Robin McKinley's Blog, page 129

Mmmm. Roses.

 

Indeed I did not sleep marvellously well last night although nothing went out of its way to wake me up. I'm now suspicious of all noises* which is unfortunate at midsummer when there are only about three hours of darkness anyway and people tend to be coming home hilariously till the time the wretched birds start trying to drag the sun up even sooner than scheduled.

I got up almost as early as I do for Sunday service ring, to take hellhounds for a brief decisive sprint.

Ugh.

No, I'm staying home. Sigh.**

So I put hellhounds in the car and took Peter to the train, and then the hellhounds and I went for the rest of the morning hurtle in a skulking, edge-of-town-in-case-of-excretions-that-cannot-be-picked-up kind of way

I want to know who planted the rose. That's not an 1888 type rose. This is the edge of a half-wild cemetery with nothing else around but trees.

. . . and Darkness, the streaming, keeping-the-hellgoddess-at-home one, within half an hour of Peter's train departing, reverted to if not normal exactly, still, if he'd been doing this all day yesterday, I'd've been on that train.***

Sigh.

I put hellhounds back in the car. I may have been muttering a little. But not very loudly. Because last night, when the likelihood that I would not be on a train to London today had begun to loom in a large Darkness-shaped darkness, I had devised an alternate plan.

We'd go to a rose nursery.

Mmmm. Roses.

The hellhounds were a little nonplussed† but I had a great time.†† I even got . . . um . . . three roses that were on the list.  Among a few others.  Um.  Well, you don't want to get everything on your list too quickly, what's the fun of that?

Patient if underwhelmed hellhounds.

We were hardly back††† again‡ when Peter rang that he was on the train home. And then I finally got a few of my thorny new family members to the cottage. Peter gallantly offered to heel in‡‡ any I hadn't decided on the future of, but this is a dangerous precedent, leading to more roses at the mews and my vague feeling that I have room for more roses.

Twelve. There are twelve. If you're counting. Are you counting? I'm not counting.

Now I need more large pots.

* * *

* . . . she says, turning up the radio. This is a radio/CD player thingummy and modern which means the wretched thing ONLY functions with its remote. ^

And we've lost the remote.

Fortunately—well, fortunately for me—the remote got lost while it was on Radio 3. Which means, until the new remote arrives—and of course it took us about a fortnight to go round humbly to the shop and order a new one because WHERE COULD A FRELLING GREAT REMOTE HAVE GONE? Tahiti, with its paintbox, apparently—I can listen to Radio 3. Or silence. Or strange shrill tinny noises from my elderly laptop.^^ Therefore of course tonight Radio 3 is playing the end of Stravinsky I loathe—Rite of Spring^^^ and Dunbarton Ughs.

^ Although I have the next edition at the cottage and it has touch-sensitive controls on its face as well as its remote. And for its next edition I hope they got the decorative face controls to work.

^^Rather angry-pipistrelle noises, as I think about it. Hey, I'll sing for you . . . if you promise only to play back on elderly laptops.+

+ Note: joke.

^^^ Yes. Sue me. Although I like the two-piano version. I'd love a look at the sheet music but it's not the sort of thing you can download for free.

** Peter's prep school—sic—was having a reunion. They were evacuated during the war—WWII, of course, pay attention—and that era is remembered as a kind of thrilling semi-anarchy. So some of them put together a book of anecdotes and some (blurry) photos and all the Old Boys who were still around and interested were meeting up for a launch-party lunch at somebody's regimental whatsit at The Tower of London. Really. And after lunch they got to knock a lot of tourists out of the way so they could stand on the steps of the regimental whatsit and get their photo taken.^ If anyone sends Peter a copy of the photo I'll let you know. The book is pretty much a you-had-to-be-there.

^ No the Beefeaters were not involved. I don't think there were any ravens either. Or Crown Jewels. Or the heads of any of Henry's ex-wives.

*** And we wouldn't have needed to be skulking near storm gutters and wilderness.

† Especially by the fact that I was outdoors in clear sight of hellhounds and . . . persistently did not return to the car, despite the pressure of four beady little eyes, and let them out to cavort with me as is The Way. That I was spending my time wrestling with large numbers of tall many-legged green things over a ridiculously small area clearly did not register: they would sort these minor delinquencies out as soon as I let them out of the car.

Dogs are a hoot. I love having dogs.^ Hellhounds didn't give up and lie down till I finally moved over to the other side of the nursery and out of their sight. They stood there STARING at me for over an hour.

^ Except for the streaming bits.

†† Peter says I had a better time at the rose nursery. That his reunion would have . . . ahem . . . made me feel very American. Yes. This possibility had occurred to me, before Darkness made all such potential anxieties superfluous.^

^ I would have behaved myself! I would!

††† Hey! It's a long drive!^ And we'd had our hurtle first! I didn't spend (nearly) three hours at the nursery! Nooooooooo!

^ Thank the gods. If I lived near a large specialist rose nursery—this one's only medium-sized, doesn't have any of the truly insane obscurities that feature conspicuously on my list, and is a significant distance from New Arcadia—I would be a danger to society.

‡ The mews, not the cottage. The cottage has been full of Atlas, two stepladders, and bits of timber all day. Really it's just as well the poor hellhounds were not trying to spend the day there.^ But this has meant a lot of shifting roses in and out of the car. I suppose I could have put a blanket in the boot for Peter. The roses certainly wouldn't have fit back there.

^ Yes, I did think of asking Atlas to keep an eye on Darkness and let him out into the courtyard if he showed Signs of Distress. But I didn't think of it long. I want a happy, trusting Atlas who is innocently willing to go on working for me.

‡‡ http://www.ehow.com/how_2272122_heel-bareroot-plants.html

But my new roses are already in pots, which makes heeling in even more dangerous, because the rose doesn't realise she's only heeled in, and, especially this time of year, immediately starts growing.

Another Critter Problem

 

Atlas has been at the cottage all day. He's not even close to being finished with the latest level of bat-resistance—not even with the kitchen, and there's still the sitting room (which has a similar monster-maw beam problem) and the linen cupboard ahead.* He'll be back tomorrow—but then he has to go save other people's sanity with nails and ply and wood stain. Which means at least one more week of cohabiting with Chiroptera.**

Meanwhile, Peter and I are/were supposed to go to London tomorrow to have an adventure. Peter is still going. I have a streaming hellhound. I have no idea why. I haven't caught him mid-sandwich or mid-whoopie-pie*** or anything † lately. But this morning . . . streaming. This afternoon . . . streaming. I took them to my voice lesson†† so I could keep an eye on them in the car out Nadia's window.††† On the way home we had a nice stroll through the back streets of Mauncester.

Streaming.

So tonight I have an assortment of reasons why I won't sleep very well.

Whimper.

* * *

* And then we sit around for a minute or two and wait for them to find the next chink in the barricade. There's been a little conversation on the forum about the unlikelihood that a single one-way door will prevent them returning next year^ . . . or even several one-way doors. If pipistrelles can turn themselves into sheets of paper and pinpricks to slide under skirting-boards and through keyholes they will certainly find other means of entrance (and exit) to an over-200-year-old cottage they've grown fond of. Because I am a really hopeless wet, my first thought, as recorded last night, to the suggestion of an exclusion license, was oh, no! I don't want to make Hermione homeless! When it occurred to me a little bit later—as, for example, I was pulling the sheet over my head in bed last night^^—that chances are a one-way door (or twelve) wouldn't work, my first thought was relief. My second thought was . . . THEN WHAT?

