Robin McKinley's Blog, page 49

KES, 91

 

NINETY ONE

I was going to stop there, and then I thought about the rumors that would instantly begin, concerning my plans for all that floor space.  A Jackson-Pollock style atelier.  A roller-skating rink.  Orgies.  Lots and lots of space to spread out all four or five hundred pages of an unsatisfactory story draft.  Or maybe I was entering into partnership with my neighbors’ orc-breeding program.  I took a deep breath.  “I wanted somewhere I could have a dog.  The small sensible houses didn’t allow pets.”  I tried a smile myself.  My mouth seemed to have forgotten the system.  Maybe showing my teeth was good enough, although they were outclassed in this company in the large, square and white department.  “My dog was on the list for the future.  I wasn’t expecting to find her quite so soon.”

Lorraine giggled.  It was rather alarming.  Not as alarming as large black men wearing swords and speaking forsoothly, but still alarming.  “Isn’t life just like that,” she said.  “But whatever brought you to our little corner of the world?”

Maybe it was the giggle that unhinged me.  But my evil twin seized control and I heard myself saying:  “Oh, my great-great grandmother is from around here.  Or great-great-great.  My mother still has the family Bible that belonged to her.  Saralinda Cadwallader, Cold Valley, 1864.  Her father was killed in the Civil War, so her mother brought her and her six brothers”—six brothers?  MacFarquhar, get a grip—“north, to escape sad memories.  The brothers, according to family mythology, all grew up and moved away.  Saralinda stayed here.”

Mr Love-Me laughed.  He had a deep hearty boyish-boardroom laugh.  I disliked him more than ever.  “Hey, Lori, maybe you’re cousins.  Dad’s family settled here in the late 1800s, didn’t they?”

Lorraine giggled again.  “This is my nephew, Hamilton,” she said.  “He has such an imagination.”

I didn’t say anything, but in my mind I was dressing her in Brunhilde’s Valkyrie armour.  Kirsten Flagstad era.  Something about the way Lorraine wore her hair reminded me of a winged helmet.  And I was having a great idea.  She could be Gurgsmeel’s new apprentice.  They would make a formidable team.  Yes.  I almost groped in my pocket for something to make a note on, but the gesture of hand-to-pocket reminded me that I was here for a reason, and having purchased the reason I could go away again before I got myself in any more trouble.  If Mr Love-Me—Hamilton—would leave, taking his opinion of himself with him, maybe my evil twin would settle down.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  I wasn’t sorry.  “I’m only here for milk.”  And not the Spanish Inquisition.  But nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.  “I was just worrying about leaving Sid tied up outside.  She’s been homeless for so long and I only—er—adopted her yesterday.”

“Oh, bring her in with you, bring her in,” said Lorraine, reverting to bustling mode.  Maybe she didn’t want to be my cousin any more than I wanted to be hers.  And if I were her cousin apparently I had to be Mr Love-Me’s something or other too.  Ugh.  I was sure Saralinda’s descendants would have produced better.  “There aren’t many customers this late,” Lorraine went on, “and my regulars won’t mind.”

“I have to get going,” said Hamilton.  No doubt he did:  he had maidens to ravish and competitors to swindle.  “Nice to meet you, Kes,” he said, making rather a mess of lingering over a name that was neither Ashley nor Amber, but then I wasn’t a maiden and would resist ravishing with a force he would find painful.  He held out his hand for shaking.  I wished I had two dogs so I could have had leads in both hands.  I shook his hand and managed not to wipe it on my jeans when he let go. He strode off down the street like a man sure there was a film crew following him. Then I followed Lorraine into the cabinet of Dr Caligari.

The personality behind the front window décor was reflected inside the store as well.  The big glass-front refrigerator was at the back, which meant you had to penetrate past the epic display of rainbow acrylic dusters and frilly flowered aprons that would have given June Cleaver heartburn.  There were shelves of candy with names like Super Charged Choco Blast and Munchy More More Munchy Ha.  There were a number of exclamation points involved in the latter.  I averted my eyes.  I had never heard of the canned soup brand Mr Grooovy but if the name wasn’t enough the photo of a smiling Mr G looked way too much like Hamilton.  Maybe Hamilton was a model.  That could explain a lot.

Sid and I made it to the back mildly traumatised but intact.  The refrigerator seemed mostly to contain milk, orange juice, beer and butter.  How normal.  There was a freezer compartment with ice cream and pizza, and a chiller bin with a few tired, frightened-looking lettuces.

I bought my milk.  I said thank you.  We fled back to the street, Sid crowding at my heels.  She didn’t like the aprons either.  I took a deep breath.  We turned back toward the Friendly Campfire.

Wedding

 

We had to leave at ten-thirty.  That’s ten-thirty in the MORNING.  I have to have got up, mainlined caffeine, consumed a maintenance dose of protein*, hurtled two shifts of hellcritters, changed into frelling wedding-attending clothes** and staggered up to the top of the hill to Wolfgang.***

All of this may help to explain what follows.  What I haven’t told you, but the story doesn’t make a lot of sense without it, is that who was getting married is one of Peter’s daughters.†  So we’re effectively the front row because Peter is the bride’s dad and I’m married to Peter.

