Robin McKinley's Blog, page 75

The Cantique de Yeeep

 

It was . . . not too bad.  The Cantique.  Considering.  Oh, and Gordon had found two more sopranos, but I’m not sure what flavour:  there were enough standard second sopranos that us front row didn’t look too appal—I mean, few, and I was standing between two known second sopranos, so while I could hear the sound thinning out at the top that could be merely be that I was hearing the harmony.  Let’s say that a clear and soulful first-soprano sound was wafting sweetly out over the assembled.  Let’s just say.

Various things went wrong, of course.*  I went to the evening service at St Radegund last night because I was worried about Pavlova keeping her legs crossed** for long enough to sprint several towns over to Aloysius’ church, and while I was there I had the fabulous idea to borrow a hymnal since I know NONE of the standard Anglican hymns and oh-by-the-way we were also going to be singing four of them for the funeral.  In four (or five) part harmony.  Oh.  So I borrowed a hymnal, promising on the earlobe of St Radegund herself*** to bring it back today, got it home and . . . one of the hymns wasn’t in it.  ARRRRGH.  Now even I can usually pick up a straightforward hymn tune in a verse or two but I am singing in the choir, and poor benighted congregation members have been known to listen to the choir for guidance.†  One of hymns has an old traditional folk tune so that’s all right, and the other two aren’t unbearably taxing, although one has a jolly little soprano descant that ascends into the aether and I, acutely conscious of a soprano shortage, gave it a cursory glance, discarded it instantly, and went back to Monsieur Racine.

Of course I had a pillow over my head against the mad gravel-churning of over the road and didn’t hear my alarm.  YAAAAAAAH.  So I had two relays of hellcritters to get out and a sufficiency of caffeine to take on so that my eyes would not merely focus on the music but would have a clue what it was telling me, as well as getting into presentable girl clothes, in rather less time than planned.  The family had specifically requested we not wear black so I was wearing (surprise!) hot pink . . . and the nice little cardi chosen for the occasion turned out to have a moth hole†† AAAAAAAAAUGH, I must have another pink cardi . . . I do, actually, several.  I went screaming††† down the road to St Radegund with at least thirty seconds to spare.

We had a forty-five minute rehearsal before we went on and this was very good for the nerves.  Even if there weren’t enough (first) sopranos there were enough bodies.  We would fill the choir stalls like we meant business.  And the new musical director, who did not make a entirely wonderful first impression on me,‡ was totally a trooper, pulling us together and being caaaaaaaalm, which counts a lot with me.  In my youth I sang once or twice for nervy, high-strung conductors and it was not a joyful experience.  There were two nasty shocks to the system however:  one of the hymns had different lyrics in the order of service than in our hymnals‡‡ . . . and they were expecting us to sing that frelling descant.  I want a lot of friends around me if I’m going to hit an A in public.‡‡‡

But . . . it wasn’t too bad.§  It really wasn’t too bad. §§

The problem is I enjoyed it.§§§  I dropped out of the Muddles because I can’t stand the rehearsals, and the rehearsals haven’t changed.  Siiiiiiiigh.  So I emailed to Gordon tonight saying, I want shorter rehearsals and a loo, but meanwhile, can I come along for a bit till I decide that I can’t deal with it—again?  And he said yes, please do.

There goes Thursday evening (again).  But . . . singing.  I do want to sing in a choir.#

* * *

* Like that I was short of sleep, but then what else is new.  I hardly know what to do with myself on the days I’ve had enough sleep.^  But hellhounds ate supper last night.  Finally.  There was, even for them, an unusual amount of faffing around and further exacting refinement of already complex ritual and general whingeing but Darkness finally unbent sufficiently to essay the contents of his bowl.  I was about to give up on Chaos, who is the bigger drama queen but has the (slightly) less possessed by demons digestion, when he suddenly decided to eat after all.  YAAAAAAY.  Pavlova wanted it to be known that her final snack was inadequate, but she was at least not in the final throes of foodless despair as she had been the night before.

^ I’ve just been reading yet another article that says you should have on average 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Nice for those of you from that planet.

** Darling Pavlova went from fire-hose runs to . . . nothing.  It was forty two hours between the last blast and the re-establishment of intestinal . . . er . . . solidarity.  I texted Olivia last night:  If she craps in her crate overnight again I’m sending her back to Birmingham.  She didn’t.

And I am zero impressed with the effects of tinned pumpkin on canine digestion.  I am one hundred percent not impressed.  She was on pumpkin while she had the runs—she had been on pumpkin before she had the runs.  She was on pumpkin when she stopped producing anything of a craplike nature, and she is still on pumpkin now while she is clearly constipated.  I’ve bought the stuff, I might as well use it, but I’m not going to repeat the mistake.  Note that pumpkin does not work on all dogs.

*** No, wait, the C of E doesn’t do relics, does it?  From someone with a generic-Protestant background all of the C of E is high church, and if you told me relics I’d believe you.  Although an earlobe isn’t really a good candidate.  It would be a tiny wizened little leathery thing after a few hundred years.  How about St Radegund’s earring?  She was a princess, there must have been earrings.  Of course after she ran away from her fratricidal husband to found a convent she lived, according to Catholic Online, in great austerity.  Well, let’s postulate a Belinda^ who carefully kept the earrings.  I fancy a nice garnet pair.  We have only one however.  The other one is in a closed convent in Yugoslavia, possibly with her hairpins.

^ ‘Thy hand, Belinda;  darkness shades me, on thy bosom let me rest.’  I’m singing Dido, although I imagine poor Belinda tearing her hair and shouting, He’s only a bloke!  He’s NOT WORTH IT!  Pull yourself together!

† I tell myself I can’t be unprofessional when I’m a volunteer amateur.

†† Moths have been a NIGHTMARE this year.  Where are my bug-eating bats when I need them?

††† No, no, not screaming, just doing a few gentle little vocal warm-ups.

‡ Too young and too frelling brash.  I said this to Nadia and she said, oh, the poor little blighter, you come out of uni having learnt your choir-director skills directing other students who have young forgiving voices and probably a fairly open and flexible attitude . . . and suddenly you’re trying to make something of a small amateur choir full of middle-aged characters and you have to figure it out before they fire you.

‡‡  I was thinking, and it seemed like such a good idea to borrow a hymnal.

‡‡‡ And the Gs in Monsieur Racine are G flat.  Piffle.

§ The blokes bungled one of their entries BUT IT WASN’T US SOPRANOS.

§§ And I hit those G flats like a hucklebutting hellterror.  WHAM.  I even managed the descant A, although I doubt it was a beautiful noise.

§§§ It was also a loving and lovely service.  I didn’t know her, but it still made me cry.

# Today to my amazement I still had some voice left to sing for Nadia.  Yes, you’re well sung in today, she said, after the first warm-ups.  It is, of course, her doing that I didn’t strain myself attempting to uphold the honour of too few first sopranos in public.

I even went ringing at Glaciation tonight and lurched through a complete plain course of dradblatted Cambridge minor.  Singing in a choir in public is good for me.

To eat or not to eat. That is the question.

 

Today got off to a very bad start last night.  As so often.  Never make jokes at your hellcritters’ expense.  They’re listening.  They are not amused.

Remember I wrote yesterday about the rogue kitchen door at the cottage?  How, when the wind is in the right/wrong quarter, it sings and does the can-can, and while its high kicks are pretty persuasive it can’t carry a tune?  And the hellhounds feel that kitchen doors should stand quietly and not make a fuss?

The door was a whole chorus line last night.   And we’d had a rather exciting time on our final, mmph-o’clock hurtle, when I thought I might very well get airborne, with two hellhounds as wings.  And the rain, you know.  Lashing.*  The one time I really miss my contact lenses is in heavy rain.

