Robin McKinley's Blog, page 128

AJLR HAS HER BEES!!!!!!!*

 

On Tuesday, this arrived in my inbox from Ajlr: 

To share the excitement, message below just received from our bee tutor. We'll have our own bees in 48 hours! :) :) :)

Think of us on Thursday evening, driving around with a box full of bees…

 Hi

I understand all went well at the weekend and . . . I've just looked at the nucleus and the queen is laying to the point that the little box is brim full of bees.

 So if you would like to come and collect it, it's yours.  You will need to come late evening when they have stopped flying and we can seal the entrance and strap it closed for travelling. . . .

I suggest you take it to the apiary and put it where you are going to have the hive and let the bees get orientated for a couple of days.  Then at the weekend or early next week you can move it to one side, put the hive in its place and transfer the occupied frames over. . . .

I replied in suitably modest, restrained hellgoddess manner:

YAAAAAY.  Okay, I'm stoked.  :):):)

Do I get to mention it on the blog?  That Ajlr is driving around the east of England with a box full of bees????  :)

And she generously replied:

Yes, mention it by all means – lots of positive thoughts would be very welcome. :)

I won't be back until about 8 on Thursday evening, but we're going to go over then and pick the bees up, to move them straight to the apiary area  that evening. I think I'll have to be suited up when we unblock the entrance in their new home though…I'm not sure they'll be that happy after 15 minutes in a car.

Oooh, my bees, my bees. ::goes into nurture mode:: :) **

If you think of it (and have time) send me an email.  I've written it in my diary . . . but that still means I have to remember to look in my diary.  And Thursday is handbells AND Muddlehamptons, so I will be distracted.

This then came in while I was Muddlehamptoning:

Off to pick up and move our box full of bees in about 15 minutes. Keep your fingers crossed that they don't try and break out of it while we're all in the car together! :)

And when I got back to the mews*** I wrote: 

YAAAAAAAY.  Well, you *must* be back by now . . . I hope ALL WENT WELL.  :):):)

This then arrived with the subject line 'A car with 5864 passengers':

So, we picked up the nucleus box full of bees from out tutor's home just now. She let us borrow a hive strap, so the lid was securely fastened for transit, and stuffed a good lump of foam rubber into the entrance hole of the nuc so no one could come out and start insisting on different driving techniques during the journey. And off we went, with our young colony of bees carefully wedged in the back of the car. I can't say that was the most relaxing four miles we've ever driven, not with our ears constantly assessing the level of grumbling coming from the box. R drove as carefully as possible but small country roads are not noted for their level surfaces. When we got to their new home, I suited-up and put the box on its stand, removed the strap and then, from the back, leaned over and pulled out the plug from the entrance hole. A small and agitated cluster of bees immediately poured out of the entrance and looked around with an air of bewildered belligerence. However, there was no-one there for them to pick a fight with and when I tiptoed back 30 seconds later there were only 30 or so crawling over the front of the box, near the entrance. It was 21.45 by then, dusk, and chilly, and as I watched they all went back inside. 

On Sunday we will move the colony into their full-sized brood box, on the same spot where they are now in their nuc box. It looks like being a fun morning!

I'm sure these are going to be the most wonderful bees in the history of beekeeping. I'm not sure how long it will take us to learn all their names though…†

If any of this is useful for the blog, it's all yours. :)

THEY ARE ALREADY THE MOST WONDERFUL BEES IN THE HISTORY OF BEEKEEPING!  YAAAAAAY!

I'm glad to know you aren't driving frantically for the Channel with 5864 angry bees in hot pursuit.  :)

I'm quite glad we aren't heading for the Channel, too. :)

. . . But by that time last night I was already most of the way through a blog entry about handbells and singing.  Today I emailed: 

I think it is VERY NOBLE of you not to have mentioned your bees on the forum.  All this goes in TONIGHT.†† 

I haven't mentioned it at all, thinking you might want to use it. And yes, I'm EXTREMELY noble, it's almost unbearable. I'll even add to it and offer to write 'Steps to bee-keeping IV' in about a month's time, if you wish. Now, where's my halo gone…:)

The rain is coming down stair rods here at the moment. My poor bees will be sitting in the entrance to their box, looking out gloomily at all the wet and probably squabbling with each other. And the queen will be humming 'now children, children, settle down'. (Anthropomorphise? Moi?) †††

OF COURSE I WISH IT.  DON'T BE SILLY.  :) ‡

Yes, I've been thinking of your poor bees sitting in their new home and wondering drearily why they've been horribly magicked to this watery place.  Stair rods here too.  At least cranky hellhounds don't sting.  :)

Must go to bell practice.  NIALL'S HOME!!!  I'M NOT IN CHARGE!!!!! YAAAAAAAAY!!!!! 

 * * *

* And yes, I did ask her first. 

** Aside: note that I am totally on board with the nurture thing.  Oisin keeps telling me that I must apply for the bat-exclusion license whether I use it or not—that it's sensible to be prepared.  Noooooo, I keep saying, my bats, my bats!  He says, look, I know you're a pathetic wet knee-jerk liberal.  Get the frelling exclusion anyway while you have a sympathetic Bat Lady.   She could move to Canada^ and her replacement could decide that you are superfluous to bat requirements. 

^ I'm sure there are lots of splendid bats in Canada

 *** And had fed the hellhounds.  And begun a blog post.  First things first. 

† Hmmmmmmm.  Maybe we should have a bee-naming contest???  Hmmmmmmmm.^ 

^ As a happy, well-named bee might say. 

†† I might even conceivably get another paragraph of PEG II written/bent/tied to the chair/negotiated for better terms with^ tonight.  Or maybe I'll ring some Cambridge on Pooka.  I might even try to get the fragment of a song I wrote while I was waiting for Oisin to get back from looking at electric organs for other people onto Finale.  It looks more singable than my stuff usually is.  I wonder how that happened.

            Or I could knit. ^^

            The possibilities are dazzling.  

^ I keep telling you we can't grow llyri grass in this world.

^^ We are not discussing Sewing Up Secret Project #1.

††† Some of you may remember it was Ajlr who helped name my bats.  Eadgyth is her fault.

 ‡ Okay, all you blog readers.   Sign on the forum and leave an EAGER COMMENT about more bee-keeping posts.

Killer Thursdays

 

Something is going to have to be done about Thursdays.  The present formulation is not going to work long term.  At least not if I'm going to make my century and get the telegram from the Queen.*

            The insanity of the day has been significantly aggravated by the insanity of the weather.  We've had close to two inches of rain this week—yaay and all that, we need it and we need more like it—but it keeps coming in these alarming swoops and slams.  It bucketed down on Sunday and has been spitting and drizzling with the occasional brief, badly timed downpour** the last few days.  Today it's like it cranked up the volume.  Beautiful blue sunny—CLOUDBURST—beautiful blue sunny—THUMPING CLOUDBURST—beautiful blue sunny, gentle breezes, chirping birds fa la la la la—FALLING WALL OF FRELLING WATER.  Cheez.***  While we were ringing handbells we had the full range:  it was cloudy and doomy when my partners in crime arrived, then it turned so bright and summery and gorgeous you wanted to throw down† your handbells and rush out into the garden†† . . . and then it turned that creepy, end-of-the-world yellow-black so I had to turn the lights on and then WHAM.  MORE WATER.

