Robin McKinley's Blog, page 52

A start at comment catch-up

 

DrDia

. . . we’re very excitedly looking into aquaponics. No need to water your veggies/flowers/whatever when they’re growing in fish-fertilised water. Of course, more investigation is in order.

This is OBVIOUSLY not the solution for our future roses, but I’m pretty sure lots of other things can be coaxed to grow this way – yummy things.

YOU’RE GOING TO GROW YOUR VEGETABLES IN FISH CRAP?  FRESH, JUST-OUT-OF-THE-FISH, FLOATING-IN-THE-WATER FISH CRAP?  YOU’RE GOING TO GROW STUFF YOU MIGHT BE EATING RAW IN UNTREATED FISH CRAP?

I daresay I’m missing something.**  And I’ve got no problem with crap as a fertilizer—I buy ‘composted farmers’ manure’* at the farm-supply shop at regular intervals.  And during the sadly brief period at the old house where I HAD MY OWN HORSE, I used to pick out the paddocks (I was very popular with the stableyard crew) and compost pure horse manure*** at home under a black plastic tarp . . . and a year later the stuff was the most amazingly beautiful, crumbly, black, sweet-smelling compost . . . I could nearly eat it myself.

But I’m a little twitchy about the idea of fresh crap—aside from the fact that the standard horse, chicken or mixed-farmyard crap will burn your plants if it hasn’t been composted first.  I don’t think I know anything about fish crap;  the only water-originated fertilizer I know much about is seaweed derived.  Also, this is frivolous of me, but a lot of gardening is about how it looks.†  I’m such a dweeb about this that barring pruning accidents or the inevitable wastage involved in hoicking thirty feet of Souvenir de la Frelling Malmaison back over to my side of the wall again, I won’t cut flowers to bring indoors and put in vases.  I don’t really fancy feeling warm and affectionate to a lot of fish tanks.

Diane in MN

I haven’t read M.R. James in YEARS. I think I’ll get my knitting and watch that video. 

Diane and I are having a FASCINATING email conversation about this video.  You’re all missing out.††

Scribblous

I’m only surviving the summer because I discovered you can order fans online even when the stores run out.

Sigh.  And I’m too dumb to live. †††  Thank you.  Very, very, very slightly in my defense I’d checked John Lewis, which is the only department store I ever think of, on probably the one day this decade that they were out of stock, last year, I think, during the heat wave in, wasn’t it March?, and all us heat-haters were freaking out at this omen of a diabolical summer to come—and then we didn’t have summer.‡  Anyway they had sold out of every fan that cost less than £500 and was just a fan and didn’t also do the ironing and balance your chequebook.  My clothing and my bank balance wouldn’t know what hit them.  I prefer to spare them the shock.  Also, all I wanted was a fan, not an additional member of the family.  I suspect it was one of those situations like the year when I was a kid my family moved to upstate New York.  Upstate New York communities are very good at coping with snow.  But that year we had something like four feet in September.  Even upstate New York isn’t ready for major blizzards in September, and their snow ploughs were all off getting serviced for the winter to come.  There were a lot of red faces.  And a lot of snow on the roads.  John Lewis was probably not prepared for a run on small electric fans in March.  Anyway, I flounced off line again and decided it was my Fate to Fry.

Diane in MN

I appreciate bees, but I’m afraid of them and do not find them necessarily benign. And the big fuzzy ones that I’ve encountered are generally carpenter bees, solitary and territorial and swift to come after you. I won’t even get started on yellowjackets. But biting and stinging insects are drawn to my aura or whatever, so I’m a little neurotic about them.

I never found bees benign when I lived in the States.  I used to wonder why they all had such a death wish—since mostly they do die if they sting you—but I never doubted that they did.  Carpenter bees?  Shudder.  They’re so huge you can see the expression on their faces as they come after you and it’s not friendly.  And I was another one who had ‘chocolate cake with hot fudge sauce’ written all over me in bug language.  People used to tell me patronisingly that it was because I ate too much sugar.  I know other people who ate too much sugar and they didn’t get chewed on like hot buttered corn on the cob every year.  And I still eat too much sugar but the bugs don’t like the post-menopausal hag nearly as much as they liked the juicy young one.  Getting old is not all bad.

Abigailmm

Wow, AJLR, either you have exceptionally nice bees or you are a lot more careful than I am, or both.

Ajlr is keeping bees in England, and you are keeping them in the States.  I rest my case.

Diane in MN

When I’m gardening, I dress for insect avoidance (pants tucked into wellies, lightweight long-sleeved jacket, hat and headnet, and gloves) because we have mosquitoes and deerflies and TICKS. It does get VERY warm. And it’s not 100% foolproof, because the mosquitoes can bite you through your clothes. But at least it keeps the ticks off and the biting flies out of my face.

We have our share of wasps, too, but they’re generally not a big problem unless they’ve built a nest somewhere really troublesome, like at the door. Then it’s a job for the exterminators, and I hide in the house.

Oh, my, how I remember the Full Gardening Suit, a close cousin of the Space Exploration Suit, each in its way doing its best to protect you from a hostile environment.  I’m pretty sure I’ve said here before that getting bitten by black flies in Maine would make me literally feverish and ill—and any Mainer will turn pale‡‡ and trembly at the thought of a bad black fly season.  And they’re all bad.  Give me a bunch of pissed-off Cardassians any day.

