Robin McKinley's Blog, page 140

WHAT??

 

Yes.  We got it.  WE GOT THE QUARTER.  I have no idea how.  I knew we weren't going to.  

            In the first place . . . I had been so proud of myself.  The ME was being a ratbag and I was determined to take my best shot at the quarter today anyway, so I went to bed EARLY last night.  Having conveniently forgotten that when the ME is bad . . . so, usually, is the insomnia. 

            I couldn't sleep.  Nothing to do with going to bed early;  I was tired enough, and when my hormones aren't dorking me around I fall asleep beautifully.  Couldn't sleep.  Had a few gruesome half-dreams for a few hours there and then woke up again too early with that slap-in-the-face-with-a-cold-wet-fish jolt that goes with this scenario.  GAAAAAAH.  Had two service rings this morning and I was all, Is this a bell rope which I see before me, The sally toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.  (I know.  I make this joke about twice a year.  Live with it.)  The barbershop-pole striping of the average sally is not a good thing early on a Sunday morning when you've had no sleep;  the Doppler effect—if it's Doppler I'm thinking of—as the sallies bob up and down as the bells ring is as potent as an hallucinogen.*  And of course the bells—and therefore the sallies—at Old Eden, where we had the second service, are always possessed by demons.  Adding to the fun.

            Then I crept home and hurtled hellhounds in a faltering, feeble sort of way and came down to the mews to hide in Balsinland for a while.**  Peter was in the garden pruning roses*** and I was being swallowed by a roc and there was a knock on the door . . . Peter having forgotten to tell me we were having people for tea.†  Try to get your sleep-deprived, roc-distracted, prospectively bell-terrified brain around an unexpected concept like visitors.

             I got out my knitting.††  Of course.†††  Georgiana knits‡ and she went home and sent me a couple of links, one to a fabulous hat, http://vivianeschwarz.blogspot.com/2011/02/oh-brave-new-world-that-has-such-fish.html and another with the instructions-for-the-eternal-ages:  scroll down to the knitted squid.  http://thefleecestation.wordpress.com/   OH MY DRANGLEFABBERS.  THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO YARNBOMBED PICCADILLY CIRCUS. ‡‡ 

              But—alas—too soon I had to lay down my knitting needles and take up a bell rope.  We were not going to get this quarter.  We weren't.  I was always going to be fried out of my little mind from the fact that it was a service ring—it was a service ring that if we got the freller was going to be dedicated to someone's retirement—and that was before the ME slugged me with a sledgehammer and didn't let me have any sleep the night before the event.  Penelope has recently taken on a second job and is out on her feet most of the time.  And Roger hasn't called a quarter in fifteen years.

              Eeep.  No chance.  Might as well relax.‡‡‡

              Three leads in Dorothy came adrift and we had to start over.  Eeeeeep.  But then we settled in and . . . it was not, in fact, too bad.  The treble did have to keep order once or twice§, but not for long enough for said treble to panic.§§  We even mostly sounded pretty good. 

              AND WE GOT IT.  YAAAAAAAY.§§§

              Now I have to start worrying about Friday's.  I have to ring inside on Friday.# 

* * *

* There's a marketing opportunity here.  Which I'm not going to touch.  Pity though.  We need money for our bell restoration.  

** Which is a really bad place to hide right now.  The bad guys are winning. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.^

^ Any of you who follow Jodi on Twitter will know that she takes reprehensible glee in torturing her characters extensively.  Oh the younger generation.  I haven't got the stamina. 

*** He has a surprising number of roses.  Ahem.

† Not in the Flanders and Swann sense.  http://www.justsomelyrics.com/1653493/Flanders-And-Swann-The-Reluctant-Cannibal-Lyrics  Why can't Keats and Browning get stuck in my head on an endless loop?  Nooooo.  It's Flanders and Swann or Beyond the Fringe^ or Monty Python^^.  Or Buffy, of course.^^^

^Then there's running at the coal face with your 'ead—one of the worst methods, known as the Bad Method of the Getting out of Coal.

^^ THIS IS AN EX PARROT.

^^^ You named your stake?  Remind me to get you a stuffed animal.

†† I finished another square.  And I managed to cast off in spite of pretending I had an end of a conversation to hold up.  Although I really have to learn to do it with the needles, not my fingers. 

††† Why did it take me so LONG?^  It is the best fidget.  And when you're preoccupied with dread of the immediate future and are suddenly expected to make conversation—blah blah blah blah tea? blah blah blah—it is a life saver.  You can talk about your knitting.  A certain amount of humour was expressed at the completeness of my equipage.  It's not just a pair of needles and a ball of yarn, is it?  It's already a stash, if a modest one, a needle case^^, a dedicated, made-for-purpose knitting bag with a hole for the yarn, and a Mobile Knitting Unit, even if it is an evening bag.  And I've been knitting—what?  A fortnight? 

^ Stop purring, you:  Jodi and blondviolinist and Fiona and the rest of you. 

^^ I managed not to flash my imported rose needles today.  We'll need something to talk about next time. 

‡ She's one of these tediously multi-skilled people.  She doesn't ring bells though. 

‡‡ OH DRANGLEFABBERS I AM GOING TO BE SO DANGEROUS AS SOON AS I LEARN TO PURL.  AND READ A PATTERN.   

‡‡‡ Relax? 

§ Where You Pass the Treble is one of the most crucial signposts in learning—and ringing—most methods.  Therefore if one of the inside ringers comes unstuck everybody frantically checks where the treble is.  If the treble is in the right place, chances are things will settle down again and you'll keep going.   

§§ It's all about rhythm.  Which I haven't got.  Much. 

§§§ As Penelope said, I have just proved I can stand on my feet for forty five minutes and pull on a bell rope.  Yes.  What really interests me . . . you remember I said yesterday that it's about two years since I stopped ringing tower quarters, which means that tower ringing is two more years more familiar.  I am so not in good shape today.  But those extra two years have given me enough autopilot to let me keep my line and my count—even if it was only the treble—when my brain had gone squidge, which it had, rather.  

# I'm not growing my hair out again, I keep forgetting to get it cut:  there is a crucial difference.  But I decided today that it has to stay long enough to tie back for ringing quarters.  Since of course I'm going to be doing more of them now.  Starting Friday.

            EEEEEEP.

Bell Ringing with ME

 

So I have my first practise quarter peal tomorrow, the first of what I hope is a series of practise quarter peals for those of us who want the extra time on a rope without the stress of trying to 'get' the quarter. . . .   

