Robin McKinley's Blog, page 116

Bells and brainmelt

 

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So, you all think I've been bunking off Forzadeldestino, don't you?  No.  Wrong.  They had a forty-seven bell practise one week and then a concert or some damn thing the other week.  That's the worst of these ancient monument places:  they're popular.  I feel that the sound of bells would enhance a concert . . . not with me ringing however.  Sigh.

Today I had no more plausible excuses* and I had furthermore talked Maribel from Stanhope into coming too, so there'd be at least one other middling ringer there if Gemma wasn't.  So I really had to go.**

The climb up to the bell tower doesn't get any shorter.  And you do feel like you're trudging through forty-seven centuries of English history to match the forty-seven bells in the tower.  How many times have they had to replace the (crucial) ropes lining the twisty, claustrophobic little stairwells with the spiral, wedge-shaped treads the long ends of which are about big enough for Tinkerbell to get her feet on?  I don't know how the blokes with their size-twelves get up and down at all.

And the ringing . . . um.  Well, I wasn't quite as bad.  Quite.  But I also lowered my expectations and asked for a plain course of Grandsire Triples . . . which I still couldn't get through without help.  SIIIIIIIIGH.  We also rang plain hunt on nine which is an improvement—from my perspective—on twenty-seven from three weeks ago.  SLOW DOWN! screamed tonight's ringing master, whom we will call Og, from the treble, when I think I was trying to lead when I should have been in fourth place.  We stumbled through several courses of this and by the end I was actually ringing more or less in the right place.  It's different on higher numbers.  It is.  My screwing up Grandsire Triples, however, is not being able to see what I'm doing when the other bells are in a line instead of a circle.***  AAAAAAAUGH.  However, they didn't tell me not to come back this week either, so I have to go again.  There are two things about this:  in the first place, it's too frelling humiliating that I simply can't do it.  In the second place . . . I could learn triples here—if I could learn it, which is the big stumbling block—and major and caters and royal and a lot of that stuff I've been feeling hopeless and frustrated about for years now.  First I have to be able to cope with those bells in that ringing chamber.  And I have to do it before they tell me not to come back. . . .

But I did have an amazing treat tonight.  The tower captain, whom we will call Ulrich, took me up into the belfry to see the bells.†  Ooooooh.  Their belfry is, of course, mega whopping thumping ginormous colossal, to hold forty-seven bells.  The tenor is the size of a pod of whales.  A large pod of blue whales.   I always say 'yes' to invitations to visit belfries†† and they're usually incredibly cramped and frequently involve contortionist crawling while clinging to solid frames—don't grab that wheel, it swings†††—and they also tend to be badly lit and full of dead flies.  This one looked like they were going to have the duchess to tea there tomorrow.  And it was so huge you could set up a tea-table in a corner, no problem, with room for the bloke with the gloves, tailcoat, deferential smile and the trolley with the six kinds of cake, four kinds of sandwiches and two kinds of tea.  The staircase to the belfry, however, was even steeper and narrower than the final stair to the ringing chamber.  Before someone gets elected steeplekeeper‡ they must have to measure the freller and make sure they'll fit.

Feye wrote

I managed to fulfill my previous prediction by blowing not one, but TWO paychecks on this auction.

I love stories like this.  Who needs to eat every day?  (Unless possibly you're not menopausal.)

Sooooo worth it. 

::Beams::

Especially since I have a sneaking suspicion I not only got myself into the top bidders, but actually WON the item I was drooling over.

Oh good!  (And remember there's a certain amount of laying-on of extras at top bid price for most items.)  But all of you should realise I am dying of curiosity to know when any of the orders attach to some forum member or other.  This doesn't necessarily come through on the order forms Blogmom is sending me.  In fact, it usually doesn't.

Have we successfully saved you from the horrors of selling raffle tickets, or do I need to start dreaming up doodles?

Dreaming up doodles is always good.  Well.  Sort of good.  You are somewhat constrained by the interesting intersection between my sense of humour and my drawing skills.  But I think I'm going to avoid the raffle tickets yes, and thanks.

HorsehairBraider

I am thrilled there are people out there with more money than I've got. . . . Good for you! I would have loved to get more stuff but that was not possible, so I am thrilled beyond measure that some of you were able to do these things.

The New Arcadia bells are also thrilled beyond measure.   I'm looking forward to a certain dumb-struckness among the human acolytes, however, when I hand the cheque over.  Vicky asked me a month or so ago for a rough guess about the proceeds from my auction, because she was due to go up against both the bell council and the parish council about how our fund-raising was going.‡‡  I said, cautiously, that I thought it should make £300.  I guess maybe.  Hee hee hee hee hee.

And I have to say, I am really thrilled that Robin is still alive

::falls down laughing::  I hear what you're saying, but you might conceivably have thought of a more tactful way of putting it. . . .

(it seems a lot of the books I love to read were written long ago by people who have already died)

I do understand the problem.  But I imagine that tea with George Eliot or Rudyard Kipling would not have been a success.  Eliot would have found me bumptious and Kipling would have found me . . . female.  And taller than he was.‡‡‡

and that it is possible to interact with a living author and thank her for her wonderful body of work. Thank you! 

My pleasure.  Usually.§  Thank you.

I can't wait to see what I get in the way of a doodle in my book!

Oh glory.  You mean you didn't specify?  Do you realise how dangerous that is?  —And it's getting dangerouser by the minute.  And by the every-completed-doodle.

And however long that takes, no problem.

Oh good.  I may need a few of you with that attitude by the end, when I've run through sixty-seven pens, four hundred and twelve A6 pads, and my eyeballs are frying.

I am thrilled with the prospect of anything at all.

Hey, whatever you're on, can I have some too?  This thrilled thing looks like fun.

* * *

* And what's worse, I had another last-minute invitation from Niall to ring handbells with one of his fancy ringers at Frellingham when both their usual third and fourth went down with the lurgy.  Waaaaah.  Although—get real, McKinley—I'm sufficiently super-extra crazed at the minute with cranking out doodles that it may be just as well I couldn't go.  If I'm going to make an utter gibbering fool of myself, I'd rather do it at Forzadeldestino.^

^ . . . which is a good thing in the circumstances.

** This is all in my head.  Neither Maribel—who does go to Forza practise erratically—nor Gemma needs a security blanket.

*** I overheard one of Forza's band talking about having gone to an eight-bell tower and how close together all the bell ropes seem, and in this weird little circle.

† No bats in evidence however.

†† Stop that giggling.

††† This is why people are not allowed in belfries when the bells are up, that is, mouth up, balanced precariously on their narrow ends, ready to be pulled off and rung.^  You grab the wheel of an 'up' bell injudiciously, and you are about to be a spot on the carpet, or rather the belfry floor.

^ There are exceptions.  But you have to know what you're doing.

‡ Which is about the physical upkeep of the bells.  I think if there's anything wrong with the steeple/tower you call in the parish council and say, yo, your problem.

‡‡ It's the usual thing where nobody is going to give you any money till you prove you're knocking yourself out to get it yourself.

‡‡‡ About once a year I dream of meeting Kipling.  Not Tolkien or E Nesbit or Edith Wharton or George Eliot or Anthony Trollope or William Morris or James Branch Cabell or Rebecca West.  Rudyard Kipling.

§ Except when Story in Progress is holding you down and stomping the sh*t out of you.  Sigh. . . .

Logistics and tea

 

To begin with, we have a winner in the random draw for a doodle-icious book.  This was open to anyone who advertised our auction/sale on their own blog, Twitter, Facebook, or megaphone from the top of their bell tower/castle/block of flats/apartment building/London Eye/Empire State Building/Seattle Space Needle/Machu Picchu*.  And our winner is:  danceswithpahis, from our very own forum.   Three cheers for danceswithpahis:  hip, hip, hooray!  Hip, hip, hooray!  THIGH, THIGH, GORBLIMEY!

