Robin McKinley's Blog, page 26

Car

 

I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR  HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR I HAVE A CAR

I HAVE A CAR

I. HAVE. A. CAR.

I HAVE A CAR

I! HAVE! A! CAR!

. . . Erm.  Wolfgang’s home.  It’s been a long nine days.*  And, as I write this, it is sheeting out there.  I mean, yes, again, but while ground water levels will take months to settle down and there’s still serious water on the road in a few places around here**, we’d not had rain in over a week and I was reduced to watering plant pots yesterday.  It rained a little last night, tactfully between the time of the last hurtle and when we had to roll out for the walk*** home, but at the moment we’re back to the End of Days.

Oh yes and Feebledweeb made a third attempt this morning.   They will stop now, right?

* * *

* And I’m running out of underwear.  Tomorrow I am bringing a lot of dirty laundry to Peter’s about-to-be-very-tired washing machine.  I was not looking forward to ferrying dirty or clean but damp laundry back and forth by gigantic knapsack.

Meanwhile I will have a full car going back to the cottage tonight with the nine hundred and eleven apples from this week’s organic grocery delivery yesterday—I get through a lot of apples, and the hellterror is not averse to offering modest assistance—the fifty-six knitting magazines I’m keeping from this month’s haul—I am a knitting magazine junkie, and I read a lot of them on the sofa at the mews—the several additional knapsacks, sweaters, pairs of gloves and socks that have accumulated down here for some reason, and the hundred and twelve books that did not make the Book Rec cut and need to go into the Oxfam Box by the door at the cottage.

** Including one stretch that is incredibly badly semi-marked and on a dark corner, and why no one has taken out the invisible barrier like Grond at the gates of Gondor for simply not being able to see it and possibly for the character flaw of not being local and therefore being unaware of neighbourhood booby traps, I cannot imagine.  Fortunately it’s only a little back road—although it’s one of those little back roads that is your only plausible choice from point A to point B—so wild veering into the centre of the road and into the path of oncoming traffic . . . can mostly be accomplished in the absence of oncoming traffic.  Even so.  I think I tweeted a county headline that the latest guesstimate about repairing Hampshire’s roads after the floods is that the price tag is going to hit £36K.    I believe it too:  not only are there potholes the size of Zeppelins but a lot of roads are simply narrower than they used to be, aside from invisible barriers protecting deep water, because the shoulders have disintegrated.  And what’s left of the road surface is like driving on stucco.  I bet tyre- and shocks-manufacturer shareholders are holding champagne parties.  I hope the list of urgently-needed mending is comprehensive.

*** Between the frelling thirty-pound knapsack and the fact that there are three of them it is a walk, although the hellterror does a fair amount of hurtling on her own recognizance.  Which brings me to a moral dilemma.  The hellterror adores the late-night strolls back to the cottage, and is, for her, surprisingly well-mannered.^  The hellhounds slouch along doing passive-aggressive sulking^^ but it’s been a year and a half, guys, get over yourselves.  And late at night is the only time it’s worth the risk taking all three out together.  I wonder if . . . it’s a pity Wolfgang can’t get himself home and the thirty-pound knapsack, and let the rest of us amble after.

^ I am really really really hoping it’s not all the frelling false pregnancy.  Which I keep hoping isn’t happening but—moan—her breasts are slightly swollen, yesterday and today, so it probably is.  Only someone who spends a lot of time rubbing her tummy would notice, but I do and I have.  She hasn’t started shredding newspapers and hiding under the sofa—she doesn’t really fit under the sofa any more—so maybe she can have the imaginary puppies imaginarily and get on with life??  But it’s been pleasant having an only semi-manic imp of the perverse about the place.  I’ve been thinking I need to take her training slightly more seriously . . . no, no, not the walking quietly on heel and the perfect recall:  the paw-offering and the playing dead.  The useful stuff.  The stuff, it must be admitted, that happens on the kitchen floor at the cottage last thing before closing her down for the night and I go upstairs for a nice hot bath and a dropping of reading material in it.  This is not, I realise, optimum training timing, but it has two things going for it:  (a) it happens at all and (b) I get a good laugh at the end of the day and on bad days this is very welcome.

^^ I am very, very, very tired of sibling rivalry, or whatever the doodah it is.  Chaos would rather be friends but Darkness is convinced she’s the antichrist and Chaos, for all his buffoonery and in-your-faceness, when in doubt, defers to Darkness.  Night before last Chaos forgot himself so far as to play tug of war with Pav and the stick she was prancing around flourishing.  There was much mock-growling and tail-wagging and I was thrilled . . . till Darkness, who had been lagging behind at the very end of his extending lead, suddenly leaped into full sprint and went past me like a cheetah after a gazelle.  I realised a third of a second before he bloody well had me over that he wasn’t going to stop, which gave me just enough instinctive time to yell and hit the end of the lead going the other way.  You colossal little ratbag.  Arrrrrgh.

Book recs: THE GRIMM LEGACY by Polly Shulman; FROST HOLLOW HALL by Emma Carroll

 

I need a night not mostly moaning about my stupid life.*  So let’s have a couple of book recs.**

I have tended to avoid books for the younger end of YA;  I’m missing the gene.  I can engage with picture books and I can engage with YA, but there are vast swathes in the middle that are to me in a foreign language.  Especially that extra-confusing subcategory of young-adult characters written for a slightly younger than young-adult audience.   But I’m a sucker for a Kindle promo bargain*** and I have bought several over the last few months telling myself that I’m broadening my horizons.  That’s a good thing, right?†

Here are two books that will amuse, divert and cheer you up as you lie on the sofa covered in hellcritters and suffering from germs, rivers where there used to be roads, or, possibly, aggravated carlessness.

Elizabeth’s favourite teacher sees her being kind to a homeless woman and shortly after suggests that she apply for a job at the New York Circulating Material Repository.  Which is like a library.  Sort of.  The interview is a little bizarre . . . but not nearly as bizarre as finding out that the Grimm Legacy, which is held on one of the mysteriously locked floors of the Repository, contains items like worn-out dancing slippers, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and nasty-tempered talking mirrors.  So far so enchanted.  And certain carefully vetted customers are allowed to borrow these things–the Repository is, after all, Circulating.  But someone is stealing some of the most valuable objects—or draining them of their magic.

It’s Sunday afternoon and Tilly is fidgeting around the house because her Pa is due home from working on the railroads—it’s 1881—and she’s eager to see him, as well as eager for the wages he’ll be bringing, so there will be enough food again, and they can pay their back rent.  But there’s a knock on the door and it’s not Pa, but Will the butcher’s son who seems to be sweet on Tilly—she doesn’t like him at all, no she doesn’t—and dares her to come ice-skating with him.  Her mother and sister nearly push her out the door but she’s piqued by the dare.  But Will is taking her to Frost Hollow Hall, where the young heir died by drowning ten years ago—and where, when Tilly falls through the too-thin ice, she is saved by—a ghost?

Both of these books are page-turners in their different ways.  Who can Elizabeth trust?  Is the thievery an inside job?  And what (or possibly who) is the gigantic bird she keeps catching terrifying glimpses of?  Tilly gets a job as a maid at Frost Hollow Hall, where they have trouble keeping servants because of the peculiar goings-on since Kit’s death, because her family needs the wages;  but also because she dreams of Kit, who looks at her so sadly:  Now it’s your turn to save me, he says.

