Robin McKinley's Blog, page 74

Dog days

 

The other kind of dog days:  the COLD dog days, where you lie around in a stupor of semi-congealed blood and frost-bitten brain cells rather than crushed to your hammock by sultriness and the weight of your chiffon Mother Hubbard.  It was seriously below zero last night, but the temperature creaked up enough* this afternoon for it to start raining, and the hellcritters and I were at the mews and all our rain kit was at the cottage arrrrrgh.  And the temperature is re-plunging even now, and at about the time hellcritters and I want to go home all horizontal surfaces between there and here will be sporting a jazzy veneer of smooth tranquil ice.  Maybe I’ll try to go home early tonight. . . .

But dog days should concern dogs.  Hellhounds and I had three classic encounters today.  The first was with the little old lady with the King Charles spaniel, who screams if it gets too close to the hellhounds.  The little old lady screams, that is.  First time this happened it totally freaked me out but we’ve got mostly used to each other and it hasn’t been bad in a while.  She even smiles (the little old lady, not the spaniel).  From a safe distance.  But I’m pretty sure I can guess what’s going on:  she’s lived in her house and walked her dog all her life and she’s not going to give it up without a struggle, even if she’s getting tottery and one good yank from an excited King Charles spaniel could have her over.  My original thought was that if she can’t keep her blasted dog under control she shouldn’t be out there with it . . . but as my sixtieth birthday recedes on the horizon behind me my view of the infirmities of age is evolving.  When I’m 103 I’ll be out there with leads looped around my Zimmer frame.  I may have moved on to Yorkies and Italian greyhounds by then.

Second encounter**.  You know you get tired of knowing what’s going to happen.  We came around a curve in the path and there, still at a little distance, was one of the big black thug-type Labradors, the kind with a head like a Volkswagen camper van or a small lorry, and it was in classic dog-thug stance.  I promptly got hellhounds on short leads and dragged them onto an alternate path that there happened to be one of at that point—this bloody dog was emerging from the end of a long narrow fenced piece of footpath . . . and do I have to bother telling you it was off lead?  Hellhounds and I were moving briskly (but not too briskly) at an angle away from where dog-thug was trying out its range of Mean SOB postures . . . and eventually—EVENTUALLY—some irresponsible twit of a woman strolled into view, casually took in the scene and called her dog.  Who ignored her.  Of course.  It made to turn off the path it was on and come after us.  The twit grew loud and angry.  The dog continued to ignore her.***  At which point the twit’s voice changed and she shouted gaily at us, Oh he’s friendly!  One of these days I’m to shout back, Oh I’m not!

We got away—because we had that alternative path to walk down as if we’d meant to all along and couldn’t care less that Conan the Labrador was flexing his muscles from the other side of the hedgerow.  I was still shaking with fury and adrenaline when we SAW ANOTHER DOG . . . also off lead, and we were by now onto that narrow fenced stretch, with nowhere to get away.  But while this is not something I’d ever rely on, I also knew at first glance—as I’d known that the Lab was trouble—that this dog was not.  It saw us, but it wasn’t fussed, and it also kept checking back with its person—which is something I always look for† but hadn’t identified as such till Southdowner pointed it out—it’s one of the ways you know instantly if a dog’s under any kind of control or not.  If it’s obviously in a relationship with its person, you’re probably not about to die.  If it obviously isn’t. . . .

This one actually went on heel—still off lead—when we got closer.  I hoicked my sagging jaw back where it belonged to enable me to exchange pleasantries about the blasted weather with the bloke.  I wish well-trained dogs weren’t the exception rather than the rule.  SIIIIIIGH.  In another couple of months Pavlova will be old enough to do the short form of the river walk—which means starting to meet up with the local canine thug population.  She’ll probably still be small enough for me to pick up†† at that point.  But she won’t stay that small.  And mutant or no, she is a bull terrier.  And my hellhounds, nonconfrontational non-hierarchical friendly sighthounds that they are, apparently permanently hate the half-dozen or so dogs that finally pushed them too far.

Sigh.†††

* * *

* I can’t quite bring myself to say ‘warmed’

** After I had to carry Chaos across the minor lake caused by the riverbank breaking at one of the low places in the path.  Darkness waded stoically through.  Not Chaos.  Chaos is delicate.  Darkness leaps twenty feet in the air straight up, shrieking, if the puppy gets anywhere near him, but he can cope with hostile terrain.

*** Of course.

† I have a gigantic advantage as a dilatory dog trainer—that I work from home, and hellcritters are under my feet all the time.  I met another woman who wanted to talk to me about whippets and whippet crosses because she’s looking for a puppy and as I know there aren’t a lot of sighthounds in this area, barring adopted ex-racing greyhounds.  She wanted to know where I let them run, and I told her, and she said, Do they catch rabbits?  And I said yes.  And she said, And do they come back to you?  Sighthounds being a trifle notorious for not.  And I said . . . yes.  Well, they do.  But it’s not because I’m such a fabulous trainer:  it’s because they’re used to having me as a fixed and constant reference point.  When they’re off lead, they check to see where I am—and I don’t push this.  Mostly they’re on lead, which is safer all round.

We’ll see if this system works with hellterrors.  I’m not counting on it.

†† I can carry Chaos across a lake, after all.

††† The rest of the day mostly sucked pond scum too.  And I went off to choir practise tonight hysterically convinced that there would be crap in Pav’s crate by the time I got back, since she had declined to have her late afternoon/early evening crap before I went.

There was no crap in the crate.  And my high A was still there.  So I guess it hasn’t been that awful a day.

Pav pics

 

 

I need a night off and you need some puppy pics.

We’re starting to have to get CREATIVE if she’s going to be in my lap.

 

You have at last count FORTY THREE MILLION TOYS. GO PLAY WITH A TOY.

 

That’s the mattress from a camp bed and we’ve got it folded around the end of the sofa to stop her setting up covert operations under the sofa.  I am going to be SO GLAD when she gets too big to fit under the sofa (and under the tallboy at the cottage.  I keep stuff under there).  Of course she will then be too big to fit in my lap too.

Speaking of toys. And teeth.

 

Chaos and Mayhem. In a rare in focus moment.

 

Now if you’d just give me a little boost I’m sure I could make it upstairs. . . .

 

Let me tell you this really great secret.

 

We have here books, yarn, a piano and some dogs. Is anything else NECESSARY?

 

Death by Cute #1

 

Death by Cute #2

 

Death by Cute #3

. . . And with that I leave you to rejuvenate yourselves from Crushing Adorableness in whatever way seems best to you.  Saltines and ginger ale.  Rhinoceros wrestling.  A quick reread of CALCULUS: LATE TRANSCENDENTALS.  Nighty-night.

