Robin McKinley's Blog, page 62

I may be wearing these shoes for the rest of my life.

 

 

Pav is cycling, or gyrating, through another phase of, Jeans legs and shoelaces, pulling on;  and I mean PULLING.  ON.  —which is interesting when Mavis is walking her because Mavis tends to wear leggings.  I happened to be there today when Mavis was trying to get her out the door and . . . it was pretty funny.  Anyway.  I am a silly person, I consider dogs to be entertaining companions with a slightly unfortunate take on acceptable social behaviour, and I seem to like the ones who don’t pop out of the womb dying to be trained to DO SOMETHING.  One of my theories of surviving puppyhood is that puppies do in fact grow out of a surprising amount of their most appalling behaviour*, and you keep mildly insisting they learn where the end of their frelling extending lead is, that they come when called**, and that they sit when you tell them to***, and hey, you let as much of the rest of it go by as you can without losing any major body parts or pieces of architecture.  So when Pav decided to take me for a walk this morning by my right pants leg I said fine, whatever.  She in fact divided her attentions between the jeans-hem and the shoelace on that side.  I didn’t think a lot about this because I knot my laces several times and a wodge that size resists being compressed past being untied again.  Oh.  Woe.  When I got home again I discovered that she’d managed somehow to subvert the laws of physics and created a Whole New Category of Gordian knot, this one with eleven dimensions and a chorus line.  I tucked the frayed dangling ends together somehow and pelted off in pursuit of the rest of my day . . .

Which culminated tonight in a FREEZING COLD CATHEDRAL† listening to Harry Christophers’ The Sixteen being unbelievable.††  If you like this kind of music, it doesn’t get better.†††  But because of my little shoelace problem I couldn’t wear my sheepskin boots tonight:  I was stuck with my drafty canvas All-Stars.  I took my knitting, of course.  And my hands were perfectly happy, knitting, and wearing a pair of Jodi Meadows’ fingerless mitts.‡

TWO HOURS of knitting. I am SO SLOW. Granted I had a little trouble getting started AND the people I was with would TALK TO ME. Can’t you see I’m KNITTING?

My feet are still cold.

* * *

* Sometimes several times

** The audible jingle of kibble in the hand is a perfectly acceptable training aid, including that when your hellcritter is too far away to hear it any more^ she will still respond to the sight of your wildly shaking hand.  Which is only shaking to make the kibble rattle together, okay?  Right.

^Well, I think.  I have no idea how spectacularly acute dog hearing is.

*** I am really not doing this right because she so makes me laugh.  Our ‘walk’ command which is to say walking on a short loose lead as opposed to official ‘heeling’^ is not one of our best tricks but unless the weather is unspeakably dire and/or the Wild Hunt is bearing down on us from behind I do make her ‘sit’ before she’s officially released . . . to practise learning where the end of her frelling extending lead is.  Sometimes she sits beautifully—I think I’ve told you that she’s got it that ‘sit’ usually does get her something she wants, so she has started sitting spontaneously and hopefully when she thinks something desirable may be impending, like, you know, FOOOOOOOD—and sometimes she does not sit beautifully.  Sometimes she just stands there and stares at me—because by this time I’ve got her chin in my hand and we are looking at each other.  There’s nothing quite like being stared at by the miniature Mack truck which is a hellterror.  We could be here a while, I say, at which point she usually does sit.^^

^ For some reason my fingers just typed helling

^^ She is so not the spirit and essence of obstinacy, the way the bull-terrier mythology runs.  She’d much rather have a good time than demand her own way.  You can see the wheels turning behind the little beady eyes:  Oh drat the woman, she’s going to insist.

But, you know, obstinacy?  I have grown up in a hard dog-ownership school.  I have sighthounds.  Although I don’t think it’s exactly obstinacy.  When Pav stares at me and considers not sitting, she is thinking about laying her will against mine, she just decides against it because life is short.  Sighthounds are all la-la-la did you say something?  Sighthounds, as opposed to being born LONGING TO BE TRAINED TO DO SOMETHING are born autonomous.  Which, as many working sighthound owners have pointed out, makes perfect sense in terms of the job they were bred to do:  run things down and kill them.  To do this successfully they have to be able to use their own judgement:  their human may be miles away at the kill.

B_twin wrote:

I SO NEED A SIGHTHOUND. The Border Collies can’t catch the little sods. (Unless a hare was very very unlucky where it was situated).

Well, what are you waiting for?  GET A SIGHTHOUND.  You are going to have to train it to come back to you—there is a lot of rather dreadfully amusing training text out there about getting a sighthound’s attention and convincing it that obeying you is a good thing to do.  (Mine are perhaps the extreme end, but they are not at all unusual in being totally resistant to food as bribes, I mean, training rewards.)  You want something from a good working line, but you’d know that.  And for the rest . . . hares are tricky, but a (good working) sighthound will figure out a strategy.  You build its confidence first by letting it catch lots of stupid bunnies.  Chaos frelling caught the first (stupid) bunny he ever went after.  Well weren’t we all very startled (especially the bunny).

And Mrs Redboots, this area is rotten with brown hares.  This time of year you just about have to knock them out of the way with sticks, as well as have your hellhounds on short lead more than either you or the hellhounds appreciate when you’re out in the countryside where you’re supposed to be able to run around.  We have thickets of hares, skylarks, and bluebells— and it’s been like this for the twenty-one-and-a-half years I’ve lived here—but all of them are endangered, so they say.  We’ve also got dormice, water rats and otters, and I think some rather nice little wild orchids.  I mean, I know we have little wild orchids, but I think they’re considered nice ones.  It’s a good area.  I like living here.  I’ll like it better when the weather warms up.

† I seem to specialise in freezing-cold places of worship.  This was not in the plan.

†† http://www.thesixteen.com/page/the-choral-pilgrimage-2013  I don’t get to their choral-pilgrimage tour every year, but more often than not.  And now that Nina and Ignatius live in the area we can sometimes hoick Peter by the armpits and make him come along.  As tonight.

††† I’ll take a grown-up soprano over a kiddie soprano any day.  I realise this is heretical, but I don’t much like child sopranos.  They sound sort of squishy and creepy.  You need some weight of both years and size to bring it off—to my ear.

‡ http://www.jodimeadows.com/?page_id=804  No, Jodi made mine.  I am an unadvanced beginner, and I don’t do cables.