            Now then, speaking of doodles.  The three doodle-icious books in the auction went for rather higher than I was expecting, plus I've had another commission from a mad—I mean, a wonderful human being who really really really wants a doodled-up DEERSKIN and is willing to pay rather astonishingly for it.**   I originally said that you'd get another doodle beyond the three-doodle minimum for every $10 increment in the auction, which is still true.  But since I've got some slack to hang myself with, I'm going to conflate some of them so I can make a few larger, more interesting doodles as well as some standard, simple doodles.  Um.  Watch out.  I'm growing dangerous with a drawing pen in my hand.

            Blogmom has also sent me the first wodge of doodle orders and . . . rrgllmmmph hee hee hee hee.  Some of you have a rather flattering if significantly untrue idea of my skills.  I'll do my best.  And you'll probably have some warning because the, ahem, new, original ones I'll hang here (without attribution) before they're put in the post.  But just to say . . . what you get may not be quite what you had in mind.  But the New Arcadia bells thank you. 

            Please remember that it's only poor Blogmom doing all the admin—and only me doing all the doodling, and only Fiona doing the packing up and hauling off to the post office.   We're doing the best we can***, but it's going to take a little while.  Unless Fiona's day job bites her and we have to reschedule, she'll be taking what I hope will be the majority of the sale/auction results to the post office on the 25th of this month.   I'll tell you how I'm doing nearer time.

            One last important thing:  orders that haven't been paid for by the 20th of October† will be cancelled.  If we were a company with staff we could both let it run on longer and send you gentle reminders of the deadline.††  But we aren't.  You'd be amazed at the amount of stuff there is to keep track of in just a little auction.  Okay, I hope you'd be amazed.†††  Having a prompt, no-bones deadline KA-CHUNK is merely a trying-to-keep-things-a-little-under-control‡ measure and you won't be drummed out of the forum‡‡ or anything if you miss it.‡‡‡ 

            Speaking of things that are taking longer than planned:  Blogmom has generously agreed to put off her Caribbean cruise till the auction/sale is rolled up and put away like Christmas decorations by the middle of January§, but she's not going to put the new doodle window up till she's had at least two good nights' sleep in a row and can remember her own name.  She or I will let you know . . . 

* * *

In one of those The Universe is Messing With Your Head conjunctions, today was the day Vicky had ordained that I would help with the teas-for-pensioners at the church hall.  Teas-for-pensioners has been going on off and on for years, mostly depending on there being someone who is willing to organise and run it.  At the moment, Tuesday afternoon tea and cake is being run by the bell ringers and for a ridiculous amount of volunteer effort, including making the cakes, we're allowed to keep the proceeds.  With five of us slicing, pouring and washing-up . . . I guess we may have made £30.  Okay, £35.  Tops.  In two and a half hours I could have drawn how many doodles—?  Never mind.  It's one of those community things, and it was pretty amusing, at least to a people-watcher.  The way the hall is set up, the kitchen runs along one side, and there's a long open counter most of its length, like what you might see in a café, where the waiters hand over their orders and pick up the food.  So when you're not pouring or washing-up you have a grand view of the proceedings.  Vicky and Roger and a non-ringer were on the wild side, while another non-ringer and I were in the kitchen.  I managed to overhear frustrating pieces of what sounded like several really good feuds, and one of pensioners has a crush on Roger.§§  And I swear Vicky could sell ice floes to a penguin, not that the home-made cakes needed much impetus to fly off the table onto individual plates. 

            It was still two and a half hours on my feet when I could have been at home at my desk.  So I'd better go draw something, and then sing something and then go to bed.  

* * *

* Hey.  We got very good feedback on the Machu Picchu shout out.  

** We are not making any more exceptions or taking any more commissions right now.  I've got too much to do—and thank you very much!!! for giving me so much to do!—but I need to get on with what there is.  If you find that you simply cannot live without a doodled-up something or other, there will be an opportunity later.  Have some chocolate and be cheerful. 

*** And Blogmom deserves a medal.  

† There are a few of you still waiting on final totals for postage and insurance.  Don't worry:  Blogmom knows who you are, and if we need—which, please the gods, we will not—to extend the deadline for you, we will. 

†† I would be out in the street if it weren't for two things:  Direct Debit, which means you can tell your bank 'pay these people' and they'll do it for you automatically, and the fact that things like the city council do send you (fairly) gentle reminders that your council tax is seriously due. 

††† I think I hear some hollow laughter.  Clearly a few of you do have some idea.  

‡ Cough cough cough cough cough 

‡‡ Or blocked on Twitter.  Sigh.  

‡‡‡ But you'll be very very sorry not to have the doodle of Wolfgang repelling the taralian army or Darkness playing the piano while Chaos sings.  Joking!  Just joking! 

§ An extremely ill-judged metaphor in this household. 

§§ Roger is my age.  And took early retirement.  I can't retire, but that's another issue.

Demon-infested technology

 

That sound you hear is me beating my head against a wall.*  I have wasted nearly two hours trying to get the second half of Alex Bellos' ALEX'S ADVENTURES IN NUMBERLAND onto Pooka.  Need I even tell you that I downloaded both parts when I downloaded the first?  No?  I didn't think so.  First part ran fine.**  And ran out, while hurtling this morning.  I pressed the arrow for the second.  'The audio is not available,' I was informed.  'Please resume download of title to continue audio playback.'  I made loud snarling noises of the sort that cause people to back away from you on the street, and which the hellhounds, being well accustomed, ignore entirely.

            I made a couple of brief stabs at deleting and re-downloading the wretched thing in between other more urgent activities.***  But tonight I thought, okay, I'm going to get the sod, because I want to listen to it on tomorrow morning's hurtle.

            I'm not going to be listening to it on tomorrow morning's hurtle.  It has defied me in every direction.  I've re-downloaded it something like six times.  I've seen it swim over the link from my computer three or four times.  It's still not on the iPhone.  'The audio is not available.'  It appears in Pooka's audible library as downloaded.  It's also in the iTunes' back-up library—claiming to be present and ready for action on Pooka.  Nothing happens if I drag and drop.  I did manage an interesting do-si-do that enabled me (theoretically) to drag and drop from audible's download manager:  'Not all the audio files were copied onto the iPhone, because they must exist on iTunes first.'  They do exist on frelling iTunes.  They bloody well play on my laptop.  I don't want to play them from my laptop.† 

            This is a fairly classic technology-will-kill-you bind as far as I'm concerned.  I totally love having audiobooks on Pooka.  Not only has it revolutionised hurtling around town, which is basically horribly booooooring for us bipeds who aren't much into sniffing pee, chasing cats and eating bugs, but audiobooks are brilliant for knitting (as of course violinknitter has been telling us for years††).  And www.audible.co.uk (I assume there's an American/Australian/Guamian/Patagonian equivalent) is affordable.   I'm not going to have a problem getting through a book a month, and the monthly membership fee is a quarter to a half of what most books cost on CD, if you can even find them on CD.  If audible and I can't reach a compromise in which I can listen to the books I buy without destroying hours, throat lining and the equilibrium of husband and hellhounds . . . I'm going to be devastated.††† 

 * * *

* Or possibly a bookcase.  Not a lot of blank, convenient walls for the purpose around here. 

