Robin McKinley's Blog, page 32

But it’s barely rained all day. How did that happen?

 

Furthermore there have been actual sunlight sightings.*

It’s fabulously past mmph o’clock even by my standards . . . or, no, I’m never asleep by a mere mmph o’clock but I’ve posted by now . . . and I’m only just sitting down to my computer rather the worse for wear in the aftermath of a substantial amount of champagne.  Mmmmmm.  But I do not repine.  I do not, either, write a full, not to say fulsome, proper blog post.  There are limits.

B_twin is here—and I might have called her Bertwine or Caronwen but SHE HAS PROMISED AT LEAST ONE GUEST POST out of this trip to England and I figure if I [user-] NAME HER she will have NOWHERE TO HIDE.  She was originally going to be here several days and we were going to scramble about the countryside having various adventures** but circumstances intervened, including Peter’s stroke and my ME.  So we had to pack a lot into today because she’s off again tomorrow, and we did, joined by Ajlr and Southdowner, braving the mud slides, the potholes and the unscheduled fords to stroll, somewhat squishily, around the kind of large old-fashioned National Trust garden with good bones so it even looks ravishing this time of year***, and cream tea after in the café, which reminded me of being a tourist in this country.  B_twin and I then went to the abbey for evening prayer, where B_twin attempted to have us ejected by throwing the furniture around, but my monks are very forbearing and I’m sure they merely put her down for extra prayers since she’s obviously in need of having extra prayers said on her behalf. † Home again there was a (noisy) assault on all fronts by my generous selection of hellcritters, and some hurtling was accomplished, and then us two humans, somewhat hairier than we’d been an hour previously, repaired to a local pub to join the others for champagne—oh, and dinner—and additional stimulus was provided by admiring, if admiring is the right word, the interesting paint work in Ajlr’s bedroom, which appears to be a reject movie set for the Pit and the Pendulum.  I considered offering her a blanket by the Aga at the cottage, but she’s British—she’d be too polite to accept.

Speaking of blankets, I really really really need to go to bed.††

* * *

* And the hellhounds ate all three meals today without fuss.  B_twin . . . don’t go home . . . stay here . . . please

** I was looking forward to the excuse to book tickets to the All New Stonehenge Experience which is apparently not going according to plan but I would still like to see it, but book ahead?  It’ll never happen unless I have a visitor as an excuse. 

*** Also there were snowdrops.  There were winter aconites too but I’m a bit, meh, weeds, about winter aconites.  I believe my companions think I’m a snarly old so and so.  Well, yes, and your point would be?

†Alfrick came up after, chiefly to give me a hard time about hiding^ behind the forty-seven bishops at the swearing-in ceremony on Sunday—well, if you can’t hide behind forty-seven bishops who can you hide behind?—but I noticed him listening carefully when I introduced my accomplice–er–comrade.  It’s easier to pray for someone when you know their name.  Rather than ‘person who throws furniture around during evening prayer’. 

^ Speaking of hiding.  B_twin . . . bishops won’t save you from guest post composition. 

†† Right after the bath in the shiny-glistening-visitor-worthy-clean bathtub.

On not creating an international incident

 

I realise this is the second Pav the Heroine story in three days*, but sometimes it happens like that.  Also it’s to do with her age**:  she’s starting to become a little more reliable about stuff—a LITTLE—or a little more responsive to me as mistress of the known universe or at least the corner that concerns HER and so I’m . . . frelling risking it a little more because life is short and being in a constant state of readiness for the worst is time-consuming and dead boring—and expecting the worst eventually becomes depressing.  Six months ago I’d’ve probably gone back and picked her up and carried her past the World Order Threatening Grey Balloons because I wouldn’t have thought my chances of persuading her to come on her own recognizance were worth the time and the likelihood of failure.

When I’m letting her out the front door at the mews to have a pee I don’t bother to put her harness and lead on any more;  she likes indoors, indoors has hellhounds and fooooood and toys*** and she’s happy to come in again.  I do look around before I let her out, in case of innocent neighbours, exciting delivery vehicles, etc.

This afternoon I looked out.  Nothing.  I opened the door and a small furry torpedo shot past me . . .

At the moment that two large, off lead Labradors† wandered across the open archway into the mews.

AAAAAAAAAAUGH.††

Pav of course instantly set off toward the archway, head and tail up, at full prance.  I am not a fluent reader of dog body language, but I would have said she was not expecting trouble but was not going to cringe away from it if it addressed her.

And I’m out there in just my shirt and jeans, because we’re only out for a minute.  I carry a little plastic bag of emergency kibble and Thrilling Canine Treats††† in my raincoat [sic] pocket.  Not in my jeans.‡

Pav!  I call.  And I can hear the panic in my voice.  If I can, she can too.

One of the Labs notices us.  It stops.  It raises its tail to the ‘alert’ position.  Noooooooooo.

Pav! I shout.  Sit!  —All you dog people will know this.  You have a much greater chance of your escaping hellcritter sitting than turning around, away from the thing it is going toward, and coming back to you, if you foolhardily attempt a recall.  If it sits, you can saunter gently up to it, you hope, and GRAB IT.

Pav keeps going.  The Lab’s tail goes up another notch or two.  I’m already seeing the headlines in the local newspaper:  American Woman and Her Ten Stone‡‡ Rabid Pit Bull Attack Perfectly Behaved, Kind to Its Mother Local Labrador. ‡‡‡

PAV! I shriek for the third time.§  SIT!!!

And . . . she stops.  She looks over her shoulder at me.  She TURNS AROUND, trots back TOWARD ME and SITS.  Wagging her tail.

Gibble.  Gibble gibble gibble gibble gibble.

* * *

* It’s actually the third Pav the Heroine story in three days but I can’t think how to tell the third one on a public blog.  Let’s just say that she was uncharacteristically polite to someone it was extremely advisable, not to say critical, that she be polite to.

