Robin McKinley's Blog, page 39

KES, 105

 

ONE HUNDRED FIVE

I still had both of those copies of TTT somewhere in those book boxes that Mike had carried up the stairs this afternoon.  The things you do when you’re eleven:  the next morning I finished carefully spreading the fallen-out pages from the old crumbly copy all over my bedroom so they would dry out.  My mother let me do my homework on the kitchen table that night because there was no spare surface area in my bedroom—as it was I had to pile up all the pages on my bed, punctiliously interleaved with notebook paper, over the ones on my desk, so I could sleep.  And yes, a Ghastly will absolutely eat your homework if you go off and leave it unguarded while you make yourself a sandwich, especially if you are foolish enough to leave your chocolate-flavored pencil lying across it, and your chair too close to the table.  Many little dogs have pogo sticks for legs but Ghastlies are unusually gifted in this area.

My mother managed to nail the miscreant before he’d swallowed anything crucial and, more important, she didn’t notice the pencil, which she would have considered provocative.  The day after that I put all the dry, curly pages in order, slid them as far as they’d go back between their frail paper covers, and tied the whole thing together with twine.  I’d had to replace the fraying string once in the ensuing almost-thirty years but I hadn’t lost any pages.

But tonight it was the iPad.  I find that I can read faster on an iPad due to frictionless page-turning—especially if I know what I’m reading so well that the words on the page are more of an aide-memoire than real text.  Ordinarily I’m a slow reader, but under stress I have been known to read LOTR in two days, although not a lot of sleeping, eating or relating to the outside world is involved.   Tonight I was hoping that a few chapters would relax me enough to sleep.  (Stop remembering Murac’s face in the moonlight.  Just stop).  Odo Proudfoot is offended;  Gandalf sees Bilbo on his way;  Lobelia calls Frodo a Brandybuck—and my Agate Ironman’s namesake is introduced.  And then Gandalf brings the shadow of the past to Frodo’s study. . . .

I’m not sure when I began dropping in and out of sleep.  I’ve dreamed Middle Earth so much in my life that my dream-versions are almost as familiar as Manhattan’s Upper West Side.  My dreams usually began in the green, comfortable Shire with its fields and trees and hobbit villages, and with a background feeling that is a mixture of unease and excitement.  Sometimes the unease deepens to fear and even terror—sometimes (this is my most frequent Middle-Earthian dream) I am riding one of Rohan’s magnificent horses at full pelt and I don’t care what may be chasing us.  Or what we may be pelting toward.  Sometimes I’m aware of the jingle of weaponry as well as tack, and that there are riders either side of me looking grim and determined.

I seemed to be hearing hoofbeats as I nodded over Frodo, Sam and Pippin setting off toward Crickhollow in the dark.  Hoofbeats.  And the jingle of weaponry. . . .

Sid whined.  I half-woke, turned the iPad—her name was Luthien Tinuviel, just by the way—off, and prepared to snuggle down farther in the tangle of bedding.  Oh, Sid, don’t be a spoilsport. . . .

Sid leaped to her feet and started barking, a full, committed barking using all the resonance of her deep chest.  Barking and snarling.  She was prancing as she barked, and managed to step on me.  Ow.  I was fully awake now.  There was the most almighty clang, like Caedmon had opened all his doors and slammed them shut again simultaneously, and the house, including Caedmon at my back, shivered.  Now I was more than fully awake:  I was rapidly approaching hysterical.

I lurched to my feet, and made a dive for the bedside lamp on its chair, wrenched it on and held it aloft, like a very cut-price Statue of Liberty.  In the original full-size version you can’t see that her nightgown has little pink rosebuds on it.

The light flickered, which was no doubt my shaking hand, but it seemed also strangely dim, more like candle- than modern electric light.  Sid was still barking and barking.  I dropped my other hand to grab her collar—which felt strangely thick and heavy in my hand—as I swung the lamp around, trying to see . . . anything.  We were in the kitchen, for pity’s sake, and even in Rose Manor it wasn’t so large that I shouldn’t be able to see the table and the walls and the windows.  And I’d left the hall light on.  I thought I had left the hall light on.

There was a gleam that might have been the sink tap, and a murky grey smudge that might have been the window beyond it.  I couldn’t hear much beyond Sid’s barking, but there might have been a kind of booming roar like perhaps the universe at the bottom of the ruts in the driveway had got bored with waiting for fresh victims and was coming after us. . . .

KES, etc

 

Jodi Meadows tweeted after last Saturday’s KES:

Oh that one is so sweet. Making us all happy before things get really bad, huh?

YES.  EXACTLY.  MWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  And it begins tomorrow.  MWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  It pleases me ridiculously that this will be happening on my birthday, which need I even bother to tell you is a TOTAL accident?  Like I could possibly have planned something like this?  In some other universe.  Like the one at the bottom of the ruts in Kes’ driveway.

I will waft home again on a cloud of champagne fumes*, delicately turn on my computer** and press PUBLISH.  Oh, and tomorrow’s ep is only the beginning.  Of course it gets worse.***

EMoon:

“Unless there’s a crack-to-the-next-universe, like the ruts in Kes’ driveway…,”

Wait…WHAT? What?!!? I was sure the crack-to-the-next-universe was [mumble, mumble]…I never thought of the driveway!

Well, mumble-mumble is good too.  I suspect there are several cracks in the general vicinity of Rose Manor.

And did you really think you could drop that in and no one would notice? (Nervously thinking of the ruts in our driveway I bounced down so gaily this afternoon on my bike.)

Blondviolinist:

I’ve been working on an academic paper, so my brain must be in “find all the sources” mode.

 From Kes episode 98:

I slowed to a near-stop before turning up into Rose Manor’s driveway. This had nothing to do with exhaustion or terror—no no of course not—it was merely I didn’t want to drive into any of those wormhole ruts and discover ourselves driving across a purple desert under a red sky with two suns, six moons and a rvzzlblug in a pear tree facsimile.

