Robin McKinley's Blog, page 134

A Not So Bell-Free Holy Week, Continued

 

I didn't sleep very well last night either.*  And when I finally rolled groaning out of bed I thought, well, never mind, I don't have to do anything at any kind of speed today.** So we got down to the mews*** and I settled in for a long slow day of putting ooooooone syllllllllable after another when . . . Niall popped up in my email.  Hey, he said, my Tuesday handbell gang are ringing a peal of Constabulary Cantabile Maximus, which I don't ring . . . and I was thinking, it's Holy Week so there's no tower practise, let's get Wild Robert to ring handbells. 

            Note that Niall had said last night† that he was going to stay in tonight and revise†† for the several peals he is ringing in the near future.  But I am a flibbertigibbet and a frivolous baggage, and I immediately thought, Hey!  What a great idea!  —This was, however, about 2:30 in the afternoon and we were talking about tonight.  I'll email him, I emailed back to Niall†††, but I bet we don't get an answer.  —Wild Robert is a trifle notorious for not answering emails.  ‡

            I then went back to my syllables‡‡ and . . . about three minutes later there was a mad flurry of email headings surging over a corner of my screen, which was Niall and Wild Robert sorting out our evening for us.  For reasons unknown to ordinary ringers Wild Robert's Tuesday tower does meet even during Holy Week.  But, he said, if you want handbells, we could meet before and then you could stay on for tower practise.  Hey!  Wait for me! I yelled, finishing a syllable.

            Suddenly it's almost three o'clock and Niall is picking me up at six.  AAAAUGH.  So of course I paid strict attention to finishing my chapter, right?  Wrong.  Of course I reached for Pooka.  I had absurd visions of getting through that second lead of Cambridge.‡‡‡  When I tucked Pooka the Magic Bell App iPhone away again to take hellhounds for a somnolent hurtle I marched along going 'one two three four five six one two three four five six one two three four five six get your butts in gear guys one two three four five six I said MOVE IT one two three four five six one two three four five six. . . .'  Have I mentioned that ringing methods on handbells is a Count or Die proposition?  Except you may die anyway.

            Chappington Fritworthy is one of these insanely pretty English villages where you say, oh, come on, get the TV crews out of here and take your ridiculous plastic facades with you.  It's another one, like Tir nan Og, which isn't actually on any main road, so you trundle along a series of exciting back roads, playing dodgem with the SUV army that now owns the English countryside grrrrrrrrrr§, although there are a lot more roads to Chappington Fritworthy they're just all of them little.  And whichever one you're on will nonetheless spill you out next to the village green and the pond.  All roads to Chappington Fritworthy lead to Chappington Fritworthy's pond.  There's a duck house on Chappington Fritworthy's pond, out in the middle, on little stilt legs, with a ramp.  The duck house is thatched.  It's that kind of a village.  

            We were a little early so I wandered around muttering under my breath about insanely pretty villages and how anyone who lived here should be required to do 200 hours of community service in an inner city council estate.  Wild Robert appeared eventually on his lean mean racing machine . . . Wild Robert is possibly the only person I have ever met who is thinner than his bicycle.§§   I'm sure he can walk through closed doors simply by turning sideways and slipping through the crack between the door and the jamb.

            Anyway.  We rang handbells.  Mostly we rang a couple of long touches of bob minor, and it was hard to decide whether it was more gratifying that there was actually the occasional fractional pause in the perfect rhythm of Wild Robert's ringing or more droolingly infuriating that that was all there was, since he's not a handbell ringer and hasn't since the last time he rang with Niall and me—which must be at least three years ago.  Well, my bob minor has improved since then.  And then we rang . . . the first lead of Cambridge minor.  Which I am still a little creative with but it is, as I said last Thursday, recognisable.  In my defense I wasn't planning on having to bring it out again for public inspection till next Thursday—a lot can happen in two days.   The droolingly infuriating thing here is that Wild Robert rang frelling Cambridge frelling Minor just as competently as he rang bob minor—it isn't fair.  I also can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing that when Niall said 'let's try the first lead of Cambridge' Wild Robert didn't gaze at me with disbelief and amazement but merely raised his bells and looked thoughtful.

            Then we stayed for tower practise.  I keep allowing myself to forget how much fun it is ringing for Wild Robert just because getting to any of his practises any more is so dranglefabbing impractical.  Touch of Grandsire doubles! he said.  Robin, you take the five, that's a good bell to call it from.  Blah erg.  I keep trying to sweep my conducting career back under the rug again.  This time however I wrote the instructions down, so I could conceivably do it again some time without Wild Robert there to prompt . . . and since Niall was following the proceedings closely, I suspect I'm probably For It sooner rather than later. 

            There were various other dramas§§§ and then Wild Robert called for frelling Union again.  He had Tilda and Niall and me ringing it at Crabbiton whenever that was, so it has a faint haze of almost-familiarity, but it's pretty faint and very almost, and then he insisted on calling a touch, and what happens to you if you're at the back when a call is made in Union is indescribable torment and remember I said that ringing methods on handbells is Count or Die and you may die anyway?  Counting won't save you, trying to stagger through a call at the back of Union.  Look, I'm bleeding.

* * *

* I dreamed the hellhounds and the roses were talking back.  It wasn't funny in the dream.  

** It's also been our first really warm day, which has unravelled hellhounds.  They're all over me when I rattle the harnesses but as soon as we get through the door and the sunlight goes wham they fall into limp skeins of vaguely dog-shaped unravelledness.   

*** And the bad news is . . . the hospital cancelled our Falling Down clinic.  Or rather, they say that Peter was signed up for the wrong clinic and they don't have space in another Falling Down clinic till mid May.  Right at the moment the NHS is not high on my list of favourite gigantic incompetent faceless bureaucracies.  

† Over a beer at the pub.  Ahem.  

†† Weird British verb for study.  You don't study for exams, you revise for them.  I always imagine revising your ideas about the worth of formal education. 

††† How did we live without email?  —Well, I, phone-allergic that I am, stayed home more.  

‡When he's on the [bell] district admin, as he has a habit of being, this has been known to make other people cranky.  

‡‡ There may also have been a little Twittering involved.  

‡‡‡ Not even CLOSE.  I get to making horrible places—about halfway through the second lead—with a second bell to worry about—and I crumble into a gibbering idiot.  GAAAAAAAAAH. 

§ Niall's car and Wolfgang are vying for last place in the Hampshire's Tattiest Vehicle list.  His is a couple of years younger, but it has more miles on it, and he has more stuff in his back seat than I do—boxes of maps and professional kit (he's an engineer)—but none of them shed dog hair, or require to be towelled off after a muddy hurtle. 

§§ Given that neither his physique nor his ringing ability is human . . . he could be fey, of course, but I think he's probably part demon. 

§§§ Including a long touch of bob doubles that had two of the other ringers asking eagerly, how much of a quarter was that . . . so I think maybe I'll ask Wild Robert if I should invite either of them to ring a practise quarter with us.

Life, that beggar

 

So, last night, off-handedly, Peter says that he thinks the pain is getting worse not better.

            WHAAAAAT?????