** Hellhounds were a little over a year old when I started this blog.  Gah.  How time flies whether you’re having fun or not, as a friend recently said.  However hellhounds have just eaten their dinner immediately and with no fuss at all so the world is bright for the next several hours till I have to feed them supper.  Sigh.  I’m sure some of my insomniac problems are a result of the throbbing blood-pressure headaches attendant on non-supper-eating hellhounds but I need that third meal for the opportunity to tamp a little more food into them and breakfast is spectacularly a lost cause.  I might never get out of bed at all if the prospect included feeding hellhounds breakfast.^  It’s funny, sort of, that they’re so jealous of anything the hellterror is getting that they think they aren’t getting—they don’t want to eat it, you understand, just that they don’t think she should be allowed to eat it either—except at breakfast.  At breakfast—and Pav roars out her crate I HAVEN’T EATEN ANYTHING IN OVER SIX HOURS.  I’M STARVING TO DEATH.  WHERE’S BREAKFAST?—you can see hellhounds turning away and delicately pressing metaphorical handkerchiefs to their noses in a gesture that would not disgrace the Duke of Avon.

^ Although since I take Astarte—with her Kindle app, and a live credit card registered on amazon—to bed with me, who needs to get up?

*** This category includes Peter

† Mrs Redboots

I think bulldozer-headed Labrafrellingdors are a Race Apart. Just not far enough.

Noooooooo – they’re LOVELY! Best dogs in the universe! Intelligent, obedient, loving…. what’s not to like?

Well, I’m not going to agree that they’re the best dogs in the universe, but you mistake me.  I’m not damning all Labs, just the huge stupid—um, bulldozer-headed—ones which invariably belong to people who don’t have a clue or they’d have bought a real Lab.  The old-fashioned working-style Labs are still around and while occasionally they too are rowdy fractious pains in the patootie, generally the old-fashioned ones have manners because they belong to people who teach their dogs manners.  I’ve even known one or two this-kind of Lab I’d have been happy to have stretched out on my sofa.

But I think it’s true I’m more drawn to the hard-graft dogs.  Neither sighthounds nor bull terriers are terribly interested in the finer points of the human ideas of training.  If I were going to get a super-trainable dog it would probably still be a border collie . . . because I like the manic.^  Gun dog breeds tend to be the exact opposite of manic.  You don’t see many Labs who’ve been taught to dance.  . . . Although Pav’s latest somewhat-on-command trick is standing on her hind legs and she’s good enough at it she could probably learn to dance if I put the time (and the fooooooood) into it.

^ Possibly not all border collies are manic.  All the ones I’ve known are, however, including the ones who can speak seven languages and have advanced degrees in quantum physics.

†† These dogs are a *&^%$£”!!!!! sore point.  They belong to regular visitors—a bit like me, then—and while they aren’t exactly thrown out and left to their own devices, their people don’t stand there and watch them the way I do mine.  And when there is unpicked up dog crap in the mews courtyard, it is not my dogs who are responsible.  Or I who am irresponsible.

††† None of which work on the hellhounds.  Just by the way.

‡ Clearly I should start carrying Emergency Hellterror Retrieval Rations in my jeans pocket too.

‡‡ A stone is fourteen pounds.  I have no idea why.  Pav, who is a mini bull terrier, not a pit bull, weighs a little over two stone.

‡‡‡ Who never ever craps in inappropriate places.  Its people are not included in the attack, by the way, because they are nowhere around.

§ ‘Never repeat a command.  You are teaching your dog to ignore you.’

Mostly critters

 

Katinseattle

The tail dropped, the ears flattened . . . and she rushed past Yog-Sothoth and hurled herself into my lap/arms.

My hellterror. Mine.

I’m not tearing up. I’m NOT.

Oh good.  No of course you aren’t.  . . . I was counting on there being at least a few saps in my audience.*

Catlady

Feynman, my youngest cat, is . . . aloof and troublesome and prone to destroy things. . . .  

. . . Richard Feynman, I assume?  Well, you’d expect him to destroy things, wouldn’t you?

Except. He loves it when I sing. Or play the piano. Or sing and play the piano . . . he’ll come, force his way into my lap, and PURR, and snuggle, and do all the cute things that cats do that, in most cases, prevent us from turning them into earmuffs.

I’ve tended to use the threat ‘hearthrug’ to the dog population.  Hazel, the smallest whippet of the previous generation, was going to be a muff.  Pav, with that dense plushy fur, would make a very good muff.**

 The other day, I was standing up and singing, and he couldn’t figure out what to do.

You don’t stand up to sing?  Golly.  I’d still be making tiny squeaking noises*** if I sang sitting at the piano.

He tried twining around my ankles, but that wasn’t good enough. He stood on the coffee table and watched. . . . After a few minutes . . . he launched himself into my arms (cats almost never do that, by the way).

Snork.  What a guest post this would have made . . . ::wistfully:: . . . a video guest post.  What do you sing?  Does he have a preference for Aida or Les Miz?

Anyone else have into-arms-leaping or musical critters?  Chaos tends to stare at me when I sing—the hellhound bed at the mews is right next to the piano and he will get up, gravely take the few steps, sit down, and look at me earnestly—I think it’s a ‘are you feeling quite all right?’ look.  He comes racing back to check on me if I sing out hurtling too.†  Darkness is eh, whatever, and Pav is YOU DON’T PLAY THE PIANO WITH BOTH HANDS WHEN YOU’RE SINGING YOU CAN PLAY TUG OF WAR WITH THAT OTHER HAND, AND IF YOU DON’T I AM GOING TO BASH YOU REPEATEDLY WITH THIS TOY UNTIL YOU FALL IN WITH, OR POSSIBLY ON, MY EXCELLENT PLAN.

I’ve known several cats that did go in for leaping into people’s arms, but they were all Orientals—Siamese and Burmese—which I think cat people consider a Race Apart.††

. . . Oh, bleggh.  I have to go to bed.  I have to get up early and address some . . . ANGUISH.  ANGUISH . . . housework.   I have visitors coming on Thursday and this ‘oh my husband’s had a stroke and my ME is in a bad mood’ will still only take me so far.  D’you suppose I could call the festoons of cobwebs swags?

