Robin McKinley's Blog, page 64

no post – Web server outage

Web host’s server was out for several hours last night.

Looks like everything is back to normal now. 

– Blogmom

 

 

Singing for Oisin

 

The problem with feeling better after you have been feeling what you need to feel better from for too long is that ALL THE STUFF YOU’VE BEEN NEGLECTING FALLS ON YOU LIKE A PIANO FROM A THIRD-STORY WINDOW.  I got up this morning so I had, like, a morning to do something with.  And it all disappeared down the time-hole in things like laundry and mopping the kitchen floor*.  I even got out into my poor neglected garden for about half an hour . . . and spent most of it picking up broken glass from the greenhouse.  Siiiiiigh.

I’d also managed to forget that one of Peter’s daughters was coming to lunch and while she’s extremely used to me and my little (late) ways, still, I came boiling in when she and Peter were having their coffee which was a trifle embarrassing.  At least I didn’t miss her entirely . . . which has been known to happen.  And when Peter went to have his nap she and I fell into one of those intense Girl Conversations . . . which meant TIME WENT RUSHING BY AGAIN and I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was due for my musical cup of tea with Oisin RIGHT NOW.

I have bottled out of singing for him for months, even these last several weeks since Nadia told me I should take Evening Hymn (Purcell) to him.  Either I have broken through one of those developmental stages or it’s spring or something** but I really WANTED to sing for him today—to get on with it, you know?  Not using Oisin is stupid.  How many feeble amateur singers have a readily available, good natured professional accompanist who furthermore is a teacher himself so understands about student neurosis?  He doesn’t even charge what he’s worth.  I have no excuse.  So I’d decided I was going to sing for him today . . . before I remembered that Nina would be at the mews, where my piano lives, and all my music, and where I practise.  Drat.  This is dumb too, because Nina is a very-good-middling, if you follow me, violinist, and plays in a couple of little local orchestras, and completely knows about musical struggles at approximately my level.  She’s even brought her violin occasionally, and played or practised with us around.

Still.  This is bridge too far territory.  But I had been singing while I washed the floor—I need to sing while I do things like wash floors—so I wasn’t entirely not warmed up, and I did have a voice today (I don’t always, and while Nadia can winkle it out of wherever it’s hiding, I usually can’t, if it needs winkling) and I thought OH FRELL IT ANYWAY and snatched up . . . mostly the wrong music, which is to say I didn’t pick up the folk songs I wanted to start with to settle me down.

But I arrived carrying music, you know?  And Oisin leaped to conclusions.  Good teachers are like that.  They like to see their students, you know, doing the stuff they’re supposed to be learning.

So I sang.  Pretty well cold.  I mean, we started with Evening Hymn because that’s what I’d managed to bring.  I hadn’t even brought that competently (no second copy for him) but Oisin said, oh, don’t worry, I have it.  He did have a copy, but in a different arrangement, with a lot more twiddly bits.  I really liked it—the version I have is pretty much trying to sound like basso continuo and it’s attractive but stark.  What Oisin was playing allows the accompanist to shine more, and to the extent that I’m into this game at all I’m all about singing with and I like the idea that your ‘accompanist’ is actually your partner.

So I was already off balance by not having practised, and then I was more off balance by an unknown accompaniment and . . . I did think it was a little higher than what I was used to singing but hey, it was probably just nerves, and once you’ve got your note all the following notes are relational, you know?, so it shouldn’t matter all that much.  (Ha ha ha.)  I also glanced at his key signature and it had sharps on it, and mine has sharps on it so . . . it was just the extra twiddly bits.  I did not sing well, but I did sing, I did hang on to the end, and there were one or two notes along the way that were Not Bad.  And for someone as well inculcated to studentry as Oisin, I want to believe that it’s obvious even through the squeaks and fumbles that I really love this piece of music.

We went through it twice and Oisin was all encouraging and supportive and so on, and how much stronger I sounded than the last time he’d heard me, and I was saying now that I’d finally sung for him again I wanted to start doing it regularly because it was such GOOD PRACTISE and made another of those enormous differences in how I relate to a piece of music I’m trying to learn.***

And at the very end—just before the cup of tea and chat—as a kind of afterthought we compared our versions.  Oisin’s is a whole two and a half notes higher than mine—starts on a D instead of an A.  YEEEP.  The whap up the side of my head part is that this meant I was topping out on a G which is not high, but it’s high enough to give me the whimwhams when I’m singing it for anyone, especially Oisin, because of the professional-accompanist thing, you know, ohmigod there’s a G coming I’m going to die.  Nadia has been telling me this for the most-of two years I’ve been going to her:  be sure to practise away from the piano too so you don’t know what you’re singing.  If you’re having a good day, go ahead and warble up through your exercises and let your voice soar.  You can check what you’re singing afterward.  I had no idea I was singing a G today. . . .

* * *

* For pity’s sake I’ve only got three dogs and one of them is still little.^  You know the Odd Sock Planet, which is where all the pairs to your socks go?  My kitchen floor is the Dirt Planet.  Arrgh.

^ Although ‘little’ gets more relative all the time.  I had a friend here yesterday and we spent a good deal of our day first wandering around Mauncester looking for little Englishye giftye items for her to take back to the States, and talking.  Finding quaint local giftyes gets harder and harder because you can order anything on the internet any more, probably including rancid yak butter for your Tibetan tea.+  We repeated this quaint giftye process in New Arcadia (including the talking).  I met her at the train station++ in Mauncester with accompanying hellhounds;  we prowled New Arcadia with accompanying hellterror.  Hellterror is still pretty much an unguided missile—an eager, outgoing unguided missile—she’s also still just about carryable.  Just.  About.  So when we went in shops I carried her.  This is actually a fabulous way not to spend money, having your arms full of eager, outgoing, interested hellterror.  It fascinates me how good she still is about being carried—all that Holding when she was still really little—and she hasn’t figured out that she’s really too big for this scam and I’m staggering along like an ant in a cartoon carrying the Taj Mahal on its head—not to mention the increasing amount of her which inevitably dangles.  But I remember fretting about keeping two shifts of hellcritters sufficiently hurtled—the hellhounds have actually grown up to be lazy beggars, and I don’t think they’ve noticed that the same number of walks they go out on have gotten cumulatively rather shorter—but a puppy?  A perpetual-motion puppy like a bull terrier?  Nah, said Olivia, it’s not fantastic amounts of exercise they need, it’s stimulation.  Pav was VERY WELL STIMULATED yesterday.  She is such a different personality from the hellhounds.  Hellhounds are polite—much politer than hellterror puppies, or I wouldn’t have been able to go in the shops with eighty-plus pounds of long-legged long-nosed and long-tailed hellhounds—but if it doesn’t run and they can’t chase it, or it doesn’t seem to engage the hellgoddess’ regard in an undesirable-by-hellhounds manner, they aren’t too concerned.  Hellterror is stiff with attention, little prick ears and little badger face swivelling around watching everything, little forepaws gripping my (sagging) arm.  She’s much better behaved being clutched to my bosom than she is causing mayhem around my ankles.  I don’t know how much of this is all the early Holding and how much is the unfamiliar view from four feet up, but it makes me want to do press-ups so I can keep carrying her a little longer.