            I didn't sleep too well last night.  And when I did sleep I had anxiety dreams so lurid and overwrought they'd be funny if they were happening to someone else.*  And then, of course, I slept through my alarm, which I had set at 6:30 or so because I wasn't sleeping—but I knew I would fall irrevocably into oblivion about twelve minutes before I was due to get up and I needed to ring the surgery as soon as they opened about getting Peter in to see someone today.   Whereupon the phone rang at 10 o'clock and it was Peter wanting to know what plans I had made for the day, especially if they included dragging him off to the surgery . . . which conversation was made more interesting than necessary by the fact that the landline at the cottage is having one of its possessed-by-demons fits of manic static.  This one began in the middle of a conversation with Hannah, so it wasn't anything I did, unless breathing and knitting are now on the proscribed list for conversations using BT wiring, and the usual pathetic excuse about rain getting into the crucial grrbbjjjt connections doesn't seem likely in the middle of a drought.**  At least in this case I knew it was Peter and could make an educated guess what he wanted.***

            I had just finished looking at the clock and screaming when the phone rang again and it was Mehitabel at the church office.  Remember the CRB check?  Criminal Records Bureau?  Because anyone who might want to teach another person to ring change methods can be assumed to be a dangerous lunatic and a threat to the fabric of society?  Yes.  This topic is so manifestly annoying without any help that the phone static shut up to listen.

            They had sent my painstakingly filled-out form back.  Due to irregularities about my name.  Look, the full whack is Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley Dickinson and I don't use all of it.  But dangerous lunatics frequently have unnecessarily long names so they have to be careful.†  So we had to go through the whole frelling *&^%$£"!!!!! thing again.  ARRRRRGH. ††

            Peter and I only had to wait about thirty-five minutes at the doctor's†††, a mere bagatelle for the cattle-call‡ that is an open surgery.  The doc we drew clearly thought I needed a stiffish sedative—something suitable, say, for an elephant—and I felt like saying, you Brits lead such sheltered lives.  But he said that These Things Take Time, and More Time Than That When You Get Old . . . and that the apparent worsening of Peter's pain has probably been caused by the endless dicking around with his painkillers, trying to find one without the fascinating array of intolerable side effects.  And he also told us more about the Falling Down‡‡ Clinic we're going to on Thursday—I wasn't, originally, going along too, but I've decided I'd rather know EXACTLY what's happening—which does at least sound like what we wanted.  Small favours and all that.

            And then we came home again (via the pharmacist) and collapsed in our various ways.  Peter had a nap and I . . . knitted.

            And then, because I am mad, I went bell ringing.  It's Holy Week so I'd assumed we wouldn't have Monday practise—having forgotten that Colin has a (secular) mini-ring in his garage.  Sometimes I think I'd rather forget that Colin has a mini-ring in his garage.  I am going to learn to ring the nasty little frelling things,  I am.  And we did get through plain courses of bob triples and bob major which was . . . amusing. 

            And at this point I'm so tired . . . I wouldn't be surprised to find I have eight hellhounds.  But I really don't want the cottage to have disappeared.  I don't feel like making up one of the beds at Third House.  Besides, if I have eight hellhounds, I'm going to need two houses.  As well as eight arms, sixteen legs, and a best-seller to pay for all the chicken.

 * * *

* One of the more absurd and therefore repeatable dreams was that I got back from hurtling hounds and discovered that the cottage had disappeared.  The front steps were still there, but instead of a front door with a house around it there was . . . nothing.  I could see the garden, which still seemed to be there.^  And I thought vaguely, well, I can plant more roses. . . . And then I looked down and discovered I had about eight hellhounds.  

^I don't remember what the shelves attached to the wall outside my kitchen window were doing.  Held up by caryatids possibly. 

** Could be squirrel pee.  Squirrels get into everything.  

*** I have a message on my answerphone right now that I can hear so little of I have no idea what it's about.  "Hello, this is GRAAAAAAHZZZZZZZZZZGGGGGTTTTTT and I wanted to ask you about the ZZZZZZZZZKHKHKHKHKHKHRRRRRRR and if you'd please drop me an email at ZRRRRKKKKAAAAAAZZZZZZGGGGGG.  Thanks so much, talk to you soon ZGZGZGZGZGZGZGZAGZAGZKKKKKKKK."  If I get desperate enough I can ring Peter back on Pooka.  I can't ring Graaahz back because I don't know who she is.

† There's a whole chapter about it in the DSM IV.

†† This time their Random Checker will declare that all hellhound owners must be asked additional questions.  You know they wanted the name of my first school?  I haven't the faintest pebbledashing idea what the name of my first school was.  It was in California.  I never, ever got to play in the sandbox because it was too small and was always crammed with of other kids.  And I was bullied relentlessly by a boy in first grade—I was in kindergarten—who looked bigger than Godzilla to me.  I hope his true love jilted him and his first novel never sold.  And that the teachers who looked the other way because 'kids have to learn how to deal with life' have boils in sensitive areas and noisy neighbours.

††† And no, I didn't knit.  I read.  I do still read.  But I had my knitting with me.  Just in case.

‡ Moooooo

‡‡ = Prevention

Bluebells and various

 

I think I got some work done this weekend.  I forget.  I've been outdoors a lot.  Fresh air and sunlight are dangerous to the middle-aged.  It gives them ideas above their mature responsible (creaky) station.  I was thinking as I plonked another rose* into Third House's garden yesterday that there are actually beginning to be stretches of that garden that feel like mine.  Chiefly the ones that have lots of roses in them, but it's a start.  This is the problem with taking over someone else's garden:  figuring out what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of, and how to make someone else's old bits and your new bits Work Together in a Harmonious Whole.  I don't do harmonious wholes too well.**

            Georgiana rang up this morning from the wilds of Sussex and said that she was getting out of her seminar early and would we like to go to a garden somewhere this afternoon?  And we decided to go look at bluebells.  Which meant the hellhounds and I had to go out and find some suitable for Peter's limited ambulatory range.   We came home with a short list which Peter promptly trumped by declaring which wood he wanted to look at.  So we went there. 

Also there are lambs

 

AWWWWWWWW

Also very good sky

In fact, never mind the lambs. Look at that sky.

This is what I think of when I think of 'the bluebell wood'. But it runs a little later than some of the others, and isn't quite out yet.

But . . . coming.

This is where we all went this afternoon. Bluebells, by George. Or possibly William. Or Elizabeth. Or Kate. Bluebells, by Kate.

This is so doorway-to-fairyland to me. Especially when there's a really clear demarcation, as here. One step you're in the mundane world, next step . . .

The local wizard, commanding a miracle.

The wizard's tree. Now, I ask you, isn't it clearly the sentinel to fairybluebellland?

Georgiana captures the local wizard and the hellgoddess with her hellhounds

* * *  

* Comtesse du Cayla http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/comtesse-du-cayla/ but she's a better colour than this.  Beales calls her red-orange which is nonsense:  she's copper-pink.^  She's also been in a pot for the last two years and the pot decided to burst.  Thanks, pot.  It was even plastic—the only excuse for plastic pots over terra cotta is that they don't burst.^^   But when this one burst, after I finished dancing around and howling, I thought, oh, what the hell, let's put her in the ground just for laughs. 

^ I have both of the roses at the bottom of her page too.+  Just by the way.  

+ Euphrates is a major ratbag, but that's another story.  What I want to know is how they get from a nice little China rose like the Comtesse to recommending the possessed-by-demons 'species' Euphrates?  I notice that even Peter Beales, champion of all things perverse in the queendom of roses, doesn't quite stretch to selling Tigris or Nigel Hawthorne which are Euphrates' siblings.  When I decided not to ruin my nice friendly laid back easy going nature# by growing Tigris and Nigel again I didn't realise I wasn't going to have the chance.  Rats.  I like a stupid challenge, especially when it's a rose.## 

# Roses are dangerous

 ## Tipsy Imperial Concubine seems to have come out of her winter in the greensummerhouse happy and jolly and ready for business.  We'll see.  She does seem to be another of these frellers whose flowers are UTTERLY SPOILT BY RAIN.  Gah.  At least there's a lot less of her than there is Souvenir de la Malmaison, who was trying to poke me in the eye this afternoon at the cottage. 

