Robin McKinley's Blog, page 87

Dogs and Bells

 

Yesterday and today we’ve had several more interesting encounters with other dogs and hellhounds have not reacted so they haven’t morphed into little paranoia machines at least—at least not yet.  Siiiiiigh.  People are insane.  The real wonder is that most dogs aren’t more insane.  One of the more interesting encounters was with another of these frelling gigantic black Labrador things—I don’t know what the hell they really are, what they’ve been crossing proper Labs with to get these monsters, but I hate them.  You do still meet nice old-fashioned Labs—it’s a bit like Alsatians.  There are the old-fashioned kind that are probably nice and the hot new huge streamlined kind which probably aren’t.  Gigantic Labs are bad news. 

            We saw this one at the far end of a long corridor of footpath.  I cranked hellhounds in and we stopped, which some owners recognise as a request to put that damn dog on a lead.*  In this case, okay, she did.  But as she came abreast of us she said pityingly, oh, aren’t yours good with other dogs? —while hers was standing on his hind legs and clawing the air.  Bloody thing is as tall as I am, and she could only hang onto it because she had it in one of those hackamore things that shut off its breathing.  FrgggfffffrrrrrrGAAAAAAAAH PEOPLE.  Granted I think it was more or less friendly in that cartoon way where the thing knocks you down and stands on your chest while it smothers you with licking . . . but LIFE IS NOT A CARTOON.  Make a note.**   

            Meanwhile . . . I did drag myself in to the abbey this afternoon.  Waaaaaaaah.  I so didn’t want to.  I didn’t tell you just how bad it was on Friday.  But utterly humiliating doesn’t cover it.  I had said to Albert on the way out that I was sorry, I seemed to have left my brain behind, and he was completely calm and said, oh, everyone has a bad night occasionally . . . which is a little like saying oh, everyone goes mad with an axe occasionally and destroys major international art works and maybe knocks out the power grid for a medium-sized town or two.  BAD.  IT WAS REALLY BAD.    

            Okay, here’s an example:  I couldn’t ring rounds.  I’ve told you the abbey has sixty-seven bells, and while at New Arcadia we might ring the front six or the back six, still, that’s all the permutations there are, since the middle sound funny by themselves.  (Change ringing bells are still tuned by fairly standard western musical notation to sound nice together.)  At the abbey there’s the front six, the light eight (which are not, in fact, the front eight bells, just to add to the confusion), the middle ten, the back forty-six (which are in fact the back forty-six but by then you’re too confused to appreciate this) and the second-sub-thoracic twelve which varies depending on if the moon is waxing or waning and whether a black cat crossed the path of the ringing master on his way to the tower.  We were ringing rounds on some weird permutation or other of thirty-six, which means you have to hold up for a noticeable space of time till it’s your turn to ring again because thirty-six is a lot of bells.  Holding your frelling bell in place is another of those distinct skills—pull it too high and it sets itself back upside down on its frame and you’ll waste precious time jerking it off again;  don’t pull it high enough and it comes down on you (starts swinging back again and therefore sounds too soon).  And I COULD NOT GET THE GAP RIGHT between my bell and the one in front of me so we were going Dong dong dong dong . . . dong dong dong dong, the . . . being me failing to be able to hold my bell in the right place:  I wasn’t quite setting it, but I couldn’t get it to stay just below the balance ARRRRRRRRGH.  I’d never rung this particular thirty-six before.  I didn’t know I was going to have trouble ringing this particular fifth bell after this particular fourth bell.  And the thing is . . . I have no idea which two bells those were in the grand scheme BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY BELLS.  And if we were ringing on fewer than thirty-six my slight handling problem probably would not show.  ARRRRRRRRRGH.

            Anyway.  Friday was bad.  Friday was baaaaaaaad.  I crawled out of there genuinely wondering if someone, possibly the Nice Man, would tell me (nicely) that it really wasn’t working out, and maybe I should take up boules or Bingo OR AT LEAST STAY AWAY FROM THE ABBEY,*** if I had the extremely poor judgment to show up again.  It wasn’t so much getting back on the horse that threw you, today, as my characteristic obstinacy:  Come on, it said, stop whining, we’re going to the abbey this afternoon, you know that, don’t you?  We’re going to the abbey this afternoon.  Whiiiiiiiiine, I said.  I went up the gazillion and a half stairs like the firing squad was waiting at the top.  I crept into the ringing chamber and sat down on the chair nearest the door, crouching over my knapsack, hoping no one would notice, I could just stay here in the shadows and knit for an hour. . . .

            They were really nice to me.  Albert, the Nice Man, applied the crowbar to get me out of my seat and said he was glad to see me and all these other lies . . . but the one thing that made it half true is that with me we were eight ringers, so we could ring stuff on eight—you don’t ring on seven, so without me they’d’ve been ringing on six.  Six for service in an abbey with ninety-two bells is not good.  Eight is acceptable.  Albert called for Grandsire Triples and I shied violently and said, I’ll take the treble (which is the easy bell), and Scary Man—Scary Man!  Who, while a really good teacher and minder who seems to know where you are before you do is not exactly notorious for patience and kindness to the mentally afflicted and the physically inept—said no, no, I’ll take the treble, you ring the two and I’ll shout at you.  —Trust me, this counts as kindness.  And that’s what we did.  We rang some other stuff and I was not totally hopeless on the treble, but the two touches of Grandsire Triples Scary Man took the treble and I took the two, and he kept me in line.  And I didn’t ring as well—cough cough well—as I have done occasionally on a good night, but the second touch was better than the first so I was at least going in the right direction again, dear frelling gods.†

           The other thing about going today is that us abbey ringers, both the real ones and the grim hangers-on like me, are on holiday for August.  This was my last chance of the summer either to finish falling on my sword . . . or decide not to fall on my sword.  I left saying, See you in September, and both Scary Man and Nice Man said, See you in September!, as if this was normal. . . . 

* * *

*Although after our experience the other day with the quarterwit who let his dog attack mine by not bothering to hit the brake on the extending lead I have less faith in dogs on leads any more either. 

** Although sometimes it is.  I was wearing my Australian Wildflowers t shirt yesterday when a little group of people asked me for some local directions.  I’m walking dogs, I’m a likely candidate for local knowledge.  I told them what they wanted to know and as I was walking away I heard one of them say to another, she’s not English.  No, said another of the group, she’s Australian.  —I love this.  I totally do not sound Australian.  They could just be clueless, but I prefer to think they took in my t shirt without realising, took in my accent with another part of their subconscious brains . . . and made a not quite logical deduction.  

*** I was reminded there is a further drawback to ringing at the abbey when I was at Curlyewe last time and heard one of the ringers there asking Niall where his home tower is.  At the moment I haven’t got a home tower, so I can say that.  But if the abbey does take me on . . . I will have to admit I’m an abbey ringer.  And there is cachet to this, cachet I don’t deserve and frankly don’t want.  I’m a middling mediocre ringer at my best.  I ring at the abbey because it’s what there is in this area, having bailed on New Arcadia.  Maybe I could make something up . . . I’m good at making stuff up. . . . 

