Robin McKinley's Blog, page 47

One of those days. Oh, another one.

 

 

As frequently referred to, I am Not Sleeping Well.*  I got up this morning at what is for me a not-unreasonable hour, had something semi-resembling breakfast, looked at the clock and decided to have a little lie down before I went off to have a cup of tea with Penelope at 11.  I wasn’t going to sleep because I don’t sleep, but I’m so ratblasted tired the idea of doing half an hour’s work was very unattractive.

I woke up at 10:59.  YAAAAAAAAH.

Fortunately Penelope** wasn’t doing anything else this morning and was willing to have me half an hour late.  Also, she’s used to me.

So I got home afterward and looked at the hellcritters and they all looked at me.  They gazed at me speakingly and what they were saying was YOU CALL THAT ONCE AROUND A CHURCHYARD EARLIER A WALK?***  WE WANT A PROPER HURTLE AND WE ARE GOING TO STARE AT YOU UNTIL YOU GIVE US ONE.

I took all three of them out together.  MISTAKE.  This is the thing about hurtling three hellcritters at once:  if anything goes wrong you are stuffed.  My insane and ridiculous plan is that I should eventually be able to give them one hurtle a day together and one separately.†  What chiefly went wrong today is that hellterror was POSSESSED BY DEMONS.  As we’ve been going out together pretty steadily recently I thought we might CONCEIVABLY be, you know, shaking down.  No.  Wrong.  She hucklebutted in about six directions simultaneously, made Darkness cry, and tied all of us up in her frelling lead . . . and this immediately in front of some damned oaf eating his lunch on one of the church benches and trying not to laugh.  The next time I have to play late catch-up with the morning hurtle we will revert to shifts.††

Darkness was so traumatised by the experience of being hucklebutted at that he couldn’t bring himself to eat his lunch.  He just couldn’t touch a morsel.

I think I managed to get a little work in here somewhere before frelling handbells.  Niall innocently asked me if I minded ringing the 5-6 (I’ve mostly been ringing the 3-4 for a long time now)—I should know better than ever to believe Niall when he’s trying for innocent.  The ratbag made me call a touch.†††  Three times.  Just to prove I could.  I don’t know why this was a successful experiment‡ but unfortunately it was and will therefore doubtless be repeated.  During tea break I was also outed by frelling Niall as having gone to New Arcadia practise last Friday‡‡ whereupon Jillian said, ooooh, let’s make her come tonight.

I was weak.  I went.‡‡‡  And all this Forza and Fustian ringing is having an effect.  They had enough fancy visiting ringers tonight to do a bit more than usual and I was dubiously offered a chance to ring Stedman Triples.  I kept my line when some of the better ringers went off theirs.  Nyah nyah nyah.

* * *

And on another subject entirely, do you know that Seamus Heaney died?  A mere lad of 74.  Much too soon.  If you don’t know his work—or even if you do—here’s a place to start.  Never mind the bogus ‘Ten Best Poems’ nonsense:  these do give you a genuine taste of why you’ll want more.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/10276092/Seamus-Heaney-his-10-best-poems.html

* * *

* CAN’T IMAGINE WHY.  I’m not neurotic or anything.  Or paranoid.  I don’t think that gigantic international financial corporations are pissing on me from a height or anything.

** Those of you with helplessly retentive memories, and I pity you, really I do^, may recall that Penelope got her blog name because she is so often a Bell Widow while Niall is out ringing.  This is not strictly accurate.  In the first place, she makes him stay home in the evening occasionally^^ and in the second place when he goes on a ringing holiday week during which a bunch of the true nutte—I mean, a bunch of the dedicated go en masse to some piece of country with a lot of bell towers in it, spend all day bouncing over bad roads and arguing with their satnavs punctuated by ringing at three or four different towers—so like what I did a fortnight ago, only day after day after day after day—he wants her to go with him.  There’s another one of these interesting opportunities coming up soon and she’s saying Nooooooooooo I want to stay hooooooooome. . . .

^ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

^^ I believe she has been known to hide his laptop.  With the bell ringing software on it.

*** Those of us of the male gender who have to pee every five feet had barely got started.

^ You know you could give us cramp in delicate regions by this callous behaviour.

† Superfluous leg stretches and last-turn-around-the-churchyard negotiable.  Which is to say I mostly cravenly leave the hellterror at home for the latter.  The advantage of there being very few other people (and dogs) around at our last-turn time is offset by not being able to see what she’s eating.

†† Despite the NOISE she makes when she’s being left behind after having already waited a monstrously long time.  I am clearly leaving her in the hands of bullie-hating fiends with hot pitchforks and pawscrews.

††† You usually start learning to call from the 5-6 for reasons you really don’t want to hear explained.

^ Yes, I could explain it.  Which is pretty alarming.

‡ My Brain Was Taken Over By One That Works.  Film at eleven.

‡‡ I told you this, didn’t I?  I went specifically to speak to one of the other ringers who’d let me have his seat at the funeral and I’d been too distressed by what we were all there for to remember to thank him properly.

‡‡‡ You know I’d been worrying about not getting enough ringing this month when lots of towers cancel regular practise while everybody’s at the beach or hiking up Everest.^  I rang two funerals and a wedding last week.  I rang three tower practises this week, plus frelling handbells, and I’m ringing another wedding tomorrow.  If I were a less hardened individual I could be getting blisters.

^ You know there’s now a queue?

I suppose roast bank manager would give the hellpack indigestion?

 

 

I got a robot letter from my bank today saying OH GEE WE’RE SO SORRY THAT YOU ARE NOT HAPPY WITH OUR SERVICE!!!  WE WILL SO TRY TO WIN YOU BACK!  HERE, HAVE SOME VIRTUAL FLOWERS, A LOT OF SNAKE OIL, AND NOTHING ELSE WHATSOEVER!  You’re expecting substantive action from us?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  We’re a gigantic global corporation!  WE DON’T GIVE HALF A HOT STEAMING TURD ABOUT YOU AND YOUR CRUMMY LITTLE ACCOUNTS!!!*  And we’re leaning back with our feet up anyway because we know that all of us banks are equally greedy, rotten, careless and incompetent,** and therefore it wouldn’t do you any good to move to another bank!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Thinking about it is putting us into such a good mood . . . here.  Have some more virtual flowers.  And maybe some (virtual) chocolate.  Is there anything else you’d like us to fail to give you?  A Ferrari F40?  An all expenses paid trip to Lhasa, guaranteed snow leopard and yeti sightings?  A perfectly trained, perfectly behaved, blue-blooded, over-championed-pedigree hellterror destined to win at CRUFTS?

