Robin McKinley's Blog, page 139

Stash

 

Exhibit A:  the tapestry bag. 

It's even prettier in person.

            This was one of my favourite things, back in the days when we went up to London a lot.  And the three years (ten weekends per) I was in homeopathy college, also in London, it was my weekend bag.  I loved it.  And then I started staying home all the time.  So when, a week or so ago, I started thinking thoughts about yarn stash, I thought of my tapestry bag.  Everything fits into it.  Even the hellhound blanket work bag fits into it. 

The Mobile Knitting Unit is in there too, it's just hiding.

But I know madness when I feel it coursing through my veins, so I also knew that this happy, contained situation would not last.

            And so today I give you . . . augmented stash.*

Yes, the book at the bottom says 'Knit Your Own Dog.' And one of the stripeys on the right is missing, but it had BETTER be back at the cottage. And the colours, as usual, are kind of off. The tweedy far-left five are a deep rosy . . . pink.

            You know what the worst thing is?  I have three more knitting books coming in the post.**  They should have been here by today.  They should have been here by the end of last week.  They were supposed to be here for Fiona to look at, blanch, and tell me I've lost my mind.  But they weren't.  Which meant I had no defense when we went to the yarn shop.  We had to go to the yarn shop!  The hellhound blanket is going to take way more yarn than what I've bought so far!***   And then. . . .

            And then. . . .

            Believe it or not I have plans for all of it.  And . . . believe it or not . . . individually quite reasonable plans.  The problem is the four hundred and sixty five simultaneous projects aspect. 

            Oh . . . well . . . almost all of it.†  That centre-left heap—there are eleven of the little suckers—that yarn has wept at me and clung to my All-Stars and my jeans hems each of the four times I've been in the frelling yarn shop.  I don't know what you call the effect, but it's variously dyed so as you knit it up you get an irregular fade from one colour to the next.  (It's not that self-striping yarn.  It's haphazard.)  They've got several colourways but this is the one I MUST HAVE.  So I'm cruising the shop and I keep cycling past it like an electron round its nucleus.  The horrible woman who runs the shop keeps knitting stuff and hanging it around, and because she is clearly telepathic and knew that my credit card and I would be arriving soon she had knitted up something from this particular yarn and it's like AAAAAUGH.  Except what she's done is this insane wave/scallop/lace pattern and kill me, just kill me.††  So I stared at it in wildest despair and then said to Fiona, do they have any patterns for REALLY SIMPLE tops?  Because it's clearly a Top Yarn.  Which is how we found ourselves on our knees by the book racks.  Which is how that happened.††† 

            Okay, new passion, new pet peeves.  Here's what may be my first knitting peeve:  books that start out helpfully with Descriptive Lists of Gradations of Skill.  Beginner patterns, they say, will be marked with one star.  Intermediate with two and three stars, and advanced with four and five stars.  And then there aren't any that are one or two stars. 

            We never did find a Really Simple Top.‡  So we consulted the horrible lady.  Who acknowledged that it was a problem, pulled out an almost simple top pattern from a large notebook full of single patterns, and started telling me how to adapt the damn thing to be more simple.  On the one hand I wanted to laugh, because the point here is that I haven't got a clue, and Fiona was going home in a couple of hours.  On the other hand . . . I was following what she was saying, although whether or not I'd be able to remember what the blasted heath to do once I got home again was moot.

            At this moment a tall elegant lady drifted up from nowhere and said in a subdued but unmistakable American accent if she could be so rude as to ask what we were talking about because she was always deeply interested in knitting.  So we told her.  And one thing led to another and she and I exchanged email addresses‡‡ and I . . . ::blush:: . . . I gave her the address of this blog as well and said that my attempts to learn to knit were featuring somewhat prominently lately.  Ahem.  But the point here is that the eleven-skein pile in the left-centre is her fault.  She said, even if you can't figure out precisely what you're making now, if you love the yarn, estimate what you'd need to make something like what you think you want to make and buy it, because by the time you find the pattern it will be gone and you will be forever bereft. 

            So I bought it.‡‡‡  And this other stuff.  And then, as if the day wasn't surreal enough already, § as Fiona and I were staggering back to the car park bowed under the weight of our new stash, a dreadfully familiar figure emerged from a grievously familiar door . . . it was Dentist from R'lyeh.  Who chatted.  Gods§§ help us.  We all walked back to the car park together in a jolly companionable fashion.  I said to Fiona that if I were a dentist I would not want to be seen in the company of someone with teeth that looked like mine, but then I suppose every time he looks at me smile he thinks, another year at Oxford for Hagar!  Yessssssss! 

* * *

* And because I wouldn't want you to think that I'm the only person with a problem, here is Fiona's supplementary stash. 

One of the teal skeins leaped out of the bag and rolled under my table. I was tempted. . . .

Yes, she's another sock knitter.  Eat your heart out, Black Bear. 

** Or four.  I forget.

*** And which honest, genuine purchase doesn't even appear in the photo.

† And I'm not going to tell you all my awesome plans at this point, the better to dazzle you with a fantastic array of whatsit later on.

†† I can now purl.  I deny however that I can now do anything.

††† Yes I know about Ravelry.  I belong, remember?  Books are still very satisfying. 

‡ I will give you a guided tour of my growing stash of knitting books some other night.

‡‡ She works at a yarn shop back home, sells her own designs, is setting up her own web site.  However I'm not going to expose her as someone who chats up random clueless strangers in Hampshire yarn shops yet.  I will acknowledge that we bonded over the fact that we both have gorilla-length arms.  She, however, is tall enough to bring this off.  Me . . . walking on your knuckles wears your gloves out something sorrowful.

‡‡‡ It's cotton and bamboo and amazingly silky.  Dunno what it's going to be like to knit with, but I'll be EXPERIENCED by then and I'm sure it will be FINE.

§ Have I been knitting a month yet?^

^ Let's say for the sake of argument I have.  And at ten squares a month it's still going to take eight months to finish the hellhound blanket.  And that's before I started trying to add in one or twelve other little projects.

§§ Elder Gods, of course

In the first place. . . .

 

In the first place, gods, daffodils and plum duff*  I love you guys.  The Harass Oisin Riot Thread is amazing.  There ought to be a way to harness all that and end war or reverse global warming or something.  As it is I may have to give away more than one poster.  Maybe even a book. 

            Don't stop now.  You're totally on a roll.

            And anybody who doesn't ordinarily read the forum . . . reform your habits at least this once.  Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee.**

I can use a little frivolity and gaiety.  Darkness was terrifyingly sick yesterday, pretty much the worst I've seen him since I finally figured out the cereal allergy two years ago.  It was so bad that my auto-shut-down mode went into effect, which is why I didn't mention it here yesterday while it was going on.  He's much better today, but a seizure like the last 24 hours has to be very hard on his system, not to mention his caretaker.  And what I'm afraid must have happened is that he picked up the end of someone's sandwich*** while the dog minder was hurtling them Saturday night in the dark, while I was at the opera.  She knows about the allergy, but the severity of it isn't tattooed on her synapses the way it is on mine—and when hellhounds are doing their army on a rampage trick they're also pretty hard to keep perfect track of—especially after dark.  So I'm twice worried:  I'm worried about Darkness, and I'm also worried that I may be going to lose another dog minder.  She may decide she doesn't want to have to cope with this—and indeed if it happens again I'll pull the plug.†