** I have very little idea why I thought I'd like this book.  As allergies to maths go, I am at the dangerous anaphylactic end.  It got a good review in the GUARDIAN http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/alex-bellos-adventures-numberland-maths but then lots of things get good reviews in the GUARDIAN that I wouldn't touch with a barge pole.^   I suppose the awful truth is that some crumb, some fragment, some iota of curiosity about how numbers work in the real world^^ survived the combination of my education^^^ and my lack of maths brains.  But my lack of bell ringing brains hasn't stopped me ringing bells and maths . . . is a language, you know?  And a way of seeing the world in other colours and other dimensions than in our usual literature-major word-words.  It's the stuff that can't be true, the stuff no one can get their heads around that appeals to me—hey, you know, I write fantasy.  But take pi, for possibly the most obvious example.  How insane is that?  And yet everyone knows pi, and uses the freller in a careless and familiar fashion.  Or how about logarithms?  Take something mind-breakingly complicated—something you have to have a calculator to figure out in the first place;  pre-calculator there were log tables—to make ordinary SCREAMINGLY BORING but straightforward stuff like multiplication easy.  Easy = not screamingly boring.  Fast.  Non-brain-numbing.  All you need is these psychotic logarithms.  I like the philosophy behind this system even if I don't understand it even a . . . ahem . . . fraction.

            So.  Yeah.  I am enjoying this book a lot.^^^^  I want to hear the rest of it.^^^^^ 

^ My allergy to misery memoirs, for example, is even more severe than my allergy to maths. 

^^ Barring anything to do with money.  I hate money.  I just want there to be enough of the stuff when I have to pay for something.  Banks?  Shudder.  I'm not surprised they do things like lie, cheat, steal and crash.  I find economics slightly fascinating in a don't-come-near-me-with-that-thing way, and banks are always there like the wicked uncle. 

^^^ I've told you about my algebra II teacher who, first class after lunch, was too drunk to copy a problem on the chalkboard correctly.  He was, I admit, the culmination of my mathematical education—I managed to opt out after that—but there were one or two other notable high points, like my first algebra I teacher who told me I was the stupidest child she had ever tried to teach in thirty years and that I would never grasp even the most basic concepts.  Oh.  Fortunately my father got transferred shortly after that and my second algebra I teacher was one of the nicest women on the planet.  

^^^^ Although if I get around to reviewing it it's going to lose a star for Bellos'—who does the reading aloud himself—appalling accents.  His Arizonan numerologist is grotesque and his Slavic Brooklynites not a lot better. 

^^^^^ Speaking of the long-lasting effects of bad education:  I can listen to this book when I would have had a lot of trouble reading it.  This audiobook thing is not exactly efficient because finding anything on audio that you want to think about some more is not a good option . . . so of course I have to have hard copy too.  And as soon as I'm looking at the equations—even though they're mostly easier to take in in their entirety that way by someone who is as visually oriented as I am—I can feel the old school-maths fog settling down over me. 

*** Work.  Voice lesson.^ Bell ringing, speaking of bell ringing. 

^ . . . which was due to be a disaster.  I had a couple of days of mutant-virus semi-laryngitis when my voice would just drop out for a syllable or a word and I thought 'uh oh' so I didn't sing for four days . . . thus discovering how deep those roots are beginning to run.  I was expecting a Cement Day when I sang yesterday—when your throat is like cement and your working range is about three notes, and two of them are squeaky—but in fact it was not too bad—as if my voice is also beginning to think this singing lark [sic] is part of the way things are supposed to be, and is eager to get on and do stuff.  And while my cough-cough Italian has frelling backslid—it's like my eyes stop reading what I've written down of what Nadia has told me and it takes her telling me again for me to register what THOSE WORDS MEAN—even I can hear that my dubious voice-equivalent is steadying and strengthening.  Mind you, it's one of those Shetland-pony-in-a-field-of-thoroughbreds things:  I'm not going to get very far by thoroughbred standards.  But I'm out of the barn. 

† Brief unenchanting vision of taking my laptop along in a large knapsack.  No. 

†† Long before I was knitting. 

††† And while I'm whining about the malice of technology, does anyone know how to query being blocked on Twitter?  Jonathan Carroll, @JSCarroll, has blocked me.  Whimper.  I really like his stuff—I used to RT it fairly regularly—and I miss it.  I thought I'd just got defollowed somehow, which does happen, so I went to refollow and . . . was informed I was blocked.  But—but—!  I'm a real person!  I'm a fan!  What have I done?  I tweeted him, but he hasn't answered.  I've also tweeted Twitter but I'm not surprised they haven't answered. . . .

Geography and Chocolate

 

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO HAS MADE THE AUCTION/SALE A HELLGODDESS-ASTONISHING SUCCESS.  THANK YOU.   The rough results are up on the auction site.  When Blogmom and I have caught up on our sleep a little, one or the other of us will tell you more about final results and future whatevers.  But chiefly . . . THANK YOU.  Ding dong bell, you might say.

* * * 

There's been a conversation on the forum about geographic perception.  Or lack of perception. 

blondviolinist wrote:

Black Bear wrote on Sat, 08 October 2011 10:28

Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas–those are all "great plains states."

I had a friend (who had grown up in Seattle) once inform me that those states were Eastern states. I just about died laughing. Honey, do you know where the Mississippi is? Do you know how many hours you have to drive from those states to get anywhere near the Eastern United States?

Everyone knows this iconic New Yorker cover, don't they?  Or are my own East Coast roots showing?  http://bigthink.com/ideas/21121

          The New Yorker shop [sic*] sells prints of it and if it cost about one-fifth of what it does cost I'd buy a copy.**   http://www.newyorkerstore.com/steinberg-collection/new-yorker-cover-3291976/invt/124544/

 * * *

Meanwhile . . . I promised a friend about three weeks ago a red velvet cake recipe.***  I  knew I had a red velvet cake recipe, but I also knew that I hadn't made it in a while because if I'm going to deal with all those calories I want them really, really worthwhile.  Here's my biased take on the red velvet cake question:  there isn't enough chocolate because some deranged person has decreed it's more about the colour.†  I got rid of a lot of my cookbooks when we moved out of the old house—aside from the bookshelf space problem, menopause zero-metabolism was already creeping up on me—so even after trolling through the cookbook shelves of three houses†† there are at least two other red velvet recipes I can't seem to find.  But here's one that I know I've made, both because I kind of remember it and because the annotations are clearly in my handwriting.  And the pages kind of stick together.  This is a good sign.  I may have to make this one again some time.

            Note that the original called for one tablespoon of cocoa powder and a two ounce bottle of red food colouring.  Ewww. 

½ c soft butter

1 ½ c golden sugar:  the raw, low-refined kind that isn't the pure white of standard granulated.  It doesn't have as much flavour as brown, but more than white, and it's mellower than dark brown (and more interesting than light brown.  Say I).

2 large eggs

1 tsp REAL vanilla

2 c flour, or maybe a little more

¼ c unsweetened non-Dutch-process 'natural' cocoa powder

pinch salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 c buttermilk, or 1 c milk minus 1T, plus 1T vinegar to sour it.  I've been told many times this is cheating, but it's a lot easier than finding buttermilk and then figuring out something to do with the rest of it.  Theoretically, I think, if you're using vinegar, it should be skim or low-fat milk—'butter' milk is a misnomer—but I always used to use whole/full fat because that's what I drank, and it worked fine.†††  Most of that soured-milk stuff works semi-interchangeably in baking—I always thought—you get a slightly different taste and texture if it's sour cream or yogurt, say, but if your ingredients, especially your chocolate, are good quality it'll all be silky—or velvety—and damnably excellent. 

             Standard cake deal:  cream butter and sugar.  Beat in eggs.  Sift dry and add alternately with sour milk.  Beat hard, but don't hang about either:  as soon as the vinegar hits the baking soda your batter starts expanding.  Turn into 2 8" or 9" round pans with removable bottoms which have first been buttered and floured with great enthusiasm and thoroughness.  (A greased and floured cut-out of parchment paper works just as well if you don't have push-out-bottom pans.)  350°F about half an hour:  the layers should rise in the middle, and the edges start to pull away from the pan walls.  Let cool at least ten or fifteen minutes before you try and get them out of the pans.  I tend to think soured-milk cakes are more fragile than others, but that may just be my karma. 

