Robin McKinley's Blog, page 50

Book rec: Silence by Michelle Sagara

 

This began several weeks ago, when I was musing on turning the hellterror into a superheroine, but (as I said on the blog) Supereater Dog! didn’t seem to me to have the necessary resonance.  One of my regular Twitter correspondents suggested the Devourer*, but added that there was already a character in Michelle Sagara’s Elantra series with that name.**

I’ve heard Sagara’s name more than once and positively, but I’ve heard a lot of people’s names—more than once and positively—and I’m a slow reader who reads over way too wide a range to have any grasp of any area of it.  But I had a look on line for Elantra and discovered that the first three of the series exist as Kindle bundle—which is apparently your only option.  So I bought, downloaded and started reading.***

Meanwhile however my insomnia, even for me, is way out of control.  Drastic measures are called for.  So I decided to try the no-computer-screens-before-bed rule that is getting a lot of public air time lately—especially on the internet.  Ha ha.  Also just in time for me to stop reading the iPad in the bath, having only just bought this waterproof iPad sleeve.  Frell.

But a friend†, hearing that I was reading Elantra for the first time, said that she’d just read SILENCE and liked it enormously, and thought I would too.  And because those microchips that float around in your bloodstream and tell global corporations all your secrets are real and not just in William Gibson novels, the next time I signed on to the Book Depository it wanted to sell me SILENCE at a discount.  Who am I to scorn a telepathic bookseller?

I liked SILENCE a lot.  Even if being nice sleep-friendly paperback hard copy isn’t as friendly as all that when you have to stay awake to keep turning pages.  I liked the basic concept a lot.  I liked the way she took several of the standard modern this-world YA fantasy tropes and . . . not stood them on their heads, exactly, but taught them to do handstands.  And at the risk of being slightly spoilery . . . what would you do if you found out you were special, that you had special powers . . . except they were the wrong powers?  The bad kind, the kind that make the guys in white hats come after you?  What if, thank you very much, you had a life, and a circle of friends—possibly a somewhat surprising circle of friends—and you are who you are, even if you are also that supposedly clueless and malleable thing, a teenager, and maybe the special powers are going to have to adapt to you rather than the other way around—?

There’s lovely humor (“When Emma was stressed, she often tidied . . . She busied herself putting away the dishes whose second home was the drying rack on the counter.  She had homework, but . . . like procrastinators everywhere, she knew that tidying still counted as work, so she could both fail to do homework and feel that she’d accomplished something”) an adorable Rottweiler, some wonderfully grabby and vivid stuff about life as or with an autistic, about being a parent, about the wealthy golden girl who us nerdy bookish types are all ready to love to hate (“Amy also never suffered from false modesty.  In Amy’s case, any modesty was going to be false”) and . . . well, read it, okay?  I think you’ll like it.††

* * *

* which just by the way I love

** The multiverse can hold more than one, right?

*** My informant tells me that the Devourer doesn’t appear till book six.  It’s going to be a while. . . .

† One of these horrible people who is a fast reader and reads everything, and apparently knows the entire fantasy genre rather better and with less swearing and bleeding than I know my own back garden, and a lot of SF as well . . . and she has a job and a life.  Some people.

†† And I’ll let you know about Elantra as soon as I catch up on my sleep.

Audiobooks, continued

 

 

Last night’s frelling chapter?  It got LONGER.  Not that this is unfamiliar behaviour from something I’m trying to write* BUT EVEN SO.  So no, I haven’t got to the end of it.  So today’s blog is Short Wednesday in a Week of Shorts.**

Now about audiobooks.  You need to remember that I have a bad attitude . . . toward almost everything.  I have a powerful native gift for cranky anyway but it’s also a kind of self-protection.  After you’ve rendered yourself a gibbering . . . thing that gibbers*** trying to write your story THE VERY BEST YOU ARE CAPABLE OF while despairingly aware that it’s not good enough† . . . you then have to sit back and pretend to relax WHILE THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY DOES ITS BEST TO DESTROY THE FRELLER.  Well, that’s how it feels.  To me.  I told you I had a bad attitude.  But no one has your vision of your story—they can’t.  And the whole ‘what sells’ thing makes pretty much everyone involved cranky, and at some point, and preferably before your editor has decided to have you killed, you have to let them get on with it.  I can’t take the strain, pretty much, which is why I get farther and farther out of the whole publishing biz world.  Here’s my story, I say at intervals.  Um.  I hope you like it.  I hope you publish it.  And I hope what you do to it in the process doesn’t make me want to retrain as a Dyno Rod Woman.††

So.  Audiobooks.  I know they are a Good Thing in theory.  I even listen to them myself occasionally—not my own, mind you, but other people’s.  I entirely agree it’s a good way to get some knitting done.  But my experience of being audiobooked is a little aggrieved.

In my experience the audiobook company rarely wants to mess with you:  you’ll only complicate their lives.  And possibly vice versa.  For example, I was once given a choice of three readers.  I listened to the clips they sent me and . . . hated them all.   After much writhing and doorsill chewing I chose the least ghastly . . . who turned out to be unavailable.  The company chirpily informed me that they had taken an executive decision . . . and hired the one (not that I had told them this) I loathed the most.  I never listened to the result.  I’ve never listened to any of my audiobooks.  I don’t want to know.

SShadow

I was surprised by the narrator’s pronunciation in The Blue Sword (mostly of Damarian words . .. .

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.  They probably are mispronounced.  Don’t tell me.

 Corlath doesn’t have quite the same power when read in a female narrator’s “man voice,” but I suppose there’s nothing to be done about that.

