Robin McKinley's Blog, page 72

Rain and puppies

 

It’s raining.  It will rain forever.  And furthermore it has been raining forever, and that stuff about blue sky and light from up there overhead somewhere so bright you can’t look at it is all myth.  The ONLY GOOD THING about this fribbleglomping weather is that it makes my hair fall into corkscrew curls.  This is amusing, but I’d rather not have my kitchen draped in wet dog-walking kit—harnesses, leads, collars, raincoats both canine and human, gloves, shoes . . . and of course the wet hellbeasts themselves . . . and the wet towels used on the wet hellbeasts (and wet hellgoddess) themselves.  And the mud all over the floor.  And the water halfway up the walls and occasionally splattered against the ceiling because of course the first thing a hellhound does after he gets indoors again is shake.  Violently.  The hellterror is a little less destructive:  in the first place she’s smaller, and in the second place her heart’s not really in it.  She doesn’t love getting wet but except when I am cruelly demanding that she stand there and have a CRAP she’s not hugely fussed about the water falling from the heavy grey louring hanging overhead.*  ARRRRGH.  I’M TIRED OF THIS RAIN.  I WANT IT TO GO AWAY.

We aren’t in a flood area (yet) and I don’t think anyone’s been evacuated from around here but if the rain doesn’t stop it’s going to happen.  Our little river is running pretty much level with its built up and buttressed banks, and in places it has broken over.  Well, in more places.  I was complaining about carrying Chaos through/over a river-path lake a week or so ago.  There’s a whole section of the standard river path that is now only passable in waders.  If you’re short, water wings.  It’s harder either to get into or out of bed in this weather:  into because schlepping way too much stuff back to the cottage** and the final hellhound hurtle must be faced first, and out should be obvious even to normal people who keep normal hours and have normal jobs.

Mind you, contemplating purchasing snorkelling gear as adjunct to going out one’s front door is not delightful, but it still beats what’s going on in a lot of America right now.  And it boggles my mind that the same storm that provided Atlanta with its first snow in eighty years is burying both my friends in the Midwest and also where I used to live in Maine.

I was sitting by the Aga in my dressing gown this morning*** staring at the driving rain and wondering how much longer the hellhounds would hold out† when Pooka chirruped.  Laconic text from Southdowner, going back to Birmingham from Christmas on the south coast with her family, could she drop by?  OF COURSE.  —Looks anxiously at hellterror.  Don’t rend her flesh or pee on her shoes or anything, okay?

I knew it was going to go pear-shaped because I did finally get my assortment of four-footed companions outdoors.  It teemed down on the poor hellhounds who, even in their raincoats, straggled along humpy-backed and cranky.  But it half cleared off for the hellterror . . . and we had a really unusually good hurtle where she came when she was called and didn’t hit the end of her lead (much) and (mostly) trotted beside me on a (mostly) loose lead when I said ‘walk’.

But . . . my ears aren’t burning so I assume Southdowner didn’t get home and immediately ring up Olivia and start telling her everything I’m doing wrong.  She was very complimentary about what a little stunner†† Pavlova is growing into†††, although that’s just genes and dog food and nothing to do with me.  But Pav did not pee on her shoes or sink her teeth in her hand, not only because Southdowner knows how to deal with young canine mania.  She also said the hellhounds were doing very well, considering, and were less stressed about the entire destruction of life as they knew it than she was expecting to see.‡  And she gave me some more training stuff to do with Pav‡‡ and gave us both CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.  Pav’s is a hollow knobbly object with a hole in one end, and you put food inside and roll it a few times so a few bits of kibble fall out to get the puppy’s attention‡‡‡ and then . . . stand back.  Now, if I could find the frelling instruction manual/CD for my frelling little video camera. . . .

* * *

* Also when she first gets indoors she’s SO EXCITED about the prospect of either foooooood or hellhounds, or, ideally, both, that mere personal wetness doesn’t really register.^

^ And yes, I still have one of the old fleece-lined raincoats from the hellhounds’ puppyhood.+  But I’m not expecting a hellterror to need it.  If it turns sleety-cold—or she starts doing misery that isn’t for effect—I’ll think again.

+ Very long term blog readers with excellent memories may remember that the second one went to Mike.

** Because I am hopelessly disorganised and I don’t know what I’m going to need either end, okay?  Next question.

*** Late morning.  Very late morning.  Like maybe early afternoon.  It’s both a good and a bad thing that Astarte’s external keyboard means I don’t have to go to my desk to work.  More range and availability for work:  good.^  Difficulty in taking anything I do on Astarte seriously:  bad.  Maybe I just need more practise.

^ The old pencil and legal pad thing was simple and barring letting yourself run out of ink or paper, pretty nearly foolproof.

† I’d managed to get the hellterror out during a break in the downpour long enough to make her crap and had sedated her with breakfast.  Although food doesn’t sedate the hellterror, but she is growing resigned to the fact that I expect her to behave like it does.  After mealtimes tends to be when she gets her most serious gnawing done.

†† Especially when she head-butts you

††† She said that she’s SMALLER than the two white puppies.  That the two tricolour girls are slightly smaller and the whites are slightly bigger.  The other tricolour is in London but the two whites have stayed in the Birmingham area and Southdowner as Roving Dog Behaviourist and Bullie Specialist has stayed in touch with all of them.  Croissant’s owner is a long-time bullie owner and one of the gang, but I don’t know about the other two.  Fruitcake is growing up to be something of an amiable lump, but Scone, aka 666, is extremely bright, and is already coming to Southdowner for remedial training.  Southdowner looooooves her.  Hee hee hee hee.  It wouldn’t surprise me at all if . . . mmmph.

