Robin McKinley's Blog, page 70

Bells, books and . . . um, candles*

 

So I wasn’t going to ring bells either yesterday or today.  Because I had this book to finish again, in this case dealing with my editor’s queries.  This is the stage, I find, where a good 90% of everything you do you throw out.  Because the book by this time is pretty much The Book and it doesn’t take kindly to your meddling.  I know this going in and therefore morale is not high.  Plus there are those delightful moments when your editor—okay, my editor—finds those places where you—I mean I—had a brain spasm and cut out something crucial or inserted a few random phrases while you, I mean I, was under the influence of the Gflytch transmitting station on Venus.  And so there’s a little note in the margin saying, um, what is going on here?   And you—I mean I—have to do something.

Sigh.

But, you know, my mere career isn’t going to keep me from bell ringing.**  But the weather will.  Yesterday afternoon I cancelled going to Glaciation that evening because it’s kind of a long way, as I count long ways, and on twisty little back roads, and it was supposed to snow and sleet.  Whereupon frelling Niall rang up at about an hour before time, while I was in the throes of chapter divisions***, and started leaning on me to come to the once-a-month practise at Old Eden.  ARRRRGH.  He knows me too well:  my ringing life feels to me chiefly notable for long languishing periods where I don’t actually learn anything either because the practise is too busy and there are too many people that need to get their hands on ropes during the course of the evening, or because the practise isn’t busy enough and can’t provide the band I need—I who only learns by ENDLESS FRELLING GRIND.  I therefore really hate the idea of beginners not getting their grinding because there aren’t enough ringers to make a band.  So Niall, grinning evilly, picked me up at the mews and brought me in triumph to Old Eden, where Vicky, looking up in surprise, said, Ooh!  The cavalry!  And while we had eight ringers for six bells . . . only three of us were proper method ringers, Niall and Vicky and me, so yeah, I served a purpose.  Oh, and then the weather did not plunge below freezing, the roads stayed dry, and I could have gone to Glaciation after all.

Tonight is the twice-monthly ‘improvers practise’ at Fustian, and I emailed tonight’s ringing master—Bailey and Nestor swap, like Scary Man† and Albert do at the abbey—that I would be there barring sleet.  I was there.  It did not sleet.  And—speaking of grind—they let me ring two plain courses of Cambridge minor which I am going to learn before I die of old age, I am, the problem being the GRIND thing again, how long have I been trying to learn it??  But I don’t get my grind.††  I don’t get my grind, I don’t learn.

There weren’t very many of us tonight, so we were all having a break while Bailey stared thoughtfully at the whiteboard.  QP next week, he said.†††  Are you here? he said, one by one, to the others assembled.  I kept my eyes on the floor, because I’m a visitor.  They don’t owe me anything:  it’s nice of them to let me come to their practises, but generally speaking you only get invited to ring quarter peals at other towers if you’re good.

A pair of shoes appeared in my field of vision.  Robin, are you here next Tuesday? said Bailey.

Eeep, I said.  Um.  Sure.

Would you like to ring a quarter peal? pursued Bailey.

Um.  Sure, I said.

He nodded, and wrote my name on the whiteboard.

WHAT A GOOD THING I’VE FINISHED THE BOOK (AGAIN).  Which is to say I don’t think the wretched thing will have been through copyediting by next Tuesday. . . .

* * *

* May I just say I hated the movie.  Talk about fear of female power dear loves-both-genders-equally God.  A witch who falls in love loses her witchcraft?  And the so-called romantic lead decides to take her back WHEN HE FINDS OUT SHE LOST HER POWER WHEN SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIM?^  This is my era, okay?  It came out in 1958 and I saw it in the late sixties some time when I was a teenager, and was already having trouble with the fact that none of the women on STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL LAUGHFEST ever did anything except show their legs and fall in love, and I had already been marked for life by Walt Disney’s SLEEPING BEAUTY.  Why am I a feminist?  This is why.

^ Note that I’ve always loathed Jimmy Stewart anyway.  It’s a Wonderful Life makes me throw up.  Frelling sue me.

** Or singing.  I had my voice lesson yesterday and went in moaning first about not singing in the Muddles’ concert and second about how the halfway okay noise I can (sometimes) make singing exercises—which is a lot of why I like exercises, as I used to like Hanon when I was playing the piano regularly—GOES AWAY as soon as I try to sing a song.  Nadia was nodding before I got halfway through this latter plaint.  Yup, she said.  Normal.  Get used to it.  And it just goes on like this however good you get.  Cecilia Bartoli probably feels exactly the same way.

*** I loathe chapters.  If it were up to me there would be no chapters, just line breaks and part one and part two etc if necessary.  Like I got away with in SUNSHINE but this doesn’t work very often.  And since I don’t write in chapters I have to go back and put them in later.  Arrrgh.

† I really have to give poor Scary Man a name.

†† Catherine, on the forum, who wrote two guest blogs about her first experience of bell ringing last September has already rung her first quarter peal inside.  ARRRRRRGH.  Listen, honey, if you ever come to one of my signings, don’t introduce yourself because I will crush you underfoot with extreme prejudice.  First quarter peal INSIDE after FOUR MONTHS?  Kill me.  Kill me now.

And do goad your conductor into posting it.  Your first QP is IMPORTANT!    

††† The Tuesday system is two ordinary practises for people like me, one gruesome brain-melting practise for people whose idea of ‘improving’ is something you need a magnifying glass just to read the line in the method book because it wiggles so much, and a quarter peal.

