Robin McKinley's Blog, page 97

Steps on the way to beekeeping IV (guest post by AJLR)

 

It’s a year, now, since I first started looking after a colony of bees. The year has been notable in many respects, mostly to do with my repeated feelings of ‘Why did they do that?!’. It is said among beekeepers that beekeeping has a 30-year apprenticeship and I suspect that may be underestimating the time required to gain a reasonable degree of understanding about what a colony of bees does in different circumstances, and how best to look after them.

When one is a novice in any area of reasonably complicated activity, one expects to find the early stage a steep learning curve* but when that activity involves looking after live beings of some sort the learning curve also involves large amounts of ‘am I doing it right for them and will they survive?’ With bees – and I don’t know if any other beekeepers reading this have experienced anything similar – I’ve found that thinking about how a colony of social insects will react as opposed to how one interacts with (typically) small mammals, one has to recognise that what is being looked after is a) a collective mind rather than a lot of individuals and b) there is no evidence to suppose the colony realises that one is trying to do the best for it. For me, and I realise it may be different for other beekeepers, the interest lies in watching the complexity of how the colony manages itself, in trying to work out from the various clues available what I need to do to help them do their own thing, in learning more about a fascinating creature, and in perhaps being able to harvest some honey if there’s a surplus. There is no personal relationship with the individuals or the colony – none of the bees is ever going to fly to me for a cuddle, or a grain of sugar fed at fingerpoint, or a game.

So, what have I learned over the past year?

I think respect would be the first thing. It’s not that I didn’t have a great admiration for honeybees (and other bees) before this. I appreciate this may sound strange – after all, they’re just doing what their genes have programmed them to do, without any conscious choice or intent involved. However, a closer acquaintance with the intricacy of their lives, their ordered activity, and the beauty of what they produce – whether that is wax comb, honey, or propolis, has given me the utmost respect for them as a species. What extraordinary creatures they have evolved to be – and how much we depend on them for so much of our food production.

Next, I’ve learned that bees don’t read the manuals. This fact may not come as a total surprise to anyone, but the multitude of ways in which a honeybee colony can react to their habitat and conditions has been a source of puzzlement, frustration, and sheer amazement to me over the past year. My new colony started off, last May/June, by being unhappy with their new young queen. There was nothing wrong with her that I or my beekeeping mentor could see but they kept trying to get rid of her by raising new queens. They had plenty of space in the hive (cramped conditions can lead to a new queen being raised and the colony splitting), she was newly-mated and laying evenly and well, and there was nothing wrong with or in the hive that we could see. Yet every 2 – 3 weeks I’d find another couple of queen cells being built and with eggs and once (when I was a few days late inspecting one week) the cell had been capped. Eventually my mentor suggested that I just let them get on with it and accept that, as I didn’t want to start a second colony in my first year, it would be best to let them sort themselves out without my regularly removing queen cells. So that’s what I did – panicking slightly one week when I couldn’t find a queen at all (the new queen must have just hatched and was lurking in a quiet corner, while the ‘old’ one had gone) but slightly comforted by the fact that the colony was not agitated and upset as they would be if there was no queen in the hive. That is not in the least how a new colony with a young queen is supposed to behave, according to the books, but hey…

The third thing I’ve learned is that belonging to a local beekeeping association is a great help in retaining one’s sanity and not having to spend mega-amounts on such things as a honey-extractor in one’s first year. Not that I had much honey to extract – I wasn’t expecting any, to be honest, as a colony’s first year energies are usually employed in building themselves up and making new comb (needed both for raising new bees and storing supplies) takes a lot of bee-hours. Being able to borrow equipment from my local association (and asking the experts how it worked) was extremely useful. Mind you, if the expert who lent me the radial extractor had mentioned, at the time of my collecting it, that it was not a good idea to have eaten supper just before trying to clean it (and pass it on to the other member who needed it urgently) after extracting honey, so that one wasn’t head-down and bottom-up in a large stainless-steel drum on top of a fairly full stomach, I would have been even more grateful. That, and learning that if you don’t have the honey-frames loaded very evenly around the extractor drum, then it will try to waltz rapidly round the kitchen when you turn the dial up to extracting-speed, so that you have to fling your arms round it in a fond and stabilising embrace while your husband makes a wild dive to turn the power off! And has anyone else noticed that honey is sticky?

So, a year after starting and with a colony that has survived the winter reasonably well, I now find myself contemplating my second year as a beekeeper. I hope to observe more, to learn more, to be able to keep my charges free of the various horrible pests that try and get them, and – possibly – to get a second colony started in a couple of months’ time. If anyone wants me, I’ll be out at the apiary, watching my precious bees. :)

* * *

* And that, possibly, it’s not a great idea to try and learn two complicated and demanding new activities at the same time. Beekeeping and bell-ringing, for example (though at least I know who to blame for the second of these!).

 

************************************

Steps on the way to beekeeping III

Steps on the way to beekeeping II

Steps on the way to bee-keeping I

 

How New Thing Happened, More or Less

 

KatydidNL

I don’t know if I can describe how much I am enjoying this [New Thing], so I won’t try. You’ll just have to imagine.  

Oh good.  ::Beams::    And LAVISH, PROFOUND AND HEARTFELT thanks to all the rest of you who have forumed, tweeted, Facebooked or emailed similar sentiments.  I hope there are a fair number of you out there, because the plan is that the New Thing should go on a while.  It is, in fact the New Thing.  I was going to do a nice tidy well-laid out How the New Thing Came to Be post but . . . when have I ever been nice, tidy or well-laid out?*  Anyway, I think I’ve already told you that I’ve been aware for a while that I needed to do something new or different about the blog.  But as to why it arrived in this particular New Thing package. . . .

            . . . Meanwhile (this is not a non sequitur:  bear with me) I should be hoovering.  I haven’t done any housework since . . . uh . . . approximately since Hannah was here.  Well, she gave me flu.  I’m allowed a little slack.  But Cathy arrives tomorrow for a few days.  And I really don’t want her to blink a couple of times at my sitting-room and run away.**  And one of the things we’ll be doing while she’s here (if she doesn’t run away) is playing with New Thing.

            Shock horror.  Someone is appearing under their own name in Days in the Life.  Yes.  Cathy.  Cathy as in Cathy Hamaker, our own Black Bear.

            Some of you have already heard how Cathy and I met at Wiscon several yonks ago, didn’t quite manage to have a cup of tea/coffee together, but kept in vague touch, each privately under the impression that we’d probably hit it off if we ever concentrated on it for a few minutes.  And then I started Days in the Life, and she started reading it.  Clearly the woman spends too much time on line, because she found it almost at once.

            One of the things Cathy does in her copious free time*** is run RPGs—role playing games—as gamesmaster.†  She’s been sending me hilarious abstracts of some of these games for years.  I keep saying oh gods what a waste these should be fiction.  And we’ve had a running conversation, also for years, about how we might somehow create an RPG for the blog, using some McKinley world or other, possibly one I make up specifically for the purpose. . . . But we’ve never been able to figure out a way to do this that wouldn’t make the blog even more work for me, as well as a way that would not send Merrilee off in fits of the screaming abdabs about copyright. 