It’s been a perfect day in the weather department and we were all standing around enjoying the good-tempered†† sunlight and chattering away the way you do to people you think you’d probably like if you saw them more often than at family weddings, and being introduced to a lot more people you may start failing to get to know at future family weddings.  There were, however, notable absences:  specifically the groom’s parents, who were stuck in one of those mysterious traffic breakdowns where there don’t seem to be roadworks and there doesn’t seem to be an accident, but nothing is moving.  Peter’s daughter said, sadly but with great British sang-froid, And Honoria is supposed to do one of the readings.  I heard myself saying, Do you have a copy of it here?  At a pinch one of us could do it.  I’m sure we have, said Peter’s daughter, and we then parted to work the crowd from our different perspectives.

You see where this is going.  Minutes ticked past and Honoria and Jackson were still bottlenecked somewhere too far to walk.  Peter’s daughter’s fiancé emerged from an emergency summit, looked around, saw me and said, okay, we’re assuming my parents are not going to make it in time.  Robin, I think you volunteered—?

I guess I did.  And you know—it’s nice to have the opportunity to do something and I think it’s extra-nice of them to choose me—yes, I opened my big mouth, but the Dickinson clan is bung full of frelling performers, and if they’d merely asked for a show of hands of anyone willing to mug up on a last-minute reading they’d’ve been spoilt for choice.  But the baton—which is to say the slip of paper—was passed to me and it was . . . Shakespeare’s 116th sonnet, Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.†††  Regular readers will recall that I am not a Shakespeare fan—that’s NOT a Shakespeare fan—but there are exceptions.  This is one of them, probably because Peter used to recite it to me—including on that famous occasion going back to Blue Hill in the middle of the night after forty-seven hours on a plane when I said ‘I’ll drive—you keep me awake.’  You can get through rather a lot of poetry in an hour.  I kept re-requesting that one, as I recall.  When I saw it today I got all teary for a moment. . . .

And then settled down in a corner for intensive swotting-up.  It’s one thing to already know a poem from multiple readings or listenings-to.  It’s another thing entirely to have ten minutes to create a performance of it, and for someone’s wedding for pity’s sake, not that any of these people would have been unkind if I’d begun frothing at the mouth and chewing the furniture.

And.  Yeah.  I read it.  I even read it pretty well, I think.  And it was a lovely wedding.  Very romantic.  I wasn’t the only person who indulged in a moment or two of teariness.  And there was CHAMPAGNE at the reception.  Really the only blot was that poor Honoraria and Jackson didn’t get there in time to see their son marry his sweetheart.

* * *

* I do much better if I have protein for breakfast.  It’s especially important on days I know are going to be demanding.  Which explains why I ate a melon for breakfast.  An entire melon.  It was PERFECTLY ripe and the perfume was worse than a rose at a garden centre trying to make me buy her.  It was HEAVEN.  An entire melon is almost protein, isn’t it?^

^ I find it’s almost impossible to keep up with my Lust for Fruit at this time of year when so many of them are heaven.

** There was a fabulous dress shop opposite the ENO—English National Opera—called . . . Droopy & Browns.  I am not kidding.    http://www.frockery.co.uk/talk/frockery-focus/frockery-focus-on-droopy-browns

Indeed I’m pretty sure I’ve mourned their passing on these virtual pages before, probably on a similar occasion.  Over the decade where there were Dickinsons coming out of the frelling woodwork to get married I bought about six frocks there.  One or two of them are dazzlers, but the others are merely beautiful and beautifully made, with the droopy or swoopy old-fashioned thing referred to in the article.  I don’t get dressed to the teeth all that often and I pretty much have a suitable Droopy for any seriously frocky occasion.  I wore one of them today.

*** Peter, who has an unforgivable habit of being early, had walked up from the mews so at least I didn’t have to waste precious minutes fetching him.

† It’s all fearfully romantic but I think I daren’t tell you because I’m breaking my own self-imposed rules about other people’s privacy by telling you even this much.  Also, I was thrilled to see that the bride had been frog-marched to a nice dress shop and forced to buy a beautiful new dress to get married in.  I know there are people allergic to shopping but there are limits.

†† None of this blast-furnace stuff as recently.

††† http://allpoetry.com/poem/8449745-Sonnet_116_Let_me_not_to_the_marriage_of_true_minds…-by-William_Shakespeare

 

Book rec: MUDDLE AND WIN by John Dickinson

 

. . . Speaking of family.  I’ve blogged about Peter’s son’s CUP OF THE WORLD fantasy series, which are gorgeous and glorious and a tiny bit bleak.  And WE, which is SF rather than fantasy, got some very nice and well-deserved attention http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/13/we-john-dickinson*

Here’s something else entirely.  Muddle, as the back jacket tells you, is a devil.  Win is an angel.  ‘They’re both on a case.  The case is Sally Jones . . .’  And the subtitle is:  The Battle for Sally Jones.

Sally is a schoolgirl and too good to be true.  She has a twin sister, Billie, who is a pain in the . . . er.  Well, a typical schoolgirl moving into her teens with extreme prejudice.  The forces of evil perhaps aren’t too interested in Billie:  not enough of a challenge.  But Sally, now.  Sally’s LDC (Lifetime Deed Counter:  everyone has one) reads:  Lifetime Good Deeds:  3,971,567.  Lifetime Bad Deeds:  NIL.  They have to do something about Sally.

The fun is in the telling.  Here the forces of good have just noticed the arrival of Muddlespot.

‘“Alert!’ cried an angel, high on a crystal tower.  A thousand amber eyes opened.

(That was his watch mate, waking up.  Angels are not challenged in the eye department.  They can have as many as they need.  A watch angel needs quite a lot of them.) . . .

‘“ALERT!  ALERT!  ALERT!’ sang angel choirs in close polyphony.  Rainbow gates clanged open.  Steeds of fire trampled.  Saints shook their lances . . . ‘ALERT!  ALERT!  YAY, VERILY ALERT!’”

