Robin McKinley's Blog, page 45

I’m feeling pretty fragmented so let’s have a fragmenty blog post

 

 

EMoon

. . . how my mother helped capture a pair of bank robbers and managed not to sell them the guns they wanted to buy.

Guest.  Post.  . . . Please?  Or if you’ve told the story elsewhere, a link?

Jaccairn

It may be time to go to the Financial Ombudsman Service about the bank.

I passed the eight weeks’ necessary time lapse yesterday if we’re counting from the date on my initial complaint letter.  If I have to wait from the first written acknowledgement I had from the bank, add a fortnight.  If the clock only starts ticking from the first case-specific letter I had from the bank add about five weeks.  I wrote to, and have been sending updates to since, the Guardian consumer champion people but apparently my case is not interesting enough—which kind of makes you wonder what is going on elsewhere.  Oh, and the latest?  My local branch told me that the reason I can have only one cheque-writing account tapping my holding-tank account is because you’re only allowed ONE account feeding off ONE other account.  WHAT?  I’ve had two cheque-writing accounts kept topped up by my single holding-tank account FOR TWENTY TWO YEARS, my personal individual account AND A SECOND ONE that I share with Peter.

I still have a headache.

Mrs Redboots

If it were me, I would be taking up residence in the bank and insisting on speaking to Someone In Authority, and not moving until you did. And if they won’t give you satisfaction, then I’d be on the phone to First Direct or one of those….

Well, it’s not you.  My local branch doesn’t have a person in authority and the idea of trying to find a bigger, hairier branch that does and then staging a dignified tantrum for said authority’s benefit doesn’t sound like a successful stratagem for me.  I’m an introvert with ME.  I have stamina problems anyway—and I’d have to drive to whatever confrontation I planned—and aside from the sheer grisly blank-mind-inducing horror of trying to have what is essentially an antagonistic conversation with a stranger about MONEY, my least favourite topic and around which I have minimal skill, between the ME and menopause I have no memory.  I want to slog through this fiscal murk as much as possible leaving a clear shining paper trail.  Or at least a slightly scintillant email trail.

But yes, I suspect First Direct is in my future.  I’ve had several people recommend them.  Even Which? likes them.*    Old person than I am, I’m not crazy about the idea of an on-line-only bank, but I like VERY MUCH that there is always a human being to talk to.

Gotomoto

Glad you made that dental appointment. One of my friends recently decided to “tough-out” a toothache, but he waited too long and by the time he sought out treatment it had gone all septic on him. He ended up near death in the hospital for a week to the tune of a bazillion dollars. (All better now though, just poorer.)

OH PLEASE.  THAT IS VERY RARE.  I’m very sorry about your friend, and I’m glad he’s better, and I’m sorry Obamacare isn’t doing anything for septic tooth related emergency hospital care . . . but he was also unlucky.  I have some of the worst teeth in human history—about twenty-six of them left, I think, although one is a glossy high-tech plastic thingy cemented onto a titanium implant and I wish I could afford more of these—and I have toughed out bad toothaches a few times when I had a deadline, most memorably for DRAGONHAVEN a few years ago.  Even before I had ME I had a history of bad times with dentistry, and if I need to keep working I’ll put off Terror by Chair with Fish** as long as I can.

On this particular visit to a sunken city in the South Pacific redolent of ancient evil . . . it’s going to cost a fortune because it always does, but I don’t think anything but my sanity (and my bank balance) are at risk.  Both of these however are at serious risk.  Whimper.

Thus I reeled back out onto the pavement today after this first sizing-up-the-victim*** appointment and . . . staggered up the street to the department store with a knitting precinct and BOUGHT TWO MAGAZINES.  I narrowly missed falling afoul of some Rowan Summerspun† which the wicked clerk†† had left scattered across the floor when—so she claimed—she was called away.  A likely story.  But I was STRONG.  I RESISTED.†††

Hoonerd

DON’T START WITH A SALUKI. Yeeeeep.

whippets and greyhounds are the easy end

Ok, ok, advice accepted. But I don’t suppose whippets and greyhounds come with long hair options (think Ash disguised by the Moonwoman.)? That is one large attraction of Salukis.

What about a nice Silken Windhound?

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2013/04/02/silken-windhound-a-guest-post-by-sarah/  ‡

* * *

* http://www1.firstdirect.com/1/2/banking/current-account?WT.mc_id=PSR0000019&WT.Srch=1

In case you’re interested.

** The videos on the ceiling screen are still fish.  I think my attitude toward aquariums—aquaria if you prefer—has been permanently damaged.^

^ Although I still have a fantasy about a betta splendens.  Or two.  In separate tanks:  I know.

*** Moustache-twisting and mwa hahahahaha optional.  However, guess what?  My dentist has had a three-YEAR argybargying, ombudsman-adjudicated row with his bank.  No, it’s not the same bank.  I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.  There aren’t that many monster, medium-sized-country owning, multi-gazillion bonus CEO maintaining, ordinary person underfoot crushing^ type banks out there.  One would have liked the incompetent ones to be in the minority.

^ Although dentist from R’lyeh and I really don’t belong in the same category.  If he’s a Cthulhu, I’m a single nightgaunt.  A single stunted nightgaunt.  A single stunted nightgaunt with issues.+

+ I bet real nightgaunts don’t have problems with their banks.

† http://www.knitrowan.com/yarns/summerspun

. . . In case you’re interested.

†† She’s from R’lyeh too.

