Robin McKinley's Blog, page 137

Writing like a feminist

 

I had an interesting email from Julia* from our forum: 

I have a question for you about the blog which I hope you don't find too impertinent or completely inane.  (Or completely insane, either.)  

Can you say 'the pot calling the kettle black'?   Barring your trying earnestly to convince me that the moon is made of spaghetti Bolognese I wouldn't DREAM of calling you or your question insane.**

I'm currently taking a course on Feminist Rhetorical Theory, an area of study which, to my great surprise, I've found completely fascinating, especially in terms of academia/ applications therein. . . . This is feminism . . . which is non-confrontational, non-hierarchical . . . Equality and respect, a consciousness of the dignity which is everyone's due . . . the professor bears out the theory in her teaching methods.  

Ooh.  I'll have some of that, please. 

But why am I telling you all this? . . . here's my question:

In class this week, we were discussing an article about the gender gap in Wikipedia contributors (as the significant percentage of those writing on Wikipedia are male, etc), when my professor mentioned blogs.  With the internet appeared this new medium which was supposed to be a great equalizer/leveler—but instead so often the problems of print (as she termed it) are reproduced on the screen… the same group of people are creating the same type of text. 

And instead of taking advantage of possibilities afforded one by the interactivity that makes the internet so different, my professor continued, blogs often are polemics/polemical, and written in the same sort of one-way expression of thought/specific opinion as they would have been in print, in the same traditional writing style that typifies the academy or the patriarchal system.

  But your blog isn't at all like that.  You write informally, conversationally . . .  Days In The Life is just that, and your footnotes' footnotes' footnotes have footnotes.  This is as far from the cumbersome hierarchy and formal academic writing that one can get, just about.

Don't my footnotes count as satire or parody or something?***  I'm crushed.

            . . . I'm also being a little unfair, hanging an email written late at night (as Julia told me in both the postscript and her 'okay' that I identify the source) and to a specific point, because of course there are lots of informal blogs out there, including a lot written by SF&F writers.†  But I'm interested by her professor's point (even if her professor clearly needs to read more SF&F and YA blogs) about changing technology changing (or not changing) the people who use it.  It's obvious when you think of it, but I don't think of it;  I'm too busy scrambling for the next thing.††  One of the things I've been wondering lately however is where the tipping point of the ability or willingness to change may come—Peter, for example, was bullied into creating his web site, but I think he'd stow away on a spaceship to Epsilon Reticuli††† before you could make him keep a blog.  Hey, I was bullied into creating a web site‡ . . . and then it took super-bullying, nay, supreme bullying to harry me into starting this blog,‡‡ although I think that may have to do more with an essentially mule-like nature than inevitable age-related creeping mental paralysis.‡‡‡  I was recently asked for a blog-erview from someone who thinks that most author bloggers are the younger ones—not merely the ones who feel the need to support a young career, but the ones who grew up with and on the web and don't think twice about a blog being a part of a marketing strategy.  Looking at the SF&F blog list I see a fair few names from (more or less) my generation—but yes, I would expect there to be more young ones than old ones because that's the way the world goes about most young things, and the evolution of the internet and its uses are still relatively young.   But is the curve more dramatic when there's a new technology involved?  Is that an obvious question?  I suspect that enhanced Zimmer-frame technology is going to have greater uptake among the old and tottery.

            It's also true that I come from an old-fashioned academic background.  I only got as far as my BA§ but the BA has blood spots on it.  I kept trying to be the hermetic, comma-counting, Northrop-Frye-worshipping§§ scholarly student who would get straight As and be beloved by her teachers . . . and kept getting called down for going off on strange tangents, and having a disturbingly non-standard approach to the creation of and argument toward a thesis.  Insipient fantasy-writer-itis, a very bad disease to have in college, majoring in English lit.

I realize that you have said that you write the blog the way you do because it is what you have to write about, that you can't sit down and write a blog post about the writing process itself, and so on…

Every NIGHT?  A blog post about the writing process EVERY NIGHT?  Dear gods, goddesses, and other tricky immortal beings, preserve me.

However . . . you have said that you are a feminist.  So, I have to ask: was it a conscious decision to write your blog in what is a decidedly feminist mode/model? 

No.  Not even close.  As you've already said—and as I've said before here—I write what I write in the blog because this is the blog that's in me to write.  I couldn't write polemic if I tried, and I'd also splutter to a halt sooner or later if there weren't some proof that there are people out there reading what I am writing.§§§  At the same time . . . I'm a feminist, as I understand feminism, the way I'm alive and breathing.  Feminism to me only means that women and men are of equal worth.#  It does not mean that we manifest our equal worth in identical ways—which of course is where a lot of the trouble sneaks in—and yes [CONTROVERSIAL OPINION ALERT] I think there are some differences in aggregate, even if you're going to find some boys falling on the girly side and some girls falling on the boyy side.  And my controversial opinion is that the chatty, engaged, interested-in-her-readers## Pollyanna-heeding### blogger is more likely to be a woman than a man.~  

If it is accurate to claim that with each new medium, written expression seems to proceed to a certain point, and then, with the emergence of a newer form or technology, start back at the beginning again within that new medium, then it makes me wonder about the application of this cyclical thing when it comes to feminist writing.

 Well, I like it.  Usually 'what goes around comes around' is used as proof that if you pass crap on you'll get a faceful of it later.  But sometimes it means human nature is human nature and we're all connected and yaay etc.  I think this is one of the latter examples.  We may be yielding to the web but the web is also yielding to us. 

Authorship  (authority) for women at the time of Fanny Burney, for instance, was tied to a very specific form of writing—novels were written in letters, diary-style, because that was the only forum or medium available to women.  Women could gain agency, some measure of control over their lives, through the letters they wrote.  And thus, we get epistolary novels like Evelina. Hooray! 

I cannot share your enthusiasm for Evelina, which I found interminable, but I take your point. 

You know all of this, I'm sure… and I am rather tired and I fear that I'm not explaining this as clearly as I ought to, anyway. 

Well, neither am I.  I'm usually short of sleep on Sundays. 

But the personal journal or letter, where women would write their lives, modifying reality as they chose…  A conversation, a letter, something conflating the public and private (to a certain extent)…

Sounds very much like the blog. 

Yes it does.  Especially the modifying reality part.  Which is worth a blog or a master's thesis in itself.  

            But not tonight.~~

 * * *

* Yes I asked first if I could identify her. 

** The moon can't be made of spaghetti Bolognese, all indications to the contrary notwithstanding, because the Gflytch have a base on the far side, and they don't like spaghetti Bolognese, especially not in 17% gravity.

*** As well as the indisputable sign of a terminally disorganised mind. 

†  Research:  http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2005/05/sff-writers-who-blog/

†† My butterfly mind.  —I have to sing tonight, I have a voice lesson tomorrow.  At the moment I'm trying not to be preoccupied with the thought that I don't have a good reason to go early and stop at the yarn shop.  Curses.  There must be something. 

††† It has at least one planet.  Wiki says so.

‡ Well, our noble and generous friend Vonda N. McIntyre did the actual creation part.  And when mine started looking like being way too much work for fun, I swapped over to Sainted Blogmom.  Vonda still minds Peter's. 

‡‡ Merrilee is still recuperating—how many years later?  I believe she gets through a lot of champagne and chocolate for strictly therapeutic reasons. 

‡‡‡ 'When I was your age I walked five miles through the snow to get to school.  Barefoot.  And I had to cut my own papyrus and screwing the press down gave me blisters.^'  And I only bought my first computer when my office-machine shop could no longer get parts for my IBM Selectric I typewriter.  I'm sure Gutenberg's dad kept telling him to stick to goldsmithing, this movable type thing wasn't going anywhere. 

^ When the elder generations are busy having had it worse than the current soft, lazy young ones, they rarely let little things like climatic consistency trouble them.  Although maybe this one was a military brat.  First few years in Wisconsin.  Then the family moved to . . . er . . . ancient Egypt.  Okay, sorry, I've let the pterodactyl out of the bag:  yes, the military prototype Time Machine is functional.