            And, speaking of handbells . . . oh dear.  Niall's been on holiday and Colin and I didn't get our butts in gear to find an alternative third, so we haven't rung handbells in a fortnight.  And . . . we rang like it had been six months or six hundred years.  Even Niall was making mistakes.†††  We eventually gave up on Cambridge entirely and retreated to various humble bob minory things.  The chocolate biscuits during tea break were the best part.  Whimper.‡

            I had to turn the other two out promptly however—on previous form when we're having a bad night we often go on a bit longer—because I now have to attend choir practise after Thursday handbells—and I have to fit in a final hellhound hurtle first.‡‡  Blearggh.    I got to Muddlehampton on time this week and could slink in and sit in the back.‡‡‡—having checked with Ravenel first that I wouldn't be sitting in the sacred spot where the abstruse and anagogic Turkey Vulture of Excellent Relative Pitch manifests on a good night.§

            We had a better turn-out this week so I have perhaps a slightly better idea of what I'm getting into.  The good news:  I am not the best, but I'm not the worst either.  Supposing I start attending regularly§§ and get a bit more of a handle on the feverish sweat of angst and terror etc, this should prove to be something I can both do and, you know, contribute to.  And I actually was going 'bom' and 'plink' off the dranglefabbing beat tonight—which it must be said was not true of everyone§§§.  Ravenel at one point leaped up from the piano and stalked off into the darkness, seeking, no doubt, for some superfluous peasant he could grind to dust and relieve his feelings.  The bad news is that we spent most of the session on the one song I really HATE . . . and now I can't get the freller out of my head.   . . . Clearly more chocolate must be applied. 

* * *

* If she's still doing telegrams by then.  If there are still telegrams by then.  When I'm 100 the Queen will be about 125, I think, but at present rate, hey, she's good for it.  But will there still be telegrams?  Landline telephones are already on their way out.^  Maybe the Queen sends cards.  I admit I'm not paying close attention since my turn isn't for another forty-two years.  Also there is a vulgar rumour that they're going to raise the age you have to be before the Queen congratulates you for being a stubborn old git because too many people are making 100.  Pardon me, she's the wealthiest woman in the world, she can hire another secretary and buy a few more stamps.  The Royal Mail can use the revenue.^^ 

^ Some of this, I feel, is BT's own stupid fault, for being gratuitously hopeless.  

^^ The Royal Mail is pretty gratuitously hopeless too, but I have more of a soft spot for it.  I like the little red vans with the Royal Mail logo and the crown.  It's so British.  The British Telecom vans are just . . . vans.  

** You've been watching out the window for hours at black clouds scampering back and forth and finally decide fine, whatever, you have to get the hellhounds out, and . . . do I really have to tell you how this story ends? 

*** This is also hard on your delphiniums, and tends to make your most brutally and heinously gigantic rosebushes try to lie down.  

† Well, lay.  Tenderly. 

†† And start looking for a winch with which to attempt to put your roses in order. 

††† See?  Holidays are bad for you. 

‡ Okay, I also enjoyed moaning to Niall about the Trials of a Deputy Ringing Master.  I didn't like his smile much though. 

‡‡ Fortunately it had stopped raining again. 

‡‡‡ St Frideswide is a typical tiny old English village church—although its stained glass windows are pretty fabulous—with walls about as thick as I am tall and an unnecessarily generously vaulted ceiling, which among other things means cold.  I was already wearing one of my nice little cashmere cardis over my t shirt and I still never took my big heavy black leather jacket off all evening—despite the feverish sweat of angst and terror.  I am not looking forward to Thursday evenings later in the year.  The membership stuff they give you even includes a chirpy little paragraph saying that the church does get quite chilly in winter and to dress up warm.  Maybe I'll finally buy one of those battery-run heated waistcoats.  I will certainly get out my sheepskin shoe liners and my polypropylene toe guards.  

§ Apparently it manifests farther up the nave. 

§§ The Forbidden Planet PEGASUS signing is on a Thursday.

§§§ Which, note, is very confusing for someone who's spent an embarrassing amount of time at home going tap BOM, tap BOM, tap PLINK, tap PLINK.

Real Magic

 

Gods, dragons, pegasi, and anything else you want to throw in, I love homeopathy.  I was going to tell you this story tonight anyway, it having happened late last night, and then today as it happens there's been another outburst of bleating from the so-called quackbuster gang about what dangerous lunatic rubbish homeopathy is.  Siiiiiiigh.  I'm not a good debater;  I get angry too quickly.  Listen:  Homeopathy works.  It doesn't work for everybody or everything—but then nothing does, most emphatically including standard doctor medicine.  And sometimes, when you manage to take exactly the right homeopathic remedy at exactly the right time, the effect could very well pass for magic.  Last night was one of those times.

            I tweeted yesterday about the morning hurtle being through clouds of grass pollen as we swished through the edge of a long field.  If I'd known, we'd've gone some other way, but by the time I realised, I figured we might as well keep going as go back.  Hellhounds, who were meeting it at face level, prudently dropped behind me, so I was swathing through it.  My black jeans were straw-yellow with it by the time we reached the road, and there was a fair amount of it on my shirt front—and of course it had gusted freely into my face.  All three of us were sneezing.

            Hellhounds had pretty much stopped sneezing by the time we got home (I had brushed them off before I let them in the car).  I had not.  I think I've told you that one of the clear gains of menopause is that my beyond-description-life-destroying hay fever is about 98.5% gone.  I don't like the wrinkles, the falling chin line and the weird flesh, but I'll take it all like a shot over wondering if I am going to live through another summer.  When I was first living in England twenty years ago . . . well.  Gruesome.  Hay fever doctor drugs make me sick or crazy.  But I started eating local honey* and I still had hay fever, but it dropped down to stupid-nuisance level.

            Fortunately menopause has mostly finished the job, because menopause has also bestowed upon me the unwelcome gift of Zero Metabolism.  Zero Metabolism means that thinking about lettuce makes me gain weight.**  One of the things that got subtracted from my daily intake was the local honey.  Which, most of the time, is okay.  But my elderly hormone-deprived ME-distracted*** immune system will still react to extreme provocation.  I spent most of yesterday sneezing and grumbling and watering at the eyes, but it didn't get really grisly till I went back to the cottage and tried to go to bed.  YOWZAH.  I felt like hell, I couldn't breathe, my ears, my head and my throat hurt, and while there was no visible rash, I was savagely itchy.  But my eyes were the worst:  the lids were so swollen they only opened about halfway, and when I looked in the mirror—AAAAAAUGH—both the lids and the whites were bright red.  Fiery red.  Which is how they felt.  And haemorrhaging tears.

            I have no good excuse for not having hit the homeopathy hours before.  But I'd learnt to be stoic decades before I discovered homeopathy—the occasions I do myself serious damage now tend to be when I'm so busy being stoical I forget to take the arnica right away.  So yesterday I was close to the life-threatening edge before I finally remembered . . . well, in this case, allium.  It was looking at my red eyes in the mirror that did it:  if hay fever is making you miserable but the worst thing is your eyes, the first thing to try is allium cepa.†

            I tottered over to the chest of drawers where I keep my remedies and fished out the allium.  Homeopathic remedy bottles are little, and the labels on them littler still, and I could barely read.  But I found what I was looking for, tipped a little white pill into the bottle cap and then into my mouth†† . . . and it began working instantly.  Contact with mucous membrane and it starts the business.  My eyes stopped burning.  I stopped sneezing.  My head cleared.  I could breathe.  I stopped itching.  I could open my eyes more than halfway.  When I opened the kitchen door to let hellhounds out the last time a few minutes later, I was fine.  I slept—slept!—with the window open.  I've been fine today, although it's been drizzly, so you can argue that it's damped pollen and other evil floating substances down. 

