Robin McKinley's Blog, page 69

Critters and Walls

 

Skating librarian wrote

Whoa! You posted a lot earlier tonight. Well done. 

Yes, and then I haul everybody back to the cottage, go for another death-defying three-way hurtle, feed everybody sequentially, including eating an apple to calm my nerves, discover that my bed is covered with clean laundry dumped there hastily earlier in the day from the overhead airer in the bathroom which I need to do something with (preferably involving folding) if I want to sleep there . . . and half an hour later I find myself sitting on the floor reading a book I have no recollection of picking up, possibly covered with inquisitive hellhounds who think it’s odd I want to sit on the floor when there’s a perfectly good sofa downstairs* but hellgoddesses are whimsical creatures . . . and it’s silly o’clock again.

Most of this is just my life, aggravated by my lack of a sense of time, but there is one awkward fact which is that while the triple hurtle is clearly a good thing from a WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, GET USED TO IT standpoint, I am not going even to think of attempting it when there’s any likelihood of anyone else around till . . . some substantial amount of time and mayhem has passed.  This means after midnight.  And I’m still a little worried about tonight and tomorrow since weekend revellers are often out till silly o’clock.  At least they don’t usually bring their dogs.

Although if we were actually going out the door at midnight that would be very good.  I’m working on it.

How about a writing break with some puppy pictures and one of the former wall?

I’m totally failing to get a good photo of the ex-wall.  I thought of this too of course—BLOG MATERIAL.  I’M ALWAYS LOOKING FOR BLOG MATERIAL—but it just doesn’t look shocking in the photos.  If I were a jazzier photographer I’m sure there are ways around this, but you know how photos tend to flatten things out—and all that dorking around with aperture and shutter speed to jigger with your depth of field is beyond me in these over-complex digital days—the photos just look like an apple tree a little distance in front of a house with a slightly odd, raggedy-edged frame between the two.  I suspect my apple tree of being the heroine:  from the gouges in her bark on the wall side, some of the wall tried to fall my way and was resisted by a little apple tree.  I hope they don’t cut into any important roots when they start digging out the footing of the ex-wall.

What I wish I could do is post a photo of my neighbour’s garden before the event, and now.  On my side it’s the apple tree and a few climbing roses and two or three clematis, and a lot of pots.  I’ve got a couple of broken pots but I think all the plants are rescuable (if presently a little confused).  On her side she had a stone-floored patio area (although the house is on the far side of the rest of her little garden), a lily pond with walls about two foot high and a built-up flowerbed ditto, plus an urn and a couple of pieces of rather nice statuary.  It’s all smoking rubble now.  But even if I could explain the concept of a blog to her—she’s a trifle old-fashioned—I wouldn’t post before-and-afters of someone else’s misfortune, however outstanding the blog material.  If it had happened on my side, you bet.  But all I’ve lost is some wall.  She’s the one with the story to tell.

The hellterror, now, hellterror photos I can do.   Tomorrow night will be Hellterror Photo Night.  Because I want to try to get out of bed early enough Sunday morning again to ring service at New Arcadia . . . and because it’s RAINING and the RAIN is supposed to go on being RAIN including the appurtenant effect of DISPOSING OF THE SNOW AND ICE which means I could finally get out of New Arcadia for the first time all week AND GO TO MY MONKS’ SATURDAY EVENING SERVICE, which is the one with the half hour of silent prayer before.  Maybe I’ll finally get back to Aloysius’ church on Sunday too.  I’m suffering withdrawal. **

* * *

* There would be a perfectly good bed if it weren’t covered with books and laundry.

** In terms of sheer church-servicery St Radegund has a totally functional brief prayer service at noon most weekdays but I can’t seem to remember this, except at teatime or later.  At noon I’ve been sitting by the Aga with the iPad for some time, and the only way to resist awareness that the hellhounds are beginning to wonder when they’re going to get a proper hurtle is by focussing intensely on what I’m doing.  This does not allow for remembering church services.  Besides, hellhounds would probably insist on coming too.^

^ The hellterror should be still sleeping off breakfast.

Kent and critters

 

Today hasn’t been nearly as crummy as I expected after I read the forecast on my six weather apps and the Met Office and BBC weather web sites.  Oh, the weather has been crummy. . . . But apparently my life is not over as a handbell ringer with having successfully lurched through a quarter peal of bob minor on the 3-4.  I keep not having the surplus mental energy to buckle down to Cambridge on handbells, so Niall assigned us . . . which is to say me . . . Kent.  Kent is the standard way station on the road to surprise methods, of which Cambridge is usually the first learnt.  We’d had a stab at Kent before and I’d kind of half-learnt a plain course (maybe only third-learnt).  So I went back to my plain course this week and then out of the blue* frelling Niall emailed me the famous Three Leads of Kent touch.**  Now the point of a touch is that it scrambles the bells’ individual routes through the pattern, so if you’ve been learning the plain course and suddenly you’ve had a touch foisted on you . . . what happens is that one gets superimposed on the other and you can’t ring anything.  I was not looking forward to this afternoon’s meeting.  But . . . by the end of the session*** we were actually getting through to the end of the touch with only occasional gleeps, grunts and groans from yours truly.†

The wind through the kitchen was blowing in the wrong direction or something this evening while I was getting the hellhounds’ supper and the hellterror, incarcerated in her crate, was not going ballistic.  Ballistic is what the hellterror does whenever there seems to be critter food in the offing.  Hellhounds were milling about my feet and demanding dropsies†† which should have been an unmissable clue, but while her eyes were open she was curled up in her bed watching with no more than hey it’s the floor show interest.  This was so unlike her I went over to her crate to check that she was still breathing and wasn’t burning with fever or anything.  She was fine.  Maybe she had a stomachache?  I couldn’t remember seeing her gulping any unknown substance I failed to get away from her today . . . maybe I merely hadn’t seen her swallowing the flowerpot, the umbrella and the (empty) pushchair?