PS:  THE DISHWASHER REPAIRMAN COMES TOMORROW.  YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

* * *

* Just as I was delighted as well as relieved that a number of you got a thrill out of Kes’ last line on Saturday.  This is a digression for another evening, but this is an example of why KES is fun for me too—I wouldn’t ever have dared write a proper book about a fantasy-writing protagonist, let alone a LOTR-obsessed fantasy-writing protagonist, let alone a LOTR-obsessed fantasy-writing protagonist who quotes one of the peak moments in LOTR during a culminant moment of her own.

** Speaking of which, I don’t seem to break out in a rash on contact any more.  Major yaay.  It’s not that hard to keep her off the insides of my arms, which are most at risk, in winter, when I can pull my sleeves down, but it’s a big lousy nuisance in warm weather.  I suppose it may have been puppy fur or some seasonal allergen that we missed this year because of the RAAAAAAAAAIN but I think it’s likelier that, as we roll into our second year together^ I’ve just got used to her.  I have a long history of adjusting—usually respiratorily—to critters I live with, but also, age is good.  The wrinkles and the rheumatism are a big stupid bother^^ but your body is also a whole lot more likely to say, Get all hysterical and overwrought about something?  Nah.  Can’t be arsed.  Whatever.  Get on with it.

^ !!!!!!!!

^^ If I didn’t have rheumatism I could still eat tomatoes and ice cream.+  Erm.  Not together.

+ So, would I rather have weird, mostly of unknown origin rashes most of the time and be able to eat tomatoes and ice cream or wrinkly baggy but rash-free skin?  And yes, I suspect an underlying intolerance of dairy and the nightshade family has been a problem for a very long time.

*** I made a startling discovery Sunday night at the show—I mean the Christian unity service.  There were, as previously observed, lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people there.  And the hymns, to my horror, weren’t the fine old classics, but more of the ghastly power ballads to God things that we sing at the evening service at St Margaret’s.  Shudder.  Well, I like singing, and if that’s what’s on offer that’s what I’ll sing.  Feh.  But in order to make a noise I may shift down to chest voice and bellow.  My startling discovery is that my head voice is now just as loud as my chest bellow—possibly louder, or at least there’s a cutting edge to the soprano range that makes it more readily noticeable in a mushy crowd roar.

† When I sing in the car I have to be prepared for the cold wet nose in the back of the neck.  Since hellhounds are pretty well trained to lie down in the car in motion this usually only happens at stoplights when sudden convulsive jerks on the part of the driver won’t send us into the opposite lane of traffic.^

^ Also I’m betting that nine out of ten, indeed ninety nine out of a hundred, people seeing my mouth moving in the car assume that I’m talking on a hands-free phone.  I know we’ve had this conversation about random singing in public and some of you insist that I’m not the only one.  Well, I seem to be the only one around here.

†† Although I know people who consider sighthounds a Race Apart.  And other people that bullies are a Race Apart.^

PamAdams

I’m sure that the hellhounds would have examined the deadly grey balloons closely, and given that superior sighthound sneer, and strolled away. 

Well . . . whippets aren’t usually sneerers.  They’re sort of the bullie end of the sighthound spectrum:  cheerful and optimistic and possibly a little frenetic.  And my guys are mostly whippet.  They would certainly do the close examination but then they’d prance past in a ‘you don’t scare us but we’re keeping an eye on you so don’t think you can try anything’ manner.

^ I think bulldozer-headed Labrafrellingdors are a Race Apart.  Just not far enough.

Tired tired tired blah blah blah blah

 

Tired.  Oh, I just said that, didn’t I?

But first, a story about life with dogs.  When things are not going well generally* it’s very easy to slide into a grim sort of Put Harness On, Take for Hurtle, Open Tin of Dog Food, Sprinkle with Chicken Scraps, Watch Hellhounds Not Eat and Hellterror Jaws Blur into Engulfing Machine and forget that these are your hellpack and not just random furry moochers that exist to make your life more complicated.

One of the pubs on the main street was having some kind of private party yesterday that involved a large bunch of grey balloons tied to the pavement sign out front.  Grey.  Who on earth** would want to advertise their festive event with grey balloons?  Anyway.  The sign in question is one of those mini sandwich boards that stand on their own little feet and are usually set out in a manner to cause a maximum of pedestrian traffic disruption.  On our way to the cottage from the mews*** the balloons were on the far side of the sign and Pav gave them only a cursory glance.  On the way back . . . there was a large flapping Yog-Sothoth right at her eye level.  And she wasn’t having any of it.

Hellterror.  Bouncing up and down on four little stiff legs.  BarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkBARK.  If she had a ruff it would be standing on end.  Tail like a flagpole.  Head straight up and ears stiff and alert as phased-array radar.  BARKBARKBARKBARKBARK.

I walked on past this demonstration of the imminent end of life as we know it.  I turned around.  Yo, Pav, I said.  Her concentration wavered just long enough to cast me a you-must-be-joking glance, and then returned smartly to her duties as herald and alarm.  BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK.

Pav, I said.  I didn’t want to order her to come to me because her recall is ordinarily surprisingly good and I don’t want to damage it by stressing it beyond its strength.  She paused long enough this time to give me a beseeching look, with that ‘it’s not that I want to be doing this’ expression of gallant anguish.  Barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark.

I bent over a little and said her name again.  She stopped briefly . . . her tail dropped by about a micro-millimetre . . . she was tempted . . . no.  Those grey balloons were a threat to world—nay, universal order.  BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK.

I knelt on the frelling pavement and called her.  Paaaaaaav.  She stopped.  She looked at me.

The tail dropped, the ears flattened . . . and she rushed past Yog-Sothoth and hurled herself into my lap/arms.

My hellterror.  Mine.

* * *

I was going to go on and tell you about Street Pastoring on Friday night† and my voice lesson today†† but . . . I think I’ll go to bed with a good book.  And maybe a few furry moochers.

* * *

* Peter has backslid rather.^  Probably from overdoing it.  And my ME is a drooling nightmare.  Probably because I’ve been overdoing it.