            Then, a few weeks ago, I went down with flu.  I’ve told you, possibly smugly, which would explain the result, that I can (usually) keep writing no matter what is going on in the real world with me.  I could have beriberi, cholera, or a major invasion of bats,†† and I could keep writing.  Well.  There’s one rather important exception.  That’s when I’m at the very, very, very end of a book, and trying to do the final comb and shine, trying to make sure all the screws are not merely the right size, but have gone in straight and been puttied and then painted over so you can’t see the join.  To do this properly you have to attain and maintain a kind of extreme squeaky alertness, which includes being able to hold the entire book in your mind all at once.†††

            I can’t do this when I feel like dirty river froth and neither my eyes nor my brain will focus. 

            I HAD TO STOP WORKING ON SHADOWS WHEN I WAS NEARLY AT THE END.

            Try to imagine how—or rather what—this contributed to my sanity and peace of mind.‡  Especially after various other literary setbacks in the last year.

            So, I’m lying there, between writing blog posts that make everything sound better than it (*&^%$£”!!!!! is, thinking, what do I do?  What can I do?  I can’t work.  I can’t even get on with all that backed-up doodling, because doodling also requires a certain level of committed attention, as well as a hand that doesn’t shake.  People paid me money for those doodles—I have to do them the best that I am able.  Which is not now.

            EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

            And thus, from fever and despair, was New Thing born.  I’ve thought of story-telling on the blog before, but I couldn’t think of how to do that either, without bleeding off real-story energy and, once again, making the blog more work.‡‡  But I thought three things more or less simultaneously (thus the splintering effect of fever):  I could do a parody.  I could do a parody of me.  I could do all kinds of stuff I wouldn’t dream of doing in a real book.  My heroine could write fantasy series.  She could write fantasy series with cliffhanger endings.  She could write fantasy series one of which, for example, features a protagonist named Flowerhair, who fends off attack mushrooms with an enchanted sword named Doomblade.  Hee hee hee hee hee, I muttered to myself, my eyes gleaming with fever.  She’ll have to write a vampire series too.  Let’s say . . . oh . . . let’s say Vampire Virago.

            The second thing I thought was:  the individual posts can be shorter, not only because they’re fiction, which from a fiction writer counts as value-added whether it is (ahem) literally or not, but also because if I run long I can just put the overrun into the next post.  This is one of my more intractable problems with Days in the Life:  stuff I cut for later almost never gets used, because, because, well, because it’s Days in the Life.  Once a day is over, it’s over.  Even irrelevant footnoted asides tend to go all floppy by next day.  And then they’re WASTED.

            The third thing I thought was:  if Cathy’s sense of humour stretches that far, she can gamesmaster me.  She can prod me on into adventures and with characters that would never have occurred to me.  She’d just sent me another one of her goofy summaries from a game she’s running, and there was a specific bit in it‡‡‡ that I thought (in my feverish way) would be perfect for an on-line blog serial.  Fine, she said.  It’s yours.  No, no, I said, I want active input—if I can get it.  If it would amuse you.  Fortunately Cathy amuses easily.  Which got us talking about how we might do this. 

            As I write now, we’ve already done two stints on Skype IM with her typing things like:  okay, there’s a funny noise, and me typing back, FUNNY NOISE?  WHAT DO YOU MEAN FUNNY NOISE?  I DON’T LIKE FUNNY NOISES.  Cathy:  It’s a sort of scrape-thump-thud noise.  Me:  NOOOOOOOOOO.  —I should perhaps add here that we’ve played a two-person RPG a couple of times but I am hopeless because I spend all my time afraid to do anything because I’m sure I’m going to die.  Characters do die in RPGs, you know.  One of the things that is going to make Cathy’s augmentations possible is that I said:  First rule.  You can’t kill me.   

            So.  Anyway.  I haven’t got to Cathy’s first injection of storyline.  It’s . . . um . . . several ep[isode]s off yet.§  I’m writing as fast as I can.§§  I’ll tell you when we get there.  But after that you’ll just have to guess.  The story is the story.  The story is always the story, and I’m still writing it . . . even if there’s some extremely silly collaboration going on just out of sight.§§§ 

* * *

* OUT.  I said OUT.  I said well laid OUT. 

** Colin and Niall were here for handbells yesterday.  I had got home barely ahead of them and was still doing things like tearing harnesses off hellhounds when they arrived.  Shall I pick this up? said Niall, referring to the green plastic garden sheet on the floor of the sitting-room which is where ALL MY BABY PLANTS COME INDOORS TO SLEEP EVERY FRELLING NIGHT.  Sure, I said, but fold it up so the dirt all stays on the inside.

            Pause.

            Oops, said Niall.  

***  HAHAHAHAHAHA.  Copious free time.  HAHAHAHAHAHA.   

† She also plays for other gamesmasters, but I don’t hear about those. 

†† Not yet. 

††† Not to mention my bank balance which, regular readers will remember, is a problem right now. 

‡ Or rather, this is how I’ve always done it.  Which is why the idea of writing a three-volume story freaks me out so much. 

‡‡ Remember, when I’m whining about how much work the blog is, two things:  I enjoy it too.  It’s just way too frelling much work.  Which leads to the second thing, which is that I have limited range to change this.  I’m an obsessive personality:  I pretty much only do things I can be obsessive about.  This includes the blog.  Shifting to posting every other day or declaring I won’t write posts over 500 words will not work.  I either do it obsessively or I won’t do it at all. 

‡‡‡ Which I’m certainly not going to tell you about because we may yet use it. 

§ Slightly after when you finally find out what my heroine’s name is.  

§§ Which is never fast, even when I’m essentially ripping myself off.

§§§ Note that when Cathy originally booked her time over here, it was planned carefully for after SHADOWS was going to be finished . . . and well before New Thing was a flu-addled gleam in my deliquescing brain.

New Thing, 3

 

THREE 

Cold Valley.  That didn’t sound too promising.

            I had stuck the pin in with more force than I realised.  It had landed in the tiny gap between ‘Cold’ and ‘Valley’ so there was no question about that—and it was in so far that I couldn’t pull it out, so I couldn’t pretend accidentally to knock it loose and forget where it had been and do it again.  Next time with maybe my eyes open a slit.

            Cold Valley.  Well, I’d decided I was going to choose my entire future by closing my eyes and sticking a pin in a map, so I could damn well live with it.  I’m sure Flowerhair would have agreed.  Doomblade would have anyway.  But this was the real world and I wouldn’t have to stay in Cold Valley—and I had to do something. Cold Valley would probably do as well as anywhere else for now.

            Probably.  I could see by the map that it was out in the middle of nowhere.  Its name was in the smallest print and there wasn’t even a tiny smudge of town:  just the name.  The atlas was old though—maybe Cold Valley had turned into a heaving arts center in the last ten years . . . in which case I wouldn’t be able to afford it. 

            I googled it.  Cold Valley was on Cold Lake and . . . not much else.  There was a drugstore that also sold postcards, newspapers and milk.  The nearest supermarket was Godzilla Food . . . which was in a mall somewhere between Amity and New Iceland, about twenty miles away.  Cold Valley did have a real estate agent—well, sort of.   It was a branch of Homeric Houses in New Iceland (this cold thing was starting to get me down) which was the wrong side of Amity.  New Iceland at least rated a small map-smudge.  I emailed Homeric Houses before I lost my nerve, and asked what there was available to rent in Cold Valley.  Then I went to make myself another cup of tea.  There were eggs in the refrigerator.  I contemplated the eggs.  Was I hungry?  I didn’t think I was hungry.  I looked at the cup of tea.  Caffeine is an appetite suppressant.  And it might have been caffeine and not nerves that made my hand shake when I stuck the pin in the atlas.  And if my hand hadn’t been shaking, the pin might not have hit Cold Valley.