We certainly have ticks here—I screw‡‡‡ them out of the hellcritters occasionally.  After most of sixty years of having dogs underfoot ticks still creep me out:  aside from the damage they can do they’re just ultimately icky.§  And I run away from wasps and hornets here just as vigorously, not to say frantically, as I did in the States—straight indoors to the exterminator’s phone number.

It’s been much too hot again today and tomorrow is supposed to be worse.  Joy.  And just to remind me—thanks, very thoughtful, but I didn’t really need reminding—that southern England is not a green and pleasant Eden, I’ve been absent-mindedly doing the watering in shorts, you know, so I don’t keel over with heatstroke or something.  With the result that the Gigantic Red Marks that came up on the backs of my legs last year . . . have returned.  It took MONTHS for them to fade last year ARRRRRRRGH but of course I’d forgotten all about them, when I put shorts on for the first time this year. . . .  I have no idea what causes these great maculae, except that it frelling lives in the frelling garden and—menopausal hormonal crash or no—I’m allergic to it.  Some things don’t change nearly enough.

* * *

* Composted farmers of course make the very best fertilizer

** Feel free to write a GUEST POST about what a short-sighted dolt I am.

*** I mean not mixed with whatever bedding is in their stalls.

† For example, right at the moment, my Ghislaine de Feligonde is amazing . . . but she also managed to break her stays in the wind, last weekend I think, and a vast agglomeration of her has fallen across the path.  What would be the path.  Which is why I haven’t posted photos.  I’ve been saying ‘I’ll tie her up tomorrow’ all this week.  If I don’t do it soon, she’ll go over.  Arrrrgh.  Gardening is such a sucker’s game.

†† I also recommend the knitting aspect.

††† See footnote **

‡ I liked it.

‡‡ Whatever colour you started out

‡‡‡ I have this little 90°-angle two-tined fork thing.  You hook it under the tick and start screwing, as if it’s a disgusting form of bolt.

§ One of those situations where you want to say OKAY, WHAT IS GOD’S PLAN ABOUT TICKS?

Unscheduled Short(ish) Thursday

 

. . . Because I spent way more hours in the garden this afternoon than I was planning to.*  I was planning just to go back to the cottage long enough to do the frelling watering** but while it’s still deadly dry for as far ahead as the forecast can plausibly make out*** it’s enough cooler today to be really lovely to be outdoors in.  Hellhounds and I ambled home smiling.  So I got out into the back garden† and thought, oh, well, maybe I’ll just do a trifle of weeding and maybe pot something on†† and three hours later I HADN’T DONE THE WATERING YET.  We had to sprint back to the mews for me to take Pav out for her afternoon/evening hurtle before she ate all her bedding in despair (a) that she’d been forgotten forever and (b) that nobody was ever going to FEED HER again.

* * *

* Having spent a surprising amount of the morning going to special-occasion Mass at the monks.  They have Mass every morning but it’s at nine o’clock which must seem almost indecent to the monks themselves, whose morning prayer is at 6:30^, and it’s probably part of their be-nice-to-the-plebs rule.  But to do standard morning Mass I would have to be not merely out of bed but functional enough to drive by 8:25.  There have been eras of my life when this would have been possible.^^   This is not one of them.  Things change, of course.  I hadn’t planned on turning Christian last September.  A proper timesuck, religion.  And I like mornings.  The problem is that I like really late nights too, and I’m always trying to get just one more thing in today.^^^  Even if it’s been tomorrow for several hours.

But today is St Catastrophia’s day and St Catastrophia is one of my monks’ special whatevers.#  So Mass was at eleven.  I can (almost) do eleven.  I clawed myself together## and made my breakfast tea strong enough that my blood pressure could do the driving entirely unaided. ###  The church was packed.~  Gives me the whimwhams, that many people in a smallish space.  And chucking us all through Communion took a while.  One way or another it was two and a half hours before I got home again to a lot of extremely cranky, legs-crossed hellcritters.~~

^ I have more than once toyed with the idea of staying up a little later and going to this one.  It’s the getting home at 8 a.m. that stops me.  I don’t think even I can go to bed at 8 a.m.  And no sleep is pretty repulsive.

^^ When the hellhounds were manic puppies I got up early enough to take them for the basic twenty-five minute river walk before bell ringing at 9:45 on Sunday mornings.  And I wouldn’t want to say that bell ringing takes any less brain than driving 3000 pounds of Wolfgang at 60 mph.  Or even 30 mph.

^^^ Often a blog post.

# A friend said, beware the High-Church tendency to pray to saints:  I (she said) pray to God.  Well, so do I.  But I think being a little extra-polite to a prefect you know is tight with the headmaster is not a bad thing.

## Hey, I put on clean jeans.  I saw one other woman there in jeans.  Most of ’em were wearing summer frocks.  And lipstick.  And lady shoes.

### Hellcritters were not amused:  first time I’m through the front door in the morning [sic] I should have at least some of them with me in a purposeful manner.

~ Average age of congregation member:  82.  And Aloysius was there, which brought the average down, and one realio-trulio baby, which brought it down some more.  I tell myself it’s a weekday morning:  the young and fit are mostly at work.

~~ The monks were laying on lunch afterwards too.  Are you kidding?  Eat lunch with all those strangers?  I had hellcritters to get home to.  As well as grave doubts about the quality of the monks’ comestibles.