+ Or buy ordinary yak butter and have it shipped over surface and it’ll rancidify itself on the way.

++ Nearly half an hour late because I set my kitchen timer alarm wrong.  Kill meeeeeeeeeee.

** Tell that to the WEATHER

*** See previous blog about Why mediocre amateurs should bother.

KES, 70

 

SEVENTY

I unclipped her lead and left Sid exploring the wainscoting. I had a very full van to unload.  I could hear my rose-bush calling to be let out of the dark.  (Metaphorically.  If I started hearing my rose-bush talking to me I would move back to the city after all, into one of those cockroach-infested studio apartments that were in my price range, because clearly the country was bad for me.  I could probably adjust to Mr Melmoth and Watermelon Shoulders if I had to.  Talking rose-bushes were a delusion too far.  Maybe Sid could learn to catch cockroaches.)

I unlocked the van’s rear doors and opened them cautiously.  A few dog toys and one of the small sample bags of kibble fell out.  Nothing else.  I looked at all the stuff and considered despairing.  No.  Didn’t have time.  This was the moment to be grateful that I was poor and had only a small van’s worth of stuff to shift.  —Nonsense.  If I had more money I’d’ve hired someone to do the shifting.

Unenthusiastically I pulled out the bags from the pet store and piled them to one side.  I needed to get started with the book boxes before I lost my nerve.  Or twisted the other ankle.  Gently I lifted my rose-bush out and set her by the edge of the driveway.  She immediately improved the view.  In spite of the ruts and the screaming skulls.  This was Rose Manor, after all.  Rose Manor should have a rose-bush in a knock-off Tiffany pot at the edge of the driveway.  Rose Manor should have a phalanx of rose-bushes lining the driveway, but I only had one.

If I’d realised I’d have to carry all of my books up a flight of stairs I’d’ve stuck them in smaller boxes.  No, probably not.  I’d packed up my old life still under the aegis of Joe the Doorman and when I’d asked for packing boxes this is what one of his janitorial minions had brought.  Those last weeks in New York I’d had as much of my brain turned off as I could manage and not set fire to anything that now belonged to Mr Diamond-Studded Shoelaces, like the entire apartment.  I knew that Joe was being even more helpful than his demanding vocation required because he felt sorry for me, but I didn’t care.  Here were boxes to put things in, and tape to finish the job.  Thank you, Joe.

I propped Rose Manor’s front door open with the first book box and began stacking the rest of them immediately inside the door.  I’d worry about where they ultimately went later.  Like maybe next year.  Who needs to read?  Um.  No.  Bad suggestion from someone who earns what passes for her living by people reading.  But maybe I’d think about an ereader a little more seriously after this.  Supposing I survived, I thought, panting up with my third box.  I set it down next to its friends.  Sid, tired from her exertions at the wainscoting, was lying stretched out on her side in the middle of the parlour floor.  She should have been dwarfed by the size and stark emptiness of the room but it had the opposite effect:  she looked enormous.  Skeletal but enormous, as if when she stood up her head would brush the ceiling.  I hoped not.  I really didn’t want to buy enough dog food to fatten up something that size.  She raised her head, gave her tail a single thump, and let both head and tail flop back to the floor.  Those mice in the wainscoting were very tiring.  I scowled.  I, however, did not need to gain half my body weight and there were 1,000,000,000 boxes of books out there waiting to help me burn off a little of what Eats had put on.

Four boxes.

Five boxes.  I was starting to see stars.  I hoped this was my blood pressure and not that it had taken me six hours to carry five boxes of books up a flight of stairs and sunset was a while ago.

Six boxes.  Maybe I’d just pile the rest of them in the middle of the front garden and have the biggest bonfire Cold Valley had ever seen.  Except that I’d read my Ray Bradbury and knew that books don’t actually burn that well.  I could siphon some gas out of the van to help the fire along a little.  No, how would I explain the gigantic scorch march on the lawn to Hayley when she came to dinner—tomorrow?  How could I have invited a real estate agent—my real estate agent—for dinner the day after I moved in?  Besides, gigantic scorch marks would lower the tone that my rose-bush was trying so hard to raise.

Seven boxes.  I was wheezing like a dragon with asthma.  My ankle had stopped hurting—in shock, possibly—but my right knee was starting to protest and I was sure my feet were getting flatter.  I had red streaks across the pads at the bottoms of my fingers where the edges of the boxes ground in and at least one blister starting.

Unh.

Comment catch up, part one

 

I’m always going to write some posts around your forum comments and then I forget.  So let’s see if I can remember long enough to catch up a little.

Jkribbitdesigns

. . . while reading tonight’s post [Chilly singing] I was humming the Gloria from Faure’s Requiem and was going to recommend Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna as I feel they have similar airy, light, and joyful qualities. Then I realized I was humming the wrong song. :/ The Lauridsen (and the Faure, for that matter) are still worth the recommendation.

I love the Faure but . . . Good old YouTube.  I’m listening—first to Lux and then to the Songs of the Roses that Diane in MN mentions later in this thread—as I type.  I’d never HEARD of Lauridsen.  I’m so ignorant.

Although I could have done without the banner ad:  How to sing, really sing.  Breakthrough method releases your unique voice.  Watch free video here!

I’m only interested if it involves chocolate and champagne.  And I’m a little worried about the escape clause provided by that ‘unique’. *

Maggie

Speaking as someone who’s seventeen, I always write drafts by hand – but that’s actually because I’m a really good typist. When I write things by hand, I can write one sentence and think of the next, then write that sentence while thinking of the next, and carry on. If I try to type a first draft, my fingers catch up to my brain and I get stuck.

YES.  EXACTLY.  I AM EXACTLY LIKE THIS.  I TYPE A WHOLE LOT FASTER THAN I THINK.  And it’s like falling off a cliff when you reach the end of your thought and your fingers are still whirring away wanting something to do.