And here I thought the rvzzlblug in a pear tree facsimile would be memorable.  It’s funny, trying to tweak your readers.  The story is the story (as EMoon knows very well) but the reason this storytelling game is such a ratbag is because of the amount of helpless, often clueless choice you the wretched teller has about how you tell it:  what details to choose, what words to use.  And as I keep saying—including as a quote I’m a bit bemused to find developing a modest fame on Twitter—the story is always better than your ability to write it.  Always, always, ALWAYS.  Now while, in my own peculiar way, I take KES with every iota as much deadly seriousness as I do any of the rest of my fiction, it is different, writing it by 800-900 word chunk, and having only a vague if powerful sense of the story running on before me and only knowing an ep or two beyond where I am—while I am busy hanging previous chunks out there in public immediately behind my own back.  Brrrrr.  Don’t think about it, McKinley.†

Anyway, I am rather more intimately conscious of my readers than usual—for one thing I’m hoping you’ll comment on the forum—and so I think, ah-ha!  Maybe that will make them laugh!  But I’m endlessly wrong about what will (or won’t) catch people.  I’ve told you before that I thought, if I were so UNBELIEVABLY FORTUNATE as to find a publisher for BEAUTY, they would make me take out the library full of books that haven’t been written yet because it was too fey/silly/distracting/blah.  In fact it’s a lot of readers’ favourite bit.  So mostly I focus on the storytelling and hope that all the book-buyers who enable me earn a living this way will go on enabling me to earn a living this way.  But I did think the rvzzlblug would be memorable.

The universe-spanning ruts actually appear for the first time in ep 81, where Kes is in conversation with Mike about winter and getting her driveway ploughed.  Plowed.††  And I think they’re mentioned at least once more, but I can’t find the reference off-hand.

Dhudson

I am showing my ignorance here, but I had only a vague notion of the definition of a hob. A ghost? A spirit? A leprechaun? I went searching the internet and found some fun articles.

I can’t believe it—they’ve let Katharine Briggs’ HOBBERDY DICK go out of print.  Arrrrrrgh.  There is no justice in this world.  Her KATE CRACKERNUTS has been reissued, which is good, but it’s not about hobs.  All of Briggs’ stuff is enormously worthwhile—she wrote a lot of nonfiction about the supernatural beasties of the British Isles.  I have several volumes of this and would automatically buy more if I ever saw them offered.†††  I feel extremely uneasy about William Mayne any more, since he served time for behaving inappropriately with several young female fans and I’m one of these people who believe that the art is not everything and who you are matters . . . but if you want to go there, I really liked his two HOB books . . . ARRRRRGH.  They are also out of print.  Well, they’re out there second-hand, and he’s dead, so you’re not putting money in his pocket.

Now, I will be looking for hobs but I need to know whether they like whiskey or milk better?

Depends on your hob.  Some of them seem to like scrambled eggs and peppermint tea. . . .

Ajlr

Or combine them for a hot toddy?

That works too.

Perhaps Kes could find out a bit more about her hob (assuming – and I know I may be assuming too much here – that it is a hob)

I think I can guarantee it’s something.  Mwa hahaha etc.

by leaving out both whiskey (made in Ireland) and whisky (made in Scotland). I’m not sure if there’s a similar distinction made in the spelling for such grain spirits made in other parts of the world?

Hmm.  At the moment I think Kes’ hob is mainly interested in calories and attention.  Questions of . . . er . . . spelling may come later.

I had also found my glorious and beautiful all-purposes copper-plated stainless-steel pan, which weighed a ton and a half but all was forgiven because of the way it made even me look like a capable cook (sometimes. Almost).

Good pans certainly help, don’t they. I treated myself to a large Le Creuset casserole dish a few months ago. Now I’ve developed the strength to lift the so-and-so I’m really enjoying using it. Long may Kes enjoy using her pan.

Everybody loves Creuset but me.  I don’t know what my problem is.  I bought a Creuset pan because Peter loves his and . . . feh.  The final indignity is that the rim is curled back on itself in such a way that when you hold it upside down under the tap, having washed the outside as well as the inside like a good girl, the water FOUNTAINS up and smacks you in the spectacles.  I consider this a design flaw.  It is not alone.  The pan cost a bomb, as Creuset does, so I use it.  But I do not love it.  The copper-covered pans I adore are some no-fame generic out of a kitchenware catalogue.  They do weigh a ton, but us bell ringers can cope.

Fidhw

Although my own large (did I mention LARGE?) sighthound scared the pants off me the first time she actually barked (howling is different. Howling is talking).

It is indeed.  There is a good deal more of it among hellhounds since the arrival of the hellterror.  What fascinates me is that there are clearly words in it.  Now all I need is the Universal Translator.

Midget

Gah, why do I like this story so much?! The endless cliffhangers are becoming hazardous to my health.

No, no, no, not hazardous.  A little finely-judged torment is good for you.  Keeps the arteries clear, the joints flexible and the pores open.

Dhudson

I have always had books that I went to in time of stress and I still do.

Yes.  Absolutely.  Tolkien, Kipling, Georgette Heyer and Diana Wynne Jones are my fiction short list, although there are others (THE WITCHES OF KARRES, for example, mentioned on these virtual pages several times before).  No, not Peter—his world-view is way too bleak.  I mostly only read him if I’m feeling relatively cheerful and want some intellectual stimulation.

EMoon

I had had the wishful-thinking-idea that my collie would learn to sleep at the foot of my bed, curled up, or beside me neatly up on his frontage, front paws stretched out and his head down between them, a pose he often took while I was doing homework. However, he preferred to sleep on his side, legs sticking out, and preferred to have his back against the wall my bed (not a wide bed) was on, and that meant his legs–which could be busy as he slept and herded dream sheep–pushed me right out onto the floor.

Well, this is something you can negotiate with training.  If you make it clear that you get the part of the bed you want the dog(s) will eventually (probably) yield the point.  What stops me having the hellhounds (never mind the hellterror) sleep with me, barring the occasional brief noncritical doze, is the general habit of dogs of getting up and spinning around every half hour or so and then settling back down.  I’M AWAKE NOW.  AND I’LL JUST HAVE DROPPED OFF AGAIN (MAYBE) WHEN THEY DO IT AGAIN.  Back in the days when Peter and I were still able to sleep well enough to share a bed he—who has ALWAYS got up earlier than I do—used to send selected whippets upstairs to share the last hour or so of my supposed slumber.  Hazel was very good at this.  She lay down, probably under my chin, and stayed lying down, understanding the principle that this was how she would be allowed to remain.  Holly used to get so excited that she couldn’t stop spinning–and was usually sent downstairs again.

Anyone else remember that funny bit in Farley Mowat’s NEVER CRY WOLF, that after he’d learnt to sleep like a wolf, which involved the getting up and spinning around, he attempted to spend the night with a young woman with whom he was enamoured, and she left after one night declaring she’d rather glurg um dorgleblat—I forget her exact metaphor—than spend another night with him?

Scribblous

Someday I’m going to be reading THIS book curled up in bed, just like Kes. 

EXCELLENT.  ::beams::

* * *

* Peter hires a taxi so I can get sloshed.

** Fending off assorted hellcritters who are resigned to regular bell-ringing evening absences and in the last year where is the God of CRITTERS a further two evenings at church^ but feel that further gratuitous truancies are really trying their patience and good nature.

