Robin McKinley's Blog, page 34

New Year’s Eve on the street and in the bell tower END FINAL YES END

 

At least I had previously confirmed with our tower captain that this was going to be the only open door on the way out too so I didn’t instantly rush away to check all the other doors—it’s a big close and there might always be another frelling door down another twisty frelling medieval alley. . . .  I may have done a little un-Street-Pastor like snarling.  I turned back toward the tower thinking that there were a number of other people who were going to be wanting to get out of the close one way or another and maybe the bishop could bless a door open or maybe we could have The Miracle of the Falling Down Wall* or something.

As I circled back toward the door that was supposed to be open** I saw one of our more volatile senior ringers approaching the shut door.  Under other circumstances what was about to happen might have been amusing, but I like the idea of ringing and SPing on New Year’s Eve, and the SP admin are not going to let me do it if I disappear into the bell tower and am never seen again.

And at this point Mr Cock of the Walk materialised, striding around the corner in rooster-coloured day-glo waterproofs.  He had the look of a man with a key to a large Saxon-echt door and I, who sometimes knows when to keep a grip, addressed him humbly.  Yes, he says, taking up the entire pavement with his swinging I Am the Man gait***, I’m going to open the door.

And now our volatile senior ringer catches sight of him.

. . . Okay, it was pretty funny.  Fortunately Mr Man did still open the gate.

I SPRINTED.

And my team were happy to see me again and said they’d listened to the bells and thought of me ringing.†

And, as New Year’s Eves go, it was pretty mellow.  Except for the not getting home till nearly 5 a.m. part.

But I hope I’ll do it again.  If they let me.††

* * *

PETER UPDATE:  We had our appointment with Dr Goodpotions yesterday and HE TOOK PETER OFF THREE DRUGS.†††  YAAAAAAAAY.  I don’t generally go with Peter to his GP—why would I—only when there’s something extreme going on, you know?  When I’m probably feeling a trifle extreme myself.  Whereupon I have to remember to be calm and understated‡ because Dr Goodpotions is VERY BRITISH.  VERY VERY BRITISH.  VERY.  I’m an American.  I don’t know how to be that British.  I don’t have the right glands.  I’m missing a crucial blood component.  It’s taking me YEARS to learn how not to frighten/repel Dr Goodpotions into not talking to me.

It worked pretty well yesterday though, the attempt at calm and understated.  What I wanted to hear was that Dr G had any idea what all these drugs were beyond what it said on the packet—um, I tried not to say it quite like this—and he said that they were all common and familiar and had been around in heavy use for years and their little idiosyncrasies were pretty well documented and not to worry, and furthermore that the particular nasty interaction that had freaked me out was old news and had been discredited.  Oh.  I’d still rather have the internet available to find out scary things on that may be untrue, but I admit I wasn’t instantly ready to view Medscape through my DISTRUST filter, shiny with use elsewhere on the webz as it is.

And then today Peter and I went to Mauncester for the first time since he fell ill.  It was going to be an adventure, and would include how well his stamina is holding up.  But I had been late picking him up at the mews and was busy blithering and rescheduling the rest of the day, and we divided up the errands as if everything was normal and I shot off in my designated direction and got about halfway to my first stop and suddenly thought I’ve just cut loose an eighty-six-year-old man who had a stroke less than three weeks ago alone in a large noisy confusing city MCKINLEY HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?  Well.  Yes.  Frequently.

He was fine.  I nearly had a nervous breakdown before I found him again.

And on the way home Peter said, you know, it’s the 3rd.  Yes, I said, we’ve been thinking about going out to dinner.‡‡  No, he said, I mean it’s the real 3rd, the 3rd of January, the actual wedding-anniversary 3rd.

I’d forgotten.‡‡‡  How embarrassing is that.

So we had to go out to dinner.

Yes.  There was champagne.§

* * *

* Theodora and I would have been happy to let them have our falling-down wall experience from last winter, if we’d only known.^  We could have told the Falling Down Wall fairy that its services were going to be vital the coming New Year’s Eve at an abbey close not far away and it should conserve its resources.

^ Despite the loss of photo-blog posts.  I would be willing to cede these.

** It was also raining.  Just by the way.  Heavily.^  I was bad and wicked and put my coat back on.^^

^ This footnote got left behind last night.  If you look closely you will observe that the ‡ footnote is missing.  Well, this is it.

^^ I also dropped my gloves in another puddle.  The wages of sin.  Sigh.

*** You can sure see where the term ‘wide boy’ could have come from.

† Also, nobody laughed.  God is kind.

††I’ll remember the large black plastic trash bag to cover up my logos next year.  Or maybe I could knit a very large Navy blue shawl.

††† He’s still on quite a few.  But three fewer.

‡ YAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH

‡‡ New readers or those with better things to remember:  Our two important dates are the 26th of July^ and the 3rd of January.  The rest of the year, if we want a random celebration, we tend to choose either a 26th or a 3rd.

^ We’d met before.  But this was The Meeting.

‡‡‡ I told you I lose my mind frequently.

§ And we’re both shattered.

New Year’s Eve on the street and in the bell tower, continued

 

Since SP teams are a minimum of three, we were going to have to meet up before I peeled* off to my second commitment.**  We gathered at the massive great front of Forza and discovered . . . that the door into the close was locked.  The door to the bell tower is off the close.  Oh.  Hmm.

I tried it two or three times, the way you do, feeling a fool.  It went on being locked.  Emphatically.  I don’t know that Forza’s big outside doors are original—since the first abbey was knocked down by William the Conqueror so his bishops could put up something new and flashy, I doubt it.  But they’re built to look like they were salvaged when the rest of the old abbey went under the wrecking ball equivalent in the late eleventh century and rehung in the new build for that quaint traditional look.  You kind of expect ‘Aethelstan was here’ to be carved into the lintel.

I noticed a group of bellringers striding purposefully toward us.  Er, I said, the door’s locked.  We know, said Conall.  So are all the other doors.

Oh.

