Robin McKinley's Blog, page 20

Tables and chairs

 

The problem with this not posting every day shtick is that you’re missing so much prime A Day in the Life blog material.  Yesterday, for example, when the final exchange with Bozo* was only the beginning.  Eleanor, who is manifestly insane, has kept nagging me to let her come help with putting Third House in order.  All right!  All right!  Whatever!  If you are so hopelessly short of interesting things to do with your time BY ALL MEANS COME!  So while she was hoovering floors and mopping shelves I was trying to force all the books that are coming off the shelves in the Mostly a Staircase Ex-Bedroom which is going to be Peter’s office after we hack out a HOLE IN THE BOOKSHELVES for his desk to go, onto a much shorter wall of mostly-recently-frantically-emptied shelves.  This is a seriously arrrgh situation anyway** AND IT GOT A LOT WORSE WHEN ONE OF THE LITTLE BRASS DOOHICKEYS THAT HOLD THE ADJUSTABLE SHELF IN PLACE FELL OUT AND 1,000,000 BOOKS RAINED DOWN AND RAINED AND RAINED ESPECIALLY WHEN THE BOOK-SHAPED CANNONBALLS MANAGED TO TAKE OUT A COUPLE OF OTHER [FULL] SHELVES ON THE WAY DOWN, ONE OF THEM ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM.  And then Eleanor’s hoover, which she had thoughtfully brought, which is just as well since mine is usually full of wood chips***, TURNED ITSELF OFF AND WOULDN’T TURN ON AGAIN.  Because its bag was full.†

Nina’s son is moving into his first flat—he’s been sharing a house and apparently furniture is not necessary in this situation.††  But the new flat is empty and Nina asked if any of our moaning about excess furniture might yield a spare table and four chairs?  Yes.  It certainly would.  So Nina and her wholly adorable husband Ignatius††† came down with a van and we played Musical Chairs [sic] for which we jigsawed around at grave danger to life and limb at our storage unit, extracting my old kitchen table from Maine and three of the four chairs that go with it—three because we’d need a forklift and a hoist to get at the fourth—and then a few odds and ends because why not, and drove interestingly in convoy‡ with Wolfgang and me loitering at corners as necessary, arrived at Third House, extruded one chair and the odds and ends, examined the Dishwasher Problem‡‡, proceeded on to the cottage where my old Maine table was swapped in for the bigger heavier Dickinson table which was great when I first moved in to the cottage but has grown mysteriously bigger with every additional critter crate, and then on to the mews where we swapped out two chairs.  And then Nina and Ignatius fled, because they still had to get all their loot up to London in time to get the van back to the van-hire.

We’d simply left my new/old table in the middle of what there is of a kitchen floor at the cottage, which isn’t much.  Both tables are drop-leaf, but the Dickinson table is rectangular and its leaves only barely clear the floor so when you put one up–and you can only put one up–it’s skating rink sized and grazes the hellhound crate so you absolutely can’t get past it unless you go under.‡‡‡  My table is round, and smaller, and the theory is that the little half-moon leaves will be usable, even in an square inch-age challenged area like the cottage kitchen.

I went back to the cottage with a happy rioting puppy§ and . . .

Had a very, very, VERY bad moment when I discovered that while my little round table is smaller, the curve means it doesn’t quite fit in the space that the straight line and square angled bigger table fitted in AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGGGGGH.

. . . No, it’s okay.  With a little weaselling the sticky-out curved edge of the table will clear over the hellterror crate so the table will settle back against the wall.  WHEEEEEEEEEEEW.  And yes, the modest half-moon leaf means I can actually sit at a table to drink my tea if I want to.

So yaaay.

* * *

* He hasn’t bothered to answer mine saying ‘please check back through this correspondence’ YOU UGLY RABID MEATLOAF.

** Especially when you started late because a hellhound threw up on the floor just as you were trying to leave and this is not something you’re willing to come back to in its original unaltered state.

*** Atlas is a wonderful human being and he’s a MAN who knows how to USE A HOOVER.^  What he does not know is how to (a) check the bag and (b) change said bag when necessary

^ Penelope says she married Niall for his hoovering.  One never tires, she says, even thirty years later, of having a husband who does the hoovering.  –In this household neither of us does the hoovering.+

+ Although Peter’s home help will employ a hoover if asked politely.  And my floors aren’t as bad as you might think BECAUSE THEY GET CLEANED REGULARLY AFTER DOGS HAVE THROWN UP ON THEM.

† Because Eleanor’s husband had been using it and hadn’t checked the bag.^  She immediately rang him up and ordered him to bring her a new one.  And he did.  Golly.

^ Niall also changes the hoover bag.  It doesn’t get better.  Although champagne is close.

†† They sit on the floor a lot?

††† I know he’s been a friend of the extended Dickinson clan since he and Nina were kiddies but they only got together a few years ago and he does the whole troublesome-in-law thing with such grace.

‡ Driving a hired van full of furniture is such fun.  Not.

‡‡ Which is that Peter comes with a dishwasher, and Third House doesn’t have the gap or the plumbing behind the gap for same.

‡‡‡ Since I don’t believe in wasting space of course there is stuff under the table.  But trying to jimmy something out without putting a leaf up is . . . bruising.  And somewhat liable to cause language.

§ You’re going to be two in August.  You wouldn’t like to think about starting to grow up, would you?^

^ Conversation with little old lady watching Pav loop the loop:  she’s very young, isn’t she?  Um.  Yes.

Singing for Sanity

 

There is a person, let’s say Person A, we will call him Abelard, who is doing a Project.  He is canvassing reactions and seeking input from a variety of Other Persons.  I am on this list.  Recently I received an email from Abelard that was to everyone on the list.  I answered.  Most of our answers go to him individually—occasionally one escapes and comes to the entire list—and he then posts round ups about what everyone is saying about this or that.  I noticed that my input had not been acknowledged.  Hmm.  Then there’s an email saying that he hasn’t heard from everyone and he’s hoping the rest of us will get in touch.  !!!!!  So I emailed him again.