So the kitchen door was singing an inappropriate descant to the Cantique de Jean Racine and laughing diabolically between verses.**  And hellhounds would not eat their supper.  Would.  Not.  Eat.  WOULD.  NOT.  EAT.

ARRRRRRGH.

I’ve told you that while it’s perfectly true that I AM A NEUROTIC CONTROL FREAK, it is also true that if the hellhounds miss a meal they won’t want the next one, possibly through the essential perversity of being hellhounds, but I assume there’s something a little rational going on, like that being hungry makes them queasy, and they are dubious about food at best.  AND SO YOU’RE JUST NEVER GOING TO EAT AGAIN, IS THAT IT, GUYS?  THAT’S THE PLAN?

         ARRRRRRRRRRRGH .

We tried supper in the crate.  We tried supper out of the crate.  The standard out-of-the-crate area is by the Aga and the door, however, so that was obviously not on.  We tried supper wedged up against the puppy gate by the front door, which was the new default position in fear of the homicidal back door.  NOOOOOOO, moaned the hellhounds.  THIS IS NOT A SUPPER AREA.  WE DO NOT EAT SUPPER IN THIS AREA.

Sigh.

We tried supper upstairs in my office in what I usually call their favourite bed, since they’ll rush up there every chance they get.***  BLASPHEMY!  YOU POLLUTE OUR TEMPLE OF PURITY AND PERFECT REST AND PILLOWS OF ACCUMULATED DOG HAIR WITH FOOD?  If you want to eat chocolate at your desk, that’s your business.  WE DO NOT EAT IN OUR FAVOURITE BED.  Pavlova, meanwhile, was trying to eat her crate, because she was DYYYYYYYYYING OF STARVAAAAAAAAATION—you should have thought of that before you ate whatever-it-was that gave you the runs, honeybun.†

Hellhounds didn’t eat last night.  Neither did Pavlova, of course.††  I went to bed screaming and beating my breast about having hellcritters who have to eat and won’t, and hellcritters, well, hellcritter, who LONGS to eat and can’t.

. . . Today hellhounds ate their first meal with no hesitation whatsoever.  So did Pavlova—of course.  Pav is eating today, having got through the night clean.  YAAAAAAAAAY.†††

Maybe this is a good omen for tomorrow???

Any of you out there with intercessionary gods to pray to, please ask for mercy tomorrow sometime soon after half-past twelve, for poor old Jean Racine and his Cantique.

            Whimper.‡

* * *

* This was not stopping the half a dozen young lads in t shirts playing silly-buggers with the orange warning cones we seem to have quite a few of in the main street at the moment.^  Why the cones had not been airlifted to Kansas in that wind I’m not sure, but I guarantee they were not meant for the uses our young men were putting them to.  I just hope the twits got indoors again before their alcoholic glow wore off and they realised they were freezing to death.  And that no orange warning cones were harmed in such a way that is going to come out of the taxpayers’ pocket.

Lively place, the back woods of Hampshire.  You have no idea.

^ Possibly marking blocked storm drains of which there also seem to be a generous plenty.

** Remember the talking skull in King Haggard’s castle in THE LAST UNICORN?  Like that.

*** This was true before the arrival of the hellterror.  Who doesn’t go upstairs.  Yet.  So long as you grab her fast enough.  The usual late-night drill is that the hellhounds get their final short hurtle^ and are sent upstairs while Pavlova and I have a little interaction.  If it’s a nice night we may go out first, but we end up at the foot of the stairs next to the Aga (and the door).  You take your life in your hands, sitting on the floor with an almost-four-months-old hellterror puppy:  they pogostick.  They pogostick at you.  Again, this is standard puppy behaviour, but hellterrors, as in so many things, have an extreme version.^^

The hellhounds will creep halfway down the stairs to watch the goings-on.  Chaos will usually, eventually, come all the way down and permit himself to be pogosticked.  Darkness may get as far as the bottom step, if she’s sufficiently occupied throwing herself at Chaos.  Eventually Chaos will have had enough of the younger generation, and hurtle back upstairs.  Pavlova can’t, actually, get up those stairs, because I’ve been watching closely as she tries, and guessing how many more weeks I have before I have to figure out some puppy-baffling sub-gate that the hellhounds can still get over.  Not many.

But three nights ago in some kind of wild rush of adrenaline she did get about halfway up the stairs, perhaps literally swept along by Chaos—I didn’t see her go, but Chaos was now at the top of the stairs and there was a hellterror puppy stuck halfway and becoming aware that she could go neither forward nor back.  I rescued her, muttering.  But I now grab her collar when silliness is taking place too near the bottom of the stairs.^^^

^ Admiring the antics of the citizenry+ as appropriate.

+ There are appalling numbers of slugs out there.  Just by the way.#

# I mean the slime-trail-leaving, garden-eating variety.

^^ And in the morning while I’m waiting for my tea to steep and am sitting dangerously on the floor if I yawn, she will pogostick so she can put her head in my mouth.  You did use to get a mouthful of tongue with Hazel, the smallest and most limber of the whippets, who also saw an open mouth as an invitation, but this is the first dog I’ve had who tries to get her entire head in.  Maybe there are more advantages to big dogs than I’d considered.  No, no, Pavlova, don’t get any ideas!  You’re a mini!  Maybe I can learn to dislocate my jaw, like a boa constrictor!  Maybe you’ll grow out of pogosticking!+

+ Why do I think this is not a good bet?

^^^ She is presently asleep in her crate, for a wonder, instead of under my foot.  She has her nose in her upturned food bowl and it’s totally Icanhaz too cute.  I don’t dare try to get a photo, though.  There’s a blanket over the top of the crate, for ease of dropping down over the front when she is being a pestilential hellterror and I can’t sit down to Quell her right away, so it’s quite dark in there and I’m not going to use the flash, it might wake her up.

† Try containing a hellterror who thinks she’s starving to death.  She will eat bedding, furniture, small dustbins, leftover birthday flowers, magazines, rolls of paper towels, dishtowels, shoes and raw Brussels sprouts.  Taking her outdoors is a NIGHTMARE.

†† Except for a few chunks out of the side of her crate.

†††Now if only she would crap again at all.

‡ I can’t believe Gordon won’t have found a few extra sopranos for tomorrow . . . I have to believe it, or I won’t get any sleep tonight . . . but I wish we’d had the chirpy email about it. . . .

Poisonous Toad Day

 

We were supposed to go to Ashtabula today, to hear one of Peter’s grandsons sing Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance in a rather good local theatre society production.  Ashtabula is pretty much a ratbag to get to from here* and I can’t drive** that far, but one of Peter’s daughters—Frederic’s auntie—was going to provide taxi service, with some trains, planes, buses, Vespas, tandem bicycles and pony traps*** making appearances along the way.

Then it started to rain.  Again.  That would be maybe . . . a week ago.†  It’s been raining a lot.  I might as well spend this autumn having a puppy, working in the garden is not very feasible.††  I think we had one day this week it did not teem with rain.†††  It is therefore pretty soggy around here.  And then it started to rain harder.  Then the wind began.‡

Some time yesterday the radio started announcing local flood warnings.‡‡  By yesterday evening we had a Severe Weather Watch for pretty much the whole of the south of England.  And I started worrying.  By the time I packed up three hellcritters, a computer, a knitting bag and too many books to go back to the cottage, I decided that I’d stay home today.  Feh.  Okay.  Whatever.  I left a note for Peter, who’d gone to bed assuming I’d stay home.  He was still going:  he was continuing on to visit various family in Gloucestershire, I mean Montana.   But if he was stranded and ended up in a hotel overnight, no big.  I have critters I have to get home to.  My dog minder is a sweetheart and I’m sure she’d cope in an emergency—but I would have a nervous breakdown and none of us would be enjoying ourselves.