** I HATE WATERING.  I HATE WATERING.  WATERING ISN’T GARDENING.  WATERING IS SLAVERY.  Or something.  I mean, no one is holding a gun to my head when I buy all those plants and put them in all those pots.  Although I didn’t know that all the plumbing in Hampshire ran under my garden when I bought the house.  This little detail wasn’t in the plans or the contract and the surveyor missed it.

*** Except my little kitchen-shelf weather station which gets all excited and predicts rain every time I’ve done enough watering to raise the humidity level in my tiny walled garden.

† The most gruesomely urgent watering tends to be at the front where not only is everything in pots, it’s surrounded by brick, tarmac and stucco.

†† Possibly the top-heavy, overdue-for-repotting dahlia that got knocked off its perch when Atlas was doing the watering and split off about a third of its pressed-compost pot.  I’ve had it propped up between two other pots, like friends getting the third friend who’s sprained her ankle back down to the bottom of the mountain again, but it has nothing to soak up water with.  –Okay.  Done.

 

Shortie Wednesday

 

For a woman who got about four hours of sleep last night I’m doing really well.  Luke and his family left this morning and I was conscious to see them off.  Morning.  Conscious.  Golly.*  I did not fall asleep during the silent-prayer sit this afternoon although there may have been a little more swaying than totally desirable.  As I keep saying, those Zen guys had some good ideas.  Cross-legged if you can fold up enough to get your knees on the floor—your zafu is totally your friend here—really is a stable posture and having to keep your back more or less straight requires a certain minimal attentiveness.  My brain, unfortunately, was even more of ricocheting disaster than usual but by the end of the second half the physical stillness was beginning to have some effect.  A bit like trapping your manic hellterror between your legs.  You are going to be quiet now.  Yes.  You are.  Quiet. I said quiet. 

I even made it through bell ringing at the abbey.  The good thing about summer holidays is that those of you who show up get to ring a lot.  This is a mixed blessing on four hours’ sleep in a muggy airless ringing chamber, but it was okay.  And when Albert called for bob minor I chose a middle bell so I could practise my ropesight on a method I should know backwards, forwards, upside down and in a frelling queue instead of a circle so you can only see some of the bells depending on which way you’re looking and end up with whiplash, snapping your head back and forth.  And even that was okay, in spite of the 7,341 Dreaded Three-Four Down Singles that my bell had to ring.

But today is OFFICIAL SHORT BLOG WEDNESDAY YAAAAAAAAY.  I was going to post this last week, and then that amazingly sensitive and perceptive blogger tweeted her review of SHADOWS and that, of course, took precedence.

Adele Geras retweeted this eight or nine days ago**, as it happens a few days after I had finished a KES ep in which Kes has a white-flapping-thing experience she does not enjoy.  And while I don’t think I’d call the original the best or my favourite M R James story*** it’s probably in my top ten.  This dramatization is also interesting, I think, for it being a classic example of the BBC of that era:  what it does really well and what it does badly.  But I did find this well worth forty minutes of my time.  If a few of you watch it and express an opinion/interest I’ll do a bit of a SPOILER post about what I thought of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j4MAzQiTxE&feature=youtu.be

* * *

* A significant part of the problem at the moment is that I own only one fan and . . . the hellcritters need it worse.  You only think about additional fans when you need one, by which time they’ve sold out.

** But because good record-keeping and tidy organization are not in my skill set I’ve managed to lose who tweeted it originally, and I can’t find it to check.  I merely emailed myself the link.

*** If I had to choose it might be Casting the Runes.  Maybe I should do some rereading. . . .

Bumblebee

 

Late last night when I brought the hellhounds back through the cottage door from our final brief hurtle there was a Loud Buzzing Noise.  Noooooo, I thought.  It’s just a VERY LARGE HOUSE FLY.

Wrong.  But it wasn’t a thumb-sized wasp.  It was a thumb-sized bumblebee.

I don’t kill bees.  I did in my younger, bloodthirsty, violently-allergic-to-everything days and in America where everything that buzzes and wears yellow and black is totally out to get you and will leap out of the shrubbery and pursue you, fizzing like a short fuse that is about to blow you away.  Honey was nice and all, but I hated bees as much as I hated anything else that if it stung me I’d blow up like a gigantic red rubber balloon and which occasionally threatened to stop me breathing too.*  Just for laughs.  Laughs are harder when you can’t breathe.

But then I moved to England where bees are a lot mellower.  They still sting, but you have to really annoy them first.**  The bumbles in particular are amazingly laid back.  I’ve inadvertently put my hand on a bumblebee more than once—they’re also kind of slow—and haven’t been stung yet, although I don’t care to push this.  But I don’t find something to do on the other side of the garden if I find myself sharing space with a bumblebee:  which in the cottage garden is a good thing, since bumblebees like it and it’s a small garden.  Three bumblebees and it’s full.

Anyway.  I had a bumblebee in the house last night.  Neither of us was happy.  I chased her around with a glass and a piece of cardboard for a while but she wouldn’t settle.  Eventually she Disappeared into the Shadows of the Sitting Room and I let her.

I assumed she wouldn’t sting me as I slept and she didn’t.†  I looked around a little cautiously this morning but I didn’t see her—maybe she was stunned by the frelling heat too.  And then as I was ringing Peter to discuss the day ahead. . . .

