Robin McKinley's Blog, page 71

Fear! Fire! Foes!*

 

I’ve had my head down over SHADOWS all day and Have No Brain Left.  Final editorial corrections always go like this.  The manuscript comes in and I sit there staring at it, hoping maybe it’ll go away or be perfect or something.  Manuscripts used to come back from your editor in hard-copy pages with little yellow sticky notes frilling the edges, which was at least a large clearly hairy object, deserving of fear and dismay.  It’s harder to have the right sense of mystic dread in response to a computer file.  Still, once you open it and start flipping through, looking for virtual yellow stickies in the margins, the dread gland starts secreting its sinister serum.  Arrrgh.

So first I do a quick read-through and reassure myself that it’s all doable.   Of course it is. My editor does not want me to add twin zebras and a jewel thief.  The book is basically fine, that’s FIIIIIIINE and my editor’s queries are thoughtful and valid.  I answer a few immediately and feel better.  Briefly.  Then I start going through the manuscript properly . . .

. . . Somewhere around here I decide that I can’t frelling cope with doing it all on the computer screen, and print the sucker out.**  There.  Now I have the proper Large Hairy Object, Deserving of Fear and Dismay.  And my editor’s notes come up red which is suitably alarming.

But it’s still all doable.  Yes.  Certainly.  Not a problem.  So after the first more or less soothing*** read through I go through again more slowly and soberly, pausing thoughtfully over each marginal note, grasping its essence and contemplating my sane, astute, attentive response.  This time I also answer all the easy queries.  These answers take up a respectable amount of space in a new file† which gives me a spurious sense of being ahead of the game.  And then I go through yet again, deciding yay or nay on the slightly complex queries, the more subtle and abstruse ones . . . first read through I hadn’t realised there were any abstruse ones. . . . Which is more or less where it all starts going horribly wrong.  The queries aren’t as straightforward as I thought, as I made myself think during the Soothing Read Through.  And some of the easy ones . . . maybe aren’t so easy after all.  Maybe I should think a little more about some of those easy queries.  Maybe I should reconsider the twin zebras.  Meanwhile I’m closing in on the genuinely tricky queries, the ones I knew from the beginning were going to cause trouble and require actual work to sort out.  The ones that my editor had written me in advance about, which warning I had read with one eye closed thinking yes, yes, I’ll worry about that when the whole manuscript arrives and I can look at it in its entirety. . . .

By the fourth read through the world is disintegrating, both this one containing noisy hellterror puppies and a lot less Green & Black’s dark chocolate with peppermint centres than it did a week ago, and that one containing manic border collies named Mongo and a lot less hot chocolate than it did before the story the book tells began, hot chocolate being the default response to stressful situations in Maggie’s family, and I’m reading the want ads for openings for bricklayers and taxi drivers.

Oh, and corrections are due on the 10th.

* * *

* And Black Riders.  Maybe it’s Black Riders I have infesting my computers and my internet connection.

** I hate flipping back and forth in a large document on the computer.  I start a new KES every ten episodes or so to keep the flip factor under control.

***  YES.  SOOTHING.  SOOOOOOOTHING.  YOU WILL BE SOOTHED, OKAY?

† Figure out how to answer marginal queries IN THE MARGINS?  Are you frelling joking?  I can barely open a new file, let alone ditz around with fancy text insertion.  I admit that Windows 7 is not quite the galactic-trashing monster I was expecting, and there are a few things I positively like about it, but the fact that it takes twenty-seven clicks and the intervention of a minor saint just to open a new dangleblatted document is not popular with me.

KES, 61

SIXTY ONE

 

I handed Bridget the end of the lead and then rubbed my hand over Sid’s ears.  “Hey, kiddo,” I said.  “A slave is going to feed you an oatmeal banana muffin crumb by crumb, while praising your beauty and virtue, and leaving out the stuff about devil dog and jumping out of windows.  You’ll enjoy it.”

“Slave?” said Bridget.

“I’m trying to put her into a hedonistic mood,” I said.

“Just go,” said Bridget.  “I take short breaks.”

I tried to saunter down the corridor from the courtyard like I hadn’t a care in the world, or a brand-new dog I was leaving behind who was laser-staring holes in my back.  I knew about the laser-holes not only because of the sharp boring pains under my shoulder-blades and the smell of smoking leather, but because I made the mistake of looking back when I turned to shut the gate behind me.

Oh dear.

I kept up the saunter till I turned the corner out of Sid’s sight and then I sprinted toward Schmitz Street, screamed around the corner on the equivalent of two wheels and stopped just before I would be visible through the front window of Homeric Homes so I could lean against the wall and gasp my breath back first.  I readjusted into saunter mode and went in through the door.

I felt guilty when Hayley looked up with a smile that could launch a thousand toothpaste ads.  She was even cleaner and shinier than I remembered.  She was wearing the navy-blue blazer again but her blouse was pale yellow, and when she stood up to greet me she was wearing a pleated skirt.  A pleated skirt.  I didn’t know anybody wore pleated skirts any more.  They’d probably stopped, and started again while I lived a fashion-unconscious life in Gelasio’s penthouse, a clueless Rapunzel in jeans.   It fitted very nicely, Hayley’s pleated skirt.  I tried not to stare.  I reminded myself that she wasn’t all good, she read FLOWERHAIR.  Therefore we would pass over the new pair of four-inch heels in silence.

“Hi,” she said.  “Are you here for the keys?”

“Yes please,” I said, and then, because that seemed a little churlish with her standing there smiling at me, added, “I’m sorry, I’m running late because–er” I’ve adopted a dog that would give your boss falling-down spasms and if she finds out about Sid she’ll make sure I never live in this town again–”because everything takes longer than you think it will” which presumably includes unscheduled dog adoption “and they’re picking up the van at the motel at six.”

She looked serious and businesslike at once.  “Is there anything I can do?  The nearest car rental is in Bittern Marsh, I could run you over there tomorrow.”

I winced.  “No, thanks, I’ve–er–I’ve got a–vehicle.  Jan has a son with a garage.”

Hayley laughed.  “You mean one of Mike’s rehab projects?  I hope it’s not a hearse.  He had a thing for hearses for a while.”