But apparently it was only that the wind was in the wrong direction.  When I turned the heat on under the chicken-and-stock pan and, presumably, the aroma wafted in her direction, she went off like a Guy Fawkes fireworks display, only with a wider variety of sound effects.  I allow moaning, whining and this offended-dowager snort that is perhaps a bullie thing because while all dogs snort, Pavlova is the first one I’ve heard who sounds like Lady Catherine de Bourgh.  I do not allow barking.  Barking causes the Blanket of Restraint to descend from above and engulf the crate.  I don’t know if it’s the dark or the muffling of interesting smells, but this usually quiets her down.  Tonight I was so relieved to have her doing her nut in standard fashion that I just let her get on with it.  By the time she’d woken up to circumstances I was nearly putting hellhounds’ bowls down, which meant I was nearly putting her bowl down, so she didn’t have time to break anything, like the crate or local eardrums.

It’s quiet in here now, the only sounds hellcritter snores and a little background Radio 3.  Maybe I should sing.

* * *

* A phrase that always gives me a little frisson of risk whenever applied in the general vicinity of a computer, prone as the species is to the Blue Screen of Death.

** A plain course has five leads, and is therefore longer than this touch.  Usually a touch is longer than a plain course but there are a few anomalies out there.  The Three Leads of Kent touch is one of them.

*** Which was allowed to run slightly long.  I wasn’t going to choir rehearsal because all the wet roads were going to start freezing after sunset.  Siiiiiiigh.

† Now I have to go back to the dratblasted plain course.

†† Us critter slaves have to derive our amusement where we can.  I have never, ever allowed dogs to mill about my feet while I’m getting their food ready . . . that was before the hellhounds, whose faintest interest in food is to be cossetted and indulged^.  So I now, and for some time, when they’re in the mood, have had two hellhounds who expect me to drop bits of chicken while I’m cutting it up to mix in with their dry kibble, since no dog in his right mind is going to eat dry kibble.^^  This means that as they see my hand moving in a their-ward direction, they put their noses down, because these scraps are dropsies.  After their proper meal, however, as all those dropsie-deprived dogs have done before them, they get two slightly bigger scraps, by sitting and politely taking them out of my hands.

When hellhounds are in Normal Dog Behaviour About Food mode—always very exciting to the downtrodden hellgoddess—as I’m putting the bits and pieces away after supper and hellhounds are still interested, I occasionally give them an intermediate scrap each.  This will be slightly larger than the dropsie morsels but slightly smaller than the official post-meal tidbit.  And as they see my hands moving them-ward . . . their heads start bobbing up and down like those psycho plastic nodding dogs as they try to guess whether this is a dropsie or a sitting-up treat.  I’m too anxious for this Supplementary Food Experience to be positive to let this go on for more than about a second . . . but it’s very entertaining for that second.

^ Not to say nourished.

^^ No one would ever accuse the hellterror of being in her right mind.

Cranky Nonfiction and a Night Off

 

 

Also:  cranky hellgoddess.  NOT IN A GOOD MOOD.  Tonight is the third night in a row that I’ve missed ringing on account of the drabble thribble quadruple blasted weather.  Monday night I probably wouldn’t have made anyway because of the (ongoing) drama of The Wall.  Last night . . . remember that Fustian invited me to ring in their next practise-night quarter peal attempt?  That was last night.  And I cancelled because of the weather.  The sleet-snow started early afternoon and just went on.  And on.  As it happens it went snowy-icy-melty all day and well into the  night and when I took my troika out at mmph o’clock the slush tended to have ice under it but the bare ground was bare.  I probably would have been fine, driving to Fustian, carefully avoiding slushy patches, but worrying about it would not have done my stamina or my concentration any good—and if I made it there and successfully rang a quarter I might well have gone off the road coming home from no greater provocation than the frelling ME.  So it’s just as well I stayed home.  BUT I’M NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT.

Today it started snow-sleeting again late this afternoon, pretty much the moment I went out with the hellhounds—who instantly went into We don’t waaaaaaaaant to mode, which doesn’t do anything good for my temper.  So I didn’t go to the abbey tonight either, and while, again, between dubious weather and the ME it was the right decision . . . I AM NOT IN A JOLLY CHIRPY HO HO HO MOOD.

So.  Book recs for nights off.  And cranky nonfiction suits my mood, although I’m indulging in a little pun-fulness about ‘cranky’ which can mean IRRITABLE as well as eccentric.  Anyway.

DRY STORE ROOM No. 1, The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey, was a big deal over here a few years ago—one of those surprise best-sellers.  It does what it says on the tin:  it’s a picaresque behind-the-scenes at the London Natural History Museum, where Fortey worked for 35 years, retiring as senior palaeontologist.  It was published in 2008 and I read it a couple of years later because, well, because I like cranky nonfiction, and I like cranky natural-history nonfiction, and because I was frelling well overwhelmed with recommendations for the flapdoodling thing.  This usually puts me off but a quick browse through it at the bookshop brought me round swiftly.  If you like Fortey’s particular brand of dry, wry Britishness and mad (British) anecdote you will fall for this book in a big way.  Merrilee says that despite publishers hanging up gigantic sample wodges of their own books on their own sites us mere humble bloggers are still stuck with quoting only snippets, so let me try to find you a few sample snippets of what I mean.  He is discussing evolution, which he says is no longer a ‘theory’ any more than that the Earth goes round the sun is a ‘theory’, and whether you like it or not . . . ‘personally I like being fourth cousin to a mushroom, and having a bonobo as my closest living relative.  It makes me feel a real part of the world’.  Describing truffles he says:  ‘The edible properties of the truffle are not matched by their aesthetic ones, for most truffles look like some kind of knobbly animal excreta, which have been passed with not a little discomfort.’  In the wake of finding ‘ . . . earlier evidence of human occupation, up to seven hundred thousand years old . . . on the coast . . . of Suffolk.  This is at present the earliest occurrence of humans north of the Alps. . . . The Suffolk coast in winter is frequented by two kinds of people, both of whose sanity might be questioned by the population at large:  onshore fishermen and palaeontologists.  What they have in common is oilskins, an infinite capacity for hope and a certain camaraderie. . . .’   And so on.  Possibly even more riveting are his descriptions of colleagues.  I’m amazed he got away with it.  But it makes for stay-up-late, miss-your-stop-on-the-tube reading.