I love foxgloves, but the basic mid-pink ones take over if you let them.  Pink of course is good, but the really startling dark raspberry pink ones are rare—unless you go to a garden centre and buy them which in foxglove country seems to me kind of cheating.  Or anyway part of the fun to me is seeing where the silly things manage to come up—foxgloves seed like anything around here, and this includes in cracks in the pavement and among the houseleeks and in three-inch pots containing mini geraniums.  But I like the whites, or the very very very pale pink, with the dark maroon spots in their throats.  Back at the old house I selected for these by pulling up all the mid-pinks—white will make a decent go of it if you give them some edge.  By the time we left we had lots of splendid white—and some mid-pink since they don’t breed true.  Which is fine.  I wouldn’t want to obliterate  . . . pink.

I can’t perform this harsh selection process at the cottage;  the garden’s too small and there are still only two or three whites a year.  I like a proper foxglove forest and we’re getting there, at the cottage, but the pinks predominate.  So I compromise and pull out most of the mid-pinks when the last flowers are coming out, and before they have a chance to set seed.  And then I put the foxglove tip with its final few inches of flowerets in a vase indoors—waste not want not.

So I had just rung Peter this morning when . . . my overnight visitor†† emerged from seclusion and crawled into one of the foxglove flowerets.†††  I put the phone down hastily, snatched up the vase and took it outdoors.  With its passenger.

Yaay. ‡

* * *

* I carried an epipen for years.  I’ve told you at least some of this before.  My last damaging encounter with Things That Sting was in that delirious week between Peter coming to visit me in Maine and his ringing me up a week later which is when we decided to get married.  It’s possible that being Off the Planet had enough physical effect that I didn’t react as badly as I might have—or as I expected to.  I hadn’t quite stepped on the nest, chiefly because they were already coming after me, and I turned and fled—running into the fellow I was with, but only I got stung.  I swelled up some and wheezed a little—and started carrying an epipen again.

** Although I’ll still never make a beekeeper.  Beekeepers do get stung even if maybe not as often as the population at large believes^ and I don’t want to press this post-menopause allergy-truce thing too far.

^ Right, Ajlr and abigailmm?

† She was probably hiding in the kindling basket with the dog food [sic] and whimpering to herself:  if I get out of this alive I’ll never go out after dark again!  —I hope she likes cedar oil.  I won’t use proprietary moth killer stuff so the sitting room, the attic and the cupboard in my bedroom kind of reek with cedar oil.   The attic contains all my wool clothing, the cupboard in my bedroom contains (most of) my YARN STASH.  I don’t know why the sitting room is so popular with clothes moths.  Maybe they like dog food.

†† Luke and Andraste and the others are at Third House.

††† I like to think of her flying hopelessly through this alien landscape—not realising that the giant with the clear columnar prison and the shingle has her best interests at heart—and catching sight of the foxglove.  My prayers are answered!, she cries and hurtles toward it.

‡ I’d like to say something about always having a foxglove in a vase after this—I’m nearly there with the necessary level of foxglove forest and they last quite a while in a vase—but bees, I’ve read, specialise.  And there’s a limit to how many bee-motel options I could have lined up on the kitchen table.^

^ Peter was faintly cranky when he rang me back, almost immediately, to say accusingly, that was you, wasn’t it?  I know, I know, I put the phone down after only about three rings, I said.  But there was this bee. . . .

 

Singing revisited

 

It is much too hot.  Much too hot.  The hellhounds agree.*  Hellhounds say, Fie! Thou insultest us with food?  We spurn both thee and it.**

Sigh.  It’s not enough to be hot*** and cranky and stupid, I have to worry extra about the frelling hellhounds.†

I’m starting this post way too late—it’s well past midnight.††  Our visitors took us out to dinner and then I went back with them to Third House so I could hear Percival sing.  Gah.  Why am I BOTHERING with voice lessons?  He offered not to sing Linden Lea because I’m singing it for Nadia right now . . . but I love Linden Lea:  of course I want to hear someone who can sing sing it.†††  The rooms in Third House are rather small.  He just about pins your hair back even when he’s not trying to project.  SIIIIIIIIIGH.

So why am I bothering?  Because I love singing.  Sue me.  But every time the hellhounds Produce Another Inappropriate Behaviour‡ my dingleblatting throat closes up again or further, so during a week that has included heat, geysering and non-eating—plus, this week, an insane pollen count which has given me a fairly insane headache and a sore throat that keeps moving around like it’s looking for something—I can go through my exercises all I like, singing is not happening.  I half-tried to cancel my lesson today:  I emailed Nadia yesterday saying that I had a sore throat, no voice and a nasty attitude, and that if she’d like the end of the afternoon off—I’m her last student—she could cancel me.  Well, she didn’t.  So, secretly glad, I got there early enough to sit in a patch of shade with my knitting‡‡ and listen to her almost-pro-baritone-who-decided-to-be-a-doctor-instead and thinking, okay, I’m bothering because Nadia has two kiddies she’s going to have to put through college and she needs the money.‡‡‡

It was a surprisingly good lesson, after all of that.§  Mainly it’s teacher magic—my wretched throat was so startled it forgot to cough.  But as will not amaze regular readers I have a little problem with relaxation and Nadia finally leaped to her feet muttering, I have a book . . . and brought back something with gruesome anatomical pictures of people’s noise-making apparatus.  I should know a lot more of this than I do;  I studied anatomy in homeopathy college and have a fabulous, if extremely lurid, anatomy book of my very own.  But I mostly didn’t get above the thyroid, and while I know what vocal folds and the larynx look like, the tongue was a revelation.  I know, theoretically, it’s bigger than you think it is, but it’s HUGE.  It fills that whole vast area of your lower jaw.  There’s a lot of it to relax.  Or not, as the case may be.  But I feel quite inspired about having another important tool I can deploy at home:  relax that blasted tongue.  Now.§§