            Homeopathy works.  Placebo effect?  Eh.  Sure, sometimes.  You get the placebo effect with doctor drugs too, sometimes.  But homeopathy works on babies and animals—and I think the argument that your dog or your child gets better because it wants to please you is just silly.  And I've dosed myself—and not got the desired reaction;  I was already figuring out what I was going to try next, last night, while I was unscrewing the lid on the allium.  I'm a rotten debater, as I said, and I'm not interested in arguing—homeopathy works.  There.

 * * *

* And if anyone either wants to try this or has tried it and thinks it doesn't work . . . in my experience it has to be really, really local.  'Hampshire' honey isn't good enough.  It has to be within about five miles of where you live.  I used to get my therapeutic honey from our next-door neighbour at the old house, and honeycomb to chew as well.  You also have to eat it faithfully, beginning several months before your hay fever season starts.  If you're careless and keep missing days, it doesn't do much–and you need a good-sized, calorie-laden blob, not just a thin scrape.  I'm sure this is another of those things that doesn't work for everybody, but it worked amazingly for me.  And you don't have worse hay fever than mine used to be, and live.  It's one of the reasons I ended up back in Maine;  I couldn't take the summers farther south—although it's also part of the reason I liked Manhattan in August.  Less pollen there^ than in Maine's brief, ferocious summer.  Lush southern England was walking into Smaug's lair without a Ring or a sword.   

^ But stay away from the 843 acres of Central Park. 

** Menopause may have got hay fever right but it got chocolate wrong.   My chocolate craving is waay worse now than it ever used to be.  I've always loved chocolate and I've always had a serious sweet tooth, but I only morphed into a 'just hand me the chocolate and nobody gets hurt' megabitch with menopause.  This is an interesting situation with Zero Metabolism.  But I've been thin for nearly forty years, and I'm not giving up without a struggle.  Not to mention my ridiculously flimsy, non-weight-carrying knees, which are a cheap Gflytchian knock off, and not made out of real human bone and sinew at all. 

*** It would be interesting to know what input the ME has had on my no-longer hyper-reactivity to a very long list of allergens.  

† One of the reasons, I think, that there's so much bad press about homeopathy is that it is such an individually-tailored system.  That's its strength, but also its weakness from a public-relations viewpoint:  you can rarely prescribe for anything, even a lot of minor things, without knowing rather a lot about your patient, or trying several remedies before you find the right one, or both.  This makes it look haphazard or inadequate, when—say I—it is exactly the opposite.  But think of how vastly complicated and unique each individual human being is:  you've got to get every symptom, every clue, every trait in the right place, or the jigsaw doesn't fit together.  Even arnica, which has probably converted more people to homeopathy than every other remedy combined, doesn't work for everybody.  And allium cepa works for most hay fever sufferers whose burning, tearing eyes are their worst symptom.  But it doesn't work for everybody.

 †† You don't touch the pills if you can help it.  You tip one into the bottle cap, toss it into your mouth, tuck the pill under your tongue and let it dissolve.

Not bluffing

 

Much too tired again.  Bleaugh.  Even a hardened old veteran of the Story Wars such as myself eventually grows weary of being pummelled, throttled and stomped by Work in Progress.  Yo, didn't your mother teach you any manners?  It's probably my fault—I didn't raise PEG I right and PEG II is determined to outdo the older sibling in heinousness and writer persecution.  Maybe I should complain more, play for pity.  Ohhhhhhhh, singing, what misery.  Ohhhhhhh, bell ringing, what wretchedness and suffering.  Ohhhhhhhh, roses, it's all blackspot* and thorns.

            I was out carolling to the hellhounds (and the sheep) this morning, and I thought, Wait a minute, why doesn't this count as warm-up?  And while I don't know why, I bet it has something to do with the over thinking thing.  Just singing for fun?  I what?   No no no.  Not on the permitted list.  Okay, now tell me why—and I'm aware that I'm not alone in this—as soon as I decide that I want to learn to do something better it immediately stops being fun and becomes hard and earnest and work?  I know that responsibility and application—and obstinacy—are good things, generally, but is it really necessary that they stomp** all the fun out? 

            Oh gods, it's already Thursday again the day after tomorrow and I'll have FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING when I go back to the Muddlehamptons.  AAAAUGH.***

Mismatched Socks says:

My teacher used to have me practice singing a piece entirely on the vowels, because it forced me to pay attention to them. It's harder than it sounds, at least until you get used to thinking about vowels all the time.

Nadia had me try to sing a few lines of The Ash Grove—Eeeeaaaaoooo—only on the vowels a fortnight ago.  It was extremely ridiculous.  But occasionally when out hurtling—and singing something I don't quite remember the lyrics to—I shift over to vowels, rather than singing la la la or unnnnnnh.  Just for laughs.  But it gives me a good excuse to drop my jaw and Make Space for the Sound.  Which is another of Nadia's things.  Also, if I don't know what the words are, I can choose my vowels.

Diane in MN

I have been taking dogs into conformation rings for almost twenty years, and self-consciousness and over-analysis and too much thinking about it accompany me every damn time, so if you get the trick of doing this, I will congratulate you wholeheartedly and then ask what is it? Interestingly enough, I don't feel this way when I go into an obedience ring, even though the potential to be made a fool of by the dog is much greater. Resigned to the inevitable, I suppose.

But isn't it also to do with the fact that you have more to do in the obedience ring?  The outcome has at least some more to do with what you do?  As I understand it, conformation is rather awfully a crap shoot a lot of the time, and you're almost totally at the mercy of the judge's own views on the matter.  With obedience while there's certainly (too much) room for interpretation (I know this with great gruesome clarity from dressage tests) but you do have to be able to heel and sit and stay and so on (or walk, trot, canter, and make round circles), and you know the result if you fail.  There's something for your brain to do.† 

            The trick, I assume, in frelling singing like in frelling everything frelling else, is going to be learning where to put my brain, so it can do the most good and the least harm possible.  If I learn that trick I will certainly let you know.

E Moon

David is also a fan of bluffing. My problem is that most of the time, when he says "Pretend you're an opera singer" my brain sees a vast stage populated by real singers, all properly costumed and made-up and with bios in the program, and a highly critical audience out front, all dressed up, and overweight & aged me in jeans and T-shirt and my mud-stained, manure-stained shoes, my bare face hanging out and my hair scraped back into its usual "three pins will hold it" knot, and I open my mouth and squeak.

Occasionally–very occasionally–I can take on the persona briefly, but at that point my music-reading brain unhooks from my voice (opera singers already know the music, right?) and I start making up what I'm singing instead of singing what's in the score. If I play the part, some part of me knows it's fake, and plays it for laughs.

You're not helping, you know.  You're not helping at all. 

            In the first place, you have an excellent bio.  How many books have you written?  In the second place, overweight is far from either unknown or a source of discrimination in the opera world.  And you brush up just fine, or people wouldn't keep asking you to cons. 

