Robin McKinley's Blog, page 154

Ninja kitty

As promised.* 

* * *

* Phineas is not only home this weekend, in an awkward and uncooperative way, he has visitors.^  He not only has visitors, he has visitors with a dog.  I'm expecting frantic claws hooking into my bedroom windowsill and feline howls of despair.^^  I have hellhounds, I will tell him.  You're probably better off with the spaniel:  it's slower, and it can't jump as high.

^ Well, now that I mention it . . . we have visitors.  I told them–she's disturbingly musical, he's in professional theatre–I was about to start rehearsals for back row of the chorus in a local amateur production of The Octopus and the Chandelier, and he immediately broke into a Greatest Hits.  Okay, okay, I'm ignorant.  I'd never heard of it before.   There, there, said Peter, who had also heard of it, and he's mega-thumpingly not musical, it's very English.  Yes.  It is.  At least I don't have to worry about them trying to cast me.   I believe they're still short a cranky old Lady Thing.

^^ Note that a clever and/or desperate enough kitten could probably negotiate the Tarzan-like-except-for-the-thorns foliage between Phineas' bathroom window and mine.+  Both of which stand open a lot, even in this weather.++

+ Both of which are a storey above the ground.  First floor in England.  Second storey in America.   The point is it's a long way to fall.  Even for something that weighs about as much as a piece of toast.

++ They toyed with the idea of threatening us with a FROST tonight.  They seem to have changed their minds.  I am zero ready for a frost. 

Frelled Out of My Own Mouth

 

I tweeted this a few hours ago:    

I AM SO FRELLED. (I'm just back from piano lesson w Oisin. & we made a DEAL. It was HIS idea. I cld hv said NOOOO. If I had any SENSE. . .)

           It's all the Computer Men's fault really.*  I've got all expansive and unbalanced by having Finale back.**   It makes me foolish.  It makes me feel as if I'm musical.  It makes me not notice tiger pits till I've already fallen into them.  Quite early on in the conversation this afternoon Oisin asked if I'd managed to get hold of the Cherub.***  Yes! I said, all bouncing and gleeful.  Yes!  Yes!  He sounds nice!  He sounds much more sensible and clued-in to things like elderly talent-free women who have strange ideas of fun than any grotesquely over-talented twelve-and-half-year-old ought to!  —I was busy setting up my laptop on one of the slightly-less-teetering piles of sheet music† on the corner of Oisin's Steinway as I said this.  

          In all truth I haven't got very far in splatting Vague Noodly Piano Thing onto Gotterdammerung, but that's partly because I've managed to forget a lot of Finale's little ways in the several weeks since I've been able to use it.  The Only Thing Worse Than Finale Is Having No Finale.  Sigh.  I had, with great pain and difficulty, managed to switch myself about three-quarters back to manuscript paper again††—and it's not like I never use it:  I pretty much always start on manuscript paper so I don't have to know before I begin what key and time signature I'm in, which Finale demands as part of the votive sacrifice to deliver the supplicant to the manuscript-paper screen.  And now here I am, staring at the blindingly annoying Finale opening screen††† with a little flutter of expectation again.  The flutter is trying to remind me that I will spend at least two-thirds of my time using my composing software trying to find what I need in the help files, and screaming. . . .

            Anyway.  I had a bit of Vague Noodly to show Oisin today:  enough to demonstrate I'm trying.‡  It always makes such a difference to hear a live person play something:  this live person anyway. ‡‡  So when he asked how much of it I thought was down on paper/screen I said with self-astonishing firmness, about a third.  If you'd asked me that question before I heard Oisin play it I would have said:  Unh.  Some. 

            Excellent, said Oisin.  Then I won't ask you any questions now.  But I'll have lots of questions when you bring me the rest.‡‡‡

            Still thinking about this ominous 'lots of questions' thing I follow Oisin into the kitchen for the ritual cup of Friday-afternoon tea.  And am immediately distracted by the box of Octopus and Chandelier libretti sitting on the counter.   Ooh.  Shiny.  I admit to having very mixed feelings about the Octopus and the Chandelier:  I'm sure the experience is going to be very good for my character.  And . . . think of the blog material.  I should have a shoo-in post every (rehearsal) Sunday for four months.  This is not to be scorned.  However there is still this little Singing in Public impediment to my perfect enjoyment:  the footlights may occasionally reach even to the back row of the chorus, don't you think?  It worries me.  And I am going to sing.  I am not going to do the old moving-lips-no-sound-comes-out ruse.  Well.  Not deliberately.

            This concatenation of concepts probably explains why I was insane enough, when Oisin said, I'll make you a deal:  you sing for me and I'll write you a blog entry, I said you're on.  You're what?  He's what?§  I WHAT?

            I'm trying to tell myself this is a good thing.  I spent most of my year with Blondel whining about how if I weren't such a coward I'd take advantage of having an experienced professional accompanist available every Friday afternoon for something besides cups of tea.  Gah.  And I'm still whining about it.  It's a good thing I've had my hand forced.  It is.  But if you don't hear from me next Friday, it's because I've run away to Goa. 

            PS:  Niall made it to tower practise tonight.  Therefore I'm letting him live.           

* * *

* Archangels are very untrustworthy on this corporeal plane.  They have secret super-righteous agendas concerning the perfectibility of the human animal which any mortal knows is tosh.  But it can be very uncomfortable to be caught in some piece of heavenly apparatus.^  OW.  LEGGO.  DOESN'T FIT.  

^ I love the idea that angels and computers have a connection.  But then I have a sick, twisted sense of humour.  

** Gotterdammerung is, at present, working so beautifully I hardly know where to put my crankiness.^  She opens.  She closes.  She moves briskly from one programme to another.  She does not hang.  She does not crash.  She does not produce pop up boxes describing anatomically impossible events and berating me for failing to have my cheezfammers aligned with my gortamflurds.  Don't I know that there are always compatibility problems with Cheezfammer 2.1 and the entire Gortamflurd empire?  There is, of course, a bug fix for Cheezfammer 2.1, but your internet security Rottweiler-wolverine programme will have kittens if you try to download it. 

            At the moment Gotterdammerung even has Outlook cowed^^, but this happy condition probably can't last. 

^ Don't worry.  I'm sure I'll find something. 

^^ Or possibly axolotled. 

*** Note that Oisin actually calls him the Cherub.  Poor Cherub.  I'm going to have to find a fierce manly name for him.  Attila.  Vlad.  Cuchulainn. 

† I'm always delighted when Oisin's phone rings while I'm there.  I immediately start rootling shamelessly in the nearest pile.

†† Oisin sniggered when I said this.  I could see he was trying not to.  But he did. 

††† I don't care who he is.  He's not Mozart.  Why don't we get to choose our opening screen shot?  At Finale's prices, we ought to get a free butler with every order, to bring us cups of freshly made hot tea while we slave over our virtual manuscript paper, discovering that we guessed wrong about the time signature and the home key.  The butler could carry a hip flask as standard. 