† I said to Nice Man that my tendency to take three steps forward and two point nine nine nine steps back was discouraging, and he said that he’s been ringing thirty years and he can remember entire seasons when he was taking three steps forward and four or five steps back.  He is a Nice Man.

KES, 30

 

THIRTY 

I looked at my inbox again.  I could see six emails from my agent, four from Flowerhair’s editor and two from Aldetruda’s among the ninety million emails from people wanting to sell me life insurance, cashmere pashminas, solar panels, pyramid healing, scuba diving holidays in Mauritius (that one sounded pretty good, especially right now), museum memberships and climbing frames for my roses.  What?  Gossip apparently doesn’t travel nearly as fast as an on-line purveyor can smell a potential new client and hit the ‘send’ button.  I needed a bed worse than my roses needed climbing frames.  I needed a bed, sixteen blankets, a flannel nightgown and bed socks.  And possibly a warm dog.  Besides, you didn’t buy climbing frames for roses, did you?  That was what the pillars holding up your porch roof were for, right?  I had a bad feeling that gardening might turn out to be complicated.  And expensive.  Maybe I could start with a nice basic gardening book to read in bed, with the sixteen blankets and the warm dog.  It would tell me that you too could have a fabulous garden with an acre of roses like the Brooklyn Botanic with only a $3.49 trowel and a lot of green twine.  And Gus to mow the lawn.

Gus.

I also needed a car.  The jelly doughnut had distracted me.  Or possibly the thought of Norah storming up here, with her red hair, her scarlet lipstick, her skintight red leather trousers, and her attitude.   

I pulled out my phone and punched in the number at the bottom of Gus’ mom’s note.

“Yo,” said her voice.

“Hi,” I said.  “Car.”

“Kes?” she said.  “I’m pretty sure I was careful not to specify car.  I’m pretty sure I said vehicle.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“It’s a very nice vehicle,” she said.  “It runs.  And there are no skulls on it anywhere.  Relax.”

“I’ve forgotten how to relax,” I said.  “I think I left relaxing back in the city.”

“Manhattan, home of the easy-going and chilled out.” 

 “Ha ha.  Where is this vehicle?”

“Jan took the liberty of bringing it along,” said Serena.  “It’s parked outside number seven, trying not to be intimidated by your van.  Where are you?”

“I’m at Eats,” I began, and she laughed.  “I’ll be there in a very few minutes,”  I added, wiping sugar off my fingers. 

“I’m in the office,” she said.  “I’ll look out for you.”

I stuffed my laptop, not without a guilty sense of relief, back in my knapsack, dropped a few dollars on the table—and gave the tea cosy a surreptitious pat.  “So soon?” said Bridget, reappearing to collect everything back on the tray again.  “Don’t you need a pastrami on rye to hold that jelly doughnut down?  Or a bowl of chili?”

“No,” I said.  “I need a job that burns 4000 calories a day.  Anyone digging a road through wilderness with pickaxes around here?”

“I don’t think so,” said Bridget, “but they’re doing some kind of major conservation deal on the shorefront at the far end of the lake.  I think it involves cement blocks and heavy lifting.  They might be hiring.”

“Thanks,” I said.  Getting into my knapsack was never pretty, but it would improve as soon as I had a house and could leave stuff there.    

As I walked back down Bradbury I looked around for trotting shadows, but there weren’t any—of course.  She was crashed out under the kitchen table in her own home, having borne the being yelled at for jumping the fence again, because the food was good.  Well, I hoped the food was good.  My mother had a patented rant on proprietary dog food.  The Silent Wonder Dog—who was still entirely unknown having nothing to do with low-ish trotting shadows—would be given real food.  I’d have to learn to cook.  (I had specialities—like Death by Brownie—but I wouldn’t say I knew how to cook.)  Surely boiling chicken carcasses wasn’t a difficult skill.

Serena was coming out of the office door as I crossed the street.  “Anyone would think you were worried about my reaction,” I said.

“Worried?” she said.  “I wouldn’t miss the look on your face for anything.”

I looked uneasily toward cabin number seven.  Whatever was there was behind the van and disguised by afternoon tree shadows.  I thought the skull’s jaw looked even more dislocated than it had when I left this morning, and its burning eyes more frantic.  Get me out of here, it was screaming (silently), where there are crickets and cows and they park me next to a . . .

“So, did you find a house?”

I could see my rose-bush on the cabin porch.  I was sure it had unfurled several new leaves since this morning.  Rose-bushes were perhaps not unduly distressed by rogue vehicles.  “What?  Oh.  Yeah.  In Cold Valley.  It’s too big and it’s pretty ramshackle but it’s kind of—charming.”

Serena nodded.  “Yeah.  I got Mrs Jenning’s house cheap because she hadn’t remodelled since her husband died thirty years before.  And the old zinc sink is still in the kitchen because I like it.”

“There’s a gigantic solid-fuel stove in the kitchen at this place that must have been there when Washington crossed the Potomac—”

But at that moment we were close enough to see past the van to my new vehicle.

 

Not a good day

 

I had one of those I Am Giving It Up Forever experiences on the end of a bell rope tonight.  Ringing in honour of the opening day ceremonies for the frelling Olympics.  It’s beside the point that I’m not interested in the Olympics*:  when you ring for an occasion you’re supposed to ring well.  It’s respectful.  I’m not a Christian either but I ring the best I can for Sunday service.  And that’s every week—if you blow it this week there’s always next week and the week after that.  I hate ringing badly for weddings because they’re one-offs.  You don’t get to do it again next week.**   And how many times are we going to have the Olympics in London?***

            Maybe I’ll take up bowling.†  Or boules.  Or Bingo.  Think of how much more time I’d have for knitting if I didn’t waste so much time in bell towers.††

            It’s still too hot.†††  It was supposed to cool off today but cooling off has not been wildly apparent.  In naïve expectation of cooling-off I wore long trousers to hurtle hounds so we had a bit more choice about where we could go than with me in bare legs and I almost died.‡  And air con is not standard over here.‡‡  But it was 87° and 87% humidity yesterday when I putting my knitting in my cough-cough evening bag‡‡‡ and it was still in the low eighties today.  I realise this will make people from Texas or even NYC snicker, but to us Hampshire wimps it’s hot.§ 

            And of course it was the heat and not all the rich food that meant I didn’t sleep too well last night.  I wasn’t particularly looking forward to All the Bells in Frelling England at 8:12 this morning but I have no idea whether there were any audible bells or not . . . because of the jackhammer that started at approximately 8:05 and went on continuously for half an hour.§§ 

* * *

* Although I love this:  

In a garden by the river

I don’t know whether it’s visible in this photo or not, but those are tyres.  Ordinary tyres off a car.  Hee hee hee hee hee. 

