Robin McKinley's Blog, page 48

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Under the ‘no good day goes unpunished*’ category . . . Saturday night, when I was slightly beyond dead tired from my interesting day gallivanting across the countryside and hanging off strange** bell ropes and getting back behind Wolfgang’s steering wheel to go sit with my monks regardless . . . Pav finished the lovely evening by having diarrhoea.  Noooooooooooo.  I blinked at what I was seeing.  NOOOOOOOOOOOO.

She got me up three times in the night to do it again.

Yesterday was not one of my more splendid days on the acuity of mind and fabulous amounts of work done front***.  But Pav seemed to be a little better and I put whatever it was down to some puppy thing, which is to say I don’t always get stuff away from her before she swallows it.  Especially when it’s disgusting and there may be a momentary hesitation on my part.†  My record is good but it is not perfect.

Then, last thing yesterday evening, it started all over again.

She got me up three times in the night last night too.

MEANWHILE IN ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST.  I was going to give you the saga once I knew how Part One ended.††

About a month ago at St Margaret’s two of our members gave a presentation about the Street Pastors.†††  I’ve been aware they existed for a while but it hadn’t registered as anything that might be to do with me.  And the presenter I knew is a good twenty years younger than me, tall, doesn’t look like someone you want to mess with, and a bloke.  Then the other presenter stood up:  a woman, smallish, and my age.  A light bulb went off in my brain.‡  I went up to Eleanor afterward to ask her a little more about it, she invited me round for a cup of tea . . . and some time during that conversation I apparently decided I was going to do this, because I’d already agreed to come out some night as an observer and see what goes on, and Eleanor had given me the name and email address of the head of the Mauncester group and recommended I get in touch.  All of this needed to go smartly because their next training uptake is only next month.

The night out was fascinating.‡‡  Mauncester has a night life.  Who knew?  Mauncester has a CLUB.  It has pubs with real live bouncers.  Who look a lot more like bouncers in films than most real-life people look like their film counterparts.  A night out with the Street Pastors also starts at nine p.m. and ends at four a.m. or thereabouts.  Yeeep.  I know I stay up late but I am not necessarily articulate and/or walking for the last hour or so.

I’ve been aware since I first signed on to this Christianity shtick that there’s an inherent commitment to service in the community as well as the prayer and God and collection plate bits.  I’ve also been increasingly aware—as my first year rolls toward its first anniversary—that I need to find something that I’m interested in before I get end-gamed into something I don’t want to do.  Which includes anything remotely resembling admin, for example, and St Margaret’s has been making noises about needing more people for note-taking and meeting-attending and leadership roles.  NOT. FOR. ME.  The Street Pastors are the practical, as it were hands-on, end of Christian service, and one of the immediately appealing things about them is that while they are out there as Christians—and one of the services offered is prayer, along with the lollipops and plasters‡‡‡—they are mandated not to preach.  No hectoring.  They can answer direct questions about their faith, but they’re not out there to make converts.  Yaaay.

I got my paperwork in.  Buckminster as my vicar had to underwrite my application.  More yeeep, although Buckminster is an optimist.  My guess is that he would feel that someone who wanted to do it ought to be allowed to try.

Oisin provided my other character reference.

And then I had to have an interview.  MORE YEEEP.  LOTS MORE YEEEP.

The interview was today.

Pav got me up three times last night too.

I had to leave for the interview at 3:15.

At about 2:30 Pav started throwing up.  She threw up three times in quick succession, and on the third brought up a . . . corpse.  Ah ha, I thought, struggling to feel hopeful.  That’s probably the problem.

Well, it probably is the problem, but she went on throwing up.  The back end was not wholly out of action either.  I am knee deep in disgusting dog bedding and will have to boil the washing machine before I use it for anything else again.

I rang the vet.  Pav wasn’t producing any blood and what was coming out was increasingly nearly water since there wasn’t anything else left.  The vet didn’t think it sounded like an emergency and didn’t have anyone who could see her till evening surgery.

So I locked her up with more clean bedding and a large bowl of water and went to the interview.

I have precious little idea why I managed to hold it together, except that God, that funny old person, must really want me as a Street Pastor, but the interview went pretty well.  The Mauncester chief of ops was one of my interviewers and he was so determined to put me at my ease I think I didn’t have a choice.  RELAX.  OR DIE.  Oh.  Okay.  I’ll take the relax option.  And they both talked to me as if we were all human beings, although they asked some pretty serious questions.

And then they said, if you want to loiter for a few minutes while we discuss, we’ll give you our answer before you leave.  So of course I loitered, and because I’m like this I suddenly thought, oh, I’ve been CHEATING!  I’ve been interviewed so often as an author I KNOW ABOUT BEING INTERVIEWED!!!!  McKinley.  Can we just stay with ‘the interview went well’?

They took me.  I’m in.§

I had a quick cup of tea AND A REALLY EXCELLENT CELEBRATORY BROWNIE with Eleanor and then raced home to take Pav to the vet.  Who loaded us up with System Calming Drugs and said if she’s not significantly better in forty-eight hours bring her back.

Tonight Chaos . . .

God.  Um.  Thank you very much for letting me say enough of the right things at the interview and mostly in complete sentences.  But I could really use some help with the dog situation.  Please.

* * *

* You thought it was only no good deed?  No, no, much more comprehensive than that.

** And in some cases strangely behaved

*** Although I did write a grim letter to my bank about the dazzlingly bad service I’ve had from them lately.  Speaking of superfluous stressors.

† I’ve been thinking about carrying a pair of those one-use latex gloves with me as standard, with the [electric] torch and the picking-up bags.  But I’m not at all sure how I would get one of them on while preventing her from swallowing.  A picking-up bag is—er—too blunt an instrument for the necessary operation.

†† How Life Parallels Fiction.  No, I still haven’t got to the end of Part One of KES.

††† http://www.streetpastors.co.uk/ I’m not totally crazy about their web site;  it’s a little too shiny.  Also, young people?  Nothing like just young people.  A lot of the homeless, for example, are not young, and anyone can have a really bad day or week or month and get a little more legless than planned.