Pointing

 

Ha.  Have just had one of those Life with Other Species moments.  Darkness, when he wants something, comes and sits at me.  Sits at me.  I guess most dogs that have been taught to sit do this, but style and manner vary, as does level of enigma.  Sid sits at Kes much the way Darkness sits at me, but Mongo sits at Maggie very differently.  I predict the hellterror will have her own style.  At the moment a sitting hellterror only means SOMETIMES I GET FOOD WHEN I DO THIS AND I’M STARVING.*  Sid and Darkness’ sitting however can be very high on the enigmatic graph.

So I look down, and there’s Darkness who, once he’s got my attention, sits.  Now we play Twenty Questions, while I try to figure out what he wants.  About half the time he gives up with a sigh and goes back to the hellhound bed.  Or maybe all he wanted was to bamboozle me for a minute or two.  Tonight, however, he turned his head very deliberately and stared at the water dish.

Pavlova, I’m sorry to say, drools in her water.  Indeed she makes such colossal mess I keep looking for the egg beater that extrudes from an invisible orifice every time she goes to take a drink.  I’m not entirely sure she actually swallows any water:  chiefly she churns it up.  And drools.  She seems to enjoy the process however and this form of amusement is much to be preferred to trying to get my knitting away from her (again).  Chaos will put up with post-Pavlova water.  Darkness won’t.  I usually remember to change it once she’s imprisoned in her crate again** . . . but occasionally I forget.

I humbly got up, rinsed the water bowl out carefully, and put fresh water down.  Darkness had a nice long drink and is now content with his world.

Which brings up something else.   What just happened is what happened.  Darkness, having deliberately sought and got my attention, directed it to the water dish.  He got up and stood beside me as I rinsed it out and refilled it, and followed me to where I put it down.  And immediately drank, and then went away and lay down.  Anyone who lives with critters will have similar stories.

A few nights ago I was listening to some high-minded interview with some fancy philosopher bloke.  Who in the middle of saying something relatively interesting about being human, added, and we’re the only animal who points.

What?

He went on about this for several minutes.  He seemed to think it was important.  I was thinking, you don’t have any pets, do you, mate?  Now if you’re going to define pointing strictly as the extended forefinger with the other three fingers held back with the opposable thumb, well, yes, we’re the only critter who does that because we’re the only critter with true opposable thumbs.  But if you mean, as you should mean, pointing as a way of making someone else look at something indicated by you . . . certainly dogs, cats, horses and (domestic) birds do it, and I’m sure the list is a lot longer, that’s just what comes immediately off the top of my head.  There’s even a dog called a pointer, because he, um, points.  Sure, he (or she) is bred and trained to do it, but how does that invalidate it?  He’s directing your attention to something you have told him you want your attention directed to.  Seeing Eye dogs do it.  Those increasingly capable Companion Dogs do it for their variously-abled humans.

In the lurcher (and I think terrier) world what the hunting pointer does is called ‘marking’ and is a lot less flashy, but it’s the same continuum.  And while generally you learn how your dog marks, rather than trying to teach her to do it your way***, a lot of dogs, having found prey, will look round to make eye contact with you and check that you’re on board with what they’ve found:  LOOK BOSS.  DINNER.†

That’s pointing.  And I’m not a philosopher.

* * *

* One of the reasons you PUT UP WITH FRELLING DOMESTIC FAUNA is because they make you laugh.  Pavlova, when she is feeling especially neglected will follow me around and plonk her butt down every time she catches my eye.  In a minute, I say, I’m washing up/hanging laundry/ordering more yarn/dusting^, and you’re not starving.  Plonk.  Plonk.  I am.  Starving.  Plonk.

^ DUSTING?  No, no, surely not dusting.

** She’s now broken two of those plastic attach-to-wall-of-crate water dishes.  This gets old, expensive and messy.  So she plays with the hellhounds’ water when she’s loose.

*** If you’re dealing with a critter with a lot of sighthound blood, I recommend that you do as much of the adapting as mere-humanly possible.

† Chaos does this faithfully.  Darkness does it late, carelessly, and resignedly:  you’re just going to let this one go too, aren’t you?

 

KES, 62

 

SIXTY TWO

 

I casually dropped the keys in my jacket pocket (and instantly canted over 30 degrees in that direction from the weight), ambled slowly out Homeric Homes’ door, turned back toward Bradbury . . . and broke into a sprint toward Eats, holding my ballasted jacket pocket in one hand in expectation that if I didn’t the keys would rip their way out through several layers of ancient seams and plunge toward the earth at just the moment that the gremlins had readied the gaping storm drain to yawn beneath my feet.  I careened around the corner, staggering wide as the centrifugal force of the keys tried to drag me back toward Manhattan (wait, was Manhattan that way?  Maybe it was Cold Valley they were pulling toward) and again stopped just short of the doorway I wanted to turn into, took a deep breath, and started back down the little corridor beside Eats, staring at my feet.  I steeled myself to look up casually and there was Sid, standing at full alert standing stretch, staring back at me.  When she caught my eye she went up on her hind legs, pawing briefly at the air, more graceful than any three Lipizzaner stallions with Trigger thrown in for good measure, but I admit I might be prejudiced.

There was a creak of metal café chair against patio stone and Bridget stood up as I came into the courtyard.  “The Phantom has been as good as gold,” said Bridget, “although I think phantoms are usually silver.”

“My Rolls-Royce dog,” I said besottedly.

“Not for another forty baths and a few truckloads of dog food, I don’t think,” said Bridget, “although she has the lines of a classic something.  Your landlord’s cousin—the one that still lives in the gigantic house on the other side of the lake—he’s got an old Phantom, 1930 or so, that he brings out every summer to scare the tourists.”

Bridget’s face was not friendly as she said this.  “You’re not one of his fans, then,” I said, trying to remember if I’d told her where I was moving.  Although that was probably irrelevant.  This was a small town, she would recognise the shape of the keys in my pocket.  These were truly memorable keys.

