Robin McKinley's Blog, page 68

Dog days

 

One Slightly Used Puppy.  Free to a Good Home.  It doesn’t have to be a very good home.  Just a reasonably good home.  A moderately good home.  A home.

WHOSE DEMIURGE-BLASTED IDEA WAS DOGS?  IT’S A REALLY BAD IDEA.  REALLY.  BAD.

I woke up too early this morning when Pooka chirruped at me.  It was my dog minder saying she had flu and couldn’t hurtle today.  Arrgh.  Too much input.  Atlas was telling me that the reason Phineas’ gutters are coming off, and, in the process, ice-stalactiting my little hamamelis to death, is because of the roses.  That’s the wall that Mme Alfred and Mme Gregoire riot up and over—well, you’ve seen the photos.  Mme Alfred is, or rather, was, reaching about ten feet nearer heaven from the roof of Phineas’ three-storey house.  Unfortunately she and Mme G are also prying the gutters free of their brackets.  Pruning once-only flowering roses this time of year means I’ll probably have precious few flowers from either of them this summer, Mme G in particular, who is an early bloomer.  Whimper.  Atlas was also hauling my dead refrigerator off to the dump to make way for the shiny new (Lilliputian*) refrigerator due to arrive on Wednesday.**  Atlas is easy to have around—it’s one of his major virtues—but it’s still another two feet in a small cottage that already contains fourteen of them.

Meanwhile Theodora’s Strong Young Men came back today and carted a skip’s worth of rubble away and I don’t like having lots of strangers in my face.  And while it does look better it also makes the hole look bigger.

After extreme ditheration I decided to take my entire furry complement with me this afternoon.  We could gambol on Drollbody’s green before going on to Nadia.  The gambolling worked out reasonably well although there were far too many other gambollers to risk the troika.  And then when we got to Nadia . . . I was trying to put a blanket over the lying-down hellhounds, especially Chaos, who really feels the cold, but every time I got out of the car they stood up again.  All right have it your way it’s probably not that cold anyway.  But when I got inside and looked out the window . . . there was frelling Chaos having stuffed most of his long-legged self onto the shelf behind the back seat where the dog bed lives, staring agonizedly through the rear window at me, two glass panes and a lot of cold air away.  Feh.

The lesson itself went better than I expected:  when I’d warmed up this morning my voice was about as rich and elastic and resonant as an underfed kitten squalling under an upended bucket.  At the end of it Nadia said, you should take that one to Oisin.  —Eeeep.  This is Purcell’s Evening Hymn which I started work on with Blondel and have gone back to and I looooooove it.  She said I should think about bringing my recording thingy again, that I might be pleasantly surprised. . . .

So possibly I was reeling from the shock of all this.  I’d already told Colin that I wouldn’t come ringing tonight, on not enough sleep plus full double hurtling I was going to be trashed by bell practise time.  And then I decided to go after all.  The ringing was not too bad, largely, however, because we were drubbing our beginners and while I am capable of going entirely wrong on anything, I have a relatively sturdy autopilot for plain bob doubles even when the brain has closed for the day . . . and was positively enjoying, in a twitchy, ouchy, oh-dear-been-there-done-that-have-the-t-shirt way, the struggles of Reynold ringing his first plain courses inside.

I had brought Pavlova, of course, she can still just about fit in her travelling crate by judicious folding.  And then on our way out IT ALL WENT HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY WRONG.  It was dark, right?  As we went through the churchyard toward the cars.   And I belong to the get-it-away-from-them-first-and-find-out-what-it-is-second school of puppy management, my reflexes and my paranoia polished to diamond brilliance by the vicissitudes of dealing with hellhounds.  So I already had my hand in her mouth . . . before . . . I . . . realised . . . what . . . I . . . now . . . had . . . a . . . handful . . . of.  A large handful.  There was struggling, and the substance got spread around rather liberally . . . and there was only the outside cold tap that people fill their watering-cans with . . . but you know I am not complaining, at least there was an available cold tap.   And oh my hearts and flowers, was there ever language.  Including the ‘I am LEAVING YOU BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD’ variety.

We got home and I burst through the front door shouting for surgical spirit†, went straight to the sink and began maniacally washing my hands.  Peter, having been dozing on the sofa, woke up enough to say, oh, hi, did it go okay?  IT WENT FINE.  I ALWAYS COME INDOORS SHOUTING FOR SURGICAL SPIRIT AND START DOING A LADY MACBETH WITH THE INDUSTRIAL DETERGENT.  Then I went back out to Wolfgang AND WIPED DOWN EVERYTHING I HAD TOUCHED WITH SURGICAL SPIRIT.  Pav, a trifle shaken by events, went straight into the bathtub and emerged smelling of lavender.††

So a nice clean slightly used puppy.  Any takers?

* * *

* But Lilliputian is A LOT EASIER to lift over the puppy gate than a full-sized refrigerator would have been.  A full-sized one might have been a Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel situation.

**  Some time Wednesday.  They’re going to ring me at SEVEN IN THE MORNING.  SEVEN.  IN THE MORNING.  TO TELL ME WHICH FOUR HOUR SLOT IT WILL BE ARRIVING IN.  SEVEN.  IN THE MORNING.  I’ve barely gone to bed.

They are at least delivering it, you know, at all.   I am disgracefully and mortifyingly retro about manuscripts, and dealing with my editor’s electronic queries on SHADOWS made me CRAAAAAAZY . . . I make similar attempts to cope with modernity every book, and fail . . . and I eventually printed out.  So my editor’s assistant, bless her, sent me hard copy to begin with of the copyedited object.  I only have a fortnight to turn the thing around, although Zandria says all the queries are of the ‘do you want this comma here?’ variety . . . but someone obsessed with how punctuation affects the rhythm of the sentence or the paragraph^ can struggle a lot over a comma.  Anyway.  I have a fortnight.