‡ I tend to tell this story as, Oh!  They take little old ladies!, but everyone I say it to falls down laughing.  Okay, I know I’m not little and that I am well preserved for my age, but over sixty is still over sixty.

‡‡ Although it was a quiet night, so I was teasing Eleanor and Jonas on the way home that I still didn’t know what they did.

‡‡‡ Band-aids.

§ The really ridiculous thing is that while I can cope with the one night a month with the ME, I’m going to need a ride to the training days.  The commute plus an intensive day’s training is beyond me.

Happy Birthday Hellhounds*

 

They are SEVEN YEARS OLD.  I don’t believe this.  I’ve lived in New Arcadia for nine years.  We—as we, I mean, Peter had been there for centuries—were only at the old house for thirteen years and that felt like almost forever.**

And I’ll do you a proper hellhound photo blog some day soon.  The footnotes have taken over tonight. . . .

* * *

*Actually it was yesterday but having roused that gratifying response about KES I thought there might be a mutiny if I broke the series even for so excellent a reason as the hellhounds’ birthday.

Hellhounds gave me the BEST PRESENT EVER when I was lurching around the kitchen yesterday morning putting their lunch together for the dog minder to give them later, before I set off on my QUEST for the first bell tower on the outing.  THEY ASKED FOR BREAKFAST.  They haven’t eaten breakfast since they were puppies.  When the digestive disaster level was first rising breakfast was one of the first casualties.  So yesterday I looked at them blankly and then gave them breakfast.  Which they ate.

It’s a good thing I left on my QUEST feeling all upbeat and jolly however since . . . I got horribly lost.  As I wandered lonely as a . . .  person looking for a small backwater bell tower^ in darkest Suffix I was thinking, Why did I think I could DO THIS?  It went gruesomely wrong early too—I never saw the sign for the B42121212112 in Prinkle-on-Weald, which is still in Hampshire, for pity’s sake.  I can find Prinkle-on-Weald.  I ended up in Amdramham on the B24141414114 and then had to turn left and get tangled up in the Celtic-knot-like muddle of little back country lanes.^^  —I’d still be wandering, probably in darkest Aberdeenshire by now, if I hadn’t met a Helpful Man with a Dog, who not only told me what to do but gave me landmarks^^^.

When I finally pulled into the car park at St Frithcombobulate I’d been on the road for an hour and a half# for a trip that should have taken about forty five minutes.  Maybe fifty.  But as I got out of Wolfgang—listening to the bells and wondering if I’d arrived in time to ring here at all—someone pulled in behind me and lo, it was Gemma.  And she even had her HUSBAND with her as navigator . . . and they too had been HORRIBLY LOST.  She said, I’ve been telling Noah, Robin will never find this.  —Suddenly I felt much better.##

Although all that early adrenaline may be why I got to the last tower, sat down in a pew while six other people got the bells up###, and thought . . . I’d better go home while I can still drive.  It’s one of those six of one ratbag, half a flaming dozen of the other:  Gemma would have given me a lift, but then I would have had to stay till the end.  If I drive myself I can leave early, but driving tires me out and then the ME starts giving me interesting peripheral visions.  Eh.  Getting home early meant I could rest up and still go to my monks for Saturday night prayer however.

^ Hey.  What do you want?  Wrong time of year for daffodils.

^^ Just by the way this is one of those jaw droppingly gorgeous bits of rural England, but when you are LOST you aren’t appreciating it fully.

^^^ Including one of England’s traveller-beware clichés, the humpy-backed high-walled stone bridge that is, of course, one ox-cart-width lane wide, now  legally two-way, and you can’t SEE the other end, including what’s coming toward you, when you start over it in your motor vehicle.

# Fortunately my paranoia had had one of its useful moments and made me stop for petrol before I set out.

## I know, I know.  Satnav.  I’m working on it.

### I’d already done my bit at the second tower, where the three, which was the bell I was on, suddenly had a hissy fit half way up, the rope fainted in coils and the bell fell back down most of the way I’d just been laboriously hauling it up.  Arrrgh.  Pulled like a mad thing, which is what you do in these circumstances—meanwhile making a horrible clanging noise because you’re no longer going up in order and the bells rather than a nice musical scale 1-2-3-4-5-6 it’s 1-CLANG-2-4-5-6, 1-2-4-5-CLANG-6 or 1-2-4-5-6-CLANG-1-2-4-5-6 AAAAAUGH—and did eventually get to the top with the rest.  Speaking of adrenaline.  But I am pleased to report that EXACTLY the same thing happened to Gemma, ringing down in peal on the three, except that coming down this kind of misbehaviour is not as critical.

Also at that tower, it’s a frelling ground floor ring, I HATE GROUND FLOOR RINGS, and furthermore some TWIT had LEFT THE DOOR OPEN and we attracted an audience.  I can’t blame them, they were, in the first place, delighted, in the second place well-mannered and in the third place in my pre-bell-ringing-myself days I’d’ve done exactly the same.  But where they were lurking in the doorway I, ringing the four at that point, was in their direct line of sight so they were chiefly staring at me.  AAAAAAUUUGGGGGHHHH.  Ringing in a strange tower is always a little nerve wracking because it’s unfamiliar, and you’re standing there ringing, let’s say, bob minor, there are people STARING AT YOU and suddenly you think, WHAT BELL AM I ON?  WHAT AM I DOING?  WHICH ONE IS THE TREBLE?, because where you pass the treble in a method is a standard lifeline but you do need to know which bell you’re on for passing the treble to do you any good AND YOU ALSO HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ONE IS THE TREBLE SO YOU CAN SEE WHEN YOU’RE PASSING IT.

We got to the end of the touch without anyone—ie me—embarrassing herself.  So I grinned back at the nice people and didn’t tell them that I now had a thundering headache and was going to have to sit down.

So maybe there were one or two extra reasons why I folded before I rang at the last tower.

** Of course I thought it was for ever.  Sigh.  Never mind.  I might never have got back to bell ringing if we had stayed there.  And I would have had serious difficulty finding a church, since the Warm Upford benefice is pretty depressing.  Maybe God is just moving in his frelling mysterious ways again.