 

Pavlova the Wonder Puppy

 

 

It has been Another One of Those Days, which I feel there have been far too many of lately and this run of blerg and arrrgh can stop any time thank you.  There was one bright spot today:  Fiona and her mum were coming to Mauncester for Christmas shopping and we arranged to meet up.  Well.  We arranged.  And then we rearranged.  I rearranged.  And then we re-re-re-re-arranged.  And then I was late.  Later.  Um. . . . As I said, blerg and arrrgh.  What a good thing texting is.  I’M ABT 15 MIN LATE.  NO, 20.  25.  LEAVING NOW.  30.  SEE U SOON.*  How did we all get along without it?

I brought Pav with me to Mauncester, of course.  IT’S ALL SOCIALISATION.  She’d managed to put a foot through several of my necklaces sequentially** which I’d taken into the jewellers’ for mending, tactlessly by myself a week or so ago and was more or less told that if I wanted to see any of my precious baubles and fripperies again I’d better bring the puppy next time.  So I brought the puppy.  Who was much admired.  Who enjoyed being much admired.

But Mauncester was gruesomely, first-week-of-Decemberly*** mobbed.  Mobbed.  MOBBED.  I was hyperventilating.  Pavlova was a star.†  I wouldn’t go so far as to say she has good lead manners but she has a clue that she’s supposed to be coming along with me, and she does.  We wound our way through crowds of people of all shapes and sizes and smells†† and thunderousness of footgear, and including screaming toddlers and pushchairs and a few wheelchairs, and balloons, and other dogs, and street musicians, and hawkers hawking items of mostly dubious worth, these latter also including those creepy monster frame things that you can hang your wares from and then wear the whole business.†††  Pavlova looked around with great interest and didn’t flinch at anything.‡

Of course she then ruined the effect by rushing up to Fiona and FLINGING herself up Fiona’s leg, leaving a generous swathe of muddy puppy prints.  I used to be able to train my dogs not to jump on people.  I’m getting old and soft.‡‡

* * *

* When I finally saw Fiona waving at me my greeting was Don’t tell me what time it is.

** I seem to be learning to get out of her way faster.  I think.  It’s like the permanent scars I have on the inside of both forearms, especially the right one, where she kicks while I rub her tummy and, I don’t know, tummy-rubbing must let off endorphins in the rubber because I don’t notice till I see my blood on the puppy and freak out because SHE’S injured.   Yes, I could cut her toenails.  NO.  ACTUALLY.  I COULDN’T CUT HER TOENAILS.  TOENAIL CUTTING DOGS TERRIFIES ME.  And yes, the vet will do it, but how pathetic is that?  So . . . she has long sharp claws on her hind feet.  And I have permanent scars on the insides of both forearms.  But the hasty sweep across of the not-so-little forepaws aiming to take out another necklace is improving.

*** By next week Gandalf could be coming to Mauncester and inviting me to meet him for a cup of tea and three wishes^ and I’d be saying, sorry, not till January, mate.

^ 1.  A singing voice more beautiful than Marilyn Horne, Janet Baker and Cecilia Bartolli all rolled together.

2.  The ability to glance at a blue line and be INSTANTLY able to ring any method.  With flawless striking.

3.  An iron digestion which can not only deal with ANYTHING but, furthermore, makes all superfluous-to-requirements calories GO AWAY.

. . . You mean I was supposed to wish for sensible things?  How would that be fun?

† Although if one more person blanches and backs away from my belly-down, butt-up, tail-wagging-furiously, flat-eared ADORABLE PUPPY, murmuring through palsied lips, But it’s a . . . bull terrier. . . . I’m going to tell Pavlova to EAT THEM.^  For pity’s sake guys.  Does she LOOK dangerous?^^  I admit I’m a little worried about when the Notorious Bull Terrier Nature kicks in—I thought it had a week ago, when I spent nearly three hours that evening STANDING on her—but maybe she’s not only a mutant, but she’s going to stay a mutant.   We live in hope.

^ FOOD?  FOOOOOOOOOOOOD?

^^ Unless you have a face like a bowlful of kibble.

††  Not a fan of perfume.  Not.  And cigarettes. . . .

†††  Ha.  Ha.  Want to hear a Really Bad Joke, compliments the gang at the South Desuetude tower?  Usually I’ve managed to forget this week’s bad jokes by Tuesday.

I had a friend who drowned in a bowl of muesli.  He was pulled down by a really strong currant.

‡ This is however the same puppy who, on walks in New Arcadia, regularly stops, turns around and stares, one forefoot delicately raised, at NOTHING, for however long it takes me to get bored or creeped out and chirp her into moving again.  Maybe she’s just an urban girl.

‡‡ And she’s a BULL TERRIER.  EVERYONE KNOWS BULL TERRIERS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO TRAIN.  Hunh.  She sits, she downs (sometimes), she knows her name, she only gets under my feet when we’re out on lead when nothing else more interesting is happening, and the last time she peed on the floor was because I’d kind of forgotten to take her out for about six hours.^  We are having a little difficulty with the DON’T FRELLING PULL YOU FRELLING PUPPY when we’ve turned to go home and she knows there will be FOOOOOOOOOOOD there. But I figure it’s worth having this argument for the reinforcement of her WANTING to go home.

^ Of course that means I’ve ruined her forever.  Ask the Evil Dog Training Man.

Mondays, now with Aulos

 

These Mondays are really taking it out of me.  And the stress level has been cranked up another notch thanks to the arrival of . . . blerg . . . Aulos.*  Whom I grimly took along with me today, plugged her into the wall and turned her on.  RECORD she said.  I told Nadia that I had decided to give up singing and take up mud wrestling instead and she said no, no, lots of people hate listening to themselves.  I hate listening to myself.  —I thought of saying, but restrained myself, But you know you have a voice.  You’re just being neurotic.  I’m being REALISTIC.

I admitted that I had made the COLOSSALLY foolish error of singing Che Faro, for pity’s sake I sooo should have known better, but I was choosing stuff that I know really, really, really well and don’t have to think about—and I sing Che Faro over the washing up and so on, with Down by the Salley Gardens and Early One Morning. It’s mine.  It’s one of the musical lines I live my life to.**  I know that my ear worm version is somewhere between Marilyn Horne and Janet Baker but . . . well, it was stupid, singing it to Aulos, almost fatally so.  But Nadia said that she thought it wasn’t that I didn’t sing it well enough in an absolute, not-Janet-Baker-or-Marilyn-Horne way, but that the aria meant too much to me.  Oh.  Yes.  That ear worm is not Baker or Horne because I have my own ideas about Che Faro, you know?  I can’t sing them but they’re there:  it’s part of the mine thing.  Miiiiiiine.  Because I bizarrely did have enough sense not to record Blow the Wind Southerly, which is at least a folk song rather than a frelling piece of frelling opera, because it belongs to Kathleen Ferrier, and that ear worm is her performing it.  Anyway.  Florence Foster Jenkins probably had ideas about the Queen of the Night but she couldn’t sing them.  The crucial difference is that I DO KNOW I can’t sing my dranglefabbing ideas.