            Meanwhile I decided I didn't want to risk leaving Darkness at home in case he suddenly needed to go out right this minute . . . so I cancelled the dog-minder's standard Monday afternoon hurtle and took them along to my voice lesson:  the driveway where you park is not only off road, it's immediately outside Nadia's music room, so between screams—er—I mean exquisite musical renderings, I could look out and check for intra-Wolfgang frenzy.  Hellhounds were fine.††

            I was . . . um.  It's ridiculous how much I love singing, whether or not it loves me.  There has been some slightly mysterious sea-change however from the time Blondel left to three weeks ago when I started with Nadia;  it's like what he'd been trying to drum into me has had an opportunity, over the last months, to seep through secretly after all.  So we're already starting slightly beyond where I was when Blondel left in September, which is a bit exhilarating.  It also fascinates me the way that Nadia is clearly aiming at the same mark as Blondel although her explanations, exercises and suggestions are slightly different.†††  I'm still persecuting The Minstrel Boy, but I said (hesitantly) that I'd been looking at Vaughan Williams' The Roadside Fire—from Songs of Travel—partly as a result of our conversation about English song last week, and she said great, bring it along next week‡  ::Beams::

            And tonight at tower practise Colin, obviously deranged from grief at the loss of last Friday's quarter, had us ringing Grandsire minor.‡‡  And Erin.  Which was created to confuse Stedman ringers.  Which is very unkind, since ringing Stedman successfully is a feat.  We should be allowed, if not to rest on our laurels, at least to have them.  Erin rushes in, stage left, shouts, nanny nanny boo boo sucks, and races off again, leaving jangling noises and the sound of Colin shouting.   Feh.  Well, it was his dumb idea.

            Darkness ate supper and is crashed out.  Yaay.

* * *

* http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/plumpuddingplumduff_89799 , just in case any of you Americans thought I was making it up.  Really, if I'm going to swear by a British pudding it ought to be spotted dick http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/spotteddick_78629 , but that would probably be asking for trouble.  And we've already had the joke about Oisin's enormous organ, so we don't need to have it again.  I will remark, however, just lightly and in passing, that every time I have to refer to the damn thing—the one with keyboards that plugs into a computer, it's the only one I know anything about—I waft a small fretful complaint to the language gods that that particular large and exceptionally thrilling musical instrument doesn't have A BETTER, MORE PRECISE AND INDIVIDUAL NAME.  

** I was trying to choose one to post here as an example of the really superior twistedness and creativity that this blog seems mysteriously to attract.  I can't.  But here are two: 

The first from ned: 

Dearest, darlingest, loveliest Oisin. Please write a guest post soon, or I will be forced to begin singing Kumbaya over and over and over again in proper protest fashion. However, since I don't know any of the proper verses, I'll be forced to make some up:

"Someone's knitting, my lord, someone's knitting…"

"Someone's turning on the lights, my lord, someone's…"

And someone else will be grading my exam, and someone else will be selling me coffee, and someone else will be trying to teach me and an entire class full of grumpy pre-meds about microbial physiology. That last one will be a bit difficult to fit in one verse without horribly disrupting the rhythm, but by that point I'll probably be a bit woozy from lack of breath and won't notice.

Of course, this can only end one way:

"Someone's coming at me with a chainsaw, my lord, kumbaya;

If only Oisin had written that guest post, my lord, kumbaya…

I guess I'm not too young to die, my lord, kumbaya,

Oh, lord, kumbaya."

And after that I will HAUNT you, and keep singing it. Somehow. Possibly borrowing the vocal chords of your friends and loved ones. And you will have only yourself to blame.

. . . which had me pretty well sick with laughing.

And from Mrs Redboots:

My dear Oisin, some months ago, we're told

A certain Hellgoddess, known to us all here,

Performed an act of magic in your rooms,

Lifted her voice, sang, warbled, made a noise

That you had longed to hear, had begged, beseeched

Upon your bended knees entreated her.

The hellgoddess, as is the way of such,

Drove a hard bargain: "Yes, you'll hear me sing

If you will write an entry for my blog!"

She sang. And now, Oisin, the time has come

For you to do your part in this exchange.

Pull out your keyboard – no, the other one,

The one on which you write, and make a start.

You'll find it's not so difficult to do.

But if you fail, beware, beware the wrath

Of all the minions threatening on this thread.

. . . which had me declaiming.  Yah.  Rah.  Blah.  ::gestures:: 

I also like the squeaky cats, the yowling violins, the ill-favoured lullabies, the note from PamAdams that a Google search for 'Octopus and Chandelier' brings up this thread^ and that Oisin is therefore wasting a chance to become more famous, and the threat from one forumite to lock herself up in Oisin's music room and play chords that don't resolve.  Aaron has also posted the beginnings of a canon which I admit is giving me very nasty ideas. 

            And you know, Oisin ought to be in a fairly fragile state after a nimiety of octopi . . . we should certainly manage to produce an effect . . . but whether it will be a blog post or a nervous breakdown remains to be seen. 

^  ::hysterics::

*** And I would like to kill the lazy thoughtless slobs who throw food any old where because they're too damn lazy to put it in a bin.  Granted my hellhounds' problems are unusual, but garbage looks like hell, stinks, and attracts rats and disease—and I object to tax money going to pay extra civil support staff to pick up after pillocks.   

† Yes, I have often thought of muzzles.  But the off-lead aggressive dog problem still gets priority.  It's bad enough my guys have to deal while they're on lead—I'm just not going to muzzle them—I'm not going to wreck their personalities too.  I've told you Darkness starts showing some symptoms of defensive aggression when we've had a bad season for truculent four-legged nincompoops—and even Chaos can be pushed too far.

†† Except that it's suddenly so cold again.  When I found out tonight's bell practise was at South Desuetude I went back to the cottage and put on longjohns.  I wasn't expecting to get my longjohns back out again this winter.  Never mind.  And—just by the way—there is nothing cuter than two hellhounds in the back seat with a blanket tucked over them.  It's interesting, the whippets never learnt to settle down under a blanket—they'd always shake it off (this was mainly Holly, who was dim) and get cold.  These guys, you break out the blanket in cold weather and they're all, Yes!  We're lying down now!  Lovely blanket!  They were entirely content while I was screaming, er, singing, although when I got back to the car there was a definite air of okay, we've been good, now you're going to hurtle us in this fascinating new neighbourhood, aren't you?

            Dogs are such a treat, even when they're a total pain in the butt.  I don't know how people enjoy themselves without a little domestic fauna around causing complications.

††† Except when they aren't.  Both Nadia and Blondel are big on arriving at a note from above rather than below, for example.  I think one of the reasons singing fascinates me is because so much of it—apparently—is taught in mad metaphor which turns out to be absolutely practical.  What nonsense is it, to let your in breath carry you up that octave, so you're already there before you have to sing the note?  But it works. 

‡ It has one serious drawback:  it's in five flats.  Please.  And that's not enough, it has extra flats, here and there (including Cb and Fb, which are the best^), and double flats.  ARRRGH.  I remind myself that I now understand that equal temperament tuning has meant that all notes are not created equal, but Fb STILL MAKES ME CRANKY.  And what this means in my practise is that, since I know the tune, I will be singing the pitch so my frelling finger on the frelling piano can find the right note—rather than the other way around. 

^ For the non-musical:  if you look at a piano keyboard, you have white keys, plus little groups of black keys in twos and threes.   C Major is where the world begins, and it's the scale that is all white keys.  You start adding black keys as sharps and flats.  The two places you haven't got a black key to make a flat are C and F, so it's a bit ridiculous.  There are reasons why an otherwise sane composer gets into these positions+ . . . but you don't really want to know. 

+ Hint:  equal temperament tuning. 

