Robin McKinley's Blog, page 123

Booklists, various. And one bell ringing . . . list.

 

First things first:  SUNSHINE is on NPR's list of candidates for best 100 SF&F books.*  You get to vote for ten:  please go vote.  :  http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles?sc=fb&cc=fp  You can do anything you like with your other nine votes. . . .

            It's an interesting list, and I'm pleased that it's as varied as it is—Elizabeth Moon is on it, and Vonda McIntyre, and Patricia McKillip;  and LOTR and THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING** . . . and a lot more than five other titles I will need to vote for, and you only get ten votes.  There are also several I think of as underappreciated, like BRIDGE OF BIRDS and REPLAY and SWORDSPOINT and THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION*** and four by Octavia Butler†.  What's good about a list like this is that people, especially those only glancingly acquainted with SF&F, will read it and go oh, hey, well, maybe I'll read that one then.  Even I'm doing that and I do read SF&F.††

            I almost never look at 'best' lists, first because I'm never on them and second because they piss me off—these two attributes are related, yes, but the former is not the whole story about the latter.  However I am on this one, and so I get to Posit A Few Things.  Like . . . eight books by Robert Heinlein?  Eight?  I want to say 'are you frelling joking' but clearly it's too late for that.  Eight titles in the running for the best SF&F ever written are by that . . . nmmmrmph . . . misogynist creep?  ARRRRRGH.  I don't think so, myself.  And yes, I agree, he's an important figure on the SF&F landscape, he can tell a heck of a page-turner†††, and siiiiiigh some representation on a best-of list is probably necessary.  But EIGHT titles?  EIGHT?‡  When there are so many that aren't on it at all?  Like . . . Peter Dickinson.  TULKU?  BLUE HAWK?  CHANGES?  EMMA TUPPER?  ROPEMAKER?  MERLIN DREAMS?  FLIGHT OF DRAGONS?  THE GREEN GENE?‡‡ To name—ahem—eight.  But at this point I pause and look through the list again.  No Diana Wynne Jones either.  Hmm.  Okay, they must be doing that spurious-division thing again:  this is the list for adults.‡‡‡  Spare me.§

          And, I guess, stay tuned for the kiddie/YA list.  At least that means more books.

 * * *

Meanwhile, I have now spent way too much time casting fretfully up and down that list and I promised you an update on the auction.  What is holding up progress is that while I know which of my books are supposed to be in print . . . which of them are readily available and in what editions is a ratbag.  In fact, several ratbags.  I have emails in to various publishing people about this . . . and only some of them have answered.  Meanwhile, my stress level, never exactly slack and floppy, but which was coping with, for example, the prospect of 3000 doodles§§, has skyrocketed out into the blergosphere with the advent of this book-availability stuff I have no control over.  So we're going to present you with a compromise:  'editions may vary'.  And if anything is particularly popular we'll have to halt production occasionally and check supply.  I'm sorry:  thinking ahead is not my strong point, and originally this was just going to be an auction of out of print stuff that is already in Third House's attic.

            Several of you have suggested that there simply has to be a bats-in-the-belfry doodle.  I can do this but I'm not sure I can get it down even to a $15 doodle.  I'm still working on it.  We may have to have a special $20 doodle category . . . but maybe I can balance it by offering the map of Damar for $5, as someone else suggested . . . snork.

 * * *

And to finish, a bit of pure sloppy unmitigated un-caveated self-aggrandising joy.  Geek Mom posted this, and I've been grinning all day.  http://www.campanophile.com/view.aspx?125427 

* * * 

* Thank you, forum member Jack D_Arcy and mod gryphon. 

** Speaking of misogyny, which I'm about to.  There's so much that is gorgeous and first-rate and essential and unbetterable in ONCE AND FUTURE, but I'll never forgive him his Guinevere. 

            And please don't start talking to me about context and era and allowing for the society they lived in blah blah blah blah.  Anthony Trollope could write intelligent, capable, human women, why couldn't Charles Dickens?  I love Dickens, I've read everything he ever wrote (nearly), but his women are all smarmy good girls or mad and depraved.  On the whole I'll take the mad and depraved but I'd like a third choice.  Even allowing for era, there are lines.  TH White was over them.  And yes I also know he was a miserable old git who didn't like much of anyone, least of all himself.   What's on the page is still on the page. 

*** And John Varley, only I don't know STEEL BEACH.  Oops. 

† And . . . LUD-IN-THE-MIST?  What?  I think obscurity suits that one just fine. 

†† And write it.  Ahem.  But there's so much of it out there now that you can't help but be overwhelmed and to ensnare more readers there need to be lists like this to give them a path through the thickets.  Mwa hahahahaha.  In a good way. 

††† And in high school I fell for STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND hook, line and the-way-women-get-to-be-important-is-by-having-sex-with-guys sinker.  Oh yes and old guys get to have sex with beautiful young nubile women.  Because that's cool.  And happy, free sex solves all your problems.^  I was young for my age, and this was the sixties.  The Vietnam War and hippies. 

            Pollyanna prevents me from getting to grips with some of the other head-exploding misogyny on this list.  Which for the sake of the integrity of my skull is just as well.  

^ It may very well.  But humans aren't built for it.  Except in science fiction. 

‡I am not counting up number of SF titles against number of fantasy, nor number of women writers against number of men.  I don't want to know.  But I kept seeing Robert Heinlein's name, again and again and again.  And . . . even without counting, I can't help registering that it's an overwhelming male list.  Siiiiiiigh.  We get Robert E Howard, but not CL Moore or Leigh Brackett, for one tiny they're-all-safely-dead example.  And . . . is James Tiptree really not on the list?  If there's a way to make the authors go alphabetical I haven't found it.  Which is one of the reasons I've spent way too much time hunting. 

‡‡ Which is one of the great criminally neglected novels out there, by Peter Dickinson or anyone else.  It is outrageous, and outrageously funny.  Have you read it?  Good luck finding a copy.  Although Abebooks usually has everything, if you keep clicking. 

‡‡‡ No Harry Potter.  And CS Lewis' space trilogy, but not Narnia. 

§ http://therumpus.net/2011/08/ya-and-your-mom/

            And while I'm being provocative, not to say cantankerous, is Margaret Atwood still saying loudly that she doesn't write SF?  I think we should say fine, honey, and take her off the list.  To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I don't want anyone in my club who doesn't want to be there. 

            Silly woman.  Genre is hot.  

§§ Which I may complete by Christmas.  Because you're all buying them for Christmas presents, right?  "Oh, thank you.  Er.  It's—what is it?"

            . . . But if they were all $15 doodles, it wouldn't be 3000, it would only be . . . the number of the beast.  This seems to me inordinately funny.  Okay, it's late at night, the ME is still sticking up my brain cells, I should go to bed. . . . hee hee hee hee hee. . . .

In Which All Modes of Transportation Are Full of Gremlins

 

Fiona came today.  She has a week off* so we had these insane plans of getting started on time.  When she first suggested this I emailed back, what is on time?  I don't remember any more. 

            It didn't matter, because we didn't.  It's too HOT to sleep, and so neither of us did that either, and thus got up . . . rather late.**  She arrived*** as I was about to take prospectively, poised-to-become-instantly hot and cranky hellhounds out into the furnace, and I left her doing . . . uh . . . never mind what she was doing . . . and hurtled down the front stairs.  Agggh, said hellhounds, are you trying to KILL US?  Where is that nice cool swamp you were talking about yesterday?  We don't mind things crawling down our shirts.†

            We were about twenty minutes on our overheated way when Pooka started barking.  I assumed it was Fiona, having failed to find something because I told her it was in/on/at x but that was at the old house and it's now in/on/at y and I forget where y is.  But it wasn't Fiona.  It was Peter.  My bus hasn't come! he said.  And I have to make the connecting bus to get me to the dentist in Fantootlington!  Where are you?