^ But he did come last night to the galactic super-gala Christian unity festival doodah including, as part of the floor show, Maxine and my intake of Street Pastors being superfluously blessed and re-sworn in by forty-seven bishops, including three from the planet Dzorkek, and the live video link to the Vatican+.  What a scrum.++  Eleanor, bless her, gave Peter and me a lift, since parking was also going to be a scrum.

Having been sternly admonished that the usual rule applied and to wear something over my logo I was wearing a hot pink gilet and wondering if we were going to do a synchronised Busby-Berkley number when at a signal no one had prearranged with me we all stood up and ripped off our Clark Kent disguises.  Got there and discovered that nobody was doing Clark Kent.  Which at least made the wodges of Street Pastors easy to find:  the old guard were there in force.  May I remark here about the total weirdness of wearing a highly visible team uniform.  I stayed the hell [sic] out of school sports and my horse riding was always solo, even if I had to wear a number at a show.  Bell ringing has been enough of a shock to the cranky individualist system and at least we don’t wear uniforms.+++

Peter claims he was glad to have come.  And I’m sure there were a few other non-Christian family members scattered through the heaving mob.  But I don’t want to know how often he wished he was at home doing the crossword.

+ Joke.  But I actually wonder if anyone has tried to get our new pope interested in the Street Pastors?  We’re a small but increasing global  phenomenon, all committed Christians welcome and never mind which church you go to, and Francis, despite adhering to the hoary party line about celibate male priests and abortion#, seems to be pretty enthusiastic about humanity first and categorization second.

# not in conjunction, we hope

++ Aggravated by the large area cordoned off for the Dzorkekians, who have special needs from an Earthly point of view.

+++ Although I do have a Guild sweatshirt somewhere.

** It may be different on Dzorkek.

*** The hellhounds are unlikely to have found Yog-Sothoth very alarming, although they would have examined this manifestation closely.  But hellhounds and I hurtled in the other direction yesterday.

† IT DIDN’T RAIN (much).  How amazing is that?

†† Speaking of overdoing it when the ME is biting.  But I’m not giving up my voice lessons.  Not.

From house to home, Part 3 – guest post by Rachel

 

Well, it is at this point that the advantages and disadvantages of the perfectionist builder approach began to show. The advantages are that the details have been really well thought out. The disadvantage is that there is no time to actually complete all the beautiful detailing required. There were three days of extreme pain, during which he was oiling floors until 2.30 in the morning. The one I remember best was the point at which the new version of the wood filler was a different colour to the old version of the wood filler and did not quite match. After I’d walked three miles to two different diy stores in pursuit of the same brand of wood filler in a desperate attempt to ensure that it did match. The new, improved variety didn’t set either. So PB set the alarm (an alarm that we share) to 1.30am so that he could get up and oil the floor so it would be dry by the morning s..o…. Well, the “so” in that sentence needs to be delivered with a sharp intake of breath and the compassion of a black mamba that has just had its tail trodden on. So the movers could start moving my furniture in. Onto the newly stripped floor. While PB delivered his son to university.

I will draw a veil over that day. It was a long long day. Which included going back to the old house in the evening and discovering that they had gouged great chunks out of the plaster in the stairwell. This is what happens when you pick the movers with a cheap quote who are available on the day. There are the boxes where I discovered that they thought it was a good plan to mix books in with other things, so the poor dears were resting on their pages with heavy weights upon their spines.

But there are only another ten boxes to unpack. Well, ten of my boxes. There are still all of PB’s to be moved from his house.

And much is forgiven. Well, when it comes to PB, anyway.

I give you… the other side of the wall, as of mid November.

Note the cupboards. With specially large handles so my newly arthritic hands can open them easily.

Note the perfect placing of every item (apart from the cat dishes). Note the shiny shiny shiny eco fridge. (If I opened it, you would see the champagne ready to christen the house.)

I also give you (I feel here we need a short fanfare of trumpets and a large semi-naked man with a conch) the boiler.

Observe how PB has carefully aligned the amazing eco-condensing boiler so that the top edge matches the line where the picture rail is in the old dining room. How the Bertozzi cooker slides into the space created by the opening of the chimney breast. How the old chimney breast has been corbelled back and the arch rebuilt to make it high enough to cook at comfortably. Concealed in the kitchen chimney and totally invisible is an extractor fan. As well as this, there are the carefully chosen screwless matt black nickel sockets (I bet you never believed that there would actually be sockets put on those socket boxes). It was a very nasty shock to me when I realised that the sockets and light switches for the kitchen and dining room were going to cost nearly as much as the fridge. And don’t even mention in my vicinity the cost of cabling and insulation and piping and grommets and screws and pipe holders. I don’t mind paying vast sums of money out of my somewhat limited budget for something that I will look at every day (like incredibly lush sockets that make me feel as if my kitchen has been designed and could be featured in a Cotswold interior magazine) but I rather resent paying even more for things that I’m never going to see. And don’t want to. I can tell you there are metres and metres and metres of ducting and cable buried in that kitchen, and I felt like Scrooge being asked to give Bob Cratchit the national minimum wage with London weighting when I paid for it.

You can also notice (though I’m not really talking about this) that the architrave (or door casing) has not been replaced, that the pipe at the top of the boiler has not been boxed in and painted green. Petty details, mere mothholes in the great tapestry of life. These things will be got round to.

And the final transformation.

From this:

To this:

This was intended as a window seat where people could sit and chat to the cook and admire the view. Or possibly the cook could sit and read a book instead of cooking. There is a radiator behind it so it is warm and pleasurable. These plans have failed. Instead, it has become the perfect cat couch.

Dear reader, you will have noticed that no mention has been made of the cavern that is being turned into stairs. This is a saga that is still in progress. Suggesting that you might want to know more is like tapping Michelangelo on the shoulder and saying how are you getting on with the ceiling then? You must feast your eyes on the Day of Judgement that I have provided and know that there are further delights in the pipeline (The pipeline, in this case, includes sewerage.)