            My email pinged.  That was fast.

            But it was only Gelasio, hoping I was all right and . . . I deleted it.

            Maybe I’d have those eggs after all.

            There was still a stool in the kitchen so I ate sitting down at the counter.  Just as I had done in my old one-room apartment in the East Village twenty years ago, because there wasn’t space for anything else, like a table and chairs.  In those days I had been grateful to have the counter.  It was even the same stool.  Perfectly good basic pine stool, you give it a fresh paint job once a decade or so. . . .

            I wasn’t going to be miserable.  I wasn’t going to be miserable.

            My email pinged again.  It was probably just Norah, reminding me of the many virtues of her guest room.  My local friends were mostly in publishing, and the ones who lived in Manhattan didn’t run to guest rooms because they couldn’t afford it.  Norah was the exception.   She was the CEO of Megalodon Books.  She’d been the acquiring editor who’d brought in Jonquil Fortesque just before she wrote PTARMIGAN APOCALYPSE and, two years later, not only bought but masterminded the marketing strategy for Dominique Zylstra’s THOU ART DAMNED LIKE AN ILL-ROASTED EGG, and since then Norah could pretty much write her own job description, including her salary.  She had five bedrooms on the Upper West Side, and only four of them were occupied. 

            She was probably my best and oldest friend.  I hoped she’d visit me in Cold Valley.  Although I wasn’t sure she’d ever been farther north than the Bronx. 

            But I’d finished my (scrambled) eggs and it was too early to go to bed.  I went back to check on my email again.

            Thank you for contacting Homeric Homes.  We are pleased to attach details of two rental properties immediately available in Cold Valley.  However if you would give us more idea of what you are looking for we would hope to be able to pinpoint the right property for you.  It is perhaps worth mentioning that purchase prices in this area are quite reasonable at present.  The name at the bottom, over the Homeric Homes banner, was ‘Hayley’.

A whangblamming thunderstorm and dazzling blue sky kind of day

 

. . . in more ways than one.  In the first place yes, the weather is completely crazed.  Because of other issues* the hellhounds got a series of short hurtles today rather than one long and one medium-length one, and trying to fit these in between cloudbursts was all part of the jolly fun.  So I’d just had the latest bit of bad news about the weekend’s Adventure** and I was blitzing around the cottage in a dangerous, bruising torpor because the archangels were due ANY MINUTE*** . . . and I finally thought to check my email and the archangels were going to be an hour later than scheduled.

            I could have had a little more sleep.

            I could have given the hellhounds a little more hurtle.

            I could have hung from the rafters screaming about the reality of Sunday travel a little longer.

            I did make myself a second cup of tea, left it on the Aga to stew, and took hellhounds for their second sprint of the day.  And got back to the latest parcel of little live green things, longing to be potted up and too tender to leave outdoors.  I’m hauling in trays of the little ratbags every night—and back out in the morning.  I’m running out of trays.  And the sweet peas, which arrived weeks ago, are starting to need repotting.  ARRRRRRGH.

            The archangels arrived†, were here for two hours . . . AND COULDN’T DO ANYTHING I WANTED THEM TO DO.  With the exception of a few bits and pieces, and getting the kanji-support Japanese download installed.††  But I need both Pooka and Astarte, both i-gizmos, frelling updated . . . and they couldn’t do it because my broadband is TOO SLOW.  Meanwhile, my so-called provider has changed hands, changed its name and logo, raised its prices and lost my Direct Debit details.  And claimed never to have received the archangels’ email, attachment and fax from a month ago about upgrading . . . they plainly raised their prices to pay the designer for the new logo which is undoubtedly larger, flashier, and in full colour, and which will cost more money to produce every month at the top of your invoice. 

            So the archangels sent it all again, and then went back to wrestling with various gremlins, ogres and unidentified snarly things.†††  Raphael checked in with my nonproviders in about fifteen minutes.  No, they hadn’t received the resend.  Half an hour.  No, they hadn’t received it.  An hour.  No, they hadn’t received it, hahahahahahahaha, isn’t this comical?  Meanwhile Gabriel had taken the lid off my phone housing, or whatever you call it, where the wires come in from outside, and did a hissing-between-his-teeth equivalent.  You will remember when this came up a week or something ago, that there’s nothing I can do about Brit Telecom’s utter indifference to the connectivity trials and tribulations of a small cul de sac in New Arcadia, and BT owns all the wiring.  Gabriel stared thoughtfully out the window at the telephone pole that various hysterically-laughing linemen have nearly fallen off.  Your Problem Is Obvious.  However between them they think that Raphael can bedevil my provider into providing something, and Gabriel can do something about the connection between Outside and Inside. 

            But meanwhile . . .

            I took hellhounds for another sprint and fulminated.  Work did not go at all well in what remained of the afternoon.  Also meanwhile . . . I had to go to Forza tonight.  I’d missed last week’s practise due to family arrivals and Morse-code electricity, the week before was some rangleblagging scheduled cancellation or other, and I’m going to miss next week because they’re having one of their forty-six-and-a-half bell practises.‡  I didn’t want to go tonight.  I didn’t want to go a lot.  I’m completely demoralised on the subject of tower ringing and I’ve pretty much turned the fact that I can’t deal with the abbey into a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom, and I’m short of sleep, dreading the pogo-stick journey on Sunday, and totally furious with my technology.  I’m clapped out on adrenaline and I’m exhausted. 

            I had to go.

            I went.

            Oh, and did I mention it was TIPPING it down?  On the way over in Wolfgang we were creeping along in third gear because I couldn’t see out of the frelling windscreen.

            And when I got there there were people crawling around with cameras.  What?  Leaving now.  And the Scary Man was in charge.  Whimper.  Why was I ever born?‡‡

            The Scary Man swooped down on me and said, Come ring some Grandsire Triples.  —Wait!  No!  I was going to run away!

            . . . I actually haven’t dwelled on how bad it’s been, the last few times at the abbey.  I had what I thought was that little breakthrough ringing on six bells rather than eight a while back . . . and then it went away, and I couldn’t ring on six either.  I am not joking about the demoralisation.  If it weren’t that it felt like either go on facing the abbey or give up ringing, I’d be staying home with a good book. 

            Anyway.  Yeah.  Clearly I’m setting you up to say . . . it was okay.  It was okay.  I didn’t ring frelling Grandsire frelling Triples flawlessly, but I was ringing it.  I wasn’t just blindly pulling on a rope and doing what my minder was shouting in my ear, which is mostly what it’s been so far.  I am going to do this.  I am going to learn to cope with the abbey.  Which is to say I may even have a bell tower again.  I’m sorry it’s a frelling abbey . . .  but it remains the nearest tower that rings methods if I’m not going back to New Arcadia and, hint, I’m not, and therefore my best option is an abbey. . . . where things like BAFTA-winning documentary makers come round and frelling film you.  Apparently we’re going to be part of a son-et-lumiere deal for some Hampshire festival.  We had exactly thirty-seven ringers for our thirty-seven bells and the Scary Man told us all to catch hold which therefore . . . included me.  We just rang rounds . . . but I’ve told you about this before:  when you’re ringing rounds on four hundred and twelve or even only thirty-seven you pull off and then hold up for frelling EVER while you’re waiting for the other thirty-six bells before it’s your turn again.  This doesn’t happen on six.  It’s very disconcerting to someone who is used to ringing on six and finds eight a stretch.  Oh, and if you see the film . . . I’m wearing a bright turquoise cardigan which would not have been my choice if I’d known I was going to be immortalised.  I’d have gone more for dark brown and a bag over my head.