††† I totally don’t want to go to this.  Totally.  Absolutely.  Not.  No way.  Ridiculous.  Never.  No.

http://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/the-knitting-and-stitching-show/#.UjthQJ1waM8

And if one more person tells me how fabulous it is I am going to strangle her in her own yarn.^

^ And furthermore, I have no money.  And if I did, I’d have to give it all to the dentist from R’yleh.  Again.

‡ There are also Afghans and Borzois if you want long hair.  All sighthounds are inclined to be a trifle inconveniently independent-minded—because they have to be able to make their own decisions when they’re flat out after their quarry—what I know about Afghans and Borzois is that they’re a little farther out on that continuum than greyhounds and whippets.  Afghans are stupid north-northwest, when it suits them;  like all sighthounds, they’re stubborn.  Borzois have a unique sense of humour.  Deerhounds tend to be sweeties, like most greyhounds and whippets, but I’m told they’re also on balance the worst eaters of the lot.  I personally am not going there.  But what you want is to make friends with a breeder who loves acquainting people with the sterling qualities of his or her own chosen breed.  Or several breeders and several chosen breeds.  And then go home and see who you dream about.

Short Wednesday – a mini (bull) review*

The best thing about families is sharing.

The worst thing about families is sharing.

And like most families the children get to go first.

 

Hi I’m Fruitcake

an dis iz wun tasty book

Scone chipped in with her review too:

At last! It’s here!!!

Finally a book I can be a part of

YES!!!

Hi I’m Millie

I feel as if I’m inside the story

Oh no!!! They can’t have…

Oh, that Mongo!!!

Hi there, I’m Hazel

I wuffs this book LOTS

 

but sometimes I had to hide in the scary bits

We iz da BOOK club

an not just ANY book club!

We iz Robin McKinley fans who DEVOURS her books

 

Yeti planning a book heist while Noodles takes her turn

I haz had to wait til eberypawdy iz asleep so’s I can read Shadows – please report dis abuse so I can getz my own copy to read!

 

* Photography (and bullies) supplied by southdowner.  Computer chops supplied by b_twin.

 

I have a headache

 

Probably as a result of the over-excitement of the weekend* I’m stranded in another ghastly insomniac stretch, so in fact I got up this morning with a headache.**  It’s raining.  This is good from a garden-care perspective***, except possibly for the disintegrating cardboard boxes containing mail-order autumn bedding plug plants†, but it’s a little frustrating from a hurtling viewpoint.  Hellterror feels that rain is unnecessary but it doesn’t slow her down any.  Hellhounds feel that I am responsible and I could stop it if I cared about their feelings.  Chaos made his lacerated feelings known by refusing to have anything to do with his lunch.  Siiiiiiiigh.

So since the day was not beautiful and uplifting anyway I decided to have a little uncharacteristic spurt of acting like a grown-up.

I was taking Wolfgang in to the garage to have a wheel replaced this afternoon—the wheel that I WHANGED getting out of the way of a bus that was trying to kill me, although, since I’m being a grown-up (briefly) I should add that this was after I had whanged that same wheel a week or so earlier because I am a git, and was looking at a bird in a hedgerow or something and not looking at what I was doing.††  The garage had booked me in and everything but I thought I’d just ring up and check.

They’d never heard of me.  I wasn’t in their diary—and I’d had two conversations with two different people about this appointment—and the fellow who was supposed to be doing the work was (unscheduledly) off today.

They were supposed to check around and ring me back about rebooking.  They are not having a grown-up day.  They didn’t.

I, meanwhile, however, was still on fire with the glow of active, practical maturity.

I made an appointment with dentist from R’lyeh.†††

Aaaaaaaaaand . . . I rang my bank.

I had a letter from them—finally—yesterday, Monday.  It was sent to the wrong address, despite the fact that (both copies of) my letter of complaint had the correct address at the top.  Their letter said that they’d written to me before but hadn’t had any reply.  This would be because I haven’t had any communication from them before this, possibly because they sent the previous missive to some even more wrong address.  This letter asks me a lot of questions I can’t answer because they concern a conversation that happened in June.

There is a phone number.  Despite my dislike of the phone I thought it might be worth trying to point out to a live human being that my memory is not flawless for conversations that happened three minutes ago, let alone three months and let alone about banking.

I waited in the phone queue for about ten minutes—I know this because it takes me twelve minutes to knit a row of my scarf and I didn’t quite get to the end.  When a live human being finally answered, I said that I should perhaps ask to speak to Ms Thingummy, whose name was at the bottom of the letter.  Oh, she’s not in today, said the helpful lady.‡‡  She’s poorly.

Is there anyone else I can speak to? I said.

Well, said the helpful lady dubiously, I’ll have a go, but Ms Thingummy does specialist blah blah blah blah and I really don’t deal with that area.

Do you know when she’ll be back? I said, my active, practical maturity trickling away down the drain like the dregs of last night’s flat champagne.

Oh, I couldn’t say, said the helpful lady.  She’s poorly.

At the bottom of the letter I received on Monday, which claims to be a second attempt to contact me, there is a notice that if they haven’t heard from me by the 25th of September they will close the case.

I think I’ll go lie down and have a little rest.

* * *

* Which, just by the way, I do not regret AT ALL

** And a hellterror saying, Ooooh, let me HELP!  I’ll make you FEEL BETTER!  Let me comb [sic] your hair!  Let me chew on your earlobes!^  Let me whack you in the face with my heavy little head!  Let me remove your glasses with my nose!  Let me climb down^^ the neck of your nightgown!  No, wait!  I do fit!  I do!  Give me a minute!  I just need to adjust the angle of approach slightly!