            I'm out hurtling, I said, but I'm in town.  I could get there in about ten minutes. 

            Oh, could you? he said in relief.  Thanks.

            . . . It was more like fifteen.  But I threw hellhounds in the back of Wolfgang, told Fiona I was going to be another half an hour, and shot off to the bus stop.

            Peter wasn't there.

            Aaaaaaugh. 

            So I wasted most of half an hour cruising all the other bus stops in town, thinking I might have the wrong one, and then went back to the mews, thinking he might have somehow ended up back there—and walked in on a Bruegel-the-Elder-scape, one of the really cheerful ones, of about 1,000,000 big fat flies buzzing round the kitchen.  I think I've told you that in #1 The Mews he's up against farmland, and farmland run not very well by a hobby farmer who can't be bothered.  Something has clearly died, and this is the result.  So I was hammering flies and howling, and Pooka started barking again, and it was Peter, whose bus had come very late, but fortunately his connecting bus was also very late, and he was now on it.  And he was sorry to have messed me around, but he hadn't been able to get a phone signal, and . . . and it was a good thing that he was about twenty miles away at that point. . . .

            So I went back to the cottage and Fiona, and collapsed.  I'm still on the thin edge, and the adrenaline spike that would have got me (and Peter) to Mauncester and his bus drained away to no purpose, leaving a hellgoddess feeling more hellish than usual in a number of ways.  I couldn't think, I couldn't finish hurtling hounds, and I couldn't make decisions. . . .

            So we did the sensible thing.  We bagged our responsibilities and went to the art supplies store.  Which is half across the country anyway—clearly people in Hampshire do not draw—and you can't get there from here, especially with a SatNav that hasn't had a crucial update.††  Fiona has Billy Connolly programmed to do the talking, so there were periods rife with Shut up, Billy.  Shut up, Billy.   EFF YOUR BLOODY GOB, BILLY.  I know all the jokes about clueless morons blindly following their SatNav's directions into bottomless lakes and so on . . . but it's not quite like that, at least not if you're directionally challenged anyway.  The SatNav is not only supposed to be telling you (accurately) what to do, it's one more frelling thing to keep track of. †††  If navigating takes all your attention at the best of times, you can't obey the SatNav and look at a map intelligently.  Also, we were talking, which meant there was perhaps the occasional lapse of focus leading to the missing of crucial turns etc. . . .

            We got to the art supplies store (eventually).  They had some very nice things to make marks with although no A6 sketch pads, arrrrgh‡.  I was saying to the nice man behind the counter that I haven't done any real drawing in what must be fifteen years, and I'm busy thinking I haven't got time to add drawing to the LIST. . . .‡‡

            Oh, we stopped at the yarn store again.  It was almost on the way home.‡‡‡  Well, sort of.  Shut UP, Billy.   

 *  *  *

* From her day job as forensic scientist with a speciality in the carbon dating of chocolate.  I bet you didn't know there was any chocolate 60,000 years old.^  But the archaeologists were utterly stymied by the conflicting clues about the age of the (astonishingly) ancient city of Gweep^^, which could not possibly be as old as the fossilised cement mixer found on site suggested.  But the last queen buried before the glyptodon stampede flattened the city^^^ had a large bar of chocolate wrapped up in her grave clothes with her.^^^^  The archaeologists who made the discovery didn't immediately know it was chocolate, but one of their number, a menopausal woman, reached out her hand, as if hypnotised, broke off a piece, and stuffed it in her mouth.  Oh, they said.  It must be chocolate.  So they rang up Fiona. 

            There actually isn't much call for carbon-dating chocolate for some reason.  So Fiona moonlights as quality control checker in a yarn factory.   They search her every night before she goes home . . . but this is only partly successful.  The yarn addict is resourceful. 

^ There wouldn't be in this house.  Ha ha.  You saw that coming, right?   

^^ Those Aztecs were such parvenus.  

^^^ A glyptodon stampede just about could.  http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/mesozoicmammals/p/glyptodon.htm 

^^^^ I understand this.   

** I used to wonder how I got along without email.  Now I wonder how I got along before I acquired Pooka and learnt how to text.  

*** Fiona came through the door with a brand new knitting project bag over her shoulder.  It was black with pink roses.  Oooooh! I said, seizing it before she finished coming in the door.^  Lust!  Ow!  Want!

            What a good thing the shop had two of them, she said, with fully justified smugness, and pulled the second one out of the first one and handed it to me. 

^ Leaving her more at the mercy of hellhounds.  Usually I try to sort of beat them back, like the lion-tamer with a chair, when visitors arrive, but you can't let me be distracted.    

† No alligators please. 

†† Fiona's been having computer problems, and . . . 

††† Using it—and then finally turning the freller off, take THAT, Billy—reminds me a bit of the awful moment when you stop reading your handbell lines off the bit of paper in your lap and go it alone.  Reading the lines lets you do stuff you wouldn't be able to do any other way—but they are also an excuse not to engage your brain if you're not careful. 

‡ So I thought, okay, fine, I'll just order some on the WH Smith website.  The WH Smith website doesn't list them.  I'm sitting here with a 'WH Smith A6 Sketch Pad' in my lap, and the website is saying 'no matches'.  I have wandered into a Max Ernst painting.  Eeeeek.  

‡‡ I'll give you an update on the auction tomorrow.  I don't foresee well anyway, especially if whatever it is concerns logistics and organisation, and by taking into account what you lot are willing to spend money on some of my alternative plans rely on publishers getting back to me promptly which isn't happening.  But I have a New Compromise Plan, and if I don't hear from any other publishers tomorrow, we'll use this one. 

‡‡‡ This one:  http://www.lisswools.co.uk/

Which I wrote about here:  http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2011/04/13/i-told-you-i-was-knitting/

 

Bluuuuuh

 

It's finally HOT here.  Yesterday shorts were maybe still optional, today they are life-support, like the reed you breathe through while lying in the swamp among all the other reeds to escape from your enemies.  The old ways are the best ways sometimes, just so long as the surgically enhanced bloodhounds still can't smell underwater bodies, the technologically enhanced humans still can't hear that one of the reeds is breathing*, and the magician-mercenaries can't hear you thinking.**

            Mmm.  Nice cool swamp.  Nice cool wet swamp.  Nice cool wet restful swamp.  Mmmmm.***

            I'm not at my best.†  The ME, having indicated its intention to sidle along outta here, honey, and good riddance, you and your cheap pickup and your cheaper pick-up lines, got a few miles out of town, did 180° and shot back to cradle me in its arms again.  ARRRGH.  Or rather, unnnnnnnh, since I haven't really got a good arrrgh in me.  Had hours and HOURS and hours of sleep last night and could still barely crawl out of bed this morning . . . one of the purposes of hellhounds is to get me out of bed so I told myself that the noise of my across-the-road neighbour's . . . I think it's a car vacuum, like you need a special hoover for your car . . . but it sounds more like a giant woodchipper, like what you'd hire when you needed to grind up a small city†† . . . that the noise it was making was disguising the forlorn pathetic whines of hellhounds wanting to begin the day and despairing at the protracted nonappearance of their hellgoddess.  Hellhounds were, of course, crashed out and motionless when I got downstairs and they objected to being prodded into wakefulness.  There's way too much sunlight out there, they said.  They were right.

            I just about managed the morning hurtle by slinking from shady bit to shady bit, trailing hot cranky panting hellhounds.  At least I didn't fall down.  Got to the mews and thought unnnnnnh, as above. . . .