So I was already staying home, okay?  If some crucial aspect of the maintenance of the universe in its present shape and balance depended on my remaining at home today, this consummation had already been accomplished.

It was therefore TOTALLY UNNECESSARY that Pavlova have diarrhoea too.  It’s been very splendid.  I came downstairs this morning to . . . a crate.  Ahem.  It was not immediately evident that there was anything wrong beyond that Pav had for some reason, after ten days or so straight of perfect control, lost it this morning, so I yelled a lot§, cleaned up, gave her breakfast and put her back in the crate while I had my tea and regained my equanimity.§§  All right, attempted to regain my equanimity.

When I went to put her out for a pee before I took hellhounds for their hurtle, the crate looked . . . more ahem.  Lots more ahem.  Gruesome ahem.§§§  At this point the problem was obvious.  Although I have no idea why we had—and, indeed, still have, although, since she’s not getting anything to eat I don’t know what she’s still-having with—an obvious problem.  But I have thought often today of the poor dog-minder turning up to hurtle everyone according to their various conditions and modes of being and finding . . . because she would have found.  I’d’ve left after the first episode and before the second.

And yes, it’s raining . . .golly is it ever raining.  And the wind is roaring.  I hope the screams of the kitchen door don’t keep me awake.

Someone posted this to the forum:

You know, I have to wonder… if Robin is using her two-person rpg to write KES, then that means *she* may have experienced the same cliffhanger about Sid’s previous owner that she “shared” with us…. 

I am tired and worried and not in a good mood and I recently received a self-righteous email from some twerp who wanted to lambaste me for depriving Cathy of her rightful share of the glory of KES . . .  but I did answer a very similar question on the forum just a few days ago.

          Barring, I think it’s three episodes, last June, KES is all mine.  All.  Mine.  I told you when I first started posting KES that I would tell you when Cathy was involved, and I even posted our Skype chat conversations that produced those episodes.  Because I am a total loose cannon, in the PEGASUS-trilogy-started-out-as-an-AIR-short-story tradition, the original plan for Cathy’s involvement didn’t work, because it was based on Kes getting moved in to Rose Manor a lot sooner in this-world time.  I’m writing her moving-in right now and . . . it won’t appear on the blog before Christmas.‡‡‡

I don’t know how I’ll drop Cathy back into the fray.  We’ve been talking about it.  Because a lot more has happened than we’d figured on—including Sid, although I’d known for a while about the shadow on Kes’ doorstep at the Friendly Campfire, and that she’d be having a dog sooner rather than later—what Cathy can or might want to do as gamesmaster has changed.  I’m thinking we might end up running sort of two streams, Mine and Hers, but we’ll see.

But the point is, I’LL TELL YOU.  I enjoy writing KES, but it’s a lot of work.  Credit where credit is due, okay?  Thanks.

* * *

* Three or four thousand miles is a long way to go to hear The Pirates of Penzance, fond as I am of The Big Four of Gilbert and Sullivan, even if your [step]grandson is singing the male lead.

** . . . or swim

*** We wanted a dog sled too, but they’d all been booked already.

† Only thirty-three days and nights to go.

†† It’s very convenient that you’re not supposed to walk on your ground when it’s very wet.  It destroys the soil structure.  Heh heh heh heh heh.^

^ Planks?  Yes, we did planks back at the old house+.  We had room to store planks back at the old house.  Capiche?

+ You put a plank down and stand on that, and it distributes the load so you don’t Destroy the Soil Structure.

††† Thirty-four days then.  Keep hammering.

‡ Yesterday morning I was drinking my tea by the Aga while the kitchen door was possessed by demons.  It was rather exciting.  It dragged at its hinges, it danced, it leaped, it moaned, it shrieked.  I discovered the hellhounds out of their crate, pressed cowering against the puppy gate^ at the opposite end of the kitchen and trembling.

^ I am so glad I decided that puppy gates were helpful containment aids for big dogs too.

‡‡ They were a day late as far as I was concerned.  Wolfgang and I had some quite interesting bow-waves on our way to the abbey Wednesday night.

‡‡‡ Christmas is much too soon.  Just by the way.

§ In a general, nonspecific sort of way, so as not to alarm any hellcritters.  That wayward kitchen door is disturbing enough.

§§ My what?  Say that again, I didn’t catch it the first time.

§§§ And no, she hadn’t made the faintest I-need-to-go-out whimper.  She has meltdown tantrums about ACTION.  I WANT ACTION AND I WANT IT NOW^ but I haven’t learnt to read needing-to-go-out signs.^^

^ Which is why I never got round to opening the bottle of therapeutic cheap fizz I put in the refrigerator earlier:  I don’t know if we’re suffering a Developmental Stage or she’s just ratbagging because she’s hungry or queasy but she’s spent most of the day being Quelled, which is to say on a pillow at my feet being STOOD ON.  She’s really outgrowing my lap big time and furthermore I have come to dislike typing one-handed.  She does acknowledge my right to Quell, so it’s (mostly) not a wrestling match, but I have backache and cramps in both calves from using her as a footstool gently.

^^ You don’t want to train a puppy to ask or it’ll ask every time it’s bored or lonely.  Ask me how I know this.

How do I get myself into these things?

 

I stopped singing with the Muddlehampton Choir months ago.  I have stamina problems at the best of times because of the ME, and the combination of their marathon two and a half hour rehearsals with the LACK OF A LOO so this postmenopausal woman can’t afford to sip water during practice eventually meant that while I never formally declared I was giving it up, I . . . stopped going.  I can’t remember how much of this I’ve told the blog.  I’d come home not merely exhausted but hoarse, wheezing, coughing and cracking.  Nadia said that I had to drink water, and that I should experiment with when I could start drinking water and still make it home afterward.  Ahem. These experiments were not a resounding [you should forgive the term] success.  Ahem.

I was still dithering and not admitting that I’d quit when I met up with the Muddles’ membership secretary on the street in New Arcadia last summer who asked me hopefully if I was coming back some time.  I moaned about the ME, the lack of a loo* . . . and also about the wheezing, coughing and cracking.  She frowned thoughtfully and said that she’d wondered herself about the actual air in that church:  it’s an old church, and could easily have weird motes and lung-inimical molecules floating around in it.

Oh great.

Well, for whatever assortment of reasons, good, bad and, er, muddled, I’ve slid out of the Muddles.  I think about them from time to time.  I’ve had a fairly cursory look around for other local non-audition choirs with shorter rehearsal times and on-site loos in newer, cleaner buildings, but I pretty much already know what’s available from the trolling I did when I joined the Muddles.  The question of the choir I don’t belong to however has become rather embarrassing again with starting up voice lessons with Nadia:  yes, I take voice lessons for fun, because I enjoy it, but my excuse, such as it is, is that I want to sing in a choir.  I want to sing in a choir to a standard that will make them reasonably glad to have me there—hence voice lessons.  Taking solo voice lessons however you are inevitably singing solo pieces, and Nadia has this entertaining habit of saying ‘Now, if you were singing this to an audience, you would want to . . .’  We both know it’s not going to happen.  And I’m not sure but what singing is another one of those things—for me, that is, solitary crank that I (mostly) am—which I’m supposed to do with other people, like bell-ringing, and finding a church community to belong to**.

