Robin McKinley's Blog, page 46

KES. Heh heh heh.

 

 

YOU THINK LAST SATURDAY NIGHT WAS BAD.*  Next week will be bad too.  So will the week after that.  We are (finally) approaching Kes’ first night in her new home** and it’s going to be EXCITING.  In fact I have spent too much of this past weekend writing eps one hundred eleven through one thirteen and it’s almost TOO exciting.  If I manage to grind out something for the blog in time I’m going to try to get a start on fourteen because even I can’t stand the cliffhanger thirteen ends on.

Anne_d

I want that bracelet. Or, rather, a bracelet like that bracelet, without the magical impedimenta. At this point I’m assuming magic is involved, and I don’t want any of that myself, thanks ever so much.

You don’t?  Golly.  I think I’ve spent my life hoping that one day I will raise my hand and a beam of light will lance out from the palm.  Or something.  That might not be the ideal manifestation;  I don’t necessarily want to fry a hole in the wall or set fire to anything.  I know:  I want to raise my hand and the large off-lead dog charging toward us will make a soft popping noise as it disappears like a soap bubble.

But I long for magic.  I write stories about it** because that’s as close as I can get.  I could have coped with dragons. . . . ***

Oh, and yes.  The bracelet is definitely magical.  It comes into eps hundred-eleven to thirteen a lot.

Shalea

Although I do find myself wondering why Serena is mad at Jan.

He doesn’t keep the paperwork up to date and he’s prone to giving people breaks on room rent or hiring someone because they need the money to do work they can’t do.  Serena, in her edgy way, is a soft touch too, but he never writes any of it down so she has no clue what’s going on, and neither does he really, and as a result some months they come to the end of and they’re in the red, not the black.  And then there’s the stuff he buys on sale because it’ll ‘come in’. . . . Serena will have a proper rant about Jan one of these eps.  I thought I’d put some of this in already, but I may not have.

KathyS

Somehow my reaction is less “Oooh, fabulous bracelet,” than “Who’s been snooping in Kes’ cabin, and why?” Or was planting the artefact their objective?

Hold that thought.  Mwa hahahahahahaha.

EMoon

I think . . . that Kes is acquiring Things From There (a dog, a house, rosebushes, the bracelet) and it may not require any snooping or sneaking for them to appear. Like those extra rosebushes.

That too.  Although Things From There may do a little surreptitious enabling of each other when appropriate.

I second or third or whatever previous hopes that Kes ends up as a book with, you know, a cover and endpapers and all that

Oh good.

. . . so I can put a drop or two of rose scent on it and read it in bed.

Ooh, rose-scented books!  I hadn’t thought of that one!  Where did I put that list. . . .

3rd dragon

I’ll de-lurk . . . to say that I enjoy Kes very much. . . . And to say that while, when life gets busy, I don’t always read all the normal blog posts, I ALWAYS go back and get the Kes I missed (and it’s often the realization of ‘Oh hey there should be more Kes by now’ that will bring me back from a hiatus or semi-hiatus).

::Purrs::  Of course I want people to read the ordinary blog posts too but as I’ve said before—since I asked plaintively if you were all still reading KES—the life is only the life, it’s the fiction that matters.  I also assume that some people read the singing and gardening posts but not the bell ringing and knitting, and various permutations therefrom.  Of course everyone reads the hellcritter and RANT posts.

RosiePosy

. . . I was running spreadsheets for invoices. One page of numbers, ten episodes of Kes. Worked out just fine.

Snork.  Always glad to be of service.

The WoobDog

NOOOOOOO!!! You can’t leave us hanging there for a whole week!

(I swear I can hear your “MUAHAHAHAAAAAAA” from all the way over here stateside)

 Yes you can.  MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  But wait’ll you get to. . . oh, say ep a hundred five or six.

Anne_d

There were a few security lights shining on the front doors, and the letters of General James B Cabell High School seemed to dance, or possibly writhe. The General James B Cabell High School? *snortle*

Well, we have had the General Cabell high school before, because someone else picked up on it last time.  You and glinda were holidaying in Florida that week I’m sure.  I’m just glad to know that someone still knows who James Branch Cabell is.

Now that’s a cliffhanger! Evil bad Robin!

Thank you!  Thank you!  ::Purrs more::

Bratsche

So, Robin, what I want to know is if there is a “pleased with yourself” scale that goes with Kes episodes? . . . Can you rate them by the inaudible howls that reach your ears on the weekends as people find the next cliff-hanger?

Yep.  Pretty much.  Hee hee hee hee hee.  And as I have already intimated, they’re going to get worse.  I may have to hire a bodyguard after oh, a hundred-five, say.  Certainly after hundred-eleven.  And I want to get the blog posted because I need to slog out a few more KES paragraphs.   I don’t think I can bear to go off and leave her at the end of hundred-thirteen and, you know, sleep or whatever.

Mwa hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  Etc.

* * *

* And, okay, it was bad.  Sid does not bark just randomly.

** And the end of Part One.  And you know what?  It’s actually got enough words to be a, you know, real novel, although I realise word count isn’t everything.^  Merrilee and I were just talking about the future hard copy edition this evening, although these conversations chiefly consist of Merrilee saying, Look, finish it first, okay?  And then we’ll talk.

^ Cough.  Cough cough.  Cough.

** And occasionally not about it.  OUTLAWS has no magic in it, which was very disconcerting.  Like writing DRAGONHAVEN from Jake’s perspective was disconcerting.  Very disconcerting.

*** http://serenpoly.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/qotd-favorite-poem/

For those of you who weren’t reading the blog the last time I mentioned it.  Although if you keep scrolling down . . . that rotten old chestnut, much favoured by a certain stripe of self-development seminar speakers and their acolytes, about how what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger . . . bulltiddly.  Sure.  Sometimes it does.  And sometimes it just grinds you up into tiny pieces and spits you out, and then not only do you have to live with your own awareness of your own weakness and failure, you get to listen to a lot of smug dorks telling you to suck it up, it’ll make you stronger.  Maybe a Street Pastor will happen along and give you a lollipop, but that’s not a permanent solution, and punching out smug dorks gets you in other kinds of trouble.

Lavender Blue (and purple and pink and white) – guest post by AJLR

 

About 45 minutes drive from where I live in southeast England is the National Lavender Collection, at Downderry Nursery, in the heart of the Kent countryside. National Collections of plants are held by people who are recognised experts in growing, identifying and propagating particular species as both a supply of true varieties and as a reference for all gardeners. Most collections are open to the public.

It’s always worth visiting during the summer months and we (husband and I) have been there several times. Each time we’ve been it has been a little bit bigger and more organised, and the exhibits of theirs that we’ve seen in the last couple of years at various RHS shows have been stunning. We went again in July this year, roughly a week into the hot weather, and this time we went also with bees in mind. This was the view as we walked in through the gate.