Sigh.  Yes, I think that part’s true.  And I never think having different voices in what is essentially a read-aloud works.  Either you have to semi-stage the thing or you have a single reader-aloud, and you have to hope they can adapt enough to the varying demands of the story.

EMoon

You might reassure Peter that Audible are serious and actually want assistance from the writer, as they get complaints when listeners don’t like the voice, or feel it gets an accent or characterization wrong.

Noted.  Dubiously.  It’s a nice thought.  But I am a frelling Audible subscriber and . . . they don’t always get it right by a long shot.   And how many of us have to complain before they rerecord something they’ve got wrong?

A voice actor I know casually commented that actors like input from writers…they want to convey the feel of the language (and especially when they have a good writer’s work to present. The same voice actor was voicing some badly-written romances and said it was driving her crazy.)

I wish all us like-minded professionals ever were on the same bandwagon at the same time.  I keep hearing fairy tales of things like actors who want input from writers and I’m like . . . what?  Peter has had contacts from some of his translators too, wanting more info about stuff they’re finding hard to translate (mind you I think Peter is unusually challenging, both for reading aloud and for translating).  Not me.  I don’t really want to know about the quality of my translations either . . . since there’s not a frelling thing I can do about it/them, either than gnaw my own flesh till I bleed.

Diane in MN

I’m a big fan of audiobooks; it’s nice to think that authors get some input into the way their work is going to sound.

AAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.  See previous.

Gwyn_sully

Having a good reader makes such a difference!

Doesn’t it just.  Yes.  A good readaloud is like suddenly finding yourself in a warm bath with a glass of cold champagne within reach somewhere you aren’t going to knock it over at the end of a hard day.  Although you’re probably knitting or having Lap Socialisation with a hellterror or possibly hurtling, the warm-bath-with-champagne effect is discernible.

I’ve listened to books by authors I’ve never heard of before simply because they were narrated by someone I like. Since I tend to get into reading ruts it’s a good way to get me to branch out a bit.

Hmm.  I’m comparatively new to audiobooks–and still in the Ooooh!  Must listen to this next! stage.  I’ll have to add this concept to the list.

. . . . See, I’m not hopelessly hopeless and negative and close-minded and CRANKY.  Just nearly.  Especially when I’m being driven crazy by a self-extending chapter.

Back to the frelling grindstone.

* * *

* Let us not forget that the PEGASUS TRILOGY^ started as a short story.

^ Note that if it turns out to be more than three books I’m going to sign up with the Witness Relocation Programme and move to Mars.

** And speaking of shorts it’s supposed to get HOT again this weekend.  NOOOOOOOO.  I was just beginning to get used to wearing long trousers again.  Also although it’s cooler the so-called air is thick as a brick.  Total headache weather.  Not ideal among other things for thrashing mutinous chapters into obedient coherence.

*** ‘Idiot’ doesn’t really fulfil the gibberingness of it.  You want a whole treeful of angry howler monkeys or the despairing crowd at the end of Stave One of A Christmas Carol when Marley’s ghost goes to join the supernatural throng.

† It might also bear repeating, with some reference to last night’s blog . . . those of you with stories in progress that you just can’t manage to do what you want/need to do with . . . remember the brain and heart energy thing.  If you’ve got a busy life, a demanding job, maybe a family with a few kids or six dogs or a horse farm or something . . . it may not be that you have no skill or talent for writing.  It may be that you’re too tired or too elsewhere-demanded to do well by your story (or your poem or your four-storey welded-steel sculpture) too.

†† And we aren’t going near any question of reviewers.

Mostly Audiobooks. And a little ranting.

 

 

I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS RATBAGGING, MULTI-BLASTED CHAPTER TONIGHT.  I AM.*

So especially since Peter never writes me guest blogs any more and what are husbands for, anyway?, I thought I would borrow his new post for his site . . . about audiobooks.

http://peterdickinson.com/audiobooks/

And, yes:  tricky, the selection process for readers.  . . . Oh, frell, I do have things to say about audiobooks.  But not tonight.  THERE’S THIS CHAPTER . . . **

* * *

* Never mind which chapter.  And never mind what’s happening.  I realise it would come as a shock if the truth about being a writer were ever revealed to the public at large:  you all know that we go to bed late^ and get up very very late^^ and then hang around in our dressing-gowns eating chocolate and drinking champagne and/or very very black tea^^^ and occasionally going into a trance during which the Muse dictates the next chapter(s) of our WIP(s).  Which is why we all have boundless time and energy for superfluous pursuits like gardening, singing, bell ringing, knitting, reading other people’s books and keeping our rather too many dogs magnificently fit from lengthy daily hurtles.^^^^  You know all that, right?  So the idea that a writer might work too hard would make you helpless with laughter, right?  That by the end of a day with too much bending over the computer in it she might feel like wet cardboard and/or something a hellterror has been chewing is totally alien to your rich understanding of the authorial life?  . . . Sigh.

^ Ahem

^^ If this meant I was actually getting some sleep I’d be all for it

^^^ Balance is very important to the creative spirit

^^^^ And because the Muse dictates, thus taking all that exhausting responsibility off our shoulders, we never ever get in over our heads with some competing creative endeavour, even a little one.  Say, doodling.  And what about all those songs I want to write?  —I should not, in fact, be taking voice lessons or playing the piano:  but in the first place, try and stop me, and in the second place, I’m pretty awful+, which is kind of its own defense.  Both my drawing and my song-writing might just conceivably get somewhere if I had the spare brain and heart energy to put into them.

