Robin McKinley's Blog, page 118

Squeaking

 

DON'T FORGET.  THE AUCTION AND SALE FOR THE NEW ARCADIA BELL RESTORATION FUND GOES LIVE TOMORROW.  TOOOOOOOOOMORROW.* 

Meanwhile, back at the maelstrom. . . .

            Niall emailed me, How did it go at Forzadeldestino last night?  I told him.  He answered:  Don't worry – the rope-sight problems of ringing in an aircraft hangar are prone to inducing paranoid sensations of agoraphobia.  When we foregathered in a handbellish way this afternoon Colin added, plain hunt on forty-seven is more complicated than just counting the same old pattern on higher numbers.**  And Gemma, whose home tower is Forzadeldestino***, said, oh, it would be great if you kept coming.  You get used to it!  Really!  —If you get used to it, I said suspiciously, why were you the only other middling-level ringer there, besides Bronwen and me?

            Erm, said Gemma, looking shifty.†  Come anyway.  It will be good for your character.

            Feh.††

            But the good news is . . . my high B is back.  Whoa, howdy, nice to see you.  I seem to have taken one of those weird lurches forward that every learner in every activity does;†††  last week was a Despair Week when singing was next thing from strangling myself with my own hands.  This week . . . well, all these things are relative, especially when applied to my singing, but I've noticed that I'm warming up more easily and the stretch-and-relax aspect is more like dealing with bread dough than cement.  I admit I've been working on the top end because I want to stay a first soprano for a while longer, and the Muddlehamptons aren't quite as tin-pot as I had been counting on.  I need that A.  Today the A came without my having to get a broom to prod it, snapping and snarling, out from under the bed, and I thought oh, ha ha ha ha, I wonder if there's a B above it?  And there was.  Golly.  So I'm now on to be a more or less functional three octaves again, although as I keep saying, and speaking of bread dough, I wish there was a way to kind of fold it over and . . . I don't know, add cinnamon or something . . . I mean, I'd be happy to have fewer notes that sounded better. 

            But I did go to choir practise tonight feeling like slightly less of a fraud than I have been.  And . . . frell and double frell, that damn A is the least of my problems.  Major sodgangblanging learning curve.  And Griselda is going to be away for the next fortnight—while the alarming Ravenel is going to be back next week.  And when I asked Gordon about extra sopranos for this wedding—the wedding we're learning Os Justi for, with the high A and some kitten-and-yarn harmonies‡—he looked surprised and said oh, yes please. . . . so despite my skill in missing concerts, I seem to have just booked myself for a Public Performance.  A visible public performance.  With your audience sitting there looking at you.  Why didn't I stick to ringing bells.  Anthea even asked if I could ring a wedding that same day and now I have to go and tell her no.  

* * *

 * And Saturday's blog will be all the caveats.  

BurgundyIce wrote:  I'm so excited!! 

Oh good. 

I have been dreaming about whether I could ask for a Tsornin w/ Narknon sitting under lashing her tail as if they just leapt the Outlander station wall and startled everyone and were smug about it. A smug Tsornin and Narknon. Doesn't that sound worth dreaming about? But the teapot… NICE!! And that clock!! I think I will be happy asking for something completely random, like a Surprise Me Thingame. 

The Surprise Me Thingame I can certainly do. ^  A smug Tsornin and Narknon?  Probably not.  I can do a Narknon^^, and I can certainly do a Tsornin, but together is too complicated for the doodle levels I'm offering here, and I'm not sure I could lay on smugness at all.  Other amateur doodlers out there will understand that you need to think simple.  The rest of you will have to take it on faith—that you need to think simple.  Any professional artists out there, please don't break any ribs laughing.

            Mind you, I'm enjoying doodling, and having the excuse to spend the time on it.  And I am nursing a little fantasy that if doodles do prove to be popular we might choose a nice charity for the loot if any, and make them available indefinitely. ^^^ Whereupon complexity, and price, would become negotiable. 

^ I'm a little anxious that anyone in receipt of one of my actual, real-live, smudgy piece of paper in your hand, doodles, is going to find it . . . surprising.  Not necessarily in a good way.  Those of you who grew up with your fingers glued to a computer keyboard mostly won't know about the astonishing credibility that your lame, fumbling words develop when you type up your handwritten scrawl.  I have the sinking feeling that the computer screen does something similar with doodles.    

^^ Any comments on her resemblance to Tsornin with a cat's head, feet and tail will not be appreciated. 

^^^ Which might also help assuage my guilt over refusing to sign books by post.  You can buy a doodle!   Given the cost of postage it will be cheaper!

** He ruined this comforting effect however by adding that it takes him a good thirty minutes into a peal attempt to feel really comfortable on a strange bell in a twelve (or more) bell tower he's never rung at before.  Thanks.  That makes me feel a lot better. 

*** If Forzadeldestino were my closest tower, I'd move.  And being two garden walls over from it^, as I am from New Arcadia's tower, would not have irresistibly started me ringing again. 

^ Aside from the fact that this would put me in the serious high rent/low square footage district of the little medieval town it used to be.  A terraced house there would make my cottage look generously proportioned . . . but the taps would be gold and the counters palladium.+  And the hellhound crate diamond-studded teak.   

+ Platinum is so last century.  

† Gemma is one of these annoying people who learnt ringing as a teenager and then stopped when her life filled up with other things.  Now her kids are mostly grown she's taken it up again.  This is a common pattern.  The problem with this common pattern from the perspective of someone like me is that these people suddenly get their feet under them and soar off into the empyrean, knocking off full peals of Dictum Sapienti Vigesimal with their mates on slow Sunday afternoons when there's nothing on TV. 

†† Further on the subject of feh:  It was just yesterday, right?, that I was telling you how great audiobooks are and how I've joined audible^ and my first download is fabulous and thrilling and so on?  Did I mention that one of the great things about all this is that it's surprisingly SIMPLE?  EVEN I CAN DO IT?

            Today, out hurtling, I ran to the end of part three.  And part four refused to play.  It claimed to need downloading.  I downloaded it when I downloaded three, which picked up at the end of part two without my having to do ANYTHING.

            I have no idea.  After screaming and throwing things for a while, I emailed audible.  And to give them credit, they emailed me back promptly.  I'm under the impression I had already done everything they suggested.  But I did it all over again—possibly in a slightly different order—and I believe I have Part Four to fascinate and horrify me during tomorrow's morning hurtle.

            Never Praise Technology.  It makes stuff short out and go gleep.  

^ http://www.audible.co.uk/ 

††† Some of us, of course, are lurchier than others. 

‡ I didn't know Bruckner had it in him.  It's really really pretty.  I just can't sing it.

Banana

 

I AM GIVING UP RINGING FOREVER AND JOINING A CONVENT.*  A SILENT CONVENT.  FURTHERMORE THERE WILL BE NO INTERNET CONNECTION AT THIS CONVENT.  THEREFORE I WILL NOT BE FORCED TO DESCRIBE PUBLICLY THE PATHETIC PARTICULARS OF MY HUMILIATION.**

            It's all Bronwen's fault.  Hear that, Bronwen?  IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.

            I haven't been to Forzadeldestino in years because it intimidates the gorblimey out of me.  Also in previous eras it was not always welcoming to ringers of a less than a Gadzooks Pentathlon level and you were made to feel it if you asked for plain bob doubles.  Also it's stonking huge.  I'd kind of forgotten how huge.   The abbey itself is the size of a small country*** and to get to the tower and then into the ringing chamber requires you take a tour.  Now here is the capital city, and here are the major seaports, and here is the palace of the queen and the exchequer.  And the llama farm.  The queen is very fond of llamas, and her breeding programme is  . . . Where was I?  I have no idea.  But there are mountains.  Look, I think that's snow. 