Nothing.

Then I emailed asking for acknowledgement that he’s receiving my emails.

Still nothing.

So I emailed his boss, Person B, whom we will call Bozo, saying that Abelard was not receiving my recent emails about his Project.  Bozo did not deign to reply to me, but he copied me forwarding mine to Abelard.  Next round-up email Abelard adds a paragraph saying Robin, I’m not getting your emails.

I forward this back to Bozo and say now what?

There is a pause, and then Bozo emails grandly, well, since you’re not really necessary to this Project why don’t you just let it go?

I stare at this in disbelief for a moment (Bozo and I have had our little differences before—just by the way).  Then I write him again.  Then I take out all the adjectives and I send what I have written, including a copy of my original email to Abelard, to demonstrate that I might conceivably have something to contribute.

There is another pause AND THEN I RECEIVE ANOTHER EMAIL FROM BOZO SAYING THAT ABELARD IS RUNNING THIS PROJECT AND I SHOULD BE CONTACTING HIM DIRECTLY.

DO I GET TO SAY AT THIS POINT THAT BOZO IS AN INCOMPETENT TWIT?

Then I took my two shifts of hellcritters out and sang like crazy.*

I told you last week that I was going to experiment in turning over a new leaf about my singing—well maybe blow on a new leaf or wave it around a little—or maybe turn over just a new petiole—although I suspect if you turn the petiole over the leaf goes with it.  Whatever.  But I was going to stop pretending I didn’t have any voice just because I don’t sound like Nadia or Joyce DiDonato, and I was also going to stop pretending that the only time I had any voice was during my voice lessons after Nadia had done her teacher magic and that it all went away again as soon as I was at home and it was just me and the piano and an assortment of beady-eyed hellcritters.**  And, since I do have a voice, such as it is, I was going to work on developing singing stamina.

And what better exercise aid than very long folk songs?***  I had another little epiphany about singing folk songs too, and this makes me look like even more of a nincompoop† than the ‘oh woe is me I have no voice’ thing.  I’ve taken folk songs in to Nadia off and on right along pretty much from the beginning and she’s even said (repeatedly) ‘find what works for you’ but noooooo I’m not going to let myself get away with it being easy.  So I keep trying to find THE EXACTLY PRECISELY RIGHT VERSION of whatever, which I will then learn slavishly . . .  but folk songs being the slippery little devils that they are I rarely do find the exactly precisely right version which means that . . . I can’t learn them.  No!  Not allowed!  It must be the ultimate perfect rubber-stamped passed-in-triplicate official THE VERSION!!!!!  How pathetic is that.  Very, very, very slightly in my defense, the problem often is that I have the version I like and I want to sing in my head and/or my imagination’s ear, from Maddy Prior or Jean Ritchie or someone, and the available sheet music is never it.  McKinley.  It’s folk music.  Make it up.  Good grief.

To be continued again. . . .

* * *

* Or, you know, like sanity.  Till I felt better.  Hey, it works.  A good murder ballad. . . .

** At Third House the critter beds will not be slap next to the piano.  WILL.  NOT.

*** I sang for service again this past Sunday.  This clearly counts as vocal press-ups, since over the course of a long evening you’re singing hard for probably an hour and a half.  Riordan, who was music leader for the evening service, sent us the playlist Monday evening.  Usually I’m whining for it Thursday or so and on at least one occasion we got it Saturday afternoon.^

It’s a mixed blessing however, having it that early.  You have so much less excuse for not spending serious time learning the latest rash of driv—I mean, these earnest, committed songs of modern worship.  ARRRRRGH.  What I have found, however, is that power ballads for God have the same effect on me that power ballads about everything else do—which is to say they depress the crap out of me.^^^  It’s all so moany.

So I maybe didn’t get quite as much practise in as I might have done for having had the playlist all week.  But the funny thing was that in the heat of the moment Sunday evening with everyone else singing and twanging and thundering~ . . . it all became quite jolly.  Aside from the whole ‘worshipping God’ aspect.  At the end of service as I was crawling around on my hands and knees coiling up ENDLESS, Midgard-Serpent-length frelling cables, Buck sauntered past nonchalantly and said, if you get too good at that, you know, we’ll put you on the rota permanently.

In six months I’m going to have a voice like iron.

^ People have lives.  Christians too.

^^ I would much rather sing Are you working in the vineyard of the Lord?, which isn’t on YouTube, which is very sad+ or When the roll is called up yonder, of which there are a gazillion versions on YouTube, many of them not fit for much beyond making you a Hindu++, although I rather like this one:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIB0xL-ejQk&index=11&list=PLD747A0359ACA320E  But then I have a weakness for the banjo after a misspent childhood listening to the Kingston Trio.+++

+ ‘From the desert wilds of sin/ Are you bringing lost ones in?’ Gospel lyrics don’t mess around.

++ Although if student performances of Voi Che Sapete can’t put me off Mozart—and they can’t—the Singing Goldfish# of Goodgodville shouldn’t shake my faith.

# Glub glub glub glub

+++ YES.  I AM THAT OLD.

^^^ I had a friend a million years ago in another life+ who used to call the soft rock radio station his wife favoured ‘suicide music’.  This is perhaps a little strong but I know what he meant.++

+ YES.  I AM THAT OLD.

++ Although I like this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0b2GFdxuVk&feature=kp

Wheeeeeeeee SPLASH.

~ Serious drum kit.  Golly.

† Not to say an incompetent twit.