Ah—here is a legitimate excerpt, and about wild museum folk rather than pickled specimens too.  Read it.  If you like it, read the book.  Have fun.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/3321767/Secret-life-of-the-Natural-History-Museum.html

KES, 63

 

SIXTY THREE

 

I jingled like the villain in a cheap western as we walked down the corridor and turned back toward the Friendly Campfire.  Not spurs.  Keys.  Big curly spurs are romantic (as long as you don’t use them on a horse).  Keys are not.  I didn’t have a hand free to shut them up;  I was holding a bag of life-sustaining muffins in one hand and Sid’s lead in the other.  Halfway down Bradbury I stopped because the noise was making me slightly nuts, although this was mostly to do with the fact that I was in a mind-frame to be driven slightly nuts by almost anything.  Sunlight.  Breathing.  Moving into my new house.  Speaking of breathing.  I was taking little tense shallow gasps like someone expecting an ambush.  I set the muffin-bag on the sidewalk between my feet (Sid took no notice), put my freed hand in my pocket, grabbed the keys, and squeezed.  Nice keys.  Affable, amiable, benevolent, genial, companionable keys.  Keys to my new (affable, amiable etc) house.  I took a deep breath, willing my anxiety level to come back down out of the stratosphere again.  I took another deep breath and opened my eyes.

Well, I thought I opened my eyes.  I was standing on a rough track with a wood on one side and a lot of open grassy meadow on the other, and a big stream or a small river running through it.  I said something like, What, and Sid turned her head to look up at me.

Except it wasn’t Sid.  It looked a lot like her, tall and slim and sighthoundy—and it looked up at me the way she did—but it was golden, not black.  And unbelievably beautifully kept.  Not a long trailing hair out of place.  Her—somehow I was sure she was another she—golden back was dazzling, and the white toes on her front feet nearly blinding.  Even when I got Sid cleaned and fed up she was never going to look this good.  She was going to be a jeans and All-Stars sort of dog because she had a jeans and All-Stars sort of owner.  This one was silk and velvet, and I wasn’t even going to speculate about appropriate footgear.  I felt embarrassed when she did a Sid-wave with her tail at me.  “Oh, honey,” I said.  “I’m the wrong one.  Although I think you’re more topaz than honey.”  Topaz’s gaze carried on past me and she did Sid’s getting-taller trick.  I looked round nervously, hoping I wasn’t going to see Mr Melmoth again.  What I saw instead was an enormous black horse, the kind you see pulling sledges of cement blocks at county fairs and that you don’t believe can canter, except this one was cantering.  (I’d been to exactly one county fair, a day trip from horse camp one summer, but I remembered it extremely vividly, the pulling horses, the fried dough, and especially the throwing up after the Gonzo Jungle Gorilla Rage ride.  I think it was less the being shaken to pieces by gorilla rage and more the background roaring and screaming that did it.  Although I was contributing to the screaming.)

This enormous black horse was wearing an enormous black saddle, and an enormous black man was sitting in it.  They made a rather glorious picture—he sat the canter like an international Grand Prix dressage rider—and I looked at them wistfully:  they belonged to Topaz’s world, not mine.  They were on the far side of the river and I could not see them very clearly;  whatever the man was wearing, it was not standard riding gear.

I waited for them to canter on past.  But the man saw me, and to my profound embarrassment he drew his horse up, turned its head toward the river, and bowed to me.  They sure do teach them nice manners in this country, wherever it was.  Sheepishly I raised a hand in acknowledgement . . . and saw the burgundy velvet sleeve with the cream silk ruffle at the wrist falling back from my arm.

“Eeep,” I said, or something equally intelligent, and shut my eyes again.  Although of course I had never had them open.  Whatever this had been, it had been something about an oxygen-deprived brain getting a sudden over-stimulating deep-breath dose.  From here on I would be careful to breathe shallowly.

I opened my eyes again cautiously.  New Iceland reconstructed itself around me.  I could see the twinkle of neon in the Friendly Campfire’s office window.  I looked down.  Dilapidated leather jacket, bedraggled jeans, All Stars.  Bag of muffins.

And Sid.  “Hey, honey,” I said.  “I’ve seen your twin, and how totally gorgeous you’re going to be.  You’ll forgive me if I don’t buy the burgundy velvet with cream silk trim to set you off however.  No, wait, for you we’d need something pastel.”  Sid was looking at me attentively.  “I’m raving,” I said.  I let go of the keys in my pocket and picked up the muffins.  “Let’s go to the pet store and buy you some protein.”