For the first time since I’d met Merry it occurred to me that things could be worse.

“But Mike’s cars run.  And glamour is a little wasted out here.”  She produced a set of keys from her top desk drawer.  They probably weighed more than Sid.  There was one relatively normal looking Yale type key and three fanged skeleton-type keys with shanks the size of my wrists.  I thought Hayley’s arm quivered with strain as she held them out toward me.

“Thanks,” I said, and turned to go.  But I made the mistake of looking back, just like I had with Sid.  The expression on Hayley’s face was not wholly dissimilar.  “Hey, come to dinner tomorrow,” I heard myself saying.  “If you dare.  If you don’t mind take-out pizza.”  There was an Elysian Pizza at the mall.  I had taken careful note of the fact they did take-out, although they wouldn’t deliver to Cold Valley.  “If you’re unlucky I may be at the heating up a tin of soup stage by then but you’re probably safe.”

“Oh, I’d love to,” began Hayley, and then the smile dropped off her face and she glanced toward the back of the office.  “But it’s probably, um, I mean, it’s very nice of you . . .”

“Don’t tell her,” I said quietly.  “Just come.  And wear jeans.  It’ll be good for you.”  I thought suddenly of Caedmon.  “You have to show me how to use that solid-fuel stove.  I’ll buy one of those woodstove kindling bundles at the mall.”

Her brows snapped ferociously together.  “You will not,” she said.  “I’ve never seen anything so overpriced.  I’ll call Jack and get him to deliver–it’s late in the season, it’ll be what he’s got, but it should get you through the spring, and then you can be on his list for the fall.  And he’ll stack it for you.”

“Sold,” I said.  “So you’ll come?”

“I’d love to,” she said.

Tolkien’s Birthday

 

. . . and our wedding anniversary.  Twenty one years today. *

We went out for dinner.  The western world closes down, the week after New Year’s.  We were going to try The Other Really Nice Restaurant in Mauncester but it’s closed—for the week after New Year’s.  And even with the only other local Really Nice Restaurant closed, Maison de Chocolat et Champagne** was still only about half full.

 

Sixty-year-old woman seen wearing miniskirt in public. Film at eleven. Call the cops.***

 

Now of course I know I’m well preserved or I wouldn’t either be wearing a miniskirt in public† or hanging photos on the internet of my failure of propriety.  But—you others of my vintage correct me if I’m wrong—I don’t think that when we were the right age to wear miniskirts any woman of our age now would have done so?††  I was slightly behind the crest of the baby boomers as well as therefore slightly behind the great fashion revelation of the miniskirt, but while old women have always got up to things the younger generations feel are inappropriate to their age and gravitas††† I think it’s those of us who grew up with miniskirts who are just going on wearing them?‡  I like to think I belong to a generation that is breaking important new cultural ground.

Serious chocolate pudding. When you stick a fork in it the middle runs out in great gloopy swirls.

 

So yes, thank you, the evening was a delectable success.

* * *

* Tolkien would be 120.

** Que faut-il?^

^ No, I don’t speak French.+

+ However I do acknowledge a few more basic food groups than chocolate and champagne.  Broccoli, for example.  Peter and I share a necessity for olives however and—also speaking of the western world closing down after New Year’s—our Olive Man has gone on holiday.  Our Olive Man at best is a flaky schmuck, but unfortunately he sells olives to die for so we keep abjectly crawling back to him when he reappears  So, we’re in another whimpering, cold-turkey phase of having to find ALTERNATIVES till he frelling returns from his safari in Tanzania or whatever.  Peter found a bottle of olives in the back of a cupboard which we looked at dubiously—bottled is never satisfactory when you’re used to fresh—but these are surprisingly good.  The only thing wrong with them is that their texture is a little mushy.  Peter finally thought to look at the use-by date:  2004.  Ah.   That might explain the mushy. . . .

*** I know that even as my unfortunate photographic standards go this is pretty skanky.  But the photo was a festering ratbag to get at all.  The electrics at the mews are infested with demons and bulbs blow before you get them poked into their sockets.  The bulb over the mirror has blown—again—and these dratted spot-style lights are also festering ratbags to change.  You can’t use a fixed flash on a mirror. So I’ve dragged half the lamps in the sitting room as close as their flexes will let them and added the taking-the-puppy-out torch to the curtain rail and . . .

† Although recollect it’s after dark, the lighting in the restaurant is low and romantic^, and I’m wearing black tights.  I didn’t think I was going to like these tights—geometric patterns on irregularly shaped limbs like human legs often don’t work very well—but I really like these.  What?  Because they were on sale.  I am a hopeless sucker for sales.  And then you get the thing home and you do like it, and you’ve just been brainwashed for the next sale.

^ Did I ever point out to all you flatterers after I posted those photos of our dinner out on my sixtieth birthday that the lighting in women’s loos in fancy restaurants tends to be aggressively well-disposed?  I wasn’t just wearing an adorable pink sequinned cashmere shrug, I was bathed in fuzzy pink light.

†† At least not without surgical enhancement.

††† Hey! You’re old! You’re not supposed to have fun!

‡ I’ve been saying, okay, this is the last time, for about ten years now.

YAAAAAAAAAAY

 

Oh, never mind the future of the blog for a minute*, I want to tell you about tower practise at the abbey tonight.

We were kind of a scrappy crowd, with too many of us middling-or-less ringers and not enough of the lofty and resplendent.**  I did get to ring a touch of Grandsire Triples, and it was not a great occasion but I held my line when other people were losing theirs, which is always very good practise if you survive.  And we rang some plain old plain hunt on lotsa bells which is not exciting*** but is useful for grinding away at learning that too many frelling bells rhythm for us rhythm-challenged.

And that was beginning to look like that was going to be that for me, and I was thinking sullen thoughts about the plain course of bob major I could have rung in but wasn’t asked† when Scary Man called for Cambridge major.  Siiiiiiiiigh.  Only the lofty and resplendent ring surprise major.  And they all seized their ropes, Scary Man taking the treble . . . when they realised they were one short.  Oh, we can’t ring it, said Scary Man.  There was a brief pause and then he turned round to us:  Gemma, Charlotte and me.  Unless one of you would like to ring the treble.