^ Street Pastoring doesn’t begin till after nine.  They haven’t yet learnt to worry when I leave after nine.

*** Hey, it’s a weekly-driblet serial.  I get to tease you.  It’s in the contract.

† Remember the broom-headed dog-thing in the Disney Alice in Wonderland?  I don’t like Disney and I’ve managed to forget 98% of the rest of the film, but that image absolutely held me—holds me now—the creature sweeps away the path she’s been walking on so now she’s really, really lost.^

^ I was trying to find a link on line, and there are references but I can’t find a photo.  Lots of other Disney Alice photos though.  I wonder if they were making the film today if they would—or if they would be allowed—to show her frilly white underwear quite so often.

†† Personally I think you probably plough fields and plow snow.

††† Well.  Slightly affected by price.

Better

 

Darkness made it through the night* without further incident** and today (thus far) has been normal.***  Life with hellhounds:  a dizzying head trip with gruesome outbreaks of reality.  Fortunately my hellhounds are cute.  Warm and furry does me in every time, especially if there are wagging tails involved.

But I was on the phone to my vet at what passes in my case for an extremely early hour this morning.†  And, wonder of wonders he was not only there—he has a nasty habit of volunteering to do marsupial field surgery in Venezuela or chiroptera rehabilitation in Romania—but he took my call.  And I certainly had stuff to tell him.†

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and cautious optimism †† when I hung up, and took my assortment of hellcritters on brisk brief hurtles because Raphael was coming to scold Astarte and tell her to stop jerking me around and losing or refusing to recognise my email . . . and of course she behaved faultlessly the moment his authoritative tread was heard BUT . . .

I’ve been moaning about my current printer for months if not years.  There are days when I can’t get it to print at all . . . and at this point it’s become one of the things that is making PEG II such a struggle.  But I can’t frelling afford a new printer.  Raphael had mentioned the new printer again when he booked to come out here and he just happened to have the one he was recommending in the boot of his car when he arrived.  Ha ha ha I’ve heard that one before.

Oh, I said.  Is it wireless?

It’s better than wireless, he said.  It’s on nice stable cable, but [blah blah blah, something to do with the wireless picking up the signal from any given computer—and including Astarte, who I haven’t been able to print from at all without the idiot faff of sending myself an email attachment—and translating it to the printer].  So as far as I’m concerned it’s wireless:  I don’t have to plug anything in I just HIT THE PRINTER BUTTON.

AND BETTER YET, IT PRINTS.

Of course I don’t know how long this blessed state of affairs will last††† but . . . maybe long enough to get PEGs II and III done.  Please. . . .

* * *

* How poetic, if you don’t know what I’m talking about

** Unless there’s a crack-to-the-next-universe, like the ruts in Kes’ driveway, in the bottom of the hellhound crate which they are careful to use in extremis.  On the whole I doubt this.  Although it might explain the occasional apparent disappearance of old dog blankets.

*** And he’s just had dinner and is curled up and crashed out, so we have crossed our fingers and are typing with great difficulty.

† It takes me a good hour of caffeine and deep breathing to be sufficiently re-engaged with modern life to be able to find a phone number and then punch it into some machine which includes telephony in its repertoire.  I usually try to get dressed before I do anything drastic like use a phone, since modern phones all have eight hundred and ninety-five options . . . and that’s just the preloaded ringtones.  I remember when making a phone call involved a phone or address book made of paper and a low-key lump of plastic that only made telephone calls.  Gone are the days etc.  Levi’s frelling button flies—the problem being that I like the jeans—are a big fat nuisance when you’re trying to have a quick pee in a hedgerow but doing them up first time in the morning is a useful station on the way to contemporary functionality.^  I don’t try to put any jewellery on^^ till much later:  all those horrible little clasps.^^^

^ It fascinates me, these people who allegedly reach for their iPhone or equivalent before they get out of bed.  Presumably this means they can, even in an unawake, precaffeinated state, turn the thing on, since there can’t be a lot of point to grappling with it if you’re not turning it on.+  The ridiculous truth is that Pooka usually does sit on a shelf by my bed (except when I forget) but if Peter ever did ring me in an emergency I’d be all is-this-a-dagger-which-I-see-before-me-the-handle-toward-my-hand-come-let-me-clutch-thee-I-have-thee-not-and-yet-I-see-thee-still.++

+ Okay, good luck charm maybe?  I’ve always thought rabbits’ feet totally ewwww and creepy.  A nice shiny piece of tech is to be preferred.

++ That was all one word.  Microsoft believes hyphens are sacred.

^^ And I’m a jewellery kind of girl, although I stopped wearing long ropey things that hellcritters can get their legs through years ago.

^^^ It’s nice to think that all those people who lived before the internet was invented didn’t have it all their own way.

† The problem with homeopathy for animals is that they don’t talk, and homeopathy depends on the sufferer’s individual experience of what is wrong with them which means that the homeopath needs to know what that is.  I’ve told you this before:  if three people come to a homeopath with ‘flu’ involving aches and pains and fever but one of them says that the worst is the headache, and one says the worst is the nausea and one says the worst is the sore throat, they’ll get three different remedies.  Although my hellhounds’ digestion is the presenting problem, ‘unpredictable outbreaks of double-ended geysering’ is of limited diagnostic usefulness^ and what Aethelstan was interested in is the ‘mentals’ in response to the first remedy, which were basically that Chaos got gloomy and lugubrious and Darkness got chirpy and cheerful, which is pretty much the opposite of their normal selves.

So that’s the hellhounds sorted with two fresh remedies.^^  Whereupon we came to the hellterror, and I told him depressedly about the disastrous show, and that Olivia had suggested that I might want to look for a behaviourist within my reach in the south of England.  And he said mildly, I don’t think you have a problem dog and I don’t think you need a behaviourist at this point.  I think you have a year-old puppy, a terrier, and an ordinary pet dog that had never seen anything like a big dog show before.  Aethelstan is a terrier person himself, so he has more of a clue than most of the other people I’ve spoken to about what happened.  You mean I’m not a bad person?  That would be wonderful.   I told him what I was doing off the long list of suggestions Southdowner made for giving Pav a wider experience of the world and he said he thought that sounded fine—while agreeing that we do need to address what he tactfully calls the ‘residual fear’ from her more important meltdown at the local vets’ last spring when she was so ill and miserable.  So she’s got a new remedy too . . . and I feel so much better about the whole situation I may venture on the perilous course of testing her long down at the dog-friendly pub soon.

^  There are pages and pages and PAGES of diarrhoea remedies in any homeopathic textbook.

^^ I wish.

†† I don’t think we’re at the end of any roads or anything, but at least I feel we’re moving again.

††† Or how I’m going to pay for it.