News of Fresh Disasters

 

Last night the frell . . . I mean, the adorable clever obedient hellterror and I had just come indoors from our final struggle of the day for the Domination of the Young Canine Large Intestine and there was the most colossal ROAR—and the house shook.  I reverted, as one will do, to an earlier and more blizzardy era and thought eeep, I didn’t think we’d had enough snow for it to come off anyone’s roof like that, and I’m glad the hellterror and I weren’t outside when it happened.  There are at least three roofs that slope into my garden*:  my own, Phineas’, and the mini-cottage at the end of my detached neighbour’s garden.  I reopened the kitchen door cautiously and stepped out.  I couldn’t see anything unusual in the dark:  it just looked like my garden, covered in somewhat patchy and trodden-on snow.   I had to go back indoors briskly because Pavlova was terrorising Darkness again.**

By morning*** I’d forgotten about it.  Maybe the new proprietors of the Troll and Nightingale had had a visit from some of the old clientele.  And then coming back from hellhound hurtle one of my neighbours said gravely, I’m so sorry about your wall.

WALL?  I said.  WHAT ABOUT MY WALL?  WHAT WALL?

You don’t know? he said, his eyes opening wide and getting all shiny.

TELL ME, I said.

He pointed up the half-flight of outside stairs to my greenhouse.  That wall, he said.  Between you and Theodora.  It’s fallen down.

Yes.  It has.  There is a gigantic hole ripped out between my garden and Theodora’s, taking the back of my greenhouse with it, and crashing into what used to be her lily pond, of about ten foot square of (ancient) brick and flint wall. 

And neither of us had noticed.  In her case it’s a little niche-y place next to the mini-cottage and not in straight view of any of her windows, and in my case because my windows all look either front or back and this is to the side, and hidden by my extremely enthusiastic little apple tree.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

. . . However, Noble Wolfgang, my seventeen-year-old scion of German automotive engineering, started at the first twitch of the key after three days sitting undisturbed in a snowbank.  Looking for the positive here.  I need some positive.  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah.†

* * *

* Plus the Blight.  The Blight is on the top-ten list for the Ugliest Shed in the Universe, and it sticks up over my wall from one of the grand gardens on the main street.  I hate rich people.  The richer you are, the more selfish and careless of the hoi polloi you also are.  I’m sure there are exceptions.^  But none of them live around here.  I can pretty much tell what you’re worth by how much of a jerk you are. Grrrrrr.  And one of the non-exceptions has a blightingly ugly shed roof that ruins the view from my office window—but it’s at the far end of their garden so they couldn’t care less.  ‘Conservation area’ status—the nonsense that prevented me for several years from cutting down a 900 foot Leylandii at Third House that terrorised the neighbourhood every time there was a wind—only counts if the tourists can see it, whatever it is.  I’d be curious to know if my predecessor tried to stop them from building the Blight.  It was too late when I moved in.

^ Shovelling acres of money into good causes and new opera productions may get you into heaven, but it doesn’t necessarily make you kind and sympathetic to the lower classes.  There are some serious disconnect issues among the unnecessarily well-off.

** We walked home again as a quartet last night.  And I find there is a down side even to the potentially excellent possibility of being able to hurtle three hellcritters together occasionally, which is that Pavlova clearly feels that she is GAINING GROUND and SHOULDN’T SHE BE A FULL MEMBER OF THE BAND NOW?  No.  Next question.  —Moaning ensues.

*** I’m trying to roll myself forward so that morning has some practical meaning in my life again.  If I’m going to try to start ringing Sunday morning service at New Arcadia again (and, very tentatively, I am), and, more importantly, if I’m ever going to make it to Aloysius’ silent prayer group at 8:30 on Saturday morning—and if I’m going to try to make morning Mass at the monks once a week—I need to get up earlier.  A lot earlier.

I told you that Aloysius sent me home with an armful of books on Zen and Christianity, or even Zen Christianity.  One of the things everyone seems to say on all sides of all available fences is that you need a community.  The pure-Zen lot say the same, and I know my experience of sitting at the zendo in Maine supports that.  Granted that I started sitting zazen because I was having a very bad stretch of life, but however rosy and pink your personal circumstances, you are going to do better in company.^  Therefore it seems to me that Aloysius should be holding his silent prayer group at least twice a month, which means—if I’m going to go along and be ballast, because while I’m a very new Christian I’ve been sitting off and on for decades, and silent prayer is something I settle into with a grateful sigh of welcome familiarity—getting up not just early enough to go, but to have given hellcritters a token hurtle first.  See:  being able to hurtle all three together occasionally, like last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

^ I say this with all the teeth-baring resistance of the extreme introvert.

† Inspecting the damage and discussing what the *&^%$£”!!!! we do now with my equally unfortunate neighbour, etc, meant that I missed my voice lesson.

Opera. Not.

 

Originally I was going to the opera last night.  Siiiiiiiiiiigh.  Of all the Met Live operas this season—most of which I have thus far missed for one reason or another—this is the one I most wanted to see.  MARIA STUARDA is not my favourite opera by a long shot, nor even my favourite Donizetti opera* but I love Joyce DiDonato and I totally wanted to see and hear her sing the flimflam out of Mary Queen of Scots . . .  as seen/heard through the eyes/ears of a nineteenth-century Italian who for dramatic purposes wanted Mary and Elizabeth I to meet, and so, by golly, they do.

Then about a fortnight ago Tabitha invited me to a dinner-and-live-jazz evening at her church.  She takes an interest because she’s been praying for me for years** and is now visibly restraining herself from assigning me 1,000,000 books to have read and annotated by next week.  I did look at my diary . . . but I wrote the Met Live dates down in last year’s diary, last spring when I ordered the tickets . . . and better than halfway through January I still haven’t got them in this year’s diary.  I did hesitate, not because there was any shadow in my mind that there might be something else happening that night that I hadn’t written into this year’s diary, but because social mobs are not my thing, and while I usually like it live, jazz is not my thing either, and the dinner was almost certainly going to be stuff I can’t eat.