^ It is interesting, to a multi-breed hellcritter owner+, how much less far a bull terrier nose goes in your ear than a sighthound nose does.

+ Hoonerd

I immediately googled rescue dogs and discovered Salukis. I have never had a sighthound, but after reading Robin for so many years I would love to give them a try. Most breeders seem to want people with sighthound experience, though? How does one get experience when one can’t get a dog without it? Dog walkers? Foster homes?

DON’T START WITH A SALUKI.  Yeeeeep.  Salukis are the hard end of sighthounds—whippets and greyhounds are the easy end.  A good greyhound rescue will both match you with a greyhound they think will suit you and keep an eye on you afterward, including being someone to ask questions as necessary.#  UNLESS you have a local Saluki rescue that is willing to mentor you don’t even THINK about a Saluki, especially a rescue Saluki.  And if there is a Saluki rescue that doesn’t want to mentor you but is willing to let you have a dog . . . YOU DON’T WANT THAT DOG.

# Also, retired-racer greyhound rescue is now common enough there’s a good deal of sensible advice available out there, in hard copy and on line, so you aren’t utterly dependent on your local experts.

^^ Or up.  Hellterrors are not fussy.

*** It’s amazing how much better watered the indoor plants are when I’m not wasting HOURS watering outdoors.

† This happens at least twice a year:  spring plant orders and autumn plant orders.  They INVARIABLY arrive when I don’t have time to deal with them, like just before my first Street Pastors training weekend, so I rip the tops off and plop the boxes around where their contents can catch some sun—and rain—and, this year, where the hellterror can’t test them for playability.

†† At twenty miles an hour and over I’m the safest driver you could ever hope to be stuck behind.  At five miles an hour I’m a menace to society because, you know, it’s five miles an hour.  I was going about three and a half miles an hour when I took out that gate a year or two ago. . . .

††† AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH 

‡ This was one of the tangential delights of being in the phone queue for so long.  About every ten seconds the robot voice comes on telling you blah blah blah blah all our helpful customer service representatives are busy . . . Maybe I could talk to an unhelpful one?  I suspect the outcome would be very similar.

Mostly Street Pastor and a little critter

 

PamAdams

Bramble, honey, I agree–he is hot. However, as a rescue dog, he’s also neutered.

Not necessarily.  This isn’t our world.*

* * *

I’ve been attempting to work on KES and while my general sense of being Crushed by Events is very suitably atmospheric it doesn’t really assist with the getting (English, recognisably spelled) words on the page/screen.  I’m so tired I could die (revisited).

Friday night I didn’t get to bed twenty minutes after I posted the blog.  The hellhounds have become used to extreme variations in our cough-cough-cough schedule, but Pav, manic young innocent that she is, still thinks things are supposed to happen WHEN THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, especially when they involve things that matter to her.  Like the boomeranging around the kitchen at the cottage after we get home . . . what used to be last thing but isn’t any more because it needs to allow for boomeranging time.**  Arrrgh.  I’m also somewhat prone to guilt, and a perpetual-motion adolescent puppy CAN ALWAYS USE a little more interaction time.  And, possibly because, in the way of dogs, she was discerning a quiver in the aether that suggested that the weekend was going to be UNUSUAL, she had no interest in settling down.  Well, okay, she is never interested in settling down, but some nights this is more negotiable than other nights.  Moan.

There are sixteen or seventeen of us regional Hampshire Street-Pastors-in-the-making this intake;  I’m embarrassed to admit I haven’t counted, but I think we’re nearly half and half, men and women;  there are probably slightly more women.  Fearless leader of our region is a bloke;  Lesser Disconcerting’s is a woman.  They’re both terrific.  They’re the kind of exceptionally terrific that when you find out they run something, you automatically want to know what it is so maybe you can join.***  Saturday’s presenter was a hired gun.  Possibly the less said about her the better.  I’m not too good with the Relentlessly Chirpy.†  There was a lot of cool stuff about the history, spread and influence of the SPs and some related groups that are gaining momentum, and then the beginning of our indoctrination into what we as SPs are actually going to do.††

Then I came home and spent the evening on the sofa . . . but when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep because I was too wound up from staying focussed all that long day by means of adrenaline instead of enough sleep the night before . . .

Which meant Sunday should have been a disaster, but it wasn’t, possibly because Lesser Disconcerting’s fearless leader, whom we shall call Corey, was the presenter, and she’s even more terrific as a chief presenter than she is providing background local anecdotes for someone else’s seminar.  Sunday was mostly a first session on street craft, including queuing up for our new tattoos which say Never EVER EVER leave your team or allow any member of your team to be left alone, plus basics of body language and listening skills.  Some of this was interesting as a sad reflection of how little of this many of us know:  why don’t they teach something USEFUL in school, like body language and listening skills?

. . . And it would be all good except that I got home last night just in time for Darkness to drag me all over Hampshire to perform the double-ended geysering trick which is my least favourite dog behaviour in the entire universe, and, after apparently being better today, has just done it again.

So you’ll excuse me if I quit tonight a little abruptly.  I’m still extremely short of sleep, and despair is very tiring. . . .

* * *

*Also, sultans have been known to throw eunuchs out of the harem that the women were too fond of.  Just sayin’.