“He’s a tick,” said Bridget.  “The kind that give you Lyme’s disease.  I’ll tell you stories some day you have less going on.  But I don’t know anything against the cousin.  And even if he’s another tick, Sally will protect you.”

I looked nervously at Sid and wished Bridget would stop saying ‘tick’.  Sally’s employee was coming to dinner tomorrow.  I had forty baths and a few truckloads of dog food to deploy by then, as well as moving house.  I hadn’t seen any chair cushions I liked at the mall yesterday but Hayley was young, her hipbones could probably stand one of those chairs for the duration of one evening.  Given her choice of business footgear she obviously had a rugged constitution.

“And while Sid ate her muffin,” Bridget continued, “I don’t think her mind was on it.  I won’t tell Ryuu, his feelings would be hurt.”

“Speaking of Ryuu’s muffins,” I began, preparing to be pathetic.  “I don’t suppose . . .”

“Yes,” said Bridget.  “You need to keep your strength up.  We do kind of fall into a habit of doing takeout for our regulars, and a few muffins in a bag, what the hey.  Fortunately the staff don’t understand what Ryuu is yelling when he reverts to Japanese after there have been too many regulars wanting too many takeouts—and most of us feel we have responsibilities in the community.  Gus, for example, might never eat any green veg at all if it weren’t for Ryuu’s green beans and later in the season, coleslaw.  What kind do you want?”

I was not at my best and I was thinking, kinds of coleslaw?  Okay, apple slaw, caraway slaw, spring onion slaw . . . oh, wait.  Muffins.  “Surprise me,” I said.  “But nothing too challenging.”

“What, you don’t want to try the bratwurst, zucchini and saffron?  You city folk.  No sense of adventure.”  She disappeared through the back door and reappeared almost before I had time to start worrying about the next thing, carrying a fat paper bag.  There was more than one muffin in there.  “Here you are,” she said.  “On the house, ha ha.  And these are for you, not the Phantom.  The Phantom needs protein.”

“I know,” I said.  “The pet store is our next stop.”  I looked at Sid.  Sid looked at me.  There were a few crumbs on her whiskers.

“Take her in with you and tell Susanna she’s the Phantom and you’ve adopted her.  She’ll take one look and suddenly remember some manufacturer’s discounts she hadn’t got out on the floor yet.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Come back soon,” said Bridget.  “If you want to keep up your takeout status.”

Chorus of Cold People

 

Yes, the Purcell.  And yes, we sang it.  And yes.  Twelve Saints and a Hedgehog is COOOOLD.  Jeepers jeepers jeepers jeepers.  Cold-duh-duh-duh-duh.

So, yes—I got there.  And . . . cough cough cough, shuffling of feet . . . it was, um, pretty easy.  Peter last night kept saying, you’ll recognise it, we did it dozens of times, you come off the main road at Trollfall, turn left at the cat (the tortoiseshell, not the tabby, it’s easy to get them confused at car speed), take the fork toward Middling Dinglebeech and just keep going. You’ll know you’re on the right road because you’ll pass the Goat and Necktie.

The Goat and Necktie is on that road?  I said.  Oh . . . dear.

The final roundabout will say Smedley-on-Cucumber, Peter went on encouragingly, and there you are.

Sure.  Yes.  And the moon is made of compacted cider pomace.

So last night I got to bed early.  Early!  Early!  Cha-cha-cha!  —And then I couldn’t sleep.  Of course.  When the alarm went off I couldn’t believe it, not least because it was so dark out it looked like dawn hadn’t happened yet.  It was throwing it down—rain.  HAMMER HAMMER HAMMER.  The hellterror was not amused.  Crap now or I’ll leave you out here, I said.  Maybe she heard the edge of frenzy in my voice.  She crapped.*

It was raining so hard the windscreen wipers couldn’t quite keep up and you had to drive slowly because one of those large wobbly elephants wandering through the thick grey mists in front of you might be a real elephant, or at least another car.  I’m on a hill, but between my cul de sac and the next village there’s a lot of downhill, and Wolfgang and I had bow-waved through three little fords by the time we got to the main road.  If it goes on like this I may just turn around, I thought.  I might swim for Beverly Sills** but not for just any excellent, well recommended vocal coach who is willing to take on a church-full of amateurs.

Just after the turn past the cat*** it stopped raining.  I did recognise the road, and the Goat and Necktie was right where it should be.†

Except for the COOOOOOOLD, did I mention it was COOOOOOLD?, the seminar was fun and probably useful.††  At my level of attainment all opportunities to sing in company, and, better, all opportunities to sing in well-conducted company are to the good.  But with reference to my lack of attainment, I had never sung any of the music before, which was a trifle frustrating, although I suppose it was good for my picking-it-up-in-a-hurry skills.  I did wonder why we weren’t told in advance what we were going to attempt, but my guess would be it’s because she doesn’t know what kind of a group of 100 random singers she’s going to be facing and needs to hear us first.†††  We were issued two booklets of highlights of the choral repertoire and did a page of Mozart and a couple of pages of Brahms . . . and the Purcell.  And a lot of singing exercises.  I liked the singing exercises:  I know where I am with singing exercises—there are fewer things to remember and I concentrate better.

Then I came home.‡  The road looked familiar in the other direction too.

. . . And now I have to go back to work.  Monday is soon.

* * *

* She received an indecently large breakfast as reward.  Which then about halfway through the seminar I started worrying about.  The dogminder took the hellhounds out as I was leaving—they weren’t amused either—and took her nibs out after that.  It was still going to be three-plus hours before I got home.

** Who died in 2007.  Just by the way.  And while Nadia keeps making vague threats about organising a master class with her teacher^ and I would sign up like a shot, I would NOT sing for him, but I would gratefully pay to sit in.  I should poke around and see if there are any recordings of Sills’ master classes.   Although . . . Simon Boccanegra was on Radio 3 on Thursday, and I was listening to those voices on the way to Muddle rehearsal and thinking, this may be counterproductive.  It’s possible that listening to a Beverly Sills master class would have the same effect.