 

KES, 92

 

NINETY TWO

I didn’t think there was anything left between us and climbing into Merry and driving out to Cold Valley, six potted rose bushes, deinonychus and an orc farm.  And Caedmon.  Caedmon would protect us.  I glanced at the office on our way in but I wasn’t going to pester Serena any more.  I didn’t want her to hear my knees actually knocking.

What with the knees and everything I stumbled going up the stairs to cabin seven one more time.  I was sure I’d been living here for years.  No, if I’d been here more than two nights I’d’ve taken the crushed food off the walls.  Or at least embellished it with sophisticated decals.  What I would have done with the neon campfire would have cost me money when it was discovered.  And possibly the good will of the father of Merry’s mechanic.  I swept up some of the bags and bundles I’d had to leave behind on the first trip because even Sid’s skinny butt took up a certain amount of room.  Although the stuff I’d bought at the pet store took up a lot more space than the dog.

I had to put everything down on the ground to wrestle with Merry’s passenger-side door.  There was probably a trick to it.  Arrgh.  I shoved everything but Sid into the passenger footwell and re-cat’s-cradled Sid to the seatbelt.  Merry’s dimensions being what they were I could have had several dogs on the passenger seat and my Vespa and the complete twenty-volume hard copy Oxford English Dictionary (plus supplements) in the footwell.  Sid lay down on the seat and stretched out comfortably.  Her feet did dangle over the edge a little.

Then I went back inside for the last Majormojo bag (Kleenex, dishwashing liquid, paper napkins with dogs on them because why not they were on sale, and a jar of local honey from a stand right outside Godzilla Food’s city-crushing-monster-width front door), my hairbrush which was mysteriously hiding under the bed, one pink striped sock I was pretty sure was mine and I hoped its twin was already at Rose Manor waiting for us and . . . a bracelet.

I don’t wear bracelets.  I looked at it in astonishment.  It was a wide, elaborate cuff thing that Topaz’ owner might have worn with the burgundy velvet although she’d have to abridge the lace if she wanted it admired properly.  It was silver and it gleamed.  It was so amazing I couldn’t imagine how its owner had left it behind and not made the most tremendous fuss till it was found.  I rubbed my finger over it.  The silver was worked in what I thought—I couldn’t be sure in the poor light—was something like tiny braids and in the center, the widest part, there was an inset medallion.  Of a rose.  It was so beautiful I didn’t quite shiver, but I maybe almost did.  Those five gratuitous rose-bushes had creeped me out quite a lot.  And there was Rose Manor itself.

Well.  The bracelet wasn’t my problem, merely a temporary frisson.  Like I needed frissons.  The thought of Darla turning the weight of her disfavor on me as soon as her meticulously-kept list reminded her I still hadn’t returned any of her or Mr W’s phone calls was frisson enough.  Meanwhile I really did have to stop in the office on the way out to sign off and return the key.  Serena could deal with the bracelet.

I took a deep breath of cheap motel air—something I had remained well acquainted with during my years of marriage to Gelasio because the only cons that wanted me as Guest of Honor had limited budgets for accommodation—closed the door of cabin seven for the last time, and gimped down the stairs.  The ankle I had twisted in one of Rose Manor’s ruts hadn’t forgiven me.

Sid thumped her tail when I got in the driver’s seat.  At least I had a dog.  If I said that to myself any more often I was going to have to look for a sampler kit.  I could learn to cross stitch in front of the fire on long winter evenings.  I wasn’t too hot at craft stuff.  It would probably come out saying The Uruk-hai Rule.  Maybe I should just get a tattoo.  I backed out and swung around cautiously.  I wasn’t at all sure where any of Merry’s edges were yet.  Probably over various state lines.  And possibly the Canadian border.  There was a Hyundai parked in front of cabin two and a two-door VW in front of cabin three.  I sighed.  I managed not to flatten either of them as we made our way cautiously to the office.

Merry’s hand brake went on like pulling the sword out of the stone.  I climbed more stairs to the office door and yanked it open, nearly hitting myself in the face because it offered so little resistance.  I had my other hand in my pocket.  The key was in that pocket, but so was the bracelet.  I was absent-mindedly rolling it through my fingers like a charm.

The person who looked up from the counter when the door-opening bell went ping wasn’t Serena.  It was a man I’d never seen before.

 

Circum-training the American West: part 4, guest post by abigailmm

From Whitefish on the west to Browning on the east,*  from about 8 to 10:30 am we were crossing the Rockies via Marias pass, up the Flathead River and along the southern border of Glacier National Park. Delightfully, we had another pair of park volunteers, who had boarded in Seattle the evening before, and gave us great commentary. And SUCH scenery they had to comment upon! In 30 hours, I went over the Cascades, up the Columbia River Gorge, and over the Rockies. WOW!

 

Flathead River roiling with snowmelt

 

modern vacation photography**      Aahhhh… that’s

.                                                          the way to travel!

Humans have to leave our mark -

Izaak Walton Inn*** at Essex and Teddy Roosevelt obelisk at the summit

 

I am fascinated with satellite imagery, and can lose hours online exploring Google Earth. Here is a clear view of the obelisk from above, with a big truck pulled in for a rest. Zoomed out, two freight trains show passing, going over the divide. And what’s with that tight curlicue of track in the corner, with the line of little, short, rusty, probably antique cars? If they are still parked there, I didn’t see them, ’cause our guides were pointing out the obelisk on the other side.

 

track-side snow, and a beaver lodge in the lake at middle distance, right

 

peak next to the route near the summit

 

leaving the Rockies behind for the plains

 

My cousin Kieren quoted his parents to me, about crossing the northern plains. “Miles and miles of miles and miles.” It was, rather. Noon on Sunday till mid-morning on Monday, lots and lots of Montana and North Dakota and Minnesota. As a botanist, I did wish that I could get off the train and see the terrain close-up, with a hand lens for the botanical details. But I couldn’t, and that was that. It *was* fun to turn on the map program and GPS function of my phone, and zoom in really close so I could see the rails in the satellite view, with the little blinking blue arrow marking “you are here” moving along them. You could almost imagine you could see the train moving along.