^^ Okay, they're cheaper, they also weigh a lot less and don't need as much watering.  But if it weren't for terra cotta's propensity for dissolving into tiny splintery shards as soon as it gets cold—and don't talk to me about pot feet:  pot feet are another of those royal-pain-in-the-butt myths foisted on a gullible gardening public—I would never use plastic. 

** Ask anyone who rings bells with me.  Assuming there's Monday night practise tomorrow as usual I will have rung five days in a row.   Ahem.  This is, of course, nothing compared to Niall, who will ring eight or nine times in seven days if Penelope doesn't hide his car keys and/or lock him in a cupboard.  Thursday was handbells, Friday was sacred home tower bell practise, this morning was service ring . . . and I went to a Special Seminar on Grandsire Triples last night which was . . . ahem.  Well, time on a rope is always a good thing, it was a tower I didn't know, the bells were nice and the people were friendly and . . . did I say ahem?  Ahem.  But they're going to do it again next month and I'm going again.  We can only get better.  I hope we can only get better.  And while I was sitting out waiting my next disastrous turn pretending to ring Grandsire Triples inside I knitted an ENTIRE hellhound square.  To the considerable amusement of several of the assembled.  At least one Madame Defarge joke was heard.  Knitting is perfect for sitting out—what is everyone else's problem?  AHEM.  One of the minders—minders didn't have the option of sitting out—told me that she'd just bought HOW TO KNIT YOUR OWN ROYAL WEDDING but she wasn't going to start till after, of course, because she wanted to see what everyone was wearing.  Which, if you are going to knit your own royal wedding, seems to me very sensible.  I fear I belong rather more to the leave the country now camp, like Georgiana's horticultural society, who've organised a tour of Belgian gardens for that weekend.

Photo Shoot: Guest Post by Diane_in_MN

 

Let me start by saying that I don't dress up my dogs.  No puppy T-shirts or bandannas, no hats or sunglasses, no rain slickers and sou'westers, no costumes.  They have wet-down coats, to keep them comfortable ringside at summer outdoor shows, but that's show equipment.  And I torture them every couple of years with antlers and Santa hats for Christmas photos, but they don't have to wear the antlers and Santa hats out in public.  But on a cold Friday afternoon, Teddy and I were at a photo studio, modeling three outfits for possible use in Big Retailer's packaging and marketing of Halloween costumes for dogs.

Ms. Photographer, who was doing the shoot, had met me about ten years ago, when I auditioned my bitch Zinka for a dog food commercial.  As I recall, a friend had passed the audition information on to me: the dog food company wanted dogs of all sizes that could hold a sit-stay or stand-stay while being filmed.  As it turned out, Zinka passed the audition and was used in the commercial; she got four or five seconds in a thirty-second spot, for which we had to hang around a studio for seven or eight hours while they filmed the rest of it.*  As a result of that, I stayed in Ms. Photographer's universe, and about a year ago took Teddy to an open audition.  He was then around a year and a half old, capable of holding a sit or stand, and not too likely to be freaked out by lighting and cameras.  He didn't make it into Ms. Photographer's database last year, but he did behave pretty well, and I was planning to take him to her next open audition this year.

But Ms. Photographer kept my e-mail address on file, and had me on her contact list when she set up auditions for this shoot.  Big Retailer was looking for a lot of different dogs—apparently the market for canine Halloween costumes is robust, and they wanted to show them on dogs of all sizes and shapes—but they did have specific breeds on their list, one of which was the Great Dane.  So I took Teddy to audition for the job.

The audition worked very much like an open one.  We showed up, signed in, and then waited for our turn behind however many dogs were still ahead of us.  When they were ready for us, we went back to the set: a sheet of bright white material pulled down from the ceiling to make a backdrop and floor, lit by short and tall standing lamps with umbrella-shaped reflectors.  Ms. Photographer took a few body and head shots, then a few of Teddy wearing a hat, and that was that.

We got the word a week or so later that he'd made the cut and was scheduled for pictures on the following Friday.  I packed up my dog bag with treats, squeaky toys, and the indispensable spit towel and we headed off to the studio on the day.  Big Retailer had called quite a few dogs back for these pictures and they were shooting on two sets, but our time slot was right after lunch, so there weren't a lot of other dogs around when we got there.  We didn't have to wait long to head back to the cameras, and then came . . . THE COSTUMES.**

The first one was quite feminine—indeed, it was little-girl pink and might have been chosen by a five-year-old for her own Halloween costume.  Big Retailer's representatives didn't seem to think that putting this outfit on a Great Dane with a very masculine head was at all incongruous.  Teddy wasn't too sure that he liked this costume, although once he got it on and couldn't see it, he was more comfortable with it.  I kept him on lead and stayed in front of him for these pictures in case he had problems holding his stay, but he did quite well and we were able to take him off lead for the rest of the session.  I also was able to leave him on the set—the same white-background-and-standing-lamp arrangement as for the audition, with a white-tape non-slip grid on the floor to mark where the dogs should sit—and stand back by the camera, which made it easier for the photographers to get him to look at them.

Once they had enough pink costume shots, they brought out a second costume.  This one was yellow and had strange headgear as well as a coat, and was barely able to get around Teddy's chest.  (Big Retailer should take a look at its sizing, because Teddy, while a big dog, isn't a big Great Dane; their marketing folks need to know that "extra large" is not necessarily big enough for a giant-sized dog.)  A safety pin and an extra piece of fastener kept the coat in place, and Ted did a great job of sitting still off-lead.  He did keep his tail well tucked under, though, and they wanted to see his tail in the pictures.  So after he was relieved of the costume, they took a few pictures of him sitting with a visible tail, and through the magic of digital photo editing that tail will be available if needed.

There was some time left in our session and Teddy had settled down nicely, so they decided to try a third costume.  This one's headpiece was not designed for a dog with upright ears, but Ted was a trouper by this time and put up with having his ears flattened and covered.  The photographers took a suite of pictures, and then we were done.

We won't know until fall if Big Retailer actually uses any of these pictures on their packaging or advertising.  They put the same costumes on a lot of dogs.  But it's very possible that I will walk into my local Big Retailer store next September, check out the dog supply aisle, and see my dog looking out at me from under a funny hat.  It wouldn't make me buy him a Halloween costume, but it would be a hoot.  And then I'd come back with a camera and take a few pictures myself.***

___________________________________

*  You probably never saw this commercial, and I saw it only on a video recording, because even though the voiceover was in English, it was apparently made for broadcasting in Latin America.  Go figure.

** Unfortunately I can't describe these costumes, as they are part of Big Retailer's new fall merchandise and have to stay under wraps until they go on sale.  That's the fashion biz, I guess.

*** Since I can't provide you pictures of Big Retailer's costumes, here are Teddy and the Alpha Bitch wearing funny hats at home. (These were taken a couple of years ago; Tasha hasn't changed much, but Teddy's still got that puppy look here .)

Tasha, in reindeer disguise.

Teddy, a more worried reindeer.