Oh, and PS:  One of my pet peeves about way too many books written for the frelling girlie market is that it’s all about the romance, the Hot Guy or Guys, and there’s way too much flirting and swooning and obsessing and smooching.   I know I’m old and everything, but I’ve always been like this:  smooching is great but I WANT THE STORY.  Both these books have very nice understated romances and while Will is pretty hot, Tilly is not the moony type—and the scene where Elizabeth proves (by satisfyingly magical means) she is not in love with the obvious Hot Guy is one of my favourite bits of the book.  Hee hee hee hee hee.

* * *

* I am still a car-free zone and am beginning to suffer existential/automotive despair.  They’re now saying Saturday.  I’ve emailed Alfrick that assuming I pick Wolfgang up at the end of their working day I can probably still JUST ABOUT make it to my appointment with him.  But that’s assuming Wolfgang is ready to be picked up.  In the twenty-three years I’ve been using this garage they have consistently done rather better than their forecasts and I’m just not dealing with the current situation because it’s so unexpected.  Yes, I should have hired a car—but so much of my Car Life involves hellcritters in the back seat that I’m very reluctant to waste all that money on a car I can’t haul critters in.  I was 95% sure hellhounds and I would be hurtling out to Warm Upford today and coming home in Wolfgang.  I had my shoes on when I rang up.  And the world has been Dark and Tragic ever since I heard the dread word ‘Saturday’.

Also—just by the way—Feebledweeb came round again this morning.

On the other hand . . . Shiny New Carrier Company came through.  I checked ‘track your parcel’ at mmph o’clock this morning.  Nothing.  I checked it again at seven and at 8:30^.  Still nothing.^^  Then at 9:30—lo, there was a little pop-up box telling me that my parcel was on the road and due to arrive between 10:53 and 11:53 [sic].  And it DID.

I was all chirpy and delighted till I opened the parcel.  And discovered they’d screwed up my order. . . .

^ I may have mentioned that I am Not A Good Sleeper?

^^ And that I take Astarte the iPad to bed with me?

** People.  It is pathetic how (not) often I post book recs.  Nag me.  If I could get it through my tiny frantic mind that I’m not writing reviews^ I’m just saying this is a good read I might be able to bring myself to do it more often.

^ And risking SAYING THE WRONG THING.

*** And doesn’t frelling amazon know it.  ‘Other customers with your browsing history have bought . . . [HOT LINK WITH ADDED PHEROMONES]’

† Not when it involves finding excuses to buy more books.  Even cheap buy-it-FAST-before-we-put-the-price-back-up ones.

Ongoing

 

Yes.  Feebledweeb came back this morning.  There was a postcard through my door about my missing my scheduled pick-up.  I’m probably imagining the petulance.  I am not imagining, however, the incredibly long, annoying, would-be mollifying robot email from a critter-supply site I have ordered from for the first time because they sell a Critter Fur Bag that is supposed to protect your (possibly new) washing machine from the extremes of critter hair production.*   Cosy Paws and Fuzzy Tummies Ltd is using one of the shiny new carrier companies . . . which I’ve already had several emails from informing me that my order is creeping inexorably nearer but they’re not going to tell me how fast or anything . . . I have to be AT HOME to SIGN FOR IT and they will only make TWO attempts to deliver before it’s returned to sender, etc.  HOW THE FREAKING ARGLEBLARGING FRELL DO THESE COMPANIES STAY IN BUSINESS?  Apparently I’m supposed to be able to track it tomorrow, when it’s (maybe**) due for Delivery Attempt #1 but I don’t even know what that means.  If I sign on tonight/tomorrow morning at midnight oh one, will it tell me that the driver is at home having a beer in front of the Late Show?***  Will Astarte chirrup at me at 6 a.m.† when the parcel is loaded into the lorry?  Will tracking include a klaxon when the lorry passes the New Arcadia town limits?  Arrrrrgh.  And the Seriously Irritating Robot letter from the critter-supply site says, ooooooh please be nice to us, we’re trying really hard.††  Sure you are.  Change delivery companies.  Change to one that when you say ‘LEAVE THE SODBLASTED PACKET BEHIND THE GATE’ they leave it behind the gate and don’t require me to poke a touchscreen with a plastic stylus in a manner that not only looks nothing like my signature, but doesn’t look like anything remotely resembling anyone’s signature.

The garage started work on Wolfgang today.  I’m supposed to ring late tomorrow afternoon and see how they’re getting on.  The suspense is killing me.  I WANT MY MONKS.  I WANT MY MONKS.  I also have an appointment to talk to Alfrick before service Saturday night.  If I started walking Saturday morning I might get there in time, maybe they’d let me sleep in the porch . . . after all I’d have to bring the hellpack, they can’t keep their legs crossed for thirty six hours, we could keep each other warm. . . .

And I’ve probably decided on my new washing machine.  ::Gasp::  It’s a Miele.  You know what Mieles COST?!  But if you ask six random critter owners what washing machine will best stand up to the depredations of critter fur, they will speak in one voice:  IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT, GET A MIELE.†††

Um.  Ratbags.  Well, the hellhounds don’t eat much . . . and I could maybe buy fewer books and less yarn . . . .

And in other techie news:  My new phone machine appears to be working.‡  I can call out on it.  I can receive calls on it, even if the dargletching ring tone sounds like a drowning pigeon.  I can even pick up messages.  That’s all I can do.  At some point I will have to find out how to erase messages before the sorbligging Message Space fills up.  For some reason a number of people, having read the Are you sure it’s not Friday the 13th? blog post, starting with lecuyerv on the forum and for which thank you, have sent me a link to this:  http://xkcd.com/1343/   Yes.  Exactly.

* * *

* This:  http://www.washingnet.co.uk/en/animal-hair-filter-bag.html

But I didn’t buy it here.  If I’m going to be rude about the seller I’m not going to hang a link on the blog.  But I’ve heard of the site I ordered from, it has a good rep in critter-supply circles, and it had some happy customers reporting on the Fur Bag.

** There is some question about the depot being stolen by deranged djinns.  A little-known prediction of Nostradamus.

*** If there have been any djinn sightings?

† The drawbacks of taking your iPad to bed with you.  Remember to turn it off?  Are you kidding?

†† If we roll over will you rub our tummy?  —No.  I get enough tummy rubbing demands already.^  Humans have alarm clocks to get them up in the morning.  Hellcritters have tummy rubbing.  GUYS.  I’VE ONLY GOT TWO HANDS.  Darkness, who is his generation’s major tummy rubbee, however, does not acknowledge that this creates any sort of common ground with the hellterror.  You call that a tummy? he says.  At which point Chaos, who isn’t totally committed to tummy rubbing but does not want to be left out of anything, ducks under one of my arms, as I kneel blearily on the kitchen floor rubbing tummies while waiting for the frelling kettle to frelling boil, and knocks me over.

^ Also, I don’t like you.

††† Also, who knew that reading about washing machines could be fun?  http://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/about-whitegoodshelp-andy-trigg/

Miele is also, siiiiiiiigh, the top of the list by a margin of about seventy-three leagues at WHICH?

http://www.which.co.uk/

Although you have to join.  I’ve joined.  But nothing on earth will make me read an entire article on George Osborne.^ 

^ This comment will become obscure+ as soon as they put some other headline on their opening page.

+ I have a strange reluctance to use the word ‘obsolete’.  I think it’s very unfriendly of Bosch to stop making parts for a mere twenty-plus-year-old washing machine.  I bet Miele is still making parts for twenty-plus-year-old machines.^

^ At these prices, better had.

‡ Mrs Redboots

Um, I’m not quite sure why anybody buys an answering machine in this day and age – can’t you just record your message on 1571, which is what I do? . . . Of course, the huge downside is you have to remember to check the frelling thing, which I never do . . .