** Including the post-prandial Find the Chicken game which involves a pan, three bowls, and a lot of racing around.  Hellhounds retire upstairs first and lie around on my office floor maintaining their dignity.^

^ Hoonerd

. . .thinking about how you bought Pav so that all your dogs wouldn’t be gone at the same time (unlike last time) . . . Pav and hellhounds are replacements (after a fashion) . . . I was dog sitting . . . we got along swimmingly except . . .  he started to remind me strongly of the cocker spaniel I lost over 9 years ago . . . he wasn’t the same (obviously) and the differences were disconcerting . . . it made me miss my dog all over again . . . one probably never really gets over the death of a really beloved pet . . . I had been looking forward to . . . a situation that allows having a dog again but it would [not] be like having my old dog back. . . . So I guess my question is, how hard is it to let one’s heart open to a new dog, and are the differences between the old and the new always kind of rattling?

Short answer:  yes.  No subsequent dog ever makes up for the loss of previous dog or dogs, critter or critters—and no, you never get over the death of anyone you love, be it human or hellcritter or boa constrictor, although I’ve tended to specialise in the warm-blooded end, I’m sure I would grow fond of a resident boa constrictor.+  I would say—for me anyway—it takes some time to fall in love with your new critter, but you bring it home and start putting time into it and you begin to learn who it is and it starts responding to you and pretty soon you have a RELATIONSHIP, which means one more critter you will be devastated by the death of.  If you’re a critter person, you do it anyway.++

+ Or royal python.  I have a small fantasy about a royal python.  They’re supposed to be small and docile, as large snakes go.

++ But if I never again have a critter that goes in for double-ended geysering I will be very grateful.

*** You may remember that my local fearless leader was one of my interviewers;  he also ran the short introductory session Friday night.  Let’s call him Llewellyn.

† I was not, by the end of the day, her favourite person either.  I don’t mean to do this, but the more interested I am in something the more I can’t resist One More Question.  This is of course a sign of healthy engagement but there are still limits.

†† There was ROLE-PLAYING.  I HATE ROLE-PLAYING.^  And it’s worse than that.  Our hired gun had asked for four volunteers and there was a pause and then two of the blokes put their hands up.  And then there was another, longer pause, and the hired gun said now ideally we would like two women . . . and I ground my teeth because I am an old-fashioned American feminist and the blokes are not going run this or any other thing if I can stop it even if it’s frelling role-playing.  So I put my hand up.  And then, bless her, one of the other women from Mauncester put her hand up too^^.  So we got to pretend to be a SP team and do everything wrong, of course, because we HAVEN’T HAD the training yet, that’s what we’re HERE FOR, RIGHT?  And it was all very educational.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

^ I came home and wrote furiously to Eleanor who wrote back laconically, yeah, I didn’t warn you about the role-playing because I thought it might put you off.

^^ Cindy.  She’s going to be a fabulous Street Pastor.  She has all those kind, intelligent, empathetic instincts.  My instincts run more toward remembering to open my mouth wide because I’ll be inserting my foot shortly.  Remind me why I thought becoming a SP would be a good idea?

 

SHADOWS – A Border Collie Review – b_twin may have assisted

 

Remember there is a CONTEST to win a SIGNED, DOODLED-IF-DESIRED COPY of SHADOWS:  http://robinmckinleysblog.com/contest/

* * *

Bramble received an ARC of SHADOWS and wished to do a review:

“Hmmmm…. Looks interesting. A Border Collie Wonder Dog you say?”

 

“Don’t bother me while I am in the middle of a book.”

 

“I heartily endorse this book. The Border Collie is an excellent role model for all puppies.
Plus, he sounds hot.” *

 

Bramble is a working Border Collie with extensive experience in herding sheep and poultry. And other dogs.

* * *

And a random blog review, by those of you who want a few more words, by a Very Nice Person with Impeccable Taste:  http://www.longandshortreviews.com/book-reviews/shadows-by-robin-mckinley/

 * * *

* He is totally hot.  Totally. 

 

KES, 96

 

NINETY SIX

I was back in the cab with the door slammed shut, the lock-button pounded down and the key turned violently in the ignition without wasting any time guessing what might have set Sid off.  The starter motor went BLAH and Merry gargled to life.

We would have lurched instantly down the road.  I had let the handbrake off with a jerk that only just didn’t dislocate my shoulder and had thudded Merry into gear.

Except that there was something in the way.  Someone.  Someone on a horse in the way.  A large horse.  A large someone.   Who was not, I thought a little hysterically, wearing a modern safety-certified riding helmet.

Even without Sid giving me her view of the situation I wouldn’t have thought this large dark person on a large dark horse looked friendly.  And Sid was still black, not gold, and in need of serious remedial hair care and I was still wearing my beat-up black leather jacket with the frayed cuffs and no burgundy velvet in sight.

The horse bowed its neck in response to some signal from its rider and turned sideways—broadside to where Merry stood vibrating, either from the tremor of his engine or the quaking of his driver.  Or possibly the bouncing-around of the tall black dog not quite well enough tied to the passenger seat belt.

The horse turned toward us again and began walking.  I think I may have whined.  Merry’s cab was heave-yourself-up-from-ground-level high, but the horse was going to be able to look me in the eye as it came nearer.  What happens when a twenty-five-hundred pound horse collides with a five-thousand-pound old-fashioned real-steel pick-up truck?  I doubted it would be good for either of us so Merry and I continued to stand and tremble.  And Sid continued to bark.  The horse’s head, its thick forelock tucked under the browband but a long sweep of mane falling down its neck, seemed to fill the windshield before it turned aside just enough to walk past us.  This was much to be preferred to its climbing the fender, walking up the hood and onto the roof—I didn’t think even Merry’s real steel was up to the weight—which I had briefly feared it was going to.