 

Frelling frelling frelling snow

 

It’s the fourth of frelling April in southern frelling England and IT’S SNOWING.  It’s been snowing off and on all freaking day, and all three of my hellcritters have been unusually possessed by demons* as, I want to believe, the result of the cold, and not because their essential anarchic nature is emerging at last.**  I took the hellhounds out to Warm Upford because Wolfgang’s tank needed filling again*** and while we weren’t going to waste a country walk, we weren’t exactly ambling along enjoying the beauties of nature and tender green burgeoning spring either.†  The snow isn’t lying, exactly:  it’s a twinkly suspended fog, and sometimes it’ll be icing-sugar on the ground for a while, and then it sort of goes away, since melting doesn’t seem the really pertinent verb in the circumstances.  There will be black ice on the roads tonight.††

And to make it perfect, this fourth of April in southern England when it’s SNOWING?  I received a big box of baby plants today.  My lurgy is a lot better—although I was barking like a hellcritter after only a half hour’s conversation with Hannah tonight—but I’m still a little slower even than usual getting out of bed in the morning with all this crud in my sinuses weighing me down.  I heard the courier van backing up the cul de sac BEEP BEEP BEEP and heard when he stopped outside my cottage, but he didn’t come to the door so I thought, excellent, since the only thing he could have been bringing me was baby plants—and turned over and went back to sleep.†††  So the baby plants he’d brought me had also been sitting in the FROZEN COLD FOR SEVERAL HOURS before the Wall Man, who comes and scowls at the irremediable Wall Situation occasionally, to prove, I suppose, that he still cares, said, when I was out chasing the hellterror round the little kitchen-door courtyard, Did you get your package?  WHAT PACKAGE?  WHY DIDN’T THE DRIVER PUT A CARD THROUGH THE MAIL SLOT?  WHY DIDN’T HE DELIVER THEM TO JAMAICA, WHERE IT’S WARM?  Whiiiiiiiine.

* * *

* Since some level of demon-possession is to be expected in hellcritters

** Note that it is harder to trap a roly-poly hellterror between your legs than it is one with a waist and hipbones.  I was trying to have a, you know, conversation with another obsessed dog person^ and Pav was all, Me!  Me!  Me!  I’M here!  Dorcas was saying that the chief function of pet dogs was to make you laugh and Pav has certainly got that cornered.

If Southdowner is reading this I know she’ll take me to task, but I’m not sure there’s a practical difference between your dog ‘knows it’s been bad’, which human-style thinking dog trainers come down on you like a ton of anvils for, and ‘knows what it’s been doing is going to piss you off’—which is real life, however you want to frame it.  Darkness, who’s the one with the what-I-would-call a conscience will sometimes flag having misbehaved when I wouldn’t have noticed, by creeping grovelling up to me.^^

Just like I’m not sure it matters if your dog thinks in the human terms of winding you up when it does things that wind you up.  It, or in this case she, is looking over her shoulder as she does them and displaying that fabulous hellterror sproingy bounding thing which I suppose is common to all dogs and particularly all puppies, but it looks more like nanny-nanny-boo-boo on a hellterror than it does on a hellhound.  I’m pretty sure Pav has figured out that I (mostly) won’t mess with her if she just picks things up and carries them around, it’s not till the jaws start grinding that—out on a hurtle—I crank her in and attempt to remove the undesirable item.  And I swear she looks over her shoulder at me when she starts chewing not because she ‘knows’ this will ‘wind me up’ but because life isn’t sufficiently exciting at this moment in time and this is a way to make me ENGAGE.  Arrrrgh.  Slightly adapting something Southdowner has told me I’ve started carrying a pocketful of loose treats on our hurtles and if she ‘drops’ the item without fuss—which means among other things that I have a hand free to pluck the blasted treat out of my pocket—she gets a treat.  I swear professional dog trainers have at least four arms, not to mention lightning reflexes.  One way or another however it means that Pav and I share high quality relationship-enhancing time on our hurtles.

^ Although her obsession runs to spaniels

^^ Chaos will come and grovel randomly just because I’m the hellgoddess.  This has its practical applications, however, as today, when I let them off lead for the first time in a while because first Chaos’ leg and then Darkness’ back has been an issue and unless the footing is good I’m just not going to risk it.  So we had several weeks of frustration exploding into motion.  They usually make a gigantic circle around me, which is preferable but unenforceable;  today they just frelling lit out.  YIIIIIIIIIIIIII.  I went pelting after them, trying to pretend that’s what I wanted to be doing and I was still totally in control . . . and they were still just about visible on the horizon when they finally stopped to check back with me.  HEY GUYS, I said, somewhat breathlessly, slowing instantly to a nonchalant walk.  HOW’S IT GOING?  And Chaos, bless his crazy little neurons, came lolloping back to me at half speed, which is still somewhat faster than mortal, and then took off again after Darkness, but now they shifted into giant circle mode, and my blood pressure and intimations-of-disaster levels dropped accordingly.  Note, however, that no one had better be lame tomorrow.  Including me.

*** Life was simpler when my home tower was a short pedestrian sprint away and I hadn’t discovered monks yet.

† Fortunately I saw the brown hare before the hellhounds did, drat the creature.  Brown hares are confident in their belief that they are the fastest land mammal in Britain^ and behave accordingly, which is to say they’re cavalier little beggars and they may be the fastest wild land mammal in Britain but a careering sighthound can catch one—and before it was made illegal, not infrequently did—and I don’t want to see this historic feat re-enacted, including the ‘yanking Robin’s arms out of their shoulder sockets’ part.  And if one of them ever decided to mosey carelessly into a field I’ve just let the hellhounds off-lead in . . .

^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/European_Hare

††  I’d been planning to go to the monks’ tonight but they’ve probably got snowdrifts.  You probably need an ice axe to get into their car park.

††† Sic.

My baklava recipe – Guest post by B-Twin

 

Baklava is a beloved treat in many cultures. Consequently, there are as many baklava recipes as there are stars in the sky! (One of these days I’ll get around to trying a rosewater one…)*

It’s assumed this is a fiddly and complex recipe but I don’t find it that way. It’s surprisingly quick to make. You just need to have things ready. Like most pastry, the filo demands you work briskly so it doesn’t dry out. Use plenty of butter and a large pastry brush. ;)

So, here’s my recipe. (With thanks to my Greek aunt.)  :)

 

Please note that if you use frozen filo then you need to read the instructions on the packet and thaw the pastry – in its packaging – either in the fridge (24hrs before) or on the bench at room temperature (about 2 hours in advance).

 

Ingredients

Syrup:

1 cup sugar (~250g) [can be omitted]

1 cup water (250ml)

2 whole cloves

4-5 strips of lemon rind (which works about to about half the rind on the lemon. And remember – no pith!)

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

1 cup of raw honey

 

~600g of fine-medium chopped nuts (whatever is on hand. Eg. Almonds, pistachios, walnuts, pecans etc. Don’t chop them so fine they all become meal though.)

1 teaspoon of mixed spice

1 teaspoon of ground cardamom

½ cup (1/2 cup) of brown sugar [can be omitted]

16 sheets of filo pastry

2/3 cup melted butter (160g) – I use cultured butter.