 All that blue is just astonishing. The sound of a lot of happy bees was pretty great, too.

One of the reasons that this place is so useful is all the demonstrations they’ve set up of how to grow lavender for various uses. The one below, showing some hardy lavenders (happy down to -15C) that can be used to form low hedges in a garden, shows young plants set out at a certain distance from each other so that one can see, for example, what particular spacing looks like, how many plants might be needed, etc.

 

The next example, below, showed some of the tender (not frost-hardy) lavenders and the soil type they’re happiest in. These flowers, of a particular sky-blue, just lit up that little area of the garden. The leaves of these lavenders are intensely aromatic – that’s where the scent comes from in those species, rather than the non-scented flowers. It’s a pity none of them would survive a winter outside with us because I’d love to try a couple. Mind you, they also prefer a more acid soil than most other lavenders, another reason why they wouldn’t like our neutral-to-mildly alkaline soil at home. And yes, OK, I could have one or two in pots inside the house but I suspect they wouldn’t really thrive.

 

One of the reasons I enjoy going to Downderry so much is the almost overwhelming impact that a lot of lavenders together can have. On a hot summer day such as that of our visit the perfumes, the sea of blue before us together with the blue sky overhead, the sight of so many plants being grown so well, just the sheer sensory impact of it all made for a great day out. It was one of those days whose memory I can cling to on cold and dark winter days.

 

Despite the heat of the day we sat in this seat for a while, our backs to the lovely 200 year-old wall (the nursery is set in what was once the walled kitchen garden to the local Big House) and baked happily in the scented sunshine.

Of course, after getting rather warm in the sunshine, we needed a little help to cool down. And help there was, close at hand. Whoever makes their lavender ice cream is a genius. It’s not a hit-you-on-the-head intensity of flavour, rather something that leads you into eating one teaspoonful after another in an effort to decide exactly how they’ve put all the ingredients together…

 

The nursery owners also grow some very attractive varieties of rosemary, another shrub whose scent under the hot summer sun of that day was almost intoxicating. I have a couple of rosemary bushes at home in the back garden, mainly for culinary use but also because I like their flowers early in the spring. The plants in this nursery ranged from the prostrate and creeping to those reaching for the sky. It’s such a clean smell, rosemary. Note also the roses against the back wall. They looked splendid, very healthy, but I couldn’t smell any scent from them. Possibly my olfactory nerve had OD’d on lavender…

 

 

Once we’d wandered round for an hour or so, admiring the masses of particular lavender varieties and being amazed at the sheer numbers of honeybees and bumblebees that were all over the flowers (the growing field next door to this display area had three hives in it so that explained the honeybees but I reckon there must also have been representatives from every bumblebee nest within a three mile radius) it was time to think what we wanted to take home with us. The sale area is well laid-out and with informative labels on all the pots so all one has to do is restrain oneself from grabbing too many plants!

We had planned to buy enough plants of one variety to have a low hedge in our front garden, in a nice sunny spot that has honeysuckle growing over a low wall as a backdrop. We chose L. ‘Peter Pan’ for that area. I also wanted one each of three other varieties that would grow well and look interesting together in a big tub outdoors and for that we chose ‘Lullaby Blue’,  a very pretty little one called ‘Thumbelina Leigh’, and one with a lovely soft foliage colour – ‘Betty’s Blue’. I’m glad to say that all the plants have now settled in well at home (planted according to the growing instructions supplied by the nursery, naturally) and we hope they’ll come safely through the winter to delight our local bees and butterflies in years to come.

 

KES, 95

NINETY FIVE

I laughed and we parted (I hoped) on friendly terms, with him promising to settle down and do his homework so Serena wouldn’t be mad at him any more and me promising not to sleep with anyone’s wife unless she was really cute and her divorce was about to go through.

Sid had her nose mashed up against the passenger-side window when I came out.  Smudgy dog noses, joy.  The passenger window in my mom’s dog-show van was usually opaque, because the current favorite would have been sitting next to it while lesser mortals travelled in crates in the back.  I had had to sit in the middle.  Even my mother drew the line at having a terrier helping her change gears.

I started Merry and we slid over the ramp into the street.  In his headlight beams New Iceland looked like the approach to Cirith Ungol.  I found the road out of town—I found the right road out of town, we passed the General James B. Cabell High School.  There were a few security lights shining on the front doors, and the letters of General James B Cabell High School seemed to dance, or possibly writhe.  In a minute I’d be seeing harpies, and I had to save the milk for the hob.

One of the things about living in the city is that it’s never really dark.  You can make believe, especially if you live in a penthouse, and we had pretty good thick romantic twilight in the roof garden in Gelasio’s penthouse, but it still wasn’t dark.  You can also complain about how you’re being deprived of the majesty of the Milky Way by light pollution and you can think you mean it and get all wistful about it, especially if you’d had a friend in high school who wanted to be an astronomer and made it sound really interesting, and you can spend a lot of time outdoors staring up at the sky when you have holidays in the Adirondacks, especially if you can’t sleep anyway because of the noise the pine trees are making.

Then try getting divorced and moving to the back of beyond—no, the back of the back of beyond—and driving out for your first night in your new house with only your faithful dog for company—and thank all the gods that ever were or will be for the mercy of Sid—in the dark.

The noise Merry’s engine was making was heh heh heh heh heh.  Okay, maybe it was a friendly heh heh heh heh heh.  I didn’t feel like counting on it.  Sid could just be picking up my anxiety, or not a big fan of internal-combustion-engine transport generally, but she was sitting up stiff as a sentinel on the city walls of Diggrud when the Mlilzcori are on the rampage.  At a low ebb Flowerhair had been a mercenary in the Diggrud army for a while, and even Doomblade didn’t like the Mlilzcori much.

And then I started seeing flashes of flickering white in my peripheral vision.  With every revolution of Merry’s wheels I more regretted the number of times I had reread M R James’ Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad when I was young and impressionable.  On the subject of ghosts and cosmic horror I was still young and impressionable.  Impressionable anyway.  I glanced at Sid.  Sighthounds have excellent vision and are immediately aware of anything that moves:  ghosts, giant tentacles, harpies.  Her eyes glittered as she tracked something.  Or somethings.

Arrrgh.  So let’s say some Majormojo shopping bag hadn’t been as well weighted down as I thought.  I didn’t bother to pull over—I hadn’t seen a single other vehicle since we left the last of New Iceland’s electric lights behind, and I had a faint recollection, dramatized by darkness and solitude, that there were ditches by the side of this road—but I stopped.  The sound of Merry’s handbrake going on said COME AND GET US.  Not in a good way.

Risking all, I got out of the cab (leaving the door open for rapid re-entry in case of trolls) and rearranged the bags in the back.  I had no idea if any of them had been flapping or not, but the two from Godzilla Food were white.  Snow white, one might almost say.  It sure felt cold enough to snow.  Never mind.  I have the kind of skin that burns at the thought of sunlight.  Long sleeves year-round would be the least of my problems.