            There are mountains.  And the steps that have been hacked into them are short, curly, and uneven.  And they keep switching back on themselves till you're pretty sure your heading is one of the more obscure of the wind's twelve quarters, and with every twist the corridor you're no longer walking along but climbing through gets smaller.  You're already hauling yourself hand over hand up the rope helpfully looped along the wall—now the ceiling is pressing in on you till you have to take your knapsack off and carry it the last few steps in your teeth.  Where is a llama when you need one?

            And then you creep out of the claustrophobic tunnel into a ringing chamber . . . the size of a ballroom.  Or possibly a llama farm.  And have I mentioned Forzadeldestino has forty-six bells?  Well, maybe thirty-eight.  Lots.  You grab a rope and you have no idea where you are.  You can pick out the tenor(s) because they're the ones with massive boxes under the ropes but . . . towers with more than six bells (at New Arcadia, for example, where we have eight bells total) may ring the 'front six' or the 'back six'.  At Forzadeldestino they have the front eight, the back ten, the second-front six, the second-back fourteen, the middle eighteen, and the King Olaf Memorial Twelve and a Half.  We rang plain hunt—plain hunt!  One miserable frelling step beyond call changes!—on eight hundred and ninety six and I couldn't count that high.  I know the pattern—that's one of the things about plain hunt, it's EXACTLY the same pattern if you're on four bells or four hundred.  I had a minder for plain hunt and I still couldn't do it.†

            Did I say 'humiliating'?  Humiliating.

            I'm not going to expound upon the touch of Grandsire triples that I only failed to derail because everyone kept ringing around me like stepping over a dead rat in the road.  Except to say that . . . when you have so frelling over-many scrangblatted bells, if you're only ringing eight of them, you aren't ringing in a circle, you're ringing in a line.  This is HORRIBLY CONFUSING (to the tiny easily-confused mind).  Also, having just been ringing on sixty-seven (plus tenor-behind) there didn't seem to be enough of them, when under ordinary circumstances, eight bells all going at once seems like a lot. 

            I wanted to go home long before the practise was over.  And the real problem is . . . shut up Bronwen, you've caused enough trouble for one evening†† . . . I have to go back.  I mostly can't be bothered having stuff to prove any more—this is one of the advantages of getting old:  not having to care about so much dumb stuff—but tonight was real getting back on the horse that threw you territory.  I have to go back. 

            I AM JOINING A CONVENT.  A SILENT CONVENT.  A CONVENT WITH NO BELLS IN ITS TOWER.

            Oh, and the banana?  Next time I'm going to eat a banana first.  Very grounding, bananas.  Plus a few calories to give the panicking mind something to chomp on.  Unless I manage to find a convent between now and next Wednesday.

* * *

* Where I will take up origami and scrimshaw.  I will also knit.  And it has to be a convent that takes hellhounds.  The Convent of the Goofy Little Friends of St Francis.  

** Okay, wait.  If I'm giving up ringing, I won't have ringing humiliation stories to tell.  I don't have to join a convent.  Although . . . no internet connection . . . hmmmmmm.  It's not that I don't spend way too much time cruising.  Or rather, it is because I spend way too much time cruising.  Think of all the knitting I can get done without an internet connection.^   I might even, you know, finally finish something. 

            Which reminds me that I never got round to responding to some of the comments about audiobooks.^^  It is very much a yes-it-works-for-me/NO-IT-DOESN'T-WORK-AT-ALL thing but I am having that late-convert's where have you been all my life reaction.  At the moment I'm listening to the 20th-anniversary revised edition of DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY, Everything You Need to Know about American History But Never Learned, by Kenneth C. Davis^^^ and am finding it absolutely riveting.  He's getting all of American history in 600-odd pages though so it does kind of careen past, with the concentrating listener going, Wait, wait, what happened because of what?  Didn't we miss out a president or two here?#  I am a little testy, however, because I found out within the first chapter or so that I need the hard copy to go over after I've listened to the audio version, to fill in those moments when my mind wandered or I got stuck at the 'wait wait' point and didn't hear what happened, or when something I was so sure I knew turns out to be wrong that the new version just bounces off the hard smooth well-muscled skin of my bum steer and disappears.  I have the original book, and I've been reading along in that, but it ends twenty years ago.  And it turns out that the new version is so frelling new it's only available in hardback.  The total sum I've spent on this book—which I now have in two paper editions and an audible download—it might as well be frelling Kelmscott's frelling Chaucer.  But my American history is probably the best it's ever been, not that this is saying much.##  http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00563S2IS&qid=1316647669&sr=1-1  ### This is the full 30-hour version—there's an abridged six hour version and I can't even imagine.  

            But on the subject of the mind wandering:  I'm listening to an audiobook either when I'm knitting or hurtling hellhounds in town.  And there are horrible knots, lumps and dropped stitches in the one or sudden encounters of a drooling pugnacious canine kind on the other that are overpoweringly distracting.  

^ I know I've told you that I only bought my first computer because I could no longer get replacement parts for my IBM Selectric I typewriter of hallowed memory.  

^^ And I now can't remember which thread they're on. 

^^^ Who is now a brand name.  Don't Know Much about Geography, the [American] Civil War, the Bible, the Universe . . . and Anything Else.  No, really.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Know-Much-about-Anything/dp/0061562327/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316645432&sr=1-12 

# Yes.  I do think it's brilliant—and a medal as well to the reader-aloud who I think gets it just right—which is not to say that I don't sometimes disagree with Davis' choice of emphasis and what to leave out.  But that's inevitable in a book like this, and it's got a massive bibliography as well as a scattering of 'must-reads' in the text. 

## And not as if I'll retain more than about 2.03% of it. 

### I don't know if the link is going to take you to audible.co.uk or inside my account to my own personal page, where it says 'your rating is'.  But yes, the single-as-I-write-this five-star rating is mine. 

***Luxembourg, say.  It's definitely bigger than Monaco. 

† Not in my defense—there is no defense—but further confusion is caused by the fact that the rhythm of lots and lots of bells is different from the rhythm of fewer bells.  When there are so many of the wretched things clanging away you pretty well have to hold up and wait every stroke . . . and this, to those of us who already have trouble with both rhythm and ropesight, is diabolical. 

 †† She was having some trouble too.  Nothing like as much as I was having.  Stop talking to me in that kind, patient, sympathetic voice. 

ANNOUNCEMENT

 

Okay, we're on.  The New Arcadia Bell Restoration Fund sale/auction that you were beginning to think I had forgotten about GOES LIVE THIS FRIDAY.  MAKE A NOTE.

            And, perhaps, to get you (back) in the mood . . . 

Inspired by the clock that hangs on the wall opposite where I sit, hunched over my computer, at the kitchen table at the mews.

 

 

No, not champagne. British cider. Which is to say hard cider. And my favourite teapot, which got broken some years back, had polka dots on it.

OF COURSE THEY'RE CHOCOLATE CHIP.  Don't be daft.  

I'm trying to remember the last time I made this recipe.  The fine old American tradition of chocolate and peanut butter tends to make the British giggle and look superior.* 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies 

¼ c soft butter.  I did once make these with all peanut butter and mysteriously it wasn't as successful.  The straight butter brings out the peanut flavour somehow—as well as producing a better crumb—or again it may have been that particular jar/batch of peanut butter.  Peanut butter isn't as variable as honey, but it's surprisingly variable nonetheless, especially, I suspect, if you decant it from giant vats at your health food shop, which I used to do, when I had a health food shop with giant peanut-butter vats.  The original recipe called for equal amounts of butter and peanut butter, however, which I don't approve of either.  This is about the peanut butter.  Well, and the chocolate.**

½ c chunky peanut butter.  This may need adjusting depending on how squidgy your peanut butter is.  But stand by to add more flour if the dough is very soft and goopy.*** 

1 c well tamped down dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract (NOT FLAVOURING.  That hellgoddess obsession:  use REAL VANILLA.)