 

Method

Make the syrup: Put the water, sugar, cloves, lemon rind, cinnamon and star anise into a heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Simmer for about 12 minutes.
Remove from heat and then, after about 5 minutes, remove the cloves, rind, star anise and cinnamon. Add the honey and stir until it is dissolved. Allow to cool to room temperature. (Which should be about the same length of time that everything else takes to prepare.)
 Pre-heat the oven to moderate (180C/350F/Gas Mark 4). (Reduce temp by 10C if using fan-forced). Grease a tin (pan) that is about 23cm x 34cm (~9” x 13”). This is a little bigger than some pans used but a) I’m too lazy to cut the filo sheets too much and b) I increased the nuts a little so wanted to make sure they fit*.
 Mix the nuts, spices and sugar in a large bowl.
 Remove the filo from the box and carefully unroll it. Now is a good time to quickly place the baking tin over the sheets and trim accordingly. You don’t have to be overly precise. You do have to be careful. And have a sharp knife.
 Butter 4 sheets of filo with the melted butter and layer them in the tin. Cover the remaining pastry with cling wrap and a damp teatowel while you then proceed to place 1/3 of the nut mixture evenly over the buttered filo. Top with another 4 buttered sheets of filo. Repeat the layers twice more. If you want to, you can now trim the edges of the top layer of filo.
 Brush the top layer with butter (if not already done so) and then carefully, with a sharp knife, score the top layers of filo into diamonds. If you can manage to get through the 4 sheets on top it will help later after cooking.
 Bake for around 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and crisp.
 Pour the cool/cold syrup over the hot baklava – I try to focus on pouring it into the cuts – and then let sit for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight. Keep in a cool place, in the hot weather I would store in the fridge.

* * *

*Also, because I am fastidious with my cake tins/trays, I don’t use a knife in them. So I line the tin with baking paper (the silicon type) so that the baked goods can be lifted out of the tin for better cutting. Greasing the tin first helps ensure that the lining paper stays firmly in place.

* Rosewater baklava is fab.  Just sayin’. 

Homeopathy. Yes. It works.

 

 

I’m frelling ILL.  I’ve got some kind of head-cold-flu thing.  It’s all that hanging out in freezing-cold chapels with monks.*

A while ago on the forum Mrs Redboots asked for the ‘go-to’ homeopathic remedy for a head cold.  There isn’t one.  But I’ve been meaning** to use the question as an excuse to give you a(nother) little disquisition, not to say harangue, about first-aid homeopathy.

One of the great strengths of homeopathy, as well as its chief central frustration, is that it’s so INDIVIDUALISED.  Barring Arnica, which works, often amazingly, for almost all blood-and-bruising injuries, there isn’t much else that is one size fits all.  The two remedies I carry teeny-tiny bottles of in my pocket are Arnica and Aconite.  Aconite is the go-to remedy for shock and fear, and one of the guidelines about using it is that if you’re in a situation where someone is freaked out enough for you to be giving it to them, you should probably take it too because fear is contagious.  You’re first on the scene at a traffic accident?  While you’re waiting for the ambulance, give anyone who’s injured Arnica***—but give everyone present Aconite.

But most things you have to choose a remedy that suits the individual.  I’m pretty sure I’ve done my little tap-dance about this before:  if, say, you are treating five people (or you have five friends who ring you up because they know you’re a homeopathy wonk) for flu, chances are very good you’ll be recommending three or four—or five—different remedies.†  All five of your friends are achy and feverish and fluey, but if you ask them what’s bothering them the worst, one of them will say the headache and sore throat, one of them will say the sneezing and streaming nose, and one of them will say the nausea and photophobia.  That’s three different remedies.

And even for ‘acute’ prescribing like this you have a better chance of hitting on the right remedy if you know something more about them than the symptoms of flu.  Do they tend to be fussy and particular or are they easy going slobs?  Are they usually hot people or cold people (when they’re not ill)?  Do they like warm rooms or fresh air?  Do they prefer company or solitude?   Arsenicum album, for example, is chilly, persnickety, cranky, fearful, restless even when they’re ill and prone to burning pains (if their noses run, it’ll burn their upper lips).  You’re going to nail an Ars alb more on the ‘mentals’ than on the fact that they’re wobbly and sneezy.  Allium cepa has a runny nose that burns the upper lip, Gelsemium is wobbly and Rhus tox is restless and fearful.  They’re all flu remedies.

The best thing to do is buy a homeopathic first-aid book and a first-aid kit to go with it, and start experimenting.  And I recommend you begin this exercise while you’re feeling well.  The last thing you want to be doing is trying to prescribe when you feel like something a bull terrier puppy has spent the last several hours chewing on.  Unfortunately homeopathy books go in and out of print really fast and the ones I learnt on and can recommend aren’t necessarily available any more.  Don’t even bother with amazon.  There are homeopathic on line bookshops however and the two that I use,

http://www.serpentinabooks.com/index.asp

http://www.minervabooks.co.uk/index.php?route=common/home

are both run by friendly helpful people—and they ship overseas.  I’m sure there are good homeopathic bookshops in whatever country you live in as you read this, it’s just these are the ones I know, and they are, not surprisingly, in the UK.  Looking at Minerva’s ‘introductory’ category I can recommend any of these:

Miranda Castro, Complete Homeopathy Handbook

Colin Griffiths, The Practical Handbook of Homeopathy

Henrietta Wells, Homeopathy the Modern Prescriber

David Gemmell, Everyday Homeopathy

The latter two are possibly a little shorter and less intimidating than the first two, although it’s the Castro that first made me a homeopathic obsessive.

Helios Pharmacy does kits:

http://www.helios.co.uk/kits.php

Ainsworth’s is the other well known homeopathic specialist pharmacy, but their kits are all stamped NOT AVAILABLE IN THE UK which is pretty unhelpful.  This is another fact about homeopathy:  it’s permanently under fire by ConMed and its allies, chiefly Big Pharma, although frequently disguised as Wanting What’s Best for Humanity.  Apparently at the moment this is preventing Ainsworth’s from selling its kits at home.  I’m not going to go there, the Bash Homeopathy movement makes me furious.  Homeopathy is not bunk and it’s not placebo, okay?  And there is evidence that it works, it’s just it’s not very good at publicising itself, and the entrenched party line is very good at burying it.  I’ve been using homeopathy for about a dozen years and I’m afraid I pay as little attention to the political rows as I can, which is in fact irresponsible of me, but life is short at best and my fuse is too short and ranting is tiring and doesn’t do any good.  Homeopathy isn’t for everyone and I’m not saying it is, but anyone who wants to tell me that it’s all water and snake oil and I’m a poor sad deluded fool will be shot at dawn, okay?