Being a girl

 

I was thinking about this this morning—about being a girl—because I pulled a few forum comments about it out last night, and then went off in some other direction in last night's blog, as I am wont to do.  But this morning I was thinking about it as I stared at the cardigan I was planning on wearing, which has a lot of different colours in it*, and deciding which t-shirt—a nice, pretty, girlie t-shirt—would look best under it, the blue?  the turquoise? the orange? the yellow?**  I settled on the blue, but with the orange coral bead necklace.  All of this matters to me, you see.  And it matters whether anyone is going to see me but Peter*** and the hellhounds or not;  I dress for me.  Although dressing for me includes that I waste enough time on articles of clothing, which are frequently as possessed by demons as technology ever is†, so I'm damned if I'm going to tangle with make up too, so I don't††, and that from the waist down I'm always in jeans or a jeans-equivalent because of the whole hellhounds/gardening/outdoor/messy thing.  I love skirts, especially big full swirly ones, but trousers are easier.  And All Stars, of course.  I'm what you might call a practical girlie girl.  Still . . . girlie.  This was one of my shattering moments of late, reluctant self-acceptance . . . oh, in my late thirties somewhere.  I'M A GIRL!  GET USED TO IT! 

          These are all from Silly Day, Part the First . . . and this first one's not about girlyness at all, but forgive me for succumbing to the temptation . . .

Catlady 

. . . My favorite Diana Wynne Jones book is probably The Dark Lord of Derkholm 

Which is dedicated to MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.  Just by the way.  Although anyone with the first American ed won't have it.  The British does.  I've posted a photo of the dedication page of—I think it's the Finnish—edition, haven't I?  For some reason it amuses me immoderately. 

boddhi_d 

I spent most of my adolescence & early adulthood struggling with 'femininity.' I have wider-than usual shoulders & ribcage, so no matter what I weighed, I always felt 'sturdy' – more like a football player than a cheerleader. Then add to that a number of 'masculine' traits (good at math & science; never wore make-up; independent; read sf & mystery novels; shopping for clothes was a chore) – there were times when I questioned my gender.

I'm certainly with you on the struggle, but my angle, somewhat curiously, has been rather different than most of you who posted about yours.  I prided myself on being a tomboy but I was also quite a bit girlier a girl than I was at all happy about.  I've always loved clothes and jewellery and dressing up—as above—even if I've learnt a compromise that allows me to be in gardening-and-hurtling jeans too—and I've always loved cooking;  I was about eleven when I started spending Saturday mornings making pies while I watched the cartoons.   And while I failed on the knitting front the first time, I did an awful lot of embroidery, and enjoyed it too.  But I wanted to be a boy.  Oh, gods and glory, did I ever want to be a boy.  I knew I wasn't one—this has nothing to do with questions of transgender—I was a girl, that low, despicable, nearly useless thing.  I grew up in an old-fashioned military family and I'm telling you, girls were nothing.  Girls were less than nothing.  And of course—as I've written elsewhere—all the best books were about boys having adventures and girls staying at home.  (As I've written elsewhere:  one of the places THE BLUE SWORD comes blazing from is THE SHEIK by EM Hull, where a girl dares to have adventures . . . and is kidnapped by a sheik and raped, which is to say punished and broken until she likes it, because, after all, she's a girl, and it is not for girls to go out and do things . . . and then it's okay after all because he's really a scion of a fine old English family.  This is an English novel, you know, with a nice English heroine.  INSERT THE EXTREMES OF BAD LANGUAGE HERE.  And it was a gigantico-gazilliono-monstero best seller in its day.)  

          In hindsight I wonder how much my extreme allergy to (most) science and (most) maths was learnt rather than innate;  by the time I got to school I already knew that I was a girl and doomed.   Peter, by the way, thinks there's nothing wrong with my maths brains, only with my attitude.

Emoon 

I came to hate the term "feminine" because it always seemed to mean someone else. I have two X chromosomes, never wanted to "be" a boy, but was always drawn to "traditionally" more male interests–outdoors (YES!), active (YES!), science (YES!), etc. I like the colors men are supposed to like (dark or intense colors) rather than pastels most of the time. It took decades to believe that since I am, in fact, female…what I am is female ENOUGH.

Which is interesting, because you're my age, so I can't just blame it on my era.  But then your mum was a single mum, I think?  And an engineer.  Mine was a housewife.  I was raised to believe that a woman should have a college degree in case her husband died and she had to go to work to  support her children.  I'm not joking. 

          I felt too female in the wrong ways.  I wanted to be more of a tomboy, since that was the nearest I was going to get to being the True Autonomous Power Thing, which was a real boy.  Sure I liked the outdoors, but even girls could go for long walks and love horses.  In fact loving horses was one of those despised girlie things, which is kind of interesting, since what's wussyish about horses, for pity's sake?  And I liked colour, full stop.  I like dark colours, I like bright colours, I like pastels.  I like COLOUR.  This is also girlie.  So I gathered.  Men were allowed to be faintly concerned about the precise crease of their trousers, and to choose the tie with the narrow navy stripe or the muted red plaid.  But a preoccupation with colour and pattern and style and so on was . . . girlie.  Whichever gender you belonged to.  And I still read certain clothing and jewellery catalogues the way romance readers read Mills & Boon. 

B_twin said and white_roses responded: 

Yeah, that. Nothing like being told "gee, you have really good swimmer's shoulders" …. But by then I had been reading about Girls Who Do Things and I knew I wanted to be on the farm. Big shoulders were GOOD I told myself. (Handy for bell ringing too! mwahahaha)

I understand these feelings very well. Working with horses helped me stop hating my figure: there is nothing in this world to make you grateful for atypical physique like a 17-hand draft stallion who utterly ignores your tugs on the longline.

One of the strikes against me as a functioning human being is that I'm, you know, thin.  I look like a . . . girl.  Mind you, I'm ex-fat, so I know more than I want to about being fat in a world that despises fatness;  but I've been thin now for a long time—and am not yielding to frelling menopause's zero-metabolism without one hell of a struggle—and the problem with being able to pass is that you're assumed to be what you are superficially presenting as.  When you're really weary of the struggle it's just so easy to put a dress on and let the guys carry your parcels for you.   This phase doesn't last long with me:  I have never patronised well:  say that again, mister, and I'll hand you your head, and possibly some other body parts, on a platter.  But the temptation to fold, when you can, can be rough on tired days. 

HeiQ responded to Diane in MN: 

 


You are not alone in this. Do you know Peggy Seeger's song "I'm Gonna be an Engineer"?

Nope, I can't say I ever have. I just read the words, and there were some pretty good lines in there . . . but it was a bit TOO angry for me, and I never actually wanted to be a boy haha… I never felt like I had those sorts of decisions forced on me by anyone I really cared about, so it's a little hard to relate to the song.

How times change.  Although you don't get the full flavour just reading the words on a page, and she sings it so deliciously;  you could dance to the tune.  I loved this song;  it was my national anthem for years.  Too angry?  Are you kidding?  It wasn't angry enough.  It was only the truth. 

           And that truth still hasn't anything like gone away.  There's probably someone who reads this blog who knows it in her own skin right now.  I've escaped;  Diane in MN and E Moon have escaped;  apparently you didn't have to escape.  But women are still not getting equal pay for equal work in the first world, never mind the third.

            Oh, and:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCRRe72mwwY

. . . And, on the subject of my girlie liking for things to be pretty, this came from my I-told-you-I-was-knitting post the other night: 

Cathy R 

Wow! I am impressed!

And not only by the quantity of the knitting  . . . but by the quality of the stash bags!

No plastic supermarket bags—slides two such stash bags out of sight under the table—for you, I see. Very classy!

Start a blog.  Start needing to dust off and brush up as much as your life as you can bear to flourish in public.   You will find it has an electrifying effect on many of the more admissible ways you spend your time (and possibly your money).  Although I admit I've always had a weakness for tote bags, and I'm delighted to have so clearly perfect a use for that Kew Gardens bag.