Good. And Bad.

 

I had an email from Aloysius yesterday saying that he had a meeting in Oxford* and wouldn’t be here for silent prayer today, and would I hold the floor down in his absence?**  I’ve done this before.  I think I told you, months ago, the first time it happened, I asked him for suitable opening and closing reading-out-loud prayers***, which he duly sent me, a print-out of which I carry around in an increasingly frayed state in the little notebook in my back pocket.†  And I read them out, turn on my electric candle, set the temple-bell timer app on Astarte, and sit quietly—by myself—in St Margaret’s†† little side chapel.  But along with believing in prayer in the standard ritual praise/petition/penitence/doodahdoodah ways I believe in the consequences of ordinary mortal structure and schedule—if you commit to Wednesday afternoon silent prayer, then you have to go on doing it.  It matters.  Even if you’re the only one and you suspect your curate is humouring you.†††

There were three of us today.  My jaw didn’t smack to the floor, but that’s possibly only because I had an armful of blanket in the way.‡  It’s pretty amazing how many more people three is than one, you know?

I still read out Aloysius’ prayers and used the temple-bell app. . . . ‡‡

* * *

* a likely story

** These weren’t quite his words.  Aloysius is a polite young British priest.^

^ I have a long-downing hellterror at my feet again.  She is being afflicted beyond measure or bearing by the fact that Peter is kneeling on the floor not six feet away, groping in the bottom drawer of the freezer.  OH.  MERCY.  HE’S NOW LAYING LARGE FASCINATING PACKAGES ON THE FLOOR BEHIND HIM.  OH.  OH.  OH.

*** I think I’ve also told you that Llewellyn says all us Street Pastors should trying being a Prayer Pastor some time—which means staying at base and, um, praying.  I would like to try PPing;  prayer is very grounding and centring.  Both of which aspects of mortal life and character I’m a little short of, and, never mind the worshiping God part, is a lot of the lure of contemplative prayer for me—the Wednesday afternoon at St Margaret’s/Saturday evening at the monks’ effect.   Prayer Pastoring takes the spiritual strength of prayer (you hope) out into the practical world—or anyway the world rings you up on the Street Pastor mobile and asks you to pray for stuff.

The problem is that as a Prayer Pastor you have to pray out loud.  You have to make it up as you go along.  I’ve been known to mutter supplicatory phrases under my breath at home^ but PRAY OUT LOUD?  USING MY OWN WORDS?  ARE YOU KIDDING?

I haven’t volunteered for Prayer Pastor duty yet.^^

^Although a lot of this, sadly, is of the ‘God please send a thunder-bolt to blast this frelling object’ variety.

^^ And I’m denial about the fact that some day someone on the street will ask me to pray for/with them.  People do.  It’s one of the things they think Street Pastors are for.  They don’t want some invisible Prayer Pastor half across the city.  They want you.  Eeeep.

† The one that on several pairs of my jeans is coming off due to small heavy scrabbly hellterror hind feet.   The notebook is getting pretty frayed too.

†† Freezing cold, just by the way.  You expect an old church like the abbey to be cold.  St Margaret’s is newish and not terribly interesting . . . and freezing cold.

††† Aloysius told me a while back that one of the few legal requirements of being a priest is that you have to pray every day.^  So he can at least multi-task Wednesday afternoon.  Except when he’s in Oxford.

^ This is one of those ‘I’m an alien in a foreign culture’+ moments for me, the separation-of-church-and-state American.  Priests must pray every day or they’re breaking the law.  Jeepers.

+ And I don’t really speak the language.

‡ See:  cold.

* * *

‡‡. . . And at this point, Darkness, who has been obviously anxious and uncomfortable all evening, went and stood by the door in a worried and meaningful way.

We’re just back from racing over half Hampshire while he geysers—I don’t know what hurtling has to do with geysering but the latter seems to require the former.

It started raining and I get tired quickly, hurtling late at night.  So I brought them home too soon and he threw up magnificently all over the carpet, whereupon I had a meltdown of epic proportions.  I also cleaned up the carpet.

I can’t remember if I’ve told you I’ve gone back to my old homeopathic vet again.  I will ring him tomorrow, since the latest remedy is clearly not having the desired effect.

And, you know, I’m not sure how long I can go on doing this.

You’ll excuse me if I stop a bit abruptly tonight.^

^ Yo, God, why are you torturing my dogs?

 

We have been here before

 

I SO HATE OTHER PEOPLE’S DOGS.  Oh, all right, some other people’s dogs.  Or rather, some other dogs’ people.

Peter and I had our monthly tune-up with Tabitha today which means I have no brain and no physical coherence—which further means not only are my sentences at risk, getting the right body parts on the keyboard to create said sentences is an odds-against activity—but I make Peter get thumped first while I hurtle shifts of hellcritters while I still can.*  Hellcritters and I have a standard circuit which begins with a public footpath running through a thin strip of wood with a private field on one side and a busy road on the other.  Hellhounds and I hadn’t gone far today when we came round a fallen tree and there . . . was an off-lead unaccompanied meatloaf.  Dog.  Large.  Looked like a [border] collie cross—collie/Godzilla, perhaps.  I am not very good at reading dog body language but I don’t like alert and interested in an unaccompanied off-lead dog the general dimensions of a medium-sized tractor.  We couldn’t get (illegally) into the farmer’s field through the hedge of brambles and nettles**.

. . . Darkness at this interesting juncture decided he had found the perfect place to have a crap.  Darkness does not defecate quickly.  I know you’re not supposed to stare at strange dogs so I edged around a little so the thing was in my peripheral vision and I should see if it charged.

It didn’t charge.

Darkness completed his endeavour.

I risked a look at Kubota***.  Both its head and its tail were slightly higher and more alert, and it had put its second forepaw—previously raised inquiringly—on the ground.

I cranked my two in to heel position, left Darkness’ offering to the arboreal gods because I did not want to be one-handed and off balance if Kubota decided to charge after all—and we marched briskly down the bank and into the road.

We were not flattened by a runaway fourteen-wheeler but that we were spared, in a karmic† sort of way, may explain why my other road luck has been unusually bad lately.††  Our mysterious survival was not for lack of trying.  We were having our ears/hair pasted back by the slipstreams of the stuff passing us.  While Kubota trotted along on the footpath parallel to us, still alert and interested, and ready, no doubt, to repel boarders if we tried to climb the bank again.  We must have walked three minutes—which is a long time if you’re being buzzed by juggernauts—till there was a break in the traffic and we could scuttle across and . . . I would still be there except a bounding hellhound in each hand gave me enough additional momentum to climb the wretched bank.