 

the engine of our own train

 

a North Dakota dawn, and the Big Sky

 

eastern Montana  . . .    or maybe North Dakota

 

 

At breakfast on Monday, at the table across the aisle from ours, a native American flutist and flute-maker#  on his way to a gig in Minneapolis was talking about his craft. Later he got into his outfit and gave the lounge car a little concert.

 

Among the audience were a few families of Amish or a similar lifestyle, who got on in the middle of the night somewhere in western North Dakota, and got off in Chicago. Some of the families were coordinated in blue, and some in green.

We were on time on Sunday evening, but sometime overnight we must have been stuck on a siding for a good while, because we found ourselves over two hours late on Monday morning. We never managed to make it up, and a lot of people were going to miss connections in Chicago. Amtrak arranged special chartered buses to get them to their destinations. I am glad I wasn’t one of them; the train is far nicer to ride than a  bus, even if coach passengers have to negotiate those steep winding stairs to the lower level every time they need a toilet.

There was a long stop at the Minneapolis/St. Paul station. You would think this would have been a chance to make up some of the time, by shortening the stop. But the crew had a lot to do there, hooking on to our train some private cars, antique dome cars and the like, that had been ferried from Chicago up to Minneapolis for National Train Day celebrations on Saturday. So they had to get attached to get taken home.

About 10 am Monday we left the Twin Cities on the last leg to Chicago, and then the next day I would head home.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

* those 5 stations may be the closest-together ones in the western Amtrak system, except the central California complex

**  I’m not knocking it! 90% of my photos were taken with my phone too, even though I carried my “real” camera on the trip.

***  It was originally built as housing for Great Northern RR workers, but with an eye even then toward re-purposing it as a hotel

# I didn’t think to get his name, and Google has failed me.

Okay, thanks

 

Dhudson wrote:

Dear Robin,

Yes, I read KES, often. Please do not even think of NOT posting them. It would be tragic.

Thank you !

I like the direct approach.

Fine.  I’ll stop thinking about it.  Listen, everyone, and especially everyone who was kind enough to post a comment last night, while I love reading comments* I really wasn’t trying to make anyone feel guilty.  You don’t have to post comments!**  It’s not required!  I’m not sending out large muscular persons with whips and chains to remonstrate with those of you who don’t!  I just need to know occasionally that I’m not talking to myself here.***  And KES, being a New Thing and fiction† is a special case.  Especially, as I say, because I want to go on writing her, and am intrigued, and sometimes whapped up longside the head, by the different sort of freedoms and restrictions of doing it here.

Catlady

Yes, yes, yes, I’m DEFINITELY still reading Kes. . . .I tend to save the Saturday night blog for a moment that I need a treat.  

::Beams::

Always before the next one comes out, but sometimes on Monday or some other, less-generally-good-than-Saturday day. When I found this blog five or six years ago (I have read every single entry since then),

::Beams more::

I remember thinking, “It’s a little bit like a short story from my favorite author every day.” And Kes actually is.

::Is now feeling her face cracking from all the beaming::

I don’t say much very often . . .  but I’m always reading and [KES is] my favorite.

::CRAAAAAACK::

Blondviolinist

I *love* Kes!!! I don’t always comment, because “Oh, yay! I’m so happy she’s remembering to buy the milk for the hob!” and “Sigh… I adore Sid so much… I can’t wait to see more of her!” don’t make very interesting forum posts. But I get excited every Saturday night!

Well I find comments like that interesting.  Just sayin’.

Susanjett

Oh please do not stop writing/posting Kes’ story! My dog & I would be devastated not to know how their story goes on!

Not to worry.  At worst I’ll make you pay.

But I’m lazy,

You are not lazy!  YOU ARE NOT LAZY!  None of you people apologising for not posting comments is lazy!  I just need to know you’re READING!

But whatever the reason, please, from one sighthound fan to another–please don’t take away a story where the sighthound is shaping up to be actually heroic. . . .

Yup.  Definite heroism in future.  Heh heh heh.  ::evil author laughter::

(She wants to be Sid almost as much as I want to be Kes.)

Queue forms to the right.  AND I’M FIRST.

PamAdams

Yes, still reading Kes. I would happily pay for installments, whether on an on-going basis, or gathered up tidily every now and then and put between covers.

I’m told by wiser internet junkies than myself that making people pay for stuff on line mostly doesn’t work very well because so many users expect on line content to be free.  I don’t know.  I would have thought that you get six free eps, say, and then sign up or not.  But the current semi-plan is to sweep Part One together with a little Additional Material, and produce some kind of hard copy version for some kind of money.  And—thank you.

Rainycity1

Yes, we’re reading, we’re reading! Please don’t stop!

Not stopping!  Not stopping!

I’m also hoping that you’ll find a way to moneytize this,

Thank you!  Me too!

through print-on-demand once it’s done or some such. I’d like to support this, and you don’t have a tip jar.

A virtual tip jar.  Snork.  I like it.

TheWoobDog

Ack. No, no, don’t stop KES! I anxiously await each week’s KES installment with bated breath. Truly. Any lack of commentary on my part is simply because I loathe waiting and getting any story in teeny dribbles that I have no control over makes me want to gnash my teeth and go buy expensive yarn (along the lines of the whole “I knit so I don’t kill people” thing).

Hee hee hee hee.  Yes, I’ve noticed I kill far fewer people now I’m knitting.  And what’s a little light puncturing among friends?

I don’t blame you for this, oh, no.

Of course not.  You’re obviously a calm, fair-minded person.

I admire your calculating writer tactics that keep me panting for more. But I don’t have to be happy about it.

No.  Just keep reading.

I will endeavor to comment more (but please don’t ban me if said commentary – in the heat of the moment directly following the reading of the week’s episode – happens to contain somewhat snarky remarks about conniving parsimonious authors who refuse to satisfy my desire for instant gratification ARGH).