PS:  I was going to start tonight’s entry by saying that there is a go-to remedy for that first all-is-not-well icky sensation of an oncoming cold or flu virus, but I’m not sure it’s obtainable in the UK:  Oscillococcinum.  It’s not listed as a remedy from either Helios or Ainsworth’s ††.  I have a remedy machine†††, I make it.  If you google it it seems to be available here and there, but the problem with here and there is knowing whether it’s the real thing . . . or water and snake oil.  Homeopathic remedies can be fake just like almost anything real can be recreated as a knock-off fake.  Hannah says however that it’s so popular in the States at the moment you can get it at ordinary drugstores, and apparently it’s the real thing because it works.  My system is that I start taking it about once an hour or, if this is happening overnight, every few hours, till the symptoms either go away or become a pattern I can prescribe on.  Which is what I did last night.  I’m still clearly ill, but I made it to tower practice at Fustian tonight and what really matters . . . ?

* * *

* I will start taking two blankets.  And a hat.  I suppose it’s possible that we’ll eventually have spring and, you know, summer.  When it’s, um, WARM?

** Believe it or not I keep a list of all the forum questions and comments I want to answer.  It’s usually quite a long list.  This plan has mostly gone the way of Ask Robin, but it might be worth re-asking something on the forum that you were actually hoping for an answer or at least a reaction to.

*** Arnica can save lives.  Don’t move them or do anything silly with a badly injured person—but do give them Arnica.

† A proper epidemic will probably respond to a specific remedy or progression of remedies, but that’s for the big boys and girls, not small time amateur wonks like me.  Common or garden variety plagues that are two a penny every winter—if you treat enough of them, you may see a pattern.  If you’re just helping people make first-aid choices you may not.  Three kids in the same family may need three different remedies, for example—or the three kids in one family may all need the same remedy but the three kids in the family next door that they caught it from need a different remedy.  Yes.  You have to stay alert.

†† And if you want a taste of the way the Other Side talks about homeopathy, look it up on Wiki.  Any time I need reminding that Wiki is unreliable, I think about the way they treat homeopathy.

††† http://www.sulisinstruments.com/

Mine is old, and was a lot cheaper.  Also I was in (homeopathic) college at the time, and a bunch of us got together and took advantage of the group rate.  Which was a lot cheaper than today’s group rate.  A machine does cost a bomb—there are other ones than the Sulis—but if you use homeopathy at all seriously it earns back really fast.  I use mine at least every week, and some weeks every day.

Silken windhound, a guest post by Sarah

 

I don’t remember exactly how my sighthound obsession started, although I suspect it had something to do with an extremely life-like, nearly life-sized statue of an Afghan hound that my aunt had.  I can vividly recall running my hands over its carved details when I was very young, willing the open, grinning mouth and lolling tongue to give me a kiss.  When I first read Deerskin at 19, a few weeks after my precious childhood dog, a scruffy-looking chihuahua/poodle mix, had succumbed finally to kidney failure, that was it.  A full-blown obsession was born.

My eye immediately fell to the regal, graceful Borzoi; all sweeping lines and glorious curls of fur.  The health problems and short lives troubled me, as did the question of bringing home a dog who would grow up to weigh more than I do,* when I was living in a home with a yard almost small enough for me to bump into the far wall if I turned a cartwheel at the near one.#

So I sighed wistfully every time a sighthound came into my field of vision, and joyfully accosted any I saw on the street and pined away for my gorgeous giant.  One fateful day, I happened to purchase a copy of Dog Fancy (which I very rarely did, but this was a Sighthound Issue) and turned upon a full-page ad for Silken Windhounds… “the little hound with the big future.”

Calantha, a bit damp after chasing her doggy friend through some sprinklers.

I knew almost every dog breed that existed,$ and could name them on sight% but I had never heard of Silkens.  And since most people I encounter don’t either, I’ll give you a brief history of them.  Silken Windhounds were created starting in the 1980′s in the United States by breed founder Francie Stull.  She had previously bred champion-winning Borzois, and felt that the sighthound group had a hole; there were no small, long-haired sighthounds.  She set out to remedy this, and also went out of her way to breed for exceptional good health in all the dogs.  She started with Borzois and a strain of long-haired whippets and eventually created the breed we have today; a medium-sized, long-haired^, healthy, long-lived , sweet-tempered dogs.

Just LOOK at her sweet face!

Despite their dazzling beauty, their upkeep is actually quite easy.  Give them the occasional bath and combing and that’s about it.  Like most sighthounds, they are quite content to help you hold the furniture down most of the day as long as they get daily opportunities to display their incredible speed.  Did I mention they are blazingly swift?  They have proven themselves to be just as quick as greyhounds, reaching speeds up to 45 miles per hour (about 72 kilometers per hour).

Boy, she can run.

But they are not simply fleet, they are exquisitely nimble.  I never, ever tire of watching Calantha streaking full-speed, pivot and flip end-to-end without stopping, then continue on the other direction.  She could stop on the head of a pin with an unknown number of angels dancing on it.  Watching her is a kind of magic; a beautiful, powerful, balletic poetry.##

She is not falling over, she is in the process of turning

And that’s all wonderful.  Having a dog who looks like carved marble and feels like satiny down is an exceptional bonus, but the most beautiful thing about a Silken is its soul.  Calantha has rightfully earned the nickname The Magic Dog through her ability to calmly, sweetly win over people who previously disliked or were afraid of all dogs.  She is kind and gentle, and has an immediate affection for babies of any species.  She is clever and thoughtful and occasionally a brat who wishes to eat only cat food and chicken jerky for the rest of her life.**  She is my friend, deeply devoted to me, but also willing to welcome in any new person I introduce with no reservations.  She does the whole unconditional love thing so much better than any human.^^

Cuddling with my cat Byron when he was a baby.

Calantha has one special skill of her own, which while I can’t confirm it to be a breed trait, I would not be surprised if it was, given their beauty: she is an excellent artist’s model.  It’s not simply that she’s easy on the eyes; she knows that when the camera comes out, she’s to hold a pose and not move.  Especially if silly hats or wigs are involved.  This is very handy for me; I am a fine art photographer, and I frequently take self portraits which Calantha often joins me in.  Most of the time she is a very willing participant since I have reinforced her modeling so heavily with praise and treats.  She will most happily wear bizarre items, anticipating the chicken jerky in her future.

About to be given chicken jerky. Intense concentration is required.

But she drew the line at the Bunny Ears.  The Bunny Ears were given to me by my husband, for their sheer absurd, excessive cuteness.  And of course, my immediate thought was to make Calantha wear them.  So we went outside with the ears and my camera, I asked her to sit and I placed them on her head.  She sat.  She sat quietly and watched with disbelief as I proceeded to take photographs documenting my abuse of her.  She is very well behaved; even under such extreme conditions, she let the ears rest upon her head.  But the moment I lowered my camera, she smacked them off her head with vengeance.

Abuse. LOOK at the abuse.

One of the self portraits I dragged Calantha along to, very early one morning.

That’s my girl.  :)

Sarah Allegra is a fine art photographer and self portrait artist in Los Angeles. If you don’t mind some occasional artistic nudity, you can read her blog here:  http://sarahallegra.wordpress.com/

 

*****

*I am exceptionally tiny.  I have mostly learned to accept this.