The hellterror morning ritual

 

I meant to write you a proper blog post tonight but the day has got away from me as days can do.*  So I thought I’d finally post The Hellterror’s Morning Ritual.  We all had a very itchy patch at the beginning of the spring.  The three hellcritters ate holes in their fur, but it only really showed on the hellterror because of black overcoat, beige undercoat and pale pink skin:  the hellhounds mostly match:  steel-grey Darkness has black skin and fawn-coloured Chaos has pale skin.  I had swollen ITCHY red eyes and I might well have chewed my eyelashes off if my face were configured for it.  Everybody’s hair has mostly grown in again, but I almost miss the extravagance of the hellterror’s ritual when she really, really, really wants to scratch her back.  Lately she’s more interested in whacking me with her long yellow rubber toy till I yield to the inevitable and play with her.   But she doesn’t look moth eaten any more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have dogs because they make you laugh.

* * *

* This includes that Penelope and I went to a big National Trust garden over Ditherington direction this afternoon and sat in the sun and totally vagued out the way denizens of the British Isles may very well because . . . sunlight!?!^

^ Also because most of Main Street in New Arcadia has been dug up and is in heaps placed for maximum inconvenience plus scaffolding+ and temporary stoplights with boa-constrictor sized cables running everywhere and GETTING ANYWHERE takes about 1,000,000 times longer than usual.  In fact, I’m still in a frelling queue.

+ The scaffolding is up near me and isn’t the town unplanners or anything civic.  The Big House on the Corner belongs to We Are Wealthier Than God#, You Are Peons and We Don’t Care, and they put scaffolding up at least once a year when buying and selling small countries palls and they want to make their presence felt closer to home.  Then they hang workpersons all over the scaffolding in decorative patterns.  Who eat sandwiches and chat and sometimes they sit on the planks dangling their feet.  And six weeks or six months later they take the scaffolding down again.

# I don’t think God does money, does he/she/they?

 

Creating DreamWorld, Part I – guest post by Sarah Allegra

 

I suppose the thing I’m always drawn to with art is telling stories. I’ve been creating and telling tales for as long as I can remember. My first real� story was dictated to my grandmother at her typewriter when I was five, which I lavishly illustrated by hand. The story was called Mommy’s Adventure, and guess what, it was about an adventure my mom went on.

Perennial Parasol

The drive to tell stories manifested in various ways through my life, but it was always there in one form or another. Writing stories, poetry, drawing, painting, jewelry-making, sculpting, singing, song-writing… I’ve tried almost anything at one point or another.*

Most of you probably don’t know that like our hellgoddess, I have ME** too. I am also fortunate enough to be on the extremely mild end of the spectrum. It’s somewhere between a chore, quite difficult and occasionally impossible for me to leave the house depending on how spiteful the ME is feeling that day, but most of the time I can leave the house. That is not true for a roughly half of us.

In The Lilac Forest

While looking back, I can see the path of the ME being laid in my teenage years, it broke out dramatically about five and half years ago. Up until then I’d had most of my artistic energy going towards learning watercolor painting. But after the ME really kicked in, I was slowly drained of the energy to create, and would find myself with forearm tendons seemingly on fire if I tried to paint anyway.

At the same time though, being suddenly struck by what seemed a completely inexorable, malevolent disease with no end in sight (nor even a diagnosis for years) I found that my need to create, to express what I was going through, was greater than ever. Painting wasn’t going to be my solution, so I turned to another visual medium: photography.

My then-boyfriend-now-husband is a talented photographer himself, so I sat him down and made him teach me the basics of how cameras work. I’d enjoyed taking snapshots my whole life, but I’d only taken one beginner’s black and white (film) photography class in college, which I’d hated. The emphasis was strongly placed on developing the film. To me, the darkroom was full of nauseating smells and a myriad of devices and steps all designed to ruin my film if at all possible. As soon as the class was over, I quickly forgot everything I’d ever learned.

Crossing The First Threshold

After my husband helped me remember about shutter speeds, f-stops and ISO, I just started taking photos and learned through lots of trial and error. Especially error. I used myself as my own model, since the photos were such personal expressions of what I was experiencing, and I also didn’t have an end-goal for the photos. They were just therapy. Being on both sides of the lens while figuring it out was a steep learning curve, but I’m glad for it. Not only am I always available to myself if I want to shoot something, but I think it gives me a deeper appreciation for the entire process of bringing a photo to life than if I’d always stayed behind the lens.

Faerie Dust

Eventually I learned that there was a whole world of self portrait artists being on both sides of the lens at once. Their work encouraged and inspired me. Things kept going wrong in my body. Doctors shrugged at me. I was feeling the urge to create more and more, and it became even more cathartic. I could create images that expressed my deepest fears and frustrations about my illness, and I could equally create an alternate world full of beauty and wonder. It was exactly what I needed, and I taught myself along the way whatever I needed to know.

I have never been a good sleeper, but ME does nothing to help that. I distinctly remember one night, about a year and a half ago, when I was lying in bed not sleeping, feeling so frustrated, I wanted to cry. I was wishing there was a person you could pay to ensure a good night’s sleep, and my imagination snatched that kernel of idea up and began building upon it at an almost alarming rate. What if such a person did exist? What would he or she be like? What would they look like? What gives them the power to present you with sleep? What kind of world do they live in? After that I didn’t sleep because my brain was too full of ideas, but at least my mood had lifted. I didn’t realize it then, but I had just given birth to what would become DreamWorld.

A Strange New World

 

Sarah Allegra is a fine art photographer and self portrait artists in Los Angeles. Read her own blog if you don’t mind occasional artistic nudity: http://sarahallegra.wordpress.com/

—

*Including knitting and crocheting. I like both, but I always fall out of the habit of it and have to re-learn it again each time I pick it up. Many a friend received gifts of baby booties and a bonnet from me at their baby shower. I do have some especially nice cream-and-metallic-gold filmy yarn leftover from another project that would look so lovely if I worked it into… something. Hmm.

**Except that I’m in The United States so they refuse to acknowledge the medical name ‘myalgic encephalomyelitis,’� and instead will only admit to you having ‘fibromyalgia’ or, most condescendingly, ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.’ There’s a big movement over here to officially change our name from either fibro or CFS to ME. The exact details of how our doctors (supposedly) distinguish between fibro and CFS are lengthy and complicated* enough to warrant their own blog.