§ I have told you that my Phi Beta Kappa key hangs from a zipper on my original Harley-Davidson motorcycle jacket, haven't I?  

§§ Shudder.  But hey, I write despicable genre twaddle, what do I know? 

§§§ Why you're reading it . . . I prefer not to think about too closely.  But I like forum comments about your lives.   And emails I can cannibalise for blog posts.

# Which ineluctably includes equal pay for equal work. 

## Aside from questions of how many of her books they're buying. 

### Although I'm still thinking about the Why Pollyanna:  Revisited blog I haven't written yet. 

~ And—ahem—one of the highest accolades I can give to a male friend is that he Talks Like a Girl. 

~~ Although you'd be welcome to write a guest blog about any of this.

Lucia

 

There were wolfhounds.

            I've been to see Lucia di Lammermoor—Live from the Met[ropolitan Opera] at your friendly local cinema.  Yes, it's pretty much always the same crowd* and quite a few of them are beginning to look familiar.**  So, I have to say, are the ads for the other productions, but hey, I have my head down over my knitting.***

            The wolfhounds appear in the very first scene:  Lucia's evil brother Enrico's equally ratbaggy captain of the guard is out scouring the landscape for the Mystery Intruder they suspect is Edgardo, sworn blood enemy of not only Enrico but Enrico's house and lineage—you know the way these feuds go.  Except that Edgardo and Lucia may have managed to fall in love with each other and to be meeting in secret, which would be inconvenient and a really bad idea.  Hence wolfhounds.  Who make a pass over the papier mache landscape and say, not here, boss, and are led away again, so that Enrico and the captain of the guard can rant at each other about Edgardo's turpitude and Lucia's treachery.  I love opera because it's so sedate.

            Lucia is one of the oldest and hoariest of the grand opera war horses—not oldest in chronology, necessarily (1835, which probably counts as early-ish), but hoariest in terms of it being one of the ones that if you've ever heard of opera at all, it'll be one of the ones you've heard of.   And yes, it's based on the Sir Walter Scott novel The Bride of Lammermoor, which means it's silly.  It's one of the ones I grew up with—and hated:  remember my great epiphany to do with opera was escaping home to go to college and discovering to my horror I couldn't live without all the shrieking—but I hated this one particularly because the girl is such a wet.  SUCH. A. WET.  Geezum arrgh.   I saw Anna Netrebko in this production on TV not all that long ago, so I probably did my rave and recant on the subject of Lucia then and should cut to the chase now.† 

            So, Lucia has fallen in love with her family's arch-enemy, who swears eternal devotion just before he gallops off on an unspecified mission.  Her evil brother, however, is on to them, and intercepts their letters.  He, meanwhile, has to make Lucia marry some bloke who is going to restore the family fortune and honour (for equally unspecified reasons, although I suppose a magnificent case of the hots for a bloke's sister can move you to extreme proposals).  I don't know whether I've just not been paying attention for the last forty years (highly possible) or whether the political aspect of Enrico's desperation is brought out a bit more in this translation, but even as an evil brother he's more sympathetic as something more than a wastrel.  And here I'd better declare my bias, which is that Ludovic Tezier is my latest hottie. ††  

            But the essential problem with Lucia is usually that Lucia is a dishrag and her brother is a cartoon villain:  all he needs is the curly moustaches and some rope to tie her to a railroad track.  And the feminism of my youth didn't really allow for a lot of appreciation of circumstances:  what I saw was Lucia folding under her brother's bullying—and then going mad.  Please.  But given a half-sympathetic portrayal you start thinking—yes, but what could she do?  She's out in the wilds of Scotland somewhere with her brother, and her only two friends are a lady's-maid/companion and a chaplain both of whom believe that Edgardo has betrayed her (there is this forged letter, you see.  Enrico doesn't leave these things to chance), and that she should marry her brother's choice.  And I doubt she has her own bank account.

            In my experience, Lucia is the soprano's opera—Lucia's opera—with some pretty exciting piffling around the edges from the boys:  Edgardo needs to be able to bring off his final aria, which is after Lucia's possibly-most-famous-episode-in-all-opera Mad Scene.  This means he not only has to have a voice that will bring you back from wherever Lucia left you—and a good Lucia will take you a long way away—but the nerve to bring it off.  And Enrico needs authority—as well as the kind of baritone that rants well.  If I was expecting anything tonight, I was expecting Natalie Dessay to blow both her tenor and her baritone off the stage—she really is that good.  She has not only the voice but the presence and the acting skill††† to do anything. ‡

            And she was superb.  How many frelling Lucia mad scenes have I seen?  Lots.  But I love the music, and a good soprano will make you feel it all over again, and Dessay is well past merely good.‡‡  But her tenor stood up to her—not just in their love scene in the first act, but in that final scene after Lucia has eaten all available scenery in her mad scene and Edgardo is left with the crumbs.  I was pulled in all over again by Edgardo's despair—during intermission Renee Fleming‡‡‡ referred to his having an 'old fashioned' voice, like the tenors of the golden age, whatever that's supposed to mean . . . but it is the rich furry end of tenors and it weeps extremely well.§

            But the revelation for me tonight, and the heart of the opera—for me tonight—was the scene between Lucia and Enrico, the evil brother, when he's trying to force her to agree to marry Arturo.§§  These two actors are beautifully matched, so as well as sounding terrific the power struggle between them is riveting—I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.

            And furthermore it's a good production.  I rarely like a production well enough to be willing to sit through it again unless the singers are really special (which would have been the case here, but it's nice not to have to suffer for it), because I mostly think that what directors do to opera these days should be shot and buried in the back garden.  This production, just by the way, is the work of a woman, still a comparatively rare thing in opera.  And I will have mentioned this the last time I saw it, but something that works—I think—extremely well is that the ghost Lucia sees in the first act, and which is supposed to prove she's already a few peats short of a bog and sets her up for going seriously round the twist with a dagger in the third act, is really there:  a dancer dressed and painted ghostly white appears and stalks her.  Very effective and very creepy.  And then in the final scene when Edgardo is getting ready to off himself so he can join Lucia in heaven§§§, Lucia herself shows up as a ghost . . . and has her hands on the knife when he stabs himself.  Indeed the way it's set up it looks like she may be the one shoving it in—just in case he changes his mind, perhaps.  I think this works a treat#, and also insures that you aren't left with any icky sentimental feelings about the lovers reuniting after death.

            All that's left is for Enrico to run off to the Fiji Islands and take up with a fruit bat, but incomprehensibly the librettist left this out. 

* * *

* And I'm becoming The Knitting Lady.  I'm astonished—and possibly a little dismayed—to report that I didn't see anyone else knitting, in spite of the excellent model I presented last opera.  I do not understand these people who can stand—er, sit—who can bear to sit around and do nothing for a whole series of interminable intermissions.^  Some people, of course, chat.^^  Brrrrrr.  No, not an option.  And I would totally understand giving yourself a headache and bobbly retinas by trying to read in the half light of theatre intermission—which is what I would be doing if I hadn't been forced^^^ to discover knitting.  But having read the synopsis apparently almost everybody else just falls into a coma . . . I wouldn't want to think there was any direct relationship between these two actions. 

^ Well, okay, only two.  But they were interminable.  Nearly.  

^^ Overheard:  The only other Donizetti opera I've seen was La Forza del Destino.  —My needles stumble and pause.  This is a bit like saying The only other Tolkien I've read is Harry Potter and the Giant Pumpkin of Doom.  Fortunately this pathetic creature's companion put her straight, or I'd've had to. 

^^^ You Know Who You Are. 

** Or, in one case, her jewellery.  Didn't remember her at all, but it's a knockout necklace.

            But they're all old.  I know I keep saying this, but I hope this little pocket of high Tory well-offness is not representative of the UK Live from the Met-going crowd, or opera is in bigger trouble than I think.  

*** I finished two hellhound blanket squares.  

† When have I ever cut to the chase.  Sigh. 

†† http://ludovictezier.blogspot.com/ 

††† She's also a gift to the short tenors of the world—tenors are always short, it's in their contract—being maybe five foot if she's standing on her tiptoes, and as big around as my wrist.  And here her tenor broke his contractual obligation and was a normal height. 