            Frost when cool.  I recommend vanilla buttercream, myself, but as you like. 

I still haven't given you my favourite chocolate cake recipe, have I?  Or have I?  The Red Devil AKA McKinley's Famous Exploding Chocolate Cake?  Which is another of these sour milk + baking soda + chocolate = red.   My Red Devil cake, despite its distressing incendiary habits, is the reason I pretty much don't make any other chocolate cake any more.  I don't dare have cake very often‡ and I only really pine and yearn for that one. 

* * *

* I grew up in the hard-copy only era, certainly, but I also grew up at a time or anyway on the fringes of a society that believed The New Yorker was cool^.  I am still having a hard time getting my head around the on line presence of a New Yorker shop.  It's like finding out that Hillary Clinton moonlights selling pencils on a street corner.  I even follow the NYer on Twitter.  It's just not the same, reading the cartoons off a computer screen.^^  

^ Although I don't think I've actually read the thing since Janet Malcolm on Sylvia Plath, which seems to have been 1993.  How time flies.  Eeep.   

^^ Which is not to say that some comics were not totally made to be read off computer screens.  http://xkcd.com/730/

** Maybe this is the modern on line version of cool.  

*** I believe she needed it by last week. 

† Also, chocolate has changed.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_velvet_cake  I've been trying to remember, but I seem to be unduly tired yet again today,^ my progress through the erratically charted geography^^ of chocolate.  http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/02/cocoa-powder-faq-dutch-process-v/   I stopped using Dutch process when I stopped drinking cocoa, but that was a long time ago;  I may have cluelessly used Dutch process in the pre-annotation version of this recipe, which would help explain why I thought it was boring.  (It still needed more chocolate.) 

^ Go away, you Mutant Virus, and take the ME with you!  You have seriously outstayed your welcome!, as Holofernes might have said to Judith if he'd had the chance. 

^^ I perceive a theme.  Also, speaking of themes, anyone who doesn't follow me on Twitter may need to know this:  http://www.chocolateweek.co.uk/ 

†† I never said there weren't drawbacks. . . . 

††† I'd use low-fat now because the rest of the carton would be easier to give away, because that's what everyone I know now uses.  And yes, I assume I could still escape major punishment for ingesting the amount of (cooked) milk that was in a few pieces of cake, despite the 'no dairy' billboards lining my alimentary canal.  I'd be worrying more about getting the waistband of my jeans closed. 

‡  See:  getting waistband of jeans closed

LAST AUCTION/SALE DAY

 

THIS IS YOUR LAST DAY.  THIS IS YOUR LAST OPPORTUNITY TO BUY A BOOK OR BID ON SOMETHING IN THE BELL-FUND AUCTION/SALE.*  The doodle option will stay up another week** but everything else shuts down tomorrow at 2 pm Chicago (Blogmom) time.  Step right up, folks, step right up.  The bearded lady and the sword-swallower right this way, just as soon as you give me all your money.   

             I'm uncommonly shattered for some reason.  Maybe it was that invasion of berserker cauliflower last night . . . no, wait, I do know what it was:  both hellhounds ate supper with almost no fuss whatsoever.  What?  Chaos has officially given up supper—he submitted the form a good fortnight ago but he'd filled it out wrong so I got to send it back—and Darkness only eats on the nights that having me pry his jaws open to get a remedy powder in is going to be just toooooo boring.  You can almost see him considering it when I put the bowl of food in front of him.   But I'd barely started my first game of Montezuma 2*** when . . . crunch crunch crunch.  Crunch crunch.  I had to put Pooka down in the middle of a game.†  But the entire experience was such a shock to the system I had to lie down and read for a while.††  And then repelling the attack cauliflower took a while.†††  And then there were the cats.  And then it was dawn.  And then the horrible man‡ across the road went to work.‡‡  The sound his frelling car makes on their gravel driveway is a lot like very large hellhounds eating supper. . . .  Sorry, I'm raving.

               So.  I've been doodling.  Some madwoman who wants to spread the joy‡‡‡ asked for a heap of sleeping puppies doodle for DEERSKIN.  Glarg.  I haven't figured out how I'm going to simplify this into a standard doodle, but here's a first trial run:

[image error]

I was looking at Chaos and Darkness puppy photos and thinking Soooooo cute . . . . Soooooo glad it's over.

  

Someone else wants a spider in the corner of a window for SPINDLE'S END:

From a golden crown let your silk hang down. Er. Or a window frame.

I may have a go at the spider dangling from a sleeve—my doodle-orderer's other suggestion—one of these days in my copious spare time, and find out if drawing Ikor's shiny ribbony sleeve is rather satisfying in an OCD sort of way, as I suspect it may be.

              . . . And the medium-large friendly squid wants not to be forgotten.  

The 'Fido' is diamante, you understand. It's just a little small here.

 

Now go buy something.  Please. 

* * *

* And, guys . . . you're seriously missing out not having a better run at TULKU, or CHUCK AND DANIELLE, or CLOCK MICE.  I know this is my blog—and my bells—but I'm recommending them.  Highly.  

** I don't know exactly when this will happen, but when Blogmom has recovered from doing all the making-it-work about the bell fund^ I've asked her if she can figure out a way to hang a more-or-less permanent^^ doodle-order window down the side of the blog somewhere.  We'll worry about what to do with the money if it turns out there is any.  

^ I believe I heard something about 'Caribbean cruise'. 

^^ Or let's call it indefinite, which is what my visa to stay in England says.  Very unsettling, 'indefinite' rather than 'permanent'.  I'll be good, officer!  Really I will!  —Er.  I do get to complain, don't I? 

*** Sigh.  You were right.  Montezuma 2 is available for iPhone.  Why it didn't appear instantly and say Buy me! when I asked iTunes for it is one of those little mysteries, like why my audible downloads are so easily led astray by bad companions and are found days later in the wrong part of town with nothing left but a headache and a vague memory of something about Long Island Iced Tea^ and spandex. 

^  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Iced_Tea 

† There doesn't seem to be a 'cancel this game, hellhounds are eating' option.  Oh well, my player rating is always pathetic. 

†† I don't suppose any of you out there want to recommend an origami book?  I dug out my ancient Dover reprint of beginner origami and ordered the FOR DUMMIES origami but neither of them is the least bit inspiring.  I want something that makes me go 'ooh'.  I'm, you know, shallow.  

††† It was a vengeance raid.  I ate the emperor a few nights ago.  Very tasty he was too. 

‡ Actually he's a very nice man.  Except at 7 o'clock in the morning. 

‡‡ Wait a minute.  It's Saturday.  What was he doing going to work?^

^ Yes, I work seven days a week.  I'm free lance.  It's the down side to being able to work in your dressing gown and not comb your hair.  And stay up till dawn.

 ‡‡‡ Too late.  I've been mad for years.

 

Another bellish Friday

 

For some reason I got an email from Fiona after she read last night's blog entry that went like this:  Choke, splutter, snork!!!!!

            I guess she must not think much of my chances of learning to knit around corners either . . . 

* * *

I should also clarify my position on iced tea, which is that back in the days when I could mainline caffeine all day* I used to drink iced tea too.  I brewed it like proper tea and when it had cooled off, transferred it into a pitcher and put it in the refrigerator.**  But when reality and the smell of burning neurons began to get obtrusive and I had to cut back to two or three average-sized mugs a day, the iced tea went.  This is partly because my idea of acceptable iced tea was twice as strong as my idea of acceptable hot tea, and my hot tea tends to make strong men blanch.***  Sigh.  Mortal limitations, what a ratbag. 

reading_fox wrote:

 but try finding somewhere in this medieval English town in the heart of Tory Hampshire that will make you a decent cup of tea.