Well, there’s a lot of other stuff going on*** and I will worry about the choir thing later.  Meanwhile I am still on the Muddlehampton mailing list.  The beginning of this week there was an all-points email bulletin from our fearless leader, saying that the Muddles were going to be singing the Cantique de Jean Racine for the funeral of a retired Muddle member this coming Monday, at 12:30 in the afternoon, that he was short available singers, and any of us deactivateds who might be able to do it he would be very grateful.

I almost didn’t answer.  Third-rate sopranos are two-a-penny and my acquaintance with the Cantique is not close.  When he said anybody he didn’t mean me.  But I know from bell-ringing what a ratbag trying to scrape together enough bodies for an in-office-hours event is . . . so I did write back, adding that if he wanted me to sing I would need to come to practise.  He answered by return electron saying that he was, in fact, a tiny bit short of sopranos, and they’d be glad to see me on Thursday.

I had way too good a time, singing with the Muddles last night.†  We practised the Cantique first, so us fillers-in could leave afterward.  I was sitting next to Cindy, fearless-leader Gordon’s wife, and as we all put the Cantique down, I said to her, so, what else are you singing?  And she said, oh, stay a little longer, and sing with us.  So I did.  Arrrgh.  A bang-up arrangement of When the Saints Go Marching in and Bruckner’s Locus Iste which is one of my favourite things ever and it was like foie gras and champagne on a platter and I’m all AAAAAUGH.  The rehearsals are still too long, the church is freezing cold and full of Malign Spores, and there is NO LOO.

I did leave at the tea break, but first I went (muttering, as above) up to Gordon to ask about Monday, and the soprano section.  I was still clutching my borrowed copy of the Cantique, because I was going to go home and cram.  Gordon had been doing head-counts at the beginning of practise, and I’d had an uneasy feeling that the sopranos for Monday were, indeed just a tiny bit short.  Just.  A tiny.

I said to Gordon:  There are three of us, right?

He looked at me with the expression of the outflanked general about to earn a posthumous Victoria Cross, and nodded.  But I’m going to call in some favours, he added, bracingly.

Three.  Sopranos.  Including me.  One of them is a perfectly adequate amateur choir soprano.  One of them is a very nice woman who makes virtually no noise audible to the human ear.   I used to sit next to her. There is the occasional distant hum from her general direction, but that might also be the ancient church wiring.

And me.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

How do I get myself into these things?

* * *

* It confounds me that the average age of a Muddle is probably the high side of fifty . . . so here are all these menopausal and postmenopausal women and I’m the only one who has trouble keeping her legs crossed for two and a half hours?

** Probably not including monks.

*** Gemma, Niall and I were handbelling tonight, and Gemma was talking about the quarter peal she and I had rung at the abbey last Sunday.  I said that I’d thought it was a bit naughty of them to pitch both of us in together:  yes I’ve rung several quarters of bob minor, but none recently, and I’m a terrible abbey ringer, and the likelihood of my being able to hold my line against someone bumbling through their first quarter^ is not good.  Someone ringing their first quarter should have a good STABLE band around them.  Okay, I worry too much, and we got the quarter, which is all that matters.  And then Gemma, who unlike me picks up methods easily, said cheerfully that she thought that they’d put us in together because they were anxious to bring us on toward strengthening the abbey band.   EEEEEEEEEP.  I think she said this to be encouraging, but it makes me want to run away to sea.

Also, supposing you read the footnotes where they appear in the text, keep reading.  I am running away to sea twice.

^ Remember that Gemma has been successfully shoved into all kinds of fancy methods I haven’t a prayer of ringing, but at the expense of some of the basics.  Like bob minor.  This does mean she’s likelier than a beginner to bumble successfully through a method she’s had insufficient practise on, but it still seems to me a little unfair.

† Their new musical director, whom I had not met before, gives us warm-ups, which Ravenel never did:  he expected us to arrive ready to go.  This new chap, furthermore, gives us warm-ups I have written down in my notebook from lessons with Nadia.  So he is clearly a Person Who Knows.

KES, 54*

 

FIFTY FOUR

 

“Hello,” said Jim.  “This is Jim Cuthburt.”  Gibber.  “Yes, I’m the vet.”

The volume at the other end of the line increased.  Jim listened for a few seconds, and then held the phone away from his ear for a few more seconds.  The blood was thudding in my own ears so hard I couldn’t hear any of what was being said.  Jim put the phone back against his ear again and said, “I see.”  Pause.  “I see.”  He glanced at me but I couldn’t read his expression.  “The woman who brought her in —”

Gibber gibber gibber GIBBER.

            “Very well,” said Jim.  “I’ll tell her.”  Gibber.  “Thank you.  You’ve been very informative.  I appreciate your being so—er—explicit.”  He ended the connection and handed the phone back to Callie.

I wanted to say for pity’s sake tell me but my mouth seemed to be glued together.

“Well,” said Jim, looking at Sid.  “Your previous owner seems to have found you a bit of a challenge.”

Previous? I thought, but my mouth still wasn’t working.

Jim looked at me.  “You have a dog, if you want her,” he said.

I breathed a very long tremulous sigh.  Very long.  I didn’t think my lungs were that big.

Sid, as if she’d been waiting the outcome of the phone call also, and assumed that ‘you have a dog if you want her’—or possibly my sigh—was sufficient, stretched out her front legs and lay down.  She put her head on her paws.

“But I did tell Mrs Tornado that I would pass on what she said.  Roughly speaking she—er—seems to feel that the Duchess —”

Duchess? I thought.  No wonder Sid hadn’t been happy.  There were duchess dogs out there.  Sid wasn’t one of them.

“Is—er—incorrigible.  ‘Devil dog’ is—er—the phrase she used.”

I looked at Sid, who had shut her eyes.  She looked like a dog that needed a lot of food and brushing and attention.  She did not look incorrigible.

“It is possible that her—incorrigibility—may return as she regains condition.  But . . .”

I finally got my jaws unstuck.  “I’ll take my chances,” I said.  “It’s also possible that Mrs Tornado and Sid just didn’t get along.”  Duchess I thought.

“Yes,” said Jim.  “That occurred to me also.  And it is also true that a dog who has been through something like the last few months may not be the same dog afterward that she was before.  And adolescence in dogs can be as trying as it sometimes is in humans.  Your Sid will turn two in August.”

“Did she have any specifics about my devil dog?”

“Well, she broke her leg jumping out a second-story window.  Apparently she spent the first year and a half of her life trying to run away—and finally succeeded four months ago.  Mrs Tornado lives in Ohio, so your Sid certainly put some miles in before she decided—er—to settle in New Iceland.  The—er—Duchess was also—er—very resistant to even basic training.”

I thought of holding a piece of cheese in front of her nose and saying ‘sit’.  Sid, just by the way, was a dumb name for a dog, because she’s not going to be able to differentiate ’Sid’ from ‘sit’.  Fine.  I’d think of something else for ‘sit’.   ‘Flump,’ possibly.  Sid was her name.  Like she was my dog.   If she had resisted learning ‘sit’ from Mrs Tornado she had nothing to unlearn.

“But Mrs T also mentioned that her mother is a Saluki, and Salukis are often—er—resistant to standard training methods.”

Oh, Salukis.  There was a whole fairy-tale mythology about Salukis, which are possibly the oldest breed of domestic dog.  I had been madly in love with the Saluki myth while I was a teenager, and being regularly bitten by the Ghastly Chan Two backstage at dog shows.  “Who—or what—is her dad?”