            And cancelled my voice lesson.  I did not want to.  I did not want to.  But Italian was clearly beyond me, I'm behind on practising anyway between the ME's previous onslaught and the distracting presence of visitors†††, and there's also the little matter of the drive.  Driving a car when the ME is turning your neural pathways into peanut butter is not advised. 

            Whimper.‡

            However I was copied in on an email exchange between Colin and Niall concerning tonight's entertainment and when Colin said we were ringing his tiny flowerpot bells because Titus was coming‡‡, and that there would be eight of us so we could ring triples and major I decided I couldn't resist the opportunity to make a fool of myself over Stedman triples.‡‡‡  I can't handle those wretched little bells anyway, I can always blame my handling.  In fact I know the frelling line to a plain course of Stedman triples just fine—and I might conceivably make my way through a touch of bob major, although we only rang plain courses tonight—but ringing something you know the line to is another matter and as I keep saying I'm someone who only learns by grind.  So we all ground.  Some of us ground worse than others.  Ahem.  Actually I did get through both the Stedman and the bob major, so it counts as a successful evening.§  I still can't handle those frelling flowerpots . . . but I'm improving.  I was thinking tonight that I need to be careful about appearing to get too adept—skanky handling is such a great excuse for going wrong.  However I don't think the 'too adept' is likely to be a problem any time soon. 

The second part of the discussion of epic fantasy went up today. 

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/epic_interview2/

It's . . . er . . . a little long.  Well, I suppose it makes sense that writers of epic fantasy should naturally go on rather.§§   My single comment is waaaaaay down near the end, under 'any last words'.  

* * *

* Presumably in these situations you choose the edge of the reedbed, so there's room for you to lie down without making a human-shaped hole in the reeds, which would probably give the game away even to the non-enhanced sort of enemy.

** What is that crawling down my shirt???  And what—AAAAAUGH

*** Okay, maybe not.  I don't like things crawling down my shirt.  And you can never be sure that this isn't the swamp where the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is about to emerge.  Or that you're not in the wrong alternate universe, and in this one Swamp Thing's personality was ruined by the transformation from mild-mannered lab coat to giant walking vegetable. 

† Statistics:  1,000,000,000,000 blog posts where I am not at my best.  3 blog posts when I am. 

†† Or possibly the wrong-alternate-universe Swamp Thing in a really bad mood.

††† Not to mention a slight lingering trauma concerning Percival and singing

‡ I spent a certain amount of the afternoon moving slowly around the (seriously neglected) cottage garden and moaning.  Alicia, gods help me, is coming to visit this week^, and I'm considering blacking out the kitchen window and the glass-paned garden door and saying, Garden?  What garden?  Don't open that door, that's where the monster lives.^^   

^ On Thursday.  There will be handbells.   

^^ The handbell ringer eating monster.  This is known as being between a rock and a hard place:  if she doesn't pick up those handbells, I'll eat her.  

‡‡ So no physical exertion necessary 

‡‡‡ And Niall would be doing the driving 

§ Also, it was cooling off a little once the sun stopped thundering away like a car vacuum disguised as a woodchipper. 

§§. . . by which standard I clearly am an epic fantasy writer, even if it doesn't show very often in my books

Another how many things can you get wrong day. Plus doodles.

 

It has been another of my HOW MANY THINGS CAN YOU GET WRONG days—including HOW MANY WRONGS CAN THINGS GET YOU.  I began by making a total horse's rear end of Grandsire doubles for pity's sake at service ring and Penelope saying later when I moaned to her about it that even Vicky and Roger get it wrong sometimes was no comfort.* 

            What with one thing and another this week—chiefly ME and visitors—hellhounds and I have mostly been hurtling around town** and I was determined to get out of town today, and I chose one of our favourite walks, from Ditherington up and down dale to Warm Upford.  We'd got off later than I planned, of course, and our footpath had meanwhile become glued up with frelling tourists***.  We streamed past these impedimenta and shot out into the farther-from-where-you-can-have-parked-the-car reaches, where the crowds thin out.  And then on the way back. . . .

            There was an era when All Stars' laces were waaaaay too frelling long.  I can even date it for you:  all the All Stars I bought at Jack's Shoes the year I was guest of honor at Wiscon—2005†—had laces for Paul Bunyan's thigh boots, and I'd noticed more of the same elsewhere around that time.  I was wearing one of these pairs today.  I had about sixteen knots in them . . . which had stealthily started coming undone on one shoe.  And I managed to put my other foot in the resulting loop and fell down.  ARRRRGH.  There was language.  There was quite a lot of language.††  There were also two skinned knees, one of which is trying to turn into an aubergine†††—I'm in shorts—a skinned elbow, a mildly wrenched wrist and a fairly significantly sprained finger‡ and some major temper.  I was in no mood to appreciate it at the time, but when we got to the top of the hill there was a woman with three small children attempting to hide in the shrubbery.  I think she heard me. . . .

Ajlr

Love, love the flying foogit! And there I was, thinking you'd started a new line in chrysanthemums. 

There is something rather mysterious about foogit reproduction.  Perhaps there's a vegetative stage that has been hitherto overlooked?

Diane in MN

I will also want a commemorative plaque on the wall of the ringing chamber and a quarter peal of Cambridgerung in my honour.

If you bring them a five-figure donation, I don't think you'll have any problem with this! 

FIVE figures???   . . . You're buying a lot of doodles/books/Special Items of Interest, then, are you?  Thank you very much!  Very happy to arrange for a plaque and a quarter peal for you too!

blondviolinist

Yes! I am going to have to buy a foogit doodle. (Though the muffin with fangs is hilarious.)

You can buy both.  Indeed, I encourage it. 

Okay, we're going to try again with frelling WordPress' photo-loading skwitzlflagelblat.  And I am looking at the amount of time I'm spending on all this, which several of you have brought up, and I'm thinking I may raise the doodle prices slightly—make $5 merely a 'thanks and best wishes from the New Arcadia bells and Robin McKinley' sans doodle, and then the lower end doodle for $10 and the upper end doodle for $15.  Which would make the following $15, and Friday night's $10.

I'm not sure even for $15 I can manage this level of value-added muffin too many times. I know you don't eat a muffin with a knife and fork but a table knife, um . . . and Charlie's is the only cafe known to sell champagne by the glass . . .

    

Pegasi are kind of scary--cartoons don't really lend themselves to breathtaking beauty. But I can do bats. Lots and lots of bats.

       

The muffin with fangs was someone else's idea.  I had thought of baked goods with teeth, but I hadn't got round to experimenting yet.  Is there anything else anyone out there wants to suggest of a doodly nature?  As I keep saying I can only do what I can do, and I think Death of Marat would look like a blob in a pudding basin . . . although that brings up another question, that of labelling.  The map of Damar, supposing anyone is mad enough to request it, isn't going to look like much without a label, for example. 

I feel this is also better with a label.

 

Which reminds me of another caveat:  I need to get as much blog material out of this auction as possible, and if anyone asks for anything I find particularly amusing and can manage to draw, I will post it here.  I won't post your name but I'll post it.  This will eventually include things like the sonata for three harps and bicycle pump, and the knitting, supposing these deranged items sell. . . .‡

 * * *

* But she gets lots of points for trying. 

** This doesn't necessarily mean pavement.  There are fields a few minutes' walk from here^.  But there aren't enough of them, and not all of them contain public footpaths.

^ Any of my three 'heres'

*** Including the kind with aggressive off-lead dogs.  What is the matter with people?  I got some fool woman smiling and saying hello to me while her two gigantic frelling Labs were busy climbing all over my hellhounds.  They didn't seem to have mayhem on their minds^, fortunately, but they're still off lead and twice the size of either of mine.  And their owner was paying no attention. 