Sigh.

What Nadia said about recording*** my lessons is that for now we will only record the warm-ups.  This is fine with me since the primary point of this exquisitely painful exercise to have a bit more chance to reproduce what Nadia can winkle out of me when I’m back home and it’s just me and the piano, and the winkling process is clearer and more straightforward during the warm-ups because I am still such a loose cannon when I try to sing a, you know, song.  I did think—possibly I still do think, but not today—that I could also use recording and playback for my own practices:  I can hear, for example, when I start falling off pitch so when I come to the end of a bar or a phrase and hit the right note on the piano it’s not a horrible surprise.† I can also hear when my breathing is working and when it . . . isn’t.  Aulos is a good thing.  Really.  Yes.  Really.  REALLY.  I’ll adapt.

But Nadia declaring that we would only record the warm-up today turned out to be an even better plan than anticipated when I murdered poor old Dido and scattered the ash of her funeral pyre to the sixty-seven winds.  Siiiigh.  After the sheer visceral horror of that final recorded F in Che Faro†† yesterday, I decided to leave Dido’s G alone:  by being a full tone higher the gutless soprano has a full tone’s space to pull back that much farther and go splat that much splattier. †††  So I didn’t practise it.  Which meant when I went in today I was underrehearsed. . . .

And, as I say, these Mondays are taking it out of me.  Nadia is about the limit of my driving in one direction and then South Desuetude is pretty much the limit in the other direction‡, plus all the singing, bell-ringing and puppy-walking each journey involves.  But here is the good news:  the thing about hellterrors having no off switch is that the more excitement Pavlova has had in a day the less likely she is to settle down and, like, SLEEP.‡‡  Mondays are, historically, bad.  Tonight after post-tower late supper she started to wind herself up and . . . stopped.  And went to sleep.  Yaaaay.

She’s waking up now though. . . .

* * *

* I was going to name her Melpomene, but I decided that was asking for trouble, like calling Pavlova^ Mayhem ( . . . too often).  Euterpe is too obvious as well as pathetic.  Aulos will do.  Auloi were supposed to be a ratbag to play.

^ A mutual friend sent Southdowner and me a silly Icanhaz-type photo of a bullie today and I thought, oh how cute, a silly photo of one of those dogs Southdowner . . . OH MY SAINTED CLAVICHORD I HAVE ONE OF THOSE THINGS.+

+ I told you.  I’m tired.

** We won’t get into the symbolism of twining your life around a song about losing your truelove on your wedding day and trooping off to hell to bring her back.  At least Gluck’s version has a happy ending.

*** I keep wanting to say taping but tape has had nothing to do with it for decades.

† Although one of the signs of my learning a new song is that I start to recognise when I’m playing the piano wrong.

†† One of the things Nadia regularly says to me is, Sing [whatever] like you’re not afraid of it.  I give you permission to ENJOY it.  —I have known what she means . . . but it was brought home with truly excoriating precision by the sound of that F at the end of Che Faro.  I don’t think, any more, it’s the pitch—it certainly used to be the pitch, when I was first getting a little of my top end back—but it absolutely is that go for it quality, that opening up and out and letting all the love and longing and despair spill into your audience, even if (or possibly particularly if) your audience is a tiny silver box with holes in and a flashing red light that means ‘recording’.  Another thing that Nadia is always reminding me of is that yes, singing is very revealing, and if you’re going to sing you have to learn to live with that.  Maybe I could stick with Jingle Bells and Eensy Weensy Spider.

††† Again it’s not so much the pure pitch, although the more cowardly you’re demonstrably feeling the ropier the pitch is going to be too, as the tone quality.

‡ I had begged off being shanghaied into the choir for the Christmas (bell) guild meeting on the grounds that it’s being held at a church too far for me to drive and Gemma, drat her, at service ring yesterday, said, no it isn’t, it’s really close, you just haven’t looked at a map, HEY, ALBERT, ROBIN CAN SING IN THE CHOIR.

‡‡ This is probably partly also the too tired to sleep fractious cranky kid situation, but Pav doesn’t give any sign of being tired, just of being ON.

Some days are not worth getting out of bed for

 

 

. . . especially if you only just got into bed a very wretchedly few hours ago.  You could make yourself a nice cup of tea and go back to bed, with your iPad and your knitting and your 1,000,000 books*.  And the windows carefully closed with the double-glazing panels run across because it’s cold, but also because from the far side of the house (my bedroom overlooks the road, not the garden, two walls over from my ex-tower) I can’t hear how many bells they’re ringing and therefore can’t feel guilty if the answer is guilt-inducing.**

But I did get out of bed because I have this menagerie.***  And after lunch I left in LOTS OF TIME to get to the abbey for afternoon service ring.

It took half an hour to find a parking space.  ARRRRRRRGH.

Ringing was not totally, hopelessly, humiliatingly ghastly.†  And thus we were all in relatively good spirits when we pulled off for what would probably be our last touch of the afternoon.

. . . When suddenly about ten tall lithe somber men in black poured into the ringing chamber and came to a halt, staring at us.  And the black baseball caps with POLICE in large white letters across the forehead were not reassuring. WHATEVER IT WAS, WE DIDN’T DO IT.  WE WERE RINGING.  It was totally like something on TV, except I am very glad to say they were not carrying submachine guns or small cannon or specially trained alligators.  Apparently the abbey has a Nameless VIP visiting this week and they’re sweeping out the corners.  Good luck, mate.  The abbey is all corners.  Dark, cobwebby ones with enormous ancient beams, and those beams are capable of anything.  But it is very disconcerting trying to keep your mind on your four-five up dodge when half a dozen Men in Black suddenly bolt across your line of vision out of one tenebrous archway and into another—and your peripheral vision is picking up murky motion your front brain is telling you is only the rest of the MiBs protecting the earth from the scum of the universe . . . um . . . but your hindbrain is saying VAMPIRES!  DEINONYCHUS!  RUN!, and if the conductor calls a bob, you’ve had it.  Fortunately I think the conductor was a little distracted too.