            . . . She says, rummaging for her square-in-progress. . . . 

* * *

* Intarsia, if you want to know^, and I was also staring at it and thinking I like multicoloured yarn that does this for you . . . if perhaps not in quite such fetching patterns. 

^ Where all the colours are knitted together as one thing, rather than over each other—for you nonknitters.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intarsia_(knitting)  Which article I find pretty confusing, but then I'm only a baby knitter. 

** Yes, lots of colours.  On a muted khaki background.  Mmmm. 

*** Whose idea of a happy relationship with his wardrobe is getting dressed in the nearest three garments hanging dry on the washing-line.  Occasionally I envy him—when I've just emerged, bloody and considerably bowed, from an epic struggle with my wardrobe.  Mostly I think he's missing a gigantic treat.  You have to wear clothes—society demands it^—why not have some fun? 

^ I am so not built to be a nudist/naturist.  No clothing:  what a waste.  Besides, I would be cold all the time.  Or sunburnt.  

† Makes me wonder where technology got the idea. . . . 

†† Besides, all that getting it off again at night?  Uggh.

Another day of contumely and handbells

 

The day did not start well.*  What with one thing and another the ME has been giving me more hell than usual and I tottered after the hellhounds this morning having to remind myself to pick up each foot sequentially . . . it's a good thing I don't have four to keep track of.  I don't know how quadrupeds do it.  Bigger brains, I suppose.  When I turned my computer on I discovered a forty percent off yarn sale in my inbox.**  And I've just had another of those developments in PEG II that remind me that I wanted to be an exobiologist.*** 

            And Thursday is handbell practise.  Moan.  So I emailed Niall if he knew whether Caitlin was coming or not—we have officially despaired of Fernanda† and are attempting to lure Caitlin into our Thursday evening clutches—because I had been making a half-hearted attempt to remember what I used to know with Pooka's assistance and not getting too far, and if I knew if I was focussing on minor (three pairs of hands) or major (four pairs of hands) that would help.  Three pairs, Niall wrote back.  Bob minor, he added, St Clements, Kent and one lead of Cambridge.††  AAAAAAAAAAAUGH.†††  Niall has Cambridge on the brain.  All right, wait, I thought.  Don't panic!  Don't panic!  We are bumbling through St Clements.  I can (probably) bumble through it again.  Kent?  Where has he got the idea that I can ring Kent on handbells?  Which leaves . . . Cambridge.  One lead of Cambridge.  Hmmmmm. . . .

            So, knowing perfectly well what one lead of Cambridge leads to‡ I shut PEG II back in its folder again‡‡ and settled down with a recently recharged Pooka to attempt to hammer one lead of Cambridge into my collapsed-soufflé brain before 5 pm.  And . . . it was not a thing of beauty, our first lead of Cambridge, but it was recognisable . . . even if it did lead to . . . a second lead.  Which was pretty frelling dire.  Which of course now I have to learn for next week.‡‡‡  And relearn St Clements which was inevitably rather derailed by the Cambridge.§

            So with a brain now resembling badly scrambled eggs I thought I'd fluff out the rest of this blog with a steal or two from the forum.  And then maybe I'll knit a few rows and go to bed.

PamAdams wrote: 

…. the prospect of trying to make a rectangle out of my non-squares scares me



Remember, it's a dog blanket. I have yet to meet the hell-hound, hell-terrier, or any other hell-dog type that cared if the blanket was square, round, or trapezoidal, as long as it could be squished up comfortably for sleeping purposes.

Yo.  I've been saying from the beginning—and said again last night—THE HELLHOUNDS WON'T MIND—about anything at all, as long as it's sleepable, hence in their case acrylic§§.  I was perhaps insufficiently explicit last night:  the point is that my squares are not square nor any other regular geometric shape and are therefore going to be difficult to stick together in any ENTIRETY whatsoever that doesn't have lots of HOLES in it.  I'm not going to be sewing my non-squares together, I'm going to be darning them together.  Arrrgh.

blondviolinist wrote: 

Oh, my goodness! So many squares! I knew you'd been knitting, but… wow, you HAVE been knitting!

::Preens::  . . . well, sort of nervously preens.  This is one of those occasions when the camera lies rather, um, magnificently.  You can't really tell, even if you blow up the photos, how blerg-ridden most of those squares are, even if it's pretty visible that they're not square.  There's like one—maybe—that doesn't have at least one blerg or gleep in it, and most of them have many.  Is this a stage I'm going to grow out of or had I better start adapting my view of my knitting future§§§ to very simple projects in multi-colour blends and biggish gauge that will disguise the blergs better?  I am improving just . . .  not very fast.  And the hellhound squares, which are in fatter yarn [fewer stitches to the inch/cm], are improving faster than the Secret Project squares, which are in finer, more delicate yarn . . . GAAAAAAAAAAH what a mistake that was.  My only comfort is that the eventual recipient does have a good sense of humour.  Whether she has a good enough sense of humour remains to be seen. 

Re: "squares" of variable squareness: When the time comes to stitch them all together, you can sort them by height, and put squares of similar height into the same rows.

Yes, I'd got that far, and in fact have started tentatively experimenting with different numbers of stitches and rows to see if there's something that in my hands would come out more or less square most of the time.  It's the ski-slope and ice-cream-cone shaped ones I'm worrying about. . . . Part of the problem with my output is that I discovered really fast that knitting is (a) soothing and (b) makes you feel that you're doing something useful when the ME is bad.  This means I'm liable to be knitting under stress# and/or when I have no discernable brain function.  The results are predictable. . . . 

* * *

* Speaking of things not going right, we need rain.  HEY, YOU GUYS UP THERE.  WE NEED RAIN.  The bluebells are going to go over before they finish coming out if we don't get some rain soon.  We were supposed to get some azalea-crushing downpours the last two days.  I'm grateful for the uncrushed azaleas, but I'm not grateful for being out there with watering-cans, and there's nobody with a very, very large tanker truck and very long hosepipe to water the wild bluebells.   

** Yes.  No.  But I still have my shopping basket open and I go look at it occasionally. 

*** This is actually true.  I was high on having done really well in track one biology, and had been marked for life by the original STAR TREK in junior high.  In my saner moments I wanted to be a vet.  In my saner moments I knew I'd never get into vet school.  

† Last unverified sighting was of firing a cannon over the bows of a Spanish galleon in the Bay of Biscay. 

†† Emphasis mine.  

††† Screaming also mine. 

‡ Another lead of Cambridge.  And another lead after that.  And . . . 

‡‡ I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too^ 

^ And remember how that ended 

‡‡‡ If you find you have a little extra time, says Niall, please feel free to learn the third lead. 

§ I have a small brain.  I can only stay apprised of two feet at a time.  And one handbell method. 

§§  This despite Elizabeth Zimmermann, who is possibly the original Knitting Goddess for the current generation(s), who feels that all knitting begins and ends with wool and anyone who is allergic to it has merely been managed badly.  Stick it in your ear, Lizzie, honey.  PS:  Sheep aren't silly [another Zimmermann proclamation].  They can be made silly if they are managed badly.  

§§§ For example that open shopping basket I haven't bought the contents of yet? 

# As for example when my husband is in A&E waiting to have his head injury looked at

I Told You I Was Knitting

 

The story thus far:

Yeeeep

Yes, it's growing.  The original stash bag long-term knitty readers will recognise as the big tapestry thing on the right.  The original project bag is the purply flowery one on the left.  Above the original project bag are two more project bags.  In the centre the same long-term knitty readers will recognise the original Mobile Knitting Unit, which used to be a black and pink evening bag.  There are now three Mobile Knitting Units:  the little green tapestry bag is Number Two, and the little red* leather bag is Number Three. 