‡‡ Which might be likened to the bell version of Cb.  You know it exists, you even know why it exists.  You still rather wish it didn't.  Although Grandsire minor is easier to play than five flats.

The Harass Oisin into Producing What He Promised Guest Blog Riot Thread

 

Months ago Oisin, my piano and composing teacher, piano accompanist and organ maestro, musical director-arranger for The Octopus and the Chandelier, and source of cups of strong tea on Friday afternoons . . . promised me a guest blog.  I can't now remember how the subject first came up, but I always have my tongue hanging out for guest blogs, so once the subject had been raised I wasn't going to let it slip away.  And then he promised—promised—that he'd write me a guest blog if I'd sing for him.  Not, you realise, that this was going to be a big event in his life, but once a music teacher always a music teacher, and I kept whining at him that it would be great to take advantage of his accompanist skills and he kept saying, yes, fine, so bring your frelling music.*

            Finally the guest post carrot was dangled in front of the recalcitrant donkey . . . and the donkey brayed.

            That was months ago.  Oisin still owes me a guest post.**

            And a few nights ago on the forum someone began a rhubarb on the subject of the Oisin Guest Post, and I said, wait, let the man get through the final performance of Octopus and Chandelier . . . and then we'll get him.

            Octopus finished last night.  So you're on.

            Mods are standing by to start a thread specifically created to harry Oisin into cooperation.  What we want here are a lot of comments saying WRITE THE GUEST POST, OISIN.  Variations on a theme are good.  Extra points for creative wheedling.  And when I say extra points. . . .

            Everybody who posts a WRITE THE GUEST POST, OISIN comment to this forum thread will go into a brand new drawing for a signed PEGASUS poster.***  And if you make me laugh † I'll put your name in twice.†† 

            And in a day or two I will print this thread off and put it through the mail slot in his door.  Just in case he is trying to escape the inevitable by not reading this blog.  So the thread needs to be really long and full of threatening and persuasive adjectives.  Okay?

 * * *

*Although unless he's been reading the blog more regularly than he admits to, I don't think he's picked up the use of 'frelling'. 

** He owes me two, but I can't remember what the second one was for.  If anyone else does remember, please remind me.

*** If you don't want a poster, I won't force you.  Please nag Oisin anyway.  I really want that guest post(s).

† Write a guest post or my forty-six friends and I will come to New Arcadia and sing Take That and Britney Spears' standards under your window!  And Captain and Tenille!  And Richard Marx!  And Celine Dion!  And Paula Abdul!  Billy Joel!  Hall & Oates!  Pat Benatar!  Bryan Adams!  (Stop!  Stop!  AAAAUGH!)

†† More than one posted comment is also allowed but you have to say different things.  Repetitions of the basic 'write the guest post, Oisin' will only net you one chance in the drawing.^

 ^ Unless I'm in an expansive mood.  I might be in an expansive mood.  After all, we want to wear him down.  Repetition might be just the ticket.  On the dripping tap/squeaky wheel principle.

More knitting. Less opera.

 

Oh ye of abysmally little faith. 

NINE squares! Count 'em! NINE!

Yes, frell it, I'm knitting.  I don't say I'm knitting well, but I'm knitting.*  And remember there's a tenth one in the needle case waiting for Fiona to teach me how to unknit a row or two without unravelling the whole thing.**  I acknowledge (especially since it won't do me any good not to acknowledge) that the quality of my unsquares is what might politely be called variable . . . and the grey ones tend to be worse because it's the grey yarn that travels around in the Mobile Knitting Unit and suffers distractions.  The grey one on the lower left, for example, was the one knitted at Iphigenie last night.  Now I don't dare stop in the middle of a row so when the lights went down I kept knitting.  And thus found that I could . . . sort of.  The problem comes when my stitches proliferate, as they are inclined to do—at one point I had sixteen of the little frellers instead of the desired fourteen, and since I was doing it IN THE DARK I couldn't identify which were the flimsiest, and most suitable for knitting together again, and I didn't choose too well.***

            And I seemed to be the only person in the entire theatre knitting . . . and I had at least six people say to me, oh, what a good idea, I should have brought my knitting.  So I will be interested to see if anybody else shows up with yarn at Lucia di Lammermoor next month.  The woman next to me said oh, what are you making?  And I said, a hel—a dog blanket.  In squares.  I've only just started (struggling with one of my suddenly too-tight stitches, which seem to spring from nowhere, like vampires and ground elder), and I figure the dogs won't mind.†  Oh, she said, staring in fascination.  —Yo, lady, you too were a beginner once.

           I love this knitting shtick.  It's the best fidget ever.††  On Twitter yesterday I was bleeping, I mean tweeting, about knitting, and someone answered:  it sounds like fun.  I responded:  All Things Are Fun with Knitting, whereupon Jodi, for some reason, and I can't think why, tweeted:   All things are fun with knitting?? VICTORY. VICTORY VICTORY VICTORY!!!!!!!  Funny Jodi.

* * *

* I'm so ready to learn to purl.  Fiona comes on TUESDAY.  YAAAAY.  Although Bronwen tried to show me how to purl on Friday—or rather, she did show me how to purl, it's just it had been a long day and I said, no, no! I can't cope!^

^ I don't care that you're the one who drove down from Skye and was menaced by sea monsters!  I'm a poor sad elderly thing and my brain is melting!

** Too horrible to contemplate.  Waste a square?  No, no,  no, a fate worse than orange shag carpeting or algebra tests.^

^ And at this point I went off on a very, very long tangent about the mathematics (or not) of bell ringing . . . which I have cut and put aside for another post.  Your reprieve is temporary. 

*** Yes, at this point, at the end of a row, I should have stopped.  But I was now interested in the problem.

† Have I told you that my ringing friend Tilda is coming back for another visit?^  And she wants me to show her how to knit.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

^ And she's agreed to let us torture her with handbells this time.  Mwa hahahahahahaha.

 †† A knitting friend who—er—really knits, and is also musical, asks if I can knit while I'm listening attentively to music?  Doesn't the rhythm of the one interfere with the rhythm of the other?  Rhythm?  Are you kidding?  I don't have a knitting rhythm.  Although last night I kept slowing down during the exciting bits.  Oreste is lying there on the slab and Iphigenie is standing over him with the knife, and . . .

Iphigenie and Knitting

 

You don't even want to hear about the opera, right?   You don't want to hear how fabulous it was?*

            Too bad.

            And now I've spent so much time on what started out as a single footnote** about the opera that . . . you're just going to have to wait till tomorrow for the next knitting update.  Hint:  I finished another square.  And it did involve some knitting in the dark.  Which may not have been such a good thing. . . . 

* * *

* Pretty damn fabulous.  http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/season/production.aspx?id=10997

I love Gluck;  he wrote the Orfeo ed Eurydice that my pet singing-lesson mangle, Che Faro [Senza Eurydice], comes from.^  But Orfeo is the only Gluck opera I know really well, although I've got two or three others on CD.  Iphigenie en Tauride is one of them.  And I was so blown away by it tonight at Live at the Met in your friendly neighbourhood cinema that I'm going to ask Oisin^^ if, wearing his sheet-music mail-order-shop hat, he can find any of Iphigenie's music.^^^  She has a couple of arias that have the same kind of meltingly, gloriously flowing line and despair that make Che Faro such a show-stopper. 