I think most of the other SPs were trying not to fall into fits of helpless giggles.  Eventually there was a rumour that the farthest-away and most inconvenient close door was still open, so five SPs went one way and I hared off after the other bellringers, struggling out of my coat and hat as I went.  Sic.  We’re not supposed to wear our SP gear, flamboyantly logo’d as it is, anywhere or any time under any conditions but when we’re on the beat with our team being Street Pastors.  I knew this, and when the possibility had first come up of ringing and pastoring I’d remembered that I was going to have to have something to drape over my coat, but I’ve been so focussed both on Peter and on the fact that I had not to focus on Peter while I was SPing***, that this little detail had kind of dropped out.  Fortunately it was not raining.  I turned my coat inside out and . . . it’s a big heavy bulky furry thing, bless it, and it didn’t want to turn inside out and there was no question of my putting it back on that way, so I stumbled along carrying a small Navy-blue polar bear cub in my arms.

The rumour was true and we got in through the Strait of Gibraltar gate, picking up hangers-on as we went, since on New Year’s Eve traditionally a lot of people with more sense the rest of the year† struggle up all those stairs to watch us ring in the new year.

We attempted, with mixed results, to scamper up all those stairs.  All.  Those.  Stairs.  I haven’t been up them in a while and they’ve got longer again.  And then our first hasty pull-off was somewhat marred by the fact that my bell was frelling locked and wouldn’t.††  Meanwhile more and more people were coming up to watch us so we stood around whistling little tunes with our hands in our pockets pretending that this is all part of the New Year’s Eve tradition while someone belted up that last flight of stairs to the belfry and unlocked my bell.

We did finally ring.  And I thought about how sad I’d feel if I were out on the street listening instead of in the bell tower trying to tell myself that I haven’t forgotten everything, and mere rounds on eighty-six or four hundred and twelve bells is no big deal even if you do have to hold up and wait about ten minutes before it’s your turn again while everyone else rings—especially those last few bells which range in size and weight from Thomas the Tank Engine through nuclear submarine to aircraft carrier.  Bong.  The mayor was there.  The bishop was there.  The Folies Bergere were there.  No no I made that up.  Although they might have been.  It was a frelling crush.  And I’ve told you before the ringing chamber is the size of a ballroom.  Two ballrooms.

It was a real crush going back down those stairs again.  Anorexic Chihuahuas have been known to have claustrophobia on that final staircase.  I’d tried to blitz for the head of the queue and I almost made it.  But immediately ahead of me were a family consisting of a tall gentleman in a very long coat whose tails trailed up the stairs behind him a remarkably long way, and ahead of him two frelling women who . . . really I have no idea what they were doing, barring whining.  Look, you can SEE what the stairs are like, if you are helpless screaming cows, why didn’t you change your minds and go to a nice ground-level party somewhere?  Oh, right, you don’t have minds.  I am not joking that the rest of us were standing at the top for a good two or three minutes while Barbie and Midge totally failed to negotiate that admittedly challenging last flight of stairs. And I was failing to channel the Holy Spirit about this situation.  FAILING.  FAAAAAAAILING.†††

Spilled out onto the street at last.  Pelted for the one open door out of the close to attempt to rejoin my team before it was time to go home and . . .

The one open door was shut and locked.  Noooooooooooo.‡

TO BE CONTINUED.‡‡

* * *

* Pealed.  Ha ha ha.

** Maxine^ kept saying, It is so cool that you are doing both.^^

^ Three of the four of us SPs from St Margaret’s were on the job last night.+  Are we the superbest or what.

+ And Eleanor was at home feeling guilty.

^^ I think I told you there was some administrative stress about this initially, but our overall team leader was fine with it, so I got to do my double act.

*** Also that I had to have suitable-for-sharing food to bring for the break.  I have my priorities.

† So far as I know theoretically anyone can come watch us any time we’re ringing.  But any time but New Year’s Eve you have to ask a ringer first.  And possibly hire a Sherpa.

†† When you’ve got eighty-seven bells you don’t want to haul them up and down^ every time you want to ring, especially when the biggest half-dozen of them weigh in total almost as much as the Isle of Wight.  Forza has a fancy locking system that bolts the bells in place, mouth up, ready for ringing.  But you do have to unbolt them.

^ Ringing up and down:  bells are normally left mouth down because it’s safer.  Therefore to do method ringing you have to drag each bell by pulling on the rope so it swings higher and higher till it’s ready to stand upright mouth up on its beam.  At which point you’re ready for full-circle ringing.

††† I am still failing.  In the first place, why didn’t they wait and let the rest of us get out first?  In the second place, there is a perfectly good tiny cul de sac at the bottom of that first stair:  having held us all up for probably five minutes total while they minced and tittuped and whatever the galflibbet, why didn’t they draw aside at that point—I’ll let them off the profuse apologizing—and let the rest of us by THEN?  But noooooooo.  They waddled^ on down.  And it’s not like Mr Coat-tails didn’t know there was a press of numbers behind him:  he looked over his shoulder several times.  Maybe he mistook me for a Street Pastor and thought that I was channelling the Holy Spirit at him.  These are not Holy Spirit vibes, honey.

^ This is not a weightist remark.  I know plenty of people whose doctors wish they were thinner who are neat and nippy on their feet.  Both these bimbos were, in fact, slim and slight.

‡‡ I didn’t mean for it to run to three.  Well, I didn’t mean for it to run more than one post, last night.  This is sort of the KES/PEGASUS New Year’s Eve post.

New Year’s Eve on the street and in the bell tower

 

Skating librarian

Ring in the New Year! Ring it in! Bells are ringing! Ding, Dong, Ding, Dong!

Thought of you . . . as we sang this round last night. . . . We were sitting around a living room, adults and children, some old friends, others newcomers, with three of the kids, now nine and ten, playing their fiddles, two grownups with guitars.

With several strong musicians to keep us on the right track, we sang lots of folk songs and carols, including some from a number of local performers we know, and some written for us to try out by members of the group. . . .

Oh and plenty of brownies . . . studded with dark chocolate chunks and dried cranberries. . . .

This sounds like a totally perfect way to spend your New Year’s Eve.  Ringing tower bells and Street Pastoring turns out to be a pretty good way to spend your New Year’s Eve too.  I missed the bishop’s party, that the bellringers were invited to, and which had champagne, but us SPs had home-made mini-stollen and sponge cake with cherry jam filling at break* and on the whole I’ll take the stollen and the cake.  It’s a lot easier to open a bottle of champagne** than to make your own stollen.***

Which is not to say that nothing went wrong.  Heaven forfend, you should forgive the phrase.