I’ve started muttering, Yay, verily alert when the hellterror is loose about the place.**

I don’t want to tell you about Sally and Billie and their mum and Greg, who is mum’s partner and I especially don’t want to tell you about Shades, their cat.  I don’t want to tell you about Muddlespot and Windleberry either—or about Ismael and Scattletail, who are assigned to Billie.  You should read about them.  But just one more clip from the background:

“Certain very-well-trained soldiers on Earth, when they have to land secretly in enemy territory, do what call a ‘HALO’ jump.  That’s ‘HALO’ as in High Altitude Low Opening.  You jump out of a plane that’s flying very high up, where it can’t be shot down.  You then fall and fall and fall and fall, and at the very last moment, when you are least likely to be spotted or picked up on someone’s radar, you open your parachute.  And you land safely.

That’s the idea.

Angels, when they are landing in dangerous territory, do what they call the ‘NO HALO’ jump.  That is, before you jump you switch your halo off.

It also helps if you are not accompanied by bright lights, the appearance of new stars, tongues of fire or claps of thunder.  All these things tend to give your position away. . . .”

And furthermore, the sequel is just out:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Attack-of-the-Cupids-ebook/dp/B00CQ1DM42/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375961862&sr=1-8&keywords=John+Dickinson

Yay verily.***

* * *

* Although why they’re calling it 8-12 I have no idea.  I’d have called it adult that teenagers will read—like DEERSKIN, if you like, although it doesn’t have DEERSKIN’s Dangerously Controversial Material.  But an eight year old who can cope with the language and the story still isn’t really going to get it:  they’re just not old enough yet.  But if you’re fifteen or so you’ll have become a bit more consciously aware of the mixture of good and ratbag that most human beings are.^

^ Which is also what MUDDLE AND WIN is about, on an entirely different level.  And a clever eight-year-old would probably cope.  There’s some good scurrilous humour.  I really liked the dove—er—artillery.

** I’ve just tweeted our miracle.  The hellterror is ASLEEP IN HER CRATE WITH THE DOOR OPEN.  I thought we were never going to reach this stage.  Her birthday gift to me, possibly.  I’m afraid to move however, and wake her up, and I need to change out of my going-to-restaurant clothes and wrap my token wedding present.

*** John is also carrying on the family tradition^ of being a Kipling reader, and wrote this recently:  http://steelthistles.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/magical-classics-puck-of-pooks-hill-by.html

And in case you’re reading hastily, don’t miss Langrish’s review of MUDDLE AND WIN, the link to which is at the very bottom of the page:  http://steelthistles.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/muddle-and-win-battle-for-sally-jones.html

^Peter and I Bonded over being Kipling readers.  I know, less surprising in a bloke born ten years before Kipling died than in a woman who grew up kicking people (mostly metaphorically) in the teeth about women’s rights and women’s worth.  I grant you almost every fault you might want to find in Kipling—and as John acknowledges in this essay there are rather a lot of them—but he could so tell a story.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TSORNIN TCHARMED LIFE

 

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear TsorninTcharmedLife, Happy Birthday to you.

 

Look at that evil little eye.

Yep.  That’s her registered name.  Southdowner was marked by BLUE SWORD at an impressionable age and when she grew up to breed and raise award-winning mini bull terriers she . . . lost her mind when she had to come up with a kennel name.  I’m just grateful that she did grow up to breed mini bull terriers rather than tall splendid war horses that go without bridles, know about swords, and leap over eight-foot gates on request.   I wouldn’t be able to afford or house a tall splendid war horse and would therefore pine.  Olivia is also a big Diana Wynne Jones fan so, since the McKinley aspect was already covered, by the time the puppies were needing registry names they were officially a DWJ litter.  I was along for the ride (so to speak) by then and of course I had to have Charmed Life.  I’m not sure who put the T in there.

She’s either checking her birthday or reading up on guide dogs. I don’t think she’s going to apply for a scholarship to guide dog school.

 

Doing what she does best. I give that kibble two seconds to live.

 

Happy Birthday from Uncle Chaos. Uncle Darkness is hiding in the . . . darkness.

 

Well, come on then! Notice fabulous pink harness.

I never quite decked out any of the whippets in pink.  Hazel, who weighed nineteen pounds, all of it leg, and who was so pretty it hurt, just about knocked my eyes out once wearing a rope of cheap plastic pearls wrapped around her long elegant neck.  A little blunt square bull terrier girl is made for pink.  The thing that gobsmacks me however is the number of people who still say he when they stop to talk to us.  What?

 

Whatever it is we’re getting there at the gallop.

One of the several things that went wrong today is that I was going to get the hellpack up to Third House for a riot around the garden.  And then our guests arrived early.  Oops.  Sooooo we’re having a little on-lead canter here, just the two of us, so I’ve still got a hand free for the camera.  Free-ish.

 

She’s a big reader you’ll note. Here she is reading ’10 mph please’.

I’m keeping her away from Jack London however.  And Clifford Simak.

It’s in there. IT’S IN THERE. I KNOW it’s in there.

We are no longer a puppy.  We are a young dog.  And we know these things.

Okay, so it’s moved. It’s along here somewhere. Don’t just stand there, help me look.

 

 

She not only reads fluently, she has a deep aesthetic appreciation of garden flowers. Cough. Cough.

 

PS:  The reason we have guests arriving is a family wedding on Friday.  I’m not sure what I’m going to be doing for blog posts the next couple of days but . . .