^ which plan I think is probably now on hold till her kids are in school

*** For anyone who doesn’t recognise it, I stole this out of Gaiman and McKean’s THE DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH.  It’s one of my favourite lines and I steal it a lot.

† Until I arrived on Smedley’s high street and . . . there was no sign for Church Road.  Fortunately there was a small invisible sign saying church which made itself known to me telepathically and, Guided By A Spirit Not My Own, I made the correct turn and arrived at the correct church.  Which is how I know someone else was driving using my hands.  I don’t do things like this.  I get lost.  Even when the signs are there.

†† It’s a bigger church than St Frideswide.  So it may have been even colder, although there were a hundred of us breathing warm steamy air into the atmosphere instead of around twenty.

††† Because I am thick as a brick, I managed to sit with the altos, so by the time I scuttled to join the sopranos I was inevitably on the edge, with the basses thumping in my ear and everyone else as through a glass, um, darkly.  But our fearless leader-for-the-day was very taken with the tenor section and swapped them out for moving the altos closer in so she could stimulate them to greater enthusiasm.  Us sops, eh.  Everywhere but at the Muddles sops are superfluous to requirements.  We were by some margin the largest section.  But at least some of us were the real thing, and not just hiding where the melody usually hangs out, because our top notes sounded pretty nice.  Those of us who knew where they should come because they knew the music.

‡ And no one had crapped in her crate.

 

No Rest for the Wicked

 

. . . Especially the ones who think they’re learning how to sing.  IF I’D KNOWN IT WAS GOING TO BE THIS HARD, I WOULDN’T HAVE SIGNED UP.  No, no, not Nadia, Nadia is brilliant.  But did I tell you about the choral-singing seminar tomorrow?  At a Church Hall Near You, being run by someone that even those grim arbiters Oisin and Nadia have heard good things about?  One of the Muddles told us about it several weeks ago, and Gordon sent us all an email about it later, but being compulsive I had already signed up*.  And it’s in Smedley-on-Cucumber, which is only a few (small) towns beyond the monks.  One of our back ways to London was through Smedley-on-Cucumber, when we used to go to London a lot.

Tonight—there have been one or two other things going on**—I decided I’d better just check on the map about finding the place.

OH GOD.

Okay, this is MY LAST BLOG ENTRY.  FOREVER.***  Because tomorrow Wolfgang and I are setting out on The Impossible Adventure.  And will Never Be Heard from Again.  At least I refilled Wolfgang’s petrol tank yesterday—we have plenty of fuel to get really, really really lost.  Really.  Which I’m sure will be terribly comforting.

When I originally looked at the map I thought oh, groan, Smedley-on-Cucumber would be the kind of small town that has seven churches all within about a mile of each other—and I will park at the wrong one, and the one I want will be the sixth or seventh, by which time I will have walked three or four miles up and down small crabbed lanes looking for hidden lych gates and it will be half an hour after the seminar began.  The one thing I know about this particular church is that, according to the informative Muddle, it has no car park . . . and parking in a small market town on Saturday morning?  Joy.

I zoomed my Google map out to take a look at approaches, and it was at this point that I graphically lost my nerve.  I then made the further mistake of asking it for directions from New Arcadia to Twelve Saints and a Hedgehog, Smedley-on-Cucumber, and it cheerfully complied, unscrolling something about the length of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Whimper.†

Meanwhile, speaking of my monks, any of you out there know about Taizé?  http://www.taize.fr/  It’s a community of monks in France, and they have what I’m told is an unusual pattern of worship . . . which is mostly singing.  It’s a seriously ecumenical and also seriously international enterprise.  The Tintinnabulation monks laid on a Taizé service tonight with the help of a local chapter and it was fabulous.††  And it was mostly singing.  There was even a rehearsal beforehand, for anyone unaccustomed to the system, but I had to work so I only got there for about the last twenty minutes before the service began.  You’re given a book of songs/hymns/chants and an order of service.  The songs the congregation sings are all short and easy and have a chant-like feel to them and you do repeat them, over and over and over, and while you’re singing a cantor is doing all kinds of wild and fancy stuff over the basic line you’re laying down.  Even short and easy taxes my minimal musical skills, and this first experience I had to think too much about what I was singing to let it become prayer or half-trance or both, which is I would have said what you’re aiming for.†††  But the woman from Aloysius’ church who had given me the heads-up about this service said that the Tintinnabulation monk who’d organized it was hoping to do more.  Yes please.  I’ll come.

* * *

* With the result that, according to the original Muddle, I’m now signed up twice, because he’d also done a block sign-up for interested Muddles.  Does that mean I get to ask twice as many questions?

** Yes, I’m under the impression I’m still on to turn SHADOWS in on Monday.  Or I was, till I realised that tomorrow is going to be epic.

***  You know.  ‘I may be some time.’  It’s even supposed to snow next week.

† Of course I haven’t got satnav.  Fiona’s satnav makes me nuts^, and I never GO anywhere so why do I need to learn to put up with the nuisance?  I DON’T DRIVE.  THE FURTHEST I DRIVE IS TO THE MONKS.^^  Why didn’t I remember that when I signed up for this blasted seminar?  Why?  WHY?  —Because I am a silly person and it sounded like fun.  Remember?  Singing is supposed to be FUN!  Nadia says so!  Flaming arrrrrgh.

^ Especially when it’s telling us to turn left into alligator-infested swamps

^^ Um.  Actually, getting to Nadia is very slightly more mileage than to the monks.