^ Minds? 

† I had to look it up.  Dates?  Remember?  Are you kidding?  I did very well to remember Peter's and my 20th.  Oh, gods, the hellhounds have a birthday in a fortnight. . . I wonder which one it is . . . . 

†† Don't forget that scientists have proved that swearing eases pain.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8458163/Swearing-can-help-relieve-pain-study-claims.html 

Yes, I know I've posted it before.  It's relevant to me kind of a lot.

††† Eggplant.  The purple kind.  Yaaaaaay arnica.  I still have a knee.  And that pale lavender is rather attractive. 

‡ And it's my clicking finger. 

‡‡ And meanwhile when is the freller going to start?  Well, there's a slight administrative hiccup out of Blogmom's and my hands.  I am hoping a solution will arrive during working hours tomorrow.

GUEST BLOG FROM OISIN, continued

 

As you will gather from all that I have said, my lot is not the privileged one of teaching Music college entrants exclusively. A fair number of my pupils have nevertheless gone to read music at university, and several more have gone into professional musical careers. My name appears on the LP label of a disc issued by a former pupil, and another pupil opened his own recording studio and sent me a hit single that he recorded with a soloist so famous that her name has exploded completely from my mind. One of the first pupils I introduced to the world of electronic music and digital recording now has his own studio, runs a backing track company and makes more money from music than I do, even though he does so part-time!

Not that I don't have fun teaching the less able – my view is that the deciding factor is what the pupil is getting out if it. I have in the past had people who were about as musical as a London bus, but derived so much pleasure from it that I regarded it as my obligation to continue as long as they wanted to keep coming. Conversely, I have had pupils who were musically very intelligent, but preferred lawn-mowing …

Musical intelligence is something I've realised seems to manifest itself irrespective of background, and even inclination. It is present when the notes seem to make sense to the pupil – some pupils, bless 'em, stare at the same tadpole for hours and at times can't find it on the keyboard, let alone work out what it is actually doing there. It is also quite independent of musical background knowledge and listening. Sadly, no assumptions whatsoever can be made about the general access to recorded music (I do not refer to the ubiquitous bindweed of mainly undistinguished and indistinguishable pop/house/garage/garden-shed/snakepit/ music). A survey was carried out some 8 years ago which found that fewer than half the households in the UK had ANY books in them at all. I shudder to think what the statistic would be for what I call art music. Yes, I like some pop, and a lot of modern jazz, but it's entertainment, for pity's sake, not brain food …

I am often asked about ages for starting lessons.  At the lower end of the antiquity spectrum, it is a matter of the ability to concentrate, coupled with a genuine interest in the instrument. A piano is good in this respect – left open and accessible, it can be tinkled on-the-fly, when walking past. A move beyond the look-how-much-noise-I-can-make-with-my-fists to the playing of single notes is also a Good Sign. As far as lessons are concerned, I require of pupils of all ages the ability to concentrate on the unending flow of wisdom, and the tact to stay awake for the duration of the lesson (normally 30 minutes). For the "mature" student, the concentration is assumed – what is often a problem is the time for practice. Busy lives lead to priority conflicts – ultimately, a decision has to be taken on the relative importance of work at their instrument. From time to time the realisation dawns that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is rather more partial to vegging out in front of the box, or simply leaning against the nearest wall staring into space …

Age, Dear Reader, has Very Little To Do With It. True, the older you get, the slower the assimilation process, but a combination of realism and B-mindedness will get you a long way. Basically, if you have always wanted to learn, find a good teacher, and go for it. My oldest beginner was 70 when she started. She was hampered by possessing the musical sensibility of a charging rhinoceros, but her age was not the problem!

Finding a good teacher. Qualifications are good, but far from the whole story. Track record is the perfect indicator. A teacher who merely teaches isn't usually the best – someone who performs regularly* and preferably has lessons themselves from time to time is a much better bet.** The rigour of subjecting yourself to examination is the sign of an open and mature mind, besides ensuring that you stay in touch with what it means to be a pupil*** , and thus be on the receiving end. In the UK, membership of a professional body such as the ISM† is very desirable, and gives an element of accountability to what can be an independent and totally unregulated operation.

So – in a nutshell of Brobdingnagian proportions a few thoughts on this music teachering game. If you ask nicely and make the appropriate sacrifice to the H G††, maybe she'll let you ask questions – if someone could also remind me what else I promised to write on, that would help.†††

Always assuming that you found this palatable enough …

           … if not, don't tell me – enough realism, already. ‡ 

Oisin, with many thanks to all my pupils over the last 185 years, especially those who have become good friends.‡

* * * 

* Yes.  He does.  He's chief organist at the big Catholic church in Mauncester.  I mean big.  I've seen smaller castles.  He also plays regularly at St Radegunde—my home tower—although I'm not sure what his title is.   And he's forever being frelling late to my music lesson/cup of tea on Friday afternoons because he has some frelling wedding rehearsal to attend, at which he will discover that they've changed their minds about the playlist and rather than Mendelssohn's Wedding March they've decided they want Mahler's Ninth as transcribed for solo organ.  The wedding is tomorrow.  

** Yes.  He does this too.  But he won't say so himself.  He takes lessons from a scary overachieving world-touring organist demigod based in London.  It is testament to Oisin's ability/attitude/B-mindedness that he comes back from these sessions feeling energized and inspired.  I think I'd just cry.  Although after several years of Oisin—especially since he got his home computer organ monster—I've gone from thinking that organ music is all very well in its place, which is to say in a very large church where I am not present, to thinking that if I were thirteen and talented I'd be all over organ lessons.  As it is I think there is an enchanted-pipe-organ story beginning to stir and, er, boom, in the back of my mind.^

^ One does what one can. 

*** Pain!  Paaaaaaain!

†Yes.  A positive paragon, our Oisin.  Pity about the whips and hot pincers.

†† Chocolate is always good.  Totally preferred over chicken entrails, etc. 

†††  More guest posts.  THINK OF QUESTIONS.  PLEASE.

‡ Hey, this is my blog.  We don't do reality here. 

‡‡ And first rate enemies.  En garde, balourd!^

^ Snork.

 

And now, back to business

 

 I CANNOT, OR, AT ANY RATE, IN A FAMILY BLOG I CANNOT BEGIN TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH I FRELLING HATE FRELLING FRELLING FRELLING WORDPRESS.  I HAVE RELOADED THE $10 DOODLE PHOTOS IT KEEPS EATING, AND THEN THROWING UP IN INTERESTING CONFIGURATIONS ON THE PAGE, AND THEN ZAPPING INTO A PARALLEL UNIVERSE, NOW THREE TIMES AND I AM TIRED, AND I HAVE A BLOOD PRESSURE HEADACHE, AND HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I HATE WORDPRESS????  AND I WILL TRY AGAIN WITH THE $10 DOODLE PHOTOS TOMORROW.

Our visitors left today.  Sniff.  Listen, stay longer next time, I promise to lose Thurn and Taxi.*

            Meanwhile, back at the drawing board, I'm having a little trouble with my equipment.  Last time I did serious drawing I used pencil and then inked in over it, but while I will undoubtedly do some pre-pencilling for some of the more esoteric doodles** I don't have time for the slow sexy languorous deal with the individual nibs and the bottles of ink—I want one of those high-tech drawing pens*** with the frictionless points and a nice medium black line. 