‡ I'm now in a quandary about Ring a Ring of Roses.  I couldn't cope with four voices (SATB) and organ stark and alone on paper, so I had this dazzling flash of creative imprudence and started writing it for four voices and percussion.  Whack, thwap, thud.  I may have told you that, did I?   But now . . . here is Finale again.  I could do two different versions.  The dull thud version and the trying-to-make-my-organist-piano-teacher-crazy version.  Like Verdi reusing one of the best bits of Otello in his staggeringly fabulous Requiem.  Well, maybe not quite like that. 

‡‡ He phrases by ear.  How does he do that??  But it means that what has been blundering around in my skull looking for the exit and whimpering, suddenly looks all solid and purposeful and sounds like its existence has meaning and a future.  

‡‡‡ Is this a good thing or a bad thing for your music teacher to say to you?  No, no, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

§ He immediately started caveatting at me that he wouldn't necessarily write me a guest blog immediately.  Ah, but there he's on my ground.  I'll get him. 

The day after a good day

 

YOU PAY FOR THE GOOD DAYS, YOU KNOW.   Of course you know.  We all know.  I know.  GAAAAH.*

            Handbells this evening.  All thrilling four of us were there, which means we were trying to ring bob major**.  I have been totally hot, excited and chirpy at the prospect of finally learning major . . . but then of course you have to do it.  Furthermore, Niall, who is sinking fast in my estimation, made me ring the 3-4:  I can't ring the 3-4.  I can maybe sort of ring the tenors and slightly less than that sort-of sort-of maybe ring the trebles.  The 3-4 and the 5-6 are in the middle.  The middle pair or pairs are the waking nightmares, where your red-and-blue method lines twine themselves around you like hungry boa constrictors and squeeze until your brain bursts.  I literally couldn't do it:  I had to ring off a little piece of paper with the lines drawn on it, which is my one peculiar talent, reading.  Never occurred to me one way or another, but a lot of real ringers can't bring their lofty intellects back down to the lowly earth of printed pages.  They can't ring and read at the same time.  Snork.  Being as how most of these people don't need to read their lines it all gets pretty moot, but it is true that when you've got a new band or a new member—Fernanda, in our case—or are learning a new method, it's useful to have a couple of steady ringers:  which would be Niall, of course, and, in this case . . . me.  Sort of:  even reading off the page I find it difficult to count that high.  Seven!  Eight!  No!  Rows are supposed to stop at six! 

            It was all particularly annoying because for once in my frantic, disorganised little life I had looked at what we were likely to be ringing, ie bob major, over the week.  I had looked at the trebles.  So with the general horror of having a middle pair sprung on me was my foggy half-memorised understanding of the one-two, which I was just about keeping separate from my nearly-almost half-skill on the seven-eight . . . the three-four really put the cat among the pigeons, and the pigeons were pretty sick to begin with.***

            And then . . . shock and trauma have driven the exact chronology out of my mind.  But Penelope was there tonight† and at the end of tea break when she was about to withdraw into the kitchen and put her hands over her ears again, I said that I hoped I'd see her tomorrow night—at New Arcadia tower practise.  She said, Well, if we get back in time.

            If . . . WHAT?

            I went roaring back into the sitting-room where Niall was spinning straw into gold or transmuting lead into handbells or some damn thing—I didn't notice—and I said, WHAT IS THIS ABOUT YOU MAYBE NOT BEING THERE FOR TOWER PRACTISE TOMORROW NIGHT?  YOU AREN'T ALLOWED TO SPRING THESE THINGS ON ME.††

            Oh, said Niall vaguely.  We're going to visit my mother.  Here, he added, extracting a Very Large Envelope from some hidden crevasse, You'd better have the keys.

            THE KEYS? I screamed.

            Yes, said Niall.  The keys to the church.  Vicky††† isn't going to be there tomorrow night either. 

            . . . Have I told you about the keys to our church?  The main part of St Radegund is old, and the outside door into the vestibule containing the ladder to the ringing chamber and bell tower is the original Visigoth-repelling fortress door, closed with several bolts as big around as my brawny, bell-ringing forearms, and a bar that looks like it belongs in a BBC production of IVANHOE.   Once you've secured the Visigoth-repeller you have to retreat out through the church proper, through both the screen into the nave and a slightly less formidable door at the far end—one which actually has a key, although said key is about the size of your hand, and the sound it makes when it turns is heard in the next village.  At this point you find yourself in the New Wing with the requisite hall, kitchen, modern toilets, etc, and some rather more comprehensible locking mechanisms.  The church and tower end involve secret cupboards, light switches which only appear if the correct incantations have been uttered and the correct obeisances made, and groping around behind the altar and/or under the organ for the bits that aren't hanging where they should be in the secret cupboard.  I have opened up or closed down maybe twice and each time required an intensive three-day seminar in church architecture and gargoyles first and took years off my life.‡

            Oh, said Niall.  And Monty will be there at 7:10.‡‡

            I think it was at this point that I crumpled into a little heap on the floor and curled into the foetal position.  Monty is one of our beginners.  He's a strapping lad and when he gets all his various limbs organised‡‡ he'll probably ring beautifully.  At the moment he's still pretty much in the NO NO DON'T LET GO OF THE TAIL END stage while the hapless teacher dives for the wildly flailing rope.  I am not dealing with Monty by myself. 

            I am at present hoping urgently that if Niall, Penelope and Vicky aren't there . . . we won't have enough, and I can cancel practise.  But I think I'd better phone Monty's dad tomorrow. . . .

            Niall was going to tell me sometime, wasn't he? 

            I hope Niall's mum throws them out EARLY.  If I had her phone number, I'd ring her.           

* * *

 * However this is a further excellent sign that the Cherub will be a success.  I wouldn't have to pay for him if he was going to be a terrible mistake, right? 

** Instead of three people, six bells, and bob minor. 

*** I should admit that I'm telling the story this way because I am going to jump on Niall with both feet here in a minute.  In fact it was fun, in the numbing, why-do-I-do-this-to-myself way that all handbell ringing is for me, Fernanda is clearly the Right Stuff, and even ringing off a piece of paper, getting through major after all this time ringing minor is a buzz.^  Indeed this is about rapidly to become the problem:  the other three of them are all way frelling upper level madly experienced tower ringers, and Fernanda is picking up handbells with appalling speed, just the way Colin did. 

             And then there's me.  Who labours extremely to learn anything.  They've all rung full peals^^ of bob major in the tower.  I've never rung it at all.   

^ One might even say a major buzz.

^^ Full peal = three and a half hours or so of continuous ringing of a given method or methods according to strict rules, run by a conductor who has to get it right, or it's not a peal, it's just some random time on a rope.  People get very depressed when they 'fire out' and don't make their peal. 