Now Ajlr has written: . . . the unusual weather conditions this Spring (long dry = fewer pools of water around = less drinking water and fewer insects) may have made other bat nurseries in the locality less desirable. So it's possible, apparently, that extra pregnant females from other roosts may have moved to the obviously ideal location of your roof space and there's just not enough room for them all. . . .

This makes the most sense to me of anything I've heard. When they were still only coming into the attic, that they smelt the water in the water tank theory made some sense. But even then not that much sense—there's always been water in my garden, because I have an old-fashioned, heavily planted and organic cottage-type garden that needs a lot of water.  And which grows big fat juicy organic bugs.  But pots stand in trays with water in them. Watering cans stand around with water in them. There are pools in the gravel where I've sloshed.^^^ And while the plastic half-barrel I use as a water butt does have a lid on it, its lid is even sillier as bat-proofing than the lid on the water tank in the attic is.+ And since the first version of the dry-spring theory was promulgated I've had several bird-bath equivalents++ full of water out in the garden for thirsty bats+++. Or birds, of course. The bats may have been smelling the water in the attic tank as an extra source of water, but Atlas has sealed it up, (apparently) blocked the attic outlets . . . and they're still pouring in. Downstairs.

Population pressure covers the observable data nicely. Now I have to hope we don't have any more dry springs . . . and that the interlopers don't decide they like Bat Cottage better anyway.~

^ Diane in MN wrote: It strikes me that the bat people might be just a wee bit optimistic about being able to locate the one and only entrance to the bat nursery from outside.

^^ Yes. Mosquito netting. Totally. Must investigate. At this point even if it turns out that Atlas' efforts are successful I'll sleep better if I don't have wonder every time there's a funny noise in my little old creaky house, if it's anything to do with wings. Mosquito netting, after all, also keeps out . . . mosquitoes.

^^^ Actually I don't waste much. I do grow things that need water—roses, dahlias, delphiniums, and everything and its uncle and its uncle's best friend in pots—but I water by hand, I don't use a sprinkler or even a hose, and I mulch like mad. In fact I'm impressed at how well things are doing despite the drought.

+ I also have a gigantic open# well taking up way too much space in the corner between me and my semi-detached (and bat-free) neighbour, although since it takes several loooooong seconds for the sound of anything you drop in to hit the water, it may be too far down for even pips to fly. But I'm sure they can smell it.

# Relatively open. The brick wall around it is over knee high and there's a gigantic steel webbing inside. All of the above covered in plant pots of course.

++Very large plant-pot trays.

+++ As well as the possibly counter-productive saucers of water indoors.

~ And yes, sadly, it's way too appropriate for a hellgoddess to live in a bat cottage.

** I used to have to look up 'Chiroptera'. It just runs—or perhaps I should say flies—off the fingers lately.

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopie_pie

Pumpkin? Are you frelling joking? Whoopie pies are chocolate.^

Although they are perhaps not in England. All right, mid Spotted Dick then.^^

^ And of course whoopie pies originated in Maine.

^^ Oops, of course I meant Plum Bolster. http://historicalfoods.com/spotted-dick-recipe 

† My hellhounds. They won't eat their food but they will beg from strangers. Darkness—the streaming one—this afternoon went up to someone eating a great greasy carton of chips^ and came all over charming and dying of hunger. I dragged him away. Although potatoes won't hurt him I think, by the smell, that the cooking grease would be better lubricating jet aircraft undercarriages.

^ French fries.

†† GAAAAH. I am tired of being able to sing^ for Nadia and sounding like an angry pipistrelle the rest of the week. It keeps happening, that at home, it's just me. Nadia's the one with the magic. Not me. Nadia's the one who has me sing this exercise rather than that one, drop my jaw and straighten my spine and think about my vowels and suddenly I'm singing (more or less). I CAN GO THROUGH THE EXACT SAME SET OF SELF-INSTRUCTIONS AT HOME AND I STILL SOUND LIKE A TAIL-TRODDEN HELLHOUND. And now I'm inflicting myself on a choir?^^ Nadia says that I am to start a pre-practise ritual that will enable me to focus on singing when I'm at home—instead of on all the reasons I won't be able to do it properly because it's only useless me. Gaaaah. One of the more pathetic reasons I look forward to my voice lessons is that FOR ONE HOUR A WEEK I get to take my singing, you know, as if seriously, as if I'm really doing something and I have a, like, goal that isn't strictly fantasy. Nadia is delighted that I've joined the Muddlehamptons—who are a perfectly good amateur choir: I've told you that Oisin says Ravenel gets surprisingly musical results out of his motley collection of people going along for a laugh and something to do on Thursday evening—but she also knows that I am at heart a snob, and keeps saying encouraging/alarming things like, Now when you join a really good choir. . . . Eeep, you know?^^^

^ well—it's more like singing, when I'm doing it for Nadia.

^^ Ravenel will at least have moved me from singing directly into his left ear by next rehearsal.

^^^ As I'm writing this I'm listening to William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices on Radio Three. Music to die for.

††† Walked them before and after down the gutter of Nadia's mum's little village street. No streaming. Whew. I can go back next week.

Do I even need a title

 

When I got back to the cottage this afternoon and did not find a bat crushed up in a corner somewhere, I didn't think, Hey! Great!, I thought, I wonder what I'm missing. And where I'm missing her. Or them.

Atlas comes tomorrow to begin the Final Attempt. They are clearly getting in downstairs; I have my suspicions about my linen cupboard* and I know they're getting in in the kitchen. Whimper. Was it only a week ago I was saying that if they were getting through downstairs—if they were, for example, barging in through that gigantic channel hacked out for the wiring above and behind the huge ceiling beam in the kitchen—I was totally and utterly frelled?

It turns out I am perhaps not totally and utterly frelled. I had borrowed the stepladder** from Peter since if Bat Lady and I were going to try to tackle the problem ourselves we would need it. I'd been up there examining the kitchen ceiling on a stool last week when I was first worrying about holes not in the attic, and already knew that the news, if there was going to be news, was going to be bad news. And in fact I've wondered about those holes since I first bought the place, but the cottage is over two hundred years old, and nothing seems to have happened so far.*** Cue hollow laughter. But once I started finding splinters and bits of plaster on the floor, the counters and the hellhound crate† however . . . when I went up yesterday and looked steadily at the situation I knew there was nothing Bat Lady or I could do with a tube of polyfilla and some wood seal††.

She came anyway because she had another bat to pick up. I'm not quite sure why I'm no longer allowed to release them out the kitchen door after twilight. The one I rang her about on Friday, it was early in the day and she was clearly not a happy bat, but this one yesterday was so lively I was surprised she was bothering with the pretence of collapsed and crushed, because she came out of the gate like the first race at Newmarket and it's a good thing it was a large dustcloth.††† I nearly lost her, and I had a lot of trouble stuffing her in the box. She didn't like the box. She liked the corner of the kitchen door behind the bottom bolt much better. I'm sure she would have been fine under the honeysuckle: no rat would have dared. However, I succeeded at last.‡

The really cool thing is that the Bat Lady had brought exhibits. I'd expressed interest in her bat hospital, so she'd fetched a few samples. One of them, poor thing, was a pip that had been mauled by a cat, and only had one and a half wings left; but he was still a doughty crawler. Then there was a BIG pipistrelle—I think it was another pip—oh, you know, ten grams or so—but the scene-stealer was the brown long-eared http://www.bats.org.uk/publications_download.php/213/brownlongeared.pdf 

TOO TOO TOO FRELLING CUTE. ‡‡ If you read through the pdf it says that it curls those ears back like rams' horns but this is way more adorable in person than any of the photos.‡‡‡

Anyway. The Bat Lady climbed the stepladder, and also had a look at the linen cupboard—and we had a survey as well over the now-pretty-well-sealed attic. I told her that I was going to get Atlas in again to address the latest awful discoveries, and she said, it is up to you, and it is your house, but . . . if you want to apply for an exclusion license, I will support you.