It’s true that I write the blog straight on the computer—it would be way too much like work if I didn’t—and I start other stuff on the computer a lot more than I used to.  Still.  Paper is the real deal.  Paper doesn’t disappear at a (usually mysterious) keystroke.  And I have more little notebooks (spiral preferred, so they lie flat) with pretty or striking or tactile covers than any four people need.  I tend to write drafts in pencil, but I take notes in ink, and I just like the process of an old-fashioned fountain pen gliding across the page.

Though I also just like paper–I usually type up the draft, then print it out to make edits and then type those in… But most people at school with me think this is insane.

When you win the Nobel Prize for Literature you will have the last laugh.

Skating librarian

How many people are there in the Muddles?

Do you sing with piano or organ? I only ask because I am part of a group which can run to twenty or more and we gather in homes (those belonging to folks with parking not entirely filled with snow) where the living-dining-kitchen areas are one glorious (or not) space.

I know that kind of space is rarer in the UK, but we make do.

Both piano and organ, but mostly piano for rehearsal.  As long as there’s an accompanying instrument I don’t think it matters that much till the next concert is getting close.  There are something like forty Muddles members on the books but I would have said we rarely have more than twenty-five at practise, and we were about fifteen last week.  I know.  I think about this.  So does Gordon, because I’ve spoken to him about it.  But it’s unlikely anyone has a drawing-room big enough if all forty of us showed up—and since I’ve never managed to sing at a concert, possibly the last couple of rehearsals or so everybody turns out.  Except the superfluous first soprano who is going to the opera, unless she has flu or a deadline rendered intolerable by said flu, and doesn’t go to the opera either.**    My murky fantasy is that we start a splinter group of oh, twelve or so.***  There are lots of living spaces that could hold a mere twelve—including Third House’s sitting room.  Mwa ha ha ha ha.  I would throw in use of my cheap portable electric keyboard free.

Susan in Melbourne

I find that commercial and public interiors in the northern hemisphere are kept unnaturally warm in winter. [In the UK] I moved between hotels, restaurants, meeting rooms in universities, public transport, and everywhere I was too hot. On arrival in a new hotel room, I’d rush for the window to fling it open, and then to the heater to turn it off. A colleague who has recently moved back to the UK from Australia was telling me that she and her partner just had to leave a restaurant recently because it was too unbearably hot.

WHERE?  This sounds like America to me, not frigid chilblained England.  I acknowledge that I’ve been too hot occasionally, like in the Heathrow hotel room where Peter and I saw the original CSI for the first time (this was long ago) the night before flying to the States.  And there are still, I believe, criminally insane stores that leave their front doors open to the street and blast the entry with the best their central heating can do.  And anybody can have a Bad Wiring Day when the on switch gets stuck.  But generally speaking . . . I like pubs with open fires, and then I want to sit next to them.

Robin, you obviously mostly inhabit private spaces rather than communal ones, and I’m guessing that you wouldn’t be burning fuel at the greenhouse-layer-thinning rate that commercial premises seem to be doing. Yours is the more realistic experience of the real (chilly) world outside.

Indeed.  This is why my laptop and I crouch by the Aga in the kitchen.  It’s not because my office is still full of stuff waiting to be doodled and I can’t bear to go in there with all of it staring at me reproachfully†.  It’s because I get COLD in my office.  At very least I’ll turn the central heating on and I’ll probably dust off the electric fire and open it up too.  If I’m sitting by the Aga, if there are penguins in my office I don’t care.††  Also, there’s the hellterror.  The hellterror does not truly grasp the concept of GO LIE DOWN yet, and her big crate lives in the kitchen.  The Aga system is not popular with hellhounds, whose favourite bed, as I’ve told you, is in my office†††, but Pav will grow up.  Or maybe I’ll just rope her feet together.

DrDia

^ Also: token footnote. So no one complains about the lack of footnotes.

Seriously? You have very demanding readers if they’d complain about a lack of footnotes

DEMANDING.  TOTALLY.  VERY DEMANDING.  MY READERS.  THEY ARE.‡

* * *

* Nadia is a little cynical about poor old Dido.  Drama queen, she says.  ‘Remember me’ indeed.    —I’ve always liked Dido although I agree that topping yourself because your boyfriend dumps you^ is not a healthy, balanced reaction.  But—I’ve gibbered about this before—your attitude toward a piece of music changes spectacularly—unrecognisably—as soon as you start developing a relationship with it by trying to perform the sucker.  However inadequately.^^  So I’ve been engaging with Dido on a whole variety of new levels as a result of trying to sing her.  And it may be entirely the wrong kind of courage, but it does take courage to do yourself in.  I think there’s some steel there—and some anger.  I’d like to get that into my performance, cough cough cough, with the despair and grief.

Purcell is Radio Three’s composer of the week.  Today we had Dido.  The presenter went on rather about the recording he’d chosen, and I have loved the soprano in other roles and agree she has a fabulous voice.  And when we got to the famous Lament, for which no stop has been left unpulled, I’m all:  STOP FRELLING WHINING YOU MAUDLIN COW.

^ I don’t find his offer to defy the gods and stay very convincing.  Just by the way.  Aeneas the creep.  Aeneas the faithless.  All he is is a pretty pair of biceps.

^^ Which is about as much explanation and excuse as anyone needs in answer to my craven question, why should mediocre amateurs even bother?  This is why.  Because performing widens and deepens your understanding of a major art form.  Your brain and your emotions are not limited by your technical skill.  Horizons beckon.  Angels+ whisper.  Doodah doodah.

+ Or supernatural being of choice.  Djinns.  Fairies.#

# Out hurtling hellhounds today I saw a van.  Gremlin Landscaping I read.  I blinked and looked again.  Gemini Landscaping.  Okay.  That’s better.  I don’t think I’d hire the first guy.  But I think I may have a creating-my-own-reality problem.

** Sigh.

***  Assuming SATB, four part music, there have to be at least eight of us because I’m not singing all by myself.  If there are second sopranos we have to be at least ten.

† Believe it or not, all you amazingly, astonishingly, superlatively, supernaturally patient people, I’m still turning the frellers out at about two a week.  Or I was, up till the last fortnight when there was too much generalised illness in this household and I lost the plot for a while.  But I should be starting up again next week.  But you are all aware of the refund button on the side bar of this blog?  Not only is there no disgrace^ to asking for a refund . . . remember that some day in the fuzzy distant future WHEN I’VE FINISHED THE BACKLOG Blogmom will put up a doodle shop where the refund button is at present and you can reorder.  We will be taking commissions at a strictly-enforced rate of about two a week.

^ The disgrace is all mine+

+ Including my continuing failure to knit square squares which means the rose and pawprint requisitions are still in the aaaaaaugh stage.

†† As long as they clean up after themselves.