            You know your basic ancient Greek myths, right?  So you know that Agamemnon, hot to get to Troy and kill him some Trojans+, asked the gods for a favourable wind, only they were sulking, and he didn't get one.  Gotta kill me some Trojans! said Agamemnon.  Whimper!  Okay, said the gods.  Sacrifice your daughter.  Then we'll give you a nice wind.  Oh, okay, said Agamemnon, and laid her on the altar and slit her throat.  Gee, dad.  So he got his wind, and you know about Troy, and then he came home, and his wife, who was the tiniest bit cross about Iphigenia, killed him.++  Whereupon Orestes, who seems to have inherited the male-honour fetish, killed her.+++   At which point the Furies felt that things had gone too far, and proceeded to drive him bonkers, but with a family history like his I think he was for the pink elephants anyway.~

            This opera supposes that Artemis (who is generally the one who wouldn't give Agamemnon his wind in the first place) snatches Iphigenie out from under her father's tender care at the last minute . . . and then rather ambiguously plonks her down to be the high priestess with the knife for a king and country who feel that the way to keep their border safe is to murder any foreigners who attempt to pass it.  She must be one busy priestess.  Anyway, she's not having a good time, and then a couple of Greeks get washed up on their shore, who prove to be Orestes and his one remaining friend, Pylades.~~  You the audience know who everybody is before they do, so they get to stomp and anguish (and sing) while you are more or less on tenterhooks as to how it's all going to work out.  Iphigenie has been ordered to kill strangers, of course, and Oreste positively wants to be killed, and their family luck is fairly dire, so . . .

            It works.  I think it works a treat.  The whole House of Atreus thing generally has always been way too yucky for me to engage with:  killing children, with or without feeding them to their parents, always loses me.  But what the story does do is set you up for some characters who are really, really really trapped by fate . . . which is a fabulous opportunity for a really great storyteller (with or without music) to render his or her audience into a wet spot on the floor.~~~

            I have some reservations about the staging—I always have reservations about opera staging> —but Susan Graham as Iphigenie is magnificent.  Paul Groves is maybe a little over the top but he looks like he was directed to be that way, and he sings gloriously.  The only slight disappointment was Placido Domingo—yes!  Placido Domingo! who generally speaking I think walks on water—but both he and Graham had (we were told) heavy head colds.  She was bearing with hers better.

            Anyway.  I'm playing the CD now.  Graham, I'm afraid, does it better:  this mezzo is a little too light.  Never mind.  Great opera.  Not nearly well enough known. Maybe I'll see what other recordings there are out there.

^ Gluck's Orfeo is one of my [mumble] favourite operas:  off the top of my head [. . . EXTENDED BLERG].  I'd better leave it as [mumble].  I started to tell you my top three operas and then thought, no, wait, what about —?  So I raised it to five, and then thought, no, that won't do, I can't possibly omit — .  Um.

            So let's leave it that if I ever figured out what my favourite operas list was, Gluck's Orfeo would be on it.

^^ You're all ready for the Oisin guest blog post riot tomorrow, right? 

^^^ By golly I'll force Wild Robert into those Monday afternoon peals yet. 

+ I mean, cheez, his bro's honour was at stake. 

++ One of the things I loooove so much about the standard tellings of familiar myths is the way, in this case, Clytemnestra is demonised:  she not only killed her husband—her HUSBAND!—but she had a lover.  You know, if my husband killed our daughter for a breeze and then sailed away to a war caused by my sister-in-law running off with a pretty boy, I'd be cross too, and taking a lover would probably be only the beginning.  And, uh—Cassandra?  Lush little number in Agamemnon's party?  Among his spoils of war, you know.  Pity about the gloomy prophecies, but you can't have everything.  She was young and looked good in her chiton.  But you know, kings are like that.   Clytemnestra—shock horror!—took a lover.   

+++ While his remaining sister, Electra, ran around going 'woe woe woe woe'.

~ Although I prefer the reading—and don't ask me where it comes from, I haven't reread my ancient Greeks in a long time—that suggests that Orestes killed his mum partly to take the burden of the family curse—the House of Atreus, don't marry in—off her and onto himself.  In most versions he does then blunder around being insane with everything a lot, which seems to me pretty reasonable, even without the Furies' input. 