 

Stedman Triples

 

It was Fustian’s extra practise for the slow and the stupid tonight.  You can see how jazzed I was to go.  I was going because I need the frelling time on a frelling rope, and the Fustian band is extremely good.*  But I’d had Computer Angel Raphael here for hours** and the Don’t Even Think About It Overlord Alarm System annual maintenance bloke*** here as well and all I wanted to do was stay home and wrestle with that wretched chapter.†  Also Pav was a trifle challenging because of all these fascinating strangers trooping through†† and one way or another I was TIRED.  It’s also been a beautiful day and I would have liked to spend a little more of it in the garden than it took to water the prima donnas and the large things in small pots as referred to yesterday.

But I went, feeling put upon, someone is holding a gun to my head and FORCING me to waste a good gardening evening ringing bells, right?  And the first thing that happened was I made rather a mess of ringing tenor to Grandsire Triples WHICH OUGHT TO BE EASY, tenor-behind is one of the early skills . . . except I never learnt it and don’t have it.  Also it’s a small ringing chamber, there were a dozen people in it and it’s summer.  By the end of the second touch we were all gasping.  Fustian’s Scary Man was there—every tower has at least one—and he doesn’t usually come to the Tuesdays, I think they’re too hard on his nerves.  And my brain was a wet dishrag:  we haven’t had any more rain, but the weather is the kind that if you run a knife through the air there will be heavy squishy thuds where air-chunks have just landed, even if you can’t see them.  When Darvell had asked me what I wanted to ring tonight, might as well take advantage of there being enough good ringers to drag me through an eight-bell method so I asked for Stedman Triples because I am a fool.  Then he told me to stand behind and watch Jabari while they rang a really complicated touch of Stedman so I could Learn Something.  I got lost about six blows in and . . . and . . . by the time he told me (beaming) that it was my turn I had no morale left.

But because Fate was having one of her silly-frellers evenings . . . I rang it probably the best I ever have.  No, definitely the best I ever have, because we were ringing proper touches, and I haven’t been ringing any touches††† for very long.  It’s a lot easier to ring with a band that good around you—and I had a minder—and those are nice cooperative bells.  AND I will undoubtedly screw it up the next time I ring it.  Even so.  It was also balm to the wounded ego after being a nincompoop at my voice lesson yesterday. . . .

* * *

* I’m on their email list so I’ll know if there are any special plans for Stupid Tuesday, including that it’s been cancelled, which happened to me once, which is when they put me on the mailing list.  But this means I also receive the thoughtful, detailed emails about their real practise . . . the one for their GOOD ringers . . . which I read with rapt, horrified fascination.

** I am buying a new printer.  I don’t want to buy a new printer, I can’t really afford a new printer since I need one that punches professional weight and if I’m going to do it at all I WANT WIRELESS.  But I am buying a new printer.  Meanwhile . . . I managed to DEMONSTRATE a Word fault that Raphael has never seen or heard of, which is almost worth it because the next time I catch him giving me the she’s-old-clueless-and-writes-FANTASY-for-a-living look I can say REMEMBER THE RANDOM ITALICS.  Word Nineteen or Forty Seven or whatever it is, the one after Vista, italicises things sometimes.  La la la la la la.  And, having done so, refuses to stop.  If you highlight and click the ital button . . . nothing happens.  The text jerks, but it stays italic.  Sometimes the ital goes away again.  If it feels like it.  La la la la la la revisited.

*** Yes.  The same triple-blasted chapter.  Gah arrrgh misery despair prostration and weeping, etc.

† I have mentioned before that I don’t want to be the only house that doesn’t have an alarm, even if I’m clearly the poor relation and unless you want to steal dahlias^ or dog food you’d be better off applying yourself to some other house.

^ One of the houses on the main street around the corner from me has gorgeous big stone planters by their front door which this summer are stuffed with frilly pink and white begonias.  Anyone who grows begonias will know their strange tendency toward suicidal flowers.  It’s worth keeping an eye on the area around your begonias for the fallen, because most of them are still in the flush of early youth and will float happily in a bowl of water indoors for days.  I had been gritting my teeth at the WASTAGE of my neighbours’ pink and white begonias . . . and finally began picking them up myself.  I do this with my own begonias and find myself gravitating toward buying the ones that are going to have suitable flowers.  Camellias are a bit liable to this behaviour as well, but begonias are far more profligate.  But these belonging to my neighbours are particularly splendid.  I should ask them what they are and buy some of my own.

†† Not naming her Mayhem, may I just say, hasn’t worked.  FRELLING FRELLING YOU LITTLE RATBAGGERY^.  As long as I’m letting her keep her reproductive bits she’s going to have to cope with being crated some of the time and since bull terriers ARE NOT PARTICULARLY CHILLED AND LAID BACK I also need a way to keep her from making the hellhounds crazy too.  Even Uncle Chaos doesn’t really want all the fur on his face lovingly nibbled off.  But she’s out as much as I can manage at the cottage^^, where it’s a little easier to maintain order.  The obvious drawback to this excellent plan is that she now thinks she OUGHT TO BE OUT and can stage some spectacular meltdowns when the crate door remains shut . . . and good luck to you if you have to lock her up WHEN SHE DOESN’T WANT TO BE.  The earth quakes on its axis and the burglar who was considering having a try for some dog food runs away.  I appreciate that from a hellterror eye view the hellhounds are out, why isn’t SHE?  I’m also just not going to not let her out to say hello to anyone who isn’t positively dog-phobic, although this tends to lead to bruises—mine—from a healthy desire to protect both my visitors and the reputation of bull terriers.  No, no—oof—she’s really very—OW—sweet.  Training?  Sure.  She will now sit while I take her harness off and scatter food in her crate—she sits a little rigidly and with great focus but that’s fine—WAITING FOR THE RELEASE WORD.  But there are, you know, limits.  Visitors are clearly beyond them.