            And the ME* has knocked me down and poured a few avalanches over me and I'm now lying, bruised and twitching faintly . . . and thinking about the fact that that frelling first practise quarter tomorrow got commandeered for not merely Sunday evening service ring but for the retirement of one of our church's important frock-wearing and service-taking people . . . which is EXACTLY what I was trying to avoid.  I was doing a little sotto voce muttering about this last night—before the ME snuck in at 3am and nailed me to the bed—and everyone was saying soothingly, no, no, don't worry about it, it's fine that it's only a practise quarter and if we don't get it it's not a problem.  Yes but 'not worrying' is Not One of My Skills.  If the ME were really going to say 'look, quarter peals are a bad idea, this is why you stopped ringing them, remember?  Dork,' I wish it had said it sooner.** 

            There was another article about another frelling study about ME in the Guardian yesterday:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/18/study-exercise-therapy-me-treatment which is pretty much the same mixture as before—which means pardon me while I go bang my avalanche-bruised head on a wall.  I tell myself I should be glad they're at least bothering to study it—I agree that there's still a stigma that 'it's all in our heads', that all we need to do *** is stop whining.  Um.  I don't think that will fix anything, and in the meanwhile whining is one of my restricted pleasures.  I'm not going to give it up.

            But the reason I'm bothering to quote this article here is because as an outed and somewhat public sufferer of ME I feel a certain responsibility to protest when the standard crap starts circulating, in defense of anyone who hasn't had it as long or has it worse than I do, and is more vulnerable to this kind of expert rot.  This is one of the things I have against most doctors:  you are not at your best when you're ill and you're not in a position of strength or wit to argue with some expert telling you what to do. 

            I still believe that what is presently called ME/CFS is going to turn out to be a syndrome or a range of diseases/conditions;  I'd guess that there are viral/bacterial/genetic triggers and predispositions, but I doubt it's ever going to be finally defined as this, this and this and not that, that and that.  Is it real?  You bet it is.  The headache, the weird vision stuff, the aches and pains, the dizziness, the nausea, the brain fog—especially the brain fog—the unmistakeable awareness of notrightness—is unlike anything else.  It's not like ordinary headaches or ordinary aches and pains or ordinary stomach upsets or ordinary klutziness.  Or ordinary brain fog.  It's the ME.  You know.  Believe me, you know.  And—with reference to 'all in your head'—it's not all in my head, but it's certainly in my head too.  I'm a homeopath;  we know that the mind and the body are one critter, and so the right kind of mental therapy is going to be helpful, just as the right kind of physical therapy will be.  That shouldn't be insulting;  and it's true.

            Personally I have my doubts about CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy, which is the psychological therapy the study in this article was examining.  I don't much like things that only treat symptoms†;  I don't want a crutch for my bad leg if I can fix the leg.  And I want to spend some time trying to fix the leg.  If CBT works for you, that's great, I'm a huge believer of what works††, but if it doesn't work for you it doesn't mean you failed, you know?  It may mean it's the wrong therapy.

            But GET—graded exercise therapy—as recommended to ME sufferers makes me crazy.  I have no doubt it works for some people;  I've heard the stories, and it seems to have a habit of throwing out the occasional fabulous miracle cure—there's another one in this article.  But blood transfusions used to throw out miracle cures too, when they didn't kill you, before the experts got the blood-type business sorted.  I think GET is dangerous.    GET basically makes you do a little more every day to GET's schedule, not yours or anything individual to you—no matter how crummy you're feeling.  In my experience, and in the experience of the other ME withstanders††† I've spoken to personally, this is a recipe for disaster.‡  One of the (many) things that makes me testy is the New Age la-la aphorism that illness is good because it teaches you stuff.  Yes.  It teaches you that life can be crappy.  I don't think any of us needs chronic illness too to learn that.  But my ME has, as sure as it will hail on the day of your first voice lesson with your new teacher, taught me to listen to my body.  And my body (and my brain) has its good days and its bad days—on its own schedule.  Not some frelling expert's therapy's schedule.  When they've got a bit more of a clue what ME is, then maybe they'll have a bit more of a clue of who GET can help.  Meanwhile . . . I think it should have a big red warning sign on the package, and anyone asking my advice I'd say don't do it. 

            . . . Apparently I drizzle on longer when I feel like death and overdue taxes.  And I'd better go to bed early.  I haven't told you I have three service rings tomorrow.   But only one of them is a quarter peal. 

* * *

* And anyone who emails me or Blogmom and wants to know what ME is will be instantly killed, okay?^  It's in 'about' in this blog. ^^ You can also google it.  It may not come top of the list on your screen the way it does on mine, but it'll be there. 

^ I suspect this comes under the heading of me being 'crusty'.  Yesterday's email writer revealed herself on the forum last night to say somewhat plaintively that she also liked the footnotes, they were just a little . . . a little . . . uh. . . . to which blondviolinist offered this excellent advice, which, as she says, has come up from time to time before:  

Two browser tabs: one for the main body of the blog post, one for the footnotes. It makes everything so much easier.  I just click back and forth. (On especially footnotey days, I have been known to open up three browser tabs: one for the blog, one for the footnotes, and one for the footnotes on the footnotes.) I get hopelessly confused when I try to read the blog in only one browser window.

But I wanted to add that I really, really did not mean to be getting at HeiQ and I hope she didn't think I was.  I was using her comment as an excuse to do something else that comes up from time to time on this blog, which is remind everyone why it takes the particular shape that it does:  this is the blog I can write.  I'm glad it has fans (thank you thank you thank you!).  It is fun, I don't deny that—especially reading forum remarks after it's all over—but it is also an immense amount of work.  Immense enough that I try not to think about it.  Immense enough that if I made it more like work by doing some dignified pulling-together and rewriting I couldn't do it.  And would stop trying in self-defense.

^^ But if the links are broken you are encouraged to tell Blogmom.   

** HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE TO PUT YOUR HAND IN THE FIRE BEFORE YOU LEARN IT'S A BAD IDEA?  —Several times, clearly.  In fact, many times.  I want to be able to ring quarters.  I am a dork.  We move on from here. 

            And I'm not quite as entirely insane as I look.^  I've been ringing something like two more years since I stopped ringing tower quarters.  Ringing is therefore two more years' worth of familiar which means the mere grabbing hold of a bell rope is two more years' worth of Less Automatically Scary and Stress Making.  And practise quarters—which are less scary and stress-making than proper, serious, going-for-it quarters—have fallen into disuse in this area, and I'm trying to fish them out of the back of the cupboard and dust them off as a concept.  If practise quarters turn out still to be a few triathlons too far for me, I'll try again in another couple of years . . . by which time I should be really good at organising the frellers, since I am in theory making this into a regular occasion for anyone who's interested.

            Meanwhile . . . I have a second (practise) quarter peal next Friday.   Eeep.  But Friday is six days away.  I don't have to worry about Friday yet.

             I'm only on the treble tomorrow.  I ought to be able to ring the treble on my head.  Or, you know, lying down, if there were a way to persuade the ungleblarging rope not to catch round the bedposts. 

^ Stop that giggling. 

*** It's the same sort of thinking that produces deathless wisdom like that all a lesbian needs is a good boffing from a bloke.  I would like to offer the counter-generalisation that any remark that begins 'All you/they need to do' spoken in hearty manner is going to be bogus.  And probably annoying as all hell. 

† And, no, I haven't ever had it myself.  It wouldn't be the right therapy for me.  And I have been close to a few people who've done it, and I haven't liked what I either saw or heard of their results and their experience. 

†† Barring unacceptable side effects, and my standard for unacceptable is a lot more stringent than Big Pharma's.  