            I went to the big W H Smith's in Mauncester, which used to have a not-to-be-sneezed-at art-supplies department and . . . ew.  They have a few wildly overpriced kits for people who like the idea of drawing†, a few sizes of drawing pads including the A6 I think I've told you I'm going to be using . . . and not a whole heck of a lot else.  Frell.

            So I came home with some A6 pads, and this:

Pink! Spotty! Who can't use a few more office supplies, especially when they're pink and spotty!

Waste not, want not.  They were on sale.††

So, with the kitchen table at the mews clear of such mutable obstructions as guests, I have been wrestling with a series of ordinary stupid rollerball pens, with varying success.  Fiona and I may have to have an expedition to a proper arts supply shop.  I'm still getting my eye in, not to mention my fine motor control and my brain is still only semi-present.  But if doodles do turn out to be popular I have to have an implement that lets me throw them off without major loss of life or time.  But these will do to give you an idea.

Sample $5 doodles. Well, someone suggested a muffin with fangs.

 

More $5 doodles. I should specify that's a flying foogit, seen from above.

 

 

BurgandyIce

So… I'm following along silently ecstatic about the chance of getting something – from a doodle to a book to a book with a doodle… and now I'm a little nervous. As happy as I am to toss doodles and dollars at each other, there's an awful lot of us and only one enthusiastic doodler. (Who has a lot going on, let's not mention.)

I will throw doodles back! And, since you mention it . . . $15,000 would do nicely, thank you. . . .

Then again… it's better not to think overmuch, creeping whatever-it-is. Best to avoid the logical "how many doodles per hour to doodle three thousand cool, personalized doodles fast enough to save the bell-ringers."

Yes, I'm avoiding thinking about this too—except to say that there is going to be a LARGE CAVEAT POSTED when all of this goes live††† that again, if the doodles—including doodled books—prove popular, it's going to take me some time to crank them all out.  I would have said that any regular readers of this blog already know about my less than mature and magnificent relationship with time‡, and while if I get 3000 orders‡‡ I will produce 3000 doodles‡‡‡, it's going to take me a while.  As observed:  there is only one of me.  And I have ME and a living to earn.  And hellhounds.  Etc.  So . . . don't worry too much.   Remember that these are not fine art, they're doodles.  And be patient.

Aside from being concerned over boring practicalities, I'm already saving to buy as much as I can.

Oh good.  Goody goody good good good.

 * * * 

* I told Oisin about my drunken agreement to sing the next time they're here and he sniggered.  Then he said, How long do you have?  Probably quite a while, I replied. 

            If not, I will have to be sure to have pneumonia.  Or at least a very large frog in my throat.  Like sort of an alligator.  

** Esoteric happens early when you're as out of practise as I am. 

*** Relatively high-tech.  I can't afford whatever the current fashion in to-die-for is. 

† And will take the kit home, strip the cellophane off, stroke all the pretty chalks and brushes and coloured pencils and . . . put the whole thing in a drawer and go back to whatever they were doing before. 

†† A friend recently sent me this, for some reason.  I have no idea why.

Who, me?

 ††† Which if I can get my slow butt finally in gear, should be soon 

‡ For example, all those UK edition PEGASUSes that people won . . . uh . . . several weeks ago, will be going to the post office on Tuesday.  Which is the next Fiona Day.  Any time anybody wins anything, don't start counting till the next time Fiona is here.  The doodles I can post, but books?  Books wait for Fiona. 

‡‡ Eeeeeep. 

‡‡‡ I will also want a commemorative plaque on the wall of the ringing chamber and a quarter peal of Cambridge rung in my honour.

Follies, vehicular and personal

 

It has not been a good couple of days to have ME in.  Not that there are ever good days to have ME, but the perniciousness of it varies.  In theory we and our visitors were going to have an excursion today—I'd even done my homework and got up a little list of possibilities—and I was wondering how I was going to fudge this since while I am beginning to recover from this particular bagged by the bad guy situation* it's kind of a slow process and the standard excursion set up of driving to somewhere, doing something when you get there and driving home again sounded a little extreme to me.  I'm still in the crawling [note:  crawling] up behind the Lord of the Nazgul with my sword phase, it's been kind of a long few days, I'm not feeling my best, I'm not sure anything useful is going to happen even if I manage to stick my sword in him, ** and I may need to go lie down again afterward.

            And then when our visitors arrived yesterday—after unforeseen adventures including a blocked-solid M25***—their big fancy brand new wheelchair-adapted car was going BLINK BLINK BLINK I NEED A MECHANIC BLINK BLINK, so they left it at Third House and we experimented with getting Luke and the necessary support paraphernalia into Wolfgang, during which it was proven that Wolfgang has some tardis blood . . . and that Luke and Andraste are amazing, but we kind of already knew that.

            This morning I rolled out of bed†, performed the slo-mo version of a hellhound hurtle, but since we're finally having some SUMMER WEATHER†† we were all content with an ambling pace, and came home via Third House to find out what was going on.  What was going on was that the RAC††† bloke had come and done the Professional Long Face and Andraste, looking somewhat shell-shocked, was waiting for the frelling tow truck, with no idea whether any of them would be going anywhere any time soon. . . . It's okay, I said, Third House is not fully booked for the rest of the summer hols:  the Duke of Clarence doesn't arrive till next week.‡ 

            So Aaron, Luke, Percival, hellhounds and I variously strolled down to the mews to infest Peter, leaving poor Andraste to her fate.‡‡  And questions therefore of excursions were (on my part at least) not entirely regretfully set aside, since Wolfgang is only part tardis.  Luke, Percival, Aaron and I played a game of Thurn and Taxis‡‡‡ in which I totally ploughed them under, coming in with twice as many points as any of the boys, by the excellent strategy—which I have used before on such occasions with this family—of doing exactly what I'm told.§

            The good news is that the Frellingmobile only needed its gerkinblitch replaced and they had one in stock.  Yaaay.  Jubilation, not to mention the return of Andraste before she'd spent all their remaining holiday money on downloading books from amazon to read while she waited for the garage to do something besides drink coffee and complain of their backlog.  So there was a certain amount of perhaps superfluous jollity around the supper table tonight, assisted by—ahem—champagne.  Usually I have the sense to wait till I've eaten something before I start hitting the champagne but when there are six of you you don't want to linger, so I didn't.   Meanwhile, when I was helping them unload yesterday I had discovered an Interestingly Shaped Object which upon application Percival admitted was his guitar.  Oooh, I said.  In response to nagging, I mean gentle request,§§ he brought it with him today and after supper . . . played.  And sang.§§§  What it is to enjoy performing.  Although the fact that he has a, you know, voice, helps.  He's now started taking proper voice lessons and apparently great minds think alike because we're singing a lot of the same stuff for our teachers, whereupon Andraste said, okay, Robin, now you sing something!

            No, I said.  I haven't had that much champagne.

            Oh, but performing is good for you, they said, more or less in harmony.  And we're friendly! 

            I still blame the champagne, and my already-ME-weakened defenses.  And the warm furry bonding moment of finding out that Percival also loves Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel.  Not this time, I said, weakly.  Next time.

            Okay! they said (still in chorus).  Next time!

            Remind me to have pneumonia. 

* * *

* I think

** I love it that in hindsight, with the whole paranormal/urban fantasy thing as huge as it is now, that Tolkien, the one true god of high fantasy, can be seen to employ . . . zombies.  Well, the undead anyway.  And as a metaphor for ME the Nazgul will do nicely.  The whole of Book One of the FELLOWSHIP will do rather too well as a description of being hunted down and nailed by the beggar.  And unfortunately most of us don't wake up in Rivendell with Gandalf at our bedside in the next chapter.^  

^ Yes, I know there are five books to go . . . and that Frodo ultimately can't go home to the Shire and relax.  At age eleven that was the first time I'd ever run into—or at least recognised and taken in—the fact that stuff changes you.     

