Robin McKinley's Blog, page 23

KES, 129

 

ONE TWENTY NINE

Granted that thoughts frequently take no time at all—except when your deadline is the end of the month and you’re 60,000 words short, or you’re trying to decide which high-heeled lady shoes you can bear to wear for that wedding you don’t want to go to because your friend’s intended is a creep—it seemed to me that this slope we were pelting down was rather longer than it looked.  Long enough for me to have a really—let’s not say fatally—clear idea of how little I wanted to be where I was.  Did Monster have to have such a turn of speed?  Did my sword have to shine like a Klieg light?  Low budget horror would be better by torch or bonfire.  And preferably on TV, with you curled up comfortably under a blanket across the room.

The shambling figures marching relentlessly through the Gate were, however, getting rather close.  Rather too close.  And if those weren’t exactly arms waving swords they were enough like to be just as sick-makingly alarming.

TV and a blanket never sounded so good.  Or felt so far away.

Defender.

Oh, do shut up, I thought irritably at the people behind me—almost simultaneously as I was registering that not all the shouts of Defender were coming from behind me.  I looked to one side—was that another Gate wavering into existence?  But if the cavalry was coming they were going to be too late.  I looked ahead of me:  the gold-edged figures had closed ranks in what you might describe as a sort of crooked British square, if you weren’t British, might not be human and your sense of geometry was unusual.  Where was Jack Hawkins or John Mills when I needed him?

The front rank knelt, or anyway got shorter in some angular, multi-jointed way.  Behind them . . . those sure looked like archers.

I swear Glosinda yanked my arm across my body as some kind of bolt seemed to whistle between Monster’s ears before . . . thanks to Glosinda, it failed to bury itself in my neck.

There was a really unpleasant noise as it caromed off my heroic wristlet, and the fantasy-writer part of my brain had a sudden insane desire to know what both wristlet and bolt were made of:  funny not ha-ha how when personal combat happens to you it’s nothing like either BEN HUR or BUFFY.  Glosinda had also deflected a critical percentage of the bolt’s velocity which meant I stayed in Monster’s saddle;  but I had dragged on his reins when she hijacked my arm, involuntarily twisted in the saddle and dug my outside leg into his side—and what had I just been saying about needing to check that he understood the same human rider signals I knew?  Violent yanks to the right, with or without involuntary leg action, in my lexicon, meant clumsy incompetent rider wants to turn in that direction.  Monster swerved just fine, but I wasn’t expecting—

—as I noticed that the bolt-flingers, and there were other bolts like the one that hadn’t killed me whistling around us, were, what was it called, laying down covering fire for some kind of attack by some of the rest of the squad?—

—him to half-rear, sinking briefly back on his hocks and getting his front legs under him, and then crash his forelegs down as he bounded forward and lashed out with his hind—

—which certainly should have unseated me, except the physics of the thing were totally under Glosinda and Silverheart’s control, and I heard a peace-of-mind-destroying noise, a sort of thud-squish, that juddered through Monster’s body and therefore mine as those powerful hind legs made contact, while Silverheart was wheeling around in another direction to cause another really horrible noise—

—oh God oh God oh God oh God—

—let me just say that strange marching gold-edged not quite human figures even when you know they’re trying to kill you and as far as you’re concerned they’re absolutely the bad guys, and you’ve been telling yourself they’re not even human anyway and you almost died a moment ago—

—it’s still about the worst thing that has ever happened to you when the sword you’re holding onto cuts one of them in half.   Ssssssssssslsh.

The fantasy-writing part of my brain, which had spent a lot of time in the library and on google, was shrieking, no, no, you’d have to be Conan or at least Arnold Schwarznegger to cut a human-sized body in half, that didn’t happen, that didn’t happen. . . . But I was still alive, and my sword-shaped Klieg light was now casting chiaroscuro because of the blood, the red, just like human, blood, running down her blade. . . .  They were all around us, Monster and me, the bad guys who were trying to kill us.  I discovered that Monster was alertly, attentively expecting me to dig my leg into his side when I hauled him around for more of the leaping and kicking action.  He knows the drill.  He’s a trained war horse:  he has an idea about repelling boarders, but he’s also expecting his rider to tell him what to do.  He’s expecting his rider to know what she’s doing . . . and to get both of us out of this.

Oh God.

Peter

 

Peter had another fall tonight.  I was less than two feet away but it happened too fast and chances are even if I’d managed to grab him he’d’ve just pulled me over too.  He fell on the kitchen paper bin which shattered courteously and dispersed his momentum.  He’s okay but . . .

I was going to write a proper entry tonight but I’m a little traumatised.  This is the second fall in a fortnight and it’s just blind luck that he wasn’t hurt this time.  And I was right here and I couldn’t do anything.

I’ll be back on the blog one of these days/nights but I’m not sure when.

Thanks and apologies and whatever.

KES comments continued and so on and so on and doobie doobie do

 

Speaking of excellent stories, you’re all Octavia E Butler readers, I hope?*  Well, looky here:  http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4976-0137-6

And now let the frivolity roll. . . .

AJLR

I hope Kes gets home soon, poor soul. I’m beginning to get quite concerned that she’ll catch a chill out there in her nightie.