2 c flour.  I recommend half standard white and half spelt.  They make white spelt now, if you can get hold of it.  When I was still making these you could only get wholemeal spelt, and you could push up the percentage to about ¾ spelt, but you need a little plain white to lighten the texture.  I'd try it with wholemeal and white spelt.  The spelt flavour goes really well with the peanut butter.

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 c chopped dark chocolate or semisweet chocolate chips

I've been known to add ½c chopped hazelnuts.  No, not peanuts.  Hazelnuts are more interesting, and to my taste they go with peanut butter better than most of the other standard nuts—almonds, walnuts, cashews.  I bet Macadamias would be good too. 

Cream butter and peanut butter together thoroughly, then brown sugar.  Then beat in egg, finally vanilla.  Beat AND BEAT till fluffy.  Mix the baking powder and soda into the flour(s), stir till all the same colour, then add to the creamed stuff.  Beat till blended but no more.  Stir in chocolate chips last. 

Drop on greased or parchment-paper-lined cookie sheets.  350°F, probably about 12 minutes, till they're just going brown around the edges.  They'll be fragile when they come out, so leave them alone till they're at least half cool.  This is why I use parchment paper:  you can just pull it, cookies still in place, off the sheets.  Of course then you run out of counter space†, but hey.    

 * * *

* Feh. 

** It's always about the chocolate.  

*** The worst thing that happens if you guess wrong and your cookies are too goopy, is that they run together while they're baking and you have to cut them up and then eat them carefully because they'll stay fragile even when they're cool.  But they'll taste fine.  That's the worst thing that happens if your cookie sheets have edges all round.  Let me tell you about how having cookie/baking sheets with edges all the way around is a very good thing.   

† Unexpected Uses of Hellhound Crate Top.

Did You Not See My Lady

 

Tonight was one of those so, I hear scrimshaw is nice this time of year*, bell practises.  It was at South Desuetude, whose bells are also possessed by demons, although a different family of demons than Old Eden's.  Also the ropes appear to be made out of some strange, floppy, un-rope-like substance, more resembling old socks you have donated to the cause of hellhound amusement than rope.  This does not add to either pleasure or accuracy.  We will note, however, before we pass gracefully on to other topics, that the rest of the band didn't seem to be having much trouble.

            However this afternoon Nadia did manage to convince me not to give up singing forever**, not that she's aware that that was what she was doing.  But I went in and whinged and moaned about my non-future in the Muddlehamptons and she suggested that as a way to think about the next few months when I know I'm not going to be in the concert, and do I bother to go to practise or not?, that I should go with the aim of their really wanting me to come back in the spring.  Which means yes, I not merely go, I sing with energy and conviction.  Now if only I had a voice. ***  Well, we're working on that.  Energy.  Conviction.   And . . . um . . .

            Because I've been feeling so let down by the Muddlehampton situation—and because secretly I already know I don't want to give up singing forever, I just wanted someone else to tell me that—I decided that the Only Thing to Do was learn a new song.  So I chose another one, which Cecilia Bartoli also sings†, out of my Everyone Starts Here Italian Songbook and asked Nadia to unglue the Italian for me.  Which brought up Silent Worship which I'm supposed to be learning in the Italian.  I had thought I was doing reasonably well with it.   Oops.††    But my eye will keep skipping back up to the English.†††  Okay, this week I'll be good. . . .‡

 * * *

* All those red maples . . . uh . . . all right, a slight confusion of milieu.  But I think of scrimshaw^ as being totally the product of the New England whaling industry, and of course it isn't.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrimshaw  Common sense will tell you that some cousin of the Lascaux lot, not to be outdone, would have tried drawing on teeth and bones because they were there like cave walls are there.  At most the New England whalers reinvented it at a time that it would finally get itself noticed by the art crowd.^^  I grew up knowing it existed and thinking it was cool^^^, but also knowing that I am a klutz, and that I dislike the sight of blood, especially my own.  I'm also surprised to read how late (new) ivory was made illegal:  it was certainly already an issue when I was a teenager and suffering from unpremeditated leftie eco idealism.~  But . . . camel bone?  Anyone know why camels (and giraffes)?  But if I needed another time sink which, you know, somehow I don't, I could totally see buying some camel bone and a lot of teeny digging tools.~~ 

^ Thank you, Aaron

^^ http://www.hopscrimshaw.com/about/scrimhistory.htm 

^^^ Possibly assisted by reading MOBY-DICK at an impressionable age.  While LOTR is my desert island book and I've only read MOBY-DICK two or three times, I have  somewhat similar feelings about both in that I (mostly) understand what readers who don't like one or the other are complaining about—but I feel sorry for them.  MOBY-DICK is fabulous.  It's wholly nuts, especially toward the end, as what started as a discursive but still more or less recognizable narrative disintegrates (perhaps) under the weight of Ahab's increasing madness, but—amazing.+  Don't give me any lip about long.  Hellooo:  JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL?  THE NAME OF THE WIND++? PERDIDO STREET STATION?  Yes, MOBY-DICK is long.  So?

+ I admit it's a guy book.  Not a lot of women on your average 19th century whaler.   

++ And isn't the sequel longer?  Don't know if  THE SCAR counts as a sequel to PERDIDO?  Or how long it is.  

~ I still suffer from leftie eco idealism, but it's no longer unpremeditated.

~~ Very very slightly seriously—it's too late at night to be serious—one of the reasons I enjoy doodling^ is that I've always been fascinated by line.  When I was drawing semi-seriously—there's that dratted word again—I always began with line.  I mean yes, of course, you have to start with line:  you have to get some kind of mark on the page.  But to me line remained preeminent even after all the other stuff went in.  So I'm not being entirely flippant when I say I'd probably enjoy learning scrimshaw.  I'm better with sharp objects than I used to be too.^^  

^ Note:  there will (finally) be an important announcement.  Probably tomorrow.

^^ See:  cutting up chicken for hellhounds.  Maybe I'm just better at pain.

** And take up scrimshaw

*** Harpergray wrote:  The choir leader said (or, rather, emailed), Thank you, you have a lovely voice

::jealousy::  SIGH.  I know, I know.  But you always want what you haven't got, right?  I'm horribly jealous of good pianists too.  I don't have to be Mitsuko Ushida!  But I'd like to be able to play the accompaniment of the frelling songs I'm singing!  I don't even require that I be able to play and sing at the same time! 

Diane in MN wrote:  What puzzles me is that no one in the Muddlehamptons goes to see the Met Live? Here we are, thirty or so dedicated classical vocal music lovers and no one^ is an opera freak?

A friend of mine is a pianist/organist and choir singer (church and civic choirs), and a lover of classical music, and she doesn't go for opera in the slightest. Not even for the choruses. Maybe your Muddlehampton choristers are of the same mindset.

Yes, but all of them?  That's what surprises me.  I know there are lots of people who like classical music, including classical vocal music, who wouldn't touch opera with tongs.  But out of a group of thirty classical singers yes, I would expect at least three or four or five to like opera.  But Nadia suggested that the operatically inclined may merely not go to the Met Live—which is, after all, a relatively recent development—they may prefer to go to London twice a year, or Glyndebourne once, or stay at home and watch it on Sky. 

to my ear sung French doesn't flow anything like as fluidly as Italian, fellow Romance language or not.

Ah well, ears are idiosyncratic, after all. To my ear, it doesn't get much more fluid than Carmen's Habanera.