Well.  Certainly not the last one.  I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

The hellhounds are not crazy about this single-stream thing with our hellterror.***  What do you mean she’s coming with us?  AGAIN?  She was just loose about the place† a few hours ago.  WE NEED TIME TO RECOVER.  Yesterday I managed to have them all out before supper and I introduced the hellterror to the delights of begging for chicken scraps while I put their meal together.  During the pre-hellterror era I told you that the previous generation of hellwhippets was NOT ALLOWED NEAR the end of the kitchen where food preparation was going on, and were allowed out of their bed only on the word of command when the food bowls went down.††  But hellhounds have been such an uphill struggle about eating at all that when they first showed signs of begging for scraps while I cut up their chicken I was all over this.  Hellterror has been protesting this rank favouritism for eleven months now.  Having her out even worked pretty well:  hellterror fixated nicely on what appeared under her nose and hellhounds are used to their scraps being tossed to them anyway.

Today however hellhounds were not having any of this, feeling that hellterror exposure was way past acceptable limits after they had suffered a brief hurtle with her—may I just add in my defense, a superfluous hurtle—AND THEN SHE WAS ACTUALLY ALLOWED ON THE SOFA AGAIN.   IS NOTHING SACRED.  So they sulked in their bed and I . . . got down on the floor with a handful of kibble and chicken fragments and began running Pav through her repertoire†††, which is, southdowner says, to be expanded to include ‘stand’ because that will make SHOWING her easier.‡

Ah.  Hmm.

* * *

* Actually, I had guessed that already, thanks.^

^One of the things I keep remembering as I continue to fail to get anywhere is that they contacted me originally and I met with a live human being when I had that this-year’s-salary single lump sum in my account.  Which if they’d bothered to check the preceding twenty-one years they’d find is a pattern and I won’t get another lump sum till this one is down to about enough to buy a knitting magazine, but not enough to buy a subscription to a knitting magazine.  Granted the live human being was pretty low level—in keeping with the level of the lump sum—and given the result possibly lower even than that.  But she wasn’t a robot letter coming in most of a month after the event, and a fortnight after the complaint.

** And on the contentious subject of comma use as bandied about on the forum last night:  I write mostly by ear and somewhat by eye.  I don’t agree that using a final comma before ‘and’ in a series is how people talk or that its presence causes less confusion.  I don’t like the way a final comma makes a series sound in my ear and I don’t like the way it clutters up its sentence to my eye.  Except on those occasions when I want that pause because to me punctuation marks are mostly about pause and quality of pause.  I don’t care about rules.  I care about rhythm.  I use punctuation accordingly.  It’s funny I used to work as a copyeditor since (ahem) I am not the ideal subject for copyediting.

*** The mad, marginally trained one.

† Some of you will be aware that something like a fortnight ago I tweeted that the MIRACLE had occurred, the hellterror was asleep in her crate with the door open.  I may have mentioned this here before because it continues to be approximately the ONLY time this has happened—because she rapidly realised she’d rather be asleep at my feet^ or better yet in my lap.  Remember when she OUTGREW my lap?   That didn’t stop us long.  I do have to remove puppy^^ from counter/table/laptop/plate occasionally and sometimes WHEN WE SIMPLY CAN’T GET IT TOGETHER I revert to being one-handed again but we’ve gotten pretty creative and she has a very flexible spine.  And still doesn’t mind dangling even now she’s twice the size she was eleven months ago.  Note that a hellterror snoring into your armpit tickles.^^^

^ And I was fool enough to put a blanket there so she could be comfortable.

^^ Yes, she’s a year old.  And your point would be?

^^^ I still haven’t figured out knitting with a lapful of critter.  When it’s just the hellhounds I can kind of leeeeeean off the sofa so the long trailing bits miss them.  But it’s not an ideal system and is very bad for my output.

†† Holly and Rowan were mostly pretty hellterror-like about food;  Hazel was more hellhound-ish.

††† She’s left-handed.  She gives you her left paw immediately and has to be heavily prompted to give you her right one.  This could be my erratic training protocol but I think it’s Pav.  Horses are strongly handed/hoofed/sided;  the folklore I learnt about this is that it’s to do with which way they’re curled up in the womb.  I don’t know if this is true of dogs as well.  Even though puppies come in batches, presumably it’s still pretty crowded in there and puppy foetuses still curl.

An interesting link for short Wednesday

 

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/36512923/Robin-McKinley-Esampler

 

Well, go on.  Click the freller*.   Ignore the serial comma at the bottom of page nine:  that’s a typo.  I don’t do commas before ‘and’.

* * *

* Unless you follow either me or Penguin Teen on Twitter and already have.^

^ I get extra points for TWO footnotes in a post only about 50 words long.

Plague Vector

 

 

You might want to disinfect your computer after you read tonight’s blog.  Clearly I am a Gremlin Plague Vector* and you can’t be too careful.

The day began badly as it so often does by not getting to sleep last night/this morning.  Circumstances probably did assist in conspiring because Fiona and I had some time ago rescheduled to have a Yarn Adventure today—we’d had to cancel during the Extreme Streaming stage a couple of months back and I was not going to cancel again.  Meanwhile however the Bank Bust exploded a fortnight or something ago and I’m getting nowhere fast and meanwhile I’m also getting more and more wound up about it** as I am stonewalled by the bank while letters are still coming in from people who didn’t get paid.***   I should have gone into the bank again this morning and demanded a HUMAN BEING TO TALK TO . . . after I hand delivered my letter of complaint to the branch manager the beginning of last week and was told they didn’t have a branch manager and that my letter would be forwarded to the Complaints Department.