KES, 114

 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN

Let me go out trying.  I was praying that the black sword’s first stroke would kill me outright:  I didn’t like pain, and I didn’t want to know what kind of a mess I’d been left in while I finished bleeding to death.  But as I swung sword and bracelet in front of me, Silverheart’s blade blazed and Glosinda flared like one of Wonder Woman’s bracelets doing its lightning-bolt trick, although I didn’t remember that Wonder Woman had ever had a red-rose era, did she?, and where the two dazzles crossed, there the black sword fell and . . .

Rebounded.

It was still like being hit with a sledgehammer.  Or a mountain.  I fell down, the breath knocked out of me, briefly blind, feeling like a fly that’s been hit by a flyswatter, wondering if any of me was leaking.  As my eyes cleared the grey landscape looked greyer than ever. . . .

Except for the black thing looming over me, raising its sword for a second blow.

I couldn’t get up in time.  I rolled, feeling Silverheart glance off my leg—cutting myself with my own sword, that sounded like a me-ish sort of thing to do.  I was still dizzy and squashed and disoriented:  I was on my back now, and clumsily raised sword (bracing Silverheart’s hilt against the ground) and bracelet again, but there was nowhere for the force of the blow to go.  I screamed as it struck, and while Silverheart and Glosinda held against it this second time, I blacked out.  When I came back to consciousness I hurt so much I thought I’d entered the dying part of this experience.  I lay taking tiny shallow painful gasps, not trying to move, not at all sure I could move, what there was left of my mind fascinated that my lungs were working, that the alveoli were apparently still doing the whole oxygen-exchange business.  The colorless fuzz over my vision thinned and disappeared more slowly this time.  I blinked and blinked, willing the grey landscape to differentiate itself from. . . . The black thing had reverted to its earlier stillness, standing motionless with its sword raised.  The blade was only barely raised from the vertical this time, but then I was lying on the ground.  A sort of sweeping gesture would do for me.

I shut my eyes briefly, and felt tears slither out between my lids and slide down the sides of my face.  There was a hot sticky sensation along the corner of my jaw and down my neck;  I thought perhaps my ears were bleeding.  I cleared my throat and discovered that my vocal chords were still responding to requests from headquarters.  “Thanks, you two,” I said hoarsely to my sword and arm guard.  I sounded both rough and tinny, as if I were speaking from somewhere else rather than this supine body.  I briefly wondered what had been damaged besides my hearing.  But it wasn’t likely to matter much longer.  “I appreciate it.  But this isn’t working, you know?  You needed a bigger hero.  Heroine.  And one who knew what she was doing.”  I looked up at the black thing, which didn’t seem to be reacting to the sound of my voice.  “And preferably a sizeable army.

“Go on,” I croaked at the black thing.  “Get it over with, will you?”  But it still wouldn’t move.  And as I lay there it began to occur to me that since I wasn’t a hundred and twenty and lying in a comfortable bed I’d really rather not die lying down.  Lying here probably didn’t count as going out trying either.

If I concentrated I could feel my arms and legs.  Maybe when I moved the black thing would finally nail me.

But it didn’t.  Slowly, painfully, I rolled over on my side.  Even more slowly and more painfully I knelt, ready to lurch to my feet.  The bits of me I could see were striped with scratches and purple with bruises.  Never mind.  I had to use Silverheart as a cane again, to get to my feet.  I kept looking up at the black thing.  It had raised its sword a little but that was all.

I turned to face it.  I balanced Silverheart across my legs, her tip in the dirt again, my hand against my belly as I held her hilt.  My other arm I crossed against my chest, rose medallion facing out.  I didn’t have the strength to lift either of them against a third stroke by the black sword.

We stood there, the black thing and I.  Maybe we were looking at each other.  I took as deep a breath as I could manage.  “By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair,” I said, “you shall have neither the Ring nor me.”  And with an effort that felt like it was breaking my bones, I managed to raise Silverheart an inch or two off the ground.

Street Pastors Stub Post Night

 

It’s throwing it down out there, like a bully throwing rocks, but there’s already so much standing water it’s not surprising that more rain bounces.  We’re having the occasional spasm of thunder and lightning for interest.  I’m a little worried about tonight’s commute to Mauncester, even though I know every sub-micron of that road, including where the invisible black water collects and does a before-the-Gates-of-Moria thing if you’re in the wrong, you should forgive the term, stream.*  But I’m also half expecting a last-minute email from our team leader saying that SPing has been cancelled by police order because the current frothing down the main pedestrian precinct is strong enough to pull anyone even slightly the worse for wear over** and anyone at all wearing stacked-sole stilettos.  Or, speaking of current, that the entire city has shorted out, including the pumps at the pubs and the shot dispensers at the club(s).

But I do want to make a start at responding to what you all said about last night’s post.

Salome

My agent also tells me that the internet has moved on and writers aren’t blogging any more

Have you suggested she should go tell John Scalzi? (And many, many others, FWIW).

Yep.  Graphic example of what happens when you’re careless about using someone else on your public blog.   I’d already had a whap up longside the head for misquoting her from Merrilee herself.  I don’t remember what she originally said, only that I came away with the impression that I was now an Old Fogey for continuing to blog—and half a dozen helpful people have sent me links to ‘why I don’t blog/don’t blog any more’ posts in the last month or thereabouts, so I was probably feeling kind of . . . oppressed.  But all that said I still knew I was making a silly generalisation and on a public blog you can only do this to yourself.

What Merrilee did say last night, and this time I am quoting, from her email:  I did not say writers aren’t blogging anymore — I said YOU DON’T NEED TO DO IT EVERY DAY AND THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA.

Okay?  —By the way I think John Scalzi is sui generis.   I just write a blog.

Catlady

The self centred is largely because I don’t have to worry about hurting my own feelings if I go over the top,

. . . I find I have to do the same thing in my sermons. Especially because sermons are so often about our frailty and failings as humans and what we should or can or should want to do about it (and, even though I’m Jewish — and thus, hardly ever discuss God in public, even at temple, because Judaism is primarily about people — occasionally even where God might play a part in all this), I often need examples of people who are misunderstanding some basic precept of existence. And I’m not going to use someone I know. Likewise, I’m not going to use some internet/urban legend story about someone I don’t know. So my only choice is…me. I come out as a total, self-centered dweeb in my sermons. I can only hope that the rest of the sermon convinces my congregation that I’ve overcome this week’s version of dweebishness enough to be brilliant about it. (Or at least funny. In sermons, if you can’t be brilliant, be funny. If you can’t be funny, be brief. The perfect sermon is all three.)