We were lucky with the weather though.  The monsoon is back and the forecast for last night was dire.  It was just starting to rain as we—er—trickled in, and while we were loading up the knapsacks and discovering that we didn’t have any fresh batteries for the torches IT CAME ON TO SHEET.  The room we meet in just before we go out† is on the first, which is in this case top, floor, and the sound of the rain was so loud we could barely hear ourselves talking.  Matilda and I exchanged glances:  we’re both on Walker’s team and Walker’s team is notorious for being rained on.

And then . . . it didn’t exactly clear but it backed off to a damp sullen grizzle with occasional outbursts of temper.††  There were six of us SPs, so we could go out in two teams;  the overall team leader, Henry, went with Maxine and Jonas;  I was with Matilda and her husband Dominic whom I hadn’t met before.  He is fabulous.†††  The twice I’ve been out with Matilda I’ve seen her do some lovely things and without apparently thinking about it, while I’m still standing there going, Wha’?‡  But the thing that makes Dominic stand out is the he seems able to get alongside the seriously out of it—the very much worse for wear or the fallen-through-the-social-services-cracks‡‡ ones.  We had examples of both last night and Dominic kept up his side of each conversation in a calm, ordinary voice as if he was having a conversation.  I had occasion to talk to one of these people myself and it seemed to me I might as well have been reciting the times tables or Chesterton’s Lepanto.‡‡‡

But it was time for our comedy of errors. . . .

TO BE CONTINUED.§

* * *

* Both made by one of our Prayer Pastors.  Last night’s was a scratch team, those of us mad enough to be willing to patrol on New Year’s Eve, and we’re all now trying to get reassigned to her team.

** And Forza is always counting its pennies.  The champagne mere bellringers are offered is not top flight.^

^ I’m a lot crankier about cheap champagne than I used to be:  there are some really just plain good Proseccos and similar out there so there’s no excuse for bad cheap fizz any more.

*** Although if you make your own you can leave out the marzipan.  Ahem.

† This is the Donning of the Armour of God bit:  we read a few Bible verses and do some praying.  And it’s interesting just how effective this is.  Now granted there’s been a fairly steep selection process for any of us to have got that far:  you have to want to do it and then you have to survive the interview process and the training.  So if you’re there weaponing up as a SP you have both faith and a call to be doing this work.  But even so.  You can feel the atmosphere in the room change.  Although I may have been especially aware of it last night because I was coming out of a fortnight pretty single-mindedly devoted to Peter.^

^ Or to worrying about Peter.

†† It was also shockingly warm.  This was excellent for several reasons, including that I had not had to bring the tropical jungle indoors again which since of course I’d spent too much time waiting fruitlessly^ for hellhounds to eat I probably couldn’t have done anyway arrrrrrrgh and when I dropped my glove into a puddle, having removed it briefly for some dumb reason^^, I didn’t go into exothermic shock.

There has been local flooding again—and some spectacular tree-uprooting in the wind—but at least it isn’t snow.

^ Also meatlessly and kibblelessly

^^ Probably concerning hot chocolate, lollipops, or pairs of flipflops, see below.

††† She likes him too.

‡ If I can’t give the problem hot chocolate or a lollipop or a pair of flipflops I have no clue.  I’m told you do learn.

‡‡ There are a lot of reasons people become homeless, and none of them is about being lazy, stupid or a slob, okay?  But some of these people really seriously need social services help which for one reason or another they’re not getting.

‡‡ The gentleman I was attempting to engage might well have liked Lepanto.  His own rendition of—something—was dramatic enough that one of the door staff of the late-night whatever we were lurking outside came over to check that Matilda and I were all right, Dominic having his attention on one of our waif’s friends.  We were fine.  Just at a loss.

§ Hey.  Cliffhangers ‘r’ us.  Didn’t you know that?

Happy New Year#

 

. . . freller.  May it be better than this one.  I suppose a ‘13’ year was always going to have a cloud hanging over it.  It could have tried harder to buck the tradition.*

I’m going Street Pastoring tonight;  Nina is staying with Peter.**  The weather is supposed to be dire again—rain and gales and maybe hail, big ugh—but maybe that’ll make everybody stay home and get drunk indoors.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.***

* * *

# How many ways do I hate technology.  The frelling blog was off the frelling air earlier, when I wanted to post this before I left.  After ten minutes when it was still off the air^ I emailed Blogmom to report it.  I added that I was also going to send her this post and if she was around when the blog came back up would she please hang it for me?

I came home to an email from Blogmom saying that yes, the blog really had been off the air . . . but not saying anything about the blog post . . . because, as I discovered, OUTLOOK HADN’T ******* SENT IT.

It’s six o’clock in the morning, I’ve been home about forty-five minutes, the hellhounds aren’t eating and the hellterror is asleep on my lap.  I’ll go to bed eventually.

^ And the error screen that says ‘this page cannot be displayed because you are not connected to the internet’ does not improve my mood

* Maybe it did.  That’s a scary thought.

**Some other therapist showed up yesterday afternoon as a kind of consolation prize, I think.  That they’re thin on the ground over the holidays is not surprising and that they are inclined to shove Peter to the bottom of the list because he’s doing so well is understandable if not exactly welcome.  But that they apparently blithely make appointments for each other without any kind of central organizing body is insane.  We’ve several times had some other therapist because the one we’d been told was coming was the wrong one—yesterday the woman who didn’t come wasn’t working that day and therefore had no reason to check her diary for any appointments and cancel.  COME ON GUYS.  PULL IT TOGETHER.  Everyone we’ve seen seems to know the therapy side of the job but it’s like they step into a black hole of incompetence the moment they leave their specific expertise.  Arrrgh.