On Friday . . . I got a phone call from someone with a heavy non-English accent who clearly didn’t know a thing but what was in front of him on his computer screen and who asked me a lot of ‘security’ questions that I didn’t want to answer over the phone to—who was this person?  He could be some joker with his ear to the virtual wire for people in bank trouble who are likely not to be thinking too clearly and are only too anxious to be helped.  So, since I wasn’t cooperating, he told me he would send me questions by post next Tuesday.  Which would be today.  Whatever he’s sending me only started on its journey today.†  Which means that absolutely nothing has happened so far except that my bank doesn’t give a sh*t.  Oh yes, and the overseas call centre racket?  My bank has made a great fuss a little while ago about how its customer service departments are all in the UK.  Okay, my guy could have been born in Manchester and be working in London—if there’s a large ethnic population around you presumably you may grow up and retain your parents’ and grandparents’ speech patterns—but that’s not the first thing you think of when someone who sounds like he’s calling from an overseas call centre, complete with semi-subdued racket of other people and other computers in the background, calls you.

It was Bank Holiday Monday yesterday.  Today I should have been first in the queue at my local managerless branch office.  But I didn’t sleep last night and I was staggering around trying to get my eyes unstuck and the hellpack hurtled because Fiona and I were going to make what passes in our case for an early start and not only did I not get to the bank but I broke my favourite jar†† instead of putting freshly roasted mixed nuts, heavy on the cashews and Brazil nuts, in it which is what I meant to be doing, and spent twenty minutes sweeping up broken glass, patting around for the bits I missed, bleeding, and worrying about the bits I had still missed that the hellcritters would find.

What with one thing and another Fiona and I got off about an hour late.  Then things seemed to go right for a while:  we didn’t get lost on the way to the yarn shop and we settled in for the duration and I hadn’t even noticed what time it had got to be till Fiona pointed out the shop was closing in ten minutes.  So I took my really very conservative purchases, or would-be purchases, up to the counter.

While I’m waiting for my financial life to calm down I am only using one credit card.  A brand shiny new one, and attached by direct debit to the new account that is causing all the problems—but which should have all my money in it.  I’m still a little twitchy about having learnt the PIN number on the new card.  But the PIN went through fine.

The card was declined.

Robin goes into grey slightly hallucinatory dissociative shock. †††

We drove home in a somewhat subdued mood.  Over Peter’s roast chicken I tried the card again, on line.‡

It was declined again.

The customer service phone number on the card wasted five minutes of my time jumping me through robot menu hoops before they decided THE OFFICE HAD CLOSED FORTY FIVE MINUTES AGO.

And the hellhounds didn’t eat supper.

I don’t think I’m getting much sleep tonight either.

* * *

* Fiona’s coinage [so to speak].  She was trying to blame it on her.  Gallant but mistaken.

** This might just conceivably have some input to the way the ME is behaving lately.

*** Most of these are automatic about stuff I think I have already dealt with and have either been switched or resubmitted, but every one of them still freaks me out big time and requires another phone call . . . which may or may not be (eventually) answered by a human being I can talk to and who may be able to look my details up and reassure me that the changes have gone through.  But . . . I don’t yet know if what I’ve changed is going to work since most of the regular stuff—utilities and so on—is only presented once a month and it hasn’t been another month yet.  Not to mention the fines I will be liable for for missing a payment.  Which I want the sodding bank to reimburse.

† This is of course assuming he is legit.

†† Thirty or forty years old and from Maine.  It’s not like I’m going to go on line and find a replacement straight off.

††† Fiona offered to put it on her card and we could sort it out later but I was way too freaked out.  Although I admit I’m still thinking about those orphan skeins of Manos del Uruguay and Artesano.  They had ‘cowl’ written all over them.  Two cowls.  One per skein.  Sigh.  And cheap leg warmer yarn on sale. . . .

‡ Ordering small folding scissors.  Why doesn’t every yarn store/yarn site in existence have these as standard equipment?  Tape measure, stitch counter, scissors that don’t stab holes in your project bag.  I found these on a cross stitch site.

Life and KES

 

 

The frelling ME is really ripping a strip off.  OKAY.  I’VE BEEN PUSHING IT.  I’VE STOPPED.*  NOW GO AWAY.**  Note that Kes, my alter ego in many ways, does not have ME, nor is she going to develop it when she reaches the age I was when I did.***

Rsrchr

Love, love, love Kes!

::Beams::

I eagerly await every Sunday (normally a day that signifies everything I have failed to get done from the week’s intended list) reading the next installment of Kes.

Oh glory.  The number of days I’ve managed to convince myself were not totally wasted because at least I got a few paragraphs of KES written . . . yes.  I sympathise.  Maybe you need a nice . . . knitting project or something.  See!  The morning/day/week is not a dead loss!  I got six rows/a sleeve/most of the back and I only had to rip out and redo about a third of it done!  . . . Unless you’re another writer in which case I really pity you.

[Excised so I don’t look like a complete fatuous self-absorbed twit.  You can always look up what she said in the forum]

I apologize for my tone, I am much older than . . . I sound like.

Yep.  I get that.  And I should stop wearing All Stars and have a decent haircut.  Guess what?  I’m not going to.

Opaleyz

Exiting lurking mode just to chime in on the Kes love

::Beams::

Kes has her own permanent tab on my web browser because I never want to forget to check for a new episode.

Boldface mine.  Love.

Amp15

Kes is a weekend treat.

 I would like to have the story as a book someday, but then I might be a bit old fashioned.

YAAAY OLD FASHIONED.  YAAAAAY.  MAY THERE BE MANY MORE OF YOU.

Rachel

Still reading Kes, Still loving Kes, even though I want to know about too many of the ends that are trailing invitingly off into the mists.

Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.  Well, of course.  I mean, good.  A story that’s going to go on for a while needs a lot of trailing ends.  Writing a story is a bit like doing a French plait.  It’s a curious sensation doing what amounts to the first draft live however.  I see the trailing ends too and while I know where some of them go . . . some of them I don’t know.  In a story I was writing in the standard way I’d have plaited them all in (or trimmed them off) by the time you saw any of it.  As it is—as KES is—I have to assume the story knows what it’s doing . . . and doesn’t lose me on the way.