††† I'm tired of the word 'sufferer'.  It's so pathetic.  

‡ And the Guardian, bless its little leftward, open minded leanings, does quote Action for ME as saying that in their poll 34% of those surveyed said GET made them worse.

I Should Have Brought My Knitting

 

. . . Oisin was painting scenery today.*  Their entire house at the moment is a kind of underwater jungle:  coral reefs, barnacle-encrusted castles, the odd kraken**, sitting around among the chairs and tables and piles of sheet music and books.  Oisin looks tired.  I had even brought Che Faro and my Folk Song Arrangements by Real Composers*** but I smuggled them in and he looked so ravaged by fate I declined to try him further.  But after the Octopus is over† . . . I will become merciless and demanding. 

            I had a very nice email from a reader this morning who goes on in a gratifying manner about how much she likes my books†† and the blog††† . . .  and then adds:  I am impressed that you are attempting to learn how to knit for the first time well into adulthood. I think that that is something that must be difficult to pick up if you haven't done it as a child.

            Honey, I ring change methods on handbells.‡  And I didn't start that till I was (well) past my half century.  If I can ring frelling bob major on the 3-4 I can learn to knit.‡‡  Although I imagine it is one of those things where the higher (or lower) reaches of deviltry‡‡‡ will remain out of my reach because I started late.§  I can live with this.  I am aware that as soon as I have produced half a legwarmer that looks even remotely like a legwarmer I will be out there trolling the 1,000,000 knitting sites§§ for challenges.§§§  . . . . Although I'm apparently going to be able to sit still with my little hands folded# and people will send me challenges.

http://erssieknits.squarespace.com/knitting-charts/free-char ts/6860416 (with slightly dubious thanks to lecuyerv and blondviolinist)

http://erssieknits.squarespace.com/knitting-charts/free-char ts/6777110 (and further increasingly dubious thanks to lecuyerv who is clearly a powerful new force of enabling evil on the forum)###

To which I raise you one: 

Or, reasons to keep your hair short. --Hey, YOU try shooting over your shoulder into a bathroom mirror.

            Yes, I'm afraid I bought it.  Even at two-thirds off list price I couldn't afford it.  I bought it anyway.  One can never have too many sighthound jumpers.  I shall start a collection.

             But one of the reasons knitting appeals to me is that at least down here among the munchkins and hellhound blankets it's pretty straightforward.  Restful, even.  You can knit a row while you're contemplating that next pivotal paragraph.  It's relatively difficult to stab yourself with a knitting needle.##  It is relatively difficult to give yourself paper cuts with yarn.  None of the accoutrements of your medium are prone to leaving ineradicable stains.  Knitting:  The Perfect Pastime.  Although I really do need to do something about my phone technique.  What does everyone else do about the ineradicable crick in your neck?  Are there Phone Knitting Headsets?  I can see me limping in to my next osteo/Bowen appointment all curled over with my head pinned to my shoulder and Rajan or Tabitha saying in horror, Robin, what have you done to yourself?  Knitting, I reply hollowly. 

 * * *

* I did offer.  He said no, no, no, you just sit there.  —Possibly he has seen me tripping over my own feet and only failing to poke myself in the eye with pencils because I wear glasses,^ and concluded that a live paintbrush and I are probably not a good mixture.  Pity, too, since the paint matched what I am wearing rather well.^^  Although I daresay I would just have splodged it on my black jeans.  And Oisin's floor.

^ Hard contact lenses are also quite good for this.   

^^ Coral pink. 

** Krakens take a lot of painting 

*** I'm such a snob.  But if I could find my ancient Steeleye Span anthology I'd be so there.  It's in the very last box up at Third House.  I hope.  Although if there were a good version of Buffalo Gals out there I'd give it try.^  Can't face This Land Is Your Land.  Sorry.  Conjures up hideous visions of pep rallies in junior high. 

^ Yerp.  I had a casual cruise on Google, found some free sheet music and . . . it's from an old tatty song book I already have.  

† Next week:  school hols.  Amateur theatrical groups all over England are putting on performances next week. 

†† I love that they are all about Girls Who Do Things.  ::Beams:: 

††† Although she confesses reservations about my footnote usage.  Allow me to remind everyone that while yes, it's a shtick, and all shticks are annoying by definition, this one has the crucially useful function of letting my butterfly brain produce a blog post every night.  This blog is one of those window-of-opportunity things, and my window of opportunity is that entries are (a) too long (b) more or less every night and (c) have footnotes.  If I rewrote to shorten and tighten and rein in the footnotes, which would absolutely produce better pieces, and (logically) I could accomplish this by (say) going to every other day rather than every day . . . what would happen is that I wouldn't do it.  The blog would crash and burn.    I'm not saying this makes any sense.  I'm telling you that's the way it is.  This is the blog I can write.   

‡ She also says she enjoys my crustiness on the blog.  I want to say, little me?  Crusty?  But I can't bring it off.  Snooooork. 

‡‡ How different can one sitting-down-wiggling-your-hands-and-concentrating thing be from another?  JOKE.  

‡‡‡ Not to say ravelry 

§ One of my overachiever knitting friends sent me a link to the seriously frightening yarn shop she works at, and which has a page about the staff.  They're all under thirty.  Well, the old one may be thirty-one and a half or something.  But I'm sure she started knitting when she was four. 

§§ Or possibly merely the 1,000,000,000,000 pages of ravelry.com 

§§§ I want to knit sweaters.  You know, those great big things that everyone I've ever met has a half-finished sleeve of in a bag in the back of a cupboard.  Yes, I said everyone.  Yes, Peter knits.  Although he hasn't in a while.  He says everyone really did knit in the postwar^ shortages era.  

^ World War II.  Remember Peter is even older than I am.  

# No, no!  Knitting! 

##I said relatively.  I come from embroidery, you know.  It's relatively difficult not to stab yourself on embroidery needles. 

### And yes, I downloaded them.  Immediately.  Yes, both of them.  Ask me a hard one.

The Story thus Far

 

No, no!  The other story!*

The one on the rose needle is TWENTY TWO rows long because I got INTENSE during a phone call again. So I shunted it off onto a not-in-use needle. Fiona is also going to teach me to UNKNIT next time. I had a look at the problem myself and thought . . . nooooooo.

            Okay.  It's true.  I like knitting.  I just . . . like it.  I like picking up my needles when my frelling computer is taking forever to load—or when I've just been put on hold.  Arrrrgh.  Even with knitting I hate being put on hold.  Four years ago, or whatever horrifying number it has become, when I was beginning to gear up for starting a blog, I remember a publishing friend, Miranda, who knits, sending me to Yarn Harlot's blog as an example of a blog with a Strong Voice (I having been bleating about not really getting it about blogging**) and I was flipping through and laughing somewhat nervously—since I did not knit—but I was briefly paralysed by an entry that began, as I recall 'I don't know what other people do when they're put on hold' next to a photo of some hideously complex and adorable knitted object.  And I thought, I hate being on hold.  Hmmmmm.