Ears are very idiocyncratic.  It's also how the music matches up with the words, isn't it?  I'm amazed at how supple and lush RUSALKA sounds in Czech.  And while I mostly think (sung) German is a ratbag, and for example contributes to the force, not necessarily in a good way, to Wagner's frelling Ring (although it's certainly a matching of words and music), it is absolutely golden in the mouth of a good lieder singer.  You would (ahem) hardly know it was German.  I was thinking that the reason my ear catches on French when it doesn't catch on Italian is that French simply has more vowels.  As Nadia has been trying to beat into my cranky, angular, irremediably American voice, Italian only has five basic vowels.   Stop making it hard for myself.  Er.  Or rather, eh.   

† I know.  Why don't I just hit myself over the head with a plank and be done with it? 

†† Granted it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to be singing 'Did you not hear my lady Go down the garden singing?' but then again . . . why not?  I can easily imagine falling in love with a lady who can sing and has a glory of golden hair, although I'd be a little old for her.  One of the things I've always liked about classical vocal music (which it shares with folk, as I think about it) is that it's mostly gender-blind^:  there are lots of trouser roles for women in opera and especially recently more and more women are singing standard male lieder.  Yaaay.  So I'll sing Did you not hear my lady if I want to, just as I've been singing Che Faro Senza Eurydice. 

^ At least in the woman-favouring direction.  Although the relatively new and still growing fashion for countertenors and male sopranos is pushing it back the other way too.  And was there ever anything more scary than Philip Langridge as the witch in Hansel and Gretel?! +

+ . . . oh dear.  I'm trying to decide if this looks like a brush-off of gayness and/or other non-standard- or non-hetero-nesses.  It's not meant to be.  I think pretty much everything that blurs the gender/sexual boundaries is a good thing toward acceptance of the variety of human character.  So women singing love songs to other women , whether either of them is in trousers and/or pretending to be a bloke or not, makes women falling in love with other women that much more ordinary and within bounds.   I'm waiting for the full staging of a (say) Handel opera where the male soprano playing the heroine is wearing a dress.  Has anyone seen this yet?

††† I'm using a borrowed copy at the moment.  Nadia suggested pink highlighter when I get my own.  

‡ Ah, eh, ee, oh, ooh.  Five.  Vowels.

Frustrations and . . . uh, frustrations

 

We ended up with two for service ring this morning.

            Yes, you read that right.  Two.

            We started out with three . . . and briefly had—four!  Be still my heart!—but the fourth was Monty, so we had to stick to call changes.  I don't think he has ever rung minimus—proper methods, but on only four bells, so your possibilities are a bit restricted—and the change of speed between going slowly out to the back and quickly down to lead is distressingly magnified on only four bells.  I'm supposed to be one of the (semi) competent ones and I still usually find myself pulling frantically to get down to lead fast enough.  For someone still in somewhat erratic control of his bell* and whose ropesight is still a bit . . . ahem . . . ropey, minimus can be a nightmare, even on the easy straightforward treble.  I know—I remember. 

            So we rang call changes for a while, and then Monty had to go pass out programmes**, so then we rang full-pull plain hunt on three for a while, which is one of these semi-methods of desperation and major ringer shortage, and so simple-minded that you can't keep your mind on it which means that even quite good ringers may drift off into their own little hypnotic trance . . . in this case, Roger, who then had the excellent excuse for escape that he had to go sing in the choir.

            Which left Vicky and me.   Do you know how sad two bells sound?  We packed in early and I merely chimed the treble for the last several minutes—that standard single-bell call to church is at least what it is and not so pathetic.  But as a bright bouncy start to the day . . . service ring this morning wasn't.     

            Where, you are asking, were Niall and Penelope? . . . wait for it. . . .

            They're on a ringing outing.  Sixty-seven towers in three days (or so).  Just so long as they don't come back and decide to take up soap-carving or scrimshaw.

EMoon wrote:  . . . started back at choir practice Wednesday, to be faced with a bunch of music, only some of which I'd sung before, and the Maestro . . . was in the mood to fix the choir. We have slipped, he told us, on some basics, and he's going to retrain us. Some shoulders hunched and some spines straightened. 

I'm suffering a slight across-the-board morale lowering, and two for service ring and the knowledge I'm going to be missing the Muddlehamptons' next concert are two, albeit minor, slaps up longside the head I could have done without, thanks.  And one of the things that is niggling at the back of my mind is the thought that Ravenel is perhaps a bit better than the Muddlehamptons are ready for . . . and (perhaps) he'll either drag us up a level or two—or he won't . . . in which case (perhaps) he will thank us politely and move on.  Which is always a problem with volunteer groups of anything, getting them invested, and often more of a problem when it's a small local amateur group of something.  You don't happen to have any idea how your Maestro inspires/harries you into cooperating with his improvement campaigns, do you?  After twenty years in this country I still get most of the cultural signals wrong, so in this case I may be reading standard British politeness as lack of engagement.***

            Meanwhile I have my voice lesson tomorrow, and get to tell Nadia that I'm not singing in the Muddlehamptons' winter concert either.  I've had several people tell me it shouldn't matter all that much, Gordon has told me that I'm still welcome to come to practise, and I joined for the experience (and learning curve) of singing-with, right?  Well, yes, but . . . it's not as though we're learning a wide and diverse selection of music to perform various combinations of at an assortment of venues on miscellaneous dates over a long future.  It's not even like when I was a teenager and used to sing alto in a church choir, and if you missed singing the new anthem the first time, don't worry about it, it'll be back, and chances are, soon.†  The Muddlehamptons learn a specific programme for a single concert and then it's all over.  I feel that if I have something to contribute†† they'll miss me and if I don't have something to contribute††† then they'll wish I'd go away. ‡

            I'm sure it's as a result of this I'm feeling even more than usually frustrated with my voice.  I sang for Oisin again on Friday and while I kept to the frelling tune reasonably well the quality of the noise I was making was pretty much monkey having her tail pulled.  Not only am I intimidated by the fact that Oisin is a professional accompanist‡‡ but the mere fact of singing with a piano confounds me.  Arrrrrrrrrgh.  So I'm so busy hanging on to everything within reach to prevent the piano from bucking me off that my voice, such as it is, shuts down.  I keep reminding myself that Nadia claims she's going to teach me to get the sound out of me that she can get out of me, which would at least move me from the embarrassing category to the merely pathetic.  ARRRRRRRRGH.

            However all is not terror and dismay!  No, wait, yes it is!  Remember I told you that I had foolishly offered to take Bronwen ringing when she comes down on Wednesday, and the only local Wednesday tower that meets regularly that I know of is Forzadeldestino, which is a Venerable Quiddity Maximus tower‡‡‡?  To my credit I have genuinely tried to get hold of the ringing master and it's not my fault if he doesn't answer emails or phone messages.  But my run of good/bad luck ended this afternoon when I met him strolling down the street in New Arcadia—yaaaaaaaaaaah!  How unfair is that!  And hellhounds were busy greeting a new friend, I didn't have time to turn around and run in the other direction and pretend I hadn't seen him. . . . So, anyway, we're welcome to come to practise.  Oh dear. . . . 

* * *

* Not that I'm not still pretty frelling erratic myself.  Especially on Sunday mornings. 

** Sorry, my brain is suffering from end-of-day, running-out-of-vocabulary-itis.  What do you call the little piece of paper with the church service of the day on it, the readings and which hymns to sing and so on? 

*** And any minute now ALL the second sopranos are going to produce fabulous high As, which will leave the first sopranos to soar to high C, and I'm going to cut my hair and join the basses. 

† We were not a very good choir.  If we actually managed to learn a new anthem it was cause for celebration.  And frequent repetition. 

†† A squeaky high A, perhaps 

††† Griselda doesn't need any help 

‡ Forum round-up: 

blondviolinist posted this, for anyone who would like to hear what Cantique de Jean Racine will not sound like when the Muddlehamptons sing it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKwHiGg21KA

Diane in MN:  Serious bummer about the concert date. But I wouldn't miss Gotterdammerung either.