I couldn’t decide if the silence made me nervous or I kind of liked it.  Both probably.  There was a little breeze going hss hss and the only other thing I could hear was Merry’s turned-off engine going tick tick.  (Oh, glory, what if Merry didn’t START again?  We’d be eaten by bears or the thousand young of the Black Goat of the Woods. . . . No, wait.  I’d phone Mike and he’d rescue us.  I was sure he kept his vorpal blade under Nilesh’s front seat.)  I scanned the horizon for trolls.  No trolls.  (Although of course trolls are very good at looking like other things in the dark.  Trees.  Boulders.  Cows.)   I looked up, watching for low-flying harpies.  Didn’t see any of them either.

And then Sid burst out in a paroxysm of barking.

Panic and futility

 

 

Mavis was late coming back with Pav today.  She takes the hellhounds out first and then Pav.  Usually I’m not there—at the cottage—so I wouldn’t notice, but Oisin is on holiday so I was at home doing laundry and scowling at the rain gauge* and shovelling out the sitting room in preparation for handbells.  I noticed.

It’s almost worth finding something to do in Dorset or Berkshire so I’m not home counting the minutes before Mavis brings my hellcritters back again.  I don’t like cancelling her too often, even on days I don’t need her, because I think I lost my previous dog minder by not using her often or regularly enough and I don’t want this to happen with Mavis.**

My sense of time is mostly pretty rough.  Bedtime was two hours ago?***  Oh.  Gee.  Unfortunately, however, I tend to know how long half an hour is since it’s a standard short hurtle.   I don’t mean to turn on the Hurtle Timer on those occasions when I’m home when Mavis leaves, but it turns itself on.  I don’t notice that either . . . unless she’s late.

She was nearly fifteen minutes late back.  I had gone beyond hysteria and moved into eerie detached calm.  I was just putting the finishing touches on my creative and exhaustive list of crises responses when she came burbling through the door saying, oh, I’m sorry we’re late, but we had to stop and talk to so many people who wanted to admire Pav!†

Ah.  Oh, well, okay then.

Pav and I were making our way through the crowded pavements of New Arcadia with difficulty a few days ago, the difficulty in part due to Pav’s many fans, when an embroidered cushion for sale in a shop window caught my eye:  I don’t do calm, it said.  I laughed.  I didn’t have time to stop but I went back a day or two later, critterless, and with my newly refurbished and eager for action credit card at the ready†† and asked about the pillow.

Now, aside from the fact that it was clearly meant for me, it’s one of those little rectangular dealies that are half the size of a standard square sofa cushion.  I had one that had originally been Peter’s††† and which fit perfectly into the small of my back when I drove Wolfgang.  I managed to lose it a few months ago—and I still don’t know how, even if, as I assume is what happened, I managed to brush it out of the car onto the ground, who is going to STEAL a small rather worn and beat up back pillow?  But it wasn’t there when I wanted to drive home—and nothing works as well.  So I went into the shop totally expecting to buy this shiny new one.

No.  Wrong.  It cost FORTY FIVE QUID.  Are you frelling kidding me?  So here’s my question.  With my copious free time for handcrafts and all‡ I thought I’ll frelling make my own.  In my remote youth, embroidery was my chosen eyestrain.  But I mostly attacked clothing and pillow cases—this was also forty and fifty years ago in America.  I’ve had a little google and I can’t find a plain, cotton canvas for preference, half-size cushion cover for embroidery purposes.  It’s all frelling predesigned kits, or loose swatches of fabric.  Does anyone out there reading this in the UK know of a source?

Knitronomicon

Did you realise you’ve got your pegs in back-to-front? Looks like they should be curved side outwards, to hold the skein better

Sigh.  This didn’t occur to me till I was looking at the swift site again before I posted the link.  Oh.  Yes.  I put them curved side in because I thought they looked prettier that way.  Duuuuuh.

* * *

* We were supposed to have RAIN last night.  We got just about enough that since I’m a lazy slut I managed to convince myself I didn’t have to water the garden today.  It’s supposed to rain tomorrow too.  I’ll believe it when the hellhounds and I get caught in it.  It’ll be the hellhounds because the hellterror doesn’t care.

** Although I may have to take out another mortgage to pay for her covering critter needs while I’m taking my Street Pastor training, which begins next Friday.  Supposing that my potential ride and I can stop playing tech-tag^ and figure out if it’s going to work.  Oh God I have to get in practise for getting up in the morning.  EARLY in the morning.  Moan.  Am I sure this is worth it?^^

^ Choose your comm gadget

^^ God:  Yes.  Focus on the fact of having a legitimate reason to stay up till four or five (or six) o’clock in the morning once a month.

*** . . . You see my problem

† I picked her up again today when we were out this morning merely because there were a few too many other critters being hurtled in the immediate vicinity and I didn’t want any setbacks to the recovery of her positive attitude.  As we strode past someone with a cocker spaniel, the woman said, Oh, is that Iris?  No it’s not frelling Iris, Iris is three times Pav’s size, white, and has a head like the back end of a bus.   All bull terriers do not look alike.  Grrrr.

†† I don’t think I described in vivid detail what happened in the aftermath of my abortive visit to the yarn store with Fiona the other week.  I finally got someone on the phone at the credit card company.  He informed me blandly that my direct debit instructions hadn’t gone through till the day after they’d tried to pay themselves and since they wouldn’t try to collect again till next month they’d put a block on the card till I came up with some alternative method of payment.  Or until next month happened.  THEY COULDN’T HAVE FRELLING TOLD ME THIS?  THEY COULDN’T HAVE, FOR EXAMPLE, SENT ME AN EMAIL SAYING THAT MY DIRECT DEBIT WOULD NOT BE IN PLACE TILL NEXT MONTH AND UNLESS I PAID THEM SOME OTHER HOW THE CARD WOULDN’T WORK?  THEY COULDN’T HAVE TOLD ME THERE WAS A PROBLEM?

††† A gift from his fond wife.  It said:  I only play bridge on days ending with y.

‡ It was last Tuesday week that Fiona and I had our latest adventure, wasn’t it?  That night I was idly cruising the web for the yarn I hadn’t bought and . . . oops . . . found a cheap final-three-skeins clearance for the one whose absence I was mourning worse.  FRELL.  One of the iPad’s features is that she saves any and all tabs open on the web when you close down—no muss, no fuss, no bother.  So I’ve just left that page open and every time I fire up Astarte I refresh that page.  I’ve been refreshing that page for eleven days.

Today I finally said, oh fumblebunny this for a lark, and BOUGHT THE THRICE BLASTED THREE SKEINS.^

^ Meanwhile . . . I’ve now attempted to knit the rose facecloth/potholder/thingy for the third time.  It’s still a parallelogram.  A sort of wobbly parallelogram.  I’m going to have start a new skein.  I don’t think this one is going to survive being frogged again.