Well if it’s any comfort, remember I’m only a few eps ahead of you, and worrying about what happens next.  Fortunately something always does.  So far.  But from where I’m sitting the story  unrolls into the hazy distance very satisfactorily energetically.  Pity about the ‘hazy’ however.  I would like to get more sleep.

Katinseattle

Stop Kes? Get rid of Kes? NO, NO, NO, NO, PLEASE NO!

Okay!  Okay!

I don’t comment because it’s boring to read the same comment every week: “Loved it. Can’t wait for the next installment.”

That’s an excellent comment.  That’s the best possible comment.

My only complaint? They’re too short. **grumpily** Congratulations on success in writing short.

SNORK.  And on that happy note, I will end tonight, since it is getting late and I need to have a run at getting up early because I will have to get up early Saturday to go bell ringing.  Also something very exciting is happening in KES right now and I might write a sentence or two more of it before I go to bed. . . . Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha.

THANKS AGAIN.††

* * *

* Except of course when they make me scream with inarticulate fury.  Fortunately this doesn’t happen too often.  Most of you are very well behaved.  Thank you. My email inbox holds far more horrors.  I DO NOT UNDERSTAND how people can briskly negotiate all the obstacles set up to STOP THEM from BLINDLY attacking me with questions answered in my FAQ.  DO YOUR HOMEWORK, PEOPLE.  Every drogflamming week I get requests for ‘tips about writing’.  ARRRRRGH.  Part of the surrealism of this is that the tips-for-writing requests are often in letters that looked—up till that moment—polite and low-profile.  I know you’re busy, they say.  I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your books.  OH AND CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME TIPS ABOUT WRITING FICTION.  It’s been a long time since I was first learning to tell stories on paper—you never finish learning—but I keep feeling that there’s a major disconnect going on in these tip-requesting people’s minds.  Aside from an inability to read sentences like PLEASE LOOK AT THE FAQ BEFORE YOU EMAIL ME YOUR QUESTIONS.  No, the disconnect I’m thinking of is:  they’ve acknowledged that I’m busy.  Writing stories, presumably.  And hurtling, ringing, singing, gardening, knitting, doodling, reading, eating chocolate and being driven mad by technology^ if they read the blog.  They also wouldn’t be asking for tips if they hadn’t already discovered that writing is hard.  Are they really expecting a rabbit^^ out of a hat?  What on earth or orbiting Betelgeuse are they expecting me to be able to say in the twenty words or less I might have time for?

^ So Raphael came back today.  After he left, the laptop refused to close down, the iPad turned its volume off and wiped the saved-sites bar on the opening page of Safari, and Dove, the book of bell towers, froze and refused to open on Pooka.^^^  And because the letters have worn off the keys of my desktop and because frelling frelling FRELLING iTunes doesn’t flash the letters at you briefly I managed to put my password in wrong and had to change it which means THAT EVERY APP I OPEN NOW WANTS ME TO PUT MY PASSWORD IN AGAIN.  And again.  And again.  One of my current word-game addictions has to have GAME CENTRAL!!!! disabled every time I open the wretched thing.  EVERY.  TIME.  ARRRRRRRRRGH.

^^ Or a £1,000,000 advance

^^^ Theoretically I’m going on a tower outing Saturday.  Theoretically.  And the iPhone is the only one of my instruments of destruction that has travelling internet connection.  Also with me in Wolfgang will be a fifty-year-old Ordinance Survey map+ on the really quite reasonable grounds that bell towers tend to be on older churches and village back lanes haven’t changed that much, a five-year-old road atlas, and a print-out of Albert’s directions.  No, I haven’t chosen my SatNav yet which means Peter hasn’t bought it yet.

+ I can hear Peter protesting tomorrow that it isn’t more than . . . thirty years old.  Well, I’m pretty sure it was one of the ones looking a little worn when I moved over here twenty-two years ago.  I was fascinated by the OS and pored over a lot of the relatively local maps—or anywhere we were going all over the UK—in the early days, before I had 500 rose-bushes and subscriptions to 4712 magazines.

** Anne_d, if you want to be grumpy and lumpy and uncommunicative, you go girl!  I spend most of my life grumpy and lumpy and uncommunicative—ask most of the people who know me in real time—it’s just that I am A WRITER and have a particular set of writerly smoke and mirrors available for blogging.  Including KES.

*** I talk to myself everywhere else.  Why not online?

† Officially fiction, as opposed to my life, which often feels like fiction.  I mean, I wish.

†† I’m going to try not to get distracted and answer a few more of last night’s comments, since there are one or two further points I want to make. . . .

Ah the writing life

 

With reference to last night’s topic, I received a street mail letter today—yes, ye olde streetye mailye, which tangible objects do find their way to the mail slot in my door occasionally—and which included this quote offered for my comfort:  “My computer may have beaten me at chess but it was no match for me at kickboxing.”

Hee hee hee hee hee.

. . . By this however I gather that the writer reads this blog at least occasionally and so I will also say something I repeat here at intervals:  while it’s true that I’m an increasingly terrible responder-to of book mail YOU WILL CERTAINLY NOT GET AN ANSWER TO YOUR STREET MAIL IF YOUR RETURN ADDRESS IS NOT ON THE LETTER ITSELF.  Forwarded letters are usually sent original-envelope-free.  And even when they aren’t, I tend to pull them out of their envelopes and lay them flat where they have some chance of being unearthed in a pile of To Do before they grow whiskers.  Some of the unanswered letters tucked tidily in my letters-in-envelopes box predate my move to New Arcadia.  Which is getting on for nine years ago, if you’re counting.

Today’s letter is, however, one of those sent on without its original envelope—and without a return address on the letter.  THANK YOU, MS G.H. FOR THE NICE THINGS YOU SAY ABOUT MY BOOKS.  She does add that she knows I’m busy and doesn’t expect a reply so it’s possible she’s just making an executive decision. . . .