+ Yesterday’s voice lesson:  siiiiiiiiigh.  Clearly I shouldn’t have said out in public that singing for Oisin last Friday hadn’t been too bad.  You’d think I could get away with not too bad, wouldn’t you?  Nooooooo.  On Monday Watching the Wheat wasn’t too bad.  But then Linden Lea . . . was too bad.  SIIIIIIIGH.  I froze up for some reason and started doing my patented vocal impression of fingernails on a blackboard.  Arrrrrgh.  Nadia suggested I take notes, the next time I sing well, that’s ‘well’, at home, of what I’d done to get there, and we’ll try and replicate it next week.  I was thinking about that today.  First, have had a voice lesson recently.  Yesterday is good.  Have sung at least enough to preserve that ‘sung in’ sensation yesterday evening.  Sing like a mad thing today whilst hurtling your variety of hellcritters.  Learning new lyrics is good because it takes your mind off worrying about the quality of the noise you’re making.  Have fun.  Oh.  Yeah.  This is why I’m doing it, isn’t it?  It’s not like I’m planning on starting a band# or auditioning to sing Mrs Lovett.##  But the point is I tend to do my best singing at home in the rush following Monday’s voice lesson, even if the lesson itself was not of the finest.  By Thursday I’m starting to slip, which is the other part of why I have this ingrained habit of bottling out of singing for Oisin on Friday.  Then it’s all downhill over the weekend till a fresh new Monday.  Feh.###

# A sort of Steeleye Span tribute band with a few extras.  There Is A Tavern in the Town.  Copperhead Road.  Che Faro Senza Eurydice.

## Although I’m going to learn The Worst Pies in London.  If there were some fool willing to be Sweeney, we could learn A Little Priest.

### Hmm.  Well, there are a couple of things I do at home that I don’t do for Nadia.  I mean that I’d be willing to admit to . . .

** And if I’m still alive at the end of it I want to sing.

Tired. Also of watering.

 

 

I AM SO TIRED OF WATERING.  TIRED.  WATERING.  OF.  ARRRRRRRRGH.  We were supposed to have thunderstorms over the weekend.  We were supposed to have TORRENTIAL RAIN!  We were supposed to have sporadic downpours, some of them heavy, today!

WE HAVE HAD NONE OF THESE THINGS.  We had two minor bursts of real rain which according to my rain gauge total a little under a quarter inch.  This is not entirely negligible . . . but NEARLY.  I heard some distant thunder while I was at the monks’ Saturday evening.  Nothing else happened.  And we do really, really, really need rain—anything that isn’t a garden tended by a (possibly) obsessive and irascible gardener is brown.  I HATE WATERING.  WATERING ISN’T GARDENING.  WATERING IS A BORING BORING BOOOOOOOORING TIME SUCK.  And while you’re wasting all your gardening time lugging cans of water* around the jungle that you had so laboriously somewhat brought under control is rioting freely again.

Side stair at the cottage. Blooming.

 

That pink rose in the upper slightly left of centre? Geoff Frelling Hamilton

Snarl.  I took advantage of a rose sale last winter.  I wrote all over my order NO SUBSTITUTIONS.  They sent me a sub anyway**.  This one.  Grrrrrrr.  So, okay, climbing pink rose.  I’ll live.

 

Blah blah blah Geoff Hamilton blah blah blah

 

Love love love sweet peas. I only buy the smelliest ones. The scent engulfs you as you start up the front steps.

 

Now let us discuss my amazing year of volunteer snapdragons. These little guys are growing out of ROCK.

I do splash some water around and there’s a little trash soil from crumbling mortar and what falls out of my pots, but they’re basically growing out of ROCK.

See the little green fringe all along this level? There are some on the opposite shelf too. THEY’RE ALL SNAPDRAGONS.

And they’re all frelling thriving, in their miniature way.  Ordinary garden snapdragons, which are a lot bigger of course, are also thirsty.  Geraniums will put up with a surprising amount of drought:  snapdragons won’t.  First they wilt and then they develop mildew.  And this year’s astonishing crop of volunteers must be all garden offspring, and first generation so far as I know, unless snapdragon seed lies in the ground/mortar/flint shelf until suitable conditions occur, like decades-old poppies waiting for the plough.

This one’s growing out of a BRICK STAIR.

It’s certainly enough to make you a really untidy gardener for the rest of your (gardening) life.  Especially if you’re that way inclined anyway.  But this one is clinging to the few grains of soil in the unswept-out whorl of the rubber stair treads.

Actually there’s two of them. The first photo is from about ten days ago. This one is today. Nice of them to be sequential, don’t you think?

 

Stair-side front of cottage again, about a week later, and from a slightly different angle.

But I’m not exactly wasting my time with all that dratblasted watering, am I?

 * * *

* The problems of Hosepipe Management in something the size and intensity of planting of the cottage garden are debatably worse than just gritting my teeth and bowing to the inevitability of can haulage.^  I do use a sprinkler occasionally but by the time I’m thinking about it we’re probably into drought conditions and it feels illegal even if it isn’t.

^ I can do a fair amount of damage with my big feet when I stagger in the wrong direction, but on the whole I leave fewer swathes of destruction carrying watering-cans than when I’m trying to cope with a frelling+ hose.  Also with a dingleframping++ hellterror about the place you have to roll and/or hoick the thing out of reach every time you’re finished using it or at least before the hellterror is loose again.

+ Didn’t some polite newcomer on the forum recently ask where ‘frelling’ came from, that she’d used it in company and got stared at?  RAISE YOUR CHIN AND TELL THEM IT’S A PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE COINAGE FROM FARSCAPE.  You can google it.  And I should pick up ‘dren’ while I’m at it.

++ And sometimes, when I’m feeling somewhat pent and fraught I just make something up.  The presence of a hellterror can make one feel pent and fraught rather easily.  Ask Darkness.