#While it is true that I was a gymnast when I was young (see previous footnote) and I can still turn a very sloppy, unsightly cartwheel if the situation truly demands it, I cannot recall if I ever actually attempted one in this backyard.  Trust me that there would have been problems negotiating the space if I had.

$I had been given a Dog Encyclopedia for a gift one year and just read the whole thing cover-to-cover.

%It’s true.  My husband can do this with cars, so if we’re out together we’re always telling each other what the cars and dogs around us are.

^Not Afghan long-haired; Borzoi long-haired, with glorious whorls and swirls of fur.

Silkens are known to live into their teens, and occasionally the early twenties; a feat quite unheard of in dogs their size.

Many people ask about the origin of Calantha’s name.  It’s a bit of a long story, but I will try and condense it for you.  I have been enamored with George Gordon Lord Byron’s poetry since I first came across it in my early teens.  As I discovered more about him as a person, I became mildly obsessed with him.  He certainly engaged in some truly odd behavior, but I found him completely fascinating, and his poetry more beautiful and meaningful than any I’d ever read.  One of the great affairs he had in his life was with Caroline Lamb, wife of poet Charles Lamb.  She is the one who famously described Byron as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”  Despite that, they had a torrid and very public affair, which Byron eventually ended when he fell for another woman.  Poor Caroline was deeply wounded, and after some time wrote a very thinly veiled account of their affair in a book called Glenarvon.  The title character Glenarvon was Byron’s fictional stand-in, and Caroline called the version of herself in the book Calantha.  When I first came across it, I was struck by what a beautiful, elegant name it was.  I liked that using it to name my dog was a very obscure Byron reference (of which there are many in my life, including the non-obscure one of my cat being named Byron).  So she became Calantha, or Cal for short.

##I am not simply watching her through a lens of love and affection; the grandeur of her running has been confirmed by many impartial individuals.

**Neither of these would happen, especially the cat food one, as she came very close to giving herself pancreatitis after sneaking some.

^^Myself very much included.

Vigil

 

Last night was lovely.

I’m also functioning [sic] on about four hours’ sleep, so if I degenerate into blah gurgle griggle frud bloob zoofan dorg, please avert your eyes politely and try again (cautiously) tomorrow.*

. . . Um.  What was I saying?  Oh.  Yes.  Monks.  I did not leave quite as early as I prefer to so I was concentrating on the video game that is driving on little twisty back country lanes as fast as is reasonable and not too hard on the tyres, and it took me a few minutes to register that the funny pale flickers against the windscreen were not very small owls but . . . snow.  SNOW.  NOOOOOOOOOO.

I drove on.  There may have been some imprecations.

When I arrived—this was nine p.m. so full dark—the little abbey was blacked out and there was a bonfire in front of the chapel with dark shapes milling around it.**  Not all of them were monks.  Having asked one of the monks tending the fire what was going to happen, and receiving the unhelpful response that he wasn’t sure himself†, I sidled up to a woman in an ordinary coat††, ie no dog collar, and asked her.  She looked at me with what I am pretty sure, despite the fact that I could barely see her, was sympathy, and explained . . . that the monks’ paschal vigil is more or less straightforwardly to the Anglican pattern, just a little more elaborate.†††  And finished by saying that she was the wife of one of the oblates, that she would never have had the nerve to come by herself at first, but the monks really were welcoming‡, to follow her if I liked and don’t worry.

So the abbot emerged eventually with satellite monks with [electric] torches, and read some stuff‡‡ and then we all trooped into the church, had our individual candles lit, and went and stood in the pews . . . if you’ve ever stood in a group of people all holding candles in the dark, you’ll know how magical this is.  And I’m telling you, it’s worth being a Christian for the moment when the abbot throws up his hands, says, Alleluia!  He is risen!  —and all the lights come on.

There were a lot of readings‡‡‡ and a lot of hymns§ and a lot of prayers and a lot of Pauses for Silent Reflection.  And a ‘homily’ which in my generic-Protestant ignorance I would have called a sermon.  And the first communion of Easter, which happened at about 11:30 Saturday night but my informant says that anything after six p.m. counts as Easter.  Oh.§§  And when the abbot raised his hands for the final blessing he began by saying that while it was not merely the middle of the night but worse than that because of the clock change, we were all invited to the common room for tea and coffee.

So I went, I and my blanket, and my new friend, Corey, whom I genuinely liked a lot, and it’s a ratbag that I won’t see her often because they live too far away.§§§  I haven’t hung out with monks in a long time, and several of them made a point of coming up to me and saying they were glad to see me every week (usually) at Saturday night prayer—I and my blanket.  All right with the blanket.

The funny thing is . . . after all the high drama, I’m longing for a simple little prayer service again.  I may try to go tomorrow since all my usual Monday distractions are cancelled for the Bank Holiday.#

But first I need SLEEP.

* * *

* Whose bloody stupid idea was it to allow the frelling clocks to go forward on Easter Sunday when the Christian-church-going wodge of the population may be going to late service Saturday night??  I assumed it was some bureaucratic idiocy, and I suppose it is, but it’s a passive rather than an active one:  clocks go forward the last Sunday in March, and Easter occasionally happens this early.  I think this blasted hopeless government could do something genuinely useful for the first time and pass a mini-bill that on years that Easter is the last Sunday in March the clocks go forward some OTHER Sunday.

** What is it that is automatically scary about monks?  Is it just the black robes?  But nuns aren’t as scary (unless possibly you went to Catholic school)?  Or was reading M G Lewis’ THE MONK in high school a mistake?

† He was a visitor.  I couldn’t see any of our monks.  They were probably in some chancel closet, hastily banging out the last few lines of the script, and swearing at their printer.

†† Who complimented me on my blanket.  I should have brought one, she said.  News flash:  I have made a breakthrough in living with attending services at Chilblain Abbey.  I wore my sheepskin house slippers last night.  They aren’t, in fact, house slippers, they’re sort of Ugg boots before there were Ugg boots, or at least before Ugg boots became a major fashion icon a while ago.  But they’re sheepskin, the leg is six or so inches high so well over your ankle and the draft-leaky cuffs of your jeans, and they have proper rubber boot-tread soles, so you don’t look like you’re wearing your house slippers.  If I weren’t thick as a post I’d have thought of them before, but . . . I’m used to thinking of them as house slippers.  I still needed my blanket.  Further news flash:  there was someone else there with a blanket.  Only one that I saw but still . . . ANOTHER PERSON WITH A BLANKET.  Another woman, furthermore, with long hair^, although she didn’t stick around afterward so I could rush up and embrace her as a sister.  Which is maybe just as well.

^ Yes, I need to change my thumbnail photo.  My hair grew back out again years ago.