Here’s another quote from a different direction:  Khaled Hosseini, THE KITE RUNNER and A THOUSAND SPLENDED SUNS author if you’re staring at those unusual-to-many-western-eyes syllables and wondering where you’ve seen them before, has a new book out, AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED.  He was interviewed for TIME magazine back the end of May, and my eye was caught by this metaphor for the writing process:  . . . “It’s a little bit like when you move into a home.  You haul all your stuff and shove it in the house;  the things you need are there, but it looks horrible and doesn’t feel like a home at all.  The subsequent draft is about saying, OK, this couch belongs here.  Let’s get rid of this painting.  Let’s put this armoire here. . . .”

I may be more sensitive to a house moving metaphor than I would have been before April 2012 when KES began.*  Especially when poor Kes’ is a house move that goes on and on, at least to your and my perspective—where she’s standing she’s still only been in New Iceland two and a half days, it’s just the translation process goes out in mingy 850ish-word lumps.**  She is spending her third night in Rose Manor—spoiler, snicker snicker—but we’re sure having a time getting her there—NO spoiler, snicker snicker snicker.***  But Kes and I, despite being largely each other’s alter egos, have very different views of house moves.  It’s true that when I moved into the old house here, me and my eighty-two thousand boxes of books, a rich collection of All Stars and a baby grand piano, I felt it was going to swallow me without leaving a trace, like disciples sacrificing an alien wanderer for Yog-Sothoth’s† favour.††  Most of the house moves in my life, including the most recent one, however, have been a question of cramming everything through the door and as hard up against the walls as possible just to get everything in, and then I sit in the last remaining scrap of empty floor space and have a nervous breakdown.†††  Kes moving into Rose Manor is MAJOR WISH FULFILLMENT, although again, it’s how the story chooses to go.‡  But for Hosseini’s metaphor, I’m saying, an entire ARMOIRE?  You think I’ve got wall space for an ARMOIRE?  And Kes is saying, get rid of a painting?  Get rid of something?

She’s a hoarder at heart though.  Give her time.

* * *

* Someone, well after the 11 April anniversary this year^, posted to the forum that she wondered if there would be any special events for said anniversary.  There should have been.  I don’t remember what epic horror was occurring in my life at that point AND PLEASE DON’T REMIND ME but I didn’t think of it in time.  Maybe next year.

Which reminds me to ask, somewhat plaintively, you are still reading it, aren’t you?  Comments have dropped off to near nothing which isn’t a problem AS LONG AS YOU’RE STILL READING IT.^^  Apparently the programme/difference engine/virtual chipmunks that keep benighted WordPress rolling don’t want to separate out page hits in a useful manner, even if you ask it nicely.  Which means I have no idea if the blog spikes or flops on KES days.  I want to keep writing it.  But whether or not I keep giving it away in this format depends whether it feels worthwhile.  Blogmom is sharpening her whacking and whapping technology to see if she can extract a better KES-visitor guess than bluh bluh bluh um.

^ Anyone who looks up the first ep will see that the date is given as 12 April.  It was the 11th of April, it just happened to be after midnight.  As so often with my blog.  Like tonight.

^^ Although I really appreciate the comments KES does receive.+

+ I’m glad JoJo was popular.  The story goes as the story goes, but when that emerged on my computer screen I did worry a little that it was either worthy, ie ticking the disabled box#, or veered a little too far over the sentimental boundary, an area I’m very fond of, but one does have to stop before one drowns nastily in the River Treacle.

# Will we meet JoJo’s sister?  If KES lasts long enough, yes.

** I still need to earn a living.  See previous footnote.  If KES isn’t working as advertising I may flog it some other how.

*** I’m not a nice person.  You knew that.

† I wonder how Yog-Sothoth feels about reading?

†† Note that it took me ten years to run out of walls to put bookshelves on.  Ten years.  In a house with floor space roughly equivalent to the Colosseum.  And I wasn’t particularly trying.

††† Which is why I bought a second/Third House.  The TBR piles by my bed at the cottage are still ginormous.

‡ Oh, and the janitor?  The janitor is based on Lived Experience.  I was glad to move out of that building.

Technology 3. McKinley minus 12.

 

 

Tabitha—my Bowen-massage lady—seems to have mauled us worse than usual today.  Peter and I were both blundering around this evening saying I’m shattered . . . . bluuuuuuh . . . I’m shattered.  Bluuuuuuuh.*

So I had this idea I’d respond to some forum comments. . . .

B_twin

Have I mentioned lately that I HATE MY PRINTER? I hate my printer. Hate. Hate.

. . . I *so understand*. For several hours yesterday I was TRYING to get our new office computer to “see” the new . . . printer. After *eventually* succeeding… it printed gibberish. . . . That’s when I discovered that, in all likelihood, there ARE no compatible drivers… AARRGGGGHHHH

And . . . I re-discovered this gem from The Oatmeal . . .

Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable

Anyone who hasn’t read this should immediately remedy this error.  If you’ve been having a BAD TECHNOLOGY DAY read it twice.  I wasn’t having a bad technology day till a few minutes ago possibly because I haven’t been near a computer till a few minutes ago since this morning.  But my laptop immediately engaged with this distressing situation and after the first few copy-and-pastes from the forum to give me something to hang a post on in the absence of any brain activity . . . when I clicked back to the forum again there was an error message.  There has been an ERROR on this page, it declared.  Do you want to continue to jambledubfred the garbonzoleach?  Yes.  No.  Clicking on yes . . . nothing happened.  Clicking on no . . . nothing happened.  Trying to close the window made it flash smartly and go DING!, and no, it did not close.  Refreshing the page produced exactly the same non-result.

I saved your comments.  I closed everything down.  IE struggled furiously, like a rabbit in a lurcher’s mouth or possibly an old-fashioned vampire impaled on an old-fashioned stake, before that cool Buffy before-the-watershed TV-friendly splintering into ash thing, but eventually inertia** overcame it and it disappeared up its own . . . fundament.  Squish.