^ This is possibly the updated equivalent of the old epithet ‘baggage’, as in you little (*&^%$£!!! baggage.

^^ Although this is not particularly conducive to the finishing of chapters.

††† Touches are when your conductor shouts out BOB or SINGLE and everybody’s line through the pattern changes, which means the bells’ routes gets jumbled up more

 

Raining and singing

 

The weather gods—and the meteorologists—have been dorking us around all weekend.  We’re going to have major rain.  No we’re not.  We’re going to have dahlia-crushing cloudbursts with thunder*, lighting and hail, for any dahlias still standing against the rain.  No we’re not.  We’re going to have some rain.  No we’re not.  It’s going to be locally heavy but only in Skint.  No, wait, it might happen here too.  No, Doorstep.  No, Wiltingshire.  No, Bulgaria.  FRELLING FRELL YOU GUYS.  I’ve been giving my potted plants just enough water (I hope) to keep them going, saying, it’s going to rain, it’s going to rain, it’s GOING TO RAIN.  YESSSSS.**  So today the local forecast said, nope, forget it, we missed it, we’re not having any.  Get your watering cans out.  Sorry.  My little kitchen window sill forecaster is still saying RAAAAAAAAIN . . . but then Pav barks at a lot of invisible burglars too.

Mavis had just arrived to take the first shift (hellhounds) out while I scrabbled my music together to go off to Nadia and . . . the heavens opened.***  YAAAAAAAAAAAH.  Wolfgang slid down the little hill to the main road on the crest of a wave.  The little piece of four-lane bypass that I swoop onto and rapidly off of again was flooded.  Even at 40 mph† and peering through the smudge your overheating wipers are making on the windscreen when your wheels hit deep water your elderly mild-mannered car bucks in a way you didn’t think he had in him.  But I think the dangblatted rain followed me to Sorghumlea—I had to put my umbrella up to make the three-foot dash from Wolfgang to Nadia’s front door—because while my pots certainly got watered I was expecting to need a safety rope tied to Wolfgang’s axle to let me brave the foaming torrent from his parking space to the cottage’s front door and all there was were some dripping trees and sluicing gutters.  So we didn’t have anything like enough rain but it may allow people foolish enough to have lawns have green lawns again for a change.  And I can probably not water anything but the prima donnas and the large things in small pots tomorrow.

Meanwhile I am maybe undergoing a developmental glitch with the frelling singing.††  Last week I sang Watching the Wheat††† for Nadia not too badly, but I was only just learning it so I didn’t have a lot to lose.  And when I went on to Linden Lea, which I should know pretty well by now, my voice closed down, and I reverted to sounding like a strangled rabbit.  Arrrrrgh.  Even Nadia couldn’t winkle me out of it, but it was also at the end of the lesson and my voice was tired.  Or at least that’s the face-saving excuse Nadia suggested.  Today . . . today she got me making quite a good noise in warm up‡, we turned to Watching the Wheat . . . and I closed down immediately.  SCREEEEEEEEEEECH.  ARRRRRRRGH.  What is the DEAL?  Now singing an actual song is harder than just doing exercises, there’s more to remember to do—you know, lyrics and stuff—and the cat-herding element gets a lot worse.  Even so.  This was a total (involuntary) slamming on of metaphorical brakes AND IT IS TOO FRUSTRATING.  We struggled for a while with Nadia having me do Nadia-stuff like singing while I walk around, singing while I walk backwards and singing leaning against the door, and then it was the end of the lesson again and my voice was tired again not LEAST because of all the struggling.  And I said to her, why am I doing this?  Why am I shutting myself down?  What is going on?  And she said, hmmm, a whiff of success possibly?

Yes.  [INSERT BAD LANGUAGE HERE.]  Very likely.  Where is it written in our cultural DNA that we’re not allowed to succeed?—okay, not everyone’s, but it’s sure rife in certain strata of society including Women of a Certain Age who grew up fighting for equal rights/respect/acknowledgement/space and are equally in a posture of ALTHOUGH I KNOW I DON’T DESERVE IT because we remember being second-class citizens and not being absolutely sure that this wasn’t as it should be.  MAJOR FRELLING ARRRRRRGH.  It’s not like I’m about to start channelling Beverly Sills.  We’re talking tiny little success here.  But somewhere in what passes for my brain is a superego that wants to grow up to be Cthulhu or Godzilla and it says, You’re earning your living telling stories, you greedy cow, you don’t think you get to sing too, do you?‡

I’m going to be sixty-one in November.  This is not the kind of arrested development that keeps you young. . . .

* * *

* I’d call this an urban myth except Nadia was there.  In a theology class.  Where the professor/teacher/don/whatever was saying, the word of God is holy, scripture is holy.  But the actual physical Bible is just cardboard and paper and ink.  He shook it at them and then dropped it on the floor.  AND THERE WAS THE MOST ALMIGHTY CRASH OF THUNDER.  Change of lesson plan, dude.

** I am SOOOO TIRED of watering.

*** I got home again to a kitchen redolent of Wet Hellcritter and a forest of sopping towels draped on anything that would hold them.  I think I have at least one wall calendar and one knitting magazine permanently curly from damp.