Um . . . pathological loathing of BT?^  BT, who, when applied to to turn the landline phone on at Third House declared that there was no cable to the house—the eighty-year-old house in the middle of town with the phone jack in the kitchen—and I would have to pay several hundred pounds to get one installed.  BT, who has insisted for nearly a decade that my problem with the upstairs phone at the cottage is to do with the house wiring and it will cost me several hundred pounds if they send an engineer, even though their own frelling linemen, laughing like drains at the state of the cul-de-sac’s common wiring, says that it is BT.  Yes, it’s true that my series of cheap, simple-minded previous phone machines were BT, but in the first place they were crap and they never pretended to be anything other than crap and in the second place a phone machine is a discrete thing that sits on your desk/table/electric keyboard/floor, it has a beginning and an ending, it has edges, and for that matter you can smudge it with burning sage if you want to drive the BT demons out.  I’m not going to use 1571.  It’s too personal.

Oh, and Peter uses 1571.  And never remembers to pick up his messages.

^ That postmistress didn’t retire.  She went to work for BT.

Feebledweeb

 

Once upon a time there was a carrier company. . . . Let’s call it Feebledweeb.  It’s been around a long time.  I had a lively and robust, not to say ranting, dislike of it over twenty years ago, before I left the States.  Before I discovered the true range of global carrier-company incompetence, creative perversity and aggressive unhelpfulness.

Feebledweeb made both of us crazy—although Peter bears crazy better than I do—back at the old house, when we were living out in the sticks of the sticks and there was a lot more hard copy in publishing than there is now.  Feebledweeb at the time was, I believe, the only carrier that would pick stuff up in the sticks of the sticks of southern England and deliver it, more or less safely and in one piece, to a Manhattan highrise.  And vice versa.  Maybe.  With a following wind.

They did, however, make their services coughcoughcoughcough as difficult and unservicelike as possible.  They toyed with the concept of timed arrivals, and even at that they could never be pinned down to anything more exacting than before noon or after noon.  But that was still better than ‘some time in April, and if you’re out, we’re going to reschedule you without telling you for some date which may or may not be at least six months in the future, oh, you have a deadline?  You should have thought of that before you took your dogs on that totally gratuitous walk, shouldn’t you?  And what do you mean by being so self-indulgent and unprofessional as having dogs that need walking in the first place?  We may not reschedule you at all, you’re not our type.’  Which system is what they reverted to.  All day, any day, whatever, if you don’t like it you can hitchhike to the coast and swim to Manhattan.  But being cruelly imprisoned by a time frame of before or after noon was giving their drivers palpitations and random crying jags and Feebledweeb are totally committed to employee welfare.

Snarl.

And then Peter and I moved into town.  And there seems to have been rather a boom in carriers, some of whom are no worse than dire and unreliable.  But Feebledweeb, unfortunately, seems still to control the frelling transatlantic routes.

Now it will amaze you to hear this, but I am not the perfect client.  I want to believe that I mostly behave myself with Merrilee, but Merrilee’s subrights department has little cause to love me, and it would not stun me with flabbergastery that there’s a doll hanging by the neck in a corner of the subrights department with a pin through her heart and a banner reading ‘Robin McKinley’.  I lose things.  I don’t remember ever having seen things.  When I send things back it turns out I signed the wrong pages, or didn’t sign enough of them*, or I didn’t put the date on when I should have or did put the date on when I shouldn’t.  And then New Arcadia’s post office exploded and was removed and rebuilt using reject Lego in the back of the village grocery, you’re no longer allowed to bring your critters with you to keep you amused while you wait in the endless queue**, and I, having been a borderline*** post office user since I moved over here†, became, um, pathological.

Re-enter Feebledweeb.  Who will come to my house and fetch my botched, ill-signed documents, and cart them off to a subrights department across the Water, where they will be the cause of screaming and nervous breakdowns—only some of which will be because I screwed up (again).

Recently we’ve been having a nice little extended torment trying to get Feebledweeb to do what it says on the tin/envelope.  Subrights and I got all excited—briefly—because according to Feebledweeb’s web site, subrights could include a prepaid return envelope with the documents I’m supposed to deal with in some way other than the way I will deal with them, and I can just pop them in the return envelope and post them in an ordinary post box, and Feebledweeb will take it from there.

Yes, they will.  They will deliver it back to me again with large red marks and seals all over it declaring that I am a liar and a cheat and that I haven’t paid them and their dog is going to pee on my shoes††.  We gambolled through this amusing cycle, I think, three times.

Okay.  The next plan of action is that we are going to revert to the earlier system of their coming to my house to pick up the envelope of mangled documents.

Feebledweeb were supposed to come last Wednesday between ten and two [sic].

Nothing happened.  Nobody came between ten and two and there were no postcards through my door when I returned after belated gratuitous critter-hurtling [see above].

Subrights emailed me anxiously that they had spoken to Feebledweeb again and Feebledweeb would now come this Wednesday between ten and two.

Monday I received a phone call from a very pleasant, very fluent young man with a very strong Indian accent, confirming that Feebledweeb was going to be fetching a parcel from me today—Tuesday.  Er, I said.  Wednesday.  Tuesday, said the young man firmly.  Okay, I said.  Tuesday.  What time?  Noon to three pm, he said.  Fine, I said, in fact, great, and wrote it down.††

Ten minutes later the phone rang again.  This time it was a woman with an English accent.  Confirming that Feebledweeb is picking up a parcel from you tomorrow, she said.  Yes, I said, between noon and three pm.  Certainly not! said the woman.  You can ring up tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. and they will give you your allocated time slot.  But— I said weakly, I have just been talking to someone at your call centre in India . . .

Ring tomorrow at nine, commanded the woman.  We never give out advance time slots.‡

I was downstairs and putting my tea water on at eight forty five this morning, I hope you’re impressed.  At 8:59 I rang the number the woman had given me.  Another woman answered and asked for my tracking number.  I gave it to her, watching an unmarked white van backing up the cul de sac and stopping in front of the cottage.  We have no record— began the woman, and there was a knock on the door.  Excuse me, I said, hope flaring in a sharp uncomfortable way, there is someone at the door.

I threw the door open . . . and there was a man in a Feebledweeb hoodie.  YAAAAAAAAAY,  I said, and thrust my envelope upon him.  I may have said one or two things . . . particularly because this is a guy I know.  Several of the regular drivers for the various carriers are regular enough that us (regular) customers say hi when we see them on the street.  FEEBLEDWEEB MAKES ME FRELLING NUTS, I may have said.  The guy held up his hands (my envelope in one of them), grinning.  You are not alone, he said.

He departed.  I picked up the phone and discovered . . . the woman had cut me off.  Never mind.  The package had gone.  And she rang back to say that the driver had just confirmed pick up and tracking number and all was well.

Five hours later I received an email from the subrights department saying that they had just got off the phone from Feebledweeb, re-verifying that one of their agents will pick up my envelope tomorrow, Wednesday, some time between ten and two. . . .

* * *

* I start to lose the will to live after about the ninety-third copy.  Why does the president of Dormidalump Multimedia Cupcakes and Related Pastry’s wife’s brother’s assistant’s hamster need a copy of the contract anyway?  I’m not sure I like the idea of CHALICE being turned into singing apple strudel, even if Merrilee did get a paragraph in there about how they had to use honey.  I should have held out for baklava . . . but that still doesn’t explain the hamster.