            But I didn't get any farther with that thought.  Well, I hadn't started the blog yet.  I hadn't cracked under the strain of all those knitters out there.  I hadn't foolishly asked a Crazed Yarn Fiend to be one of my mods.***  I hadn't met Fiona.  I admit that once I had met Fiona, I noticed—one could hardly not notice—that there tended to be a lot of knitting where Fiona was.  But I didn't really register this.

The Mobile Knitting Unit. Manifestly made for the task. It's an evening bag. Someone gave it to me because it has ROSES on it. I have used it like maybe once. It is now a crucial addition to my complex daily multi-house commute.

            How times change. 

 * * * 

* PEG II is positively pouring, streaming, cascading on at the moment, although this lovely if spectacularly draining phase won't last.  More's the pity, mostly.  If it kept on like this I might even make my original deadline, about which I've been making rude noises since last summer . . . but which would probably also kill me, about which see yesterday's entry on the counterproductivity of offing me.  So when it tapers off to a steady trickle all will be well and I will not be crumbling to a few little bits of water-smoothed bone, and will probably live to write ALBION.^  Today was one of the important scenes I haven't been able to get on with because of that little plot difficulty I referred to.  I thought  I knew what happened . . . and wow, was I wrong.  Well, the result was the same, but getting there was like . . . uh, pegasus rather than pogo stick.  Or the world ending in fire rather than ice.  Drat.  What do I do with all these parkas?

            And then I had to close down and go ring handbells.  Handbells?!  What the freaking frell are handbells and why am I supposed to care?  Poor Fernanda was suffering an anaesthesia hangover and I was still out there in la-la-la land^^ so we got off to a somewhat uncertain start^^^ but plain bob major was eventually had by all.

The grey one is the first item produced by the Mobile Knitting Unit. Although I had to rip out the first half dozen rows during another intense phone conversation. I need to do something about my phone technique.

            For my next trick I have to decide if I'm going to bring some stuff to sing with me when I go to take a cup of tea off Oisin tomorrow.  I told you Nadia told me to keep working on Che Faro but to prepare a folk song too, for variety?#  I've been vacillating between The Miller of Dee and The Minstrel Boy, but I'm probably better off with The Minstrel Boy, which is not only a full step lower, but less manic.##   And if the plug's been pulled out of the writing wellspring, I can risk composing again.  That's actually been there when the story-writing wasn't, but I'm still new to composing and I'm not quite sure what goes on in the murky depths of my subconscious and I didn't want to disturb the creative end that pays the bills.  But there's a little piano piece that keeps bursting out a bar at a time if Oisin isn't there when I arrive—in which case I rush to his piano and pull out my sheet of manuscript paper—and did I tell you I'd started to write a piece for bass-baritone and organ with soprano accompaniment?  Equal time, you know:  sopranos get all the fancy stuff.  It was originally for bass and organ only but I began to worry that you wouldn't be able to hear it, except through the bottoms of your feet.  I could always do two versions. . . .

 ^ Which I'm looking forward to.  Even if ONE OF THE DAMAR NOVELS is the one making the most noise at the moment.  No, no, this is normal for me—the stronger and wilder story-in-progress is, the more I need some other story prancing around like a hellhound with a stick and saying Play with me!  Play with me!  Which is also one of the supernumerary blecch-nesses of dead zones like the last couple of months:  the other stories that I know are out there mostly stay out there.  Even if I manage to engage with one, it doesn't really mean it.  It would rather go back to the story-bed and curl up and go to sleep.

            Sigh.

^^ Or Balsinland.  Note that none of my three Brits knew what 'space cadet' meant.  Is it a significant cultural marker that Americans say 'space cadet' and Brits say 'away with the fairies'?

^^^ No, no, no, you hold the little leather strap and shake the bell

# I told a friend this and she said, Oh?  This Land Is Your Land?  Buffalo Gals?  No, I said quellingly.  Beethoven.  Haydn.  Vaughan Williams.  Britten.  Get some couth, woman.

I ALSO NOW KNIT WHILE I'M WAITING FOR FRELLING WORDPRESS TO LOAD PHOTOS. Good shoes, huh.

## I keep forgetting to show you the shoes I wore to my first voice lesson.  I wanted to omen^ this as well as I was able to. 

 ^ Well it should be a verb.  Clearly.

 ** Hey.  It was a long time ago, okay?

*** And I was too naïve to realise that all of blondviolinist's chirping about Bach was a ploy.  That really it was all about knitting.

PEG II: It Lives

 

Today has been the first day in . . . probably two months when I positively wanted to get to my desk and Find Out What Happens Next.  It has been a very very crummy couple of months in terms of writing and all that comes with that—my self identification as A Writer*, the need to earn a living, sheer morale or lack thereof**, and the morbid imaginings of what you all will do to me if I don't get PEG II turned in on time.***  But about a week ago I had what I frelling well hope is the last delivery of major plot business—and yes I've been having several well-populated hells of a time trying to write around this lack:  making apple pie without apples, your top crust keeps falling in, never mind that the smell and the taste are all wrong—and I'm very much afraid that when I go back (again) for rewrites there is going to be a lot of stuff I can't use any more.  Arrrrgh.†  HOWEVER.  Whatever the system is, it's now working.††  Don't make any sudden moves or loud noises and scare it.   

So let's celebrate with an Ask Robin.

I'm wondering, were you at all inspired and/or influenced by Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast film in writing either of your Beauty and the Beast retellings?

Short form:  No.  Slightly longer form:  Not quite no, but almost.  I didn't like the film.†††  I didn't find it stylized and dreamlike, I found it awkward and tiresome.  Of course I don't know what I would have thought of it in 1946 when it came out and broke cinematic rules right and left (so the critics say) but I don't think context would change my basic problems with it.  I am resistant to beauty presented as beauty-and-therefore-it-doesn't-have-to-be-anything else, which Cocteau does (I feel) with both Josette Day and Jean Marais.  All right.  They're pretty.  And your point would be?  I also hated the doubling of the Jean Marais character, and felt it undermined both Beauty‡ and the story.  I didn't like the Beast being so manifestly a lion.  This is one of my lifelong bugbears.  He's not called the Lion, or the Wolverine, or the Walrus.  He's called the Beast.  He should not be caged and constrained by one beast and the myths and folk wisdom we have about that one creature.

            The single thing I took away with me—the shiny thing that the magpie-storyteller stole and put in her hidden cache—is the liveness of the Beast's house.  The image that has stayed with me is those arms holding the candelabra—and swinging them toward Beauty as she walks past them.  It ought to be a grotesque image—disembodied arms sticking out of a wall, ewwwww—but it isn't.  And there are various eyes and at least one statue's head that follow Beauty as well.  I liked this a lot.  I tend to think of things generally counted as inert as alive‡‡ and this appealed to me.  And while the Beast's palace in ROSE DAUGHTER was alive from a lot of different sources,  those images from LA BELLE ET LE BETE were one of the shiny things I took out of my magpie hoard. 