‡ I may even, as a result of a text conversation Southdowner and I had a few days ago after my all I want for Christmas post, be getting somewhere with convincing Pav that leaping on Chaos is counterproductive.  But we were talking about Life with Dogs and . . . I have such an advantage, just being here all the time.  Tales of a Dog Behaviourist will curl your hair^.  But the whole bullie thing . . . in the first place, as I keep saying, my Pav’s not a hellterror at all, she’s a mutant with a bullie-shaped head.  As hellterrors go, she’s very mellow, and as I also keep saying, she’s no worse than any other puppy I’ve had . . . different but not really any more insane.  But some of that is just . . . I’m here all the time.  Things don’t get out of hand because I can squash them before they become things.  And dogs are pack animals.  They’re happier hanging out with their pack.^^  Even if the tyrannical pack leader occasionally introduces a new associate without having consulted senior members first.

^ without benefit of monsoon

^^ Southdowner said, so, you’re not planning on asking me to take her back to Olivia?  Try it and you will bleed, I said.

‡‡ And did not say, You haven’t done what?  You have done what?

‡‡‡ I had an earlier version of one of these for the hellhounds too and they looked at it, and looked at the bits of kibble falling out of it, and looked at me politely . . . and went back to whatever they were doing.

Merry/Happy Christmas

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS  MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS

 

TREEEEEEEEEEE

MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS OH DUCK AND CHAMPAGNE AND BRUSSELS SPROUTS AND CHESTNUTS AND CHAMPAGNE AND CHRISTMAS PUDDING AND BRANDY BUTTER AND CHAMPAGNE OH

I asked for this, and Peter consulted Oisin about which one to get, and now Oisin is going to go through it and pick out the 50 or 100 most often sung and I’m going to LEARN THEM. (Tunes are mostly easy. Not as appalling as it sounds.) If I’m going to make a noise in church I want to make the RIGHT noise. I’ll recognise a few right noises as herein described . . . but not very many.

Although I did lie on the sofa covered with hellhounds (hellterror grumbling in her crate:  she’s still not too up on the concept of lying quietly in heaps) and sang carols out of my new hymnal while Peter took a break from present-tearing-into to attend to the DUCK.

MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERRY CHRISTMAS HAPPY CHRISTMAS

::falls down laughing::

Someone sent me this with a note saying, I saw this and I had to* . . . Eat your hearts out, Southdowner and Olivia!!!!!**

MERRY CHRISTMAS! HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

* * *

* I thought it was going to be roses.

** Now I really am going to have to learn to knit socks.  On circulars or DPNs.  Because clearly that’s what will fit.  And it’s much too cute not to be a knitting bag, right?

Evolution of a Christmas tree

 

It’s been Christmas for several hours.  HAPPY CHRISTMAS.  But I haven’t got to bed yet so as far as I’m concerned it’s still Christmas Eve.*

Christmas tree at 6 pm Christmas Eve

Peter was doing extremely well.   I’d only got it out of Third House’s attic and brought it down to the mews at about 3:30.  And fed my assortment of creatures lunch [sic], bolted a few olives and yesterday’s brussels sprouts and hared off to ring bells at Forza for the crib service.    I came home via Third House again to get the rest of the stuff to, you know, decorate the tree.  There wasn’t room first run, with a car full of critters.

Stage Two.

Okay.  Tree’s up.  Now I wrap the stem/trunk/knobbly plastic central column with tinsel.  This hides the strange bare patches in real trees and the equally strange green tape used to hold fake trees together.  Also, I like tinsel.

Lotsa stuff. You want lotsa stuff to hang on your tree.

And yes, that’s dinner in a bowl on the right with chopsticks across it.

More stuff. Even more stuff.

And the next course of dinner on the table on the right.

Enough! It’s enough! I want to go to BED!

 

Between previous photo and this one there were three hurtles–one long hellhound and two short hellterror–plus midnight mass.   With lots more carols.  I’ve found that the answer to my ME-related inability to stand for very long is to sit in the back row and stand behind my chair and then lean on its back.  This frees up all those tight little anxiety cells so you can SING LOUDER.  During the passing-the-peace-around one of my neighbours said, I’m enjoying your singing.  –I’m not sure if this might be Britspeak for shut up, okay?  You’re bothering me.

Hellterror barricade.

The tree’s on a table this year in the fond belief that we can keep her off it.  But for the early everything-all-over-the-floor stages a lack of hellterror is critical.  That is in fact her crate on the left covered in an orange blanket (the green towel is covering the hole in the orange blanket).**  When she barks she gets her curtains closed.  She was barking at the thunder.  We’ve been having thunder, lightning, hail, and torrential rain.  Joy.  I keep reminding myself I’d rather have rain than snow–in a country where no one knows how to deal with snow–but I think less rain might be, you know, possible.   It would certainly be desirable.

Meanwhile I’m getting tired of climbing over the sofa.

And yes, of course I decorated the back of the tree too.

What kind of a cheesy scuzzball do you think I am?  I admit that if I didn’t have to have bells if there are bells to be had, I would bag the horrible little ropes of bells which TANGLE LIKE A !”£$%^&*(!!!!!!.  Which is why we don’t have lights.  Peter used to put the lights up and he hates lights . . . because of the whole untangling thing.  And I’m not going there.  I have enough things to melt down over.  Including, once a year, my two ropes of decorative mini-bells.

Our pair of Mythopoeic Fantasy Award lions made festive.

I haven’t finished draping the rest of the sitting room in tinsel yet.  TOMORROW.  I CAN DO IT TOMORROW.  I mean . . . later today.***

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

* * *

*All right, it’s Christmas and Christmas Eve.  I went to Midnight Mass–which is at 11:30–but the vicar said, yo, let me be the first to wish you Happy Christmas, as the big hand rolled past the twelve.  Which was still several hours ago.

** Behind the crate you can see a chair with presents on it.  Yes.  Other people get their presents wrapped before the last minute.  Before after the last minute.  Sigh.

*** It’s almost time for the monks’ morning prayer.  Hmmmm.  No, McKinley, get a grip, you have PRESENTS TO WRAP.  And you’ll enjoy the duck and champagne and mince pies and brandy butter more if you’ve had some sleep. . . .