‡ I've liked her voice since I first heard her—six or so years ago I think—but I really fell for her when I saw her in La Fille du Regiment.  She's also got spectacular comic timing which for some reason caught me off guard. 

‡‡ And on the subject of how little she is, she faints at the end—and one of the chorus doesn't merely pick her up off the floor, he tosses her up and catches her as she comes down.  Ah the drama. 

‡‡‡ Who was wearing the ugliest orange jacket I have ever seen in my life.  Renee, honey, lose that designer.  He's not doing you any favours. 

§ http://www.josephcalleja.com/  I notice the lead review seems to agree with me. 

§§ One of the most thankless roles in all opera.  He has one brief scene being a prat, and is then murdered off-stage by his bride. 

§§§ Heaven?  Really?  Extenuating circumstances and all, but . . . even so. 

# The director/producer was another of the intermission interviewees, and she was saying of her idea to make the ghost real that the ghosts in the novel are real and that 'Scotland of course is very haunted' or words to that effect in her rich American accent and I winced while most of the theatre laughed.

::Beams::

 

So I'm having a stupid day.*   The brain is not working, the limbs are made of old rubber bands that have lost their stretch, and the attitude is rat hair and warts.  And the expression on the face is suitable for scaring small children into becoming model citizens.**   It's probably a good thing that Oisin was trying to get ready to go away for the weekend and was therefore willing to let me slouch at the kitchen counter, drinking tea and grumbling, and that I didn't get to ring anything I wanted to ring at practise tonight.***

            And then I came home and found this in my Twitter feed:

@writingjules Some 10th gr. students made an adaptation of Outlaws of Sherwood. They're thrilled that you might watch. http://bit.ly/hiW0dS

It's fabulous.  Watch it.  Go on, press that button.  And make sure you watch both parts.  Including the outtakes in which there is a discussion about whether or not the author is Robert McKinley.  Warning:  there is a pretty dramatic spoiler, if you haven't read the book, but in fact you may not recognise that it's a spoiler since there's a fair amount of recasting to get it all in in about sixteen minutes.†  Love love love love.  I love Friar Tuck's dog.  There's so much about it that is delightful—I love the choreography of the fight scenes and the helpful soundtrack.  (Also love the music.)  I love the creative intelligence behind it—sure it's both obvious, practical and in the fine old Robin Hood tradition to retell it in a way relevant to the teller—but there are so many clever touches.  Love Tweetie-bird.  Love the hat.   Love—er—King Richard.

            Look, just watch it, okay?††  It'll cheer your day up too.

* * *

* No.  I have no idea why.  The ME was bored, I suppose.  All its favourite TV programmes have been cancelled or something.

** I have two subdued six-year-olds polishing the silver right now.

*** Niall asked me to call a touch of plain bob doubles for one of our beginners.  Fortunately several people went disastrously adrift at about the point when I was going to have to say 'that's all'.  I can usually call the beggar, it's registering when to stop it that I get wrong every time.   So I could just shout ROUNDS and escape responsibility.

† And just by the way, it's a damn good thing that spoiler is there.  The film was made by a boy and his mates, and girls are very thin on the ground.  I appreciate that this was the situation and I'm okay with that:  it's a work of art and I'm so flattered I can hardly stand it.  But I don't want anyone getting the idea that the original Greentree was short of women.   

†† Here come the boring, tedious legal caveats.  Which are that I basically don't have a clue but I'm sure there's a can of worms here that could be opened, and I hope nobody has a tin-opener handy.  I'm not granting any rights, and if someone makes a DVD off the YouTube film and starts selling copies I will be Very Displeased.^  I'm not suggesting that every other tenth grader or teacher of tenth graders should be let loose with copies of my books and video cameras, and I'm still dead against fanfic and fanart based on my work.^^  But every now and then I think it's good for you to compromise your principles and have the sticky toffee pudding with ice cream, or to sit back and enjoy something marvellous even if it may be leaving a few muddy footprints on your copyright.

^ Not my problem, but I also wonder what the rules are about using music clips.

^^ No.  It isn't.  It's retelling my version of the story in another medium.  We don't follow them to Iraq or find out what Robin and Marian's kids grow up to be.+

+ A composer, a bricklayer and a high school English teacher.  The bricklayer went to Oxford and got her post-doc from Harvard.  The English teacher raises wolfhounds.  And the composer is mad.  Nice mad. 

            Next question.

More about things with wiggly lines

 

SNORK.  I've been off line all day and as a warm up to addressing the blog I tweeted that my first mail order yarn arrived today, uh oh . . . and there were five insta-whizz responses in as many minutes.*  You knitters.  You're something else.  Someone wants to know what project this yarn is for . . . and the less than satisfactory answer is that it's for Secret Projects #1 & 2.  The slightly more responsive answer is that I am amusing myself.  Translated, this means that although I am/can still only knit rectangles of varying proportions I am already going off the rails.  Surprise.  Not.  You may remember that even the hellhound blanket is made of three different coloured yarns.  Well, so is everything else (made of different different coloured yarns).**  I am enabling myself. *** I am keeping myself from getting bored.  This is sensible.  It's called Self Knowledge.

            One of the things that the Sainted Yarn Harlot says is that if you're one of these people who takes her knitting everywhere then possibly you have a teeny-weeny problem, the way Imelda Marcos had a teeny-weeny problem about shoes.†  Granted that I am perhaps not the best person to make judgements on what constitutes a problem †† but I think the Sainted Yarn Harlot has it all wrong.†††  One of the great, immediate draws of knitting is that it is the best fidget ever.   Sitting in a traffic jam while you watch the stoplights turn pretty colours like a kind of very slow fireworks and the only thing you can see is the butt end of a police car in the middle of the crossroads?  Can you read—for comprehension, mind—in this situation?  I can't.  But I can knit.  Your public transport is bounding dismayingly over the landscape like a cheetah after a springbok, and you don't dare read?  You can knit.  I admit I knit very slowly when I'm doing it mostly by feel, but it beats both throwing up and being bored.‡  Knitting has already insinuated itself into my life to such an extent that the idea of being caught somewhere without a Mobile Knitting Unit‡‡ is almost as awful as the idea of being caught somewhere without a book.‡‡‡  But it seems to me that's the point.  I mean, it's nice if you have the kind of life where you can just make time for a pleasant new hobby.§  I don't actually know anybody that has that kind of life, but they probably exist out there somewhere. §§  But knitting mops up the interstitial minutes . . . and at the end of it all you have a hellhound blanket.

            So . . . what is my excuse for having been off line all day?  I'm still sleeping badly—I keep snapping awake about once an hour imagining that I'm hearing the end of the world or a norindour coming through the window—so I'm getting up much too late and staggering around mumbling incomprehensibly to myself for too long, and needing too much caffeine before I can remember how to put a hellhound harness on—and I had to crank out two or three syllables of PEG II before I settled down to the real goal of the day, which was to finish learning St Clements College Bob Minor for handbells this afternoon.  The pressgang having shanghaied Fernanda away from us we are forced to find new six-bell ways to amuse ourselves.  St Clements is short but it packs a lot of incident in its brief span ARRGH. 

            So Pooka and her bell ringing ap and I had a fairly intense burst of St Clements over lunch,§§§ and I swore a lot, and then I ran out into the garden and Planted Things and declared to the hellebores and the camellias and the daffodils and the pansies that handbells are a silly way to waste time.#  And then of course Colin and Niall arrived and I had to shut up (and come indoors) and ring.  I love my Pooka.  I love, love, love my Pooka.##  Although it's the usual problem with doing anything with people who are a lot better at it than you are:  they instantly take up your slack and start dragging you farther.  Hey!  I learnt St Clements!  Lay off!  We were ringing frelling spliced this afternoon.  It doesn't get more brain-destroying than spliced on handbells.  Spliced is when you're happily (or even unhappily) ringing your given method and then your evil fiend of a conductor yells some other method at you and you have to start ringing that method in the middle of the method you're already ringing.  The brain-exploding part is that you have not only to make the switch at all, but you have to be able to comprehend where in the new method you are when you pop out of hyperspace into this new universe.  AAAAAUGH.  Granted this was the very shallow end of spliced, but it was still spliced. 