And the mutton-brained UPS man^^ came on Friday when I was not there and took it away again.  IT’S A MANUSCRIPT, YOU MORON.  IT SAYS SO ON THE PACKAGE, ALONG WITH ‘DOES NOT NEED TO BE SIGNED FOR.’  IT IS WORTH ZERO FLOGGED ON THE BLACK MARKET.  WTF, YOU OVERDONE PORK CHOP?

So this jerk has just stolen nearly four working days from me thanks ever so.  It arrived today.  But it arrived when Atlas was there to take receipt.  I wouldn’t have been able to write a blog tonight if Mr Pond Slime had taken it away again, because I would have been busy hunting him down and KILLING HIM.  And recovering my package before the bloodstains penetrated too far.

^ SOMEBODY TELL ME WHY MY EAR FOR THIS KIND OF THING IS SO FRELLING DEMANDING WHEN I CAN’T KEEP A RHYTHM BELL RINGING TO SAVE MY FREAKING LIFE.

^^ It always is a bloke.  There are female mailpersons but I have yet to see a girl courier.

† Rubbing alcohol

†† Peter, who is a wonderful human being, cleaned the crate.

Sunday services

 

Yesterday started badly when I didn’t make it to Aloysius’ silent prayer group again.  It’s only once a month so it’s not like I can try again tomorrow or even next week.  But I am not (as we know) a morning person to begin with, I get going at all kinda slow, which is probably also partly the ME, and driving is always my weak point—because of the ME.  Yesterday morning at Way Too Early O’Clock, Even When I’ve Injected Caffeine Recently, I thought, hmmmmm, maybe I had better not climb behind the wheel of two tons of wayward metal moving at a high rate of speed on a, you know, little narrow thing called a road.

So I stayed home.  Sigh.*  But I did go to the monks yesterday evening.

This morning I got up early enough to bolt down main street to St Radegund—just like the bad old days—and, pelting, thought, there is something wrong with this picture when I can frelling run down a little narrow thing called a road and can’t loll at my ease in a car and let it carry me.  Feh.  So I panted up the bell tower ladder and found . . . that I was the fourth person there.  The difference between whole pull plain hunt on three bells and bob minimus on four is in orders of galactic expansion . . . and when Edward showed up and we were five, the difference between bob minimus and being able to ring doubles methods without the tenor-behind is even greater.  So today I was totally a desirable commodity.  I’m only experimenting with ringing at St Radegund again—I went last Sunday too—it’s frankly silly not to ring (supposing you’re a ringer) at a tower two garden walls away from your house if there aren’t strong reasons against and I’ll just have to see how it goes.  Since they still need ringers, and I’m officially a member of another tower, so St Radegund doesn’t have any control over me beyond ‘ring that bell over there’ or ‘go away and leave us alone you evil insurrectionist’, I’m hoping if the politics start getting up my nose again I can ignore them better.

We even rang reasonably well which is to say I was the weak link, and if everybody else is ringing accurately they can kind of harry one random member into behaving.  It’s when there’s more than one that you start getting interesting sound effects.

I went home feeling cautiously chuffed and actually spent about an hour in my poor neglected garden—in the first place it was quite a nice morning** and the snowdrops are up and my double hellebores are flowering away like mad, gallant things, and in the second place this business of having your previously walled garden open to view is embarrassing.  Or at least it is if you haven’t done any tidying beyond picking up crap in plastic bags since your puppy came home getting on four months ago.

I went off to ring at the abbey in the afternoon feeling pretty cheerful.***  Wow.  Mistake.  There were only eight of us, and while we weren’t the haut monde, I wouldn’t have said we had been scraped off the bottom of anyone’s shoe either.  But we couldn’t ring anything.  Your Mother Warned You There Would Be Days Like These.  I didn’t come out of it unscathed, but I did manage to hold my line while lines all around me were going twangle ping CRASH.  This would be more impressive if my sense of rhythm were a little less haphazard—I was probably contributing to anarchy simply by not being where some poor struggling other bell might have hoped to find me.  †

I went home now feeling a trifle chastened.  But at least I had gone, so we had eight ringers.  Tea with Georgiana and two hurtles later I set off for St Margaret of Scotland.  I wasn’t late for a change and there weren’t a lot of us there, which no doubt explains why as I came through the door Charity thrust a Bible at me and said, Fancy doing a reading tonight?

Oh.  Okay.

It’s a long one, she said.

Oh.  Okay.

You can say no, she said.

No, no, that’s fine, I said, reminding myself that public speaking holds no terrors for me††, and that I’m trying to get involved in church community.  So I took the Bible she was brandishing at me and went and sat down to look over the passage.

It was a frelling long one too:  Luke 11:37-54, if anyone wants to look it up.  It’s Jesus ranting at the Pharisees:  Woe to you!  For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.  I’m afraid I respond to Jesus in hair-tearing mode—scenes like this what I hear is the incarnate man who only has three years to turn the world around, and it’s in a worse mess than he and God and the Holy Ghost realised when they dreamed up this insane plan to send him down here.

I’m afraid I ate a certain amount of scenery.  The interesting question is whether, after this demonstration of shameless American grandstanding, they ever ask me to do a reading again.