            And speaking of cons, you're not going to try to b*llsh*t me that you don't have a public persona, are you?  Please.  The trick here—for you and me both—is tweaking the writer-persona into a shape we can use for singing.  Unfortunately the 'earning a living by SALES OF BOOKS' doesn't work as spur here. 

            I've always loved dressing-up—preferably inappropriately††—and one of the less gratifying aspects of choir membership is the extremely boring clothing most choirs seem to expect their members to wear for public performances.  White shirts and black trousers or skirts:  Yuck.  One of the few compensations—indeed inducements—for having to go be an author in public is getting to wear silly clothing.  Hmmph.

            But . . . yeah.  The curse of an overactive imagination.  I'm extremely sorry to hear that you still have squeaking problems.  I don't want to squeak!  No squeaking!  I don't want to hear about squeaking! 

Ajlr

Apropos of the being able to write anywhere, do you also find that the Story – whether the current one or something else that tries to elbow its way in – also can arrive when you're anywhere? You've described in the past how some of your most useful development times can come with hurtling the hellhounds and I wondered if a (fairly) long period of such simple (!) physical movement allows you to listen more productively than, say, a series of shorter and more mixed activities?

Yes.  Anywhere.  The more inconvenient the better.  And yes, I'm probably at greater, ahem, risk out hurtling—overactive body like overactive mind (see above).  Hurtling gives my body something to do so it's not fidgeting and I can think of other things without having constantly to mind [sic] it. . . .  For example I'm trying to write a guest blog about the stories that folk songs tell—the story-telling aspect appeals to me as much as the music carrying it along, and my favourite folk songs are almost invariably ones that also tell a good story—and this morning while hurtling I was entirely deflected from both the guest blog and PEG FRELLING II by a story arriving unheralded but with a decisive thump in response to listening for the 1,000,000th time to an old folk song that has always bothered me because it tells the story wrong.  Now, do I want to risk pissing PEG II off even more by taking a day to scratch an outline down? 

 * * *

* http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/problem-solving/rose-blackspot/

Also rust:  http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/problem-solving/rose-rust/

And mildew:  http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/problem-solving/rose-powdery-mildew/

There are plenty of others, but these are the big three.  Unless you choose badly, are very unlucky, or have a ratbag climate, roses are not hard, as I keep saying.  But anything that puts on a flower show as spectacular as roses do needs liberal amounts of food and water.  If they don't get them the evil blackspot, rust and mildew fairies will likely visit your garden.  And gardening organically does mean that you will probably have some spots and speckles however well you take care of your roses.  The rose world is catching on to the need to breed for disease resistance rather slowly.  Even a mere twenty years ago when I was first buying hundreds of roses and then watching kind of a lot of them turn funny colours and keel over, the philosophy was that you had to spray . . . and breeders didn't give a damn about anything but how spectacular the flowers were.  This is changing.  But not fast enough.

** Speaking of stomping 

*** And furthermore I'll have just come from my first handbells in a fortnight and that is sure to have been chastening, if not downright traumatic.

† Forget the test route.

            I've also trotted a few horses around a conformation ring and hated it.  The perceived helplessness not only makes me a bigger klutz, it makes me stupid. 

 †† Generally speaking I find being old much to be preferred over being young, but it does make me sad that I'm too old to wear my barely-butt-covering black leather mini any more.  Okay, probably too old.  I did say 'inappropriately'.

Learning to Bluff

 

Way too tired.  Ugh.  Aggravated by this nonsense of having to be out of bed and coherent enough to unlock the door for Atlas at morning-business type hours.  Well, he has his own key, but I would rather protect the poor man from the experience of coming in and finding me slumped on the floor* in my dressing-gown waiting for the kettle to boil.  

            Also I think possibly it is tiring being rumbled . . . in this case by Nadia.  I finally started remembering to bring a notebook** to my voice lessons.  And I've written all kinds of wonderful stuff down . . . which I then get home and can't frelling use.  It's the Teacher-Magic that's missing, you know?  It's like the dry chant of the acolytes without any fresh entrails to read:  it's just not going to work alone.  And about a fortnight ago Nadia suggested that I was writing too much down and probably making my life harder rather than easier.***  Sigh.  Probably.  I still find pretty much everything about singing overwhelming.  Which is why it's a good thing that I sing Flow Gently Sweet Afton and Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes† to the hellhounds when we're out hurtling in a sufficiently remote area:  it reminds me that I like singing, which is how I got into this mess.††  Then I go home and back to the piano and . . . eeep. 

            So last week she said we were going to reduce, as one might a gravy, what I needed to take away with me from the lesson, to a few bullet points.†††  Three, in fact.  And what interests me is that I only really managed to work on one of them.  Speaking of overwhelming—or of being easily overwhelmed.  What interests me even more is that that one is sheer tactics—none of that creepy ephemereal stuff like the actual sound you make—and it's merely this:  sing twice.  Nadia suggested that some of the reason I always sing better for her than I do at home‡ is not only Teacher-Magic but that I've warmed up at home—and the warming up some time before I sing (cough-cough) seriously is in fact something I can reproduce at home.

            This has been amazingly hard to get my head around.  It's like I'm trying to wear my shoes on the wrong feet or something—this is not how I do it—also making time to sing every day (nearly) is hard enough—do it twice?  What is this, self-torture?  Don't I do enough of that naturally?  It's not a time thing per se—I mean it wouldn't have to be—beyond the fact that I'm always always ALWAYS running late so, in the first place, if I manage to get to the piano at all I feel I've gotten away with something and want to stay there for a bit, and in the second place one of the reasons I'm always-always-always running late is because I've got interested in the last five things I've been doing‡‡ and spent too much time at them.  Singing twice merely allows me to overrun twice.  Plus the shoes on the wrong feet feeling.  But if I'm allowing half an hour a day to sing there is no reason I couldn't divide it up into ten minutes and twenty minutes.  Except that's not what happens.

            The second bullet point is to do with vowels.  You don't sing like you talk:  singing is all about vowels with some little brackety things at the ends, which are the consonants.  My vowels need more room.  Trying to give them more room makes me feel silly.  You get over this, says Nadia.  I didn't get very far with it this week—I was too busy wresting myself away from the piano and promising to come back in a few hours—although I did at least remember that it was a bullet point.

            The third one I forgot entirely.  Yes, of course I could have looked it up—what do I have a notebook to write things in for?—but I didn't.  I had enough to do.  So I was fascinated, today, when I went in there and started moaning about not getting it and being overwhelmed . . . to glance down at my notebook and discover that the third bullet point from last week was 'positivity. (strong posture helps)'.

            Oh.

            And one of this week's bullet points?  Bluff. 

            I also went in there saying that if I'm going to sing with the Muddlehamptons I want to contribute, you know?  Which means that the whole teeny weedy squeaky noise thing has got to improve.  You need a singing persona, said Nadia.  Bluff.  You go in there and present yourself as a singer.  And you'll be a singer.

            Oh.

            What this so reminds me of—and Nadia, professional singer that she is, knew exactly what I was talking about—is what I was trying to explain the other night in the blog:  to tell a story you have to get YOURSELF out of the way.  Yes, said Nadia.  You have to learn to get yourself out of the way of your SINGING.

            Oh.

            You think too much, said Nadia.  Write that down.  Don't give yourself time to over-analyse.  Just SING.  Oh, and relax.  And bluff. 

            Oh. . . . 