† Mostly hiding in the kitchen, no doubt with her hands over her ears

†† For recent readers:  Niall is ringing master.  I'm frelling deputy ringing master.  If Niall isn't there, I'm in charge of practise.  This is a bit like a three-legged Shetland pony leading the Charge of the Light Brigade.^ 

^ Which wouldn't have been such a bad thing.  They wouldn't have got near enough to the cannon to get killed.  For better or worse however New Arcadia at the end of 2010 bears very little resemblance to the Crimea of the 1850s, and I know very few Shetland ponies, even those with a full complement of legs, who are method ringers.  

††† Who usually opens up 

‡ I am not at all sure what lives behind the altar and under the organ.  Whatever they are you can hear them talking to each other when you're stumbling around in the dark looking for inscrutable propitiatory objects, because of course you have not succeeded in the incantations and the obeisances, and the bits are not hanging in the secret cupboard.

‡‡ He's a teenager.  Most teenagers find their bodies alien, uninterpretable, and of dubious cordiality.  It's not his fault. 

‡‡‡ General practise starts at 7:30.  I usually get there at about 7:29.5

It may have been a good day

 

I probably won't know for a few weeks.  But the omens are promising.*

            I spoke to the Cherub.  I SPOKE to the Cherub!!!

            I rang him again.**  This afternoon.  I was rehearsing what I was going to say to his answering doohickey*** so as not to sound petulant because he hadn't answered my first message when on the third ring someone answered!  Eeek! I said.  Gleep!

            I make such a good first impression.  And it's so heart-warming to look like a total dork to someone about a third your age.†  Never mind.  He sounds nice.  He said he didn't have a problem with elderly women of zero talent and a very high anxiety level.  He said he thought we could have fun.††  One of the somewhat disconcerting things about these professional voice people is how elegant their, you know, voices are.  I remember that from talking to Blondel over the phone:  a very high meep factor from my end.  The Cherub does not sound like a very young man.

            Anyway.  We aren't going to manage to get together till the first week of November††† but—contact!  Made!  Yaaaay!  Meeeep! 

            And I may have found someone bearing a slight but significant resemblance to a dog minder.  For a town groaning under an intolerable burden of aggressive off-lead dogs we sure seem to keep our dog minders busy.  This woman is only willing to try and squeeze me in because I'm (a) desperate (b) she likes my dogs‡ and (c) Oisin gave me her name.  She can do occasional Tuesday afternoons, she says.  So she's coming round on Saturday for the official introduction.  My ENO (English National Opera) catalogue arrived this afternoon and I was glancing through to see what's on on any Tuesday.

            And I'm getting Gotterdammerung back tomorrow.‡‡  And Raphael says that Finale now works. 

            Of course I'm not telling you about the dentist's appointment tomorrow, or about the fact that Wolfgang is broken, and the garage can't have him for mending till Monday, and on Tuesday we're supposed to be driving to Okefenokee, which is about an hour and a half from here‡‡‡, and therefore pushing my driving limit rather drastically over the line, but Luke and his family are going to be there, and ordinarily they live about seven hours from here. 

             But sufficient unto the day.  Today I spoke to the Cherub!

* * *

* However.  A story from the real world.

            A Large Famous UK Rose Nursery which shall remain nameless has several held-over-from-having-been-sold-out-last-year roses for me on its books for delivery this autumn.  They keep sending me invoices.  I keep ignoring them.  It is lost in the mists of time why I didn't pay for the roses last autumn when they were held over in the first place—which is the sort of thing I prefer to do so I don't have to think about it—I don't care a whole lot about the interest on twenty quid for a year.  I would have got round to paying eventually except I added a couple of roses to the list late last winter when the nursery I'd originally ordered them from had a hissy fit and decided they weren't going to sell them any more.^  And the woman I spoke to on the phone at Large and Famous said that if I was planning on adding to my order for next autumn, which I was,^^ to wait and pay for the entire lot in one go.  Fine, I said, I'll finish my order after you send me this year's paper catalogue.^^^  Catalogues go out in August, she said.

            They went on sending me invoices.  I went on ignoring them.

            August came and went.

            They are still sending me invoices.  I am still waiting for my catalogue.  I emailed them.  No reply.  I phoned them, got their answering machine, left a message.  No reply.  And no catalogue.  I emailed them again.

            I rang them again, day before yesterday.  Got their answering machine again.  I said wearily, my name is blah, I've been trying to get hold of you blah, I am still waiting for your paper catalogue blah.  Please send, blah.

            Yesterday I got an answer, on my machine.  You didn't leave us a phone number, said the voice aggrievedly.  How are we supposed to answer your question about your order if you don't leave us a phone number?  Fortunately you're on our database because you have an outstanding invoice. . . .

^ Yes.  I have a weakness for the neglected and obscure.  Not all of them are hard to grow.+

+ Unusual Ways of Learning Your New Cultural Referents.  One of the songs at last night's concert was about Grace Darling.  Okay, hands up, all the Americans who know who Grace Darling is.  No?  I didn't either before I moved over here, despite being an Anglophile with a perhaps somewhat sardonic fondness for the Victorian era.  http://www.rnli.org.uk/who_we_are/the_heritage_trust/grace-darling-museum/grace-darling-story   I found out who she was after I bought the rose named for her.  Which is one of the obscure ones who is hard to grow.  She expired after a few years at the old house and I haven't tried the experiment again in town.  But Hybrid Teas aren't generally very long-lived.  She was probably a terror in her heyday. 

^^ Duuuuuuh. 

^^^ A lot of stuff I go straight to the web for any more, and rip off an order as fast as poss.  Not roses.  I want a three-dimensional catalogue to gloat greedily and lovingly over, dog ear pages, make notes in the margins and lists on scraps+ of paper tucked between the pages.  And mutter.  Muttering is much more cathartic somehow when there is an affiliated something you can worry and fray and doodle on.  Also . . . ordering on line is too dranglefabbing slick and easy++.  I need ballast.

+ Sometimes rather large scraps.  Sometimes rather a lot of rather large scraps.

++ Except when it isn't.  This same Large Frelling I Mean Famous Rose Nursery lost a fairly substantial order from yours truly this summer when they had an advertised sale that didn't actually mesh with your experience on line.  They didn't answer that email either.

** Note to self:  when I really want to force myself to do something . . . be sure to mention it on the blog.  Embarrassment is a wonderful goad.

*** It's a mobile, not a landline, which makes the usual excuses/defenses of having been away somewhat creaky and dubious.

† I'm expecting him to be five feet tall and look about twelve years old.  I probably shouldn't have nicknamed him Cherub. 

†† I think fun is a little extreme, but . . .

††† Which is also when the rehearsals for the Octopus and the Chandelier start. 