And, speaking of Peter doing well . . . they’re all signing him off in droves.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I recognise that he is doing well and HUGE THUNDERING YAAAY HERE but every therapist still tweaks something or other that he’s doing, or adds an exercise, or whatever.  This is not unlike—well, voice lessons, for example, or most learning activities.  There’s stuff you can do on your own, and there’s stuff you need a teacher for, or at least someone to look at your work and give professional advice.  I would slip back big time, singing, if I stopped seeing Nadia;  granted there have been one or two disturbances in the last fortnight that might be having an effect, but though I’m not making a totally bad job of learning my new pieces, my voice is not right, or as right as it is presently capable of, and I can’t fix it.  I’m not sure that it’s not similar with Peter, even though of course he’s trying to regain something he’s lost rather than learn something new.

Meanwhile I’ve joined Medscape^ because I can, and like so many of us amateur dorks plunged instantly into their drug reference database . . . and promptly discovered an interactions listing I DID NOT LIKE AT ALL.  And rang up Peter’s clinic and spoke to the duty doctor who said, they’re talking about high doses and Peter’s is very low.  Still.  With iatrogenic illness one of the major killers of our time—and the way specialists specialise so one specialist prescribes one drug and another specialist prescribes some other drug and there may be no overseer who knows enough about both to say um, wait a minute—I’ve booked Peter and me in to have a nice chat with his GP (who is a good guy, and pays attention, and if he doesn’t know he’ll look into it) on Thursday.  And while we’re there I’m going to ask about having a few physios check progress in a fortnight or so.

Stay healthy, everyone.  It’s a lot simpler.

^ http://www.medscape.com/

Just to warn anyone interested:  When you sign up it’s all professional, professional, professional, and I was thinking eeeeep, although there are all these reviews out there by ordinary people and there’s an app available on iTunes, for pity’s sake, which is where I’ve got it, on Astarte.  And then waaaaaaay down at the bottom of all the forms they want you to fill in there’s a list ending ‘consumer/other’ and I hastily ticked that and breathed easier.

*** In which all hellhounds eat.

Another day bites the dust

 

So I’m short of sleep (again).  The hellhounds weren’t eating (again) last night so I got to bed later than desirable.  And still had to get up in time to sprint down to the mews for the speech therapist coming at 9:30.*  Which meant that I spent the hours I did have for sleep waking up every half hour and looking anxiously at the clock (which necessitates turning the light on and focusing) in fear that I’d slept through the alarm.  IT’S STILL DARK OUT.  IT’S PROBABLY STILL NIGHT, ALTHOUGH I ADMIT THIS TIME OF YEAR THAT IS NOT GUARANTEED.  I finally got up about twenty minutes before the alarm would have gone off. . . .

AND THEN SHE DIDN’T COME.  THE SPEECH THERAPIST DIDN’T COME.  Between diabolical hospital car parks and the non-arrival of therapists—we haven’t had a new one yet, and at the moment they’re all new, who doesn’t get lost trying to find us.  Yes okay we are modestly tricky to find but don’t you guys TALK to each other???  So even when they arrive they’re always frelling late—THE NHS IS STARTING TO GET ON MY LAST REMAINING NERVE.

CateK

Speaking of experience informing writing, I occasionally wish I could grab a ‘High Forsoothly’ author and stick them on a horse for 5 days, see how far they could travel and whether they might start actually cleaning their horse’s hooves occasionally (not that I put Kes in this category.)

And take its tack on and off, and check it and clean it occasionally, and groom the wretched animal (including its feet) and FEED IT.  Good grief.  Horses take a lot of feeding because basic grazing is low-cal.  And you can only carry so much grain/concentrates/what-have-you on your epic journey before this gets counterproductive:  hence your horse needs hours of grazing.**  And, you know, rest.  Like it was a live animal or something.

It never ceases to confound me how clueless, erm, storytellers can be.  What’s their excuse for not having spent two minutes to realise that you don’t turn a live animal on and off like you do a computer or a car?  The other thing I always think of when I am faced with one of these horse-shaped vehicles is, hasn’t the author ever had a pet, to have some clue about the whole care-and-feeding issue?

Not that this is necessarily enough.  When I was a young writer and hadn’t yet realised there is a vast political/hierarchical labyrinth between writers and readers***, I did some falling in with the wrong crowd.  I was immediately made uneasy by the acolyte system† that a few of the big names had allowed to build itself around them.  I also became semi-friends with an acolyte of a writer who had a particularly extensive worshipper cult.  My semi-friend had written a story for her demiurge, and it had a horse in it.  So she asked me if I’d read it before she submitted it.  I said yes.

Erm.  Well, it was a story.  With a horse in it.  The problem that I thought I could address was that she was treating the horse like her pet cat.  She wasn’t quite opening tins of tuna for it but . . . close.  I made a couple of suggestions which she did not take in good part.††  And she made sure to tell me a month or two later that her Most High had rejected the story for her next fanfic anthology, listing weaknesses I had let her down by failing to mention and not alluding to the unchanged horse/cat at all.

Oh.

EMoon

. . .  I agree [with CateK], but have found that authors who don’t know diddly about horses and want to use horses will ask for help and then not use it. Because they’ve already decided that a) the horse care doesn’t really matter as it’s only fiction, b) they don’t want to spend words on it, c) they had what they wanted to do with a horse in the story all worked out and you’re just getting in the way. Then sometimes they mention the one who gave them the right information in the acknowledgments, with fulsome thanks, while doing exactly what they were told was impossible, thus making the one who gave them the advice looks really, really incompetent. You can drag a writer to the fount of information, but you cannot make him/her USE it.

YES.  THIS.  Moan, moan, moan.  There are still books out there—but I can hope they’re all OP—with my name on the acknowledgements page.  NOOOOOOOO.  I DIDN’T DO IT.  THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID.  THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT.  IT’S NOT MY FAULT.†††

(And saying that puts me on a very slippery knife-edge, because heaven knows I don’t know everything about everything I’ve ever put in a book. I try, but…fall short. . . .)

Yes.  This too.  When you’re already having a bad night, this is one of the ruts of conscience that will keep you awake indefinitely.  It’s the things you didn’t know you needed to look up that probably haunt me the worst.  I knew I was on shaky ground with Taks’ Japanese, but thought I could just about get away with it since it was only a few words and he’d spoken only English for years.  But . . . I’m sure I’ve told you this story . . . BEAUTY’s canary was originally female.  My copyeditor told me that only male canaries sing much.