Yes I’ve been worrying about that too.  It’s the sort of thing I won’t know till I get there.  Of course I often know things that still turn out to be wrong when I get there.**  But so far as I know she isn’t sneezing at the end of Part One.  Whether or not she wakes up the next morning (?) at the beginning of Part Two with a major fever that is trying to convince her she imagined most of Part One. . . . There will be one or two momentos of her experiences which will lobby rather forcefully against this ridiculous enterprise  however.***  Aside from the dead guy in the front hall.  I imagine Mr WS, being a gentleman, will do something about the body when the mayhem level subsides a bit† but I don’t think bloodstains on wooden floors is within his remit.  Maybe the hob will have some ideas. ††

Longhairmathgeek

I’m reminded of certain scenes in Sunshine which I reread recently…

I think this is a good thing . . . †††

. . . for the scripturally inclined: the second verse of Genesis, part of which is commonly translated “And darkness covered over the land,” could be trying to convey the sensation you’re describing [when Kes locates the Gate]. If you go back to the Hebrew, the word translated as ‘darkness’ could be translated as ‘seething unfathomable chaos.’

Darkness and Chaos being my natural state, of course.  This does give me the edge for certain descriptive passages.‡

Katinseattle

You didn’t know who shouted, only that it sounded like it came from someone standing with you, some Falcon, and that the voice was rough with both joy and terror. “Defender!”

Wait. Are these soldiers allies? Or enemies? Who are they fighting against? Who’s the Lady?

I realise you are expressing impatience, but if they were enemies, would the voice be rough with joy?

I take back what I said about wanting this story to go on forever. I want some answers.

You do?  Gee.  That’s too bad.

EMoon

The twisted strap on the saddle–I’ve had big nasty blisters from that. One of which got infected and…oh, wait, nobody wants to know about that. It’s just that I was taking a microbiology class at the time and I recognized…NO. (Smacks self on head, several times.)

Any time you want to write a guest blog on the interesting real-life applications of taking a microbiology class . . . we can just put a GROSS ALERT at the beginning.  And yeah, about blisters.  It is AMAZING how quickly a stupid little rubbing thing turns into a MAJOR WEEPING WOUND.  It’s why I’m so paranoid about shoes, since I spend so much of my time walking.  All Stars Rule.

But I miss Sid. I really, really want to know that Sid is OK back where Sid is (wherever that is…) and that the hob is dealing with the home invasion, and so on.

Well, I miss Sid too.  I can hear the barking.  You will too soon, I promise.  I don’t even think ‘soon’ is very relative in this instance.

Anne_d

I love that the guards are still ordinary people with mundane concerns. I think that’s one of your greatest strengths, building solid ground under the fantasy so that it’s even more real.

Thank you.  THANK YOU.  As I’ve said before when I’m doing a comment-answering post, I tend to cut out the compliments‡‡ because leaving them in makes me look like such a prat, but since this is one of my major preoccupations about the writing of fantasy, my own and everyone else’s, I’m leaving it in.  Yes.   Grounding is crucial.  People are people, even if they’re nine feet tall and have seven arm-like appendages, and if they live in a landscape with purple trees I want to know what the trees look like, what the shape of the leaves is, what the flowers smell like in spring and what alcoholic beverages you can make from the fruit.  As I keep saying, the great thing about fantasy is that you can make up your own rules . . . the ratbag about fantasy is that you then have to stick to the rules you made up.  And sometimes your rules are less great than you thought, and sometimes you’re so far into the story when you realise you made a mistake there’s nothing you can do but live with it.‡‡‡  But as soon as you think, okay, what’s it like for these guys, whoever they are, whether they’re human or not, they’re going to have upkeep issues, whether that means sewing on buttons and boiling water for tea, or gliffermying the vrumpetty and doogling the brezzer.  And if the latter you need to explain for your presumably mostly human audience so that the human reader totally feels the zogle pressing into the mrilf and kind of wants to have a go at gliffermying themselves, and when they close the book§ are startled to discover they’re short and have only two arms.

Stardancer

Oooh. Not that I don’t enjoy Kes’ narration and her ties to the ordinary world, but there’s something about the mix of fairy tale and ordinary people (who get nervous and drop things and such) that I love.

::Beams::  This is part of the grounding thing I’m talking about.  Denouements between super-wizards tend to be kinda boring.  Denouements between more or less ordinary people who may fumble the universe-commanding wand at a critical moment are much more interesting.  Also super-wizards are already out there because of their superness.  There’s a steep climb for an ordinary Jo(e) to get to the super-level where the universe-commanding wand needs to be wielded.  This is more interesting and also a lot more sympathetic for ordinary-Jo(e) readers.  Say I.

It amuses me that their first sight of Kes isn’t much like what Kes herself has been thinking.

Well of course not.  That’s the deal.  Yes.§§

They see “a pale slender woman, with long tangled hair, riding bare-legged and barefoot.” Whereas Kes has been thinking things like “How did I get in this story?”, “Why didn’t I wear pajamas with pants?” and “Oh gods I’m going to cut my own leg off.” I find myself wondering what the Falcons will think when she gets closer.

There are three answers to this:  (a) Mwa hahahahahahaha (b) I wonder too (c) There’s going to be some Hayley action:  ohmigod it’s the Defender she’s real that’s not really a tatty pink nightgown is it?  All three of these answers are true.  Stories and writing are often confusing.  It’s why writers are often nuts.  Or that’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

* * *

* And that she died way too young several years ago?

** I wasn’t expecting Sid to show up nearly so soon, for example, when Kes sticks her pin in a map in Manhattan and contemplates the possibility of getting a dog.

*** Mwa hahahahahaha

† Or bodies, as the case may be

††  Mrrrrmph.  ::Not giving anything away.  Not.::

††† I’m extremely fond of SUNSHINE.  Just so you know.

‡ Snoring optional.  Darkness, who has disdained his dinner^, in his efforts to elude the nasty thing, has buried his head under a blanket from which posture he is having some trouble breathing.