We stalwart ringers then all descended back into the teeming mob of twenty-four shopping days till Christmas and it is a miracle I didn’t kill anybody.††  GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.  But then I thought, I’m here already, I might as well drop into WH Smith and buy Peter a Christmas present, this object being one of the few things I’ve thought of to give him†††, I have to go that way to get back to Wolfgang anyway.

WH Smith has put in a few of those self-check-out electronic till things‡.  The queue was shorter than for a live human being, so I went for the high tech option:  the ones at Tesco’s don’t generally bite.  It checked me straight through with only a few personal comments about my dress sense and gene pool, accepted my credit card and . . . suddenly stalled out, presenting me with a blue screen saying the end is nigh.  Seek assistance.

It had run to the end of its paper roll and couldn’t give me my receipt.  First I had to go make the people in the human-till-operated queue hate me, because the humans operating those tills were the only staff visible.  The first person to attempt to unravel my problem ran away screaming.  The second person, of stouter material, fed the thing a fresh new roll of receipt paper . . . which the machine spat out again instantly, demanding the mint-flavoured.

I was there for nearly half an hour.  The poor sweating clerk never did get the thrice-blasted machine to accept any roll of branded WH SMITH TILL RECEIPT paper.  Eventually he took me back to his till, decharged me and recharged me . . . and gave me a receipt.

Peter probably won’t like it anyway.

I should have stayed in bed.  I wonder if I could teach Pavlova to make tea?‡‡

* * *

* Now including your Bible which is a BIG FAT THING.

** Having received a cryptic message from Niall at ringing-o’clock this morning I suspect it was guilt-inducing.  But I was singing^ or refereeing hellcritters or banging my spoon against the side of my mug or something and didn’t hear it come in TILL MUCH LATER.  Fortunately.

^ Oh . . . moan.  I told you, didn’t I, that Peter was buying me a sound recording thingy for Christmas?  Did I tell you it arrived?  A few days ago.  Peter, being a Very Nice Man, gave it to me early, because Nadia is taking several weeks off over Christmas.  And I looked at it, and all the large obtrusive advertising on the box about everything it can do and I thought nooooooooo another thing to have to learn to use.  So I took it along to Oisin on Friday, and made him figure it out.  Unfortunately he was successful.  So I took it home and—before I forgot how—yesterday afternoon I recorded me singing.

Oh . . . moan.  I knew it was going to be bad but . . . I knew that, at best, I’m just some twittish talent-free+ middle-aged amateur but . . . How does Nadia stand it?  There must be easier ways to earn a living.  I have a voice lesson tomorrow.  I feel a permanent case of laryngitis coming on.++  Which would sure solve the two-and-a-half-hour choir rehearsal with no loo problem.

+ Why am I so drawn to things I AM NO FRELLING GOOD AT?    Singing.  Bell ringing.  Someone said in the forum recently, after a report on one of my small quavery triumphs, that maybe I should just accept that I’m a competent ringer.  The problem is that I’m not.  I have my moments—bashing through our quarter peal of bob minor with Gemma having quite a few quavery moments ringing a method she didn’t know was one of them—but I’m not reliable and the accuracy of my striking is pretty frelling dire.  I’m what you get if you take a reasonably intelligent, unreasonably obstinate person and plonk her down in the middle of something she really wants to learn when the hard way is the only one available to her—and obstinacy does get you farther than you expect but it can’t morph your pig’s-earishness into a silk purse.  I’m a useful ringer because I show up.  That I keep showing up is my chief virtue.  Sigh.  Mind you, it is a virtue, but it would be nice to have a few more to keep it company.

++ You know that standard thing that voice teachers tell you to stop you cutting your throat?  That you can’t hear what you sound like to everyone else because you’re hearing it from the inside?  It’s even WORSE from the outside.#

# So don’t hold your breath about my debut on YouTube.

*** I swear there are more than three of them.  Well, four, if you count the dragon.

† Translation:  other people went wrong worse than I did.  And I managed to hold my line when it was someone else screwing up.

†† Or if I did, they went down quietly and I didn’t notice.

††† I HATE THIS TIME OF YEAR^ I HAVE THE WORLD’S WORST HUSBAND FOR FINDING PRESENTS FOR AND HIS BIRTHDAY IS NINE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

^ I know.  I’m a Christian this year.  Christ’s birthday etc.  I’m working on it.

‡ With the robo voice that says things like ‘put your purchased item in the bagging area, you stupid git, how many times do I have to tell you?’ and ‘that’s not the barcode, that’s your fingerprint’ and ‘no, I’m not going to give you your change until you’ve sung the descant to Angels We Have Heard on High’.

‡  No.

KES, 56

FIFTY SIX

 

I looked at the wall clock on our way out of the clinic.  (I almost forgot to notice the time because I was distracted by the design:  there were two alert-looking cats standing on the two hands, and an assortment of frolicking dogs marking the hours.)   I’d been planning on being on the road to Cold Valley by now.  Not that the diversion from schedule wasn’t totally worth it, but JoJo would be here in eight hours, and I probably wouldn’t be able to train Sid between now and arrival at Rose Manor to help unload the (bulging) back of the van.  Here, I could say to her, take this plastic bag of t shirts and underwear upstairs and put it in the bottom of the wardrobe.  —To-do list included a chest of drawers.  And a strong young man to carry it upstairs.  I’d settle for a flimsy middle-aged man to help me carry it upstairs.

. . . I was leaving out the Revelation of the Thing in bottom of the wardrobe, or the trap door which, when opened, revealed The Colour Out of Space.  My wardrobe would not contain fur coats and a lamp-post.  No, wait, it would be okay, I now had a trusty and redoubtable companion.  Mr Lovecraft’s problem was that he hadn’t had a dog to make him keep his mind on the important things, like cheese and long walks.  There would be nothing in the wardrobe but dust.  And possibly a mouse skeleton.

There was kind of a funny echo.  All Stars, even with me wearing them, don’t really thud.  It’s hard to thud with rubber soles.  And this was New Iceland:  we weren’t walking down a canyon of skyscrapers that would reflect the sound of pursuing footsteps. . . .

He wasn’t pursuing.  He was thumping along beside me, to my right as Sid trotted (soundlessly) on my left.  The black guy with the cape.  The big black guy with the cape, and the glinty, pointy thing that couldn’t possibly be a sword sticking out below the hem of his cape.  Mr Watermelon Shoulders.  As I turned my head to look at him, he smiled at me and said, “Thou’rt fortunate.  Thy new comrade is swift and loyal and high-couraged.  Thou and she will go far both as the world doth count span of distance, and in the journey of the heart.”