            I also have to say a big fat shiny word for Gemma here.  She’s an abbey ringer, and she knows what a struggle I’ve been having.  She’s the one who’s kept saying, no, no, they will not tell you to go away and furthermore you will catch on.  She’s also the one who suggested that I try a different bell for triples because she found it easier to see from . . . and she’s right.  I think that’s one of the things that helped tonight.  She does keep smiling at me in this Rather Amused Fashion, but I have this effect on some people for some reason.  And I was so giddy tonight that I let her convince me to come to the pub after. . . .

            I may have a bell tower again.  My life is not over.

            And the OTHER THING?  I HAVE A NEST FULL OF ADORABLE FLUFFY BABY ROBINS IN THE GREENHOUSE.  They’re so cute you could die.  I rushed out and bought mealworms.  

* * *

* Including sleeping really badly because I’m starting (early) to stress out about an Adventure I’m slated for this weekend that I am dreading extremely.  So . . . of course.  I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep in one fluid movement.  The sleep I’d spent the last x hours not getting.  

** You cannot go ANYWHERE on a Sunday in this country.  They close the roads^, they close the railway lines, they lock all the barn doors before and after the horses have fled, they glue the wheels of all locally-flying airplanes to the runways, and the Sunday dog sled teams are booked years in advance.  Maybe if I started walking now. . . .  

^ Including bicycle paths and rickshaws. 

*** And I’d overslept.  See above. 

† Gabriel reported that they had been given a very suspicious look by one of my neighbours.  Hey, two young men in hoodies.  And Gabriel has a two-day beard. 

†† Do I even have to tell you that this did not go the way it was supposed to and I would have gotten totally screwed up and berserk if I’d tried to do it myself?  Whatever.  They pulled out one of their Magic Discs and made the software(s) talk to each other.  And now my Learn Japanese site isn’t mostly little empty rectangles. 

††† I sat on the floor and knitted.  With some help from hellhounds. 

‡ The half is the tower captain’s gerbil. 

‡‡ Don’t answer that.

Handbells, and further bulletins on comparative ickiness

 

Niall and I went haring across the landscape this evening*, looking for Curlyewe.  Our new lot of handbell ringers are from Curlyewe and last time they came to New Arcadia Niall suggested, despite my frantic gestures,** we come to them next time.  ARRRRGH.  I do not commute.  Commuting is something other people do.***

            Niall picked me up tonight, so all I had to do was hold onto my seat.†  But Curlyewe is in the same section of enchanted landscape that Tir nan Og†† is, which is to say that you can’t get there from here, and even if you could, you’d miss it in the fairy mist.  Maps lie, and signposts move around.  Possibly Niall had in mind outrunning the magic.

            I guess it worked, since we got there.  Eventually.  I had been even less enthusiastic about our expedition when I found out they were expecting us to ring at the church.  Doesn’t someone have a sitting-room we could use?  A nice warm sitting-room with mod cons like an electric kettle and a loo?  Whimper.  So I was wearing six extra layers and fingerless gloves††† and a good thing too.  Although there was both a loo and a kitchen with an electric kettle . . . there was even an electric fire, which Enoch put up on a shelf and angled down at us as we sat in our little circle . . . and I was still freezing to death.

            But handbells were rung.  Farrell is back at university, but Oliver is beginning to ring little touches of bob minor;  Enoch is beginning to get through plain courses of bob minor;  and Olga . . . needs more self-confidence, and an iPhone with Mobel on it.  She is bringing back horrible memories of Niall and Esme trying to teach me. . . .

            But the main thing is, the three of them really aren’t ready to cope alone, and neither Niall nor I have a regular free evening left.  I don’t know what we do now.  Pity we can’t use a little of that fairy magic and call up a handbell-ringing golem. . . . 

* * *

* At an extreme rate of speed.  Frell it, honeybun, I want to live to my sixtieth birthday.   

** You could see him thinking, poor thing, she has cramp. 

*** Yes, I’m a cow.^  But it’s a little like judging a book by its cover.  There are too many books.  If I really, really hate the cover well, great, there’s one I don’t have to buy.  DISCARD.  YAAAY.  There are too many interesting things to do and see and get involved in.  If they take more than twenty minutes to get to, great, there are closer ones.  DISCARD.  YAAAY.

            I admit there’s a sliding scale about this.  If Nadia were a bell tower, I’d be looking for something closer.^^  And the Japanese conversation lessons I’m still promising myself after I finish SHADOWS, which is a little perverse, but there’s no way I have brain or energy to start now, will be farther away than Nadia.  However, they have helpfully said that a good deal can be done via Skype.^  While they also, equally helpfully, send me occasional links to interesting events at the Japan Society in London. 

            Anyway.  Niall is a nicer human being than I am.  If it were up to me, if a bunch of beginners want to learn to ring handbells, they can come to us.  A bit like I go to Nadia—or to the language school.# 

            . . . Oh, and yes, both my Japanese cookbooks arrived.  Someone on Twitter (?) asked a few days ago.  I think that’s one of the things that got buried in the post-flu avalanche of Missed Stuff.  It’s not that the flu was all that severe—it was a ratbag but it wasn’t serious—it’s just that I’m always not quite coping as a way of life, so any spanner in the works really does me in, like a mild wind will knock over a cardboard house.  I was going to blog about my new cookbooks—they’re lovely.  Maybe I still will.  I can pull them off the shelf## and add them to the pile of things to be dealt with NOW.  RIGHT NOW.  I MEAN NOW.   

^ I’m also a cow with ME, and driving is a genuine bugbear. 

^^ On a heavy Monday, let’s say when I’ve done a particularly intense stint of work before my voice lesson, and Niall isn’t going to Colin’s that night so if I want to go I have to drive myself, when I get home again I may be just beginning to see the little smoke wisps in my peripheral vision that mean STOP NOW. 

^^^ Supposing Skype is in the mood.  A language I know—which is to say English—is usually pretty challenging and video?  Are you kidding? 

# Which may indeed turn out to be too far.  In which case I will have to find a Skype pixie/hobgoblin/troll and bribe the frell out of it. 

## Yes.  They’re on a SHELF.  I hope you’re impressed. 

† YAAAAAAAAAH.  It’s amazing what a 15-year-old Peugeot can do. 

††  Er—Tir nan Og, Hampshire.  I have rung there occasionally.  When I can find it. 

††† NO NOT THOSE FINGERLESS GLOVES.  They’re still in a bucket in the greenhouse. 

Diane in MN

I’ve never had a plastic bag break, but oh how I appreciate the ewww grossness of your situation. I have taken to using plastic gloves–the disposable exam-glove kind–when doing public pick-up duty with my critters, and keeping an extra one in my pocket just in case of some unexpected disaster. So far so good. 