†† I was sitting next to a nun, and I asked her afterward if she was local.  No.  Blurgle Niffnaff, down on the south coast.  Phooey.  If we have a local(ish) abbey, why shouldn’t we have a local convent?

††† There is also a pause for SILENT prayer.  Singing and silent prayer?  I am so there.

Raaaaaaaaaaatbags

 

I’m not singing in the Muddlehampton Choir concert.  Again.

I think this has happened twice before—I know it’s happened once—but I used to have such a struggle with the length of the rehearsals and the NO LOO that I always kind of felt I had one foot out the door anyway, so it wasn’t totally traumatic.  It was almost more like confirmation that I had to find some other choir.  But here I am now, having rejoined and coping*, and, furthermore, having developed something much more nearly resembling a voice** than I had when I was last standing at the end of the choir stalls and screaming into the musical director’s ear***.  I’m pretty into it this time—as well as the fact that since Griselda, with her professional-level range and projection, has quit, they can use more sopranos†.  Also I like a larger percentage of the music we—they—are performing this concert than playlists previously and most of it is EASY enough that I could probably get through it without humiliating anyone, especially me.††  Before SHADOWS got badly in the way I’d spent some real time over the holiday break learning the soprano part of some of the pieces††† and . . . it is so frelling different singing in COMPANY.  Tonight, first meeting after the holidays, it was like I’d spent all that effort practising Mary Had a Little Lamb on a xylophone and I get to the venue and there’s a Steinway concert grand and an audience expecting the Moonlight Sonata.  If my goal is to sing in a choir .  .  . I need to sing in a choir more.

But my education is not going to be furthered by taking part in the Muddlehamptons’ February concert.  Communication among small amateur performing groups, in Hampshire anyway, is not good, and Gordon only found out recently that another local group is having their fund-raising quiz-and-curry evening the same night we were planning to sing.  It’s way too much the same audience, and I’d guess there might be hard feelings on both sides about the money that went to the other group and, furthermore  . . . the curry’s going to win.

I was totally in favour of moving the date‡—we’re not good enough to bear any competition, and I imagine there are still going to be a lot of local friends and relatives of Muddle singers who stay home to shampoo the cat or sort their knitting patterns.  But I could see where this date-change thing was going.  Yes.  I have a Met Live opera on the new Muddlehampton choir concert date‡‡.

RAAAAAAAAAAATBAGS.

* * *

* God knows why.  Well, yes, he probably does.

** Thank you, God.

*** The previous musical director.  You don’t suppose this had anything to do with Ravenel deciding to move to Malaysia, did it?  He could have just rearranged the sopranos, and placed me to shriek at the tenors.  Wimp.  I wasn’t nearly as loud then.

† Sopranos are a glut on the market.  I can’t understand the Muddles’ permanent shortage.  There were only three of us first sops there tonight.

†† Possibly excepting the two pieces we—they—are singing without the music.  Those were going to be bad.  And a bag over my head was going to be so conspicuous.   Only slightly less conspicuous than not singing what everyone else is singing.

††† Yes I am lame and pathetic, but remember I rejoined halfway through their rehearsal run up to this concert.

‡ Apparently curry is not very mobile, so it was up to us.

‡‡ Rigoletto.  I was just snarking to a friend that I’ve seen a million Rigolettos and I’m not a fan of the fashion for relocating it to modern times in some gang of criminals or other which this one, much advertised as set in Las Vegas, is clearly going to be, and maybe I’ll give it a miss.  But . . . Rigoletto?  Verdi?  One of my favourite operas by my favourite opera composer?  Containing one of my favourite pieces of music of all time (the quartet in the third act, even though I spend the entire opera wanting to slap Gilda silly, but given her upbringing it’s not surprising she’s a little odd)?  No, no, don’t be silly, I have to go.  Furthermore I had briefly forgotten that I’d already bought my ticket when they went on sale last spring some time.

Another Wednesday

 

Today was not shaping up well.  I went to bed LATE last night partly because I felt so dying-liver-fluke-ish that I couldn’t pull myself together to go to bed, involving, as it does, a house move and two final hurtles.  Also, it was raining, and hellhounds are hard work in the rain.

I got out of bed LATE* and [omits gruesome details of a delicate nature indicating that there was a germ involved in yesterday’s oatmeal-brained listlessness and that possibly it is not lingering in the vicinity] was still feeling about one-third alive when I had to assemble four-legged companions in the back of Wolfgang, pick up Peter, and go to our monthly tune-up with Tabitha.

Peter goes first while I hurtle.**  Peter has a nap while Tabitha bulldozes me, and I get us all home again hastily before I finish turning into cold peanut-butter noodles.***   It was going to be a near thing today when I was already feeling fairly limp and peanut-buttery.

It was not going to be a good night for bell ringing.  I hadn’t wanted to book Tabitha on a Wednesday anyway, but between my ridiculous list of extracurriculars and Peter’s occasional evening playing bridge our choices are limited.  It was going to be an even worse evening for bell ringing or anything else after I dropped a half-full box of my favourite olives on the floor and Chaos decided he wasn’t in the MOOD for food† ARRRRRRRRGH.

Scary Man decided he had enough variables in the first touch of Grandsire Triples and did not invite me to ring, I had to watch Gemma ringing a touch of Stedman Triples†† . . . and then as I was standing behind Gemma eavesdropping on the post mortem, Scary Man flipped the rope at me and said, And now Robin is going to treble bob, CAMBRIDGE MAJOR, FILL IN.

Well, I’ve been worrying about this, of course.  It has happened before that I did something right first time and then went to pieces for months, like starting over from scratch only worse because you had done it right first time, WHAT HAPPENED?  I don’t know what happens, but there is a funny kink in my learning curve, and this happens more than it doesn’t.  So I grabbed the rope before it grabbed me††† and . . .