YES.  EXACTLY.  THIS.  THANK YOU.  Not that I write sermons***, but if I want to get a point across?  If I want to say something . . . unflattering?  If I want to dandle a buffoon before you in the hopes of making you laugh?  Yes.  I can only use me.

Hoonerd

. . . I’m glad that I was wrong in taking you too seriously because I do think your anecdotes are funny,

Oh good.

. . . and I do relate them to my friends, all the while laughing that a writer I have loved my whole life is a “cranky”, “old” lady as you often make yourself out to be in the blog.

Well, it’s like being self-absorbed, volatile and having a talent for seeing the dire in things.  I am cranky, and sixty-one ain’t young.  It’s what you do with the bits and pieces you decide to use in public.  But if you’re laughing I am succeeding.

It wouldn’t surprise me… if the blog hasn’t further confused the issue of Who I Am As A Real Human Being

Yep, guess I was confused . . . due to my not catching on to the hyperbolic nature of your stories and rants . . . but I am glad, too . . . a little glad? Still sorry I upset you . . .

‘Appal’ is the word you’re looking for here.  THEY THINK I’M TELLING THE TRUTH?  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

. . . because now I can be in on the jokes along with everyone else.

Oh good.

I do like your blog! Can we be friends again, Hellgoddess? . . .

Snork.  Yes, of course.  And apologies for ironing out your footnotes;  I couldn’t figure out how not to confuse everyone hopelessly, including myself.

And thank you, all of you forum commenters.  I’m telling the real, true, unyanked-around truth that I could not keep my energy up for blogging if some of you didn’t talk back sometimes.  THANK YOU.

* * *

* That may be a Britishism, stream for car lane.

** Which means they won’t get far away from home, since ‘pre-loading’ is the order of the standard night out.  Note:  ugh.

*** Or that I know how to be brief

Blogging and the blog

 

Hoonerd

I need a disclaimer: I sometimes roll my eyes at the way we readers mollycoddle you with our flattery and commiseration. Furthermore, after becoming more familiar with your blog over this past year, I also thought that things might be improved in your case if you didn’t look at things in such a dire light. But then I read some post where you write how you worry that your readers must perceive you as inordinately over-dramatic and that your response to this would be that your blog is the outlet for all of these spewing emotions and that you are not as self-focused during the rest of your day. Then I realized that my equivalent of your blog is my daily journal, and I certainly am self-centered and overly dramatic there.

Boldface mine.  No.  Wrong.  Good grief.  On a public blog?  Are you frelling kidding?  Smoke and mirrors, remember?  I am self-centred and overly dramatic, but what you read on the blog is a shtick.  It’s a persona built on the fact that I can get good mileage out of dire and overly dramatic—although I admit it’s supposed to be funny.  I’m trying for funny*.  The self centred is (as I have also said on the blog, although you seem to have missed it) largely because I don’t have to worry about hurting my own feelings if I go over the top, and I don’t want to hurt anyone else’s by taking the mickey wrong.  I tweak other people only as far as I think I would let them tweak me, if they had a public blog that a lot of strangers read.  I may get this wrong but I’m trying to be responsible—and I as a subject am always safe.  Also—and this relates both to the smoke and mirrors and to how far I will go using other real people on my blog—I have a privacy fetish.  I’m very well aware that it would only take some basic Google fu and a little time to find out all the ordinary realworld ™ details about my life, but all the aliases are there partly because it’s fun for me, partly because I’m doing unto others as I would have them do unto me and partly because it’s an indication that an essential aspect of my blog shtick is misdirection.

I don’t keep a daily journal.  It’s not because the blog takes up equivalent time and it’s certainly not because the blog provides genuine catharsis.  It’s because I don’t find the naked truth about myself all that interesting.  I’m a storyteller.  I take facts and yank them around. This includes the blog.  Something else I’ve said, I thought often but perhaps not often enough, is that I rarely lie by commission on the blog.  I lie by omission every day.  It’s not just leaving stuff out.

I’ve said for years—since I first started receiving embarrassingly personal fan mail, which means shortly after BEAUTY was published in 1978—that it’s true that readers know a lot about me (cf embarrassing fan mail declaring that the letter-writer totally understands me) but they don’t know what they know.  Because of the storyteller.  Because of the yanking around.  I think all writers write from their guts—what else is there to write from?**—but I may do it a bit more transparently and—er—enthusiastically than some.***

It wouldn’t surprise me, although as a poll this is a nonstarter, if the blog hasn’t further confused the issue of Who I Am As A Real Human Being rather than reading only all those made-up stories.  Because I’m starting with my life.  Not with dragons and pegasi and vampires.

I began the blog because my agent told me to.  It was no burning desire of mine.  I’ve turned it into something I can do, and even mostly enjoy†, although regular readers know that one of my regular moans is about the limitations of that can.  I’m bad at writing short;  if I stopped doing it every day I’d start trying to make the more occasional posts better which would take even more time.  Which is also the reason I rarely write about big important real-world stuff however much it concerns me privately, because I’m not going to be able to do it justice without tapping into my professional story-writing energy which I (mostly) manage to keep separate.††  And I have a huge mental block about writing book reviews††† because I know how much even the wrong praise can hurt or discourage, and acknowledgement of subjectivity may not cover all a reviewer’s errors.

My agent also tells me that the internet has moved on and writers aren’t blogging any more.  Sigh.  This blog having become something I can do, something that gives me some, however off centre, public profile, I am unwilling to give it up and try to learn to do something else—since we’re all now supposed to have some kind of visibility as ourselves, not just as the things we do, the stories we write, the song cycles we compose, the forty-foot rusty steel sculptures that terrify the children in the city parks.