Gemma had just rung a practise touch of Stedman Triples†† and Charlotte is being a little cautious about getting to grips with ringing at the abbey.  Also, Gemma, who is generally a better ringer than I am†††, hasn’t quite caught on to treble-bobbing, which is what you do on the treble to surprise methods.  I, on the other hand, am relatively secure treble-bobbing to minor (six bells) and have been LOOOOOONGING for the chance to treble-bob to major (eight bells).  I have never treble-bobbed to major.  Never.

I stepped forward and grabbed the rope from Scary Man.  Yes, I said.

Well, you see where this is going.  I wouldn’t have headed it YAAAAAAAY if I’d bollixed it up or broken a stay or otherwise humiliated myself, and was signing up right now for a bookbinding course.

YES.  I DID IT.  I TREBLE-BOBBED TO A FULL PLAIN COURSE OF CAMBRIDGE MAJOR.  AND FURTHERMORE I DID IT AT THE ABBEY.  YAAAAAAAAAAAAY ME.‡

I’m not hopeless.  Even at the abbey.‡‡

* * *

* Although in answer to the anxious emails about KES . . . not to worry.  I have every intention of going on with it.  KES indeed is one of the reasons I feel I can risk messing with the blog’s format.  Saner, more intelligent people than I am—Blogmom and my agent for example—repeat that they don’t understand why I keep saying I have to post every night, that if I have the self-discipline to post every night why can’t I expend less self-discipline and post less often?  Because I’m an all-or-nothing obsessive, is why.  Next question.  But KES really wants me to write it.  So that’ll help keep me coming back to the blog, however the New System shakes down.

** Marilyn, looking around, said, I think a lot of people made a New Year’s resolution to come to tower practise more often.  Including me, she added.  —I haven’t seen her there since I started coming regularly some time last spring.  But her two daughters are now old and tall enough to start learning to ring—Isolde, the older one, has wanted to learn since she was about two and shorter and lighter than a hellhound—so they may indeed start coming regularly.  Aglovale was (kindly and patiently) teaching them tonight and Marilyn was standing at the opposite end of that vast room with her hands over her face saying I can’t watch!  I can’t watch!  (Which seems to me entirely sensible.)  Isolde has inherited her mum’s Maths Brains and will be ringing Spliced Surplus Surplice Maximus by the end of the year, and I will have taken up bookbinding.

*** Except when you screw up and have to fall on your sword again

† Generally speaking if it’s something you’re learning or can’t ring reliably you wait to be asked.  You only ‘fill in’ if you know what you’re doing.

†† Yaaaaaaay Gemma

††† She’s rung a quarter of Grandsire caters.  TEN bells.  Aaaaugh.

‡ Mind you it was not the most perfectly struck plain course of Cambridge you have ever heard.  And most of the clanking was me.  But I never got lost—I never got yelled at—and while when we’d started Scary Man had said, Be nice to the treble, catch her eye when you’re bobbing with her, almost none of them did:  only Scary Man himself and Aglovale.  Mostly I was On My Own.

The thing about treble-bobbing is the pattern is minimal:  for every two steps you step back one before you go on.  You do have to cling to that like mad but that’s all you have to remember.  It’s all in the frelling RHYTHM which as I keep saying I have not got.  I’m used to the rhythm of six bells, so I can treble-bob to minor.  Probably the biggest reason I’m taking AEONS to learn to ring Grandsire triples reliably is because I’m not used to any eight-bell rhythm, either triples with the tenor-behind or major when all eight are working bells.  I have stood behind the treble’s shoulder for a lot of surprise major on practise nights at the abbey and I have thought I should be able to do it—as I say, I’ve been longing for a chance to try—but—frelling eight bells.

But I DID IT.  I DID IT FIRST GO.^  And even if I screw up next time I’ll know I can do it.

^ Although one other point I need to make in all this unseemly gloating is that this was a good band.  I was the weak link.  When you’re essentially being shuffled along by all the other bells being in the right place it does make it a lot easier.

‡‡ And Scary Man came round at the end and congratulated Gemma for her touch of Stedman triples and me for my treble-bobbing to major.  You never looked like you were in trouble even once, he said to me.  ::Beams::  He must be taking sensitivity training.  He didn’t even scold me for my ragged striking.

All Change

 

. . . Or nearly all juggle around a little.

I’ve been saying for most of the last five and a quarter years that I must cut back on the amount of time I spend on the blog but . . . this time I mean it.  I have to mean it.

I have needed to cut back because I live over the time-line of 24-hour-day plausibility because I’m like that* and ‘time’ is a ridiculous human construct anyway.  I’m not going to let some frelling mechanical instrument that goes tick tock** tell me what I can and can’t do.  But . . .

The avalanche began when PEG II crashed and burned nearly a year and a half ago.  And SHADOWS, bless its pointed little head, rolled in to give me something to DO and also something to tell my agent, my editor, and get PAID FOR when I also told them the bad news about having to put off PEG II till I could face the fact that frelling PEGASUS is a trilogy and PEG II is not the end.   Originally SHADOWS was going to be short and . . . er . . . well, I get interested in the story I’m telling, you know?  And I start thinking, oh, hey, well, if that, then that, and pretty soon . . . this is nothing on George R R Martin or Robin Hobbs, but SHADOWS weighs in at about 105,000 words which to a slow writer like me is plenty.

And then, last winter, there was that tiny fracas at my bell tower, which resulted in my quitting the tower that is a minute’s pedestrian sprint down the street from the cottage and joining one that is a half-hour-plus commute in Wolfgang . . . and half-hour-plus does not include lurid adventures in quest of parking, or pelting across town (and back) from wherever I finally manage to leave Wolfgang.  And around the same time that I switched towers my one evening a week handbell group underwent meiosis and became two groups and two evenings.  I said at the time I wasn’t going to be able to do two evenings a week regularly.  But week by week I’m not very good at saying no.

Last summer I found myself agreeing to a bull terrier puppy.