Dog adventures, chapter 1,000,000,000

 

 

Pav and I met another border collie today.  She’s been doing better*  but when I haven’t liked either her or an approaching dog’s body language . . . I’m picking her up.  In this case it looked like a perfectly harmless and inoffensive border collie, but when Darkness is feeling twitchy he tends to feel twitchy about dogs similar to the one or ones who have got in his face recently, and border collies are pretty memorable.  I know there’s some question about whether a dog sees colour, but nothing moves like a border collie except a border collie.  So I picked little Gatorface up.**  As we got close enough, and I could see the dog was on a lead—although this means less than you might think on a narrow path, which this was—I said, I’m sorry, we’ve been harassed by too many dogs lately, and Gatorface is feeling a little insecure.

They were by this time telling me how gorgeous she was—’Don’t these dogs usually come in white?  But the tricolour is spectacular’—and Pav was sucking up all the attention while the poor border collie was looking rather forlorn.  I put her down and she immediately recognised the border collie as her long-lost best friend, so that was all right.  Meanwhile, as I’m beginning to think chance-met responsible dog owners do automatically, we plunged into a conversation about other people’s dogs.  They were telling me that they had recently (but I’m glad to say not in this town) been surrounded by five off lead Rhodesian Ridgebacks and had their lives flash before their eyes.  The collie had gone abjectly submissive, bless her, and the mafia had let them live.

Diane in MN

The critters are worth it. The moron population, maybe not so much.

You think?

We drive four or five miles to a park to walk our dogs, because there are loose dogs in my neighborhood. The park is very open, so I can case it to see if there are any loose dogs there before we decide to stay. We don’t relax while we’re there; someone might show up and let their dog out off-lead.

Yes.  Which ruins your walk.  Tramping over the Hampshire countryside used to be one of my favourite activities.  We rarely do it any more because it’s not worth the constant, exhausting, sick-making worry.  I’ve said before that every time Darkness goes through another of these undesirably interactive incidents, over time, so long as it doesn’t happen again too soon, his reactivity level drops again.  But it never quite drops down to the level it was before.  This means that over the seven years he’s been alive, his base level of reactivity has risen and risen till now I have to assume the worst, and try to peer around corners and out of the back of my head to see peril coming in time to . . . try and turn around and run away.  I hate this.  I especially hate this because the hellhounds were such sunny sweethearts when they were puppies—for their first several years.  They loved everybody, and couldn’t believe it when someone was mean to them.  Darkness, the responsible one, twigged first.  But even Chaos is not the California surfer dude that he used to be.

Morons are everywhere. (And I have to keep reminding myself that it’s the OWNER, not the dog, that’s the problem when picking up the neighbor dog’s crap from my flower beds. SUPER morons.)

WHAT?  For pity’s sake there has to be some ‘negotiating the nuisance without bloodshed’ body in your local city council or equivalent when you know who’s to blame?  I’ve mostly solved the Third House dog crap problem by keeping the gate shut all the time.  The neighbourhood cat problem, now . . . I’m most of the way toward being a card-carrying cat hater.  Not quite.  But it’s a close thing.  And the amount of cat crap in Third House’s garden is a major contributing factor.

one of these hairy black Sherman tanks they’re breeding as Labradors these days came barrelling around a corner and nailed Darkness

Labs aren’t meant to do this! My Lab (decades ago; English lines) was the kindest dog in the world. This is depressing as well as infuriating. ::headdesk:: And poor Darkness, hope he wasn’t hurt.

Not physically;  this one was the standard all mouth and no trousers thug—which the bulldozer-sized Labs tend to be, not that you want to have to rely on this when one is coming toward you with the drool sliding off its fangs.  And the good old-fashioned working-dog Labs do still exist.  You meet them occasionally modestly trotting along at someone’s heels and it’s like, golly, what’s that?

Ringlets

. . . some of the locals who insist on loosing their out of control dogs are driving the horse riders (us included), other more responsible dog walkers, and pedestrians absolutely crazy around here. . . .  Some of these dogs are really dangerous too . . .  And like the police where you are, the ones here will do nothing either. A number of ladies from our stables have had to put up with nutter dogs and their swearing nutter owners just because they happened to be out for a quiet afternoon ride in the same area and asked the owner to hold their snarling, foaming, rabid looking beast …er.. I mean dog, while the horses passed by.

Yes.  All of that.  The ME is what really ended my riding career (again) but if there’s anything that scares me worse than facing a vicious dog it’s facing a vicious dog from horseback—and the moron population guarantees that this will happen occasionally.  Horses are prey animals and behave accordingly—and most vicious dogs are bullies and fear excites them.  You can train yourself to behave quietly—although the smell of the sweat of terror is doing you no favours—but barring the occasional strong-minded horse which has decided to take no nonsense from dogs, most horses tend to revert to atavistic instincts of running across the veldt away from the lion.  You can’t blame them.  But being on top of a thousand pounds of panic is not my idea of a good time.

And hands up how many people have a strong suspicion that the reason irresponsible owners get verbally abusive is because they know perfectly well they’re not in control and don’t want to demonstrate it to the world by failing to catch Fluffy when asked politely?

lecuyerv

Is it possible to ask an authority in the church where people are ignoring the “No Off Lead Dogs” sign to enforce said signage? Even if it’s only to ask the dog owner to please leave the premise and not to return until the dog is, in fact, on a leash?

The short answer is no.  The local church is mostly empty unless there’s something actually going on, and most such goings-on are not conducive to running outdoors and accosting dog owners.  Whoever it was would also be unlikely to have any real this-world authority to insist on anything, and the problem with irresponsible morons is that they’re irresponsible morons.  HOWEVER I have thought of someone who volunteers at the church who is a force to be reckoned with . . . if I could get her on the case something would happen.  I imagine the answer is that she’s a trifle over-booked to save the world already.  But it won’t hurt to ask.

But then I’m rather pro-active where animals are concerned. If an off lead dog had followed me for as long as the collie did, I’d have taken the dog to the nearest pound/animal shelter and report it as a nuisance. For a less friendly dog, I’d call Animal Control. That way the owner would have to pay to get their dog out of hock. Where I grew up, ownerless dogs pestering people usually got shot because everyone’s dogs were working dogs first and pets dead last. Unless you lived in town. Then the police got called to deal with nuisance animals.

Well, in the best of possible worlds, all of that, sure.  However I had my arms full of almost-thirty-pound hellterror who, while she likes being carried and was being very good about it all, was clearly a little stressed by what was going on a few inches below her paws.  I am not going to grab a strange dog with my less-burdened arm and . . . and what?  The nearest animal shelter is something like twenty miles away.  And just by the way I am not thrilled at the prospect of containing this strange, unknown dog in either my house, my car or my garden till someone fetches it . . . which someone probably won’t, because while the web site looks all shiny and dutiful in practise dog wardens don’t answer their phones and don’t have the staff to do anything even if they did.  I went through quite a lot of this four, five, six years ago when the hellhounds were young and got pretty much nowhere, beyond a few cathartic conversations with people (including cops and dog wardens) as frustrated as I was.  And that was before the latest round(s) of government spending cuts.  We have something mind-boggling like a third fewer coppers than we did even a few years ago—and animal control has always been under-funded.