I have a large-economy-size box of those disposable gloves because I seem . . . to get myself in icky situations, one way or another, somewhat regularly.^  But as a town dog owner, I go through one to four plastic pick-up bags a day.  Even if we get out to the country for the long morning hurtle, the afternoon hurtle is pretty much invariably in town.  That’s a lot of plastic.  The local pet store, after listening to me whine about it for several years, finally found a source of biodegradable dog crap bags that seem to be genuinely biodegradable even after you’ve read the fine print . . . but it’s still a lot of plastic.  I certainly use the gloves . . . but I’m under the impression the bags leave a smaller, you know, footprint.

Re Williams

As someone who milks cows on a dairy farm two days a week, I can tell you that it does wash off. 

Well personally I draw AN ENORMOUS THICK LINE, LIKE MAYBE ABOUT A MEDIUM-SIZED ASTEROID WIDE, between herbivore crap and carnivore crap.  I’ve spent years of my life mucking out stalls, but I think I’d have trouble working at a kennels, and I’m even a dog person.  Herbivore crap is just not that big a deal.^^  I’ve come into direct personal contact with . . . well, an awful lot of horse, including scouring foal, which is pretty unpleasant, cow, which is always sloppy, goat, including scouring goatling, sheep and rabbit.  There are probably others.  But it never occurred to me in my barn days that washing my hands and putting my jeans and flannel shirts through the washing machine wouldn’t be enough. 

PamAdams

I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse. 

Oh gods.  Oh gods.  I’m not laughing.  I’m really not . . . RRRMBGGLK.  NOT.  LAUGHING.

 b_twin_1

I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse.

 

. . .  given the number of people on the forum who have access to animals with copious excrement of all types I humbly suggest we don’t carry on with “mine’s bigger than yours” 

::notgigglingeither::  ::NOT::  I don’t think that’s what was happening here, but you’re probably right we want to ensure that it doesn’t.  But I’d differentiate between indoor pets and you farmers.  I’ve worked on farms, and it’s also a different mindset.  So PamAdams’ interesting experience and my exploding dog bag are in the same category, as are you and Re Williams in the same other category.  

^ This includes in the garden.  I scatter pelleted chicken manure by hand, because it’s quick, easy and efficient that way.  The bags all say STERILIZED but I am much happier in gloves somehow.  And I once had a carton of mealworms break all over the kitchen floor, and having very promptly shut up hellhounds, scrabbled (most of) the escapees out from under the corner overhang of cupboards and so on by hand.  Speaking of mealworms I haven’t checked on the robin’s nest in a couple of days. . . . 

^^ Which, since there’s so much more of it, is a very good thing.+ 

+ I don’t think I’d do too well mucking out the big cat cages at the zoo either. 

 

Singing and a ’cello

 

I had FOUR new songs to learn, or to try on for size and choose from, the last fortnight, since Nadia, the lazy slut, was taking Easter Monday off,* they just don’t make voice teachers like they used to.**  And then I had flu.***  I’ve only been really singing for about the last three days.†  So, at rather a pelt, I learnt a song and a half:  Long Time Ago arranged by Aaron Copland†† and half of When Daisies Pied by Thomas Arne†††. 

            In some ways the increasing gap between what I do or can do at home and what I do or can do for Nadia is INCREASINGLY FRUSTRATING.  I do my most emotive singing . . . mostly over the washing-up.  Please.  But there’s something about having something that is just slightly distracting‡ to do with your hands and about one-tenth of your brain, as well as no audience‡‡, that enables all kinds of freedom.  I caught myself breaking my heart over the dead Eurydice some time this weekend . . . and of course the moment I noticed it went away and I couldn’t get it back.  Arrrrgh.  But in terms of sheer howling frustration at the perversity of self-consciousness . . . I was doing scales at the sink.  It was, again, some time this weekend.  I’d been singing for a day or two at that point but this was my first attempt to get back into my top end.  Oh dear, I thought, that A is still very squeaky.  So I went to the piano because sometimes having the piano to lean on is comforting.  And it wasn’t the A.  It was the B.  I don’t have a B—yet—but I’ve thought I probably will because I have the A# most of the time at home and an occasional chalkboard squeal above that.  This was definitely a B, and while it was far from a thing of beauty, it was real enough that if I could make it on demand it would be useful in a choir where I’m being covered up by a lot of better Bs.‡‡‡

            Of course it only lasted long enough for me to go, glibberglingglang, that’s a B!  That’s a real, live B!  Whereupon it went away so emphatically I could barely hack my way to the A.  Siiiiiiiigh. 

            When I went in today the first thing Nadia did was make me do a lot of physical stretches to get the bits reconnected since, post-flu, they’ve all shut down in postures of rigid defense.  The point being that I was even singing badly . . . but I had still managed to produce that top B I don’t have (yet) simply because I knew I had had flu and wasn’t expecting much.   ARRRRRRGH.

            She then asked me what, of whatever I was singing, I’d most like her input on, and I pulled out Long Time Ago.  And here’s the thing . . . she didn’t say anything about the notes and all that basic stuff (despite the fact that they are not perfect).  She went immediately into phrasing and interpretation. 

            You know this improvement scam is kind of intimidating. . . . 

blondviolinist

cicatricella wrote on Fri, 13 April 2012 22:02

Re: the violoncello thing. I know not how it might apply to voice, and why there would be both a ‘cello’ and a ‘violoncelle’, but ‘cello’ is actually an abbreviation (or was originally anyway). ‘Cello’ is a diminutive in Italian and a ‘violoncello’ is a ‘little (contra)bass’. That’s why some books (especially older ones) write it ” ‘cello”

 

Yep. So the performer who listed it as “cello” was probably a nice enough person, and the performer who listed it as “violoncelle” was full of themselves.  

I did wonder.  It’s the ‘violoncelle’ performer that we missed.  The cello player was a nice young man—and I think I remember he placed in the instrumental category.  I did know about the “ ’cello” from reading lots of old books, but I assumed that since this was in some other language it must be some other instrument. 

Diane in MN

Unfortunately he’s not the least interested in opera and unless he has a voice teacher at some point who wakes him up to the glories of the operatic repertoire I think we’ll lose him to the West End. Feh.

How good are you at subverting voice teachers? 

SNORK.  That approach hadn’t occurred to me.  Well, the family have been threatening to move south, to be nearer the rest of the clan. . . . 

I didn’t hear Traviata this afternoon and from your description, I would have disliked the production a whole lot. As when:

[. . .] she realises he’s asking her to give up Alfredo forever SHE TAKES HER DRESSING-GOWN OFF and trails around in her slip. Oh gods how I hate the wandering around in your underwear to indicate vulnerability and innocence thing. (She does it again later at the party. [. . .])

This would have taken me right outside the performance, 

YES.   THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT IT DOES.  ‘Surreal’ has rules (even if I’m not sure what they are) just like ‘fantasy’ does, and if you break them, you ruin the story, and the spell.  The end of the first act, when she’s singing about how she has to be free, and then she hears Alfredo off stage singing about the power of love, in his wet way, and it stops her . . . in this staging, he comes on stage and confronts her, although I think you don’t have to know the standard set-up to recognise the dream-like quality of it here:  she is confronting herself really.  And it works.  That’s one of the things that works a treat.  It’s hard to believe that someone who came up with this would also come up with trailing around in your slip. 

even if other elements (like Alfredo in his underwear) had failed to do so.  

Indeed.  I was having a little trouble, although I would have coped, with the cabbage roses.  The boxer shorts broke my suspension of disbelief snap.  Reasons Never to Be A Stage Actor:  your director can make a fool of you and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

I dislike and am distracted by staging that wants to trump the music or libretto or both.  Aaargh. It’s too bad that on top of that, the singers were not at their best. 