“Unknown.  Her mother escaped for a night when, as it turned out, she was in season.  Which might suggest that Sid’s wanderlust is in the genes, except that her mother came home again the next day, and proved to have been in season by being pregnant.  Her mother is a championship Saluki, and while I have no excuse for this hypothesis, except that I would like to see Sid in a happy home, it is possible that Mrs Tornado liked the idea of having a cheap half-champion puppy with a mystery father better than she liked the reality.”

I have a dog, I thought.  I have a dog.  I felt my face blooming in an enormous smile.  I looked at Jim and discovered that he was looking at me.  He smiled back.

“Whatever,” I said.  “I have a dog.”  The words tasted like champagne and chocolate in my mouth.  I stood up and Sid stood up at once too.  Jim got more slowly to his feet.  “Oof,” he said.  “Now that her future is assured, shall we see if she’ll come and stand on the scales?”

* * *

*  Happy Thanksgiving.  As a hellgoddess, I am a wuss.

Triumph. Itty bitty teeny weeny . . . triumph.

 

It hadn’t been a total toad of a day before bell practise, despite getting to bed later than later than later than later . . . because the point about Remedial Holding, which you wouldn’t need to be doing if you hadn’t taken your eye off the ball/puppy, is that you’d better be absotively flangbastedly sure that the hellterror in question has, in fact, yielded the point and isn’t waiting to spring back into sedition and anarchy the moment you put her back in her crate.

This took a while.

Today when I flomped her on my lap again* keeping her there was somewhat less of a Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant situation than it had been yesterday and I thought, first/rough draft is such a nightmarishly slow process anyway typing with one hand probably won’t slow me down that much.**  And I don’t think it did.  The hellterror erupted only rarely and broke my concentration no oftener than I break it myself anyway.***

So I went off to tower practise at the abbey tonight feeling that I had almost earned an hour and a half away from my computer.  This faint glow of positivity had, of course, departed for parts unknown by the time I got to the top of those consarning stairs and fell out into that vast gloomy ballroom of a ringing chamber. †  Besides, I was convinced that there would have to be a backlash from Sunday’s success and tonight I would probably ring with the grace of a hellterror presented with knife and fork.††

And then . . . we had a visitor who is trying to learn Grandsire Triples††† and Scary Man let me ring inside too, which was pretty foolhardy of him . . . and nobody died.  I really am getting the hang of this, I thought in astonishment.  No, no, don’t even think that, the Bad Fairies will hear you.  But one of the crucial stages of learning a method is being able to keep ringing the freller when someone else is going wrong, and learners are always with us.‡

Various other things were rung and I got some knitting done.‡‡  And then Scary Man called for bob major.  I put my knitting down.  Hopefully.  This was the method we had the half-day seminar in a little while ago.  That I was labouring under the delusion I had learnt a bit of.  Robin, you take the two, said Scary Man.  Excellent:  the two is inside (ringing the method), but it’s next to the treble (the first bell, ringing simple plain hunt).  I’m still totally ropesight challenged in the abbey because of this ringing queue thing instead of a ringing circle where you can see everybody and therefore have half a prayer of seeing the bell you should be striking after.  Learning a method usually includes learning when you pass the treble, which doesn’t change when the rest of the bells get mixed up, so if you’re ringing in a queue, and you’re lucky enough to be on the two, you can ignore the treble on your right and just keep looking left.‡‡‡

We got through this, despite the fact that the eight-bell rhythm is still dangerous alien territory for me.  And then Scary Man swapped people around, called for bob major again, put a learner on the two . . . and put me on the three.  Rope sight ahoy.  YEEEEEEEEEP.

And the learner on the two went wrong.

And the ringer on the five had a senior moment and also went wrong.

I did it.  I did not go wrong.§  I am learning both the eight-bell rhythm§§ AND ROPESIGHT AT THE ABBEY.§§§

* * *

* Which she only fits on any more when she’s cooperating, which makes the remedial aspect presently rather thrilling.  I have picked up the intensity of our lessons in down, since when we get to the stage where she won’t fit on my lap any more even if I wodge her together first, like trussing a turkey for a too-small pan, we will need the long down available.  The Long Down saved my sanity with Holly of the previous generation, who thought ricocheting off the walls was perfectly reasonable behaviour.  If I’d known the word ‘hucklebutting’ I would have applied it to Holly.  Whippets hucklebutt too.  Some whippets.  Hazel was much too well-bred^ and Rowan didn’t believe in fun.^^

^ Although she went like hellblazers outdoors.

^^ Much too undignified.

** Handwriting on paper sounds like the obvious answer but it somehow isn’t.  I seem to do more paper-adjusting with my left hand than I realised.

*** Isn’t it time for another cup of tea?  What is that funny noise?^  What is that funny smell?^^  My nose itches.  There’s a smudge on my glasses.  And salad dressing on the monitor.  Also, the world is going to end.  In about half an hour.  THIS IS A STUPID STORY.  WHAT WAS I THINKING OF, TRYING TO TELL THIS REALLY STUPID STORY?^^^

^ Is it vampires?

^^ Please let it not be a dead rodent under the floor.

^^^ Further break for hilarity when Pavlova starts furiously wagging her tail in her sleep.

† All 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them, especially the final flight, which is in a spiral tighter than your average wine-opening corkscrew and the treads are too small for my gigantic feet.  Not to mention the strange angles they have subsided into^ and the interesting surface wear produced by several hundred years of toiling ringers.   I’ve been ringing there pretty regularly for what, nearly ten months?  And I still can’t climb those frelling stairs.  It’s worse going down, when I seem to be stepping on both of my own feet at the same time.

^ The stair treads, not my feet.  Although my feet maintain some pretty strange angles too, especially when there’s a hellterror hanging off one of them.

†† She’d probably eat them.

††† I feel for her.

‡ Or they’d better be, or bell ringing is in big trouble.

‡‡ Halfway through first leg of fourth pair of leg warmers.

‡‡‡ Equally good from a ropesight angle is the last bell, but the eighth bell at the abbey, even if we’re ringing round the front, is going to be heavier than I can make dodge neatly, not because in an absolute sense I can’t handle a medium-sized bell, but because I’m a frelling clumsy ringer who gets worse when she’s anxious, and it shows more on a bigger bell.

§  Well, not very. When things got a little confused I was certainly not striking with brilliant accuracy where I should have been, but I did keep going in the right direction, and when things settled down again I popped back onto the line pretty much where I should be.

§§ Let me just add here that bob major is BY FAR THE EASIEST EIGHT BELL METHOD not least because the basic pattern is REALLY STRAIGHTFORWARD so the old ringer’s ‘oh it’s JUST LIKE bob doubles/minor/triples except THERE’S ANOTHER WORKING BELL’ thing that with most methods will make the learner fall down in hysterical laughter and then go off in spasms of despair, has some validity here.

§§§ Which is not the same thing as saying I will ring well next time, but it’s a start.

Dogs. Whose idea was dogs?

 

I have HOW many of these creatures?  I did what recently (on the subject of creature accumulation)?  WHY?  Why didn’t someone STOP ME?

I’m one-handed again and CRANKY, which makes two of us:  little miss madam is extremely cranky.  Sigh.  This shouldn’t have crept up on me but it did.  Puppies have good days and bad days just like absent-minded human dog-food-buyers do and there’s been a lot going on.*  But it didn’t occur to me till yesterday that eruptions from madam’s crate were on the increase.  She’s got through the night clean pretty consistently for a while now so for example it has seemed to me reasonable that she gets a little excitable in the mornings, and new people** and new experiences can be a little overstimulating*** . . . but I think what has tipped furry adorableness incarnate into ravening red-eyed hellterror is that she and Chaos positively have a relationship lately—that was unmistakably playing going on in the sitting room at the mews† the last few days.  Even Darkness emerges from the—er—darkness of the bigdog bed occasionally and views the proceedings.  Dubiously, but (I choose to believe) with a slow increase of resignation to the inevitable.  All four of us were on the sofa for about half an hour the other night.  Pavlova was being suppressed like crazy†† but when she briefly came in contact with one of Darkness’ feet he did NOT leap off the sofa and run away.  This is major progress.