* And stupid.  Don’t get me started on the whole doctor thing.  But as patronising brush-offs go, ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’ takes some kind of prize.  A large bouquet of deadly nightshade or thereabouts. –ed.

 

 

KES, 135

 

ONE THIRTY FIVE

Yuck.

I fervently do not recommend this tactic.  The biting thing under some circumstances may perhaps provide a certain fleeting satisfaction but unfortunately your tongue is intimately connected with your teeth and the taste of well-worn well-used well-oiled well-blooded leather, with maybe an edge of chain for that tooth-chipping sensation, is VERY UNPLEASANT.  Even if your taste buds are still stunned from their inoculation by Spirits of the Black Lagoon but moments ago.

It’s not as though I had any chance of doing Murac any damage.  Neither my neck nor my teeth were long enough and he was, after all, wearing (evil-tasting) armor.  It wasn’t Kevlar or titanium alloy, but it was well up to protecting him from being munched on by a wussy modern human woman whose idea of difficult chewing was a tough piece of fruit leather.

I did feel him startle and he shifted his grip on me very slightly—and was now holding me tighter.  Oh well.  There was enough else going on, breathing was perhaps surplus to all the other stuff I needed to be thinking about.

All of this did serve briefly to take my mind off the sensation of someone carving up my leg like a Thanksgiving turkey.  Briefly it took my mind off.  Not nearly long enough.  Droko was not nearly fast enough at his job.  How many stitches were involved, for pity’s sake?  Was he embroidering the Defender logo down there or something?

I couldn’t have kicked if I’d tried.  The motor controls to that leg were off-line and the remaining leg was gallantly trying to keep me upright.  I didn’t think Murac had really planned on supporting me as a dead weight.  Um.  Let’s rephrase that.  He hadn’t planned on carrying me.

I was pretty well failing at the job of constructive thought.  Like whether anyone was looking at the slash on Monster’s shoulder, and if someone had loosened his girth.  I should ask—I should have asked—a soldier sees to her horse first.

More thoughts intruded.  Like whether what was happening to me here was having any undesirable spillage into my world . . . or rather what kind of spillage and what kind of undesirable.  It must be too much to hope for that my being snatched into madness and infamy might have cauterised the gap . . . No.  This crew wouldn’t be going on about Gates and Defenders and providing me with bodyguards (gitzimi optional) and huge magnificent horses if Silverheart appearing in Rose Manor’s front hall had been a fluky one-off.

But then the worst thought, the one that kept repeating:  What was happening to Sid?  Watermelon Shoulders could take care of himself.  But Sid . . . whom I’d only just supposedly rescued. . . .

And while I’m worrying about spillage . . . how long does it take and how far does it go?  If someone wanted to drop the orc farm next door in another galaxy—or deinonychus under the porch—I wouldn’t mind too much.  But will it suck up Serena and Gus and Mike and Jan and the Eatsmobile?  Will it ooze its way down to Manhattan and thrust sticky tendrils under Norah’s door?

For a moment, through the escalating pain that I was trying to tell myself, with my fading remnants of reason and rationality, was ridiculous for a mere leg, I thought I heard barking. . . .

It had been a long day.  I was bone-marrow weary in a way not usually pertinent to someone whose crises had never until very recently involved edged metal and gates between worlds.  Although walking out of Gelasio’s penthouse for the last time, whizzing down to the basement parking garage in the impeccably decorated tenants’ elevator containing a specklessly uniformed elevator attendant and a rotating selection of exquisitely tended tiny bonsai trees in a mirror-backed niche . . . and turning the key in an elderly van with over two hundred thousand miles on it, squashy shocks and illuminated by a diverse series of screaming skulls, was as close to walking through a gate into another world as anyone needed.

I was also dismayingly aware of the hard male body I was being clutched against.  I was indecorously dressed for close contact and the truth was that I hadn’t been clutched to any hard male bodies in a while for any purpose, although minor surgery without anesthetic was not something that had ever occurred to me to fantasize about.  But I’d always been attracted by strength and preferred the real kind rather than the gym-bunny kind although blacksmiths, stevedores and sword-bearing mercenaries are badly outnumbered by wimpy suits in the corridors of publishing where I tended to hang out. MacFarquhar get a GRIP.  You’re talking about MURAC.  Who is a figment of your OWN overheated brain and furthermore, said the fading remnants of my reason and rationality desperately, you don’t even LIKE HIM.  Um, said my hormones.  Isn’t being distracted by a little inconvenient animal magnetism preferable to total concentration on all this PAIN?

I was way beyond coping.

I hurt.

I had to stop biting Murac to gasp.

I fainted.

 

Good stuff. Makes a change.

 

There is a God*:  hellhounds ate their dinner.  For like the first time in a fortnight.  Maybe three weeks.  I don’t know how much these thrilling new horizons of food prejudice are the new treatment they’re on, how much is the weather—although summer only began about this week**—how much is natural hellhound perversity and how much is the Borg.***  But it is hard on the person poking food down their throats two or three times a day†.  I suppose it is too much to hope for that this is a new trend. . . .

Meanwhile.  I’ve been singing.††  I’ve had a series of tiny epiphanies this week in a sort of PING-OW-PING-OW ††† cattle-prod pattern.  Nadia’s new beginner soprano was ahead of me this week instead of the scary could-have-been-professional-WHY-AM-I-BOTHERING bloke.  And she was torturing poor old Caro Mio Ben in a way that made me feel almost nostalgic.  But . . . I could hear what Nadia is doing with her.  In a way that you can’t hear yourself.  I know I’ve been that route‡ but it’s waaaaay different from the inside.  I could hear her ‘real’ voice breaking through occasionally‡‡ and I could hear what Nadia keeps telling me about me, that pitch is not the problem, making the sound is the problem, and if/when I make the sound correctly the pitch will be fine.‡‡‡

PING.  OW.§

Last week was not a great week in what I acknowledge has been a too-little-interrupted series of crap weeks, and I was expecting Nadia to have to spend most of my lesson winkling my voice out of hiding.  It’s a bit prone to slamming the door shut and hiding under the bed.  I’m so used to going to my lesson to be re-set that I don’t always notice what I’m doing at home because it can’t possibly be any good, now can it?  Nooooooo.§§  I go through the frelling blasted motions and then take the pieces in to Nadia to do something with.  So, for example, I have been failing to notice that recently, even when I’m having a crap week, there’s still enough voice for me to sing with.