Rang it.  Yes.  Rang it.  Now, I could still go horribly wrong and lose it and have to start over.  But the thing that is really exciting is the sense that I’m FINALLY catching on to the MULTIPLY-BLASTED SEVEN-EIGHT BELL RHYTHM, I who am seriously rhythm-challenged.  At the beginning of the second lead when I was down front again, I was too fast, and almost missed the bell I was dodging with.  But I figured it out and got back on my line.  Scary Man came and whispered in my shell-like that I needed to slow up on the lead just a bit, and it was like YESSSSS!  I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TELLING ME!!!! rather than, huh?, which is what far too much of most of this last year of struggling with Grandsire Triples in that tower has been.  And while last week the rest of the Cambridge band had been nice and solid, tonight we had people going wrong and I still kept my line.

There is hope for me as a bell ringer.  Really.  Please remind me of this the next time I decide to take up bowling.

* * *

* How UNUSUAL^

^ Had an email from Aloysius today about the Silent Prayer group.  They’re moving it to 8:30 Saturday morning—from 8—to make it a little easier.  Whimper.  I’m resisting writing back, make it 9, and I’ll come.

** Chaos had a crap immediately in front of one of those mysterious locked city-authority boxes that may have to do with electricity or water or some other mod con, and then again may contain gremlins, sharks’ teeth and black chicken feathers, none of us ordinary folk will ever know.  But on this particular box was pasted one of those pick up after your dog posters that are among my (many) rant subjects.  Has anyone ever picked up dog crap because they read a poster that tells them they’re supposed to?  Does anyone not know they’re supposed to pick up any dog crap deposited on pavements and footpaths and people’s front gardens (and CHURCHYARDS)?  Are they going to read the poster and think, oh, my, yes, of course, my mind was wandering, I will pick it up at once?  I don’t care if the poster warns them about the fine and tells them that furthermore if they don’t pick up after their dog(s) their children will marry unsuitable partners, their garden will be eaten by slugs and their boss will tell the same interminable bad jokes till murder is their only recourse.^  The only excuse for these thrice-blasted posters is if there is a bin in the vicinity.  Nobody who isn’t inured to carrying around a pocket or a hand full of (plastic-wrapped) dog crap is going to take a blind bit of notice of a poster telling them to pick up after their dog if it’s going to be miles before they can get rid of it.  I guess the posters go up when the city council can’t afford more bins . . . but they could afford one or two more if they stopped wasting money on posters. 

^ That’s why there are locked metal boxes full of specially-trained gremlins all over town.

*** Speaking of recipes.  There are zillions of peanut-butter noodle recipes out there but most of them are All Wrong.

† While Pavlova flings herself at the front of her crate, shouting,  I CAN MAKE IT ALL GO AWAY!  HAVE I MENTIONED IN THE LAST THREE SECONDS THAT I’M STAAAAAAAARVING?

†† And yes, she needed her minder, but she rang it.

††† Bell ropes are heavy hawser-y things, and you treat them respectfully aside from the several hundredweight or more of metal on their other ends.

Varieties of short

 

PamAdams wrote:

I would quit checking for your posts every day, but you keep posting!

Yes, but they’re about half length.  I still haven’t got round to the Future of the Blog post—being easily distracted hasn’t changed—but it includes, among other SHORT things, reverting to having more recipes.

And today, when I’m crazy-stupid-tired* I thought I’d post the sort of recipe you need when you’re banging, or perhaps whimpering, over the final corrections of a novel, overdue optional.**  Also, I adore corn/maize in nearly all its incarnations.  Cornmeal and CHOCOLATE?  Be still my heart.

This is adapted from UNWRAPPED, which is Green & Black’s cookbook.  Really.  And, as you would hope, it is chocolate porn of the highest quality.

Polenta Chocolate Cake

Okay, I haven’t exactly converted, but I do now have a nice small neat digital kitchen scales, and . . . I use it.  So I don’t always recalibrate to American measurements.***  Also, there are now converters EVERYWHERE.  Those of you with reliable internet connections can go on line.  I have several converters on Pooka, because I am indecisive, easily confused and inclined to assume that the next one will be the best—and most aps are so engagingly cheap you can afford to be silly.  PLUS there are aps specifically for kitchenware and cooking ingredients.  Even if I do still tend to measure by handfuls and what stuff looks like.

8 oz dark chocolate, preferably G&B’s own either 70% or—recommended—the blow-your-socks-off 85% cocoa solids dark chocolate, which is intense.  I find it a little too intense for plain eating but the sock-blowing thing happens when you bake with it.

125g (4 ½ oz) good quality slightly salted butter

5 large eggs, separated

150g (5 oz) granulated sugar.  The original recipe calls for caster, which is finer-grained.  I like granulated, which seems to me to leave a faint residue of grittiness even after baking, although I may be hallucinating this.

100g (3 ½ oz) polenta.  Again, the original recipe stipulates fine.  In my experience this cake doesn’t really rise anyway, it falls.  It’s going to be gooey and sticky whatever you do.  I like the slight grittiness of not-quite-fine polenta.  All those eggs will stop it from being heavy, so if you like gritty, go for not-quite-fine.  I also prefer yellow to white.  This may also be hallucination but I think the yellow has a stronger flavour.

The original recipe also calls for rum.  Feh.  I like rum, in its place, but this isn’t its place.  I use about two tsps of good vanilla—and I haven’t posted a recipe in a while, but you all remember my doodah about GOOD vanilla, right?  None of this vanilla flavouring scam.  Get the real thing.

The original recipe tells you to butter and flour a 10” deep-sided springform cake tin.  I don’t.  This is going to be STICKY so I want it shallow so I can get it out better.  Springform is fine but I don’t think they make shallow springform?  Dunno.  But you could have chocolate-polenta goo all over your counter if you took the sides off too soon.  I use an ordinary big flat cake tin, butter and flour it AND THEN line with parchment paper and butter and flour again.