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M25_motorway  Blocked-solid is its natural state. 

† And fell to the floor and lay moaning 

†† No sweater with my shorts.  —Which is a pity, because I'm wearing my fabulous £18 steal.^  The Mauncester knitting shop apparently—I had no reason to know this before February this year—every now and then sells off all the gorgeous high-level knitted stuff that their staff makes and that they hang about the place in a showy and come-hither manner^^, for pretty much the price of the yarn.  Or less.  Yowzah.  

^ It's pink.  

^^ The appropriate yarn and the pattern always prominently displayed, for people like me to look at, laugh painfully, and head for some other yarn to fondle for comfort. 

††† http://www.rac.co.uk/ 

‡ Speaking of the undead. 

‡‡ Technology is wonderful.  We had a pretty much running commentary of what was going on with Andraste by text. . . . And I have found it very amusing to spend a couple of days in the company of people as techno-addicted as I am.^  I may or may not have told you that my lust for an iPad was partly fuelled by hanging out with Percival and Luke . . . whom I am now going to trump with my iPad 2 . . . of course supposing it ever dranglefabbing arrives. 

 ^ In their rather more clued in ways. 

‡‡‡ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurn_and_Taxis_(board_game) 

§ When this was reported to Andraste, who lives with three games-mad boys, she said crisply, Just so long as the girl wins. 

§§ I'm older than he is.  He has to do what I say.  Ha hahahahahahahaha. 

§§§ Including The Four Chord Song  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

which had me crying with laughter and I only recognise about half of the songs.

How to Make Beds When You Have Acute ME

 

Sit down.

Remember that there was something you needed to do.  Stand up.  Decide that whatever it was wasn't that urgent.  Sit down again.

Remember that you have hellhounds.  Look at hellhounds.  Look at hellhounds looking at you.  Contemplate the concept of 'walking'.*

Put harnesses on hellhounds.  The problem with putting harnesses on hellhounds while sitting down is that hellhounds immediately hurl themselves in your lap.  Serially.  But with great emphasis.**  Guys.  Do you want to go out, or do you want to go on with this really bad impression of Yorkshire terriers?***

Totter outdoors.†  Totter several times around a block or several blocks or some damn block-like things.  Or something.  Pick up dog crap by kneeling down first, so you don't fall over.

Go home again.

Sit down.

Take harnesses off hellhounds.

Stare.  At anything.  It doesn't matter what. ††

Become aware that you have been sitting staring for rather a long time.  Remember that there is something you need to do.  Have vague memory trace that it has something to do with Third House. 

Groan.  Put harnesses back on amenable hellhounds.†††

Trudge up to Third House.‡  Convince hellhounds to lie on a perfectly nice comfy pile of blankets‡‡ in the sitting room.

Sitting room?

Sit down.‡‡‡

Stand up.  The sofa you're sitting on is one of the beds that needs making up.  First you have to take all the cushions off and then you have to pull—pull—it open before you even get to the sheet thing.  We do not do this . . . pulling.  Whimper.

Stagger into bathroom and cling onto linen cupboard door for support.  Stare at pile of sheets.  Remember how much trouble you and Fiona had trying to find the one fitted sheet big enough to go on the queen-size in the bedroom.§

Take sheets into sitting room. 

Sit down.

Decide to tackle the sofa with the pulling-out thing last.

Go back into bathroom.  Stare into linen cupboard some more.  Pray to the Linen Fairy.  Pick up likely-looking pair of sheets and take them into bedroom. . . .

The fitted sheet FITS. 

Attempt to do small shaky jig of joy, and a salaam to the Linen Fairy.

Sit down.

Put pillow cases on pillows.

Sit down.

Go yet again into the bathroom and stare into the depths of the linen cupboard.  Pick out third pair of sheets and some more pillow cases.  Creep upstairs on hands and knees and collapse panting at the top.§§

Sit down.

Make bed in attic.

Sit down.

Go back downstairs again.  Possibly on your bum, like a two-year-old.

Sit down.  Fend off hellhounds, who were afraid a roc was going to sweep into the attic and steal you away.

Stand up.  Go into sitting room.

Sit down.

Make bed.  Including the pulling-out thing.

Lie down.  Fail to fend off delighted hellhounds.

. . . It was all worth it though.  Our visitors brought champagne. 

* * *

* We elect not to contemplate the concept of 'hurtling'.

** This is particularly unpopular when I'm wearing shorts.^

^ My weather aps keep predicting summer weather.   They keep lying.  I put on shorts . . . and then I put on a sweater.  I feel silly in shorts and a sweater.

*** Or possibly Jack Russells.  It's amazing how high those legless little frellers can jump.  I was assaulted by a Jack Russell puppy today—fortunately the hellhounds were not present—so once he was already in my lap I turned him over and rubbed his tummy, and he nearly died of joy.  Not one of your dominant dogs then.  I'm even on record as disliking Jack Russells^, but I like anything that is made this happy this easily.  And, you know, puppies. . . . 

^ I dislike Labs too, for exactly the same reason, that I've met too many of them wrecked by stupid humans.  We had another non-incident yesterday that I had no way of knowing was going to be a non-incident:  a frelling Lab on the far side of the little park we were walking across which I assumed was far enough away and wasn't—and I am so not in the mood for an adrenaline spike when I saw the thing streaking toward us with all its hair up and its useless owner vaguely calling after it.  I had just about ascertained that it was a bitch, which possibly meant this was going to be less of a bloodbath than I feared with two male hellhounds, when she . . . slammed on the brakes and sat down about six feet away . . . and turned her back toward us.  Hopefully, if you can turn your back on someone hopefully.  I know this is a submissive thing, but I find it a hoot every time—I've also chiefly seen it in female Labs, I don't know if they're particularly prone?+  So I permitted the hellhounds to lunge in her direction, and there was general rejoicing.  Dogs.  Gah.  Oh, the useless owner was still on the far side of the park, calling vaguely.  I nearly went home with a third dog.  I might not have minded. 

+ Supine really.

† Attempting to rebuff Chaos, who wants to bite the insides of my bare thighs.  Ow.  If this were a paranormal romance he would suddenly morph into Alan Rickman^.  It is not a paranormal romance, and Chaos is a twerp.

^ And we would both be thirty years younger 

†† If I am sitting in the chair by the front door, I am facing the tallboy, which mysteriously has a number of fake roses tied, clipped to and hanging from it.  Next to it on the wall is a meat save . . . with a particularly excellent fake rose appended to its dome.  Hey, I know what I like, and so do all my friends. 

††† Oooh.  We're going out again already?  Oooooh. 

‡ Where the pond is full of waterlilies.  Palest pale pink waterlilies.  For these waterlilies I almost forgive my predecessor for the ducky and chickie tiles in the kitchen.^   I'll try to remember to take a picture.

^ And the plastic baronial chandelier. 

‡‡ Noooooo!  This is not our bed!  This is not our space!  We cannot lie here!  We must tirelessly patrol the borders!  Tirelessly!  Patrol! 

‡‡‡ Ooooh, say the hellhounds, who were looking for an excuse not to lie down any more.^  Isn't that a sofa you're sitting on?  That looks a lot like a sofa to us.  Weren't you saying something about wanting us to lie down?  

^ They've been lying down at least twenty seconds.  What am I expecting?  Miracles? 

§ There used to be three.  Where did the other two go?  Burglars?  Bats? 

§§ The carpet up there is still new and, you know, shiny.  Lying on it is a pleasure.