“Forsoothly,” I said disbelievingly.  “I have never, ever written forsoothly, let alone high forsoothly.  I’m imagining you, aren’t I?  I haven’t had enough sleep in several months, and you’re a manifestation of—of ringworm of the brain.”

But he was gone and I was talking to myself, because of course he hadn’t been there in the first place.  We turned down Bradbury again, crossed Sir Alexander Dane, and picked up a trot to sprint across the Friendly Campfire’s parking lot, before anyone saw us.

It didn’t work.  I’d got the door of cabin seven not only open but closed again behind us and was breathing a sigh of relief—except for the hallucination thing, but I’d worry about that later—as I swept my toothbrush back into its washbag, stuffed my dirty laundry in an empty Majormojo shopping bag, and prepared to . . . attempt to persuade Sid to climb in the passenger seat of the van, as soon as I made enough space in the passenger seat for even a narrow, underweight dog to plant her bony butt.  Okay, my anxiety level was rising again:  Sid had to come with me, and she was going to come to the end of this Perfect Dog routine sooner or later.  Make it later.  Please make it later.

There was a knock on the door.

Pond scum.  And liver flukes.

I looked round for Sid.  She was standing, poised, alertly watching the door that had just made that noise.  I was partial, of course, but I thought she already looked better than she had last night.  We were stopping at the mall on our way to Cold Valley—the mall was not on the way to Cold Valley—so I could buy dog food and a brush.

I opened the door.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” said Serena.  She peered past me at Sid.  Sid looked back at her. “I thought that was a dog, and not a disturbingly strange shadow indicating that your cloaking device is breaking down and you’re an alien from another planet.  Although I’m not entirely sure.  If that’s a dog, it needs serious remedial work.”  She sighed.  “The Friendly Campfire has three cabins that take pets, but this isn’t one of them.  You’re leaving soon, right?  I don’t like to think what your new friend is distributing in its vicinity.  Please tell me it didn’t sleep on the bed last night.”

“She,” I said.  “She’s a she.  And her name’s Sid.”

“And you’re not answering my question about the bed.”

I didn’t say anything.

Serena sighed again.  “Okay.  We will boil the bedding and it’s probably time the carpet in here had the industrial-strength alien-combating deep-clean again anyway.  And if the little plastic bag by the steps is what I think it is, put it in the trash can on the street, okay?  Don’t bring it in here.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

 

Keys

 

I have a small furry demonspawn hellterror under my feet again as I write.  It’s very distracting, being lifted off your chair by small but intense volcanic eruptions at ankle level.  The accompanying sound effects are pretty discommodious too.  The footwarmer aspect is appealing, but the staying-on-top-of-the-rolling-beachball skill is challenging.  I’m improving though.  And she’s getting bigger.  What do you do with a two hundred pound Mastiff puppy in a strop?  Straitjacket?*

I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.  I doublelock and throw bolts and things anyway because I lived a long time in major cities as a single girl, and some instincts, once dug into the synapses, are permanent.**   Also, paranoia is one of my gifts.  This is only sometimes a good thing.  I am so freaked out by the dog-theft warning that last night I shot awake every time a hellhound rolled over, convinced that I was hearing dog thieves.***  Yes, my doors and windows are all locked, but as the cops and the ex-military life-skills coaches like to tell you, someone who really wants to get in can get in.  The trick is to be less worth it than you are a pain in the ass to crack.  Two middle-aged hellhounds, an admittedly glamorous (if stroppy†) bull terrier puppy and a lot of books don’t sound like a fabulous haul to me.

I hope.

The good side of living in the middle of town and being conspicuous (but what dog person, licit and illicit, doesn’t clock every dog in the area) is that you are conspicuous, and you are surrounded by a lot of people who know and recognise you.  And my cul de sac is little but crowded.  There’s always someone around.  There are occasions when I wouldn’t at all mind there being FEWER people in the immediate vicinity.  But this isn’t one of them.  I hope all my neighbours have restless insomniac visitors until . . . the dog thieves recognise the error of their ways, decide to lead blameless lives hereafter, and enrol for courses in fashion design and farriery.

Sigh.

I was running late this morning, but when am I ever not running late?  So, McKinley, relax, situation normal.  Since the hellterror started getting her own mini hurtles I’ve been putting the hellhounds in Wolfgang after their full hurtle while the little ’un and I have our scramble.  Not today.  In the first place it’s TOO COLD†† and in the second place you can’t bolt and barricade a car sufficiently and I imagine the fuel consumption rates on an armoured vehicle are out of my price range.  So I brought a somewhat bemused Chaos and Darkness back indoors while I took Mayhem out.†††

This did however mean that we had a welcoming committee when we got back to the cottage, with considerable confusion on all sides since dogs LIKE THEIR PREDICTABLE SCHEDULES.‡  Hellhounds are saying, we’re supposed to be in Wolfgang.‡‡  Pavlova is saying AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE.  Darkness is saying, What are you doing with that—thing?  Pavlova is saying AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE.  Chaos is saying oh, hi, you again.  You know, boss, we were having a nice nap before you opened that door.  Pavlova is saying AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEE.  Nobody died, and nobody suffered (serious) friction burns from Pav’s flying lead.  But it was pretty exciting there for about five minutes.

And my keys disappeared.  Disappeared.  Disappeared.  DISAPPEARED.

I spent something like half an hour looking for them.  How far could they have gotten?  I’d only just unlocked the door and let Pav and me back in.‡‡‡  And I was thinking IF THIS IS A SIGN IT’S THE WRONG SIGN.  YES OF COURSE I HAVE A SPARE SET OF HOUSE KEYS, although I’d find it pretty much of a ratbag to remember some of what else is on that ring till I need it and it’s not there, BUT I’M STILL TOTALLY FREAKED OUT ABOUT THE DOG THIEF WARNING AND IF I CAN’T FIND MY KEYS which have got to be RIGHT HERE SOMEWHERE I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE EVER AGAIN.

I did find them, eventually.  I have no idea how they got there:  flung by an exuberant hellcritter, presumably.  But I found them.

. . . And I have a sleeping hellterror.  Finally.  In my lap.  She doesn’t FIT in my lap any more.  But you can see when she is trying to calm down and get a grip, and on her pillow at—no longer under—my feet she kept climbing pathetically up my leg and trying to get in my lap.  ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT.  But it’s going to be interesting in another ten pounds and a few more inches of leg.

* * *

* You or him/her?

** I hope they’re permanent.  When I’m a little old lady, even more of a space cadet than I am now, and a single girl again I want to remember to lock my doors.