^ Siiiiiiiiigh

‡‡ Having read them over slowly and carefully several times first

‡‡‡ This may be less true for people who rewrite better than I do.  I certainly do a lot of rewriting, but the basic shape of the thing has to be more or less right the first time or I lose it, I lose my ability to hear the story.  Rewriting is more about expanding, tidying up and pursuing implications^ than deciding in the second draft that the heroine is nine feet tall and has seven arms and likes hot spiced blurdge from the purple yikyak trees’ bojally fruit, although she was human in the first draft and liked maple syrup on her blueberry pancakes.

^ Which do, I admit, cause collision disasters upon occasion.  NOOOOOOO.  JUST BECAUSE SHE WAS ON THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN TALKING TO A DRAGON DOESN’T MEAN SHE ISN’T AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA TALKING TO A MERMAID.  Wait, wait, I’m inventing teleportation . . . or cloning . . . give me a minute I’LL THINK OF SOMETHING.

§ Or click the ereader off

§§ Also, most of my major characters think less well of themselves than perhaps they should.  Ahem.  The Story Council does usually try to send you stuff you can feel your way into.  Writing is hard enough work without making it harder.

First Roses?!

 

We have roses.  We’re not supposed to have roses—it’s only the end of frelling April—and we don’t have many, but we do have roses.  And they’re not even the so-called species* roses which are often the early ones, but proper overbred garden roses.  Peter’s is even an Austin for pity’s sake, although she is on the front wall of the mews, and that courtyard is a heat sink, but I’m used to Austins in Hampshire starting up in June.  My two, Sophie’s Perpetual and my beloved Old Blush, AKA (among other things) Parson’s Monthly, are certainly human bred roses, but they are also known for starting early and going on and on.**  But THIS early?***  Never mind . . . I’m not complaining.

 

William Morris. Personally I think the original WM would have spasms at the idea of an apricot-pink rose named after him but hey.

Sophie’s Perpetual. If she goes on being a healthy and reliable bloomer I’ll forgive her but she has a tendency to grow sideways rather than up.

 

Old Blush. If you are the last rose of summer in my garden you are CHERISHED.

* Botanical nomenclature makes me lose the will to live really fast.  I acknowledge the need for precision, including that everyone talking about this plant rather than that plant can feel sure they’re all on the same page blah blah blah blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH but I don’t want to hear about it.  I have one perfectly practical, working response to plants, in a catalogue, on a web site or at a nursery:  (a) roses = want^;  (b) shiny = want;  (c) meh = don’t want.  I don’t care what you call them^^.  ‘Species’ roses, or ‘species’ most things that have a large cultivated-garden presence, are, for my money, and you purists out there look away now, the ones that haven’t been endlessly messed with by plant breeders and look more or less as they did when some stalwart explorer first found them growing out of a hillside or a cliff top or a river margin or the roof of the local priestess’ temple and brought them home in the hopes of material gain.

^ This being why I have to chain myself to Wolfgang’s steering wheel when we drive past the one semi-local rose nursery:  when you have a small garden you can do a lot of damage in a rose nursery even if you only go there once a year.+

+ Penelope, Harriet and I are planning a field trip that will involve passing that nursery but Harriet is driving.  This is ostensibly because Harriet of the three of us minds driving the least and she has a much nicer cleaner car than Wolfgang.#  But I haven’t told them about the chaining myself to the steering wheel tactic or they might insist on my driving for the entertainment value.##

# People given the choice of firing squad or death by dog hair inhalation will probably choose the firing squad.  Even if I remove the dog beds and sweep out the back seat it’s still a Guinness Book of World Records situation back there.

## Most of my friends have a strange sense of humour, yes.  That’s why we get along, innit?

^^ Except insofar as it pertains to whether or not I can grow the sucker.  If it’s going to get eight foot tall and is frost tender, no, I can’t.+

+ Which is why the one fabulously successful stephanotis floribunda# I once grew in my office at the old house and which was significantly bigger than I am when I had to move it into town, croaked the first winter.  Both of us couldn’t fit in the cottage kitchen at the same time, and I didn’t get it indoors soon enough one night.##

# Botanical nomenclature AAAAAAAUGH.  It’s a lot harder to avoid in England, however.  You Americans can call it Madagascar jasmine, I think.

## I killed another little one this winter I have no idea why.  It had been doing pretty well, I thought, on the kitchen windowsill, and then it suddenly said, bored now, and died.  I’ll probably get another one. . . . ~

~ And I think I haven’t told you about the Hibiscus Forest.  Peter had a very, very, very, very badly neglected hibiscus houseplant that I tried to kind of fatten up for the chop so I could get some cuttings off it before/when I pruned it because I suspected the pruning would kill it.  It did.  I had about eight viable cuttings which to my total astonishment struck= which I therefore had to pot on and figure out what to do with.  First winter they all fit on the same windowsill, no problem.  And then the gardening books always tell you to put your houseplants outdoors for the summer because all indoor plants are ipso facto dying== and this will make them happy and strong to survive another winter on your windowsill.

The hibiscus cuttings hated being outdoors.  I kept trying to find the hibiscus sweet spot and they kept saying, no, this isn’t it, waaaaaaah, we want murky daylight through glass, we want house spiders and dust, we want dog hair.  I lost three of them.  I thought I was going to lose a fourth, but it was still semi-clinging to life by early last autumn when I gave up and brought them indoors long before frost would become an issue.  All five of them have shot up and out over the winter and I’m going to have to pot them on and . . . you know, common-or-garden-variety hibiscus get kind of large.

= Ie grew roots and looked like living.

== Although if you want to get technical about it everything alive is dying.

** I’ve told you before that in a mild winter Old Blush will have a flower out for Christmas.^  I haven’t had Sophie in town long enough, and at the old house she was in a dumb place and shut down flowering with the majority.