** It’s perfectly true that most people don’t know what they’re listening to, listening to method bell ringing, and this is what old experienced ringers always say when someone like me (who is nonetheless way too old and experienced to make as total a hash of it as I did tonight) moans about failing to make a joyful noise.   But I insist that you don’t have to know anything about change ringing to recognise BANG CRASH CLANG CRUNCH when you hear it.^ 

^  Because, I suppose, I bemuse easily, I googled ‘chiming bells vs method bell ringing’.  The first link below was number three in the list.  The second was tucked within the first link, which is www.cccbr.org.uk, the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers.  I went there and typed ‘chiming’ in the search box.  The Learning Curve is a terrific series anyway.  It’s worth going on subscribing to THE RINGING WORLD for when the name-calling on the letters page starts getting kind of depressing. 

http://www.cb1.com/~john/ringing/glossary.html   You do have to scroll down to ‘chiming’.  

http://www.cccbr.org.uk/education/thelearningcurve/pdfs/200207.pdf 

Oh, and this is also on the opening page of the cccbr site, top of the list in the left hand column:  http://cccbr.org.uk/bellrestoration/pubs/a-glossary-of-bellringing-terms.pdf

*** I mean, thank the gods we won’t have it again in my lifetime.^  But the point about one-offs and respectfulness remains.  

^ We’d already done it in 1908 and 1948, we didn’t need to do it again in 2012.  Let someone else have a chance.  

† I’ve bowled a little.  I’m no good at that either. 

††  Unfortunately hanging around in bell towers tends to be good for my knitting—especially ringing somewhere like the abbey^ where I sit out a lot listening to the big boys and girls ringing things like Stedman caters^^.  A modest touch of something like Stedman caters which involves nine working bells takes a long time to work through its permutations.  I got several yarn rows done.^^^ 

            Then they rang Cambridge Major and I stood behind the treble, because I can treble bob on six (minor), I should be able to pick it up on eight (major).#   Why is it so much easier to watch someone else ringing something than to do it yourself?  Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. 

^ Where they probably passed a total ban on McKinley the minute I fled down those dangerous stairs a few hours ago.  When I show up on Sunday afternoon there will be a force field that doesn’t let me through.  I hope they are merciful enough to put it at the bottom of all those stairs rather than the top. 

^^ Again.  Show offs. 

^^^ Short rows however.  I’m about three quarters of the way through the Right Front and most of the way through Shaping Armhole.+  Yes.  I should do a knitting blog.  But it requires a certain amount of organisation, and organisation and I are not good friends.  

+ This is not the best shaped armhole that has ever existed.  I keep forgetting to tick off how many rows I’ve done.  I’m going to have to measure it against the finished armholes of the back.  Surreptitiously.  Of course I know what I’m doing.  I can see whether the armhole looks like an armhole.  Um . . . 

# ‘Treble bob’ is the name of the line that the treble follows through surprise methods.^ 

^ I don’t know enough about frelling surprise to know how many exceptions there are.  There are exceptions to everything in ringing, so presumably there are exceptions to treble bobbing to surprise methods too. 

††† And the ME is biting my ass big time.  GO.  AWAY.  This was undoubtedly a contributing factor in the bell tower tonight, but, so?  If I’m going to ring I have to be able to ring. 

‡ And we met the dog that chased us back into town the other day.  Joy.  And . . . Chaos and Darkness did their little united front guard Rottweiler confronting burglar thing again and . . . I’m not totally happy about it.  I mean, the stupid dog backed off—his veering into the hedgerow every time he got too close the other day proves he’s a coward, which is good—and not getting bitten is good for all of us—but I really don’t want my sweet hellhounds turning into a pair of tuned-out defensive-aggressive maniacs.  If they haven’t already:  if I haven’t just witnessed the moment that they did.  But I missed the other day, when Darkness went after the duckling:  what happens when I miss some day during a face off with another dog?  Darkness has been worrying about other dogs from the beginning—and unfortunately when Chaos learns something he tends to retain it.^  He may have just learnt that making other dogs back off is satisfying. 

^ Except when it has to do with picking his feet up to have his harness put on.  

‡‡ We didn’t have air conditioning in the fancy restaurant last night.  I knew this, so I was wearing shoes I could take off under the table and a skirt with design holes in it to encourage air flow.  Unfortunately I was also wearing the shirt I’d been wearing all day—it was a perfectly nice shirt chosen that morning to look fine with a going out to dinner skirt—but I didn’t notice till I got to the restaurant that it had lunch on it.  Arrrrrgh.  Oh well, indoors, dimly lit, flickering candles . . . Peter claims not to have noticed . . . but then he is a gentleman. . . . ^ 

^ He is also . . . untidy.  I am forever snatching articles of clothing away from him and screaming PUT THIS THROUGH THE WASH.  

‡‡‡ My real evening bags^ have developed a whole new life as Mobile Knitting Units however. 

^ Not only I but various friends have a weakness for sparkly things found at Oxfam.  

§ I also disenjoy watering the garden.  It takes huge amounts of time, struggling with taps and water butts and heavy cans full of water is tiring and awkward and the whole business is boring.  And I haven’t figured out a way to knit while I’m doing it either. 

§§ This has never happened before in the seven or eight years I’ve lived at the cottage.  We have jackhammers and chainsaws occasionally, but they’re not that early and they don’t go on uninterrupted that long.  And it happens for the first time the morning of All the Bells in England?  I think someone may be even less a fan of Martin Creed than I am.

We Are Twenty-One Today

 

 

 I may have reached a new low tonight.  Or a new something.

           It is our TWENTY FIRST ANNIVERSARY* and we went out to dinner at our single remaining favourite local(ish) Fancy Restaurant.**  And it was excellent.  I managed to have both chicken liver pate and foie gras—both champagne and Supreme Overwhelming Sticky Toffee Pudding in a Glass—the latter to go with the chocolate slice.  I generally have a second glass of champagne on these (fortunately for my liver) infrequent outings, partly because . . . because . . . well, because it’s champagne, but partly because there are very very few dessert wines that will actually hold their own against chocolate with attitude, and why waste my alcohol budget (the cough-syrup end of dessert wines tend also to be super fortified)?  This one held powerfully.  Yurp.  Fortunately I have no intention of being anywhere to ring any bells at 8:12 tomorrow morning.*** 

           Peter and I rarely discuss the future of the world when we go out to dinner.†  We tend to do crosswords.  Tonight we did the Times Literary Supplement Summer Acrostic which Peter had thoughtfully provided.  You know how this works?  You have clues you have to fill in, and once you’ve got the clues you write in the letters as directed into the acrostic box.  As the box fills up with letters you can start back guessing to the clues you may have missed.  And in this version, the acrostic quotation author’s name appears in the left-hand column of the clue grid.  Uh oh, said Peter . . . 

******SPOILER ALERT FOR ANYONE PLANNING ON DOING THE TLS SUMMER ACROSTIC******

. . . the first two letters of the author’s name are ‘LM’.  LM Montgomery! I shouted . . . and so it was.  Now warning to anyone (still) planning to do the TLS summer acrostic, there are at least two egregious errors, which seems to me a bit rough, but we’re so clever, which is to say Peter is so clever, he got about 80% of the clues††, and we did it anyway.  Whereupon I asked if I could have the page out of Peter’s (new) TLS because my idea of souvenirs of important occasions is peculiar.  And he said, just let me have a look at the other side of the page . . . which he then proceeded to read.