Thank you.  I was expecting a certain amount of heckling, Wagner being something of a minority flavour. What puzzles me is that no one in the Muddlehamptons goes to see the Met Live?  Here we are, thirty or so dedicated classical vocal music lovers and no one^ is an opera freak?

But what's the deal with French anyway? It's another Romance language, it ought to sing itself. It doesn't though.

You don't think so? But Carmen and Faust, to name just a couple, are eminently singable! 

The music is eminently singable, and a good singer can make anything sound mellifluous and as if any minute now you're going to understand what they're saying/singing even if you don't know a word of the language (Janacek or Dvorak in the original Czech, for example!) but to my ear sung French doesn't flow anything like as fluidly as Italian, fellow Romance language or not. 

Harpergray:  How did the audition go? 

Glanalaw:  How did the theory exam go?  And are there any YOUTUBE videos of you doing your stuff that we can all rush to watch and listen to?  

^ All right, no one else.  But I'm not feeling very full-memberish at the moment. 

^^ Oh, and Maren's rr-rolling videos are scary.  I'm going to take them in to Nadia too.  Nadia can roll her rrs.

‡‡ Yes I know how stupid this is.  And your point would be? 

‡‡‡ Fancy ringing.  Lots of bells.  Lots of zigs and zags on the blue method line. 

 

Ringing despite obstacles

 

I had to get out of bed what passes in my case for early this morning to get hellhounds hurtled before I met Vicky at Old Eden to ring the bells up for the wedding this afternoon.   Hellhounds are accustomed to opening one eye and then closing it again while I race around Sunday mornings, moaning and making extra-large extra-strong cups of tea, but they weren't going to be happy about my leaving them behind at what they think is hurtling time.  So we got out earlier than usual and thus met a whole different shift of idiot people and their manic off lead dogs.   Well, that woke me up nicely.  Just as effective as black tea if not nearly as much fun.

              I'd promised Vicky I'd be home by ten.  She was going to phone me as soon as Maud went down for her nap—Vicky has two of her granddaughters visiting.  I was nursing a second cup of post-off-lead-dog-encounter tea and reading about great autumn plant sales! on all the gardening web sites I'm stupid enough to be on the email lists of when the phone finally rang.  "Maud doesn't want to go down for her nap," Vicky said briskly, the sounds of a small person very determined not to go down for her nap highly audible in the background, "so I'll have to bring her with me."

             Ah.  Hmm.  I wondered how this was going to be managed—I was having an interesting mental image of a child chained to the wall—but Vicky had brought her husband with her as, um, wrangler.  Maud was more or less self-attached to Vicky's leg and had that dazed, furious look of a kiddie who needs its nap but is beyond being able to sleep: and anything you offer is the thing it most of all doesn't want.  We limped variously up to the ringing chamber—Maud was not going to be carried, she was going to WALK despite the fact that the risers are nearly as tall as she is and she was reeling with tiredness—and then poor Albert got her in a . . . well, something not wholly unlike a stepover armlock camel clutch . . . while Vicky and I rang up the bells in twos.  Louisa, by the way, Maud's elder sister, behaved impeccably.  She is going to grow up to be Prime Minister.*

          By the time we had to reconvene at the church for the wedding, it was just Louisa with Vicky.  Both Albert and Maud, we were told, were out cold.** 

Ajlr wrote:  

. . . .but I am going to go out on this nice firm sturdy limb here and say there is nothing else like learning method ringing. Nothing. Else.

Totally agree.

 Oh good.

When I was doing a Master's, a few years ago, there were far fewer demands on my brain in the sense of sheer processing and association than there are now, learning the baby inside steps (so far as ringing methods goes) of the two to Bob Doubles. It's the combination of fast mental agility and physical co-ordination that's so hard – and that makes it so fascinating.

Given that I am uncomfortably aware that I had some influence on your decision to learn to ring I am very grateful for that fascinating.  It is though, isn't it?  Fascinating.  It bends your brain into a pretzel and rather than having the sense to run away and dedicate yourself to soap-carving or origami*** you go oh, that's cool.   I'm also a bit chuffed that it feels that way even to a computer geek:  don't try to hide it, I know you're a techno whizzy in your day job.   The fact that I find method ringing riveting could just be a sad late life reaction to a long passionate dedication to almost anything that doesn't involve numbers or logic.†

Monty, however, is going to boil through learning inside like Desert Orchid chasing for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

I know it's not nice for a grown woman to hate a teenager for no good reason

No good reason?   Woman, hating teenagers for manifesting their dazzling superiority in things like bell ringing is one of the things that keeps us elderly feeble dodderers still limber and ready for battle.

but I'm afraid I may be heading that way. I'm doing exactly the same thing as Monty, except I've been doing it for three practise nights now and I still haven't got it right. Arrgggh! I get so caught up in trying to keep counting my places that I forget who to ring over. Someone pass me a spare brain, if they've one to hand.

Three nights?  Three?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . . sorry, that just came out.  Okay, at conservative estimate it took me 1,207 practise nights to get it right . . . and that was on my second try, this time, with New Arcadia, when I finally succeeded.   And—hang on to counting your places.  (Say I.)  The rest will come.  

Audrey Falconer posted about calling out what she was ringing to help a beginner understand how the pattern works:

. . . Seemed to help her follow it. I learnt it recently enough myself to remember how I learnt it and do those things that I wished people would do for me back then.

This is such a monster.  I consider it one of the big central issues with ringing, learning to ring, and teaching ringing generally:  how you learn, and how people experienced enough to teach so often have forgotten what learning was like—or are talented ringers and don't know how to adapt to those of us who aren't.  Niall, for example, has been giving Monty dodging practise.  You can learn the line on the page all you want but the like-nothing-else rhythm of dodging, where you're jerking your bell around to go forwards and backwards, so one split second you're 'holding up' or pausing and the next split second you're 'pulling in' or yanking like the dickens—and then you have to frelling hold up again (or pull in again)—and chances are when you're first learning to ring inside your ropesight isn't exactly powerful yet either, so who you're supposed to be following gets lost in the yakkety maelstrom of dodging.  I didn't get dodging practise.  And I've mentioned before that I'm rhythm-challenged anyway.  I'm sure lack of preliminary dodging practise is the cause of at least a few hundred of those practise nights I needed before I started getting bob doubles inside (occasionally) right. 

                  Not everyone can learn by standing at someone's shoulder and watching what they do.  I can, for example, and Penelope can't.  But for those of us who can, someone who is willing to call out what they're doing as they're doing it is golden.  Not to mention the rest of the band who are stoically not listening to someone else's counting so they don't go wrong.

Oddly, other ringers seem to think it would be hard to call out the place they're ringing.

People count more or less at the fronts of their minds, I think, depending on what kind of ringer they are, what clues they rely on, and maybe how experienced they are.  I totally cling to my counting, I'm a very front-of-mind counter, but I'm also aware that the less sure I am of my ability to ring a method the more emphatically front-of-brain my counting is.  Dear gods do I ever count Cambridge.  And then there are people (whisper it!  It is too terrible to say aloud! ) who . . . don't count their places.  I dare say there are brilliant natural ringers who don't need to count but for us rank and file . . . you start counting as soon as you're learning plain hunt and you count your places like your life depends on it, because it does.   If you skive off by learning the numbers . . . you have a very nasty piece of remedial work to do later on.  I've seen this, and it's not pretty.

Cathy R wrote: 

I still remember vividly the feeling of absolute and total certainty that I would never, ever, master bob doubles! 

Yes.  That's one of those memories I have no nostalgia about whatsoever. 