This autumn I took possession of said bull terrier puppy***.  I also started voice lessons again when Nadia came back from maternity leave.†  And because this was not enough I rejoined the Muddlehamptons.  Well, my goal always has been to sing in a choir, and I’d been putting off figuring out what to do instead of the Muddles, and here I am, Muddling again, and rather mysteriously coping with the twelve-hour practises, the freezing cold church and the No Loo.  One more thing I think I haven’t told you is that while the first shock of hearing myself recorded was just how DIABOLICALLY AWFUL I was . . . the second shock was that there is actually more voice there to do something with than I had any awareness of.  I knew I had become louder, but . . . well.  That noise I’m now making almost is a singing voice, if I could get it under some kind of control.

And, this autumn, I found God, or he/she/it/they found me.  God takes a lot of time.  There’s all that praying business, and (ugh) facing yourself, and, since I’ve popped out in the Christian spectrum, there’s the Bible to read, and the 1,000,000,000,000 commentaries on the Bible, and the gazillion and twenty-six books about trying to live as a Christian, and there’s the note-taking you’ll inevitably do, and the conversations (both live and by email) with friends who have been doing this longer than you have, and the lists of more books to read and (not least) the sitting staring into infinite space and thinking ‘eep’ and . . .

And there’s going to church.  St Radegund is right around the corner of course, and I do go there occasionally, but it’s not a church I’m much drawn to.  Nooooo, I have to be drawn to monks, who are another half-hour-plus commute†††, and Aloysius’ church is only a minute or two nearer, and then there’s the abbey–I mean Forza, not the monks–which is miles in the opposite direction.  I bought a bit of flex that is supposed to make Pooka read aloud to me when plugged into Wolfgang’s speakers for all this car time, supposing I figure out how to use it . . . but it’s still time.

And neither last nor least . . . there are hundreds of uncompleted auction orders waiting my attention.  AAAAAAAAAUGH.‡  Those nights I can’t sleep?  One of the things that keeps me awake is the knowledge of all those piles of books and order slips next door in my office.  I really did get started on them when I sent the more-or-less finished SHADOWS in—bleh, whenever it was, whenever I announced it here—but I almost immediately had to go back to work on the things both Merrilee and my editor brought up.  None of this has been major, but it all . . . takes time.  And I’ve got to have these LAST editorial/authorial twiddles in by the tenth of this month, and then there will be copyediting, and . . .

And my poor neglected garden. . . .

I’m not closing the blog down.  And I will still write long rambling days-in-the-life posts.  But not as many of them, not as often.

And I’ll tell you more about my ideas for the Future of the Blog . . . tomorrow.

* * *

* I sometimes feel, especially when it’s being inconvenient, like a PUPPY WHO FEELS NEGLECTED BECAUSE IT’S BEEN AT LEAST FIFTEEN MINUTES SINCE ANYONE EITHER FED HER OR PLAYED WITH HER, that the ME is Just One More Thing on the frelling list.  Except those times when I think it’s probably saving my life.  No, you can’t do that too, it says.  Sit down.  Have a little rest.  Do it now.

** Well, I still have frelling mechanical instruments that go tick tock.

*** To the continuing consternation of hellhounds.  We’ve had her THREE MONTHS, you guys!  Get used to it!  Said hellterror puppy, just by the way, is up to needing almost half an hour of hurtling a day . . . and there is as yet no indication of a likelihood of survival of any attempt at triune hurtling.

†† I’ve now knitted two, count ’em, two, baby bibs and furthermore have given them to people with babies.  As opposed to burying them in the bottom of some stash bag or other, as happened to all those Secret Projects last year.  I don’t guarantee that either recipient has used them, or anyway has used them more than once when they unravelled instantly on contact with an actual baby, but Raphael did send me an awfully cute photo of his baby wearing hers and it does seem to be functioning.  Nadia received the second one, right before our Christmas break, not because I meant to give it to her then but because I kept forgetting to give it to her at all.

††† Although I have yet to have a parking problem, if this wet weather continues I will need a ferry.

‡ Both Blogmom and I get queries about what’s happened to the money.  The money is still sitting there in its account.  It will eventually go to one of the bell funds run by the national bell-ringers’ council, but I am NOT DOING ANYTHING WITH IT till I’ve actually fulfilled my obligations.

2013

 

H A P P Y   N E W   Y E A R

 

I should have known that New Year’s Eve at the abbey would be a big deal, but I’m not very intelligent* about cultural ritual type things**, and I didn’t realise.  I can’t even claim clueless Americanness since I’m accustomed (or possibly resigned) to people making a fuss about New Year’s.  And the abbey is gigantic and a national frelling site of historical whatsit and so on*** so, yeah, okay, New Year’s Eve probably would be more than a few hard-core nerds pulling on the bell ropes.

I don’t actually like ringing New Year’s Eve.  Worrying about it makes such a long day.  A hideous threatening quarter peal for Sunday afternoon service ring, for example, is over by 3:30 and you still have half a day for ingesting compensatory chocolate and plotting your new, bell-free life.†  New Year’s Eve . . . you’re lying on the sofa bestrewn with hellhounds and knitting magazines and you can’t even enjoy it.

It was rather ridiculously exciting driving into the abbey close for the first time tonight.  I walk through it frequently but I’ve never taken a car in there—what for?  I’d only have to do a three-point turn and scramble out again.  The application for a parking permit which I still haven’t remembered to put through the office door makes a big fuss about how you must only park in marked bays.  Well, you get in there at 11 pm on New Year’s Eve and it’s dark and very badly lit and covered in taken-down bits of Christmas and—just by the way—this is a medieval close and has adapted to the modern world only somewhat.  I found a tree to park under which didn’t seem to leave Wolfgang blocking anything in particular, and went off to be intimidated by the vicar’s wife’s party.  Yeep.  The vicar was there too, in an ornate frock, and so was the mayor, wearing half a ton of chain††, and a smattering of lords of this and that and the new/old Archbishop of Canterbury’s mother-in-law’s milkmaid’s niece.†††

But the tower was no haven, because half the assembled followed us.  How the ladies in their party frocks and high heels got up those stairs I have no idea, but several of them did.‡  And then they all stood around staring at us.  Frell.  I might as well have rung at Crabbiton, as I have done in years past, where the entire village comes and stares at you (it’s a ground floor ring):  at least there aren’t lords and mayors in chains and the vicar’s frock is plain.  Also, Crabbiton has only six bells.  The possibilities for mayhem are limited.