            So I got out my knitting.  Of course I had brought my knitting to the fancy restaurant for dinner with my husband on our twenty-first anniversary.††† 

* * *

* Of the famous-to-regular-readers-of-the-blog beginning of a weekend in Maine when I went to the airport to pick up this odd fellow I slightly knew, Peter Dickinson, because we kept running into each other at book conventions and had a developed a vague sort-of friendship.  The weekend was going to be interesting because he was an interesting character^ but it wasn’t going to be a big deal.  Oops.^^ 

^  !!!!!!!! I again hesitate to attempt to delineate any of this since Peter reads the blog.  But to your average American, Peter was/is a total walking manifestation of someone you thought only existed in Anthony Trollope.  Starting with the BBC historical drama accent.  +

+ He has as much trouble with voice recognition software on the robot answering programmes on frelling every corporate, service or sales phone line out there as I do, although he dangles from a different branch of the accent tree.  Someone needs to build more of a tall spreading two-hundred-year-old oak unit as opposed to the stunted bonsai minichip presently enabled.  Grrrrr. 

^^ Our wedding anniversary is the beginning of January.  

** Back in the days when we got out more we were better at poking around in odd corners for interesting places to eat.  But I am less and less willing to spend that much money and time on a less than fabulous meal when we’d do it better at home, it would be organic at home, and I could read/work on story in progress/write a blog entry/cruise Ravelry’s new patterns^ over dinner.  I should say something here about How Terrible It Is to Get Old and Boring, but that’s not how it feels from the inside.  It feels from the inside like discarding the non-crucial as the future gets shorter.  I admit, however, that when our other favourite restaurant changed hands and was demoted, and our list of favourite restaurants became one restaurant long^^ I felt a trifle cul de sac-ish.  Not enough to do anything about it however.^^^ 

^ A recent addition to the list of ways I soak up hours so I don’t have time to have a life. 

^^ and one or two unfancy pubs 

^^^ Going out to dinner also really cuts into your bridge-playing and bell-ringing evenings. 

*** Some poor innocent person posted to the blog asking if I knew about Martin Creed’s All the Bells in England.  http://festival.london2012.com/events/9000961496  Yes.  It has only been this huge contentious topic in the method-bell-ringing world for months.  I’m not a fan.  I’m a first cousin to the Grinch who stole Christmas, okay?  I think it’s a dumb idea.^  And I saw an interview with Martin Creed when this ‘art work’ was first announced in which he came off as entirely up himself, but in his defense he may just interview badly or had just found out his wife had run off with the plumber two minutes before the interviewer arrived. 

            I’m also just a tiny bit discouraged that a regular forum poster and therefore I would imagine regular blog reader had to ask what the difference between chiming and method bell ringing is.  Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.  B_twin_1, thank you very much, posted an answer, but to anyone else out there who doesn’t read the forum and lets the whole bell thing pass them by as a faint breeze, START SKIMMING NOW, chiming is just wagging either the bell or the clapper hard enough that the one makes contact with the other and makes a noise.  Hard enough but no harder—and on a mouth down bell, with the clapper hanging loose.  For method bell ringing you start by ringing the bells all the way up, by yanking on the rope as they swing higher^^.  This does start with chiming but ends with the bells mouth up on a frame specially built to hold them—which is why you can’t method ring with any old bunch of bells—and the clapper lying against one side of its bell or the other.^^^  Method ringing is full circle ringing:  each bell swings 360° with every stroke,# beginning and ending mouth up.    

            And it’s the order of the strokes among a band of bells that makes method ringing beguiling, but I really don’t expect anyone who doesn’t do it to understand the difference between Grandsire and Stedman and Deedledeedledumpling Surprise.  But I’d appreciate it if you’d make ‘oooh’ noises when I tell you, okay?  Thanks. 

^ But then I’m not a fan of the Olympics either.  Grinch, Grinch, Grinch.  

^^ Yes.  This is a fairly exacting skill in itself, since method-ringing bells tend to range in weight between several hundred and lots of hundred pounds.  The biggest change-ringing bell in the world, at Liverpool Cathedral, is over 9000 pounds (82 long hundredweight.  Feel free to redo the arithmetic).  Biggest bell I’ve ever rung is pushing 2000 pounds, and that is . . . plenty big enough for me. 

^^^I will spare you the discussion of bells that go up ‘wrong’ which is to say the clapper ends up leaning against the wrong side.  Yes, it matters. 

# Okay, I am also sparing you the exceptions to this rule.  Some circles are a little short for reasons either of relative bell size or style of ringing. 

† Although some sotto voce discussion of persons at neighbouring tables is usually entered into.  We were next to a family where you could so absolutely see they were related to each other.  And behind Peter’s back there was a couple where the bloke was really hoping to get laid tonight.    

†† But my handwriting is better.  You can read the boxes I filled in. 

††† And yes.  I got the page.  It is here beside me adding to the clutter on my desk.

 

Way. Too. Hot.

 

People think I’m kidding when I say if I have to choose, I’ll take cold and raining.  I’m not kidding.  I was thinking about it today as I examined the latest crop of mysterious evil toxic bug bites, scrapes, scratches, bruises and gouges, that I don’t actually like wearing shorts quite aside from the fact that wearing shorts means that it’s HOT:  I frelling damage too easily.  Also the bugs are getting worse.  This is the second time I’ve had one of these red-haloed purple doohickeys and they last for weeks.*  And the nettles, because of all the rain, are extremely fierce and juicy.  They’ll burn you through heavy jeans denim—they’ll burn you at twenty paces in shorts.** 

               It was a particularly bad day for off lead dogs too.  I knew walking by the river was going to be fraught but the idea of climbing into Wolfgang and driving somewhere in temperatures of 112°F (nearly) was pretty loathsome.  And most of the river trail is shady.  Today it was shady and covered with wet lolloping off lead dogs.***  Arrrrgh.  Fortunately most of them were friendly but most of them were also gigantic, and ran in packs.  Listen, you bloody human morons, being mobbed by five or six thugs individually twice your size counts as harassment, okay?  Even if there isn’t any snarling. 

               Our best encounter, however, was the last, after we’d left the riverbank and were headed back toward town on one of the little one-and-a-half-lanes wide back roads that don’t have a speed limit which means you can do sixty and some people do.  I do not plug into Pooka on these roads.  There was body language on this particular dog that even I could read—from farther away than I could tell if it was on lead or not.  We got a little closer and—relief—it was.  I still cranked hellhounds in before I really needed to because this thing was making me nervous even on lead.  And then the UNBELIEVABLE TWO LEGGED HALFWIT, no, QUARTERWIT on the other end of the lead as we drew abreast smiled vaguely and said hello AS THE FRELLING DOG BROKE FOR MINE AND HE DIDN’T MAKE ANY ATTEMPT TO STOP IT.  I think the only reason we didn’t have serious blood on the pavement in this case is because Chaos, for a wonder, agreed with Darkness’ view of the situation and lunged forward with his brother—McKinley shoulder muscles here going AAAAAAAAH but holding—barking and snarling right back, and, like so many bullies, I don’t think their opponent† was expecting resistance—or quite up to taking on two of them at once.  Nasty quick little beggars, sighthounds.  Anyway in the melee, and somewhat conscious of my bare legs, although hellhounds were out in front of me clearly prepared to take on all comers, I was mainly interested in getting out, which in this case meant backing up into a morass.  Those used to be pink All Stars.  And there was this large, complex, affectionate bramble.  Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

               At least the excitement seems to have given Chaos an appetite.  He’d eaten two of six†† meals in the previous forty-eight hours, to his human’s despair.†††  He ate lunch today!  He ate dinner!