Jcairn

I came across a website FIDO – Fighting Irresponsible Dog Owners may have some useful advice although a lot of it relies on you gathering evidence and creating a fuss.

Yes.

https://sites.google.com/site/fidointheuk/

But that’s just it—it’s such entrenched standard behaviour there’s nowhere to begin.  And it’s not like my copious free time is . . . copious or free.  But I’ll have a chat with Angelica and see if she has any ideas.

* * *

* I swear I can see her waistline expanding from all that desensitising, and she eats her butter sandwich—southdowner swears this is an old show trainer’s trick, butter is good for their coats—so fast I’m sure she’s trying to make me think that I haven’t given her a butter sandwich, I must have been distracted or something, and I need to make her another one.  I rarely eat anything any more with tricky unpredictable gluten in it, so I just absent-mindedly give her a slice of whatever Peter is eating.  He bought a new sort of bread a few days ago a slice of which is TWICE the size of a slice of the previous loaf, but since I was in one of my little la-la-la spaces at the time^ I turned an entire slice into a butter sandwich.  It wasn’t till I was about to give it to her and realised that it was nearly as big as she was . . . She still frelling engulfed it in .00001 seconds.  Since then she’s had to lower expectations to half a slice.

^ Possibly thinking about Kes’ first night in her new home, which, trust me, is exciting.+

+ Mwa hahahahahahaha

** Pav gains another nickname.  The bull terrier’s unusual head shape from most angles looks like a blunt instrument to whack someone with, or possibly something to bang hot horseshoes on.  But a bull terrier tummy up, if you can tear your gaze away from the fabulous smile, there are two evil little beady eyes set close together at the top of the head.  Totally alligator.

A calm, soothing* subject for short Wednesday

 

Another adventure.

Golly. Whatever can it be?

It looks like a terrifyingly expensive green [sic:  my poor camera is once again contending with bad indoor light] suede bag I bought for like a fifth of full price because it was a floor sample but that I’ve always been afraid to use as a handbag.  You know, put stuff in it that might STAIN or GOUDGE it?  Put it down casually on the FLOOR?

You’re baffled, right?  The hellterror is too.

STOP LOOKING AHEAD.  That’s cheating.  And yes, anyone who was at Forbidden Planet one evening nearly two years ago when someone was wearing a black leather miniskirt on a dare should recognise that pink knitted bag.

Oh! It’s a SWIFT!

. . .  That’s a yarn winding thingy to those of you who don’t.  It’s also a nostepinne but I bottled out on the nostepinne.  One thing at a time.  Besides, I can probably get another photo blog out of my first nostepinne attempt.

There was a really horrible moment when I thought I’d lost the pegs. . . .

After I had my last nervous breakdown winding yarn by hand I got serious about looking for a swift.  But I wanted one that sat rather than clamped, and I wanted one made out of wood like a proper Lost Country Craft tool.  That’s my piano bench it’s sitting on, by the way.  And that odd little blue scrap on the floor to the left is a token of the hellterror’s affection.

Okay. It’s getting serious now.

 

Oooooh.

The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend wildflower.  http://www.deramores.com/manos-del-uruguay-silk-blend-50g  Wildflower is third up from the bottom in the left hand column.

We’re in business.

I will spare you a graphic description of the several minutes of vivid language while I untied the blasted hank.   Nice yarn makers tie their skeins off with bits of waste yarn, so you can just frelling cut them.  These bozos use the live end to wind through and around the hank at several places, twisted into secret Masonic knots that require needle-tipped fingers and a graduate degree in physics to untangle.

It’s WORKING.

 

The final exciting moments. Yaaaaay.

 

Ta da. Ball of yarn. And nobody died.

We pause here a moment to contemplate the joy that is WordPress, that piece of insufficiently composted crap.  I’ve been saving-draft like anything, composing this post,  because I know it’ll frell me if it can, and if it can’t, it will anyway.  Which it has just done.  I wanted to get to bed tonight. 

. . . I was trying to say something about the fabulousness of not getting enmeshed in your half-wound skein when the invisible cat squiggles it into anarchy between one eye-blink and the next.  Also that I don’t know if this is a particularly fabulous swift or if fabulousness is the basic swiftian nature:  but this one is very nice indeed.  If you want this exact swift or one of its cousins, I bought it here:  http://www.sunflowerswifts.co.uk/  My timing is not great, the home page says they’re closed till the end of September.  But you can still poke around and admire what will be on offer again in a few weeks.  There are also some rather more descriptive photos of this swift.

And now, rather later than planned, I am going to bed.  I may knit a little to calm down. . . .

* * *

* Well that was the plan anyway.

 

Standard rant, with knobs on

 

Rant rant rant rant rant rant rant.

I almost never take the hellhounds along the river any more—which used to be pretty much our favourite town walk—because we’ve been jumped too flaming-damnation many times by too many irresponsible idiots’ too many bloody-minded off-lead dogs.  I can’t remember if I told you that this happened again recently, in this case when hellhounds were out with Mavis.  She had taken them along the river because it was hot and there’s shade there*.  She has previously been inclined to think I’m a little hyper on the subject of off lead dogs but I’ve noticed her worry level is rising recently after encounters (mostly not in the company of any members of my hellgang I’m happy to say) with a few of the four-legged travelling horror shows that make my life a paranoia fest.  In this particular case one of these hairy black Sherman tanks they’re breeding as Labradors these days came barrelling around a corner and nailed Darkness, who is not only the more reactive of the two hellhounds but must have the body language that demonstrates it because he’s also the more likely to be targeted.  The people responsible, or rather not responsible, for the dog wrung their hands and twittered and babbled that it wasn’t their dog.

VERY VERY VERY BAD LANGUAGE HERE.  They’re walking a dog that isn’t even theirs—they had a kiddie in a pushchair with them as well—on a narrow crowded riverside path on a hot day . . . AND THEY LET THE DAMNED THING OFF LEAD to molest the passers-by.**  These particular morons apologised, for what that is worth, ie nothing, but they didn’t put the thing on lead, they just grabbed it by the collar and said that its owner had said it was fine and that they had no idea.  Presumably as soon as Mavis was out of sight they let it go again. . . .

We seem to have dodged that bullet—Darkness has been a little more reactive to other dogs lately, but nothing like what he can be when he’s been really freaked out.  And I’ve asked Mavis not to walk along the river with the hellhounds for now.  Meanwhile we’re having another heat wave this week.  It’s not a hugely seriously one—in September*** it’s not likely to have, um, teeth—but it’s certainly hot enough mid-afternoon when Mavis is walking my lot that it would be nice to walk along the river with hellhounds, who feel the heat badly.  ARRRRRRRRRGH.