^ Mythology states that Thomas Moore’s Last Rose of Summer was an Old Blush.  Mind you, what exactly is going on in that poem is, perhaps fortunately, a trifle obscure.  If he’s really tearing up a rose so it doesn’t have to be alooone, he’s a dipstick with a tendency to vandalism and it’s no wonder he doesn’t have any friends.

*** Apologies to the forum member whom I told quellingly she would not see roses when she was over here the end of April.  I hope there are banks, walls and gazebos of blooming roses wherever you are.

KES, 128

 

I thought at the idiots pouring down the slope after me, you guys.  Wasn’t the nightgown enough?  Don’t you know cluelessness when you see it?  Why don’t you just let me get killed?  (My stomach tried to turn over at this point, but that might have been from trying to sit on a galloping horse for the first time in twenty years.)  Wouldn’t—whoever—whatever—provide you with another Defender?  Possibly one who had held a sword once or twice in his or her previous life?  Maybe had some concept of practical strategy?  Knew some good soldier jokes?

But in the stories I knew that involved things like enchanted swords and seriously unlikely heroines, there was this whole honor shtick going on too.  Tulamaro had liked the look of me even less than I’d liked the look of him, but when the Gate opened he’d dropped back to rally his lot to follow me.  Because following the Defender, even if she is wearing a pink nightgown, can barely hold her sword, and is hurtling toward disaster because she has no idea what else to do, is what the set-up demands.

I’d have to remember, the next time I had a meeting with an editor who wasn’t doing what my agent and I wanted, that my scintillating glare could open interdimensional gates.  Surely an assault on a mere publicity budget would be child’s play in comparison?

Supposing I ever had a meeting with an editor again.  All the editors I knew were on the other side of that Gate, where more and more things with swords were coming through toward me and the gang trapped by tradition behind me.   Trying to find a bright side to look on, I considered the fact that also on the far side of the Gate was the dangerously over-extended deadline for FLOWERHAIR FOUR, which story I still had no idea how to pump up into implacable page-turning thrillingness.  And presumably Darla couldn’t get to me on this side of the Gate either.  Although I wouldn’t want to lay money (supposing I had any, till FF was written, accepted and paid for) on Darla not being able to do something.

But Sid was on the other side of the Gate.  So was Norah.  So were Serena and Hayley and Bridget and Mike and Susannah and JoJo.

So were Rose Manor and a dead guy in a pool of blood by the front door.  And unknown, but given the way this story was going, probably extensive quantities of further mayhem.

She holds Silverheart, Murac had said, Murac, who’d begun our association by calling me a useless mare.

Okay, I thought.  Why?  That’s the sixty-four gazillion-dollar question.  Why did Silverheart come to me?  Why am I the seriously unlikely enchanted-sword-holding heroine in this particular story?

Watermelon Shoulders, long long ago when I still believed I had some faint handle on the real world, had said something about how there had not been a Defender for some time and that the situation had deteriorated as a result.  That hadn’t been how Mr Forsoothly had put it, of course.  I seemed to remember the word ‘calamity’ had been employed.  But I had been distracted by that dead guy in a spreading pool of his own blood in my front hall. . . . and by my panic-arousing loosening grasp of reality.

Why me?

Most of the time, if you’re not too old yet, and you’re reasonably healthy, and you live (for example) in a city with a (mostly) reliable electricity and water supply, a (mostly) working subway system, the best opera house in the world and some really great bagel shops, your own death seems so theoretical.  Dead guys in your front hall shake this comfortable abstraction.

Forests of swords being waved at you meaningfully shake it even more.

I was pretty sure the things with swords had mouths they were opening and closing.  Singing their battle song, no doubt.  Something with lots of eviscerations and dismemberment in it.  There seemed to be more roaring in my ears than just wind and terror could account for.

Monster was still galloping.  He ran like a racehorse;  that moment every stride when all four feet were off the ground was like flying.   If I hadn’t been waiting for death I might have been enjoying it.  Except for that twisted strap—drat—and I couldn’t fix it now—I was going to have a blister soon and I doubted Murac had Band-Aids in his saddle bags.  Fortunately Monster’s gallop was as smooth as spreading butter on hot toast;  I was having enough trouble staying in the saddle on account of the stupid holding naked sword over my head situation.  Not only my shoulder but my back hurt, there were various muscles trying to cramp, and I was pretty sure the only reason I hadn’t dropped her was because she didn’t want to be dropped.  Don’t try this the next time you’re trying to lead an army into battle in your nightgown:  put your sword back in its blasted scabbard before you ask your horse to gallop.  It’s not just the weight, it’s the wind resistance.

Thunder of hooves.  Thunder of enemy’s battle song.  Thunder of your own team shouting at your back.

Defender, I heard.

Defender.

Spring, springing

 

I never finished my earlier spring-in-the-garden post and everything has moved on, the way everything does this time of year.   Including the frelling indoor jungle which I am still hauling in overnight occasionally THANK YOU WEATHER GREMLINS.  THANK YOU SO MUCH.  And I went to the ironmonger’s* yesterday for silver polish and came home with a tray of snapdragons.   Which will have to be brought indoors if it turns cold again.  And the sweet peas are getting to the twining-up-your-arms PLANT ME PLANT ME stage.   Arrrrgh.  Also I’m waiting for the early bulb greenery to die back a little more before the (tender) summer bedding goes in.  Even daffodils will lose the will to live if you don’t let them soak up some rays after they’ve flowered.  I am having a daffodil tragedy however–the only daffs I had this spring were the ones in pots.  Not a single one of what is usually the stealthily expanding army of daffs in the ground came up.  With the cottage garden’s all-the-plumbing-in-Hampshire drainage system I doubt they rotted, even in the winter we’ve just had;  I think I must have some extremely fat mice.  Whose mutant gene allows them to eat daffodils which they are not supposed to do.