But I think bonding with the hellhounds, with whom she is obsessed, has given the hellterror airs above her station.  We are therefore into our fourth hour of Remedial Holding today and I am VERY BORED with being one-handed.†††  I am GETTING A LOT OF READING DONE.

However the best part of a day that has needed a best part?‡  FIRST BRUSSELS SPROUTS OF THE SEASON.  No, really.  I love Brussels sprouts.  I’m also a poor sad thing with no life and too many dogs, but I absolutely do love Brussels sprouts.

* * *

* The frelling synod voted against women bishops?  AGAIN?  Last time, of course, I didn’t care, beyond the distant barely-relevant fact that the C of E was thus reconfirmed as nowhere, barring bell towers, I’d ever find myself.  But . . . this makes me feel like I’m still living in the 1950s or so.  I really don’t want to live in the 50s, you know, again.  June Cleaver gave me the creeps even at the time.  ARRRRRGH.  I realise that everyone is saying that the change has to come eventually but . . . except that the last two and a bit months have not been the most fabulous time I’ve ever had, and I’ll be very grateful when the general level of tempest-tossing and major destruction of self and belief systems begin to subside because I am a little old^ for this level of upheaval, I could almost wish that I hadn’t had my conversion-zapping till tomorrow or next week, after the women-bishops question was done and dusted for another five years.^^

^ See: first-run memories of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER.  I’d hate to think that’s where my pearl fetish started.  No, no!  Audrey Hepburn!  Ingrid Bergman!  Even Grace Kelly!  Not Barbara Billingsley!

^^ FIVE YEARS!  FIVE YEARS!  We have to hang around getting older for another five years before they can put it to the vote again!!

** It continues to confuzzle me, the reactions Pav and I receive.  It still amazes me, the besotted owner, the number of people—have I mentioned recently that the whole ‘Britain is a nation of animal-lovers’ is a load of old cobblers?—who don’t want to talk to my puppy.  But of the ones that register her, and (mostly) stop to say hello, the majority are the generic ooooh-puppy sort, but at either end of reaction range, and about evenly balanced, are the Do you know what you’re getting into, those dogs are savage brutes^, which Olivia and Southdowner both did warn me about, and the They are the most beautiful dog and so charming.  I had one woman telling me how intelligent they are and while you have heard me on the subject of ‘intelligence’ as opposed to ‘easy trainability from the wanting-it-all-their-own-way human standpoint’, still, bullies are not the most trainable, and I wondered if perhaps she was very short-sighted and had confused Pavlova with a border collie.

^ I feel like I’m being accused of not doing my homework.  I wasn’t going to have a bullie because it’s not a breed you want to make a mistake about.  That was before I met Southdowner—and her bullies.  But do I look stupid?  No, don’t answer that.^

^ I’ve had the dangerous-dog savage-brute reaction several times in various bell towers when I’ve told people about her . . . where, okay, I do look stupid.+

+ Trying to readjust to the energy drain of a voice lesson in the afternoon and still go ringing that night IS GOING TO TAKE SOME DOING.  I was very stupid last night at Colin’s . . . in front of two visitors, siiiiiiiigh, one of whom has recently moved back to this area and rings at the abbey, where they are all over her because she is very good, and the other one who hasn’t rung in ten years but had remembered her Cambridge minor by the end of the evening as well as successfully turning in South Desuetude’s heavy, bad-tempered tenor for a touch of bob minor.  SIIIIIIIIGH.  Maybe I should hire out as a Remedial Canine Holding Agent in the evenings, which would keep me out of bell towers.

The voice lesson went pretty well, within the limits of what Nadia can do with me.  I AM SO HAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPY to be singing again.  She had her arms full of baby this week, so rather than playing the piano she sang with me to give me a little support—also because it’s very easy to slide off pitch with frelling Purcell, and she said if I got the tone and the ‘lift’ right the pitch would come, but the piano would just keep reminding me of what I was doing wrong.  I really like singing with Nadia, despite the fact that she has a voice and I don’t, and even with her barely humming along this is obvious, because I am a masochi—because I still have it in mind that eventually I will find other people to sing with.  But it’ll be good next week when the baby has done a little studying and can join in on the bass line.

*** I went to evensong again tonight.  I went alone.  Unless you count the knitting.

† I’d have to put up a mezzanine at the cottage to create equivalent floor space.  The walls are tall—taller than average—but they’re not that tall.  And I don’t feel like spending the rest of my life walking on all fours because of headroom problems.

†† I could get tendonitis.

††† Even though Peter nobly suppresses her so I can go have a pee occasionally.  And then make more tea, of course.

‡ Which has signally failed to include the weather.  Torrential rain at least means bottoms of hiking boots get REALLY CLEAN.^

^ PEOPLE WHO LET THEIR DOGS CRAP IN CHURCHYARDS SHOULD BE SHOT.  CHRISTIAN CHARITY MY ASS.

KES, 53

FIFTY THREE

 

Callie, no longer smiling, took the gadget from Jim and disappeared again.  Jim began to inspect . . . did I still get to call her Sid?  Maybe I’d better call her the Phantom like everyone else, to get used to . . . I was having trouble not crying.  I pinched the bridge of my nose hard, and scowled ferociously.

Jim took several minutes to go over his new client.  I was pretending not to strain to hear Callie in the office.  I could hear her voice, and pauses while—presumably—someone on the other end of the phone said something.  I knew there was a database for microchip numbers, but I didn’t know how long it took to track one down.  Sid wasn’t entirely at her ease as Jim gently prodded her, but she didn’t look either hostile or frightened, and the beautiful red leather lead hung slack between us.

He paused over one foreleg, running his hand up and down it several times and breathing out a small ‘hmmph’.  Then he fished a stethoscope out of one of his doctor-coat pockets, and let Sid sniff that before he burrowed gently through her matted coat to listen to her heart and lungs.  His face relaxed as he listened.  Finally he said, “She seems to be in remarkably good shape considering what her life has been recently.  I doubt she’s two years old yet.  She’s had a broken foreleg but it seems to have healed very well—it must have happened before she ran away.  Her teeth are fine.  If she’ll let me, I’ll take a blood sample and check what vaccinations she needs.  Her heart and lungs sound clear, but we should start her on heart worm meds immediately, and keep a close eye on her for a while.  I’d also like to weigh her—I guess she needs to put on about half again what she weighs now.  We can see if she’ll walk a few steps—the machine’s just there—but it’s not worth stressing her if she doesn’t want to.  But as she’s standing here I don’t see anything wrong with her that food and a good brushing won’t cure.  I’m not even finding fleas, but I’m too old to kneel on the floor this long, so I may be missing something.”

He glanced toward the office.  “If the chip info has been kept current, Callie should be able to locate . . . right away.  Occasionally it takes a day or two.  I’d ask you to bring her back in a week and we’d see where we are—I assume you’ve had dogs before?  I can tell you which food I’d recommend and give you some supplements and so on—but I’d entirely understand if you wanted to take her to the shelter now, immediately, before you—er—get too fond of her.  In case she’s got a home to go to.”

In case she’s got a home to go to.