† The speed limit being 70

†† The person standing in front of me at St Margaret’s last night would probably agree.  I have COMPLAINED here before about the so-called music we sing, and aside from the fact that most of it is unmitigated tosh it’s also unmitigated tosh that is surprisingly hard to sing.  A lot of it doesn’t seem to engage with my voice somehow.  Nadia says that this is probably because it was written for people who only want to make a joyful noise and don’t, you know, sing:  it’s to let them have a melody that doesn’t force them out of their ordinary-speaking-voice comfort zone.  Ah.  Okay.  I would accept simple and boring, I think—not everyone is or wants to be, doodah doodah, musical—but the frelling TOSH level is cranky-making.  So I’m not in my best frame of mind for wrestling with this stuff AND I find it hard to sing.  The result is that my voice flares like a badly tuned radio:  I’ll be mumbling along with a line that I can’t make a noise on either an octave up or an octave down and then suddenly I hit a note or a phrase I can sing and for a second or two they can hear me in Doorstep.  I don’t quite see the person in front of me’s hair parting from the blast . . . but close.  Nadia visibly tries not to laugh when I tell her things like this.  It gets easier, she says.

††† I was looking for a YouTube of Watching the Wheat for you because I didn’t know it till I started to learn it and you might not either.  It’s apparently dead common and every Welsh person emerges from the womb singing it.  Oh.  I’m so ignorant.  However they mostly sing it in Welsh.  So I was looking for an English version and there mostly aren’t any.  And then . . . ::Robin’s head explodes::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp2pazjN6wo

Gleep gleep gleep gleep gleep.  It’s the right tune but these are not, just by the way, the English words I sing . . . on the whole I think this is a GOOD THING.

‡ I don’t know if this is just what it sounds like from the inside and I’m afraid to ask, but there’s a woodwind quality to my voice when I’m not frelling closing it down to a squeal.

‡‡ And just forget drawing.  Your doodles are pathetic.

Circum-training the American West: part 2

 

Though I have always considered myself virtually a native Texan, with all my grandparents here, I was born in Los Angeles. After WWII, my parents and a group of their friends bought a chunk of property on Mount Washington north of downtown, and created their own subdivision.*  My architect parents built their tiny gem of a modern house on the steep hillside, with a splendid view south over the city, and east to the Southwest Museum of the American Indian on the next hill over.

4567 Starling Way on Mount Washington in Los Angeles, Mount Miller Architects – then and now

They lived there only five or six years before moving back to north Texas to be near my mother’s elderly parents. But the “little house on Starling Way” was a major part of the family stories as I grew up. Last year I did some research with Google Earth Street View and the Internet, and it’s still standing! So I had to visit. With the invaluable aid of a former middle school student of mine who lives in LA, I did so.**  The current owner was very gracious, and has fixed up the house beautifully.

Monday morning I entrained on the Coast Starlight at LA Union Station. We went right up the coast from Santa Barbara to Salinas, then angled inland to Oakland.

unexpected rocky canyons near Simi Valley

 

some places, the tracks seem almost IN the ocean

 

For many miles, there is a huge ranch along the coast, and then some military installations, so there is no road access to the coast. The beach itself is all public land. But to get to a lot of it, you either sail in, or hike a long way in the sand.

deserted beaches, though someone sometime planted palm trees

 

wonderful shapes of central coastal California hills

 

Scenery from a train is often frustrating to a photographer. Here are these wonderful scenes, and they keep going by with no chance to stop and compose. And probably just as you click an obliterating tree goes by in the foreground, or you find out later you have a tilted horizon. And you are stuck with window reflections. But then the next scene goes by, and you snap again.***

 

Vinyards, a good ways south of the Napa Valley

 

Lucy, alert, and then in a more normal pose for when her folks are gone to work

I stayed with my cousin and his wife in Oakland for four days. Mostly I rested, and did laundry, and made the acquaintance of their elderly dog, Lucy. And I just luxuriated in the view of their live oaks in the backyard ravine, with the branches at the level of the sunny deck. I descended the flight of steps from the deck, and considered going down the steep path to the bottom, but common sense prevailed.

Everything blooms all the time in Oakland too. Plus, you can have a “baby” redwood tree#  in your back yard, much taller than the house even though rooted 30 feet below in the ravine. And a tree full of ripe oranges in the front yard.

The gorgeous pink cups arising from the roses by the street are Calandrinia grandiflora, in the purslane family. I brought a cutting home, but it hasn’t done anything yet.

 

I did take BART into San Francisco one day and went to the shops at Japan Town, but found them sadly declined in interest since I was there twenty years ago.

a “shopper” rests on Geary Street in San Francisco. I felt about that tired.

 

Amtrak has no north/south routes between the Mississippi and the Pacific. Since I didn’t want to simply retrace my steps, and since my pass let me  choose any route as long as I got back in 15  days, I e-mailed another cousin in Chicago and asked if I could visit overnight, the northern Empire Builder route getting in at 3 pm and the Texas Eagle inconveniently departing an hour earlier. Kieren was enthusiastic, so I left Oakland Friday night heading north.

The big loop route I ended up taking (dotted in blue)

 

to be continued — going home the long way . . .

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

* My father spent the last couple years of the war on the west coast, in Civilian Public Service camps in Santa Barbara, CA, and Waldport, OR. The neighborhood on Mt. Washington was mostly men from Waldport and their families.