‡ We are a trifle . . . conspicuous.  And as it happens we were roaring off toward the mews this evening when a tentative little voice behind us said, Excuse me—?  It was a young woman who is dithering about adopting a rescue whippet cross and wanted to know everything about whippets.  She staggered away under a great weight of somewhat internally inconsistent enthusiasm.^  I said I hoped I'd see her around town with her new family member.

^ Especially ironic in this case as not half an hour before I'd been fishing an Unspeakable Substance out of Chaos' mouth with my bare hand. . . .AAAAAAUGH. The thing is, you don't have time on these occasions to do anything else.  You can fish, or you can not fish, and if you do not fish, the hellhound swallows.  And I live in permanent, total dread of either of them eating the ends of sandwiches or burger rolls or anything bready or grainy, the results of which will last for days, and in this case I even thought it looked like focaccia, sort of flat and shreddy and . . . no.  Wrong.  Ewwwwwww.  Anyway.  I told this woman how loving and friendly and charming and beautiful hellhounds are, while hellhounds cavorted and batted their eyelashes and played along.  I am a chump.  We knew that.

‡‡ Only very shortly before Gremlin, my knapsack computer, drives me round the twist. 

‡‡‡ Yes.  Time and space in the south of England are very strange.

Hellhounds (and singing)

 

Okay, so tonight I'm going eep glah carfoom blerk ipple ipple urf.*  But it's the anniversary of bringing hellpuppies home!  So clearly I should inundate you with photos of adorable hellhounds!**

* * *

 

* Buy this album:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jul/08/eliza-carthy-norma-waterson-cd-review ^  The tour supporting it is what Fiona and I went to see tonight.  Poor Wayfaring Stranger will knock your socks off—and it's one of my favourites so I'm fussy about versions—and then The Rose and the Lily will barrel you over and sit on your chest.   Eliza, by the way, is seriously pregnant—not to say gigantic—no, I take it back, GIGANTIC—and this is the beginning of the tour??  She's going to have it on stage after one of those long held notes.^^  There was a point tonight when she was sitting very strangely with her hands braced behind her (at a guess her back was hurting:  yes, she's that pregnant) and I was thinking Oh no!  It's happening NOW!  But it wasn't.

            However.  Ahem.  The Waterson-Carthys are an interactive bunch.  The audience was encouraged, indeed threatened,^^^ to sing along. 

            I sang along.  Noise and everything.  Not just the moving lips trick.  Are you amazed?  You should be amazed.  I was thinking, while I sang along, that the rehearsals for The Octopus and the Chandelier or whatever it's called start in a fortnight.  But it's okay.  I can do this.  I can sing in the back row of the chorus!  I can! ^^^^

^ Except for the fact that it's only about 50 minutes long.  Am I just spoilt from the way classical CDs tend to cram 60-70 minutes on?  50 is not enough. 

^^ Very likely in Rose and Lily.

^^^ Listen, said Eliza.  We've got CCTV cameras all over this theatre, and anyone caught without their lips moving won't be allowed to leave.

 

^^^^ Tomorrow, when, please the gods, nothing is happening, I am going to ring the Cherub again. 

** Not to worry.  We'll catch up with the hellkitten later.

NOTE THAT MY LOATHING FOR ALL THINGS COMPUTER HAS REACHED NEW HEIGHTS/DEPTHS OF UNFORESEEABLE REDOLENCE AND DEPRAVITY THIS EVENING.  BUT IT IS NOW NEARLY FRELLING DAWN AND IF I DON'T GO TO BED SOON I MIGHT AS WELL NOT BOTHER.

Not an Entirely Successful Day

 

I was trying to decide, driving home from bell practise tonight, if I was going to stick to the plan and go ghablirg rmmmph burflevork duh duh duh and post a lot of hellkitten pics . . . or maybe mutter a few thoughts about life and so on.*  Mostly I burble on the blog**.  As you may have noticed.  I don't do thoughts that much.  They're too hard.  If I'm going to work on content as well as the sheer slog of getting SOMETHING down on paper/screen, I'd rather be writing PEG II.

            But it's been rather a thought-provoking day.  Not altogether in a good way.   I don't go in much for being a community member.  Some of this is doubtless my own private weirdness, but I think some of it is the way I'm made.  Writers tend to be solitary because what they do is (usually) solitary by definition.  But, for example, most of the writers I know know more other writers than I do, if you follow me. 

            Homeopathy, or homeopaths, tend to be a community, or communities.  I don't know to what extent all professions create professional communities which spill over to a greater or lesser extent into their members' private lives.  Homeopathy may be more prone to this behaviour because it's a minority thing—there aren't that many homeopaths and homeopathy isn't mainstream like doctoring or farming or bookkeeping, and part of what makes it non-mainstream is all that fringey holistic stuff that the strict rationalists deride.  And I do not mean that all homeopaths get along with each other and are unified by a common philosophy.  Nooooooo.  There are feuds and cults and gangs in homeopathy like there are in any group of people—perhaps especially any group of people who believe they have something important to impart to or do for other people.***

            Sigh.  I find this really depressing, the arguing and feuding.  I find it particularly depressing lately because homeopathy has rather abruptly become a favourite target among the so-called quackbusters—don't get me started.  The so-called 'proof' that homeopathy is balderdash has had a lot of press, and it's become vanishingly difficult to get a recommendation to a homeopath from the NHS, although homeopathy is still, I believe, officially on the books in most places.

            This has not surprisingly encouraged an us-against-them mentality among many of the rank and file, among whom I would count myself—although I already had the anti-big-stuff attitude—Big Science, Big Medicine, Big Pharma, Big Government—in place before I found homeopathy.  I'd had it with being treated as either a hysterical woman or a machine with defective parts.  And homeopathy works.  There's a lot wrong (say I) with the delivery system, which depends far too much on the individual homeopath;  but homeopathy itself is brilliant.  I know beyond any gremlin of doubt that it's the reason I'm on my feet.  I still have ME and a charming complement of related mayhem—but I function.  I write books, I hurtle hellhounds, I ring bells, play the piano†, plant roses and so on.  That's the homeopathy.††

            For one reason and another, including but not exclusively that I tend to resist being a member of a group, I've fallen out of touch with the homeopaths I used to know.  The seminar I went to today is the first such I've been to in two or three years.†††  And . . .

            I liked the presenter.  I thought she had some very useful and interesting stuff to say, and, if you will forgive a little crunchy-fringe-speech, I liked her energy.   But I didn't like some of the vibe I was getting off some of the other participants.  Some of what was making me uncomfortable became unpleasantly clear during the morning break.  I was about to amble off and look at the garden around the beautiful‡ old house the seminar was hiring a room of when one of the other audience members spoke to me.  Hi, she said, my name is Grzlthrp.  Are you a practising homeopath?  No, I said.  I took the training‡‡ but didn't set up a practise.  Oh yes, she said, I know that happens to a lot of students.  They get out of college and don't have the bottle‡‡‡ to go on.