~~ There are a lot of eye-poppingly homoerotic friendships in grand opera—one of the most famous is in Don Carlo that we just saw earlier this season—but the one between Oreste and Pylades has just become the eye-poppingest I know of.  I've read the libretto of course, but that 'death is a blessing if the tomb unites us forever' stuff just comes off as operatic silliness on the page, and generally the love-you-bro music is fairly, you know, hearty.  The amazingly sweet and lyrical aria Pylades sings to Oreste after they're captured is a love song.  And in this production Paul Groves sings it as a love song.  My jaw totally dropped.  I was at least half expecting them to fall into each other's arms and kiss passionately at the end.  No.  Exuberant forearm grasping only.  Good grief.  I was just looking at the intro to my Iphigenie CD set and the writer says, apparently straight-faced, that one of the strengths of Gluck's opera is the way it presents such a range of human emotions 'without the erotic element'.  Ahem.  Wrong. 

~~~ And I love the Big Three of the ancient Greek storytellers:  Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides—especially Euripides.  If you wanted to ask me, I'd tell you I like them better than Shakespeare. 

> And if I had one wish about operatic staging it would be to Banish Forever the Staggering to Demonstrate Emotion device. 

** Some nights I have more of a clue what's going to happen in advance than other nights

The Quarter That Wasn't

 

Nope.  We didn't get it.  We didn't get our quarter.

Sigh.

BUT IT WASN'T ME.

It was Colin.  He called it wrong. 

I did actually know this was a risk:   he doesn't love Grandsire (the method, I mean) and he's usually ringing and calling Fortinbras Curmudgeon Gadzooks Surprise and—Bronwen and I were just talking about this—it's often hard for these superheroes to come back down to ground level to play in the sandbox with the likes of us.  If we'd wanted a full peal of Fortinbras Curmudgeon on fifteen, he could have done that.  A quarter of Grandsire on five . . . well.

I'm less disappointed than you might expect because it was still fabulous practise, which is what these PRACTISE QUARTER PEALS are supposed to be about.  Forty-five minutes nonstop (more or less) on the end of a rope.  And we still had that.  Although after we failed our quarter we swapped around and let Bronwen and Leo ring inside, and stopped torturing Colin with Grandsire and rang bob minor instead.  But both touches—of Grandsire and bob minor—were long, about twenty minutes each, which is way longer than you ever get on an ordinary practise night because there's too much—too many people and too many varying levels of skill—to fit in, to allow any one touch to go on for more than five or ten minutes. 

So, modified yaay but still yaay.  My idea is a success.  And we're going to do this again next month.* 

The day had been somewhat overshadowed by WORRYING.  I was on the treble last Sunday;  all I had to do was keep counting up to five, and back down again.  The treble is crucial** but it still only goes straight out to the back and straight down to the front again.  There are no twiddly bits and the calls don't affect it.  I was ringing inside today, which meant I had the twiddly bits, and the calls would further jumble me up like clothes in a dryer—something with lots of sleeves, so you get a detergent-smelling rat king when you try to haul the result into your laundry basket.  I thought we had about a 60/40 chance against*** getting this quarter and was only keeping myself on the ground instead of plastered against the ceiling wailing like a banshee with the thought that it's a practise quarter.  This is why I'm doing this frelling practise quarter gig.  So I can maybe ring quarters without the wailing like a banshee part.  I was also aware that I was not the only weak link:  in the first place, anyone can have a split second's inattention—and I've told you before that you have approximately one third of a second to make your bell go 'dong' in the right tiny niche of the row of bells going dong;  in the second place I knew that Colin doesn't like Grandsire and was only agreeing to call it as a favour, because he likes to prop up and encourage us strugglers as well as the Fortinbras Curmudgeon ringers.

            Meanwhile, Bronwen was coming down from Skye to ring in my quarter.   Since what was supposed to be my first practise quarter had been somehow exploded into double of what you fancy, I was already a bit short of ringers for this second one, and I'd been telling Bronwen about my trials by email and said to her jokingly, want to come down and ring the treble?  And she replied by return electron:  yes, I'd love to.  —Oh.  Okay.  So there's my sixth ringer.†

            It's been a rather gloomy, suspicious day when the overcast looks like it's in a bad mood and the heavy air and superfluity of grey makes you sure that there's someone in a trenchcoat and a pulled-down hat brim taking notes of your activities and drawing ill conclusions.††  I did have my usual cup of tea with Oisin, who is feeling a little oppressed himself, and the Octopus isn't halfway through its run yet.†††  I told him that the Days in the Life forum was fomenting unrest and that a riot on the subject of Oisin's undelivered guest blogs was due to break out on Sunday and he was . . . delighted.  I swore I had nothing to do with this, the forum had come up with it on its own and that I had merely freely and energetically fanned flames already kindled.  As I was leaving he said, Don't forget to start that blog thread on Sunday.  —So.  You guys.  You have forty-eight hours to polish up your invective and hone your diatribes.  Don't let me down here.

            Then I pelted back to the mews for the hellhounds' evening hurtle.  Bronwen was due to arrive at the cottage at about five, and I'd left her keys because I knew I wouldn't be back yet. 

            I got back to the cottage at 6 o'clock.  And Bronwen wasn't there. 

            The quarter was supposed to start at 6:30.  There was a message from her:  there had been an outbreak of sea monsters‡ and the ferry to the mainland had been delayed.  AAAAAUGH.  The only mobile number I had for the other four ringers was Niall's, and it didn't work.  Bronwen arrived at about 6:29 and I pressed Wolfgang's tardis button and we were at Ditherington twenty seconds later which gave us forty seconds to figure out which keys went in which doors and where the light switches were.  It was very nice to be back at Ditherington, even if the rope on the three does still run away from you, giggling madly.

            And quarter or no quarter, the adrenaline was going and most of us piled back to New Arcadia for normal practise—which had been part of the plan, so that's something else that worked the way it was supposed to—and we rang more stuff‡‡ and at least Bronwen and I thought it went really well.  By the time we got back to the mews (where there is more food in the refrigerator than there is at the cottage) I for one felt that I had been well and thoroughly belled—and, in fact, my hands are sore.

            So, as above.  Modified yaay, but still yaay. 

* * *

* Truth is I'm wondering if we might conceivably try again sooner than a month.  After all, we didn't get this one . . . and this is my second in a week, and it didn't kill me.  The immediate problem is that I have a somewhat limited good-support-ringer supply and I can't afford to alienate any of them.  Niall said tonight, hey, we could do this every week  . . . but that's Niall.  

** I personally think the treble is particularly crucial in Grandsire.  The structure of Grandsire is bizarre, even within the bizarre reaches of method bell ringing, and while a plain course  is no big deal, I come out of any of the calls pretty much having no frelling clue where I am, and figure it out (. . . usually) by where I meet the treble.  

***I gave last Sunday's quarter 80/20 against, and we did get that one. 

† Our line up was Bronwen, me, Niall, Colin, Leo and Flora, whom you haven't heard about before.  Flora is a South Desuetude-East Persnickety ringer, tower captain at Lesser Gaberdine, and another of these good natured buttresses of the feeble and hysterical.  She also can ring Fortinbras Curmudgeon.  I was kind of amazed when she said 'yes' to my timid request to ring in a quarter of Grandsire doubles:  I repressed the urge to say, you will?  Are you sure?  Don't you have to sieve your compost or watch some paint dry or something? 

†† 'No normal dogs behave the way these two do, therefore they must have been specially trained to distract.  The hanging from trees by their tails while barking arias from Handel is especially impressive.  But the woman with them clearly must be in the plot—whatever the plot is.' 

††† He says we were a better audience than the one last night. 

‡ They were all coming south for the bang-up performance of The Octopus and the Chandelier that they have heard so much about by oceanic wire service. 

‡‡ Including another touch of bob minor in which I had to negotiate the Evil Three-Four Down Bob Minor Single.  I was going to answer claning-on-the-forum's query about bobs and singles tonight but I am too tired.  Unless some other clever person remembers or can find where I've described bobs and singles before I'll do it next bell entry. . . .

One car, eight bells, and a large dark cloud of prospective dread

 

My sixteen-year-old hundred-and-fifteen-thousand-(and-five)-mile squeaky-steering dented-fender chipped-paint hellhound-haired mud-encrusted stuck-auto-windowed damaged-by-fire-lock* rattletrap beloved old car Wolfgang PASSED HIS ROAD TEST.  YAAAAAY.  In fact he passed it rather comprehensively.  All I got over the phone was that he was done and ready to be picked up so hellhounds and I hightailed it over green hill** and forested dale*** and when we arrived I cornered a Garage Man and said okay, now tell me the truth and he said, no, fine, you'll need rear shocks† in a couple of months . . . really, the car's fine. 