Percival finished tonight by singing Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes which tickled me extremely, since it’s one of my oldest favouritest favourites—and I wouldn’t have thought anyone under the age of ninety would be learning it voluntarily.  I came home singing it, probably to the dismay of the neighbours.§§§  And I’m presently listening to a CD by The Choir of New College Oxford, called Early One Morning and of the twenty songs on it I sing seventeen of them (including Early One Morning§§§) and not singing Sumer is Icumen in doesn’t really count because I only know it as a round which means you need someone to sing it with.  But.  Hey.  I may not sound like much but I’m developing repertoire.

* * *

* The hellterror says, Hot, schmot, where’s my next meal?

** Hellterror says, Risk of food wastage?  Not to worry.  I can handle it.^

^ There’s probably a superhero(ine) possibility here.  I just have to figure out how to package it.  Supereater Dog! doesn’t have the vibrancy somehow.  But consider how convenient a critter that will eat ANYTHING will be the next time your army/group of adventurers is trapped on the wrong side of a mountain range in bad weather.  Barring a tame horla, a picked troop of hellterrors will totally do the job.^

^ Think how differently the second book of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING would have turned out if they had had some hellterrors with them.

*** I am well aware that what the south of England is withstanding doesn’t even register with anyone who is living in, say, New Mexico or Texas . . . but it counts as hot here.  It’s just as well that seventeen-year-old Wolfgang doesn’t have aircon, or hellcritters and I would be spending a lot of time driving nowhere in particular.

† Superfluously-frelling Chaos had one of those nights when the hellgoddess didn’t get any sleep, Saturday.  I’ve got another phone call in to the Detox Man.  I assume Chaos is manifesting another layer that needs clearing.  I am looking forward to bedrock.

†† Eh.  It’s too hot to sleep.  I’m not missing anything.

††† Singing The Roadside Fire doesn’t stop me listening to Bryn Terfel sing it.^  Singing Dido’s Lament doesn’t stop me listening to Janet Baker and 1,000,000 superb mezzos singing it.

^ Percival says he’s going to learn it, he just hasn’t got round to it yet.  It’s on the list.

‡ Chaos has actually eaten dinner.  Having rejected lunch unilaterally.  Darkness, being as one with his brother on the subject of lunch, hasn’t eaten dinner either, and I’m starting to breathe rather hard, since the bottom line with these guys has always been if they stop eating they don’t start again.  They consider hunger a character flaw and they weary of humouring me on this topic.

‡‡ I’ve decided that knitting wool in tragic heat is good for morale.  It reminds you that it will get cold again.

‡‡‡ Although I think she has a waiting list.  And maybe the next person on it sounds like Percival. . . . No, I’m not going there.

§ It’s also surprisingly encouraging to hear a really good singer make mistakes.  Hey.  They make mistakes.  You don’t hear the professionals on the concert platform doing anything but the final shiny performance.

§§ Yeah, that’ll work.  Uh-huh.  Sure.

§§§ Including Linden Lea.  Not Drink to Me Only however.

An Outing to a Bell Foundry – guest post by Sue

 

Bell casting first came to my attention when (many years ago) my chemistry teacher in school told the story of a King whose fleet was confined to harbour by a contrary wind. An oracle declared that the wind would change only if a bell was cast and rung.  Time and time again the bell was cast but it always emerged cracked.  The oracle was again consulted and this time told the king that only the death of his daughter would placate the gods and allow a successful casting. The king refused to sacrifice his daughter but she overheard the prophecy and, because she loved her father, threw herself into the vat of molten metal when the next casting was attempted.  The resulting bell was sound and rang true. The wind changed and the fleet sailed. *

With that tale resonating in me, and after following Robin’s blogging about bell ringing, I decided a couple of years ago to visit the John Taylor bell foundry in Loughborough, one of only 2 bell foundries remaining in Britain (the other is Whitechapel’s in London).  Mike – my partner and an engineer with absolutely no interest in bells – needed more than a little encouragement to provide chauffeur & companion duties (I too have ME), so I arranged for us to join a tour organised for a Rolls Royce enthusiasts’ group – plenty of like-minded people for him to talk to, I thought.

Bells are made of bronze, an alloy of 77% copper and 23% tin, with slightly more tin being used for handbells.** Other metals can be used but the tone isn’t as good – our guide demonstrated bronze, aluminium, cast iron and steel bells and even a musical novice like me would choose the bronze variety.  At the time of our visit, one ton of bell metal cost around £10,000. The bell known as Great Paul, hung in St Paul’s Cathedral in 1881, weighs 17 tons and would cost £1¼m to cast.

Bells and fittings stacked up waiting for recycling. They’ll be either retuned or melted down and recast.

Casting a bell uses two molds, the core and the case. The core is solid and built from various ingredients – loam and manure are two that stick in my memory – and then shaped to the inside of the new bell.  The case is a large metal bell-shaped shell and a dozen or so can be seen in the lower half of the photo of the workshop.  The core is clamped inside the case and molten bell metal is poured between them.

The workshop area seen from an observation balcony overlooking its length.

Much to my disappointment we didn’t get to see a bell being cast, although bell solder was being poured into small molds amidst much sparking and smoke.