            The what? 

            I was too gobsmacked to answer as she deserved, and then the moment passed, as moments like this do.  So I'll have to make do with protesting on the blog:  I am not spiritually inferior because I'm not a full time practising homeopath.  I did manage to say that I had a full-time job, but she'd already identified me as a sad case and told me patronisingly that she'd had a full-time job too, and that earned her lots of money, but that money wasn't everything and that if you were a real, committed homeopath, all you had to do was open your door and your heart and you would attract the people you were meant to attract.

            Ahem.  This is the sort of ravening bulltiddly that gives homeopaths and homeopathy a bad name—I say.  I actually do know what she's talking about, and yeah, opportunity tends to be one of those things that helps those that help themselves.  But I hope she puts that major ego problem in a drawer when she's treating clients.§

            This is probably why, after the break, when the conversation began to drift toward the Horrors of Modern Society and How the Internet Has Ruined Humanity and Social Intercourse and the Younger Generations Are Doomed, I found myself defending the way we live now.  Someone suggested Twitter as some kind of ultimate depravity and inexplicable mind-worm.  In other circumstances I would be the first to agree that it's dangerously addictive and a major waste of time—but that would have to be in a group that recognised its virtues.  I don't suppose I really saw the rest of them drawing their skirts and/or trouser-hems away from me today when I said, excuse me, I'm on Twitter, and it's just another mode of communication like the telephone or the walk round the block to have tea with a friend.  Yes the virtual thing can be dangerous . . . but so are most human things dangerous, one way or another, and kids and teenagers don't only take up with paedophiles and axe murderers on line, they also keep track of their friends, and meet up with those known, three-dimensional friends partly as a result of that sometimes-rather-scary constant checking-in thing most of them seem to do now.  And may I say, as someone who grew up in a world where boy-girl pairs were required, that the modern pattern of hanging out in groups of mixed genders (and sexual preferences) seems to me a whole lot healthier?

            Grrrrrrrrrrrr. 

* * *

 * Life!  Thoughts!  Not the comfy chair!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY  

** Yes, of course there's cranky burbling.  You must not be a regular here or you wouldn't be asking. 

*** I am trying not to say:  like Parliament, or the US Congress. 

† And I would sing.  But I've phoned the Cherub and he hasn't phoned back.  

†† And yeah.  I'm still hoping for better.  I personally think this is one of homeopathy's strengths:  there's always something else to try.  If you want to keep on, you can.  And hope is terribly important.  It's not the only thing, but it is a crucial thing.  I am still not saying I will never ride horses again. 

††† Hellhound digestion had something to do with this.  I had them all nicely set up with a regular dog minder before I even brought them home from the breeder.  And then . . .  

‡ if dilapidated, and with the familiar look of a building hastily and somewhat haphazardly modified to a new purpose.  I'm all for hasty modifications if that's all you can afford, so you can keep the building instead of tearing it down and turning it into a car park. 

‡‡ which isn't quite true.  I took some of the training—and then the ME made me drop out.  Which is a whole other issue.  I've told you this.  I still have fantasies of finishing my last year, but the urgency disappeared when the single-register committee crashed and burned.  Speaking of not getting along.  And of depressing.  There is no single register of homeopaths in the UK.  There are a bunch of splinter groups with splinter accreditation systems, some of them more and less sensible and/or expensive.  And when CORE admitted it was disbanding it was like the starting pistol for the quackbusters to come after us. 

‡‡‡ bottle:  Britspeak for courage, backbone, guts, nerve 

§ And she may well do.  I've known several psychotherapists who were very, very good at their jobs who were TOTAL WING NUTS in their private lives.

It's a rough job but someone's got to do it

 

Hellkitten duty.  Yep.  Still adorable.  Never mind his personality, I'm glad he's ginger because it makes him (relatively) easy to photograph.  I have twice as many good photos of Chaos than I do Darkness, simply because the camera boggles at . . . darkness. 

            Meanwhile, speaking of hellhounds, this week is the anniversary of bringing them home.   I probably would remember their birthday because I'm like that, but I might very well forget the 12th of October if I weren't reminded every year by the return of this frelling street fair:  the kind with rides.  Large noisy rides.*  The beginning of October, posters are plastered all over the south of England, I think, and I had been ignoring them, lo these many years in this area, but four years ago I was driving back and forth twice a week to East Persnickety to visit my puppies and the imminent arrival of the juggernaut not only impressed itself on my jangling, puppy-hyped little mind, but it was going on the day I brought them home so we had to drive through LOTSA THROBBING MUSIC AND CLANGING MACHINERY AND SCREAMING TEENAGERS.  That's probably when they threw up.  The puppies, I mean, not the teenagers.  I don't want to know about the teenagers.

            Meanwhile meanwhile, I may conceivably find myself being SHORT the next couple of days on the blog.  I know, I know, I've said this before.**  But due to a whole series of circumstances mostly beyond my control and/or rude and preposterous scheduling I find that the next two days are going to be unpleasantly packed with incident.  Not to mention getting up early THREE DAYS IN A ROW.  Tomorrow I am attending a HOMEOPATHIC SEMINAR IN MAUNCESTER YAAAAAAAY.  I have assumed for some years now that all homeopaths who dare attempt to cross the border into Hampshire are immediately transformed, by some fell sorcery, into aggressive out of control dogs which would explain a lot.  I believed I had avoided this destiny by leading with the fantasy-writing thing and the goblins in charge overlooked me.  So tomorrow I will discover how other people maintain human integrity upon the dangerous ground of Hampshire.  Either that or there's going to be a lot of barking.

              The seminar runs from ten a.m. to 5:00.  This means getting up early enough to get hounds half-hurtled before I go.  There's an hour and a half for lunch, which means I've just about got enough time to come screaming home, race hellhounds around the block, slap their lunch down, and scream back to Mauncester.  I'm not sure when I eat.  I will get home just about in time to have a cup of tea, re-hurtle some by that time seriously disaffected hellhounds and go to our frelling once-a-month tower practise at Old Eden.

            Tuesday morning a Computer Man arrives at the crack of dawn to take Gotterdammerung away and contend with it.  At a slightly more sensible hour Fiona is coming to rescue me from myself again*** . . . we having intelligently chosen this Tuesday rather than some other day because we're going to a concert that night.†  Fiona cheerfully informed me that I should be home by midnight which ordinarily is the mere shank of my evening but . . . . ††

            I've just had a brilliant idea.  I'm going to save most of the hellkitten photos for tomorrow.  And possibly Tuesday.  By Wednesday it may all be Gotterdammerung.

* * *

* And food that smells disgusting.  But I haven't eaten any real junk food in so long^ I don't react to those chemical enhancers the way you're supposed to.  Baking Bread Smell in the supermarket that's supposed to make you buy more tends to smell like Air Wick to me.  Ewww.