Yes.  And part of the frustration is that a good deal of this staging was really interesting.  But . . . I was talking to someone else who saw it, who agreed that Dmitri sang like a stick.  It may have been characterisation—Papa Germont is a stick—but it was not a good choice. 

Blondviolinist

I haven’t seen many productions of La Trav, but I’ve yet to see one in which the 2nd act didn’t bore me. (Well, except for Papa Germond’s aria. He’s being a jerk, but oh! is it gorgeous music.) This includes two of Zeffirelli’s stagings. Maybe the act is simply hard to stage effectively. 

We-ell. . . . I wouldn’t say boring, myself, but then I love the opera too much.  I do absolutely know what you mean.  For me the music, well sung, can deal with anything (and Dessay, even not in top voice, was well worth watching, and I’d see her in it again without hesitation).  What I guess happens with me is that I look forward to all three scenes, and I would have said that it’s pretty hard to get both Germont and Violetta and the party scene wrong, they’re both oozy with easy drama.  All right, it’s not hard:  put Violetta in her dressing gown, and then make her take it off, and then wander brokenly around the rest of the stage pulling all the cabbage roses off the furniture.  ARRRRGH.  Anyway.  It shouldn’t be hard to stage both those scenes.  The rough one is the one between Papa the Thug and Alfredo the Wet Brat. 

              And yes, since you ask, I’m insane, we knew that, I’d love a chance to try. . . . 

* * * 

* I think this was a toddler-minding problem rather than a desire to loll around at home in her dressing-gown all day eating bonbons and watching soap operas.  

** WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WHILE SHE’S ON MATERNITY LEAVE FOR TWO MONTHS?  I’LL FORGET EVERYTHING.^ 

^ Drama queen?  What?  Clearly you don’t take music lessons from a Nadia. 

*** I know.  I still owe you a what? blog about how the New Thing came to be.  It may be some help if I mention now that ‘raving with fever’ had something to do with it.

 † And I still have one spectacularly blocked ear which is very, very boring.  

†† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D8wqsmkYT8  So I have a thing for baritones.  Sue me.  Of the half dozen that come up immediately on YouTube this is my favourite.  And having listened to all of the ones I liked twice (and this one three times) I have STOPPED because Nadia doesn’t like me listening to YouTube—I told you this, that she believes that you pick up interpretations without meaning to and she wants her students making their own mistakes.  And their own not-mistakes.  As recently as when I was first learning Dove Sei I thought she was straining at gnats with me—I could certainly see why she’d be thinking about this with a student who, you know, had a real voice and was really singing—but . . .

               Um.  Okay.  Yes.  I’ve crossed that line too.^  Granted that Long Time Ago (or When Daisies Pied) is a simple song, but my excuse for heading for YouTube was to learn the actual line as quickly as possible without worrying about my eccentric piano-playing.  But I was pretty much ignoring the melody because I knew I could pick it up, and listening to the phrasing.  How does he do that—oh.  Oops. 

EMoon

It is amazing, as I take more lessons and crawl slowly forward in the singing, how much more I can hear in others’ singing. 

Yes.  Exactly.  I’ve been aware of it increasingly—as I mentioned again on Friday after the Pan-galactic finals, that your listening is different in kind if you’re having even a feeble and talent-free stab at doing whatever-it-is yourself.  But I don’t think I had realised till I started listening to good professional singers singing Long Time Ago the other night just how far down this road I’ve come.  Oh wow.  Look.  Elephants.  Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.  

All I need is more work, more work, more work, and no other things interrupting it. (Bwah-ha-ha-ha! she sings, with expression and only the right amount of vibrato. . . .

Well . . . that might be true with you people with voices.  It’s certainly true that I could use more practise time to good effect but . . . I’m still going to hit the wall with this voice-equivalent sooner rather than later.  Good reasons to keep singing off the McKinley Obsession List. 

My friend Susan . . . mentioned today that a great contralto died a few days ago at age 90, Lili Chookasian. I knew nothing about her, but Susan gave a link to one of her recordings and I was completely wiped out by it, tears and all. Well below both our ranges, on the low end, but in case you’re interested, here’s a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrZTUm8IUAU&feature=relat ed 

Oh my.  Yes.  (Which is why I’m sticking it in here, for musical blog-readers who don’t look at the forum.)  I would love Kathleen Ferrier anyway, but I also love her because she’s the only true contralto I’ve pretty much ever frelling heard of. 

              I also sing Blow the Wind Southerly and even though I love the song and there’s no reason I shouldn’t, still . . . why?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjvHg9cBriw ^^  

^ For better and worse.  Generally speaking I’m fine with the fact that I’m not going to be a (very) late-flowering Beverly Sills.  But I do kind of catch myself wishing that I had the chops+ to be a big frog in even a very small pond.   Some of this is worrying about the future of the Muddles:  I’ve told you we’re going to be getting a new director and Who Knows.  And thanks to having more throat trouble this last year than I have had since I was a bronchitis-prone preteen and that the Muddles have lots of long breaks from rehearsal, I’ve never quite fully committed to them.  If our new leader wants us singing medleys of old Beatles hits I’ll be out of there so fast I’ll give myself road burn.  

+ Er . . . croaks? 

^^ And Che Faro.  And He Was Despised.  And O Waly Waly.  She sang a lot of my favourite repertoire.  And I am a glutton for self-punishment.  

 ††† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxiTrRwsW0E  

‡ There are good musical moments out with hellhounds too.^  But you can never afford to be too distracted from continuously scanning your surroundings for sudden perils.  And I’ve never had a spoon or a tea mug leap out of my hands and go scalding off after a rabbit. 

^ Even if Chaos will not stop looking up at me earnestly when I sing.  When we’re out hurtling he trots at my side.  At home he gets out of the nice comfy dog bed to stand near me and stare.   No, I’m not in pain.  Go away.   

‡‡ Other than a deranged hellhound.  

‡‡‡ Or at least Griselda.  You really only need Griselda.

New Thing, 2

 

TWO 

Gelasio hired the kind of lawyer that someone who could buy the Rockefeller Center would hire, and then hired one of his partners to deal with me.  I know how bad an idea this is—in my Vampire Virago series, Aldetruda is hired by the pissed-off wife of the virago’s vavasour to find out how much her also-soon-to-be-ex husband is planning to take her for by trying to make her use one of the other lawyers in his firm.  A lot.  But fangs are so persuasive.  I specialised in cliffhanger endings.  After I finished Flowerhair four I’d probably have to rescue Aldetruda.

            But I didn’t have anything to steal.  Probably the only thing I owned that was worth actual money was my signed copy of THE LORD OF THE RINGS.  I didn’t really think Gelasio would try to get it off me.  If he wanted a signed LOTR, he could buy one.  He could buy sixty.

            Gelasio was moving to California.  The girlfriend was from California.  There are really great mainframes and motherboards out there.  I guess.  I didn’t want to know what had happened between that conference where they’d met and now.  It didn’t seem to me that Gelasio had been away on business any more than usual—what?  The last six months?  A year?  Had the girlfriend rented the flat on the sixth floor whose owner had decided to be a monk in Tibet but wanted to keep his options open?  Don’t think about it.  I wasn’t going to think about it.  It was fine with me that there was going to be a continent between them and me though.  