Or pretty much anywhere else in the country. It is depressing. I can recommend Betty's tea shop in York, should anyone ever find their way up there.

Now all I need is a B&B that takes hellhounds.  It is totally weird that Britain has lost its way on the subject of tea.  Or, for that matter, on the subject of hellhounds and other animals.  Britain still has the reputation of being a nation of animal lovers but . . . no.  Wrong.  Granted that the number of idiot owners is discouraging, but that's part of the picture, isn't it?  And the result is that critters are welcome very nearly nowhere.†  I've had a moan here before about the number of kids who are being raised to be (a) afraid of animals—and while there are a few, I think it's a very few, kids who are 'naturally' afraid of animals, most of them have picked it up from the society around them and (b) clueless about how to approach/avoid animals.  The ones that make me despair are the ones who scream Don't let it near me! and dance up and down waving their hands or similar—something very attractive to a friendly and curious critter.  

. . . I did have tea in the Ritz once. I wasn't that impressed with the actual tea. Large silver teapots were lovely, but loose tea was left steeping in them for far too long resulting in a bitter brew even before it reached you. And they go cold quickly.

Tea at the Ritz used to be my favourite ridiculously overpriced going-out treat.  Still cheaper than a good dinner at a London restaurant and you got home a lot earlier.††  I'm almost wondering if you were there on a bad day.  It's true the silver teapots go cold way too quickly but the tea in my experience was always very good quality and . . . well, I like stewed tea, so I'm not a good judge of it at the end of the afternoon, but one of my interesting theories is that good tea doesn't stew as in . . . stew.  Stewed PG Tips is so bitter it eats holes in ceramic teapots and will kill you, rendering your organs not worth transplanting despite that card you carry in your wallet, but stewed golden tippy organic single estate something or other just becomes more, ahem, intensely itself.  

* * *

I didn't sing for Oisin (again) today because the Mutant Virus has taken up residence in my throat and while I only sound faintly scratchy every now and then I have laryngitis for about two words and I figure I'll just have a nice rest for a few days.†††  The tea was excellent, however and the music . . . wow.  Oisin was playing Louis Vierne's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Vierne second [organ] symphony and . . . wow.  He's played some of it before but he was taking it apart for me today so I could hear the individual lines, and have I said WOW?  WOW.‡ 

            But I was dreading tower practise because Penelope, who is mostly a good friend except when she drags Niall off on holiday, has dragged Niall off on holiday‡‡ which meant I was in charge.  The first thing that happened was that there were only three of us.  Ugggh.  But if it had remained three we could have gone home and I wouldn't have to be in charge of anything.  Then there were four, which meant minimus.  Ugggh.  We were just failing to grapple with Reverse Canterbury—everything happens so fast on only four bells—when a fifth person turned up and saved us.  Five bells—doubles.  Yaaay.  So I, daring greatly, and there have to be some perks to being the boss, called my little touch of Grandsire from the five—the fifth bell—which is big and heavy enough that you have to get your dodges pretty well right because you're not going to be able to yank it back into line if you get it wrong.  Not to mention that with only five ringers and no tenor-behind (sixth bell) any doubles method is a lot more unstable.  And, if you're conducting, you have to remember to call your bobs and singles at the right moment.  Victory.  Yaaay.‡‡‡ 

            And then Edward showed up and the evening took a significantly upward turn.  Edward's been in the States§ forever and only got back this week.  Edward can ring anything, so we suddenly had critical mass with Vicky, Dorothy, Roger and Edward . . . and only Leo and me to muck things up.  I got through both a touch of Stedman doubles and a touch of St Clements, even if this was largely the result of tactful calling on Edward's part.  And everyone told me what a good job I had done running the evening.  Snork.  You can sure recognise a bunch of people who don't want the flying fickle finger of fate pointing at them at the next annual general meeting and election of officers. 

* * *

* I used to get through up to ten double-sized mugs of quadruple-strong black tea a day.  And I wonder why my digestion is frelled^ and my nerves are in shreds.^^ 

^ Well, my digestion has always been frelled.  I think it was born frelled.  

^^ I was also born looking for things to overreact to.  AAAAUGH!  Air!  AAAAUGH!  Light!  AAAAUGH!  Other people!  AAAAAUGH!  Most of us outgrow this stage.  

** If it's hot I want pure mint or pure black and any mixture is disgusting, but black iced tea with mint was my favourite.  

*** This part hasn't changed.  When Oisin makes our Friday afternoon pot of tea he makes it extra-strong, hastily pours out the first mug for himself and . . . I drink the rest.  By the bottom of the pot my eyes are getting kind of bloodshot. 

† Although there is no attempt to control everyone throwing their cats outdoors to destroy other people's gardens, leave crap everywhere, shred awnings and lawn furniture, kill endangered songbirds, and have noisy arguments under bedroom windows at unsuitable hours.  One of the reasons for going to bed at dawn is that you have thus missed being woken up by a cat fight.   

†† Also if you go to the final sitting you can just stay on and buy a glass of champagne.  Go you neurons.  First you're frizzled by the tea and then you're slapped silly by champagne.^  Wheeeee. 

^ The menu has changed over the years however.  I think you can get a champagne tea whenever you like now.  

††† I don't want a nice few days' rest, and I am going to my voice lesson on Monday.   Not only because Peter left his walking stick at Tabitha's and I can pick it up more or less on the way. 

‡ The lines are amazing:  usually when you listen to a line that is meant to go with other lines you mainly hear the incompleteness.  Not here.  Vierne was an organist and mainly wrote music for organ, but he also wrote some choral music.  Hmmmmmm. 

‡‡ To another outlandish place, Dorking or Barking or Wapping or Leatherhead orPatagonia or something. 

‡‡‡ Except for the little matter that I always forget when it ends.  Fortunately everybody else knows the touch I was calling so they were going to come into rounds whether I remembered to call it or not. 

§ Speaking of outlandish places

Fiona, shining with an ethereal light

 

Fiona has been here today, sorting me out.  I stayed as far out of her way as possible* all day, and was REWARDED for restraining my natural gibbering trepidation about seeing the first flood of sale/auction orders made manifest** by our going to Greater Footling*** for a folk concert tonight.  Aside from the winter gale blowing on our ankles† throughout the evening it was excellent.††  It was probably my guilty awareness of blowing off Muddlehampton practise that was making me listen with a kind of newly-heightened awareness:  you can get away with more if you just do it boldly.†††  The prelim act may have featured the singer with the more beautiful voice but she was too tentative.‡  The headliner has a voice like anyone might have a voice, but golly she can parlay it.  But she's also busy soaring off into realms that have very little to do with folk music but everything to do with making her audience sit up and go 'oooh'.  I need to get back to composing my weird little pieces in my copious free time.  Perhaps the purchaser of the original McKinley composition in the auction will prove to have a generous and flexible nature. 

PS:  Fiona also brought cookies. 

* * *

* Assisted, as ever, by faithful hellhounds.  Oh, hi, Fiona, I have to take hellhounds out^ . . . . So, Fiona, how's it going? [staring in terror at pile of order print-outs and mountain of padded envelopes].  Right, Fiona, we're on our way down to the mews . . . No, hellhounds and I are just passing through [I DON'T THINK I CAN GET INTO MY OFFICE ANY MORE] you're doing a great job, thanks so much.^^ 

I am now organised.  There are seventy-eight piles, all of them beautifully and precisely labelled.  All I have to do is . . . function.^^^ 

^ The Trauma of Technology, Chapter 4,728,311.  I've finally got to the end of the www.audible.uk DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT [AMERICAN] HISTORY and I've been listening to it for so long+ it's like losing a friend. 