** It seems to me very sad that Pav may never have the fabulous experience of waiting in an endless post office queue.

*** Borderline as in personality

† THE POSTMISTRESS HATED ME.  SHE DID.  She also retired some years ago, but THE TRAUMA REMAINS.

†† Note that (a) the payment for this interesting process is coming out of the money that passes through Merrilee’s hands on my behalf and (b) apparently even if they believed they had been paid . . . they would still deliver it back to me again.  Because they can’t read.  Or because they can’t design forms that are readable.

††† He then asked me where I was from and acknowledged that he was Indian and calling from India. The thing that interests me though is that these overseas call centres have a very bad rep, which is mostly well earned, but allowing for the fact that Feebledweeb is messing him over as well as messing me over, the phone line was clearer than mine to Peter often is and he was intelligent and articulate and able to answer questions . . . off the sheet of bad info they had given him, but hey.

‡  Of course not.  OF COURSE NOT.

In medias res

 

Let me see, where were we?  Well, where was I . . .

I still have a dead car.  I rang up the garage this afternoon and most of the parts have arrived . . . but not all of them.  Of course.  This is how it goes.  The flusterdamitter is still en route from Enceladus* and won’t be here till Wednesday.  Or Thursday.  Whimper.

The hellpack and I stream** up and down main street on foot, pitter patter pitter patter, to and from the mews.***  I am poised to try to rent a car if Peter wants me to . . . but I’m not going to unless he does.  The worst of the week is over:  I’ve already missed my singing lesson.

And I have a definitively dead washing machine.  The repairman’s wife, who is also his secretary and office manager, rang back today to say that the necessary part is obsolete.  Sigh.  Meanwhile I had had a look on line for washing machines and there aren’t any that say HAS EXTRA-STRENGTH FILTER.†  CAN STAND UP TO THREE HAIRY DOGS.  I have asked Mrs Repairman to ask her husband if he can recommend one.  Meanwhile when I contemplate the likelihood of my carrying large knapsacks of dirty/clean laundry up and down main street in the near future the idea of a rental car starts to look pretty good.

* * *

* They relocated the factory because those cold water jets make cooling all that molten steel^ a snap.  Also native labour is cheap.

^ As if they made cars out of steel any more.  HAhahahahahahahahaha.  But Enceladus’ surface contains substantial deposits of rmmfglorple, which makes really great Car Plastic.

** New Arcadia is mostly not streaming any more, but down by the river there are great chunks of the path missing where the water has undermined it till it collapsed.  There’s at least one spot where you have to leap, and for some reason you don’t see as many pushchairs^ on that path as you used to.  The river is still really high all along its length and at the most exciting point it’s broken up through actual paving slabs, where an overstressed tributary is joining the main flow and it’s gushing out across the path and torrenting down the little hill built over the confluence.  It’s strong enough to wash away small children and unwary dogs, and the hellterror, who is a bit of a delicate flower for a bullie, doesn’t like it much.  You might have thought legs that short couldn’t do a decent passage^^, but you’d be wrong.  But the look I get nearly burns through denim.

The dog-encounter stories just keep on however, and we’re trapped in town at present.  Saw what is possibly the nastiest of our local dogs again a few days ago—off lead of course—this thing is totally known to be dog aggressive.  I was out with Pav, fortunately, not the hellhounds, saw dog and murder-worthy owner.  No-jury-would-convict-me owner looked at us, glanced around for his vicious off lead brute . . . and then kept on coming!  ARRRRRRRRRRGH!  —Pav and I crossed the road.

My most recent meltdown, however, was a day or two before that.  I’m not the only near relation with dogs at the mews.  We’ve had mostly minor encounters with the worst offenders but one of these is a border collie type—it’s either a crossbred or a very badly bred border collie—who is the kind of aggressive-manic that gives border collies a bad name^^^.  It’s frequently loose, of course.  Arrrrrrgh.  The other day Pav and I were coming back from our afternoon hurtle, came through the gate, and there was that criminally idiot owner surrounded by her three dogs, one harmless Lab, one semi-harmless Lab . . . and this border collie.  To give her what little credit she’s due, she saw us and did put them all on lead, and they trailed her across the drive and into the big garden that belongs to her father/mother/uncle/halfsister/secondcousintwiceremoved . . . and then she deliberately dropped the leads.

And as Pav and I walked past the wide, entirely open mouth of that garden, the border collie just went for us—trailing its useless lead.  I had time to pick Pav up—just.  The no-jury-would-convict-me-for-this-one-either is screaming her head off and the dog is, of course, ignoring her.  It’s growling and snapping and making little leaps at Pav, who is comfortably folded up chest-high in my arms~ and even allowing for the situation this is a mean looking dog.  It ran away as its owner came after it—she didn’t say a word to me of course—and have I mentioned that a lot of what used to be the parkland around the Big Pink Blot has sheep on it?

But we were even more of a draw than the sheep.  Once it had lost its owner it came after us again.  It was not willing, fortunately, to attack a human, so we strolled the rest of the way back to Peter’s—I’m not quite up to walking briskly clutching thirty pounds of hellterror awkwardly to my chest~~ —with it circling and snarling. . . .

And there’s not a thing I can do about it, not really.  The police don’t care.  The dog warden has most of southern England to patrol.  And the family the idiot is visiting . . . well, let’s simplify the politics of cooperative ownership and say they have seniority.  Which I assume is why no one else has ever complained . . . about the dog crap that loose unsupervised dogs tend to leave about the place, for example.

::is beyond words:: ~~~

^ Strollers

^^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqaQ6SnqAtI

^^^ I know that Cocker spaniels are supposed to be the top of the bitey dogs list, but I and several generations of my dogs have been nipped by far more border collies.  It’s not frelling all herding instinct.

~ There are advantages to the little short legs.  She weighs nearly twice what Hazel did, but Hazel was a whippet with legs that went on and on.  Upon similar occasions it would have been better if I could have hung her around my neck, but there was never quite time.