Did think about offering a guest blog on the joys having a house conversion done by your feller and his son – yay, gas pipe laid; weep, hot water leaks in hall; fret, son opens hole in floor and steps backwards into it – but most of my attention and energy is soaked up by said situation (and visiting Japanese student)

YOU’RE TAKING NOTES, RIGHT?  AND PHOTOGRAPHS?  YOU CAN DO THE GUEST BLOG LATER.  —Are you learning Japanese?  ::jealous::

But much appreciation for daily blog posts

Oh good.  Thank you.

Calamity

Kes is SUCH a treat. Thank you for giving us the privilege of reading a story that is in process.

As above.  Thank you.  And yes.  It’s a little unnerving.†  But as I said previously about writing KES I’m enjoying the different freedoms and restrictions of doing it this way.  Well.  Mostly enjoying.  Except for those ARRRRGH moments.  But they happen with everything.  Novels.  Hellcritters.  Getting out of bed in the morning.  Failing to get to bed at night.

(It isn’t working as advertising for me, because I have been reading everything you publish on paper since I was twelve or so,

THAT’S JUST FINE.  PLEASE CONSIDER KES YOUR WELL-EARNED BONUS.

though I just discovered the blog a few months ago.)

Oh good.  My writing on virtual paper.

Also love reading about bell ringing and singing and roses.

 Re-lurking, gratefully.

You’re very welcome.

Moniqueleigh

The wonderful thing about Facebook . . . is that I can set up notifications. So I get a note every time something gets posted on the blog. That note means I don’t miss a Single Episode of KES.

::Beams::

And, er, don’t know if you know, but there seem to be a few folks who comment over there on Fb. Some state they have issues getting into forums generally, but some don’t seem to have quite noticed the forum. I’ve occasionally tried to point it out when someone seems to truly want an answer.

I loathe Facebook.  I got railroaded into doing the blog back six (GAAAAH) years ago when authors were doing blogs and now that (apparently) the fashion has moved on I’m kind of dug in here and except for the little twenty-four-hours-in-a-day problem have kind of figured out what works for me and, fortunately, for a number of you.  I was, somewhat later, railroaded into Facebook and Twitter.  I’ve come round to Twitter, aside from the fact that it is the most COLOSSAL time suck.  Facebook . . . I’ve tried several times to plug into FB since I have a lot of friends who keep track of each other that way.  But I hate the way it keeps trying to take over your life—and the way it keeps getting more demanding and more overwhelming and more frelling complicated.  I gave up a couple of incarnations ago and now don’t touch it with tongs aside from ten seconds every night to post a blog link.†† I wouldn’t do that much except that I don’t want to be rude to the people who follow me that way by dropping it.  I usually glance at the comments that attach to specific blog posts.  There’s at least one more feed of comments which I don’t understand and tend to get boomeranged off in the bullying FB way if I try to read it, so mostly I don’t.  I apologise to anyone who finds the blog forum intimidating but if you want to be sure I see something, you need to join the forum.  I promise nothing about FB.

Corellia

Kes is my favourite, though I enjoy the rest of the blog too.

Which seems to me as it should be.  If readers weren’t enjoying the rest of the blog there’d be precious little reason to go on writing it, but KES after all is FICTION.  My life is only my life.

Blkbrd

I read Kes every weekend too, (and the blog, most days). And I’m waiting very patiently for Forsoothly to ride back in again. Please? (to Forsoothly, not the author, who may or may not have control over his movements.)

Mwa ha hahahahahahaha hahahahahaha.  Note that you’re right, ‘please’ has no effect whatsoever on the author, aside, probably, from a burst of snarling, †† but I can tell you that Mr Forsoothly, Watermelon Shoulders, will return.

* * *

* . . . More or less.  Street Pastor training starts in a fortnight.

** Going bell ringing tonight doesn’t count.  It was Colin’s lot and very low stress level.  Chiefly I practised my autopilot.  Hurtling three hellcritters simultaneously doesn’t count either—not even two days in a row—because of course it’s more efficient to hurtle them together.  Southdowner was here again yesterday.  I had thought, at least briefly, that since she’s ended up with two puppies of her own to show—and Fruitcake just mopped the floor with his competitors on his first public performance—she can leave mine alone.  But Fruitcake’s new ranking seems to have had the opposite effect.  Southdowner keeps looking at Pav and saying, she’s gorgeous.  She’s gorgeous.  You must let me show her.  MUST.  LET.  ME.  SHOW.  HER.^

Erm.

We had all three off lead yesterday too—hurtling over the countryside.  Pav levitates to a remarkable degree for something that looks like a small rectangular shoebox on little short legs.   We’re rolling into the season of stubble fields, when in years past the hellhounds get off lead a lot, but I’m as freaked as poor Darkness by the increasing Aggressive Off Lead Dog Problem and I’m so busy worrying it kind of wrecks our options.  I’m seriously depressed about it really:  I live in a fantastically beautiful area of the country and one of the reasons you have dogs is to take them for WALKS. Or hurtles, as the case may be.  And I increasingly just don’t dare.  We still get our exercise but it’s not the same.  It sucks.  It totally totally totally SUCKS.

But they were all off yesterday and Pav levitated remarkably successfully, not only going after the hellhounds with a speed that surprised them—they actually had to turn on a fraction of their real speed to stay ahead of her—but somehow wafting over the stubble, and coming home with an unscratched tummy.  I went out with Mavis today and let the hellhounds off again but decided that without Southdowner there doing her Imperturbable Dog Behaviourist/Trainer thing two at large was enough.  Although it wasn’t so much that I thought I’d lose her—hellhound recall is pretty good, and she’ll do what they do—as I didn’t want to worry about her eating any more corpses.  There was a rabbit in a disturbingly advanced state of deadness which the hellhounds were certainly interested in but I can keep them moving and food is not high on their list of special treats anyway^^.  They’re much likelier to roll in it.  Pav however would have got a mouthful if she’d been off lead.

^  She left last night saying, I’ll email you the show dates.  –Oh yes?  How interesting.