An exclusion license means that at the end of the breeding season, when the babies can fly and forage for themselves, some human comes round and installs a one-way door, so that when the last bat has left, they can't get back in again. No more bats.

No more bat nursery.

You'd think I'd be burning a hole on my way to my computer to draft that letter. Well . . . no. I'm a wet knee-jerk liberal who gardens organically, rescues bees, and brakes for unicorns. I even let spiders alone if they are smaller than my hand. My bat nursery has been around a while. It's an established part of the system. And yes, when all those tiny pregnant bats come back next year, they can find somewhere else to roost and rear their even tinier offspring.§ But I bet there will be some losses. As well as a great big red FAIL for the human/nature balance.

No, I can't live like this for five or six months every year during Chiroptera parturition. But I'd rather hope that Atlas is successful.§§

* * *

* I am so not looking forward to shifting nine bedrooms' worth of sheets. Okay, seven bedrooms' worth of sheets, since Peter has two (bedrooms). Or even five bedrooms' worth of sheets, since Third House still has two beds, even if the attic is not precisely a bedroom. It's still a lot of sheets.^ Not to mention the Clean But Still Hairy hellhound blankets which also live in that cupboard. Maybe I'll find my iron however. I think it's in there somewhere. I haven't seen it in a while.

^ Especially in a house with one bedroom.

** The *&^%$£"!!!!!! stepladder. It's one of these dranglefabbing convertible numbers which means it can be a kind of low platform or tall stepladder or an extending ladder or a three-piece suit with a hidden pocket for whatever you're packing, roscoe, loppers, or sharpened hedgehog. I only wanted a stepladder. There was language.

*** At least nothing that was making it onto the paperwork. I wonder if a title search can be expected to bring up a slight bat infestation?

† I also resent the extra housework. Some of you probably read The New Scientist? Peter does, and passes it on to me, where it makes a gigantic pile with all the other periodicals I mean to get around to reading. I have no idea when this particular issue was from, but there was a query on the last page—where you can write in your vaguely science-related questions and other readers, if so moved, will respond—saying that dust on shelves and tables seems to mound up in layers, but the stuff on floors rolls up in whorls and heaps, and why is that? I may be suffering from unseemly and unbecoming CRANKINESS due to bat-related issues, but my reaction to this is, BECAUSE YOU WALK ON THE FLOORS, STUPID, AND STIR THE STUFF UP. Or, possibly, you have low-flying bats. One of the clues that I had aerial visitors were the sausages of dust that began appearing on my countertops. GAAAAAAH. It did get me up there to sweep off the tops of the frelling kitchen cupboards. We've had this conversation. Who designs cupboards that do NOT go to the ceiling? People who have never had to DUST anything. It should be a criminal offense punishable by 1,000,000,000 hours of remedial housework and a substantial fine to install cupboards that do not go all the way to the ceiling in a kitchen with an Aga in it. Which creates dust the way hellhounds create hair.

†† Well, I could wring my hands.

††† Actually it was not a dustcloth. It was a tea towel. There is now a Dedicated Bat Catching Tea Towel. Thanks to bats my dustcloths are dustier than usual.

‡ And gosh was there ever language. I didn't know bats had it in them. I had not, in fact, till last summer, listening to them chatting through the wall^, realised that bats made any noise within human hearing range. They also do vituperation extremely well for something that weighs one-fifth of an ounce. The hellhounds found this very interesting.

^ Poor naïve fool that I was

‡‡ http://www.wildaboutdevon.co.uk/?attachment_id=255 This is perhaps not the cutest long-eared bat photo, but I am riveted by its being described as filed under 'plants and fungi'. Oh, of course.

‡‡‡ Lots of stuff here: http://www.arkive.org/brown-long-eared-bat/plecotus-auritus/

§ In my wet knee-jerk liberal way I can ask about bat houses. I mean made for the purpose bat houses.

§§ There's also the little matter of living through this final breeding season if he isn't.

Wuthering Heights the Opera, guest blog by Diane in MN

 

Bernard Herrmann was a well-known and highly-regarded composer of film scores, from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver. He's probably most famous for his work with Alfred Hitchcock; Herrmann wrote the scores for North by Northwest, Vertigo, and Psycho. But he also wrote an opera, Wuthering Heights, and the Minnesota Opera presented it in April.

Herrmann was working on the Orson Welles film of Jane Eyre in the early 1940s, and that may have been when he started to think about writing an opera based on Wuthering Heights. His then wife, Lucille Fletcher, wrote the libretto after the Herrmanns visited Yorkshire in 1946, and Herrmann completed the score in 1951. It was never produced during Herrmann's lifetime, possibly because of its length (Herrmann refused to allow any cuts), or possibly because Herrmann wanted more control over a production than any interested opera company was willing to concede. The work was premiered in Portland in 1982. The MN Opera production was its first staged revival.

There was a discussion on the forum some time ago that boiled down to: Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? I plumped for Jane Eyre and freely admit that I don't like Wuthering Heights the novel. That being said, I did like Wuthering Heights the opera, with some reservations. I like Herrmann's movie scores, for one thing, and even though I find Heathcliff and Cathy, never mind the rest of the characters, to be deeply unsympathetic, opera plots are full of unsympathetic characters, so that's not a deal-breaker. Also, the libretto confines itself to the first half of the book, so the opera can focus on the main characters even though the plot resists a tight dramatic structure. And then, of course, there's the fit between the music and the libretto that pulls everything together.

Wuthering Heights is written in a prologue and four acts, and Herrmann bridges the acts with orchestral interludes that—what? suggest? describe? reflect?—what's happening in nature as the action takes place. Given that Heathcliff and especially Cathy are so identified (and at least in Cathy's case, self-identified) with nature, Herrmann's interludes provide both a physical and a psychological background for the opera's events, and supplement the sung text. I don't know what, if anything, Herrmann might have had in mind for the stage while the orchestra was playing. Projections of the Yorkshire landscape at different seasons accompanied the interludes in the MN Opera production, and I think this would have made sense to Herrmann the film composer, who made a career of writing evocative music for a primarily visual medium. This treatment was certainly effective in setting the mood for each scene.

Of course, the music written for the singers is the essential part of an opera. MN Opera's program notes assert that Herrmann was "not a melodist," and go on to say that the "voices sing in a declamatory parlando style, while the orchestra truly tells the story". I wouldn't agree that the orchestra has pride of place here, despite Herrmann's success in using it to create atmosphere. Herrmann interspersed arias with the sung dialogue, and two of Cathy's, "I have been wandering," (her opening aria, a setting of a poem by Emily Bronte), and "I have dreamt" (from Act II, a brief moment of self-knowledge before she turns away to marry Edgar Linton), are very good and have stayed with me since I heard them. Most of the arias are indeed conversational, but both Edgar and Isabella Linton are given songs, largely due I think to the demands of the plot, but perhaps also because their world is less natural and more artificial— civilized, in fact—than the world of Wuthering Heights. The music is romantic in a mid-twentieth-century style, and doesn't make excessive demands of its audience. (I don't say this in a damns-with-faint-praise spirit, but to contrast the score with the sort of mid-twentieth-century atonal modernism that I personally would find hard to take for three-plus hours.)