            Postscript:  I can pretty much guarantee that BELLE didn't affect the writing of BEAUTY because I hadn't seen it yet.  I saw it for the first time during the several months between the time I sent my manuscript to Harper & Row, as it then was, and when I received the little white envelope containing a letter saying they wanted to publish it.  I may have not been in the best frame of mind for it, therefore, but I saw it again a few years later and didn't like it any better.  Mooooo.

 * * *

* Although the bottom line under the bottom line is storyteller, how I tell my stories is in words on a page.

** And December-January-February is the pit of the year weatherwise in the Northern Hemisphere—cold, sunless, bleak, and in southern England, wet.  Or occasionally when it's a skating rink. 

*** Killing me outright would be counterproductive, however tempting.  But there is plenty of opportunity on this side of the final solution.  Small dark rooms and chains have featured prominently.  But you should also know that the flow of inspiration, such as it is, feeds on things like sunlight, roses, hellhounds and chocolate^ so really you're probably best off just letting me crush myself with guilt.

^ Not to mention music and other people's stories

† Only faint silver lining is the possibility of some bloggable outtakes.  All nights off the blog are good nights off.

†† Thank the wicked gods that I have not tried, or rather had to try, to write a sequel/second half of the story book before now.  There have been two things I have been holding in front of myself like a sword and shield, the last two months:  One:  the story is there.  I may be totally failing to hear it accurately—hear it accurately enough to write it down—write it down in a way that isn't immediately obviously wrong.  I may have spent far too much time playing with the king's hellhounds—er—hounds—because I haven't been given anything better to do.  But the story is there.  I can hear it rustling and muttering to itself in the next room.^  Which meant I'd get my hands on it some day.  Two:  I've always been like this.  I've always written in manic bursts followed by falling into the silent void^^ for some unguessable span.  I don't like it—I will not abuse you with how much I don't like it—but that's the way it is.  I know this by now.  I haven't lost everything^^^.  I'm just having another of these spells.  But if I'd been trying to do this two-book thing a couple of decades ago when I still thought that my writing and my career as a writer were a kind of transitory joke that were likely to be over with at any moment^^^^, I would be bunged up in the padded room by now.

           I was hoping I was going to finish PEG II before I fell into the void again—I've been worrying about this since I first realised that PEGASUS was two books.  DRAGONHAVEN-CHALICE-FIRE-PEGASUS came out four years in a row, and I've never had four books out in four years before, even when one of them is half my husband's.  Surely I'll get through the second half of PEGASUS before . . .

            Given that the gaps between my novels have been more often longer than two years than less, don't stop lighting those candles.  But we're okay at the moment.

^ Talk louder.

^^ Except it's not silent, so it's not the void, because voids don't have noise either, they're void.  But the void-like place is full of nasty little chittering noises:  some of them are demons of long acquaintance.  Some of them are new. 

^^^ I hope.  I find it hard to believe that any professionally creative person—anyone who makes stuff up for a living in any medium—doesn't have hours or days or middle-of-the-nights when they're afraid they have.

^^^^ Possibly mid-sentence

††† You can't kill me, remember?  I have to finish PEG II.  And then there's ALBION and TAM LIN and the FORTY SIX NEXT DAMAR NOVELS and the rest.

 ‡ I have a snarly, having-grown-up-reading-books-about-boys-because-there-were-no-books-about-girls-doing-things reaction to this:  'Right, of course, they're going to undermine the GIRL'. Mustn't let those uppity women be strong or brave or clear-sighted or self-aware or anything.  Grrrrr.

 ‡‡ A basic tenet of shamanism is 'Everything that is, is alive'.  Yes.  And, speaking of stealing, I stole this for A Pool in the Desert, when Zasharan says 'Everything that is, is real'.

And here's another one you weren't expecting

 

Yaaay!  Free night* to get on with PEG II, sing, knit. . . .

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2011/02/writers-choice-295-robin-mckinley.html

* Not that it wasn't an expensive afternoon, a week or two back, writing it.  But it feels free now, for the delay.

It Is Way Too Small A World

 

Finding my frelling new voice teacher was (almost) the worst part.*  I had left lots of time to get lost** which is a good thing.  Nadia had given me directions but I managed to drive straight through the village and out the other side again without ever seeing the road I wanted.  I turned around and went back . . . and stopped at the pub.  Village pubs know everything. 

            Not in this case.  The publican looked bemused, admitted he lived in the village, but had never heard of Anaconda Row.   The man standing next to me, sinking his pint, laughed.  That's reassuring, he said.

            It was now hailing.  I bolted for the car and dove through the driver's door, narrowly escaping serious bodily harm.  I couldn't get a signal on Pooka, of course, so I couldn't ring up for further instructions.  I waited till I could see through my windscreen again and then crept out on the road to peer despairingly at street signs.  Eventually I caught sight of an intrepid grandmother airing her descendent in a steel-framed pram with a titanium hood.  I pulled over and asked her if she'd ever heard of Anaconda Row.  She turned around and pointed to a street sign about six feet away.  You've already been through the village and turned around, haven't you? she said sympathetically.  There is no sign from the other direction.

            I was still on time, even if once I got to the further end I had to get out of Wolfgang again and run up people's driveways in the rain in search of invisible street numbers.  This quest was not assisted by the total absence of the red Volvo that was supposed to be parked in front of the house I wanted.***

            Nadia is small and brisk.  She teaches (I believe) a lot of school-age kids trying for their A-levels in voice (one of them was going out as I was coming in) and she has that headmistress no-nonsense edge.†  I liked her a lot.  She kept me sort of crowded up against the edge of what I could do, didn't allow any pauses for second thoughts and misgivings . . . and in forty-five minutes had me sounding better than I have since Blondel left five months ago.  Which includes the part about getting me to sing at all.  To begin with she sang along with me:  she has a lovely clear warm soprano voice herself and I was aware of the Blondel Effect which is that you just want to shut up and listen to them.  But the truth is that I was ridiculously eager to be singing again and barely did my dying goldfish impersonation. 

            It was all going, uh, swimmingly, when there was a knock on the door and . . . Wild Robert walked in.  New readers of the blog, or persons who have better things to do with their minds than remember the minutiae of my life:  Wild Robert was the ringing master at Ditherington, my Wednesday night tower, for about four years, till the practise was folded up for lack of local attendance.  Wild Robert has taught more people to ring bells than I have had hot dinners.  He taught me Grandsire and Stedman;  he taught me my first tiny incursions into conducting.  Of the ringing masters I have laboured under, he has probably had the greatest influence and I miss him horribly.††

            Oh, this is my brother, said Nadia, as Wild Robert and I stared at each other in disbelief and perturbation.  I know—er—Robert! I squeaked.  I ring with him!  I was just trying to ensnare him into my practise-quarter plans the day before yesterday!  Eeeep! 

            I emailed Oisin when I got home again, saying, YOU DIDN'T TELL ME NADIA IS WILD ROBERT'S SISTER.  I DON'T SING IF THERE'S ANYONE I KNOW IN THE HOUSE.†††  Oisin, who is a stony-hearted brute, emailed back:   Oh, and by the way—someone who reads your books lives in Greater Footling and has VERY acute hearing …

            Feh. 