** My former student is now 40 instead of 12, which is really scary

*** I really did edit stringently; I took about 900 photos!

# The feathery tall tree on the left behind the house is the redwood; the other is a Douglas fir

 

KES, 90

 

NINETY

We found Lorraine’s without any trouble at all.  This was disconcerting.  Maybe I lived in the neighborhood or something.  Maybe I had a homing instinct for purple acrylic yarn.  The streetlights had come on, but at this end of the street Lorraine’s was the only shopfront with light coming out through the window.  We stopped to look in.  There was a big square cake on center display. The caramel-and-white checkerboard frosting looked lacquered and a small vase on a spike through its middle bloomed with plastic daisies.  There was a broom with a tiger-striped handle propped next to a leopard dustpan and a peacock-feather duster of dubious provenance.  There were paper cupcake cases in a variety of stripes, stars and polka dots full of what might be jelly beans on a cake stand the improbable gilt of whose edges appeared to have been slapped on by a chimpanzee with delirium tremens and whose carrying handle looked like the Seattle space needle.  There was a cluster of melamine mugs festooned with smiling bumblebees and robins in aprons.  At this point either my eyes or my brain started begging for mercy.  I blinked.  I liked the broom.  Did I need a broom?  Probably.

I hesitated at the door, not liking to leave my four-legged security blanket behind even for five minutes to buy milk.  Besides, what if the cake stand broke out and started impaling innocent passers-by and their dogs?  I didn’t trust that cake stand at all.

Someone came out the door—jingle jangle said the old-fashioned bell—automatically holding it open for me and then stopping dead as their—his—eyes fell on Sid.  “Hey—isn’t that the Phantom?”

What?  Did they hold a press conference?  Were we on the news?   Was someone about to offer me a million dollars for exclusive rights to our story?  Okay, I could live with that.

“I heard—” He paused, and his eyes wandered slowly up from Sid, lingered on the black leather jacket, arrived at my face.  He smiled.  He had too many teeth and they were all very white.  He knew he was charming.  I didn’t like him.

“I heard that someone from out of town had caught him,” he said.  “Her.”

“Her,” I said in what I hoped was a cool and dignified manner and was probably just hostile.

“Her,” he repeated.  He bent down—he was tall—to pat her.  She bore with this but I could feel her butt against my leg and she wasn’t wagging her tail.  He straightened up again and reopened Lorraine’s door.  “Lori—you’ve got new customers.  The Phantom.  And —”  He raised his eyebrows at me and tried the smile again.

“Kes,” I said unwillingly.

The eyebrows went up higher.  “And Kes,” he said, making it clear in the way he lengthened that one reasonably harmless syllable that it should have been Ashley or Amber.

There was a bustling, clacking noise, and a woman, presumably Lorraine, appeared in the doorway.  She was short and square, and the flowers on her tunic would have looked good on a tray or a teapot in her shop window.  The clacking noise was from the red patent-leather mules on her feet.  Wow.  “Welcome to New Iceland,” she said, bustling forward.

She’d been backlit as she stood in the doorway.  I was already tired of my local celebrity and I was probably just remembering what Serena had said about her:  I wasn’t really burning up from the strength of her stare.  As she came into the light from her own window and the streetlight overhead and I could see her face clearly however I slightly revised this theory. And I was sure there was a faint smell of singed leather.   I knew I didn’t want her for an enemy.  I was pretty sure I didn’t want her for a friend either.  I braced myself.  What was she going to want to know?  Height, weight, marital status, prior convictions, what I thought of her window display?

“We are all so glad the Phantom finally has a home,” she said.  She didn’t look like an animal lover.  Maybe she was just an equal-opportunity yenta.  “You’re moving to this area, I believe?  So you aren’t going to take him—her?—away from us?”

“Her,” I said again.  “Yes.  I’ve rented a house in Cold Valley.”

“Oh, Rose Manor!” said Lorraine, smiling.  Her teeth were almost as big and white as Mr Love-me’s.  Maybe they were related.  “Yes, Maureen told me Sally had just rented it.”

Maureen?  I wasn’t going to ask.

“You must be a large family?” she went on, her eyes glittering in a way that told me she already knew I had come to town alone in a small van (doubtless she was aware that it was adorned with large screaming skulls).  Maybe she was counting the six rose-bushes.  Because of course she also knew about the rose-bushes.  With Sid and me that made eight.

“No,” I said calmly.  “Just me.”

 

A RATFRELLERFESTERINGBAG DAY

 

(Feh.  Yes.  Blog post tonight.  And here I had an excuse to skive off.)

. . . It started last night of course.  All the worst days start the night before.  It gives days with attitude problems a better run at being festering ratbags.

I’d had a fit of the sillies and bought half a dozen songs from an on-line sheet music shop who sells you the downloads and then you have to print the suckers out.  Hey, the shop was having a sale.  You don’t expect me to resist a SALE, do you?*  Have I mentioned lately that I HATE MY PRINTER?  I hate my printer.  Hate.  Hate.  The hellpack may have to live on dog food to let me squeeze out enough money to BUY A NEW PRINTER.**

I managed to get two of five or six pieces printed out.  By which time I was hoarse from screaming and all three critters were in various carpet-like postures, hoping to escape attention from Kali in her Destroyer phase.  And the printer was now permanently stuck in one of two responses:  PAPER JAM or PAPER TRAY EMPTY.  Print something?  Are you kidding?  It was totally betrayed and violated by the fact that I’d got any pages out of it at all.  PAPER JAM, it says, aggrievedly.  And when it gets bored with that, and I’ve opened and slammed shut ALL of its doors and turned it off and back on again two or three times, it declares PAPER TRAY EMPTY for a while.