* * *

* Hey, the nearest chair is the other side of the kitchen from the counter with the electric kettle on it.  A good . . . six feet away.  You expect me to walk that far without caffeine? 

** Did I tell you that it has ROSES on it? 

*** She has a suspicion that I tend toward making my life harder rather than easier.  I don't know where she would have picked up such an outlandish idea. 

† Sad.  Yes, I know. 

†† That, and liking writing songs, which I am going to get back to as soon as PEG II stops reverting to kicking me in the head as default. 

††† Okay, not like a gravy

‡ With one peculiar caveat.  At 2 a.m. or so, too tired to function, well aware that I should be going home to bed, and on the wrong side of a glass or two of wine, is pretty reliably the one time of day (or night) when I can—reliably—get at my top G^ and more and more often the A above it.  The quality of my voice at 2 a.m. and almost too tired to breathe is pretty crap, but the top end is mysteriously available—I mean without any sense of strain.  That'll be the alcohol, says Nadia.  Yes, it is bad for quality sound, but it's a great releaser of inhibition.  Er.  Yes.  I should find a nice folk song that uses the A.  This is when I sing Beethoven's The Miller of Dee, which has the G, and which is great fun.  At the moment I only find the poor A by stirring it with a stick, I mean singing some exercise just to see if it's in residence, which isn't really very friendly.  

^ So the G above the C above middle C 

‡‡ I'm even capable of finding housework interesting.  I like my house(s), you know?  I like my stuff.  The problem is, of course, that housework takes TIME, like every frelling thing else.  Especially when you live in a house full of double-shelved books and little noodgy things.  And hellhound hair factories.

Rain

 

It's raining.  Really.  Genuine tipping-it-down, puddles-to-the-ankles, hellhound-outraging rain.  In the last week or so we've had nearly half an inch, mostly in a couple of fairly spectacular meteorological displays of bad temper*, but while I'm sure everybody's gardens appreciated anything they could get, it's barely laid the dust, and anywhere that isn't a pampered private garden and heavily mulched I suspect it ran straight off again.  I was still watering my pots yesterday (and complaining).  Today . . . today it's raining.

            I've forgotten how to cope with rain.  I got rain on my glasses on the way to the tower this morning.**  I was wearing my leather jacket, and I hadn't zipped it up.  I was also wearing ancient All Stars with holes in the bottoms***.  What Is This Wet Stuff Falling From the Sky?  What do I do?

            And the hellhounds . . . the hellhounds are not the least impressed by the interruption of the drought.  They want a nice hurtle, like the nice hurtles they've been getting pretty well uninterrupted for the last three or four months.  I had to drag† them out on our shortest round—and these guys are a lot chattier than the whippets were.  Rowan could do a fair peevish grumble, but when Darkness doesn't approve of current events by golly you hear about it.  At least neither of them belongs to the 'I'm not gonna crap till the weather improves' school of dog perversity.  We're really all still in shock.  Wet!  Stuff!  Falling!  From!  The!  Sky!  But if it's still doing this tomorrow we'll have to go out for a proper hurtle regardless or we'll all be dangling from the chandelier with restless cooped-up-ness.††

            But, you know . . . rain.  Rain is good.  It's been raining hard and steadily enough today that it should be getting into the ground.            

* * *

* Not at all popular with someone who has windows permanently open for the easy egress of bats.  And the bat update is . . . I went so far as to risk closing the bathroom window a couple of nights ago when the rain was coming in sideways.  And . . . there have been no repercussions that I'm aware of.^  Atlas managed to come in a third day again last week and finished sealing up (I hope) both the kitchen and the linen cupboard^^ . . . but he's coming back this week to do the sitting room as well.  Despite the apparent lack of bats at the moment, the sitting room beams are in the exact same state as the kitchen beams were, and I predict that Hermione and Eadgyth will become cranky one day soon and start looking for alternate exits as their old ones have disappeared.  Once you introduce a bat to a chandelier she's not going to give it up again easily.  I did wonder, if Ajlr's resident eco warrior is correct about Bat Cottage having more summer tenants this year than usual because of the dry weather, if perhaps they'd disperse again if it rains hard enough.  But I suspect it's too late this year—by mid-June the first babies are already born, and I don't think anyone's going to move once there are babies involved.  Also you may remember—or you bat people already knew this—that the point about nurseries is there need to be enough babies to huddle together to stay warm while the mums are out hunting.  We're also having an unusually cold season so some of the smaller nurseries maybe have been abandoned this year for that reason as well as the drought.  I really should not have allowed myself to be pleased at the Largest Bat Nursery in Hampshire cognomen last year.^^^  This is the kind of thing fate latches onto, laughing maniacally. 

            Anyway.  I haven't seen a bat in nearly a week, although I heard wings once or twice early on.  But the attic window is still open.  And it will stay open till at least one night after Atlas finishes stoppering up the sitting room.  Bats are, you know, mammals.  They have brains.  You're not going to teach a wasp or a bee where the open window is.  But I would expect Hermione or Eadgyth, if they manage to find a new way through in the sitting room#, to be able to find the emergency exit.  I can stand wet carpet for a few more days if I have to. 

^ Insert nervous ritual gestures here. 

^^ And while the attractiveness rating of the inside of my linen cupboard does not greatly concern me the kitchen is going to require some cosmetic rehabilitation.  Which probably means the sitting room will too. 

^^^ As a result of a series of frivolous emails with a friend and the promiscuous following of links I found this site:  http://www.habitataid.co.uk/   I'm a little tempted to contact them and ask what they might recommend for a very small garden that supports an awful lot of bats.  For all I know the Chiropteran population explosion started when Bat Cottage's new owner started stuffing rose-bushes in every available gap.  Pssst—all the aphids you can eat—pass it on. 

# aaaaaaaaugh  

** This is the second time Niall has managed to be away for a long weekend over an Old Eden practise night.  I'm having to run three bell-meets in four days.  This is absolutely not allowed in the Care and Handling of Fragile Deputy Ringing Masters Who Don't Know What the Frell They're Doing.^   We pretty much got through Friday practise by the skin of our teeth.  Or the sleight of our hands.  We only just got through service ring this morning—we were piteously ringing minimus (four bells) when Edward, bless him, showed up^^—but it's looking bad for Old Eden tomorrow.  I've been having top-level consultations with Colin.  We are hoping that a battlefield alliance of our two sadly depleted forces^^^ may result in one bell practise somewhere.

            Meanwhile those of you who follow me on Twitter already know that I fell downstairs yesterday morning (ow) and this morning managed to impale my forehead on the sharp steely# corner of Wolfgang's driver's side door (double ow).##   Both my left shoulder and most of my left ribs were testy this morning### and service ring was while both eyelids still opened fully.  Colin's nasty little garage flower-pot ring never looked so good as it does to me tonight in prospect of wrestling those possessed-by-demons clankers tomorrow night at Old Eden. 

^ I could have a word with Penelope, who is responsible for forcing Niall to go on holidays in the first place.  Unfortunately she'd laugh.  

^^ There are four-bell towers and ringers who love kinky four-bell methods.  But most of us feel that real method ringing begins with five working bells:  doubles.  Doubles, however, is supposed to include a sixth, tenor-behind, bell.  The drawback to this morning is that the other four were all good ringers which meant we rang Stedman without a tenor behind.  I know I tell you that this happens now and again.  It's still terrifying. 