Oh.

* * *

* No, I don’t have to be there.  But while the therapists are still figuring out what Peter needs I don’t want to miss anything.  And the speech therapist is probably the most important.

** Wild horses spend their lives grazing, you know?  We’re interrupting the flow.

*** Some writers and some readers.  Some of my best non-writing friends read me.  Some of my best non-writing friends don’t.  But there is a large social element of weirdness in the corner of genre publishing I know anything about, and while I’ve met people at SF&F cons and book conventions who have gone on to become friends . . . the graphic weirdness that inevitably comes with being a writer at one of these extravaganzas is a major reason why I don’t mind not going to them any more.

† Caveats here too.  Some authors can’t help having groupies;  it’s the way their books are read, or the luck of the draw, or that the media found them in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person and made a groupie-attracting story out of it, or something.  And some authors do a genuine and generous job of mentoring.  But a few of them merely relish being adored, and behave accordingly.

†† The McKinley Learning Curve.  Sigh.

††† It was my evil twin.

Life in the (Very) Slow Lane

 

I darned a sock this morning.  I’m trying to remember the last time I darned a frelling sock.*  There are advantages to staying home all the time.**  At the moment I’m actually reading*** books faster than I’m buying them.  This won’t last.  But I have TWO NEW BOOK RECS to add to the list just in this last week, and you will remember I am a Very Cranky Reader.  I periodically have fantasies of doing a book rec a week for the blog.  That would press pretty hard on my fundamental CRANKINESS—two rec-able titles in seven days is perhaps not unheard of but supremely unlikely—but it might be an interesting experiment.

After the monsoon, the Nor’easter.  We had a no-nonsense hard frost last night, according to my minimum-maximum thermometer down to 28°(F) and the tropical jungle is all huddled anxiously on the Winter Table indoors.  And it’s slithery outdoors.  I hadn’t tried to go to my monks last night after I got a last-minute email from Alfrick saying that there was no contemplation before the night prayer, which was furthermore early . . . but this morning I was booted, spurred and caffeinated to bolt for Sunday [Anglican] Mass at the monks’, but by the time I had to leave it was still below freezing and I didn’t like the look of the roads.  At.  All.  So I didn’t go.  And I didn’t go to St Margaret’s tonight either for the same reason.†  I’m beginning to feel like an eremite.

But I darned a sock.††

What with the last fortnight’s undesirable adventures, I’ve kind of lost track of where I am rattling through forum comments.  So if I’ve responded to any of these already I hope I’m saying more or less the same things.  This may be boring for you, but anything else would be very disconcerting to me.

Katinseattle

Tall, thin, spiky shadow? Like, um, rose bushes? Rosebushes that SALUTE? Well, maybe there’s a breeze in there.

 No, no, it’s the hob. It’s got to be the hob.

 But what’s the hob going to do? They’re not warriors, are they? Maybe it could trip somebody, er, something, er, whatever is coming.

I think rose-bushes of apparently supernatural origin can probably do whatever they put their pointy little minds to.  I wouldn’t trust Rose Manor’s own roses—the ones that can survive anything, even Cold Valley winters, and who eat children and small dogs when they can get them—not to have an agenda.  And hobs . . . now I know I said something like this before . . . hobs protect their homes.  That’s what they’re for.  That’s what they do.

Katinseattle

bethanynash wrote on Sat, 07 December 2013 22:18



I hadn’t even considered the idea that the tall spiky shadow could be the   hob… what does a hob look like? Is the hob tall? Would a hob salute?

I think we’re in anything-can-happen territory here.

Yep.  Got it in one.  For a storyteller like me the fun is in taking a tradition or a fairy tale or a bit of folklore  . . . and giving it a pink feather boa and a pair of All Stars, so to speak.  Again, as I keep saying, I don’t do this deliberately, but when a story—or a hob or a dragon or a vampire or whatever—speaks to me, speaks to me rather than some other storyteller, it’s because THEY WANT THE BOA.

LHurst

I learned a new word: “deliquescing”!

It’s a good one, isn’t it?  It’s been one of My Words for some time.  Vellicating, however, I’d forgotten about, till I saw it somewhere recently and thought, oh!  I should use that!—especially since I’m twitchy myself.

CateK

What I’m wondering is, how will this experience affect Kes’ next volume of ‘Flowerhair’? As in, personal experience (blood, the sheer physicality and awfulness of violent death, which is expressed so well here) informing her writing.

We-ell . . . your life and your fiction have a strange relationship to each other.  It’s as I’ve ranted in other contexts:  yes, readers know a lot about me, the author of the story, but they don’t know what they know.  I’ve never written about being a military brat, living five years in Japan where I clearly did not belong, and then coming back to America and finding that it wasn’t home any more . . . anywhere but here in the blog.  But my particular experience of being an outsider—most authors feel like outsiders in one form or another, I think;  it helps channel the storytelling—entirely informs my writing.  But you can’t tell from my stories that I lived five years in Japan when I was a kid.

And . . . my own experience of extreme situations is that the last thing I want to do is stuff them in my fiction†††—which is what Kes says:  nightmares that she doesn’t put in her stories.  Flowerhair might retire and . . . er . . . open a florist’s. ‡

* * *

* Your average cotton-with-a-little-spandex or equivalent isn’t worth the bother unless they’re really favourite socks, especially since they’re probably going thin all over at the same time.  But nice heavy socks, like the wool oversocks I wear this time of year—they deserve respect, and darning when necessary.^  I used to have a darning basket but it got kind of intimidating.

^ Not least in my case when I find some wool socks I can bear to wear, even over one or two pairs of cotton socks+, I want to keep them as long as possible.

+ Yes.  My shoe size goes up in the winter.

** Somewhat depending on how you feel about things like darning socks.  Or washing the kitchen floor which I did a couple of days ago.^  I actually kind of like all that fussy domestic stuff.  It’s the time it takes I object to.  And as I have said frequently, if I have an urge to tidy I’m unlike to waste it on the mere house^^:  I’ll go out in the garden and thrash around there.  Unless, of course, it’s zero degrees out there.  In which case I may wash the kitchen floor.