Progress is so often two steps forward, one-and-a-half steps backwards!

Only one and a half?  You lucky person.  I tend to take three steps backward for a while and then have a lot of catching up to do.   But I did start counting from the beginning. . . Even if I didn't always know what I was counting. . . .

* * *

* She's already ahead of the field:  she has red hair. 

** The fact that my algebra II class was first after lunch, by which time my algebra II teacher was too drunk even to copy problems out of the book accurately may have had something to do with my dislike of the field.

*** Remind me, Mrs Redboots, some time, but not right away, to tell you why your forum suggestion made me laugh and laugh.

Ringing inside

 

We were not a hot happening band tonight at tower (bell) practise and so spent most of the time beating Monty through plain courses of plain bob doubles inside.  He is taking that critical step across the threshold into the true arcane mysteries of method ringing:  he is learning to ring 'inside' on his first bell in his first method.  I personally think—and I am not alone—that this really is the moment when you become a method ringer . . . or not.  Someone who can handle a bell competently and can do what they're told, ie ring call changes,* will be welcome in every tower but the top level, six impossible things before breakfast and a full peal of Cosmic Gazpacho Delight towers—where the genuine inside but middling ringers like me wouldn't be welcome either.**     

              However, once you can ring call changes, you will be persuaded to learn to ring treble.  You are indicating, possibly involuntarily, because your ringing master has you in a stepover armlock camel clutch***, by agreeing to learn to ring treble to methods, treble being the easy bell in all the basic methods, that you are willing to go for the full deal—that after you've mastered treble ringing you'll go on to inside. †  The problem with this is that most non-obsessive negligibly-talented people can get as far as learning to ring the treble when all the treble is doing is plain-hunt over different coursing orders of the other bells.  Where us ordinary drones need a brain transplant is to make that leap over the bottomless intellectual chasm that is learning to ring inside—learning to ring one of the bells whose line through the pattern is ziggy and zaggy—one of the bells that isn't the treble or the tenor-behind (if any).  Gaaaaaah.  Okay, I have not experienced every mentally challenging pastime out there available to masochists and martyrs, but I am going to go out on this nice firm sturdy limb here and say there is nothing else like learning method ringing.  Nothing.  Else.  And call changes are complete in themselves:  out in the west country they have bands devoted to call changes only, and their call changes are a wonder to behold—er, hear.  Behear?  But a ringer who can only ring the treble is a broken or incomplete method ringer.  Once they let you out of the camel clutch and start teaching you to ring plain hunt on the treble, you're doomed.

            Ah, the memories.  Long-term readers of this blog may recall that I've described how I hit the bar and crashed at the ringing-inside fence the first time I tried to learn to ring, over a decade ago now.  What I didn't know was that the ME was eating my brain;  I just thought I was too stupid to learn 'inside'.  And then the ME took me down and I spent eighteen months on the sofa.  When I started walking again I didn't go back to ringing because . . . I thought I was too stupid.  I can deal with being mediocre (fortunately);  I couldn't cope with flat failure.  I might never have gone back to ringing at all if I hadn't moved into a little house two garden walls over from a church with a tower with some active bells in it.  I've told you this too:  I lasted about six weeks living in the cottage, I think, before I was phoning the tower secretary and asking if I could start coming to practise.  The rest is history.††

            Monty, however, is going to boil through learning inside like Desert Orchid chasing for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. †††  We dragged and prodded him through his very first inside last Monday at Old Eden, and Niall, giving me a lift back to the mews after practise was over said, Do you remember learning to ring inside?  YES, I said.  And I remember getting to the learning-inside point at New Arcadia and being sure I was going to fail this time too . . . which is perhaps why I remember it so vividly.  It doesn't seem all that long ago either when you're trying to hold your own line through a simple plain course of plain bob doubles, for pity's sake, it doesn't get simpler, which is why it's where most beginners get their baptism of fire, with the beginner's minder way too audibly saying, [ring] over Robin, over Leo, now over Roger, under Roger, over Roger . . . LEAD NOW.  Someone screaming lead now tends to make you lead now even when you're supposed to be finishing your three-four up dodge.  Gah. 

            I was perhaps not the only one unhinged by this experience:  we ended with Niall asking me to call a touch of plain bob doubles.  I want to go hooooooome.  I did notice that when I called the first bob Leo disappeared out from under me when I was supposed to be ringing over him—this is the sort of thing a good conductor is supposed to be able to unstick:  I'm doing well to remember to squeal bob at the right moment—but whatever happened, apparently they got themselves untangled because we managed to keep going.  Except . . . the bells weren't coming up in the right order.  Whimper.  I was calling the simplest touch there is—it's called observation because you leave yourself alone and mix everybody else up—and you get to know how the pattern works itself out.  You also learn the tune even if you don't mean to‡ and this one was off.  Whimper.  I was sure it must be my fault but I thought I'd counted right.  I didn't know what else to do so I called 'that's all' when I thought I should and waited for Roger to take unnecessary delight in telling me what I'd done wrong.

            It wasn't me.  Vicky and Leo had got their bells swapped over and hadn't figured out how to get them unswapped—it being late on a Friday evening and we'd spent too much time ringing plain courses for a beginner.  It takes a village to raise a bell ringer too. 

* * * 

* Where you only move your place in the row if the conductor calls you to do so.  You don't have to remember anything.  Except to not fall asleep standing up, which has been known to happen.  —Two!  You're following the four!  Two!   Colin says he has occasionally reached out and grabbed the rope of a neighbour who is manifestly not on the planet.  But then the rules change for ringers like Colin.  Brrrrrr.  Don't Try This at Home.  

** This is just a trifle on my mind because Bronwen is coming down next Wednesday and I somewhat foolishly asked her if she'd like to ring.  Of course she'd like to ring.  Silly question.  But since Ditherington disintegrated, and Tir Nan Og's schedule has become pretty erratic, the only local Wednesday tower I know is Forzadeldestino.  Which is pretty much one of those towers.  I have rung (elsewhere) for their ringing master however and I know one or two of their regular ringers^.  Aglovale has evidently appeared in these virtual pages, since he has a blog name.^^  So . . . I've sent Forzadeldestino's ringing master an email inquiry about visitors.  A humble email inquiry. 

^ A cat can look at a king, or a muddle-headed klutz can look at Margot Fonteyn.  Speaking of cats, however, the Cat Statue Issue is not yet over.  I caught Darkness today having crawled under the big lax shrub that is between it and the pedestrian pavement to have a nose to nose with it—when he clearly thought neither Chaos nor I was paying attention.  

^^ I don't give blog names to just anybody.  For one thing, it's too hard.  I can waste terrifying amounts of time flipping through my FORTY SEVEN MILLION NAMES FOR BABY book and waiting for the ka-CHUNG! of the right name to connect with my skittering eye. 

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling_holds#Stepover_armlock_camel_clutch 

† It doesn't necessarily stay the easy bell later on, but that's another tangent for another time. 

†† Well, no not the rest.  I still have to finish learning Grandsire Triples and bob major and Cambridge minor and . . . while we were waiting for Colin yesterday, Niall was telling me encouragingly how much like Cambridge Yorkshire is.  In the first place, you can't ring Yorkshire on fewer than eight bells.  There is no Yorkshire minor.  But my handbell epiphany was listening to Niall ringing a plain course of Yorkshire with a pick-up band^ years ago, when he hadn't quite got the slave torc^^ soldered around my neck yet.  I listened to them and thought, yes, I want to do that.  Niall knows this.  He manages to bring up Yorkshire on handbells every few months, just to see me twitch. 

^ The idea of a pick up band for something like Yorkshire makes me feel faint and dizzy.  Oh yes, I can ring Yorkshire on frelling handbells.  Oh yes, I can climb Everest without oxygen.  Oh yes, I can walk on water.  Oh yes, I have the cure for cancer right here, I wrote it down the other night. . . . 