Melt the chocolate and butter in your bain-marie, let cool, vigorously beat in egg yolks one at a time, and then beat in about half the sugar.  It should be so gorgeously thick and creamy you have trouble not saying ‘bag the polenta’ and eating it as is.†

Beat the egg whites with the rest of the sugar.  You want it as airy as possible but as I say, this cake is going to fall so don’t kill yourself over this.

Stir the polenta and vanilla into the chocolate mixture.††

Finally ‘fold in’ the egg whites as the cookbooks always say, like this is going to work. You do want to preserve as much of the air and structure as possible, but it is going to collapse, so don’t let this disturb you.  Stir gently, till it’s shiny and homogenous.

Pour, still gently, into the cake pan, smooth the top, and bake at 350F/180C.  The original recipe says 40 minutes, but it’s supposing a deep-sided pan.  Because I am a twit, I have not written down how long I expect it to take.  I’d guess about half an hour.  It will change colour and look like it’s trying to turn into a cake . . . but as I say, think sticky.  Then take it out of the oven and let sit FOR A VERY LONG TIME.  Unless you want chocolate-cornmeal soup.  Not that this is a bad thing.†††  It WILL SINK as it cools.  Not to worry.

Dust it with icing sugar.  Then cut it up kindly and patiently into squarish globs.

* * *

* I don’t know why^, but I hope it goes away.  Like, now.

^ I mean, sure, I’m tying myself in knots over the last tweaks and twiddles on SHADOWS but I do this writing foolishness for a living.  I should be used to it.  Maybe I’m just dreading the copyediting stage.+

+ Yes.

** And my angelic editor gave me a few days’ grace.  Thursday was going to be hard.  Monday is fabulous.

***  Thus forcing British and Australian and various other non-American readers to convert back.

†And if your eggs are fresh and from nice clean hens, I wouldn’t say you were wrong.

†† And taste again.  You know you want to.  If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be making this in the first place.

††† See:  eating the batter before you put it in the cake pan.

Another year another voice lesson

 

Okay, we’re carrying over all the aaaaaaugh and angst from yesterday, okay?  Etc etc etc etc.  Why didn’t I grow up to be a fireperson or a vet?*  Why did I grow up to be a WRITER?**

Meanwhile . . . I had my first post-holiday voice lesson today.  Now a sane, responsible, grown-up sort of person would have cancelled it due to Stress of Bill-Paying-Job*** Deadline, right?  Nobody out there would mistake me for a sane, responsible, grown-up sort of person, would they?†  No, of course I didn’t cancel.

I did go in ASSUMING IT WAS GOING TO BE A DISASTER HOWEVER.  Me?  Bad attitude?  I can’t imagine where you’ve got that idea.  But I’d been both singing and practising every day up till about five days ago when two things happened:  first, it suddenly occurred to me that I was not keeping to a working schedule that was going to allow me to meet my thrice-blasted deadline and second, the frelling Muddlehamptons are threatening to change the concert date due to conflict with another piffling third-rate amateur group performance . . . to another of my opera days.  ARRRRRRGH.  Also, I’m sorry, but while generally speaking I can use some repertoire, any repertoire, I would not be spending time learning this INCREDIBLY anodyne John Rutter rubbish if it I weren’t planning to sing it in my choir’s frelling concert.  And then I was late to Nadia today when my posh neighbour who thinks that foreign peons with ancient (filthy) decrepit vehicles don’t count managed to block me both in AND out of my parking space at the cottage, and fury makes all of my voice except the very high and very low notes close down.

So, late and squeaking/bellowing, I went panting in and told Nadia that as a result of listening to myself sound really horrible on that recording before Christmas and realising that I was letting myself down because there was actually enough voice there to do something with and I WASN’T doing it or I wouldn’t sound so HORRIBLE (and therefore also letting my voice teacher down, since she’s the one created this monster out of even less plausible bits and scraps than Dr Frankenstein used) and she said, hey Robin, that’s really great, you’ve found ANOTHER stick to beat yourself with!  Did you find it behind the Christmas tree?

Oh.

But I’ve got like three whole pages of notes from today’s lesson and came away all charged up to SING because it’s FUN.  Which, as Nadia pointed out, only gently holding the bridge of her nose while she closed her eyes and spoke in calm, gentle one- and two-syllable words, that’s what I’m taking voice lessons FOR. Because singing is FUN.

. . . And now, enough of that, back to work.

* * *

* Possibly because I’m terrified of fire and hopeless at science, an awful lot of which you need to get into med school.  Not to mention the way most of your clients hate you and you probably wanted to be a vet because you love animals.

** I don’t even like sitting around in my dressing-gown all day.  And remember LAURA, where the icky journalist guy writes in the BATH?  Ewwwwwww.  Not to mention the hot-water bills.

*** Have I mentioned I need a new REFRIGERATOR?  The old one has stopped being, you know, cold.  Tra la la.  I presently have a large white refrigerator-shaped object covered in refrigerator magnets taking up SPACE^ in my kitchen and I’m keeping everything that needs to stay cold on the window-box shelf outside the kitchen door, attractively arranged among the geraniums.  Arrrgh.  I’ll go price refrigerators AFTER I get the book turned in.

^ Actually it’s a tiny under-counter-sized refrigerator, because it’s part of the Block of Dwarf Appliances under the stairs, which is what I’ve got room for in this kitchen at all.  But I noticed that it grew as soon as it stopped working.