†††  She also uttered the disconcerting phrase ‘Anglo Catholic’.  Well.  Hmm.  Whatever.  My monks support women priests and that’s my bottom line.  I was just saying to a (real) Catholic friend that I may respond to the bells and smells approach because I find the additional three-dimensional stuff very grounding.  Getting walloped off your donkey on the road to Damascus is disturbing and religion has an awful lot of la-la-la stuff in it by definition.  Getting hit in the face with holy water is reassuring.  There, you’re real, it says, and therefore, by extension, so is this.  Whatever it is.

‡ It is in the Rule, but this lot do give the impression they mean it.

‡‡ Before electric torches, what?  Was the celebrant’s assistant allowed to light a candle early?  Did the celebrant have to have everything he said off by heart?  Did they redesign the liturgy after the advent of battery-operated lighting?

‡‡‡ I realise this is normal, but the Bible frelling baffles me.  But . . .  but . . . but . . . but . . . ?

§ And the woman on my other side from my new friend carries a tune even less successfully than my husband.  I didn’t realise this was humanly possible.  The people sitting in front of us turned around a couple of times and I just barely prevented myself saying, It’s not me!  It’s not me!

§§ I’m all in favour of keeping the dead part as brief as possible but that makes the ‘three days’ about thirty-six hours.  Okay.  Fine.

§§§ I’ll see him more, and I liked him too, but sometimes you want another girl.  Sue me.

# Unless it starts snowing again.  After freaking out those of us who were driving last night, it stopped.  But Corey says that the monks often have snow when no one else does.  As miracles go, I can think of preferable ones.  How about a warm floor-level draft in the chapel?

KES, 72*

 

SEVENTY TWO

Rather shakily I let go of Sid, who sat down and had a thoughtful scratch.  I rinsed and filled my kettle and put it on the now calmly-burning flame.  I groped in the pocket of my leather jacket—which I’d taken off a couple of book boxes ago but was considering putting back on—found my house keys—my house keys!—and opened the back door.   The air had that magical post-storm smell which was a little reassuring:  maybe it hadn’t been King Kong.  Or Cthulhu.  I looked out across my garden (my garden).  I thought I was facing the lake but I wasn’t sure;  there were trees in the way.  But boiling off in that direction was a large black cloud that seemed to be moving faster than either the wind or any of the other clouds.

My kettle began to sing.  I went back indoors, warmed the smaller teapot and a mug that said 1987 Best in Show Hyacinth River Dog Show.  That had been Chan Three.  She was a much better natured dog than Chan Two but she didn’t win as much.  I added three big pinches of tea and water and put the tea cosy over.  Imagine.  I’d packed the tea cosy in the same box as the teapot, the tea and several mugs.  Anyone would think I’d been paying attention, those last few days in Manhattan.

A restless movement from Sid caught my eye.  I looked at her.  She looked at me, gave a tiny wriggle and sat.  “Dog food,” I said.  “Absolutely.”   I found one of the sample bags of kibble and a tin of chicken and giant gorilla in gravy.  I started opening drawers.  The silverware drawer contained six bent spoons, two forks whose tines looked like false eyelashes and three blackened silver-plate knives.  I sighed.  The best of my old flea-market silverware from the pre-Gelasio era was in one of the boxes.  I’d better find it before tomorrow night.  You could eat pizza with your fingers but the salad a healthy modern nutritionally-correct young woman would expect to be served with it was problematic.  Maybe I could do something artistic with a fruit bowl if I didn’t find the silverware in time.  There was a can-opener in with the black knives.  In the cupboard above the cutlery drawer there was an assortment of tired-looking dishes and a Pyrex brownie pan whose corners needed cleaning.  No, make that excavating.  I scooped out the chicken and giant gorilla into the brownie pan with the second-least-bent spoon, saving the best one for my tea, and mixed in a big handful of kibble.

I set this down in front of Sid, expecting her to suck up the lot in a flash of blinding speed.  She was still sitting.  She bowed her head to look at this feast, and then raised her head and looked at me again.  It was an accusing look.  It said, Dog food!!!  “Yes, dog food, drat you,” I said.  “You’re not a dog, you’re a silhouette of a dog, you have to eat.”  I pulled out the rest of the cheese, broke off a chunk, and buried it in the chicken and gorilla.  Sid stood up, carefully extracted the cheese and swallowed it.  I tried not to hold my breath.  She sat down, sighed, and began to work her way through the rest of it.  I rinsed out her new water bowl, filled it, and put it down next to her.  She was eating now as if she was enjoying it in spite of herself.  That was something I was repressing remembering about both Salukis and Deerhounds:  they were not great eaters.  I was used to Ghastlies, who ate anything that would stand still long enough for them to grab hold of (including sofa legs).

My tea should be ready.  My mug was still warm;  I dumped the water back in the kettle, and poured my tea.  This was Brandyleaf Extra Superlative that I used to buy from a tiny cramped shop in an alley off St Mark’s Place;  I’d found it by accident on one of my pilgrimages to Trash & Vaudeville and it became an even stronger draw than T&V’s studs and spandex.  I’d bought extra the last time I went, knowing I was leaving Manhattan soon.  It had a web site;  I could order more Brandyleaf Extra Superlative any time I wanted it.  But it wasn’t the same. . . .

Oh, dung beetles and pond scum.  I was crying again.  I gulped my tea so that scalding my esophagus could provide an excuse for the tears in my eyes.  Sid had finished her . . . um, let’s call it lunch . . . and was licking the encrusted corners of the Pyrex dish thoughtfully.  Before I made my next batch of brownies I’d take a knife to those corners, or possibly a blowtorch.

I was indulging a distracting little fantasy about having fresh brownies to offer Hayley tomorrow night, with the pizza and the fruit bowl, when both Sid and I heard a sound outside.  It didn’t sound like deinonychus or attack squirrels.  Or King Kong.  It sounded like a fairly large, van- or pick-up-type vehicle turning into my driveway, stopping, having its handbrake hauled on . . . and then the sound of a door opening.

* * *

* Saturday night KES going up early because I’m on my way to the paschal vigil at the monks’.  Er.  Wish me luck. 

 

Good Friday

 

 

I added a third pair of (wool*) socks and a goose down vest** to my monk-visiting wardrobe today and was almost warm.  I noticed a lot of heavy winter coats in the audience but I’m still the only one with a blanket.

It’s halfway to Easter, the way I’m counting; I know it’s Holy Week and I think the special services began the beginning of the week too, but I began yesterday, with Maundy Thursday—partly out of funk, and known lack of stamina.   Out here in the ordinary-real world we had actual sunlight, which was rather shocking.***  Also I’m not used to driving to the monks in daylight—the main service today was at 3 pm—and was quite startled by how normal the village their abbey is on the edge of looks.  There should at least be a sentry tower and a portcullis somewhere, even if the portcullis has rusted open and the sentry moonlights in IT.