* * *

*Although it did occur to me that I don’t know for sure I can sit—ie crossed-legged on the floor—for most of an hour^ in jeans, even if I take my shoes off.  I sit at home either first or last thing, which means I’m in my dressing-gown, which is baggy, not to say tent-like or voluminous.  Maybe I’d better test the jeans method before the first Saturday of next month.

^ Two twenty-five minute stretches with a five-minute break in between.  I don’t know if Aloysius gives you five free minutes to get the blood circulating in your lower limbs again or whether he leads you in kinhin—walking meditation—before you return to your cushion for more zazen, the standard sitting meditation.  I’ve pretty much only just found out that there is a tradition of Zen-style sitting within contemplative Christianity, so I’m clueless.

** We’re supposed to be having winter again, but it seems to have stopped at Starbucks for a coffee.

*** Yes.  Two service rings at two different churches.  You normal people are thinking, well, we already knew she is an obsessive, and it’s true, I am an obsessive, but within the real bell-ringing community, as opposed to the dabblers,^ a mere two service rings on a Sunday is piffling.  There are gangs in various parts of the country that spend all day Sunday leaping into their cars and speeding on to the next service ring at the next church.

^ Leo, for example, rings as part of his commitment to his church.  He is not an obsessive.

† I’ve told you what a steep learning curve I am still finding life at the abbey, partly due to the size of the dratblasted ringing chamber and the difficulty of seeing the other ropes accurately because the circle is so big.  If you’re ringing on all four hundred and twelve the other side of the circle is a mile away.  But if you’re ringing on fewer—like, say, eight—you’re not in a circle at all, you’re in a queue.  We were ringing a slightly non-standard eight, and where I was on the three there was something wrong with the perspective, so looking down the wretched QUEUE it ALWAYS looked like the four, five and six were ringing simultaneously.  Mind you, the day we were having, maybe they were ringing simultaneously.  But I think it was the perspective.

†† Well, not very many.

KES, 64

 

SIXTY FOUR

 

I wouldn’t say we sprinted back to the van, but we went pretty briskly.  (The fact that I briefly forgot where I had left it is not relevant.  And besides, our indirect route was really because I was checking that we weren’t being followed by evil fairies or the Brotherhood of Mutants.  I didn’t have the faintest idea what I’d do if we were being followed, of course.  I wasn’t sure either Serena’s or Bridget’s patience would stretch to the Brotherhood of Mutants.  And I didn’t have Watermelon Shoulders’ phone number.)  I didn’t want to see anything else that shouldn’t be there.  Maybe living in Manhattan all my life till now had not prepared me well for life anywhere else.  In Manhattan if you saw a huge black guy with a sword you thought, eh, fantasy convention, they’re shooting a movie, on his way to tai chi class, he’s the local probably harmless loony and the cops (probably) know about him.  In New Iceland you see a huge black guy with a sword and you wonder what they’re putting in the water.  No, wait, it wasn’t a sword.  I had established that it was not a sword.  (I wasn’t sure how I had established it, but it was established.  No swords on the streets of New Iceland.  It was probably in the town charter:  one musket per able-bodied adult.  No swords.)

And Topaz, the horse, the burgundy velvet?  They were putting something in the water.  Or Mr Wolverine, cranky at my non-return of phone calls, had told his secretary to put a hex on me.  I spent a little time imagining Darla’s to-do list:   Buy coffee.  Pick up dry cleaning.  Disembowel senior partner, preserve organs for future use, possibly toward spell to run new district attorney out of town.  Set vengeance demons on non-paying clients.  Put hex on that feeble little hack so-called writer who doesn’t answer phone calls.  Surely this last was hardly worth the trouble.  I hoped.  Because I wasn’t ringing him back today either, so if I was lucky Darla was fully occupied with the evisceration and the district attorney.  I had a house to move into and a dog to feed up.  I could deal with the occasional outbreak of burgundy velvet if I had to.  But I’d have to hope that Sid and Watermelon Shoulders would continue to deal with Mr Melmoth.  I really did not like Mr Melmoth.  I might like him even less than I liked Mr Wolverine.

The van started at once, as if it were eager to be gone.  It probably was.  I had begun to suspect that beneath the exterior of screaming skulls there beat the heart of a plastic roller skate.  We bumped back into the parking lot of the Friendly Campfire and Sid, sitting up very straight in the passenger seat, didn’t even pant this time.  Progress.  “So, how about if you stay there a minute?”  I said.  I reached across her to roll the window down enough that she could get her nose out but not so far any of the rest of her could follow.

I took the steps to the porch two at a time, hurtled indoors, took a fast look around, told the ratatouille on the walls that I wasn’t going to miss it at all and looked gloomily at the amount of stuff I had somehow managed to accumulate in less than forty-eight hours.  Although my major acquisition was sitting on the passenger seat of the van, which was why, plus the space I needed for what I was about to buy at the pet shop, there was now so much on the floor of cabin seven.  And which major acquisition and causer of tumult I did not wanting eating the armrest padding or the seatbelts, which fear was the cause of this unseemly speed.  (That, and the fact that six o’clock was ticking relentlessly nearer.)  I wondered if Mike would still be offering me Merry if he’d known about Sid.  No, wait, from what Serena said of his family—yes, probably.  Maybe she could show her appreciation by not eating Merry’s armrests or seatbelts either.

As I locked the cabin door again I looked for Sid, who was still sitting bolt upright and staring through the windshield at me.  I couldn’t see any tell-tale threads trailing from her jaws.  Excellent.  I went past on her side to the back of the van and opened the doors . . . and then spent a few minutes muttering under my breath while I attempted to recreate a rosebush-in-a-pot-sized hole, which is a tactically different shape than a large-amounts-of-dog-food-sized hole.