††† And this was true before the arrival of the hellterror.

‡ However there is no footnote shortage today.

Unexpected Monks

 

I’m just back from the monks.  Always an adventure.  I can’t remember if I’ve told you that I’ve finally figured out that the way to convince my superego, who is a cynical old ratbag who lives entirely in her head*, that the forty-five minute commute is worth it in an arranging-your-life way** is to go early enough to do at least some of my daily ‘sit’ before the service starts. I know I’ve told you before that sitting in that space, in the monks’ chapel, is amazing, all by itself, chanting and being hit in the face with holy water not required.***  I’ve always picked up the whatever-it-is in old, much-prayed-in churches:  call it numinousness, if you like.†  I assume it’s why people sneak into church to pray rather than staying at home:  one space is not like another††. It’s why I find most cathedrals overwhelming, not always in a good way, and back before last 12 September††† it didn’t feel very welcoming:  it felt much more like a giant boot about to stand on me.  The monks’ chapel is big enough to hold intensity, but not big enough that I feel the force of gravity multiply as soon as I walk in the door, or maybe it’s just that here I’ve found the atmosphere that supports rather than stomps me.  But that intensity does help you—well, it helps me—focus, and focus is not one of my natural talents.  So I go early, when I can, and sit, and focus.‡  It’s like sitting in company—which is another support thing‡‡—even when there’s no one else around.

So I arrived half an hour early and slipped in, preparing to wrap myself up in my blanket, put my gloves back on, and sit in the friendly (if cold) near-dark till the monks filed in a minute or two before the service began and turned on the lights.

They were already there.  Sitting in their long pews.  In the dark.  What?  Now, I wobble easily, and I’m convinced that whatever I’m doing, I’m doing it wrong, and that goes several times with bells, whistles and incense as I fumble my way into becoming a practising Anglican.  So while it was not a moment out of Rosemary’s Baby or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or similar I still had a mega wobble as I emerged from the hallway into the dark chapel and found the pews on either side of the altar full of black monk-shaped shadows.‡‡‡  Waaah!  Eeeeep!  I shouldn’t be here!  I’m doing something wrong!  But it wasn’t on the service sheet on their web site that there was a stretch of silent contemplation before Tuesday evening prayer!  Nor did it say, clueless members of the public should stay home!

I crept to my usual place.  I wrapped myself in my blanket as quickly and quietly as I could and sat down.  Nobody told me to go away.  I admit that my focus was less good than sometimes.  But I could still feel the atmosphere winding itself around me like another blanket and saying ‘there there’.  And a minute or two before the service started the abbot got up and did turn the lights on . . . and a couple more people emerged from the monks’ guest space to sit in the congregation with me, thank you very much God, one of my several horrors is of being the only person on the lay side at some random weekday prayer, although one of my lesser and, over time, diminishing horrors was finally faced today, which is that I was the only woman present.  Eh.  I was so busy worrying that I was DOING IT WRONG by being there at all that I forgot to be stressed by being the only woman.

The abbot still threw holy water at me at the end of the service.  So it must have been okay.

And then I drove home in the spitting snow and sleet and merciless continuing fanged wind and met two gigantic lorries out gritting the roads.  Sigh.  So it’s a good thing I got my holy in tonight, I may not be going anywhere tomorrow, including to Forza bell practise.

* * *

* Poor thing.  No wonder she’s cranky.  When she signed on for this job I’m sure she was hoping for a more nourishing intellect than mine.

** To give the old bag credit she doesn’t argue with me about God.  The Road to Damascus thing is blisteringly convincing to anyone present, including your box-ticking, ledger-sheet and graph-paper-minded superego, whether she likes it or not.

*** I love the smack of holy water.  Just by the way.  It’s the reality of it.  It’s WATER.  As well as all the symbolism it carries with it, including that it’s an abbot who’s throwing it at you.  I’m still pretty freaked by taking communion, which is probably an auxiliary reason why I can’t quite get myself out of bed in time to go to Mass with the monks.  If I can get to the New Arcadia bell tower on Sunday morning I can frelling well get to the monks on some other morning.  Although the New Arcadia bell tower doesn’t require any driving.  If I can ring epic frelling touches of Grandsire doubles inside on Sunday morning I can DRIVE to the monks some other morning.  I’m working on it.

† If you can stand it.  But according to Merriam-Webster online, numinousness is the noun form of numinous.

†† Also it’s a lot harder to convince yourself you should stop wasting valuable time and do the washing-up/hang the laundry/mop the floor/water the houseplants if you’ve escaped your material reality to sit in church.  Religious experience has rather more in common with my life as a twitchy, easily distracted, guilt-prone writer than I might have expected.

††† Today is my six-months’ half-birthday as a Christian, as a friend pointed out.

‡ I may be Knitting Lady at various bell towers but I am Blanket Lady at the monks’.  If this frelling dratblasted weather continues I may start taking two blankets.  One of the monks seems to have a permanent cold.  I feel there should be supplementary blankets with the capes and habits and scapulars and cuculae and things.

‡‡ Hence relentless nagging of poor Aloysius.

‡‡‡ With optional sneezing.

Winter in Spring

 

It’s southern England in the middle of March and it’s snowing.  And the wind chill factor is something like minus eight hundred and twelve.*  What’s the opposite of a meltdown?  I’m having one.  I am not willing to PUT UP WITH THIS WEATHER in the south of England in the middle of MARCH.**  My crocuses, daffs, hyacinths and hellebores have SNOW on them.  And the wind?  Not only does it try to push your teeth down your throat should you be so injudicious as to open your mouth—in shock—to breathe, it makes Wolfgang rock on his (elderly) suspension as we speed toward Sorgumlea and Nadia and it lifted one of the Wall Man’s neatly stacked bricks and threw it at my greenhouse—crash!  Bricks are heavy, you know?  And their glide ratio is not good.  But a brick still levitated off the pile, flew up into the air and whanged down on my greenhouse.