The reservations I have about Wuthering Heights relate to the question of how it works as a stage piece. The events in the opera take place over several years, and while the passage of time from one scene to another is sometimes clear—Cathy Earnshaw in the kitchen at Wuthering Heights is next seen as Catherine Linton in the drawing-room at Thrushcross Grange—at other times, it's not. On the whole, I think the librettist did a good job with a difficult source, but if the audience needs to know that six months or three years have passed, they should be able to get that information from the characters, not from seeing "Three years later …" projected on a curtain before the next scene. To me, this distances the audience from the action, when opera should be about immediacy.

Also, while I was somewhat amused to learn that a Mexican miniseries based on Wuthering Heights was called Abismos de pasion (and the book certainly contains more than enough melodrama for an operatic plot), the abysms of passion weren't always plumbed on the stage. In part, this may have been due to the production's director, since the singers tended to sing to the audience rather than to each other, but it may also have to do with the librettist and composer working within the constraints of the novel. Don Jose and Carmen might plausibly (if uncomfortably) sing a duet while rolling around on the floor of a tavern, but the passions of the characters in Wuthering Heights have less opportunity for physical expression. There is a Bernard Herrmann Society, and a few of its members that saw the MN Opera production thought that there was simply a lack of chemistry between the principal singers. It would be interesting to see another production, with different singers and a different director, and compare the effects.

Some very brief excerpts from the Minnesota Opera production, highlighting arias sung by several characters, are on the Minnesota Opera website at www.mnopera.org/watchlisten.

A selection of three different arias, including Cathy's "I have wandered," is on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nV5DytV-2g&feature=related.

And another version of "I have dreamt," sung in recital by a mezzo-soprano, is also on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJaxm0VeyMQ&NR=1.

(I like this performance better than the soprano's in the Minnesota production.)

 Have a listen, and see what you think. And for anyone really interested, one of the Minnesota performances was filmed for HD presentation sometime in the future. A recorded performance will probably be featured on Minnesota Public Radio next year, and if so could be heard on the MPR classical music web site.

Even more bats

 

Last night I think I would have slept. . . .

I went to bed comparatively early, as bed-going goes with me. And I literally had my hand out to turn the reading light off and . . . a bat HURLED herself through the bedroom door, aiming straight at me, or the wall—um, why?—or the canopy, or whatever. It was another of those occasions when I felt something—I assume a wing—graze me as she did a boomerang turn past me* and shot back out the door again. GAAAAAAAAAAH. There goes the old adrenaline, thanks so much. Someone on Facebook posted to last night's entry on the subject of bats 'yes, and they're bigger indoors.' Yes. Funny thing about that. And they're really amazingly gigantic when they're flying at you while you're lying supine in your bed.

I lay there gasping a minute. I could hear her caroming around elsewhere. This ludicrous Besieged by Bats situation makes me glad that my poor hellhounds are digestively challenged, which means that I'm still crating them every night—they are very clean, and I think they would cry to go out anyway, if they're in trouble. But crating them reinforces this—in my mind anyway, and I have enough trouble sleeping. Had enough trouble before there were bats. Anyway—at least I don't have to worry about hellhounds giving chase to low-darting bats in the middle of the night.

I got up—grimly—went across the hall into the bathroom and regretfully unvelcroed and bent back a corner of the lovely, bug-resistant screen in the window, and propped it open with my toothbrush mug. Which has a plastic bag over it these days, since I have a peculiar aversion to the idea of bats among my toothbrushes. It's been really nice not hosting a house party for every bug in this end of New Arcadia plus its friends and relations, but letting bats out, unfortunately, takes precedence over not letting bugs in. The attic window has been open for a while, of course, but bugs seem to like heights: if they come in the attic, mostly they stay up there. Mostly.

Then I went back to bed and listened to the caroming some more. I pulled the sheet over my head and dragged a pillow over that—stopping just short of making breathing challenging—but sleep? Noisy little beggars, bats. Although possibly the racket of the beating wings is less when they're not in the bedroom with you. This one seemed to figure out the canopy better than the one a while ago, but she really liked my dream catcher and kept flying through it. Tinkletinkletinkle. Tinkletinkletinkle. TinkletinkleAAAAAAAUGH.** If this was Hermione, she is definitely in the annoying adolescent phase.

Then she'd go take a loop or two around the rest of the first floor***. And come back. Tinkletinkletinkle. Tinkletinkletinkle. Flapflapflapflappityflappityflappityflapflap

Bats know when there's an open window. Yes. And I'm Deborah Voigt.†

Anyway. Not a lot of sleep was had last night. This on top of not-a-lot-of-sleep the night before, and we're now into Zombie McKinley territory. I've always hallucinated a bit when I get really tired, and this propensity has intensified since the ME. And I've already noticed an increasing tendency to identify all small dark blobs as collapsed bats—and any sudden zinging motions, especially in peripheral vision, as flying bats—probably coming to get me. There have been a lot of bats in my life today. Some of them even real.

Including three dead ones. I am a bat-killer! I am a bad hellgoddess! Yes but—but—bats aren't supposed to live in the human side of houses! They're supposed to stay up under the roof, in the structural gaps! The window was open! Bats are supposed to find the open window! I've found one dead one before, but I've been uneasy right along about the ones that don't collapse in plain sight, and today I went looking. One had got itself caught in a moth trap—pipistrelles are little, but moths are a lot littler, and it never occurred to me that the glue on the moth trap would catch a bat. I have now thrown out the moth traps. Another one was dead at the bottom of a vase. I found one in the bottom of a vase once before—that one was still alive—and assumed it was some kind of bizarre one-off. I've now turned all the empty vases mouth down—and let me tell you how silly that looks. The third one was just collapsed and past resuscitating, as the first dead one was a week or so ago.

I also found one barely alive at the foot of the stairs at around noon. Why are the little frellers wandering around in the middle of the day. Usually at least I find them late afternoon. I put her out under the honeysuckle with the now de rigueur tiny saucer of water, but I was pretty sure she was on to become an ex-bat very soon: as I keep saying I worry about the metabolisms of little tiny things, and it was about ten hours till sunset and bat-suppertime. I couldn't believe she'd last that long.

I rang the Bat Lady. The Bat Lady said, don't leave her under the honeysuckle, put her in a box and keep her indoors—you'd be surprised at the number of predators around. Magpies. Rats. —Rats. Ewwwwww. Rats are one of those things you know are there even if you don't see them. (If you see them you call the exterminator.) So I got a box and punched some holes in the lid, feeling like a kid doing a school project, and then I went out to catch her. . . . A drink and some cool shade had cheered her up a lot, and she didn't want to be caught. You know the wingspan on a common pipistrelle is about eight inches: that's actually a lot when you're trying to grab it, or it's flying at you as you're lying in bed.

I caught her. I put her in her box. There were tiny aggrieved scrabbling noises, which I ignored. The Bat Lady had made some suggestions about trying to feed her, but if she was feeling that lively she could last till 6 pm when she would become the Bat Lady's problem. I had a cup of tea with Oisin††—there was no way I was going to try to sing anything today—who suggested that I should start a rumour that Ground Bat Bones are an aphrodisiac. This would probably solve my problem. Sigh. On a day this ghastly it's almost tempting.