I was singing within the first few minutes of warm-up last Monday.  SINGING.  Nadia didn’t need forceps or anything.  And we had a really good bash at Vedrai Carino§§§.  And . . . okay, so I’ll never be Joyce DiDonato, but at my age it would be kind of a waste, not to mention that I already have a perfectly good creative career.  But . . . I do have a voice.  I may never get much beyond singing Jesus Is My Boyfriend for Sunday service at St Margaret’s but . . . I have a voice.  I have to stop saying I don’t.

PING.  OWWWWWW.

Also . . . my voice got tired before the end of the lesson because it had come roaring out of its silk-lined palanquin with such uncharacteristic dispatch.  I came home thinking if I sang more and maybe developed some stamina, and engaged more with what I chose to sing and why I chose it. . . .

PING.  To be continued. . . .

* * *

* Hahahahahahaha.

** And my annual anguish about when/if to turn the Aga off.

*** Who mess with our dogs and our rose-bushes as well as our computers to keep us demoralised and malleable.  Souvenir de la Malmaison is out there laughing her thorny little socks off because of course Death by Sunlight began after all the rain had wrecked most of her flowers this year as usual.  Since she’s now about forty feet tall she’s oppressing all my neighbours too.

† Two bottom lines:  they get really ill if they miss more than one meal in a row, as I re-proved recently^, and the new drug has to be given with food.

^ None of us enjoyed the experience

†† Well duh.

††† And another one bell ringing at Crabbiton last night.

I was only the third person to arrive expecting to pull a rope and Felicity was wondering if she should have cancelled practise—it’s June, it’s hot, everyone is at home enjoying the long daylight and either drinking their iced tea or pouring it over their heads to cool off—and Wild Robert wasn’t going to make it.  Three more people turned up.  Yaay.  Crabbiton only has six bells:  we’re good to go.

Um.  Except for the fact that Felicity and I were the good ringers and . . . um.

The funny thing is . . . we had a good practise.  Everyone managed to do something that made them feel they were learning something.  In poor Felicity’s case this was mostly the thankless task of holding practise together.  In my case . . . she frelling made me frelling call SEVERAL touches of frelling Grandsire doubles.

I used to know a simple-minded touch of Grandsire where if you can count to three twice you’ll do.  And then various things happened, including that I started ringing at Forza where there are eighty-seven bells and almost enough good ringers to ring them, and you’d better not even admit that you can (probably) call the notorious beginner’s touch of Grandsire doubles.  And then when I recently began ringing at Crabbiton . . . Wild Robert decided it was time I learnt the touch after the beginner’s touch.

I have spectacularly failed to learn this new touch, and in the process—especially since it’s been a while since I tried to call it—I have forgotten the beginner’s touch.

Last night I re-invented it from first principles, with some help from the band.^  It took three tries but . . . we did it.  And the teeny-weeny epiphany was:  Wild Robert wants me to learn this second touch because it’ll force me to pay attention to where the other bells are, rather than blindly following a simple pattern for my bell.  I don’t have enough brain.  Counting to three twice is enough, when you’re also ringing a frelling bell.

Except . . . I had to pay some attention to where the other bells were last night, to re-figure out the simple pattern for mine.  I didn’t do it well or thoroughly . . . but I did it enough to have a tiny insight into what Wild Robert is on about.  And what I’d have to do to call his nasty next touch.  PING.  OW.

Now I have to decide if I’m going to tell him.

^ YOU CAN’T CALL A BOB THERE.

‡ Including torturing Caro Mio Ben.

‡‡ Note that she has more voice than I did when I began, but, as I was telling someone again recently, everyone has more voice than I did when I began.  Nadia, Sorceress.  Put her up against Circe and Circe would creep away weeping and get a job as an insurance adjuster.

‡‡‡ This is not to say there aren’t pitch problems out there.  I used sometimes to follow a woman with quite a nice voice . . . who couldn’t carry a tune in a basket.  I think she has stopped coming.

§ Also just hearing Nadia beginning to open her up is cheering somehow.  It makes it more of a process and less . . . sorcery.

§§ I’m also having a meltdown crisis of confidence about the Samaritans as we approach the end of training and the beginning of duty.  SIIIIIIIIIGH.  I am so predictable.

§§§ Mozart is my man.  Although if anyone could find a half-decent edition of Beethoven’s folk song arrangements for solo voice I would be all over it.

Wolfgang my hero

 

 

Yes. The hatchback closes too.

 

One of the nasty little surprises awaiting me at Third House* was the FRELLING BOXES OF OLD PAPER FILES.  Crushed frelling boxes, just by the way, since they’d got mixed up with the backlist.  But when Atlas was loading up his trailer to take backlist to the storage unit last autumn I asked him to set anything that wasn’t book boxes aside.  And then life happened and the last few months Atlas has seen more of Third House than I have.**

It’s quite amazing how much STUFF is left after you’ve emptied a house.  Curtains.  Rolled up rugs.  Bits of china you never liked and hadn’t decided what to do with.  BOOKS THAT MUST BE SORTED.  It’s also quite amazing how many old files I seem to have.  Speaking of things that need sorting.