** When I protested they told me I could send it back.  Uh huh.  Sure.  That’s totally practical.

Circum-training the American West: part 1, guest post by abigailmm

 

It’s not Machu Picchu at dawn, and it’s for sure not CathyR’s gorgeous pictures of Venice. But they do say quantity is its own form of quality, and when you have travelled over 6000 miles by train, you have seen a heck of a lot of scenery. Even if the way you have to share most of it is with pictures taken through a train window with a cell phone.

For ten years, since I had to cancel attendance at my 30th college reunion at the very last second, I have been planning to make the 40th. Then I broke my ankle last year. Also my family ataxia*, which I had been hoping was not in my genes, showed up after all. So getting to Pomona was looking a bit dicey. However, I ascertained that a 15-day Amtrak rail pass was affordable, meaning airports and rental cars could be avoided. And as the registration deadline approached, I went for it.

The Amtrak Texas Eagle leaves Dallas at noon, and makes slow progress south. Unlike in days of yore, the passenger train has no priority, and waits any time the freight schedule has a hiccup. Eventually, in the middle of the night in San Antonio, it hooks up with the Sunset Limited out of New Orleans and proceeds west across west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, to get to Los Angeles at dawn, 30 hours out of San Antonio. The previous stop, Pomona, California, was mine, a fairly short cab ride from my hotel.

 

nifty newish bridge over the Trinity River in west Dallas at the start

approaching the Brazos River in central Texas — on May 1 the countryside’s still greenish

 

dawn in west Texas

 

Sanderson, Texas. Wonder who decides which little wide places in the road get train stops?

 

west Texas and New Mexico and Arizona. They sort of ran together, but the red-flowered Ocotillo is definitely in Arizona. The center photo (N.M.?) has a small barrel cactus in the right center foreground.There was a longish stop in Tucson near sunset; I got off and found a Subway for supper.

 

For four years of my life Mount Baldy was my compass, defining north. I was briefly confused, when I came out of the Claremont Lodge in daylight**, which way to head to campus. Then I saw the  mountains and all was clear.***

Some of the students# have an Organic Farm, with a farm stand on Friday afternoons outside the student union.  Notice the hand at the left holding a small jar of honey. Later I toured, and was given a lovely sweet sticky taste of comb just out of the hive.

When I attended Pomona at 18-22, I didn’t have the gardening experience to appreciate that everything blooms, all the time! My botany professors never had any problem producing whatever plant family they needed for lab that week.

Roses and Dianthus at the Student Union – the Coop.  And eucalypts are everywhere.

 

also the bikes breed…

 

As the Parade of Classes got organized, the Class of ’68 put our Class of ’73 to shame with their protest signs.##

 

to be continued – over 4000 miles to go

- – - -  – - – - – - – - -  – - -

*  Inherited ataxia is a late-developing cerebellar condition that, in my case, messes up my speech and my balance.

**  having checked in about 5:30am

*** The air was clear too, they have improved the smog situation in 40 years. Back then, there were lots of days when you couldn’t SEE Baldy.

# When I attended my 20th reunion in ’93, all the students looked like babies to me; this time they seemed like normal young folks. I guess then I was still feeling a little like a student myself, and now I know I aren’t one ;-)

## If you’re puzzled by the right-hand sign, the Pomona teams are the Sagehens. Cecil Sagehen is their mascot, and his fighting yell is, of course, “CHIRP!”

KES, 89

 

EIGHTY NINE

His gaze locked with Serena’s briefly and the ambient local temperature went up about fifty degrees.  Then he was walking away and it was April in New Iceland again and my nose was cold.  “Nice guy,” I said experimentally.

“Don’t you start,” said Serena.

“Ah?” I said.  “Start?” I added, preparing to back away quickly if she took a swing at me.

She sighed.  “I have to go back to work.  You’re not going to get the story out of me today.  But yeah.  Nice guy.  Lorraine’s, you turn left out of the parking lot here, a block back on Dane, right on McIntyre, and it’s next to the craft shop which, last time I looked, had fuzzy purple acrylic yarn in the window.”

“You know,” I said, “there’s a theory that some of the dinosaurs were really bright colors.”

“Okay, purple,” said Serena.  “But fuzzy?”

“Art creates its own reality,” I said, thinking about attack mushrooms and mummified possum hearts.

“You are so from out of town,” said Serena.  “Go away before I forget how to be polite to strangers.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said, and picked up Sid’s lead.  I wouldn’t be able to hang around for Lorraine’s cross-examination if I had a dog tied to the parking meter or lamppost outside her door.  The three of us straggled across the parking lot together.  At the curb we paused.  “Good luck,” said Serena.  She hesitated.  “You have my phone number too.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “The memory of that pear and ginger crumble will keep me strong and brave.”

She grinned.  “That’ll be because the pears were picked by a crack troop of apprentice ninjas.  Apparently fruit-picking is a really good way of practising your shuriken technique.  So they tell me.  Let me know how it goes with the new house and everything.”

“I will,” I said.  Especially the everything. But I didn’t say this out loud.

She hesitated again.  “This would be a bad time to make a joke about things that go bump in the night, right?”

“A very bad time,” I said.  Feelingly.

“You aren’t buying milk for a hob, by any chance, are you?” said Serena.

I didn’t say anything.

“Okay, you write fantasy for a living, maybe you just think in terms of milk for the hob, moving into a new house.  And the old military dress sword you bought at a garage sale because it looked like it might be enchanted is leaning against the wall next to the front door.  So maybe you don’t already have reason for thinking Rose Manor has—or needs—a hob.”