The Bat Lady came. I said, I'm sure they're getting in downstairs—and I showed her the awful channel cut in the ceiling behind the beam in my kitchen where the wiring now runs. I also showed her the splinters and crumbs of plaster I'd found on the hellhound crate this morning. And I showed her my linen cupboard†††. My linen cupboard is full of pipes, and the holes cut in the walls for the pipes to run out are big enough for a crack [sic] troop of pipistrelles to come through all together. The Bat Lady is coming back tomorrow—her own self—with polyfilla and a stepladder. Golly.

She also took Giselle out of her box and had a brisk, businesslike look at her. Claning—I think it was Claning—posted a while back that tiny bats can't actually open their mouths wide enough to bite you, nor are their jaws strong enough.‡ That would be the case here. Tiny. Bat Lady also turned her over, tummy up: not that I know bat anatomy from Newton's Third Law, but knowing that Giselle is likely to be a pregnant female, it was extremely easy to identify that swell in her belly. Awwwwwww.  She seemed surprisingly unweirded out by human handling. Cute. I do not like them flying and caroming indoors but . . . cute. The Bat Lady took her home for remedial feeding.

And I went to . . . bell practise. Gods. I was at least half-planning to give it a miss, because I am so . . . negligible. And it looked like we were going to manage to cancel: by five to eight there were only three of us. I was delighted. And then they started trickling in. My heart sank. I had only come at all because when I had cravenly emailed Niall that I might not he emailed back bracingly that I had to come because we knew we were going to be short. Frell. Yes, we did. But then we weren't. I almost crept back out again when the sixth person arrived . . . only Niall got in the way and called for Cambridge. This is not a good idea, I said. Sure it is, said Niall. Cambridge. And—gods help me—I was dragged through a plain course of Cambridge by the hair, more or less. The thing is that even with No Brain after all this frelling handbell stuff, I know the blue line extremely well, so when my brain has turned to mush and my ropesight is inventing bats, when someone shouts at me, double-dodge and become fifth place bell!, unfortunately I know what he means. So I do. I'm glad I went to practise but I did wish I'd had a brain.

Now I have to go back to the cottage and see . . .

* * *

* If larger things are described as able to turn on a dime—or, over here, a five-pence piece, which are the littlest in common use—what is a pipistrelle described as turning on? The tip of a hypodermic needle? The first 'a' in the Lord's Prayer written on the head of a pin?

** blondviolinist wrote: These bat posts are highly entertaining in the abstract, but I'm starting to worry for you a bit, Robin! (Well, for your house at any rate.)

Never mind the house! Worry about me!

*** Second floor in American.

† http://www.deborahvoigt.com/

†† Who is now saying next week he'll write a guest blog. I said that last week, didn't I? he said. Yes, I said. And the week before that.

††† Please don't laugh, I said. We moved out of a house with nine bedrooms and . . .

‡ Claning also posted last night:

Although if they eat bugs on the wing, why do they need all those TINY NEEDLE-LIKE TEETH? It's enough to give you the wrong idea. Birds that swoop after flying bugs in a fairly bat-like fashion make do just fine with beaks.

But bats are much smaller in relation to their prey. And they eat moths and other things that are slippery, and they do so in mid-air, so they only get one chance to grab them firmly — no shifting one's grip and trying again. This feeding on the wing business does have its drawbacks.

Bats, Inc

 

The Bat Lady is coming again tomorrow.

I am very tired. I'm very tired because I'm not sleeping, but it's also true that the not sleeping—which I'm reasonably sure would be happening anyway—is aggravated by the fact that I'm now jerking awake every time I hear small fluttery and/or whanging/blundering noises. Yes, pipistrelles are ridiculously cute*—as several people have commented in response to last night's photojournalism—even their infinitesimal faces are cute. Some bats have pretty bizarre noses and ears and things from the whole echolocation apparatus. Pipistrelles look how tiny flying mammals with big ears ought to look.** NOW ASK ME WHY I'M SO SURE THEIR FACES ARE CUTE.

Because they've started looking back at me. I noticed this last night with Hermione—she was remarkably unfazed by the presence of a Very Large Moving Thing (with a small device that kept blinking a tiny red eye at her) in the same room with her. This afternoon's bat*** was snuggled up in a corner of hellhound blanket that had fallen outside the crate. Hellbat indeed: staking her territory. She was waiting for us. At, it seems to me, considerable risk to life and limb, since the first creatures through the front door are usually the hellhounds. And indeed Darkness was on her at once, but all he did was point his nose at her and wag his tail and when I, fearing the worst, went to drag him off what I could guess was a bat, there she was looking perfectly serene.

The thing that is bothering me is that they're acclimating. First few I found downstairs were either frantic or collapsed—you didn't know for sure if they were alive or dead till it—she—feebly tried either to fend you off or to grab onto the dustcloth for support. Today, having stared down a hellhound several gazillion [insert weight measurement system of choice here] times bigger than she is†, when I knelt down beside her—hellhounds firmly on sit behind me†† she turned her face up and looked at me. Tell me I'm anthropomorphising. Go on, I dare you. The ones from a week or a fortnight ago were either comatose or trying to crawl under the nearest wall, bathtub, tea caddy, whatever. They did not want to know, and they were not having a good time. Today when I picked her up she made a tiny huffing noise—not at all like the aggrieved hiss of the first one, so long ago, before I knew what I was involuntarily getting into, and when I put her down under the honeysuckle she looked up at me again. Little bright eyes. Furry face. Enormous laid-back ears. And that odd, sort of shovel-shaped line of mouth.††† AND JUST BY THE WAY, BAT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WANDERING ALERTLY AROUND THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON????? YOU'RE A BAT. GO ROOST SOMEWHERE—but not in my house.

When I went outdoors again two minutes later with a fresh saucer of water she was already gone. Not miserable and exhausted.

Okay, maybe this one is Hermione. Maybe Hermione is EMoon's original rebellious adolescent bat with a crush on the hellgoddess gig. I do find it a little ominous that she chose to land on the Mc shelf‡ even if the McKinleys are off on their own—unappealingly down at floor level—and then there was the bedding down on my All Stars incident. And the hellhound blanket? Doesn't it smell like LARGE PREDATOR for pity's sake? I know that bats are themselves predators, but—for example—sparrows and robins run away from peregrines. Adolescents with crushes do, of course, often behave like loonies.

Maybe there's only really one acclimating bat.

AJLR wrote:

She was on this beam several minutes. She'd stroll along for a while, and then she'd groom for a while, and then she'd stroll some more.

Uh oh! I hope she wasn't crawling along on a recce and muttering in her little bat voice 'this crevice looks just right for Ermintrude, and that one there could be for Esmerelda, and the one over there could have been tailor-made for Eadgyth and her group'!

Yes. This is exactly what I'm worrying about. The Aga means it's nice and warm in the cottage.‡‡ You know the reason the bat mums congregate in nurseries? Because the babies are born naked, and the crèche needs to be pretty large to have enough 50p-piece-size-naked-baby bodymass to keep them all warm while the mums are out hunting.

Anyway. Where I began: Yes, pipistrelles are ridiculously cute, and I may have to find out how to print out copies of the literary bat and the chandelier bat. BUT I STILL DON'T WANT THEM IN THE HOUSE.