^ You’d never know it.  I have three dogs.  Sigh.

^^ The house with three dogs

*** This includes throwing some of them violently across the room and then picking them up and putting them in the ‘Oxfam’ bag.  Hey, they have been processed, and they’re now ready to depart my living space.

† Driving is always kind of a marginal activity for me, because of the ME.  And although Peter stopped driving several years ago, he blocks the cold wind of reality in other ways.  With him mostly out of action I’m feeling even less heroic (and more cold) than usual.

†† Life in the very very slow lane:  I’ve forgotten how to do fiddly daily shopping—partly because Peter likes doing it^ and partly because I grew up in a culture that does once a week mega-shops.  So I went to mini-grocery number one for lettuce and Peter’s GUARDIAN, and they had the lettuce but not the GUARDIAN.  So I heaved a deep sigh, but I’ve already failed Peter once in the newspaper category this week, and a GUARDIAN man can only read the TIMES so often before he starts throwing silverware at the wall, and I walked to the far end of town^^ to mini-grocery number two where I bought the last Sunday GUARDIAN^^^ . . . but it wouldn’t have done me any good to go there first because they didn’t have any lettuce.  Store managers get together to plan this kind of thing, right?

^ Takes all kinds

^^ Which takes about thirty seconds.  It is, however, uphill going home.

^^^ Which is to say OBSERVER, for those of you who care.  I have no idea why the Sunday GUARDIAN is called the OBSERVER.

††† Maybe in a decade or two.  Or three.

‡ . . . although I doubt it.

KES, 111

ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN

Okay.  Notes from a life.  It’s a whole lot easier to describe a lot of stuff, especially scary stuff, happening all at once when you’re not in the middle of it.  It’s a lot easier when you’re sitting at your computer (mostly) staring into space and drinking too much tea, and experimenting with a phrase or a paragraph and if it doesn’t work deleting it and plucking another one out of your thesaurus and your overcaffeinated brain.

It’s especially easier to see anything at all when there’s light to see by.

You’re at a big disadvantage, description-wise, when a lot of monsters and bad guys from your worst nightmares—the nightmares that freak you out so much you haven’t tried to put them in your fiction—materialise, out of the caliginous malevolent non-air that has been corkscrewing unpleasantly in the vicinity and messing both with your sight and your increasingly besieged sense of well-being, inches from your nose, and immediately attempt to eat you or behead you or burn your house down.  Although it did seem to me, insofar as I was noticing anything past the immediate business of trying to stay alive for another few seconds, that the fire was mostly on our side.  I saw it take out a couple of guys, or guy-like things with swords, with a kind of flaming butterfly-net effect.  Then there was a mouth-thing, this sort of giant maggot with a hole at one end full of teeth, that really was about to swallow me, as I pretty much stood there paralysed (again), except some kind of fireball blew over my shoulder and down its throat and it exploded instead, flinging wet gobbets of . . . never mind.  That was pretty ghastly.  No, it was very ghastly.

But I didn’t have time to go off in fits or throw up or any of the normal reactions to this kind of experience because I was busy swinging Silverheart up to block some new ugly scumbag with a sword.  I say swing, but it was mostly her getting in the way of danger and me trying not to fall over.  This kept happening.  Watermelon Shoulders was right:  Silverheart knew her business.  My increasingly sore and aching arm just followed along where it was led.  The rose bracelet’s focus was maybe even better.  The widest part of the band, the rose medallion itself, was only about three inches long, and yet every time I raised my other arm against some other sword or set of teeth, while Silverheart was occupied elsewhere, the rose bracelet took the blow—which is to say I still have two arms, thank you.   The contact was often dizzying;  not just the force of a blow that is trying to kill or maim you, but as if the medallion was defusing that deadly momentum by transforming it into some other force.  As my body juddered and staggered, visions burst behind my eyes as violently as claps of thunder, as dazzling as lightning striking at my feet.  I saw a castle on a hill and, because visions don’t care about the reality of eyesight, I saw the banner flying from its topmost tower very plainly:  two sword blades crossed to divide it into quarters, and in the quarters were a horse, a hawk, a sighthound and a rose.  I saw a company on horseback galloping, galloping and—again thanks to vision-sight—I saw one of the riders in the lead raise an arm to point, and the pointing arm was wearing a rose bracelet identical to the one on my arm.

I saw a woman kneeling by a stream.  Her long hair trailed in the water with the leaves of the willow that bowed beside her.  She held her arms out toward the water in a gesture that looked like pleading;  she drew her fingers across the water’s surface as if it were an animal she was stroking.  She looked up fearfully, toward but past me, wherever it was that I was.  When she turned back to the water, although I couldn’t hear her, I felt that I knew she had caught her breath on a little sob, and as she breathed out again she murmured, Please.  She let her hands drop beneath the water’s surface—and then she dived, fast and suddenly—or had she been drawn into the water by something I could not see?

I saw a stand of young trees, moving restlessly in a wind I could neither see nor feel.  It took me a moment—clang, and the bracelet defeated another my-life-threatening wallop—to realise that they were not behaving like ordinary trees in an ordinary wind, for they were lashing in different directions.  And then my vision-sight kicked in, and I saw that only a few of them were trees, and the others were young women—dryads?  Under the circumstances this seemed quite likely.  They were dressed in green and brown, in long strange ribbon-like wrappings that didn’t look at all good for walking in, but then perhaps dryads didn’t walk much.  One of them seemed to see me, and stretched her hands out toward me, but whether she was saying come here or go away I couldn’t tell, and then the vision ended. . . .

Our Unnecessarily Exciting Life

 

Peter had a fall today.  It was not, as falls go, a serious one.  He is nonetheless indubitably eighty-six and had a stroke less than a fortnight ago.  He tripped over the dog bed while reaching for GHOST BRIGADES on the table behind the sofa.  And hit his head on the way to the floor.  I was all of about a foot away—on the wrong side of the sofa, and covered in hellhounds and he was falling in the wrong direction, away from me.  But this at least meant I could say firmly to the A&E doctor that he had not blacked out.

He lay there looking mildly surprised while I erupted off the sofa, saying something intelligent like, Oh!  You fell!  He put his hand to the back of his head.  There’s rather a lot of blood, he said, as if apologetically.