^ This isn't purity of thought and deed, you know.  If I ate a hot dog or a billow of cotton candy my stomach would say YOU MUST BE UNGLEBLARGING JOKING and then I'd probably explode.

** I say this regularly.  Indeed I should be making another of my turning-over-a-new-shorter-leaf announcements any time now.

*** Note that this means that all the various things I've promised various people will finally get sent out tomorrow.  Brave Fiona, for whom aggressive, out of control postmistresses are nothing. 

† At least while Fiona is rescuing I can hurtle and attempt to get back in hellhounds' good graces.

†† Mind you, she has another hour to go to get home after she drops me off.   But I hope she won't have been up at the crack of dawn for Gotterdammerung.

Husbandless

 

As husbandless days go this one has not been too bad.*  (So far.  Six minutes left.)  I had a wedding to ring at South Desuetude this afternoon** and contrived to get a ride*** from Niall, who was another of the fortunate.  We got there early because you're never quite sure about parking, and then of course had to wait AND WAIT AND WAIT AND WAIT because (of course) the bride was late, and there were the three extra hymns and the performing seals, as there usually are.  It's been a grey sort of day but not unpleasant, and the South Desuetude church is on a hill at the edge of town, and the land slopes away across the graveyard and a field of prancing horses to a long low horizon of Hampshire farmland.  So Niall and I were sitting on a bench waiting for everybody else so we could then begin waiting in company, and I was looking out over all this and feeling a totally unjustified sense of peace and serenity but dauntlessly fought it off by having an emigrant's attack of How did I get here?  And I'm about to do what?†

            Colin who, like most long-term tower captains, has a little black book of fearsome proportions, had managed to get eight ringers for eight bells, even with less than twenty-four hours to do it in.   And as I have repeatedly whined in here that I so rarely get to ring on eight, this was a treat, despite having had to wait extra for the performing seals, who were so popular they had an encore.  We only rang call changes followed by a few plain courses of Grandsire Triples—because for a wedding I am totally not reliable for a touch inside, and I was inside—but it was fun.†† 

            I then had to hurtle hounds around Radio Three's Saturday opera, Lohengrin, which I did want to hear†††—and of course Peter phoned at the moment I was climactically wrist-deep in chicken fat toward the hellhounds' supper‡—but there is nonetheless a reasonable amount right with the world at present.  Now if only more than four people show up for service ring tomorrow morning. 

* * *

* The champagne and mayonnaise help.  I tweeted this morning that Peter had left me a note which, among the instructions on use of the dishwasher etc^, enjoined me to treat myself.  Whereupon I immediately put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, since he'd clearly ordered me to, right?  But I didn't tweet the mayonnaise.  The perfect husband in 140 characters might get a bit much.  It's easier to give you extenuating footnotes in the blog. 

^ Using the dishwasher?  This is another example of Peter at his control-freak best, right?  Well . . . not exactly, or anyway not until you back up a few levels.  It's been a joke in Peter's family for getting on forty years+ that you do not touch Peter's dishwasher.  No one but Peter can load a dishwasher properly.++  And, you know, for some strange reason no doubt due to the extreme twistedness of my psyche, I can't be bothered fighting my husband for the honour of loading and starting the frelling dishwasher.  This means that on the rare occasions when I might want to use the thing myself I don't know how.+++ 

+ It may be less than that.  I'm not sure when they got their first dishwasher.~  But I can assure you the Peter's-dishwasher system began immediately.  

~ I, on the other hand, am a sad case:  I've never owned a dishwasher.  I'd thought about it in Maine but never quite got around to it.  The old house had one when I moved in, and I assume the new owners had it extracted with large tongs and buried in the Appliances So Old Their Serial Numbers Have Rusted Off graveyard.  And once we moved into town . . . Peter does most of the cooking, so Peter has the dishwasher.  Aside from the fact that there is absolutely no place to put one in the cottage kitchen, and I think keeping it outdoors under a tarp would be unsatisfactory.  And the garden is already small enough without stochastic appliances cluttering it up.

            Third House would probably have room for a dishwasher.  If we start having [three]-house-parties for twenty I'll think about installing one. 

++ He's like this in other people's houses too.  I'm sure he's loading his son and daughter-in-law's dishwasher right now.

            My normal life is so chock full of excitement and adventure I never get around to telling you any backstory.  Like for example—at least I don't think I've told you this—the first thing that Peter said on crossing the threshold of my little house in Maine was that I needed a proper shelf in my coat closet, and if I had the tools he'd do it for me.  Right now.  Orient yourselves with the knowledge that this is a man I had met three or four times at conventions and so on plus one totally appalling lunch with my then-English publisher and a bizarre if riveting weekend at what I now call the old house when his first wife was still alive.  It is disconcerting to find yourself falling more or less instantaneously in love with someone whom you barely know and is manifestly a fruit loop.  He did create a proper shelf out of the haphazard bits of timber balancing on bulges in the wall in my coat closet—more of a cupboard than a closet, by the way—but I don't now remember if he did it that first weekend or later on when we'd already settled that I was going to emigrate and marry him and all our respective friends and family were going, You what?  You who?, and Peter came to Maine for a couple of months while I finished DEERSKIN.

            Anyway.  In his Gratuitously Polite, Disappearing Englishman way, Peter is a commanding kinda guy.  Dishwashers.  Closet shelves.  He also has strong opinions about what constitutes a proper breakfast/lunch/tea/supper and what everyone should plant in their gardens.  Fortunately he makes great mayonnaise. 

+++ And/or can't remember from last time because it was too long ago.   

** Phone call from Colin yesterday, drawling, the vicar didn't give me much time to make up a band. . . . 

*** The ME is a total ratbag, and don't ever let me fool you into thinking anything else.  But I've never liked driving^ and having the excuse always to be the one who gets the ride and never provides it is not all bad.  

^ Barring pootling around back roads in my MGB of sainted memory, sigh 

† And what are those strange diagonal stripes^ of callus across both hands? 

^ More dotted lines really 

†† Anthea, who does not like Grandsire, gallantly went slightly wrong^ so I could feel clever by not being thrown by this.

^Deliberately.  Of course.  Cough cough cough.

††† Despite one of the most maddeningly wet heroines in all of literature, musical or otherwise.  ARRRRRRGH.  I may have to do a rant on Wagner so-called heroines and Elsa in particular some day. 