AND IT'S JUNE. THE BABIES ARE STARTING TO BE BORN ANY MINUTE.

Handbells were a disaster today. I couldn't keep my mind on the business somehow.

* * *

* Although if they eat bugs on the wing, why do they need all those TINY NEEDLE-LIKE TEETH? It's enough to give you the wrong idea. Birds that swoop after flying bugs in a fairly bat-like fashion make do just fine with beaks.

** And lots of needle-like teeth.

*** Siiiiiiiiiigh

† Possibly four thousand times. Five gram bat. Forty pound hellhound. Somebody else can do the maths, including all that conversion stuff.

†† There was a certain amount of semi-suppressed mmmmmmmmmOOOoooh back there, and some hot breath down my neck. But the basic fact of surviving hellhounds is Don't Run, so in the absence of something to chase they were reasonably willing to be (reasonably) obedient.

††† She didn't open her mouth and display her teeth. Tactful of her. She didn't want to scare me.

‡ I think I've got everything Vonda's ever written. I may have missed one or two of Pat's books. I keep meaning to check this: I don't want any omissions. But order—feh. My bookshelves are in better shape since Fiona took me in hand, but I'm really not trustworthy.

Also I think the books hold square dances on book-solstices, and I don't think they always reshelve themselves very soberly after these occasions.

‡‡ It is comparatively nice and warm under the roof, but it is warmer indoors on the other side of the house from the nursery, where the Aga is. Today's been pretty much our first warm day—it's been a cold as well as a dry spring, and I'm sure responsible bat mums are worrying about this. Also, there are now saucers of water all over the frelling house for thirsty bats, since I'm assuming dehydration is a significant contributing factor to bat collapse. —Oh, frell, that's why the recent rescuees are so sodding alert and frisky. The point is, Esmerelda, Ermintrude and Eadgyth are probably now in high-level consultation about how to convince a cranky hellgoddess to put a nice cardboard box with a folded-up towel inside on the counter next to the Aga. GAAAAAAAH.

A Day. With Bats.

 

Yes. I still have bats.

I believe there has been a certain cynical murmuring about my bats. Photos! so goes this murmur. We believe nothing we have not seen with our own eyes! You're a storyteller! You could be making it all up (because you lead such a boring life, with all the hellhounds, bells, roses, singing, chocolate, and other people's books! BORING! Not a single dragon! Not even a book tour*)!

I could be. But I'm not.

Nothing like Bela Lugosi.

Okay, maybe a little like Bela Lugosi.

About two-thirds along the beam, on the far side. She's waving.

She was on this beam several minutes. She'd stroll along for a while, and then she'd groom for a while, and then she'd stroll some more.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Two for the price of one. No, no, it's just the table-lamp shadow.

Literary bat.

HOW COOL IS IT TO HAVE A BAT CLIMBING ON YOUR CHANDELIER??? HOW TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY FRELLING COOL? You're all jealous. You know you are.

 

I'm just really, really, really, really, really glad that a few of the fifty or so photos I took are usable.** Someone who knew what they were doing could doubtless have got better photos out of my fancy, over-eager-to-please*** camera—but despite me it managed to cope with a small dark furry thing with a penchant for walking along dark tenebrous beams or flying at hellhound speeds with superfluous swooping—at twilight. And all without flash. Well, I didn't want to upset my bat. The weird shadows are because the only light was a table lamp.

So I may have fewer bats. But I still have bats.

I had closed the attic window last night when hellhounds and I got back to the cottage well after bat-launch for bat suppertime. Just in case there were any carelessly roosting in my attic. That should have been the end of it. Because Atlas had SEALED ALL THE CRACKS IN THE ATTIC YESTERDAY.

I really am too dumb to live. Yes, reader, I left the attic hatch open. But whenever it was that I got home to a bat-blizzard last week . . . eh, it was Wednesday again . . . I had stood at the bottom of the attic stairs staring in disbelief at the aerial careering going on overhead. But they stayed IN the attic. So, fool that I am, today I thought that supposing, just supposing, there were still a few teleporting bats in my attic tonight, they would at least stay up there and wait for me to get back and open the frelling window for them. Bats as small flying hellhounds. But the teleporting ones are the adventurers. I should have realised I was in trouble when I came in from an extended stint of gardening this evening and found a bat . . . lying on my All Stars. No, really. I was going to take hellhounds out and . . . there was a small furry thing ON THE ALL STARS I AM WEARING TODAY.  (Note that I garden in beat-up leather clogs.)  Geep. Yah. Dustcloth, I said. I rolled her up (gently) in a dustcloth†, put her under the honeysuckle and, since she was showing signs of holding on, I let her keep the dustcloth. When I went back two minutes later with a mini-plant-saucer of water for her, she was already gone. I said to myself, either this was a single bizarre one-off like anyone could find a bat lying on their All Stars—anyone!—or it's already too late. So fatalistically we went out for our hurtle.

Afterward I bundled hellhounds into the car and went into the cottage. And was not really surprised to hear faint skittery noises. I went upstairs and found a bat—this bat—trying to peel the screen off a corner of the bathroom window. Sigh. Mostly those screens are a good thing. She flew out and into my office . . . so I hastily opened an unscreened window. Bats know when there is an open window. Sure they do. Teleporting bats are the adventurers, as I said. She was in no hurry. She liked the beams, the books, the chandelier. Gah. I went (more) upstairs to open the attic window again and found a bat already there, patting the window glass impatiently. I'm coming, I'm coming, keep your hair on, I said. I opened the window. I came back down to office level. Hermione was still exploring the bookshelves and ignoring the open window. There was a crash behind me as another small furry flying thing engaged with the bamboo screen over the (closed) hall window. That's four.

I can only vouch for four. Which would be fewer than the bat-blizzard a week ago. Still . . . bats. Indoors. I watched Hermione for a minute or two longer—I was not going to leave my office window open: if she didn't find it now I was going to close it when I left for the mews and she could figure out the attic one again when she was tired of reading—which is when I finally bethought me of my camera. . . .

* * *

* I have, however, been failing to tell you that I'm doing a signing at the Forbidden Planet in London on 7 July. Details to follow. I keep forgetting. Duh. It's true, I'm hopeless.

** And—trust me—I would have no idea how to make up photos.

*** What do you want me to do! I can do this and this! I can do this and this and this and this and this and this and this! And this! And thisthisthisthisthisthisthisandthis!!!!! All you have to do is choose! —And then, of course, press the right frelling buttons.

† Sigh. This is not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to do the cardboard-and-shoebox thing, like the large, mammalian version of the glass and the piece of cardboard you use for getting bugs outdoors where they belong.^

^ Note that I was bitten by a ladybird today. Ahem. Stop that. I'm afraid this is probably the drought—they only bite people when they can't get anything better. Hellhounds and I were out hurtling, and I was mid-smash, assuming what was biting me was a deerfly, only it was a ladybird. We need our ladybirds. So I halted the violent downward progress of my hand and merely knocked the little freller off my arm. But it's clearly been a day for interactions with wildlife. Feh.

Navigational Follies

 

Today was Peter's appointment for his bone-density scan at the St Frumentious hospital. I also had Fiona coming today. I had managed not to notice till about three days ago that both these momentous events were happening on the same day.* I knew next Tuesday was Peter's bone scan. I knew next Tuesday was Fiona. I hadn't registered that these were the, you know, same next Tuesday.