I turned everything on again.  —GARGLE ARGLE BARGLE DARGLE.  The last time Raphael was here he re-installed Skype, which doesn’t like the laptop, AND NOW IT WON’T NOT LAUNCH*** WHEN I TURN THIS DRANGLEFLAMPING COMPUTER ON.†  Raphael told me exactly what to do to make it stop and . . . I GET AN ERROR MESSAGE SAYING CHIZTOGMALIFRY DOGGLE DOODAH RATCHET, TOUCH THAT MENU AND DIE.  Raphael is coming again on Thursday.  For this among other things.

Tonight’s interesting IE error message has disappeared.  That’s the good thing.  But every web address now goes on for about a mile and a half.  It should be, for example, robinmckinleysblog.com, not robinmckinleysblog.com/?ezekielGRINCH... ZORGliarliarpantsonfire+/-stupidbloodyfrelling=ARRRRRGH/?#094gx2% . . . Maybe the laptop is just jealous that the printer is getting too much attention?

Oh, and further to yesterday’s fascinating tale . . . my new chequebook arrived with the wrong name printed on the cheques.  They’ve got it right on the frelling address . . . BUT THEY’VE GOT IT WRONG ON THE CHEQUES.  This makes those transferring-bank-details phone calls even more stomachache-inducing.††  And is the name the same on the new account, Mrs Dickinson?  Er—yes—er—well, it will be.  What’s that you are saying, Mrs Dickinson?  NOTHING.  NOTHING.  YES, IT’S THE SAME NAME.†††

Let me leave you with something that the fabulous gryphyn found for our delectation and delight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v= luVjkTEIoJc

Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee. . . .

* * *

* Which is probably why I fell down and rolled over for the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home http://www.battersea.org.uk/ begging person when he knocked on my door and started telling me how much it costs to save critters.  I KNOW.  I ALREADY GIVE MONEY TO THE DOGS TRUST.  http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/   Well, now I give money to the Battersea lot too.  He totally had me^ as soon as he asked me if any of the hellpack are rescues.  Um . . . no . . . I am a bad person.  Fine, he says, sign here.

^ Possibly also because I was out in the garden frelling watering and hating that almost as much as PRINTERS.  I have barely done any GARDENING in weeks because I’m wasting so much time WAAAAAAATERING.+  So I’m busy feeling guilty about all my neglected plants too.

+ Someone, I think on the forum, suggested getting one of those leaky-hose watering systems installed.  Not unless SHADOWS is a major best-seller.  Even the low-tech# versions cost kind of a lot.##  And I’d still be watering all the stuff in front by hand.  And complaining.

# That evil word again

## Do it MYSELF?  You’re joking, right?  I, who can’t weed without sticking the trowel in my hand at least once, and who can’t water without pouring water all over my feet?

** And screaming

*** with its ever-so-charming sound effects

† I have no idea if it works.  Skype?  Me?  Are you kidding?  But it’s one of those things your publisher thinks you should have, like having a flu jab every winter just in case, which I don’t either.  Have.  A flu jab.

†† Note that Credit Card Diabolus in Musica’s queue is still twenty minutes long today.  Have I mentioned that my other credit card answered the phone in ten seconds, after a negligible battering by a robot voice?  I have written Diabolus an email.  They haven’t answered.  Surprise.  I am warming up to write a letter to the charity Diabolus is fronting, or maybe it’s the other way around.  You want my .00000000002 pence worth every time I buy something?  THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR BANK.

††† Well, it’s the same person.  It’s the same negligible income.

 

Modern Life YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

 

I have told you about the weirdness of being (effectively) paid once a year.*  One of the tangential weirdnesses is that a lump sum year’s salary tends to make the lower level local managers at your bank sit up and get glinty about the eyes.  They may even call you in for a discussion.  We have a new branch manager at Debt, Deprivation and Piranhas Ltd here in New Arcadia and she got glinty on me.  I don’t know what I can have been thinking.  I let her make an appointment to talk to me about handling my money rather than just dividing it up into job lots and handing it over to the city council, the national tax floggers and flayers, a range of leaking utility companies, and the makers of gold-standard dog food, retaining a few broken scraps for books, voice lessons and maybe the odd rose bush.

Where I really went off the deep end was letting her talk me into changing my basic daily-use account over to one that offered .000000009% interest rather than only .0000000001%.  This might conceivably be worth a new pink harness for Pav at the end of the year.  Maybe.

I’ve once changed accounts before for similar reasons, but last time it was the background account where the money lived and was dispensed in curmudgeonly driblets to the account I could write cheques on—and the bank was closing down the old style accounts, so they were motivated to make sure everyone’s funds moved in an orderly manner.

This is not what happened this time.  The end of last week I discovered cheques bouncing all over the landscape like turbo-charged kangaroos, and my credit card companies were eagerly offering to attach my house(s) as collateral for paying off my dog food debt.  ARRRRRRGH.

I hate money.  I just want it to be there, you know?  I hate investments, I’ve never read the stock market report in my life, I have nil interest in shopping around for the best rates on car, house, critter and gizmo insurance—I’m not a complete fool, I do read up on this rubbish going in, but I’m not going to dork around with it every year and decide that I’m going to experiment with insuring Doohickey A with a Doohickey A specialist or whatever.  And the thing in this case is that the money is there, the bank has just turned the tap off without turning the other frelling tap on.  I even got a letter from the triple-blasted blithering bank saying, Do you know that there isn’t enough money in this account to pay x, y and z, which, by the way, are baying for your blood and we’ve given them your street address, a recent photo and the number plate of your car because we’re helpful that way?

ARRRRRRRRRRGH.

That was the end of last week, and I had a wedding.  Now the only reason I’m still at Debt, Deprivation and Piranhas** is because the people at the local branch actually make eye contact and do what you ask them to, even if  they may have the occasional over-eager manager.  So I went into our local office and moved some money back into the old account to buy me some time while I tried to convince all my creditors, especially the ones who were already coming after me with knuckledusters and morningstars, that all they had to do was change a few account numbers.

I WAS ON THE PHONE FOR OVER TWO HOURS THIS MORNING.  AND I’M NOT FINISHED.  I had one or two pretty straightforward exchanges—for example, as I have noticed before, the local city council seems unusually well furnished with people with brains and a good working knowledge of their jobs—and I totally lucked into the woman I talked to at my major utility company.  One or two of the others I think went through okay—I’ll know soon enough.  Ugggh.  Really the worst of it all is the Pounding Headache of Frustration and Fury and the Throbbing Stomachache of Loathing and Horror.  Money, and large bozo corporate entities, wind me up even when everything is more or less behaving itself.