But it was worse than that.  When I looked forward again—having torn my gaze away from the horse and its rider brushing by so near that if I’d put a hand out the driver’s window I would have touched them—there were more dark riders on dark horses behind the first one.  I couldn’t see how many of them there were:  they were a sort of cloudy seethe in the darkness.  I could almost—almost—tell myself that it was some trick of moonlight and shadow.  But moonlight and shadow doesn’t have legs and heads and tails and riders and saddles.  A horse at the edge of the mob tossed its head.  There’s nothing but a horse tossing its head that looks like a horse tossing its head, especially when there are reins involved, and the rider reaches forward and puts a hand on the horse’s crest for a moment.   The bubble of hysteria rising from my chest was getting so big and breath-blocking I put my hands on my throat as if I could squeeze it away.  And I know I whined then—or moaned—because I could feel the vibration against the palms of my hands.  The only things here that are really real, I thought wildly, are my own hands on my own throat, and my barking dog.

The other horses and riders began following the first one—past Sid and Merry and me.  The moon was behind them:  their faces were all in shadow although any of them who cared to could probably see white-as-a-bleached-sheet me through the windshield.  I saw the occasional moonlit glint of brown:  not all the horses were black, nor all the riders’ clothing.  There might have been the thud of hooves and the creak of tack, but Sid was making too much noise.  I wanted to tell her to shut up—I wanted to be able to hear if my ears agreed with what my eyes were telling me—and then again I didn’t want to.  Sid clearly thought there was something going on:  wasn’t that enough?

It took a century or two for all the riders to file by.  There might have been twenty of them.  There might have been two hundred.  Sid was starting to sound hoarse.  The last one was a little behind the next-to-last.  Sid stopped barking for a moment as if waiting for him—all the riders were all either big guys or amazingly big amazons—to get close enough to be worth it.

I’m sure I heard a jingle of bit-rings.  I’m even surer I heard the saddle creak as this last rider turned his head and deliberately looked down into the window at me.

I recognised him.  He was—or he was the identical twin to—Murac, a mercenary Flowerhair knew.  Flowerhair had never decided if he was a good guy or not.  Neither had I.

He touched two gauntleted fingers to his forehead as he looked at me.  The moonlight, for a fraction of a second, lit him clearly.  The look on his face might have been irony.

And then he was gone.

Street Pastor training began tonight and continues way too early tomorrow morning

 

Happy Friday the 13th.

* * *

Some random woman rushed up to Pav and me this afternoon and said Oh she’s so gorgeous, she’s just so gorgeous.

Her breeder says I have to show her, I said lugubriously.

Oh yes you must, said the random woman.  You MUST!*

Meanwhile I’ve been looking at photos of fancy show bullies and they’re all too fat.  I don’t LIKE that wobbly-barrel-on-legs look.  I’ve probably said this before:  it totally reminds me of in-hand show horses—the ones that are judged on gorgeousness and breed standard, not for any ability to do anything like jump over something or canter a ten-metre circle.  They’re all too fat too.  And I have a new measure of how fat I’m willing to let Pav get to make some fat-eyed judge love her—as of last night she was thirty pounds and I like her better at twenty-eight—I have to be able to do a straight one-arm lift on her.  So far so good.  But the moment she wins her Mistress of the Known Universe Championship no more butter sandwiches.**

* * *

Tonight’s training intro was pretty interesting, except maybe the part about trying on disgusting Street Pastor clothing which we have to wear—the insurance requires it, but it makes sense;  you want anyone you approach to know who and what you are, and some of us wouldn’t have the frelling nerve to approach a stranger or a potentially tricky situation if we didn’t have borrowed Street Pastors intrepidity to keep us warm.  I am however pretty comforted at the number of people who say oh, I totally can’t chat, I have no idea how to initiate or sustain a conversation . . . and yet here they are, either taking the training or already out on the street.  One of the things our fearless leader said (reassuringly) is that it’s good to have different people with different strengths in a team*** because it means you have a different point person and different spotters for different situations.†

But while I knew we had to wear our logo front and back I didn’t realise we also had to frelling wear it on our heads.  There’s a truly revolting beanie type thing or a baseball hat.  Siiiiiiiiiiigh.  Barring the fabulous Dickinson wedding hat, with the red roses and the swathes of black netting, and a small but select assortment of very loud somewhat baseball hat type headgear that Peter used to use to find me in the crowd when we went to mob scenes like the Hampton Court Flower Show, I’m pretty anti-hat.  In the winter I wear scarves.  The Street Pastor admin issue us with a winter coat, a summer coat—which is REALLY disgusting—a denim shirt, a polo shirt—my particular fashion phobia, I hate polo shirts:  haven’t worn one in fifty years, although I rather like denim shirts—and the semi-revolting baseball hat.  Then there are a few optional extras that you have to pay for:  I sprang for both the fleece and the padded winter hat because I’m already worrying about standing around outside one of the livelier venues in sub-freezing temperatures.  I don’t do summer swelter but I REALLY don’t do cold, and If I’m shivering too hard no one will be able to read my logo and my calming influence will be compromised.  Which is why my first move after I’m officially inducted is going to be to cruise the web for battery-operated mobile heat.  I had a pair of heated gloves to drive the MG which are probably too clumsy for this, but I know I’ve seen heated waistcoats out there.  My first bona fide night on the street will probably be in October . . . it can be COLD by October.