THERE WAS BLOOD EVERYWHERE.  I do know that scalp wounds bleed like the very dickens* even when they’re totally minor** and superficial, but he had fallen down and cracked his head on the edge of a chair AND HE’S ON BLOOD THINNERS BECAUSE OF THE STROKE.  As well as the eighty-six years old part.  He got up without trouble (!) and sat in a chair, and I attempted to view (and staunch) the damage.

He was busy saying he was fine.  I was busy saying You are going to A&E.  You can either go quietly in Wolfgang with me or I’m ringing for an ambulance.  He went quietly.  I did agree to ring the out-of-office-hours thingy again just to prove I was right and we should go to A&E.  I was right.***

*&^%$£”!!!!! hospital &^%$)*~#@!!!!!!  You’re not at your best when you’re bringing someone to A&E, you know?  Even when you’re fairly sure it’s not a life-threatening situation†.  I should find out if they have a side door somewhere to let people down who aren’t walking too well:  the main entrance is only really theoretically accessible by anyone but ambulances††;  where pedestrians who are willing to hike in from the car park are allowed to walk is merely a swathe of red paint along the ambulance lane, and God help you if an ambulance in a hurry takes a slightly wide corner.  Because I didn’t know any better I frelling drove up to the ambulance-only door so I could put Peter down as near to the intake desk as possible.  I parked behind a pillar and put my flashers on, I was not blocking anyone or anything, and I hustled Peter in.  I was gone maybe two minutes.  When I came out some ambulance guy wanted to give me a hard time—he and his mate were ambling toward an empty parked ambulance with an empty made-up bed-on-wheels.  I said, I’m dropping off someone who is very tottery, what am I supposed to do?  And he said, charmingly, well, that’s your problem, innit?†††  Add him to the rotting dog turd list.

Because Peter is okay, I will further digress by remarking that I HATE THE HOSPITAL CAR PARK FACILITIES WITH INCREASING ARDOUR.  One of the few things going for the wretched coin machines is that they’ll take 5p pieces, which very few car parks will any more.  So the freller I was addressing rejected four 5p pieces before I found two that would work.  And a good thing too since they were the only two remaining and I was, of course, nearly out of change.  You don’t think in terms of necessary change any more:  it’s all plastic and the occasional bank note, especially at hospital-car-park prices.  Aside from the fact that when you’re bringing someone to A&E you may not be in a position to top up your change before you arrive, even supposing you remembered this was an issue.

Indiana Jones was going over a waterfall when I caught up with Peter.‡  And the day after Boxing Day and four days before New Year’s Eve is apparently the dead zone;  we were seen quickly and calmly.  The doctor was probably all of twenty-five;  I think the nice young (male) nurse she gave us to for the disinfecting and wound-glue-applying was about sixteen.  But they looked him over, asked the obvious questions, and told us to be careful going home.  Indeed.  We walked out to the beastly car park . . . and had a difficult time of it, okay?  It’s INSANELY badly laid out.  Well, it’s not laid out, that’s exactly the problem.  And I’m not frail, but I am sixty-one and a lot smaller than Peter, and when I can’t frelling see in the frelling dark and don’t know the best way for someone unsteady on their feet to go, the whole thing becomes a trifle traumatic.

However.  We got home in one piece.  Well, two pieces, one each:  Peter.  Me.  And had cold turkey [sic] for supper.  And tomorrow’s physio comes at NINE FRELLING THIRTY IN THE MORNING.  I’m waiting for my tea to steep at 9:30 and I’m probably still in my dressing gown.  So I’d better get my gratuitously whacked-out self‡‡ to bed.  Maybe I’ll ask the physio about navigating the frelling A&E labyrinth.  I don’t know what we do about tripping over the dog bed.  Hellhounds need somewhere to sleep.  Arrrgh.

* * *

* . . . the very Dickinson

** If falling on your head is ever totally minor.

*** They did however seriously put the wind up me by the 1,001 questions they wanted answers to as soon as I admitted it was a head injury.^  And finished off by telling me to take him to A&E anyway.  What a good thing I hadn’t been lying on the sofa with hellhounds^^ and the last glass of champagne.^^^

^ The one about diving the gentleman on the phone acknowledged was probably irrelevant.  Yes, I said, it happened in our sitting room, which is, despite local flooding, beautifully dry, thank you.

^^ No, no hellterror.  Hellterror had had a looooong lap this morning while the physio was here.     And hellhounds unfortunately still find it more relaxing when she’s not around.

Hellterror has decided she likes physios.

^^^ . . . and reading a book on the anthropology of the Bible, if you want to know.

† Which is what ambulances are for

†† Speaking of ambulances

††† It’s a funny thing about ambulance staff.  I’ve never had anything but good to excellent experiences with them when it’s me or mine who are the objects of their attention.  I think it may be the case that I’ve never not had crummy experiences with them when they’re nothing to do with me.  WTF.  If this is how they deal with the stress of their job I think there needs to be another training module, Dealings with the General Public, Who Have Lives, Genuine Urgencies, and Decisions of Their Own.

‡ Ah the wonders of modern technology.  Your hospital A&E has large-screen entertainment for the sick, feverish, mad and bleeding.

‡‡ Peter said drily on the way home, well, it got us through the evening.

Holidays

 

I was cleaning bird feeders this morning.  Hey, you feathered guys, you’re supposed to eat the stuff I put out, instead of getting bored and flying away to Tahiti for the poisson cru or next door for the sunflower hearts* and leaving the nutritious, carefully balanced by the wild-bird-food company accountants but probably not very exciting seed-with-bits-in** to curdle into what eventually sets into a substance remarkably like concrete.***  The stubbly kind.  Arrrgh.  And while the Second Wave of bird feeders is more satisfactory than the first they’re still diabolical little frellers to clean.

It’s been a clear bright day today after all the rain and wind† and it’s Boxing Day so EVERYONE and his/her aunt/uncle, third cousin twice removed and their large ill-mannered off lead dogs are out having jolly walks over the countryside.  Which means we did not have any jolly walks over the countryside because it wasn’t going to be worth the stress level.  I have enough stress in my life just now, you know?  Worrying about the three-bedroom-cottage-sized†† four-legged thug(s) bounding up to the crest of the hill from the other side wasn’t going to be a fun relaxing time.