And then there was Atlas, who was coming back today** with a tube of crack-sealant suitable for keeping the Titanic afloat, assuming there had been divers in arctic gear standing by for the moment of impact. I was maybe a little preoccupied with thoughts of the cracks and the sealant, and the possibility of premature baby bats scuba-ing in my water tank. So when the hellhounds and I got back to the cottage after the morning hurtle, Fiona having arrived in the meanwhile, I didn't immediately take note of her rather extraordinary headgear.

Then I took it away from her and made her take a photo of me.

Bats. It's BATS. And what's more, it's SPARKLY bats.

I also (excuses, excuses) had had another rotten night last night and was lurching around trying to remember anything at all,*** let alone details like bats and bone scans. I decided that in fact my lack of organizational skills in this instance was providential, and that Fiona could drive us to the hospital.

Mind you, I thought I was being a wimp. MANY people have told me that the St Frumentious hospital is really easy to find. Even Peter's next-door neighbour, who, like myself, has the navigational skills of a wet rock, told me it was easy to find. Oh yes, she said. The very first roundabout after you come off the motorway has a sign for the hospital. NO PROBLEM. But I thought hey, Fiona, she's here, why not. The bookshelves at Third House have been a disaster area for years, another month won't hurt. If I don't have to do the driving I might even make it to handbells this evening.

And then—and then!!!!! The next time I see Peter's neighbour I am—I am—no, I am not, Peter has to live here. But I'm going to think about it. Fiona has a theory to do with the little-acknowledged St Frumentious Triangle. You can drive into it—there may be distant cackling noises, but you think it's just the traffic—but once you're there you will spiral endlessly in a mist of orange construction-warning cones† and signs directing you to the Harrumphadilly Household Recycling Centre—which apparently has outposts north, west, south, east, and grumplemow, the grumplemow being the giveaway that you have entered another dimension. I'm still not sure how we made it to the hospital. Maybe we didn't make it to the hospital, maybe it was all a part of the hallucination . . . no, no, I'm sure we did make it, because we had a sub-Triangle experience, a sort of Hexagonatron, at the hospital, where there were lots and lots of signs, all of them telling us to go in a variety of wrong directions, so that we had paced out a ritual figure of great power by the time we arrived at our oft-deferred destination . . . causing the front desk check in to shut down with a snap moments before we arrived. We were thus left to make our wary way down a long dark deserted corridor to the very end where there was a sign saying bone density over the door, and on the door was another sign that said, Don't knock. Sit down and shut up. We'll come out and fetch you when we frelling well feel like it.

To my surprise, they did. Fetch Peter, that is. I assume they also gave him his scan. They at least implanted a memory to that effect. Fiona and I knitted.†† Then we leaped through the force field trying to compel us back the tortuous way we came, dodged the deadly laser blast and the bionic Rottweilers, attained Fiona's car . . . and then we had to escape St Frumentius.  Preferably heading back toward New Arcadia and not the Aleutian Islands.  I know I saw a sign for the Aleutians.  That was just before we got back off the motorway and turned around.  Again.

Well, we did it. But it wasn't easy. The next medical field trip that Peter needs, it's either in Mauncester or I'm demanding the NHS provide us with a helicopter.  And I've put in for Fiona's medal.  Although I imagine the bureaucratic details will be extreme.  They'll probably try to insist that the St Frumentius Triangle doesn't exist.

I even made it to handbells. Niall had told me that his Tuesday gang were meeting at his house tonight. He told me this somewhat emphatically, in the quiet, relentless, tunnel-vision Niall-about-handbells way, which is to say that even after I made a TOTAL rat's ass of tower practise last night††† he reminded me brightly that there were handbells tonight. I emailed him this morning during one of my breaks for more caffeine that I was probably not going to make it AND that this was the correct decision, and he emailed back by return electron, Glad we'll be seeing you tonight! Have a look at bob royal, since there will be FIVE of us!

Fortunately, however, I was not alone in my incapacity, and we stuck to plain hunt on ten. And—if I do say so myself—I was one of the steadier pairs.

*  *  *

* This is surprisingly easy to do, possibly even for people with relatively normal brains but a certain tendency to offhandedness. My stuff goes in my diary^. Peter's stuff goes on the calendar on the kitchen wall at the mews. Since Peter cannot be expected to grope around in my knapsack for my diary—and furthermore I can rarely read his handwriting—it is up to me to do more than keep glancing at the wall calendar and thinking, yes, next Tuesday, I won't forget, but I really should write it into my diary. . . .

^ My RINGING WORLD pocket diary. http://www.ringingworld.co.uk/purchase/diary-calendar-other/diary.html

This is so pathetically geeky. Nearly half the silly thing is nonsense about bells—early learning, method lines, touches, tips for ringing touches, guilds, associations, biggest bells BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH . . . there's even a diagram at the front of what a change-ringing bell and its frame look like, which is not for you because you already know, and therefore it is there clearly so you can whip it out and bore the socks off your non-ringing friends.

I love it. I wouldn't be without mine. I've been buying them for as many years as I've been in New Arcadia and started ringing again, and I try to order early because the idea of being without one some year is too appalling to contemplate. And this has nothing to do with my loathing for electronic diaries. I'm sure I could find a nice paper diary with roses on it, say.

** Yesterday was ANOTHER FRELLING BANK HOLIDAY. There have been WAY TOO MANY FRELLING BANK HOLIDAYS lately. The UK economy is going to finish going down the tubes if something isn't done about all these promiscuous holidays. And I have bats in my attic. Have I mentioned the BATS IN MY ATTIC lately? Bats don't take holidays.^

^ Or maybe they do.  Maybe I'm going to go up there tonight to see how things are going and find them playing poker and eating salted peanuts and popcorn.

*** I can remember how to make a cup of tea and/or unwrap a bar of chocolate under any circumstances.

† No workpersons of course. Just the cones.

†† Fiona is making a shawl of great beauty and . . . neatness.

Look at all those TINY LITTLE EVEN STITCHES! AAAAAAAAAAUGH!

I am still sewing up Secret Project #1 in . . . increasing despair.

††† VERY VERY SLIGHTLY in my defense, it wasn't at a tower, it was at Colin's evil flower-pot mini-ring. I keep telling myself that I've got used to these wretched tiny bell-things. I'm lying.

GRAVEMINDER by Melissa Marr

 

Because I am a MORON—also because I don't keep track even when I should and mean to, and furthermore this time of year my head is full of roses, but chiefly because I'm a moron—I've managed to miss that Melissa Marr's GRAVEMINDER came out . . . um . . . well, I hope it was recently.* My attention was finally caught when I was half-attentively scrabbling through old tweets and saw that Melissa** herself had posted that USA TODAY had liked GRAVEMINDER. Woohoo Melissa!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2011-05-26-Graveminder-by-Melissa-Marr_n.htm  ***

I read it a while ago, when it was still only in pages. In my slow elderly way I don't get the business about creating 'buzz' by blogging and reviewing and talking about a book long before pub date, so unless I have a publicist nagging me I will probably wait till the book's available and I can tell you that you should check it out. The problem with that system is the likelihood that I will forget. . . .

You can read a plot summary and cover fluff on line, as well as some very nice reviews, both blog and (gasp!) other media. What's important to me is that Melissa's gift for ordinary people shines in this book too. There isn't anyone out there who doesn't know her WICKED LOVELY series, is there?† One of the pleasures of it is that ordinary-people-rising-to-extraordinary-circumstances thing that I'm so fond of, both as a reader and a writer. †† GRAVEMINDER is very different from WICKED LOVELY, but its main characters have a not-dissimilar ordinary familiar reality to them†††—including an obstinate determination to remain ordinary when they clearly are nothing of the kind. Part of the way Marr's books draw you in is that sense that these are people you might know, who might live down the street from you. You might even be one yourself. Eeep.