Life on more than one level

 

All I want for Christmas is that my assortment of hellcritters stop acting like morons about each other.  Arrrrrgh.  The people at the pet shop say it took (variously) six or nine months for their old dog to get used to their young one.  NINE MONTHS?  Oh . . . dear.  I tell myself that at least the hellhounds have offered no violence to the hellterror—there are all these great stories people are eager to tell you about prying the puppy back out of the gullet of the old dog and how the bloodstains on the carpet have never come out—but there’s precious little evidence of an evolution of relationship going on chez McKinley-Dickinson.  Darkness still barks any time she’s running around loose, and gets positively frenzied if Chaos decides to go relate—and paaaaaaaanics if she comes anywhere near him.  He still bolts for the stairs as retreat of choice, but this isn’t going to work much longer.  She can now climb stairs but she’s not very good at it, so I can grab her before she gets very far—my style of puppy-raising is rather labour-intensive—I’m also waiting for the Puppy May Be Permitted to Climb Stairs release from Southdowner.  The stairs up to the front door of the cottage are little low things* and I have to snatch her up QUICKLY on our way back from a puppy hurtle because she knows there will be FOOOOOOOD as soon as we get inside.  But the indoor stairs at the cottage are tall, and turn 180° in about as much space as a twist of yarn and she hasn’t sussed them out yet.  But if she ever stood still you could see her legs growing longer and one of these days I will have stopped to pull dog hair out of my mouth and when I look up she’ll be at the top of the stairs.  Possibly I will be galvanised into rapid rearguard action by the screams of Darkness trapped.

But Chaos, while he is at least willing to engage the hellterror, is chiefly interested in her butt, and that has GOT VERY OLD.  MOVE ON, HONEY, MOVE ON.  And she will not learn that he doesn’t like being bounced on, and cannot resist trying to hook her forelegs either over or around his neck so she can suck on his face which he does not appreciate either.**  DOMESTIC ANIMALS.  WHOSE IDEA WAS DOMESTIC ANIMALS?  I’d like to have a little chat with that bright spark 40,000 years ago who thought that roast wolf-cub was a short-sighted use of resources.

Domestic animals do however serve to ground you.  I do not recommend the experience of your first Christmas as a Christian, at least not if you went the road to Damascus route and you’re old.  I feel like I’m made of oatmeal and wet string.***  I went back to the monks last night and sitting quietly in the twilight before the psalm-chant started was a little comforting.†  I went to two carol services today, one at Aloysius’ church†† and took Peter to one at Tabitha’s church.  I cried through the first one—fortunately I’d had the sense to sit in the back, because I suspected I might kind of lose it—you make very strange noises if you try to sing while you’re crying—and then both Aloysius and Osbert, the vicar, were at the door and you couldn’t escape without speaking to them first.  Maybe my red jeans made it look like my eyes were just reflecting their colour.  Snivel.

Aloysius and I have been pelting emails back and forth:  he suggests stuff for me to read and then I go what? †††  I mean, of course there’s going to be amazing amounts of stuff out there about a popular 2000-year-old religion but . . . golly.  And to the extent that I come from anywhere, I come, a little, from Zen:  I may have told you already that during one of the roughest periods of my life I was getting up at 5 am‡ to sit zazen with the local community.  There’s a meditative tradition in Christianity as well, which I knew nothing about.  I was gerbilling on in my last email about book tours—I thought I’d already told him what I did for a living—and being an introvert, and today he said:  I googled you.  You’re famous.  Oh.  Um.  Well.  But I went home to three hellcritters who chiefly wanted hurtling and attention—I’ll give you famous, what do you mean you don’t have TIME for a sofa?—and then Peter and I shot off to Tabitha’s gigantic, totally packed-out church, where I had to drop Peter at the door and go on a quest for a parking space . . . in Dorset.  It was still a no room at the inn experience:  we were out in the hall with the video link and I shamelessly brought out my knitting.  At least I didn’t cry.  Much.

I suppose I’d better get the tree and the Christmas stuff down from Third House’s attic tomorrow, hadn’t I?  And maybe wrap some presents?  Although I’d better also make time for a sofa.  Critters aren’t big into human religious ritual.  Hey, we’re performing our function (they say).  Remember?  We’re grounding you in a reality of refilling water dishes and picking up crap and dropping chicken crumbs for us to cruise for.

* * *

* For which I’m very grateful every time I take delivery on twenty-seven kilograms of the gold-plated kibble hellhounds get for their final meal—27 kilos being the cut-off point for free delivery.  Remember I’ve said that I can carry Chaos around if I have to, who is a pound or two under forty (eighteen kilos) but Darkness, who several pounds over, is a strain?  Yes.  Maybe I should be glad that they’re not big supper eaters.  But the delivery man pretty well invariably comes when I’m not there, which means he leaves the parcel behind the greenhouse gate.  And I get to schlep it down the TERRIFYINGLY steep greenhouse steps . . . and then groan my way up the cottage stairs which are at least short, even if there are ninety-four of them.

** I see teenage couples behaving a lot like this.  He’s a little old for her though.

*** How am I going to survive Easter?  I know the point is he rose from the dead, but . . .

† Although what is more comforting is that the monks’ rubber soles squeak on the floor, and sometimes one of them may SNEEZE AND BLOW HIS NOSE.  HOOOOOOOONK.

†† I know it needs a name.  But it has to be the right name.  There are a lot of female saints out there.  I haven’t found the right one yet.  Women’s history being what it is they were mostly abbesses or martyred.  Or both.  For Aloysius’ church I want one with a story.

††† Hands up anyone who knows what Hesychasm is without googling it.

‡ No, really.

KES, 59

FIFTY NINE

 

I finished stuffing the odds and ends of my brief sojourn at the Friendly Campfire into plastic bags and my knapsack.  I would not grieve the artwork in cabin seven.  Why didn’t Serena put some of her stuff on the walls?  People might stay longer.  Although it might be a little like a Nobel prize winner being asked to write a jingle for a toothpaste commercial.  I wondered what Jan was like.  That Serena liked him was in his favor.  That he had dogs was probably in his favor.  That the neon campfires were his idea was not.