Minimalist and tidy are not my forte indoors or out.

Anyway you have to imagine everything in this photo about a foot taller.  And a couple of the hippeastrums are in ginormous flower.  They were supposed to flower at Christmas, of course, but I . . . forgot to plant them.  The bulbs are surprisingly hardy;  I’ve rescued two or three from secret corners of the garden where they were having a nice summer outdoors from last year which, having been fed and apologised to, are good-naturedly producing leaves.  I have no idea when they might flower again.  The flowers, however, are fantastically tender.  It gets below about 50 degrees and they shrivel up and fall over.  Sigh.  Live and learn.

 

Pots. I haz em.

This will, I hope, look a little more artistic later in the year when things start coming up and being themselves and I can move stuff around for maximum impact.**  And just by the way there are a good twenty roses in this shot.  Maybe twenty-five.   The [mumble-mumble] new ones are still heeled in in a single big pot just out of frame at the front.

FRITILLARIES!!!!!

Well, it is very exciting.  I didn’t have any for a couple of years–they can be fiddly to convince to settle down and be happy and grow, and the Evil Red Lily Beetle eats them.  I’ve turfed out my remaining lilies and the ERLB have apparently gone looking for better accommodation.

Well, they are very exciting to those of us who love them.

 

Okay, I’ve already done FRITILLARIES!!!!! So I suppose it would be boring and repetitive to do CAMELLIAS!!!!!

As regular readers of this blog know, in my pantheon roses are the business.  But I’m amassing kind of a lot of camellias.  If they ever invent a repeat-flowering camellia I’ll be lost.  As it is the fact that they’re only fairly briefly in flower–and tend to be biggish to GIGANTIC shrubs–keeps me a little under control.  One of their great virtues however is that they’re pretty trouble free.  Anything in a pot you do have to be pretty faithful about feeding and watering, but beyond that you can stuff them in any corner–including dark corners–and they’ll just get on with it.***

And furthermore a pink camellia. How surprising.

 

And the mythical rust-red cowslip.

After mentioning here that I didn’t even know there was such a thing I received an email from a friend saying, er . . . those might be the cuttings of my rust-red cowslip that I gave you when I was there last year?  Oh.  Well, they’re doing really well.  Turns out I planted another little tuft of them in the dark narrow bed beside Wolfgang’s space where the standard yellow cowslips do very well, and it’s rioting away there too.

Markham’s Pink (clematis). Another important harbinger of spring in my life.

I’m pretty sure I post a photo of Markham’s Pink every year#.  It grew up the shed outside our bedroom window at the old house and was one of those things that I had to have even in a tiny town garden.  But the one at the old house was a delicate little item;  Peter muttered every year that it was in a very bad place, poor thing, and it was surprising that it kept coming up.  Well, I have it in a medium-sized pot and it gets fed every year AND IT’S FRELLING HUGE.  I have several clematis throwing themselves around over the little low picket fence around the Hellcritter Relief Station Courtyard and I keep having to be creative about where to twine the extra 1,000,000 feet of clinging-tendril stems.

Frilly pansies.

I don’t ordinarily like the big frilly vulgar## garden centre pansies but I think these are a hoot.  They’re in a hanging basket because . . . because.  Stuff goes in where I’ve got a gap at the time that whatever it is is ERUPTING out of whatever it’s been in.  Plants grow.  Plants are supposed to grow.  You’re happy that they’re happy and growing.  But . . .

And two random old people caught walking through someone else’s garden a while back.

This was another garden post I didn’t get around to organising . . .

 

* * *

* Which is more of a general store than just hardware.  You can buy teapots, tourist tat, slug bait, batteries and pet food at our ironmongers’.  And silver polish.  And for a few weeks in spring, snapdragons.  I may have bought those frilly pansies (see below) there too, last autumn.

** Metaphorical impact.

*** Although for your sanity’s sake, WATER THEM A LOT the end of summer.  Or all the flower buds will drop off . . . not at the time, so at least you know immediately you’ve screwed up, but just before they would have flowered, the following spring.  This is deeply traumatic.  It happened to me once or twice at the old house because the garden was so frelling huge it was easy to forget stuff, but I’ve had flowering camellias every year so far in my tiny town garden(s).  ::Pours a libation over the compost heap to the Camellia Gods::

Also, if they ever do invent a repeat-flowering camellia, it’ll probably need more sunlight to crank itself up for the second flush.  I have as many as I do because they’ll thrive in shadowy recesses where roses wouldn’t.

# . . . Probably including the following story . . .

## Since when did vulgar ever bother me?  ::Looks at feet, wearing black and brown sequin tiger striped All Stars::

Yarn Adventure and maybe some ranting

 

Fiona and I had a Yarn Adventure today.  And about time too:  we haven’t seen each other since November.  Life:  what a ratbag.

Admittedly there is usually a high gremlin count when Fiona and I get together but today they weren’t half trying.  We were going to set off at two, which in our case usually means before 2:30, well, maybe, if we’re lucky.  Fiona usually texts me as she leaves the house*.

No text.  Well, whatever, and we got on with hurtling and then with feeding me**.

Still no text.  Prepare to feed critters, since I was going to put it down as I left.  Sometimes this intrigues hellhounds sufficiently to stimulate them to eat.

Still no text.

Dither.  Feed critters.***

Okay, now I’m worried.  I have checked Pooka several times.  Nothing.

I’ve hung the laundry and washed all the lunch dishes† which is of course nicer to come home to but WHERE IS FIONA?

Pooka barks, and I make a slightly dish-soapy dive for her.  I have the feeling my texts aren’t getting through, says Fiona’s voice.  I HAVEN’T HEARD ANYTHING FROM YOU SINCE LAST NIGHT TILL THIS PHONE CALL.