*** My probability of any sleep tonight dropped like a stone when hellhounds and I hurtled back to the cottage this evening and I found one of the local free papers on the mat with a front page story about a family dog being killed by an ordinary burglar in a bad mood because he didn’t find what he wanted.

† I’m looking on the bright side.  She won’t need another puppy hurtle tonight, she’ll—eventually—wear herself out tantruming.  Tiring things, tantrums.  For both of us.  The hellhounds are mildly fascinated, in a distant we-never-did-anything-like-that way.  Of course you didn’t.  You were the souls of courtesy and restraint from the day you arrived and as your first act destroyed my herb patch.

†† You forumites are absolutely right about hats.  I’m very good about getting the woolly scarves and the hoods out for hurtling as soon as the weather turns grisly but I hadn’t made the connection to rehearsal in a gelid church, which is dim of me when I’d had enough sense to wrap my neck up.  I will have to examine my hat selection.^  I’m usually thinking in terms of wind resistance but the icicles hang pretty straight down indoors at St Frideswide.  Maybe I should knit something.

^ And find the sheepskin inserts for the All Stars.  I was wearing long johns and a second pair of socks but that was not enough.

††† You can stop re-earning your sobriquet any time, honey.  I’ve just texted Olivia:  I’m going to tie her little feet together and hang her from the ceiling any minute now.  And to think you and Southdowner conspired to give me the easy one.

‡ Which is a bit of a problem in this household.

‡‡ All wrapped up with just their noses sticking out.  I live by cold ears and trembling.  If their ears are warm, they’re fine.  If their ears are cold but they’re not shivering, they’re fine.  If their ears are cold and they’re shivering, they need their woollies, and I do tend to swathe them round in the car, when they’re lying down.  Chaos is as much a wimp as I am:  I’ll have him wrapped up in two layers of blanket before Darkness needs one.  But it has to be pretty extreme before they need their coats while hurtling.  And it makes me kind of nuts seeing tough little terrier types with thick rough dense coats of their own swaddled up in heavy wool fleece-lined jackets.  Good grief.

And if hellhound ears are warm and they’re shivering GET A GOOD GRIP ON SHORT LEADS FAST because they’re about to take off after something.

‡‡‡ I knew I had unlocked the door.  See:  dug into the synapses.

Return to the Muddles

 

I’M SO COLD I COULD DIE.  Frelling frelling.*  The temperature has dropped about 20 degrees in the last twenty hours CLANG!!!!, just in time for me to go to my first sort-of official—NO NO I HAVEN’T PROMISED ANYTHING I’M JUST . . . I’M JUST . . . I’m just coming along to choir practise, okay?  IT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING.  St Frideswide is always cold, except occasionally, briefly, in August, when it can become stickily, smotheringly, swelteringly too hot**, weather as something out of an MR James story.  It was cold last week, when I wasn’t there for the full gruesome extent, but got to run away at the break and turn the heater up HIGH in Wolfgang driving home.  Well, I turned the heater up HIIIIIIIGH tonight as well, but I was almost past saving.  COOOOOLD.  COOOOOOOLD.

Unfortunately I had way too good a time.  In spite of the fact that I could no longer turn pages by the end because my fingers were toooooo coooooold even though I was wearing fingerless gloves.*** And the rest of the choir clearly all assumed I was, you know, back.  NOOOOOOOOO.  I HAVEN’T PROMISED ANYTHING.  The frelling treasurer accosted me during the break about membership dues.†  Arrrrrrgh.  And Cindy, who I was sitting next to again, and with whom I shared music and leaned on heavily for any of the soprano lines I don’t know, came up with a really good way of ensuring that I come back next week:  she sent me home with all her music.  I can use Gordon’s if I want to practise anything, she said.  You take it.

I have a grievous problem. ††  My standard excuse for not having to take the Muddles seriously is that they invariably schedule their concerts on Saturdays I’m going to a Live Met Opera relay at the cinema.  This wheeze is working as it should for their Christmas carol concert.  It’s not working for the concert next February.†††  And, furthermore, although I haven’t yet got to the bottom of the ENORMOUS pile of music Cindy gave me, most of it is stuff I like, and some of it is stuff I even know.  I can probably catch up.  Of course you can, said Cindy bracingly.

And I took a bottle of water.  And I sipped it.‡  And I’m not hoarse. And us first sopranos spent a lot of time hitting frelling A, which I historically don’t rely on having available, but it was there tonight.  It was there tonight in a, Problem?  There is a problem?, way.  Next February? it added.  Sure.  I can do next February.  Write it down in the diary.

Well, I have to go back next week, I have all of Cindy’s music. . . .

* * *

* Try saying ‘frelling’ when your teeth are chattering.

** Especially in the ringing chamber, where I gasp out the occasional wedding.

*** I was sitting next to Cindy who was wearing proper gloves with fingers and still turning pages.  Maybe this is a necessary Muddlehampton survival skill.  Maybe I could get her to teach me.  Or at least tell me where she buys her gloves.

† And then started talking about his military service in the ’60s, when they were quartered in leftover WWII Quonset huts which leaked, and how they all developed a blanket-folding technique so they could pull a flap over their heads so the snow falling on their faces didn’t wake them up.  I can’t imagine why this story seemed appropriate tonight.

†† Aside from the two-and-a-half-hours-and-no-loo problem.  Which I solved tonight by the simple expedient of not having had anything to eat or drink since two pears and a mug of tea this morning.  Drastic but effective.  I didn’t mean to skip lunch.  I . . . forgot.

Well, I was running late because I’m always running late.^  And by the time I get two shifts of hellcritters hurtled^^ and fed an amazing amount of time always seems to have passed.  So I went whizzing back to the cottage from the mews thirty seconds before everyone would be showing up for handbells, and had galloped around picking up puppy toys and sweeping up great globs of dog hair—did all the dishes in the sink, started a load of laundry—when it finally occurred to me that people were kind of late.  Found a laconic little message on Pooka—who had managed to turn herself off, which is a whole lot easier than it should be—that handbells were cancelled and maybe they’d forgotten to tell me.  ARRRRRRRRRGH.

At which point I might have gone back to the mews, had lunch, and got on with either Story-in-Progress^^^ or Kes moving in to Rose Manor but . . . I DIDN’T.  The temperature was busy plummeting and I’ve already lost the dahlias and the begonias, snapdragons and chocolate cosmos hate being indoors so much it’s not really worth it, but I was looking at my geraniums. . . .  I spent the afternoon getting a lot of geraniums indoors (and, what the heck, some of the cosmos, osteospermums and fuchsias) and figuring out which windowsills I can wedge how many of them on.  I had left Pavlova at the mews with Peter, where she has a bigger crate with more wire mesh to look out through, but I’d brought the hellhounds, basically because I get twitchy if there isn’t at least one dog underfoot.   Hellhounds have mostly outgrown wanting to help me in the garden#, and they lay around extending long trip-overable limbs and having bits dropped on them.  And the half of the Winter Table not occupied by Pav’s travelling crate and assorted puppy gubbins is now jammed solid with the Indoor Jungle.  And since I usually eat lunch at the mews, I wasn’t thinking about lunch at the cottage.  And I had only just enough time to hurtle my shifts of hellcritters briefly again before I left for choir practice . . . And there was ice on the roads coming home.