^^  I was thinking after I wrote the other night that terriers are a whole different order of being from other dogs—?  So are sighthounds.  Sighthounds are not dogs.  I don’t know what they are, but they’re . . . a different order of being.  An alien life form from a chlorophyll-based fauna that incompletely made the transition to the usual system of eating and digestion on earth.  Ninety-nine point nine percent of standard dog training techniques are based on food rewards.+  Which don’t work with sighthounds.  Who think that the human preoccupation with something they call training is pretty funny anyway.  Bull terriers, on the other hand, say, training?  Is there FOOD involved?  Fine.  Training.  We give you TRAINING.  They think the human preoccupation with something we call training is pretty funny too, but they express it differently.

+ All right, ninety-eight percent.

*** Given that it’s taken sixteen months to tell two and a half days of her story, I’m not going to live long enough to get her to that perilous birthday.

† Sometimes it’s a lot unnerving.

†† Or twenty or eighty, or ten minutes when it or my connection is in a bad mood

††† PLEASE write another Damar book!  PLEASE write a sequel to SUNSHINE!

Circum-training the American West: part 5 – homeward

 

We had one more pair of park volunteers, from Minneapolis to the Wisconsin Dells, discussing the largely urban Mississippi River Park. But they were less experienced than the others, and had much less striking scenery to show off, so I didn’t pay as much attention.

           I’m in Minnesota, Wisconsin’s on the other side

I did eavesdrop on my neighbors in the lounge car. Siri and Christy were on their way from Minneapolis to New Orleans, to then turn around and come back — on bicycles! They were planning a ride to investigate and bring attention to local, non-corporate agriculture through America’s heartland, and would stay and help at farms, visit markets, and hold meetings along the way. I have periodically been following their blog. In early August they were in Iowa. As of August 19 they seem to have made  it!

 

assorted stations, Illinois to Texas

 

Kieren and Dan met me in Chicago and took me out to dinner at their favorite Greek restaurant. Amusingly, one of my fellow passengers, who would be going on with me on the Texas Eagle the next day, was at the same restaurant, out of all the restaurants in all of Chicago!  She recognized me (kind of memorable as the lady with the two walking sticks) and came over to say, “Hi!”

Kieren and Dan then took me home to their third floor in a little old house that is getting surrounded by high-rises – when they moved there they had many sunny windows, but they fear that their last sun is about to be obliterated. I had forgotten the stairs when I asked for the visit, but I slowly negotiated them up and down. After all, I had been going  down and up in the train cars several times a day all weekend!

downtown Chicago from trackside, and a garden awaiting its summer flowers

Kieren doesn’t garden his backyard as intensively Robin’s cottage*, but the phenomenon of “millions of little green things in pots” seems to be universal

Kieren got me back to the station – I think it’s another Union Station – the next day for the last leg. It was a full train and I had a seatmate, a boy in his twenties, from the start. Having become experienced by this time, I just decamped to the lounge car for most of the trip. That way he had space, and I had space.

 

I paid attention to the advancing season, from early to late spring, as the afternoon went  by – pictured are red maple and plum in Minnesota or Wisconsin on May 13, and greenness in southern Illinois on May 14.

And I got several shots of the St. Louis Arch at sunset,

and one blurry pre-dawn documentation that I had  been through Clinton’s birthplace in Hope, Arkansas.

But I was getting pretty tired by this time, and ready to be home. And after the roughest ride of the whole trip, when the engineer maintained his top allowed speed of 80mph on track in east Texas that wasn’t really up to it (drinking breakfast coffee was almost impossible), we got  back to Dallas, actually early.                   Texas Eagle under Reunion Tower

 

I saw more spectacular scenery in 15 days than I have seen in 15 years. But there were longish periods when it was less than rivetting.

 

So I played with my phone a good deal. (The cars have all been fitted with two outlets at each pair of seats.) Aside from my little game of watching the blue arrow move over the countryside, I played a lot of Spider 2-Suit. And Mah-jong solitaire.

And I knitted. I’m not very good, but I was ambushed by some gorgeous yarn at a fiber show, and I’ve been plodding along turning it into a scarf since last fall.

my scarf on the second day, in west Texas, and the next-to-last, in Illinois – it really is longer!

Having gotten so far, I decided it really didn’t need to be a six-foot long scarf. Eventually, after I got back, I picked up a row of loops just before the first pattern-row, carefully cut off and ravelled out the first six solid rows, half-twisted the scarf, and grafted the ends. Voila! A möbius cowl as concrete product of my wonderful trip. (Also, I still have the other half of my lovely yarn.)

 

I kind of jumped into the deep end for my first train trip in maybe thirty years. But I will definitely try it again!

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

* Well, the climate! snow on the ground for months, and 100° sometimes in the summer…

 

 

Abigail, from north Texas, is a former teacher, a naturalist, and a chain-mail jewelry maker. She occasionally blogs about natural history (mostly) at http://naturalist-amm.blogspot.com, and sells her handicraft at http://piedras.etsy.com

 

KES, 93

 

NINETY THREE

He briefly looked as startled as I felt.  But then his face cleared and he said, “You must be Kes from cabin seven.  Hi.  I’m Jan.”  He held out his hand, but this was a blunt, broken-fingernailed, ink- and machine-oil-stained hand, not at all like Mr Love-Me’s, and looking at his grin I could see him as Mike’s father.  My face relaxed into a smile in response (Hey!  What do you mean by relaxing!  Deinonychus and unspeakable cosmic horror is waiting for us a mere twenty miles away!).

“Yes.  Maybe Serena told you I’m checking out tonight.”

“She did indeed.”  Jan opened the giant ledger Serena had applied to on my arrival.  There wasn’t a computer screen in sight and the credit-card machine looked humble and subservient.  And old.  A Model T of credit-card machines.

“Er—where is Serena?  She was here five minutes ago.”

“Yep,” said Jan, making a note in the book.  “She’s mad at me so I gave her the night off.”  He looked up at me again, grinned, and went back to his book.  I could immediately see him as a great guy to have a beer with and a totally infuriating boss.  I could also kind of see his shirt as a manifestation of the taste that produced friendly neon campfires.  The plastic mother-of-pearl buttons were particularly eye-catching.

I took the key out of my pocket and laid it on the table.  I would not be sorry not to have a campfire gouging my leg any more, but since I was trading it in for a ring of keys big and heavy enough to use as a spare anchor for a medium-sized yacht I had slightly mixed feelings about the exchange.  At least there wouldn’t be crushed food on the walls.  Unless there was a poltergeist who had liked its solitude.