Well, I’ll be there in three minutes, she said.  And as she rang off, Pooka chirruped and SEVEN MESSAGES POPPED THROUGH.  ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

The day improved from there however.  Our chosen yarn shop was having a MOVING TO NEW PREMISES sale and . . .

Fiona, as we know, has a slight Sock Yarn problem.

My problems are perhaps more general.

I’ve been wanting FEARLESS KNITTING for yonks but, you know, it persists in being full price.  The dark auburn yarn is Debbie Bliss Winter Garden which I have also wanted for yonks but it’s too frelling expensive, and the green and gold down front is Louisa Harding Grace Hand Beaded which etc.  And the other stuff is just . . . um . . . shiny?  And when a pattern book only costs £2 you only need to like one pattern in it. . . .

* * *

* This text will read ‘I’m running a little late because . . .’  Mind you, if she’s not running late, I’m in deep trouble.^  Today’s non-arriving text however informed me that her car had broken down and she was negotiating to borrow her parents’.

^ The hellhounds would like this.  It might mean I didn’t have time to FEED them before I left.  The hellterror, of course, would chew her way through the front door and come after me if I tried any such thing but I wouldn’t DARE.  Also feeding the hellterror is easy.  Open nearest tin, throw contents in general hellterror direction, add a handful of kibble if you’re feeling persnickety, and don’t stand too close or she’ll eat the toes off your shoes.  The hellhounds . . . it starts with cutting up the chicken scraps SMALL ENOUGH that Chaos, in particular, who has prehensile lips, can’t just hoover up the chicken, and you need to stir the kibble in really well because any that has not been touched by the magic chicken-stock wand will be instantly rejected as dry and tasteless and beneath delicate hellhound dignity.

Unfortunately for them, however, I had allowed time for the careful creation of appropriate hellhound comestibles.  It didn’t work though.  They still didn’t eat it.+  That look in Chaos’ eyes says:  if you didn’t mix it in so well I’d’ve at least eaten the chicken.

+ Do I have to bother to tell you that the hellterror ate hers?  No?  I didn’t think so.

** Moans of protest from the hellterror who is, furthermore, sitting on my feet, just to make sure I haven’t forgotten her.  YOU JUST ATE BREAKFAST TWO HOURS AGO.  YOU ARE NOT STARVING.  Also, sitting on my feet is counterproductive.  You are heavy.  You are obviously getting plenty to eat.^

^ I was out hurtling hellhounds recently.+   People frequently stop us to be goopy over them.  Mostly their admirers stick to telling me how beautiful they are, but occasionally someone wants to find it funny that we’re all skinny and leggy.  Hellhounds are also now quite grey in the face so we’re all skinny, leggy and old.  But some dork came up to us the other day and was in grave danger of rupturing himself over the sheer hilarity of owners who look like their dogs.++  I stared him in the eye.  I have a bull terrier at home, I said.  I did not mention the ‘mini’ part.  He stopped laughing and edged away prudently.

+ In my life I can always say I was out hurtling hellhounds recently.  And hellterror.

++ I wondered what his frelling problem is.  I have no idea, of course, but he was a big flashy maybe forty-ish dork, and looked a bit like someone who was maybe rolling into midlife crisis and in a mood to be snarky about some post-menopausal hag who is refusing to stay home with her TV and her memories but is out cluttering up the pavement wearing jeans, All Stars and long hair, and walking her dogs like she thinks she still has a purpose in life.  I don’t like big flashy forty-ish dorks who think looming over me and being scornful is a fun thing to do.#

# Speaking of testosterone poisoning, yesterday I was creeping up the hill to the mews in Wolfgang, which little journey is another of those absolutes in my life, going at 30 mph which happens to be the speed limit.  And I was passed by five motorcycles.  FIVE.  Streaking past, whing whing whing whing whing.  What the what the what the I can’t even.  And there is all this bushwa about how cars are supposed to be careful of motorcycles.  I don’t know if this is nationwide or just around here, but there are posters all over the landscape saying THINK BIKE.  How about if BIKERS think at all?  I’ve been a motorcyclist, as long-term readers of this blog know, and it is absolutely true that people driving cars can be amazingly stupid and dangerous about bikers and this is a large part of the reason I stopped driving a bike while I still had all my body parts intact . . . but the frelling majority of the motorcycle accidents around here are caused by male bikers being assholes:  yesterday at least I was only going 30.  Being passed by some dinglenut on a 60 mph road that is only just two lanes wide with hedgerows on either side . . . going around a curve?  Yes.  I have.

*** Ecstasy of the Hellterror.

† Except, of course, hellhound bowls, since they haven’t eaten anything.

Surviving Easter

 

Peter’s had another fall.

I went to the Easter Vigil at the monks’ last night and it wasn’t over till after eleven—and then they fed us tea and cakes.*  So I got home late and it took me forever to wind down** and eventually went to bed late even for me.***

I’d left Peter a note that I wasn’t going to make our 11:30 pick up—since the stroke he walks into town to buy a newspaper, he’s old-fashioned like that, and I appear with Wolfgang and a backseat full of hellcritters at the appointed hour and take all of us down to the mews.  My note said that I’d ring him.

I rang him at 11:30, after about half an hour of evolving wakefulness, swearing and caffeine, and said I could be at the pick-up point at 12:30.  I’m not coming, he said.  What? I said.  I’ve had a fall, he said:  It’s okay.

IT’S NOT OKAY.  WHY DIDN’T YOU ******* RING ME.

I knew you went to bed late last night, he said.  I didn’t want to bother you.