            However, nothing ventured, nothing rattling your cage.  So I downloaded the next book on my list.++  I'd already bought the freller, all I had to do was download it.  I downloaded it.  It appeared in my iTunes library.  I synced it with Pooka, having ticked it to be transferred.  I was watching the little window at the top of the screen—I'm paranoid, you know—and I SAW it slide over the wires into my iPhone.

            Not.  When hellhounds and I went out for our second hurtle, I tried to turn it on.  It wasn't there.  WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT THERE?  I checked on my computer again.  iTunes, sniggering to itself, brought it up on the screen when I asked it about the contents of Robin's iPhone.  I went back to the iTunes library and tried dragging and dropping it, which is a trick Fiona taught me and has worked for other things in the past.  Nope.  Still not there. 

            I will spare you the labyrinthine sequelae.  The point is that I have no idea what I finally did that made the wretched thing appear on Pooka's screen and, wonder of wonders, consent to play.  Since it is not in audible's best interests to alienate eager new members, it's clearly the technology which is amusing itself using my brain for a nice game of pinball.  DON'T KNOW MUCH+++ was my first audible book and the first three of its four parts downloaded beautifully and were simply there when I went to play them.  The fourth one, as regular readers may remember, was a shedload of kryptonite and Pooka is also a native of the planet Krypton.  By that time, however, I'd not only listened to the first three parts but downloaded and listened to several free sample chapters, all of which behaved flawlessly.

            Arrrrrrrgh.  

+ Although I've listened to most of it twice—going back to the beginning of a section and listening to it again before I go on.  As previously observed, 200-plus years of American history in not quite 700 pages is . . . intense.  And that's aside from the head-exploding moments.  It still makes my head explode that it took till 1920 for American women to get the vote.  We've had the vote for LESS THAN a century.  And seven states (all of them, just by the way, southern ex-slave states) still rejected it.  ' . . . While it guaranteed the vote to women, states could enact their own voting requirements. [I'd've liked to hear what some of these were~  Probably that you were an heiress of at least 600 acres—old white men have always worshipped their property—and married—can't have all that land in a woman's hands—and could recite the Bhagavad Gita backwards in the original Sanskrit.  Okay, probably not the Gita, but you know what I mean.]  The amendment also did not require states to allow women to serve on juries or be eligible for public office . . . .' 

~ Yes, I know.  Google.  

++   http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/alex-bellos-adventures-numberland-maths 

+++ . . . how very prescient 

^^ Whose stupid idea was this again?  Can't we just tie the bells up with string or something? 

^^^ HorsehairBraider:  . . . look what awesome taste the squid has – not only chocolate, but champagne! With lots of glasses for friends! It would be wonderful to be a squid and have all those arms. 

Stephanie:  You're not making the process of picking a doodle subject any easier, you know. 

A doodle-orderer could specify what her (or his) medium-large friendly squid was carrying in all those arms.  If a doodle-orderer were thus inclined.  Default, I admit, would likely be champagne and chocolate. 

Aaron 

Quote:

^ using the second sides of paper that has story drafts on the other side.

I trust that you realize that even a rumour to the effect that the pre-existing doodles in the auction might fall into this category could cause a riot.

Oh.  Well, maybe we can save that for the next doodle-aganza.  

** Despite my printer being possessed by increasing numbers of highly inventive demons.  Fiona got out her vorpal blade and cut a few mystic runes in the atmosphere around said printer.  You are so no fun, it said, and printed.  

*** Which involved only six Sherpas and a musk ox. 

† Getting old is a ratbag.  By the time the concert was over all the free-floating rheumatism within a ten-mile radius had glommed onto me and I nearly needed a forklift to get me out of my chair, let alone up the six hundred and twelve stairs to the frelling car park.  I comfort myself with the fact that Fiona was limping too, and she's a good quarter century younger than I am.  But after equatorial jungle weather^ all week it's suddenly turned to winter and all our atomic densities are realigning themselves in a singularly thoughtless way.  Ouch.

 ^ I'm sure I heard monkeys and parrots. 

†† Diane in MN

I was made to sit in a small room . . . all right, a large room . . . with a piano, a computer, a lot of paper of various types, several handsful of pens and pencils, hellhounds, an electric kettle, a teapot^ . . . and told to get on with it.

Hey, you forgot the YARN.

Oh, how could I forget the yarn?  Fiona and I were Comparing Projects tonight during the intervals.  I'm . . . still knitting squares.^  Fiona is doing this way cool thing where you change yarns/colours by simply knitting on to your previous, uh, polygon.  No sewing up.  I like this.  Unfortunately what she's doing involves going around corners.  I'm not sure I like it well enough to risk learning to go around corners.  Mind you I've already self-taught the knitting-on of edges which prove too short when clapped together with other, cough cough, squares of peculiarly unpolygonal shape and angular relationship.^^  But corners . . . I foresee dodecahedrons of potential errors in the concept of knitting corners. 

 ^ I meant to get Fiona to check me over for counting stitches and purling competence.  I have two large, patterned squares to get going on.  A rose.  And a paw print.  

^^ It's not the sewing-up so much as the addenda to sewing up. 

††† EMoon:  I have the same thing about not wanting to be heard. I've been trying to think where it came from…but there was a lot of silencing going on when and where I grew up. Girls, in particular, were supposed to be quiet. . . . Yet I went on being outgoing and outspoken until…when? I can't remember the specific incidents when suddenly I froze if asked to sing. 

. . . Have just wasted some more time trying to track down a reference (not assisted by the fact that Wiki has been violently unstable the last couple of days and my less than sainted Internet Explorer keeps opening and shutting Wiki pages like a nutcracker smashing walnuts.  CRUNCH).  Who was it that thought girls suddenly shut down at around age eleven?  I was thinking it was Carol Gilligan but I'm not finding a suitable quote.  I also think it's probably changed in the generation(s) since ours, but I sure remember finding out that I was going to have to stop being a kid and grow up to be a . . . girl.  My freezing was general though:  singing was a mere aspect.  It was a severe aspect of this paralysis, however, and is still alive and well almost half a century later.

I can't make myself sing as loud in the house as I can at lessons. I don't even want to hear myself. . . . 

Yep.  I'm there too.  Although I know one sort of sub-reason for this:  Nadia is a whole lot nicer about my voice than I am.  But that's part of this vicious circle.  And I'm not going to get caught in it tonight.

‡ I can hear Oisin saying, Give it more wellie.

Other cat-like beings

 

I'm so tired I'm doing things like just stopping myself in time from putting the peppermint tea in the kettle instead of the . . . the . . . and standing there with a heaped-up teaspoon of loose peppermint tea* and trying to think what to do with it, while a few peppermint leaf fragments drift gently down to the counter.  —Teapot.  I knew it would come to me eventually.*

            Various Things are making me crazy**, I've still got this mutant virus sticking up progress, and today I took Peter and me to Tabitha for our monthly onslaught of Bowen massage.  When it was my turn and she asked me how I was I said MAKE THIS MUTANT VIRUS GO AWAY.  Bowen always tires me out, it's just worth it when you wake up the next day feeling better than you have since . . . well, probably since the day after your last treatment.  But if there's something really to be grappled with, like a mutant virus . . . well.  I feel like a petri dish and the fungus is winning.

            So, since by the time I got back from the last hellhound hurtle of the day the prospect of words in complete sentences was alarming, I got out the doodle paper instead.***  There are quite a few people soliciting Narknon and someone tweeted in response to last night's blog that her idea of McKinley felines are all tiger sized.   Okay.

Narknon.

