Robin McKinley's Blog, page 153

Hee hee hee hee hee

 

http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/178218.html

 

 

Planting Pansies in the Dark . . .

 

. . . and other notable vegetative mishaps, most particularly The Return of the Indoor Jungle.  I am already TIRED of bringing things in and taking things out the next morning AND IT'S STILL ONLY OCTOBER.  The clocks haven't even gone back yet.*  Granted I slowly develop a system**:  the stuff that's going to have to come in lives near the door—either door, I'm not fussy, except for the icy wind tunnel caused by having both front and kitchen doors open at once—which means that the stuff from the very-well-back of the garden has to find, or have found for it, somewhere near one of the doors to put its feet or anyway its pot down.  Fortunately the hellhounds don't use their courtyard much any more.  In the morning they can't be bothered:  they're busy bringing the Beady Eyed Take Us for a Hurtle Stare into play.***   Last thing at night . . . it's pretty much an obstacle course out there, made more exciting by me standing in the kitchen door (because I usually haven't remembered to put shoes on) and hissing† (it being very late and sound carries†† and Phineas will leave his bathroom window open, even in cold weather †††) No—no—you don't want to pee there—noooo—not on the pansies/snapdragons/salvia‡/rudbeckia/begonia/dahlia/pelargonium/ monarda/chocolatecosmos/gallardia/osteospermum/impatiens/echinacea/ pink/clematis/funnythingIdon'tknowthenameofbutIknowit'stender/rose!  And in fact hellhounds seem to have decided that going outdoors merely long enough to make me say 'no don't pee there' is a mysterious but salient part of the last-thing-before-bed ritual that leads to their bedtime snack which, mysteriously, they seem to like.‡‡

            On frosty nights, of course, you could play six a side football out there because the plants are all indoors.  Like tonight.  Tonight is the third night this week I've played host to the indoor jungle.  All that schlepping drastically cuts into my pansy-planting time too.‡‡‡  Not to mention PEG II writing.  And singing.  Ahem. 

* * *

* And then I'll really be planting pansies in the dark.

** Chiefly involving HOW MANY PLANTS CAN I GET ON THAT WINDOWSILL FOR THE WINTER?^  OH COME ON, I'M SURE I CAN GET AT LEAST ONE MORE ON.  MAYBE TWO.  AND IF YOU FALL OFF YOU LITTLE RATBAG(S),^^ I'LL LEAVE YOU OUT FOR MR FROST.  

^ Some of which then settle down and get on with it so successfully that come spring they're too big to move.  

^^ Happy begonias and trailing fuchsias in particular can boil over the edges of their pots and down to a remarkable, not to say oversetting, degree, and you don't know in advance which pots to put the osmium bricks in the bottoms of, because the relative happiness of pot plants is a riddle and a conundrum the finest minds cannot penetrate.  And osmium is expensive, you know.  You don't use osmium bricks . . . lightly.+ 

+ Hee hee hee.     

*** Chaos will quite often go stand by the kitchen door in the morning and look at me meaningfully.  Okay, I say, and open the door.  He goes out, looks around, does a 360° turn and comes straight back in again, now glaring at me and clearly affronted.  —I have no idea.  He is a fruit loop.  Fruit loops frequently behave in a fruitily loopish manner. 

† Speaking of which, Phineas is already letting the hellkitten out.  He's still hardly big enough to make a hellhound hors d'oeuvre, not that food is ever high on the hellhound agenda . . . but they love things that run, and it's not going to matter that I never ever ever ever ever ever let them chase him, after they've seen him streak across the landscape once or twice they're going to be coming out of the cottage spring-loaded, like the English archers at Agincourt.  I may start taking them back and forth to the car blindfolded. 

†† It sure does.  All summer long I get a front row/back bedroom seat/pillow over head^ to the Troll and Nightingale's weekend live tribute bands.  You know, there are a lot of bands that were sufficiently ghastly in the original that the concept of tribute conjures up a rather Necronomicon-ish vision, with fewer stringed instruments and a lot more blood . . . especially very late at night with a pillow over your head. 

^ And no cover charge!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. 

††† Ie into my garden.  Yet another clear piece of evidence that the builder responsible for the conversion was planning to put his hated mother-in-law in my cottage. 

‡ Which is tender and it has no business being tender.  Whoever heard of a tender salvia?  All right, all right, don't everybody yell at me at once.  But you can't kill common purple sage with fire, drought, heavy shade, no root room due to all the plumbing in Hampshire, criminal neglect or having large heavy things dropped on it repeatedly.  Or hard frost.  Ask me how I know this.  Eventually I dug it up and took it to Third House where it went YOWZAH and is now taking over the universe.  Although my Greater Thigh of Nymph^ is saying, not my universe, honeybun.

            I thought my pretty blue sage was merely a particularly good blue.  Not that it was a particularly good blue because it was going to turn out to be some frelling tender fainting heroine.  The thing's HUGE.  I wouldn't have potted it on so generously IF I'D REALISED IT WAS GOING TO SPEND THE WINTER IN THE SITTING ROOM.  Actually, it isn't, but I'm not sure it'll fit in Wolfgang to go up to the summer/greenhouse at Third House either.  Aaaaugh. 

            And my frelling hardy fuchsias are frelling tender too.  I don't know what it is about me and fuchsias.  I knew I was going to have to bring the long frilly trailing petticoat ones indoors, and have dug them up and put them in pots, and most of them are yielding with good grace to this discourtesy but one of them isn't, but the hardy ones in the garden are busy going all wilty and sad (like the salvia).  You're hardy.  I still have the catalogue that says you're hardy^^.  Meanwhile:  starspawn in a small Hampshire garden.  Siiiiiiigh.  I can't go on doing this all winter. 

 ^ Or possibly Thigh of Greater Nymph.  No, really.  But you only get it in the original French.  When the prudish English translate, it comes out as Maiden's Blush.  You've figured out by now I'm talking about a rose, right?  I've probably made this joke before too because I like it.  http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/maidens-blush-great/

^^ I've been through this before.  Oh, it's just the stuff above ground, I've said.  It'll come back next year, like the dicentras.  No.  Wrong. 

‡‡ Possibly because it's the Third-Mortgage Kibble.  The reason it costs so much is that it's laced with heroin, to make sure dogs really like it and come back for more.  I'm not sure I care if they eat it.  

‡‡‡ Have I mentioned my 13 million pansies?  I have?  I was planting out wodges of the several trays of unknowns today.  The damp muddy piece of paper may have told me that I was the glad recipient of lots and lots and lots of Ratbag Rosencavaliers, Bilateral Bandoliers and Toxic Pterodactyls, but the trays themselves still have no labels on them.  It seems rather suitable to be planting unknown pansies in the dark.