             I was a New Yorker born and bred—but the last time I’d had to live on what I earned I’d been twenty-three.  You put up with stuff when you’re twenty-three that didn’t look so tolerable at forty.  One room.  Cockroaches.  And after almost eighteen years in a nine-room Manhattan penthouse with a roof garden and both a housekeeper and a gardener who came in two days a week. . . .

            Gelasio and the girlfriend had already left for California:  San Diego.  Maybe he had fallen for her because she was from San Diego.  Gelasio had a thing for bougainvillea.  We grew it here because Gelasio paid the gardener a lot of money.   (Gelasio was from the Midwest.  I don’t think you can keep bougainvillea alive in the Midwest even if you pay your gardener a lot of money.)  Gelasio had said I could stay in the penthouse till the final hand-over to the new owner—which gave me about a ten days, as I wandered through the empty rooms, trying to develop some kind of clue about what I was going to do with the rest of my life or at least the next few weeks.  I had half a dozen local friends trying to convince me to stay with them till I figured this out.  My editor had given me an extension on Flowerhair.  My old boss at Whizzbangpow Books had offered me free lance work editing.  I liked being all cool and rational about someone else’s book:  I was better at the cool and rational when it was someone else’s book.  But this meant I didn’t have to stop eating immediately.  And I didn’t have much appetite.  I wasn’t even in love with Gelasio any more, but I was used to him.  And I was really used to his life style.

            My young lawyer had offered (hopefully) to go after Gelasio’s senior partner for a better settlement.  He thought he could get one.  Remind me never to get involved with a lawyer.  I said no.  He argued with me for a while but eventually he gave up.

            I was living in my office, sleeping on the sofa, computering sitting cross-legged on the floor, occasionally venturing into the naked kitchen to boil water in a pan for tea.  I had two tea mugs.  Luxury.  I had a map of the world on my computer screen.  I had a fresh cup of tea on the floor next to it.  I sipped at it.  Deciding to lift a cup of tea and drink out of it seemed like a big decision.  I was going to leave New York City.  That was as far as I could get.

            You can’t stick a pin in a computer screen.

            I hadn’t thrown out my old paper atlas.  Hey, I’m forty (nearly), I get nostalgia sometimes.  I pulled it out of its box and let it fall open.  East coast.  Okay.  I didn’t really want to get into visas and work permits, so let’s stay in the country, and Gelasio and girlfriend were on the other side of it, so let’s stay on this side.  I didn’t have a straight pin but I bent a safety pin so it would stay open.  My hand was trembling a little.  I closed my eyes.  I let the pin fall. . . .

 

New Thing Premiere

 

ONE

When my soon-to-be-ex husband told me he was leaving me for someone he met at a conference, who knew the difference between a main frame and a motherboard, I was halfway through chapter six of the fourth volume of The Epic of Flowerhair.  Flowerhair was up against a wall in the Temple of Grifola and she was not having a good time.  Those walking fungi can get really worked up when you're trying to steal one of their goddess' relics.  Flowerhair hadn't wanted to take the job, but she needed to eat, and the wizard who hired her had offered a really good price for one miserable little relic.  She hoped she'd picked up the right thing:  it looked a lot like a mummified thumb.  Ugh.  Can't fungi just grow another one, whatever it was? Flowerhair said to herself as she chopped off another fungal limb with her enchanted sword.  The problem with Doomblade was that it didn't like belonging to her;  the only reason it did belong to her was because of some complicated curse business to do with an evil magician and the sword's original owner, who had, of course, been a mighty-thewed (male) warrior type with more honor than sense.  So far today Doomblade seemed to be in a good mood.  Maybe it liked the odds:  Bad.  Fungi don't much mind having bits lopped off.  They just reorganise.  If they killed her, Doomblade might go to some noble champion worthy of it. 

            I knew about needing to eat.  Some years the only reason I did (keep eating I mean) is because I was married to Gelasio.   Although Flowerhair was selling pretty well.  Which was a good thing and, if Gelasio was cutting me loose, about to be a crucial thing.  The bad thing was that volume four was due the end of the month and that was 60,000 words away.  I wouldn't get paid till I handed it in and my editor liked it.  Sometimes it took a while for my editor to decide she liked something.  While I suffered the agonies of the damned, in case she didn't.  The agonies of the damned were about to increase in severity without a spousal bank balance as safety net and solace.  While I was married to Gelasio, I drank a lot of comforting champagne during the months I was waiting to hear back from my editor.  I was pretty sure I'd lost my taste for Thunderbird.

            I let Flowerhair wonder if (supposing she got out of this, which according to my contract she had to) she could take some of the lopped-off bits away with her and eat them.  Were attack fungi sentient?  Did it count as some kind of creepy philosophic cannibalism if they were?  I carefully hit 'save' and looked at Gelasio.  He was standing in the doorway of my office and looking apologetic.  He was still cute, after more than seventeen years of marriage:  curly black hair and that golden Greek skin, even when he never got outdoors in daylight.  He was the kind of computer nerd who never got outdoors in daylight.  He even went to the gym at about 3 a.m., just in case some sunlight might make it through the gym's smoked glass during the day.  I wondered what the new girlfriend looked like.  Gelasio was also the kind of computer nerd who earned enough money to buy a penthouse in Manhattan.  I would miss the view from my office.  I would miss the champagne.  But I would miss eating even more. 

            His timing was poor, but that wasn't entirely his fault.  I didn't get outdoors in daylight much either because I was always missing some deadline or other.  And I hadn't told him I had 60,000 words to write by the end of the month.  I didn't tell him because I didn't like rubbing it in that I worked as hard as he did for about one-seventy-two-millionth of the money.

            I never did meet the girlfriend, although I found out she was another extremely well paid computer nerd.  This almost upset me more than that Gelasio was leaving me:  it was clearly not fair that two people in the same household were being paid enough to buy Rockefeller Center.  Each.  I wanted the wealth spread around a little more.  I wanted an advance on my next book of more than $2.57.  I wanted a royalty check for more than $1.82. 

             I wanted to keep eating. 

 * * *

Editor's note:  There will be a What? You're doing what? semi-explanatory blog (probably) tomorrow.  But I didn't want to spoil the fun (all right, my fun), by telling you in advance.

Mouth breather

 

There will be an ANNOUNCEMENT at the end of this post. 

Oh, stop it.  It's not one o'clock in the frelling morning.  That's an optical illusion.  The kitchen clock hates me, and I'm sure I need a new prescription for my glasses.*

            I was thinking, as I snarled my way out of bed this morning, that I'm very grateful that horrible as this flu has been it's not maintaining the extreme fevered purple-spotted torture level forever . . . but it would still be very nice to be able to hear and breathe again some time soon.**  I was too busy being a pain in the neck last night*** to let reality deflect me from my malign purpose, but Peter and I had an adventure yesterday, visiting a friend who has recently moved to this area.  Not all that recently.  She and her husband have been here several times.  But I keep bottling out—or the ME bottles out for me—of going to visit them.  You know, driving.  On the roads and everything.  I'd rather be knitting.