Pouring bell solder into a carrying pot. Its destination was the small molds on the floor behind the man standing. This was the best shot I managed – general light levels were poor but the bell solder was incandescent.

Once the bell has been cast it needs tuning. The bell is mounted upside down on a lathe and turned to remove rings of metal from its inside.  We were told that Church bells are tuned using a 5 tone tuning principle, these being:

(1)    Hum – lowest note

(2)    Fundamental – octave above the hum

(3)    Nominal – octave above the fundamental

(4)    Tierce – minor 3rd above the fundamental

(5)    Quint – 5th above the fundamental

The largest tuning fork I’ve ever seen!

Overall, I had the impression that bell manufacture is a very traditional sort of work; on a cloudy day the work areas looked grimy and it was easy to imagine little might have changed since the Victorian era. Modern technology wasn’t much in evidence although I did see a laptop in the tuning area, alongside an impressive array of tuning forks.

Leaving the foundry, Mike admitted enjoying the tour. He didn’t talk shop with the Rolls Royce people (who were, quite reasonably, interested in what our guide was saying) but there were some lovely, expensive-looking cars parked outside the Foundry – amongst them a 1910ish custom built open topper and a couple of others from the 1930s and ’40s (or so I’m told – I have about as much interest in cars as Mike does in  church bells).

All in, a good day and a memorable outing.

* * *

*  I am going to rewrite this story.  It’s been biting my butt since Sue first sent me a draft of this post.  Arrrrgh.  If this isn’t a TYPICAL trad-girl story.  Oh, dearie me [vigorous hand-wringing] what can I DOOOOOOOO to save the situation?  You can diiiiiiiiiiiie.  Her father and her people are devastated.  She’s still dead.  Not in my version. –ed.

** I didn’t know that!!!  –ed.

KES, 86

 

EIGHTY SIX

“Coffee?” said JoJo.  “No.”  There was a pause while a memory of interactions with human beings outside his garage perhaps struggled to surface, and then he added, “Thanks.”  He then shrugged out of a knapsack, heretofore invisible among the hair and the blackness since the knapsack was black too, and said, “Got this.”

“Brownies?” said Serena.  “Home-made brownies?”

He grew at least two extra inches as he came to alert:  “Brownies?”  His eyes gleamed.  He went so far as to brush his hair back from his forehead.  His forehead was tattooed.  At least it wasn’t a screaming skull or an exploding head.  It looked sort of like crenellations.  He would make Gurgsmeel the Malevolent a fabulous assistant.  He would of course rebel at a critical moment, giving Flowerhair a chance to escape.  He had been sold to Gurgsmeel when barely more than an infant by parents so poor that allowing an evil magician to buy one of their offspring seemed like a good business move, and despite his upbringing retained a dislike of murder.  Gurgsmeel was furious, of course, so JoJo—um, Joran, Jundo, I’d think about it later—ran away with Flowerhair.  His skills were all of the evil magician’s apprentice variety, however;  who owed Flowerhair a favor that she could leave him with, to learn useful things like goat-herding or rope-making or ploughshare sharpening?

I pulled myself back to standard reality with an effort.  I almost looked around for my knapsack so I could make a note.  (I carried pen and notebook, iPhone, iPad and iPad stylus as standard:  who says technology simplifies your life?  At least I’d managed to leave the laptop at Rose Manor—like I lived there or something.  I hoped the hob was keeping an eye on it.)  I was suffering writing withdrawal:  I hadn’t been near any writing implements in a meaningful manner in over a week.  This didn’t happen.

Serena said, “I’ll be right back.”  She went toward the office at nearly a trot and I thought, why does she want to waste home-made brownies on JoJo?  All right, not waste, expend.  JoJo was about to disappear into the Manhattan conurbation and out of New Iceland forever (one assumed) and picking up a rented vehicle isn’t really the sort of situation where a home-made brownie welcome is expected.  But I saw her face as she came toward us again, carrying a three-quarters-full brownie pan and staring at it with a look of intense concentration.  She glanced up at JoJo and then down again at the brownies and the look of concentration deepened even farther.  Gotcha, I thought, and almost laughed.  Serena’s doing the representational artist’s version of reinventing JoJo as Gurgsmeel’s apprentice.  I wondered if he’d appear in two dimensions or three.

JoJo apparently didn’t want to go far from the van, so we all sat on the steps of cabin number seven.  I tried to pull my leather jacket closer around me surreptitiously.  I would have been glad of Sid’s warmth on the step next to me except she was doing the huge sad eyes thing, and chocolate is bad for dogs.  “No,” I said, talking through a mouthful.  “It destroys your liver.  Dogs die of eating chocolate.”  She remained unconvinced.

“Dog,” said JoJo.

“Er,” I said.  “Yes.  She adopted me.”  It couldn’t possibly be only last night.  Couldn’t possibly be.  Therefore wasn’t.  I shoved her head away.  She was about to lick brownie crumbs off my chin.

“My little sister has a dog,” said JoJo.  I didn’t see Mike’s face, but Serena looked as startled as I felt.  That was a complete sentence:  My little sister has a dog.  And it contained several sibilants.