I’m a little less freaked today now that it’s finally here, although the monks’ reading of the Passion was a little too evocative—three of them, taking the different parts, all three of them together as the crowd shouting Crucify him!  Crucify him!, sharp and vivid as the Royal Shakespeare Company, yeep—and although he stays dead for another day.  Number two monk took the service today but the abbot gave the ‘homily’.  He stepped up to the lectern rubbing his hands together and said in opening, Yes, it is cold.†  And then went on to tell us briskly that it’s Good Friday because it’s good news and we are not allowed to mope.  Oh.  I was thinking that Easter always comes up some time in your first year and that shaky new Christians ought to be sent to the Shaky-New-Christian hermitage for the week, which is deep in the countryside and has no internet access and there are fabulous walks, an extensive library, and plenty of blankets on the beds.  Next year, when you’re stronger, then you can go through Easter.  Without moping.

I also went to St Margaret’s meditation service tonight, which was rather gentler:  just readings, and a few silent minutes between, for you to think your own thoughts.  I tried to concentrate on the ‘good news’ part.  And I am, God help me, at least going to turn up for the start of the monks’ paschal vigil tomorrow night.  It starts at 9 p.m. which I assume means it lasts at least three hours, till midnight?  What happens when I need a pee?  Speaking of ordinary reality.

* * *

* I have to be wearing at least two pairs of cotton socks to bear wool socks, since I’m of the AAAAUGH IT’S SCRATCHY TAKE IT AWAY school of wool wearers, which drastically limits my choice of footgear^ but wool is so beautifully warm.  I wear mostly wool cardis and pullovers by choice—over at least two cotton turtlenecks—because of the WARM.  It is a cruel fate to be cold-blooded and allergic to wool.  I’m just grateful that (apparently) my hands can bear to knit it.  I’ve been told by a number of people that it is worth investigating wool that hasn’t been through the standard commercial processes and chemical dyes.  First Cardi, which has been sitting unfinished in its plastic bag for months while I fail to engage with trying to figure out what the frell the DIAGRAMLESS pattern is unhelpfully on about, is made out of theoretically organic wool and friendly nontoxic dyes.  If I ever finish it I’ll experiment with wearing it over only one cotton t-shirt.^^^

^ And with feet the size of mine one does not go up a size very willingly, even to accommodate extra pairs of winter socks.+  Goliath?  Two sizes smaller than me.  Jolly Green Giant?  Three sizes smaller++.  Paul Bunyon?  Little fairy feet, compared to mine.

+ This is aside from the question of finding shoes bigger than my usual.  Goliath wore sandals.

++ Don’t let the curly leprechaun toes mislead you.

^^^ I’m about to rip out the entire back of something I was . . . making for someone else.  SIIIIIIIIIGH.  I should stick to leg warmers.  Meanwhile the yarn site I have dropped the most money on over the last two years is having a THIRTY percent off sale for favoured customers, which is to say those of us who have a bad case of Ooooh Shiny and no self control.  Get thee behind me Satan and take the internet with you.

** I got rid of nearly all my winter down-filled stuff when I moved over here.  What a silly person.^  Two winters ago—the same winter, I believe, when I discovered the wonders of Yaktrax—I bought myself a new down vest.  Now all I need is the quilted trousers and the battery-operated Radiator Boots.

^ The monks would have felt right at home in our old house.  But it was bought by people with money and probably has underfloor heating and an Aga in every room by now.

*** Insert video of chilly sweet pea seedlings doing a fandango

† My blanket and I were at the aisle end of the second row.  Some upstart was in my seat^ when I got there so I was farther forward than usual.  It was only after I’d sat down that it registered that there was no one in the front row.  Paaaaaanic.  There is sure to be something unknown and Eastery that the congregation will be expected to file forward and do and I won’t know how.

Let me put it this way:  I assume I will eventually run out of things to do wrong.  That Shaky-New-Christian hermitage can also have lessons on stuff you’re expected to know how to respond to.

^ Given that the monks, as monks will, have about eighty-seven+ prayer services every day she may be a regular attendee and think of it as her seat

+ You understand that this eighty-seven is like the ninety-two bells at Forza?  I am very slightly prone to exaggeration.

I AM SO COLD I COULD DIE.*

 

 

It is brutal out there.  Even the hellterror was willing to scamper back to the house early, although it’s always difficult to tell with the hellterror, since she knows when I put her back in her crate she gets a handful of FOOOOOOOOD which salves the wounded (hyperactive) spirit.  I went to the Maundy Thursday [Anglican] Mass at the monks tonight** and I took my sitting-still-in-the-cold blanket because I went early, as usual, for a little silent contemplation before the service began.  I was expecting there to be a proper congregation today but I wasn’t expecting the jugglers and the dancing elephant.***  The lights were already on when I arrived and monks in an assortment of party frocks were rushing around setting up.  I wrapped myself in my blanket and prepared to practise focussing despite distractions—it takes a lot of concentration to ignore a dancing elephant—but even by the time the service started I was thinking, I don’t believe the heat is on at all.  I know they don’t have a lot of money, maybe they turn their central heating off on the Ides of March and if that means frost on the soup and hypothermia in the congregation, so be it.  During the standing-up bits I was hoping we could sit down again—and I could rewrap my blanket—before my knees started audibly knocking together. †

It also went on rather a while.  This would have been fine—and Easter is the biggest event in the Christian year, bigger than Christmas, so you’re expecting services to be a little extra elaborate††—if it weren’t for the creeping frostbite.  I should have brought a bigger blanket.  I should have brought a duvet.  I should have brought a self-heating dog.

And then at the end the monks get various things up on poles and platters and march firmly down the aisle and out of the chapel—chanting all the while—and we get up and follow them.  Good thing someone has been here before and knows the drill.  It’s not like the monks’ web site has any useful information like what happens during service.

So we all troop out of the church and into the DARK and the FREEEEEEEZING COLD and I wrap my blanket around my shoulders,  praying for a miraculous sirocco, and we file into a tiny little chapel away from the main block of the abbey.  I don’t think the monks’ abbey is all that old, but this hidey-hole looks like something the desert fathers might have used (speaking of siroccos).  Perhaps it is, and was brought, stone by stone, from Egypt in Early Gleep A.D.   The monks set up the bits of whatever they’d brought and then left us there.  Not having realised there was going to be Silent Contemplation built into this service, I’d been attempting to be pious for about two hours at that point and when various other cravens starting creeping out . . . I crept out too.  And went home to feed hellcritters and reassure my husband I hadn’t taken holy orders.   And to warm up.