            Maybe Wild Robert will develop the habit of ringing peals in London on Monday afternoons.  And there was a good deal of hilarity at Old Eden tower practise tonight when I told this story . . . I may also have been bagged for someone's Christmas concert. . . . um. . . . 

* * *

* BY THE WAY, you guys, I did not buy more yarn.  I admit I fondled a few skeins.  But give me a break:  The only thing I know how to do is knit squares^ fourteen stitches by twenty rows.  That's all.  I can't even purl.  This includes that I cannot read a knitting pattern.   Wait'll I have half a clue, all right?  Wait till I know how to get in trouble, so to speak.  Wait till I've knit at least one legwarmer,^^ preferably one that looks like a legwarmer, quacks like a legwarmer, and can be made to function like a legwarmer.^^^

            Yes, I did buy my spare set of needles.  But—I'm sorry to be so disappointing—I didn't buy another knitting bag either:  the little ones are all boring.  Or covered with cats.  Where is it written than only cat people knit? 

^ Which aren't square.  Sigh.

^^ I do not insist on a pair.  But one.  With, you know, ribbing and so on.  And sewn together.  Okay, I either have to have knit both of them or sewn one together. 

^^^ Some of the yarn I was fondling today would make great legwarmers.  —See, I'm on the right track.  I'm sure you won't have to be patient long.  

** Even after buying knitting needles, fondling yarn, rejecting second knitting bags and buying Peter a Valentine's Day present.  Arrrrrgh.  My husband who hates Valentine's Day.  I had been thinking about buying him flowers—I went so far as to stand consideringly in front of the florist's for several minutes this morning while the hellhounds sighed over the regrettable habits of humans, but I decided it would make him cranky.  He has this getting-up-and-rushing-out-of-the-room trick when he doesn't like something you've given him.  Peter does not receive presents well.  And then I got down to the mews for lunch and there are three yellow^ roses with a ribbon around them by my place at the table. 

Mmmm. Roses. On a Valentine's Day that features hail, sunshine-coloured roses are a very good thing

            Turnabout being fair play, on my way to the fabric shop I stopped at a shop that is good at silly—silly is generally rather hard to come by in Mauncester—and bought. . . .

 ^ sic

 *** Because Nadia's nine-month-old daughter has managed to secrete the keys somewhere.

† And Nadia Boulanger sounds terrifying. 

†† He is still teaching at other towers but none of them is practical for me.

 ††† I don't sing if there's anyone in the house, full stop.  Blondel had to send his wife away if she happened not to be at work that day.

Peter tends to fall asleep after supper a lot. I think a little silver glitter might have a beneficial effect.

Wet Roses

 

Yesterday was a BEAUTIFUL day—one of those spring days you get sometimes in what is still untrustworthily deep winter and you have to say harshly to yourself it's February.  Don't get carried away.  It's FEBRUARY.  It was a beautiful day for gardening . . . and I was mostly* tied up in FRELLING BELL ADMIN MEETINGS** . . . which just would have got scheduled for what turned out to be February's delusive spring Saturday.

            Today it's been sheeting down all day . . . and after Sunday service ring***  I was out in the garden at the cottage planting roses.  In the rain.  At the old house where we spent a major portion of our time in the garden every frelling day† rain, shine, or alien invasion, I did a lot of gardening in the rain††, but that was when we had two and a half acres.†††  But these poor roses . . . they're carry-overs from last year and I'd forgotten about them entirely when they arrived unheralded in the post a . . . er . . . few weeks ago.  Er.  They arrived during one of our really extreme seizures of winter and the posting bag even says that if due to inclement weather you can't get them into the ground right away leave them shut up in the bag for up to . . . well, quite a while.  Er.  And I did.  Leave them in the bag, that is, for quite a while.  When I finally remembered them again I did the inarticulate-cries-of-dismay thing, tore them out of the bag, ascertained that against the odds they were still alive and, because I didn't have time to plant roses then, slapped them into one of my big rubber half-barrel containers with half a (large) bag of compost to reassure them and . . . well, that was a while ago too.   And every time I'd go out into the garden I would say to myself, I really have to figure out where I'm going to plant those roses.  Here?  Third House?  Pot?  Ground?  With what friends?   And I'd put off deciding, because I'm always in a hurry and I want to think about it. 

            The other salient fact about all this is that when I hauled them out of their dungeon cell and put them in the oversized bucket we hadn't had any rain for a while, and I was having to water everything in pots which is very annoying in January when there aren't any flowers to spur you on‡, not to mention freezing your butt off and getting chilblains on your hands, and because of course I was going to plant them shortly it didn't matter that the oversized rubber bucket didn't have any drainage holes, and what was important was that it was the biggest container I had empty, so I could put all three of them in it.‡‡

            And then it started raining.  Barring yesterday it's been raining kind of a lot.  And I was looking at them swimming yesterday‡‡‡ and thinking the Rose Rescue Society is going to be after me, I have got to get them planted.  Or at least out of that bucket.  So today . . . I planted them.  In three flower-pots which are too small.  Sigh.  But it was raining.  It was in fact pelting down.§   These pots were what was available and easy both to fill up and to move.  And the next time I'll plant them properly!  I promise!  No, really!

            . . . And then, because I am insane, I took my sodden gardening sweatshirt off, put my raincoat back on§§ and went out to support our local snowdrop garden which had the bad luck to be open today.  They had a plant stand.  What did they want to go and have a plant stand for?  So I bought two clematis and one of those little fiery-red dogwoods which in my defense I've wanted for a long time. . . . 

* * *

* 'Mostly' being relative.  Which in my case is to say all non-PEG and non-hellhound time.  I didn't even sing yesterday.  Arrrgh.  First voice lesson tomorrow.  I feel like a little kid the day before first grade starts.  Remember when you were excited about school?  When it was all a Daring Adventure?  And you couldn't decide whether to be scared or thrilled?  And you weren't sure what you were getting into?  And what if the teacher didn't like you?^  And what if you were too stupid to do . . . whatever?  Eeeeep. 

^ I dunno about the rest of you, but the possibility that I wouldn't like the teacher didn't start occurring to me till much later.  When I was little, if I didn't like the teacher it was my fault.  She (in my era all primary school teachers were she) was the teacher, wasn't she?  

** Well, someone has to go.^  Sigh.  And it does bestow upon one a faint comforting gloss of moral superiority.  Not comforting enough.  Or possibly not superior enough.  

^ I wanted my knitting.  Oh, how I wanted my knitting.  And I didn't have it.  And the reason I didn't have it?  No, not because I bottled out.  Because I had a Dalek at the foot of the stairs moment when I went to bundle the current skein and my knitting needles into my knapsack . . . and realised there was no way to do this because the working yarn was threaded through the little hole in the knitting bag.  You remember the clever little working-yarn hole in the knitting bag, which is why I bought the thing?  Yes.  So . . . I could unravel the first four rows of square #3, not to be thought of, or I could feed a lot of yarn through the hole, cut it off and then wind it up.  No.  And no, I was not going to schlep the whole bag to the meeting.  So I had no knitting.  Anguish.  This being one of the REASONS TO LEARN TO KNIT.  However at least I now know that I do want my knitting+ and can plan in advance.  Which in this instance means I'm going to try to get off to my FIRST VOICE LESSON WITH MY NEW TEACHER tomorrow early enough to . . . stop at the yarn shop++ and buy a second set of 6mm needles.  To have them to stick through another skein of mobile yarn.  