On becoming a bellringer, Part One. Guest post by CathyR

The Birth of an Obsession

Ropes up

I'm not sure how most people get drawn into bell ringing. Of course, we know the influence exerted by the owner of this blog on certain readers in counties and continents far and wide. I'd already become a ringer, however, before discovering Robin by searching for blogs about bell ringing. The obsession began just over two years ago. I'd gone to a small village church (St Michael's) to take photographs of the ringers on a practice night. (I was one of a small internet photography group who had been asked to create a folder of photos to keep in the church for visitors). So, I turned up with the camera, not knowing what to expect. What struck me immediately as I watched was the way in which the ringers were all aiming to achieve something as a team that none of them could achieve alone – and how much they enjoyed what they were doing. Wow, I thought. I like that idea. I'd like to be part of something like that ….

Old bell

This bell, the heaviest of the original three, was cast in 1664, and has been on display in St Michael's since 1938, when the ring was augmented to six, as it was not in good enough condition to be reused. *

And so I returned the following Friday, for a few more photos, and was persuaded (not that it took much persuasion) by Frank (the Tower Captain) and the others to "have a go". A few pulls on the backstroke (of course, I didn't know it was "the backstroke" at that stage, it was just the end of the rope), and I'd actually made the bell sound! I knew straight away that I wanted to learn more, but was a bit hesitant about the whole "church" aspect, to be honest. Was bellringing only for those with Christian religious belief? Would I be obliged, once ringing on Sundays, to attend church? Just how much commitment would be required? Somewhat tentatively, I asked Frank, and was immediately reassured that not all bellringers are churchgoers by any means, and that the only "church" commitment would be ringing for two Sunday services a month. (Little did I know then, that a year down the line I wouldn't be able to get enough ringing)!

Reassured, I started my first individual lessons, with a tied bell. To tie a bell, Frank (aged 75) goes up into the ringing chamber, clambers over and around the bell frame, and grovels around in the dust and muck under the bells in order to tie the clapper of the practice bell so that it doesn't swing. In this way, although the "feel" of the bell is somewhat different because of the lack of clapper swing, early ringing can be practised without any noise disturbing anyone else.

One of the St Michael's bells

There was so much to think about in terms of just being safe and handling the rope and bell that initially it was quite overwhelming. One of the very first instructions Frank gave me was "don't ever let go of the rope. BUT, if I say 'let go', then let go immediately!" Initially I was just ringing the backstroke, or just ringing the handstroke; by lesson three I was putting the two actions together. That's when it gets really tricky! It's the "feeling" for and of the bell that is so crucial, its weight and momentum, its behaviour and how to recognize that behaviour from below via 50 feet of rope. Many times the rope went loose and floppy, spiralling out of control, as I tried to use it to *push* the bell back up again because of something I'd done wrong. "Let go!", and Frank would rescue me yet again. The Indian Rope Trick is definitely unsuccessful in these situations!

Despite all this, I did make good progress, and when I could by and large ring a bell under (some semblance of) control, the time came to join a practice evening and ring a bell "aloud" for the first time. Now I had to look at other ringers and ropes, and try to keep in time and sequence with them, as well as manage my own ringing! Concentrating on trying to ring in the right place, and any semblance of bell control vanished. As I tried to focus on bell handling and control, I was nowhere near the right place in the sequence! Would I ever master this? I doubted it often, and in the early days there was such frustration – but also huge elation and satisfaction when small goals were achieved.

Slowly, things improved. I became less of a hazard to myself and others. I could be trusted to ring without such close supervision. About seven weeks after starting, I visited another tower for the first time. I went with Frank, just to have a look. "I'm NOT ringing in a strange place, I'm not good enough, I can't do it"! So, we got there and again, I was persuaded by Peter, the Tower Captain, to have a go on my own. He stood close by me, things remained under control … so far, so good. Then … " take hold for rounds around Cathy", and all of a sudden five other ringers were there, ringing with me! I still remember just how good that felt; ringing rounds almost without going wrong and losing my place. I had a grin like a Cheshire Cat for the whole evening! Frank was so proud of me, and I was so pleased to have made him proud.

Some months after my first lessons, I was deemed good enough to begin Sunday service ringing. Ringing in public, when it really matters! On display! I was so anxious, I couldn't eat any breakfast the morning of my first service ring! But at the same time, I recognized it as another milestone in my ringing progress. But service ringing always caters to the least able ringer present, and with the simplest ringing possible, I got through my first service rings unscathed!

I had become a bellringer!

* * *

* And very sadly, this bell has just been stolen whilst the church was, as usual, unlocked and open during the day for visitors. It seems that the bell was somehow dragged out of the church and through the churchyard to a distant corner, and tipped over the low wall onto the back of a truck parked in the quiet lane, away from the village itself. No reputable scrap metal dealer would deal with something so obviously stolen, and of such obvious historical and cultural value, but it will undoubtedly have been melted down by now by the thieves' associates. A very sad loss for the church, the bellringers, and the public.

Excitements, various and noisy

 

Looky looky looky at what arrived today!*  YAAAY!  (The hand, please note, is just to give you a sense of scale, although if you choose to admire the pink and purple stripes you are welcome to do so.)   I know Putnams has all sorts of plans about Fabulous Robin McKinley Publicity Packs, but I feel we are going to have to have a signed poster contest on the blog some day soon.

            And PEGASUS gets a starred review from PW [Publishers Weekly, the big American trade mag]:

Leisurely in its pacing, but rich in language and character development, this lovely tale concerns young Princess Sylvi and her singular bond with her pegasus, Ebon. Humans and pegasi have maintained an alliance against their land's other murderous species–taralians, norindours, and rocs–over many centuries, despite an almost complete inability to communicate with each other except, with great difficulty, through the aid of human magicians. But Sylvi and Ebon are different. From the moment they meet, they form a telepathic bond, something that could be a boon to both species. The powerful magician Fthoom, however, seeing their relationship as both heresy and a danger to the magicians' power, has vowed to end it. McKinley (Chalice) does a wonderful job of developing the pegasi culture, particularly their art and largely gestural language, as Sylvi and Ebon's relationship grows over the course of several years. Because this is only the first part of what is presumably a two-volume novel, readers may find the book's inconclusive ending frustrating**. Despite this, it's an enchanting fantasy that the author's many fans will love.

And in other local news . . .

            I sang for Oisin today.  Yes.  Truly.  LA LA LA LA LA LA.  Well, no, actually:  I sang that old warhorse of mezzo warhorses Che Faro Senza Eurydice and Finzi's Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun, which is usually sung by a baritone but hey.

             And we both survived.***   More or less. †  After last week's dire and horrifying challenge I have been singing rather earnestly this week, which is to say trying to claw back some of what Blondel could manage to trick out of me on a good day.  ARRRRGH.  And then this morning I overslept again and when I got down to the mews post-hurtle and was wrapping myself around some much needed caffeine while I checked my email and calculated that I could just about manage to get hellhounds fed and do a little pre-Oisin warm-up . . . there was an email from Oisin asking if I could come early. 