Shaking with frustrated rage***  I went into the bathroom for a nice calming bath.  And discovered a wasp trying to fight its way through the screen.†  WTF, you moron?  It’s a BATHROOM.  I don’t use scented bath oil and my peppermint toothpaste is unsweetened.  I turned the light out for a minute . . . went back in and discovered the freller ON THE INSIDE.

I killed it.  I don’t like killing things, but I’m a little hysterical about aggressive things that bite.  And I was just getting into my nice calming bath WHEN I DISCOVERED THERE WERE THREE MORE WASPS ALREADY IN THE BATHROOM.  If the first one had been a honeybee†† I’d’ve at least tried to trap her in a glass and take her outdoors.  But FOUR?  Waaaaaah.  Well, I nailed two of ’em and couldn’t find the third, so I spent the night—what was left of the night—(a) with the bathroom window closed, which was horrible because it was a hot night and that bathroom window is the centrepiece of my cross ventilation system (b) not sleeping, of course, because I was lying there rigidly listening for buzzing noises, because aside from the missing third/fourth, if there were four there might be more and (c) when I got up for a pee slamming painfully into the closed bathroom door.  And (d) sweltering.

I am not awake today.  And there were handbells this afternoon.

There was supposed to be Oisin this afternoon too, although after the night I’d just had I might have bottled out of singing again, but I had to cancel to stay in for the Exterminator Man.  Who came, confirmed that my unwelcome guests are wasps not honeybees, THAT THEY’RE FRELLING RAMPANT IN MY GARDEN . . . and that there’s NOTHING HE CAN DO ABOUT THEM BECAUSE THE NEST IS SOMEWHERE ELSE.

So I have the joyous prospect before me of either boiling to death with all my windows shut . . . or knocking on a series disturbingly upwardly mobile doors—have I mentioned lately that I live in the high-rent district, and single-handedly lower the tone by relentless application of All Stars and an American accent and, lately, bull terrier puppy—and saying pardon me, have you noticed any wasps about the place?

Oh, and I’ve forgotten to tell you that my landline has died.  DIED.  Died.  No phone.  I don’t like phones but it is a little inconvenient. . . . And people get testy when you won’t give them your mobile number just because your landline isn’t working.

I decided that what I really needed was some monks.  So when my handbellers left, I am happy to add, unstung, I told the hellpack to Go.  Lie.  Down, I would be back later.

Well, I was back a lot sooner than planned.  They’d had night prayer unscheduledly early and the chapel was already locked.

A truly festering ratfrellerbag of a day.

* * *

* Also sheet music is cheaper than yarn.^  Awful lot of frelling yarn shops having summer sales too.  They figure hey, it’s August, September is coming . . . WINTER.  MUST HAVE YARN.

^ I could of course start collecting complete scores . . . which would put me back in the silk/merino/hand-dyed category again . . . but I’m not going to.  I have my complete SWEENEY TODD.  That’s enough.  Probably.  For now.+

+  Yarn.  Must have yarn.#

# Would also quite like a little more Olivier Messiaen.  I can’t read it, but just staring at the page makes me feel a little like how I imagine mainlining heroin might feel.  Whoooooosh.  Hey, another planet.  And Messiaen scores are definitely in the silk/cashmere/hand-dyed in small lots by virgin priestesses at the new moon price category.

** Since the angels tell me that getting the current purulent garbage heap rehabilitated would cost more than buying a new one.  PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE MY AUNT FANNY.  THE PIECE OF ROTTEN OFFAL ARRIVED NEEDING TO BE REPLACED.^

^ Some day . . . pleeeeeeeeease . . . some day may I have a printer I don’t hate?

*** Throwing it out the window would result in picking little stupid plastic pieces out of my garden for the next century.  Aside from the fact that my handkerchief of earth is so densely planted there’s nowhere for the abomination to land without crushing something innocent and friendly . . . no, Souvenir, speaking of guilty and hostile, is on the far wall.  I wouldn’t be able to heave the unholy object that distance.

† And then there are the Window Screen Wars.  England doesn’t believe in air con.  It doesn’t believe in screens for your windows either.  ARRRRRRRGH.  I can see some justification for a lack of air con.  I CAN SEE NO JUSTIFICATION WHATSOEVER FOR A LACK OF WINDOW SCREENS.  And the cut-to-size stuff costs £1,762,444 per square metre, and the square metre isn’t square, it’s in some kind of funny rhomboid shape specially designed for as much wastage as possible per window.  I think it’s the same company that makes printers.  Furthermore the cut-to-size stuff is stuck in place by Velcro strips and it’s a whole lot better than nothing but it’s a bit like the locks on your doors:  a really determined burglar/wasp will get in anyway.  What you want to try to do is not be that attractive.  IT’S A BATHROOM.  WHY DO YOU WANT TO GET INTO MY BATHROOM?

†† The horrible truth is that I cannot reliably tell one buzzy stinging thing from another.  I can totally do bumblebees, who are slow and furry, but those nippy little yellow and black things, not so much.  I know that wasps are the yellowest and blackest, and the nippiest, but unless I’ve got a wasp to hand to compare a honeybee with, the smaller, more slender honeybees look a little too wasp-like for my comfort.  Anything that has big yellow pollen panniers is also fine but they don’t always.  And you can kind of assume that something that is trying to get into MY BATHROOM is confused and therefore unpredictable and possibly cranky.

Outage today

Due to a massive network outage affecting multiple Web hosting companies, the blog and forum were down for the better part of the day.  Sites are back up but not sure how stable things are.

There may or may not be a blog post tonight.  — Blogmom