Then I pulled the bracelet out and laid it next to the key.  It was even more beautiful than I’d thought in the dim light of cabin seven.  Here there was a blast of overhead 100 watt that made it glitter.  I was pretty sure it was real silver—it had what looked like hallmarks stamped on the inside of the cuff—but it was as shiny as if it had just come out of the hands of one of the White House’s butlers.  So it was well cared for and couldn’t have been lost for long.  Bizarrer and bizarrer.  To coin a phrase.  Even more bizarre was my conviction, as I pulled it out, that I suddenly smelled roses:  it was so strong I looked around the office.  Although florists’ roses are notoriously duds in the scent department and I doubted there were any roses blooming in New Iceland this time of year.

And roses didn’t really fit the décor.  I’d been too stunned when I arrived two nights ( . . . two nights) ago to notice much.  There was a big wall unit of veneer-plywood pigeonholes of about the same vintage as the credit card machine.  I knew it was veneer over plywood because the corners were splitting.   I was relieved to see there was nothing visible in the pigeonhole for cabin seven.  The pigeonholes were facing a gigantic map of the area and some racks of flyers for local attractions.  Which meant there must be local attractions.  I probably didn’t want to know.  Giant freshwater squid taxidermy museum.   Possibly sharing the parking lot and really bad café with a theme park based on other unusual animals.  Naked mole rat roller coaster.  Axolotl carousel.  I shook my head.  I had to get back to work before my brain was taken over by the stuff I usually shoved into my fiction.

“I found this in a corner,” I said, turning the bracelet up so the rose gleamed.  The medallion was maybe ceramic;  the rose was a deep velvety red and the white background was slightly opalescent.  The contrast with Jan’s buttons was a little queasy-making.  “The previous tenant must have left it behind, although I can’t imagine why she didn’t turn around, however far away she’d gone, the moment she noticed it was missing.”

Jan looked mildly surprised and then puzzled.  He flipped one page back in the ledger book and shook his head.  “Last person in that cabin was a week ago, Bill Wheatley, he travels in agricultural equipment, one of our regulars.  Nice guy, still calls his wife sweetheart like he means it, but he wouldn’t be buying her anything that looks like that.”  He flipped another page.  “Before that, young couple with three little kids, couldn’t afford a bigger cabin, had ’em in sleeping bags on the floor.  Not theirs either.”  He picked the bracelet up and looked at it.  I was only now noticing the seed pearls around the medallion.  I’d thought they were silver beads.  “Pretty thing.”  And then added, “Almost too pretty.  Take some living up to, I guess.”

I looked at him, startled.  I wasn’t expecting poetic sensibility from Neon Campfire Decorative Squashed Food Man.

He laid it down and then pushed it back across the counter at me.  “You keep it.”

 

Fun with your critters

 

 

Hellterror:  Want a lap.

Hellgoddess:  It’s too hot.

Hellterror:  Want a lap.

Hellgoddess:  It’s too hot and I’m wearing shorts.

Hellhounds:  Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hellterror:  Want a lap.

Hellgoddess:  It’s too hot, I’m wearing shorts, if I put you on my lap my legs will break out in large prickly red splotches, and if I put a towel or a sweatshirt over my legs it kind of ruins the shorts part, okay?  Also, dog body temperature is higher than human, which is not attractive in this weather.

Hellterror:  Want a lap.

Hellgoddess:  Why don’t you go play with a nice toy?

Hellterror and hellgoddess engage in staring match.  Hellterror eventually heaves deep sigh of sadness, disillusionment and crushedness and wanders off, channelling Eeyore with every dragging, melancholy step.  Hellgoddess warily goes back to her book.*

Hellhounds:  Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

::Rustling noise::.

Hellterror comes prancing back, bearing her trophy, and settles down on her nice comfy floor-padding blanket at the hellgoddess’ feet to enjoy it.

Hellterror:  Have a shoe.

Hellgoddess briefly presses fingers to forehead.  She lays her book down.**

Hellgoddess:  You aren’t allowed to eat shoes.

Removes shoe, while hellterror looks at her through her eyelashes.  Wags tail.  Hellgoddess puts the sacred All Star back under the bookcase by the front door with its 1,000,001 friends.***

Hellgoddess offers toy that has found favour at other times.  Hellterror accepts it listlessly.

Hellgoddess goes back to her book.  Warily.  Hellterror rests her head on boring toy and contemplates options.

Hellterror trots off purposefully.

Hellhounds:  Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hellterror returns bearing another trophy.  The scene as before.

Hellterror:  Have another shoe.

Hellgoddess doesn’t bother with the finger-pressing this time, although she does heave a deep sigh.  She sighs much more deeply than hellterror because her lungs are bigger.†  Also her lungs are very well developed because of all the hurtling.

Hellgoddess:  You aren’t allowed to eat shoes.

Removes shoe.  Offers a different toy that has found favour at other times.  Hellterror lets off a glare with her evil little varminty eyes that would knock Jericho’s walls down without benefit of trumpet, but the hellgoddess is made of sturdy stuff.

Hellhounds:  Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

::Different rustling noises::

Hellterror:  Got a sock.

Hellgoddess:  You aren’t allowed to eat socks either.  Or bras, knickers or t-shirts.††

Hellterror:  Want a lap.

Hellgoddess:  ALL RIGHT.  ALL RIGHT.†††

Hellhounds:  Zzzzzzzzzzz.‡

* * *

* No, the one I was reading.

Gwyn_sully

I’ve been reading some rather good cheezy science fiction.  But I’m not going to tell you what, because I would be fallen on in a body and pummelled to death for disrespect.

If I promise not to pummel you to death will you tell? I could use some good cheezy sci fi, and I’m not attached enough to anyone to get offended at their being put in such a category.

I read that when it came in and thought, okay, how am I going to do this?  Anagram?  Smoke signals?^  But I’m going to do a book rec on it, so all is well except for the part when I admit that as far as I’m concerned a Classic of the Genre is cheezy science fiction, it just happens to be good.  Hey, I write cheezy fantasy, wizards, dragons, enchanted swords, retold fairy tales, the occasional vampire and so on.  It just happens to be—ahem—good.