Twenty or thirty years ago when I was buying filing cabinets in Maine you could get black ones.  Or grey ones.  Or black.  Or grey.  Or . . . I bought black.  But I did not love them, and I left them behind because standard British paper is longer than standard American paper and it wasn’t going to fit in standard American filing cabinets.  I had a gorgeous old wooden filing cabinet at the old house, its only drawbacks being that it took ten strong men and a team of eight Shire horses to move it and that the drawers kept falling off their rails.  It then declined to fit through the door at Third House.  MORE ARRRGH.  So I sold it, and put the files in cardboard boxes.  Which I was going to deal with.  Later.

Well.  It’s later.  And I have to WEDGE everything I had sprawled all over Third House into the attic because the ground floor is now Peter’s.***

I went on line.  I searched for two-drawer filing cabinets, because they have to fit under the eaves that make the attic a living space for people who like crawling around on their hands and knees.  COLOURED FILING CABINETS.  COLOURED FILING CABINETS.  Be still my heart.  So I bought a PINK one.  Of course I bought a pink one.  Two pink ones is so obvious however so I bought a yellow one.†   Yaaay.

Except that the on line description says ‘self assembly’.  Golly, I thought, nuts and bolts.  But I have my secret weapon, Atlas, so, fine.  I ordered.  And I had them delivered to the cottage because of the whole WHAT DO YOU MEAN DELIVER TO AN ADDRESS NOT ATTACHED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD AND OF COURSE WE AREN’T GOING TO TELL YOU WHEN WE’RE ARRIVING SO YOU CAN GET UP THERE TO ACCEPT DELIVERY.  WHICH WE WON’T LET YOU HAVE ANYWAY BECAUSE IT’S NOT THE ADDRESS ATTACHED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD thing.

I don’t know what the self-assembly part is but two filing cabinets arrived today.  I looked at them and my heart sank.  I wasn’t at all sure even one of them lying on its side would fit in Wolfgang’s boot.

Wolfgang, my hero.

* * *

* That’s aside from the fact that we’re going to have to RIP OUT BOOKSHELVES to get Peter’s desk into his office.  WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.  What is wrong with it is that the second, smaller bedroom is now a staircase with a little angular wodge of semi-usable space around it.  Arrrgh.  Building regs^ ARRRRRRRGH.  And Peter is so inconvenient as to have a LARGE desk.  Why can’t he just balance his laptop on his knee?  Feh.  Half a wall of bookshelves has to go.  Misery.

^ For anyone who wasn’t reading the blog then:  I wanted to put a WEIGHT BEARING FLOOR in the attic for all the BACKLIST.  As soon as you put in a weight-bearing floor the Building Regulation Goons are all over you.  A weight-bearing floor means living space, never mind you can’t stand up in it.  Or that it’s going to be full of boxes of books.  Living space means you have to have a proper staircase.  Good bye, second bedroom.

** Mowing the grass, propping up the frelling FRELLING boundary fence so next door’s evil little ratbag terrier doesn’t keep getting through and crapping all over my garden,^ taking over the garden shed with boy tools.

^ Evil little spiky-haired ratbag terriers are an entirely different, monumentally inferior order of being from, you know, bull coughcoughcough terriers.

*** This happens to involve carrying all 1,098 crushed boxes of files up the stairs to the attic again.

† I probably need three or four.  I’ll worry about that LATER.

Summer. Ugh.

 

We’re having summer.  Eh.  I hope it goes away soon.  I like daylight fine—us old people need our vitamin D—but HOT HOT HOT FRELLING DAZZLING SUNSHINE IS OVERRATED.*  And it’s thunderstorm weather so for even those of you (strange) people who like hot-hot-hot-frelling it’s not good hot-hot-hot-frelling, it’s oppressive and headachy.  I always get up in the morning [sic] feeling like the slurry in the bottom of your dishwasher but days like today it’s all I can do to play tug-of-war with the hellterror.**

Or by evening be capable of writing a blog post.***

Unnnnnngh. . . . †

* * *

* A certain heroine of a certain book might disagree with me.   Although I don’t think even Sunshine wants her tyres—tires—melting into the pavement.

** This is an IMPORTANT PART OF THE MORNING RITUAL.  I stagger downstairs in my semi-decomposed state and get my tea and the hellterror’s breakfast^ started.  Then I brace myself and let her out of her crate while the hellhounds cower in the back of theirs.  She goes out for a pee in the courtyard and then comes indoors and checks all the corners for escaped kibble.^^  And then at some point while I’m peacefully mincing leftovers to make her tinned food a little more exciting^^^ she will trot up purposefully carrying her long yellow rubber toy and if I don’t notice quickly enough she will whack me with it, smartly across the calves.#

Let me just say that any woman who worries about her upper arms## . . . consider purchasing a hellterror, or other square, solid critter with jaws that could chomp for England, and spend serious time playing tug of war with it.  It will adore you, and you will have beautifully toned upper arms.

^ Have I mentioned that my local bird population is nuts?  I’ve spent all this frelling money on bird feeders and bird food and THEY DON’T EAT IT.  By the end of the winter I was tired of dumping out (expensive) mouldy bird food and scrubbing the frelling bird feeders so I . . . stopped.  I took the one most prone to morphing its contents into sticky black sludge down altogether—it’s still around here somewhere all cleaned out and innocent-looking—and left the other three up.  The wire fat-ball container in the apple tree does have some turnover, but I can’t see it that well from the kitchen window so I’m not absolutely sure it’s not mice, there being a vibrant mouse population in my garden.  The suet block and seed feeders sway gently in the airy zephyrs and . . . over the months their fardels have become pretty disgusting-looking but I have other tasks ahead of dealing with superfluous feeders for ungrateful avian passers-by.

About a month ago I noticed that the by now black suet block was . . . diminishing.  Eh.  It was probably struck by lightning when I wasn’t noticing.

Nope.  Birds.  They ate the whole thing.  Ewwwww.  And, furthermore, the day that I noticed it had disappeared entirely there was also a crabby looking bird sitting on top of the feeder, swapping ends occasionally the better to keep watch for whoever was in charge of REPLACEMENT and also occasionally bending down to peer, in a significant manner, into the still offensively empty feeder.  Just in case the bungling factotum was nearby and could be brought to awareness of her failings.