I have two credit cards.  They hate me because I pay back to zero every month—which is the only way to do it when money gives you hives and your yearly income is somewhat less stable than a stooping peregrine—and so while I’m sure they’re all over anyone who screws up I always feel that they’re all over me with particular malice because I’m not making them any money.  One of them, I think, is now transferred, and has reluctantly started pulling the pins out of the wax doll.***

The other one . . . first you get the chirpy robot voice which wants to talk to you except it doesn’t pick up my accent, and none of its suggestions are what I want to talk to A HUMAN BEING about.†  When you finally fight your way through to stage two . . . we’re very sorry, but we are experiencing a very busy period, and all our customer representatives are taking time to ensure that every client receives the best possible assistance and . . . it’ll be at least TWENTY MINUTES before we get to you.  FEEL FREE to stay on the line WHILE WE SERENADE YOU WITH UNBELIEVABLY LOUD AND EVEN MORE UNBELIEVABLY AWFUL AURAL SWILL PRETENDING TO BE MUSIC.

I hung up.  I rang someone else.  I have my new bank account number frelling memorised.  I rang Credit Card Diabolus in Musica again.  I jumped through the same hoops with the same robot voice†† and . . . the queue was down to fifteen minutes.  I rang someone else.  I rattled off my new bank account number.  I rang Credit Card Diabolus for the third time.

The queue was back up to twenty minutes.  Oh, and in today’s post was a letter from them describing in drooling detail what they’re going to do to me when they catch me.

But I had to tear myself away from this fascinating saga of fiscal responsibility, I not only have a voice lesson on Monday afternoon, I had a moderately crucial stop to make on the way.  I had at least to hurtle and feed hellcritters.  I thought if I ate lunch I’d probably throw up.

I SPENT FIFTY MINUTES STUCK IN TRAFFIC WHEN THE M1302 FELL OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET AND ALL THOSE CARS HAD TO GO SOMEWHERE. 

* * *

* And that’s in a good year, because I’m a slow writer.  And yes, you hope for a few royalties, and maybe some sub rights, foreign sales or what have you, but the main chunk of change for someone like me is the advance for the new novel.  Which is why I wish I produced new novels a little faster.

** Aside from the major nuisance value, which would include that Peter is a fatalist about banks and wouldn’t come with me.

*** I admit I didn’t ask them what they’re going to fine me for this little show of incompetence, only part of it mine.  I can wait till next month’s bill comes.  The forfeit will be all mine.  Sigh.

† It doesn’t pick up JUST GIVE ME A HUMAN BEING either.

†† Which also fails to pick up INGEST HOT FAECAL MATTER AND EXPIRE, YOU SON^ OF A CRIPPLED HAMSTER

^ It’s a male robot voice.

Circum-training the American West: part 3, guest blog by abigailmm

 

I made my way to the dining car for breakfast Saturday as it opened at 6 am. There was just a glimpse of beautiful Mt. Shasta as it disappeared behind us. A couple of hours later, at Klamath Falls, Oregon, we picked up two volunteers from the Klamath Falls Museum who provided a running commentary to those in the lounge car of what we were seeing. This is a very nice collaboration between Amtrak and, usually but not in this case, the National Parks Service.

 

We headed up the Klamath Valley, across miles of the wetlands of the Upper Klamath Wildlife Refuge, with views off to the west of Mount Scott* and Mount Thielsen (not sure which this is). Then up into the Cascades, past some beautiful high lakes, and down through 26 tunnels and assorted roofed snow shelters.

 

approaching the east side of the Cascades

 

Snow was still on the ground, a wonder to a Texan in mid-May.

 

From Eugene we traversed the broad Willamette** Valley, the ‘Promised Land’ of the Oregon Trail settlers, till we arrived in Portland.

I had been worried about my connection to the east/west Empire Builder at Portland. Since Amtrak doesn’t own its own tracks, their passenger trains take a back seat to freights if there are any glitches in the schedule, and the connection was just an hour. However all was well. I sat among the merrymakers in Portland’s Union Station***  who were celebrating National Train Day with a band, a raffle, and various other goings-on. After a while, a red-cap ferried me out to my train, and we were off across the Columbia and up its Gorge. By sunset, we were up at the relatively flat land in eastern Washington, having traversed in half an afternoon what took the pioneers with their wagons arduous weeks.#

 

crossing the Columbia into Washington state

 

Heading up the Gorge. Until we picked up the Seattle half of the Empire Builder train, the lounge car was the front car; evidently we were pushed, not pulled. You can see the near shore out the front window.

 

I wonder if the island is Oregon or Washington?

 

basalt cliffs fall sheer to the water

 

Wind energy is harvested to add to the hydroelectricity from the dams.

 

We left the Columbia about dark and headed northeast across eastern Washington toward Spokane. Pulling in around midnight, we waited a couple hours to get hooked up with the Seattle half of our train. Then we went east across northern Idaho, which we crossed entirely in the wee hours. So I can’t count it among the 13 states I saw on the trip. By breakfast time we were in Montana; just after breakfast, as I was heading back to my coach seat to get my stuff, since I had decided to spend the morning in the lounge car, it got very dark. We had entered the 7 miles of the Flathead Tunnel, the second longest in the US. We seemed to be in the dark forever; I guess it was actually around eight minutes. Shortly after, we were in Whitefish, Montana, and then we headed up over the Rockies.

The satellite view of the East Portal of the tunnel (actually the north end, as that section of the route is n/s) caught a freight in the act of going in.

 

to be continued – 1200 miles to Minneapolis …

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

* on one rim of Crater Lake

** pronounced ‘wil-LAMM-et’

*** Most train stations seem to be called Union Station. I’m not sure of the history behind this.

# For an engaging YA account of this, I recommend Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s Moccasin Trail.