~~ The funny thing, if I’d been in a mood to appreciate it, is how laid back Pav was about the whole thing.  Maybe because she was already out of reach by the time the marauder arrived?  But she peered down with interest and no alarm whatsoever.  At least having her relaxed made her easier to hang onto.  She can be quite challenging in this regard when she’s in LEMME AT ’EM mode.

~~~ Which is a bad thing in a professional writer.

*** During the day we go down to the mews in shifts—I was bringing Pav down at lunchtime when we met Mr Notorious Evil Ratbag—but we do all go home collectively after midnight.  Speaking of challenging, trying to pick up crap when you have not merely three leads to deal with but a heavy knapsack throwing your blasted balance off . . . and last night Pav’s extending-lead spring failed.  I’m a little amazed we all got home in one piece.  There may have been language.

† Preferably one that does not exist suspended in a reservoir of dirty water two inches from the floor which you have to bail out spoonful by spoonful because you can’t get a container of any size under the frelling hatch.

From house to home, Part 4 – guest post by Rachel

 

Did I mention that PB was selling his house? This was a large four-bedroomed section of a Georgian house which has been inhabited by himself, two of his delightful sons, and occasional tenants. Those of you familiar with Georgian architecture will immediately think “large, beautifully-proportioned rooms”. Those of you who know a particular type of man will think “infinite junk store”.

His house sale was trapped between lawyers, but in the interim one of his sons (tall, good-looking and clean) came to stay with us for a few days. PB immediately thrust him into work, moving interesting and important items from his house to mine (there seems to have been a magic portal at some point on the road where interesting and important items transformed into something quite different).

You may wonder why I was so emphatic about son’s cleanliness. As I mentioned before, the new house has one avocado bathroom. Which contains the single (avocado, obviously) loo that had to service three adults and a teenager. And no shower. So the clean and good-looking son had to maintain his status with frequent baths. I would arrive home to a pleasant fragrance, a waft of steam and a sense of tightly-crossed legs.

The requirement for a second loo increased its importance. You will remember the space under the stairs. Well, a hole was put through its wall. And a new sewer was dug. This is extremely exciting. I am ashamed to admit that it had not occurred to me that a new loo meant a new sewer and another inspection pit and all these other things that take a ridiculous amount of time and all you get out of it is an apparently empty flowerbed. Here is another picture of that space. There is a pipe! A pipe! Coming through the wall! Ready for a loo to be fitted.

The thick line on the wall on the right is a massive slab of insulation. The pipes are going to run along the top of it. There is also insulation on the left-hand side, underneath the plaster, but not so much, because it’s not semi subterranean.

You can see the full glory of the insulation in this photo. It’s not just insulation. It’s also stairs. Real stairs that you can stand on. And a newly built wooden floor. Those reclaimed planks have been reused (one of them – I’m not saying which one – is in fact a piece of skirting board. It’s OK. It’s on a solid concrete floor). The stairtreads themselves were taken from the old staircase cum ladder. You will also recognise that familiar orange wire of an extension lead running up the wall. Yes, we haven’t quite got as far as lighting.

As proof that gods do play dice (or if they don’t, they have an exquisite sense of retribution), his moving date was the day before the party (it should not have been, but it was). A day on which he was also fixing someone’s boiler and my daughter had a day off school. I was not prepared to sacrifice the planned day with my daughter cooking party food and clearing boxes out of the sitting-room to pack boxes in his house while he repaired boilers.

To do the man credit, he was sitting up the night before, installing stuff in the space below the stairs. A space I now feel that we can honour with the name “loo”. Look. It has vital porcelain equipment. It has a radiator. It even has a roll of loo paper. The more acute among you, gentle readers, will have spotted that to take this photograph, I must have been standing outside the loo. Yes. It doesn’t actually have a front wall. Or a door. There is of course a door between you and the rest of the house (the one with the cat hole in it), but I did feel that guests at the house-warming might require a little more privacy than that. And possibly (given that the party was going to be an evening event) a light. I knew that we could illuminate the loo tastefully with candles in jars, but the stairs would be rather more difficult. Torches handed out at the door perhaps? One of those stick on LED things? Hanging lanterns? We would cope. Somehow.

While he went off to pack up his house and mend a boiler, I started clearing the sitting room. It is really amazing about the transformative powers of cardboard boxes. You put in a standard quantity of delightful treasured items. You take out, a proportion of total rubbish that you cannot understand why you didn’t throw away years ago; a proportion of useful items that look a bit tatty and a proportion of treasured objects that have been irretrievably damaged and must be thrown away. If you’re very fortunate, there will be one item in each box that you are very very pleased to see again and hurriedly find a space for. The only exception to this rule is boxes of books. It’s like coffee. The amount of books that come out of a box bears no relation to the amount that went in and is in inverse proportion to the shelf space available.

I also got the house ready for the party. Here is a beautiful piece of cardboard that I have cut to fill up the hole in the floor where the hall tiles have been removed and not yet replaced.

While my daughter and I tested the quality of our new Italian oven (remember the oven) and beat up dips and taste-tested cheesy biscuits, PB packed the last remnants of his house up, and discovered all the items that his sons had left idly in the hall, the back bedroom, the front bedroom, the sitting room, the hall and the cellar. He arrived back, discarded his loaded van (so abruptly that his son’s bike was left on the roofrack for three days) then converted himself into SuperBuilder. This involves a costume consisting of a pair of sturdy trousers with knee-pads and multiple pockets and a paint-spattered shirt. SuperBuilder may be seen swinging around on lengths of dangling flex, aiming drilldrivers at escaping screws. He works without food with the aid of a plasterer’s lamp and an infinite supply of extension cables and power tools.

He sawed, he drilled, he hammered, he built. And lo, just before the party, we had a loo that you would be proud (or, at least, willing) to use.

There is a door. It may be rather narrower than our initial plan, but that was merely due to the washbasin being slightly more extravagant than our original ideas. There is a wall. There is a door handle. There is even a lock. And if that was not adequate, observe the fabulous light quality in the stairwell. It is coming from an actual light. With a shade. Carefully chosen (smother your laughter please) to co-ordinate with the tall rectangular shape of the space.

We have lift off. We have house-warming. We have perfectionist builder being concerned about the quality of his floor joists due to the number of people standing on them. (They did nobly.) And just to give you a full flavour of the party, I will give you a close-up of the door. The careful writing that notifies the casual visitor to its function (comments that it says “Zoo” will be treated with the contempt they deserve). This was created with quick-drying nail polish after PB was concerned about the clothes of visitors brushing against anything less durable. Note the subtle, distressed finish; a texture created from the ripping off of plywood and fake wood panels from the original pantry door. I believe that it gives off a sophisticated design ambience of a little French estaminet. I’d better believe this. I think we will be living like this for some time to come.

KES, 122

 

ONE TWENTY TWO

With a grim and weary resignation I recognised Borcaithna’s name.  He was a very capable magician, but slapdash.  He kept getting hired because most magicians who could do what he did were hired permanently—and exclusively—by powerbrokers and the nobility, and there was a much wider market for those particular skills, for any magician who liked to live dangerously.  But Borcaithna also kept getting fired for screwing up.  Flowerhair tried to run the other way any time she heard his name but didn’t always succeed.  Doomblade hated him and was always trying to duck out of the scabbard and go for him, like a terrier with a grievance.  One of Mom’s stud Ghastlies had hated anything in a blue uniform and it was a little-known wonder of the modern, legal-action prone world that he’d died of natural causes at a ripe old age.  I didn’t know Tulamaro, but he might be the head of this ragtag band.  Murac never stayed in one place or company long either, but in his case it was usually to do with who he picked a fight with.