‡ Yes.  They ate.  ::Huzzahs and cheering::

In which Tessa Gratton Saves My Day

 

I am still suffering Dreaded Lurgy Aftermath and it went and got all hot today.  Sweating in October is unattractive and it makes me cranky not that this takes much, especially during Dreaded Lurgy Aftermath.  Hellhounds trailed along during morning non-hurtle like polar bears in Equador . . . guys.  Get real.  And then Peter's plumber turned up during that slot of time before my piano lesson when, if I'm actually planning on playing something, I'm frantically doing a last minute swot.  He—the plumber—was here for an hour, and couldn't find anything wrong.  The plumbing at the mews generally is somewhat overpopulated by demons, and lately the kitchen sink has had a large fat demon squatting in the drain.  Peter chases it away briefly with various conjurations, but it always comes back.  Arguably GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG provides an interesting bass line for the thrashing I'm giving Ring a Ring a Rosie* but it's not so good for Mozart.  Of course the drain, or possibly the demon, behaved IMPECCABLY while the plumber was here . . . and less than a quarter hour after he left . . .  GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG. 

           So, anyway, I went to Oisin with nothing to show for myself, not that he isn't used to this, but after last weekend I had all these plans.**  There, there, he said, and started playing his fabulous Notre-Dame-in-your-hip-pocket-or-possibly-Chartres organ, and while I usually stay well across the room not only for sound and resonance purposes but so I won't be tempted to try and turn pages, I hadn't moved fast enough in this case and . . . I found myself turning pages because HE HAS A REALLY STUPID MUSIC STAND for the organ and he was playing something that kept falling off.   I hate turning pages.  It's the most frelling nerve-wracking thing in the universe.  And about three page-turns in I found myself with two pages between my trembling feverish fingers and in the process of trying to RID myself of one of them without either knocking the frelling book off the frelling stand (counterproductive) or blocking his view (ALSO counterproductive) I ENTIRELY LOST TRACK OF WHERE HE WAS so when I finally successfully had only one page to turn . . . I should have turned it about thirty seconds ago.

            At this point we broke*** for a cup of tea. 

            Bell practise did not go a great deal better.

            And Peter is going away for the weekend.  I am going to have to keep myself and hellhounds amused for three whole days.†

            So I stumbled and snarled back to the mews for supper†† and . . . discovered this on Twitter:

 @tessagratton Win an ARC of PEGASUS by @robinmckinley! All you have to do is pretend to love Shakespeare for 5 minutes. http://tinyurl.com/2wrrekn 

            Pardon me while I fall about.  I love this.  Shakespeare!  Me!  Shakespeare and me!  Who—ahem—does not love Shakespeare!  Who nonetheless realises that Shakespeare is a GOD and I am a bacterium in the dust under the great man's feet, or wherever bacteria hang out!†††  And, furthermore, Shakespeare performed!  Sort of in my honour!  Mind you, I haven't been able to watch Tessa's videos because all the demons that aren't infesting the plumbing at the mews are infesting my laptop, but I'll try to check 'em out‡ on the desktop when I get back to the cottage tonight.

            Suddenly I feel all jolly and cheerful.  Thank you, Tessa Gratton.‡‡  Hee hee hee hee hee.  

* * *

* I was very pleased with myself this week when I suddenly figured out some, ahem, percussion accompaniment for my SATB setting.  This was originally going to be for chorus and organ, but then Finale packed in and I couldn't get my head around what I was trying to do without some digital assistance so I skulked off and started writing . . . the longest introduction to a Piano Thing I've ever frelling seen.  Usually it's a bar or two and we're in business.  I'm about to be forced onto a second page and it's still noodling along trying to decide what it wants to do with its life.  ARRRRGH.  So now I can go back to Rosie for a while and give it a chance to pull itself together.   Maybe I should give it a name.  Maybe that would help.  Oscar.  Jethro.  Frank. 

^ Hammerstein.  Tull.  Bridge.  Hmmm.  No, this didn't occur to me when I was choosing names.  Obviously my subconscious was hard at work however.

** We did spend some time discussing Oisin's rather-alarming-as-soon-as-I-allow-myself-to-think-about-it-so-I-am-not-going-to-think-about-it plans for future accompaniment/more-than-one-person-making-noise-at-a-time seminars.  I have totally wrecked my life by saying that OF COURSE I'll sign up.  OF COURSE.  Gaaaaah.  It's only because of the weather that I find myself sweating freely.  Oisin keeps saying that kids should just grow up not only with performing music but with the idea that music is something you do with your friends—which I think is also Black Bear's community orchestra conductor's idea.  The problem with this is that I agree.  And the eye-opener about last weekend is that something can be done even at my level.^  Now all Oisin needs is a few more fools . . . uh . . . relaxed, open-minded students.^^ I am trying not to think, among all the things I'm trying not to think about these prospective seminars, of Robin among the fifth graders.   All of whom play/sing better than she does.

^ Here I started defining my level, realised this might be construed as unflattering to the other attendees—the ones, in fact, willing to put their mouths and fingers where their money is and perform—and have shut up.  Mmmph.  But as Oisin put it, he would like to start at the level where a hopeful future accompanist just about knows which end of the piano to hold.  Okay.  I can do that.

            Have I mentioned that I told the story of my creeping over to play the piano during the break last Saturday to a friend who put herself through college playing at a piano bar—which is to say they paid her—who just about killed herself laughing.  She says that I have Crossed A Boundary From Which There Is No Return.  Piffle, I say.  The differences between, say, a jaguar and a coffee table are more important than the similarities (they both have four legs.  And if enough people have put wet mugs on the table, they're both spotty).   There are no piano bars in my future.  But fortunately I don't need to put myself through college.+ 

+ I still need a new front door for Third House however.  And new kitchen counters for the cottage. 

*** A significant choice of verb. 

† I may even have to roast a fresh chicken for hellhounds.  Peter had to write the instructions out because I forget.  He usually does it.  I look forward to roast chicken for hellhounds:  us mere humans are allowed a few scraps.^ 

^ Speaking of hellhound supper.  Surreal evenings chez McKinley-Dickinson:  Hellhounds are required to sit for their food.  I began this, naively, when they were tiny puppies, because this is one of the ways you slip a little training in without their noticing:  dogs will do ANYTHING for food, right?  So make it easy for yourself, get 'em when they're motivated.  ::Hollow laughter.::  By a year or two later I'd've been happy to lie down and beg if that would have made them eat.  But hellhounds sitting for food, whether they then eat it or not, is still part of the way this ménage runs.  I developed the in-normal-dog-households-what-would-be-a slovenly habit of putting the food down anywhere a hellhound actually sat for it, hoping hellhound was indicating interest rather than mere patterning . . . and I continue to do this.^  Tonight Chaos sat immediately behind Peter's chair.  I put his bowl down.

            Chaos is right behind you, I said.

            I'm very glad to hear that, said Peter.

 ^ Within reason.  Which is to say within the kitchen. 

†† Sustainably fished tinned tuna.  Not chicken. 

††† Give me a minute.  I'll try and infect him with something.  Leprosy.  Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

‡ The videos.  I know more about demons than I want to.

‡‡ And may all your commenters be politer and more appreciative of The Great Man than I am.