Waiting.  Not my best trick.  “I don’t know,” I said.  I thought about it.  Or I tried to think about it.  The synapses seemed to have frozen with the sound of that beep.  “It’s already too late,” realising this was true as I said it.  I’d been telling myself that this was all still kind of a joke—that it would make a great story to tell Norah, especially the lunatic aspects, which were most of them.  But it was a part of the general post-divorce lunacy of creating a new life.  I didn’t have to take it seriously.  I still didn’t have to keep Sid, and this was, in fact, a damn silly way to acquire a dog.  But my heart didn’t care.  It took Sid seriously.  I’d found the town I was moving to by sticking a pin in a map.  Why should finding my dog be any more sensible?  “But giving her back will just get worse if I . . .”  Sid turned her head and looked at me, flattened her ears and waved her tail.  She thought she was going home with me.  How was I going to give her away, now or when they found out who the microchip was listed to?

Callie had been silent for about a minute, and then she asked a question.  There was a pause, and the tone of Callie’s voice changed when she spoke again.  I was staring toward the office.  I couldn’t help it.  “Kes —” said Jim.

The creak of Callie’s chair, and then she appeared in the doorway again.  She had the phone against her ear.  “Just a moment, please, I am going to let you talk to the vet,” she said.  She took the phone away from her ear, and as she walked toward us I could hear the voice on the other end of the line going gibber gibber gibber.  Whoever it was was clearly excited.

“The Phantom’s owner would like to speak to you,” said Callie, and handed the phone to Jim.

 

Bob minor

 

Last Sunday afternoon at the abbey I was the second person into the ringing chamber.*  The first person was Albert, who is Someone with a Key to the tower, and I was very glad he was there first, because it’s a life-threatening wind tunnel, waiting for Someone with a Key at the foot of the tower stairs.  You could find yourself in Madagascar with hypothermia (and very messy hair).

Albert said, We’re due to do a local quarter** next Sunday, and I wondered if you’d like to ring in it?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, drop back and regroup.  I don’t ring quarters because I’m an easily overwrought coward with ME.  I have stamina issues anyway and as soon as I’m stressed about anything—like, for example, worrying about getting through a quarter peal, because if you mess up you’ve ruined it for the entire band—my brain goes all lalalalalalalala and I start having to lean on things and sit down a lot.  Arrrgh.  But I’m longing to ring more at the abbey first because I just need more PRAAAAAAACTISE and also ringing quarters is a bonding thing and I can’t forget that I’m not really abbey material, it’s just the abbey is going through a thin time when they need all the hands on ropes they can get, and have to let people like me in if we want to come.  If I can ring even a stupid baby quarter without screwing it up too badly I will feel a little less hopeless.  It also occurred to me several months ago that in terms of my erratic stamina, service QPs at the abbey are a better bet than they were at New Arcadia because they’re earlier in the day—the New Arcadia service quarters are rung at 5 pm, after you rang that morning—and I don’t even try to ring morning service at the abbey.

Yes, I said to Albert.  I’d love to.

The man first offered me bob major.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Er, I said.  The first touch of it I’ve ever rung successfully was at the education day a couple of weeks back.  I don’t think I’d get through a quarter.**

Oh, okay, said Alfred.  I can see how you’d want to work on it a little more first.

Mmmrrrggmmph, I said.

Bob minor? said Alfred.

Oh, yes, I can do bob minor! I said, hoping I was telling the truth.  I jolly well ought to be able to ring bob minor, upside down, asleep, or in the abbey, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can.

Fine, he said.  We start half an hour early when we’re ringing a quarter, just in case anything goes wrong.

I assumed this meant in case it fires out, there’s more time to start over and have a second try.  Okay, I said, Two o’clock next Sunday.  Thanks.

My pleasure, said Albert.

At Wednesday practise Scary Man had me ring a touch of bob minor as a little warm-up, which is very sensible and all that.  But we were ringing on the front six which are TINY bells and eezum cheezum they go, as the saying is, like the clappers.  My hands were smoking, and my brain felt like a hellterror trying to catch a fleeing hellhound.  We don’t have to ring on the front six on Sunday, said Albert and Scary Man.  We have an assortment of sixes—you can choose.

Not the front six, I said.  Something a little heavier so we don’t go quite so frelling fast.

I have, of course, been WORRYING ABOUT THIS QUARTER ALL WEEK.

Today, finally, my life is or is not going to end.  I’ve been TRYING TO TELL MYSELF that if we fire out—no, if I fire the rest of the band out—it is NOT the end of the world, I will NOT die, etc.  But I don’t believe me.  I’d like to get the quarter, but I chiefly DON’T WANT IT TO BE ME IF WE FIRE OUT.

It’s now officially the run up to Christmas, and there are frelling craft fairs and trinket stalls and blah and blah littering the landscape.  I allowed myself fifteen extra minutes for finding parking.  When I hit the beginning of the abbey’s medieval town’s one-way system there was a tailback to Dorset.  I turned the other way.  I had TIME.  I could park at the edge of town and lollop the rest of the way on foot.

The multi-storey car park was closed.

The other multi-storey had its top two floors closed.

The other other multi-storey had so extreme a tailback—farther than Dorset, maybe Cornwall—I didn’t even bother to try.

It took me thirty five minutes to find . . . the LAST parking space anywhere in town, ‘in town’ being used fairly loosely, since it was nearly a quarter-hour sprint to the abbey.  Those quadruply-frelling stairs to the ringing chamber ARE EVEN MORE BOUNDLESS AND IMMODERATE when you’ve just sprinted a quarter-hour across town.

I fell across the threshold and gasped, it took me thirty-five minutes to find a parking space!

Don’t worry, said Albert.  Leandra and I only got here about five minutes ago for the same reason.

Gasp, I said.  Gasp.

Sit down and catch your breath, said Scary Man.  We have time.

Which was nice of him, although we only sort of had time.  We did ring on the thrice-blasted front six . . . because they go faster.

Eeeeeeep.

Well, I wouldn’t be telling you this story like this if it didn’t have a happy ending, right?

WE GOT THE QUARTER.

. . . It was even not too bad.  I was even not too bad.  I am so much better on six bells, which is what I’ve mostly rung in my life so far, and which comforts me that I MAY YET EVENTUALLY LEARN to ring on eight and ten and forty-six, which us abbey ringers are expected to do.  And there is absolutely no way I’d’ve survived forty-five minutes of bob major after spending thirty-five minutes looking for a parking space, fifteen minutes sprinting across town—and having wound myself up into a complete frenzy in the process.  And if we hadn’t theoretically been starting half an hour early we wouldn’t have had time for a quarter, even on the front six.

Yaaaaaaaaay.

* * *

* Pant, pant, pant, pant, pant.  You have to REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT^ to ring bells to climb all those FRELLING stairs on a regular basis.  GAH.

^ Infinitive splitting is allowed under stress of extreme emotion.

** Quarter peal.  The abbey band rings a quarter for Sunday afternoon service about once a month, I think, although I don’t pay attention beyond checking the web site to see if I should turn up or not, since quarters never concern me.  And visiting bands clutter up the schedule ringing quarters on Sunday afternoons with some frequency.  It’s all part of the NATIONAL CONSPIRACY to prevent me from getting enough time on a rope to LEARN anything.^

^ There’s been a mixed response to our bob major half-day a fortnight or so back.  One of the helpers left early, almost in tears, saying that it was too confusing and she couldn’t hold her line through the method.  I’ve heard from several other helpers that they were having difficulty holding their place because there were too many learners per touch—there were as many as four learners ringing an eight-bell method.  This does not, it’s true, offer good critical mass for keeping the whole shebang moving in the right direction—and yes, once we got beyond plain courses and were trying to ring touches we crashed and burned kind of a lot.  Yes, it was pretty shambolic.