I put the glamorous red leather lead back on Sid and looped the handle over the bathroom door knob.  This was in theory so I could leave the cabin door open while I schlepped my gear out to the van without worrying what she was getting up to. I hoped this would not include chewing the corner off the bathroom door, since I hadn’t bought her any dog toys yet, while I was preoccupied with the tiresome limitations of vehicular three-dimensional space.  Of course she might well prefer the corners of bathroom doors even after I bought her some dog toys.  Some one or ones of Mom’s Ghastlies had chewed through the back legs of the living-room sofa without anyone noticing.  It went down, and over, on Thanksgiving, with a crash that had the downstairs neighbors howling for our blood, when Uncle Throgmorton sat down next to Aunt Daphne and Cousin Agatha.  My parents and I tend toward the lanky. The Throgmorton end of the family are more well-nourished.  I laughed till I was sick, and was sent to my room.  Unfortunately they let me out again later.  I could leave most of the shopping bags where they were to come out tonight with Merry, although the apples and the 127.9% minimum cocoa solids organic dark chocolate bars clearly had to come now to sustain me through the coming trials of box-hauling.   I brought in a couple of book boxes to make room on the van’s passenger seat.  I tried not to think about how much they weighed carrying them up the few short steps to cabin seven.  The second one popped open as I set it (laboriously) on the floor.  LEST DARKNESS FALL and THE CANTERBURY TALES were on top.  I have catholic tastes.

Sid was watching me a little too closely, but I didn’t see any splinters sticking out of her mouth.  The door was probably plastic anyway.  “Dog toys,” I said.  “With the dog food and the brush.  I promise.”  The doors at Rose Manor, I was reasonably sure, were wood.

The doors.  At Rose Manor.  The keys.  Oh black widow spiders and large rodents, I had to stop by Homeric Homes and pick up the keys.  And I had a remedial dog problem.  I stared blankly into space for a moment, and then pulled out my phone.  “Eats,” said Bridget’s voice.

“Um,” I said, reverting to my standard phone persona.

“Oh, hi,” said Bridget immediately.  “I understand you have an inadvertent dog.  Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” I said.  “I was told there was cheering.  The adrenaline buzz in my ears meant that it was hard to hear much.”

“We’re all really glad the Phantom has a home.  Or has met her match, depending on how you want to look at it.”

“I’m not sure she’s met her match,” I said, eyeing my dog, who was having another scratch.  I hoped no one at the lab had got the new vat of Fleawhacker™ serum mixed up with the experimental let’s-party flea pheromones.  “Did Callie tell you about her previous owner?”

“Ah,” said Bridget.  “Well, let’s pretend she didn’t, because you’re new, and you should probably be broken in gently to the truth about small-town gossip.”

“Manhattan is just a lot of small towns shoved up against each other,” I said.  “Okay.  I won’t mention the broken leg and the devil dog.”

“Devil dog?” said Bridget.  “Ooh.  Exciting.  I missed that part.”

“Yeah.  Her previous owner seriously doesn’t want her back.”

“She doesn’t deserve her.” There was a noise in the restaurant and Bridget said away from the phone, “I can see you fine.  You’re going to give yourself repetitive stress injury and what if your face froze like that?”  She said to me, “I assume you need something.  I should to be working.”

“Yes.  Sorry.  Um.  I have to pick up the keys to my new house and—”

I didn’t get any farther because Bridget started to laugh.  “You’re more fun to watch than the TV.  No, you’re right, Homeric Homes is the clean and tidy end and Sally shouldn’t see the devil dog till she’s had a bath.  Maybe two baths.  Sure, bring her back to the courtyard again on your way and I’ll take my break early.”

“You’re a star,” I said.

“I know,” she said, and hung up.

 

Thrilling thrilling thrilling news

 

Never mind KHANS and SHADOWS and outtake stories to PEGASUS* . . . I may FINALLY have found a puppy for Pavlova to play with.  I feel as if the pavements are usually crawling with puppies . . . till I brought my clearly dangerous ENGLISH BULL TERRIER puppy home and now of course anyone sees us coming picks up precious Poopsie and runs in the opposite direction.**  Of the two puppies I had hoped I kind of had lined up for Pav duty, one of them is, thanks to less than resolute handling by his humans, turning into the brand of terror that gives terrors a bad name to people like me, and the other one . . . is twice Pav’s size and a WIMP.  Sigh.  He’s apparently heard that bullies inherited the biological niche vacated by sabre-toothed tigers a few millennia ago and is taking no chances.

But TODAY we met . . . well, it’s a Labrador, but it’s a cute Labrador, and not all Labs are ghastly, just most of them,*** and the one these people had before this one was smallish and gentle and looked like a Labrador instead of like a mutant Mack truck.  I’ve seen it around a few times previously but never when I had Pavlova with me.  But TODAY . . . it was pretty much a joke since we were in the churchyard and couldn’t let them off lead, although Pav at least was on her (baby-length) extending lead which gave her a little space for hucklebutting, which she desperately wanted to do.  The woman with the Lab kept saying, she’s so tolerant!, which may be the first time in the history of domesticated canines that that adjective has ever been applied to a bullie, although all it seemed to me was happening was that two puppies were having a heck of a time with each other.  The Lab’s a little bigger, but I think she’s also a little younger.  I said, hopefully, on parting, that perhaps we could get together in a garden with a gate and let them go for it some time.  Oh yes, said the woman.

Fingers crossed.

* * *

* And thank you for all the suggestions, including all you renegades contacting me by email.^  Thank you in particular for adhering to the spirit of the ‘twenty words or less’.  Of course as I write this I will hear an email ‘ping’ and when I check on it in the middle of some sentence I can’t think of how to end it will turn out to be a 3500-word outline of PEG II (since I’m obviously having trouble left to myself) including a choice of three possible outtake short stories, each painstakingly described in 500 words per, and including characters I’ve never heard of with odd names like Mary and John and a disco in the Caves.