“I don’t have a sword,” I said.  “And I didn’t pack the chef’s knife because it was too big and threatening-looking.  Pancakes are good.  Scrambled eggs.  Hamburgers.”   The Manhattan penthouse hadn’t had a hob.  It had had Joe the Doorman.  You didn’t put milk out for him.  You gave him a whopping bonus at Christmas.  I hoped a rural hob would get by on milk.

“I kept telling myself that I was getting a nice house cheap because it was haunted,” said Serena after a pause.  “I did waste some time trying to avoid the cold spot in the hall, but it didn’t like being avoided and not knowing where it was going to be was worse than just walking through it.”

“Did the ticking thing in the living room ever . . . do anything else?”

“No,” said Serena.  “But I have a son.  It’s easy to blame funny noises on resident offspring and their friends.  When he was little he used to roar a lot.  Now he’s older he mainly just collides with things.  Including the floor he’s walking on.  His friends have similar talents.  And feet.”

“At least I have a dog,” I said.  “Maybe I could teach her to roar.”

“At least you have a dog,” said Serena.  She and Sid looked at each other.  I saw out of the corner of my eye Sid essaying a small tail-wag, and I saw Serena’s face soften, not unlike the way she’d looked at Mike when he said he’d told JoJo they can always use a good mechanic.  Good.  Maybe she’d forgive all of us if Sid and Gus hit it off a little too well.

I could feel the seconds ticking by.  It was a tickly sensation like spiders walking on your skin.  It was not a pleasant tickly sensation—like spiders walking on your skin.  JoJo had taken the van back to Manhattan.  I was stranded here—with my new house, my new vehicle and my new dog.  My first night as a resident had begun.

I was probably staring blankly into space, thinking about spiders.   Serena touched my arm.  “It gets easier.”

I looked at her and tried to smile.

“I know I keep saying that.  I’m going to keep saying it till you don’t need to hear it any more,” said Serena.

“Okay,” I said.

“The hob’ll like the milk,” said Serena.  “Us rural creatures are simple folk.”

This was so close to what I had been thinking I really did smile.  And tried not to let my heart sink as Serena climbed the steps to the office door, leaving us behind.

It was nearly dark already.

 

Happy 22nd

 

 

Days lurch and trundle their own frelling way.  We were going out to dinner tonight because it’s our (first) 22nd anniversary* and I know I got up late** but somehow the day GOT AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAY from me . . . and having brought the hurtling second shift home and discovering I had TEN MINUTES to get dressed to go out, came pelting panting back downstairs again eleven minutes later . . . and Pooka started barking.***  It was the taxi service saying that the taxi despatched to convey us had broken down and it would be at least another fifteen minutes before they could get another one to us.  Oh.  Frell.  I could have hurtled farther.  I could have done more watering.†  I could have worn something more interesting.  Meanwhile Peter had already left the mews to go stand in the road, waiting to be picked up, and hadn’t taken his mobile with him.  If the wind had been just slightly more in the right direction he would have heard me cursing his name without any technological enhancement necessary.  I rang the restaurant.  I paced the floor.  I kept covering up the frelling hellterror’s crate because she responds to jumpiness in the hellgoddess by barking and only Pooka is allowed to bark in this household.  And uncovering her again because it’s too hot to leave her swaddled for long.††

But it’s cooled off a lot, for the moment.  I took a fetching little jacket with me to the restaurant . . . and then it was UNBELIEVABLY HOT in the restaurant.  Arrrrgh.  It’s not that we didn’t know it’s not air conditioned, it’s our standard top-end††† restaurant and we go there two or three times a year.  But there was no cross-ventilation despite open windows and the fans were dragging their blades through the thick air like stirring custard.  Even our teach-Robin-to-play bridge hands were possessed by demons.  Fortunately it was a small table so when they brought our food we had to clear the cards away.

But the champagne was gloriously cold.  And twenty-two years is twenty-two years.  And worth celebrating.‡  Yaay us.

* * *

*The second one is in January.  This is our the-meeting-that-counts anniversary, when I went to pick up my slight acquaintance, that rather odd fellow, Peter Dickinson, at the Bangor, Maine, airport, having offered to show him a bit of Maine.  Saw him walk through the door^, blinked once or twice and went, oops.  The rest is history.  Six months later we got married.

^ It’s a small airport, or it was in those days, and you just walk across the tarmac from your plane to the door beside the luggage carrel, where if you’re very very lucky your luggage will eventually appear.

** When do I ever not get up late??  Note that virtuously not reading off the iPad^ and adhering dutifully to hard copy is not having any effect on the sleep deficit.

^ Although I have bad news:  I bought a waterproof envelope thingy for Astarte . . . and it works just fine.  So I can lie in the bath and read digitally.  Rats.  Mistake.  Although if I’m going to make a habit of it I’m going to have also to buy one of those horrible cross-bath platform things to rest her on:  an iPad weighs, after the first ten minutes or so.  But the Horrible Cross-Bath platform things are usually crappy cheap wire and hideous.  We had one at the old house which Peter wouldn’t let me get rid of, like he ever read in the bath, or drank tea/coffee/whisky or burned a candle or whatever the frell you put in all those stupid pockets, and I was THRILLED to get rid of it when we moved.+  Maybe they’ve improved.  Maybe I can just use a plank or something. . . .

+Hey.  You take your thrills where you can find them.

*** Yes, my iPhone ringtone is a barking dog.  The hellterror reacts less often than she used to.  I may not have to change it after all.  Meanwhile my landline is dead.  I have no idea.  Siiiiiiigh.  I really hate BT.  They’ve been dorking me around for as long as I’ve lived here, although dead is a little extreme.