            I was not quite as early as requested and when I got there he was playing some scary thing on the organ, so I sidled past him and put my music on the piano bench—well muffled up so if you weren't actually expecting there to be sheet music present you wouldn't necessarily notice the presence of sheet music.  Then he played some other scary thing on the organ while I listened to my blood pressure rise and then he turned to me with an evil look comprised of three parts Fu Manchi, two parts Blofeld and a ghastly dash of Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter, and asked me what we were doing today.

            And so, beaten, I unwrapped my music.  I had kept, ahem, forgetting to make copies for my accompanist, and had thought that I would race back to the cottage last thing and do it on my way, but this early deal had spoilt that plan.  But I didn't seriously expect this to foil the diabolical Oisin:  he has the technology.  He made his own copies.††

            On a scale of one to ten. . . . Uh.  Well, with Florence Foster Jenkins††† as one and Beverly Sills as ten. . . . No!  No!  I don't want to go there!  I can carry a tune!‡  That means I have more in common with Sills than Jenkins!  It does!  Oisin, of course, half ruptured himself being encouraging, but then he would.  And I have to say it's rather incredibly glorious having a proper accompanist.  It's a little ridiculous, like driving a Lamborghini to the farm store to buy compost for your thirteen million tiny seedling pansies, but it's pretty frelling nice.‡‡  We may even do it again.

            And now Oisin owes me a blog post.

 * * *

* Also . . . thirteen million more pansies.  I tweeted earlier that I CAN'T have ordered this many, and I'm sure all my Twitter followers sniggered to themselves.  Well . . . I HADN'T ordered them.  I hadn't.  I opened the first box with a sinking heart.  It contains my MYSTERY PLANTS!  TO THANK ME FOR BEING SUCH A GOOD CUSTOMER!  THEY'VE SENT ME FIFTY WALLFLOWERS.  FIFTY.  I can use about twelve . . .  except I've already GOT twelve, I put them in last winter and they've pretty much flowered all year, and I have no intention of taking them out while they're still on a roll.

            So, after clutching the kitchen counter and sobbing for several minutes I turned to the other boxes.  There are three of them, all taped^ together.  Only the top box has my address on it, and none of them have any labels whatsoever.  I opened them.  Pansies.  Yup.  More pansies.  Unknown pansies.  Lots and lots of unknown pansies.  Finally, in the bottom of the first box I find a small, damp, muddy sheet of paper.  It says:  we are very sorry we cannot send you the four Piccadilly Peccadillo pansies you ordered as part of the dozen total mixed tray of Piccadilly Peccadillo, Bilateral Bandolier, and Ratbag Rosencavalier pansies.  So because we're so nice we have sent you twelve MORE Piccadilly Peccadillos and nine hundred and forty-two Toxic Pterodactyls which you've never heard of, aren't on our web site AND we aren't going to tell you what colour(s) they are Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.  

^ Prodigiously taped.  Fearsomely taped.  Whoever did the taping believes in the Great Postal Dragons.  In fact may have a personal vendetta with the Great Postal Dragons.  Maybe we should start a club.  I wonder if the same dragons eat mail-order plants as eat books?  Or do they specialise, like different bees specialise in different flowers? 

** 'Frustrating' is the polite version.  I'm just hoping to escape without blood loss. 

*** I'm not really waiting for the polite little email from his wife saying that the Octopus and Chandelier is unexpectedly oversubscribed, and while they deeply appreciate my willingness to give up my Sunday afternoons for four months to be in the back row of the chorus, my presence will not be required.  Don't come, okay?  Don't show up.   

† Although I did catch him whispering to his wife just before I left.

†† Except for the leaving out of one page of Che Faro part.  Oh, never mind, he said, I'll make something up.^  And he'd've got away with it if that old sneakypants Gluck hadn't gone and written a new bit at the bottom.  WHICH I HAD TO SING UNACCOMPANIED.  I GET EXTRA POINTS FOR THIS, YOU KNOW.

^ This was kindness.  If I had to stand there another minute and a half while he fired up his scanner again I'd've fallen down on the floor in fits.  He was probably afraid I'd start gnawing on his pedalboard.  It's a small studio and a rather large computery organ thing.  And I was at the organ end so as to be as far away from that bloke at the piano as possible.  I also faced away for that top F in Che Faro.  The F is still there, but it has never been a thing of beauty.  

††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins  Be sure to click on the clip of her Queen of the Night.   There's a lot more on YouTube but you need a really strong stomach.  

‡ Usually!  Having the accompanist tactfully giving me my notes even when that's not what the composer^ wrote is very nice!  Oisin said that if he'd been doing it right I wouldn't have noticed.  Pleeeeeeease.  This is the kind of thing us voice students work on, when we have teachers, and will work on again.  Soon.  My first catastrophic confrontation with the Cherub is 1 November.  Unless he starts making like a dog minder and cancels.

^ Finzi is another sneakypants.

‡‡ As long as you don't, you know, think about it too much.

In Which It is Revealed that Bell Ringers Are the Best

 

So, what happens when you find a lovely new dog minder, highly recommended and all that kind of thing, who furthermore is starting her own business minding dogs and you are in at the beginning and everything is beautiful and possible, and you get all excited about some of those possibles, and you ring her up almost immediately with two more dates to mind your dogs so you can run around and play in other parts of the world* and she says yes, that's fine, and puts them in her diary. . . .

            What happens is that she rings you back a few days later and tells you she can't do the next date. 

            As honeymoons go, this one may have just set a record for the swiftness with which it is over.  I'm not even particularly clear about why she can't do it:  I think it's something about her pre-dog-minding-business life refusing to take its teeth out of her arm.  I was sufficiently fixated on the fact that she was cancelling that I kind of lost the details.

            This happened this evening.  Fernanda and Niall and I were sitting around making pinging noises with Niall's handbells:  sometimes these pinging noises sounded more or less like plain bob minor.  Sometimes they did not sound like much of anything beyond pinging noises.  (Method ringing on handbells = chords = bad.)  Fernanda is still climbing the handbell equivalent of Nanga Parbat and Niall has a head cold, the kind that gets into your brain and starts rearranging the furniture.  And I am presently very easily distracted by thoughts of PEG II which are developing a kind of haunting, luminescent quality as the pub date of PEG I nears.

            And then Pooka started barking and I thought aaaugh!  Peter!, and ran for it**.  So the adrenaline was already surging when it turned out to be Mavis and when she told me (brightly) that she wasn't going to be able to do the 6th of November after all, my vision clouded over with a strange red glare, my eyebrows grew strangely tight and my hands curled into claws while I made small yeeping noises to prevent myself from biting a chunk out of the Aga, which would have been very bad for my teeth.  I haven't gotten over having a dog minder yet and she's just cancelled my second date.

            This is not a good beginning.