Books on shelves

 

I've been battling a dreaded lurgy* for the last several days and one of the things that goes first when I need extra troops on other fronts** is responding to forum threads.***  But I've been fascinated at the number of people posting—and number of different ways described—about how they organise their books.  So I thought I'd respond here.

            I'm basically an alphabetizer . . . sort of.†  I drift in and out of alphabetising, depending on life circumstances and numbers of books involved.  I've always split things up somewhat by category as well—nonfiction and fiction at very least, but usually a few more large rough divisions too.  Rule One:  No system really, totally works.  Quite a few of you say that you wouldn't dream of alphabetising:  you organise by intuition.  I don't myself find this works once the collection is above a few hundred items.††  When I've been living in small spaces with small numbers of books, I organise by intuition.  As soon as there are several rooms involved, I start getting all boring and standard and cozy with the alphabet.  Also, I have this husband.  I would say that intuitive organising is hard on the person(s) whose intuition it isn't.  The alphabet you can (mostly) share.†††

            At the moment, but these things change, Peter has the 'literature', novels, poetry, plays, short stories, and collections thereof—the last mostly hived off into the downstairs loo.  No, really.  No shower in there to make things damp, and this long wall that was obviously made for bookshelves long before anyone thought of putting a toilet in.  He also has about half of the gardening books—his half, approximately—and a few practical cookbooks—he doesn't read cookbooks the way I do—my Encyclopaedia Britannica‡ and my Compact Oxford Dictionary.‡‡  Biographies of authors are also shelved with the author, not the author of the biography‡‡‡.

            I have the genre stuff.§  Picture books and outsize books with lots of illustrations§§ have their own shelves.  Most of the rest of my office and bedroom are given over to an alphabetised hodgepodge of kids', YA and fantasy and SF—except for Kipling and Tolkien, which are downstairs in the witches' grotto, I mean the sitting room, in their own dedicated shelves, with folk and fairy tales§§§ on one side and swathes of nonfiction more or less by type on the other.#  The totally unclassifiable nonfiction is at Third House in a kind of putting-off-the-inevitable, or, there-is-this nice-little-niche-with-these-nice-little-built-in-shelves-in-the-sitting-room-which-were-probably-the-previous-owner's-ONLY-bookshelves.##  Murder mysteries are also at Third House, alphabetised with the more-or-less straight adventure, like John Buchan and PC Wren;  and animal books, barring dog books (see below), everything from Vicki Hearne and Frans Van der Waal to identifying wild animal tracks and Mammals of Australia.###  And speaking of unclassifiable, my collection of non-traditional not to say whacked-out reference, shamanism, dowsing, astrology, and so on, are at Third House, while my homeopathy books are at the cottage on the wall behind my desk.  And the wall by my side of the bed is (a) a few select favourites good to have at immediate hand during nightmare season°  (b) a rather too vast range and number of books I haven't read yet (c) my foundation homeopathy books since I tend to read the too-many quarterly journals in bed and end up with reference books everywhere anyway (d) er . . . dog books. 

            Maybe I'm sort of an intuitive alphabetiser. 

           * * *

* One of the minor pleasures of living in England is that everyone knows what the dreaded lurgy is here.  http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+dreaded+lurgy  In America, at least America of twenty years ago, only strange late-night watchers of public TV and aficionados of ancient British comedy knew. 

** A problem Sylvi is having at the moment.

 *** Note that I ALWAYS READ BLOG POST THREADS.  ALWAYS.

† Diane in MN mentions that there was a brief period in her life when all her books were also numbered.  Yup.  Me too.  Some of my old favourites still have tiny neat numbers on their back flyleaves in my staggeringly neat teenage printing.  Tiny?  Neat?  Me?  I wouldn't believe it if I didn't have proof. 

†† Any collection.  I can't remember when I stopped organising my opera by feel.  Possibly when I shifted over from LPs to CDs.^  I still organise different recordings of the same work by feel however:  period instruments together, for example, and in piano music the blokes tend to hang together and the women at the other end.  For the few items or collections I have that many copies of Angela Hewitt tends to be the crossover point.  I haven't got a standard singer crossover but any opera I have a Beverly Sills recording of she's first.

            Music is an intolerable ratbag however since so few [classical] CDs are actually only one thing.  It's almost enough to make me stick to opera.

^ Another reminder that I am That Old. 

††† Du Maurier.  The D or the M?

‡ To which I am—yes—still buying the yearbooks, partly, at this point, to see how long they continue printing them.  There is a certain recalcitrance about the yearbooks, but Peter uses the encyclopaedia, and at the moment I'm still successfully maintaining that if you have the encyclopaedia, you have to have the yearbooks.  The day that that side of the mews falls in because of one yearbook too many, I will move the lot up to Third House.  With its purpose-built attic floor.  

‡‡ The one that is two ginormous volumes that each weigh as much as a hellhound, plus an addendum volume, all of which stuffed with tissue-paper pages you need—literally—a magnifying glass to read.  I'm getting positively nostalgic here, since I now mostly use the CD version—which has the repellent habit of needing to be validated when the validating CD is at the other house.  Whichever house happens to be other at the time. 

‡‡‡ Which is another ratbag, when you have favourite biographers.  Claire Tomalin, say, I think I have six of her books—but I'm not sure;  or Hermione Lee, and what do I do with BODY PARTS, which is a (lovely) book of essays on the art of biography?  Or Miranda Frelling Seymour who is worse yet, since she also writes novels herself.  Or Jenny Uglow, or Fiona MacCarthy, for example, who may write about groups—social biography, aaaaaaugh—or, of course, about people who aren't writers.^

            The other ones I'm mostly willing to let get on with it, but I'm considering an act of major mutiny, and having a Claire Tomalin shelf. 

^ Okay, wait.  There has to be a biographer bloke here somewhere . . . um . . . Michael Holroyd!   

§ There will be a further blog on labels and labelling. 

§§ A tentative and mutable selection since art books are elsewhere.  

§§§ A folk-and-fairy-tales designation takes precedence.  You may also be a picture book or fabulously illustrated by a famous artist.  But you'll go in the fairy tale shelves. 

# This includes, for example, art and music, and biographies of artists and musicians/singers/composers are slotted in here.  

## Or maybe they held china and noodgy objects.

### Except for the identifying-local-British-flora-and-fauna books, which are at the cottage, with the hands-on practical living-close-to-the-land/self-sufficiency stuff like John Seymour.  As are my half of the gardening books.  Well, there are a few gardening books at Third House too.  Are you confused yet?  The funny thing is that while there are a few permanent bugbears, like biographies generally, mostly I know instantly where something goes.  I'll tell you more about my strange random range of nonfiction some other day.  It so reflects some of the stuff that comes up over and over in my stories. 

° It's not a wholly bad thing, going to bed rather too soon before dawn.  Gives you much better odds that when you wake out of a proper screaming nightmare, it'll be daylight.