I'm ringing master in name only, you realise.  All these people outrank me.  If I hadn't called for Stedman, they'd merely have mutinied.

^^^ Yes.  I've been writing PEG II for quite a lot of the afternoon and it's not looking good for our gang.  

# Modern cars are made of plastic.  Until you impale yourself on a corner of one of them. 

## The parking-space-side flowerbed is perhaps a trifle richly planted.  This includes . . . uh . . . several roses.  One of them is Ayrshire Splendens, which Peter Beales http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/ayrshire-splendens/

describes as a 15-footer but she was 20-plus at the old house and still in world-conquering mode when we left.  She's supposed to be climbing the fence and launching herself into my (*&^%$£"!!!! neighbour's frelling forest here in New Arcadia.  But roses don't always do what you want them to.   She's got a couple of thorny tendrils out investigating that empty area on the side opposite the forest.  Because I am too stupid to live I was ducking out of her way at the same moment that I was opening the car door. . . .

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 

### I would fall left-side-down.  Left is Chaos' side in the hellhound hierarchy.

*** I wear them till I can no longer tie them on, okay?  And I've been known to use duct tape to delay the day. 

† Ow.  Oh, well, Chaos may be more chaotic but he weighs noticeably less in all-four-feet-braced posture. 

†† With the bats.

Mmmm. More Roses.

 

I spent a lot of the afternoon in the garden.  Longer than I meant to, which is how it usually goes with us gardeners.*  I planted one rose** and two dahlias—yes, I know, but the dahlias are getting urgent:  one of them is even threatening to bloom, which is a little rude for a dahlia in mid-June.***  And I wasted too much time trying to figure out where I could wedge some more roses in and, in Wedging Mode, what shape of pot is going to work best in this or that imaginary space. . . .

            And then I came back to the mews for supper and Peter said, oh, I was going through back issues of the TLS and I think you said you wanted this. . . .

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7175082.ece

YES.  I CERTAINLY DO WANT IT.  THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME.†

And hey, it's nearly half off if you order it from the Book Depository. 

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Rose-Jennifer-Potter/9781848871762?b=-3&t=-20#Fulldescription-20

Mmmm.  Roses. 

* * *

* I was just complaining to Georgiana, who has an amazing allotment^ and brought us strawberries to die for last week, that the problem with this time of year is that of course you want to spend as much time as possible in your own garden—but it's also the time of year that if you want to see anyone else's, the National Garden Scheme plus every other garden occasionally open to the public for charity^^ is in full spectacular roar.

^ You non-Brits, you know about allotments? http://www.allotment.org.uk/articles/Allotment-History.php 

^^ All proceeds to the Distressed Werecritters and Vampire Protection Agency. 

**  This one:  http://www.roselocator.com/rose_locator/roses/hybrid_tea_other_form_flower_form/1402_proper_job.php

You can see why I had to have it:  dark red old-fashioned and very fragrant.^  But . . . the name?  'Proper Job'?  They named a rose 'Proper Job'?  What?  This shouldn't have been allowed.  The Rose Anti-Defamation League should have sent the registry form back with a big red DENIED and told them to try again.

            But I'm wondering if rose names, never a strong point, are getting worse.^^  Here's another one I bought on Tuesday:  http://www.roselocator.com/rose_locator/roses/hybrid_tea_spiral_bud_form/590_global_beauty.php 'Global Beauty'.  Ewwwwww.  And that photo wouldn't necessarily have grabbed me—I already grow Graham Thomas and Golden Celebration—but this stopped me in my tracks as I was cruising the plant tables last Tuesday:

So--in theory--I get the heartbreaking hybrid tea bud shape plus a big fat riot of petals once she's full out. Mmmm.

 I don't think this photo does her justice either however:  you'll have to take my word for it that the shading from cream to dark yellow isn't a trick of the light, that's the bud itself.  I'm watching it closely and hope to have a smack-you-silly photo of the final flower later on.  Oh—and even the bud is scented.  I'm so happy.

^ Mine is just a little green thing at the moment.  I hope this is what she turns out to be.  See below.  Nervously.

^^ Although 'Sexy Rexy' takes some beating as a really really really bad name.  http://www.rosesuk.com/rose_locator/roses/floribunda_less_100cm/121_sexy_rexy.php  She was very popular in my early obsessive days+ so I gave her a shot++ and she was a frail heroine and had almost no scent.  You can afford the occasional scentless wonder when you've got over 500 roses but I wouldn't have her now.+++          

            I was about to go off on a little riff about how scent and scentedness is very individual and you can't really trust catalogue descriptions of scent—even more than of colour, and catalogues always lie about colour.  As an example of this I was going to cite [Madame Mmmph] whom I've also just bought—partly because she is already in full flower and I therefore know her scent is fabulous, despite the catalogue description of her as having little scent.  Even with the windows open, driving home with a car full of roses, she was magnificent.  I'm now looking her up on line for you since the catalogue doesn't have a photo of her and I foolishly haven't taken one and  . . . that's not the rose I bought.  Oh.  Um.  Well, that explains the discrepancy about scent.  I wonder who she is?  That also explains why her growth habit clearly isn't as described either.   Hmm.  Rose growing.  Always an adventure.

            Never mind.  Whoever she is, she's fragrant. 

+ Of course I'm still obsessive.  But these are my later obsessive days. 

++ Using her breeding name of Macrexy on my label.  When she was good she was, admittedly, very good, so I had people on our open days asking me about that mysterious rose, Macrexy, they were sure they'd never seen that name in a catalogue. 

+++ I do have two scentless wonders . . . but I'll come back to them some other post. 

*** Although one of the ones from last year is already in flower.  Whoa.  Geez.  I'd better feed her again if I want her to keep going into the autumn.  This is the one that spent the winter in its pot in a corner of the sitting room—rather too near the radiator, although with the Aga and a small house I don't use the central heating much.  I knew it had to be dead;  this is not how you overwinter dahlias.  You overwinter dahlias by digging them up, hosing the tubers down, letting them dry (mostly) off, and then playing Russian roulette with sand, vermiculite, crumpled newspaper, cardboard boxes, and plastic bags.  They also need frost free but cool and dark.  I never got around to doing whatever it was I was going to do with this one—it came in as part of the jungle last winter and never got moved up to Third House because why?  This is not how you overwinter dahlias.  So before I threw it on the compost this spring I watered it (still in last year's plastic pot) and put it out back and . . . she promptly produced leaves and a stem.  Oh my gods you're alive.  The only problem is that there will now be a row of pots with dahlias in them in my sitting room this winter and since this isn't the way you overwinter dahlias my luck may very well run out and I'll have a lot of dead dahlias next spring and be all cast down and sad and everything.

            Meanwhile . . . only about a fortnight ago I was in the attic ferreting in the corners for bats and discovered . . . a paper bag with a leaf growing hopefully out of it.  Oh my gods it's another dahlia.  Why aren't you dead?  When did I dig it up and tuck it away?  I have no recollection of doing this.^  So I took her out and potted her up, assuming she'd promptly collapse from the shock . . . and she's growing away like anything.  Maybe I'd better stick to pots in the sitting room however.  They're harder to forget. 

^ Maybe it's an Alien Spy Dahlia.  I'm the perfect choice because I will assume I just forgot.

† Peter has this inexplicable habit of wanting to finish reading his TLS before I start ripping pages out.