^ Yes.  Hellhounds ate supper last night.  Eventually.  Eventually.  I got most of another swatch done.  I’m trying the holding-two-different-yarns-together business, and I decided I wanted it on bigger needles.  And I’m right, I do.

^^ Also a certain amount of unspare time was expended on freaking out today when not thirty seconds after a woman had made slightly too much fuss of Pavlova and said to me, you have greyhounds, don’t you?  And you live on the little cul de sac up that way?—what am I going to say, ‘no’?—Pav and I walked into the pet store and they said, There are dog thieves around again.  Be careful.  All three of yours would be gone in a flash, you know.  FREAK.  OUT.

^^^ No, not EBON.  I can’t face EBON till SHADOWS is definitively off my hands.  This is a mere whim, a bagatelle, a . . . it’s SHORT, okay?  SHORT.

#  Mostly.  Chaos occasionally wants a pansy of his own.

††† So, who’s going to be in Hampshire next February?

‡ And despite being hungry and dehydrated I still came through the front door at the mews and down the hall to the loo kind of rapidly.

Hobgoblins, hellhounds, food and monks.

 

I have a small—although not quite so small any more—hellterror at my feet, or rather under my feet.  Said hellterror is having mad erratic spasms of I CAN’T POSSIBLY LIE STILL.  I CAN’T.  POSSIBLY.  I HAVE BEEN QUIET FOR AT LEAST TWO HOURS WHICH IS A VERY LONG TIME IF YOU’RE A THREE AND A HALF MONTH OLD PUPPY AND FURTHERMORE YOU FED ME WHICH ALWAYS WINDS ME UP.  Hmm.  You mean if I didn’t feed you you would remain nice and calm?  I wonder if there’s a food-replacement injection for puppies.  It would also save on dishwashing.  This is one of those things I wasn’t expecting:  dogs are predators.  They eat and they crash out.  They don’t eat and then go out and chase something else.  Maybe the fact that Pavlova eats several small meals a day rather than one enormous one twice a week means that after one of these tiddlers she wants to go out and chase the rest of it which must have got away.  THAT WAS A MINNOW AND I WANTED A BLUEFIN TUNA.

I should be grateful to her contortions, which are serving to help keep me awake.  I appear to be riding a small sailboat in a towering gale or a wild horse with the wind up its tail.  No, wait, it’s only a hobgoblin in a mood to sour milk.  Listen, kiddo, keep me awake long enough to write a blog and I promise to sit down on the floor and let you play Terminator all over my ass.  I remember when Southdowner and Olivia were warning me about hucklebutting—I think it was Southdowner who said bullies do racing-car turns up the walls—that Pavlova would be tobogganing across the front of the Aga before long.  In the last week or so she’s developed a new routine:  a combined hucklebutt, pogostick and end-swap (another bullie speciality, but my Hazel had the most amazing end swapping I’ve ever seen, at ninety miles an hour across the garden at the old house) done at little-scuttling-legs-a-blur speed—all within the tiny space between the Aga, the sink and the island-counter at the cottage.  It is hilarious.  Last night as she blasted in for her next racing turn . . . she went up and across my CHEST, as I sat leaning against the kitchen sink.  I am not joking.  I was falling (the rest of the way) down laughing, but I am not joking.

That was the good part of last night.  I had been PLANNING ON GOING TO BED EARLY, as I count early, because I was determined to get back to the monks today.  Tintinnabulation has almost as many services as Forza has bells, and I keep looking at the schedule and thinking, well, I could go to that one, or that one, or that one.  Or that one.  I could do it today.  And then it’s frelling dark again and I don’t want to try and find non-existent villages with aberrant post codes in the dark.  I came out of Tintinnabulation’s chapel a fortnight ago saying this was the service, or at least the space, of the churches I’ve been to so far that most and most immediately speaks to me and I haven’t been back?  What is wrong with this picture?  All day yesterday I really did keep thinking, I could still go to that service . . . but I never quite did.

Today I was going.  I was going to go to midday prayer, and before you all snicker loudly, yes, I do keep late hours, but recollect that getting going in the morning now demands two shifts of hurtling.

And then last night Chaos went on serious hunger strike.  ARRRRRRRRGH.  This is one of the many wildly infuriating things about the hellhounds:  after something STRANGE has happened—like, say, a kitchen door possessed by hellhound-antipathetic demons—hellhounds don’t say, oh, right, okay, it’s over now, they say:  THAT DOOR HAS FOREVER CHANGED ITS CENTRAL BEING AND WE WILL NEVER TRUST IT AGAIN.  Oh, and no, we’re not going to colonize the Safe Area by the front door as suitable new supper territory.  No.  Absolutely not.  WE’RE JUST GOING TO GIVE UP SUPPER.

How many days has it been since the monsoon?  Two?  Three?  There have been a lot of whites of hellhound eyes at suppertime, but they have eaten.  But last night . . . Chaos decided that the stress was simply TOO MUCH and the clear, the obvious answer was to not eat supper.  Then we could all relax.

Um.  No.*

. . . Two hours later Chaos finally ate his supper.  And once he had started it was like, oh!  Hey!  This is cool, this food thing!  Can I have more?   ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.  I had, meanwhile, had a bath, read half a book, cleaned the kitchen windowsill, knitted two inches of pullover, and aged by about twenty years.**

I got up this morning anyway, to go to midday prayer at the monks’ abbey as planned.  I ingested caffeine.  I hurtled hellhounds.  I mini-hurtled the hellterror.  I climbed into Wolfgang and set off across hill, dale and badly marked roads, where whatever you’re looking for is always behind you, and the crossroads look like yarn a puppy has been at, and the central signpost for what you do want could be pointing at any of about six roads

We arrived.  We arrived early.  We arrived early without getting lost.  It must be an omen, right?  I crept down the long silent corridor to the chapel—Aloysius had told me that the chapel is always open, so even if you can’t manage to get yourself (or your hellhounds’ mealtimes) organised to go to a service, you can still pray in that peaceful present space.  And I had brought my knitting:  I could be happy indefinitely.