† We’re supposed to have torrential rains tomorrow.  That must be making everybody in this area who’s planning to get married tomorrow wildly happy.  Including the party I’m supposed to be ringing for at Forza.  I will probably get a lot of knitting done waiting for the bride, who left her umbrella in Berkshire and has gone back to retrieve it.  When it’s time to go to my monks, I go, whether she’s arrived yet and been rung for or not.

†† Also, the more she’s out of her crate, the more she thinks she should be out.  And while I can knit or write emails with her loose about the place, I can’t work with her cruising for excitement.  But this means that every time a hellhound comes out of his crate, at will, for a stretch or a drink or a mosey, there is an eruption of protest from another corner:  Hey!  His door is open!  My door is closed!  My door could be open too!  In fact I’m sure it should be open!  I’m sure you just haven’t noticed that it’s inappropriately closed so let me draw your attention to this unfortunate fact so you can RECTIFY it at your EARLIEST CONVENIENCE!  Let me rephrase that:  at your earliest!  Never mind the convenience part!

††† And while we huddle around the bottom of that top end, it still caters to people who want to spend £150 on a bottle of champagne to go with their single caviar canapé for £65.

‡ And furthermore I sang for Oisin today.  No, I haven’t, in yonks and yonks.  Possibly not since the hellcritter digestion crisis began.  I didn’t need the extra dratblasted strain.  The problem with Oisin, as I keep saying, is that he’s not only a professional accompanist, he’s a friend, and I don’t like torturing my friends.  Nadia, this last week, said that if he were someone else I’d just find different excuses.  This is, I think, only about half correct . . . but still.  Probably half.  So I took some music along today and after Oisin scraped himself off the floor where he had fallen in astonishment . . . It was not too bad.  I lost less of my voice from terror, cowardice and not-good-enough-ness than previously.  Nadia keeps reminding me there’s anywhere from a six month to a (probably) eighteen month lag between what I can do in a lesson with her tweaking me and anything or anywhere else, and poor Oisin counts, in my tiny snivelling mind, as performance, and with my personality?  Performance?^

But it was not too bad.  I can probably even do it again. . . .

^ Remind me why I think I want to join a choir I can make some difference to?

A gardening day

 

It’s been a beautiful day here.  Outdoors.  I’ve spent far too much of it indoors.  What is this cruel thing known as earning a living?  And why do I have to do it?  There are days for high adventure and doughty hero(in)es and wicked magicians and allies that fly* and there are days for chucking it all in and rushing out into the garden and vying valiantly with the ground elder and the enchanter’s frelling nightshade [sic] and the thrice blasted comfrey which is taking over the universe although the two-and-a-half-times blasted Japanese anemones are giving it a run for its money.  There’s also an Evil nineteen-times-blasted Vine which I’ve forgotten the name of which is trying to do a Sleeping-Beauty’s-castle trick only without the thorns, and I’m forever having to hack it back before it swallows a hellhound** or blocks the door.  THANK YOU, MY PREDECESSOR, YOU TWIT.  THANK YOU SO MUCH.  The ground elder and the enchanter’s nightshade—and the goose grass, and the willow herb, and the multiply-blasted wild yellow poppies and that ooooh-little-me? black-leaved violet which may be the worst thug of the lot, and the nettles, and the docks, and the spurge, and the scarlet pimpernel which is orange, and the groundsel, and the speedwell, and the land cress, and half a billion other bleeping volunteers—they’re all life or bad husbandry or the bad husbandry of your neighbours.***  The known ratbags† that someone actually PLANTED you’re all WHHHYYYYYYYYYYY?

The day did not get off to a calm, well-organised start when having found myself still awake well after dawn I reset the alarm . . . and only by good luck woke up for no reason three minutes before Computer Angel Raphael arrived.  I had managed to stare disbelievingly at the clock, put my glasses on, stare disbelievingly some more, scream, scramble into one of the little cotton dresses that I wear instead of a dressing gown in hot weather, hastily sweep the floor†† and put the water on for tea when there was the knock on the door . . . and violent eruptions from critter crates.  I like a quiet beginning to the day, so I usually let Pav out for a few minutes to carom around the kitchen before I lock her up again with her breakfast and let the hellhounds out . . . but you can’t expect anyone to stay all silent and lying down when THERE IS AN EXCITING KNOCK ON THE DOOR.  So in fairness I let everyone out and . . . mayhem.†††  Fortunately Raphael has three small children.  Mayhem is his natural condition.

And then I had to WORK.  I had to WRITE SENTENCES.  With the sun streaming down and the temperature beautifully cool-warm or warm-cool—we even had a little rain last night.  Not a lot, but enough to let me bunk off WATERING and actually do some, you know, gardening.  I could have written more sentences.  But it’s going to get hot again and I’ll want to hide indoors and have somebody else’s high adventures.

There are good years and bad years in a garden.  This is probably one of my better years with the cottage garden:  to the extent that I have a plan, I want a miniature version of the big messy crowded romantic garden that we had at the old house.  There are glimpses of that this year‡ so long as you (a) squint‡‡ and (b) on no account leave the courtyard and penetrate into the surrounding jungle.  You’d be surprised at how much jungle you can manage, or rather, not manage, in a space about the size of Merry’s truck bed.  Granted Merry is a large pick-up truck, but this is not large in gardening terms.

I have some photos for you but first I have to tidy them up a little.

* * *

* and enchanted rose-bushes and hobs

** I think the hellterror would give as good as she got.  Hellhounds are too polite.

*** I’ve been threatening to stab to death with his own hand fork my neighbour over the facing wall for as long as I’ve lived here not only because of the staggering ugliness of the garden shed roof that pokes up above my wall and frells my view, but for the ground elder that races under his piece of wall to attack me.  Only he died recently.  Hmmm.  Maybe one of his other neighbours. . . .