The Wall Man hasn’t been here in about four days—it’s been raining till it started snowing.  So not only is our wall not being finished, but the WIND comes through the gap into my garden galloping like a jousting knight—GET OUT OF THE WAAAAAAAY.  Pavlova was nearly tossed over the opposite wall onto Phineas’ lawn.***

Generally speaking however Pav doesn’t care.  The hellhounds care.  Make it stop or we’ll stop eating (again).  I also hate picking up crap in this weather:  you have to take your gloves off.  For most of your average [sic] English winter fingerless gloves, especially the kind with the little fold-over mitten end, are perfectly adequate.  I suppose if the evil aspect of winter is going to hang around more I will be forced to learn to adapt to picking up crap with my gloves on.†  I took Pav with me today—now that the daylight is getting loonger†† in the afternoons again there’s a perfectly good hurtling opportunity post-voice-lesson before we return to familiar territory—and since as we know she only ever craps at home and when ordered to do so by the hellgoddess, the taking off of gloves was not going to be a problem.  But it was so COOOLD that she managed to hucklebutt the end of the lead right out of my numbed fingers—she’s mostly figured out how long her (extending) lead is, just as the hellhounds did at her age, and watching her hucklebutt in a tight zigzag pattern is better entertainment than most West End plays.  But she misjudges occasionally.  Today when she got to the end the handle just rattled straight out of my failing-to-close non-grip.  Oops.  Loose frelling hellterror in the middle of vast edge-of-town park and sports and playground area with lots of lovely people and other dogs to meet.  Hey, Pav, I said casually.  She looked at me.  Pav, come, I said, and knelt, which is one of those cheating-but-whatever-WORKS recall tricks—and she came to me instantly.  Noble Pav.  Fabulous Pav.†††

I finally made it to Colin’s Monday tower practise tonight too—I was thinking that in the last few weeks I’ve had a sick car, a sick husband, a sick dog‡ and a sick me.  It’s not surprising my life is even more ramshackle than usual.  But Nadia had dragged me through the first two pages of Vedrai, carino‡‡ and then offered me my first Schubert.‡‡  ::Beams::  This because I wanted to sing something cheerful, and this is one of those spring-it’s-spring-la-la-la-la songs even if it’s called FRUHLINGSGLAUBE for pity’s sake and is (duh) in German.  So I was feeling all chirpy and upbeat and it isn’t snowing hard, the roads are clear.  Although the South Desuetude tower has to be the coldest place on earth, if I hadn’t gone Niall would have kidnapped me off to Old Eden and those cranky bells in this rotten weather?  Nooooooo.

Maybe if I sing FRUHLINGSGLAUBE with feeling it’ll bring the season on a little—?

* * *

*Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin or Icicledoolally, I don’t care.  Cold.  Very frelling COLD.

** Cue every (old) person who has ever lived in southern England telling me about ice-skating every winter in the 60s.  I don’t care.  It’s not the 60s any more.^

^ For which I am very grateful.  I did not enjoy being a teenager.  At all.  You know that so-called joke about locking kids up when they turn 13 and letting them out again when they turn 20, so that parents, other authority figures and random adults are spared the whole teenage thing?  Sounds good to me.  As the kid.  I’d have been great locked up for six years as long as there were sufficient supplies of books, chocolate, a piano, what in those days would have been a ‘stereo system’, a (large) sketchpad, a dog or dogs at my feet and a (walled) field out back with two or three horses in it (horses are herd animals:  you should have more than one).+  I’m getting all wistful just thinking about it.

+ I didn’t discover gardening till I married Peter and bell ringing requires other people.#

# And maybe someone could have taught me to knit when I was 12.  So books, chocolate, yarn . . .

*** This probably has not improved her attitude toward the whole having-a-crap thing.

† I was younger when I still lived in Maine.

†† YAAAAAAY

††† It’s always something.  With the hellhounds, when they were insane puppies and I wasn’t sure of their recall, when they occasionally got away from me I freaked because they are so fast.  I am not joking that they can have disappeared before I’ve finished shouting their names.  Fortunately they never have,^ but they could.  With Pav, my number-one fear is becoming that she is a dangerous bull terrier with dangerous bull-terrier fighting DNA^^ and people are STUPID.  I realise that the Language of Dog is pretty much as complex as any other language but I feel that anyone who lives in an area that has pet dogs—which would be pretty much everywhere in England—ought to frelling recognise the wagging tail, flat ears and belly-creep of the (over) friendly hellcritter, whatever the shape of its profile.

^ knocking on wood here

^^ In terms of bull-terrier jaw DNA, by the time she’s grown I’m not going to be able to pry her mouth open any more.  Hellhounds I still can—but they aren’t big clampers anyway, aside from not being wired to grab something and not let go.  I am hoping by the time she’s grown I will have less need to pry her mouth open.  Today I saw her go for something, and I could see by the way she was holding her mouth closed there was something in there . . . a broken-off chicken thighbone GEEZUM GEEZUM GEEZUM that could have killed her if she’d chewed it up and swallowed it—oh yes, she chews her trophies.  I’m having to learn that too—hellhounds mostly just carry their treasures around—Pav, with that bull-terrier jaw, will chew up heavy plastic, for example, which SPLINTERS.  Whimper.  I will have to ask Olivia or Southdowner what you do when you have to get something out of your puppy’s mouth after she starts biting steel girders in half.  Small pocket-sized titanium-alloy crowbar?

‡ And then frelling Chaos decided to stop eating too because the fact that Darkness wasn’t eating was making him nervous.

‡‡ Zerlina, in DON GIOVANNI.  Mmmmm Mozart.

‡‡‡ Not quite my first Schubert.  Blondel tried to give me the ratblasted Lotus Flower but I hated the lyrics so much I couldn’t engage, even with the protective colouration of the terrifyingly unpronounceable German.

The Perils of Book Tours, guest post by Jodi Meadows

PART TWO

Strategically placed buy link.

By the time the shuttle driver took me away from the airport — at least, I thought I was away from the airport — I was pretty nervous. I’d had a lot of weird luck already, and it wasn’t even noon. And the building where he dropped me off looked a lot like the building where he’d picked me up. When I stepped inside, thank goodness, there were the machines to buy subway tickets.

I bought my ticket and hauled my overstuffed bag through the turnstile. Then . . . I wasn’t sure where to go. I’d been to Boston once before, but I hadn’t been left to navigate the subway by myself then. I tried not to panic.

Blue Line to Government Center: It was a sign on an elevator. Heaven’s light shone down. Angels sang. I stepped into the elevator, the doors closed, and I pushed a button.

The doors opened.

I waited for the doors to shut again, then pushed my button. Neither button was labeled with Blue Line to Government Center. But really, there were only two. How hard could it be?

The doors opened.

I fiddled around with the buttons some more before I pushed the other one, the elevator took me up, and I made it out of that horrible box. But the only way to go after that was a short hallway and down a flight of stairs.

I JUST GOT UPSTAIRS, THOUGH!

It turns out that the elevator was to get you up, and the stairs were to get you over a set of tracks without dying. But basically, either way you were going on the subway, you needed to be on the one floor. There were no signs telling me about this. But okay. Whatever. Eventually I made it onto the Blue Line to Government Center.

From there, I took another train to my agent’s apartment. She’d given me walking directions after that, so during the (really long) ride, I studied them.