I bought a suet block that day.  I put it in the feeder.

That was, I think, three suet blocks ago.  I assume this is the Hungry Gap—which is always later in the year than I expect it to be—so I’ll be interested to see if the little feathered ratbags have now got into the habit, or if they’ll drop me again as soon as something better comes along.

^^ Since the hellhounds have stopped eating altogether and force-feeding+ is not an exact science++, this tends to be worth her while.

+ Aside from little matters like starving to death or the fact that the hellhounds’ unique internal economy goes haywire if they miss more than one meal, this new drug they’re on has to be given with food.

++ Not when I do it anyway.  Siiiiiiiigh.

^^^ Given that it’s ORGANIC the PRICE is quite EXCITING ENOUGH FOR ME.

# Speaking of the somewhat uncontrolled exuberance of youth . . . there’s been a great spreading glob of building work near here since last winter.  They were supposed to be finished by the end of March.  Anyone with experience of Great Globs of Building Work will not be surprised to hear that they are still not finished.  The most annoying thing about this particular glob is that it’s closed off a footpath that everybody in this town uses, including the youff.  Now generally speaking teenage anarchy holds no charms for me but occasionally I do enjoy watching it take on self-righteous adult admin.

The glob admin reopened the footpath briefly about a month ago and then—no, no, mustn’t have that!—changed their minds and closed it off again.  They closed it off by sticking a big gate panel in the gap in the fence they were now regretting.

Over the first weekend, the local youff knocked it down.

Next weekend, the admin attached it to the gateposts with these little plastic loop things like the builders’ version of the plastic loops that hold price tags on clothing.

The youff cut the loops and knocked the gate down again.

This weekend just past, the admin chained the panel to the posts.

The youff dug out the bottom of the panel and shoved it back far enough that they and, possibly, a cranky old lady and her ebb and flow of hellcritters could get through.

The admin have now lowered and tightened the loops of chain.

Stay tuned.

## And doesn’t have a change-ringing bell tower available^

^ With my usual caveat that good ringers do not use brute strength.  I am not a good ringer.  But I have unembarrassing upper arms.

*** Maybe I’ll tell you about my voice lesson tomorrow.

† Fortunately we have a oscillating fan so both Darkness and I can get some churned-up air.  Neither Pav nor Chaos seems to mind that much.

Spring at Biltmore Estate, Part II – guest post by TheWoobDog

 

I should note as we continue our photographic tour of the spring blooms at Biltmore that in all of these gardens, each season brings new delights (I admit that the delights of the winter season are best experienced inside Biltmore House rather than outside, but it’s every bit as breathtaking – the Candlelight Christmas tours are not to be missed). Spring is my favorite time of year to visit, but that’s mostly because the part of my brain that processes color atrophies over the winter and by April I’m usually desperate to see something blooming.* This also explains why spring is pretty much the only season my own garden has much in the way of color…**

If the azaleas had been in bloom, the Azalea Garden probably would have had the most color for our spring visit, but that honor fell to the Walled Garden this time. The Walled Garden is an English-style garden which covers about four acres and comprises a rose garden***, peony garden, and butterfly garden in addition to dozens of seasonal annual beds, culminating in an expansive conservatory.

 

The Walled Garden – I actually took this picture last spring, but due to an overabundance of visitors this year I couldn’t get a good pic showing an elevated view this year

The Conservatory – 7,000 heated square feet showcasing tropical plants and throngs of orchids#

 

The gardeners plant roughly 90,000 tulip bulbs for the spring display in the manicured central beds of the Walled Garden.## In summer, these are replaced by dahlias, zinnias, and globe amaranth, while in autumn masses of chrysanthemums are on display. I can’t even imagine doing this kind of massive all-change three times a year###, but I certainly appreciate the results.

 

Pansies, tulips, and daffodils in mass plantings

One of the upper tulip edging beds – a little bit of espaliered tree is visible on the right

Massed tulips and daffodils

 

I have it on good authority that these are Darwin Hybrid Tulips, but I can’t categorize them any more specifically, sadly (all you gardening buffs – please be gentle with me). The massed beds of tulips, daffodils, and pansies are showcased on either side of the 236 foot arbor that forms the spine of the garden, and the plantings continue inside the arbor itself. Tulips line the arbor floor and openings like picture frames run along its length, creating the lovely effect of a hall lined with flower prints.

 

Tulips line the arbor – a portion of picture-frame opening is visible above

 

Not all the beds are devoted to mass plantings – occasionally pops of color among the mulched side beds catch the eye. I love finding these little reminders of spring against the backdrop of brown, cheerily popping up and demanding attention.

 

Pointy tulips? I don’t know, but I thought they were pretty.

I don’t know what these are, either, but they were pretty.

A double-bloom daffodil

Hyacinth

Another double-bloom daffodil

 

Woobie, of course, preferred to spend the majority of her time frolicking in the soft lawn grasses, but we managed to get her to pose for a quick pic among the flowers before we called it a day.

 

Note the (outwardly adorable) head tilt – she’s trying to decide if I really meant it when I said, “Stay!” or if it was more along the lines of a suggestion

 

I’d like to say that this has inspired me to get my own garden in order, but we’ll see. I did go out and grab some hostas and ferns for the hitherto neglected shady side of the yard today, though…†

 * * *

* It’s also probably due to the fact that an unfortunate side effect of summer’s arrival is, you know, heat, and I much prefer strolling through gardens without the risk of heatstroke and third degree burns. There’s a reason I live in the mountains (and nowhere beats the mountains for autumn color, so of course I never feel the pressing need to head elsewhere during the fall).