But this finding a community is a ratbag, since I’ve been anti-community all my life, and I haven’t given Tabitha’s church a fair trial because of location/scheduling problems, and it is one of the churches with a rep for good energy.  So I stifled a sigh and said Thank you.  At least if I went with Tabitha I’d have someone to sit with. . . .

Then it SNOWED.***   I wouldn’t have got to the opera anyway.

I rang Tabitha to say I WAS NOT DRIVING IN THIS† . . . but I assumed the jazz and dinner would be cancelled:  even if most of the attendees are walking distance the band had to get here from elsewhere, and elsewhere was also having gruesome weather, and this is England.  We don’t do serious weather here.  —No, no, said Tabitha, it’s still on.  And, going into carrying-all-before-her mode, which is Tabitha’s natural state, she said, I’ll see if I can find you a ride.

She found me a ride.  Then follows a Comedy of Technological Errors when nobody’s fancy mobile phone picked up anyone else’s message.  There were a lot of very-carefully-low-key last-minute landline phone calls wanting to know if anyone had answered anyone else and if so what did they say—?††

When we got there††† I quailed.  This is the church I’ve told you about that still looks old from the outside, but inside it’s had its insides ripped out so, for example, they could take all the service chairs out and replace them with tables and turn the space into a giant candle-lit restaurant.  Eeeeep.  If I’d come in my own car I might have spun on my heel and fled.  There were nearly 300 people there, all of them talking. 

I don’t think the evening furthered my development as a Christian much but . . . it was less ghastly than I was expecting as I trembled on the threshold.  And the looks on the faces of the other people at the table when, under pressure, I admitted that I wrote fantasy fiction for a living, was worth some discomfort.  The accountant sitting next to me claimed he’s going to find one of my books and read it.‡

This morning the puppy crapped promptly.  So I went and rang New Arcadia’s bells.‡‡

* * *

* In spite of having CDs of The Three Donizetti Queens by Beverly Sills

** Come on, God, get the lead out.  This one needs you

*** It’s snowing again.  I didn’t make it to Aloysius’ church tonight.  Whimper.  That one’s well ahead in the community search but I wish they sang hymns instead of soggy drivel.

† I’ve told you this a million times, right?  Of ordinary activities, driving a car presses on the ME the worst, because of that constant hyper-vigilance you need behind the wheel.  You don’t even notice you’re doing it, if you haven’t got something like ME gnawing at you, although lots of people find driving tiring.  And sure, when I lived in Maine, I drove in snow.  I didn’t have a lot of choice.  But I also had four-wheel drive and I didn’t have ME.

†† This included Tabitha.  Carrying it all before her doesn’t work with technology.

††† There was the bloke driving and his daughter and son in law, Grandma staying home with the kiddies.  The daughter was wearing high heels and a frilly frock and was in danger of death by hypothermia or massive breakage caused by sudden violent contact with frozen ground.  I was wearing two cotton turtlenecks, two woolly jumpers, a wool shawl and a coat—and fur-lined boots over heavy cotton tights and a long thick skirt.  She admitted she was being silly but, she said, she doesn’t go out much, and she wanted to wear what she wanted to wear.  I get this.  She’s also young and pretty and has two kiddies under five.  Her dad dropped us at the church but we all walked out to the car after, and her husband had her by one elbow and I had her by the other, and we STAYED UPRIGHT when her feet went out from under her. . . .

‡ I’m thinking he may have to take a course first.  Fantasy 101.  The final exam will consist of twenty multiple choice questions which will include such material as, A dragon is:  (a) a flame-throwing, princess-kidnapping, treasure-hoarding scaly reptile of generous proportions (b) a large nearly extinct mutant telepathic marsupial that mostly hangs out in caves in a few wildlife parks (c) an immoral but difficult to trace tax evasion much loved by greedy creeps, especially bankers and shareholder boards;  plus a choice of essay.  LOTR vs RINGWORLD:  would women rather be objectified and marginalised by JRR Tolkien or Larry Niven?  Discuss.  Edgar Rice Burroughs and H Rider Haggard:  are series that go on and on and on AND ON AND ON AND ON always a mistake?  Discuss.

‡‡ Well, this weather, I’m going to get desperate for a bell fix.

Adventures in living . . . with too many dogs

 
 
Last night it got . . . late.  Later than I meant it to get, I mean, not that I have acquired Godlike Powers and have LEARNT TO STOP TIME* but by the time I was packing up to drag myself and assorted livestock back to the cottage, later than I wanted to take two dangblasted trips to accomplish this feat.  Also, while I have never had an even remotely scary encounter at mmph o’clock in the morning here I have had the occasional peculiar one when I’m not sorry to be accompanied by eighty-odd pounds of hellhound(s).  And it was Friday night, and if I’m going to have an peculiar encounter, it’s usually Friday or Saturday.**  And Pavlova is adorable but she’s not very intimidating.***  But chiefly I was just tired. †  And it’s cold and nasty out there.
 
Reader, I took all three hellcritters home together.  And lived.††
 
Darkness was in an unusually laid-back mood and I can still carry Pavlova under one arm if I have to, so I pinned her whirligig self to my side and staggered through the SNOW and ICE out of the mews courtyard and halfway down the long drive before I risked putting her down.  And it was not too bad.  Darkness indicated a desire to bark and I indicated a desire that he cease and desist, and I won.  And her long extending lead is slightly shorter than hellhounds’ so Darkness could stay away from her if he wanted to, and while he wanted to he wasn’t too punishing about it.   More remarkably the hellterror was so dazed with joy at going for a hurtle with her heroes that she was what passes in her case for subdued.  And I didn’t get tied to trees, dustbins, park benches, railings or passing owls . . . very often.  There may have been language once or twice, chiefly because untying yourself is made undesirably extra-complex when you are wearing a vast heavy bulge of knapsack.†††
 
The most interesting part of this is that I have had the distinct impression that Darkness has been less reactive about the hellterror today.  She was positively in their bed this morning–all of her–all four feet, head, tail, and gyrations–which of course is Not Allowed but my attention wanders occasionally–and I didn’t notice till I noticed she’d disappeared.  Chaos was being stoic as she lavished her eager adoration upon him, but Darkness, while in the very back of the crate, was lying down and merely looking on warily rather than yelling FEAR! FIRE! FOES! in what has become his habitual manner.  Small cautious cheer. . . . 
 