            I went back into the sitting room and cast myself on the sofa in a posture of despair. 

            Meanwhile I haven't told you yet why I need a dog minder on the 6th of November.

            There's a Ringing Education Day.

            They're doing Stedman Triples.

            Last Friday Vicky said to me, because Vicky is like this, although she already knows I will say no because I can never do ringing education days on account of the hellhounds—and I therefore never pay attention to any interesting education days coming up, because I do not enjoy the stabbing pain of thwarted yearning, and when Vicky tells me about them I try to forget—so, anyway, last Friday, she said, there's a day of Stedman Triples on the 6th, are you interested?  And, this being the day after I'd spoken to Mavis and the world was busy opening**, I whirled on her and shouted joyously, Yes! 

            Stedman Triples. Yowzah.  Geeeeeeeeeeeee.  I would love to do a day of Stedman Triples.  I think I actually had seen the notice on the board when it went up weeks ago, but I had resisted registering it, so it would have passed me by, as education days always pass me by, if Vicky hadn't said something.  So I rang up about it and they said that they were almost full but it was still worth sending an application in—so I did, and I was waiting, more or less breathlessly, till I heard, before I told the blog about it. 

            Yesterday I got a phone call pointing out, in a patient and friendly manner, that while my application and cheque had arrived, the SASE for details had not (because I'd forgotten to put one in, sigh).  I assume that means I've got in—?  Do I tell Days in the Life yet?  Maybe not quite yet, just to be sure. . . .

            And today my putative dog minder yanks the rug out.

            So.  Back to the posture of despair on the sofa.  I tell Niall and Fernanda my hideous situation.  They make commiserating noises.  After all, Stedman Triples—which both of them could ring in their sleep, just by the way, but they have both heard me on the subject of my frustration at the lack of opportunity to get on with my ringing around here. 

            And Fernanda says off handedly, I could walk your dogs.

            WHAT?

            Note that Fernanda lives in Mauncester.  It's not a negligible commute, just to do someone a favour.

            I don't have dogs now, but I've mostly had dogs in my life, she said.  I don't mind the plastic bag detail. 

            Gibble gibble gibble gibble I said, or equivalent.  Then I said, YES PLEASE.  Are you serious?  YES!  PLEASE!

            So I may still get to spend all day Saturday, 6 November ringing Stedman Triples.  Supposing I get on the list—after all this.  Whimper.

            But whatever happens, Fernanda now has a slave for life. 

            And I hope as Mavis extracts herself from her old life she may yet become the true and faithful dog minder of my dreams.  Hey, dreams are free. . . .                 

* * *

* Other parts of the world within a short train ride or even shorter drive away, that is. 

** I have to figure out a system about Pooka.  The reason she lives in a pocket or around my neck in a designer knock-off mini-bag or on the shelf beside my bed^ is because she's speed-dialed to Peter's mobile and to the Lifeline people who answer if Peter presses the button he wears round his neck.  That's what she's for.  But it makes sense that the occasional other person should have your mobile number:  like your dog minder.  Or Aaron, who is going to be picking you up at the train station.  But most of the time if it's not Peter I do not need to dive for it. . . . How many different ringtones can I face deciding on and remembering the subdivisions of:  (a) Peter;  (b) slightly less crucial;  (c) slightly slightly less crucial;  (d) everybody else.  Not to mention remembering to assign them.  Although if I stop diving I will have to learn how to pick up voicemail.  Sigh.  Modern life is so complex.  However.  If I can learn to text surely I can learn to pick up voicemail.  Excelsior.^^

^ Or possibly on the table in the next room while I'm ringing handbells

^^ I wish Excelsior would stop occurring to me at Excelsior-like moments.  Well, wrestling with my iPhone contacts is my idea of an Excelsior moment.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may be spinning in his grave at such disrespect, but then he deserves to be spinning in his grave for writing that bloody awful poem in the first place.  Gah!  Blech!  I am not the same species as this man! 

*** As far as a short train ride or an even shorter drive

The Curmudgeon Speaks

 

I even had a guest post for tonight* but then this morning I read Lucy Coats' blog post on author antics:  http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2010/10/hubris-and-art-of-good-behaviour-lucy.html and decided I wanted to put in a word for the peevish and ill-tempered.**

            Long long ago when I was younger and stronger I did rather a lot of travelling to talk at schools, libraries and bookshops.  I didn't do a lot a lot because even in those days the public thing wore me out extremely.  And because it wore me out I started drawing up lists of what I would and wouldn't do.  Let me emphasise:  this was a survival mechanism.  I was not making demands to prove that I could, or to see what I could get away with, or to make myself seem so desirable that I could jack my fees up some more.***   Not all writers are like this.  Some of us, of course, are even crankier and more misanthropic than I am.  But some of us are witty, charming extroverts who can do six presentations in a day and still keep a dinner party of thirty in stitches that evening. 

            One of my basic requirements was that I could only do three presentations in a day.  This is crucial when you, which is to say I, was out on the road for more than a day or two.  If I was going to have anything left to continue to engage my audiences with, I could not do more.   And I was very sorry, but situations involving 'presentation' and 'audience' included hanging out in the staff room with the teachers—and going out to dinner with Everyone Who Had Worked Hard to Make My Visit a Success. 

            I do understand that small cash-strapped school systems or equivalent want to wring every droplet out of any cultural enrichment programme they've hired, including the breathing, two-legged kind.   But I have to earn a living too, and this means not only not making too awful an impression on the last small cash-strapped school system or equivalent on the tour ('All she said was ungh!') but not taking a month to recuperate once I get home again.  I also understand that it's very flattering that everyone wants a word or an hour with you—and that there may have been positively shoving matches over who gets to drive you from point A to point B.  But you—which is to say I—are being expected to engage with the person-eager-to-meet-you who is driving you from Point A and your first gig to Point B and your second—when what you need is silence and if not strictly solitude then anonymity and, in a perfect world, a cup of tea.  And then there will be another person to drive you from Point B to Point C. . . .

             One of the stand-out moments of my life as an author-on-the-road—and one that always comes back to me whenever I'm thinking about Gigs I Have Lived to Tell the Tale of, so I may well have told it here before—happened at the end of a long day.  The third and final presentation at the local library had run long, but it was the final presentation of the day so I was willing to let it go on a bit.  Then I signed books for a while.  I looked around for my minder because I badly wanted to go back to my hotel and go to bed.  She bustled up to me, smiling, and escorted me . . .

            . . . into a function room at the back of the library, where a long buffet table was set up with food and wine and a gigantic milling throng not only of any of the audience who wanted to stick around but an alarming selection of the local Great and Good.  I think we may have even had the mayor.  Dear gods.  I looked at her and stammered something about the letter she should have had from my publisher about what I would and would not do, and I didn't do, you know, parties, especially at the end of a long day. . . .