Return of Ask Robin

 

In honour of the fact that PEG II has not been kicking me in the head for about a week now*, which is to say for a change, I thought I'd revert (briefly) to admitting that I am, in fact, a writer, and not only a hurtler of hellhounds, a multi-piercings veteran of life with roses**, a maker of strange noises that might under careful laboratory conditions be counted (dubiously) as musical, a wrangler of bells*** (various), and a reader of other people's books.  No, it's true, I write books.  Sometimes I even answer questions about the process.

            So I thought I'd give you an Ask Robin. 

            The whole rattling-on-about-myself thing is tricky to negotiate even when I'm yacketing about stuff that has only just happened:  how many times can even a daily-blog audience be expected to bear the news that the hellhounds aren't eating again?  Or that they're keeping me home suddenly and inconveniently . . . the way they usually (suddenly and inconveniently) keep me home?  But at least by declaring it (almost) a DAILY BLOG it's both warning and guideline.  Writer stuff is much harder—at least for me.  Writing is about going somewhere else.  The best I can explain it is by saying, read the book I wrote about/from that somewhere else.  That's the best I can tell you.  Why would I want to tell you the less-best?

            But, because people do keep asking, and keep asking even when I've been over this writer-ground before, here are a few of today's thoughts about some of the standard writer-type questions from someone who clearly has too much time on her hands.

What do you consider your writing strengths?  Weaknesses?

If I stopped to think in those terms I'd cripple myself.  I'm one of your less secure and self-valuing writers, you know?  The stuff that's good is good because Story took me over more rather than less.  The stuff that isn't good isn't good either because Story had an absent-minded moment and loosened its grip or because it hit one of the places in the McKinley Channelling System so squashy that it fell over, like a Lamborghini hitting the Honey Island Swamp. 

Have you ever written a scene and thought, "By gods, this is utter crap!"?  What do you do then? (ie, tear it out, crumple it into a ball . . . only to rescue it hours later and smooth it out, reread it, and think, "Well, it's not THAT bad." …..)

I try to stay out of it as much as possible.  I write whatever it is I am given to write the best I can and keep going.  If I stop for value judgements . . . see previous answer.  Keep going, keep going, keep going!  When I hit a spot I know is swampy on the next draft I try to pay as little attention as possible to the dreck on the page, and as much attention as possible to the STORY which will tell me what I need to do if I can only hear it clearly enough.  This is also why I am a nightmare to edit.  Stop confusing me!  I'm trying to listen to the Story! 

How often do you edit your own work in progress?  Do you start from a basic outline and go from there, or just have a general idea of a plot, plop it down onto paper, and then let it take shape?  When do you reread your own stuff… in the middle, when it's ready to go to the editor, or constantly?

I mostly slog through it draft by draft from the beginning to the end and then over again till I can feel it coming together . . . in spite of me.  See previous answers.  I cannot afford to get bogged down in my own shortcomings.  It's not about me, it's about THE STORY.  My responsibility is wholly and totally to THE STORY.  Wasting time calling myself names is just . . . wasting time.  And I know my own tendency to think that I am The Worst Person Who Ever Did X.  I am the worst bell ringer in the history of bell ringing!  I am about to become the worst choir member the Muddlehamptons have ever imagined!  And I am DEFINITELY the worst knitter who ever lived!!!  My great gift is, I finally realised, embarrassingly not all that long ago, obstinacy.  I've talked about this before.  Obstinacy keeps you going.  Nurture it.  Appreciate it.  Granted I may need it more than some.  But when my head is full of voices shrieking invective, I turn my metaphorical coat collar up against the really nasty weather, and trudge on.

Where do you keep your notes (if you have any)?

When I still wrote first drafts on yellow legal pads I used to write in the margins.  I now mostly write notes when I think of them in the body of the manuscript on the computer screen—in another colour.  Usually pink, if you're asking.  Ahem.  If they have to do with what is going on right now, in that scene, I just write them and keep going.  If they are about some other part of the story I'll leave blank spaces on either side of the (pink) note.  What I do not do is try to find where they do go.  I'll pick that up on the next draft. 

What does your writing space (if you have one) look like?

I'm a nest-builder.  I dare say I was born like this, but it was definitely aggravated by being a military brat and moving on every year or two when I was a kid.  The perhaps somewhat peculiar result of this is that while I always have an official writing space I'm conscious that I can write anywhere.  At present while my licensed (not to say authoritative) office is at the cottage, and it's full of favourite books and journals and pictures and bristling bulletin boards and little noodgy things and bits of paper with quotations on them taped to what wall space is left (not very much) . . . I can and do write anywhere.  It's all about Story, you know?  The rest is just vanity—or part of my life as a human being rather than a channeller of Story.  Because of the weird business of Peter and me living in different houses, at the moment I do a lot of my writing on Peter's kitchen table.  I almost always write the blog here.  I'm here/there now.  Finishing a glass of (fake) champagne, and preparing to go back to the cottage for a nice hot bath and the reading of someone else's book.   

* * *

* Although I'm not necessarily enjoying the tenor of its blandishments either, but that's another blog for another day.

** It's like this if you're going to cohabit with alien species.  There are inevitably scars.  Now ask me about bats.

*** Indeed tonight's expansive attitude is also in honour of the fact that in the absence of the treacherous Niall^ I was in charge of bell practise tonight^^, and no lives were lost.  There were maybe a few nicks in some auras, mainly mine, but hey.  Peter made mayonnaise to comfort me.  Life is good.^^^ 

^ Ringing masters aren't allowed to go on holidays.  Didn't he read the by-laws? 

^^ ARRRRGH

^^^ Especially because I am getting out of the next tower reps' meeting.  Tower secretaries are automatically tower representatives too, unless they tell off some other poor flunkey to do it.  That would be me at New Arcadia.  I went last winter, I had thought I'd put myself on the email list for future meetings, and assumed (grimly) that I was now permanently for it.  I knew there was supposed to be another meeting around here some time soon so I finally asked the district secretary.  No, he said, Vicky is still tower rep of record, and I understand that Roger is her representative.  —I blinked once or twice because Vicky is usually the rather terrifying model of organisation, and it was funny she hadn't said anything to me.  But she's had one or two other traumas going on recently so I guessed this had just slipped into the shadows.  No big.  But tonight at practise I was puzzled by the note on the board in Vicky's handwriting asking if I was going to the meeting.  So when Vicky looked in briefly on her way from trauma one to trauma two, I said, Aglovale says that Roger is going to the tower reps' meeting for you?

            He is? said Vicky, looking nonplussed.

            Roger, pulling on a bell rope at the time, faltered, and said, I'm what?

            Going to the tower reps' meeting, I said, helpfully.

            I am? said Roger.

            You are, I said.  The district secretary says so. 

             Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.

You've only got till midnight tonight

 

. . . USA Eastern Standard Time, that is.  To get your FABULOUS BUTTERFLY MASKS in to Jodi for a chance to win a pair of FABULOUS CABLED MITTS. *

Meanwhile Jodi told me, perhaps unwisely, that she would give me a SECOND CHANCE in the draw if I MADE MASKS FOR THE HELLHOUNDS TOO.  Which I (perhaps unwisely) had admitted was my first thought.  But then certain tactical difficulties presented themselves.

Like, how to get the thing to stay on.

And how to convince the hellhound to let it stay on.