               . . . I’ll let you know how supper goes. 

* * *

* Last time I had one was . . . the last heat spasm we had.  May?  I might assume it was the same one hideously re-revealed but it’s on the other leg.  I think. 

** Too much information alert.  And then there’s Darkness, who has a strange fetish for crapping in tall stands of nettles.  If he restricted himself to indulging this curious behaviour when we’re out of town I wouldn’t mind.  Fishing around by the side of the footpath with nothing but a plastic bag for protection. . . .^ 

^ Even more too much information alert.  It’s perfectly true that there are way too many irresponsible slobs of dog owners who look the other way so they don’t have to pretend to pick anything up.+  It’s also true that town councils are chronically short of money, including for things like public green space upkeep.  I don’t want your two-year-old falling down in dog crap either.  But there’s not always a lot the anxious, trying-hard dog owner can do about picking up efficiently in long grass.  And if I limited my poor hellhounds to freshly-mowed landscape there would be days when we never found anywhere they could use.  And I’ll teach my hellhounds to employ a litterbox just as soon as the legislation is passed ordering people to keep their frelling cats in their own gardens. 

+ I’ve got a great idea that I’m sure would make my fortune if I could figure out how to market it.  Filled Dog Crap Bags.  I’d need to find a source of some cheap, inert substance that can be broken up into globs of roughly the right size and weight . . . and then I start putting globs in dog crap bags and knotting them closed with the convenient plastic tie handles, and then I sell the frellers to the creeps out there who want to look like they pick up after their dogs without actually having to do it.  There would need to be several sizes too:  it would never do for a Rottweiler owner to be swinging a Yorkshire-terrier-sized bag . . . or vice versa.    As I say, I’m sure these would go like copies of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY# if I knew how to find my buyers.  I think the full page ads in USA TODAY, the SUN, and YOMIURI SHIMBUN## might not reach enough of the right people.###  There must be a way.  Discretion absolutely guaranteed.  Orders sent out in plain envelopes and no database will be created.

# All other comparisons are, of course, iniquitous. 

## http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomiuri_Shimbun 

### I may be missing a trick.  Perhaps it should be full page ads in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and the GUARDIAN. 

*** I think I’ve told you my guys are not the least interested in getting into the river.  They can be panting like bellows and draaaaaaagging on the ends of their leads and they still aren’t interested.^  I can stand in the river and call them and they will remain on the shore, waiting for me to come out before they trot up . . . and start licking my wet legs in a there-there-you-poor-soggy-thing sort of way.  Feh. 

^ Our native hell is a cold, raining one. 

† Border collie crossed with something bigger.  Alsatian, maybe. 

†† Little and often is the rule for sighthounds anyway, because their extreme undercarriage design makes them prone to gut trouble.  Times 1,000,000 in my hellhounds’ case.  So they get three little meals a day.  When they eat them. 

††† Both of us went to bed in a bad mood last night. 

             Eat, you crummy rotten animal!   You’ll have a stomachache tomorrow morning if you don’t!

             I’m not going to eat, leave me alone!   I won’t have a stomachache!  I won’t!

             Like all those other stomachaches you haven’t had when you don’t eat!

              ::Sulks::

             —Darkness, in another corner of the kitchen, having eaten his ration, whistling through his teeth and looking innocent.

KES, 29

 

TWENTY NINE 

At the end of Chapel I turned right again on Pohl.  Pohl had a parking garage, a very 70s apartment building slightly humanised by all the laundry flapping on the balconies, and an accountant, humanised not at all by the aspidistra in the window.  An accountant would have an aspidistra.  At the end of Pohl I turned right again and . . . well, imagine that, I was on Bradbury, and there, two blocks away was the Eatsmobile.  

A nice cup of tea, that’s what I wanted, out of a warmed mug from a pot with a cosy.  I hauled myself up the steps by holding onto the railing.  Somehow my knapsack had got heavier since I signed the forty-six hundred contract copies for Rose Manor.  It was probably the blood loss.  It was probably the invisible life-force shunt that all ongoing contracts involve, doubtless including house rentals.  I knew a lot about ongoing contracts.  But then perhaps the fact that mine required frequent personal contact with vampires and evil magicians and other risky social misfits put me in the wrong frame of mind.

The lunch rush was over, so I thought I might get away with nailing a booth.  I slid out of The Knapsack and fell in after it.

“Well, hello there,” said Bridget, Mistress of Tea.  “Haven’t seen you in at least four hours.”

“I tried to stay away as long as I could,” I said.

“I know,” said Bridget.  “We have that effect on a lot of people.  Tea?”

“Yes please,” I said humbly.

“And a nice jelly doughnut?”

I hesitated.

“If you listen you can probably hear the sizzle from here.  Ryuu is squirting the jelly in the first batch.  Raspberry, boysenberry or crabapple.  He dips them in sugar while they’re still warm, you know?  So the sugar melts some.  Then after he sticks the jelly in he dips them in sugar again.”

I was drooling.  “All right, all right.  And a jelly doughnut.”

“Which kind?”

I thought about it.  I stopped thinking about it.  “If you make me choose I’ll have to have one of each.  And then I’ll need to buy a new pair of jeans.”

“Zenna’s has good jeans.  Two blocks away, on Sturgeon.”

“You’re not helping.  Boysenberry.”

“Wise woman.” 

Wise.  I doubted that.  I reluctantly opened my knapsack and pulled out my laptop.  Turned it on.  Discovered that the Eatsmobile had free wifi.  I was going to dedicate my next book to this place.  Although I’d better check first that this wouldn’t get me banned.  Not everyone would want something entitled FLOWERHAIR THE INDOMINABLE dedicated to them.  Especially if my or my editor’s hand slipped and the art department, unhindered, produced a cover with a lot of orange and pink and some extravagant nipple protectors.   Opened my email program and ran my eye down the list.  The top name was Norah’s.  Hmm.  There were, in fact, several from Norah.  I opened the newest:  IF YOU DON’T ANSWER THIS BY THE TIME I LEAVE THE OFFICE I AM COMING UP THERE AFTER YOU.  WHEREVER THERE IS.  YOU’VE GOT YOUR PHONE TURNED OFF TOO??  WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?  TALK TO ME.

Best friends.  Every recently divorced woman who has run off into the unknown because she doesn’t know what else to do should have one.