After some alarming adventures like ringing plain hunt on a hundred and fourteen, the tenor—the almost two tons of the abbey tenor—is pulled off alone to toll twelve, and (theoretically exactly at midnight) the rest of us then pull off in perfect rounds behind the tenor striking that twelfth time.  There were slightly more ringers than there were bells (amazingly)‡‡ and as we were all standing there in silence waiting for it to be time for the tenor to begin I very frelling nearly bottled out.  Steady the Buffs.  I stayed where I was.

And our rounds sounded pretty good.  Celebratory, even.  Better yet, when we descended from our eyrie, they in fact hadn’t locked the close gate—which every night of the year but New Year’s Eve is shut at ten—and Wolfgang was waiting for me under his tree.  And the roads were empty coming home.

* * *

* Stop that laughing

** I said stop that laughing.

*** Which means that every time they need to replace a door-latch or hang a picture they have to ask English Heritage to send a team of conservationists to consult on how or if it’s going to be done.   It’s a good thing English Heritage exists, or there’d be a lot less English heritage around, and big crumbly ancient buildings do need a phenomenal amount of upkeep, but I do sometimes wonder if about half the running costs aren’t about the running but about the arguing.

† It had not been a great day.  I spent the morning thinking up new and unspeakable^ tortures for my printer while it jammed every third page—and once it has jammed it goes on jamming, even after you’ve not only removed the offending page but taken ALL the paper out, shuffled it, put it ALL back in again, reset the tabs that hold it in place, ritually slammed ALL the doors including the one defending the ink cartridges which has NOTHING TO DO with the paper feed, and offered the gods more chocolate.  PAPER JAM, it whines.  BITE ME.  Sometimes it randomly varies this with PAPER TRAY EMPTY.^^   I’ve been working on my editor’s comments on SHADOWS on the computer but there’s a scene at the end where I think I have to take the pages and lay them out on the floor, supposing I can find a large enough piece of floor that can be made to remain hellcritter free.  Siiiiiiigh.  I should have let her send me a print-out.  She offered.  No, no, no, I said, it’s fine I can do it.

And then I decided to take the hellterror to run an errand in Mauncester and the shop in question had closed early half an hour before we got there.  You could put updates on your web site, you know?  That’s what web sites are for.  To tell customers stuff like we’re closing EARLY on New Year’s Eve.

At least I’d brought the hellterror, so we were accruing SOCIALISATION from the experience.  We went back to the car and I looked at the clock and thought . . . I could probably just about get to the monks’ evening prayer.  And I did.  With about twenty seconds to spare.  And going the speed limit, which is always a plus.^^^  But I was the last person in and my footsteps echoed and everyone turned and looked at me.  #

^ But howlable

^^ Bite me anyway.

^^^ Which was a good thing—as is that I wedge the hellterror’s crate carefully in place behind the front seat—when we had a Near Death Experience of a monster semi pulling out in front of us as we were bombing down the highway at 68 mph [speed limit 70].  JESUS CHRIST, I screamed as I stood on noble Wolfgang’s brakes, which is probably what I would have screamed more than three months and a half months ago too, but part of my new covenant with God is that I’m trying to clean up my language.+  I apologised, which is what I usually do on these humiliating occasions, about five seconds later, as the higher functions started coming back on line again, but I was also thinking that while not yelling his name every time you spill your tea is a good idea, really, when you’d urgently like him to intervene before you’re squashed like a bug on the windscreen of some thrice-blasted juggernaut, it’s quite appropriate.

+ And a frelling frelling frelling struggle it is too.  Arrrgh.  I am very grateful for ‘arrrgh’.  And frelling.

# I put a blanket over the hellterror’s crate but really it’s so WARM.  It’s RAINING, but it’s WARM.

†† I wonder if he has special padding sewn into the jacket(s) he’s planning on wearing his professional shackles with?

††† The most interesting part of the occasion was being accidentally included in a conversation between Ulrich and the vicar, about some of the practicalities of keeping the abbey standing.  God?  When they have a minute.  And this isn’t worldliness and Mammon, this is just the truth about something this size with this much going on.

‡ Me?  I was wearing jeans and All Stars.  Clean jeans.  The All Stars were a little muddy.  But the world is a little muddy.

‡‡ And the really fancy ringers, like Albert and Scary Man, stood out, so us hoi polloi could ring.

Fair Day (guest post by Black Bear) *

 

I look forward to the Indiana State Fair pretty much all year long.  By late August, when the barns close up and the food stands roll out to their next venue and the roller derby takes over the expo hall for the season, I’m already looking ahead to the next year’s fair.  I’ve been going since I was a little kid; and like most little kids, for me back then the fair was all about this.

Or this.

Or possibly this.

 

As I got older, I realized that there was more to the fair than eating dangerously colored foods, going on rides, and possibly throwing up.  My parents are both artists, and so we spent a lot of quality time in the Home and Family Arts building, which runs the gamut from paintings and sculpture to kitchen creations that back in the good old days would succumb to the ravages of mold before the first week of the fair was out.  The 100+ year old building lacked air conditioning until the early 2000′s, and by the end of week two each year, culinary arts was a chamber of furry horror that had to be seen to be believed.  My mother and I found this hilarious, and were devastated when funds were finally raised to upgrade the climate control in the HFA building.  Now we’re forced to make do with unintentionally amusing petit fours and the occasional ill-advised cake.

One of the big things that I’ve come to really look forward to in my adulthood is the heavy horse championship events. I was never much of a horse kid; I liked horses just fine, rode them at summer camp now and then, but my interests at the fair always ran to the BIG horses, the Clydesdales and Percherons who terrified and awed me with their sheer size and power.  I loved walking through the barns on Percheron days… but for some reason, it was years before I happened to stumble into the Coliseum during the Clydesdale hitch competitions.  Now I can’t imagine visiting the fair without at least an hour or two of big horses and bright carts; I actually plan my visits (yes, visits plural) around their schedule.

It’s a beautifully consistent experience year to year, right down to the tiny little old lady who plays the electric organ (she has a CD out–one of these days I’m going to buy it.)