            And her eyes got larger and larger and larger and she said, or rather wailed, But I thought you'd like it. . . . And burst into tears.

            But I have lots of stories like that, barring the minder bursting into tears, which I'm glad to say is unusual.  There was the occasion when they hadn't bothered to tell me that they had auctioned off Dinner with the Author because they figured that I wouldn't be such a bastard as to blow off a kid whose fault it wasn't and who was thrilled that she'd won.  And they were right:  I wasn't.  They'd already got their three presentations out of me, you know, and I was some other school's problem tomorrow.  They told me about the kid and the Dinner with the Author auction in this cute little aren't-we-clever way that made me want to . . .

            So I'm glad Lucy stayed the twenty minutes and talked to the kids, whose fault it also wasn't that they were late.  And I have also had wonderful times out on the road, with minders who have taken me sightseeing and horseback riding and shopping and old-bookstore-haunting, and even to the cinema and the theatre—or indeed home to dinner with the family, where I'm not An Author but some weird colleague of mum or dad.  But on behalf of crusty old introverts everywhere . . . sometimes authors behave badly because they're exhausted, they've been shoved over a line that very likely the present company has no way of knowing is there, and they can't frelling cope.  There are stories out there of the awfulness of Robin McKinley.  But I want to believe that there are extenuating circumstances to all of them, even if the tellers of the stories don't know what they are. 

* * *

* YAAAAY! for guest posts.  There's absolutely nothing better than a guest post or two sitting quietly in the admin queue.  A safety net for this nightly high-wire act.  I feel it when it's not there. 

** I also want to mention the blog that set Lucy off:  http://www.amandacraig.com/pages/blog_01/blog_item.asp?Blog_01ID=252 

Which has set me off too, but in another direction.  I had a few moments of serious Britain-is-not-just-another-country-but-another-planet, reading it.  I entirely agree with the basic premise of both Lucy and Amanda's posts—authors should mind their manners in public, and if they can't, they should stay home and stop embarrassing not only themselves and their readers but the rest of us by association—but here's one quote that knocked my socks off, not in a good way:

Needless to say these stories are all about men, simply because women – even the most prize-laden – just have it drummed into them that they had better not get uppity.

What?  British women never behave badly?  British women writers never behave badly?  Arrogantly?  Condescendingly?  Crushingly to the lesser mortals around them?  No.  Wrong.  Maybe my American accent brings out the worst but . . . no.   I've blogged about this before, but it's relevant in the present context:  One of the last British publishing events I attended, nearly a decade ago now, when I was barely up off the sofa from a year and a half of acute ME, and still wasn't handling my new situation as a semi-invalid all that well, and I have always found Going Out in Public as An Author a strain and a drain . . . I was cut up in small pieces and handed back to myself on a shovel by an Award Winning British Woman Writer.  I have no idea what her deal was, except she was in a bad mood and I didn't get out of the way fast enough.  And then there was the edifying evening I spent as Peter Dickinson's bimbo wife when he was elected into the Royal Society of Literature—at which event I was not only more or less called a slut to my face by a mere award-winning bloke, but cut spectacularly dead by another Award Winning British Woman Writer—one famous enough that I only knew who she was because I'd seen her photo so often.  Grrrrrrr.  Let me also say in a small polite aside here that being a successful bimbo wife is harder than it looks.  You can either try to stay in your husband's shadow when, after all, you're attending something that's about him not you, and be despised and called a slut, or you can say, well, um, actually, I'm a writer too, you know, published, I earn a living and all that, that's how Peter and I met—and be despised and called a social-climbing slut.  And while I'm actually a pretty good live-author dog-and-pony show, professional social mixing is my idea of the deepest pits of hell, and I'm sure I don't put myself over very well.  But slack could have been extended in both the cases cited above—and wasn't.  

One more quote that had me going 'gah gah gah gah gah what?':

If, like myself, you believe that there are no major living authors in our time – not one of the stature of Tolstoy, Dickens, Eliot etc –  then absolutely everyone is simply quarrelling over degrees of mediocrity. 

No, I do not agree, although I'm not going to list the first—oh, let's say six—living writers I would put on the same list as, um, well, Dickens and Eliot anyway, Tolstoy kind of gets up my nose^, because Pollyanna works in reverse too, and I don't want to say YES this person is a MAJOR WRITER^^. . . but by omission this other person is not.^^^   Furthermore, I would myself say there's an enormous gap between 'genius' and 'mediocrity'—most of the writers I know and love live in that gap, I fancy including myself, thank you very much.  Genius is pretty frelling rarefied—but mediocre is mediocre.  I throw mediocre books against the wall.  And I have quite a few books by living authors on my shelves. 

^ I should try one of the new translations

^^ And then of course there's the 'define major' conversation.

^^^An omission which could be caused by Menopause Memory as well as by evil cowness. 

*** And then there's the story of when and how I stopped doing things for free, because people only respect what they pay for.

† Signing books didn't/doesn't count.  I'll always sign books.

The Horrors of Travel

 

Luke is amazing and seeing him and his family was terrific, whatever the circumstances.  And that's about as much as I'm going to say about that.*

            Now I am going to talk about the Horrors of Travel.**

            I had carefully looked up train schedules between Mauncester and Okefenokee on National Rail's web site.  And then Aaron, who was going to be picking us up at the station, phoned to ask if we could get off at Blackguard Junction, which is where they're staying, a few miles outside the swamp itself and more convenient because you don't need special canoeing licenses and all that.***  I (carefully) looked up Blackguard Junction and said† yes, fine, it's on the same line.

            This morning Peter and I got to the train station in lots of time.  I parked lovely Wolfgang and strolled to the ticket office, feeling nearly light-hearted, where Peter had been wresting tickets out of the system.  We change at Barnstorming, said Peter.  We what? I said.  I hate changing trains.  They're never where they're supposed to be, and they arrive, leave and are cancelled randomly.††  And beware any rail personnel who answer questions too decisively.

            You know those great sheets of schedules laminated to the walls of train stations?  At bigger train stations—this includes Mauncester—they hang on a rack and you flip through them like looking at posters in a museum shop.  Blackguard Junction did not appear.  Anywhere.  Branch line into the Twilight Zone.  My favourite.  Joy.

            The train left Mauncester at the time I was actually expecting it to leave which was insufficiently comforting.  I immediately got out Apocalypse and started trying to find out††† whether getting off at Barnstorming was going to have the desired effect of providing us with a train that would take us on to Blackguard.  According to National Rail it would.  National Rail furthermore gave me times for these longed-for things to happen.

            Then we arrived at the wrong time and on the wrong platform.  And those horrible flickering departure/arrival screens—except in really big stations like Waterloo—only give you terminus names:  the next train at that platform usually has a ribbon of its stops running underneath it, but by that time if you're on the wrong platform it's probably too late.  I had no frelling idea what the final stop on the Blackguard line was.  Shangri-La West?