And now, Pav.  I’m already supposed to be desensitizing her to other dogs—which effectively means turning aside as soon as there’s another dog in view and giving her a few treat-level kibble or bits of cheese both to take her mind off the other dog’s potential threat and to make her think that other dogs are GOOD because they produce FOOD.  I am wasting my f******* time.  It’s not the on lead dogs that it’s possible to turn aside from that are the problem:  it’s the sodding off lead dogs, which are why Pav is becoming reactive in the first place, that are the problem and about which THE ONLY THING I CAN DO IS PICK HER UP.  The only reason I can cope with having a bull terrier—that is with the whole Dangerous Dog mythology that surrounds them:  if some off lead thug sticks its nose in her (on lead) face and gets bitten, she’ll be the vicious one because she’s a bull terrier—is because she’s a mini and I can PICK HER UP.  THAT’S MY ONLY REAL OPTION.

WE WERE FOLLOWED ABOUT TWO THIRDS OF THE LENGTH OF THE RIVER PATH TODAY BY SOME SODDING OFF LEAD BORDER COLLIE.  I NEVER SAW ANY SIGN OF AN OWNER.

Pav was reasonably cool about this—she likes being carried—but she has to have been aware of the damned thing clinging to my side and bumping its cold wet nose against my bare leg†.  And was probably aware of my rising blood pressure.  Also, of course, she’s supposed to be running around and being stimulated and getting her exercise.  I do not need the additional exercise of carrying a pushing-thirty-pound mini bull terrier.††  When our unwelcome companion finally peeled off and I put her down . . . a few minutes later she reacted to an old floppy friendly harmless Golden that we’ve met many times and she’s always gone up to before with her tail wagging.

I was still completely blistered by all of this when we met up with one of Peter’s neighbours who wanted to say hello (to Pav, I mean) and who made the mistake of asking me if I was walking all three of them together yet.  WELL IT’S A GOOD THING I HADN’T BEEN TRYING TO DO THAT A FEW MINUTES AGO ON THE RIVER PATH.  So I ranted and raved to her for a while and then seamlessly segued into my other major other-people’s-dogs rant/rave about unpicked-up dog crap.  There were like twelve piles of dog crap on the river walk today.  TWELVE.  Maybe more.  I was both overly aware of dog issues with a strange dog glued to my leg and also a trifle distracted by said strange dog.  And Peter’s neighbour said that she occasionally walked the elderly dog of a friend who, when she first asked where she should take him, was told, oh, I go up to the churchyard.  You can just let him off lead there.

Sandra, to her credit, had been horrified by this and said, oh, but you can’t, there are even signs telling you not to.†††  The friend said airily, Oh, it doesn’t matter.

It does matter. It does freaking well bloody matter.  And, just by the way, I stepped in someone else’s dog crap this morning, getting the hellhounds off the path through the churchyard and out of the way of a little old lady on a mobility cart who glared at us as she went by:  her grandson or nephew or something probably spends Sunday afternoons cleaning the dog crap out of her tyres.

There are days when I really, sincerely wonder if having critters is worth it.

* * *

* And nice cool water, but hellhounds spurn such vulgar pastimes as paddling in the common flood.  Hellhounds are such odd—er, ducks—that I’m not all that surprised;  more surprising is that Pav isn’t much interested.  She’ll just about put her forepaws in the water and then she stands there:  can we go now?

** Have I mentioned recently that the police don’t give a flying fart about sociopathic dogs?

*** I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S SEPTEMBER ALREADY

† Yes, I’m in shorts.  Despite the prevalence of off lead dogs of uncertain motives.

†† Even if she does help by putting her back feet in my pockets.

††† There sure are.  Lots of them.

 

Fortunately I write better than I sing

 

 

First voice lesson in three weeks and . . .

I’ve been singing to keep myself sane the last few weeks which doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve been either singing well or practising something to take to my voice teacher when she gets back from holiday.*  I went in today crying to be reset which has become a joke between us:  I get more and more tense and squeaky over the course of the week or, occasionally, weeks between lessons and I go less to work on new repertoire or polish up old than for her to find my restart button and press it.  If only it were that easy.  But after fifteen or twenty minutes of bizarre exercises—most of them at least involve some kind of vocal effort but quite a few of them are things like making curtain-opening gestures with my hands as I begin to produce a note, or walking backwards while I sing—I can start hearing my voice coming cautiously out of hiding.  Ready at a moment’s notice to dart back into its dark cavern, but . . . as the frelling years pass that I’ve been going to Nadia, I can begin to hear that my voice, such as the poor thing is, does have some individuality, some quality that makes it my voice rather than someone else’s.**  But I only ever hear this, and that sporadically, in lessons.  I go home again to my house(s), my piano, me directing traffic and . . . I might as well get on with learning all nineteen verses of the Battle Hymn of the Republic because in terms of music as opposed accompanying myself on a critter hurtle, it’s all over till next week.

Today was a more successful reset than sometimes.  I so want to be singing before I die of old age. . . .

So I thought I’d put on my professional hat for a few paragraphs and write about something I can do.  Even if I don’t write about how I do it very well.

When did you first start writing and feeling confident enough to show your writing to others and hope for publication?  I wonder what is the tipping point between people who dabble and enjoy writing but have no confidence that it is anything but drivel, and those who believe enough in their work and can shush the inner demons of doubt long enough to have others read her or his writing? 

This is one of those, didn’t I answer this in the FAQ—?  From my perspective I did, but from the letter-writer’s I probably didn’t.  So, Useless Non-Answer #1A coming up (again):  I don’t know.  It wasn’t really like that for me.  I’ve always told stories.  Sometimes I wrote them down.  Fairly early on I got into sort of a habit of trying to write them down, which is a good thing:  it means I was practising.  And when I reached the end of BEAUTY it was like, well, okay, you keep saying you want to be a writer, you have here a novel-shaped object, hadn’t you better go through the motions of sending it to a publisher?  If I’d waited for confidence I’d even now be looking forward to my retirement after forty-five years of being a truck driver or a cleaning lady.  Truck driver or cleaning lady because I’d still be writing:  I’m a writer.  I’m the kind of storyteller who writes stuff down, and I didn’t want a career that might distract me.*** The term ‘published’ is a real-world gloss on the basic fact and may or may not have anything to do with whether a writer/storyteller is any good, or whether she is earning a living at it or not.  If you’re a writer, you write.  If you want to be a writer, you do have to write. †  And at some point, if you want to try for publication, you have to shove yourself and all your demons over the tipping point, and get on with it.  Sorry.  There’s no fairy dust option available.

I just wanted to thank you for your marvelous books.