Bridget reappeared with a tray and slid it on to my table.  The mug was gorgeously warm.  The tea cosy had a slender long-legged black dog on it.  I looked at it nervously.  Then I turned it around.  The other side had another slender long-legged black dog on it, only now she’d turned her head to look at me reproachfully.  I sighed.  I poured my tea.  I moved the sugar bowl in front of the teapot and its cosy, but I could still see her eyes watching me.  I started trying to write to Norah.  I’ve got a house.  It has Yog-Sothoth in the cellar and a tower with a madwoman in it but I will be well protected by my dog and the big black old iron stove whose name is Caedmon.  I’m moving in tomorrow.  I stared at this for a while.  Norah usually rolled with my eccentricities pretty well—she had been known to say that I was fun to watch—but I thought possibly not in the present circumstances.  I deleted it.  I sighed again.

Bridget came back with the jelly doughnut.  It was so good it almost made me cry.  I was licking my fingers when my tea cosy caught my eye.  I thought the dog was now looking more hopeful.  “You’re not going to be a beggar, are you?” I said, but the sugar bowl was in the way and I couldn’t see if she wagged her tail or not.  I looked up, and there was a young man sitting at the counter, grinning broadly at the woman talking to her tea cosy.  Gah.  I tried to write to Norah again.  Wait till I get moved in and buy a bed before you visit.  Two beds.  I’m renting a house called Rose Manor, isn’t that a hoot?  It’s big enough for house parties though.  And a dog.  Okay.  I could send that one. 

 

Hot Bells

 

It is now hot.  Two days ago it was cold and sheeting and it is now HOT.  My blood—as well as my brain—is still in Thick and Cold-Resistant mode.  Hellhounds are all over me as I put my shoes and their harnesses on and then we walk outdoors into Wall of Heat and . . . they turn and look at me reproachfully.  Again.  There was a lot of reproachful looking two days ago with the cold and the sheeting.  There was a lot of reproachful looking for weeks, there, with the cold and the sheeting.  They’re going to lose faith in me.  If they weren’t dogs they would ALREADY have lost faith in me.*  Dogs:  the only love, and against-all-evidence confidence in your omnipotence, that money can buy.  It’s not necessarily a good bargain.  Siiiiiiigh.

            It has not been a great day overall.**  It’s too HOOOOT and when I went up to Third House to view the situation for practicalities beyond sufficient compost and rose food because we have people coming to stay the end of the week, I found I’m out of things like soap and paper towels—how does this HAPPEN?  Do basic household supplies MIGRATE or something?  Cheez.  And all the roses need deadheading, but I knew that.***

            And then Niall and I went to Curlyewe tonight.  We’d been due to go a few weeks ago and then Niall’s car was run into by a deer.  Sic.  He did not run into it, it ran into him.†  Ex-deer and ex-car.  We went to Curlyewe in his new car tonight.††  We blundered through the usual suspects (ouch!  Oof!) on handbells†††, and then tower practise . . . the big kids got stuck on trying to ring a touch of Cambridge, which kept breaking down—cue heated discussion on who got what wrong and why—and then they’d try it again and something/someone else would go wrong.  After this by the time they’d dragged their assortment of beginners through a great many plain courses of bob doubles it was time to ring down again.  Feh.  But I got a lot of knitting done.

            Tomorrow could be better.  Maybe I’ll try to get up earlier so we can hurtle before hellhound melting point is reached. 

* * *

 * If they weren’t dogs, they wouldn’t be thinking I control the weather anyway.  When cats turn and glare at you after you’ve opened the door on meteorological extravagances they don’t approve of, you have the feeling that they aren’t surprised.  They’ve always known you were a broken reed.  With dogs it’s like every day you’re taking the ice-cream away from the four-year-old child who idolises you just because you can.  The sad, forlorn look.  The ‘what have I done wrong that you treat me so cruelly’ look.  AAAAAAAUGH.^ 

^ Although . . . hellhounds.  Speaking of AAAAAAAUGH.  Hellhounds are their own little demonic subgroup within the vast complex enigma that is dog. We are continuing to struggle through an anti-food period.  It’s not as bad as it was, but I’m still not having a good time.  Lunch today, for example.  They hid frantically in the back of the dog bed while I was putting it together and when I came after them with it they gave me the whole collapsed-subsmissive-enormous-tortured-eyes thing.  It’s difficult to concentrate+ when you have to get out of your chair every ten minutes or so to move hellhound bowls and chirrup at them in a friendly and encouraging manner:  ‘Eat your lunch, you monsters of prandial depravity before I turn you into rose fertilizer.’++ 

            They did, eventually.  Eat lunch.  All that moving around gave them an appetite.  About half an hour later I decided I’d better cut up the chicken for their supper, because Niall and I were going to Curlyewe, which is too frelling far away, and I had asked Peter if he’d feed them before I would get back.  Suddenly I am besieged by a seethe of eager scrap-begging hellhounds.  What the frell, guys?  Eating makes you hungry? 

+ I have only JUST had an important bit of frelling plot machinery delivered.  FOR GODSSAKE YOU STORY COUNCIL GUYS, GIVE A WORKING WRITER A BREAK.    I’m through the last draft, I’m at the final tinkering stage—the making sure the heroine’s second cousin’s boyfriend’s dog is a Dalmatian on both page 47 and page 213#—the plot was obviously The Plot and I had decided that this particular aspect of it was supposed to remain mysterious.  Okay, I can do mysterious.  I’d quite like to know what’s going on myself but . . . okay, okay, I don’t know, it’s not going to be in the story, whatever, fine, it’s not my decision, it’s never my decision . . . AND THEY SEND IT TO ME NOW?  THEY SEND IT TO ME NOOOOOW?  Frelling frelling frelling frelling FRELLING FRELLING FREEEELLLLLLLLINGGGGGG.  I mean, no, it doesn’t change the story—for which I am devoutly grateful—but it sure casts some heavy srggghffdblugging atmosphere, we’re all a little rocked back on our heels here and our eyebrows are lightly singed.##  Adjectives.  I need some new adjectives.### 

# Okay, you don’t meet any of Maggie’s second cousins, let alone their boyfriends or their boyfriends’ dogs, but you know what I mean. 

## Even Mongo.  

### Frelling does not appear in SHADOWS. 

++ http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/22/gardens-dan-pearson-roses-david-austin?newsfeed=true

In the hard copy version of this article, which I only read about an hour ago, there is a page opposite the text, of photographs of nine roses.  On line you have to squirrel around for another link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2012/jul/23/growing-roses-best-varieties-in-pictures#/?picture=393471114&index=0   This begins with a photo of Pearson’s own garden which, if a professional gardener can’t do any better I feel he should stick to close-ups of individual blooms.  Anyway, I wanted to say, off-handedly, that I have seven of the nine he recommends# although this wouldn’t be my top nine list.  I have very mixed feelings about orange in an old-fashioned rose.  I have Lady of Shalott because . . .well, because I had to have a rose called Lady of Shalott, and I had to have Benjamin Britten for the same reason.  The Lady of Shalott is pretty . . . frelling orange, and I don’t know what to call Benjamin Britten:  she’s a sort of very dark burnt orange with a heavy pink overlay.  It’s interesting but I’m not sure it’s a rose colour.  The two I don’t have are Lady Emma Hamilton because . . . well, orange, and The Alexandra Rose who doesn’t really believe in leaves.  I know about mixed borders to hide your roses’ deficiencies, but I feel there are limits about this.  I grew TAR at the old house but she’s not one of those that I miss enormously.  Those I miss enormously tend to get wedged into a corner here somewhere. . . .