I looked across the river of flying metal to the footpath side and Kubota had picked up speed and was now cantering gaily toward a tall stooped tottering figure at the far end of the path, which turned around (still tottering) to greet Kubota, who was now flat-eared and waggy-tailed.  SNARL.  Does this joker, whoever he—probably he from the height—is get extra points for walking his beloved dog despite his physical limitations?  NOT WHEN HE’S PUTTING OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR DOGS’ PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS AT RISK OF BEING FRELLING ROADKILL.

I had been planning on responding to forum comments tonight.††

* * *

* Since the hellterror is easily amused in a wider variety of ways, this usually works out that hellhounds get a proper walk, and hellterror gets a thrilling sprint around a few fields and a bit of road she only sees once a month.  YAAAAAAAAAH.  If the 26-foot extending lead were a little bit longer she would leap over houses.^

^ And I may have seriously damaged a little old lady’s+ health this morning while I was chasing the hellterror around a sapling in the churchyard in New Arcadia.  Generally speaking I make her—the hellterror, that is, not random old ladies—go the correct way around obstacles which is to say she has to come to my side because I am the hellgoddess and she is a minion.++  The rules change somewhat when hucklebutting is occurring.  If we had more and better spaces for hucklebutting I’d enforce her using them, but we don’t, so if she takes it into her manic little head to hucklebutt in what would be a perfectly good space if it weren’t for some frelling TREE in the way—I may try and let her.  This involves me pelting around said tree several times, including tendon-snapping changes of direction, and probably finishes with her doing her end-swapping thing, which usually gets mixed up in the last (or so) circuit, and may involve the both of us getting tangled up in 26 feet of (extending) lead.  I was rather pleased with us today—even if I was a trifle dizzy—till I looked up because of the funny noise, and found a little old lady stopped on the path next to us, bent over her frelling cane and purple with laughter. . . .

+ that is, older than me

++ hahahahahaha

** By mid-November the nettles are probably relatively harmless, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it, and brambles are knife-wielding thugs all year long.

*** Makes a change from John Deere, which is the maker of the only tractorish machinery I’ve ever been on speaking terms with.  http://www.kubota.co.uk/

† Turning Christian hasn’t stopped me considering other possibilities.  As my monk says, us Christians may have some surprises when [sic] we get to heaven.

†† I had some woman with a grievance stop and get out of her car yesterday to yell at me for nearly running into her.  I didn’t anything like nearly run into her;  it’s a particularly brutal blind corner and you have to creep out at .000002 miles an hour prepared to slam on the brakes the moment you see something.  I saw her.  I slammed on the brakes.  Maybe she should find an alternate route.^  And, speaking of slamming on the brakes, on my way to Nadia yesterday I had a near-fourteen wheeler . . . maybe twelve . . . change lanes into me.  He^^ didn’t even signal.  Just changed lanes.  Fortunately Wolfgang’s elderly brakes are in prime condition.  I laid enough rubber I should probably have the frelling wheels checked.  Arrrrrrrgh.^^^

^ She was also totally blocking traffic while she indulged her inner banshee by shrieking at me.

^^ Yup.  I’m assuming it’s a he.

^^^ It interests me in a cool, intellectual way that the adrenaline spike from that little incident was less than when I thought Pav and I were going to get eaten by the hairy four-legged barn the other evening.  Maybe I was just more excited about being on the way to Nadia than being on the way to tower practise.+

+ Well . . . yes.

†† I do live in a small rural-ish village.  I Street Pastor at the nearest small(ish) city with something resembling a nightlife.^  And if the weather gets rough I won’t be able to do it;  I am not driving home at 4 a.m in anything the faintest bit inclement.

^ New Arcadia’s night life consists of the butcher’s delivery van arriving at about one a.m., bless him, since that’s one fewer delivery van clogging up the main road during the day.

Fun with your new voice

 

I’m not sure I can wrest an entire blog entry out of that title, although I can’t resist using it.* It’s probably a bad idea anyway partly because it risks just sounding like bragging, although anyone who has been through the voice-lesson mill knows that the opportunities for true bragging are vanishingly minimal:  it’s all, hey, that was less bad than usual.  Er.  Maybe.  I think.  As someone who also plays the piano with stunning awfulness there is a serious extra frisson of horror to the it’s your BODY aspect, especially, I suspect, for any of us who struggle with self-worth issues.**  At least if you manage to make a nice noise—purely by accident of course—out of a piano or a ukulele or a crumhorn, you can blame the piano (or the ukulele or the crumhorn).  If you’re your instrument you have nowhere to hide and nothing to blame.

Which is something Nadia has been saying to me for two and a half years.  Aside from the fact that I’m pretty much afraid of everything*** I don’t really know why making any noise is so threatening—why am I taking voice lessons if I don’t want to make a noise—but it’s like every time the personal door opens a little I slam it shut again.

I seem to have wedged it open this time.  I hope.  One of the disconcerting things is that a lot of what I’m finally doing right enough to be producing a noise is as instinctive, involuntary and generally non-intellectual as not doing it ever used to be.  It’s not that I’ve bypassed the ‘breathe from the abdomen/support the breath/lift the top end/get your frelling tongue out of the way’ stage, but when I was mired in it, knowing intellectually that I needed to support the breath and get my frelling tongue out of the way, it was like, yeah?  So?   When I kept having to stop and readjust—when I spent weeks at a time not really being able to practise at all because I tightened up so fast that my jaws and throat would ache after only a comparatively few minutes—there was certainly no music happening even if I did manage to learn a few tunes.  And then there were those wha’? moments, like the day my personal door-shutter fell asleep on the job and I had a lesson when I sang Dido’s Lament like I meant it—or any late night at home, because it occurs to me I think it only happens late at night, when my high B emerges from wherever and sticks around just long enough for me to check on the piano that that’s what it is.†

But, you know, I’m singing.  I was so anxious to demonstrate this to Nadia today that of course I made a mess of both Voi che sapete and Un moto di gioja . . . but I got enough right—singing not being like bell ringing—that she could hear I was getting somewhere.

I’M SINGING.

* * *

* Besides I can probably do something with FOOTNOTES.^

^ For example, I have a long-downing hellterror at my feet again.  Which means I’m writing this one choppy half-attentive syllable at a time (again).  It’s beginning to worry her that I seem to mean this long-down nonsense.  First time she gave up relatively soon and went to sleep.  But over the days resistance is rising.  Yep.  Been here, done that, wore out the t shirt in a previous generation.  Holly, of the pure-whippet generation, spent a lot of time on long down.  It was never really an issue with the hellhounds:  they’ve always been good oh-whatever sleepers.  Sighthound obstinacy manifests in other ways in the hellhounds.  Eating, for example.  Or not.  The hellterror is not a natural long-downer but she is a mighty trencherwoman.