Thank you!

I love them, especially Beauty and Sunshine. ††. . . Beauty is my favorite book and has been since I was in 6th grade. My copy is the most battered book that I own, though I bought it new. . . . . Reading it always makes me wish I had a rose garden of my own . . .  the first rose I hope to have is a fragrant deep scarlet. . . . What is your favorite rose?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Um.  How long do you have?

Please do not be offended if I hope that they never try to turn your stories into movies.   Not only would it be difficult to duplicate what your words  evoke in describing the physical settings,  it could not be possible to find anyone able to turn themselves into the people you have brought to life within your novels.

Offended?  I couldn’t agree more.  (And thank you!)  I admit I wish people bought options a little more often, I could use the money.  But I positively don’t want any of my books to make it through the great pulverising industry process to become a film.  Shudder.  Although Peter has a point when he says that the trick is to hope or, if anyone asks you, which they won’t because no one pays any attention to writers, to encourage the TV or film maker to change as much as possible so no one would ever confuse the moving-pictures thing with your book.  Although I feel there are still limits to this approach.  I’ve told you before that I dreamed once—decades ago, but it’s a memory that lingers—that Spielberg really was turning BLUE SWORD into a movie, and the very first thing he did was make Harry a boy.   The dream did not specify what happened with/to Corlath.

I just discovered your blog last week.  It’s awesome to see you embrace your crankiness . . .

THANK YOU. 

* * *

* ‘Holiday’ is relative when you have two children under five.

** Joyce DiDonato’s, say.  Siiiiiiiigh.

*** There are writers who are also tinkers and tailors and soldiers and spies.  I wouldn’t have been one of them.

† And yes, I remind myself of this a lot when I’m making myself practise singing.  Good, bad and economically viable or not come later.  If you want to be a singer, you have to sing.  So I have more sympathy than you might expect for writers who will never be much good and will never earn much if any money at it.  Yes.  I get it.  I’m that kind of singer.

††I  received a really lovely, long, thoughtful, perceptive, intelligent letter from a reader recently.  Who then blew it all out of the water by saying that while she’s a big fan of all my other books she didn’t like SUNSHINE because she doesn’t like vampires.  Why do people feel the need to say things like this?  SUNSHINE, with vampires, sex and bad language is both one of my most popular books and also the one that gets the most stick—but it is far from alone in getting whacked for not being the book the reader wanted to read.  The face-off between BEAUTY and ROSE DAUGHTER also gets a lot of email time.  I really like BEAUTY but ROSE DAUGHTER is too weird and complicated, I never figured out what was going on.^  BEAUTY is childish and simplistic and I wasn’t going to read any more of your books but a friend gave me ROSE DAUGHTER and it’s great.  CHALICE is too short.  SPINDLE’S END is too long.  CHALICE is your best book because it doesn’t go on and on and on, I never finished SPINDLE’S END because it did.

I still receive the occasional you-have-betrayed-your-audience letter about DRAGONHAVEN because it’s narrated by a boy not a girl, and here whoever is writing me about it were trusting me because of all the other Girls Who Do Things stories I’ve written, and of course DEERSKIN betrays my audience of little soap-bubble-dwellers because it engages with the r word.^^  SWORD is some letter-writer’s favourite book ever—while HERO promotes adultery and that it won the Newbery is shocking and offensive. 

This latest letter writer is not unusual, although her letter is longer and more detailed than most, and I would have expected someone capable of some of her other insights to realise ‘I like novels x, y and z but a sucks dead bears’ is a crummy thing to say to a storyteller.  What a great dinner, everything was really good except the peach pie because I don’t like peaches.  Hey, you’re a really good friend, you’re a really important part of my life, you’re one of the people I know I could phone in the middle of the night if I was in trouble but you have a really awful laugh, it’s like a donkey braying.  You’ve got four great kids, but I don’t like the fifth because I don’t like red hair.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  honesty is overrated.  ‘I’m only telling the truth’ is no excuse.  If there is no overwhelming reason for being unkind or tactless, shut up.

^ Hint:  you’re not supposed to.  The stories don’t match up.

^^ Rape.  Which happens, you know?  It’s not a figment of my sick twisted imagination.  Sweetness and light are not guaranteed when you pick up a work of fiction, fantasy fiction, or even fantasy fiction by Robin McKinley.  Deal with it.

 

Growing Lilies in Pots – guest post by Anette

 

I’ve been growing lilies in pots for more than three decades. When living in apartments they grew on windowsills from start to finish, but even now that I also grow them in my garden, there are advantages to the pots.

My primary reason is that I draw them – type: botanic illustration in watercolor and crayon – and a flower still on its roots does not change its shape as quickly as a cut flower, so I need not work quite so fast. Other main reasons are that pots make it easier to give the various lily-species the type of soil they prefer, and that the pots may be moved around and placed wherever I prefer them – indoors and out.

Red oriental lily, bought as Stargazer, but with no white border on the petals

Growing lilies in pots is easy. Basically you just plumb the bulbs in, surround them with soil, give them some water, and they handle the rest. If that’s all you do, they do, however, tend to be annuals or at least not flower much after their first season, but with even minimum care of water and fertilizer, most types will flower for 3-5 years. Once they are down to one or two flowers per stem, I usually plant them in the back garden, and some will recover and go on there for decades.

I like to keep 5-10 pots going per season, so most years I buy new bulbs for 1-3 pots. Some years I go for 1-3 good quality bulbs of a named hybrid from a reliable nursery. These planted together will make a luxurious decoration for weeks at the price of a single bouquet from a florist. Other years I just buy a bag or two of “mixed hybrids” from the rack at the local grocery, and plant them one by one in any pot or container, to use for painting models, presents, or just decorations.

Both the cheap and the expensive bulbs I buy tend to belong to one of three groups of lilies: Asian, Trumpet or Oriental. There are other kinds, incl. Lilium longiflorum with the slim, white trumpet flowers often grown to decorate the churches, but my three stalwarts are both the easiest to find and the easiest to grow.

Asian lily, Landini, have no fragrance, but the most beautiful glossy leaves and dark flowers

The easiest – and earliest – of the three are the Asians. You simply place your bulbs on 5-10 cm (2-4”) ordinary potting soil in a pot with drainage holes, cover with about 10 cm (4”) of the same soil, and water when dry. About 2 months later you’ll have upwards and outwards facing bowl or star shaped flowers at the top of a sturdy 1-2′ stem narrow, fresh green leaves. One of the easiest and most popular is the old orange ‘Enchantment’, but the colors of the flowers may be anything from pale cream, rosy or primrose yellow, over intense golden or orange, to deep dark mahogany red. Asian Lilies rarely have much fragrance, but unless placed directly in burning sun, the flowering lasts 2-3 weeks.