            Oh, and that’s a terrible picture of Graham Thomas, who is a glorious pure vivid yellow.  This is better:  http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardens/Hyde-Hall/About-HydeHall/Plant-of-the-month/June/Rosa-Graham-Thomas-(-Ausmas-) 

# Yes.  They’re all David Austins.  Yes.  I keep saying that Austin roses are overrated.  They are overrated.  They’re just so sodblasted ubiquitous.  And some of them are very nice indeed. 

** See previous footnote, about late deliveries. 

*** I was also scowling at my wisteria which is, I think, four years old and HAS NEVER PRODUCED A SINGLE FLOWER.  I know wisteria are like this, but this is supposedly one of the ones that flower in the first year or two.  This one is reverting to its Palaeolithic ancestor which flowers on its fortieth birthday.  It’s already got a purple clematis growing through it.  Maybe I’ll plant another purple clematis.   

† Deer are like this.  As some of you probably know.  

†† It is very shiny.  I am keeping it away from Wolfgang.^ 

^ And the MGB is dusty. 

††† No, no, the shiny new car is fine.

Several Aspects of Sunday Ringing

 

katinseattle

I wait breathlessly for the decision on the MGB. I realize it would be more practical to get rid of it…but practical isn’t much fun. 

EMoon

…my vote’s for fun now. Driving to the Abbey for ringing in an MG would be…enormously helpful to the writer’s mood. 

Diane in MN

Because the hellhounds won’t fit in the back seat! I said.

In our young days, my husband had a Fiat 124 Spyder ragtop with one of those pretend back seats in it–the kind someone’s two-year-old child might fit in if she was small for her age–and we had a Lab/Shepherd mix and a Great Dane who BOTH rode in it. That would have been, oh, 200 pounds of dog. And they couldn’t squirm around, which was a very good thing. You may need to rethink the bit about the hellhounds.*

CathyR

Yup! I vote for fun now, as well. You’re still amazed at yourself ringing at the Abbey every time you approach it – without any disrespect to the loyal and faithful Wolfgang, wouldn’t it feel even better and more exhilarating to be driving to the Abbey in the MGB?! 

Stardancer

practical isn’t much fun.

AGREED. Also, I looked up pictures. It’s a PRETTY car. I’m just saying. 

About a dozen emails:

KEEP THE MG. 

YOU PEOPLE AREN’T HELPING AT ALL, YOU KNOW.   

1.  My All Stars are deeply practical.  They are also fun. 

2.  EMoon, you ratbag, you are a writer so you know these things.** 

3.  THEY MUST HAVE BEEN EXCEPTIONALLY WELL TRAINED, OBEDIENT AND MELLOW CHARACTERS.  None of which would apply to the hellhounds. 

4.  I thought about this.  There is that spectacular view as you come over the hill into town.  But the thing that really caught my feeble and easily distracted attention is the idea of parking in the close.***  Generally speaking only archbishops and the queen are allowed to park in the close.  But us bell ringers are also granted special dispensation.  Hmmmmm.  Descending gently through the maze of the old town and penetrating at last to the, you should forgive the term, cloistered abbey grounds . . . as I said, hmmmmm. 

5.  It’s a very pretty car.  It looks a lot like this:  http://www.oselli.com/items/226?back=%2F   There’s a reason they’re a cult car.  Aside from the excuse to wear motorcycle leathers without driving a motorcycle.

            Not that I’m against motorcycles, although I think it’s unlikely I’ll ever have one again.†  An MGB will still cruise happily at speeds that the cops will pull you over for, and the boot may be small, but it’s bigger than panniers on a motorcycle, big enough for a haul home from supermarket/garden supply/old bookstore.†† 

And, speaking of bell ringing, as I so often am . . . I seem to have rung twice today.  This is one of those things that I promised myself (and possibly my husband) that I would never develop a habit of doing:  ringing more than one Sunday service.†††  Well, it’s not a habit . . . yet.  But I knew that Penelope was away, and Penelope is one of the core group of New Arcadia Sunday ringers.  So I went along again this week.  And  . . . as I was strolling toward the tower in plenty of time I was thinking a little drily that if I’ve stopped not going, if you follow me, I’m going to hate sitting in the kitchen drinking tea on a Sunday morning I’m ringing in the abbey in the afternoon just as much as I’ve hated putting a pillow over my head and pretending to go back to sleep these last six or seven months.  Feh.  I got into this whole mess again after I quit ringing twelve years ago when the ME knocked me over because I’m now two garden walls over from a bell tower and can’t frelling HELP hearing them ring.  Okay.  I’ll worry about the habit thing later.  Next week.  Or the week after.  Or the week after that.  Edward is away for three weeks, so they’re going to go on being short. . . .

            Oh, and it’s our first beautiful day since about . . . March.  And as I was driving into the abbey I was thinking it would be a great day to be driving the MG.  Robin, will you please think about something else?‡

            And on our first beautiful day in about a year and a half we had a turnout of twelve which is very good for a Sunday afternoon.  We rang Grandsire Triples for me‡‡ (seven bells plus tenor-behind) because the peons need to be kept cheerful (so they’ll keep coming back) and then the fancy guys rang Stedman caters (nine bells plus tenor-behind) which is almost beyond my tiny mind to grasp the implications of, if I ever really ring Stedman triples (seven bells of this twisty volatile nightmare method with tenor-behind) I will be very happy, and then we rang plain hunt on all twelve because that’s the only thing their twelfth ringer—me—can ring on twelve.  And they put me on the treble.  I hate trebling‡‡‡ for a lot of bells.  It brings out all my frelling performance anxiety.  But Scary Man was on the two and he didn’t yell at me . . . much . . . maybe he was tired. . . . 

* * *

* Diane in MN continues:

 GODS. The things one does when one is culpably young and even more culpably stupid. This was before I discovered single malt, however.

And if your youth was like mine, it was before you could AFFORD single-malt, too. 

YES.  Remember Thunderbird?  Ripple?  Cold Duck?  Ewwwww.  It amazes me my attitude toward booze wasn’t permanently ruined by these early experiences.  And I’m pretty sure I’ve told the blog that I was put off champagne for about twenty years by a traumatic encounter with cheap rosé.   

** One of the things I found myself telling Colin on Thursday was that while driving was and still is the ordinary daily activity that is probably the most conspicuously restricted by my ME^, one of the things I remember the most vividly about the summer of the year after I started getting up off the sofa again after the eighteen months of acute horizontality, was wandering around the back roads of Hampshire, at about 20 mph, in the MG, with the top off.  Clearly it was a better summer that year.^^ 

^ which is really more to say that it’s harder to disguise with smoke and mirrors.  I’m good at smoke and mirrors—my old friends who also read the blog might call it more Jekyll and Hyde—but driving/not driving is not terribly susceptible to guile and subterfuge.  