But it seems to me one of the good things that has come out of the internet is some loss of the bad sort of innocence.  I get fewer we-are-twin-souls letters than I used to—and fewer suggestions that if I write up your great idea you’ll split it 60/40 with me—I get the 40%, which is generous really because of course the idea is the hard part and writing it up is just clerical.  Or maybe it’s that this blog radiates CRANKY and other, sweeter-natured authors are getting all the undesirables who used to mistake me for a kindly, compassionate human being.^^

^ Which is fine, by the way.  So long as you’re not telling me you’re coming to England to discuss the details of your fabulous ideas with me in person and can I put you up?, since you’re short of funds till DreamWorks buys our project, oh, and you’re allergic to dogs.

^^ I do still get the occasional You Arrogant Slime, I Have Never Read Anything So Heinously Self Absorbed as your blog/web site/that interview with Terminal Geek Knitting Magazine and I Will Never Read Any of Your Books Again,+ but I’m getting fewer of them. ++

+ Okay.  Whatever, but I think you should get out more.  Terminal Geek Knitting is pretty extreme.

++ I’m even getting fewer of the You Should Be Grateful to Your Readers (ie Instead of Making Them Pay for What You Do) to which my response has for some time been, very nice for those of you with a trust fund.  But these people have fallen silent probably only because they’re downloading pirate copies.  Sigh.

** Every time I’ve had a puppy—since the monster Alsatian of my childhood—I’ve wondered how people with giant-breed puppies cope.  Puppies aren’t supposed to go up and down stairs, for example.^  So, you have a Mastiff or a Great Dane and you live at the top of a flight of stairs?  On a cul de sac in a small town in Hampshire, England, say.  Does this mean I can only have small-to-medium, carryable dogs unless I move house?^^  I really don’t want to think about a flight-long ramp, although Atlas could probably figure one out.  And due to the natural frenzy level of a hellterror and the delicate sensibilities of hellhounds and hellgoddess, Pavlova spends a lot of her time crated^^^ and when I let her out I tend first to tuck her under my arm# and get her to the door as quickly as possible just in case the fervour of freedom puts undue pressure on her bladder.  Also, the initial joy-of-life hucklebutting is perhaps better worn off outdoors leaping tall buildings at a single bound.  When she comes indoors again she is less likely to jump on the kitchen table—but she’s a lot shorter than a Great Dane.  There’s less of her to have to repel.  And we’re having some altercations about STAYING OFF THE SOFA.

^ Southdowner or Olivia, WHEN CAN PAV FRELLING DO HER OWN STAIRS?  She can already get up a few stairs if I don’t nail her fast enough, especially if there’s a hellhound looking down at her from the top, although she still doesn’t like going down stairs and there’s enough of a hesitation for me to nab her.

^^ Or relocate headquarters to Third House.

^^^ Although the crate sits literally between the hellhounds and me, so she’s in the thick of things, and I’m sure there’s great entertainment value in watching me struggle for dominance over my laptop.  That could indeed explain a lot.  Hellcritters are all exchanging glances that mean ‘She can’t even control her laptop.  We certainly don’t have to pay a lot of attention.’+

+ Although having said that . . . I was starting to worry about getting NOWHERE with the walking quietly on loose lead trick, which is one of those necessary bits of training to have a dog that’s nice to have around, and Southdowner suggested a ‘halti’ harness http://www.petplanet.co.uk/product.asp?dept_id=483&pf_id=4454&co=fr&gclid=CKWsseXwrLQCFcbLtAodSWgALg

So yesterday we went into the pet shop and ordered one, and coming away from the pet shop yesterday . . . I got my first few steps of loose lead ‘walk’.  Today we shared a few more.  YAAAAAAAY.  Of course the moment I cancel my order she’ll revert to mini-bull-dozer.

But the thing that absolutely boggles my tiny mind is that she now almost reliably sits AND WAITS TO BE RELEASED while I scatter food on the floor in front of her.  We’re still negotiating ‘down’ a bit.  She lies down pretty well, but is inclined to slither around on her belly after bits of kibble that may have escaped.

# Yup.  I can still do that.  But it gets more exciting every day.  She has a spine like a bungie cord.  She can beat you to death with her tail while wrapping her forelegs around your neck the better to cover your face with kisses.

*** I don’t like terrors either.

If . . .

 

If . . . IF, IF. . . Merrilee is very emphatic about the if, that I make it CLEAR I am not PROMISING ANYTHING . . .

I AM NOT PROMISING ANYTHING.

But if . . . if I were going to write an outtake short story from/about/around/beside PEGASUS, who or what, any of you who read this blog and feel like signing onto the forum to answer, would you like it to be about?  IN TWENTY WORDS OR LESS.

This is a warning as emphatic as Merrilee’s if.  I only want the twenty words or less version.  I’m not very biddable at the best of times (ask anyone who has ever tried to get a short story out of me, including my husband), and anything anyone suggests in any detail I will immediately rebound off of and head out into some other direction entirely.  Sometimes this is because I am a cranky cow, but mostly it’s just because that’s the way suggestions go with me.  Or go away with me.  Plus that I’m allergic to fanfic and paranoid about copyright.

But . . . it’s going to be a long time till PEG II.  (Note that I’m still wrestling with final editorial comments on SHADOWS right now and then there will be copyediting and screaming.  And book jacket art and nervous breakdowns.  And advertising schedules and throwing large heavy objects out of windows.  Also there’s that short Other Thing I may have mentioned working on—as well as the ongoing that is KES.  But I’m hoping to restart PEG II in February.  I’m hoping that more of the first version will be usable than I think but . . . well, I’ll see.  In February.)

And an outtake short story might put us all back in the mood.  Including me.