When we finally reached my stop, I stood by the door and waited for it to open.

And waited.

Finally I realized it wasn’t going to open, so I ran to a door that was open and hurled myself outside just as the doors slid shut.

Whew. Made it. Time for walking.

My agent, bless her heart, is from the South. She’s lived in Boston for years and years, but she still gives directions like a Southerner. Fortunately, I also grew up in the South. So, walk toward the 7-11.

Done. Turn left on Blah Street. Hmm. There’s a right on Blah Street, but no left. But there’s the store she mentioned she lives near. I walked a little farther. I was getting tired. I hadn’t slept the night before, my planes were all delayed, I’d been asked to go to Argentina, and doors were conspiring against me.

I called Agent Lauren.

Me: You give directions like a Southerner.

Her: . . . Are you lost?

Me: There was no left at Blah Street.

Her: Right! I meant turn right!

So I turned around, but decided to cut through the grocery store parking lot as I told her about my trip.

Me: And then– Ahh! Ahh! I’m getting run over!

A car in the parking lot was backing up. Into me. It hit my bag. I walked faster. The car kept coming.

Agent Lauren: You’re . . . getting run over? Are you okay?

I started running from the car. They didn’t stop. My overstuffed carry-on bag basically saved my life.

Me: I’m alive.

Agent Lauren: That’s good.

Me: Your directions say you live in a brick building.

Her: Yep!

Me: All the buildings here are brick.

Finally, I made it to her apartment — alive — and made best friends forever with her mini dachshund, Elvis. We had some time to kill before the party, so we went out for lunch. Then I got a text from another writer friend who was visiting the area. She wanted to know if I wanted to grab coffee. I love coffee! So I went back out. . . . Of course I got lost on the way. I took a wrong turn and walked about a mile before I turned around and went in the right direction. Because I’m a genius.

I was really looking forward to the party, though! When it was time, Anne — one of Agent Lauren’s friends — picked us up. She had made a cake for the occasion. It had rainbow layers, which was all I knew about it. That was all I was permitted to know.

While parking, we jumped the curb. Whups. I apologized to Anne, saying the curb probably jumped out to get me — Boston had been doing that to me all day.

Then, finally, we made it to the bookstore. Hurrah! Brookline Booksmith is amazing. The people there are so nice and thoughtful. They had everything all set up. They had a billion books! They even had people there. Like, readers. It was great.

I talked, answered questions, and then we had an INCARNATE trivia contest to win a pair of my handknit mitts. One of the book bloggers who was there did a great post on the event. The highlight for me was, of course, seeing friends and readers. I hung out with Forum Mod Gryphyn, who I was lucky enough to meet my previous time in Boston, too. There were writer friends — some I’d met before, some not — and a couple of Lauren’s other clients. There were book bloggers I’d met online.

Forum Mod Gryphyn and me at Brookline Booksmith 

It was lovely. I completely forgot how Boston was trying to kill me.

Then I sat down to sign books and someone dropped off a piece of cake — which did indeed have rainbow layers — but I didn’t have a chance to eat it because I was signing books. Good problem to have, I know. But . . . cake. I never saw the actual cake. Someone showed me a picture later. It was really pretty!

When the event was over, Agent Lauren was grabbing a few friends to hang out at her place. She went back ahead of me, leaving Anne to take me when I was finished with the books.

Happy and tired, I followed Anne out to her car. As I started to climb in, a passerby said, “Hey, your tire is flat!”

I told Anne. She got out to look. “It’s really flat,” she said. Apparently when we jumped the curb earlier, the tire exploded. We sat in the car while she called another friend to get me, and then AAA. And I ate my cake (at last!). (It was delicious and worth the wait.)

Eventually, we both made it back to Agent Lauren’s. The rest of the day — all three hours of it — was incident-free.

Dear Boston: Thank you for not actually killing me on my big day. I love you.

The Perils of Book Tours, guest post by Jodi Meadows

PART ONE

Strategically placed buy link.

On January 29, I had a book come out. Months before, my agent said I should go to Boston — where she lives — and have my launch party there. I agreed that sounded like a fantastic plan.

It all started Tuesday morning. I was to get to the airport by 6:15AM, catch a 7:15 plane to Philadelphia and then Boston, and have a ridiculously fancy time at my launch party that evening.

Since this was January, I was a little worried about snow keeping me from getting (safely, and alive) across the mountain to the (tiny) Charlottesville airport. I also get travel anxiety. I set three alarms to go off early — like, 5AM early — so I could make sure I made it to the airport on time.

So of course I didn’t sleep. I kept checking the clock, the alarms, thinking about my flights in the morning, hoping it wouldn’t snow. The weather people hadn’t forecasted snow, but that doesn’t always mean anything. I was also worried about fog on the mountain. Fog snow fog snow oh my commas traveling tomorrow can I look like a grown up and my book is out eeeeee fog snow fog snow.

That’s not an exact transcript of my thoughts, but it’s pretty close. Just imagine that for several hours. When I should have been sleeping.

All of my alarms went off. I dragged myself into my clothes and grabbed my bag, which I’d smartly packed with everything the night before. Halfway to the car, I ran back to get my toothbrush.

Then I really had everything.

Getting to the airport was no problem. My husband dropped me off and I stood in the security line, waiting my turn to be scanned, wanded, and glared at. When I’d packed, I thought I’d been so smart, getting all of my stuff into one carry-on bag — but then I had to take out my liquids so they could be scrutinized, too. They came out. But would they go back in? Hmm.

“You’re only allowed one bag of liquids,” said the TSA lady.

Me: O____O But I’ve taken two several times and no one said anything. Is this rule new?

Her: No. You’re only allowed one bag of liquids. But . . . some of this looks like contact solution. We’ll see if they let it through.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Yes. Contact stuff. Exactly. They let me through — along with my contact solution — and I thought, “Well, I remembered my toothbrush at the last second and I’ve had a scolding by the TSA people. The rest of this trip should go juuuust fine.”

Then I sat at the gate and waited.

And waited.

Apparently there was a ground hold on planes in Philadelphia, so anyone heading to Boston after that would need to have their connecting flight pushed back.

Great. Great great. Fortunately I was getting into Boston plenty early. I had time. I headed over to the desk, got my connecting flight moved back an hour, and sat down again — next to an older gentleman who had trouble hearing the announcements so, from that point on, relied on me to yell in his ear.

And when we finally got on the plane, we were seat-mates! Yay? He asked why I was going to Boston.

Me: My second book is out today! I’m going to my launch party.

Him: Oh, what do you write about?

Me: Teenagers. Reincarnation. Dragons.