You know, there's a certain . . . Cthulhuian . . . effect here

From this angle possibly more praying mantis

And yes, if I had a fortnight and nothing else to do I could certainly have constructed something that would (a) stay butterfly-shaped and (b) hook behind hellhound ears . . . and then train them to sit still long enough for me to get a photo of the two of them together.  As it is, all a hellhound had to do was drop his nose and the thing fell off.  And I failed miserably to explain to them the wonder of cabled mitts.  They just kept looking at me.  And dropping their noses.

So this will have to suffice.

* * *

 So it's Thursday.  And I should have been going back to Muddlehampton Choir practise for my second bash of flustered-hen squawking . . . I mean, of sweet tuneful warbling, like to the lark at break of day arising, sings hymns at heaven's gate.  Ahem.  I should have been going back to Muddlehampton, to see what corner the beleaguered Ravenel was going to stuff me into.

            But I didn't.  District bell practise was tonight at Crabbiton.  There are a lot of towers in this district, and I don't, as a rule, go to district practise** . . . because I'm out too many nights a week as it is*** and one of the ways I pretend to keep some kind of control over my bell habit is to not commute to feed it.  But Crabbiton is next door.  I'm on Crabbiton's list of emergency fill-in ringers.†  I've been saying since the district diary went up that I'd go to Crabbiton's district practise. 

            And then I finally started this choir, uh, lark.  Gleep.  Also damn.††  I don't know what the Muddlehamptons' turnover is like††† but I could kind of imagine a few of them frowning vaguely at each other tonight and saying, Wasn't there a new woman last time?  Sounded like a cat being stepped on?‡  So I fished out all the bumf I'd been given with the sheet music, which included contact info for everyone down to chief sub assistant tea lady, and rang the membership secretary.  I explained who I was‡‡ and that I would be there next week.  And then for good measure I emailed Ravenel.  Who, to my astonishment, emailed friendlily back. ‡‡

            Albert as district education master ran bell practise tonight, but Wild Robert was there being supportive and looking for ways to get ringers he knew in trouble.  That would include me.‡‡‡  It was a funny mix of ringers, with a lot on the low end of experience and ability, so I got to sit out a lot and stare nervously at the line for Cambridge which I should know backwards and upside down by now# although at one point there was a general call for someone, anyone to ring the five for a touch of Grandsire doubles . . . and I discovered I'd been set up and was calling the beggar.  Gah.  Cambridge crashed and burned three times due to a little trouble down front—I was on the four, thank you very much, I was not a part of the trouble initially, although once the vortex was swirling nicely I was certainly only too willing to be sucked into it—and I was then dragged gleefully by the metaphorical hair—by Wild Robert, of course—through the abbreviated touch of Kent that is always everyone's first touch of Kent.  I did manage to prove I'm not entirely useless by being one of the steady ones in some plain courses of Stedman with a couple of learners caroming around rather.  And I had quite a long chat with a fellow who rings at Forzadeldestino:  twelve bells and a lot of attitude.  Oh, definitely come along, he said, looking at me directly, as if I were a, you know, real bell ringer, like him, and not someone who needs to be dragged (by the hair) through a first short touch of Kent.##

            Forzadeldestino's practise night is Wednesday.  And it's close.  It's barely farther than Crabbiton.  Hmmm. . . .   

* * * 

*Anyone who has spent the last twenty-four hours holding hands^ with a really cute member of the gender of your preference, in Paris or Rome or the shores of Lake Huechulafquen or some other deeply romantic place, and missed checking in,^^ details are in last night's blog.

^ etc

^^ I'm not sure how good the wireless pick up is on the shores of Lake Huechulafquen either

** which happens once a month, at a different tower each month.  I assume till they reach the end of the list, and then they start over.  It takes years.  The point is that a bunch of hot-shot district-admin ringers come, so the local band can try stuff they may not ordinarily have the band to do on ordinary practise nights.  District practise is open to everyone, so a few rogue members of neighbouring bands will probably turn up in the hopes of ringing something interesting.  I was rather startled that I was the only New Arcadia ringer there tonight. 

*** And on Thursdays I sing 

† Crabbiton gets stuck with the organising when Madhatterington wants its bells rung. 

†† Slightly in my defense they didn't answer their emails when I tried to make contact after Easter, when they should have been starting up practise for the summer show.  And it took me a while to whine to Oisin about it.  Oisin rang up Ravenel smartly after that, but it then took me another fortnight or so to get my timid butt over there.  And then Ravenel^ was on holiday last week. 

^ I don't think I told you that when Nadia asked me what he was like I said that I thought there was a rather scary iron fist in that velvet glove, and she got a rather scary twinkle in her own eye and said, you try running an amateur choir some time.  Scary is good.  

††† The rules of engagement say that you're allowed to attend a few practises and make up your mind before they start coming after you with demands of fee-paying membership. 

 ‡ A small, undernourished cat with a small undernourished voice, but piercing.  

‡‡ I could hear her remembering me:  Oh, the American woman.

‡‡‡ I've been trying to decide if this is a good thing or merely a thing.  Maybe he's naturally polite.  Maybe it's a bit of velvet-glove flimflam.  He's slightly deaf in his left ear and didn't hear me last time.  He's not slightly deaf in his left ear and still didn't hear me because . . . well, because.^  The Muddlehamptons have a steep turnover, and any recruits are welcome.  Or possibly he knows that those of us prone to doing too much—I told him I was a bell ringer—are the likeliest candidates for continuing to show up to do too much.  He doesn't know about the ME yet.  Still.  

^ But Nadia thinks I will have a usable voice eventually.  One that doesn't instantly become more or less inaudible squeaks any time I'm not singing for Nadia. 

‡‡‡ I admit I was determined to go on the assumption that Wild Robert would be there.

# And which arguably is my problem:  I do know it backwards and upside down.  Right side up and forward is therefore confusing.

## Kent minor.  A mere six bells.

Listen up

 

http://jmeadows.livejournal.com/867771.html

Please note you only have till TOMORROW to get yours in.*

I so totally want a pair of those mitts.** Cables. The only way I'm ever going to get cables is if someone else knits them.***

So.  Ahem.

Um. Mask. I may have got the 'mask' thing a little bit wrong.

 

Helmet is good though. Isn't helmet good?

It's a sort of helmet mask. Sure, that works. I'm sure that works.

 

* * *

* Yes, I am a careless slob, and I haven't been paying attention. But Mean Jodi didn't send me the link till this morning. And look at the date! She only posted it at all yesterday!

**So why am I TELLING you about this and LOWERING my chances?? Well, she does say that if she gets over a hundred entries she'll give away a SECOND PAIR. And trying to figure out some kind of sliding odds thing about over and under a hundred entries and a second pair of mitts^ makes my poor PEG-fagged brain ache.^^

^ Which, you know, might be PINK.  WITH CABLES.

^^ I hate battles. Hate, hate, hate. I'm going back to fairy tales after this. Or possibly I'm going to reinvent myself as a florist.#

# And if any slightly less than totally sane person is looking really closely at these photos you may notice shadow-stripes on the helmet-mask.  Yes.  I am making use of second sides of early draft pages of frelling PEG II. 

*** I'm in one of those beginner stages where the skill in question, in this case knitting, is EVIL. Soft sweet cuddly pretty friendly cooperative adaptable tolerant forgiving yarn?? Don't you believe it. Yarn is evil. Yarn is out to get you. Well, it's out to get me anyway.