            I should drop out of this nonsense while I still have some brain left, and take up knitting.  Do you suppose it's too late?° 

* * *

* Then there were a dozen in ten minutes.  Now I am stopping counting.  

** I am eyeing the legwarmer pattern(s) with a view to adapting it to a series of long skinny ribbed rectangles, so I can pursue my patchwork yarn thing further.^ 

^ I keep telling you, sewing holds no terrors.  I come from a misspent youth of embroidery.

*** Blondviolinist tweeted that mail order yarn is a slippery slope.  AAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE . . . wham.  Yup.  Slippery.  Very.  

†  Not even close.  —My All Star collection.  I grant you it's scary, but it's nowhere near that scary. 

†† Obsessive?  Moi?  And I wear those shoes, you know.  Like I knit that yarn and sing out of that (growing) collection of songbooks and ring those bells . . . ahem . . . several times a week.  And no, I haven't counted my rosebushes since I put a few more in last autumn.  And no, I'm not going to.^ 

^ I don't have a problem. . . . 

††† This is the only thing she has wrong, of course.^  

^ I have twice been laughing in the bath so hard over a Yarn Harlot book in the last week that the hellhounds have had to come in and make sure I wasn't being eaten by a marauding norindour.+   Or possibly by an invasion of Sweaters that Failed to Make Gauge.++ 

+ That ill-fitting window only accessible by flying things, you know. 

++ This is sort of the knitting version of firing out your quarter peal, except generally speaking you can hate yourself privately, I assume, if you've just knitted something that would fit a Tyrannosaurus Rex rather than your fourteen-year-old niece.~  In the tower you have to withstand either the glares or the pity of the entire rest of the band.  Uggh. 

~ And don't forget that your fourteen-year-old niece may be grateful you fired out because she doesn't believe in knitwear.  Leather, denim, or forget it.  

‡ And yes, you can listen to music and/or stare at the passing land- or cityscape and/or think deep, ardent thoughts about what the hell needs to happen in the next chapter of your confounded novel, but with knitting you get something at the end of it, which is not guaranteed for most of your other choices, especially not the one about the novel. 

‡‡ Yes.  There are now several, to suit all occasions.

‡‡‡ Moi?  Obsessive?  —The cross-fertilisation of one's . . . several beloveds.^  I also had a book delivery today and I was looking at the cover^^ of one of them and thinking, Hmm.  I would like yarn that colour. . . .

^ I too am a harlot.  I am a Multi Harlot. 

^^ http://www.candlestickpress.co.uk/pamphlet/ten-poems-about-tea/

§ Hobby.  Hahahahahahahaha.  The word itself is a bad joke.^

^ The word itself derives from my name.  See?  It's not my fault.  I was cursed at birth to be a (somewhat feverish) dilettante.    

§§ They're all independently wealthy and under 25.  Life accumulates, and earning a living is a ratbag.

§§§ Made more interesting by Chaos having one of his moments.  I'm sure he decided not to eat lunch to help me develop my powers of concentration.  Arrrrrrrrrgh. 

# And you don't get anything at the end either.

## When is the frelling iPad 2 coming out in this country???  Not that it's going to supplant the wonder that is Pooka the iPhone, but it's going to enhance like crazy.

° I wonder if I could learn something else this week and scare them with it next Thursday??  It seems kind of a waste that the Mwa ha ha ha ha-ing always seems to be on their side.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, guest post by Susan Cassidy

 

At a few months shy of the birthday that will mark his passage to manhood, Todd Hewitt, the youngest resident of Prentisstown, New World, has never seen anyone younger than himself, and has never seen a girl or a woman. Bizarre as this is, it is not the most unusual fact of his existence. On New World, everyone can hear the thoughts of men and animals. This cacophony is called Noise, and there is no relief from it unless you are by yourself.

Todd is often by himself. All the other boys who used to be his companions are now men, and Prentisstown men don't associate with boys. Todd lives with his foster fathers, Ben and Cillian, who took him in when his mother, the last woman in the settlement, died. Like the rest of the New World settlers, they are subsistence farmers, and there is always work to be done.

As he labors on the farm or runs errands for his fathers, Todd's constant companion is Manchee, the dog Cillian bought for him on his last birthday. The book memorably opens with Todd's opinion of his dog:

"The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. About anything.

            'Need a poo, Todd.'

            'Shut up, Manchee.'

            'Poo. Poo, Todd.'

            'I said shut it.' "

Manchee is the best dog in literature. I'll admit that my opinion may be skewed by the fact that I tend to avoid dog stories because the dogs almost always die, but I'm still sticking with my claim.

It's difficult to write about this book—the opening novel in the Chaos Walking trilogy—without giving away secrets. Todd knows so little; young, illiterate and protected by his fathers, he is not aware of the history of how New World was settled, what happened to the native population, what caused all the women to die, and most of all, what awaits him on becoming a man. In this first person novel, the reader discovers the truth when Todd does.

The secrets begin to peel away in the first chapter, when Todd and Manchee are out in the swamp, gathering apples, and they discover a hole in the Noise. Todd says, "There ain't nothing but Noise in this world, nothing but the constant thoughts of men and things coming at you and at you and at you," but this is different.

"It's weird, it is, out there, hiding somewhere, in the trees or somewhere outta sight, a spot where yer ears and yer mind are telling you there's no Noise…It's not like the quiet of the swamp, which is never quiet obviously, just less Noisy. But this, this is a shape, a shape of nothing, a hole where all Noise stops."

The hole in the Noise is Viola Eade, a girl. On a scouting mission with her parents, their craft has crashed and she is the sole survivor, marooned on New World with no way to contact the ship of settlers that will land on the planet in a few months. Her fate and Todd's become linked as his discovery of her in the swamp sets off a chain of events that continues through three books.

The Knife of Never Letting Go tells of the journey that Todd and the Noise-less Viola take to find a place of safety. They discover that Prentisstown is not the only settlement on New World, and that Viola is not the only girl, but I won't provide any more plot details because the unrelenting suspense is an important part of these books. And if you hate cliffhanger endings, you'd better have all three books on hand before you begin the first one.

A word about Ness' style: I had heard of this book many times before I finally started to read it, and I put it down after the first (short) chapter. Todd's voice, which I now find completely endearing, grated on me with its long, stream of consciousness sentences and ungrammatical usage. Hopefully that's not a problem you have, but if it is, I advise you to press on. I didn't pick up the book again until I started hearing so much about the final book, which was published last fall.  Of course, Ness reveals his characters through their voices, and Todd is unforgettable. In the second book, The Ask and the Answer, Viola's character becomes fully realized as she shares the narration with Todd. And the third book, Monsters of Men, adds a surprise third narrator.

Much of The Knife of Never Letting Go deals with the discovery of the truth and the question of what it means to be a man. Todd, who has been waiting all his life to be accepted into the society of men, comes to learn that he must define manhood in his own way. As a boy who was raised with no knowledge of women, he is in a unique position to know Viola without being crippled by the prejudices of his society.

But in discussing themes, it is impossible to separate this book from its sequels, in which it becomes clear that Ness is taking on a host of big themes: not only truth and adulthood, but power, loyalty, love, morality, racism, madness, and war. The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men are considerably grimmer than the first book, as Ness explores the darker sides of these themes with difficult scenes of murder, torture and genocide. Yet none of it is gratuitous; rather, by putting the characters in nearly impossible situations, deeper questions about what it means to be human are posed.

Despite the lengthy treatment (1600 pages in all) of these weighty themes, the books are quick reads. The compelling voices of the characters will pull you in, the conflict—and Ness' willingness to kill off nearly anyone—will keep you reading, and the ending that draws out the suspense until the final line will satisfy you deeply.

Tired and old

 

I'm gruesomely tired again.  Sigh.  I was so buzzed last night that it took me forever to get to sleep . . . and then the phone rang again this morning . . . blerg . . . not at an hour that anyone but a madwoman* who turned her light out well past mmph o'clock would consider early.  Peter needed a ride to the osteo.  He'd managed to get an appointment because Rajan had had a cancellation—and it's a good thing that Peter asked me because he is, if anything, worse today, probably because he overdid it yesterday, but it still meant I was Dali's-clocking out of bed and trying to find clothing to put on** earlier than planned. 