Smug Narknon

Tiger

* I drink black tea all day long and then I shift to peppermint after dinner.  It's all loose.  Teabags are an abomination.  There's a Graham Greene quote that I've just wasted about ten minutes trying to find on Google, which I'm pretty sure is from TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT.  The narrator, sitting in a café, is watching someone at the next table remove the teabag from his/her cup 'like a small drowned animal on a string' or words to that effect.  As I recall the someone is American.  Thanks a lot, Graham old buddy.  At most restaurants it's not like you have a choice . . . and his narrator is at the next table, isn't he?  This is on my mind because I seem to have been in and out of Mauncester rather too often the last few days and have twice wanted a cup of tea and a sit down . . . but try finding somewhere in this medieval English town in the heart of Tory Hampshire that will make you a decent cup of tea.  It's stiff with cafés . . . all of which throw a tea bag in a pot and seem to think they're a hot number when they offer you Earl Grey or Assam.  Grrrrrrr.  Floor sweepings are floor sweepings and they don't warm the pot first either.  Monday I had a cup of tea at a Very Lofty Tea Shop with Pretensions—and a national reputation.  Teabag.  In a pot.  Weak and bitter.  And the chocolate croissant was ordinary.^^

 'In the early 1960s, tea bags made up less than 3 per cent of the British market, but this has been growing steadily ever since. By 2007 tea bags made up a phenomenal 96 per cent of the British market.'  http://www.tea.co.uk/the-history-of-the-tea-bag  How the mighty are fallen.  How glad Mr Greene is to have died twenty years ago.  I hope there is tea in Paradise.^ 

It's not like my country of origin is getting it right either however.  'Approximately 85% of the tea drunk in the USA is iced.'  http://www.teausa.org/general/pdf/FACTSHEET.pdf  What?  I'm with Katharine Hepburn in THE AFRICAN QUEEN on this one:  a nice cup of hot tea on a sweltering day is refreshing.  And I fear a lot of that iced tea is that ghastly powder stuff out of a jar or a packet. 

^ Or wherever I go to wait between incarnations. 

^^ The problem with taking your own flask is that I have yet to find a flask that doesn't have a plastic stopper and the taste poisons the contents.  You make a thermos of your very own perfectly brewed tea and . . . BLEEEAUGH.  Yes.  I'm fussy.  It's a curse. 

** Yes, this would include the sale/auction.  But it's not the doodling, it's the practicalities of the back end.  I WAS NOT MADE TO BE PRACTICAL.  I was made to sit in a small room . . . all right, a large room . . . with a piano, a computer, a lot of paper of various types, several handsful of pens and pencils, hellhounds, an electric kettle, a teapot^ . . .  and told to get on with it.  I don't want to know about the rest of reality!  Tell it to go away!  I have plenty to do in here! 

^ And may I please have some overachieving geraniums in the windows? 

*** I've been trying to convince myself to doodle on proper drawing paper but that's so . . . serious.  I suppose I'll have to when I run out of second sheets^. 

^ using the second sides of paper that has story drafts on the other side.

Friendly medium-large squid. I admit he's not giant, but he's still bigger than I want to meet if he's not friendly.

Cats, etc

 

Blogmom got an email from someone wanting a hellfeline doodle and being unsure what to ask for.  So I thought I'd run through the rough doodle guidelines again—beginning with the fact that while the book sale and auction ends on Sunday, the doodle option will remain open a while longer.*

            So the first rule is:  Don't worry.  Doodles aren't rocket science—especially not the way I draw—and there's no hard deadline.

            Second rule:  this is where the 'rough' and the 'guideline' part starts.  I was talking to another friend who draws about the awkwardness of trying to explain to non-drawers what's possible in this instance.  The other night on the blog I said 'single strong image'—so the Mona Lisa yes, The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke** no.  Think nouns.***  But think simple nouns.  I can do a teapot.  I can do a teapot and a mug.  I can even do a Japanese teapot with little Japanese cups.†  I cannot do a Japanese tea ceremony.††

            Third rule:  I can certainly do a hellfeline.  I can probably have a run at pretty much any critter, although I'm saying that looking nervously over my shoulder for the stealthy approach of the Thing That Can't Be Doodled.†††  But if there's a nice clear picture of it through google somewhere, I'll have a go. 

This is pretty much a portrait of the ex-hellkitten who has grown up to enjoy his food. I wish a little of this would rub off on hellhounds.

 

 

Um. Cats. Um.

 

Burgandy Ice wrote in response to EMoon's guest blog on writing speed: 

 . . . My husband restores classic cars and "how long have you been working on that?" is like a horror question – or was for the bit of art in progress that sat under cover for a few years.

I think sometimes these questions are just clueless attempts to keep the conversation going:  oh, how long does it take to write a novel?  But certainly sometimes your interlocutor is either thinking 'why is she getting paid for fooling around?' or 'I could do it faster than he is'.   And there's also the crucial question of exactly what you're paying for.  Horsehairbraider posted about a client not wanting to pay the hourly rate for a design she'd ripped off in a minute.  But the client isn't paying for the design minute, he's paying for the expertise that made it possible for a design to be produced in a minute.  I was trying to make google find this story for me, and I can't.  I think it was James McNeill Whistler who refused to lower his price on something he'd done, and the outraged would-be buyer asked how long it had taken him to paint it.  Oh, about half an hour, said Whistler-if-it-was-Whistler.  But you're paying for the years I've spent perfecting what I do.‡

            It seems to be human nature to look for the easy way—both from the buyer's and the seller's end.  But the truth is that just about every frelling thing requires work, even when you're doing it at a pretty low level.  Singing in a small local amateur choir, for example, or doodling.  I'm aware of the energy and concentration requirements for both of these because they're new on my list, and I have a more intimate relationship with my energy level than most people because of the ratbagging ME.  Putting time and energy into something you enjoy is exhilarating—but it's still time and energy. 

CathyR wrote: 

danceswithpahis wrote on Tue, 04 October 2011 06:49

 

Quote:


If you ride as well as you can on every horse on every ride, you will continue to improve as a rider,

This totally reminds me of dancing (having been taking dance lessons for the past few years). I find that if I just brush things off and don't bother trying, the dance doesn't usually go so well no matter who my partner is. On the other hand, if I give it my best and try to use my best technique while adapting to my partner's technique and skill level, we usually do well, enjoy ourselves, and hopefully both learn something.

And I think the same applies to bellringing. Doing the best I can may be simply concentrating furiously on sticking to the blue line (the squiggly pattern that tells me when to pull my rope in relation to everyone else) of a complex or unfamiliar method, and doing that correctly so that the ringing doesn't sound awful or collapse in a heap. But if I'm ringing "only" plain hunt, or "only" bob doubles (the very first things learnt as a bell ringer), then if I don't bother trying, or if I let my mind wander, it's likely to result in me striking poorly and/or going wrong thru lack of concentration. End result – unsatisfactory and unenjoyable. Whereas if I try to always think about ringing the best I can, in terms of technique, striking, rhythm, bell control, etc, then I and everyone else (including those for whom "only" bob doubles is a new and complex method) will all enjoy it far more and get more out of it. 

Yes.  I'm very conscious of this because I spend so much of my ringing time trying to be one of the steady ones—steady not being one of my gifts, in bell ringing or anything else—for people who can ring even less than I can.  I confess that I long for three Venerable Quiddity ringers to join the New Arcadia band so I can get brought on—I'd settle for learning Grandsire and Stedman Triples and Cambridge minor and major, thanks—but it is undoubtedly satisfying to hew successfully to your own line, however simple, when all about you are chopping theirs to splinters.  It's also the best for the band—if only one person goes wrong, chances are the conductor will set them right—or the band will simply shove them back to where they should be by emphatically only leaving gaps where the miscreant should put their bell.  If more than one person goes wrong . . . well, you'd better hew like mad, and the conductor had better know what they're doing.  But it's really your responsibility to do your best, you know?  Which sounds a whole lot like life.  Ugh.                   

            Even when what you're manifesting is doodles.   

* * *

 * I'm still thinking I might leave a doodle window up indefinitely, but we'll see how sane I still am/am not after I get the bell-fund doodles done.  