† All right, I like Japanese anemones.  But I’d plant them in pots.

†† Three critters = sweep floor three times a day.  I don’t, of course, but I should.

††† Pav has jolted forward one of those developmental stages, the way little growing-up things do.  She (mostly) sits on demand.  She (mostly) does not pull on the end of her lead.  And she (mostly) listens to me.  I know, I know, not a bull terrier trait, but I’ve said before she’s a mutant.^  Usually when I’ve got her tucked under one arm I’m wearing jeans and she can do her whirring propeller legs trick and no harm done.  This morning in a little cotton frock was a different manner.  Shortly before I bled to death I fetched her out from under my arm, turned her over and said Stop.  That.  And she did the little forepaws by the face thing like someone raising their hands over their head because the bad guy has pulled a gun on them, and her face was all distressed, What?  What?  But I’m a bull terrier.  Oh . . . sob . . . I am a poor downtrodden misunderstood creature . . . all right.  And she stopped (mostly).  Now if only I could persuade her not to run through her entire electrifying range of noises while she’s waiting for her next meal.

^ The builder who thinks she’s too docile for a bull terrier would agree

‡ In the ‘if fate hands you lemons, make lemonade’ department, if you’re nailed at home due to streaming or possibly-streaming hellcritters . . . you could spend more time in your garden.

‡‡ Late afternoon is a good time to let people out into the courtyard because the sun will be right in their eyes.

Short Wednesday*

 

Angelia

Be sure to set your meeting times with your advisor at the same time as some activity you wish to avoid. That way you can truthfully beg off by saying you have a prior engagement.

::falls down laughing::

Ringlets

The prior does sound very scary! are you going to share some more about your meeting with him?

It would help if he were shorter.  I was thinking that there is already Scary Man at Forza** but at least he’s short.  SO I SCARE EASILY.  THIS IS NOT NEWS.  But even in the interests of witnessing which is another awkward part of this Christianity package deal I’m not sure that aside from privacy issues there’s much to tell you that would make sense in public:  one on one tends to be that way for a reason.  Oh, well, speaking of awkward and public:  one of the things we talked quite a bit about is community.  This is another thing that walking across that threshold—or being prodded over it by a Son of God who feels you’ve been goofing off long enough—lands you in.  Community.  It’s not that there aren’t legitimate vocations for walling yourself up in a narrow cell and spending the rest of your life praying and having bread and gruel poked through a slot at intervals*** but these are rare and it’s not what I have.  I have the common or garden variety belief system endowment, which includes the belonging to a community requirement.  Eep.  Ugh.  I don’t like people in groups.  My natural lack of talent for relating in groups is of course enhanced, not to say aggravated, by doing something intensely self-involved and solitary for a living.  New skills.  Blugh.  New frelling skills.  So we talked about coping strategies.

Nat

Ah… you see, the faithful avoid Microsoft at all costs and worship at Apple!

You Apple-istas puzzle me.  I have an iPhone and an iPad . . . and they’re just as frelling frelled as anything PC, just differently.  Indeed, the archangels are coming tomorrow chiefly to strive with Astarte the iPad, not the PC laptop, which has mysteriously decided to work again, possibly because it heard me making the appointment with the angels.  Which means I need to go to bed so I can perform some facsimile of functional awakeness before noon tomorrow . . .

* * *

* Also frelling frelling frelling frell.  SUPERSHARP KNIVES ARE OVERRATED.  Sure, the as one might say cutting edge professional chef with the magic wrists and the reputation, probably needs a supersharp knife for his angelhair cabbage or her baroque-candelabra cantelope—or the poor sweating sous-chef producing cucumber posies to disguise the fact that their delivery of tiger nuts and fractal cauliflower^ has been hijacked by harpies—but us ordinary oafs at home?  I agree that blunt knives are a hazard because of the way they ricochet and gouge chunks out of the plaster/cupboard/your arm, but just manual-sharpener-quality sharp knives are splendidly adequate.  I was ordering a bunch of standard kitchen-supply stuff from a web site shop I use about twice a year and since the arrival of Pav I seem to be spending an unholy amount of time chopping things and I had decided I would like a second little paring-or-thereabouts-sized knife.  They had one of these supersharp things on sale so I bought the freller.  It arrived in its own sheath.  And it’s a good thing too since it cuts things from several feet away.  You’re still getting the chicken out of the refrigerator and there’s a faint whistling noise and you’re bleeding.  I need all these fingers in their original confinguration, thanks.  You can’t wash it unless you want to turn your kitchen sponge or dishcloth into a mop head.  You can nervously hold it under hot water for a while.  And watch it trying to slice water.  It hisses if I open the drawer it’s in.  All I wanted was another paring knife.  I probably need a special license if I want to dispose of this menace, and SAS operatives are expensive.  Keeping critters is a never-ending saga of astonishment and peril.^^

^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/04/weird-vegetables_n_3210027.html#slide=2408323 May I just say I’ve only never heard of two of them, that I regularly eat most of them except samphire which is disgusting, I’m a dedicated fan of fractal cauliflower and sunchokes, and that I don’t miss fiddleheads at all?

^^ Like the fellow with twenty-four spikes in his face who came over to tell me how gorgeous Pav is and how much he likes bull terriers.+  Oh.  Ah.  Well, that’s nice. —Does he take them out at night?  How does he EAT?  What happens if he wants to kiss someone?++  Does sneezing hurt?

+ This encounter happened in the New Arcadia churchyard.  There was a group of blokes chatting.  I didn’t look at the other ones.