But this blog is what it is.  I know that.  It’s not meant to be awesome and deathless.  It’s only supposed to be amusing.‡  And no writer gets it right every time, either in a multi-draft novel or a once-through-with-safety-pins-to-hold-its-hems-up blog.  I suggest that the next time I . . . roll my eyes at the way we readers mollycoddle you with our flattery and commiseration you give my blog a miss.  There is an infinity of ways to waste your time pleasurably on the internet.  It’s not worth sticking around somewhere if you’re not having fun.

* * *

* Mostly.  Peter’s stroke, for example, is not funny.

** Which may be a revelatory remark.  But as a reader I find books that feel to me too much written from their authors’ heads uninvolving.

*** Peter doesn’t get nearly as much embarrassing fan mail as I do.  His readers rarely declare that they have known him in previous lives and that their souls are intertwined with his for eternity.

† Including the forum.  If people didn’t comment I’d lose the will to blog.

†† And maybe not at all.  True nonfiction and I are a trifle wary with each other.  Possibly because I don’t believe true nonfiction exists, and I get hung up negotiating the shape of my subjectivity.

††† Frelling ratbags anyway.  I would like to figure out a way over/around this.

‡ Which, you know, is hard graft enough.

The horror of email

 

MY EMAIL IS DEAD*.  AND I WANT MY SERVER’S GUTS ON A PLATE.**

I had an email a few days ago from my host or whatever the arglebargle jerkface, saying that my email was migrating.  Quack quack quack or similar.  I had no idea that email was of a nomadic bent.   And that when this process was complete and it was contentedly nest-building in its new neighbourhood I was going to have to mrffjjjx darblefhha gormblad, being extra-careful with the tuvuprk so that it doesn’t hipplycritz.  I leaped back with a cry as if I’d been burnt, and forwarded this dreadful memorandum to Raphael.  Who replied laconically that he would come out and reconfigure, and that he’d bring restraints for the tuvuprk , which was prone to bolting.

Migration was supposed to occur on Monday.  How was I supposed to know if it’s happened or not?  My email continued to behave as normal, which is to say as if possessed by demons, but no better or worse than it ever does.

Raphael came today on the assumption that my email must have moved into its new home by now and was ready for him to hang the pictures on the walls and fix the leaky tap and the sticky door.

Nope.  Still migrating.  Maybe it has a lot of boxes of books.

So he can’t reconfigure.  And therefore he took his departure*** and I went about my (slow†) business

This evening, firing up the laptop for the first time since about an hour after Raphael left . . . MY EMAIL IS DEAD.  I sent a suitably outraged text to Raphael who rang me from home, trying not to laugh, but it’s so dead he can’t talk me through a patch.

He’s coming again tomorrow, poor man.  The hellterror will be delighted.

* * *

* So is the dishwasher.^  This is a CALAMITY.  Peter, while admirably domestic in theory, and goes through the motions beautifully, belongs to that quaint British philosophy which holds that most household chores are performed for their ritual function, in which gesture, posture and the type and quality of your ceremonial objects are the crucial aspects, and hygiene has nothing to do with it.^^  AAAAAAAAAUGH.^^^

^ I mean the electric appliance.  Calm down.

^^ Yes.  British.  Sue me.  We have slobs in America—lots of slobs, in fact—but this business of faithfully and energetically applying the dish mop# to no discernable effect is British.

# That’s part of the problem right there.  Dish mop?

^^^ Also something previously living has taken its final departure from this mortal coil somewhere rather too nearby and we have the invasion of big fat bluebottle flies at the mews to prove it.  Yuck.#  The only thing to be said for having them in the middle of winter is that they’re really slow and you can just about whap them out of the air, should you want to, and not bother waiting for them to light somewhere.  I HAVE THREE DOGS AND NOT ONE OF THEM IS INTERESTED IN CATCHING FLIES.  It’s not a rabbit, say the hellhounds.  It’s not a hedgehog.  IT’S TOO HIGH UP, says the hellterror, whose pogosticking is not an exact science.##

# Peter, at the far end of the mews, which is very nice for those of us who sing a lot louder than we used to and don’t want to be heard by the neighbours, is slap up against farmland, and the farmer in this case is a slob, speaking of slobs.  Peter’s too nice to take her to court.  He could.

## I think I’ve told you—? the story of one of Peter’s in laws ringing us up in a panic, many years ago now, while we were still at the old house, because she was having a sudden invasion of bluebottles and was assuming The World Was Ending?  I happened to answer the phone.  Nah, I said, it’s just that something’s died in your vicinity.  If you have any closed-up chimneys or similar—especially if there’s a funny smell—it’s worth trying to find and dispose of it.  If not, buy an extra fly swatter and hunker down.  It’ll be over pretty soon—a few days, a week.   Oh thank you, she said.  I knew you’d know.

Hmmm.

** Yes, Peter is still alive and breathing and his body parts remain in conformance to the standard arrangement.  Although he went to his Wednesday bridge club today and confessed when he came home that he had faded badly by the end.  You had a stroke a month ago.  Lighten up.^

^ I’m still not in a very good mood.  I’m being vouchsafed the honour of giving him a ride home from town tomorrow morning+ because he has to climb up the long hill to my end of town.  I’ll get the palanquin dusted off.++

+ Sic.  Late morning.

++ Hey.  We have four bearers.  Two hellhounds, a hellterror, and me.  I admit the height differential is tricky#, but we’ll figure something out.

# Not to mention hellterror directional control

*** After a brief frustrating conversation about Android tablets, because the tablet-sized homeopathic software I want is only on Android.  Fie.^

^ And while Astarte is a wonderful machine in many ways+, even Raphael has never managed to make her play nicely with PC-based email.  Speaking of frelling email.

+ I am presently reading another cheap ebook that I again bought for the author’s name when it appeared in one of the weekly Kindle come-ons and . . . . arrrrrrgh.  FOR PITY’S SAKE GET ON WITH IT.  It’s alternate history and they want you to know they have DONE THEIR HOMEWORK.  If this were hard copy I’d’ve thrown it across the room by now.  As it is the skimming swipe-finger is so seductive I may even finish it.  If reading one page in five counts as finishing.