^ DM?  Please.  Besides, mine is turned off and I don’t want to know how to turn it on.

** Carefully.  I’m near the end and it’s very exciting.

*** There are more upstairs in the bedroom cupboard.  With the yarn.  There are even more in the attic.

† Hellterror is tiny.  Southdowner has been around kind of a lot this week^ because she’s visiting her family on the south coast, and we’ve met both Monster Scone and Super-Monster Fruitcake.  Fruitcake is ENORMOUS.  Fruitcake is probably twice the hellterror’s size.  I like tiny.  Tiny means I can still tuck her under one arm and go shopping.  Tiny is, of course, relative, and twenty-seven pounds starts to weigh kind of a lot after a few minutes, especially if it wriggles, although thanks to all that dedicated holding of baby puppies, it’s actually pretty good about not wriggling.  But southdowner was talking about a semi-non-confrontation she’d had recently with Scone, and had simply picked Scone up out of the target zone while the idiot owner harrumphed about how his dog was friendly and the dog demonstrated body language of a less than friendly sort.  I had one of these semi-non-confrontations today, when I saw a Jack Russell-y type dog get all low-bodied and intent and . . . I picked the hellterror up.  Isn’t yours okay? said this idiot owner, while his dog held its tail out stiff as a frelling poker and its head low and menacing.  Mine is okay.  Oh yeah? I didn’t say, and kept moving.  I’d’ve been staggering pretty quickly if I’d been carrying Scone or Fruitcake.

And, you know, ha ha ha ha ha and everything, but the aggressive off-lead dog problem depresses the frelling frelling out of me.

^ I’ve been getting a few Remedial Hellterror Owner lessons.  Some of this adolescence thing has been worrying me a little.+  If there are any long-time, naively believe they have some clue dog owners out there thinking of branching out into terriers, be aware that terriers are a whole different life form.  All that standard training and response stuff with other dogs?  Doesn’t work with terriers.  Oh.

+Oh my God, have I BROKEN her??

†† Hellterror’s distressing fondness for dirty laundry—that is, the hellgoddess’ dirty laundry—makes me wonder if I should try wearing new toys before I give them to her, to make them more attractive.  The laundry issue is ongoing, since the laundry bags live in a heap among the bevy of dwarf appliances under the stairs at the cottage.  There isn’t any other place for them to be.  And hellterror appears to have learnt to untie drawstring bags.

††† The funny thing is that I did not break out in itchy red splotches.  Either there’s a seasonal thing going on—she’s pretty low to the ground, and she runs through a lot of grass—or I’m adapting to the third dog I live with.  Her body temperature is still too high for August however.

‡ abigailmm

Chaos and Darkness are the most beautiful dogs, period, I have ever seen. If I knew anything about keeping dogs, and if I thought I could physically manage to exercise them, I would look for some of my own.

If you’re serious, it would be worth contacting your local greyhound rescue and asking about middle-aged couch potatoes.  Older dogs are harder to place so they would love to hear from you, and a good rescue will know their dogs pretty well and could suggest one or two of the couch-potato-iest.  It’s a myth that retired greyhounds need huge amounts of exercise.  Individuals vary, but older retired racers mostly have done all that and are looking for the sofa stage of existence and a little regular gentle ambling outdoors and your company indoors is adequate.  You do have to remember that they can hit top speed in a couple of bounds if they choose to, so you have to be ALERT out walking them.  I have mine on extending leads, but they’ve been with me their entire lives which works both ways—I’m used to watching them for rocketing-off symptoms and they know how long their leads are.  If I ever bring a retired greyhound home it will be on a short, non-extending lead for a long time.  Possibly the rest of its life.

My guys are of course not greyhounds, they’re whippet cross deerhound.  And whippets aren’t quite small greyhounds, there are some differences in detail:  personally I find whippets the more beautiful, but there are some 100% eye candy greyhounds out there just longing for an ordinary, non-racing-kennels home.

[Ringing] two funerals and a wedding

 

Although the wedding isn’t till Saturday I didn’t want to waste an opportunity to rip off a title.*  I haven’t rung a funeral in over a year, I think—not since Gloriana’s**—and then I’ve rung two in a row:  yesterday and today.***  I really don’t like this bit about how as you get older more and more people that you know seem to be popping off around you.  Yesterday’s funeral was at least someone I only knew very vaguely but today’s . . . well.  I’m not sure the whole ‘we’ll see her again in heaven’ thing works all that well in the first instance.†  She’s been terminally ill for months.  It’s not like we didn’t know.  But. . . .

. . . Well.  I’m still tired, although I did get some sleep last night.  Maybe I could get some sleep two nights in a row?  Now there’s an exciting thought.

* * *

* Even if the film is where I developed my profound aversion to Hugh Grant.

** I’ve said before I wish we rang more funerals.  I think people mostly just don’t think of bells for funerals—plus that funerals tend to happen during the working week and it’s hard to put bands together.  Vicky pulled us in today from about six different towers—she and Roger were the only locals.

*** Sometimes I even think there’s hope for me as a ringer.  Two of our eight today don’t ring a lot, so the six of us bell junkies rang a touch of Grandsire doubles while the two normal people had a sit down between slabs of call changes.  I tend not to ring my best for occasions—Sunday service is bad enough, but one-offs like weddings and funerals . . . anguish, anguish . . . and funerals, it’s worse, because weddings are supposed to be happy occasions and can absorb a little screwing up.  It’ll make a good story later that you could hear the conductor yelling at his/her band where you were standing in the receiving line:  DODGE WITH THE FOUR, PASS THE TREBLE AND LEAD!^—and you can hear the ‘YOU MORON’ even if this remains unuttered.  Funerals, even when you’re trying to celebrate rather than mourn, it’s an edgier sort of thing, and it’s harder to laugh if you gerfarkle it—especially if you knew the person you’re ringing for.  But I was the dubious sixth ringing with five good ringers, and when it’s five to one they’ll carry you if need be.  But you know . . . it was pretty good.  It was at least not bad.  And they weren’t carrying me.  And Grandsire doubles, eh, I frelling well ought to be able to ring Grandsire doubles—but ringing is one of those really discouraging skills where you never reach the ‘ah ha—got it’ stage:  there’s always another ignis fatuus sneering at you out there in the bog somewhere.  Learning the frelling method line is only the beginning.^^