            It's been a beautiful day—hellhounds and I all went kind of limp and floppy under the always-surprising unhingingness of spring.  What is it about gorgeous spring days that your bones turn to vanilla custard***?   We had a glorious walk with the skylarks singing like Orfeo† to Eurydice, and I had two excellent hours in the garden this afternoon going, Aaaugh!  It's alive!  And, aaaugh!  It's dead!††, and starting the slamming-hastily-into-pots of the March-April mail-order-delivery rush.††† 

            But I'm worried about Peter and . . . while this is undoubtedly absurd and presumptuous and possibly offensive . . . I'm taking what's happening in Japan personally, as if it were my land and my people.  There have been way too many 'natural' disasters in the last few years—whatever happens now at Fukushima—and the first shock of the news is always like a blow to your own chest:  it's hard to breathe, and your eyes go funny.  But I'm in England, which has been spared so far, and I'm sitting comfortably with my computer in a warm room with a good light source and plenty of food in the refrigerator.  I lived in Japan for five years forty five years ago and I've never been back—and I was an American military brat who never spoke the language properly forty-five years ago and doesn't speak it at all now.  It's not like I ever was assimilated.  But none of that matters.  I feel like the prodigal daughter who left it too late and can't go home again.  Can't do anything but grieve for the people whose losses are all too real.

            So I'm not in the best mood‡.  And Jodi, in an email conversation we were having about books,‡‡ made reference to the recent flare-up about the YA mafia, and I said, the what?, and she sent me some links.  Here's maybe the best sum-up, or it was a day ago and I'm not going to go looking for more:  http://www.yahighway.com/2011/03/field-trip-friday-special-edition-ya.html  You can follow her links and then those links till your hair turns white and you've worn your 'enter'-pressing finger to blisters.  The combustible idea seems to be that there may be a group of best-selling YA authors who all live in each other's pockets, blurb each other's books extravagantly . . . and if you piss one of them off you'll never work in this town again.  And that pissing them off may happen by running unflattering reviews on your book blog.

            Um.  No.  Wrong.

            Now, granted, I am not a best-selling author, and I stay home and ring bells and sing and plant roses and am hurtled by hellhounds‡‡‡ and don't keep up with my corner of the publishing world and am an evil cow of a reader who finds reasons to dislike even those above reproach,§ so if there were a cabal I wouldn't be in it.

            But there isn't a cabal.  For reasons that other people have covered admirably elsewhere, which pretty much come down to: #1  no one has that kind of power, except maybe Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling, both of whom are by almost universal accord decent human beings, and wouldn't have any use for a cabal if someone came rushing up to one of them and offered to make her Empress.  And #2 publishing is a business, and a cabal doesn't have a chance against 1,000,000,000,000,000 editors, agents, booksellers and CEOs looking for the next big thing. 

            But what I wanted to say is about people.   One of the things that several of the commentators on this latest outbreak of a very old familiar complaint—that of those not where they want to be (published) looking at those who are (and famous with it) and wondering if there's an invidious reason why the situation is the way it is—have said is that the ferocity of some of it (and some of it is pretty ferocious) is down to the whole anonymity-of-the-internet thing.  It's so easy to rip a strip off from the comfort of your own office/sitting room and safe behind your user name of Dances with Flamethrowers.  Well, it is undoubtedly easier to do it that way . . . but this behaviour has been around, I assume, as long as there have been people, and I can vouch for its having been around long before the internet happened.  One of the reasons I stopped going to cons is because I'm lousy at confrontation and don't think well on my feet, and I don't like people getting in my face and telling me what is wrong with me, my books, and the horse I rode in on,§§ . . .  and in a few extreme cases telling me that I stole their ideas, that they know that I'm the reason publisher x turned them down and they hate me forever.  Yeeeeeep.

            There are undoubtedly gross injustices that happen everywhere, including in publishing.  (This also is scrupulously explicated in some of the links above.)  There are famous people (including authors) who behave like assholes—including pretending to a power they haven't got (like that they can stop someone getting published).  And some of the furious unfamous people have good reason to be furious.  But . . . there's so awfully much fury and a fair bit of it is not justified.  And that makes me sad and kind of depressed.   We've all got stuff in our lives that isn't working.  I have ME and a frail elderly husband.  There's other stuff I'm not going to talk about in public.  Even Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling have problems, even if you and I don't know what they are.  Problems tend to cause internal pressure, and ones that don't seem to have any answers (like perhaps ME and old age) may bleed their own safety valves by blowing about something irrelevant to the real source of misery.   I'm feeling more like 116 than fifty-eight tonight, so maybe I'm just tired.  If I were less tired I'd probably come up with a better finish line.  But here's the one that I keep thinking.  You know those standard dopey interview questions like, if someone gave you a gazillion pounds/dollars/euros/rubles/yuan/yen, what would you buy first, or what would your superpower be, or if you could have one wish for the world what would you wish?  Okay.  My wimpy old answer, tonight, when I'm tired and depressed, for that last one is:  that when people are in a situation they don't like, when they're angry or hurt or frustrated or confused and looking for someone to blame, that they assume the best rather than the worst about the people around them.   And go from there.

             Yeah.  Wimpy.  I said.

            And maybe tomorrow I'll tell you why an evil cow adopted Pollyanna and why the whole savage-review thing doesn't appeal to me much—even when it's not only not one of my books being pilloried, but I even agree that the subject being torched is not a good book.  

* * *

* or hellgoddess 

** I know I have 1,000,000 t shirts around here somewhere 

*** Not chocolate.  Chocolate is much denser.  

† I think Gluck^ like I think Verdi.^^  Ask me how I pronounce Desdemona.  

^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orfeo_ed_Euridice 

^^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otello 

†† And then I came indoors and had an hour and twenty minutes on the phone with Hannah and knitted.  Ow.  I have got to get either a shoulder holster or a speakerphone before I cripple myself. 

††† I do hope we are not going to get any more late frosts.  It was only luck that the busy lizzies were in the kitchen sink [sic] at the cottage the night before last, when I went out to Wolfgang at the mews at my usual going-home o'clock and discovered him under a thick enough coating of frost I had to get the scraper out to see through the windscreen.  Most of the tender bulbs are still in boxes on the Winter Table—which is the weight-bearing object that stands over the hellhound crate in the cottage kitchen which I would like to take down, but I can't till I can be fairly certain I won't need it for a tender-plant hostel again.  I've got a few short queues of the recently-potted-up outdoors that I'm going to have to schlep indoors again if the temperature drops.  This happens every year:  your tender plants start arriving and you have to do something with them.   It's when my always-too-many dahlia cuttings show up that the situation becomes critical.  And it's no use looking superior and saying that if I had any sense I'd wait and buy the tender stuff at a garden centre—garden centres only ever carry about half a dozen of this year's top fashions in plants, and the two that you might have wanted will have sold out early. 

‡ And just by the way, if this roller-coaster of good and bad days doesn't roll to a halt and let me the hell off soon, I'm going to go to bed and stay there.^ 

^ Faint dissenting murmur from hellhound bed:  Nooooooooooooo, wrooooooooong

‡‡ Fancy!  Talking about books!  

‡‡‡ And worry about my husband 

§ Shakespeare.  Feh. 

§§ I wish.

Yowzah

 

So I was going to chirp on and on in a really annoying way about the wonderfulness of Nadia . . . and I still must chirp at least a little about my voice lesson today.*  But first I have to tell you . . .

            I almost didn't go to Old Eden practise tonight.  I'm still pretty hung over from the events of yesterday** and it took me a while to get moving at all.***  I emailed Niall that I hadn't done my phone round yesterday, stirring up business for our monthly Old Eden practise, so I didn't know how many people would remember to come . . . and that I wasn't sure I'd be there myself.  But that I was going to go to my voice lesson† and that would probably either cheer me up or wipe me out completely.