             YAAAAY.  I still have a live car.

            So we drove back to the cottage in triumph . . . thirty seconds before Niall arrived with handbells, although I'd actually passed him twice on the road as we crissed and crossed—this is the sort of thing that happens in a small town—which at least gave him warning that I was (a) around and (b) late-so-what-else-is-new.

athenapallas87 wrote:

Every time there's a blog post about handbells, I feel like I'm reading about some sort of strange magic method from one of your novels, like kelar.# It's all unfamiliar words to piece together into sense using context, and half the time I hover between absolute faith that it exists and wavering doubt that it's all just made up.

#That would make you the plucky heroine learning the strange magic method, by the way.

It's a tricky balance trying to decide how much to describe of one's more tenebrous and arcane occupations.  I want you to have some kind of clue without boring you to death.  There are people who skip over the bell bits, and I get the occasional cranky email telling me that the writer is bored to death but . . . to some degree it again comes down to this is my blog and I have to keep myself amused first and while I do try to take into account that many of my readers are . . . er . . . more normal than I am, still, this is what I have to write about.   (I admit I doubt this is what either my agent or my publisher had in mind when they came after me with burning brands and told me I had to start a blog.)  As to the reality of handbells. . . . I suppose it's a pity to make so mundane a remark as that there are a few method handbell videos on YouTube.  And I'm still totally planning on getting a video of Niall and me and two other victims—Colin presumably, I don't know whether this would amuse Fernanda or not—ringing bob major.  I missed my chance:  I should have tried harder to get a video of Niall, Colin and me ringing bob minor, but I'm so ridiculously thrilled by ringing bob major nothing less will now do.  First, however, we have to get a trifle more reliable at it. 

            And the sad geeky truth is I feel like the plucky heroine, ringing bob major.  I've already referred to the extreme thrill of ringing the difficult inside pairs . . . but Colin, the ratbag, is agitating for us to get on and ring a few bobs and singles so we don't start ringing by the tune.  Nooooo.  Waaaaaaah.  At the moment I'm an equal among equals—but this halcyon situation will disappear like roast chicken into a hungry hellhound†† as soon as we start ringing touches, because the others' tower experience of bob major will instantly crush my tower nonexperience of bob major.  Sigh.  I'm not ready to let go of not being the least and last yet.

CathyR wrote:

. . . even as a total non-singer, I can appreciate that the thrill from singing must be qualitatively (and physically?) different from the (perhaps more intellectual – although I have been known to grin like a Cheshire Cat and jump around madly) satisfaction gained from ringing a method successfully.

When I start analysing it I start thinking maybe it isn't that different.   But what someone else said—for singing you ARE the instrument.  Singing gives you a uniquely mad view of your own body—or unique in my experience.  And bell ringing is inevitably a team sport (unless you're doing it with your iPhone).  What I'm LOOKING FORWARD to finding out is if singing in a group is more like bell ringing.

             And now . . . I was going to say something more about [whispers] knitting.†††  Geez, you guys.   But I have to go to bed early.  Because I have that second pestilential practise quarter peal to ring tomorrow.  And, please the gods, let me actually sleep the night before this one:  I have to ring inside.

* * *

* Although I've simply stopped locking him if it's going to freeze.  If it may freeze.  If the hellebores are looking chilly.  If there is a fluffed-up robin [sic] on a nearby branch.  If the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.  If it isn't August.  

**And it has been such a gorgeous day—deepest gentlest spring which of course doesn't say anything about tomorrow or next week, but for today it was glorious.  And the five miles to Warm Upford is shorter by daylight.  Not to mention that the worst mud-ravine did have a way around it—drat—although I had no way to know that last night in the dark.   I do carry a pocket torch as standard^ but you have to think it's going to be worth using to go to the trouble of getting it out.^^  Also the gate at the far end of the field that detours around the real impassable abyss was open, but it's a very long field to have to backtrack over and I would never have been able to find the way through the hedgerow in the dark.  Rural life is so complex. 

^Witness forum references to holding it in my teeth when picking up hellhound effluvia after dark in town.

^^ Ie with a large plastic rewind-handle-extending-lead in each hand. 

*** The last stretch to the garage is on the main road.  I had hellhounds snugged in on short lead and we were striding along, approaching a parking space that has been cut out of the bank, opposite one of those tiny humming barbed-wire-enclosed compounds beloved by the utilities industry.  In this case there was a BT car parked there—British Telecom, the UK's answer to what used to be Ma Bell, but BT is not the colossus it once was either—and the BT man had already got out of the car and was crossing the road . . . when he caught sight of us, stopped dead in the middle of the road, turned, and zapped his car locks shut.  Snork.  Of course seeing us may have had nothing to do with his sudden realisation that he hadn't locked his car^ . . . but it sure looked like it did.  We're so dangerous. 

^ Maybe he was checking his weather aps for predictions of frost

† Sixteen years old is sixteen years old, and Wolfgang has earned the right to a new pair of shocks now and then.  But the fact that every time he goes in he has to have his steering rebalanced again gets a little . . . old.   I realise that VW is not BMW, but I feel it ought perhaps to have a little more of that famous German durability.  It's not like I drive slalom courses over cobblestones at high speed:  just back country farm tracks at low speed.

†† A rare species, but there are sightings occasionally.

††† Some shockingly rude person on Twitter has suggested that I did not knit a whole half square last night at the Octopus, and demands photographic proof.  And then there's the knitting books discussion.  And then there's:

http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production/2011/02/24/fusenews-the-hardy-boys-were-tense-with-a-realization-of-their-peril/

. . . keep scrolling.  With thanks to Sharyn November.

I Brought My Knitting

 

It is amazing the adventures you can have when you live in the back-of-beyond-'burbs* of Hampshire and never get any farther than five miles out of the tiny town you live in.  Although five miles is enough when you're walking back in the dark.  With hellhounds. 

            Wolfgang went in to the garage today for his MOT—the UK version of the Are We Going to Let This Car on the Road for Another Year test.  And we've gone on using the garage** from our old village, which is now five miles down the road.  There's a perfectly good cross-country footpath between there and here, but it is cross country.  And five miles.  I'd been planning to drive out there midafternoon and stroll back in broad daylight.  And then we'd had to reschedule the chimney sweep when they had the drive at the mews up again ***, and I'd written the appointment down for an hour earlier than he'd written it down, and he came to the mews first . . . which means that by the time he'd packed up his surprisingly tidy kit† at the cottage it was already getting dark.  Bundled cranky hellhounds into the back of the car—they usually get their long walk in the morning, and had been increasingly doing Canine Outrage as the afternoon hours wore on—and shot off to Warm Upford. 

            We started back to New Arcadia at 5:50.  That's twenty minutes after sunset.  I was telling myself that I know the footpaths around here so well I cannot possibly get lost.  Mmph.  Well, I didn't—quite.  But I almost took the turning that would have been eight miles home instead of five . . . the first half hour there was still enough light left to differentiate Darkness from his surroundings, and the mud puddle from the ravine, but by the time we got to the wood on the south side of New Arcadia it was pitch.  And did I mention there was a heavy overcast?  Along with all the other excitements there was the constant background worry:  don't-rain-don't-rain-don't-rain-please-don't-rain.  It didn't.  But there was no moon or lingering twilight either.  The one other gleam in the darkness besides glimpses of pale-fawn Chaos was where rain-rivers had scoured the track down to chalk.††  I was by then navigating by smell, which as I said to Peter when we got back, works better if you're a hellhound than a human.  Hellhounds were entirely unfazed—and I think they forgave me their abbreviated morning hurtle.

            I had three minutes—no, really—to scrape mud off hellhounds and sprint back out the door to make curtain-up of the opening night of THE OCTOPUS AND THE CHANDELIER.  This aim was complicated by the fact that I was, of course, still on foot and I had no idea where the theatre was.   This is not a large town;  I knew it had to be Over There Somewhere . . . and fortunately it was.