So.  What, off the tops of your heads, do you think you would like—off the tops of your heads, do you think you might like to hear more about?  I have a few ideas.  (I always have a few ideas.  Ideas have never been the problem.)  Ebon’s childhood?  Ahathin’s apprenticeship?  Niahi?  Hibeehea?  Lrrianay and Aliaalia’s courtship?  I can’t tell you much about Corone and Eliona’s, there’s more of it in PEG II—and I don’t think I can tell you anything about Redfora and Oraan yet because they’ll be important later.  I could tell you about Eliona and her sisters growing up—a sort of SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS with swords and teeth.  Or about Erisika, the cabinet-maker’s daughter who won the battle, saved the kingdom and married the king. Or maybe Balsin and Viktur and Gandam, and Sinsi, and Fralialal, where it all began?

Or something—or someone—else entirely?

Not an optimum day

 

In theory I’m going to a concert tomorrow night.  In practise . . . not.

In the first place I’m a disorganised moron who tends to take each day as it comes only when it comes, with the punch in the ribs or the kick behind the knee or the inconveniently located banana skin.  Very slightly in my defense, this concert was booked months ago, before Pav was a twinkle in Lavvy’s eye.  But I hadn’t sat down to think about the geometry of puppy sphincter control over against time, mileage, and musical sets.  I know how far away Smite-the-infidels* is.  I just hadn’t thought about it.

So a couple of nights ago I thought about it.  Which is to say I asked Fiona, who would be driving, how long we’d be gone.  Five or six hours, she said.  Better assume six.

SIX HOURS? . . . frell.

And Mavis, my dog-minder, is tactlessly going to a Christmas party tomorrow night.  She has a nerve.  We did discuss the possibility of her coming round just long enough to put Pav in the back garden—but you don’t actually want to wrestle an increasingly heavy and muscular puppy out of a table-high crate and around the tricky corner between the door of the crate and the tallboy** in your taffeta and patent leather with the rhinestone heels.  If it were a simple matter of escorting a polite, subdued, floor-level creature from bed to kitchen door and back again there are several people I could ask to do it.  But even fleeting contact with Pavlova tends to be a bit of an adventure.

She might last six hours.  Might.  But I really really really don’t want to force her to break training when she’s been dry now for weeks.  Even if we do have a slight issue about the other thing.

Fiona suggested that we could smuggle her into the concert.  I’m sure Pav would be totally fine with this and would have eaten ice-creams during the interval just like everyone else in the audience but me.  But I’m not sure she would fit even on both Fiona’s and my laps together, and that’s aside from the ‘smuggling’ part.

So I was still grappling with my latest failure to address reality yesterday afternoon on the second hellhound hurtle when . . . Darkness suddenly produced raging-waterfall squirts.  Two or three times.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGHHHH.

Yesterday evening I spent poking Ars Alb*** into Darkness.  He still wanted both dinner and supper, which is excellent as far as it goes, and he was OUTRAGED by the half rations, especially because they were ALL MUSHY . . . but today he had colic and was never going to eat again, and he hoped I understood that.†

Sooooooo I spent this morning†† poking repeated doses of a different homeopathic remedy††† into Darkness and . . . he ate his lunch.  And he crapped solid.  YAAAAAAAAAAY.

Whereupon I went off in the pouring rain—yes, we’re back to pouring rain‡—to ring one of the several carol services at Forza.  There were about ninety-six of us so I wouldn’t have needed to go but I’m into brownie points and of course I brought my knitting.  And because it’s good people management to let the duffers ring even when you’d rather they’d stayed home, I rang on ninety-six several times and screwed it up every time.  I CANNOT COUNT THAT HIGH.  Let alone back down again.  Wait, what comes after thirty-two?  No, no, in the other direction.  Plus I got stuck on the two the first time, and the problem with the abbey’s littlest bells is that they’re really little and the sheer physics of little bells is different—their turning radius is smaller and, crucially, the weight of the rope is a much bigger percentage of their weight than it is on a bigger bell.  Handling little bells is a different skill.  One that I haven’t got.  Especially when I’m trying to keep my place in a row of ninety-six other bongs.  Scary Man afterward even acknowledged that the two is a trifle possessed by demons—those were perhaps not his exact words—but the point is that crankiness in a little bell, which already handles differently, is much more confounding to the stupid (ringer) than minor waywardness is in an ordinary-middling sized bell.

But on the way out . . . the service was starting, and part of the centuries-long route in and out of our eyrie is an open gallery where you look down over the area where the priests and choir and various admin assemble before they file statelily into the, you know, whatsit (my knowledge of church architecture is somewhat less than minimal) for the service itself.  The parade had queued itself up but hadn’t started moving yet, so you’re looking down into this hushed twilight sea of white cassocks and candleflames and rising out of this, suddenly, is the perfect voice of one choirboy.  Your hair totally stands on end.  And right there it was worth schlepping in in the pouring rain to ring (badly).  It was probably even worth months of toiling up those deeply and irregularly worn, dingleblasted and NEVER BUILT FOR HUMANS IN THE FIRST PLACE stairs . . . to have been standing in the gallery for those first few solo notes.‡‡

* * *

* The old town is dominated by a particularly fierce cathedral.  It was always coming after me when I was a heathen.  This won’t have changed.  But it’ll know my name now.

** It’s not going to be her sheer weight that forces me to figure out how to put the crate down on floor level and facing in.  It’s getting her around that corner, especially in the morning when she’s Very Glad to See You.

*** Arsenicum Album.  Yes, white arsenic.  Classic (homeopathic) remedy for eating something you shouldn’t’ve, including all those travellers’-trots situations.^  It doesn’t work for everybody but it (usually) works on Darkness when he’s managed to eat the end of someone’s discarded sandwich because I didn’t see him try it.  But it usually takes a while, I assume because Ars Alb doesn’t really address the underlying cereal-grain allergy, it’s just shortening and alleviating the duration of the result.  So you do have to keep redosing.

^ I don’t leave home without it.  I prefer, however, just not leaving home.