I gave him my card and the usual pitch for INCARNATE. Usually I get either intrigued or unsettled looks from people. This guy just asked, “Why don’t you write about adults?”

Me: Because I like writing about teenagers.

Him: You should write about old people.

Me: I’m happy writing what I write.

Him: You should come to Argentina and write about teenagers there. You could stay at my apartment.

Me: Oh look, electronic devices are allowed again! I have something very important to do with my headphones.

So that happened. We landed in Philadelphia and one of the other guys heading to Boston said our original flight had been delayed, so if we ran, we could all catch that instead of the next flight.

We ran.

The other guys were jerkfaces. They were super rude to the attendants when we arrived at the gate. Oh, I’m sure they thought they were clever with their jokes about the airline delaying and delaying and how we got this flight again because the airline was delaaaaayed, but the folks at the counter just gave them death looks and were really slow to help them. Meanwhile, I smiled and said thank you, and was back on my original flight very quickly.

We landed in Boston. I stopped for coffee, because good grief. I deserved some coffee. Then I pulled out the directions Agent Lauren had given me to get to her apartment.

Blue Line to Government Center. Then a bunch of other stuff. Okay. Okay. Blue Line. I could do this. I walked outside and found a bunch of bus stops. I wasn’t 100% sure how they were organized. There seemed to be some color coding involved. I stood near a blue sign. Because I wanted the Blue Line. Yep. I could do this.

A bus pulled up. Several people standing around me got on. Some didn’t, though. I panicked. Why weren’t they getting on the bus? Didn’t everyone want Blue Line to Government Center?

I didn’t get on the bus. I waited. Other busses were coming. Some had yellow on them. Some had blue. There were all sorts of colors and they didn’t seem to be obeying the colored signs I thought was the thing. I walked inside. Walked back outside. Another bus with something blue on it pulled up. I jumped on and asked the driver if this went to Government Center.

Him: Blue Line to Government Center!

Me: Yes, that’s what I want.

Him: Sit.

I sat. The bus pulled out. We seemed to move just around the airport, but I wasn’t sure. Everything was very large. My airport at home has five gates. I’m very good about finding my way around those five gates. Logan International has . . . considerably more. It’s a little intimidating.

The driver said, “Government Center girl! Get off!”

I got up. “We’re at Government Center?”

Him: No. Blue Line to Government Center.

He’d dropped me off somewhere that looked just like where I’d started. . . .

Steeleye, yarn and death

 

Fiona tried to kill me today.

And after we were stopped, sweating and shaking and trying to drag our adrenaline levels back down out of the stratosphere but ALIVE, and beginning to get our breaths back, she turned to me and said earnestly, Think of the blog material!*

Okay.  I’m thinking of it.  On the whole I feel a near-death experience is carrying the relentless quest for blog material a little far.

I told you that Fiona and I were playing hooky today.  We were going to play more hooky but I got caught in a time warp with a mild but annoying stomach virus and a non-eating hellhound.  No, not Darkness—frelling Chaos.  WHAT THE FRELL YOU FRELLING FRELLER.  Arrrrrgh.  I’ve been really enjoying the (relative) straightforwardness of feeding all three hellcritters lately—till Darkness fell off the cliff.**  Fiona (this was before she tried to kill me) said that there should be some way to pool the appetites and food attitudes of my bonkers three and then redistribute the result more evenly.  Yes.  Although the hellterror could eat for England.  WHAT IS IT?  NO, NEVER MIND, I DON’T CARE, JUST HOLD IT THERE AND I’LL EAT IT.  Pavlova’s appetite, bottled, and then judiciously sprinkled over entire kennels full of anorexic sighthounds, would have them all eating their heads off, and she would still be ingesting your All Stars if you don’t walk fast enough.

Anyway.  We left finally in enough time to make it to another YARN STORE***.

It was on the way home from this escapade† that Fiona turned the wrong way down a one-way piece of major divided motorway and we saw a flotilla of cars bearing down on us at 70 mph.

In her defense, it’s a very confusing section of road.  I don’t know that particular bit, but it’s in an area where a lot of the old Roman roads have been inefficiently widened, or extra lanes and slip roads have been kind of bolted on without sufficient signage to explain how they’re supposed to be used.  It still might have been the end of a beautiful friendship† but . . . Fiona was holding both tickets to tonight’s Steeleye Span concert and even if I’d wrested mine away from her we were still sitting next to each other so whatever.  My hair has only turned grey.  Not a big deal.

. . .  This is now the second time today that Radio Three has played Vivaldi’s GLORIA.  What is this, a conspiracy?  Has the Muddles’ musical director bribed the BBC to play it as often as possible between now and the end of May in an attempt to make us do some involuntary homework?†††  But with last night’s choir practise rather dreadfully fresh in my mind‡ it was very interesting listening to some professional singers who aren’t off the top of the chart super-accomplished, super-super-schooled and super-super-super gifted opera-singer types, but people with voices more like yours and mine and who merely know how to deploy them.  Nobody is going to hire Peter Knight to sing Parsifal, but he gets his point across, you know?

Also it was just a brilliant show.  It was a brilliant enough show that I’ve had something like six emails from Fiona since she got home suggesting a series of reasons that we go to another concert on this tour. . . .

1969. Yeep. Although I don’t remember them till the 70s that’s because I was looking in the wrong direction.

* * *

* She was very embarrassed and contrite.  But I’m not perfectly sure about the contrition.  She might have been embarrassed that she missed.  No, wait, I’m probably (relatively) safe till PEG III comes out.  I’ve told you, haven’t I, that PEG II ends possibly even worse than PEG?  Slightly depending on your definition of ‘worse’.  But I think I can guarantee that it is not reader-friendly.  And I can predict the hate mail.  Sigh.

** I can’t wait for the hellterror to grow up so I can get her on the cereal-free kibble too.  One of my recurring nightmares is the hellhounds getting into the puppy kibble.  Mind you, if it weren’t that the puppy gets it they wouldn’t be the LEAST interested.  But she does and they don’t, and it’s bad enough she exists.  That she has Special Hellterror-only Food is just not okay.^  I’ve applied to Olivia and Southdowner about when I can put her on grown-up food—it seems to me she still has substantial growing to do but maybe the last burst happens slowly—the only cereal-free puppy food I know anything about is from the same line of rotblasted gold-standard kibble the hellhounds get ONCE a day because I can’t AFFORD it.  The way the hellterror eats. . . .