Lotsa hellhound blanket squares

So, this looks like a lot of hellhound blanket squares, doesn't it? 

It is.  It is lots of hellhound blanket squares.  I told you I was knitting. 

LOTSA hellhound squares. Er, hellhound blanket squares.

           Not nearly as many as it needs to be however:  that's twenty-six of the marly** ones, nine grey and one pink—plus five knitted by other people which do not appear here.***  I need nearly three times that many.  Not least because my squares (mostly†) aren't square and they're too small.††

Knitters get their thrills in some strange places

This is the end of my second skein!  So exciting!!!! The first one ended very politely at the end of a square, so I haven't yet had the breathtaking Beginning of the New Skein in the Middle of a Square experience yet.  But . . . second skein . . . with the off-screen extras this means I'm only getting about fifteen squares per skein.  Aaaugh.  I need more yarn. 

Um. Pink. THE HELLHOUNDS WON'T MIND.

 In theory the hellhound blanket is going to be mostly marl with some grey and . . . er . . . pink for variety.  There wasn't a whole lot of choice in the chunky-acrylic category when Fiona and I went in needing to buy yarn for my hellhound blanket.  I knew before I began that I was going to have to do it in more than one colour or go mad and . . . well . . . pink.  There's only a little pink.  This is my first pink skein and I'm over halfway through my first grey one. 

The Second Project Bag. Containing Mysteries.

However this is not all.  The second project bag contains Secret Projects #1 and 2.†††  And having consulted anxiously with Master Knitters it has been agreed that #1 is not immediately identifiable as its eventual self, and I can therefore afford to demonstrate. . . .

Even more squares!!!!!

Next time I will tell you about my passion for fancy knitting needles. . . .‡

 * * *

* No, really, it is red.  My camera is once again struggling with dim indoor light and my dislike of the flash.  And the somewhat weird angles that most of these are shot at is me trying to keep me out of the photos since what light there is is pretty much coming in from everywhere, which makes the shadow of the cameraperson a ubiquitous ratbag. 

** Unbeautifully called 'orchid marl'.  Orchid?  Marl? 

*** Which I feel would be cheating.  

† Speaking of mostly . . . my knitting is mostly a lot of things, and most of them vary.^  I imagine if my non-squares were reliable rectangles, since this is a rectangular thing, a blanket, that would be fine.  But they are not reliable.  Trying to stick them together at the end is going to be . . . interesting.  I keep saying that ordinary sewing doesn't scare me, but . . . the prospect of trying to make a rectangle out of my non-squares scares me.  Badly.

^ For example, all of it still contains gleeps and blergs.+  But the gleeps and blergs vary. 

+ Sigh.

†† I am clearly becoming one of those knitters who Does Not Make Gauge.  Sigh.  It's not like I'm surprised. 

††† Also my scarf, which is a little curled-up wisp at the moment.  I'll show it to you when there's a bit more to show.  

‡ The Third Project Bag (whose contents I will also show you some other blog) was a present from Fiona:

So be nice. Or else.

 Mwa hahahahahaha.

Winter and Shopping

 

I only just yesterday asked Atlas to collapse the Winter Table—that which stands over the hellhound crate and eliminates what remains of my kitchen for the duration, but, with a plastic garden sheet over it, gives me somewhere to stash plants in pots hiding from sudden frosts. 

            And there's the threat of a frost tonight.  Okay.  The more fool me for taking the Table down in April.  But . . . I get tired of not having a kitchen.  Meanwhile the hibiscus, half a dozen gone-over hippeastrums beginning recovery from their exertions, the cardboard box of geranium plugs that arrived in the post yesterday and haven't been dealt with, and the dahlia that survived the winter in my sitting room are all perched in and around the kitchen sink.

            It's pretty crowded in there.  It's going to be challenging making a cup of tea, let alone washing an apple for breakfast.*

            And I'd better go past Third House on my way home tonight and get the chocolate cosmos under cover again, the pelargoniums, the fuchsias, and the outdoor begonias.  That there are begonias is almost as exciting as the dahlia—begonias also go dormant in the winter**, and I never know which ones are planning to start up again in the spring and which aren't, so pretty much anything that has a firm tuber I make some attempt to save.  With varying degrees of success, mostly low to nil.  But they liked the green/summerhouse*** and I've got way more than usual coming up again this year.  Which is great, but . . .

            Sigh. 

* * *

I took Peter to Tabitha again this afternoon for extreme kneading and decided that rather than sit and knit† while she employed the hob-nailed boots and the wooden mallets, I would go explore the joys of a Waitrose that opened in this area a few years ago and which I've never got round to visiting.  Of the monster food chains in this country Waitrose is supposed to be greenest, and when we lived at the old house I used to go to the one in Prinkle-on-Weald, but from New Arcadia it's in the wrong direction.  Then I developed a dislike of Waitrose when I tried to use their internet shopping site and they wouldn't let me join unless I gave them a mobile phone number.  Are you frelling joking?  So far as I know it is not yet a requirement of modern life to have your ID code tattooed on the back of your neck or to have a mobile phone.  I even tried the '0000000' trick which will shut most web phone ultimatums up.  Not this one.  Whereupon I lost my temper.  I also wrote their 'contact us' a (relatively) polite email on the subject of requiring a mobile phone number from someone who merely wants a few groceries delivered.  They didn't answer.  And we get almost all our food from a mash-up of two organic grocery delivery companies and the health food store in town†† so recolonising Waitrose hasn't been important.

            Which is a good thing.  On a scale of one to ten this glossy new store gets about a one.  Maybe one and a half.

            You can see the store itself from the next frelling county, but as you approach you discover that actually getting to it is one of those video game scenarios where if you don't make your decision fast enough you are eaten by zombies.  The road that looks logical takes you relentlessly past your goal††† and the road you need to take springs up at you suddenly, having been hidden by a pedestrian bridge, and furthermore there's now a roundabout in the way, and of the three exits, you want the one that looks least likely.‡  This will lead you into the bowels of the earth where there is a large faceless, frontless, backless, signpostless and clueless parking space where you are welcome to leave your car somewhere you will never find it again.  Most parking garages have helpful bay numbers or letters.  Not this one.‡‡

            I managed to park reasonably near the entrance to the store.  There is a narrow walkway and two lifts.  The staircase is beyond the lifts.  If you want to use the stairway you have to barge through the people waiting for the lifts, because there is only a tiny pan in front of the lifts, hemmed in by the car park, and the alley is one person wide, so if you meet someone, let alone someone carrying groceries, one of you has to back up . . . into the people waiting for the lifts.   The stairs, just by the way, are cheap and nasty.  Clearly no one is expected to use them, because no effort has been made to put the approaching customer in a mood to part with some of her hard-earned money.  She's already working on a bad attitude, caused by the necessity for trampling little old ladies underfoot to get to the stair, and the likelihood that she won't be able to find her car again.

            The stairway dumps you out facing the wrong way.  You're already disoriented from having been underground and you blink in the sunlight‡‡‡ and wonder where the hell you are.  Oh.  There's the store.  I walk in and look around for the standard little loo sign.§  I don't see it.  I approach a clerk.  Do you have a public loo? I say.

            No, she says.

            No? I say.  You could train for the marathon doing laps around this store it's so frelling gigantic.  And it doesn't have a customer toilet?

            —But there's a loo at Caffeine Frenzy next door, she adds.