^^ With the handbell runes etched deeply into it 

††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Orchid 

‡ Ringing by the tune in handbells is a common fault.  Don't do it.

Splendid, fabulous, awesome news

 

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH*

Hey, guess what?  THE MUDDLEHAMPTON CHOIR'S NEXT CONCERT IS THE DAY THE METROPOLITAN OPERA LIVE BROADCAST IS DOING GOTTERDAMMERUNG.  I HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT MY TICKET AND THERE IS NO WAY.  REPEAT.  NO WAY I AM GOING TO MISS IT. 

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I think possibly I'm not in a very good mood.**

            Tonight was the Muddlehampton AGM.***  I'd thrown my handbellers out†, raced hellhounds round the lower slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, and rocketed myself off to St Frideswide.  To find that our fearless stand-in leader† was late.   I got out my knitting.

            But this meant the entire evening ran late.  Tonight's epic journey into the semi-harmonic darkness was Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine which is, as will probably not amaze you, in French.  Oh gods.  I will never complain about Italian again.††  Furthermore I was sitting next to Griselda.  You know, the sopranos' secret weapon.  With Griselda we can do anything.†††  But we were short of (sheet) music for some reason, and Griselda gallantly gave hers to the tenors.  You and I can share, she said to me.  Er.  Yes.  Several hours later I'm still deaf on that side.  Furthermore she sings beautiful French.  She rolls her rrrs.  She can read what she's supposed to sing straight off the page—this includes not only the notes, but getting the words and the notes to match up—and she says things like 'the basses were singing D-sharp when it should be D-natural.'  She didn't get the opportunity to wheel out her high A tonight but we all know it's there.  May I go home now please?‡  I am surplus to requirements.

            Little did I know just how surplus.  We'd got through the edifying discussion of what jolly choir event we might lay on for Christmas while I winced and bit my knitting needles‡‡ and the re-electing of all the officials who hadn't got out of the way fast enough last year and then Gordon, our fearless (late) stand-in leader, said, you might want to get the date of the winter concert in your diaries now. . . .  

            Cursed.  I am cursed. 

* * *

* And . . . just by the way . . . I AM SO FRELLING SICK TO FRELLING DEATH OF THE FRELLING SO-CALLED RANGBLANGFRELLINGGLANG BROADBAND IN THIS TOWN.  IT SPENDS AS MUCH OF ITS TIME CRASHED AND BURNING AS IT DOES LIVE AND FUNCTIONING, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  Twitter is also a disaster of instability, but at least you've got a choice there.  You live in an area with sucky broadband?  You're screwed.  Hahahahahahahahahaha.  Our latest MP^ actually had 'will work for better broadband' as one of the bullet points on his campaign poster but somehow that seems to have fallen off the train on his way to London. 

^ 'Miserable Plonker' 

** We were making such a hash of Cambridge at handbells this evening that Colin said, I don't want to know what's going on the blog tonight.^ 

^ Gemma [who is a beginner and makes four, so we can't ring Cambridge minor] come back, all is forgiven.+ 

+ She's just home from holiday.  What does she need another holiday for? 

*** Annual General Meeting.  Americans keep asking.  Since when I lived in America I didn't do things involving annual general meetings^, my native lore is deserting me in this instance. 

^ I think I may have had the right idea. 

† But see above.  Not a great loss.  It was even less of a loss after our tea break when we attempted to ring little bob minor.  Little bob is like one-forty-seventh as difficult as Cambridge, which I was at least making a run at.  But my brain had had it.  It had melted around the edges^ and then re-congealed into scary new contours during tea. 

            To give it some credit, it had had a rough afternoon.  I knew that in Gemma's absence I was going to be expected to make a showing on the Cambridge front so I was attempting to claw at least the first few leads back within reach again.  Meanwhile there's a bit of plot machinery giving me hell.^^  So the mental conversation has been going like this:

            Dodge, you moron!  And then out to the back!

            But if a and b are at c with d, while e effs with g and the hhhhs are iiing j, . . . where is k?

            Dodge and lie!  Dodge and lie, dammit!

            But x has always been so mild-mannered . . .

            I'm sure I've been at the front for too long!

            I suppose x might y for z.  That would solve the hail of toads problem, but that still leaves me with a large exploding doohickey.

            You're not coursing!  There is no frelling coursing in a plain course of Cambridge minor on the treble and the two! 

            And wasn't l trying to find out what happened to m?  So what did happen?  It wasn't anything to do with the boa constrictor and the lift shaft, was it?

            WAAAAAAAAH.

            . . . chocolate.            

^ about halfway through the fourth lead of Cambridge the resemblance to tapioca pudding became inescapable 

^^ If I ever get my hands on that creepazoid at the Story Council. . . . 

† Ravenel is still on Tuvalu, teaching the sharks to sing Henry Purcell 

††  . . . of course I will.  But I've even said here that I can live without singing in German^ and I'm willing to forego French.  I do want Italian.  But what's the deal with French anyway?  It's another Romance language, it ought to sing itself.  It doesn't though.  

^ Yes, I love a lot of lieder.  But . . . you have to be good to sing lieder.  You can get away with being bad in opera—sometimes, and to a degree—not real lieder.  I think.  I'm still hoping to make a fool of myself over a few arias.  I'm happy to leave lieder to the professionals. 

††† And the temptation to sit back and let her get on with it is very strong.  

‡ The burning question to my mind is what is she doing in the Muddlehamptons? 

‡‡ I appreciate that there tend to be too many carol concerts around Christmas and we want to do something else.  But sing at a pub?  Noooooooooo.  Not my idea of a good time.  

‡‡‡ Gordon did make a point of saying that you don't have to be in the concert to come to rehearsal and sing, and that not everyone wants to perform in public, and that it's in the Muddlehamptons' rules that you don't have to sing in their concerts.  But this is supposed to be part of my education—and without a concert as a goal it does seem a little pointless.  I've already dropped out of singing for the bishop because of all those Friday rehearsals—and if they do decide to go harass some innocent pint-drinkers with Christmas carols I doubt I'll volunteer.  The next thing is that they'll be over-subscribed with sopranos for this wedding—I've put my name down as an extra, and given that high A I suggest they have Griselda and the second sopranos and let the rest of us in the front row stay home with our knitting.

            Sigh.  This is not turning out as planned.

More blurry chick photos!

 

You're so excited!  Just what you wanted!  MORE BLURRY CHICK PHOTOS!!!   Sigh.  I am so tapped out at the minute that even an hour–half an hour–to experiment with The Magic Camera and do what Blue Rose and a few others have suggested Cannot Be Budgeted into the Schedule at This Time.*  With the result that . . . this week's photos of expanding poultry are also blurry.    I'll probably waste even more time screaming and throwing things at WordPress.  Although I am attempting to use the photo template that patient Blogmom has mocked** up for me:  she of course can't replicate what keeps happening to me.  I'm sure this means this template will grow horns and a long pointed tail as soon as I start loading photos.

This is where we began a fortnight ago. Week-old chicks. Woosha woosha.

This is now last week. THEY'VE GROWN. As they do.

Food! Food! Foodfoodfoodfoodfoodfood!

And they talk ALL THE TIME. Cheepcheepcheepcheepcheepcheep. It's like someone left the switch on.

Look, Mom! I can FLY! (Or at least jump with flapping.)

This is now this week.  By next week they won't be chicks any more, they'll be half-grown chickens.

They're still obsessed with food though. While Penelope was feeding the other chickens they rushed over to me. Any human shoes are worth a try.

FEEDING FRENZY! GAAAAAAAAAAH!

WE HAVEN'T EATEN IN AT LEAST HALF AN HOUR! WE'RE STAAAAAAARVING!