            It had a kind of combined effect.  I came home again quite repulsively jolly and upbeat, but also aware that the grey fog of everythinglessness was pressing rather near.  I was still making up my mind at 7:25 (practise starts at 7:30).  Oh well, I thought.  They're going to be short, I'd better go.

            Eeep.  I was the third, with Vicky and Niall.  We looked at each other for a while, and then we rang the bells up for something to do, and then we sat around some more—I had emailed Colin when I emailed Niall, and Colin had emailed back that he and Flora were coming, so that would be five . . . Where's Roger? said Colin, when he arrived.  He's probably asleep in front of the TV, said Vicky.  Who's got his phone number? said Colin, flashing his mobile.  If we have a sixth, we can ring a quarter.

            We can do WHAT?  I'm barely standing up, guys.  It's been a rough couple of days.  Roger was duly awakened and agreed to come along.  We rang a little Stedman without a cover while we were waiting.  When Roger showed up, Colin said, We thought we'd ring a quarter.  Of Grandsire doubles!  And you can call it!

            Roger doesn't have a lot of hair left, but what there was of it stood on end.  Ten minutes ago he'd been comfortably asleep in front of the TV.  Give me a minute, he said, alternately clutching his forehead and counting on his fingers . . . I was crouched in another corner of the tower alternately gibbering quietly and chewing on a bell rope.  (The bell ropes at Old Eden are all too long.)  Okay, Roger said.  Let's do it.

            I dove for the two—you may remember that all the bells at Old Eden are to a greater or lesser extent possessed by demons, and the two is on the lesser end.  It also gives you a good view of the other three inside bells.  But this wasn't going to work.  After yesterday I don't have any adrenaline left for sudden shocks to the system and I'm not at my blazingest and crackingest, Roger had been expecting to spend a quiet night at home with a large beer, Flora is getting over a nasty bout of flu including the kind of sinus infection that makes you dizzy and tottery—and all of this on six unfriendly bells.

            YES.  WE DID IT.  I HAVE JUST RUNG MY FIRST QUARTER PEAL OF GRANDSIRE DOUBLES INSIDE.   Mind you, it's completely ridiculous that someone who has been ringing as long as I have (six years I think—yeep††) hasn't rung a quarter of Grandsire doubles inside long since, but . . . hey.  I've done it now.

            And then we all went off to the pub where Colin congratulated himself several times for springing a quarter on me and suckering poor Roger into calling it . . . and Vicky said in her best carrying-it-all-before-her manner, That's the way to ring a quarter—then you can't get all worried about it. 

             These people know me too well. 

* * *

* It doesn't actually fit anywhere—that's the trouble with nonfiction:  it feels no necessity to be graceful and pertinent and to have all its bits work together to a cumulative whole—so I might as well put it here.  I didn't sing yesterday—which will not astonish you—and this morning when I tried to warm up I had no voice.  No.  Voice.  Whatsoever.  It was like my first weeks with Blondel, when I was still expecting him to fall down laughing and tell me he couldn't stand stealing my money any more, and to go home and take up knitting.  I did figure that this was some kind of reaction to yesterday, but I still didn't have a clue what to do about it, and I was assuming (as I will do) that the lesson would as a result be kind of a disaster.  I got there already stiff and braced for the worst, you know?  Can I say 'counterproductive'?  She was running really late, but Wild Robert was there, so I got completely distracted talking about bells^ and when Nadia finally came for me I forgot at least a little that I was expecting the worst, but I did tell her about yesterday and that I had no voice.  And she told me, of course you don't, after a shock like that, all your singing-support muscles are locked up solid. 

            So she unlocked them.  It was almost that straightforward:  she had me do some deep breathing and some wiggling and loosening and . . . I could sing again.   A good teacher is amazing.  It really is like magic.  And I really am improving.  Even I can hear it.^^  Wheeeeee.  I told her that I'd taken my music round to Oisin last Friday and she twinkled at me and said, That was very brave.  Whereupon I told her that someone on my blog forum had got after me for calling myself unmusical, but that the thing about asking Oisin to accompany me is that he's a professional.  It feels like the most colossal cheek.  And she said, without missing a beat, yes, he is.  He's also a teacher. 

             Oh.  Um.  Yes, that's a point. . . .   

^ I miss ringing for Wild Robert.  Waaaaaaah. 

^^ Even I can't quite manage to discount it entirely.

** Peter is much better.  He went to bed last night pretty much in medias res to an extent I found rather alarming . . . but then I found yesterday generally pretty alarming.  And I was worried that he was so sore—and he is sore, very sore, and stiff—that he wouldn't sleep very well.  But in fact when I finally hauled my own sorry ass out of bed this (very late) morning and rang him he was just back from walking up to town with his knapsack to go shopping.  Good grief.  He's still tired and achy though and we still need to figure out what's going on. 

*** Hellhounds are a great motivator, of course.  Yo.  Hellgoddess.  How about now?  

† Voice lessons cost money.  Also . . . I had to go to the yarn shop.   No, really!  I'm going to run out of Secret Project #1 yarn!  Because I can't count!  And all I bought was two skeins of Secret Project #1 yarn!  I may have done a little thoughtful fondling.  

†† This assuming I've been ringing with a band or bands that can teach it to me, which I have.  There are a lot of people who get stuck at call changes or plain hunt simply because nobody else in their tower knows any more than call changes and plain hunt.  Or, of course, there are the ringers who take one look at what's involved in ringing methods and say, thanks, I like call changes.  Which is perfectly valid (if possibly somewhat frustrating to a band who needs extra method ringers).  And well-struck call changes are lovely.

The Day That Did Not Go as Planned

 

The phone rang at 7:30 this morning.  This is my idea of an ungodly hour even on Sundays, when I drag myself groaning out of bed at 8 for service ring at 8:45.  In theory I have the upstairs phone unplugged because I do not want to be disturbed by people who lead normal sorts of lives and keep normal sorts of hours.  In practise I can hear the downstairs phone perfectly clearly and the more ungodly the hour the faster I answer it.  I can get the flex jammed back into its connection while my eyes are still glued shut.

            Sorry to trouble you, said Peter's voice in his best I'm-fine-really tone, but I've just fallen down and bashed the back of my head against the bath, and there's rather a lot of blood.  Can you come?

            This was—just by the way—the second fall in less than two days.  Yesterday afternoon Peter had been hanging a picture I had unearthed at Third House and brought down to the mews . . . and there was this loud thud in the hall and a faint, startled moan . . . and I leaped over the kitchen table and wrenched open the door, and there was Peter, lying on the carpet.  Other than the actual falling down part, he seemed unhurt.

            Today . . . there was rather a lot of blood, trailing thrillingly all over the (dry) bath.*  I'll never feel the same about raspberry coulis.**  I'm taking you to A&E***, I said.

            No, said Peter.  I'm fine.  But thanks for coming down. 

            You are not fine, I said, having checked for things like pupils the same size and eyes tracking together.  He's already demonstrated that he can speak in complete sentences, he's got his dressing-gown on right-side-up and is walking around.  —The back of your head looks like someone hit it with a hammer.

            I'm fine, said Peter.  It's just a graze.  Here, feel it.

            I am not touching anything, I said.  I know sod-all about concussion, but I do know that scalp wounds bleed like the levee breaking, and there's a bathtub in the vicinity that supports this view.  I am taking you to A&E.†  

            We compromised.  Peter rang the out-of-office-hours emergency-doctor service—the one I got quite chummy with last spring—who of course immediately said, tell your wife to bring you in to A&E.  I want my breakfast, said Peter, sullenly:  you do not get between this man and his three and a half square meals a day.  So we compromised again.  I took very alarmed hellhounds†† for a quick placatory hurtle while Peter had breakfast.†††   I then bundled still very alarmed but no longer suffering internal urgencies hellhounds back to the cottage, and Peter and I set out for A&E.‡

            . . . Where they told us it would be at least two hours—Sunday morning after Saturday night, what can I tell you, although there were a lot of little kids who probably hadn't been in bar brawls—and Peter sent me home. ‡‡  Hellhounds were not the least bit deflected/propitiated by a second abridged walk by a clearly distracted hellgoddess, but at least it lowered my guilt level somewhat—and when I drove back to the hospital, there was Peter sitting on a wall in the sunshine, dubiously pressing buttons on his mobile and failing to make Pooka ring, to tell me to come fetch him.