† I’m due to go Street Pastoring this Friday and I’m going.  ME, are you listening?  You can knock me around two more days.  Friday night I have plans.

In which Peter narrowly misses being murdered by his loving wife

 

And no jury would convict me.

I still feel like death on stale toast* and while I was up by nine this morning two hours later I was still having trouble trying to figure out how to get out of my dressing gown and into my jeans.  So I rang Peter to tell him that I was, once again, going to be late for taking him shopping.

He didn’t answer.

I muttered to myself a little but he’d call back in a few minutes.  I returned to figuring out which part of my jeans went over my shoulders.

He didn’t ring back.

I’d got my jeans on by this time, having wasted a certain amount of time shoving everything that had fallen out back into the pockets**.  I rang him again.

He didn’t answer again.

At this point I was getting worried. Very worried.  In fact VERY worried.  I’m usually pretty good in emergencies but it takes me a while to find the ‘adrenaline’ button when the ME is weighing on me this heavily.  I decided to whip the hellhounds round the churchyard for immediate-relief purposes—Pav goes out first thing—and then I could haul everyone down to the mews and find out what was going on.

I rang Peter a third time.  He still didn’t answer.

As I loaded up Wolfgang I knew I was heading for a ring-the-ambulance situation.  The only question was how bad it was.  He might have got up for a pee ten minutes after I left last night, had a fall, and spent the last twelve hours wedged against the bathroom door.  He could have hit his head and bled out. . . .

I was also sort of testing my own spongy boundaries:  yes I could get him to A&E myself if the ambulance was going to take too long, but I was also going to pay for this later.  The ME is a usurer, and there are no regulatory bodies it listens to.

The mews front door was unlocked when I arrived.  This is a tentatively good sign:  whatever happened had happened after he got up this morning and got dressed.  He has not spent twelve hours wedged against the bathroom door.  Probably.

I burst in.  And there was Peter standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, holding his knapsack and looking a little startled at my precipitate arrival.

He had decided to walk into town and do his own shopping—for the first time today since his stroke, so yaay, hurrah blah blah blah etc —without telling me.   

I nearly freaking killed him.

* * *

* Although I’ve started learning A Bay in Anglesey, another of the Five Betjeman Songs by Madeline Dring, she of the Nightclub Proprietress^.  I’ve been hiding in other languages, the last few weeks.  With the occasional exception like Che Faro,^^ which is very nearly tattooed on my heart, even when I know the English translation pretty well it’s easier to stay safely aloof when it’s in Italian or German.

^ Which in my present state of negligible energy and mood to match I’m not going to touch with a barge pole (‘ . . . But I’m dying now and done for, What on earth was all the fun for?  I am ill and old and terrified and tight’) except that I found myself singing it to the hellhounds today.  They were fine.  Dunno about the neighbours.

^^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ccRKZSNV24

This is one of those base-line WHY AM I BOTHERING?? performances for me.  I’ve posted it here before.  But speaking of things I’ve posted here before, I’ve posted the why before here too, which is that grappling with a beloved piece of music as a performer transforms your relationship with it, I mean TRANSFORMS.  It’s like going from two dimensions to three.  Or eleven.  It’s worth it in a Where There Is Joy There Is Paaaaain kind of way . . . but it also serves to make me crazy, because I am in such need of extra things to be made crazy by, that schools keep calling stuff like art and music optional or superfluous or frivolous.  We should be taught/given/forced into some kind of personal engagement with music the way we’re taught/given/forced into relationship with the alphabet and with (shudder) numbers.  Do we want two-dimensional humans or eleven-dimensional humans?+

Also, just how does Janet Baker sing ‘ben’ in that gorgeous open way???  —This is at the very end when she’s rising to her final despair.  The lyric is pretty simple and you keep repeating most of it, including ‘where will I go without my beloved’.  But it’s only at the end that you’re expected to soar up to ‘Dove andro senza il mio ben’.  It’s only a frelling F, but try singing ‘ben’ on a high F without sounding like a goat overdue to be milked, standing at the gate, going behn.  Behn.  Behn.  Eff eff eff eff.  Both Blondel and Nadia have told me to bag the syllable and concentrate on getting a nice full throbbing F.++  But some day I’m going to get ‘ben’ back in there.  On a good day I almost can, not that I’m ever going to sound like Janet Baker.  But if you listen very closely you’ll notice that even Baker is cheating a little:  her high-F ‘ben’ is a lot more like ‘bain’+++ than it is ‘ben’.  It becomes ‘ben’ again when she drops down to C.

Now all I have to do is get the ‘pre’ back onto the high G in Un moto di gioja.  At the moment I’m just singing pah.  Mozart is usually pretty singer-friendly but this may be one of the pieces he wrote for a friend he wanted to tease.  For this music, you put up with the teasing.  Pah.

+ It’s a new term and All Change.  I usually have my voice lesson after Boris, the baritone who could have been professional and decided to be a doctor instead.  He’s pretty intimidating.  HE’S VERY FRELLING INTIMIDATING.  Very nice man but VERY INTIMIDATING SINGER.  I’ve told Nadia she’s not allowed to schedule him right after me, when he might HEAR.  ME.  She thinks I’m having my little joke.#  But yesterday I was right after one of her new beginners.  Yet another woman probably nearly as old as I am deciding that if she’s ever going to do it the time is now . . . and taking voice lessons.  She’s not as bad as I was two years ago but listening to her sure brings it all back, that little tight thin giving-nothing-away sound.  Oh my.  Honey, wait’ll the first time you open your mouth and a REAL NOISE comes out.  You’ll scare yourself silly.

# Although she’s afraid I’m not having my little joke.  Yep.  I’m not.

++ Thus sounding more like a sheep who has lost her lamb.  BAAAA.  BAAAA.

+++ Nadia says, think ‘bairn’ and leave the ‘r’ out.

** This is a seriously hellterror-compromised pair of jeans so a certain amount of creativity may be necessary in tying them on.