            Yes.  There is.  The coffeeshop is tiny, with about a dozen tables, and there is exactly one toilet in a large all-things-to-all-people room which means both badly designed disabled and a nappy-changing table that I suspect you have to be a contortionist to use, although I did not explore this option carefully.  There wasn't even a hook on the frelling door for your coat.  There was, however, a queue, when I came back out again—and I recognised the polka-dot sweater on one of them:  it had been coming through the Waitrose door as I was going back out again, in pursuit of the only public loo available.

            The experience went downhill from there.  Green?  I've never seen such a dismal organic section—Tesco, the Evil Empire, does a lot better, and even the tiny downtown Sainsbury in Mauncester has about as much selection as this airplane hangar.  They're also over-supplied with large, tastefully arranged posters about Waitrose's commitment to Treading Gently on the Earth . . . one of which glares down at you as you stare disbelievingly at their organic broccoli, swathed in miles of plastic wrap. 

            The crowning achievement of the architect's art and empathy for the customer experience was when my two handfuls of heavy shopping bags§§ and I arrived at the bottom of the ugly staircase and found a sign on the door to the parking garage:  please pull it says.

            I was telling myself that I hadn't wasted most of an hour of my life§§§, it was too cold for sitting outdoors in Tabitha's garden and KNITTING.  I was wrong.  I got back with about ten minutes left and . . . there was a lovely piece of warm sunlight waiting for me.  Obviously wondering where I'd been.

            Sigh.           

* * *

* Put the plants outdoors again before the first cup of tea in the morning?  Are you kidding?  Before the apple, maybe.

** There are also house-plant begonias that seem to flower pretty well constantly till they die after a year or two or three but the outdoor ones, tiresomely tender as they nonetheless are, don't like windowsills.  Well, they don't like my windowsills.

*** Which is a whole other issue.  There is clearly a lot more to a greenhouse than hanging a gro-light on the ceiling of your summerhouse and adding a heater.  

† Knitting post soon, I promise.  Or threaten, depending on your point of view. 

†† Which is about to close.  The owner, having reached retirement age, wants to retire and can't find a buyer.  Know anyone who wants to run an organic food, vitamins and take-out sandwich shop in darkest Hampshire? 

††† Toward the rotating knives.  Think of the tourist trade.  http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode17.htm#1 

‡ I hear the zombies chortling.  Or whatever it is zombies do. 

‡‡ More zombie chortling.  It won't be long now. 

‡‡‡ Yes.  There was sunlight.  I could have been at home, potting up geraniums. 

§ I've been shopping hard.  I may even tell you about it.  But not tonight. 

§§ They had some champagne on sale.  Ahem. 

§§§ No, champagne on sale was not worth it.

Semi-riotous spring garden

 

So the ME started to wear off last night . . . at, oh, mmph o'clock, approximately, while I was trying to go to bed because I had to get up early to say goodbye to departing family and then go on for my grilling by the local anointed  CRB goon.  Aaaaaaaaand . . . I couldn't sleep.*  So today I'm probably just as tired as I've been the last two or three days, just for different reasons.  I'm a deep and profound believer in the amazingness of homeopathy–I've seen it work far too often to have anything but scorn and fury for the obstructionists out there–but one of its basic tenets concerns the wisdom of the body.  Which makes me scream and throw things.  Especially at mmph o'clock in the morning when my ME is ebbing and my energy level is flowing with the result that I can't sleep.  This is really, really common, that the changeover happens in the middle of the night.  I'll give you wisdom of the body . . . where is that hat pin . . .

                I got through the goodbyes, the grilling . . . and the voice lesson, and the tower practise at Old Eden.  I am now cross eyed and need to go to bed.**  So let's have some spring plant photos.

Azalea. Going for it.

 There are also a geranium and a gazania on the inside of the window saying, Me too!  Me too!   The pansies on the left here . . . you will notice the unpansylike bamboo support arch over their heads.  The pansies were supposed to be a stopgap till I could put my sweet peas in.  The ones in the little temporary pot have rooted through.  So I've pulled the bamboo out of this pot and put it in the pot that now does have some sweet peas in it.

Itty bitty fuzzy things

I love these immoderately.  Not that I remember what their names are.  But I saw them in an alpine catalogue–alpines and I do not get along–and I ordered them anyway.  First year I thought they'd died.  Second year–last year–out of three clumps I got maybe three flowers.  This year . . . they're spreading!  They're spreading!  Yaaaaay!

More immoderate love

This rather ordinary dahlia (for those of you who recognise dahlia leaves) coming up for a new season . . . spent the winter in the sitting room.  Next to the radiator.  Oh gods.  The prevention of cruelty to dahlias society will be after me.  Some of you will know that you're supposed to dig your dahlia tubers up every autumn (first check:  when they haven't bothered to form tubers) and go through this whole frou-frou of hanging them upside down either on slatted shelves or in boxes of sand, depending on who you read, plus the ritual chanting and the sacrifice of a virgin black goat.  I have occasionally dug them up and got as far as the wrapped in newspaper in the attic trick . . . but they don't actually live that way, and who needs an attic full of rotting dahlia tubers?  I'm not sure why I even bothered with this one last autumn.  But I brought it in at the beginning of that vicious cold spell and forgot about it, and when all of its brethren and sororen were outdoors getting flash-frozen it was indoors . . . withering.  There is no frelling way that a tuber in a pot left dry in the dark for six months next to a radiator (even a radiator that is rarely on) is going to be alive in the spring.

              Except that it is. 

And for my next trick . . .

The rampant pink thing in the middle is clematis Markham's Pink.  We had it at the old house where it survived by sheer obstinacy, growing up a shed wall with nowhere really to get its feet down.  But I saw it from our bedroom window and it became a crucial Hey, it's spring! thing.  Then we moved into town and I bought Markham's Pink and it died.  Then it died again.  The third one I put in a pot where I could keep an eye on it–maybe I'd try the virgin black goat and the chanting–where it is suddenly going like ninety and is now much too large for the pot, which had been chosen as appropriate for a fading tubercular heroine.  Not to mention creating a hedge, which was not a part of the plan.  But I forget what the plan was.

Front door step

  Including some of my fritillaries.  Yaaaay.  You will however notice a label on the lower, blue-green pot.  One of my pet peeves is frelling garden centre labels that won't come off.  You could mend battleships with the glue that frelling garden centres use on their sale stickers.  Arrrgh. 

Trip over one of my pots and be torn to pieces by savage hellhounds

The wilting foxglove on the right is, as you might expect, a volunteer.  I have tried to water it, since I admire its chutzpah, but I'm not sure where its roots go (probably into my foundations, and I shouldn't be encouraging it) and the water just runs down the step.  I'm still, um, rooting for it.  PS:  the tatty green thing in the lower right-hand corner is a badly slugged daylily which is now wearing a copper necklace and recovering nicely.

Daffs.

If you pay attention to flowering times you can have daffs about six months of the year–December through May.  And you can start forcing them in October.  I keep meaning to pay more attention to flowering times. 

Yes . . .

. . . the bluebells are starting to come out.  It's predicted to be a good bluebell year this year but we need rain.  Meanwhile they're early.

PS:  And speaking of early:

Yes, that's a rose bush

Old Blush's first rosebuds are showing colour.  It's not even quite the middle of April yet!  And Old Blush is early anyway, especially in a pot against a house wall, but this early??

* * *

* So, hey, what did it matter that it took FORTY FIVE MINUTES for hellhounds to eat their snack?  I got one and a half Secret Project #1 squares knitted, and these are the intensive ones, 22 stitches by 28 rows.  Wow.  You're saying wow, right?  You're supposed to be saying wow. 