            Peter is officially fine.  They didn't even put in any stitches.  But he's about as sore as you'd expect, if you were 83 and had had two heavy falls in less than two days, and he's written a letter to his doctor that I put through the clinic door on our afternoon hurtle, and his doctor is pretty good about making contact.‡‡‡  Falling down has already got old, and we would like some alternatives.

            Meanwhile, I'm sure you'll forgive me if I go to bed early.  Gods help me, I'm supposed to have a voice lesson tomorrow. . . . 

* * *

* When we were first married, we used to shout, We be of one blood, thou and I! a lot.  —Speaking of blood.  But tripping over your own feet and into an empty bathtub is the sort of thing Peter and I do.  No, I only got a few bruises, last time I tried it.

** And I've never liked the modern art approach to culinary performance anyway.

*** ER 

† Let me tell you about living in a country with a national health service.  There are several crucial aspects to arguments with one's bleeding spouse when you live in a country with a national health service, to wit: 

It exists.
It exists.
It exists.
One's obstinate ratbag of a bleeding spouse cannot put forward the argument that you cannot afford to go to a doctor.
One can, however, put forward the argument that if the bleeding spouse doesn't come quietly to A&E, one will ring for an ambulance.  83-year-old man had a fall in the bath, blood everywhere?  I could have an ambulance here in minutes. ^
It exists.  Did I mention that it EXISTS? 

^ Probably.  But response rate is pretty good in this area. 

†† Dogs are funny.  Warning:  too much information follows.  I've had about six cups of tea today, partly because I'm badly short of sleep^, partly in response to the horrible grey aftermath of a major adrenaline spike, and partly out of anxiety, something-to-do-with-my-hands, comfortable-familiar-ritual . . . and I wonder why I twitch at small noises . . . and as a result I'm peeing about every five minutes.  Every time I get out of my chair to go have another pee . . . hellhounds bounce out of their bed and follow me.  They know something's up and they're sure it's not a good thing.  They're right, of course.

^ There was the little matter of lying in the (full) bath to read another chapter last night 

††† Peter also phoned his second cousin once removed and apologised for not coming to the party.  And I phoned Niall and said I wasn't going to make service ring. 

‡ You better believe the Mobile Knitting Unit came with me.  When things calm down a little I will have to introduce you to the new range of Mobile Knitting Units.  A Unit for Every Mobility!  —I also brought four books.^  And Pooka, of course, although the intricacies of learning a new handbell method were wildly beyond me today.^^ 

^ . . . waiting for the iPad 2 to be released in the UK . . . waiting . . . 

^^ It's been a very good day for knitting.  I knew I wanted a nice friendly obsession that you can do sitting down in the warm and brain dead, if you're careful about your choice of enterprise.  I can just about slash off a hellhound blanket square these days without—er—very noticeable error.  Don't ask me about the error rate of Secret Project #1.  Siiiiigh.  

‡‡ He tried to tell me he'd take the bus home whereupon I threatened not to leave in the first place.  Marriage.  The art of compromise. 

‡‡‡ If he fails in this case I will hunt him down and suck the marrow out of his bones.

In Which the Hellgoddess Proves She Can Talk at Length about Nothing

 

After a very slow cautious ME-placating start* this morning I took a deep breath and wandered desultorily up to Third House.  I already had the dog-minder booked because I was supposed to be going somewhere today** so I thought I'd at least go have a mild little look at . . . what is still more or less the bomb site that is Third House.  GAAAAH.  Every time I go up there and gaze upon all those boxes of books I have a sudden appointment at the opposite end of town.***   But it's getting increasingly ridiculous that I have this . . . uh . . . Third House and people who come to visit still get put up at the local B&Bs.†   So I did some squirreling and scouring†† and as a result was on such a high of virtue manifested that when I swept (admirably exhausted) hellhounds down to the mews I immediately embarked on the noble and shining exploit to make bookshelf space for my knitting books.  There is, however, a significant drawback to having accomplished this feat:  standing up on a shelf, as opposed to lying down on the table next to the piano that is supposed to be devoted to music, ††† suddenly there are so few of them.  Maybe I should order a few more to keep them company—?‡ 

* * *

* Plus strong black tea.  Sigh.  I eat more fresh vegetables than a regiment of giant rabbits, I take my vitamin pills, I support and boost with homeopathy^ and Bowen, I neither eat, wear nor wash with anything containing Funny Chemicals . . . but I'm still a caffeine addict.  I've been off tea three times in the last quarter century . . . including once after the ME felled me . . . and I go back every time.  Okay, everyone needs a vice^^ and I have yet to gamble away all my material goods in a single throw^^^ or pick a fight with someone twice my size and with six arms, all of them holding swords, after a beer too many.^^^^  But . . .

^ Indeed I'm pretty sure I'm on my feet today because I made a good choice of booster last night. 

^^ Or twelve

^^^ Possibly because no self-respecting gambler would be interested

^^^^ In my case of course it would be glass of champagne too many.  Speaking of vices. 

** What a kick in the head this weekend has turned out to be.  After I was already signed up for my bell outing an invitation to a major Dickinson clan gathering arrived, and Peter and I discussed it but the journey was not plausible—too far for me to drive, and the train/coach option plus the party itself would equate to a body bag for McKinley.  Peter decided he would go—the irony being that at 83 and falling asleep after supper every night his stamina is still better than mine.  This afternoon, after hellhounds and I got down to the mews, after the dog minder had performed her ambulant magic . . . Peter got a phone call from one of the Younger Generation saying that he would come and fetch his second cousin once removed^ tomorrow . . . including any attendant wives.   And I can't ask my dog minder on no notice to do a second weekend stint and I'm still pretty much on the thin edge myself and probably don't dare go be frelling social at one of these clan gatherings which I found seriously debilitating before the ME.  But . . . damn.  If the Younger Generation had got wind of the situation two days ago and made his extremely generous offer then, I might have been able to juggle.  The gathering tomorrow will have too many people, but there will also be champagne.^^ 

^ . . . I think.  Genealogy is not one of my strong points.

^^ I tweeted this, but it's worth repeating:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/12/what-really-thinking-woman-with-me

I'm a little wary of how these pieces are edited—some of you may remember the what-someone-is-really-thinking column about a woman with a much older husband:  she sounded pretty much a cow, and as another woman with a much older husband I objected to what seemed to be her assumptions about the reality of the situation.  But after a lot of other people posted their similar objections, she signed on to protest that she'd been harshly edited.  So I wonder about this one, because this woman has also been edited to sound pretty bitter and whiny, and while there's bitter and whiny too that's not all of it—and I bet she also said 'I am not my illness'—but that's been edited out.  Allowing, then, for unsympathetic editing, let me say that every word that has made it onto the page is true for me too.  I am not malingering.  And I know a lot about what my illness is telling me—so?   Someone with a limp because one leg is six inches shorter than the other knows why they have a limp too.  I also tend always 'to look so well'—and as someone one of whose basic ME boundaries is about getting behind the wheel of a car, I notice she refers to being well enough to drive.  And the last paragraph—yes.  You may just get the flu.  And it may just not go away.  That's what happened to me too.  I still have the poem Peter wrote me about glandular fever+ when I finally got that diagnosis and was so relieved.  I'll put it up here some day.  I still have it up on my wall.  As a warning, I guess, about what you want to risk laughing about.  But it's a funny poem, and it still does make me laugh.  Black humour is a lot better than no humour. 

+ mono in the States  

*** The best news about Third House is that at least two of my chocolate cosmos are still alive.  I love chocolate cosmos^ but I always lose them over the winter—it's not just that they're tender, they're fussy.  Geraniums, for example, you bring indoors and shove on a windowsill and they give themselves a shake and say, oh, right, indoors, and keep right on flowering.  Begonias that have been outdoors all summer tend to sulk but survive . . . snapdragons hate my windowsills but are fine in my Heath-Robinson greenhouse^^^ . . . blah blah blah blah: I could go on but I won't . . . anyway.  I have occasionally wintered a single chocolate cosmos over but this is the first time I've succeeded with more than one:  and one of them looks positively robust.^^^^  

^ Well, duh.  But you don't eat them.  You just smell them.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_atrosanguineus  But they smell heavenly.  