            And then there was a glitch, and they started late.  But I had brought my knitting!!!!  I almost didn't, you know.  I was bleating about this on the forum today:  the Mobile Knitting Unit won't fit in my current knapsack, and Pooka already has her own dedicated tiny bag since she goes with me on hellhound hurtles, which means I'm already schlepping around two pieces of luggage.  A third . . . but I'm also resisting upsizing to a knapsack that would hold both the Unit and Pooka's little bag.  It did not come at a good moment that my new camera, compact though it still is, is about twice the size of the old one. . . .  †††

            But the important point is—I brought that third suitcase!  I brought my knitting!  And I knitted!  And it was great!  The lighting in the hall was, predictably, dire, and I wouldn't have been able to read and would have had to just sit there.  Aaaaaaugh!  I am so glad I have discovered knitting!‡

            But the glitch was unglitched at last and the show . . . is pretty damn cute.‡‡  The hall is smallish, and they've choreographed it both on the stage and down on the floor, so during the big numbers the chorus is in your lap as you sit in the audience, and you want to look like you're enjoying yourself because they can see your face.  This was not difficult.  There are a few standouts:  the heroine's best girlfriend, who is a terrible flirt, sashayed around the stage like a combination of Marilyn Monroe and Mae West—even though in real life she's about fourteen.‡‡‡  The kids' chorus are all so adorable you could die, and there is one little boy among about thirty little and medium-sized girls.  I remember him from my brief stint as a member of the chorus:  in the first place he's no taller than a hellhound and in the second place he has this utterly humourless look of intense concentration.  Several of us were waiting for him to drop out;  he so didn't look like he was having a good time—the manifest concentration didn't appear to be about anything going on in his immediate vicinity.  But he is still there, still no bigger than a ten-pound bag of flour, still concentrating. 

            And yes, it is clearly a small local amateur theatre group.  But it was very thoroughly staged and businessed and drilled, and that kind of movement and flow can carry you over a lot of wobbly bits—and there weren't in fact a lot of wobbly bits.  What they have particularly learnt is panache.§   It was snappy and bright and jolly and a hoot.  Yaay Minnie.  And big yaay Oisin—I couldn't believe what he got out of his cough-cough orchestra—although I know he's spent a lot of time doing arrangements as well as building the coral reefs and lichen-covered castles, still, you can only be clever with what you've got—and what he had wasn't quite a tuba and a kazoo, but nearly.  And Oisin himself of course, burning up the keyboards.

           Hey, I'll go to their next show.§§

* * *

* It used to be the back of beyond.  It's been colonised by bankers from London with turbo-charged Porsches. 

** Despite the rising numbers of turbo-charged Porsches there are surprisingly few garages that work on cars around here . . . or anyway that you'd want to work on your car.  Or anyway that you'd want to pay for working on your car.

*** Having the Drive up at the Mews is turning into the latest party game.  I don't want to play.

† He has a hoover that will suck paint off the walls if you wave it around carelessly.

†† Totally Kipling.  We're a part of the great swathe of southeast-England downland here, and sightings of the underlying chalk always give me a brief rhapsodic rush of this is England and I live here.  And while I know we're in the wrong area for Tolkien, there's a lot of the Shire around here too.  That's not just me:  Peter agrees.

            However, I prefer my rhapsodic rushes in daylight. 

††† Sigh.  Here we go again.  I've been carrying around enough basic kit to start a small colony on Mars since sixth grade.  I still remember that really splendid red leather tote bag. 

‡ I also knitted through intermission.  Gods, this knitting thing is so wonderful.  And when people came up to chat, as people will do  . . . I kept knitting!  If people come up to chat while you're reading, you have to stop! 

‡‡ Special mentions for the coral reef and the kraken.

‡‡‡ The heroine is your standard drippy ingénue.  Fins, a tail and a green wig don't really disguise the awful truth.  And she has a standard drippy boyfriend.  Musicals.  Feh.^

^ Bring on Stephen Sondheim.

§ And am I sorry I dropped out?  No.  Not even a little?  No.  Why?  Because . . . because the fun stuff is for the people who can walk and chew gum at the same time.  Back row of the chorus is boring.  And I can't even begin to imagine how you organise your body to sing and dance at the same time.  I don't think I have that many neurons. 

            But am I now even more fixated on the New Arcadia Singers?  Yes. 

§§ And take my knitting.  By the time they put on their next show I will be . . . still knitting more hellhound blanket squares.

Apologies. Here Be More Chirping.

 

PEG II is (still) going well* and I'm still tediously chirpy about my new voice teacher** and I'VE JUST BEEN RINGING THE 5-6 TO BOB MAJOR ON HANDBELLS YAAAAAAAAY.  It's both a good and a bad thing that you begin to pick up the Essential Pattern of the method—in this case plain bob major—sort of through your particular pair of bells as through a glass darkly.  How people learn handbell methods varies, possibly more so than how people learn the same methods on tower bells, because of the two bells aspect;  I learn based on the relationship between the two bells*** and the shape the two lines make—more in my head than on the page, but it has to start on the page.  But before you start learning a specific pair of bells you learn the entire method as a single line, on or in which each bell starts at a different place.†  This means that the 'shapes' your pair of bells are making tend to come up in a different order and different relationships to each other on different pairs of bells.  YES, THIS IS VERY CONFUSING.  And it means you're happily dubbing along on (say) the 1-2 and suddenly find yourself sliding inadvertently into the 3-4's place(s) because it looks too comfy and familiar.  And I apologize for chirping protractedly two days in a row, but the endorphin high from singing†† is a lot different from the endorphin high from ringing handbells.  Singing . . . I got into this because I like writing songs, and then started wondering if it might eventually be a way of doing music with other people (I'm carefully avoiding the verb 'perform').  But I'm never going to be any more than back row of the chorus, I just may be a somewhat louder and more expansive back row than I hitherto had imagined. 

            With the handbells . . . Lots of people sing.  It's quite a reasonable thing to do.  'Oh I sing in the choir' is not a conversation-killer.  Method ringing on handbells is a small crabbed cult of weirdos just going in.  Ringing tower bells is crabbed and weird enough:  handbells are a sort of boiled-down essence of total weirdness.†††  'Oh I ring methods on handbells' is a conversation-killer because no one has the faintest idea what you're talking about . . . and an uneasy sensation they don't want to. 

             One of the reasons method handbell ringing is so small and crabbed a cult is because learning the frelling methods on handbells is so FRELLING DIFFICULT.  We're all out of our minds.  What minds we once had, before we discovered method ringing on handbells.   And I have been resigned to hanging on to the cult's trailing hem with my fingernails.‡  If I don't have the right shape of brain to learn methods for tower ringing I doubly—or rather quadruply or possibly octagonally, since geometry is one of the many things that is bent in anti-Einsteinian directions by the dangerous radiation caused by the presence of handbells—don't have it for learning methods on handbells.

            And then Pooka happened—and a method-ringing ap for iPhones:  my secret weapon.  And I am no longer the least of handbell ringers.  The least of handbell ringers couldn't possibly ring all four pairs to bob major.  I'm almost . . . the middle row of the chorus, in handbell ringing.

           At the moment however we're still only ringing plain courses.  This won't last.   It's all going to go astronomically pear-shaped as soon as Niall can't restrain himself any longer and starts calling bobs and singles. ‡‡  

* * *

* The problem with more words on more pages is the eternal prospect of REWRITING the more words on more pages.  Back in typewriter days I used to get to the end of the third draft and say THAT'S IT.  WHATEVER IS WRONG WITH IT CAN JUST STAY WRONG.^  In these sleek clicky computer days you don't get to say 'my fingers are bleeding'. 

^ Barring little things like that it's drivel. 

** I think I didn't tell you that Oisin^ had spoken to her after my first lesson and since I'd told her I got her name from him she mentioned me—and that she was feeling a bit guilty because originally she'd said over the phone that we'd have a nice 'chat' and 'ease' into the singing bit . . . when in fact I got there and she was like, right, sing this.  What music have you brought?  Right.  Sing that.  —I'd forgotten.  She had said we'd ease into it.  But she'd had one of her A-levels students before me and was obviously in full headmistress mode.  I didn't quite say 'Yes, ma'am,' 'No, ma'am,' but I was feeling it.  And I came home and have been singing like crazy, so it's all good.  And yesterday was thrilling.^^  Now if only we could do something about her brother.  Although the duet thing is growing on me.   Hey, he could join the New Arcadia Singers.^^^

^ Speaking of whom, there's a rumbling and a murmuring on the forum concerning the long-deferred Oisin Blog Post(s).  I couldn't agree more.  However—let the poor man survive the Octopus this week . . . and then we'll get him.+ 