** I'll lie down on the floor while hellhounds are negotiating with their final meal.^

^ Although I'll probably lie down with yarn.

Well the Iron Dragon part was fun

 

The ME would decide it wanted to close me down the weekend we had visiting family.  OH FRELL.  It could have been a lot worse—I haven't done any falling down, my eyes focus more or less on what I'm looking at—and I've got quite a lot of knitting done.*   I was supposed to go to the opera yesterday and went to bed instead.  I did listen to it** on the radio but I was kind of drifting in and out.  The bits I heard sounded rather nice.  SIIIIIIGH.  At least the dog minder gave hellhounds their afternoon hurtle.

            I was beginning to notice a slight scorching of synapses on Thursday, Friday was bad, Saturday was dire, and today is better although I'm still not quite up to leaping tall buildings with a single pole vault.  I made it to service ring this morning although I was late, and I came in on the end of the six people who were there on time ringing the first six up in peal.  Niall picked up the rope of the tenor and looked at me meaningfully so I automatically took the seven's rope, coiled it up and pulled, and as all forty-five tons of the thing went noooooo—I don't think so, the way biggish bells do when you first interrupt their inertia, I thought, McKinley, what are you DOING?, but by then it was too late because basic ringing drill had taken over.  Basic ringing drill is a very good thing on a Sunday morning when chances are you have no brain.  Well, I have no brain.***  But occasionally it leads you into error.  I could have done without ringing up the seven today.

            We're also having to go through this miserable dranglefabbing taxpayer money wasting nonsense with another gah arrgh [muffled swearing noises] Criminal Records Bureau check.  Not that many years ago everybody who ever laid hands on a bell rope had to go through this bad Disneyland ride, and the form was a lot longer and sillier—like anyone is going to give the details of their bank accounts to some large faceless frelling government bureaucracy, especially with large faceless frelling government bureaucracies having such an excellent rep for security and privacy.  This time around only those of us with titles in the bell world are targeted—which unfortunately would include me, as Deputy Ringing Master.  Gaaaah.†  But why the great powers that be, who are busy elsewhere slashing minor superfluous amenities like libraries can't merely run an update on those of us so fortunate as still to be under suspicion—Has This Person Killed Anybody, Robbed Any Banks or Allowed His/Her Off Lead Disobedient and Aggressive Dog(s) to Harass Innocent Passersby?††—rather than going through the whole stupid EXPENSIVE business again . . . I have no idea.  Anyway.  This morning Vicky told me I have not merely to fill out the wretched, if abbreviated, form, I have to go round with my passport, my driving license, my national insurance card and a recent utility bill to be cross-examined by one of the church officials GAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGH.

            Everyone else in the family party went down to Gallimaufry to have lunch with Georgiana and Saxon, and I stayed home to do more lying down and knitting.†††  I also thought I'd get my passport etc out because I'm going to need to lurch over to the church office tomorrow morning to brandish same, and this would help me REMEMBER.

            Aaaaaaaaand my passport wasn't where it should be.  Aaaaaaaaaand I had no idea where else it could be.

            Cue very large unaffordable adrenaline spike.

            I did find it eventually.  Pant, pant, whimper.  Not as if I'm going anywhere, but it's like the tin of mackerel in the cupboard and the packet of peas in the freezer‡:  they're there just in case of emergency.  Or in case of proving to a large faceless frelling bureaucracy that you exist within acceptable parameters.

            . . . And then I spent twenty minutes rescuing a bumblebee from my kitchen windowsill.  I was just posting to the forum earlier that I'm rescuing up to several bees a day at present—but it's usually down at the mews.  Peter does not have eleven-inch-deep windowsills that are obviously begging for you to cram too much stuff on them:  I do.  First there's the layer of plants, and then there's the layer of . . . everything else.  The indoor watering can lives on the kitchen windowsill, the box of plant labels, the bottle of plant food, the tall glass of brushes and bamboo skewers of countless and divers uses, the windowsill weather station, the washing-up apparatus, the soap dish . . . the various little broken-off plant bits in various little containers water that might grow roots‡‡ . . . there's a lot for a bumblebee to get lost in, even when you've ascertained by glimpses through the foliage that that's where she is.  Just clearing the windowsill is not necessarily a guarantee of success:  then she flies to some other windowsill . . . which is just as well populated.

            She was one of these thumb-sized monsters, and the temptation is just to put your hand (gently) around her, because chances are she won't sting you.‡‡‡  But I didn't.  And I did eventually get her between a glass and a bit of cardboard, and toss her outdoors again, where I hope she raises a nice family.  And this experience was not exactly an adrenaline spike, but it was still undesirable.

            I had just enough presence of mind left to win a game of Iron Dragon§ with the assembled down at the mews.  Which is to say I had enough presence of mind to say 'yes thank you' when Peter's grandson offered me free use of his track if I would please beat his dad. 

            I have to try and sing tomorrow.  Oh . . . golly. 

* * *

* In hindsight I'm a little surprised that re-learning to knit didn't occur to me that eighteen months I spent on the sofa during the first vicious acute stage of my ME.  Possibly I'd decided that failure was failure, I'd already failed at knitting and once was enough.^  Possibly I was not surrounded by demon knitters.    Possibly the fact that my hand-eye coordination was about 10% was daunting.  And the hallucinations were kind of a bore too.  Still.  I might have tried.  In which case by now I would be yarnbombing Buckingham Palace, or at least Runnymede.  The fact that the Magna Carta had to wait for the American Frelling Bar Association to buy a memorial makes me nuts in a next-you're-going-to-tell-me-the-original-Captain-Kirk-was-played-by-George-Hamilton kind of way.  The memorial really needs yarnbombing, and it would be poetic justice if it were done by an American.

^ I thought I'd already done failing to learn method ringing too. 

** Rossini's Le Comte Ory, which I've never seen.  Rats.  And it had Juan Diego Florez and Joan DiDonato in it.  Double rats.  In fact, quadruple rats. 

*** And hey.  I survived a touch of Stedman doubles.  Yaay. 

† I could resign. . . . No, maybe that would look suspicious.  

†† Had a good one today.  It's been another beautiful day so there's no point in even trying the footpaths around town, they'll be choked with off lead dogs, at least some of whom will make my adrenaline spike, and I can't afford any adrenaline spikes this weekend.  So we were on a track that is usually relatively free of incident and . . . met three LARGE SNARLING OFF LEAD DOGS all of whom came barrelling toward us with all their hair up and suitable noises.  The bloody idiot woman with them said and did nothing.  NOTHING.  My guys thought hiding behind me was appropriate, and I couldn't blame them.  As it turns out these sodding animals were all mouth and no trousers (so to speak) and as the woman sauntered unhurriedly up to us she drawled, they're friendly, they're just a little noisy.  There are THREE OF THEM!  I said.  AND THEY'RE OFF LEAD!  They're off lead because they're safe, said the woman self-righteously.  MY DOGS DON'T KNOW THAT! I said.  Speaking of unaffordable adrenaline spikes. 

††† I also got a few sweet peas planted.  I love this time of year.  Gardening post as soon as I can stand up unwaveringly enough to take some photos.  That anti-shake thing on your camera wasn't meant for people with recurring ME. 

‡ And the six bars of Green & Black's in the refrigerator. 

‡‡ Unfortunately just enough of them do to encourage me in this folly. 

‡‡‡ I've done this inadvertently several times and not been stung, although I always say 'thank you'.  And yes, they're just as fuzzy as they look. 

§ http://www.gameslore.com/acatalog/PR_Iron_Dragon_Board_Game.html