+ Even though I would have been the only knitting person there.  Hey, I can start a trend. 

++ Uh-oh  

*** Not bad, thank you for asking.  Although I was hideously conscious of being jerked back from Sunday morning la-la-la-la land by where I passed the treble during a touch of bob minor:   oh . . . oh . . . that's where I am.  Arrgh.   I also survived a touch of Stedman doubles but I was unaffected by the calls—which means I could just keep grinding away at the basic pattern, although everybody else was shifting around, which is disconcerting on a Sunday morning—and I was so distracted by the intensity of my prayer to the bell gods:  please don't call me into an evil coathanger single, please don't call me into an evil coathanger single, that I nearly went off the rails anyway.  But I didn't.  And nobody else has to know.  Except you, of course.  Niall said afterward, that was pretty good, wasn't it?  Yes, it was, I said, not meeting his eyes.  

† Well, Peter did.  I've always been more of a fair-weather gardener than he is, but I'm nowhere near as much a fair-weather gardener as he thinks I am.  Because he used to be out there in blizzards and hailstorms doesn't say I'm a slacker, it says that he's a fruit loop. 

†† I've told you about Peter's 'it's not wet rain', yes?  My own feeling about gardening in the rain tends to be that if I get out there and stuck into something before the heavens open, I'll probably stay out.  If it's already teeming down muskrats and giraffes, I'll probably stay indoors and dust the bookshelves^ or something.  Today was an exception. 

^ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.  

††† And I wasn't taking forty-seven kinds of music lessons and being outmanoeuvred into deputy ringing masterships, organising quarter peals, etc.^  The whippets also took less dedicated hurtling than the hellhounds do because the whippets had a big lawn to streak over and flowerbeds to jink around.  

^ Knitting doesn't count.  It's (mostly) for those little bits of time and brainlessness when the only alternative would be . . . dusting bookshelves.+ 

+ Funny.  I've had no problem avoiding dusting bookshelves the last fifty-eight years.  Despite my lack of knitting skills. 

‡ Except for my gallant little witchhazel, and the odd primrose.  I have snowdrops everywhere now, more primulas, and my winter-flowering jasmine, having had a nasty shock last month, pulled itself together and is flowering again.  Don't know about the daphne odora.  It's huge, it's not a particularly lovely object, and if I'm not even getting smelly flowers off it—in a good year it will make you think you've walked into Woolworth's perfume section when you open the kitchen door—I'm thinking its days may be numbered.  I could get at least three roses in the space it takes up. . . .  Maybe five. 

‡‡ With this winter's indoor-forced hyacinths.  They are gloriously tough little beggars, hyacinths, with the result that in a few more years both the cottage and Third House's gardens are going to be given over to a forest of ex-indoor hyacinths.  I like indoor hyacinths possibly a little too much.  A bright pink or blue thing that smells like spring is very welcome in midwinter. 

‡‡‡ Making faint little gasping noises 

§ In terms of how hard gardening is on your back:  the back of my sweatshirt was soaked through.  The front had a little dirt on it but was completely dry. 

§§ The hellhounds looked at me, shuddered, and said, You have got to be kidding

Personal pandemonium – guest blog by southdowner

 

So if one dog can cause chaos, nine together must equal pandemonium… ! OK, let me introduce you to my personal pandemonium :)

How does living with multiple hounds work?  – isn't it chaos? After a couple of decades of living with and enjoying the company of many varied canine characters I have found that life in a canine-human group* can work well and that it is (mainly) peaceful. Mind you, most people who expect chaos have contacted me with problems in their own canine-human relationships.**

So this is a picture blog post to show that it really IS mostly peaceful here in multi-dog-ville and to illuminate some of the relationships between the group which make multiple dog owning such a rich source of education (mine)  and entertainment (for all of us, both species).

2 seconds later Nemo DID fall off!

Here are some pictures I took recently. I have few photos of all the dogs together so how to keep them all in frame? Ask them all to sit together on the sofa while I took their pawtraits; as you can see, it was crowded.

missing Nemo

My vet nurse friend looked at this yesterday and asked how I kept them all there; she said that her two (also terriers) would be straight off again. Thinking about this, I don't actually spend hours training in formal sessions – these are bullies, they have a short attention span ! – but I do expect them to be nice to each other and listen to me mostly, especially if I use my "this is it folks!" voice. With multiple dogs, what is fun for two quickly degenerates into  a riot with many.

In the picture above, no one is yawning or panting (signs of stress and discomfort), but they are all being polite – no eyeballing, much looking away from each other. It's a bit like the London underground in rush hour :)

eye contact

Here (above) only one dog has made eye contact – Noodles with the bling collar. This is typical of Noodles! Every other bullie is being extremely polite and looking away. If you look at Noodles' ears they are half folded back, indicating friendship rather than a forceful glare, but Maisy is sensitive and Noodles is exuberant; with their personalities and relationship this is sufficient eye contact for Maisy to start panting.

Although the Grey Dogs (Xanthe and Maisy) are more aware of the other dogs' proximity and have a definite defined personal space, the bullies don't appear to mind closeness to the same extent***, and in most cases choose to lie in heaps of terriers.

Hazel lurking

Hazel (small brown and white dog, 2nd from left in pic above) appears particularly comfortable with dogs (our dogs) on all sides, being invisible in several photos once she curled up under the other dogs. On the other hand Friesia (out of this pic) rarely cuddles up tightly with the other bulls but will happily snuggle with Rosie. Again, the bulls here are being quiet and tactful except for Noodles (pic above) who is ferreting about for some reason…

Friesia's space

It's deliberate that everyone has made space around Friesia****(2nd dog from left, above)  – squashing is not her scene and without any staring, noise or faces, space has been made for her to be comfortable next to Rosie.***** (If  you look very closely you might see a small part of Hazel's neck, between the Greys and behind Nemo)

Meanwhile Rosie is distancing herself from the rabble. Some of the other dogs will curl up on or next to Rosie, especially Xanthe, Parker, Hazel and Friesia, but the only dog Rosie chose to go and curl up with was her daughter Flora. Sadly we lost Flora very suddenly this year aged only 8, and I'm sure that Rosie misses her daughter.

Parker and Hazel

Parker is a rescue labrador who had been badly abused before I adopted  him. He was terrified of people, dogs and new situations; he would stand in a doorway trembling and unable to walk through the entrance. If anyone leaned over him he would cower and urinate, and he took time to learn that walks were fun. With dogs he trusts he has become playful, and given the choice he enjoys sharing a dog bed to sleep in, rather than spreading out on his own.