** Remember those oddities of my gardening habits that I mentioned in the footnote in Part 1? I get so excited to see plants with blooms in the gardening centers in spring that I go into a frenzy of purchasing, buying more than any sane person with a full-time job would ever have time to plant. As a result, I get completely burned out on doing anything in the yard by about the end of May, and I boycott all the garden centers during summer. Since most garden centers wisely sell plants based on what’s blooming at any given time, this of course means that my yard is a riot of gorgeous color in spring (irises the size of my head are one of my favorites) and the only things blooming mid-summer are there by accident since I’m never in a garden center when they’re actually selling summer-blooming plants.

*** The rose garden contains over 2,300 roses representing 250 varieties, none of which are in bloom this early. ^

^ You will of course go back at a more propitious time.  –ed.

# If there are any rabid orchid aficionados out there, I did take some gorgeous pics inside the Conservatory, but since I have no idea what any of the varieties are I didn’t post any. If there’s someone out there desperate for orchid pics perhaps Robin would approve a guest post collaboration – my pics and someone else’s intelligent orchid discourse.

## 90,000. This boggles my mind.

### Let’s be honest.  I can’t imagine doing this once a year. Plants have to be hardy to make it in my garden – I won’t even plant bulbs that I have to dig up for overwintering, so I’m surely not going to dig up stuff for aesthetic reasons.^

^ Yes, the plants in my garden are sturdy, independent souls.  The delicate ones don’t last long.  On the upside, I can give anyone in a similar climate good advice on what plants can survive truly staggering amounts of neglect.

† Doing final edits on this about a month later (our visit was in April), and I felt I should ‘fess up and admit that the hostas and ferns are still hanging out in their pots weeks later waiting for me to get around to popping them in the ground.^

^ Apparently all of the synonyms for “slack” apply to my gardening habits – careless, derelict, neglectful, remiss, lax…

 

KES, 134

 

ONE THIRTY FOUR

Tulamaro was carrying a not much less ominous looking brown bottle.  He pulled the extremely unsavory-looking cork, sloshed some of the bottle’s contents on a piece of cloth that looked like he’d found it in a bog recently where it had been resting undisturbed for a number of dank, toxic years, knelt briskly and slapped this unlovely concoction on my leg.  Very far beyond OW.  All my breath left me in one great gust, as if I’d been punched in the stomach.  The man with the box—who I assumed was Droko—knelt also, and flipped the lid of the box open.  I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to:  my vision had gone fuzzy again.

I blinked, and saw that Tulamaro was holding the bottle up toward me as he knelt at my feet.  The fumes were making my eyes water so the scene in front of me was going all late-Turner-watercolor.  I liked the effect better in a museum hanging on a wall.  The good news, I thought, is that the alcohol level of whatever that stuff is must be about eight hundred proof, and local bacteria should die, shouldn’t they?

A blur that might have been Murac’s hand reached down and took the thinner, darker blur that might have been the bottle.  “Sip it,” he said.  “A sip.  Two.  No more.  But tha’ll want the heat while he works.”   Tha’ll want the heat while he works.  I found one of my hands—surprisingly it was hanging by my side, attached by an arm and a shoulder—and wrapped my fingers around the bottle.   When Murac let go I almost dropped it, not because it was all that heavy but because I didn’t seem to be inhabiting my body with the usual dedication:  my arm, my fingers.  My aching head.  My more than aching leg.  Tha’ll want the heat while he works.

I tried to remind myself that anesthesia was a recent invention in relation to the human proclivity for warfare and that people tended to die of post-op infection rather than undergoing minor surgery in the first place.  This was not an entirely uplifting thought.  I’d like to feel I was planning to be back in the world with hospitals, antibiotics and painkillers before the infection took hold but then I didn’t want to be where I was in the first place, did I?  And hadn’t wanted to be here before someone—or something—had taken a gouge out of my leg.

Flowerhair had been wounded several times but I didn’t like blood and screaming so she tended to carry a little pouch of numbleaf for emergencies.  Once she’d called in a favor from a magician.  I didn’t have any favors to call in, and if Borcaithna was the only magician on offer I’d rather take my chances with Droko and the ominous brown bottle of Spirits of the Black Lagoon.

I shuddered.  Murac said quietly and with what sounded surprisingly like sympathy, “First time’s worst.  Good wound for first, little ’un on a leg.  Droko’s quick;  knows his job.”

Tulamaro said, “Falcons can’t hold long alone.  We’ll do here.  Steady her.”

Wait—what?  Shouldn’t I be lying down with my leg elevated—and wasn’t there some flimflam with a tourniquet?  Not that this was ground I wanted to lie down on—war was hell on landscape too.  Where was a nice operating table when you wanted one.  And an anesthetist.

. . . Falcons?

Murac’s hand closed over mine on the bottle, and raised the bottle to my mouth.  “Drink,” he said.

I was not having a good day.  I drank.

(*&^%$£”!!!!!!GAH!!!!BLEAGH!!!!!ARRRRGH!!!!!”£$$~@

While I was coughing my brains, lungs, liver and guts out Murac removed the bottle from my limp flapping hand and gave it back to Tulamaro who I suspected was laughing.  Murac then unbent me, as I folded up around the burning fireball that had once been my insides, crossed my arms over my chest and wrapped his own arms around me.  “I have tha.  If tha must struggle, struggle against me.  Nah kick.  Listen, Defender, tha will not kick.”

“I will not kick,” I muttered.  The Spirits of the Black Lagoon had blasted the dying frog out of my throat but they’d also ripped off a few layers of mucus membrane.  The next time I tried to sing anything I might find that I was a baritone.  My entire body now throbbed in unison with my leg which I suppose was the other approach to anesthesia:  if you couldn’t lower the specific pain level then raise the general one.

Murac smelled of blood and sweat.  And his arms around me were like iron.

Something heavy plonked on the foot of the uninjured leg—it might have been Tulamaro’s knee—and then there were what I guessed were gigantic hands around my calf pressing the wound closed.  And then . . . Droko began.

Good wound for first, little ’un on a leg.  Droko’s quick;  knows his job.

. . . I turned my head and sank my teeth into Murac’s shoulder.