It’s funny, though, because she is now usually allowed to mill around my feet and hope for fragments of chicken to rain from the sky while I’m putting hellcritter meals together.  Often she’s the only one milling, when the hellhounds have better things to do+ than eat, but if all three of them are underfoot she’s amazingly polite for something that is basically all stomach with teeth at one end.

. . . I am now eating lamb chops.  Hellterror would like to suggest that she would lie down really well in my lap.  Uh huh.  And the Pope is not Catholic.

+ ie SLEEP.  With their backs to the kitchen.  Just in case I had any illusory hopes.

** Last night at St Margaret’s the topic for discussion was around self-worth:   what gives us our sense of identity, how do we define our worth?  Another way of putting this is, how do we try to duck out of accepting God’s unconditional love?  Unworthiness as an avoidance technique.  Discuss^.

^ And speaking of St Margaret’s, you have heard me before moaning about the awful ‘modern Christian music’ schlock that we sing at the evening service and how frelling HARD it is to sing because it’s in a funny range—Nadia says it’s mostly designed not to frighten non-singers—and I keep swapping back and forth between chest voice an octave down and head voice an octave up because neither sits comfortably.  I’m pretty much resigned to not making a noise—and if you’re going to sing, whatever your personal demons are up to, you want to make a noise—and a few weeks back I pretty well gave up, and shifted over to bellowing in chest voice.  Last night, partly because I’d had a good week for singing+, and partly because I was standing next to Aloysius who has a nice strong tenor and was singing harmony I shifted back up into soprano . . . and made a noise.

+ Note that it’s been a sodding ratbag blister of a week in a lot of ways, and SINGING# has been a very welcome bright spot.

# and Street Pastoring

*** Yup.  Sunshine got that one from me.  Kes is, of course, out of the same dark dusty cupboard.

† Nadia got me up to an A#/Bb today—and I was shutting down out of eeeeep-ness rather than that’s clearly as far as my voice is going to go.  I want my high C back.  Which would mean a reliable A#, I think, which is a perfectly respectable mezzo range, and in the sort of community choir I’m ever likely to infest, probably first soprano.

First Street Pastors Duty Night, Epilogue

 

My usual flippant remark ‘nobody died’ as a summing-up of my standard type of semi-adventure doesn’t really work well here, because while so far as I know nobody in our bailiwick did die, still, intervention in potentially life-threatening situations is one of the things we’re for.  And we did have two medical emergencies and two ambulances Friday night—one per team, as it happens.  There were six of us, which meant two teams—plus two Prayer Pastors who remain back at base but stay in touch by phone and pray for people and situations and perform a practical grounding or centring function for us street operatives.*

My new fearless leader whom we will call . . . Walker** put me on his team so he could keep an eye on me, not surprisingly.  I didn’t, er, put my foot in it too badly, I think.  Or at least I haven’t had the email telling me not to come back . . . but then maybe it’s another of those non-arriving emails.  Or maybe I’ll get it tomorrow when Llewellyn gets back to the office. . . .

MCKINLEY.  STOP IT.

I think it went okay.  It was certainly extremely interesting—not always in the best way but then if everything was all happy and jolly there wouldn’t be Street Pastors in the first place.  It was very striking during our training that all the presenters kept referring to the nightttime economy—not in the money sense but the social-structure sense.  And Walker referred to ‘our community’.  In the briefing before we went out there was a run-down of all the ongoing stories and what the ‘regulars’ are up to—the homeless, the ne’er-do-wells and the troublemakers, which make up a Venn diagram and are not the same thing—anything the cops want us to be aware of, anything previous teams want us to know has been going on recently.  A lot of it went straight past me but that team thing was very strong*** as was the sense that here was a world, which is to say an economy, that ordinary daylight working tax-paying (relatively) sober folk have no idea of.  It was a bit of a fantasy-novel moment—although we didn’t see any dragons.

We could have used a (friendly) dragon—it was SO COLD.  SO.  COLD.  It was even colder when we went back out after our break.  I am so ordering a battery-heated waistcoat before the next duty night.†  And all these CHILDREN†† go clubbing, coatless of course, coats are totally uncool,††† in within-a-degree-of-freezing-according-to-my-kitchen-thermometer weather in sleeveless and in some cases backless frocks which are so short they barely cover . . . well.  In some cases they don’t.‡  The boys are nearly as bad in their meagre t shirts.  It makes us oldies even colder just looking at them.  At least it wasn’t raining.  It would have been sleet, how cold it was:  I’m not sure what I’m going to do if some winter duty night it comes on to sleet:  driving home at 4 am is challenging enough without any help from the weather.

I got home at about 4:30 and had to feed and hurtle confused hellcritters.  I went to bed at about six, and got up at half-past noon. . . .

* * *

* They also get a cup of tea any time they want one.  We have to wait till break.

** Hee hee hee hee hee

*** I’VE PUT MYSELF IN ANOTHER FRELLING TEAM SITUATION.  WHAT THE FRELL, MCKINLEY??  ISN’T REGULARLY MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF BELL RINGING ENOUGH?  I rang twice today, it being Remembrance Sunday and extra services being laid on in churches with bells in them.

I didn’t ring at Forza last Sunday because they cancelled afternoon service ring without updating their frelling web site—I think I had a nice restrained grumble about this last week—and then I didn’t go to tower practise on Wednesday after Pav and I on our evening hurtle had another run in with an aggressive dog, this one the size of a 50’s Cadillac, and Pav did her staring-it-down trick while I imploded in a massive surge of adrenaline and felt so ill and trembly after I didn’t think I was safe to drive.^  So it’s been over a week since I rang—tried to ring those golblarging bells and I made a serious city-centre-in-rush-hour snarl^^ of poor old Grandsire Triples.  GT is usually the first triples method you learn and in theory I should have learnt it and moved on but the problem is that anything I don’t ring I lose and since I’m supposed to know it already I don’t ring it on practise nights.  Which I missed the last one of anyway.  As well as not ringing last Sunday which means the bells are all out to get me again.  I tell myself that when I’ve been ringing them as long as I’ve been ringing the triple-blasted demon-possessed bells at Old Eden^^^ they will no longer be able to gang up on me like that after a mere week and a half away.  However there were no swords for me to fall on so I had to ring Stedman Triples which is like after screwing up on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star being asked to ring Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic.  I was even on the wrong frelling bell—Gemma and I always fight over the treble for Stedman and I lost# so I was on the two.  Good ringers invariably sneer delicately and say that it shouldn’t matter which bell.  Well, it shouldn’t, but it does, and I don’t CARE how well you know the ratblasted line on a page in a method book.  The perverse thing is that I got through the Stedman ##.  So I didn’t have to race out of the tower and look for a sword to fall on.

