Robin McKinley's Blog, page 202

Guest blog by Jeanne Marie

Canine Gourmands

Like many of you, I have hellhounds. Cece is a 6 year old Lab-AmStaff* mix, and Charlie is an almost 3 year old collie-something-or-other-mix.  Both were rescued,** Cece from the parking lot where I work, Charlie from the from porch where he was abandoned when his former "family" moved.  Both are great dogs, but Charlie does have some issues.***   The most prominent has been allergies. 

Last spring, when Charlie was roughly 1 ½, was when the allergies first presented.+  Charlie st

The End of July

 

So it's the last day of July.  And it's official:  I'm behind on Pegasus.  Pegasus the Cow.  Pegasus the Cow who briefly surfaced from the ravine a week or ten days ago or something, spent about a day pirouetting on the edge and . . . I think she took a good look around, like a ground hog on Ground Hog Day, said, Ewwww, what is this?* and swandived back into the ravine again.  It's dark and muddy down here and I can't see where I'm going.  And the mooing echoes unhelpfully.

            Behindnes

Silly Canon

     

This all began . . . a lot of weeks ago.  (I'm slow.)  But there was a thread on the forum that for reasons which now escape me indulged in a sudden burst of composing epitaphs for Black Bear.*  This was happening right around the time Oisin suggested I write a canon.  I sat down at the piano thinking about Row Row Row Your Boat and J S Bach, and somehow rowing your boat won.  I'm also now sort of half on the lookout for short, not too horrifyingly profound and/or literary** poems to set an

Guest post by Peter

Garden Party 

Somebody* has asked how I came to go to a Buckingham Palace Garden Party, and what was it like.  I went because my grandmother was entitled to an invitation, I'm not sure why.  Perhaps just because she was the widow of a peer of the realm, or because her husband had been a Privy Counsellor. (No, not a sanitary plumber– that's got to be an old joke.**)  These used to be the monarch's official advisers but are now largely purposeless, apart from having a legal sub-committee which is t

Bowen method for creatures great and small

 

If I were any tireder the Zombie Police would arrest me on suspicion.  Did anything happen on Saturday?*  It's too long ago, I can't remember.  But there was the quarter on Sunday and then yesterday was Glyndebourne*** and today the hellhounds and I went to see my Bowen lady** and Bowen always wipes me out.   Uuuunnnnnnh.

            I don't usually take the hellhounds to see Tabitha.  I usually go a little early and do something creative on the way like stop at the supermarket and check for off

Unfrelling Glyndebourne*

 

 I lead such an exciting life.**   So today was our third opera at Glyndebourne, http://www.glyndebourne.com/ , which is our annual holiday equivalent in terms of price—since it includes not merely two wallet-bendingly excellent tickets but dinner, half a bottle of champagne*** and a taxi.†  And it happens at the end of July to celebrate our end-of-July anniversary, which is when I picked up the eccentric Englishman I knew slightly at the Bangor, Maine airport for a minor weekend of literary da

Frelling OBE

 

Vicky, our tower secretary, is one of the organising forces of the known universe.  There's the Electromagnetic force, the Strong nuclear force, the Weak nuclear force, the Gravitational force, and Vicky.  She organises bands for weddings, funerals, special services, quarter peals and striking competitions, she looks after visiting bands . . . she's been known to pressgang visiting ringers in the street when we're short handed, even if said ringers were trying to have a bell-free holiday:  and

Guest post by Diane in MN

Dog Show Weekend

 

On Memorial Day weekend (late May, for anyone outside the US), we took Teddy to his first show ON GRASS.  He hadn't exactly been in a lot of indoor shows—his career started the first week of January, when he turned six months old, but even if there were shows in the Upper Midwest in winter, you wouldn't risk going into the ditch to take a puppy to them—but even youngsters who know the routine at an indoor show can get a little crazed in an outdoor ring, and decide that the grass

Another Friday

 

Fridays are always a monster because it's both Music Lesson and Sacred Home Tower Bell Practise.  Today was further confounded, compounded, confused and flummoxed by Weather. 

            I heard it tipping it down in buckets last night.  I know it's all cosy and everything to lie snugly in bed and listen to Weather happening on the other side of the window,* but I tend to peer at the clock, calculate how many hours before I will be wanting to hurtle hellhounds again, and wonder how long the sle

Frelling ratbag

 

It has been an absolute frelling ratbag sod of a day.   A lot of the most emotionally oppressive garbage is inherently unbloggable.*  But I'll tell you I've had a second friend in I think two months diagnosed with cancer;   they got the news for sure yesterday, it's just a question of how bad it is and what they do next.    Friend number one has come through surgery with flying colours but . . . who needs to have cancer, you know?   There are so many better things to be doing with your time.