^ Since I’d had no inkling of Darkness being out of my sight long enough to get into anything that could have caused the recent meltdown OF COURSE I wondered if it could have been puppy kibble, but I don’t think so.  Also of the two of them Chaos is a lot more intent on snatching a mouthful.  Darkness can’t quite bring himself to stoop to real interest—General All Encompassing Appalled Horror and Revulsion is his shtick+, of which pointed accusatory looks at bags of puppy kibble are merely one aspect of a unified tactical assault.

+ ALTHOUGH I had THREE HELLCRITTERS IN THE SAME BED . . . for about five minutes a few days ago.  ALL THREE of them LYING DOWN.  No, I didn’t get a photo.  My gimlet eye was part of what was holding them there, and getting up to fetch the camera would have been counterproductive.  In a big noisy way.

It would be nice if they could share some space during the day, but they will always be crated separately and probably not allowed to frolic together unsupervised—at least not if Pavlova keeps all her bits.  The people at the pet shop have already started saying, oh, six months old?  A small dog could come on heat any time now.  SHUT UP, OKAY?

*** Having exchanged Christmas presents first.  Yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Fiona.^  Hers included a knitting bag that says ‘a day without knitting is like a day without chocolate’.  Mine included an assortment of kitchen magnets, my favourite of which reads:  I’d like to help you out.  Which way did you come in?  —Fiona knows me well, you think?

^ Or since Fiona has seen the hellterror.  Hey, when did you trade in that sweet little thing for this RAGING MONSTER?  —It’s true, Pav is getting to be quite an armful when she’s in frenzy mode.  It still hasn’t occurred to her that one of these days I’m not going to be able to pick her up.  Remind me to have her crate off the kitchen table and on the FLOOR before that happens.

† I DIDN’T BUY ANYTHING.  No, really.  I kept saying to myself, Wall.  Remember the wall.  Remember the SEVERAL THOUSAND POUNDS that wall is going to cost.  WALL.  WALL.  WALL.

Fiona doesn’t have paying for a wall in her immediate future, sooooo . . .

†† Especially if we were both dead.

††† I almost didn’t go to choir practise yesterday—this generic all-over germ that has recently settled in my stomach is not making my life a joy and my energy level sublime.  But they were very glad to see me when I did go since there were ONLY THREE SOPRANOS.  THREE?  SOPRANOS?  WTF?  Cheez.

‡ Even though one of us was the director’s wife, who has a nice strong voice and reads music deplorably well, when there’s only three of you, you are each relentlessly audible.

KES, 69

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMOON

SIXTY NINE

I barely prevented myself from turning around and running away.  I was going to sleep here tonight?  I was going to sleep here every night till my lease ran out?  How long a lease had I signed for?  I couldn’t remember.  I didn’t want to remember.  Maybe I could stay at the Friendly Campfire till the tourist season started.  No, I couldn’t afford it, especially after I finally called Mr Wolverine back and found out that I’d misread the fine print and I still owed him seventeen gazillion dollars plus a home-made chocolate cake on his birthday.  Every year.  I had a better shot at the seventeen gazillion dollars.  Maybe Serena could teach me how to make a cake.  Learning to bake cakes sounded like a nice stay-at-home country activity, in which the size of your front door key is not an obstacle.  Maybe Serena would let me sleep in her garage.  Maybe the vet would let me sleep in an empty kennel. . . .

Sid.  I wasn’t running away, I was only going back to the van to get my dog.  Why shouldn’t she be part of the official first threshold-crossing?  All she needed was some gold braid and a trombone.  All I needed was a better attitude.  She jumped down from the van, missing the ruts.  She looked around interestedly, both ears and tail up.  I felt a little better, watching her.  She seemed unworried by the rustling deinonychus.  Maybe it was the wind in the trees.  It seemed a little more solid a rustling than air through leaves though.  Maybe it was the giant person-eating squirrels that lived in the trees rubbing their paws together at the arrival of fresh supplies.  Maybe it was Mr Melmoth’s swirling cloak. . . .

MacFarquhar.  Get a grip.

I looped Sid’s shiny new red nylon lead over my wrist, hoisted my knapsack up on the undislocated shoulder, and climbed the stairs to the porch again.  Slowly.  I already wanted a freight elevator and this was only the first load.  My ankle was not throbbing because I couldn’t afford it to be throbbing.  It was true that my knapsack was so heavy it needed grommets and steel cable reinforcements and that mere book boxes were bagatelles in comparison . . . but I had only one knapsack and I suspected the boxes would become less bagatelle-like the more of them I carried up these stairs.

Sid and I stepped across the door sill and paused.

Nothing pounced.

It wasn’t even dark.  That was just the effect of coming indoors from outdoors (plus the above-mentioned bad attitude).  It was an overcast grey day (those clouds were not banding together to make rain, they were not) but sunlight was still coming in through the windows.

And I wasn’t alone.  I had a dog.  A warm, breathing, hairy, live-young-bearing mammal just like me.   I had the opposable thumbs.  She had the sense of smell.  “You’ll warn me if unspeakable evil is creeping up on us, right?” I said to her, but my voice sounded so strange in the empty house I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.  Did unspeakable evil smell?

I unslung my knapsack and leaned it against the wall.  I took a deep breath.  The air smelled of dust and closed-up house and . . . something or other.  More of those mysterious country smells.  Green growing things and wildlife crap presumably.  Nothing ominous.  Nothing to do with (say) a poker-playing trio of cosmic horror in the cellar.  I looked at my dog again.  She was investigating a hole in the wainscoting.  Okay, mice.  I could probably cope with mice.

As if she felt me looking at her, she glanced up, waved her tail matter-of-factly, and began casting around for the next hole in the wainscoting.  She was not worrying about Shub-Niggurath.  She looked happy.  She didn’t know about the bottle of dog shampoo in the back of the van.  Maybe I could hire Gus to help me give her a bath.  I wasn’t going to be able to do it alone if she objected, and she probably would object.  Most dogs did. This might put Gus off dogs long enough to get him safely off to college, which would please Serena. Vivid memories of bathing Mom’s Ghastlies daunted me briefly.  I could worry about that later too.  “What a good idea you were,” I said to my dog.  “You won’t believe this but I thought it would be wise and practical to move in before I got a dog.”  Sid had lowered her front half till her elbows were on the floor, the better to wedge a little more of her long thin nose into the original hole in the wainscoting.  Her butt remained standing, tail wagging faintly.  She looked ridiculous.  It was very reassuring.

Thou’rt fortunate.  Thy new comrade is swift and loyal and high-couraged.  Thou and she will go far both as the world doth count span of distance, and in the journey of the heart.  Maybe if I counted deinonychus crap as fewmets I’d feel more in control.  But the deinonychus were raccoons.  Probably.  And the large forsoothly-speaking guys in funny clothes were a figment of my imagination.

Right?