And yes, Street Pastoring is supposed to be about caring for some of God’s more at-risk children in as close to a Christ-like manner as you can manage, not about how yucky the uniform is.  But I’m also trying to be discreet here:  I’m not sure where the lines are, or I haven’t decided where my lines are.  But I’ll tell you this one:  we looked at Scripture a couple of times, and I whipped out Astarte and fired her up and hit ‘browse’ on my English Standard [digital] Bible and was there in a flash.  Maxine, sitting next to me, and also from St Margaret, said, wow, that is so cool.  Yes, I said, especially when you’re still as frelling IGNORANT as I still am about where anything is in that whopping great tome, the Bible . . .

I need to be in bed in twenty minutes.  I don’t think I’m going to make it.

* * *

* She also said, laughing lightly at the vagaries of other people, that she has a friend who is dying for a bull terrier—a white one with a bull’s-eye.  Say what?  I belong to the ‘a good dog/horse/cat/rabbit/parrot/axolotl is never a bad colour’ school of philosophy and once you’re past the age of nine or so—maybe twelve—you’re supposed to outgrow the whole black stallion must-have thing and get real.  Personally I could have done without a show-quality puppy of any colour.  My bull terrier didn’t have to slay me with gorgeousness, I have two hellhounds that provide as much eye candy as I need.  The hellterror was only supposed to make me laugh.^

^ When I’m not threatening to turn her in a steering wheel cover.

** Well . . . smaller butter sandwiches.  I’m displacing my baffled and defeated bread-and-butter love onto my dog.  That’s what dogs are for, right?

*** And it’s always a team.  If there aren’t enough of you, you don’t go.

† Some of the situations that result from altered chemical states can be rather messy.  After seven years of digestively challenged hellhounds I am extremely competent in dealing with effluvia of various unpleasant kinds.  I DO NOT WANT THIS TO BE MY SPECIALITY ON THE STREET.

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeee . . .

 

. . . and also to Southdowner.*  I checked with her today if I could tell the blog about this bizarre serendipity that she was busy turning mrggle years old this time last year while Jesus was gripping me by the back of the neck (rather like Southdowner with a recalcitrant bullie) and saying, You’re MINE now, get used to it.

Oh.  Ah.  Um?

I should know my friends’ birthdays . . . but I don’t.  Some years I’m doing well to remember my own.  I’m probably only remembering this shiny new first birthday because it’s shiny and new.  But Southdowner tactfully waited quite some time last year—till I climbed down off the ceiling at least—before she mentioned casually that the twelfth of September was her standard birthday, the one she’s been having for quite some time now, decades in fact.**  Which is when we decided we should try to have this one together.

The day did not get off to a good start*** however when I opened another robot letter from my bank, this one saying that they are now bouncing cheques on the new account.  I went frelling boiling over to the local office† and I think I put out the brand-frelling-new raging fire, but I am not a happy customer.  Oh, I almost forgot, there was a second robot letter from my bank saying that investigating my case was taking longer than they anticipated and thanking me for my patience.

Patience my ass.  I want the Governor’s head on a plate.††

Also, the adrenaline spike from this latest round of fiscal folly was extreme and the rest of the day has been a trifle hazy.

Still.  Southdowner and I had an extremely good lunch at the entirely refurbished, dazzlingly upmarket and, crucially, dog-friendly Troll and Nightingale†††—Southdowner, me, Pav, and Ahab.‡

 

Hi. We’re cute.

 

Awwwwwwwwww.

 

Also woozily woozily

 

And we just go on being cute.

Note that Ahab really is about twice Pav’s size.  Pav is small but intense.

Don’t try and fool us. There is trout pate in that bowl.

 

I’m supposed to be teaching her to stand like this for the judge.  Um.  Gleep.

 

And then we went to the monks’ for evening prayer.  It’s only been a year. . . .

* * *

* And also to a litter of Vizsla puppies, born today, that a friend of Southdowner’s has been waiting for.

** On the other hand, she doesn’t need to turn Christian.  She already is.

*** And here I’d thought it was getting off to a good start because my back let me get out of bed and stand up, and when I bent over to open hellcritter crate doors I didn’t scream or fall down.

† With some hellhounds.  Although they aren’t nearly threatening enough.  The wagging tails are a real mystique destroyer.

†† And his testicles in a plastic bag.

††† This was the hard-boy pub I have mentioned in its previous incarnation, complete with exciting street brawls.^  Maybe I should worry a little more about the Street Pastor thing.

^ When it was not dog-friendly.  See?  Dogs are good.

‡ I can’t remember if Southdowner’s bullies have blog pseudonyms or not and since we’ve just been having another argument about Pav’s weight^ in which Southdowner says that my eyes have been wrecked by looking at too many ribby sighthounds and I say that you couldn’t find a rib on Pav without major excavation apparatus, it AMUSES me to pseudonize one of her bullies with a reference to a great white whale.  But Ahab suits him and Moby doesn’t, which probably proves Southdowner’s point, not mine.

^ This argument will be heating up in the next few weeks because I appear to have lost the other argument about showing her and her first live gig is in October.  Unless I’ve taken hellhounds, hellterror, all my money out of the bank and put it in a sock and run off to Tahiti+ in the meanwhile.

+ Don’t worry, I will continue to post KES.

Latest in a series of arrrrrrghs

 

I SOMETIMES THINK GOD HAS A FUNNY NOT HA-HA SENSE OF HUMOUR.

Tomorrow is my first anniversary as a Christian.  I am ONE YEAR OLD tomorrow.

And the day after that my Street Pastor training starts.

I have a thundering headache, the kind that makes you feel sick, the kind of toothache that means it and I’m going to have to ring dentist from R’lyeh tomorrow—tomorrow—AND my back’s in spasm.