And I have to go to BED so I can GET UP AND RING BELLS at an ungodly [sic] hour tomorrow morning.  So tonight’s adventure will have to wait till tomorrow night.
 
* * * 
 
* I frelling wish
 
** Have I told you that the Troll and Nightingale has had a refit and has gone all subdued and tasteful not to say posh?  I was preparing to wait for summer and to see what the live music, audible from my bedroom, was going to be before I made up my mind about this development but  they have a sign on the front door saying DOGS WELCOME.  It would be too thrilling to have an actual local that likes dogs but I can at least get Pavlova in once or twice before they change their minds.  And Penelope says the beer is good.  Oh.  Beer.  Pub.  Right.  Not everyone’s first thought is PUPPY SOCIALISATION.   
 
No, not worth taking the hellhounds.  They would lie rigidly at attention, staring at me with WHEN CAN WE GO HOOOOOOME beaming out of their eyes.
 
*** Possibly ‘yet’.  Although I’m having trouble envisioning her as intimidating even if she grows Yeti-sized.

† Next time I start really moaning about being tired, remind me to CHECK MY PROTEIN LEVELS.  How long have I had ME?  I’ve always needed a higher-than-the-holier-than-dietary-thou-pundits-permit percentage of protein and especially of meat and especially of red meat–you don’t like it?  Take it up with my metabolism–and for the last dozen-plus years it’s been both higher and more critical, because of the frelling ME.  And you would think I’d learn.  But I don’t.  Maybe I should put it up on a wall somewhere:  next time I’m unreasonably tired for more than twenty-four hours have a steak.  Or a platter of chicken livers.  Or both.   

††When I told this story to Southdowner she said, YAAAAY!  Welcome to the ranks of the Multi Dog Walkers!   

Both Peter and I had each walked all three of the previous generation^ alone at some point or another, but they’d been a triplicate for many years by the time we tried it and Rowan was usually doing her Marvin the Paranoid Android thing at the farthest end of her extending lead.  This made her a nuisance to haul along, but it kept the Plaiting as an Extreme Sport to a minimum.
 
^ Eh.  Now, with Pavlova, are the whippets TWO generations ago?  I prefer to think of her as an add-on to the hellhounds.  Sort of a bicycle to their fish.  Or a chocolate biscuit to their bouillabaisse. 

††† And, speaking of peculiar encounters, a group of teenage boys threw a few snowballs at us.  It wasn’t frightening but it was PECULIAR.  WHAT, YOU GUYS?

Viva Yaktrax

 

Snow.  There is snow.

Snow.

It was so warm last night—several degrees above freezing and it hadn’t started snowing yet—I didn’t think it was going to.  I thought it would just rain some more.  Hey, we haven’t had to ford anything in several days, it’s clearly time for more rain.

Snow EVERYWHERE.

Except it snowed.  It’s good snow—fluffy but it packs well:  hellhounds and I went the long way around a couple of times so as not to get caught up in any snowball scrimmages—but it’s still snow.  When I woke up this morning it was coming down in great fat golfballs.  Unnh, I said, and went back to sleep.  Later, after wrestling a few falls with the hellterror WHO CERTAINLY DOESN’T WANT TO CRAP IN THIS ALIEN LANDSCAPE, I caught my neighbour, the military bloke whose last away assignment was being seconded to a remote bit of Afghanistan, shovelling out the driveway so he could get into it and I said, How are the roads?  He stopped shovelling, straightened up, looked me directly in the eye the way a Commander of Forces should and said, Unpleasant.  Ah, the scintillant beauty of British understatement.  Another reason to live in this country.*

Hellterror, hiding under her cafe chair again. Make it go AWAAAAAAAAAAAY.

IT TOOK ME TWO TRIPS TO TRAMP TWO HELLHOUNDS AND A HELLTERROR TO THE MEWS.  AND IT’S GOING TO TAKE ME ANOTHER TWO TRIPS TO GET THEM ALL HOME AGAIN.**  Whose bright idea was this living in two*** houses anyway?†  ARRRRRRGH.  If this weather continues—which it’s supposed to—I will experiment in daylight with a troika, but I’m not going to start tonight.  The reason I haven’t tried triple hurtling yet already is because I’m still hoping Darkness will get over himself a little more.  At the moment he still barks manically when the hellterror is loose and, I acknowledge, behaving like a hellterror.  I can usually manage to shut him up when we’re indoors since he has developed some faith that I will prevent her from Assaulting Him in His Bed, or at least that I will remove her with alacrity.  But I can imagine what our first attempt at a trichotomous hurtle is going to be like.  Peter’s neighbours already don’t like me because of the late hours I keep . . . and I don’t think neighbourly relations would be positively enhanced if Darkness went into Frenzied Barking Mode under their window at mmph o’clock in the morning.

I even know there’s a coal tit on the birdfeeder and I still can’t see him. At one point I had three or four coal tits on the seed feeder and simultaneously another three or four on the suet feeder. I didn’t get a photo of that of course.