Big eeep in this case. Byron has long known what is ahead of him; Bek ran away from finding out what was ahead of her. But she comes back to Claysville when her grandmother dies, her grandmother who used to attend all—repeat, all—the funerals in town, and perform an odd little ritual: three sips from a silver flask and the words: Sleep well, and stay where I put you. Another of the pleasures of Marr's stories is her feel for folklore: I totally believe in something called a graveminder, and who must, as part of her job description, attend all the funerals in her town, take three sips from a flask and say these particular words.

This is a horror novel, of course‡: the dead walk, and do horrible things, the way the walking dead usually do. But it's an old-fashioned horror novel—I say that cheering and waving banners—in that the horrors are in the atmosphere, in what isn't told, in the aftermath of those untold horrors—in the choices that the characters have to make—in the choices the characters have taken away from them. I've said often enough that I don't do graphic horror—it squicks me out—I find it both gross and boring. But GRAVEMINDER is a page-turner—the kind of sneaky, understated creepy that gets you by the ankle and won't let you go. There are a lot of best frisson bits: the chief 'villain' is probably my favourite of these, and one scene involving her is one of the most macabre I've read anywhere—while not really telling you a thing. Also, her part in the denouement is . . . splendid. Icky and splendid.

I think there are rumours of a sequel?, although with my standard flimsy Google-fu I'm failing to find anything I can provide a link to.‡‡ There is certainly plenty in this story Marr could go on with, if she (or the story) is so, ahem, minded. I think I read GRAVEMINDER before it was final-final-final; there may be more (or fewer) loose ends in the finished book. I plan to reread it and find out.

* * *

*Very slightly in my defense, it's apparently not available over here yet. The Book Depository is supposed to tell me when I can buy it, and when I checked today they seem to be saying the hardback passed silently and invisibly through availability a week or two ago and may or may not be obtainable again some time in this dimension, and the paperback is coming out in July. I am in this case going to attempt to hold out for the hardback which from what my computer screen is telling me has a killer cover

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Graveminder-Melissa-Marr/?isbn=9780061826870

Although the paperback looks pretty cool too

 http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Graveminder-Melissa-Marr/9780007349272

** Yes, I even follow her on Twitter and I still hadn't noticed. Twitter is a little . . . overwhelming, you know? I only follow 40-odd people, places and things and I still can't keep up.^ And the real people tend to get lost among the I-should-be-paying-attention-but-I-don't-want-to stuff from all the what's-happening-in-publishing sites.

^ I can't even begin to imagine what the people who are following 100s or even 1000s of other twitterers are getting out of it. And how they're getting anything out of it at all, except stress saturation.

*** It's an unnecessarily weird photo though. Try

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/175855.Melissa_Marr

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/31765/Melissa_Marr/index.aspx

† I admit I haven't finished it, but that's because it's fallen into the Saving For Later category. I'm both a slow reader and someone who likes to look forward to something she's going to enjoy. Also coming to the end of a complex, engrossing series is sad. Then there won't be anything to do but read it again! —Plus my slight cowardly fear that she may not do absolutely everything the way I want her to^ and I'll come to the end of DARKEST MERCY going noooooooo! I mean, it's not the most reassuring title, is it?

^ I do love reading other writers' calm, gentle, polite rebuffs to importunate readers. I often wonder if it costs them anything, the calm, gentle, polite thing. But it is reassuring that other writers have importunate readers too.

†† We're all kings, queens, pegasi and dragons really.^

^ If you're a vampire, don't tell me about it.

††† It's being billed as 'Melissa Marr's first adult novel'. Yaaaaaawn. Okay, the main characters are out of school and earning a living but—so? Teenagers will read GRAVEMINDER and adults are reading WICKED LOVELY. Let's all take a deep breath and read what we want to read.

‡ Well, it's an 'of course' to me. Those more learned in genre may disagree.

‡‡ Here we go.

http://melissa-writing.livejournal.com/369137.html

Give up and be looking for something else and then you'll find it.

My Jungle

 

The view from the hellhound courtyard at the kitchen door. Enter at your peril.

It's not absolutely all roses.  There are a few freshly planted dahlias that you can't see unless you're really good at differentiating one green leaf from another.*  And how about a nice poppy?

Poppy in MORNING sunlight. That's MORNING sunlight.

She's just off screen to the left.  Or a nice miniature clematis in a hanging basket: 

Yes, I should PLANT her in her hanging basket. But this is the famous hanging-basket pole that BOWS under the weight of a, er, hanging basket. I found this out AFTER I had Atlas cement it into place so it would stop taking out the rose that climbs up it every time it levered itself out of the ground. If I planted her she'd weigh more.

She's just out of sight on the right hand side.  Her name is Filigree . . . and in the process of scampering through the Taylors Clematis site http://www.taylorsclematis.co.uk/ to rediscover this since of course her label has been eaten by wolves, I've compiled quite the little list of new clematis I'm sure I need.  **

But I admit there are a lot of roses.  That dark red babe on the right is Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which has–heretofore–always been a total flimsy fainting heroine–she even died on me at the old house.  I'm not even sure why I bothered to try again at the cottage when I have NO space for flimsy and fainting.  But–when she produces them–she really does have flowers to swoon over.

Mmmmmm. She also smells divine. It is perverse how many red roses there are that have no smell.

Her first couple of years at the cottage she tried the feeble thing and I was like yeah, yeah, get on with it, either pull yourself together or croak so I can put something else in there.   I do keep feeding her.  Last year she was pretty good and this year she's amazing.

Amazing.

She grows in a great tangle with Mme Isaac [Periere], who also likes to bow and lean, but of course I have completely failed to get a persuasive photo of this phenomenon.  This is one of those things about photographing gardens that many of you will know:  your eye picks out the flowers.  The camera relentlessly points out that actually the view is mostly green. 

And the combined scent--Mme Isaac has a notoriously powerful fragrance--will make you drunk. Or at least a little giggly.

The flowers are unmistakably different as soon as you have the chance to compare them.  Mme Isaac is a deep raspberry pink;  Tess is rich dark red.  Mme Isaac is a genuine old rose and Tess is one of David Austin's little darlings,  and clearly modern.  But hey.  With roses this superb, whatever. 

Roses. Mmmmmmmm. Roses.

To Be Continued. 

* * *

*Plants.  Gaaah.  I have [rmmph] dahlias to plant out, standing in little rows in their little pots.   They arrived as cuttings, and you whap them into small pots to give them a chance to develop a root system, and then you put them where you want them to grow and be dazzling.  You watch them–well, theoretically you watch them–so you can get them out of their little pots before they get cramped and cranky.^   So I'm trying to plant them out as they're ready.  I have one that's already a good two foot high so I thought, yeep, get that one planted.  So I Prepared the Hole and tipped her out and . . . she has no visible root system yet.  The faintest of white threads.  GAAAAAAAH.  I planted her anyway.

^ Although I've grown some astonishingly large dahlias in astonishingly small pots when I've not been paying attention.  Oh, gods, I'd say, and dump a little more flower food on it, and stab in another bamboo pole for it to lean on.

** I also seem to have lost most of an hour.  Hmmm.