I woke up this morning feeling physically better than lately* so I decided I would reform** and start doing the frelling exercises that Tabitha keeps nagging me about.***

You’re supposed to do them while you’re still in bed.  She says it’s a nice way to get started in the morning.†  Yes and she drinks wheatgrass almond milk smoothies for breakfast, hoovers her pale beige and cream-coloured carpeting every day and has NO VICES except for smuggling hashish from India . . . no, no, I made that last one up.

So I did my frelling exercises.  And when I finally rolled panting out of bed . . . I couldn’t stand up.  My back went AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH and seized up like a bunch of hot pistons welding themselves to their cylinder walls.

That’s also when the headache started.  The toothache has been lurking for several days while I tried to persuade it it didn’t mean it.††  Today it decided it meant it.  THANK YOU SO MUCH.

I spent the morning standing up at the kitchen counter at the cottage. †††  I also took delivery on 1,000,000,000,000 baby plug plants and spring bulbs that I will have to bend over to get into the ground.  Some day.  Not today.

Wednesday is also the Zen-style silent prayer sit at St Margaret’s.  I’ve already been having a stupid time with this the last few weeks because one of my knees has decided it’s no longer up for this cross-legged lark and I keep trying to find a way to placate it.  I’ve told you this, haven’t I?  I’ve gone all Pavlov’s dog about my zazen cushion so that when I sit on it I sit QUIETLY which in all ordinary circumstances is not one of the options. I do not sit quietly.‡  And now all that indoctrination has gone for nothing?  Today I went in and couldn’t sit, let alone cross my blasted legs without my knee staging a mutiny.  ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH.‡‡

Southdowner and I had planned an Epic Hellterror Adventure tomorrow‡‡‡ which I am clearly now not up for.  So we are having a sub-epic hellterror adventure tomorrow.  Which is better than nothing.  Sigh.  Supposing I can put the emergency visit to the dentist off till Friday.  When my Street Pastor training starts.  Did I mention my Street Pastor training starting this weekend?  I did?  Did I tell you about the totally obscure and obfuscatory on-line signing-up procedure I had to endure today?  I’m expecting, when I turn up for the first session Friday evening, for the door guard to go, PING!  NOT YOU!  YOU TICKED THE WRONG LITTLE BOX!  Did I tell you there’s a ringing outing on Saturday that I really wanted to go on only I can’t, because I’m TRAINING TO BE A FRELLING STREET PASTOR, WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS ANYWAY?§  Oh, and the poor woman who is supposed to be my ride to Lesser Disconcerting, which is too far for me to drive and attend classes without melting into a little puddle of viscous myalgic encephalomyelitis, has child care problems and may not be able to make it at all. . . . §§

* * *

* This has something to do with stress levels.  I’m not good at stress and then I have an (ahem) overfull life so that when something like this still-ongoing bank disaster gets dropped on me like one of those gigantic tiger-catching nets in an old Hollywood saga about big game hunters I go a bit paralytic.^

^ I would make a very bad tiger.  I probably wouldn’t even try to eat Clark Gable or Rory Calhoun or whoever.

** After all, it’s the day before my first anniversary as a Christian.  I should be straining to become as holy as possible as rapidly as possible, especially considering my advanced age.

*** I hate exercises!  I have dogs so I have to walk them even when it’s raining stair-rods, even when the wind chill factor is something from the moons of Jupiter!  So that my extremely annoying post-menopausal metabolism is forced to burn two or three calories!  I used to do yoga pretty seriously but . . . exercises?  Exercises just because they’re GOOD for you?!?  Get away from me with that thing!

† Pardon me but !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

†† Sometimes this works.  No, really.

††† Much to the hellterror’s consternation.  She’s accustomed to cavorting about in the morning and making everything take twice as long as it has to because she’s in the WAAAAY and then when I settle down at the computer she gets a lap.

‡ When the hellterror is in my lap we fidget together.

‡‡ So I leaned quietly.  Aloysius suggested piling my assortment of cushions on a chair.  With an extra cushion to support my wretched back this worked pretty well.  Prayer is good.  When you stop gnawing on your own vitals for a minute everything kind of calms down. Including your blood pressure.  Dear God, grant me serenity.  The peace that passeth all understanding is probably beyond me even by extreme grace, but common garden-variety serenity would be great.

‡‡‡ Hellcritters are children of God too, you know.

§  Oh.  Yeah.  God’s.  Whatever.^

^ Although I’m a little unsettled by some of the reactions you get when you tell people that’s what you’re up to.  The non-Christians tend merely to think you’re mad, which is fine.  I’ve been going for the ‘mad’ option most of my life, this reassures me I’m doing the right thing.  The Christians . . . by no means all of them, but a significant minority seem to think it’s walking on water territory or at least tending the poor in the Black Hole of Calcutta.  It isn’t.  We’re not even talking council estates in east London, for pity’s sake, this is HAMPSHIRE.  Even (most of) the criminals are (relatively) polite.  But ask me again Sunday night.  No, Monday.  Sunday night I’ll probably be lying on the floor whimpering.  Although that may just be my back. . . .

§§ But the Saturday classes are local.  So I can’t bunk off and go ringing.

Autumn

 

Last night I turned the Aga back on*, closed the kitchen and attic windows for the first time in months and ate my first apples of the season off my little tree**.  I also wore gloves to take hellhounds for their last hurtle at glurp o’clock in the morning.  And it was dark tonight at eight o’clock.  Trying to get everybody hurtled at least occasionally in daylight is going to be more challenging this year, since the dream of a regular three-way hurtle isn’t looking too good.***

Good-bye summer, I guess.  But I’d like to keep my dahlias till November, okay?