I light-headedly considered asking him what he’d thought of the scenery on my side—of Merry, of tarmac, of barbed wire, of power lines, of that dubious feat of modern biological engineering, dairy cows—but I didn’t want to ask anything, you know, out loud, to this not-imaginary-enough thug which might remind me of the less than twenty-four hours between gaining a dog and losing the standard verities of time and space.  No, wait, they’d proved Einstein wrong, hadn’t they?  If I got out of this alive I’d google it. . . .  I had to get out of it alive.  I had a dog waiting for me.  Not to mention six rose bushes.  And a house.  And maybe a hob.  And Norah would miss me.  Norah might even find a way to come after me.  I could try thought waves.  Including check in on Sid on your way, okay? 

MacFarquhar, get a grip.

Watermelon Shoulders did not count on the list of who was waiting for me.  I didn’t want him waiting for me.  If he went away maybe all the—the goofy stuff—would go away too.

I heard myself fumbling out a question I didn’t want the answer to either: “Why were you—er—assigned to—er—Defender?”

I was trying to sound neutral, but Murac heard what I was saying.  “Why  giztimi, you mean, eh?” he said, and grinned his creepy grin again.

I didn’t know giztimi any more than I knew azogging but if I were going to guess I’d guess it meant something like klutz or moron.  I nodded.

“Wanted someone no one would mourn, didn’t they, eh?” he said.  “If plan goes amiss.”

Ah.  I knew I shouldn’t’ve asked.

I made it worse.  I asked another question.  “Um—so what is the plan?”

“Tis no plan,” Murac replied, much too readily.  “Tis word for Tulamaro to say:  plan.”

No plan.  No plan.  And the noises I was hearing was a bunch of idiots forming up behind me?  Didn’t they know a clueless modern urban middle-aged woman in a pink nightgown when they saw one?

“And them to believe,” he added, nodding over my shoulder.

He sounded almost cheerful.  I doubted this was a good sign.  I couldn’t remember if Murac was especially fond of lost causes, but I was pretty sure he had that old-soldier’s blithe-before-death thing.  I did not feel at all blithe.  Sore and aching—and foolish—and frightened—yes.  Blithe, no.  “We take tha toward Gate,” he said and stopped.

As his silence grew longer the sound of my blood banging in my ears got louder.  “And—?” I said.  It’s hard to sound strangled on one syllable but I managed.

He shrugged.  “And,” he said.  “Tha’s Defender.”

Oh.

There was a chasm opening at my feet.  Or at Monster’s feet.   Dark.  Deep.  I thought it was probably a figment of my despair but in the circumstances I wasn’t sure.  I jerked my head up and looked at Murac.  Allowing for the fact that he was about as safe and trustworthy as a long-term meth head, he looked almost sympathetic.  “Tha sword,” he said. “She’s good ’un.  Tha grip her close.”

Someone else was telling me to grip my sword.  I might have laughed, but all I could produce was a kind of croak.  It was the kind of croak that reverberates, and my knee banged painfully against that twisted strap.  I’d move it in a minute.  But right now my hands were frozen on the reins.

The rustling noises around us were quieting.  A few minutes ago I would have hoped this was a good thing.  As Defender I was pretty sure it wasn’t.  I thought the new silence had a primed and ready sort of feel to it.  An anticipatory sort of feel.

Tis no plan.

Tha’s Defender.

Are you sure it’s not Friday the 13th?

 

I have a DEAD CAR.

I have a DEAD WASHING MACHINE.

I am SUPPOSED TO BE STREET PASTORING TONIGHT*, but I can’t, because I have a DEAD CAR.  This means I’ve missed TWO MONTHS IN A ROW.**

I probably won’t get Wolfgang back till the end of next week . . . which among other things means I WILL MISS MY VOICE LESSON ON MONDAY.***

I will also MISS MY MONKS TOMORROW NIGHT.†

And the DEAD CAR means I have no way to schlep my dirty laundry to Peter’s washing machine—and New Arcadia is way too small for a Laundromat, aside from the question of how many machines one person with three hairy dogs can blow up in a single application.††

AND I—finally—bought a new phone answering machine†††.  Which I spent two hours over this afternoon, trying to figure out how to make the sucker work.  I HATE TECHNOLOGY.‡  This object is such a piece of rubbish in so many ways.  You have 1,000,000,000,000 frelling menus of obscure acronyms and impenetrable icons . . . and an ‘instruction book’ that fails to instruct.  For example:  it keeps saying, you press this little arrow till you get the listing you want, and then you hit ‘okay’.  IT NEVER TELLS YOU WHERE YOU’RE GOING TO FIND THE OKAY, AND OKAY DOESN’T APPEAR UNTIL YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING RIGHT ALREADY WHICH YOU WON’T HAVE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.  Frelling icons are frelling Rorschach blots, every one of them meaning:  YOU’RE TOTALLY SCREWED HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.‡‡

I think I finally got the date and time set up‡‡‡ and a basic message recorded . . . although that I am speaking through clenched teeth is pretty obvious.  Leave.  A.  Message.  After.  The.  Beep.   I have no idea what most of the superfluous crap on all those menus is . . . but this frzzzzzblggggng thing has only TWO ringtones, both of them nasty.  And this thing cost money!  It cost real money!  I’ve been putting off buying a new phone machine because BT stopped making the cut-rate plastic toy model that I used to use, which was not a total loss because they were SO cruddy they only lasted about a year before disintegrating like one of those cornstarch shopping bags . . . but they were simple.  I could use one.  Mind you, if you’re asking, I’d say they were overspecified too:  all I want is something I can record my voice on, so people ringing me know they’ve got my phone number—among my many, many pet hates is robot-voice answering machines so you have no idea if you’ve reached the right person/number or not—and that will record any messages.  I don’t want a phone machine that can make hollandaise sauce and tutor me in Russian and mechanical engineering!  I ONLY WANT TO RECORD MESSAGES, PLAY THEM BACK, AND THEN ERASE THEM.

. . . And now I have to shoulder my heavy knapsack§ and hike home . . . with three hellcritters gambolling delightedly in my wake.§§

* * *

* So this entry was supposed to be a stub.  It may yet be when a crevasse opens at my feet and the table falls into the centre of the earth, which would be about par for this day’s course.  I may or may not catch the laptop before it disappears forever, but my four knitting books from the library, at present lying on the table, will be goners.  Even knitting books are out to get me:  there is ONE pattern out of all FOUR of them that I can imagine knitting, and this includes two books by a designer I usually like.^

^ There’s also a yarn sale going on on a Web Site Near You where one of the listings is for £17 skeins of luxury yarn . . . at eight pence off the usual price.  Be still my heart.

** Last month was The Night of the Tempestuous Tempest, when the cops were telling us to stay home unless we HAD to be out.  And I was looking at all the raging torrents that used to be roads and gardens and sitting rooms and so on and thought, staying home, above the flood line, that’s a good idea.

*** I may end up hiring a car—NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—but not till I’ve talked to the garage again on Monday, which will be too late for my lesson.  They’re ordering parts tomorrow, so some of my fate is riding on whether the gloppendorkenflurgetruder^ arrives on Monday.

^ Well, Wolfgang is German.

† Buckminster thinks he can find me a ride to St Margaret’s Sunday evening.  He hasn’t said anything about ‘if you promise not to sing’.^

^ I will miss my monks worse.  I like their music better.

†† I think I’ve told you that the hellterror is an astonishing producer of loose hair.  No wonder she eats so much.  Has to keep her strength up for all that intensive fur growing.

††† Delivered by an unusually delightful carrier, who put a postcard through my door after a failed first attempt, saying that they would try again the next day, any time from seven a.m. to six p.m., and upon a third failure the item would be returned to the warehouse and I would be issued a refund.  WHAT?  How does the seller stay in business with a system like that?  And as I’ve said—often—before, any blasted carrier who puts a postcard through my door saying they tried to leave my package with a neighbour is either lying or terminally lazy.  My neighbours are all either retired or work from home.