I wish a little of this would rub off on the hellhounds. . . .

One of the cool things is the way mum patrols.  She walks round and round and round, keeping an eye on things and making 'don't worry dear I'm here' gurgles deep in her throat.  Penelope says that after the chicks have had their meal she herds them firmly into a corner, plonks herself down in front of them and makes them have a nap.  Snork.  Mums.  They're all alike.***

* * *

* I happened to be listening to a voice + piano concert on Radio 3 . . . just before I had planned to do my own singing practise.  Ugggggh.  Change of plan.  She was one of these dark rich apparent mezzos who have the full coloratura top end.  Ugggggh.   . . . The only drawback so far to learning how to knit, aside from the stash, the books, and the time, is that it destroyed my standard cry of despair:  Why didn't I take up knitting!  I need a new standard cry of despair.  Why didn't I take up carving roses out of soap!  Why didn't I take up World of Warcraft!  Why didn't I take up snowshoeing!^  I can't say Why didn't I take up crochet because clearly I will take up crochet.  Just not right now.

^ I did.  But I ran out of snow.

** So to speak.  Blogmom is pretty much a mock-free zone although she retains her right to irony.

*** Gulp.  Pressing the publish button now. . . .

A Keeping My Head Down Day

 

Today has been mostly head down over the writing desk (or the writing kitchen table, as it may be), looking up occasionally long enough to regret a good gardening afternoon . . . the things I do to get paid.*    

              Atlas has been hacking back Mme Alfred Carriere who was showing signs of pulling down my semi-detached neighbour's house wall, and while Phineas is an exceptionally easy-going fellow, I think even he might protest being involuntarily catapulted into my back garden.  I wouldn't like it either:  the garden's small enough already, I don't want the contents of two bedrooms, a study, a kitchen and a bathroom scattered around** although loose bricks are popular as plant-pot stands.  Since I don't do heights, Atlas is the one who's been out there with the ladder and the loppers.  It's astonishing how much more light there suddenly is:  Mme Alfred is kind of a monster.  But the best kind of monster:  the kind that produces lots of big fat roses.  She needs her autumn feed, as does everything else in this garden and Third House's.  Meanwhile I've got the autumn bulb orders arriving any day now—yeep.   With less of Mme Alfred shadowing that side I can get more tulips in.

             Autumn has kind of snuck up on me*** partly due to the coldest August in seventeen years†† . . . I am not ready for it to be autumn.†   I used to like autumn better than I do now;   that first crackle of cold meant adventure;  it used to feel like the time of year I woke up after the sultry hedonism of summer.  But I'm not very interested in adventures any more—or rather the adventures I am interested in are things like learning to ring Cambridge minor or having a high A available during choir practise, and not only erratically after midnight and a glass of champagne on a good day.   Back in the days when autumn meant adventure I didn't have increasing numbers of tender begonias, geraniums, dahlias, cosmos, fuchsias, blah, blerg, blug to try and frelling overwinter.  Have I told you I keep thinking about buying a second, extra-small grow-lamp and hanging it over the Winter Table that goes over the hellhound crate at the cottage—?  The summer/greenhouse at Third House is starting to get kind of crowded. 

* * *

* Yes, in many ways very like what most people do to get paid.  I keep telling you writing is not glamorous.  It has its brilliant moments, but glamorous?^  No.  And I splattered salad dressing on my white shirt today (again).^^  Frelling springy frelling lettuce frelling leaves. 

^ A friend was telling me about the book convention she's just back from and I was thinking yes, I remember why, when I moved over here, I wasn't particularly sorry to be too expensive to import to most American book cons any more.  It's the same thing in a different medium as book mail:  most of the people who want to talk to you about your books are really nice, or at least complimentary, even if both of you are so desperately embarrassed and uncomfortable by the encounter you each run away afterward to hide under the bed.  But it's the skirmishes and confrontations—including the occasional downright scary one—I remember.+ 

            The main drawback, for someone like me, lacking in most public social skills++, is that I have totally lost what habituation I once had+++, and when my poor publisher starts talking about promotion and that of course they'll pay my travel expenses I'm like, What?  Are you kidding?  I only so much as cross the Hampshire border with a written permission from Queen Mab.  She's not noted for her good temper either, and I don't want to press her too far.  An extra thimble of Laphroiag is acceptable as a thank-you for allowing me to go to London for the day:  I don't want to imagine what she'd demand for a trip to New York. 

+ And the frelling patronising ones.  The whole 'oh, when are you going to write a real book?' brigade, and its outliers, like the hug from the perfect stranger who says, BEAUTY was such a sweet little story.  I want to believe there's a lot less of that around these days when YA is hot, but thirty years ago . . . especially with this face which thirty years ago looked about sixteen.  I looked like someone who might have written a sweet little story.  This involuntary circumstance was not good for the development of my attitude toward my public.  I've told you all this before, haven't I?  Sorry.  The unexpected shaping experiences of one's life are, I find, harder to integrate and forget.  —Grrrr.  There's one stranger-hugging woman I could probably still pick out of a police line up . . . but that scrimmage was also when I was still in the early, first-book, I'm a Published Author! phase, and hadn't started biting people yet~.  She probably went away thinking she'd brightened my sweet little life. 

~ Yes, Jodi, I'm looking at you.  But I don't think you're the natural viper that I am.

++ And for anyone who has met me at a con and thought I came off fairly human:   thank you.  Clearly you made it easy for me. 

+++ And gained a sweet little case of ME . . . and more lately, a sweet little couple of majorly flaky hellhounds. 

^^ Yes, I should wear a bib or an overall or something.  Except that I hate it.  It makes me feel like a drooling idiot.+  Of course I'm not thrilled with using spot remover several times a week either.  These critical dilemmas of life. 

+ If the shoe/bib fits . . . 

** Not to mention the potential for highly distressing contact between the ex-hellkitten and the hellhounds.

            I think I tweeted about the hellhounds attempting to chase the statue of a cat.  I entirely agree it's a very lifelike statue of a cat but I thought dogs had a highly developed sense of smell??  And yes, I know, sighthounds, but they pick up scent-trails like foxhounds and cruise along with their sterns in the air and their noses to the ground.  Maybe there's a switch buried deep in their medulla oblongatas^ that auto-sets for whichever stimulus comes in first, eyes or nose, and then turns the other one off.   But hellhounds have taken this daunting rebuff to the way things are supposed to be—cats are cats, and they run away—very much to heart.  Chaos checks that statue now every time we hurtle by—he has grasped that there is something wrong with this cat:  it doesn't run away and, upon closer investigation, it smells funny—but he's still sure he's missing something.  Darkness keeps an eye on Chaos keeping an eye on the non-cat. 

            Today we met a cat—a live, breathing, tail-twitching cat—of very much the same colouring and demeanour as the non-cat . . . and the hellhounds didn't know what to do.  Ears and tails went up, and butts sank halfway to the ground in that ready-for-anything posture and . . . nothing happened.  I'd already put the brakes on the leads in case anything did happen.  But the cat just went on lying there, curling the end of its tail up and down, and the hellhounds went on looking at it, waiting for it to prove that it was not a non-cat . . . and eventually we pottered on, befuddled hellhounds following on a loose lead. 

^ Or equivalent.  My knowledge of the architecture of the canine brain is nil. +

+ Yes I know I could google it.  Tomorrow.  If I remember. 

*** Not that everything to do with the passage of time isn't, in my experience, essentially sneaky. 

† Ho hum.  Like I don't say this about every season, month, year, week, hour, blog post, bolting hellhound. . . . 

†† Which is fine with me.  And reminds me that when I first moved over here we used to have English weather, which is to say cold and wet, including in August.  Ah, nostalgia.