^ You’re all going, ha ha ha ha, I don’t know much about bell ringing but I know bells are noisy.  Yes.  Very true.  Which means that a conductor has to bellow like sixty devils+ to be heard over the row.   Now think about a ground floor ring, where the ringers are at street level with the peons, and the bells are making their racket some distance overhead.  It of course depends on your ground floor ring—occasionally they are tucked away from the hurly burly, madding crowd, etc—but generally you ground-floor ringers are depressingly visible++, which means you can’t wear your oldest jeans and your favourite t shirt which says ‘Miskatonic University, Necromancy Department, bringing dead things back to life since 1690’, although I will be wearing All Stars and if they don’t like it they can not ask me to ring there again.  Anyway.  If your conductor loses it when the person on the two goes AWOL yet again and said conductor starts addressing the problem in a possibly over-emphatic manner, especially a conductor who is used to ringing in a tower . . . yeah.  It’ll make a good a good story to tell over the anniversary dinner.  If the conductor is lucky, he’s the hired gun, and will never be seen in those parts again.

+ Most conductors.  There are a few that just make themselves heard.  I have no idea how they manage this.

++ For only about one wedding in three does some intrepid becamera’d person struggle up to the bell tower to take photos.  A ground floor ring, there’ll be at least six cameras firing every wedding.  Maybe twenty-six.  If you’re particularly unlucky, someone will want to pose with the ringers.

^^ Also worth noticing is that all the ghastly struggle of ringing at the abbey becomes suddenly dazzlingly worth it when you find yourself ringing at an easier tower.  Yesterday’s funeral was at the abbey and I was hanging on a bell rope and thinking WHAT IS GOING ON? and I only didn’t go wrong because the touch came round+ soon enough to save me from myself.

+ ie back to rounds, ie finished

† I was sitting there in the congregation thinking, I’m a frelling CHRISTIAN now.  I’m supposed to BELIEVE that I’ll see her again in heaven, and catch up, because as Life Got Complicated (again) I’d let myself fall out of touch.  And all that’s happening is that I’m sitting there thinking, she’s dead.  I’m never going to see her in her garden/walking her dogs/outside the bell tower ready to tell us how much she’d enjoyed the bells again.

It was also a little, ahem, deadly, that the readings and hymns were so well chosen—by her.  Including Lord of the Dance^ which has made me cry pretty much every time I’ve sung it for the last thirty or forty years, and that wonderful Joyce Grenfell poem:  http://www.funeralhelper.org/popular-if-i-should-go-joyce-grenfell.html

^ Good grief there are a lot of really bad covers of Lord of the Dance out there.  I’m not generally a fan of unmitigated kiddie cathedral choirs, but this version is at least not embarrassing:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRpaxb6dP7k

Or if you prefer the folkie version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klcsqF2pplA

Good heavens.  And here’s John Langstaff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3LJgXcTayA

I’m so old I remember his Revels when they were starting out, and how amazing and like nothing else they were—that was my living-in-Boston era so I was on the spot.  All of us who loved early music and the rougher end of folk music and where they got mixed up together kind of thing—but there was hardly any of this around, I didn’t and really still don’t quite know what to call it—totally thought we . . . er . . . had died and gone to heaven.  This clip doesn’t anything like do justice to the experience of being in the audience for one of them—my first experience of a Langstaff Revel ended with the players fishing members of the audience out of their chairs to snake, hand in hand, outside and dance on the green.  The hall emptied:  we were all outside, singing and dancing.  It pleases me that people still remember Langstaff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Langstaff

 

A Very Full Sofa

 

The weight of my eyelids is going to crack the toothpicks here any minute and then I will fall face forward onto my keyboard, snoring mightily, and the rest of this post will be xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or possibly ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss depending on where my nose hits.  Actually, I wish.  Getting up in the night* several times to put your intestinally challenged hellterror out gets very old, but it’s the worry that comes with it that really keeps you awake and wipes you to a smudge.  I’ve been reading some rather good cheezy science fiction** since I’m not worth much else that might be more demanding and also because it’s easier to hold your hellterror in your lap if you only need one hand to do what (else) you’re doing.***  Fortunately she’s a small hellterror.  I’m feeling pretty feeble.

We’ve been to the vet twice in two days.  This is neither my nor my credit card’s† idea of a good time.††  If I want to make my credit card get all hot and bendy, I want to buy books or yarn.  But southdowner was here tonight with one of her reproba—I mean, one of her calm, charming, perfectly-mannered bull terriers††† and that seems to have reawoken the hellterror to her duty as a hyperactive mad thing.  Who, furthermore, eats.  When a hellhound doesn’t eat it’s OH NO NOT THIS AGAIN.  When a hellterror doesn’t it, it’s panic stations.  Okay, standing down from panic now.

I want to go to bed.  And maybe, you know, sleep for a change.  So I will leave you tonight with a few photos of a Very Full Sofa.

 

I’m not holding her down or anything. Noooooo.

 

We’re napping with our head up and our ears at alert. Certainly we are.

 

Hey, we’re lying down. What more do you want?

 

A fragile peace. Ask Darkness.

* * *

* Or possibly the morning.  Focus on the ‘getting up’ part.

** But I’m not going to tell you what, because I would be fallen on in a body and pummelled to death for disrespect.  You don’t want to do that, you know, I haven’t finished PEG II yet, let alone PEG III.

*** Unfortunately you only need one hand to play iPad Boggle either.

† No, I haven’t had an answer to my letter to the bank.  But this should be the credit card that is correctly attached to the new account.  I hope.  Please.

†† Nor is it the hellterror’s.  Walk into the vet’s and you’re suddenly an honorary Wookie of recently-released dog hair.  I get it that a lizard being able to lose its tail is a useful survival technique, but why did evolution come up with hair-ejection as a sensible response to visiting the vet?

††† HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  As soon as you get to the ‘bull terrier’ at the end of that sentence you know you’re being had.