Robin McKinley's Blog, page 211

Bluebells

 

Every year I take dozens of bluebell photos, and every year I gnash my teeth and rend my garments and cry aloud to the uncaring heavens* at the sheer frelling frustration of it all.  I’ve never yet seen a bluebell photo, including ones by fancy professional photographers specialising in Edenic garden photos**, photos that make Lothlorien look like some cheap decking and a barbecue, that come close to what a bluebell wood in full flower can do to you. 

 

 

And that’s even aside from the fact that t

Missing link

ARRRRRRGH.

I have no idea why the Funny Bad Language link dropped out of ‘Entitlement’.    I don’t usually cruise the forum at this time of day but at least I can stick it back in ten hours or so earlier than I would ordinarily have discovered it wasn’t there.  I also have no idea why I didn’t NOTICE it had dropped out . . . it’s there in the original document back in Word!  It just didn’t make the transfer!    But I admit that by the time I’m pasting into the blog my eyes/brain are losing focus,

Entitlement

 

Several people sent me this link today:  *

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html 

(You want to keep reading down a bit, till you get to the letter that begins ‘Hi Neil.’  Begin to pay close attention from this point.) 

.. . I have one word to say:  yesssssssssss.

            It’s all about Othering, you know.  I’ve been on about Othering before.**  As soon as you Other a writer–define them as some arcane species other than your own–you can say the most extraordinary things t

Anyone fancy a bath?

 

 

 

 

The outdoor experience is so romantic.  The rustle of the leaves, the chirping of the birds, the weird conversations people on the footpath just over the hedge are having, the smell of the exhaust from the cars on the street out front, the bellow of the tannoy* from the train station not far enough away, the faint ooooooooo of visiting ghosts from the churchyard, the permanently stuck-on yelling of the terrier next door . . . and of course the exquisite modern found sculpture of your immedia

Tiles

 

I was dragging myself together to take hellhounds for their first hurtle this morning when the phone rang.  It was my builder.*  About these tiles, he said.  I’ve just rung up the tile company** and they say that their computers are down.  And their computers may be down for several weeks.  And the fellow I spoke to can’t find the ID numbers on the back of the sample tiles you gave me in the database that he can still get to, and he wants me to describe the tiles over the phone.

                

PEGASUS

 

. . . is driving me mad.  Well, madder.  Not that this is the least unusual.  Writing novels does drive one mad. 

Well, writing mine has always driven me mad.  Peter, however, is a pain in the butt about this as about so many writery things.  I always used to say–grandly, smugly–that while I am perhaps a little slow, no one can crank out really superior prose quickly:  a book a year, say.  Anyone holding to that schedule very long* is inevitably writing inferior stuff.  Then I started noticing t

Guest post by Black Bear

How Mean Cat Got Her Mean   

As I’ve said on the forum and elsewhere, I live with three cats.  They do have names, but as I’m not good at naming things, and I’m even worse at calling things by their proper names once named, I generally refer to them as Big Cat, Mean Cat, and Orange Cat. Big Cat is rather obviously named; he’s one of those enormous soft black-and-white tuxedo cats who weighs nearly 20 lbs and would spend all day cuddling if he could. Orange Cat used to be called New Cat, but I’ve h

Phantom of the Opera or someone like him

 

I was hewing and slashing at the rock face of my Just A Little till the last possible minute* this afternoon and then my not-a-piano-lesson lasted two hours.  First we had a little chat about JS Bach’s sonatas and partitas for violin and for cello–I have only just discovered Bach’s solo violin stuff:  I was innocently driving home from a hellhound hurtle a fortnight or three weeks ago and this ravishingly beautiful piece–by a solo frelling violin–came on Radio Three and I was suddenly and incon

Noises off

 

I was up too late last night reading* and overslept disastrously, partly from reading late and partly from ME, and have therefore spent the day stumbling around from one activity/hellhound** to the next, glancing at the clock and twitching as if stung.  I’m disintegrating rather quickly at this point and I must get back to Just a Little Piece for Organ tonight:  my music lesson*** is tomorrow, and the Little Piece just stops, it doesn’t end.  The fact that I’m having to guess at what any of it

Little walled jungle

 

I’ve spent way too much time writing entries the last two nights . . . that’s the drawback to having something to write about.

            So tonight I’m going to dazzle you with garden photos and go to bed at what passes in my case for a reasonable hour.  Although I have so many garden photos–I love this time of year, when everything in the garden suddenly goes YAAAAAAY.  SPRING--it’s taken me almost as long to sort out just a few as it would have to write an entry*.

 The view from my office win