I came to myself abruptly in response to a small pathetic whine from the front of the van.  Sid had had plenty of time to eat both seatbelts and the dashboard. . . . But she hadn’t.  “Good girl,” I said, and gave her a piece of cheese because I felt like it.  Don’t respond to your dog if it cries, because it will learn that crying gets it attention.  I’d become a responsible dog owner tomorrow.

I turned at last to my rose-bush.  “Okay, honey,” I said.  “We’re going . . . home.”  I picked her up, staggered down the length of the van again, plopped her in the (almost big enough) space, and gently closed the van doors on her.

I climbed into the driver’s seat.  “We’re off,” I said.  “Help.”

 

Wall

 

So.  I’ve got some wall photos.  Remember the wall?

The view from my kitchen door, if you turn your head to the right. No big deal, right?

.

But step closer. Um. Well, maybe it’s a little bit of a deal.

.

To give you a little more sense of scale, that was all wall where there is plywood now holding my greenhouse together. Atlas and I recovered most of what you see from the mess in poor Theodora’s garden.

 

Eeep. (Atlas put the barbed wire up as a temporary measure because my walled garden is now open to the road AND I DON’T LIKE THIS AT ALL.)

 

This is after Theodora’s Strong Young Men did major clearing. This used to be a flower bed.

 

The long view. Ouch. Theodora’s garden took 98% of the damage. Mine took 2%. Plus the back of my greenhouse.

That’s Phineas’ house you’re looking through the hole at, my semi-detached neighbour.  The cottage is hidden behind the greenhouse.

Some dizzy and confused tulips are trying to grow.

 

 

And there’s still a lily pond under the rubble.

 

 

Sigh. Poor Theodora.

 

Homeopathy, chapter whatever

 

I am very short of sleep.

Last night as I was pulling myself together (later than planned, of course) to take myself and the domestic fauna back to the cottage* I noticed that Darkness was licking his lips a lot.  This is not a good sign.  But I hadn’t seen him swallow anything suspicious before I got there to take it AWAY from him and I wasn’t expecting trouble.

Mistake.

While I was ferrying paraphernalia from kitchen to front door, he threw up—extensively—all over the mat.  GREAT.  WONDERFUL.  I’M SO GLAD I HAVE DOGS.**

I cleaned up, describing aloud all the other things I could be doing with my life if I didn’t have HELLCRITTERS.  Then I let hellhounds out.  They have a pee and then jump in Wolfgang.  We have our final after-midnight hurtle at the cottage after I’ve hauled all the kit indoors again.

Last night Darkness headed for the courtyard gate . . . and kept going.  It’s Bloody Silly o’clock in the morning, right?  I can’t just yell at him under all Peter’s neighbours’ bedroom windows.  So I sprinted after him, stage-whispering violently.  He stopped, looked at me . . . and kept going.

I eventually got hold of him, dragged him reluctantly back to Wolfgang, let go . . . and the frelling mutt took off for the gate again.  This time, when he let me catch him again, I didn’t let go.  I hauled him back through the front door, fetched his and Chaos’ leads, and hooked him up.***  Then we all took off through the gate.  We got to the main road . . .

Geysering ensued.  I will spare you the graphic details.

I had, after cleaning up the first eruption indoors, given him his first dose of homeopathic Ars Alb, the classic dietary-indiscretion remedy.  Darkness will have eaten the end of someone’s tossed-into-the-hedgerow sandwich† or equivalent, which ARRRRRRGH happens now and again.  Depending on how severe the expulsions are, I will keep giving him Ars Alb till I can see him stop worrying.  He must feel pretty grisly, but he’s also a clean dog and doesn’t like making messes.††

I was up very late, poking Ars Alb into Darkness.  Who eventually relaxed.  Whereupon we all went to bed.†††  Finally.

This morning Darkness, predictably, had what I call colic, which is cacophonous internal rumblings, and which mean in effect that he’s not going to eat and nothing on this earth is going to make him eat.  Aaaaaand if he doesn’t eat, by the end of the first day his coat will already be staring and his ribs sticking out and he won’t eat tomorrow either, and . . . Missing even one meal with these guys is an emergency because their digestion is so crazy.

I pulled out the homeopathic Lycopodium.  And started poking that into him, waiting to hear the roaring begin to subside.  Which it did, eventually.  Whereupon he ate lunch—and dinner—and his ribs are rather more prominent than they should be as a result of missing (or losing, depending on how you want to look at it) two meals, probably only I the paranoid and accountable hellgoddess would notice, and he’s bright and shiny-eyed and, I hope, fine.

Homeopathy works.  I don’t proselytise for it because I haven’t figured out a good way to do so, a way that I’m happy with.  Although most of my friends could tell you I’m a bit of a bore on the subject, and I’m always encouraging people to buy a homeopathic first-aid kit and learn to use it, homeopathy is a very big, complicated subject, and it starts getting big and complicated fast right after ‘Arnica for bruises’.  It’s a fascinating study but it can take over your life, and unless you’re very lucky you will have to do it mostly on your own—even if you go to school (I did), even if you keep going to seminars (I still do, although not many lately), still, when you’re away from specific homeopathy-related gatherings, you’re probably winging it the best you can.  If you and your friends, family and critters are lucky in your good health, and you only ever have to deal with bruises and strains and the occasional head cold, you’ll have the slack to work out what pattern of remedies works for which person—because homeopathy is all about choosing an individual remedy for an individual person‡, and six people with eczema or hay fever or flu will need six, or twelve, or eighteen different remedies.  In a society accustomed to ‘take two aspirin and call me in the morning’ the individual thing makes it look like it doesn’t work.  It does work.  But finding and prescribing the right remedy at the right time . . . is very often an epic ratbag.