And because two slogs from one end of town to another aren’t enough, and because I feel a trifle guilty about the hellhounds, who are used to more and better . . . we schlepped back to the cottage an extra time so I could go to New Arcadia tower practise.  Well, our Friday handbell third cancelled, not surprisingly, since she doesn’t live here, and I was all loose-ends and Whatever Will I Do With Myself?, and I asked Niall if they were having tower practise tonight.  Yes, said Niall, Vicky and I are hoping that people who live close by will come.

Ahem.

There were exactly six of us—exactly the six that live walking distance from the tower.  And it was fun.  There was a slight we-few-we-happy-few-we-band-of-siblings feel about it, braving the elements and all—Fustian cancelled their Friday practise and the abbey has cancelled Sunday afternoon service ring already—and while there’s quite a bit you can ring on five, I was amused that just about everything Niall called required that the sixth person present was a proper method ringer.

I had a few words with Niall as we were leaving.  Good practise, said Niall.  Yes, I said, and useful too.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve rung a touch of Grandsire doubles.  And anything I don’t use I lose.

Come on Sunday, said Niall.  We ring a lot of Grandsire doubles on Sunday morning.

If the puppy craps in time, I said, I will.

* * *

* Except when it comes under the category of ‘home—drives you crazy’.

** Viva Yaktrax.  http://www.yaktrax.co.uk/

*** or three

† Mine.  I’ve told you this story.  When we were moving out of the big house in the country and looking for a little house in town I knew Peter and I would drive each other round the twist in a little house.  Okay, Peter would drive me round the twist.  I’d been hoping for a house with an annexe or a granny flat, whither I could retire to fulminate and pile things in heaps my way, but Peter really wanted New Arcadia and so do a lot of other people and we couldn’t find anything here in our price range.  I still have I-wonder-what-if thoughts about houses we looked at in Mauncester.

Speaking of Quarter Peals*

 

I.  Er.  Rang.  A quarter peal tonight.  Er.**

Those of you with ridiculously good memories who should be using them to remember something else may recollect that Thursday is one of my handbell evenings. I’ve been celebrating sending SHADOWS in (again) by being reeeeeeeaaaaaallllllly tired*** and I did not look forward with any enthusiasm to handbells tonight.  However I didn’t have any good reason to cancel so I let the boys in when they arrived and tried not to moan.  In hindsight I’m wondering if they’d been plotting behind my back, because we plunged immediately into a really long touch of our standard bob minor, and usually there’s some faffing around first and finding out if Robin has done any homework on Kent or Cambridge or St Clements (no).

Anyway, we crashed and burned.  Colin and Niall had one of those conversations over my head about what went wrong and then we did it again.  This time it went on and on and ON AND ON AND ON AND ON.  And on.  And on.  And on.  I’ve been ringing the 3-4 (bells) mostly—I like the 3-4, I don’t know why, I just do—and I was ringing them tonight.  I had to be hauled protesting through a few of the calls, but haulage was successful†, and we kept on.  And on.  And then Niall finally said ‘that’s all’ and we got to STOP and he and Colin were grinning at each other.

Your first quarter on the 3-4, said Niall, still grinning.

Quarter? I said.  That was a quarter?  I thought we were just ringing more Really Really Really Long Touches.††

Quarter, confirmed Colin.

Oh.  Um.  Well, cool.  I’ve been looking forward to my first quarter on the 3-4.  I guess I thought I’d know it was coming, although the majority of my (few) handbell quarters with Niall and Colin have been accidents—or at least surprises to me.†††

So I felt more cheerful‡ as I went off to frelling Muddles frelling practise for the frelling concert I’m not (frelling) singing in.  I’m still going to rehearsal on the notion that I can use the repertoire . . . it was the merest accident that I knew the Canticle de Jean Racine that we sang for the funeral, that got me back into the Muddles again, because I have pretty much zip choral repertoire.  But I slouched up to our musical director during the tea break and asked sullenly when he’d like me to stop coming to rehearsal, since at least the last fortnight or so ought to be the away team only.  You don’t have to stop coming to rehearsals, he said.  Come along and practise your repertoire.  Happy to have you.

So  . . . what else can go right?‡‡

* * *

* Here’s Catherine’s, finally.  And yes I did check with her first about posting it.^  Thank you CathyR^^ for both finding the listing and, crucially, leading the Harass Catherine’s Conductor into Posting Her FIRST QP for Pity’s Sake Operation http://www.bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=272669

^ Paranoia Is My Middle Name.  But this is really just Doing Unto Others as I Would Be Done to.

^^ And speaking of bell ringing, book recs and cranky nonfiction, CathyR also posted a rec for Roland Blythe’s Akenfield:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Akenfield-Ronald-Blythe/dp/0141187921/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358465685&sr=1-1

I agree.  I adored it.  I can’t remember now if I read it first while I was still a clueless American Anglophile who worshipped all things really, really English+ but when I read it (possibly again) shortly after I moved over here it blew me away.  It’s a wonderful book.  Do read it.++  It would have showed up in my book recs here sooner or later.+++

+ Clotted cream, scones, proper sausages, proper tea in a pot, hard cider . . . the public footpath system, especially old roads worn deep into the ground—some of the banks of these around here are over my head—from hundreds of years of hard use by feet, hooves and wheels, thatched roofs, the so-called cottage-garden style of gardening with lots of roses, METHOD BELL RINGING. . . .

++ Has anyone read the sequel?  I’m sure I don’t want to hear about SUVs and the internet in Akenfield.  But I’m curious.

+++ There will doubtless be other cranky nonfiction about Englishness, and more general Britishness, but living here has changed my perspective.  My fantasies about living in Britain used to be about equally divided between England and Scotland.  They’re all Scotland any more because I don’t live there.  As I’ve told you before, this is home, and I’m planning on dying here (eventually) and having my cremated ashes dug into someone’s garden, but however much you love home, it also makes you crazy, like your family and friends and critters and rose-bushes do.  All right, I admit I’m more easily made crazy than some.