I was gratuitously right about this:  Wolfgang coughed a bit in a sad neglected way when he started this morning and I was struck by a pang of conscience as well as the standard anxiety anyone with a getting-on-for-twenty-years-old car is going to have about such things, so we sauntered down to the mews the ridiculously long way to get his arthritic joints warmed up and all his meters reading normal.  We could barely thrash our way down any road††† for all the trippers out there in their coloured wellies‡ grimly appreciating nature and hoping that all this frelling fresh air is helping them wear off the excesses of yesterday.‡‡

Accompanied by their formidable battalions of drooling, superfluously-fanged off-lead dogs.  Arrrgh.  One of the (over-populated) roads we ventured down today cut across the path I did at least briefly consider taking Pav along because I can pick her up and . . . galumphing toward us as part of a well-wellied family party were two, I dunno, Golden Retrievers crossed with polar bear possibly?  Picking Pav up wouldn’t have been enough.  And I suspect I would not climb a tree efficiently with only one arm and a struggling thirty-pound hellterror under the other.

Eh.  I’m about to eat Christmas pudding.  Flour two days in a row.  I’m really dicing with death here.

* * *

* I’m cheap.  I spend enough on gold-standard frelling dog kibble.^

^ You’d think I’d be grateful the hellhounds don’t like eating.

** Mealworms, chiefly, because robins like mealworms, but I’ve already told you that my resident robin is TOO LARGE to fit through the squirrel-resistant cage.  I still haven’t addressed this problem.  Buying bird feeders gets old too, and as soon as you do your St Francis thing on the ground you get rats.  St Francis probably managed to love rats too but then he didn’t stay in one place much, did he?  Rats in the garden weren’t an issue.

*** I’ve been meaning to deal with the bird feeders since . . . oh, October or so.

† My focus has been a little narrow of late and I was apparently unduly off hand about the effects of the storms in this area;  there are people around here who have been and are still without power.  None of my neighbours has knocked on the door begging for a shower^ but then most of them are away for the holidays and aren’t noticing if they’ve got power or not.  I’m used to coming home in the small hours to a dark street but it’s disconcerting to come back at teatime to bring the indoor jungle in for the night and close the curtains, to a dark street.^^  Because I have more imagination than is good for me, and possibly because I read THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS at an impressionable age, there’s always a whiff of Last Woman on Earth about it.  And if Phineas doesn’t come back because a triffid got him I’ll have to start buying cat food.

^ And a good thing too since I don’t have a shower.  Took my first shower(s) in years when I was overnighting at Peter’s.  It was interesting.  Oh.  Yes.  I remember this.  Big waste of hot water.  No reading.+

+ Okay, you could read in the shower with—say—your iPad in her little waterproof jacket.  But it would be hell on your hot water bills and don’t you usually like to sit down when you read?

^^ The shortest day of the year is over.  We’re officially rolling on toward spring.  Yaaay.

†† Ie bigger than mine, which is one and a half bedrooms.  I’ve told you, haven’t I, that my predecessor used the big room as her bedroom and the medium-sized cupboard as her office?  Ah, priorities.  I ripped out the closet in the big room for more bookshelves in my office.

††† Except the main street, of course, which is beautifully empty because all the shops are closed.  Holiday traffic is funny.

‡ All right, my wellies are pink.  But they’re real wellies, and they have the real gouges and claw marks from working in a garden with a lot of rose bushes in it.  Some of the rubber boots out there look like the wellie version of those designer jodhpurs made for women who get no closer to a horse than the valuable antique horsehair sofa in their sitting room.  Jodhpurs are stupid unless there’s a horse involved.^  Wellies are stupid unless you have a garden or a lot of horses to muck out.  There were two little girls today with especially fabulous flash wellies in forty-seven decorator colours between them . . . and faces like the return of local thunderstorms.  I thought ‘blisters’.

^ Personally I think they’re pretty stupid even with a horse involved.  Nice pair of stretch breeches with reinforced fanny and inside-of-leg, thanks.

‡‡ Or possibly looking forward to further excesses today that all the fresh air is going to make justifiable.

I said I was going to hang some baubles on Peter

 

 

Father Christmas

 

I was laughing so hard* I could barely take the shot.**  But one must commit to one’s inspiration.***

It has been sheeting with rain much of the day, in evil sneaky sudden outbursts, but barring mad dimming and  flickering of the lights, the occasional irritated bleep out of some tech item or other and Radio Three taking a nosedive off the air for several hours Monday night we’ve escaped the worst of the weather as well as the worst of the results of the weather.  I had a few top heavy camellias in their pots go over but no walls fell down.  It was sleeting last night so I didn’t make it to midnight mass, sigh–and I’ve managed to wedge so much of the indoor jungle onto windowsills that it only takes about ten minutes to get everything remaining in/out again.  When you have brandy butter to make you don’t want to be spending a lot of time on botanical airlift rescue.

There was turkey and champagne and Brussels sprouts with chestnuts . . . and mince pies with brandy butter.  I seem to have eaten four of these.†  Well, they were small.   And Peter went to bed at nearly midnight and promises to sleep in tomorrow so I don’t have to get down here EARLY.  I don’t think early is an option.

Oh yes and . . . Jesus is born.  For those of us that way inclined, yaaay. ††

* * *

* Which is a great improvement on this time last week.

** Actually I took several.  Once he got up again it was going to be all over.  He’d said originally did I want him standing up or sitting down?  Sitting down, I said, this may take a while.  In case anyone is interested, I’ve tied the star on by looping garden twine through the tag inside the collar of his shirt.  Great stuff, garden twine.  It’s stringing the baubles too.  And yes, I’ve been wondering about the length of those canines for twenty-two years.  Alternative and Little Discussed Origins of ME/CFS.

*** . . . for an easy blog post.

†  The hellterror says, hey, boss, I could help you with that.

††  Also probably the only day of the year I don’t feel silly singing in public.  People who object to the plangent tones of The First Nowell, The Cherry Tree Carol, etc, can just leave town for the day.