Homeopathy isn’t for everyone.  But it is worthy of respect.  From everyone.

I have been f*cked over by the medical establishment so many times and in so many ways I admit I’m not entirely sane on the subject.  And therefore my hair-trigger about morons taking pot shots at homeopathy is even hairier than my tendency to go nuclear about things generally.  I stay alive by avoiding as much of the controversy as I can. ‡‡  But I do belong to a homeopathic mailing list ‡‡‡ and I am aware of the so-called science-based skeptics waving their jousting sticks at us.

So here’s a link to a letter a scientifically-trained homeopath wrote in response to . . . one of those morons.  He knows how to argue.  He also knows how to call a moron a moron.

http://homeopathyheals.me.uk/site/component/content/article/2577-scientist-dr-lionel-milgrom-replies-to-professor-dame-sally-davies

* * *

* Which is like moving house . . . every night.

** It is a ratbag when you have promised God to moderate your language at least somewhat AND IT’S BLOODY SILLY O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING SO YOU CAN’T EVEN SHOUT.

*** Pavlova wasn’t happy either.  This is not how late nights are supposed to be organised.  She’s a member of the team!  And they’re leaving her behind!^  Woe!  Woe!

^ And the hellgoddess doesn’t even seem disposed to leave a little food to comfort the exile!

† If I ever catch anyone doing this, I will Kill.  Them.  It also attracts rats, you know?  How many ways can you be stupid?

†† He’d like making them even less if he had to clean them up.

††† This morning they couldn’t WAAAAIT to get out of their crate, and I thought oh, pond scum and warthogs, I stopped the Ars Alb too soon after all and there are horrors in that crate.  But there weren’t.  But the wind was in the north-west, which makes the eaves yodel like banshees, and apparently up off the end of what human ears can hear the hellhounds are being traumatised by goblin bards.  So they spent what remained of this morning (and some of the early afternoon) pressed against the dog-gate by the front door and waiting for the world to end.

‡ Or critter.  But it’s illegal in the UK to treat any animal but those that belong to you unless you’re a licensed vet.

‡‡ Also I can’t debate/discuss/deliberate to save my life.  I’m like, look, read up on it and make your own mind up, okay?  Do your homework and leave me alone.  I have a lot of reading to do myself.

‡‡‡ Most of them professional.  But a lot of us lay homeopaths are lay homeopaths because we can’t find a professional to treat us.   You need a bit of an individual fit with your homeopath too.

Cheerful things

 

Jodi Meadows, touring author, posted to the forum last night:

Getting here was kind of an adventure (Wherever she is right now, Robin just perked up and thought “guest blog?”)

GUEST BLOG?

Hey, I need cheering up.*  Wild Robert had one of his semi-random upper-lower-level practises** tonight and I rang bob minor and Stedman okay, but I came unpleasantly and discouragingly unstuck on Cambridge.  We did get through to the end, but that’s only because Wild Robert has two brains and six eyes.  I rarely get to ring Cambridge, I lose anything I don’t use, and I never really had Cambridge to begin with, although I did spend some time at the point where I could straggle through a plain course more often than not (without being yelled at).

So let’s have a CHEERING-UP RECIPE in honour of the nearly four hundred quid I just paid for my new dwarf under-stairs refrigerator.***

I’m already seeing fresh rhubarb at the greengrocers, so here is something to do with it.  The original recipe came from Rosie’s All Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg, which you have often seen quoted in these (virtual) pages.

Rhubarb Bars

Crust:

¾ c plain/unbleached white flour

¼ c ground oatmeal:  whizz ordinary porridge oats in your blender or food processor.  You can also leave them whole, but in this case I like the texture better ground.

8 T lightly salted butter, room temperature, chopped up in preparation to being smushed into the flour and oatmeal

5-6T icing/confectioner’s sugar

1 egg white for glazing

Rhubarb:

1 large egg, room temperature

½ c caster/granulated sugar.  I know, caster is finer grained.  It’s not going to matter here.

¼ c dark brown sugar.  You can cut this down to 2 T and replace with 2 more T of the white.  I like dark brown sugar.

2-6 T ordinary white flour

4 c sliced rhubarb.  NOTE that both how thick you slice it and how much sugar and flour you use should vary with your rhubarb.  If it’s young and sweet and tender, cut big fat chunks and trim the sugar.  If the stalks look like the legs of sea monsters, slice more severely.  If it’s really wet, add more flour.  If it’s relatively dry, add less.

Optional:  1 tsp cinnamon

Or handful of fresh mint leaves, slightly shredded

If you have a food processor, you can make the pastry in it.  I have one but I still make pastry with a knife or the back of a spoon and one hand.†  Stir the flour and oatmeal and sugar (and cinnamon if you’re using it) together and then cut in the butter.  You want to rub it together till it’s reasonably homogenous but don’t suffer over it.  If you’re using unground oatmeal, add it last, after the pastry is mostly finished.  Press this into the bottom of an 8” square pan and glaze with the egg white.  The original recipe tells you to tip the pan back and forth.  My egg whites do not behave very helpfully.  I use either my fingers or a brush.  If you have any egg white left over—this should be a glaze, not a pond—tip it out.  Bake 350°F about 25 minutes.  Take it out and let cool.

Whisk the egg.  Whisk in the flour and sugar.  Stir in the rhubarb.  When the pastry is cool enough that you can pick the pan up in your bare hands, pour the rhubarb over, and put this in the oven for about an hour.  Cool COMPLETELY before cutting, and chances are, rhubarb being rhubarb, you’ll still be serving it in bowls.  Sprinkle mint leaves over, if you like mint leaves.