As it happens I was waiting in, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the washing-machine man—the appointment was for ‘after nine’.  Well, it was certainly after nine:  in fact it was after noon—and I was therefore available at 11:45 when Delivery Attempt #2 happened—and I ran after him and pulled him down and snatched my parcel away from him before he could get back to his truck and lock the doors. . . . I should have let him keep it.

‡ The favour is, of course, mutual.

‡‡ I am reminded of the old joke which I’ve seen somewhere very recently, did someone post it on the forum?  Having no car and no washing machine is having an unfortunate suppressive effect on my brain.  So, this shrink shows a patient a Rorschach blot and says, what do you see?  And the patient says, a man and a woman making love.  The shrink shows the patient another blot and the patient says, that’s a man and a man really getting it on.  And looking at the third blot the patient says, and that’s two women having a very, very hot time.  The shrink says, I see that you are obsessed with sex.  The patient says in possibly justifiable outrage, that’s rich, coming from you.  You’re the one with all the dirty pictures.

‡‡‡ Which I will have to reset every time there is a power outage, and we have brief, settings-blowing power outages kind of a lot.  My old el frelling cheapo phone machine, you put a BATTERY in it and it HELD its settings through power cuts.

§ Having seriously damaged my back and shoulders hauling dog food in the other direction

§§ This is a rant for another day, but I’ve basically given up taking all three of them out together—the Off Lead Dog problem is too severe, and I’m at just too much of a disadvantage with three of my own.  The only time I’ll risk it is after midnight, like now. . . .

Spring

 

I love spring.*  I never used to but I think that may be because in areas where winters are gruesomely hard, like Maine, spring is kind of disgusting.  I keep remembering the smell of March in Maine and the way EVERYTHING needed cleaning, and that was even before it got covered in mud from the snowmelt.  It was great that the snow was melting (probably) but sometimes the results seemed like too much trouble.**  Some of you Midwesterners may agree/disagree.

We’ve had GENUINE SUNLIGHT the last few days.  And I’ve been getting out in the garden.

Garden.

Little tiny overpotted garden.  With verifiable sunlight on the back wall.

 

Corydalis

Way beyond cute.  We must have had it at the old house–it’s common, it grows well around here–but I don’t remember it, or anyway I’m not the one looked after where it grew.***  But my predecessor at the cottage grew a lot of it.  I was kind of a scourge to begin with because I didn’t recognise it when it wasn’t in flower, it was mostly growing in inconvenient places, and the foliage dies to nothing later in the season so I’d go to dig up a blank space and discover these tiny little bulby things that had the look of something that maybe ought to be rescued.  So eventually I started plonking it in pots.  I’ve got at least three different sorts in six or eight little pots, this dark pink, the blue, and a pale pink one . . . which I only just stopped from accidentally obliterating a new little clump of–I think it must regenerate if you leave a scrap in the ground–about a fortnight ago, stuffed it in another pot . . . and, gallant creature, it’s flowering.  The bizarre thing is that I took a bunch of it up to Third House a few years ago and it disappeared.  Maybe next door’s evil terrier dug it up and ate it.

Random primrose.

Primroses are a big favourite with me.  I have no idea where this one came from.  I was clearing out pots and this one had some clearly primrose leaves growing at one edge so I said, okay, fine, go for it.  Cowslips, just by the way, garden primroses’ wild cousins, which are some kind of endangered, are a weed in my garden.  Another few weeks I’ll be ankle deep in them.

Hyacinth

I love the variety of colour in most hyacinth flowers.  That’s not just blue or purple, you know?  Speaking of ankle deep, in a week or two I will be knee deep in blooming hyacinths.  I keep buying them to force over the winter and then . . . you have these perfectly functional bulbs at the end of your fit of botanical self-indulgence and all they ask is a small corner outdoors and a bit of dirt . . . they’re frost-hardy, they’re tough, and apparently mice would rather eat other things.†  And they produce one fat fabulous heavenly smelly flower every spring.  Except that this is a very small garden and I’m running out of SPACE.  How do you reforce bulbs?  I know you can prepare your own by putting them in the fridge for a bit but after having their constitutions screwed up like that, how long do they need in the garden being normal before you can do it again?

Pots. Lotsa pots.

I have made reference to my pots-in-pots-in-pots gardening habits.  In the back left-hand corner there are at least four levels.  And that doesn’t count the fact that there are several pots in levels two and three.  The pink plastic bucket by the kitchen door is my compost bucket, although it goes to the town compost maker, not a hot fermenting corner of this garden.  As a compost bucket it has no holes in its bottom, so when it rains, it fills up.  Found a drowned mouse about a week ago–sorry, but YAAAAAAAAY.  Mice are vermin††–just in time to prevent the hellterror from engaging in close acquaintance.  She now checks that bucket very very carefully every time I open the door, and if nothing is better on offer she stands by the door and stares at it.

And the little square grey thing in the bottom right-hand corner is my maximum-minimum thermometer.  Love.  I am not a very comprehensive weather geek but I LOOOOVE having a max/min.  They are one of these things that for inexplicable reasons go out of fashion–at just about the time that your last one stops working–and it takes you YEARS to find a replacement.  I hope this one lives a long time.

Potting up

Yesterday three boxes of tubers arrived, two of begonias and one of dahlias.  All of these things are frost-tender.  I spent a couple of hours in the sunshine yesterday afternoon potting them up–I potted all of them up the day the arrived!!!!!!  How utterly fantastic is that–and so of course we had a frost last night.  The indoor jungle lives.  It would have been so much easier if they’d just still been in three small, tidy cardboard boxes.

And it will probably freeze again tonight.  So I’d better get back to the cottage and schlepp a lot of grubby pots indoors again.  Feh.  Gardening.  It’s as mad as critters.

* * *

* Well.  When it stops raining I love spring.

** Except for the lilacs.  Lilacs are worth it.^

^ Lilacs would GROW.  Don’t talk to me about roses, AKA your very expensive annuals if you live in Maine.  Lilacs only rioted for a few weeks but by golly they RIOTED.  And they required zero care, as I should know, since those were my pre-gardening days, and I took my landscape as a given.  I had massive lilac hedges around my little house, but they seemed like just another feature like one bathroom and a long skinny kitchen.

*** Is it a rose?  No?  Go away and don’t bother me.^

^ Does it grow under roses?  No?  Go away and don’t bother me.  Although in my current garden it perforce grows under roses because there isn’t anywhere else.

† Tulip bulbs, for example.  Snarl.

†† They eat tulip bulbs.

Conversations about music

 

I am wallowing, as if reclining in a hot bath*, in the forum conversations about music.

Midget

. . . the flute DOES take a colossal amount of air. My woodwind methods teacher maintained that it didn’t really take that much air if you knew how to manage it correctly. Us students listened attentively, agreed that you probably did learn how to manage your air after 40+ years of playing at a professional level on Broadway and with symphonies, and then put our heads between our knees to avoid passing out.

Yes.  I took approximately two flute lessons in my youth because, as a really bad piano student, I was greatly attracted to the idea of a single line of music to have to read, and I think the flute goes on using the standard treble clef?**  Your first two lessons are in treble clef anyway, at least if you’re a known piano drop-out.  I was so hilariously incapable of keeping my fingers on the right little holes–hole covers–buttons–something that the question of air supply didn’t present itself but I had a faint premonition that it eventually would.  Oisin plays the flute.  There was a cotton-wadding-brained scheme at one point that when he bought himself a new flute I’d adopt his old one, and take a few more flute lessons.  In our copious spare time.

But I like the noise a flute makes, it doesn’t have reeds, and all those brass things and strings look waaaaaay too hard.  In my fantasies I still take a few flute lessons eventually.***   I hurtle many, many hellcritters† on a daily basis.  My lungs would probably say nooooooooo, not a flute too, what next, a frelling marathon?

Blondviolinist

(Uh oh. Does the forum’s Pollyanna Principle apply to composers who’ve been dead over one hundred years?)