26 July 2011

 

. . . is the twentieth anniversary of the famous day when I picked up that eccentric English writer Peter Dickinson, whom I slightly knew, at the Bangor, Maine airport, saw him coming through the gate, and went 'oops'.

            The rest is history.  My twentieth anniversary of living in England—and specifically this little bit of Hampshire—is the end of October.  And our twentieth wedding anniversary is the third of January next year.*

            We will now briskly fast-forward to today.  Peter had spent most of yesterday going to a funeral**, came home shattered, and is only semi-de-shattered today.  I had nine hours and twenty minutes of sleep last night and I still feel like death and dog crap.***   We have Luke and his family arriving tomorrow, and I'm supposed to be making Third House differently-abled-friendly.  We hadn't really decided what we were going to do for our summer twentieth when we found out this was when Luke could come;  and so in our usual never-mind-I'll-think-about-that-tomorrow way we decided we'd have a gentle half-day outing to Wisley, which is the big RHS garden† not undoably far from here . . . but 'not undoably' is a relative term and in this case involves a long stretch of motorway driving.  That was not going to happen today.

            Peter and I stared at each other over the kitchen table.††  We could go to Zigguraton, I said tentatively.  The media centre††† has a little art gallery and a nice café.  There might even be two or three books on a shelf somewhere they haven't reassigned to a computer docking station.‡

            So that's what we did.  The art gallery contained an unexpectedly charming exhibit and the café is a really nice space‡‡ . . .  But the thing that really caught my eye was the knitting exhibit in the case by the front door.‡‡‡  There's a KNITTING GROUP that meets in the café every Tuesday morning.  All welcome.  Just bring your current project. . . .  

* * *

Honey_bee

Please forgive me if this has been answered but are the book doodles going to be book themed? Say…muffin doodles in Sunshine (or muffins with fangs) or a sighthound for Deerskin and so forth? Not that I wouldn't appreciate any doodle but a specific book themed one would be really fantastic.

As what I say keeps evolving it is not surprising you are having trouble keeping up.   People buying anything that includes a doodle will have the option of specifying what general category of doodle they would like.  I'm hoping there will be an actual email submission form which will include a space for doodle requests—with a limit of, say, ten words, and with the caveat that my doodle skilz are limited and I can only do what I can do.  I should start keeping a list of the things people suggest for doodles and post samples.  (I can do a muffin with fangs for example but I'm not sure you'd like it.)  But 'themed-to-book doodle' is certainly an option. 

katinseattle

I know I can't outbid for an autographed book, but I'd love a dragon doodle to go into my copy of Dragonhaven. I'd also love a doodle of the whippet. Just because. These will be autographed doodles, won't they?

Remember that in-print hardbacks, signed and doodled, are going to be available at a flat fee of $35—it's only the out of print stuff that is going to be some kind of auctioned.    But the loose doodles will TOTALLY be autographed.  The basic premise is:  'best wishes and thanks to YOUR NAME HERE, Robin McKinley'.  The $5 doodle will have a smaller doodle than the $10 is all.  I wanted to have them on two different sizes of paper, but barring that I get to what looks like the nearest really good art supplies store—which is not near—they'll both have to go on the WH Smith standard A6.  Which means the $5 will have more white space as well as fewer lines. 

Ajlr

And – you may snigger, at this point, if you wish – the timing of Sunday morning service where I ring is going to be brought forward in October so that we'll need to start ringing just after 08.45 instead of 09.45! Can you give me any tips on how to survive such horror?

If you will forgive a brief excursion into semi-seriousness—and, may I add, well aware that you are pulling my poor sore ME-raddled leg, since you routinely get up at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning§ during the working week—the way I get myself out of bed on Sunday mornings, hours before my usual, is by remembering that this is what us bell ringers are for.  It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or not—and I'm not—the reason our bells exist is to call Christians to worship.  The way we frelling pay back for the honour of ringing our bells is by ringing for service in the churches where they hang.  This is something of a hobbyhorse of mine—people who can't be arsed to ring for service infuriate me.  It's dishonourable.  It's stealing.  The only literal financial cost to any bell ringer is a piddling yearly guild membership fee.  The rest of our subscription is paid by ringing for service. 

            I don't actually say this over to myself every Sunday morning when the alarm goes off much too early.  It's just something you do, if you're a bell ringer, like if you have a dog, you take it for walks.  There are people who have dogs who don't take them for walks too. . . .

            Don't get me started.  But Aj, I'm not worried.  You'll get up.  

* * *

And just in case anyone was worrying . . . yes, there was champagne for supper tonight. 

* * *

 

* Over halfway.  I told Peter I'm expecting thirty-five years.  More is negotiable.  It's all in the contract.

** Of a branch of the family I've never met, which is why I didn't.

*** Our local pet shop, which orders the hellhounds' monster bags of cereal-free kibble, greeted me with cries of triumph when I went in to pick up the latest delivery the end of last week.  You'll like these! they said, and flourished a packet of biodegradable dog-crap bags at me.  Biodegradable dog-crap bags are remarkably elusive, or possibly illusory:  the ones I used for a while turn out, on close inspection of the fine print, only to be degradable if you have a major metropolitan recycling complex available.  I found this out as one might say the hard way—and after they'd changed their advertising.  This new lot avoids all such tricky questions by declining to provide any justification whatsoever for the label 'biodegradable'.  They just say they are.  Well, everything is 'biodegradable', given sufficient eons.  When I have a spare minute and at least one spare brain cell I will look them up on line.  Meanwhile, I'm using them . . . and they feel biodegradable, which is to say they have that slippery corn-starch feel . . . and they are so thin as to be seriously alarming to the person employing them.   I will endeavour not to tell you if . . . anything of a distressing nature occurs. 

† http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardens/Wisley 

†† Haggard and red-eyed optional. 

††† which used to be a library.  Cue extreme local controversy.  

‡ Temper, temper. 

‡‡ Even if it should be full of BOOKS.  The thing that bugs the grangblatting, rumplehammering hells out of me is that they have room for a lot more books than they've bothered either to have shelves for or, having shelves, put on them.  The café is gigantic, the first/second^ floor is a frelling rotunda, there's more SPACE than there is anything else, they could frelling well have wedged in a few more shelves in the pathetic amount of square footage they have allotted to bookshelves and then put books on them.  ARRRRGH.^^

            Oh, and there's a shop.  Having utterly failed to find any of the books I thought—just for laughs—I'd look for, since the media this is a centre of is supposed to include books, I BOUGHT a book in the SHOP.  How frelled is that.

            But we did have a very nice slice of lemon cake with our tea.  And Peter read his New Scientist and I knitted.^^^  Just like an old married couple.  ::Hilarity:: 

^ British:  first.  American:  second. 

^^ Postscript:  neither my, which is not surprising, nor Peter's, which is shameful, books appear anywhere on said shelves.+  Sure.  We can pretend they were all checked out. 

+ And the children's room is a grim little afterthought.  ARRRRGH.

^^^ Stupid square knitting is fabulous when the ME is winning.  Why did it take me so long to discover knitting??      

‡‡‡  All of them, I think, out of this single splendid book:   http://www.amazon.co.uk/Knitted-Cakes-Twenty-Susan-Penny/dp/1844483614 

Which I just happen—er—to have.  It's near the front of the queue on my Knitting Shelf.

§ I believe you have been known to grumble briefly when you have to get up at 5

 

 

In which the ME gets in the way of progress

 

Today has been a ratbag ME day wherein not all my complete sentences are compl. . . .   And I find myself standing outside some door or other staring at my keys and wondering what the one thing has to do with the other thing.*  And Mondays are voice lesson and ringing at one of Colin's towers in the evening.  Oh, and earning a living.