* * *

* Guest blogs are very cheering.

** For ringers like me.  I’m not a beginner, I ring inside, I want to scale a few of the modest heights of the method ringing craft.  There are plenty of us erratic mid-level ringers.  But why we belong in this category varies.  Some of us are just passing through on the way to ringing Spliced Panjandrum Superlative Doohickey.  Some of us are just TERMINALLY KLUTZY AND STUPID.  ARRRRRGH.  You can tell the latter subgroup by the condition of their method books, which are dog-eared and scribbled-in to disintegration.  I really need to replace mine, before it completes its transformation into smudgy dust.  Gemma’s, on the other hand, is very nearly frelling pristine.  Can This Friendship Be Saved.

*** Speaking of ARRRRRGH.  If my swift and delightful publisher doesn’t start disbursing funds here soon I’m going to pack my ninja kit, fly to NYC and start stealing all the vice presidents’ bicycles in protest.  I shall create a Giant Bicycle Mobile and . . . well, New York is full of tall buildings.  I’m sure I can find a suitable pair, hang my Giant Bicycle Mobile between them . . .  and the Museum of Modern Art would probably pay me more for it than I was going to see for SHADOWS anyway, but unfortunately the entire plan falls down on trying to pack two hellhounds and a hellterror with the ninja kit.  I can barely tuck the hellterror under my arm any more.  One of these mornings I’m going to reach in to extract her from her crate at the cottage, and in negotiating the blasted 90° turn between the front of her crate and the rest of the kitchen . . . fall over.^

^ Getting her in the crate is much easier—I have of course put a little FOOOOOOOOOD on the crate floor, so she’s shinning up the chair legs for all she’s worth and she only needs an energetic heave.  SPROING.  But in the morning we’re all kind of sleepy and I don’t want her leaping down in the all-directions-at-once manner of a hellterror who suddenly realises she’s been in her crate for HOURS AND HOURS.  She’d probably take out the tallboy.

† Note that I have cold hands.  I’m told this is critical to a hands-on pastry-maker.

Jodi’s pub day

 

 

Our own Jodi Meadows’ second* book is out today:

http://www.jodimeadows.com/?page_id=1303

And she’s doing signings and appearances, possibly at a bookstore near you**:

http://www.jodimeadows.com/?page_id=17

And if you keep scrolling down this page there is an amazing list of guest blogs, interviews and so on available Out There by the merest tap of a finger.

Now here’s the HarperTeen page:

http://browseinside.harperteen.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780062060785

. . . where you can apparently read the whole book on line for free??  This does seem to be legit.  Maybe it’s in honour of publication day or something, and large dubiously smiling men will knock on your door in a few more days and say, Ahem, a computer at this residence read the entire ASUNDER on line for free, and we feel that the person with the finger on the clicking button will have found this so stimulating an experience that he/she/it/you will volunteer the purchase price to the Jodi’s Ferrets and Yarn Fund.

Anyway.  There’s a new book out.  By someone we all know.  Champagne all around.***

* * *

* Second published book ever and second in a trilogy I might add.  Some people are born brave.  Apparently.

** Because she is a good girl and wants to make her publisher happy.  Hey, I toured when I was her age.  Some of us then stop.  Some of us figure it out and, believing it sells books, keep on doing it.  I respect these people.  But you’ll find me in a bell tower.^

^ Tonight, for example, when there was a Tour of the Ancient Building Including A Demonstration of Method Bell Ringing open evening at Forza and it was SOOOOO BOOOOOORING oh my sainted aunt.  Maybe there is something to be said for touring.  At least during dull moments you’re probably near bookshelves.  I got a lot of knitting done tonight.  I would rather have been plugged in to Pooka listening to some book being read out loud instead of unavoidably listening to our poor chosen-victim lead ringer giving the same blerg about ringing and the history of ringing for the 1,000,000,000th time to the 1,000,000,000th group of visitors, but I had to be ready to spring to my feet and ring plain frelling hunt for the 1,000,000,000th time.  Arrrgh.

*** ‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad.  Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone.  When I have company I consider it obligatory.  I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am.  Otherwise, I never touch it—unless I’m thirsty.’

—Madame Bollinger, who was clearly a strong supporter of the family business.

 

Voice lesson with hellterror accompaniment

 

I had a surprisingly good voice lesson today.  Surprisingly.  I was in good voice—I mean, for me, but good enough that a small amateur choir would be glad to have me, rather than metaphorically rolling their eyes and thinking ‘well she helps to fill out the row.’  Which of course I’m not doing in two and a half weeks because I’m going to RIGOLETTO instead.  Somehow having the date changed on me is worse than knowing going in that I wasn’t going to be singing in the concert, although Galen telling me I’m welcome to keep coming to practise because I’m learning repertoire helps—and having rejoined halfway through this concert’s rehearsal period meant I was going to be cramming hysterically the last fortnight or so anyway.  Which fresh level of frenzy would be starting about now.*

But Galen’s reassurance and avoidance of (fresh) frenzy don’t help enough.