I’m continually amazed at what goes into putting together these teams–not just the horses, but the tack, the hardware, the carts, the drivers.  I find the whole thing unbelievably beautiful, which is probably why I’m so content to spend an hour of my precious fair time allotment sitting on an uncomfortable folding seat, drinking a chocolate milkshake from the dairy tent and watching the horses go by.  So here, for those of you who were unable to attend this year’s fair, I offer you the experience via Youtube.

Percheron 4-Horse Hitch

Clydesdale Unicorn Hitch

 

Enjoy!

 

* Note first that for some reason WordPress won’t let you change font colour in a heading or that asterisk would be pink, and second, that poor Black Bear wrote this up soon after the event, but it was MY ONLY GUEST POST and I couldn’t, um, bear to put it up and lose it.  B_twin has now supplied the replacement ONLY GUEST POST so I can hang this one. 

Further Complications of Abbey Ringing

 

The wedding at the abbey today finished only seven minutes late.*  Shock.**  I hadn’t even got my knitting out yet.  I was busy worrying about parking for New Year’s Eve and applying to long-time abbey ringers for advice.  I don’t fancy the long walk back to my usual edge-of-town car park at midnight-thirty;  the centre-of-town one that casuistically calls itself the abbey car park and which has been full since the middle of November is unpredictably*** full the rest of the year too—and even that one requires an unpleasant saunter down a dark high-walled medieval alley† and an excellent opportunity to fall in an open and magnificently unlit water-channel if you are so inclined.

Now that I’m an actual branded member of the Forza band I’m eligible for a parking permit for the close . . . which has made me fall down laughing so hard that I keep forgetting to apply.  Ulrich gave me the form today†† but even if they decide to overlook my foibles I’m not going to have it by Monday†††.  Don’t worry about it, said the old guard in unison.  Nobody’s going to be checking abbey parking permits at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  So if I don’t post here on the 31st it’s because I’m walking home.‡

* * *

* Which means you hear it thundering through those vast spaces as you creep along your open gallery on the way to the tower.  This is the down side of that fabulous angle on the choir queued up for their parade through the nave that you have coming down, since the usual service ring is before.  If you’re ringing after something then you’re coming in while it’s going on^ and . . . you want to mind your manners, even if your big feet are out of your control.  You trip over that danglefrabbing break in the stair tread^^ again and you bleed silently.  No language.  The initial thud and gasp will go unremarked:  Forza is over fifteen hundred years old.  Ghosts are inevitable.^^^

^ If the bride isn’t having brunch in Monaco first and got a little held up.  Grrrr.

^^ It hasn’t been mended in six hundred years because Saint Inexorabla narrowly missed being martyred there by tripping over it with her big feet and the ninja archer’s shot whistled through where her head should have been.  She was passing as Dom Inexorable, of course.  This was a monastery.  She was a monk.  History does not record what she had done to rouse someone to sufficient exasperation to hire a ninja to deal with her, nor what a ninja was doing wandering around the back woods of Hampshire in the 1400s and hiring out to kill annoying monks.  The story does say that he laid his bow down forever that day and entered the monastery as a novice and that he and Inexorable later became good friends.

^^^ Including, according to some authorities, Inexorable and the ex-ninja, Dom Goro, having a passionate dispute about a tricky point of theology.

** Fortunately my shock was not so great that I embarrassed myself on the end of a bell rope any more than usual.  We were not a particularly good band, which meant call changes and plain hunt, since the usual rule is that you want as many bells going as you have pairs of hands for, so your worst ringer sets the standard.  But there were twenty-nine of us, which meant twenty-eight ringers and a stand-out, and Scary Man stood out to call the call changes.  Having your conductor standing out works extremely well in that airplane hangar because with umpty-mumble bells going you cannot HEAR a THING but a generalised roar, certainly not some puny little human voice screaming:  SIXTEEN TO FOUR!, THIRTY-THREE TO FIFTY-SEVEN!^ and instead he wanders around the circle standing in front of his chosen victim and screaming directly at them.^^  The only thing that went horribly wrong with the call changes is that I’d moved too slowly when he called us to fill in and all the front bells were taken so I ended up dead centre on the fourteen^^^.  To make the shouting easier Scary Man tends to break call changes into the front and back halves . . . and put me on the lead forever.  I HATE LEADING WHEN IT MATTERS.  Leading ruthlessly exposes your rhythmic shortcomings, of which I have many.  I stood there trying not to twitch, which is one of those things that makes you ring unevenly, and telling myself that if I were doing it too badly he’d get me off the lead even if it messed up his pattern.   Arrrgh.

^ For those of you who know how call changes work, yes, then he has to move briskly to shout at the other person affected, who may or may not have figured it out for themselves.

^^ Did I say twenty-eight bells?

^^^ And most of the front thirteen and Scary Man instantly said, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT THERE? and started offering me alternative ropes, and I derived some backbone from somewhere and said that I was fine.  The middle bells of twenty-eight are not heavy and frelling totally within my capabilities if I weren’t so frelling prone to PAAAAAANIC, especially at the frelling abbey.

*** Weirdly unpredictably.  I think there must be secret global conferences going on underground in the catacombs or something.  I never knew Forza had catacombs^, but then . . . they’re secret.  And any number of those gnarly little medieval doors could lead to crypts and grottos recently refitted with cutting-edge multi-media, infinitely twiddle-able indirect lighting, and coffee makers that look like a bad day on the FARSCAPE set.  And frog graveyards.

^ Except for frogs.  Especially lately.

† With very irregular paving stones.

†† It’s forty-seven pages long and demands your genealogy back to 1066 and the name of your sixth-form sportsmistress, and the vehicle you are wishing permission to possess its being briefly within the shadow of the abbey must present a clean and well-cared-for appearance as will not frighten any passing deans or deacons or ghosts of monks.  Maybe I should buy another motorcycle.   There’s less to keep tidy.

††† Especially because I forgot to put it through the office door on my way out today.

‡ Too Much Information Update:  The hellterror has been crapping her tiny brains out, the last two days.  Every time she sees me waving her lead^ in a meaningful manner she leaps to her feet and says, Oooh!  Are we going outside?  I’m so excited, that means I can crap again!  No, no, I’m not going to stop with a mere pee, I am definitely going to have another CRAP!  It’s such fun!