^ Speaking of occasions when ‘nobody died’ is appropriate.

^^ In several senses of the term

^^^ Which was my extra ring today.  It was pretty funny really.  We had six ringers for six bells but we were a motley crew so we were each on the bell most appropriate for our skill level.  Niall and Vicky were on the back two which are heavy enough to be vicious when they’re in a snit, and the five likes to fall down on you just when you begin to relax because it seems to be in a good mood (ask me how I know this), and I was on the three which is a sod but not tremendously heavy:  bell ringing is never about brute strength, but the heavier a ratbag bell is the better a ringer you have to be to cope, the two and the four which are relatively polite were rung by our two beginners, and our semi-invalid who is still ringing because she’s an amazingly gallant old thing was on the treble, which is pretty small anyway and has reasonably good manners.  Hey, the bells got rung.  That’s the main thing.

# This is PARTICULARLY UNFAIR because she’s a much steadier, less, ahem, hysterical ringer than I am.

## In spite of someone else going adrift.

† Supposing that ‘don’t come back’ email continues not to arrive.

†† And I am so old.

††† Also, I’m told, most clubs have nowhere to put coats.  Oh.

‡ This is a genuine management issue and one of the reasons if at all possible they send you out in mixed-gender teams.  If you have a scantily-clad drunk-on-her-rear female to deal with—the women of the team do the hands-on dealing.  Which can then become a different sort of problem, if the drunk is large and the team members are small—which is exactly what happened to our other team on Friday.

KES,104

 

ONE HUNDRED FOUR

I compromised.  I left the upstairs hall light burning. This was totally reasonable really:  both the door to the downstairs toilet-containing cupboard and the way to the full bath upstairs would be thus findable by a confused half-awake foreigner when she got up in the night for a pee.  Sid had already installed herself in the new bed and I had first to step around her as I dubiously put another log into what I hoped was the correct aperture.  I did like the sound of the door closing on Caedmon’s firebox-what-you-call-it.  Thud.  It declared:  I am solid and I am not going anywhere.  Surprisingly reassuring, even though roving appliances have not been a feature of my nightmares so far.  Then I had to heave my dog over to claim any part of the bed for myself.  She grumbled, of course, and appeared to adhere to the bedding.  I managed to lever myself and my iPad in after some effort, thinking, this is going to get harder as she puts on weight.  Shopping list:  large bed.

I knew that using a computer screen before you try to sleep is supposed to be a bad idea, that it scrambles your hormones which believe they are being stimulated to keep you awake.  But the first night in my new hou—home I really had to read LOTR.  Maybe tomorrow I could find the box with my rather numerous hard copy editions.  Tonight the iPad would do.

I was surprisingly comfortable, once we were both settled, lying on my not-quite-fully-inflated-after-all air mattress with a folded blanket over it, and then an inelegant jumble of sheets and blankets over that, made more jumbly by Sid’s determination that her side was adequately arranged.  She had, however, generously ceded me the space nearest to Caedmon, so I had an excellent heat source on both sides, and enough pillows or pillow-equivalents behind me to make lounging positively luxurious.  Plus the bedside lamp.  Whatever it might be doing to persuade my hormones that we were reading a book and not a computer screen, it was definitely responsible for my having been able to turn the rest of the lights (except the upstairs hall) off.

When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

          Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar. . . .

I’d reread it so often during the awful year my parents were breaking up that the pages of my first, much beloved childhood copy started falling out.  One night my mother found me weeping in my closet, on the floor among the shoes, because I’d dropped THE TWO TOWERS in the bath and so many of the pages had come out I didn’t think I could save it.  I was eleven years old, and it was nearly nine o’clock:  she’d come in to make sure I was in bed and was going to tell me lights out in five minutes.  This was Manhattan, and it was a small closet.  There wasn’t really room for me and the shoes, my school clothes and winter coat, and a disintegrating paperback of THE TWO TOWERS.

“Come out of there,” my mother said grimly, and I crept out, my heart somewhere about six stories down, because now I was in trouble with her too.  “Put a pair of those shoes on.  You can put your coat over your nightgown.  And wash your face.  Quickly.”

“What?” I said, or probably squeaked.  I laid the remains of TWO TOWERS carefully down, and rubbed my dirty face with a dirty hand.  “Where are we going?”  I had a sudden horrible vision of Dad throwing us out, although my dad would never have done any such thing.

“Crack Lit,” said my mother, which was the neighborhood name for the neighborhood bookstore, although the name over the door was Craddock Books.  “Hurry up.  I think they close at nine.”

They were, in fact, closing when we got there.  Lara was cranking the steel shutter down.  She looked up as she saw us—looked up and paused, taking in, I think, my blotchy face and my nightgown sticking out from under my coat, and that my mother was holding my hand.  I was much too old for my mother to be holding my hand.  Everybody in the neighborhood knew that my parents were breaking up, and everybody would include Lara.   “We need a copy of THE TWO TOWERS,” said my mother, and I’d never heard that note of pleading in her voice before.  “We need it tonight.”

Lara stared at us a moment longer and then ducked under the half-lowered shutter.  There was a rattle of a key in a door, and she disappeared inside.  We waited.  Lara knew her stock extremely well:  she was out again in under a minute, and she hadn’t turned the store lights on.  She held out a shiny new copy of TWO TOWERS to me. “Pay for it tomorrow,” she said.  “I’ve already cashed out.”

“Thanks,” said my mother.

“No problem,” said Cara, and went back to cranking down the shutter.

 

Street Pastors

 

This blog post is a stub, as Wiki might say.

I haven’t decided about a future official blog approach to Street Pastor duty nights—if ever there was a good reason to take a night off once a month SPing should be it—but I’m still provisional for I think the first six months, while I figure out if encouraging myself to stay up all night is a good idea even once a month and the Street Pastors decide if my peculiar gifts are a positive contribution to their community or not.  So maybe we’ll just go on winging it for now.

And so here we are . . . on my first post-training post-commissioning realio-trulio Street Pastor patrol night.  EEEEEEEEEEEEEP.  Everyone tells me that first-night nerves are normal but my level of anxiety—and, unfortunately, lack of sleep—have been exacerbated by the fact that I got left off my new team’s email list because my address was spelled wrong by whoever put it in.  So I’ve been waiting all week for the round-up email that I was told every team leader sends out the beginning of a duty-night week to make sure all is well.  And it didn’t arrive.