            In this case we were lucky.  There was an Official Rail Person wearing Official Rail Person insignia who told us we were on the right platform and the right train would be there in three minutes.  And it was.  Never mind that it had nothing to with the time the National Rail site had given me.  Never mind.  We got to Blackguard!!!!  We got off the train!!!!! . . . And Apocalypse immediately started barking at me, because Aaron was waiting at the wrong platform, having been helpfully directed there by the Official Rail Person he had asked for the train coming in from Barnstorming, and had applied 21st century technology to the problem.

            NEVER MIND.  THE POINT IS WE GOT THERE.‡   AND AARON WAS THERE TO MEET US.‡‡

            We were driven back to the train station this evening in teeming rain.  Teeming rain is always a bad sign when you're travelling.  Even when nobody drowns it's a bad omen.  We got there with about two minutes to spare—well, maybe, because we were back to believing that pesky web site again—and were (helpfully) directed to Platform 2 for Barnstorming.  We raced up the stairs that said Platform 2 . . .

            . . . and there was no Platform 2.  There was a Platform 1, and Platforms 4 and 5, and across the rails we could see a Platform 3.

            There was no Platform 2.

            Nor were there any Official Rail Personnel.

            I accosted an ordinary human who was standing in the middle of the empty stretch of what might, conceivably, have been Platform 2, not that there were any signs to this effect.  He looked amused.  He said, yes, this was Platform 2.  I applied myself to the Nasty Flickering Overhead Arrival/Departure Screen.  It said:  Next train:  Venous Baroque.  And it did not have a ribbon of station stops running under it.  I've never heard of Venous Baroque. 

            The train came in.  We got on it.  It took us to Barnstorming.  We got off.

            The train to Venous Baroque stops at Barnstorming at Platform 1,002.  It's a long way to the Travel Advice Desk—and there was nothing on our way but some handers-out of leaflets for local gyms, furniture warehouses, and really great deals on flights to Goa.  At, for example, Clapham Junction, which is a terrifying station, if you keep your nerve, it's pretty well labelled, and you can probably find what you're looking for before the nervous breakdown, even in the absence of Official Rail Personnel in preference for the handers-out of leaflets.  Barnstorming was clearly designed and built by an alien race who do not have human best interests at heart, or at carapace, or whatever evil train-station-builders have.  Then you finally get to Barnstorming's Travel Advice Desk . . . and it's on the far side of the ticket-eating barrier, so if you go through you won't be able to come back, and, furthermore, it's closed, so you might as well keep your ticket, useless as it is, since you have no idea where your train is.  There was a woman in Official Rail Personnel uniform leaning on the ticket-eating barrier, having a good old jaw with a woman not in Official Rail Personnel uniform.  They were laughing.  They were having a good time.  Peter and I were not.  I said to the ORP uniform woman, pardon me, how do I find out where my train is?  And she said to me crisply, I am helping this woman.  I'll be with you when I'm finished. 

            Well excuse me for living, and for wanting to catch my train.

            At this point a young man also in ORP uniform strode up, inquired what train we wanted, and said, with absolute conviction, Mauncester!  Platform 1,001!

            So we toiled back out to the end of the frelling platforms, dodging more leafleters.  And we got to Platform 1,001 and the FRELLING OVERHEAD SCREEN was listing more towns neither of us had ever heard of.  When we're somewhere else and heading back toward Mauncester, the terminal stations ought to sound relatively familiar.  We both started looking around for someone else to ask.  I wandered across the platform to look down the other side, partly because a train had pulled in and a lot of people had got off, which should mean there were Station Personnel congregating, eager to be helpful and decisive.  And I happened to look at the frelling overhead screen for Platform 999, just out of mild curiosity about where this train might be headed, and it said . . . Dastardly.

            Dastardly?  That's one of the places Mauncester trains tend to end up!  I rushed up to a Station Person.  Does this train go to Mauncester? I shrieked.  Yes, he said. 

            They're already shutting the doors.

            I turn around again . . . AND PETER HAS DISAPPEARED.

            How far can he have gotten in less than twenty seconds?  NOOOOOOOOO.  I start racing up and down both 999 and 1,001—which, I have to tell you, with this knapsack, was not easy—and screaming PETER!!!!!!! which usually works a treat, because he's British, and he will commit feats of incredible speed and superhuman daring to make me shut up.  One of the other Station Personnel was beginning to take an interest.  I daresay to become an Official Rail Person you have to take special seminars in the treatment of hysterical madwomen.  This is our train! I said, and I may have been in tears by that point.  And my husband has disappeared!

            And the Official Rail Person held the train.  And calmly asked for Peter's name, and read it out over the PA system, and . . .

            We got on the train.  It took us to Mauncester.  We got off.

            I am a nervous wreck.

             The hellhounds had eaten lunch for the dog minder.  And they ate dinner for me.

            And I am never going anywhere again.‡‡‡ 

* * *

 * Except that I hope we see them again sooner this time.

 ** Jodi, if you're reading this, stop now.

 *** http://www.okefenokee.com/

I've told you before, southern England is a very strange place, reality-wise. 

 † Actually I texted.^  On Aaron's request.^^  Trembling in every limb, since texting isn't in my skill set.  It is now.  I am so 21st century.

 ^ Which I swear is not a verb. 

^^ Connections are a little flaky near the swamp.  All those tentacles.  Does something to the air waves. 

†† I realise that the schedulers must do this deliberately.  There is no way mere fortuity could screw things up this spectacularly.  What I don't understand is why.  Wouldn't a system that, you know, worked, be easier to design? 

††† Slowly.  Dear gods.  I have never seen anything load so slowly.  And repeatedly.  And every time it reloaded I was back on the homepage and had to go to the 'schedules' page again and retype my station names . . . whereupon we would have to start over.  The only thing moving quickly during all of this were the waving fronds of little bars telling me how much signal my server was picking up:  FOUR HUNDRED AND TWELVE—TWO POINT SIX—ZERO—NINETY SIX MILLION!!!! TYPE FAST!!!!! 

‡ I had brought three books and my laptop, and none of them had come out of my knapsack.  It would be better on the way back, right? 

‡‡ Several minutes early, because he had believed the National Rail web site nonsense that I'd sent him. 

‡‡‡ Probably.

Sometimes the gods are kind

 

I HAVE A BRAND NEW SHINY BEAUTIFUL DOG MINDER!!!!!!  YESSSSSSS!  THE WORLD OPENS!*

             I also have a car.

             And a large tote bag full of board games, also new and shiny.**

              Life is good.***

              Oisin gave me Mavis' phone number.  Oisin's wife is one of these people who knows everyone† and she knows Mavis.††  It took me a little while to ring her . . . because . . . because . . . because I'm totally twitchy and superstitious and crazed on the subject of dog minders, and I knew that if she was any good she would be all booked up and if she wasn't any good . . . she'd probably still be all booked up.