            Remember first and foremost that as ME goes I have a mild case.  But it is interesting the extent to which you can sometimes learn to manage your shortcomings.  I was talking to Niall about this coming home from bell practise tonight—that first time I began learning method ringing I had to give it up when the ME felled me.  I did have to give it up—I spent about eighteen months not able to do anything but lie on the sofa and watch BUFFY—but I remember the six months or so leading to that culminating takedown.  There were a lot of days like today, where everything is foggy and slippery . . . but I had no idea how to cope.  The only thing I knew how to do was fight back—which is the wrong answer.  You have to learn to . . . slip and fog yourself.  You don't confront ME as an enemy—or as an equal;  you're not equals—it's stronger than you are, which is your First Lesson.  And I don't, after all, find the enemy model all that useful;  I know some people do.  But the ME is part of me.  As someone with a chronic, lifelong case of Low Self Esteem, self-hatred is a real and constant danger as well as an incredible waste of time and energy.  Let's not go there.  So I don't (mostly).  I'm a 59-year-old female Caucasian mezzo-soprano bell-ringing rose-gardening storyteller with bad teeth, hellhounds and ME.  Nu.  Deal.**

            In my experience you have to learn to slip and fog individually for each activity—and I've been ringing bells longer than I've been taking voice lessons, for all that bell ringing is a deeply alien activity for someone with my shape of brain*** and singing is pretty normal for almost everybody—and I'm on the right side of the line in that I can carry a tune.†  Which is another way of saying that today's voice lesson was not the most superb I've ever had, although some of that is the frelling Italian.  Today was not a good day to be trying to sing in a foreign frelling language for the first time for Nadia.††  But I did come away with some new stuff written down in my notebook and a wary sense that it might some day be possible to remember that I'm only allowed five vowel sounds.†††

            I came home and found an email from Niall wanting to know which house to pick me up from.  Of course I went bell ringing.  I clawed what neurons I could find out of the shadows, dusted them off, tied them up with twine, and went.  And while I was about as reliable as a plastic tin-opener, we did ring Stedman and I did successfully ring several evil coathanger singles, and they're becoming positively familiar, which means I've learnt how to slip and fog my way through Stedman (doubles), which is good.  The shocker of the evening was the Cambridge—having been dragged by the hair through a plain course and preparing drearily to stand my bell, Colin kept us going through a second course which, after I had totally frelled the beginning because I was expecting to stop . . . was about as good as I've ever rung Cambridge at all.  Which isn't very good, but it's nonetheless a testament to my increasing slip-and-fog skills.

            I then came home again to a lot of questions about the auction from poor Blogmom, who is trying to make the practical end work . . . and the last neuron I had I blew on Cambridge.  But I thought I could at least answer a few of your questions.

Maren wrote 

PamAdams wrote on Mon, 25 July 2011 12:15


Have I missed something or is the auction not posted yet?

Don't worry! It's not up yet, but Blogmom is feverishly working to get it ready.

She would be less feverish if I had given her everything she needed.  But we are getting there.  Truly.

I don't think you'll be able to miss it when it does go up, as I expect there will be a blog post or several with big pink text.

I think that's a fair prognostication. . . .

Julia

. . . Robin has nearly 3,000 people who "like" her Facebook page, and more than 3,000 followers on Twitter. Even if there is a certain amount of overlap, that's a great many people. Imagine if we all gave $5 to help save the bells. That's a lot of money! Granted, it isn't terribly likely that EVERYONE from FB/Twitter would give. But if even half that number did- 3,000 people times $5 each is 15,000! I know that I could manage $5 for sure!

Remember the doodles.  There will be $5 and $10 doodles.  You aren't expected to throw money at me!  I will throw doodles back!  And, since you mention it . . . $15,000 would do nicely, thank you. . . .

rhymeswithcarrot

. . . I will bid as much as my graduate student budget allows! . . . I'm also eyeing a copy of Knot in the Grain (if Knot in the Grain is on the list…I can't remember) and a foogit doodle. Yay, foogits! 

KNOT wasn't in the original list because I . . . forgot.  But it was in the list by the time (blushing slightly) I read this comment.   And a foogit doodle is entirely possible.

glanalaw

. . . I'd pay at least $10 extra for an autograph . . . And I would go for a doodle as well. I'm on one of those exceedingly strict student budgets but I'd be willing to go without a lot to support you and the bells. (Heck, I'd go without tea for a while if necessary. And tea is one of the essentials of life.)

No, no!  You mustn't try to go without tea!  That would be dangerous! [says the tea addict, trembling at the thought].  Present plan is that all McKinley hardbacks in print will be available, although that rhythmic thumping noise you hear is Blogmom and I beating our respective heads against our respective walls as I change my mind again.

Rain.drop 7

I would ABSOLUTELY pay a premium for a signed copy of Sunshine! . . . I was worried all I would be able to afford was a doodle (Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with your doodles, I will still be buying one either way I am quite sure). This is a great idea, especially for those of us across oceans who can't attend book signings. PLEASE do this! Think of the bells.

I am thinking of the bells.  No, don't worry, the signed-with-doodle books are now firmly on the list.  Details to come.  As soon as I figure out what they are and Blogmom has patiently explained to me (again) that they're hopelessly unwieldy and I have to think of something else (again).    

danceswithpahis

So are the doodles going to be auctioned, or will they have set prices? 

Set prices.  Doodles ($5 and $10) and signed-with-doodle hardbacks (probably $35 for any/all) are for those of you who don't want to get into the auction thing. 

boddhi_d

You could do the doodle on bookplates (or bookplate-sized paper); Jan Brett does this to good effect, autographing bookplates.

Jan Mark is a proper artist.  I'm a writer who doodles.  My doodles are just a value-added joke to give this charity gig some . . . er . . . fizz.

amyrose 

Thank you for considering autographed books with a doodle! I would definitely like one, and would have a hard time not being greedy and going for two. And a separate bat doodle, of course.

Excellent.  Very excellent.  I like greed in a contributor.  Have several doodles while you're at it. 

Susan in Melbourne

In the Project Management world that I inhabit we refer to the concept of 'scope creep' when people have lots of good new ideas, usually long after the budget has been established. 

This made me laugh and laugh.  Scope creep indeed.  That's exactly what's been going on, and why it's taking Blogmom so long to get the back end built . . . and why we are not taking any more ideas, new or creepy . . . I'm creepy enough without help.  But it's also why you're going to have autographed and doodled flat-rate books as an option, so what a good thing someone spoke up before the portcullis crashed down.

And . . . thanks.  Thanks very much.  I'll thank you even more when it's all over . . .  

* * *

 * Or just now, when I filled the electric kettle with water and turned it on.  I then went into one of my little dazes and came out the other side staring intently at the right rear burner on the cooker, listening to the water coming to a boil and wondering what the significance^ of boiling water plus back burner might be.  Unh.  Well, on the days I have a brain, I put my teapot on that burner, fill it up with peppermint leaves and hot water, and put a tea cozy over it.  On days I don't have a brain, I stand there staring.

            Days like this I'm afraid I'll forget to feed the hellhounds.  They'd probably be delighted.

^  'Significance' is a very good word to remember on a day like today.  It could easily have been the whatsit of boiling whatsit plus back whatsit. 

** Sure.  Puns intended.

*** Lots of fantasy.  No maths.

† Mostly. 

†† Che Faro—that hoary aria from Gluck's Orfeo—doesn't count.  My Italian is no better in it, but all those funny syllables are familiar in this particular context and order. 

††† And furthermore I have to choose the right one every time.  Cheeeez.  But I want to be able to sing in Italian.  If I don't get any farther into foreign repertoire I can live with that.  But I want Italian.