He immediately lapsed back into silence and while it was hard to tell through the hair, I thought he looked embarrassed.  But we were all now paying attention.  It was Serena who got the story out of him.  JoJo lived at home with his mom and his sister.  His sister, Evie, was in a wheelchair.  She’d been born with a lot of stuff wrong with her, and their dad had taken off because he couldn’t deal with it.  Their mom was the designated carer and they got some money out of the government because she couldn’t work and take care of her disabled daughter, but there wasn’t enough money, which was where JoJo came in.  Evie’s dog (Van Helsing, known as Hugh.  You figure it out) was trained to warn her mom if Evie was about to have a seizure, and had taught himself to pick stuff up if Evie dropped it.  “My sister wants to go to college,” JoJo said.  “She’s really bright.  She should go.  Mom’s trying to get a scholarship for her.”  He ate the last brownie without any embarrassment at all, and stood up.  “Thanks,” he said.  He leaned over to riffle the sticky-up hair along Sid’s ruff.  “Gotta get going.”

I think we may have been kind of looking at him with our jaws hanging.  I was revising my Gurgsmeel’s apprentice story.  Having given Flowerhair a boost over the city wall Jugjug pauses to rescue five hundred children out of a burning orphanage despite Gurgsmeel coming after him with six dragons and a poison-tipped spear.  When it turns out that the only daughter of the king was visiting a friend at the orphanage that day, the king buys his apprenticeship papers and has a statue of him put up in the palace courtyard.

JoJo grinned.  “S’okay,” he said.  “I like cars.”

You never know about people.

Fast fast fast Friday

 

It’s been a running-around kind of day.*  Nina and Halley** came for lunch and then, bless them many times, came up to Third House with me and made beds and swept floors and watered plants and were generally far too energetic for THIS HEAT.***  I mean, they’re even old.  Almost as old as me.†  Then I went back to the cottage and did some more watering†† while keeping an eye on Pooka for texts from Andraste about progress.†††

Everyone has arrived who should have and dinner has been eaten and everybody but me has gone to bed.  It’s too hot to sleep.‡  Hey, maybe I could sing a little.

* * *

* Including a certain amount of running away as soon as anyone says anything tennis-related.  Wimbledon?  Isn’t that a small South American lizard?  No?  Pity.  I’d like it better if it were.

** Whose only major fault is he likes sports.

*** WATERING.  PLANTS.  ARRRRRRRGH.  HATE WATERING.  HATE.  WATERING IS BORING.  Says the woman who may have even more pots in her garden than she has bats in her roof.  I understand bats are having a bad year.  They’re doing all right in New Arcadia.

† Over the bed-making Nina and I were having a desultory conversation about the likelihood of ever getting our [free for old fogies] bus passes.  When I moved over here almost twenty-two years ago^ women were still eligible at my age now.  I think I’m eligible when I’m something like sixty-two, three months and eight days—they’ve got some very bizarre sliding scale.  But they’ll have moved it again by the time I arrive at sixty-two, three months and eight days.  Nina, being several years younger than me, has even less prospect.  But at the rate they’re destroying public transport there won’t be any buses to take anywhere anyway in a few more years.  When I’m no longer safe to drive 4000 pounds of cheap plastic at speeds in excess of 60 mph, I’ll have to buy a horse.  The monks are a long way away by horse.

^ One of the women at St Margaret’s asked me how long I’d been in England.  Twenty-two years in October, I said.  Oh! she said.  Half your life then.  —Snork.  Well, the church is not at all well-lit, and by Sunday evening it’s been a long weekend.

†† GAAAAAH.  ARRRRRGH.

††† ‘Long tailback caused by explosion in confetti factory’ ‘Oops, entire load of cheese-bearing lorry has just slewed across the road, and all that half-melted Cheddar has created impassable barrier, they’re rerouting us via Marseille, I think we’ll be late’

‡ Darkness, I don’t need any help not sleeping, okay?

Unofficial Short Thursday Blog

 

Darkness got me up last night.*  About three hours after I’d gone to bed.  And the adrenaline rush of coping meant that I did not get back to sleep although I lay in bed a while longer and hallucinated.  Those dreams you have when you’re teeming with unfriendly adrenaline and can’t sleep but are so tired you can’t help trying are usually pretty gnarly.  Mine are anyway.  I would probably have been better turning the light** back on and reading a nice soothing knitting magazine.

Hellcritter update:  I’ve told you they’re all on homeopathic detox, yes?  And Darkness, as the worst affected by whatever-it-is, always was likely to have the roughest time getting clean.  Pavlova has already regained about TWO HUNDRED PERCENT OF HER ENERGY.  I’M NOT SURE BUT WHAT I PREFERRED THE FRAIL SUBDUED VERSION . . . joke.  Also, I have a strange fondness for solid crap.  But she was pinging off fences and car doors and shrubbery*** with such an excess of vitality on our morning walk today that when we met a friend and stopped to chat I simply sat down on the pavement and held her on my lap rather than try and keep her in order in my weakened condition.  Since my friend sat down too Pav thought this was a great system.†

Chaos is also livelier . . . and, a little ironically, so is Darkness.  But Darkness has good days and bad days whereas Chaos is more steadily improving.  Even more ironically, part of what made yesterday worse is my ridiculous attempt to go to bed a little earlier—combined with critter supper being a little later than usual, after I got home from tower practise.

Bluuuuuh.  Which is also the sound of the washing machine boiling dog bedding.  Since he was going to wake me up anyway, he might have woken me up before he threw up all over his bed.††

I have to get enough sleep tonight to blitz through Third House:  our visitors arrive tomorrow evening. . . . †††

* * *

* Under other circumstances this sentence would be poetic.  Not these circumstances.