^ Her inferior substitute back up lead because in the excitement of getting indoors and having lunch after all on Thursday I managed to leave her good one behind.  Georgiana says she’ll bring it back the next time she comes through, which is most weekends.  I hope this doesn’t turn into a Georgiana’s Champagne Stopper situation however:  she sent the rest of the bottle home with Peter on his birthday.  The champagne was finished off in a punctilious manner and the stopper . . . remained sitting on the table when Georgiana stopped for tea here last Sunday and had a nice little ride in the bottom of my knapsack on Thursday.

KES, 60

SIXTY

 

This was going to be my preliminary shot at finding out if Sid was willing to be compatible with modern American internal-combustion engine transport—or not—before we committed to the drive to Cold Valley.  And back.  Twice.  Like I had another choice if the answer was no.  We were going to take a lap around downtown in the van till I found a long enough piece of street to park it on, and then walk to Eats.

I felt like a cartoon villain as I opened cabin seven’s door and looked cautiously in all directions.  All I needed was the black fedora.  I thought the curly moustache would probably have been going too far.

There wasn’t anyone visible.  There were two cars parked by the office, so Serena was fully occupied.  I hoped that whoever they were, they didn’t come out in the next few minutes.  Sid looked a lot worse in daylight.

“All right, kiddo,” I said.  “You’re on.”  I took her lead off the bathroom door handle, shouldered my knapsack, and we went down the cabin steps and around to the passenger side of the van.  I opened the door.  I’d never really contemplated what an ominous noise a car—or van—door makes.  I wondered if this would be true on an Aston Martin or a Rolls Royce.  I wasn’t likely ever to find out.  (I was carefully not thinking about Merry.  When we got to Merry—if we got to Merry—I might have to knock out the rear window glass, persuade Sid to vault into the truck bed and climb through the empty window.  I wasn’t thinking about Merry.)  Sid stood politely, awaiting developments.  This was at least a lot better than setting off at speed in search of a vehicle-free environment.  The red leather lead looked pretty sturdy, but I wasn’t so sure about my shoulder.  “Hup,” I said, without much hope, patting the seat.

Sid continued to stand politely, not recognising this as a development.  I still had the cheese in my pocket.  I checked.  Sid immediately became very interested in my right hand.  I heaved my knapsack into the passenger side footwell, climbed into the van myself and hadn’t finished crawling over the gearshift when I was slammed into by a hairy black torpedo.  “Hup,” I said breathlessly.  “Ow.  I mean, good girl.”  I gave Sid a piece of cheese.  She sat down.  I leaned past her to pull the door closed.

It didn’t want to close, of course.  “Liver flukes,” I said.  “Parasitic wasps.  Maggots.”  Sid pricked her ears.  I snapped the passenger seatbelt closed, looped the lead through it a few times and then back through Sid’s makeshift harness.  “Wait,” I said, slid out the driver’s side, closed the possessed-by-demons passenger door from the outside, and climbed back in behind the wheel.  Sid watched me.  The way her head was swivelling I considered the possibility she might be part owl.  That might help explain the incompetently-felted effect.

I turned the engine on.  Thubba thubba thubba it went.  Sid sat up a little straighter.  I backed up, turned around, and headed for the exit.  She started to pant a little as we bumped over the ramp and the curb, but she didn’t offer to bite anything.  Me, for example.  Thy new companion is swift and loyal and high-couraged.  Oh, shut up.

We found an empty half a block in a parking zone after only a minute or two, and it only took me another minute or two to swan into it, like an oil tanker docking.  Arrrgh.  Sid emerged onto the sidewalk with alacrity but no apparent ill effects.  We set off in an Eats-ward direction.  I hoped we didn’t meet anyone likely to know me in the future, and peg me on first impression as a criminally incompetent dog-owner.  For that matter I hoped we didn’t meet any other dogs.  One thing at a time.  I was happy to wait to find out what Sid’s attitude toward others of her species was.

I felt like a traitor as she pricked her ears and trotted happily down the little corridor beside Eats.  Bridget had been watching for us, and came out the courtyard door as we arrived.  She had two muffins on two plates in her hands.  “What do you think she would prefer, oatmeal banana or apple bran?  It’s early in the day for meatloaf and I was trying to think of the nearest dog-biscuit equivalent.”

“Oatmeal banana,” I said, “although I may be projecting.”

“Fine,” she said, and sat down at the table Sid and I had been sitting at less than two hours ago.  “I’m in the mood for apple bran.”   She looked at my face and grinned.  “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?   We’ll be fine alone together for five minutes.  Just hand me the lead and walk away like it’s no big deal.  Although you might just close the gate behind you.”

 

WHOSE DRATBLASTED IDEA WAS DOGS ANYWAY? Chapter 41,006

 

Note that this entire post can be defined as Too Much Information.  Those of you of a delicate disposition should look away now. 

So.  We were going to try again to get three of us down to Georgiana and Saxon’s glamorous open-plan flat on the water.  It had to be today because today was the day the dog minder could hurtle the hellhounds while Peter and I took the hellterror with us.  Peter was really looking forward to the hucklebutting, and promised faithfully to guard the Christmas tree while riot and anarchy were occurring.

The day did not get off to an auspicious start.  I slept through my alarm again.*  Naturally.  There was an email from Peter that he was coming into town anyway, and would walk up the rest of the way to the cottage.  Great.  That would save five minutes going to fetch him.

Except he didn’t appear.  Graaak.  Arrrgh.  Bleh.  I started to worry.  I harnessed up the hellhounds—having been waiting to give them their mini-hurtle to let Peter in first—and decided we would go in pursuit . . . and found him sitting on the greenhouse stairs, reading his paper.  WHAT? I said.  I may have, ahem, shouted.

The car’s not there, he said.  I thought you’d taken the hellhounds somewhere for a country hurtle and I was getting worried you weren’t back yet.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE CAR’S NOT THERE? I said, or maybe shouted.  Hellhounds and I hurtled up the hill and . . . there was Wolfgang.  The frelling cul de sac is deceptive.  It looks straight.  It isn’t, as many people who have tried to back out of it (which, unless you have a driveway to call your own is your only choice, having made the serious vehicular error of turning into it the first place) have learnt to the cost of their wing mirrors, paintwork and fenders.  And the final two parking spaces, the further one mine, do kind of hide.  I’VE LIVED HERE EIGHT YEARS, I said to my husband.  YOU SHOULD KNOW BY NOW TO WALK FARTHER UP THE HILL TO CHECK ON WOLFGANG.