† Trust me, the normal treatment regime of No Food Whatsoever for 24 hours after severe diarrhoea is worse with the hellhounds than the likelihood of colic if I can keep them eating.

†† Erm.  What passes in my life for morning.

††† Which I’m not telling you the name of because I’m not sure where the lines of responsibility lie.  Ars Alb for digestive upset after injudicious eating is one of the most basic first-aid treatments and a useful thing to try even if the only other thing you know about homeopathy is arnica for bruising.  The remedy I usually give Darkness for what I’m calling colic^ is based slightly more my knowledge of my individual dog rather than the fact that his guts are making more noise than me practising Dido’s Lament.  It’s not necessarily the remedy to grab automatically if you are similarly afflicted.

^ Sorry.  Regular blog readers have heard all this before.  Homeopathic prescribing is based on what’s happening, and never mind the labels.  So three people could have ‘flu’ but they would be given three different remedies because one of them is suffering worst with a headache and runny nose, one of them with a fever and an upset stomach and one of them with coughing and wheezing.

‡ It is probably not suitable for an essentially family blog to describe the strategies of a hellterror owner burdened with a puppy who doesn’t like either rain or crapping.  I can think of tightrope-dancing adventures I would prefer.

‡‡ Scary Man was leaving right behind me and as I showed an inclination to linger by the staff side door where you could hear the choir he said, I can let you in that way if you like, and he did.  I’d already decided I wasn’t going to go to the service—one of the aspects of this first Christmas as a Christian is how terribly, totteringly easily I overwhelm and I didn’t think I could deal with an abbey full to its expansive brim of carol-service attendees, most of whom go to church once a year to sing carols, you know?  So I hid behind a pillar in an alcove and listened to the music for a while, and the silence inside the music, and then I crept away again.  What I need is to go off to my abbey, the little one with monks, and sit in that chapel.  In the full drowning silence.

 

KES, 58

 

FIFTY EIGHT

 

I know irony when I hear it.  “She was lying on the doorstep here when you dropped me off last night!” I said.  “I didn’t mean to get a dog yet!”

Sid, apparently believing that she had performed her function, sat down and had a scratch.  I could feel Serena stiffening in the doorway.  The carpet, foresightfully tweedy to disguise mystery stains, didn’t reveal any small leaping things trying to escape the recent assault of Fleawhacker™.  This was okay as far as it went, but my middle-aged eyes had spent too much time staring at a computer screen and if it didn’t have pixels, they were slow to react.  Sid, possibly responding to the atmosphere, lay down again in the New York City library lion pose but I thought it was more of a ‘I’m small and harmless’ choice than a ‘I’ll just have a little rest till something else happens, preferably something including cheese.’  She wasn’t bolting out the open door or looking for windows to jump out of though.  That was good.  Maybe she was intimidated by Merry’s grin.

“I especially didn’t mean to get a dog that—er—needs serious remedial work.  The vet says she needs to gain about half her present body weight.  Her vertebrae are like—fists.”  I looked at my dog-stroking hands.  “And I’m worried about the black widow spiders too.  I want her presentable before Hayley comes round to see how I’m settling in.  Rose Manor’s landlord allows pets but there are probably limits.”

I could hear Serena not saying anything.  She might not be an animal person.  Not everyone was.  And I hadn’t seen any bowls in the corner of her kitchen saying ‘cat’ or ‘dog’.  Or ‘megatherium.’

“I want a cat and Gus wants a dog,” she said as if reading my mind.  “We’ve compromised so far by having neither.  I figure I’ve held out this long, he goes to college in less than three years.”

I looked at my dog.  “Canary.  Chinchilla.  Siamese fighting fish.”

“Don’t have this conversation with Gus on Sunday, okay?” said Serena.  “It’s going to be bad enough you’ve got a dog.  I swear every person in Jan’s family has about twelve dogs, and there are always dogs hanging out at Mike’s garage, but only one of Gus’ regular clients has a dog at the moment and it’s kind of a dumb dog.  Three years can be a long time.”  Serena brooded.  “Supposing Gus goes to college.  He may go straight into idiosyncratic computer entrepreneurship.”

I blocked the thought of the idiosyncratic computer entrepreneur I’d been married to for almost twenty years and who was responsible for railroading me into Mr W, even if he’d raised the settlement to cover Mr W’s bill without complaint.  I complained.  I didn’t want to take any more money off Gelasio than I could possibly help.  Although now I had an extra mouth to feed—an extra mouth that was attached to a body that needed to gain thirty-five pounds—I really needed to finish FLOWERHAIR FOUR.  I needed an ending to finish with however.  Maybe she could meet a forsoothly-speaking watermelon-shouldered black guy and adopt a dog.  I needed a bridge to FLOWERHAIR FIVE too.  New characters were good.  Wait, wasn’t life supposed to imitate art?

I’d pulled the curtains open before we’d left for breakfast and other adventures, and I could see my rose bush doing gentle calisthenics above the sill.  I winced.  What was the odd stolen rose-bush among ex-friends.  I hoped the fashionably understated pot she was in wasn’t Ming Dynasty.  No, Mr Diamond-Studded Shoelaces would have had handcuffs on me by now if it was anything more serious than cut rate Tiffany.  Although Gelasio would probably have been glad to give me a character reference for cluelessness about art if it turned out to be Ming, or Barbara Hepworth, if Barbara Hepworth had ever done flower pots.  My idea of great art was James McNeil Whistler.  Gelasio’s idea of great art was Mark Rothko.  I thought Mark Rothko would have made interesting bedsheets. Gelasio and I had disagreed vehemently about what to hang on the walls of our apartment.  Some things about my old life I didn’t miss at all.

“What do you think of Mark Rothko?” I said.

“What?” said Serena.  “Eh.  Good knitting patterns.  I made half a dozen Rothko pullovers a while back.  I like stripes and big geometric shapes.  In clothing.  Listen, I have to get back to the office.  Try to be discreet, please?  I’m not sure where all our visitors are, and the guy in cabin two is a regular and I really don’t want . . . never mind.  If I’d found her on my doorstep I’d have brought her in and fed her too.  Although I wouldn’t have allowed her on the bed till after the buzzcut and the fumigation.  See you.”