^^ Although I still have the heated gloves and the Harley Davidson black leather chaps+ from my one winter of bell ringing with the MG.  Put the top back on?  What would I want to do that for?  As soon as you put the top on it’s just a car.++ 

+ I’m failing to find a good on-line picture.  But mine are the proper full length kind:  legs with a belt to hold them up.  They zip up the sides.  They are very cool.  If you’re into retro biker chic.  With the pink All Stars an onlooker could injure him/herself laughing.  There are ladies’ leather chaps# but twelve years ago when I was looking the only full-length ladies’ chaps were really cheezy.  This is mysterious to me:  a woman connecting with a road surface at high speed needs good quality leather between her and it just as much as a bloke does.  Anyway, for other reasons concerning heat retention, I bought blokes’.  

# I’ve even seen a rumour of pink ones 

++ Also the claustrophobia, when you’re used to the top off, is kind of extreme.  Headroom in old MGs is not too generous.  

*** I’m not sure abbeys have closes.  But it’s a close-like space, and since the Dissolution I daresay closes have grown up around ex-abbeys.  The early 1500s is a long time ago.  

† Although I totally fancy a Vespa.  http://www.uk.vespa.com/#/vespa/UK/uk/Model/Vespa-LX/Vespa-LX-125-3V ^ It’s probably a good thing they don’t come in pink. 

^ I don’t really see the point of a 300cc Vespa.  If you want a real engine, why don’t you buy a motorcycle and get it over with? 

†† We are not discussing the transportation of hellhounds.   

††† Of course there are loonies in places like London where it’s cough-cough feasible, who spend their Sundays sprinting from one tower to the next and knock off half a dozen before going home to the Sunday roast. 

‡ All else being equal, which it never is, if I were doing her up to sell her, I could probably afford it.  If I’m doing her up to keep her . . . 

‡‡ Scary Man has this infuriating habit of shouting Listen to your bell! when I start going astray.  If I could frelling hear my frelling bell I would be a much better ringer.   

‡‡‡ The treble is first.  It all begins with you.  There are various arguments about who ‘really’ sets the pace or the rhythm.  The stronger argument is that the tenor does for the simple reason that it’s the biggest bell and the rest of us have to make space.  But the treble is still first—and totally exposed.  Ugggggggh.

KES, 28

 

TWENTY EIGHT

I left Homeric Homes in a daze and—despite the weight of my iPad-and-laptop-containing knapsack—decided to have a stroll around New Iceland before I went back to the Friendly Campfire and, you know, faced anything.  If I worked up an appetite (which still didn’t seem very likely unless Extreme Sport was rapidly introduced:  bench-pressing Hayley’s car, perhaps, or jogging around town by leaping from one parking meter to the next.  No, that would be boring, there were only about three parking meters in this town) I could put off the contents of my inboxes till after lunch.  Or I could get lost.  That was the easy option.  Even if New Iceland was only about five blocks square I could probably fail to find my way to anywhere for at least an hour.  Unfortunately all my tech had toggles that would pull in things like the contents of inboxes from the insubstantial air of anywhere.  I could sit on the curb in a sad, hopeless, mislaid way and still read my agent wanting to know yesterday what I thought about the cover for the first Aldetruda omnibus or whether I liked this other unknown but ambitious artist enough to accept $1.79 for the rights to do a graphic novel of FLOWERHAIR THE RECKLESS.  (Answer:  Aldetruda was not a seven foot tall size two with a rubber fetish, and no.  $2.79 at least.) 

            . . . I found myself involuntarily remembering how, when I went to conventions and things, Gelasio used to send me little silly email notes.  Sometimes they just said things like ‘Miss you.  Can’t you cut the panel on Shaping Your Stake for Maximum Penetration (!!!) and come home sooner?’  Sometimes they said things like:  ‘Watch out!  There’s a minotaur behind the chair, and he’s in a bad mood!’ and I’d look behind some chair or other in my hotel room and there’d be a vase of roses standing on the floor, or a package from Godiva.  I wasn’t thinking about Gelasio, who was in San Diego with a floozie.  A floozie with six PhDs from UCLA in various aspects of computer science I didn’t even know the names of.  Maybe she was a size two and had a rubber fetish.  Gelasio had always had a soft spot for Aldetruda.

            I wasn’t thinking about Gelasio. 

            I hitched my knapsack farther up on my shoulders and rolled forward, letting the weight of it decide my direction (this method, frequently employed, might have something to do with my propensity for getting lost).  I did the running-ahead-of-falling-over thing to the corner, swung right onto Chapel Road and stumbled to a halt.  I didn’t want to get out of town—not only did I dislike the prospect of walking on ordinary lumpy ground rather than (relatively) flat pavement carrying seventy-two tons of knapsack, there were cows out there beyond the town limits.  I was pretty sure I was even more afraid of cows than I was of crickets.  No, I was safe.  There were still shops on this street:  a hairdresser, a florist, office supplies with optional kitschy greeting cards . . . oh.  And a used bookstore.  A used bookstore with a storefront and everything, where (presumably) you could go in and fondle the merchandise, and breathe the indescribable perfume of paper, silverfish and damp.  MacFarquhar, make a note.  Either New Iceland was the secret omphalos of old-fashioned booksters or the proprietor was mad and had an independent income.  I’d check the possibilities later, preferably when I was not carrying seventy-two tons and four foot square of swingeing, bookshelf-destroying knapsack.  

             I did pause, however, resting The Knapsack on the sturdy metal top of a public trash bin, eyeing the storefront.  USED BOOKS, the banner over the door said briefly.  There was a sign on the door that was probably opening hours, unreadable at this distance.  Probably ten to noon on alternate Tuesdays and 7 pm to 7 am every full moon.  The still luridly bright paperbacks behind the sunny glass suggested at least regular front-window turnover. 

             I couldn’t be sure from here but I was trying to decide if I recognised a particularly unfortunate reissue of PRINCESS OF MARS which involved a lot of pink and orange, and (if I was right) a hero with well-defined musculature clearly indicating non-human genes, and a babe wearing some truly remarkable nipple protectors and not much else, when something else caught my eye.  I turned my head.  It was mostly houses on the other side of Chapel, punctuated by the occasional drugstore and a Thai take out.  A low, but not all that low, trotting shadow was just disappearing down an alley, turning off behind a row of houses.  I recognised that shadow.  No I didn’t.  MacFarquhar, don’t be any sillier than you have to be.  I told myself this very firmly, to squash the absurd sense of disappointment:  she lived in one of those houses.  Nothing to do with me.

               She?

               I hoisted up The Knapsack and went on. 

 

Raggsokker, a tutorial – guest post by Corellia

Raggsokker, an illustrated tutorial with a pattern for knitting socks the traditional Norwegian way.

View PDF.

 

Blogmon sez: it’s fixed.  PDF had mysteriously gone walkabout.

The pdf link is not working for me.  I’ve emailed Blogmom.  If it’s not   working for you either, check back later.  If it is working . . . ah well.  The gremlins have singled me out again.  –ed.