Yes, I should, said Peter humbly (possibly seeing blood and spousal abuse in my eye).  I’m so sorry.

ARRRRRRGH, I said, and flew off with hellhounds.

So, you know, we were already a good half hour late.  And I still had to give the hellterror her mini-hurtle so she would have a crap before we left.

Those of you who have been watching the hellterror’s alimentary antics will know where this is going.

She didn’t crap.  She wouldn’t crap, and nothing was going to make her.  By this time we were about forty five minutes late and I uttered a final, heartfelt ARRRRRRGH, stuffed her into her travelling crate and we left.

Here’s the good news:  we got there.  The first half hour is pretty much B and substandard rural A roads.  The second half hour is Spaghetti Junction South and a nightmare every bit as compelling as the ones I’m having when I fail to wake up when my alarm goes off.

The other good news is that it stopped raining**.  Which is a very good thing since the hellterror and I were out in the weather for about two hours.  Didn’t I say something prophetic, the last time this journey was contemplated, about how the hellterror and I might never get indoors because I would spend the whole visit walking her around WAITING FOR HER TO EXCRETE?

Yes.  Well.  At least it was a nice day.  I topped up really well on my vitamin D levels.  And the predicted wind died away to gentle airs, and it wasn’t that cold, although frustrated fury does help keep you warm.  And the hellterror hucklebutted fabulously outdoors on the patch of grass I had randomly chosen, doing backflips when she forgot where the end of her extending lead was.  And she paid close attention to every single person who walked past—I had no idea that Georgiana and Saxon’s development has so frelling many people in it—became engrossed in the passage of buses, was disapproving of the rattly, popping starting of motorcycles, and yearned after other dogs going for walks.  In between times she ate leaves, repeatedly attacked the laurel hedge, wrapped her lead around the sentinel tree, and tried to get me to PLAY WITH HER.

What she did not do is crap.  She peed about forty-seven times, including two or three where she was CLEARLY FINALLY FRELLING about to CRAP and then at the final moment—nope—nope—can’t possibly—I only crap at home (sometimes).  —Which was the other aspect of this dreadful epic:  imagine living with a dog WHO WILL ONLY CRAP AT HOME.***

AARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH.  She nearly came back tonight as a hearthrug.†

I didn’t dare bring her indoors.  I do not want to establish her pleasant habit of crapping in her crate, which is friendly and safe and familiar and she can just flip the blanket over any unpleasantness which will be dealt with later by her indentured servant, and the flat is on the top floor,†† there’s a long hall to the lift/elevator, several doors to negotiate, the lift doesn’t move very quickly . . . and the entrance to the flat is another long frelling hallway.  Poor Georgiana came down three times to check on us, and on the third time††† we went for a little walk while Peter had a nap.

The hellterror really enjoyed her walk.  By this time she frelling well ought to have been falling down with exhaustion‡ but noooooooooooo not the hellterror.  Then we came back and stood around the tree some more while the hellterror cavorted.  ARRRRRRRRGH.  Well, I said finally, a little wildly, I suppose we might as well go home.

So Georgiana went off to collect Peter and the frelling crate and the frelling hellterror spare kit and the frelling hellterror lunch—puppies should not miss meals, but I was NOT going to put more in the front end when nothing was coming out the back end—and I stood there between the tree and the hedge and looked at the hellterror, and the hellterror looked at me.  And the hellterror ambled off in an idle sort of way and . . . had a crap.

So we raced indoors and BOTH HAD LUNCH and I got to sit down.  The hellterror—even the tireless hellterror—wasn’t really up for hucklebutting around the flat, but with only a token howl of outrage permitted herself to be locked up in her crate.  And all these shenanigans meant that we had to negotiate Spaghetti Junction South in the dark . . . but we’re HOME.

And when upon arrival I let the hellterror out of her travelling crate for a pee . . . she rushed over to HER SPOT and had THE MOST ENORMOUS CRAP I HAVE EVER SEEN.

* * *

* All my life I’ve had my most lurid—and they can be very lurid indeed—dreams just before I wake up for the final time in the morning.  This is all explained by human sleep patterns blah blah blah but I have perhaps an extreme case.  I usually hear my alarm, I just don’t always recognise it as a clarion adjuration to GET OUT OF BED.  At the time it seems to be something to do with the assembled forces of the Evil Magician Alliance or the mating cry of a lovesick banshee or similar.  The fact that the hellterror has now learnt the sound—and the meaning—of my kitchen-timer alarm and usually joins in the fun should assist, but it doesn’t.  It just means the Alliance is even more diabolical than I realised, or the banshee brought a friend.^

^ Or possibly the banshee’s love-object is protesting.

** Although it’s supposed to start again any minute.  Hellhounds and I were positively sportive last night at mmmph o’clock, unexpectedly cantering around town on our last hurtle with actual stars overhead.  It had started raining again by the time I put the hellterror out for a last pee and it was grizzly later this morning when I was making tea and unsticking my eyelids.

*** Also . . . what is wrong with my critter karma that all my critters have Digestive/Eliminatory Issues?  It’s a very good thing I like staying at home.

† Southdowner suggested steering wheel cover.  She’s not really big enough yet to make a satisfactory hearthrug.

†† Fourth floor in American, third in Britspeak.

††† I left the hellish hellterror with Georgiana long enough that I could go indoors and have a pee.  Now the hellterror loves everyone and generally speaking ignores me like an old tatty rejected toy if there’s anyone NEW AND INTERESTING around, but Georgiana said she had a wobble when I stalked away leaving her with AN ALMOST UNKNOWN PERSONAGE OF DUBIOUS MOTIVES, and made little pathetic noises.  This is the first known occurrence of the hellterror making little pathetic noises about anything except the speed at which her next meal is coming.

‡ As well as full of well-compressed faecal matter to the neck