† Thank you, by the way, for all the kind comments about my mini-skirted presentation the other night.  I wanted to say that of course it’s vanity, that not all of us were simply born with good legs (and note that unless it’s 110/43° in the shade and NOTHING ELSE MATTERS I do have to wear tights) and furthermore that I’m a little too willing to turn almost^ anything into a blog post. . . . But as I’ve said to several of you individually there’s also a certain sense of holding the line.  Western first-world society is awfully preoccupied with youth and celebrity and there’s quite a lot of life left after thirty or forty or fifty . . . or sixty . . . even if you’re not the Queen or Judi Dench.  Some of us hold the line by getting third PhDs or adopting at-risk children.  Some of us learn method bell ringing, take voice lessons and wear miniskirts.^^

^ almost

^^ and bring home frelling hellterror puppies

 

The Race to the Deadline Continues . . .

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

Gibber gibber gibber gibber GLEEEEEP.*

EMoon wrote:

(virtual hand-holding)

Thank you.  But it’s a good thing it’s virtual.  I’d be leaving bruises.

Yes. I understand completely.

Sigh.  I’m very sorry.  Grateful, you know, but sorry.

It’s always like this. “I absolutely love the book and have just a few things I think need tweaking” says Editor (or something like that, except for the time a Former Editor was incredibly snotty & made sure I got an in-house email full of damning with loud damns and no praise at all. Very, VERY Former, that editor.)

And the problem, at least for those of us of a neurotic turn, is that however ex- that editor is, we remember them.  We remember them at all the worst possible moments, and we remember them like sitting on a pitchfork. YOW.

But then it turns out that Editor has not grasped the importance of the relationship between A and R, does not understand why you can’t just excise this “slow” paragraph, wants “more background” to something that you backgrounded five chapters before, and what Editor thinks can be done in “just a few hours, really” takes for-blinkin-EVER because every single change changes something else, and you have to think hard about every single one of them, often multiple times.

Yes.  This.  I also like the probably-looks-perfectly-sensible-from-their-end suggestion that you take Scene W and put it back with Scene B where it more clearly goes.  Well.  No.  In the first place you’re seeing it at W from a different angle than you were at B and furthermore, this world-building thing is a ratbag.  You break it up, and lever a little in here and sprinkle a little in there, you should get away with it.  You smack W up against B and you have an Expository Lump.

It’s not always clear what Editor meant when deleting a couple of lines (slow? fast? boring? distracting?)

Or—one of my favourites—the tidying-up without comment change of something that was obviously just a careless error.   NO.  WRONG.  IT IS NOT AN ERROR.  STET.  ARRRRGH.

and thus finding the right fix–or deciding if Editor must’ve been having a coffee break with a dash of something else in it and actually those deleted lines are, as you thought initially, absolutely necessary right there and in those exact words.

Or possibly you and Editor are different species from different galaxies.  I think this often.  It would be against Editor’s best interests to drive his/her authors to find jobs as bricklayers and taxi drivers, wouldn’t it?  Wouldn’t it?**  So there has to be some other explanation for the yawning communication chasm.

And this is so with the best Editors in the business. Intelligent, sensitive, skilled readers and analysts…and if they don’t get something, how can readers be expected to?

YES.  THIS IS THE THING THAT REALLY KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT.  IF AN INTELLIGENT EDITOR, PAYING ATTENTION, DOESN’T GET IT . . . AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

And you worked so hard on that in the first place…it’s not like you were a careless, slapdash writer who just tossed those words in to bring it up to its required word count.

Or that scene in.  Here you thought that scene was crucial to character development or was the Fabulous Big Reveal about the Mystery of the Heroine’s Talking Footstool.

Revisions are one head-desk and face-palm and blank-stare-at-wall-wondering-if-after-all-you-should-go-back-to-bed-forever

With your knitting.  And Green & Black’s.  And maybe somebody else’s novel(s).

after another. At best. And I like all my Editors,

::hums to herself:: I have liked most of my editors ::hums to herself some more::

and have had wonderful editors, and the one I have now is very, very good, but….BUT.

Yes.  My current one is thoughtful and intelligent and takes pains and laughs at my jokes . . . BUT.

(Green & Black’s comes with peppermint centers? REALLY?)

Well, they do on this side of the pond:  http://www.greenandblacks.co.uk/our-range/Bars/Mint?p=2669&c1=1559#first

What’s interesting is that I can’t find this on the American site.  Not only is the only mint listed mere paltry mint-oil-infused chocolate, but it’s only 60% whereas my mint-fondant is 70%.  If this anomaly is truly what it appears THIS GOES VERY HIGH ON MY LIST OF REASONS TO LIVE IN ENGLAND.

Anyway, condolences, virtual cups of tea or cocoa

Or both.  In separate cups.  No, in separate large mugs.  Or possibly beer steins.

and many and varied small pastries and varieties of dark chocolate. It’s really hard. You’re really struggling. I wish I could make it better.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiigh. . . . .***

* * *

* An editor friend RT’d my tweet of last night’s post.  Snork.

** Remembering the old publishing joke:  Editing would be a great job if it weren’t for the writers.  Yup.  And writing would be a great job if it weren’t for the editors.

*** I did break to ring bells this afternoon and go to church this evening.^  There were only eight of us at the former, and we rang some pretty snaggedy Grandsire Triples which depressed everyone but me.  I felt positively chirpy because we got through.  A very few months ago, if I went off, that was the end. Chances are I’ll struggle back onto my line again now, at least if not more than one other person is going wrong at the same time.

Tonight . . . it was a communion evening, and when the vicar got up to hand the baskets out—we serve each other, so there are little baskets that make their way up and down the rows—he explained blandly that when he’d got the loaf out of the freezer he’d inadvertently pulled out a buttered baguette.  Snork.  Much better-quality bread than we usually have, but the butter I admit was a little distracting.

^And hurtle an assortment of hellcritters.  One of whom is singing in her crate right now. LATER.  LATER, drat you.