* * *

* It’s been off long enough that I’d got used to being able to put stuff on it.  What with the bowls of fruit, small decorative jars of (decanted) dog food, caddies of (also decanted) bird food^, piles of magazines and knitting there is no counter, you know, space, and I have to decide what to put my computer on.^^  At least I managed to remember to take the plug-in single electric burner off the top of one of the Aga burner lids.  I forgot last time and the little rubber pads on the ends of the legs of the electric burner melted.

^ I need yet another new bird feeder.  I have two of those squirrel-repelling cage ones, the theory being that the mesh is big enough only to let small birds through.  I discovered, by the simple expedient of doing the washing-up while the assault on Everest was being performed in my back garden, that the mesh is too small to let the (fat) resident robin through.+

+ The size differential among British robins is pretty extreme.  Of the breeding pair a year ago who raised two broods in my greenhouse# one was nearly twice the size of the other one and easily differentiated even when there was only one visible.  And it’s the bigger one that did most of the nest sitting and who disappeared as soon as the babies were half fledged, leaving the other to finish the job—which ought to mean she was mum.  But according to on line the male robin is slightly bigger.  Well, on line isn’t always correct, and maybe this robin has the short-man-likes-big-women complex.

# I have my fingers crossed for next year.  This year my greenhouse was full of the results of a fallen-down wall which is to say first a shortage of walls and shelves to put nests on and second a Strange Man wielding wall-building materials and a trowel.

^^ Fruit is a bad choice:  too knobbly.+

+ I am so looking forward to the hellterror being old enough to learn ‘go lie down [and stay there for more than ten seconds]’ so that I can START USING MY OFFICE AGAIN.  At the moment it’s just a bridge too far.  I can’t exactly work with her underfoot in the cottage kitchen but certain things are possible.#  And she has to spend enough time in her crate:  hellhounds and I don’t have to go upstairs.  Hellhounds flee occasionally## but I stay in the kitchen, providing her with a Focus for Existence, and balancing my computer on tall piles of mostly magazines.  It’s not a bad thing to have the computer higher than usual if I end up with a hellterror in my lap, which I mostly do.  This wouldn’t work at all at a desk, by the way.  My knees against the cupboard door and her butt tucked under the edge of the counter is what keeps her in position and I can still type.

# Chiefly fishing her out of the hellhound crate for the 1,000,000,000,000th time this hour.

## Although Chaos usually creeps down again and crouches on the stairs peering through the railing and waiting for me to notice and open the gate.  Then he quickly plasters his cranky-uncle expression on and bolts for the hellhound crate.

** Not so little really.  I’m still saying it has to get through its first winter after the wall fell down and was rebuilt around it before I stop worrying about the state of its roots, but the fact that it is producing lovely apples despite the gaspingly dry summer is a good sign.  I have been watering it—and I don’t usually water anything that is both well-established and in the ground since I have way way WAAAAAAY too many dratblasted pots to keep up with—but even a middling-sized apple tree is still a tree.

*** All five of us went to see Tabitha today.  Tabitha lives on the edge of one of the suburbs of Mauncester, with farmland starting at the end of her drive.  I hurtle while Peter is getting thumped.^  And the hellterror so loooooongs to be One of Us I can’t quite give up on the three-way hurtle idea^^.  So we all three/four went up the road and then turned to come back across the stubble fields.  I had a pocket full of kibble and half an insane plan to try and let them all off lead again.

Only the field was full of frelling game birds.  Even aside from the fact that they’ve no doubt been raised for shooting and the local keeper would not be pleased to have them exploded off the territory by havoc-running dogs, I’m not going to slip hellcritters when there’s wildlife in view.  Hellhounds are used to this unreasonableness from the hellgoddess.  Hellterror is used to nothing.  I thought (a) the frelling birds would fly when they realised that slowly ambling group behind them was going to keep coming and (b) that the FRELLING HELLTERROR would eventually give up when the birds didn’t fly but the hellgoddess didn’t let go either.

Wrong on both counts.  I think the blasted birds were enjoying the show.  They kept looking back over their shoulders, clacking, and then going back to winnowing through the stubble.  ARRRRRRRRGH.  Fortunately I am the arthritic sixty-year-old skinny white girl version of Watermelon Shoulders and she didn’t have a chance.^^^  But by the time we got back to the car I was ready to give her away.  I remind myself that I spent YEARS threatening to leave hellhounds in a box by the side of the road with a sign saying FREE HELLHOUNDS.

^ Peter then falls asleep on Tabitha’s sofa while I get thumped.  When we get home again I fall asleep on Peter’s sofa.  It’s the Tabitha Effect and is why I try to book on days I am not ringing bells in the evening.

^^ As well that three-way would be saving me a little time and wear.  I am NOT THINKING about the possibility that—chiefly thanks to other people’s dogs#—it will never be really safe or practical to harness the troika.

# I believe I said recently that I had mostly sorted out the neighbour’s terrier crapping in the drive at Third House by keeping the gate shut?  Next time I went up there . . . there was a fresh pile of dog crap immediately outside the gate.  Very funny.  Very, very, very funny.

^^^ Fortunately she was in her shiny new padded harness after she ate her pink one.  Ten minutes unsupervised in the car and one of the crucial connecting straps was hanging by a shred.  This happened Saturday afternoon, of course, so I spent a day and a half threading the long lead through the bits of the harness that were still harness so that when the shred gave way I would still have a hellterror on the end of the lead.

The new padded harness is very flash.  And sturdy.  But it’s only red.  Sigh.