AAAAAAAAAAAUGH.  WHY DO I TAKE POOKA TO BED WITH ME?  WHY DOES SHE LIE ON THE EDGE OF THE BOOKSHELF RIGHT BY THE BED HEAD, RIGHT NEXT TO MY ALARM CLOCK, SO I CAN’T POSSIBLY NOT HEAR HER IF SHE RINGS?†  LIKE, IF YOU GET IN TROUBLE AND COULD USE MY HELP?††

It’s okay, said Peter.  I’m fine.

Well . . . as falls in the bath when you’re eighty-six years old go, yes, he’s pretty healthy.  He still looks like an extra from one of the battle scenes in BRAVEHEART.  Meanwhile I was down to sing at St Margaret’s tonight†††, it’s Easter, and—I’ve told you this, haven’t I?—the Master of Music, whom we shall call Mr Bach‡, has decreed that there shall be no more than THREE singers, so if one of us doesn’t show it’s a bit conspicuous.  So I viewed my gory husband‡‡ with disfavour‡‡‡ and declared I was going to church as scheduled.

Aloysius had sent us our list of six—six—songs gallantly early in the week, which chiefly gave me time to freak out.§  Also there have been one or two other things going on.  And then I got there tonight and after having a brisk lesson in being a roadie (‘plug that in there—and that in there—and that in there’§§) I discovered that what we were performing only bore a genetically modified family resemblance to the YouTube links.  Arrrrrgh.  Oh, and I’d’ve made a hole in the line up if I’d cancelled?  There were only two of us singers.  ARRRRRGH.§§§

But there were big handfuls of chocolate eggs on all the little café tables that we gather around at the evening service.  Eat up, said Buck.  I don’t want any left.  Hey, singing in front of an audience burns a lot of calories.#  And there was roast chicken when I got home.

Happy Easter.##

* * *

* Banana coconut cake to die for, just by the way.  I’m going to ask Alfrick if there’s a recipe.^  There was also hot chocolate for anyone who can deal with dairy.  Siiiiiiiigh.

^ Alfrick’s a good cook.  Experienced in producing lavish spreads for mobs with varying dietary requirements.

** Christ is risen, you know.  The Anglicans raise him Saturday night which is fine with me—I’m not invested in the three days thing, I want the Friday part over as fast as possible—plus driving.  That the Saviour lives is exciting enough but driving a car really winds me up.

*** . . . Never mind.

† That is, barks.

†† And it’s worse than that.  He fell in the bath.  The bath apparatus the NHS physios tried to set up didn’t work with him in this bath, so they took it away again.  And he has insisted on going on having his bath in the morning when I’m not here rather than the evening when I am.  It was clear I wasn’t going to win this battle and purposeless bloodshed does not appeal, so I let it go.  Even knowing it was an accident waiting to happen, it’s not like I could lock the bathtub when I left at night.  But  . . . he fell in the bath having spent most of half an hour trying to get out of it first.  He fell in the bath having spent most of half an hour trying to get out of it with HIS phone within easy reach.

I’m running away from home to join a convent.^

^ Also, the Nightmare of Hellhound Digestion continues.+

+ And by current indications Darkness is planning on dragging me all over Hampshire again later tonight.  Joy.

††† I know Easter is supposed to be pretty epic, but . . . it is.  And bouncing between St Margaret’s and the monks for the last few days has rendered me even more la-la-la-la than I would be anyway:  if you’re going to engage with the Easter story, it’s going to rip you up pretty extensively, and I’m old to be learning graphic new skills.

Generally speaking I find St Margaret’s less embarrassing because it’s less formal.  But in the can’t-take-me-anywhere category . . . Good Friday at the monks includes the abbot and some candle-holders and incense-swingers doing an abbreviated Stations of the Cross which finishes with everybody else queuing up to genuflect and kiss the cross that was sequentially unwrapped during the Stations.  My turn:  I managed the genuflection without killing anyone but I misjudged the bending-forward business and managed to impale my face on the sticky-out bits of the cross.  Wounded by God.  Good . . . grief.  Fortunately the cross was being held by two stalwart young men, possibly in expectation of someone like me, so no damage done.  Except to my face, of course.

At least I managed to cross myself a couple of times at more or less the right moment without poking myself in the eye—or in my neighbour’s.  I’ve made a few hopeless attempts to find out what the actual system is at a high-Anglican service but since it apparently varies from church to church and priest to priest anything google might be able to teach me would turn out to be wrong.  It would also be helpful if the actual order of service books produced BY the monks for their attendees were frelling accurate.    And why does everyone else in the congregation seem to know which bits to ignore?

‡ PDQ.  I am not a fan of a Master of Music who limits singers to three.

‡‡ Head wounds BLEED.  Also he’s on Warfarin.  Whimper.

‡‡‡ Georgiana was here this afternoon, and in a family notorious for its bossy women we may be the two bossiest.  And Peter stood up to both of us with aplomb and dispatch^ so he probably is okay.

^ Including things like chaining himself to the railing rather than be taken to A&E.

§ Also . . . I rather like one of them.  Oh God I am losing my musical integrity.

§§ I think the church’s bass amp is about as old as I am.

§§§ Tonight’s other singer, Janey, who has been singing at St Margaret’s for many years, said, somewhat grimly, in response to my craven desire for sheet music, that learning any given song is of limited usefulness on the night since every leader performs it differently.  She picked up the lyric-only sheet of our first song.  This one, she said.  Aloysius plays it one way.  Buck does it another.  PDQ does it yet another.  Samantha another.  Are there any other leaders?  They do it differently too.

Oh.

# And my husband seems to have hidden the GIGANTIC chocolate egg another branch of the family brought us on Saturday.  I have to get my ellipsoidal chocolate fix somehow.