             And she was all booked up.  She is, I think, kind of the female version of Atlas:  jill of all trades and mistress of most.  People want her to sort them out for a variety of reasons, dog minding merely being one item on the list.  But I wielded Oisin's name and she thought she might squeeze me in on the occasional Tuesday.  This conversation was the end of last week.  I instantly made plans for a couple of future Tuesdays . . . and then it suddenly occurred to me that we're going to Okefenokee this Tuesday.  So when she came round to meet the hellhounds I diffidently inquired if she could possibly start fitting me in this very Tuesday . . . and she said yes, she could, and furthermore partly as a result of my woebegone phone call she had decided it was time to start her own dog minding business.  And I'm in on the ground floor.  Yaaaaaay.

            Fabulous vistas unfurl of being away from home more than four hours!†††  I can go see Diana again without spending the entire visit sitting on the edge of my chair, watching the clock, and fretting about taxis and train times!  I can go up to London and meet my new editor . . . without spending the entire visit sitting on the edge of my chair and fretting about tube and train times!‡  I can go to the opera again!‡‡

            However.  Eight hours‡‡‡ sounds perfect.  Even ten.  After that my hands start shaking and you can see the whites all the way round my eyes and I want to go hoooooome.  I was a military brat, and as Robin McKinley the Author I have climbed on and off an awful lot of airplanes and talked to a(n awful) lot of schools, libraries and bookstores over the years.  But I've always suffered Travel Dread:  the conviction that your house is going to implode the minute your plane leaves the ground, the absolute knowledge that you've left The Thing Most Crucial To The Success of Your Journey behind—this would include the book that you didn't realise you really really really wanted to read till you were sitting in the airport departure lounge with the wrong books which you did bring§—and that you will come home someone else and your dogs and your husband will run away from you howling.§§  And when you write your next book it will turn out to be about fractals.  Or the economy of 19th century Brazil.

            But tomorrow is going to be perfect.  Eight hours of away:  perfect.  Wolfgang is home again tonight with more working bits than he had when we sent him to the mechanic for emergency mending this morning.  This means we can drive to the train station tomorrow.   But we can then get on the train and go to Okefenokee gazing negligently at the passing landscape and a book or (conceivably) a computer open on our laps.  Mavis will be giving hellhounds their second hurtle and their lunch.§§§ 

            And the large tote bag full of board games?  Well.  That perfect last paragraph is whistling in the dark.  We're going to be visiting Luke and his family, who are within a day's train-ride just for this week.  This will be the first time I've seen him since it all went desperately and terrifyingly pear-shaped the end of last year.  But . . . what happens is what happens.  And Luke is still Luke—and his entire family are fanatical board-game freaks.  Think of me and bell ringing.  Worse. 

            We've known for . . . really quite a while now that we'd be going to see them some time this week.  And I've been saying to myself:  board games.  Order some frelling board games, McKinley.  I finally did . . . at about 3 am last Friday.  This is a great site# and they promise that if what you order is in stock they'll get it shipped within 24 hours.  Which should just about mean it gets here . . . today.   Just about.  I am an irresponsible moron. 

             There was a knock on the door this morning before I was anything like ready to get out of bed, and I thought oh . . . frell.  I thought oh-frell even harder when I got downstairs (somewhat later) and found the card from Royal Mail saying You can pick it up tomorrow.  No.  I can't.  I'm going to be on the train.  Boardgameless.   I also thought irritably that they're supposed to have left it behind the gate instead of making me troop in to the PO to fetch it . . . but I could have done my ordering a lot sooner. 

             We hurtled back to the cottage this afternoon from the mews## and I drearily decided just to check behind the gate, in case this morning's non-delivery was something else . . .

            And there was a large box full of board games.  HUZZAH.### 

            AND I HAVE A DOG MINDER! 

* * *

 * Let me emphasize it doesn't open enormously far.^  She's so fabulously round-the-corner local that while she doesn't mind coming in on weekend mornings, she has encumbrances, like a husband, kids, and dogs of her own.  She goes home again.^^

^ Fortunately.  A dog minder who won't cover the twenty-one cities in eighteen days tour is included in 'the gods are kind'. 

^^ Yaay.  See above.  

** No, I'm not raving.  A large tote bag full of shiny new board games is a crucial element in the goodness of life right now.  Keep reading. 

*** Although it would be even better if I could get more sleep.  

† This is very useful in a director of a small local music-theatre company 

†† I haven't yet asked her if she's in The Octopus and the Chandelier.  She's much too young and nice to be cranky old Lady Thing.  Maybe she'd like to be in the back row of the chorus. 

††† Yes, normal dogs can keep their legs crossed a lot longer than four hours.  Hellhounds, when all is well, can apparently maintain sphincter control indefinitely.  But the sweating, paranoid, highly-imaginative human cannot predict when all may suddenly stop being well on the hellhound front.  And the hellhound rear. 

‡ I could even start having those fantasies about finishing homeopathy college again!  

‡‡ The ENO's spring season is pretty much all stuff I want to see. 

‡‡‡ Especially when someone else is doing some of the hurtling in my absence 

§ This happens to me so regularly I'm convinced there's something Funny About the Air in airport departure lounges.  And is why, if I ever find myself on the bookselling road again, I will have an ebook reader with me.  

§§ Or, possibly, ferrets.  It is very comforting to know that I'm in good company with the Travel Dread.  Jodi Meadows^ is about to go to Boston and New York City for a week of fun, depravity and publishing, and is suffering Travel Dread:  'I've reached the point now I wish I wasn't even going. I don't like traveling. I like being at home. That's why I live here. All my stuff is here. . . . I've actually finished packing.  I've overcome the I-hate-all-my-clothes part of the Travel Dread. . . .  I do it every time. Every time. I hate all my clothes.'  Yes.  Me too.  Not to mention trying to get the number of pairs of All Stars I have to take with me to fewer than six.

             And then there's the glorious, the magnificent^^ Nancy Pearl:  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/44847-the-allure-of-armchair-travel.html   Yep.  Give me Eric Newby, William Dalrymple, a sofa, and some hellhounds.

^ ERIN INCARNATE, coming in 2012 from Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins

^^ Ahem.  She likes SUNSHINE a lot

§§§ And if the gods are really kind, they'll even eat it.

# http://www.iguk.co.uk/   Highly recommended.  I totally depend on their reviews too, since I don't myself know from board games.

## For me to do things like anticipatorily wrestle with my wardrobe.  Yes.  Even when I'm only going to be gone eight or ten hours.  Although I will only be taking one pair of All Stars with me.