“Thanks,” I said to her retreating back, but I’m not sure she heard me.

The Real Story about Yesterday

 

Peter’s birthday, right?  And Georgiana was laying on a little tiny party-type lunch for her and Saxon and us and Nina and Ignatius.  Georgiana and Saxon live in a gorgeous open-plan flat on some piece of water or other at the south end of this island country;  the development used to be the world’s biggest assemblage of warehouses or something and they’ve been converted to flats with lots of open space and the big old weight-bearing beams left exposed.  You can go for a stroll along the waterfront with all these massive great stern-fronted buildings looming over you—but then there’ll be an abandoned pushchair with the kiddie and its minder frolicking at a little distance, or a dog being walked*, and you notice that some of that stern frontage is a coffee bar and there are houseplants in windows, and curtains not at all likely on a containment facility for bales of hay or rocket-launcher projectiles.

I don’t drive much—or anyway much farther than Forza in one direction and Tintinnabulation at the other**—and while I have driven to Georgiana’s flat I haven’t been reliably up to it lately.  So Nina and Ignatius were going to give us a lift.  There were complications:  Mavis, my dogminder, had a footy match for her sons in the afternoon, so any supernumerary hurtling she did would have to be early.  Hellhounds would last till we got back;  hellterror probably wouldn’t.  So I was taking the hellterror with us.  She would double as the live entertainment:  she was going to have a great time in Georgiana’s flat.  New hucklebutting records would be made.***

I overslept my alarm, of course†, and I was flying around cursing fate when the phone rang.  They’re running late, said Peter, and I said, GREAT.  I’m DELIGHTED.

But when I finally got to the mews, hellterror and crate included††, Nina and Ignatius’ car had its bonnet up, great racking billows of smoke and steam were waggling across the courtyard, and Ignatius was looking grim.  Peter said to me, We have a problem.  Ignatius doesn’t want to drive their car any farther (which looked totally sensible from where I was standing).  Can we take Wolfgang?

Blither blither blither, I said, because making up my mind on no sleep is one of the things I do best.  Um.  Yes, of course you can take Wolfgang.  But we’re not all going to fit.  The hellterror and I will stay home.†††

Which is what happened.  The hellhounds and I had a nap‡ folded up on the little cottage sofa and then I puttered around singing Christmas carols and doing stuff I never get around to doing‡‡.  Oh, and I texted Mavis explaining what hd hppnd & cld we cancel?  And she answered that of course we could cancel, not a problem—but her sons’ footy game had also been cancelled.  So she could have looked after the hellterror after all. . . . ‡‡‡

* * *

* Or possibly hurtled

** And Nadia at a kind of angle.  Today’s lesson was fascinating.  I’ll tell you about it later.

*** If we ever got indoors at all.  I might spend THE ENTIRE VISIT walking her around outdoors WAITING FOR HER TO EXCRETE.

† Mostly I find other people’s dreams TERMINALLY BORING but this one was so odd I thought I’d risk telling you.  Last night I dreamed that I was walking home in the dark and someone came up behind me and GAROTTED ME.  I went limp slightly before I didn’t have a choice, my assailant loosened the cord and I had just got my fingers under it and was kicking like fury when I woke up.  What?  Someone really doesn’t like my singing?  Oh, and I overslept my alarm today too.

†† And hellterror food, and an unbreakable bowl to feed her her lunch, because while we can probably borrow a water bowl, mealtime servings are never adequate and the dish takes the brunt of her dismay, extra bedding in case anything goes wrong, newspapers, paper towels and plastic bags ditto, bath towels in case she falls in a mud flat and comes out a new and interesting colour, a spare collar and lead in case anything else goes wrong, a selection of her current favourite toys, and sufficient heavy twine to tie all her little feet together and hang her from the ceiling if nothing else works.

††† As I say, making up my mind on no sleep is one of the things I do best.  But I don’t necessarily do it accurately.  It wasn’t till everyone was home again that Peter said that the crate might have fit in the boot.  Oh dear.  It might have, especially if we took lid off—Wolfgang is a hatchback, and has one of those fold-down shelf things over the boot.  But it probably wouldn’t have fit in lengthwise, and I wouldn’t have wanted her travelling any distance with the crate sideways to the motion of the car, which sounds pretty uncomfortable.  But what further occurred to me after it was too late is that Nina is as skinny as I am—we might conceivably have got the crate between us on the back seat without undue distress on anyone’s part.  And is it illegal to have a dog loose in your lap in a moving vehicle?  Taken apart—and the travelling crate comes to bits easily^—the crate would certainly have gone in the boot, and while all of Pav doesn’t really fit in my lap any more, she seems to like flopping over the edges, and I’m still bigger and stronger than she is.  For a few more weeks.

^ Too easily.  But that’s another story.

‡ With the view from the hellterror crate of this wicked indulgence carefully blocked.  Someone on the forum wondered what triple hurtling is going to be like.  Yes.  So do I.  Gloomily.  But I wonder even more if three hellcritters and I are ever going to be able to share a sofa without Major Suppression.  Lying on the sofa is supposed to be relaxing.

‡‡ Even cleaning the floor is mildly attractive when it feels somehow illicit.  And I don’t know but what I prefer it to sorting through bookshelves looking for stuff I can haul off to Oxfam to make room for the stuff that somehow keeps coming in.  My knitting shelves are out of control, I have a ridiculous number of books on conversational Japanese for someone who doesn’t really speak a word of it, and the latest are the books on Christian theology which are mounting up kinda fast.

‡‡‡ Although that would still have meant missing the hucklebutting derby.  But Peter came home bearing smoked salmon and champagne, so I don’t feel I missed much, and Nina and Ignatius limped home in their smoking car, their mechanic prostrated himself in apology today, and all appears to be well there too.