Not when it’s Wagner.  Stab away.  I have come round to Wagner a fair distance but . . . in the first place I’m one of these wet liberal dweebs who believe that who you are matters, not just how talented you are.  I guess Wagner was a genius—I guess—but he was a redolently nasty piece of work†† and I will never love him, and I will never not somehow resist his music because at some level I think you can hear that however fabulous it is it was written by someone who was, at heart, an evil creep.

Now, please, we will stand back to back to defend ourselves against the ravening pro-Wagner hordes.

Jmeadows

[The beginner flautist] needs to learn to take small, quick breaths, staggered with when the other flutists are taking theirs. (So there’s not a gap in the sound.) She can make breath marks on her sheet music. Even if she doesn’t need a breath in some of those places, she should take it because there will likely be somewhere coming up that she should not inhale.

This is just like singing.  Just like.  Nadia was making me put fresh breath marks on a piece just this Monday, so I would take a breath I didn’t need so I could sing through the place I needed the breath and shouldn’t take it.  I suppose the whole frelling line thing is true across all music?  Sometimes just going thud, thud, thud according to the beat or time signature or what-have-you results in . . . well, in thud-thud-thud.  Music requires a line.  Sometimes taking a breath in what seems like an obvious place—like the end of a phrase—results in the whole thing going flump.

Maybe especially when I’m doing it, of course.  Someone with a high flump tendency can be somewhat ameliorated by being buried in a group however.  ::Looks around nervously::  Three isn’t really a big enough group.  I told Nadia about my thrilling Sunday-evening debut, including that I was audible.  Most of the rota of evening-service backing singers have ordinary-congregation-member voices, not three-years-of-Nadia voices. ††† THANK YOU, I said.  Just doing my job, said Nadia.

Midget

My husband . . . plays the trombone. . . . It . . . helps that he has the longest arms on the planet. I was whining one day about how I had to nearly dislocate my shoulder to get the slide out to 7th position (as far out as you can go without taking the slide off the instrument) and he smirked and said, “You just have to unbend your elbow.” No, that’s what YOU have to do, Mr. Orangutang Arms.

My long-lost twin brother.  At last!  I have found him!  —Maybe I should take trombone lessons.  It would be nice to get some practical use out of the length of these arms that stick inches out of every shirt on the planet except Men’s Extra Large with the Knuckle Chamois for protection from rough ground.  Although I admit that being able to reach the top shelves of a kitchen built of offcuts rescued from the tip by a 6’2” bloke was a bonus.  And Peter’s arms aren’t short.

I never got . . . far in my string workshop classes. I was too busy being appalled that I had to move my fingers AND my arm at the SAME TIME. Nope. Not happening. That’s far too many appendages to coordinate simultaneously.

Yup.  Big problem with the piano, that organization of too many appendages thing.  You mean your fingers have to act INDEPENDENTLY?  Like maybe ALL TEN OF THEM [all right, all eight of them and two thumbs] AT THE SAME TIME?  AND YOUR ARMS MAY BE GOING IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS?  AND YOU MAY BE PLAYING TWO DIFFERENT TIME SIGNATURES SIMULTANEOUSLY???  AND YOU MAY BE DOING THIS AT SPEED?

I more or less eventually plumped for voice because the piano is such an abominably solo instrument, and if I’m ever going to do stuff with other people—at least without them running away screaming—I need to be in a group.  But the great thing about the piano is that the noises you make are FIXED.  You have a key, and you whack it, and a little hammer hits a little wire or wires and PLINK you have produced a note, no muss, no fuss, no bother and, barring psychotic piano tuners, no doubt.

The problem with the human voice, similar to the problem with strings and most or all of the brass, is the margin for error in the actual note.  There are days I long for the frelling security of the piano, even a piano that needs tuning.  In some ways singing is worse than trying to organize all those arms and fingers . . . whiiiiiiiiiiine. . . . .

I was also distracted by the thin strands of razor wire that pass for strings slicing my fingertips to bits. Ow ow ow ow ow.

Yes.  I had exactly one guitar lesson, for this reason.‡‡

Glinda

Muscle and physical memory etc. are required for organ, as well… sometimes both feet (and legs, therefore) doing simultaneous different things, as well as both hands and arms… but at least we have keys and pedals and they stay in the same place!

Yes, as above, about the piano only more so.  I can just about do the ten-fingers thing on a good day and a not too demanding piece, some nice little item by Scarlatti or Clementi or one of those late baroque/early classical guys who wrote a lot of stuff for their rather slow students.  I can’t get my head around the idea of DOING IT WITH YOUR FEET TOO.  I watch Oisin skating back and forth on his organ bench while his feet are skipping the light fantastic and have to remember to shut my mouth, which has a tendency to drop open. . . .

Stardancer

Midget

I was too busy being appalled that I had to move my fingers AND my arm   at the SAME TIME.

This is not dissimilar my experience in basic piano class. “Right hand on…C major. Left hand on the…C major…no wait that’s bass clef… Whole note in the left hand, half notes in the right…OH NO I HAVE TO CHANGE WHOLE NOTES!”

Yes.  Different ones with every finger.

I also did the classic (?) thing where I finally learned to read bass clef, and then BOTH of my hands wanted to play in bass clef. It was funny in a seriously discordant kind of way.

Oh, I can do the two clefs thing (she says airily).  It’s doing them together I have a slight problem with.

. . . And now I have to go SING, you know, officially, with the piano keeping score.  Blondviolinist—who is violinknitter on Twitter—tweeted that she now has I Want to Be a Prima Donna [donna, donna, donna, I long to shine upon the stage;  I have the embonpoint to become a queen of song . . . ] stuck in her head.  Yes.  It’s a real earworm.  I was singing it out hurtling earlier.  I do try to be a little circumspect under people’s windows at gleep o’clock in the morning however which would be, you know, now, so I need to get it out of my system.

* * *

* I finally gave up feeling hard done by because I’m pretty well allergic to all known amusing bath supplements, bubbles and oils and so on^, with the realisation that reading in your hot bath is not enhanced by the presence of bubbles.^^  Okay.  Fine.  I will adjust my resentful envy to focus on people who can play the piano with both hands and sing at the same time and people with really long thick hair.^^^  And if you miss the hot-bath-oil smell you can always burn a suitably fragranced candle.  Feh.

^ I Was Betrayed by Crabtree and Evelyn.  I got through a lot of it before my skin said, okay, we’ve had enough of that.  You don’t believe it?  ::RASH::   Ah, the fabulous rashes of my life.  I have been the Incredible Lobster Girl on several occasions and have enjoyed none of them.

^^ Although the damp sticky exploded-bubble marks on the pages would not be a problem if you’re reading your iPad in its little plastic jacket.

^^^There’s a poster in a hairdressers’ window that I hurtle past, dragged by an assortment of critters, that says, Instantly hydrate dry hair by 41%.  It’s been there for months and it makes me crazy.  FORTY-ONE PERCENT?  NOT FORTY-TWO?  OR THIRTY-NINE?  WHAT THE FRELL DOES THIS MEAN?  WHAT DO THEY THINK IT MEANS??

** I’ve just tried to look this up and became embroiled in a whole series of these graphic-heavy sites that furthermore won’t let you out again.  What’s so difficult about telling me what clef a flute uses? 

*** In the fantasies of my fantasies, I take a few violin lessons.  Since that day, what, two or three years ago, when one of those unaccompanied Bach violin things came on the car radio—and I’ve heard them before, you know?  But somehow the heavens opened and the angels sang that day, and I had to pull over to the side of the road and listen.

† Twelve churning little legs several times every day.  That’s a lot.

†† And in my end of the playground, so was Dickens.  So was Tolstoy.

††† There were some nice ones in the scratch choir for the carol service, but none of them come to evening service apparently.

‡ About halfway through rehearsal I realised I was hearing myself through the microphone, not just because I’m very close to my own ears.  And one of my friends—who sits at the back where I usually sit—said afterward, it was really nice to hear you up there.  You could hear me? I said.  Oh yes, she said.

‡‡ I also had two or three bagpipe lessons.  There, your cheeks give out from blowing up the frelling bag all the time.  When you stop your entire face rattles and shakes like a train going over a really bad patch of track.  Rubbuddyrubbuddyrubbuddyrubbuddy.