And this is only the beginning.  I’ll go back for service tomorrow—I’m pretty freaked out about Good/Black Friday:  I know he rose and everything, but they still killed him and he still died—and then Saturday night there’s a vigil.  I might sign on for the vigil if I had the faintest clue what it entailed. . . . ††

* * *

* And apparently this bloody weather is going to last another three weeks.  Mid April and HARD FROST every night?!?!?  Even in Maine by mid-April you can expect some nights to stay above freezing.  I finally potted up my sweet peas today, poor things, they’ve been living on the edge the last ten days or so—or off the edge, when the cardboard box they arrived in disintegrated at an inopportune moment and I had sweet pea seedlings all over the floor.^ Unlabelled sweet pea seedlings:  the plastic cell-packs are labelled, not the plant plugs, which all look alike.  Arrrrrgh.  I originally assumed that this weather would go away within a day or two, so I took the lid off but left the seedlings, in their teetery plastic trays, in the nice stable flat-bottomed box.  I hadn’t realised how much run off there had been from watering them till the cardboard bottom fell out.  ARRRRRRGH.  Anyway it’s really been too cold to put greenhouse-raised tender seedlings outdoors even during the day and the sweet peas have spent a good deal of time in the kitchen sink, to no one’s satisfaction.  Or propped up against the kitchen door, which is at least glass—the sink doesn’t get a lot of sunlight—with a towel against boreal drafts and my wellies holding the teetery plastic packaging upright to further general dissatisfaction.^^  I am grateful that I decided to cut my losses early—the only things I can reliably get through the winter indoors are geraniums, with an honourable mention for begonias^^^—so I left most things where they were,# jammed my windowsills, and had a relatively cope-with-able commuting indoor/outdoor jungle this year.  It’s about to become not cope-with-able however, since it now includes a large tray full of dazed sweet pea seedlings## . . . and another box of tender plants arrived today.

I’m trying to tell myself that nurseries need the space they’re freeing up by sending you your plants at the scheduled time, however undesirable that schedule has become.  What I’m really thinking is you morons.  Most of us don’t have greenhouses## and we don’t want to see this stuff till we can start hardening it off to live outdoors. 

^ Fortunately the hellterror was in her crate.

^^ Including putting them back in the sink any time the hellterror is loose.

^^^And a dishonourable mention to so-called hardy fuchsias.  I lose ’em every dratblasted winter+ so this winter, ha ha ha ha ha, I decided to bring a couple of ’em indoors.  They’re doing great.  Hey.  Guys.  You’re supposed to be hardy.  You’re supposed to live outdoors over the winter.  That’s live. 

+ Don’t talk to me about drainage or I will become violent

# And by some bizarre miracle a few snapdragons are still hanging on.  I doubt they’ll survive another three weeks of this however SIIIIIIIGH.

## Which spent SEVERAL HOURS OUTDOORS today during a BREAK IN THE CLOUDS THAT WAS ALMOST SUNLIGHT.  On the shelf under the kitchen window—speaking of life on the edge—which should be almost warm, with the Aga throwing heat at the glass from the other side.

### Greenhouses you could actually grow stuff in, anyway.  Mine gets almost no sunlight.  It’s a sort of glass-paned tool shed.  Makes you wonder what was on my predecessor’s mind when she sited it there.

** I might add that the day did not get off to a good start when I was woken up three times by parcel-delivery people demanding signatures for parcels that did not need signing for.^  Each time this happened I reset my alarm because I seriously need some sleep, with the result that I didn’t get up till nearly . . . um . . . late.  I was wakened a fourth time by the hellterror taking noisy exception to some other dog barking in the neighbourhood.  Moan.

^ Including first-pass page proofs for SHADOWS.  Ugggggggh.  That parcel is even marked DOES NOT NEED SIGNATURE.  We have been here before . . .

*** Or the Spanish Inquisition, but then nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

† At least I didn’t—or anyway I think I didn’t—mess up taking communion tonight.  Arrrrgh.  It’s all very well as Aloysius says that Anglicanism is big and comprehensive enough^ that there’s a niche somewhere for almost everyone, but this also means that the way service is run may differ spectacularly from one church to the next—and I don’t know what the frell I’m doing anyway.  So you get the run-down in a brisk, no-nonsense, nothing-to-be-afraid-of way from some long-time Anglican friend and then you go to the monks and yaaaaaaah.^^

^ Except about women bishops

^^ I was talking to Gemma about this.  Gemma is Catholic.  She says that one of the things she likes about Catholicism is that Mass is said the same everywhere.  You don’t have to worry about it.  You can pitch up in England or France or Outer Mongolia, and if it’s Catholic Mass, you’ll know where you are and what’s going on.

†† Possibly including jugglers and dancing elephants

††† It’s too late to ask the monks:  they’re being silent till Easter, and Aloysius doesn’t know.

Slightly Blurry Photos of a Gigantic Hellterror and Friends

The big courtyard at the mews is almost never empty.  The car jigsaw usually runs to about nine, and if some resident is so imprudent as to desire the attendance of someone who drives a van or (horrors) a lorry, negotiations of the most delicate nature are required, and probably the services of an astrologer are hired as well.  So yesterday when IT WAS EMPTY I couldn’t resist.  You didn’t get these photos yesterday, however, because the one of herself and Chaos sparring made the Funny Patch* on her head look like a remake of Attack of the Mushroom People, so I asked Blogmom to fuzz it over a little**, and she couldn’t do it right away.

Gigantic hellterror. Try tucking one of these under your arm of a morning, when hellterror is AWAAAAAAAAKE and you’re not.

You can also see a shadow of the cranky, supercilious uncle face on Chaos.

She’s not this big, she’s BOUNCING.

Although it creeps up on you, that your puppy is growing.  I mean, of course you know she’s growing, it’s what puppies do.  Also she WEIGHS MORE than she used to, when you snatch her up away from the ravening jaws of some off lead thug.  Oh, he just wants to play! says the BRAINLESS IRRESPONSIBLE owner.  I know what playful dog body language looks like.  This isn’t it.  Although the snatching up in such cases is made dazzlingly easy because your adrenaline level just rocketed.  Which means that five minutes from now you’re going to have to find something to sit down on–draping your gigantic hellterror over your knees, so she can’t find any distressing substances to eat while you’re seeing stars.

Also note snarky uncle face.

AAAAUGH. SHE’S AFTER ME.

There isn’t a mean bone in her entire hyperactive little body (also the hellhounds simply have the legs on her, although she has an impressive sudden-little-dashes facility) and mostly she plays with Chaos because he will play with her.  But it has not escaped her attention that Darkness is fun to tease.

I’m not sure who’s winning.

But I don’t think they care.

The dynamic hasn’t really changed. Chaos plays with her. Darkness WORRIES.

 

Hey! Wait for me! I got DISTRACTED!

Fortunately hellhounds are pretty good about turning around and coming back when the hellgoddess hastily sucks in her breath and SCREAMS.

You know, Darkness, you might even ENJOY playing with her.

You could maybe give it a try some time.

The fabulous hellterror tummy. Admired by all.

Woosilly woosilly woosilly woosilly.  Or thereabouts.

 

DARKNESS. WE KNOW THERE’S A PUPPY. THERE HAS BEEN A PUPPY FOR FIVE MONTHS NOW.

Maybe he’s worrying about how gigantic she’s getting.

* * *

* Which is diminishing nicely, and should be gone in another week or so.

** No, of course I don’t know how to do it myself.  I can crop.  That’s ALL I can do.