** I was going to say ‘it must be something in the air’ but Catherine’s is from November.

*** And there’s nothing more frustrating than going to bed to read and falling asleep.

† I said later over tea and chocolate cake that since I still have to think about what I do when a call is made, when I fall apart is usually because my attention had wandered and I hadn’t noticed the treble was coming into lead (in standard methods EVERYTHING HAPPENS when the treble leads).  If there is no call then I can fumble through the basic line.  If there’s a call when I’m not expecting it and haven’t reminded myself where I am and where I’ll be going when the treble leads AAAAAAAAUGH.

†† Technically a quarter peal is a really, really, really long touch.  A full peal is a REALLY REALLY REALLY long touch.^

^ I was complaining about the length of the touch we’d already rung before we started the long touch that did become a quarter, and Colin looked thoughtful for a moment and said yes, you probably rang a total of about 2200 changes tonight . . . see, you could ring a full peal.+  No.  Wrong.  2200 isn’t quite half a full peal.++

+ Colin is full-peal mad.  Quarters don’t count to Colin.  He rings them to humour us plebs.

++ Furthermore tonight I would have lost all feeling in my arms before then which would lead to dropping the bells.  It’s VERY COLD and I am wearing three t shirts under my heavy wool jumper.  This is fine unless you need to bend your arms quickly and repeatedly, as for ringing handbells.  I couldn’t figure out why my hands were going numb till I finally realised it was because I normally hold my arms at a 90° angle and then ring up, narrowing the angle still more.  And my extra layers of shirt were cutting off my circulation.  So I had to open the angle out by ringing farther down, which was VERY CONFUSING and it’s amazing I only needed to be hauled through a few calls.

††† There was the infamous first one when I was on the trebles and every time we came to the end of a plain course—with only six bells your opportunities for messing up the pattern are (mathematically) limited, so you do have to ring a plain course occasionally—they’d yell DON’T STOP at me as we came into rounds.

‡ It helped make up for the fact that last night at tower practise at the abbey I got ONE proper go on a rope.  ONE.  I’m not going to learn anything that way.

‡‡ Well . . . I have this list. . . .

The Future of the Blog: Book Recs

 

I never tell you about what I’m reading, right?  Or almost never.  This is not, in fact, because I throw everything across the room.  I am a cow, but I am a cow who loves reading, and there are books that Pollyanna would let me talk about.  No, the problem is that writing  B o o k   R e v i e w s  freaks me out because I’m sure I’ll do it wrong.*  So I don’t do it.  So I read a great book and . . . I don’t tell you about it.  I pull down an old favourite and reread it and love it all over again, and I don’t tell you about that either.

Bad.

So, when I was thinking about the Future of the Blog and my wish for placeholder posts on nights I need off for one reason or another** I thought, I know!  BOOK RECS!  Not reviews.  Just . . . here’s a nice book.  I liked it.  You might too.

However, being the hellgoddess, which means cranky and perverse, as soon as this brilliant notion flashed into my consciousness I knew I wanted to start this new tradition not with a fabulous fantasy novel*** but with an example of the peculiar nonfiction I spend most of my time reading.

I’d seen references to CHURCH BELLS AND BELL-RINGING, A NORFOLK PROFILE by Paul Cattermole, knew it was ‘destined to be a classic’ as the foreword says, and knew there was a new edition coming out.  I’m geeky enough to think it sounded interesting, but not right before Christmas when I’m running out of money anyway and should buy a few Christmas presents†.

And then . . . fancy . . . I received an email from the sales and marketing director of the academic firm who’s publishing it offering me a comp copy.  After I finished laughing—and I did try to warn the nice man that, supposing that I feel it lives up to its reputation, my puffing it on my blog will not result in a run on sales—I said yes please, I’d love one.

The thing is . . . it’s frelling fascinating.  It really is.  Here’s the link:

http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14074

It’s hard for me to judge because I am a bell ringer, and I like knowing how things work, and how they’ve come to work the way they do.  But it seems to me that anyone with an interest in cranky history—particularly cranky English history—might well find this fascinating too.  Note also that I am a flibbertigibbet dilettante and pretty well incapable of beating myself through text I find dry and graceless, even if it’s the only book or article or clay tablet on a subject I urgently want to know more about.  This is, ahem, surprisingly well written and equally surprisingly moves right along, bringing great swathes of archaeology, sociology, heraldry and bell-casting with it, and is stuffed with (black and white) photos and diagrams.

It’s just way cool.  And good cranky nonfiction is worthwhile twice:  imagine taking CHURCH BELLS AND BELL-RINGING to the café because you want to read it . . .  and watching people’s faces when you prop it up against the sugar-bowl and they see the title. . . .

* * *

* What if I praise the wrong character, the wrong plot development, the wrong turn of phrase?  What if I look COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY CLUELESS?  I spend a lot of my life looking pretty nearly utterly clueless^ and mostly I’m resigned but I have some faint professional vanity that resists being publicly clueless about other people’s books.

^ See:  Bell ringing.  Singing.  Knitting.  Quantum Physics.  Japanese.

** Tonight, for example, when you’d think I’d have LOTS of time, having SENT SHADOWS IN TO MY EDITOR THIS AFTERNOON . . . you’d be wrong.  Because I also had a cup of tea with my curate, who sent me home with an armful of books on Zen Christianity and the Christian contemplative tradition—there’s a lot more of the latter than I realised—and I want to go to bed^ and read.

^ I don’t read other people’s books in the bath.  Just in case.

*** I promise there are a few of these in the queue.

† for other people