In the picture above he is starting to lick his lips – this is a calming signal, an instinctive way of helping him cope with the camera pointed at him. ******

Friesia and Rosie

Friesia prefers Rosie as her most frequent companion for snuggling (above);  she also has clear patterns in whom she is unlikely to settle next to, and Noodles is her least likely choice of all the other dogs; both can be restless and easily disturbed and it seems a mutual decision that they play together but settle apart. Of course there's an exception to every rule!

ankle as pillow

Here's the exception captured (above), when they managed to sneak on the sofa next to me :)                                                              (Friesia on left, Noodles upside down on right)

* * *

*I chose "group" rather than pack deliberately – our group is very different from a pack in some ways – different rules and possibly stricter limits^, and the introduction of human communication and values definitely moves the concept of multiple characters away from that of a purely canine pack organisation.              

^maybe not necessary with some other breeds but essential with bullie personalities.

**That's my term of reference, a two-way relationship with responsibility on both sides. Usually it is not even distantly related to the way in which these owners view things.

***personal space for dogs is changeable and dependent on stress levels, situation, characters involved etc

****aka Moo!

***** I encouraged them all onto the sofa and then let them choose their places – maybe not military precision, but very interesting from a dog watching perspective.

****** Turid Rugaas, international dog trainer who first recognised and catalogued calming signals – a remarkable woman.

It's late Friday night and I'm not making much sense

 

I've been ringing the tenor (bell) tonight at home tower practise.* Our tenor is over three-quarters of a ton, and I keep remembering this as I'm ringing it.  It's a very nice bell—I don't know this because it's the only big bell I have ever rung**, or anyway am likely to be expected to ring regularly, but I assume that the, ahem, big end has to be fairly cooperative or us flimsy little humans wouldn't be able to ring them at all.  Clearly ringing is not about brute strength but you do have to be able to make your tweaks on the rope count, and the bigger the bell the cleverer you need to be about this.  But if the bell just said 'go away and don't bother me' there isn't a lot you could do about it.***   What always staggers [sic] me when I'm ringing our five-sixths-of-a-ton tenor is the thought that good ringers—Colin, say, or Edward—can as it's called 'turn it in', which means ring it as an active part of the method rather than just bonging behind.†  I find this flatly un . . . un . . . un . . . can't get my head around it.  I want to say 'impossible' but it isn't impossible, I've been there and heard them do it.  I can barely ring continuous last.  The idea of course is that tenor-behind grounds and stabilises the method—provides a corral from which the mustangs can't escape. ††  But in practise you're having to make tiny adjustments, both because the inertia that's ringing the bell for you isn't perfect, and your hands on the rope making suggestions about when to come down and when to go up aren't perfect—and the other ringers you're ringing behind aren't perfect either.  So you do have to be able to move it around a little even if you're ringing tenor-behind.  And I find that it takes about three blows (bongs) before whatever I think I've done has any effect . . . usually the wrong one . . . and then it takes another three blows to readjust.  If you're ringing in the method you have to change your place in the row with pretty much every stroke.  When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, right?  Okay.  Ringing the tenor 'inside'?  Magic powers.  It's the only answer.†††

            Meanwhile . . . I told you about my great idea for monthly practise quarter (peals)?  I have to stop having great ideas.  Or have them around less experienced manoeuvrers.  I now seem to be not merely ringing but organising two quarters in the next fortnight.  This was not the plan. 

            So I came home and wept‡ into my knitting bag.  Look, look!  There's two of them! 

I even remembered how to cast off. I think.

Only seventy-eight or so more and I'll have a hellhound blanket!  At the rate of two squares a week I'll . . . have most of a blanket by the end of the year.  Whimper.  ‡‡

And yes, flushed with the victory of casting off, I immediately cast on the beginning of a new square. Nervously.

* * *

Have any of you seen or read/heard about this manifestation of utter pigfuggery, as tweeted by Publishers Weekly: 

UK children's authors angered over Martin Amis's comment on BBC that only a brain injury could make him write for kids http://bit.ly/emuAMo

Martin Amis has always been an asshole.  It's his shtick.  I don't doubt his writing ability,‡‡‡ but his personality should have been excised at birth and replaced with something more attractive like a wet flounder or a handful of weevils.  I'm sure a competent surgeon could have retained the storytelling during the transfer.  He also so blatantly belongs to the 'all publicity is good publicity' school of thought that I've been hesitating to add even my meagre little flare of public dislike.  But this is such a plug-ugly ignorant jackwad remark, and as a YA/crossover writer myself I'm extremely familiar with remarks like it.  But as it happens I don't have to hang around in his or its company for any longer than it takes me to copy and paste this link from Lucy Coats:

In Which I Defend Children's Books Against A Literary Twit http://bit.ly/dOHswO

Except that I do wish to add it's not only UK writers, of children's books or otherwise.

 * * *

Now, however, to take the disagreeable taste of the foregoing out of your mouths, and thank you EMoon, who tweeted:  Free-roaming wind-powered kinetic sculpture: http://www.wimp.com/kineticsculpture/

Amazing.  Totally amazing.  Absolutely watch this one.

* * *

* Couldn't get any sense out of Oisin this afternoon at all.  He's busy building coral reefs in . . . rather astonishing colours.  Good All-Stars colours.   Pity. . . .

** Hmm.  As I think about it that's not true, or anyway it depends on what you mean by 'big'.  Both South Desuetude and Glaciation have tenors that are over half a ton, which is big to me.  And in my previous pre-ME incarnation as a beginning bell ringer at East Persnickety I rang the tenor a couple of times, and it's only off about a handful of raisins being a whole ton.  Although in terms of ringing I'm not sure it counts, because there was a bloke at my elbow ready to perform a blokey takeover if I showed signs of having the vapours or anything.  Niall sticks me on our tenor and then pointedly ignores me.  He thinks it would be good for me to ring our tenor.  It would be good if I could stop thinking about the more-than-three-quarters-of-a-ton.  But our tenor is the nicest of the three I'm presently acquainted with.  South Desuetude's tenor doesn't actually feel that heavy per se, but it does take some yanking to keep it up there.

And just by the way, I find this ad, which pops up on Google while you're checking bell weights, hilarious:

Church Tower Bells

Large Choice of Church Tower Bells

Find the Lowest Prices. Shop Now.

shopzilla.co.uk

*** It's like that horses are mostly willing to do what we ask, if we ask politely.  Half a ton of critter and it says, canter?  Oh, okay, which lead would you like?  Why are horses so nice?  

† Niall can do it but finds it a—ahem—stretch, and Vicky has done it but would rather not.

†† Speaking of horses.

††† If we could get Mel ringing the tenor to bob major at New Arcadia, we'd find out if he's a sorcerer or not.^

^ Who says I have trouble defining reality?

‡ We're talking tears of frustration here.  What I specifically did not want is to ring a service quarter on a Sunday evening.  Guess what I'm doing next Sunday evening.  And to add insult to injury I'm organising it. 

‡‡ Do you suppose if I laid on a little candlelight and champagne they'd breed? 

‡‡‡ Yes, I have read some of his stuff.  Sharp and nasty.  I have better things to do with my time.