Trumpet Lilies are the offspring of the old fragrant, white Royal Lily, Lilium regale. They’re grown just like the Asian Lilies, but have taller, more spindly stems, that often need a cane – especially if grown on a windowsill where there’s less light than outdoors. When in full bloom it might also be necessary to cover the surface of the pots with stones to keep the weight from tipping it over. The trumpet name comes from the longer, less open flowers some of which face outwards, some of which are hanging. The leaves also tend to be slightly narrower, but that’ll vary. There are a few Trumpet Lilies with deep colors such as the deep yellow African Queen, and the dusky pink Pink Perfection, but most have fairly pale colors in shades of white, pink or yellow, and nearly all are fragrant enough for a single flowering plant to fill a living room with as much perfume as anyone could want.

Oriental lily, Journey’s End – and it smell heavenly!

The late flowering Oriental Lilies are often the most fragrant of all lilies, but while they are still easy to grow compared with many other flowers, they do insist on a few basic perks. First, they are acid lovers and must be grown in chalk-free soil of the kind used for rhododendrons. Second, they very much dislike having their bulbs baked by the sun, so the pots should never be placed in full sun. Thirdly, most – such as the very pretty Stargazer – need about a month more to grow before blooming than the Asians and Trumpets. These things aside the bulbs of the Oriental Lilies should be treated exactly the same as the other lilies, and will shoot up a 45-75 cm (1.5-2.5′) stem with leaves broader than the other types, and ending with a spray of white and pink or red star-shaped flowers set on short side-stems.

Finally a few tips:

1. If your bulbs are completely dormant with no sign of sprouting when you want to plant them, it’s a good idea to either give the bulbs a week in the refrigerator before potting or to place the potted bulbs outdoors for 1-2 weeks.

2. Lilies in pots are not normally troubled with diseases and pests, but the lacquer red lily beetle (looks like an elongated ladybird without spots) sometimes finds your lilies even in their pots. The beetles don’t normally like pots, as they survive by dropping to the ground and burrowing when in danger. If, however, you see one, just let it drop into your hand or onto a trowel, drop it on a paving stone and stomp on it. Then look at the underside of the lily leaves for any of the tiny orange eggs or the – very dirty – black larvae, and remove those. I just pick off the leaves, but in my experience the only type likely to attract the beetles is the broad leaved Orientals, which I often keep standing in a corner of the garden waiting for them to flower after the summer holiday.

Anette, the Great Dane

 

KES, 94

 

NINETY FOUR

I gaped at him.  “Oh, but —”

“If the owner does come back for it—Angelina Jolie was here about six weeks ago, it’ll be hers, right?  Or maybe Catherine Zeta-Jones, she was here the week before that.”  And he grinned his grin again.  “If she comes back for it, I know where you live, don’t I?  Take it.”

I didn’t wear bracelets and I didn’t wear burgundy velvet and I hadn’t worn lace in twenty years and then only when semi-artfully torn first, but my hand was itching to snatch it and stuff it back in my pocket.  I tried to do this casually, like it was no big deal.  “Well—thanks.”

“If you’d found something the pawn shop in Bittern Marsh would take I might’ve tried,” said Jan.  “But Hector runs more toward your grandfather’s medals and your great-grandfather’s watch.  This’d just freak him out.  Okay, you’re done.  We already got your money.  Safe journey.”

“I’m driving Merry, you know,” I said.

“Sure.  It’s the other people on the road have to worry.  You may have to help Gus lift his lawnmower in the back is all.  I told Mike he should have thrown in a ramp in the purchase price.”

Small town life, I thought.  “Okay,” I said.

“Come back and see Serena,” he said.  “Especially when she’s mad at me.”

“Does it happen often?” I said cautiously, torn between lurid curiosity and wondering if the slight reformed-bar-brawler aura might suddenly manifest in his tearing my ass off and handing it back to me.

“Often enough,” he said.  “If I had any sense I’d give her the business and make her pay me a salary.  I’m not a bad plumber and I’m good at nailing things together before they fall over and kill somebody.  But I’ve had no sense over sixty years, it’s late to start now.”  He fixed me with a look.

Uh oh.  This was maybe when the ass-tearing began.

“You write books.”

If he had a novel in his bottom drawer that he wanted me to read I was going to burst into tears.  I’d almost rather he punched me.  Last time I got punched by a disgruntled would-be writer he was extremely drunk and would have been relatively easy to dodge if it hadn’t been for malignly-placed furniture.  Con security arrived pretty soon and escorted him off the premises.  However the photo that made the front page of EWBAG because some scum-sucking loser had his phone out at the wrong minute showed me falling over a chair as I dove out of Snidely Whiplash’s way.  I needed six stitches in my chin.  But there had been a novel in a bottom drawer involved.  Usually people take ‘no’ pretty well.  Occasionally you get one who tells you you are a selfish close-minded cow, but physical violence is unusual.  EWBAG—Einstein was Wrong But in a Good Way, EWWBIAGW, usually known as and pronounced Ewbag—for anyone not plugged into the science fiction and fantasy world, used to be the weekly trade paper for all things SF&F.  It’s now a web site slightly larger than God.  Unfortunately there is an archive of all the old paper issues.

Jan probably was motel security and he looked sober.  Nothing more dangerous than a sober reformed bar brawler.  “Er.  Yes,” I said reluctantly.  “But—strictly genre.  Fantasy.  Swords and sorcery.  Vampires.”  Your bildungsroman about a sensitive young man growing up in a small lakeside town and losing his virginity to an evil soul-swallowing celestial-eyed goldfish goddess . . . no, no, wait.  Stop at the sensitive young man growing up in a small lakeside town.  A bildungsroman about a sensitive young man would be wasted on me.  If there’s an evil soul-swallowing celestial-eyed goldfish goddess I might be interested.

“You put real people in your books?”

I blinked.  Okay, this was also in the top ten, with ‘will you read my novel’ and ‘where do you get your ideas’ but I hadn’t been expecting it.  I thought of JoJo and Mr Love-Me.  “No.  Not recognisably anyway.”  I scowled.  “I’m considering putting my ex-husband in one though.  With a stake through his heart.”

The look eased.  He reverted to a good, if possibly slightly risky, person to have a beer with.  I made a mental note that if this ever happened to me, not to ask him any more leading questions.

“When I wasn’t much more than Gus’ age we had a writer fella move up here from the big city.  Said he wanted peace and quiet though you’d never guess it since he spent all his time slouching around downtown, except when he was playing poker in the back room at the Hydrant.  He was here a little over a year.  Then someone figured out that he was sleeping with three of the wives of his poker buddies and he left in kind of a hurry.  When his next book come out, a lot of people saw themselves and they weren’t real happy.  He wasn’t Dan Brown so no one else cared.  But we cared.”

“You?” I said before I could stop myself—and checked hastily for malignly-placed furniture.

“Yeah.  I was the mama’s boy who wouldn’t play poker because I was underage.  That wasn’t why.  Why was because I’ve always sucked at poker.”