It occurred to me to look round for the donation box, which I’d missed under stress of generalised yeeep when I was there with Aloysius.  And there it was, bolted to the wall by ironmongery that looked like it had been blessed by the first Archbishop of Canterbury***.  On the top of it was a little pile of Gift Aid envelopes.  Over here, if you’re donating to a charity, if you fill in a Gift Aid slip they get to keep all of it instead of passing a sizable chunk to the government.  I filled out one of the envelopes.

IT WOULDN’T FIT THROUGH THE SLOT IN THE DONATION BOX.

Okay, how silly is this?  It’s like some kind of initiation ritual.  Can You Solve This Puzzle?  No.  I folded the freller up about thirty two times and jammed it into the narrow little slit.  They may have to pry the box off the wall and take it to the new Archbishop of Canterbury for a special unsticking blessing before they can get it out again. . . .

But the service was lovely.

. . . And the hellterror is asleep.

* * *

* The hobgoblin, having

How  I frelling hate frelling WordPress.  When I tried to ‘publish’ this a few minutes ago it crashed and burned with a lot of doolally about a database error.  It then mysteriously self-published . . . having hacked the footnotes off the end.  I am not frelling amused. 

Okay.  Reconstructed from the original Word draft:

. . . having wolfed her meagre portion, was pressed up against the wire of her crate, watching the drama unfold and saying, Put me in, coach!  You want that nasty food to go away?  I can do that for you.

** But part of the business of things not going away with hellhounds and food . . . the fact that it’s two or three days after the all-singing all-dancing door before Chaos got around to refusing to eat anything is a bad sign.  It means he’s escalating.  I suspect, from six years of coping with these bozos, that it also means that he’s frelling forgotten what the initial stimulus was and is now just freaking out because he’s flipped the freaking out switch.  I really really really didn’t want to let this go.  And hey, the pullover looks pretty nice and the book I was reading is fabulous.

*** Augustine.  597.  A long time ago.

KES, 55

FIFTY FIVE

 

Sid now followed me placidly across the rest of the front room, through the open archway, and into a little room with an examining table and a scales that covered most of the rest of the floor.  I stood at one end of the scales, leaned down, tapped it with one hand, and said, “Hup.”  This used to work with the Ghastlies, when they were in the mood.  Sid, of course, went carefully around the scales and stood beside me.

“You get on it and we’ll weigh you,” said Jim, “and then you can try to persuade Sid to join you.”

I dumped my knapsack and the leather jacket, got on the scales and as Jim opened his mouth I said, “I don’t want to know.  I keep finding myself at Eats ordering more food.  Besides, I’m wearing All Stars.  They’re a good ten pounds, right?”

“Absolutely,” said Jim.  “Sequins weigh a lot.  Okay, I’m ready for your skinny dog.”

“Hey, kiddo,” I said to Sid.  “Come on up, the view’s great.”  Sid put her forefeet on the scales and stopped.  I pulled the cheese out of my pocket, bit off a chunk, and held it out toward my dog.  Sid’s ears pricked, and her rear legs joined her forelegs on the scales.

“She needs to hold still long enough for the read out to settle down.”

I held the cheese in front of her nose again.  “Flump.”  She sat.  I gave her the cheese.  She remained sitting, staring at the hand that had had the cheese in it.  I got the cheese out again, bit off another chunk (her eyes watched this performance closely) and gave her that one too.  It was good cheese.  I’d have to buy more, so I got to swallow some.

“Forty-six and a half pounds,” said Jim.  “That’s pathetic.  Phantom, you idiot, you had half the town putting food out for you, why didn’t you eat any of it?”

I heard the phone ring in the office, and Callie answer it.

“She needs to gain twenty-five, thirty pounds,” said Jim, “for her frame.  I wonder who her daddy was?   She’s tall for a Saluki.”

“And it may just be having lived out over the winter and being in bad condition,” I said, “but it seems to me she has too much rough hair for a Saluki too.”  In the grip of Saluki fever when I was a kid, I’d managed to pet a few Salukis at dog shows I’d accompanied my mother to.  They had been creamed and coiffed to a high gloss, of course, but I thought even thirty pounds heavier and well brushed Sid was still going to have more coat than they did.

“Deerhound?” said Jim.

“That’s what I was wondering,” I said.

Jim started to laugh.  “I hope you like a challenge.”

“Deerhounds are very sweet, friendly, affectionate dogs,” I said, with dignity.  I liked Deerhounds too.

“Yes, and about as trainable as a piano,” said Jim.  “Rather like Salukis that way, in fact.”

Callie appeared in the doorway again but this time I didn’t flinch.  She was a friendly smiling woman again instead of a bringer of doom.  “She’s going to be a beautiful dog,” she said to me.  “Don’t mind Jim.  If it’s not a working dog—and preferably over a hundred pounds, four feet tall at the shoulder and drooling—it is a lesser being.”

“Piffle,” said Jim.  “Best dog I ever owned was a Pekinese.”

“The attraction of novelty,” said Callie.  “And the second-smallest dog you’ve ever owned is a Mastiff.  Kes,” she went on, “Bridget rang up from Eats, wanting to know if you’d turned up here okay, so I told her that you had, and that Sid was officially yours.  She said to tell you if you put your head out the window you’d hear cheering.”

I thought of Bridget opening up the (freezing) courtyard and feeding us both scrambled eggs and started feeling all misty-eyed again.  “Well, tell them not to cheer so loud they’ll hear anything at the Friendly Campfire.  Sid is there on false pretenses—but I’m moving out as soon as we get back there, so it should be okay.”

“Jan’s extended family contains about a dozen retired greyhounds and a lot of little stuff,” said Jim.  “Dogs, cats, goldfish, turtles.  Rabbits.  Parakeets.  I forget.  I wouldn’t worry too much.”  We’d climbed back down off the scales and Jim approached us with a syringe.  “Well, sweetheart,” he said, rubbed a bit of Sid’s (matted) shoulder briskly, and stuck the needle in.  Sid looked mildly surprised but no more.

I wrote a disturbingly large check for the meds and fancy vitamins, the prospective bloodwork and the change of details for Sid’s chip number, filled out a new patient form, forgot Rose Manor’s zip code—“Don’t worry,” said Callie, “Cold Valley is enough”—agreed to ring up in a few days and see if the lab results were back yet . . . and prepared to totter out the way we had come.  “Thanks,” I said, and meant it.

“You’re very welcome,” said Callie.

I was as tired as if . . . I’d just got divorced, moved to the other side of the planet and got a dog.  I kept thinking, What if Mrs Tornado had wanted her back?

But she didn’t.  I had a dog.