Glump.  Grangle.  Rrffmp.  Noises like a hellterror trying to restrain herself from protesting the extreme slowness of this restaurant.***

I’ve been singing, of course, and I’ve been trying to remind myself that I sing because it’s FUN.  Oh.  Right.  Make a note [sic].  In an attempt to come to terms with not singing in this stupid concert, I didn’t want to sing in the concert anyway,† I have been ‘working’ on what you might call private repertoire, the stuff you sing while hurtling** or doing the washing up.  Which involves remembering not only the tune but the words, since practising your Italianate vowels when you can’t remember the lyrics gets old pretty fast.††  I missed choir practise last Thursday since I was still being paranoid and martyred about the weather . . . but since my top A was missing, what the heck.  That A has been reliable for most of a year now, what the arrrrrrgh, your body is your instrument, frell this, get me a violin.  I have no idea.  The B above the A has—or anyway had—been putting in an appearance often enough when I’m just doing exercises alone at my long-suffering piano I was hoping to be able to teach it to go in harness and conceivably reveal it with other people in the room before awfully long.††  But noooooo.  So this was another reason to concentrate on washing-up repertoire:  nothing too frelling demanding.  Except to the crumbly post-menopausal memory.

Today I sucked in a deep breath to start the depressing warming-up process since I was going to have to take my weedy, shrill, A-less voice into Nadia . . .

And . . . today a small amateur choir would have been glad to have me.  I say nothing about tomorrow.  Or about choir practise on Thursday.

* * *

* Especially the part about singing two of the pieces without the music.

** Hellterror and I left for voice lesson early so I could stop on the way to check on the non-arrival of my volunteer-staff-parking-in-the-abbey-close permit.  Hellterror decided she’s not going down stairs.  Come on, silly, you do go down stairs.  Not nasty dark cement pee-smelling^ car park stairs!  —Little badger face peering down at me from top of stairs . . . belly half an inch from the floor because all four little legs are braced like a sort of mini-Colossus of Rhodes, only furry.  There are advantages to long extending leads:  I told her I was going to go away and leave her . . . turned the corner out of her sight . . . and suddenly I had a puppy scuttling downstairs with surprisingly little difficulty.  But she clearly felt she had lost face because she then performed the same ridiculous meltdown over a sort of shallow gutter that follows the short side of the pedestrian precinct:  No, no!  I CAN’T!  There’s WATER in it!^^  Pavlova, get a grip.  It’s half an inch deep and about two inches across.  So we were live entertainment for the people at the bus stop for about two minutes^^^ and then I told her I was leaving her behind again, turned and marched off . . . and nearly tripped over the little ratbag she came after me so fast.

I seem to have missed this chapter in the How to Train the Perfect Puppy book.#

But I did get my volunteer staff parking permit.  And I’m going to be sad when I can no longer tuck little Miss Spirit of Perversity under my arm and venture across solemn business thresholds.  Mind you I can only still do it now because she dangles well.  She doesn’t fit in my lap any more either, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed.##  I can see me staggering around with forty pounds of bullie in my arms this time next year. . . .

^ You’d think the pee-smelling would be a plus to a hellcritter.

^^ My little vampire puppy.  Won’t cross running water.

^^^ She also made friends with several of the passersby, who I’m sure would not be so cruel as to make her walk down stairs and cross running water.

# Possibly because I haven’t got a perfect puppy.  Darling, yes.  Frequently hilarious, yes.  Even more frequently in grave danger of being murdered out of hand, yes.  Perfect, no.

## Chaos still thinks he’s a lapdog.  (Darkness fears the truth.)  But long-legged sighthounds don’t dangle so well.

*** Despite the way this makes Chaos drop back and stare worriedly into my face.

† You know, singing in public, etc, ugh.  But that bird won’t really fly since I’ve survived two weddings and a funeral.

†† I also discovered that my old favourite There Is A Tavern in the Town^, sung a full pitch down from the key signature in the version I have, is a great practise piece for that gruesome business of shifting from head voice to chest voice.  I made the mistake, however, of mentioning this to Nadia who said, Great.  Bring it next week.  Bring it—? I said, appalled.  You want to hear me sing There Is A Tavern in the Town?  You forget, said Nadia, I also teach seven-year-olds.  I have heard everything.

^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzJvNB7-UkU

Wow.  My new piano-playing hero.  There doesn’t seem to be any good sung version though.  Hmmmm. . . .

††† At which point I’ll need a piece of music that has a B to attain.  My mezzo books seem to stop at A.

Thaw

 

THAW YAAAAAAAAAY THAW.  I got back to my monks last night for the first time in over a week and it felt like years had gone by.*  They still have quite a lot of snow so I have been making the right decision to stay home but** . . . YAAAAAAAAAY.  Not that unmixed blessings are standard, and in this case IT’S BEEN RAINING AGAIN.  IT’S BEEN FRELLING THROWING IT DOWN AGAIN.  Arrrgh.  However meteorological mayhem did assist me to get to bed early last night because the troika had a minimal final hurtle—with the hellterror forging ahead at the end of her lead and the hellhounds dragging behind at the ends of their leads which at least meant there was less Extreme Plaiting last night than sometimes.

Today I have been a thawed-out model citizen.

I got up early.

I rang morning service at New Arcadia.***

I rang afternoon service at the abbey.

And I went to evening service at St Margaret of Scotland† and clambered all over poor Aloysius with questions, including the one about having a second silent prayer meeting that happens somewhat LATER in the day.  And he’s reading DRAGONHAVEN.  Yes.  Really.

But so you won’t think I might become vain or anything, I copy and paste in its entirety an email received in my inbox today:

Just read Pegasus.  And the sequel isn’t coming out till 2014?  You stink.

::falls down laughing::  And you, whoever you are, are charming and delightful and exquisite and I’m so glad you’re not my next-door neighbour.

* * *

* As a Christian I’m still a very small child.  Remember when you were in primary school summer vacation went on FOREVER?^  And the time between birthdays (with the presents and cake and everyone was supposed to be nice to you etc) went on for MORE THAN FOREVER?  By the time you’re my age now you’re like, ewwwww, another birthday?^^  Take it away.^^^  But ten days without my MONKS?  Totally forever.