## Although the Darkness situation is still outstanding.  And I’m trying to decide if I should wake Peter up before I leave and make sure nothing new has swollen or developed bruising and his pupils are still the same size as each other.

KES, 127

ONE TWENTY SEVEN

Silverheart’s light went out like a bonfire that had had a bucket of water thrown over it—there was even a burning smell.  I let my aching arm drop;  my mouth fell open of its own accord.  Mr TS wrenched his horse away from Monster, standing up in his stirrups and shouting.  I could guess that the rustling, hustling noises around me now were of the people I’d seen forming up . . . to do what?  There was a somewhat similar shout and seethe on my left—Galinglud, perhaps, if Mr TS was Tulamaro.

But no one shouted at me.  No one told me what to do.  Nobody told me to follow them.  The muted but urgent noises were leaving a little empty space around me.  I didn’t know where Murac was and it seemed . . . unsuitable, somehow, to turn and look.  What if he was right there, staring at me?  What if he wasn’t?  I put Silverheart carefully back into her scabbard and straightened my back.  I knew what was supposed to happen:  I could recognise a story reaching its climax when I saw it.  I just wished I was seeing it the usual way:  from a desk chair, staring at a computer screen, my hands clamped around a cup of tea, and my vocabulary having just run away to join the circus.

Only the faint vibration through the reins as he tongued his bit and a silky-rough lash across my bare legs when he swished his tail told me that Monster was maybe a trifle worried also.  But he stood perfectly still, ears pricked.  Adventurer’s horse.  Warrior’s horse.

Defender’s horse.

I wanted to say something funny or throw-away, like oops, or oh well.  But I didn’t have the heart.  I hate letting other people down.   I’m still haunted by Norah’s second daughter’s tenth birthday, when I’d promised her a hot-off-the-press copy of ZOMBIE MACAROONS, published by the tiny indie house that occupied a corner of my then-publisher’s giganticonormous offices  . . . and forgot.  I got it to her the next day, but it’s not the same, is it?  Especially when you’re ten.

It somehow wasn’t making it any better right now that I was pretty sure no one in my immediate vicinity was ten years old today.

Monster swished his tail again.

I was supposed to say something memorable and heroic, wasn’t I?  But with my vocabulary cleaning up after the performing elephants nothing occurred to me.  And my range of available quotations was limited.  Even when you’re curled up in your own bed with Joe the Doorman on guard downstairs and the need for heroism is limited it’s noticeable that Tolkien is short of valiant women.  ‘But no living man am I!’ drifted apologetically across my mind:  Eowyn had never been a satisfactory heroine because of that whole seeking-death-because-of-unrequited-love thing to which I had had a strong ‘spare me’ reaction even at the age of eleven.  “ ‘Beneath the Moon and under star/ she wandered far from northern strands, bewildered on enchanted ways/ beyond the days of mortal lands. . . .’ ”

‘Bewildered’ was certainly apropos.

I sat there, breathing, listening to my ragtag army lining up behind its useless Defender.  I had one hand on Silverheart’s hilt, one hand pretending to hold Monster’s reins.  I could feel the faint throb of my heartbeat in my throat, in my bare thighs against the saddle flaps, in the thin skin of my wrist and forearm inside Glosinda’s firm but gentle grasp.  My heart didn’t seem to be beating nearly as panic-strickenly fast as it should be, I thought.  Maybe it was tired of the whole ‘about to die’ situation.  About to die did seem to be grinding on rather.

Let me go out trying.

There were quite a few figures marching through the Gate, toward us, by now.  Some of them were on horseback.  Or on something-back.

I pulled Silverheart out of her scabbard again, with a satisfying ringing noise.  She understood her business:  she flared up immediately, lighting the harsh ugly empty slope in front of us.  The front ranks of the marching figures were disconcertingly outlined in gold, and I saw several swords drawn in answer, although none of them shone with their own light.

Let me go out trying.

“YAAAAAAAAAH!” I howled, wrapped my legs around as much of Monster’s barrel as I could reach and squeezed.  Warrior’s horse, Defender’s horse:  his rear end dropped and his hind legs drove us forward as if he was longing to plunge into battle.  You don’t expect a horse his size to be able to sprint;  the only reason I didn’t topple off the back end when he barrelled downhill toward the approaching troop was because I had a good handful of mane in my non-sword-holding hand.  And, faintly through the drumming of my huge horse’s huge hooves, the wind in my ears and the banging of my own heartbeat, I heard a YAAAAAAAAH behind me, and the clamor of another company—of my company—sending its horses into a gallop.

Emma Tupper’s Diary

 

 

I told you it had been reissued:  http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2014/02/13/dont-i-keep-trying-to-reinstate-short-wednesdays/  Almost any of Peter’s books, if you mention it suddenly and catch me off guard I will probably say, Oh, that’s one of my favourites!  But in Emma Tupper’s case I’m telling the truth.

Here’s a new review by its very own republisher:  http://smallbeerpress.com/not-a-journal/2014/04/16/reading-like-its-1971/ *

I was already distressingly near to grown up by 1971 and wasn’t hanging out in kids’ book sections any more.  I knew about Peter Dickinson, but I knew him for his rivetingly bizarre murder mysteries.  It would take several more years and a job at the children’s division of Little, Brown (as it then was), for me to learn what I had been missing.  L,B had the back catalogue of its colleague Atlantic Monthly Press on its shelves too . . . including Peter Dickinson’s kids’ books.  Including Emma Tupper.

If you haven’t read it yet, what are you waiting for?  You don’t have to be told a third time, do you?**

* * *

* I wish I’d grown up on a Scottish loch side.  ^

^ I’m keeping the five years in Japan though.

** Makes a good gift too.