           I suggest that—Sunday or something—I will have a line in that night's blog that WE ARE NOW ORGANISING AN OISIN-BLOG-POST PROTEST.  Everyone who wishes to be involved can post something to the forum . . . which I will then sweep up and send him. 

           If you're hearty and graphic (not too graphic:  under that testy exterior he's a nice boy) enough I might even get a BLOG POST out of it.  

+ All Gahan Wilson resonances here are valid. 

^^ I should try to find Blondel and tell him that he wrought better than he could have guessed.  I had no idea that I'd blow into Nadia's studio—AKA her mum's dining room, with piano—open my mouth, and sing.   I will go to my grave remembering that day in Blondel's little music room—probably about a year ago—when I'd been learning He Was Despised from MESSIAH.  But at home alone learning the tune by picking it out with one finger on the piano I hadn't registered that place in the middle when the accompaniment falls silent and you have to come in all by yourself.  This happens constantly in vocal music, of course—or any kind of music with solos—but it was the first time it had happened to me.  There are a couple of these naked ratbag entries in Che Faro.  But I'm all old and blasé about it now.  That day with Blondel . . . I couldn't do it.  Eeep.  Uggggh.

^^^ Let me say that the very idea of Wild Robert singing duets makes me totally fall down laughing.  Which, barring the Monday Afternoon Peal option, is possibly my best answer to Another Person in the House.  Laughter is a lot less work than organising peals.  

*** How feminine of me.

† Which is why everybody I frelling ring handbells with has an enormous advantage on me, because I don't ring bob major in the tower.   Experienced ringers will say off-handedly, oh, all the plain bob methods are alike.  You just keep adding the same piece of work, over and over, to the back end:  so first you ring it on five bells, then six, then seven, then eight . . . however many you have (and have the brain to keep track of).  And from a perspective of being able to ring Thirty-six Spliced Pantechnicon Twiddle Supreme Maximus, it probably is all the same method.  Down here among the rank and file it is not all the same method.

†† Which may only be lack of oxygen to the brain, although she does keep reminding you to breathe.

††† Hi there, multi-handbell-peal ringers who may be reading this.  Nice to meet you.

‡ If ungleblarging Niall hadn't been so desperate for handbell ringers a few years ago.  And it's totally too late now.

‡‡ PS:  I should have brought my knitting.  Over our tea break the boys got into an incredibly boring conversation about central heating alternatives.  AAAAUGH.   I was ready to start plaiting the contents of the kindling basket.

Singing and Ringing

 

It's already past midnight AND I HAVEN'T STARTED THE BLOG YET.  Well, oops. 

            I was a little worried about getting out of bed this morning.  Usually when the ME is bad and I do stuff anyway—like, say, ringing a quarter peal on no sleep—it may let me get away with it, but it will probably also come down on me double-strength, or rather double-floppy, the next day.  I couldn't afford to be double-floppy today!  I had my SECOND VOICE LESSON!*

            Her brother came home while I was there again.  Oh, that'll be Robert, she said, as the front door banged and there was a lot of mad jingling:  I can tell by all his keys.  —I really have to do something about the brother.  With my new organizational skills maybe I can arrange for a series of peals . . . not just in London but all over the south of England.**  The Monday Afternoon Peal.  It could be famous.  Soon bell ringers from Australia and America would be organising their ringing holidays around a prized invitation to ring in a particular Monday Afternoon Peal.  The one constant would be the presence of Wild Robert.  Who would be kept out of his mum's house while his sister was giving voice lessons forever. 

            She says 'oh that'll be Robert' in this sprightly, carefree voice.  I have so failed to give her a proper understanding of what a neurotic little git I am.  The problem is that I'm just so happy to be singing again—not that I've exactly stopped in the interim, but voice lessons give you an excuse to go for it, like a ticking crocodile after a one-handed pirate captain.  It's like, don't bother me!  I'll be neurotic later!  Right now I just want to SING!

            This leads to other errors.  So, what do you want to do with your singing? Nadia says bracingly.  You must feel ready to join a choir?  Glurp, I reply.  Well, I am trying to convince Oisin that he really wants to start a nice little local New Arcadia singing group.  What an excellent idea, says Nadia.  I think he'd really enjoy that.  Hmmmm.  If I got Nadia on my side. . . .   Hmmmmmm.

              And a little later, after we'd got to the singing bit, I'd brought Finzi's Let Us Garlands Bring and Purcell's Evening Hymn as well as Che Faro and the folk songs*** as evidence of the great galloping breadth of my vocal industry and she said, oh, Finzi, my husband loves Finzi, all English song really—whereupon I confessed my plan to learn some of Vaughan Williams' settings of Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel.  You'll have to come out to us some time, she went on in her relentlessly jolly manner† and let my husband accompany you.

              EEEEEEEP.  Well, that's certainly one way to get their top notes out of your students.††

               I then had to pelt home again because the branch of the family containing the bell-ringing Swanhilde is visiting, and I'd offered to take her to tower practise at South Desuetude.  She's, um, second to last year before university†††, and this week is half term‡, and she was remarking on the disconcertingness of holidays, and the way catching up on your sleep makes you tired.  Swanhilde is starting young with the overdoing I'm afraid.  I proceeded to preach my new gospel of Knitting as the Sublime Fidget‡‡, we discussed the evolution of feminism, and agreed that The Great Gatsby is overrated.  And rang some bells.  The South Desuetude bells are not the lightest or the easiest-going in the world but we stayed on the front six ‡‡‡ and valiant grappling was done, and we got through a few courses of Stedman Doubles with Swanhilde bonging behind.§

               And now I will (finally) go to bed, and worry about getting up tomorrow morning, since the ME may be running a tab. . . . 

* * *

* I am so pathetic.  It's half term, and a lot of her students are, you know, students.  She'd made vague noises last week about the possibility that enough of her students wouldn't want lessons today that she might cancel.  No, no! I thought.  Noooooo!  —And then the week has passed without hearing from her and it's like every day the tension rises.  By this morning I was thinking I should really ring and just check.  And I couldn't do it.  What if she said—oh, right, I'm so glad you rang, I'm not giving lessons today.  Like my phone call was going to cause this.  I'm how old and I still haven't got past a six-year-old's magical thinking?  —If nobody notices, I didn't break Mrs Cholmondeley's 500-year-old stained-glass window with the thumbprint of Henry VIII in the corner.^ 

^ Although isn't this a standard philosophical query?  If no one hears the tree fall in the wilderness, did it make a sound?  Unfortunately I think Mrs C will probably make a lot of sounds when she finds her broken window. 

** Although I kind of like the idea of threatening him with duets.  He doesn't have to know I'd tank. 

*** The Minstrel Boy and The Miller of Dee, if you're asking. 

† I'm not sure Nadia Boulanger was ever relentlessly jolly. 

†† Yes, Oisin is also a professional accompanist, but I know him.  He also knows me.  He is not expecting much. 

††† Sixth form.  But I will never learn the English educational system. 

‡ Holiday.  I should have said that before.  But it's too late and I'm too tired to reorganise the footnotes.   Reorganising footnotes is almost enough to make me want . . . a logical mind. 

‡‡ And in fact after we got home again and had dinner and everyone was sitting around chatting . . . I got out my knitting.  There was the standard hilarity at how well tricked out I am after a fortnight, with an assortment of knitting bags and yarn.  I rose above this vulgar heckling.  Hey, I knitted half a square.^ 

^ The Mobile Knitting Unit actually went to my voice lesson.  Well, you never know, right? 

‡‡‡ Also Colin was feeling wimpish because he has another crop of blisters from being given the multi-ton tenor to ring^ for his latest full peal.  Have I mentioned that he's ringing a full peal Friday morning, before our flimsy little practise quarter Friday evening, about which I'm not stressing out YET?  There are people who think I'm a bell junkie.

^ Inside, of course:  none of this feeble tenor-behind business.  Niall has been trying to convince me that the best way for me to learn the rhythm of triples—seven working bells and the tenor behind—is to ring the tenor for a quarter peal.  In someone else's dreams.  I'm so intimidated by our tenor at New Arcadia that while I can ring it for a touch—and it's a perfectly nice, cooperative bell, it's just a little large—I'm a gibbering wreck by the time we stand our bells.  I cannot imagine ringing the thing inside. . . . and Colin commonly rings full peals on working tenors substantially bigger than ours.  I think he's human. 

§ Speaking of peals, Niall was absent tonight:  ringing a handbell peal.  Feh.