^^ My stephanotis is flowering and speaking of smelling heavenly . . . mmmmmm.  It's not chocolate, it's . . . well, it's a summer smell, except that stephanotis is also tender, and flowers in my experience in early spring when everything outdoors is still shivering.+ 

+ Wiki says summer.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanotis  I had a monster stephanotis once—which I inadvertently killed by leaving outdoors on a night it wasn't supposed to freeze—and it used to flower and flower and flower and flower, but when it was still a windowsill plant it flowered in spring. 

^^^ I've told you I've got several snapdragons that have wintered themselves over outdoors?  Snapdragons are tender.  Snapdragons do not survive months like last November-December–or even last week.  I'm hoping I've just inadvertently provided hospitality to a mutant hardy strain and am about to make my fortune (finally) selling the seed. 

^^^^ Gods help me if cosmos are like stephanotis and get large.  The reason the stephanotis died—and I still feel guilty—is because it was so big it was a major wrestle to get it back into the kitchen at the cottage—at the old house it lived inside the French windows in my office. 

† No, I am glad to see you!   Really I am!  It's just—uh— 

†† I am still finding charming little leftovers from the builders.  I love builders so much.  Not.  Who puts wet soap in a box of towels?  Builders.  Who don't notice that they've left their almost-empty^ cup of coffee behind a stack of (book) boxes?  Builders.   Who leave screws, splintery tag-ends of timber, bits of piping, incomprehensible broken-off shards of plastic and the occasional rusty tool behind, so your property is an archaeological site of no interest whatsoever for years after?  BUILDERS. 

^ I am trying to be grateful for small favours. 

††† Speaking of which, I've just ordered some Benjamin Britten sheet music for voice.  Also Purcell.  And . . . Pirate Jenny. 

‡ No I am not asking for recommendations.

The Fine Song for Singing

 

I'm so tired I'm considering tying myself to my chair.  I'm supposed to be going on a ringing outing tomorrow but I don't think I'm going to make it.  I think I'm just tired—I think it's not the ME—yet—but I think if I don't behave myself tomorrow it will be the ME.  Well there are worse fates than lying on the sofa covered in hellhounds and . . . knitting.  Or reading about knitting:  my second Yarn Harlot book arrived today.*

            So . . . why am I so tired?  Well, in the first place, a novel that is going well is a whole lot more tiring than a novel that is sitting there like a lump of granite.  I bounce off the lump of granite a few times, sigh heavily, check my bruises, and go do something else.  A novel that wants attention is more demanding than several dozen hellhounds, or a kindergarten class on a field trip.

            Also . . . I had to sing for Oisin today.  The experience of learning The Roadside Fire has been one of those occasions where I rather wished that I didn't have a piano and an old-fashioned attitude, and could learn the freller by singing along to YouTube.  I've moaned to you about this before, haven't I?  It's in five flats.  Five.  I really don't think five flats is necessary.**  And since Vaughan Williams is a Great Composer instead of some dull hack, he doesn't just stay in five flats where you might be able to adjust, he creeps around, making sudden, nasty little forays in other directions.  I'd only got through the first three pages of Roadside Fire for Nadia on Monday, but then since she was busy primping my vowels we didn't need any more.  When you show up to sing with your accompanist (!!!) there is a certain burden of assumption that you're going to sing the whole thing.  This has meant earnestly tackling the final two pages which are suddenly in four sharps.  Except for the very last note, which merrily slews back into five flats again.  What is the matter with the man??  This is very hard on the stressed-out not-very-musical.  It makes us threaten to take up abacus collecting. 

            The learning experience has been further enhanced by my tendency to play the frelling notes wrong***.  I'm only picking out the melody with one finger and I am still getting it wrong—well, I am trying to sing at the same time.  I've already observed with reference to the front row of the chorus in Octopus and Chandelier having much more fun than the back row because they get to shimmy across the stage waving their fins, I can't walk and chew gum at the same time . . . let alone pick out the melody and sing.  So it's a good thing that I had Bryn Terfel† (and YouTube) as back up because my finger has kept trying to teach my voice wrong.  Gaaaaaah.

            So I was banging on my long-suffering piano last night and screaming, I mean singing, and some more of the same today before I had to go . . . uh, face my music.  Oh gods why do I get myself into these things.  But . . . music is supposed to be shared.  That's the deal.  I've done my little tap-dance for you before about how we're hard-wired for music the way we're hard-wired for language, story-telling, and producing the next generation?  It's insane that art and music†† are the first casualties when local governments (this includes school boards) start axing public programmes.  It's like making everybody wear blindfolds or have one arm tied behind them or only eat grey food. 

            Anyway.  Where was I?  Standing trembling on Oisin's threshold.  First he tortured me a little playing Louis Vierne††† as if it were any ordinary Friday afternoon.  And then . . . finally . . .

            Truth is . . . it wasn't too bad.  My place in the New Arcadia Singers is probably not under threat.‡  Probably.  And more to the immediate point, Oisin looked around and said, okay, what's next?  What else did you bring?  So I have to bring something else next week.  I said provocatively, I'd like to get into some Britten.  Great, said Oisin—way too quickly.  You know, I do love singing.  And evidently it doesn't hate me. . . .‡‡ 

* * *

* Relax.  I'm also reading several novels.  And Oisin just loaned me a book on music—on the experience of music, and what it does to you—and refused to say a thing about it.  I'll be very interested in your reaction, he said straight-faced, suppressing his Mwa hahahahahaha.  —Ratbag. 

** I have a theory that the physics that produced the need for musical compromise which in the present day is mostly met by the use of equal temperament tuning . . . proves that this universe doesn't really exist.  Because it makes no sense.  We're all a fantasy.  What is that old conundrum about the Chinese philosopher dreaming he is a butterfly, unless it's the other way around?  I don't believe in a world where the physics of sound is so silly.  And since we're all a fantasy, there will be a small, friendly dragon sitting on Wolfgang's roof when the hellhounds and I go back to the cottage tonight, and three pegasi in the attic—having got in through the window that doesn't fit, but is only accessible to things that fly.  They and the dragon will be instant friends, and will stay up all night exchanging stories about the different parts of this imaginary universe they're from, and giggling.  Pegasi giggles are breathy, but a dragon giggle is quite raspy. 

*** See:  five flats.  Except when it's four sharps.  Or something else entirely, hiding behind injudicious use of accidentals. 

† http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bryn-Terfel-Vagabond/dp/B000001GPD 

†† And sex ed 

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

‡ Oh, and I have the perfect first gig:  a charity concert toward our tower bell restoration fund.  We'd better get moving.  They're scheduling the work on the bells as soon as they can.  The excitement at tonight's practise was caused when a bell rope broke.  We knew that the ropes needed replacing . . . but we possibly didn't know that the need was quite this drastic.  The broken end of the rope was crumbly, more like pottery than worn hemp.  We thus lost half an hour while we got the other bells down^, and people who knew what they were doing, which would not include me, went up and replaced the broken rope.  I sat down in a dark corner, got out Pooka, and began addressing St Clements Bob Minor.  Arrgh.  When I said yesterday that the three of us original Thursday night handbellers looked at each other and said, Let's learn a new method!, what I meant was, let's make Robin learn a new method!  Colin can ring anything anyway, even if there keep being brief hiatuses while he fails to translate this encyclopaedic knowledge into handbells, and as far as I'm concerned Niall can ring anything on handbells, although he keeps insisting that he's the bottom end when he rings with the big boys.  Well, he's my idea of the top end.  Which means that we'll be able to ring St Clements as soon as I can.  Siiiiigh.  I think I'd enjoy a collection of abacuses. 

^ Never ever ever crawl around in a belfry when the bells are up.  Death wish isn't in it.

‡‡ 'the fine song for singing' is from Roadside Fire.  It's out of the four-sharps section.