### I have no idea what's waiting for me at the post office . . .

Drowning in Pansies

 

I am.  Drowning in Pansies.  I played hooky for a couple of hours this afternoon* and slammed some pansies into various pots and like receptacles.   I love pansies, and it's not to be thought of that I don't have lots, and the invention and promulgation of winter flowering pansies** were a great contribution to human felicity.   But lots is a mutable concept when applied to an acreage better measured in micrometers.  And every year autumn*** plant ordering gets done even more at the last minute while I'm thinking about several something elses than it was last year.†

            I usually remember pansies however.  I remembered them this year.  I remembered that I hadn't ordered them yet as the usual catalogues came rolling in offering you 36,000 pansies with another 8000 free.††  Cognitive dissonance alert.  Gardens are getting smaller.  More houses are going up = less space for gardens. The gardening magazines have mostly caught on to this:  there are usually a few fantasy-garden articles and photo-visits to Stourhead and Stowe and so on, but most of them knuckle down to the reality of how to grow cabbages on your windowsill and roses on your doorstep without the Royal Mail bringing suit for assault and battery.  Mail-order nurseries seem to be going the other way.  Fourteen million something or others!  And another mumblety-jumble free!†††

            So I let all the offers of 36,800 pansies pass me by.  And then I started getting nervous.  My extremely gallant and stalwart summer pansies were stuttering to an end and I want some little fresh green pansy-leaf mounds promising me there will be more pansies some day. 

            And I lost my nerve.  About a fortnight ago.  I was watching all the fourteen-million offers of specific named pansies that I want, just not fourteen million of them, sell out.  I decided . . . oh, maybe I could do them in tiers or something.  And I found a couple of obscure nurseries that were selling them in mere hundreds rather than gigabillions.  It was still more pansies of fewer kinds than I wanted, but it was better than no pansies. . . .

            Literally the day after I ordered my, as I thought, last-minute winter-cough-cough-flowering pansies . . . the first of the big well-known standard mail order nurseries sent me a FABULOUS AUTUMN SALE email . . . which included pansies.  Things like sixteen pansies of one sort.  Or twenty four pansies.  And thereupon was a weeping and a wailing about the land, or at least a particular cottage and Third House.  Especially when all the other big mail order nurseries followed suit within another day or two.

            I ordered more pansies.  Well, of course.  And the big companies tend to be faster off the mark than the little companies, so there was a memorable day last week when I came home from hurtling hounds to find a Leaning Tower of Pansies propped against my front door.  I'm glad I didn't have to face the laughing deliveryperson.  I had to tie up hellhounds at the foot of the stair, there wasn't room for all of us. . . .

            Anyone in the neighbourhood, drop by for a cup of tea and a few pansies. 

* * *

* Very much uneasily in the front of my mind that my Sunday afternoons are about to disappear in a puff of Octopus and Chandelier for four months, starting—eeep—in three weeks.  Speaking of the O and the C, I mentioned this medium-sized foothill in the Himalayas of music theatre to somebody else and they had heard of it too.^  And had also not heard of Che Faro.  This keeps happening.  I'm going to get a complex here in a minute.  Che Faro Senza Eurydice?  Possibly the most famous mezzo aria in the entire frelling repertoire?^^  And which I am going to be singing for Oisin next Friday.^^^  How can you not have heard of it?  I'm not asking you to know what it's about, or even what opera it's from.  Or even that it's from an opera.  'Opera', after all, is a term of reproach and reprehensibility in some uncouth circles.  But if someone says to you 'Che Faro Senza Eurydice' you should say oh yeah, and start humming.  Like Halley did when I said O&C. 

             Not having heard of Che Faro is like not having heard of WG Grace.^^^^  Shameful.  No civilised person, etc etc.^^^^^

^ Some heretic who reads my blog and fancies herself a friend of mine emailed asking if Halley had really burst into a selection of O&C highlights.  Yes, devils seize it.  He did.  But any chastening effect this might have had on me was entirely negated by the discovery that he does not like Stephen Sondheim.  For this he shall be killed—er—never allowed to darken this door again—er—well, I don't have to care he knows the songs I'm going to be laboriously learning over the next four months.   Feh.  At least it's not Stephen Sondheim, who is hard.  In another life—a life in which I had both a voice and a confident, extrovert personality—I would have been happy to turn a few rivals into meat pies for the opportunity to sing Mrs Lovett.  

^^ Yes, I know it has some competition.  Dido's Lament.  The Habanera.  Possibly Voi che sapete.  Or even Stride la vampa.  Don't you automatically want to sing something called Stride la vampa?  It's almost as good as it sounds—it's a mad gypsy talking about her mum being burnt at the stake in front of a slavering crowd.  Grand opera.  Love it.  

^^^ If I Want to Make Myself Do Something, Mention It on the Blog.+ 

+ Looking up travel opportunities for Goa now.  Blondviolinist has suggested that the hellhounds won't like Goa.  They'll like Goa better than I'm going to like New Arcadia next Friday.  

^^^^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._G._Grace 

^^^^^ This is a trick question.  You may laugh now.  I wouldn't have had a clue who WG Grace was before I moved over here.  I only have a clue now because if you live in England it's hard not to be at least dimly aware that there is a Most Famous Cricketer of All Time, and then all I have to do is ask Peter who it is.  I don't do sports, especially not ball sports.  I barely know who Babe Ruth is.  I only know Joe DiMaggio because of Simon and Garfunkel.

** Despite the fact that they mostly don't flower in the winter, bar the occasional small confused bloom.  But they get going pretty impressively early in the spring, and they're like daffodils:  they lie down in a frost, and then pop upright again as soon as the temperature lets them.  This being southern England I've never had to find out how long they can stay lying down before they won't pop up again.  

*** I will be saying the exact same thing about spring ordering in a few months. 

† This frequently includes having forgotten that in fact I did already do most of the ordering and only had a few things left to search for.  Oops.  I do that with tulips every dranglefabbing year. 

            Usually I also do it with crocuses.  So this year I was determined not to do it with crocuses.  And I haven't.  I have too few crocuses.  I'm now going to have to go to the garden centre and buy crocuses at garden-centre prices and from garden-centre selections.  Sigh. 

†† I have never understood the 'and another 800 free' business.  Sometimes it's if you order by x date.  But usually it's just AND ANOTHER 800 FREE!!!!  Why isn't it just 36,800 pansies in the first place?  It's still more than I want.  I want, you know, twelve.  And then I want another twelve of some other kind of pansy.  

††† Are they pink?  Okay.  Fine.  I'm sure I can fit them in somewhere.

Ninja kitty, ii

 

Blogmom sent me shiny new directions for how to load photos on WordPress without tears.  Which I have apparently lost.  With tears.*  So I decided I'd better do this in two batches. 

* * *

* Of course this may the work of Charming and Delightful Outlook.  Whose 'find' function is slightly less efficient than starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together.  At least the sticks don't randomly disappear.^   And which gets peckish at odd moments and–well, what would you expect of an email-handling programme?–snacks on my inbox.

^ At least I don't think they do.  I haven't tried starting a fire without matches lately.