** Not that it’s not BROAD DAYLIGHT out there by this time.  I still need a reading light.  You’ve read, speaking of read, the articles on how you shouldn’t use your ereader just like you shouldn’t play video games just before you try to sleep?  HARD COPY STILL RULES.  Even for those of you who don’t read in the bath.

*** And ducks.  Idiot duck was lying at the edge of the path and DIDN’T MOVE.  When I take the hellhounds down by the river I short-lead them past wildlife, because most wildlife doesn’t realise how fast a sprinting sighthound is.  Pav, while a good deal faster and more agile than I am, not that this takes a great deal, isn’t the speed death machine that the hellhounds are.  I generally let her shoot after things:  that pigeon will be in the air before she arrives (unfortunately).  She’s also accustomed to things getting away.  She piled up on the back end of this duck and didn’t know what to do next.  The duck was cross.  It jumped (belatedly) in the water and swam away in a huff, going wankwankwankwankwank the way ducks do.^

^ Yes, I do know what ‘wank’ means.  It’s still a closer representation of the standard duck noise than ‘quack’ ever was.  ‘Quack’ is for special occasions.  ‘Wank’ is the default.  Maybe it depends on your duck.  Ours clearly say ‘wank’.

† Have I mentioned that I have a serious contact allergy to my hellterror?  How frelling, um, aggravating is that?!?  If we’d gone on having a typical English grey cold long-sleeved summer I might never have noticed.  But holding her in a t shirt?^  Major rash all along the insides of my arms after a few minutes.  ARRRRRRGH.  My little Rappacini’s Daughter.^^  I thought Olivia was going to break a rib laughing.  Southdowner has offered to knit me arm protectors.  I AM ASSUMING I will adjust . . . to an animal I live with.  Usually I, er, grow into my puppies—never had a problem with the hellhounds, who have silky fur anyway.  But in my critter-sitting days I sneezed a lot.  And wore long sleeves.   Time was that a cat sleeping on my face, as cats will do, made me wake up as Mr Potato Head.^^^   I still occasionally react to other people’s critters.  But Pav has lovely fur:  it’s like dense plush.  My skin is a moron.

^ I mean me in a t shirt.

^^ http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Hawthorne/Rappaccini.htm

^^^ Haven’t made the experiment lately.  Would rather not.

†† So, how many other town-dwelling dog owners sleep in cotton dresses rather than nightgowns?  Just in case you have to rush outdoors with a dog in whatever you’re wearing?

††† And happy Fourth of July.  Eh.

 

Short and Sweet (?)

 

I have, as regular readers know, been making another of my ATTEMPTS to cut down on the ridiculous amount of stuff I keep trying to jam into my life and the twenty-four crummy little hours in an entire day.*  Well I’m declaring Wednesday to be an Official Short Blog Day, because it’s the only regular double-drama weekday:  the matinee is the silent prayer service at St Margaret’s with Aloysius** and the evening performance is tower practise at Forza.***  This week however we also have a major invasion of family arriving on Friday so I may exercise my new short-blog skills again soon.†

But for tonight I will leave you with a pretty amazing advance review of SHADOWS from a blogger who tweeted the link:

http://www.flyleafreview.com/2013/07/book-review-shadows-by-robin-mckinley.html

And yes, I think Hix is pretty cute too. . . . ††

* * *

* I’m not even counting cruising on-line yarn sales and cross-referencing with Ravelry about both the yarn and what I might be able to do with it.  I needed another time-waster.  I don’t fritter away enough time reading book reviews and sample chapters and making lists.  The latest variation on that theme is sheet music.

** Although he and I are the only ones sitting on the floor on zafus.  It fascinates me who with advancing age and ME has an increasing number and amount of stupid aches and pains that I can sit cross-legged and more or less motionless for more than forty-seven seconds.  I can’t sit on a chair without fidgeting, but plop me down on my meditation or, in this case, prayer cushion and I subside into a surprisingly convincing facsimile of calm.  Unfortunately this goes away again as soon as I stand up, and I suspect trying to introduce a laptop to the situation would not go well.

Those old Zen masters were clearly onto something about human anatomy however.  If any of you want to try it, I bought mine—on Aloysius’ recommendation—from http://bluebanyan.co.uk/meditation-cushions.html  Mine is the bog-standard buckwheat zafu.

*** Not too bad, thank you.  But I went to the twice-a-month additional practise for the slow and dim at Fustian last night and was told to go home and learn the calls for Cambridge minor.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  I can’t ring a plain course reliably.  They seem to think learning what happens in a touch is going to help.  Good ringers have no clue what it’s like being a not good ringer.

† I’m also really enjoying Guest Post Sundays. I have two left in the queue and then. . . . Any of you who have either promised guest posts and then run away apparently forever, or who are contemplating all those fabulous photos you took of the Inca trail and dawn over Machu Picchu and wondering what you want to do with them . . . ahem.  Allow me to make you feel welcome and desirable.

†† And yes—sigh—I’m aware that my ‘slow to get going’ is one of the reasons I’m not a fabulous best seller and not worrying about money all the time.  But I don’t seem to be able to help it.  It’s the way my stories go.  Aggravated, I’m sure, by the fact that I tend to like this approach in other people’s books.  The story is the story, but it is inevitably shaped and coloured by you the teller.  Which is one of the things that keeps us tellers awake at night.