^ In America.  Over here they break up the holiday time more.

^^ There may, of course, be other issues here.

^^^ I have more hellcritters than I can handle I don’t need any more.+

+ I usually am in a hurry, of course, because I’m already late for the next twelve things, but the hellterror and I were going a lick as we wheeled around a corner and . . . came face to face with a GIGANTIC male Rottweiler on a loose lead looking at us with interest.  My life flashed before my eyes, as it does on these occasions# as the woman on the other end of the lead said off-handedly, as owners of drooling monsters tend to do, oh, he’s fine, he loves puppies, and I was thinking uh-huh, grilled or roasted?  But at this point, as I was about to reach down and grab my hellterror—out of the monster’s gullet as necessary, although I was aware that by bending down I was putting my jugular at greater risk—my life finished flashing and I could begin to register what I was seeing.  In this case the woman was telling the truth:  he was fine.  And he did seem to love puppies, at least manic bullie puppies.  I was also thinking, if you describe a dog as having his ears and his tail up, this can be good or bad:  hellhounds and I met a bad out today.##  But the first thing I noticed about the Rottie once I was looking at the Rottie is the soft eyes and the soft expression on his face.  That’s your real clue—the lack of tension.  His raised tail was wagging, not the stiff territorial wagging of a thug, but a floppy waving back and forth, and he was standing four square but completely at ease.   You get so traumatized by all the villains out there you almost don’t recognise a sweetie when you meet one.###  The two of them made an attempt to play which in the middle of main street and on short leads was doomed to failure, but it was still pretty cute.  Breed that dog.  We want more of him.

# Funny how much better your memory is when you’re about to die.  I can’t remember half this stuff when I’m sitting at my computer trying to write a blog post.

##Siiiiiiigh.  I knew from across the green that this ears-and-tail-up were the bad variety.~  The hellterror hasn’t had a genuine bad yet:  I pick her up or turn on our various heels and go somewhere else if I recognise one of the local thugs.  But our hurtles are also still relatively short and I choose the territory carefully.  I’m putting off the inevitable bad as long as possible.

~ Still not as terrifying as the Elvis Impersonator we’ve now met twice.  He has an American accent and he likes sighthounds.  I keep wanting to ask him, Are you really an Elvis Impersonator?  And if so what are you doing in New Arcadia?  But if you’re not, what’s with the hair?

### We meet lots of nice dogs.  But not many nice-to-other-dogs Rotties.  I’ve known several Rotties who are pussycats with human beings but morph into the Terminator when faced with another dog.

** I was beginning to have cabin fever, for pity’s sake.  After a week?  Pull yourself together, McKinley.  You used to live in Maine.  But I wasn’t going regularly to tower practise at Forza last winter—I don’t off hand remember when I quit New Arcadia, but Forza was such a gruesome learning curve that it took me a while not to look for excuses to miss a ring—and I only went over the line into Christianity this September, and started picking up out-of-town churches.  Two winters ago, which I think is the last time I had my Yaktrax out for an extended period, New Arcadia could still hold me.

*** Did I tell you I went to practise again on Friday?  —Having gone last Friday, when we were snowed in.  This week Gemma and Niall more or less got me by the elbows after handbells and frog-marched me to the tower.  The problem is that I owe them:  I owe Niall more than any other ringer in making me the mediocre git that I am today, even though he doesn’t have Wild Robert’s deranged brilliance.  And if it weren’t for Gemma cheering me on I would never have stuck it out at Forza.  So when they smell weakness I don’t resist very well.

† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Margaret_of_Scotland

They sainted her for doing something rather than wringing her hands, remaining virgin or having bits cut off, I like the Scotland part, the Anglicans recognise her too, and look at her feast day.

Hellterror, eating

 

 

So here she is being forced to work for her food.  You knock it around, it dispenses food.   FOOOOOOOOOD.

I’ve also got a Wobbler for her—as a result of someone on the forum mentioning the entertainment value of feeding your dog this way—which is the same kind of thing in that your dog cuffs it around so that food falls out the hole but the Wobbler is not really satisfactory with the tiny puppy kibble, which empties out too fast.  This one the aperture is adjustable.  The Wobbler will come into its own as soon as she shifts over to adult kibble.  And I can’t wait.  Hellhounds are well aware that she’s eating something that they aren’t allowed so they sneak around after her looking for anything she’s missed—and she does miss the occasional crumb which Chaos in particular eats instantly—my hellhounds who, as previously observed, wouldn’t dream of eating dry kibble.  This dry kibble, of course, has cereal grains in it, which the hellhounds are wildly and spectacularly allergic to, but I creep around looking for spillages after I’ve locked the hellterror up again and SO FAR the occasional dot of kibble half the size of my littlest fingernail has had no adverse effect on hellhound digestion.  In a perfect world there would be grain-free puppy kibble—dogs didn’t evolve to eat cereal grains any more than we did—but if it exists I probably can’t afford it.   And she looks pretty healthy.  I could stand it if she had a little less energy. . . .

I’ve seen this before. I think . . . I think if I . . .

 

YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS.

 

MORE! MORE! MORE! MORE!

 

You are a THING. Why don’t you just GIVE ME MY FOOOOOOD?

 

I’m still hungry. And you’re still a THING.

 

YAAAAAAAH! You can’t get away from MEEEEE!

 

Gimmee gimmee gimmee GIMMEEEEEEEEE.

 

Oh the adorable.

Me?  Besotted?  What?