Wednesday afternoon I finally emailed Llewellyn, our area head, asking if I’d missed something or maybe I’d been reassigned or maybe THEY DIDN’T WANT ME or something?  And I didn’t hear from him either.  So I went to bed last night convinced that . . . oh, I don’t know.  The Borg have landed, Brussels sprouts are taking over the planet*, vampires are just misunderstood,** bull terriers are bland, inactive little creatures and what I’ve got is a . . .   And of course I didn’t sleep.

This morning there was a copy of an email from Llewellyn to my team leader . . . and then, finally, a very nice, and apologetic, email from the team leader himself.  Which is when we figured out what had gone wrong.  It happens;  and we’re a volunteer organisation, after all.

But the result is still that I’m going out on my first pavement-pounding all-nighter on no sleep . . . and it’s cold.  And raining. ***

* * *

* First cousins of killer tomatoes, you know

** On trustworthy recorded historical evidence, who’s responsible for more bad behaviour?  Humans or vampires?

*** Any prayers gratefully accepted.  We’re actually supposed to ask people to pray for us when we’re on the street so I’m not only being a wimp.  I don’t myself think that time makes much difference to the prayer-space—or to God—so retroactive prayers are equally welcome, if you’re reading this tomorrow or next March.^

^ Although if it’s March, there may be three or four more SP nights to pray over me for too.

The way life keeps happening

 

Arrrrrrgh.  I am not getting on with sorting out Third House for rental as fast as I should through a combination of factors:  gremlins, gremlins, ME, native disorganizational genius, deep personal reluctance imperfectly repressed and gremlins.  Did I mention gremlins?  Originally I was going to start moving [Peter’s and my] backlist to the storage warehouse last week but Atlas and I got our diaries crossed* and he showed up on Thursday when I was going to the dentist.**  ARRRRRGH.

First opportunity for a reschedule was today.  I am not sleeping well*** and I have all these CRITTERS to hurtle and Peter and Atlas are detestably early risers so they played pinochle or something till I pantingly arrived, having run the hellterror 6,728 times around the (tiny) kitchen at the cottage, including over the island and across the ceiling† while I mainlined black tea, then locked her back in her crate with her breakfast†† and threw the hellhounds in the back of Wolfgang for ballast.  We convoyed to Hrothgar’s Hall††† with Atlas going uphill at about twelve miles an hour with all that backlist dragging him down, and Peter noted lugubriously that it was too far for him to come on his bicycle.  !!!!!!!*&^%$£”!!!!!!!!  YES, IT IS.

We fell out of our various vehicles and I made a horse’s ass of myself trying to break into . . . I mean, use my honestly-acquired keys and instructions to get us into the flipping warehouse and open the loading gate.  I’d still be there‡ if Atlas hadn’t cleared his throat and indicated salient features a couple of times.  How does he KNOW?  These frelling mechanical people.  It’s like being able to do maths in your head or fly by flapping your arms.  You’re either born with the gift or you aren’t.

I took hellhounds for a sprint around the perimeter while Atlas and Peter got on with unloading.  There were sheep, white-winged doves that made me come all over Emmylou Harris and make a nice change from pigeons, and horses.  This may have possibilities:  I’ll have to look at the local footpath map.  I quite like the idea of going for six copies of THE SUNSHINE ROSE HERO AND THE OUTLAW BLUE PEGASUS CHALICE END and having a nice country hurtle with some critters while I’m at it.‡‡

I looked at the space remaining in the tiny cubicle—the barely-more-than-a-cupboard—after Atlas and Peter had made tidy box-piles against one wall, and thought dark, evil thoughts.  Then we all went home for lunch‡‡‡ . . . after which I crept, bent and oppressed with woe,§ back up to Third House and squinted, with the other eye squeezed shut, at the remaining boxes of backlist and 4,341 other people’s books still on shelves. . . .

Bottom line.  I haven’t got a prayer of getting all those books in that space.§§  Never mind the odd box of towels§§§ and maybe kitchen china too.#

So Atlas brought the next load, this time of my backlist, along since that’s what he was there for and we weren’t going to burst out of the confines of the cupboard till the third load, and I applied to the Nice Man## who runs Hrothgar’s Hall and . . . of course he’s just rented the last remaining next-size-up cupboard and only has small airplane hangar—sort of helicopter hanger—sized units left.  So I am faced with ENTIRELY READJUSTING my plans for only having stuff like backlist that we need to have available in this place and storing the big stuff in the very-slightly-cheaper, but-your-stuff-goes-away-and-you-can’t-get-at-it warehouse.

I’m so happy.  Not.

* * *

* A little like pistols at dawn, but not very

** That whole side of my head is still irregularly flaring and snarling and saying DON’T DO THAT AGAIN, OKAY?  Whimper.  But he’s not done yet.

*** I am still breathing = I am not sleeping well

† The pans hanging from the ceiling rack making a musical noise as she weaves among them like a barrel-racing Quarter horse

†† She is now getting most of her food via kong.  http://www.kongcompany.com/en-uk/

This is supposed to help keep her amused.  Rather than just chowing down the contents of her bowl faster than the speed of light^ she has to work for her meals.  Well, yes, but trust the hellcritter that belongs to me to find an alternative application.  Your dog is supposed to chew the thing:  Pav mainly throws it around.  She does some chewing . . . but mostly she throws it around.  Whang.  Whang.  WHOP.  Whang.  As musical accompaniments go I prefer the ting-tong of clashing pans.

^ This is totally true, you know.  Scientists should investigate the physics of bullie food-inhalation.  I’m sure the resulting warp drive would be better than dilithium crystals.  We might make it to the stars after all.

††† Big storage facilities are creepy.  I’m sure there are some really excellent horror stories about big storage facilities.  Don’t bother to tell me:  there’s no way I’m going to read any of them.

‡ And the hellterror would be very cross and HUNGRY.

‡‡ ::Urgently looking for reasons not to hate everything about renting Third House::

‡‡‡ Variously.  The lunch part did not include the hellhounds.  Siiiiiiiigh.  Hellterror says, Put me in, coach.  I can handle it.  I’ll even play with that dumb rubber thing if it makes you happy.

§ Including non-eating hellhounds

§§ Also I think there’s a Pit and the Pendulum vibe and with every box you deposit in the space the walls move a little closer together.

§§§ There’s nothing the hellterror enjoys more than a nice towel shredding,  so I can use the back-up

# We don’t need any hellterror help for breakages.  Although she did take out the plate glass window of my ex-glass-fronted bookcase about a week ago.  I spent hours sweeping, scrubbing and patting the floor for splinters.  Also moaning.  Moaning goes with this kind of work.  The kitchen floor hasn’t been that clean in years.

## He probably needs a name.  He will probably appear on these pages again.  Also, he has two adorable spaniels.  One of them wags her tail in her sleep.