++ They run away?

** At least I didn’t bleed on any bell ropes tonight.  Or at least I didn’t get caught bleeding on any bell ropes tonight.

*** One hopes that there is sufficient allowance and arrangement for certain refuse and debris egress as well.  I still worry about laundry.

Microsoft Outlook. And spiritual direction.

 

This is not going to be my most organised blog post.

I had my first meeting with my new SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR today.  Scary.

And, from the sublime to the ridiculous, I’ve just wasted over an hour wrestling with frelling frelling FRELLING Microsoft Outlook, which has (apparently) decided it’s not speaking to America.  Eh, what do you want with those colonials? it says, shuffling its component crapware.  —YOU’RE AN AMERICAN PROGRAMME, I reply.  YOU’RE A CRUMMY AMERICAN PROGRAMME BUT YOU’RE AN AMERICAN PROGRAMME.  PROGRAM.  WHATEVER.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries, it responds.  America is not on the menu today.  Go away.*

ARRRRRRRRGH.  I don’t even know how long it would have taken me to notice except that I was supposed to talk to Hannah tonight after I got home from my FIRST MEETING WITH MY NEW SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR.  I’d hurtled a startlingly wide variety of hellcritters—the tireder I am, the more of them there are, I’ve noticed this often—and was creating critter dinner.  Hannah emailed to check we were still on** and I emailed back that we were . . . and then it was fifteen minutes past when she should have rung and she hadn’t, so I emailed her again, and five minutes after that I received another email from her saying that evidently I wasn’t there*** and we’d have to reschedule . . . whereupon I frantically phoned her while discovering, phone tucked into my shoulder to leave my hands free, that my emails to her were still sitting in my outbox.  With every other email to America I’ve written in the last twenty-four hours. ARRRRRRRRRRGH.  And none of them will open so I could, perhaps, paste them in new windows or send them by GM-enhanced pigeon post or telepathy or something because Outlook won’t let me open them, claiming that it has ALREADY BEGUN SENDING THEM.  In some cases twenty-three hours ago.

And here I thought it was trying to be a good day.  The temperature has dropped enough for all of us to throw open all our windows and start as it were feverishly fanning since it’s supposed to get hot again almost immediately—and a little of that rain would be nice†—but at least the idea of putting on long trousers to go to my first meeting with my spiritual director didn’t make me cry.

So I’ve been at this Christianity lark for ten months now.  The first eight months or so were all about the run up to Lent and Easter—Christmas is fine, Christmas is all jolly, except for the long shadow of events to come—Easter, I was worried about Easter.  But I got through that and . . . gleep.  It’s like looking up from picking your way down a very narrow stony path with a chasm on one side and dragons on the other and realising that it’s not just dragons and bottomless ravines but you’re lost in a universe-sized jungle AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHERE YOU’RE GOING.  Where does the narrow stony path go?  Is that where you want to go?  Is there a beautiful sunset and a cup of tea at the end of it or a larger dragon?

The monks have a little box tucked into a corner of one of their web site pages saying that they offer spiritual direction and to get in touch if you are interested.  I read this to mean if you’re another monk or a monk-novice or a priest or a serious plugged-in type Christian but Aloysius said that no, they took ordinary clueless kittle-cattle as well.††  Oh.  And he encouraged me to contact them—write to the abbot, he said.

I wrote—emailed—the abbot.  And he emailed by return frelling electron saying that he was about to be gone for a fortnight but to contact the prior.

Ah.  The prior.  Yes.  Hmm.

I’m afraid of the prior.  When Aloysius took me to the abbey for the first time last autumn to prove that the monks were friendly and that the public was welcome, the prior was having a rant about some piece of the world that did not work properly.  I listened to him and thought yes, totally, you’re right and . . . is there possibly a small dark hole I could crawl into before your fiery eye falls on me?

You can see where this is going, right?  Ultimately the abbot decided that the correct spiritual director for me is . . . the prior.

Eeeeeeep.

I’ve been sort of terrifiedly looking forward to today.  But he didn’t singe me or anything.  I’m exhausted but . . . more than a little inspired.  So I guess it is a good day.  But Outlook is still a rabid rotting ratbag.

* * *

* Ithilien wrote

Give me SHADOWS and go away.

 I didn’t say that! Although I could have thought it rather loudly…

Very loudly!  Very, very loudly!  Not that I MINDED!  If you do it right your books are MUCH more interesting than you are!

For the record, SHADOWS is even more fabulous than all previous snippets led me to believe. Y’all should totally go and pre-order it now.

::Beams::^

^ Note that she’s safely in Greenland.  I can’t hold a gun to her head or anything.+

+ Although it may be true that I’m holding her grandmother’s opal and peacock feather brooch hostage.  Never mind how I acquired it.

** Which is my opportunity to pull myself together and say, oh!  Yes!  Of course! as if I was expecting it.  If I don’t talk to Hannah for more than a week I start feeling flimsy and as if I have pieces missing, but I am notorious even to myself for writing things dutifully in my diary and then forgetting to look at my diary.

*** Ie I hadn’t looked at my diary again

† Mrs Redboots

You either sleep very soundly or are in the wrong part of the UK! It was absolutely sheeting down in the middle of the night here in the Capital, quite literally a solid wall of water! And lots and lots of lovely thunder, and I think there was lightning, too – funny how it penetrates closed eyelids – but I was trying to go to sleep, having been rudely awakened by rain beating in on me so I had to sit up and close the windows.

We haven’t had a spot of rain.  A speckle, a mote, an atom.  Stop selfishly keeping it all up there in London.

† This may not have been his exact phrase.