** http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=2979 

*** Think visible nouns.  I do not want to doodle hegemony or jurisprudence.^ 

^ I could do honour.  Or nausea.+ 

+ Honour would be very doodlier.  Nausea is simple.     

† This would be a doodlier doodle, you understand. 

†† At least not unless you want to pay me a lot of money.  And furthermore I'd probably keep it.  And buy chocolate and champagne and books and yarn.  For me.  

††† I was trying to think of a critter I know I could not doodle . . . velociraptor?  No, I could doodle a velociraptor.  Duck-billed platypus?  Sure.  Giant squid?  Oh, probably, although I'd rather not^ . . . but it's also late at night (as usual) so I'm probably just blanking on The Thing That Cannot Be Doodled. 

^ And it would be a friendly giant squid 

‡ Speaking of Whistler and doodles:  Arrangement in Grey and Black, yes.  Nocturne in Blue and Gold, no. 

 

Bonkers

 

Hellhounds, in their never-ending quest to create a hellgoddess as entirely bonkers as they are, have a New Trick.  They are STILL causing daily havoc by refusing to eat their supper, final meal of the day, which happens, you know, after midnight . . . sometimes quite a lot after midnight . . . when I would be on my way to bed if I didn't have non-eating hellhounds in the way.*  ARRRRGH.  However, since I found a homeopathic remedy that stops Darkness from having a stomach-ache if he misses a meal** I no longer stay up till past dawn hoping they'll eventually frelling eat.*** 

            They've been eating supper somewhat more often than they haven't lately and . . . I'll take what I can get.  Night before last they wouldn't eat and I had to go to bed so I could get up for service ring Sunday morning without bursting into tears.  I usually pathetically leave the bowls in the crate with them—well it can't hurt—and Saturday night I had done this, muttering animadversions on the genetic heritage of hellhounds, and then went upstairs, shutting down computer, turning lights off, opening windows and whatever.  When I turned the radio off I† heard a funny noise.

            Crunch crunch crunch.  Crunch.  Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.

            I went downstairs and turned the light back on.  Four hellhound eyes stared at me over two empty bowls.  Now this is perhaps the most frustrating part of this particular piece of behaviour:  once they've started eating they're hungry!  Huuuuuuuuuungry!  Huuuuuuuuungry!  I don't want to intimidate them with huge bowls of dog food at the end of the day, so I give it to them by handful.  I gave them each a fresh double handful . . . which they ate . . . but when I removed the bowls they came boiling out of the crate after me, or rather after the bowls, looking pointedly at the green jar I keep supper kibble in.  ARRRRRGH.

            Last night I didn't have to be up early in the morning so I curled up with my book†† while hellhounds stared at their supper.  I read about 100 pages††† . . . and hellhounds had still not touched their supper.  FRELL, FRELL, FRELL, FRELL, I said, and other more hellhound-specific imprecations of a non-family-friendly-blog kind, turned the lights out and went upstairs to . . .

            Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch. 

 * * *

Singing lesson today.  I wasn't sure what kind of a voice I was going to be able to demonstrate;  this migrant virus I've got‡ continues to lurk ominously like a hoodlum on a street corner and then rematerialise, swinging a bicycle chain, where least wanted.  These bruising appearances have included all organs, orifices, muscles and spaces needed to produce singing noises.  It continues to make me crazy‡‡ that the voice is so variable—it's not just from day to day but from hour to frelling hour.‡‡‡  For someone who is already a trifle prone to feelings of insecurity it is a daily re-enactment of those grisly dreams where you're about to address a summit of world leaders on the effect of sunspots on the global economy and you have written a speech on first looking into Chapman's Homer§, or you're about to sit for the exam that will get you into Oxford/Harvard and you know everything about ancient Sumerian abacus usage and the paper they've given you appears to concern the private life of Diophantus, or you're about to have the interview for a plum job with the most important person in your ideal career field and you're wearing your nightgown and haven't washed your hair.  Blerg.  There is enough quicksand in my life already. 

            But somehow Nadia wasn't surprised that I've decided, without ever having decided, that I'm going to keep going to Muddlehampton practise and learn all that music I'm not going to be singing in the winter concert.  And I try not to think about the fact that I'm now loud enough that anyone making a cup of tea in Nadia's mum's kitchen is going to be able to hear me.  Although this encapsulates the latest distressing fact preying on my inhibitions:  I'm audible.  As a first soprano with the Muddlehamptons you can hear me.  I said to Nadia, I'm not ready to be audible.  Too late, said Nadia, grinning that annoying grin of a successful teacher.

        * * *

 * If there were another cereal-free whole-food kibble I would be more than happy to try them on it.  But choice is limited and they're already getting what they'll eat^ and I am extremely loath to cut the list of tolerateds any shorter than it already is.  I am also extremely loath to have to cook for hellhounds three times a day rather than only twice.^^  Supper is supposed to be a snack, like me having an apple.  But then I don't have a stomach-ache in the morning if I don't have an apple before I go to bed.

^ Nothing piscine need apply, for example, and beef makes them itch 

^^ Although I think in fact fresh roast chicken is probably cheaper than this stuff, which is what they get for supper  http://www.orijenpetfoods.co.uk/   and which up until a few months ago they appeared to like—relatively speaking.  Lunch and dinner it's the lamb & veg and turkey & veg cereal free http://www.wellbeloved.com/products/dog_food.aspx with chicken scraps and stock, which Peter makes with the carcasses, and anything else suitable us mere humans have lying around.  They're very fond of chicken liver.+  That makes three of us.  No, mine!  Mine!  Being hellgoddess must have some privileges! 

+ Well . . . fond.  We are talking about hellhounds and food here. 

** One of my many grudges against ConMed—conventional medicine—is its blind prejudice against what it calls anecdotal evidence.  But then I don't believe in objectivity:  it's all subjective, to a greater or lesser degree, and the fact that most labcoats believe that a well-run scientific experiment produces pure, unbiased and unassailable results only makes me less inclined to believe them because the essential fallibility of mortals is being ignored.  My one-rat experiment with Darkness says that if I remember to give him his remedy on a night he's not eating, he'll be okay in the morning, and will eat his lunch.  If I don't remember, he'll have borborygmi I can hear from the upstairs hall when I come downstairs in the morning—and won't eat his lunch, at least not without a lot of palaver.  Homeopathy.  It works.   

*** Don't be silly.  Of course feeding them earlier doesn't help.  I just assume I'll be getting another couple of chapters read or another square knitted very last thing while waiting on hellhounds. 

† Here's another good Word grammar catch.  It wants me to replace 'I' with 'me'.  Okay, so when I've moved the radio off me, who is hearing the funny noise that presumably I am making because there was a radio on me? 

†† I've kind of gone off Montezuma since I got to the end of it the first time.  That's it?  That's all you get?  You've penetrated into the deepest something of the something or other to achieve the archaeological ultimate and . . . that's it? 

            This is not to say that if Montezuma 2 comes out for iPhone I won't immediately download it.  

††† I am a slow reader  

‡ I keep thinking of that Gary Larson cartoon—'You've got cows, Mr Blahblah'. 

              There are a few Larsons on the web but I can't find that one.  I'd at least direct you to the correct book but I haven't a clue where it is. 

‡‡ Speaking of bonkers 

‡‡‡ Since I've found that I get more out of x amount of practise time if I split it in two, even if it's only twenty minutes, this has become conspicuous.  I'm also noticing, with a combination of bemusement and dismay, that I can no longer afford to miss.  Used to be—just a month or two ago—missing a day didn't, you know, show, as long as I learnt the tune I was trying to sing.  Now if I want to make Better Noises I pretty well have to sing every day.  When a you've-got-cows virus is trying to shut you down this is quadruply frustrating. 

§ http://www.bartleby.com/101/634.html