Was it worth it?  Yes.  Absolutely.  The point is IT HAPPENED.  And those of us who only learn ANYTHING by grind had time on a rope.  There were enough helpers—ie people who knew the method really well—that there were spares for minders—standing at learners’ shoulders while they rang.  No, it was not beautiful.  But IT HAPPENED.  Education days and half-days are a big tiresome pain to organise, and people have lives, and as a result there aren’t nearly as many education days as us grinders want or need.   So full points to the organisers.

*** SIIIIIIIIGH.  The problem is that the very best way to finish learning something is by ringing a quarter of it.  Forty-five minutes non-stop of a specific method really does grind it into your synapses.  But you need to know it well enough^ to have a prayer of surviving forty-five minutes.  I don’t think I have more than about half a prayer of surviving forty-five minutes of bob major even under optimum conditions.  Forty-five minutes pulling on a rope is a long time, especially if you’re a stress freak.^^

^ ‘Know it well enough’ means have rung it enough that you have some familiarity and a few clues to fall back on if you have a brain failure and suddenly have no idea what you’re doing, including where you are and why you have a rope in your hands.  ‘Enough’, however, varies from ringer to ringer.

^^ Three and a half hours is even longer, which is about what a full peal takes, but I’ll never ring one so it’s a bit moot in my case.  I flatly don’t have the stamina.  Colin, on the other hand, is only interested in full peals.  He thinks quarters are boring, and will only ring them if someone is short a ringer.

 

Cranky

 

It was still dark when I got up this morning.  Well, dark-ish.  Granted it stays dark later (and gets dark earlier) this time of year AND that it was a drizzly, grizzly, dank, overcast day—typical November in fact:  but I like being a Scorpio—still.  It was dark when I got up.  Pavlova was like, oh, hey, MORE PLAY TIME* but the hellhounds were all, are you kidding?**  Go away.  I poured a certain amount of caffeine into the machinery, creaked, misfired, caught, moaned, and went outdoors to fumble uphill to Wolfgang.***

I was so terrified of being late picking up Aloysius that I left FABULOUS AMOUNTS OF TIME to get lost in.  And then finding his house was as easy as Google maps said, which is not a given in my experience.  So I was there about fifteen minutes early.  You feel very conspicuous sitting at the end of a curate’s driveway at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

As the minutes ticked by, and I tried not to catch the eye of any of the early joggers and newspaper-buyers and so on as they wended their legitimate ways through the little estate, I started to grow increasingly nervous about the lack of any signs of life in the house I was parked in front of.  Maybe this wasn’t the right address.  The development his house is in is one of these that has several lobes, and once you’ve passed the entrance and been told to go this way rather than that way . . . you’re kind of on your own.  The individual courts are not marked.  So you’re sitting there looking at this clearly dark, sleeping house six and a half minutes before you’re supposed to be picking up your native guide to deepest elsewhere and thinking, maybe you misread the signposts.  Maybe this isn’t Borogove Crescent.  Maybe this is Bandersnatch Close!

With five minutes to go, I crept up the walkway and tremblingly pressed the bell.  A sudden uprush of bustling noises and the door was thrown open and a small person in a dressing gown beamed at me and said, “He’s just finishing getting dressed!  He’ll be with you in a moment!” and I, relieved, thought, ah, what it is to be a pastor’s wife:  smiling at importunate strangers who want your husband at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

Tintinnabulation Abbey is beyond the back of beyond, and I have no idea how I’m going to find it again, barring rent-an-angel.  You drive through several decreasingly tiny villages—I’m sure there was a border crossing involved—and then eventually you declare yourself in the hands of God, turn left into a forest, and . . . there it is.  With electricity and central heating and everything.†

And monks.  Wibble, as someone said on the forum recently.  I am very grateful to have had Aloysius’ shadow to hide in, because despite the large sign saying VISITORS WELCOME and Aloysius’ conviction that services are open to the public it was pretty intimidating.  No, make that VERY intimidating.

But the chapel holds grace the way a bowl holds roses, or that’s how it felt to me, even freaking out as I was about the monks.  I think I told you that Aloysius had suggested I try Tintinnabulation because they have a silent-prayer service each week and, he said, the services generally have a nice sense of space to them.  Yes.

The ridiculous thing is that of the churches I’ve tried so far—and barring my abbey they’ve all been recommended by some or other Christian friend, so I’m only going to the ones with a good reputation—this has been the first one that I’ve known pretty well immediately that I want to go back to.  This finding a church thing is supposed to be about finding a community.  Monks?  I don’t think so.††

As promised, Aloysius took me round to the refectory after the service, for tea and monkish chat.  Most of the latter went straight over my head††† but I did come away with a very sharp, vivid impression of the monks who hung out to drink hot liquids in the company of the hoi polloi.  In one word:  cranky.  And I was thinking, hmmm, Christians so seriously committed they’ve gone the religious community route . . . cranky?  Maybe there is a place for me somewhere in the monolithic C of E.  Cranky I can do.

* * *

* We have another new game.  This one is called . . . Whirlygig puppy.  One of the silliest things Nemo did when Southdowner brought him here was lie down in a field when we were all out hurtling, forelegs stretched out in front of him and back legs stretched out bonelessly, or anyway hiplessly, behind him.  Toy dog position:  toy dog limbs are attached differently.  And then he refused to get up.  So Southdowner dragged him about halfway across the field (he was in a harness, not a collar, and furthermore this is clearly a vaudeville act).  While I was falling down in helpless laughter—and hellhounds were looking on in consternation^—Southdowner said that this is a standard bullie silliness, and that when I had a bullie, because of course, I would have a bullie some day, he/she would do this too.

It took about a week for Pavlova to start lying like that, like a beanbag dog, and at first I worried about dragging her (playing tug indoors), she didn’t really weigh enough to provide stability and I was afraid of giving her carpet burn.  But she is now a VAST CHUNK of fourteen pounds—she weighs a stone!—and belly-glides over the carpet as slickly as Dorothy Hamill^^ on the ice.  This means we can start working on our routine.  Whirlygig puppy.  But our fabulous new move involves a quick flick of my wrist and gives Pavlova the impetus for a rollover.  We’re still totally failing to learn ‘down’—the theory is that you get the ‘sit’ established and then lower the treat till the puppy has to lie down to get it.  Uh huh.  Anyway.  Maybe we should just go straight to rolling over, which she clearly has a gift for.

^ I’m not sure if the consternation was for me or for Nemo.  I can just about understand a bitch finding this a funny double act, but I would have thought a male dog would find that tiny clods and small splintery bits might get rammed up sensitive organs.

^^ Yes I’m that old.

** Also frelling Chaos is lame.  He did something to himself that day we met the off lead Labrador/Godzilla cross, limped for a bit and seemed to get over it.  I didn’t take it seriously because he’s a wuss—Darkness is the stoic one—but over the next couple of days it got worse.  Last two days now we go out at dog walking speed—you know how SLOWLY a dog WALKS?  They trot everywhere—so I can make the wretched animal put that leg down.  After ten minutes or so the soreness (apparently) eases off and then he wants to run.  Arrrrgh.

*** Who started better than I did.  But he’s only seventeen.

† I forgot to check for free wifi.

†† I was also reassured by how many women—saints, bishops, nuns and ordinary members of the public—were mentioned during the service and, even better, one of their staff spiritual directors is a woman in a dog collar.

††† I have told Aloysius that my conversion was the whap up longside the head variety and I have no clue, and the only experience I ever had was in generic Protestant back in the States when I was a kiddie.  He was clearly trying not to laugh when he said it was not surprising if I found the Church of England a little confusing.