            But I wanted to get it over with, that first assault on Everest† . . . not least because she and I are supposed to be going to a concert together next week at her local hall.  Which means I need to be able to get there.  And on the whole I'd rather wreck Easter Monday lunch with the anticipatory nervous breakdown than a concert you've bought tickets to.  So Peter and I added two boxes of tissues to the emergency kit in Wolfgang's boot†† and set off.†††

            Hey.  Wow.  Gosh.  Actually the way there is pretty straightforward.  I can do this.‡  And their new house is adorable—it has no right angles in it anywhere, and a Charles Rennie Macintosh surround on the (tiny) dining room fireplace—and the typical town garden that isn't much wider than you can spread your arms, except this one goes on and on and on.  And on and on and on.  And on.  It's like the far end is in Norway‡‡ it's so long. 

            But my point is . . . it's more embarrassing having a lurgy in someone else's house, even when you're pretty sure you're not leaving it behind for them to enjoy in your absence.  Oh gods I'm a mouth breather.  No one will ever invite me anywhere again.

            Niall is forced to make use of me, however, because I can hold the line even against the worst assaults of beginner handbellers.  Niall is applying the high-intensity inauguration system with this new group—he's booked them (and me) in for next Tuesday too.‡‡‡  Mind you, Farrell is starting to scare me:  you just hand him a pair of bells and say 'do this' and he does.  I won't be ringing with him much longer because I'll be beneath his notice. §  But Enoch is needing the standard beginner grind, and they'd brought a tasty new mutton chop, I mean person, with them tonight, Olga being unavailable, whom we will call Oliver.  Oliver once in the dark days of foolish youth had begun to learn to ring handbells and had sensibly given it up . . . I'm not sure what Enoch has on him that he agreed to come along tonight.  A good grind was had by all, one way and another, although whether or not it was a pleasant evening might be open for debate.  But . . . carrying around a superfluous lurgy was not on my mind when I was developing my nascent handbell habits.  I tend to look down—I only want to see the bells out of the corners of my eyes, although in my peripheral way I'm watching the treble like a hawk waiting for that rabbit to wander just another step farther away from the hedgerow—and looking down makes all that crap in my head shift forward and lodge like cement in a slurry pit.  Mouth breather.  Arrgh.  This too will pass.  I hope. 

ANNOUNCEMENT:  THE NEW THING WILL DEBUT TOMORROW.§§ 

* * *

* The many advantages of touch typing.  Also most of the letters on the keys have worn off. 

** Also I have a cough that scares small children, but that has its uses.  Not being able to hear has its uses too^, but not enough of them.  Not being able to breathe has no uses at all.  

^ Take 1,000,000 empty bottles to the dump, dear?  Sorry, I can't hear you. 

*** Heh heh heh heh heh 

† She lives on a HILL.  Do you have any idea how much I loathe parallel parking on a HILL?  Especially a crowded residential hill where the spaces are all at best .0326 inches longer than your car?  When there are any spaces?

†† trunk 

††† Leaving hellhounds to sulk at the dog minder about the rain.  At least it's good rain—it's a bit whimsical, liking to lure you outdoors with the blue-and-sunny trap before it yanks the black wall of water on and lets you have it—but it is raining determinedly while it's raining, and gardens and ponds and frogspawn and reservoirs are liking it.  Not so the hellhounds.  FOR GODSSAKE GUYS YOU WON'T MELT.  Darkness is tentatively willing to take this on faith.  Not Chaos.  Chaos can feel every drop penetrating his liver.  Rainy days it's always a dice roll:  do I put their raincoats on them so they comprehensively hate the entire hurtle, Darkness affecting stoicism and Chaos doing his upside-down backwards and sideways Maybe I Can Shake It Off dance with much tail-lashing, or do I leave their raincoats off so they only hate the part when it's raining, but then spray house, car and me with strangely knife-edged mud droplets which furthermore have an inexplicable capacity to stain more damningly than black tea?  They also sulk longer post-hurtle if they're wet . . . but this is English weather.  If you're lucky it won't rain while you're out in it, and there are four little beady eyes, when I pick up harnesses in preparation to going out, beaming the message noooooooooo raincoats. . . . 

‡ I had a revolutionary thought.  I could learn to drive slower.  Ugggh.  I get behind the wheel, I want to get it over with.  And the speed limit on motorways and A roads is 70, which is Mario Andretti's idea of a crippled amble, but it's my idea of pedal to the metal, and if the sign says 70, I go 70.  But the faster you're driving, the more acute that hyper buzzy awareness you're using to stay alive is, whether you're aware of it or not, and this is tiring  . . . which is where the ME comes in in my case, and why I drive as little as possible.  I'm not sure the neurological stress level is that much different between driving 45 and 70 . . . but I could find out.  Sigh.  I'd rather just have a chauffeur.  Then I could knit.  

‡‡ What?  There's a bridge over the North Sea, of course.  It's long and narrow too. 

‡‡‡ We're going to them next week.  I think this may be Penelope losing patience and wanting her sitting room back.  I don't think I can get five people in the cottage.  Maybe I should suggest Third House. 

§ Very scary.  Remember I told you he's a dancer?  He auditioned—and won a place for the Olympic opening day ceremonies.  Yeep etc—better him than me.  But I hope he'll tell us about it.^ 

^ I hope he keeps ringing handbells.  Despite the immediate prospect of my being discarded for insufficient skill, I want to hold onto this boy for the greater good of our mutual art. 

§§ Unless of course I change my mind again.

 

New Thing, New Thing, nanny-nanny-boo-boo, tra la la New Thing

 

::dandles New Thing:: 

::dandle-dangle-dandle-twinkle-dingle-dangle:: 

::hums idly:: 

And, finally, bursts into loud roars of evil laughter.  MWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . . . Sorry guys.  Ordinarily I loathe and despise people who tease* other people but . . . but . . . well I'm having a good time with the New Thing.  I think you will too** . . . or if you don't I will crawl away into a corner and cry . . . but the thing thing is that the blog is such a lot of work.  I'm increasingly aware that I can't do this forever, even if there were enough people who wanted me to, but that while the obvious answer is to change the wretched thing somehow, I am hideously constrained by what I can do . . . which includes the limitations of the peculiar personality that does it.  Just declaring 'less often, fewer words and more other people's books' does not work.

            I think . . . I think . . . I've found something that will work.

            It'll make better sense after I post the beggar.  And then I'll tell you more about it too.  Meanwhile . . . 

            ::dingle-dangle-glitter-flourish-swank:: 

            Tomorrow?  I might post it tomorrow.  I might.  Or maybe I'll post it Wednesday.  Or Thursday . . . or . . . decisions, decisions . . . 

            ::twinkle:: 

Catlady

I have so far avoided getting a cell phone because the very idea that someone could call me at any time is so terrifying that I'd rather get stuck halfway home and have to walk my broken bicycle straight to the dentist than have the ability to call someone to come rescue me.

Um.  Not that I wish to damage the perfect bloom of your paranoia—having a number of healthy, well-nurtured paranoias of my own—but you do know you can turn it off, don't you?  There are, so far as I'm aware, two options for the turning-off thing:  you can either merely make it not make noise by setting it to 'vibrate' which means it will undulate embarrassingly against your leg—GADFRELLINGZOOKS I HAVE A RAT IN MY POCKET—oh, wait, it's the phone.   Or you can turn it off off, and then you'll never know that you won that voucher for a free glass of champagne the next time you're at Charlie's, because of course you never check your messages.***  But this does at least mean that when you're lying at the bottom of the muddy ravine you can ring someone with a rope ladder.† 

BlueRose

Your comment about the phone lines always being bad . . . unless you have had fibre installed then your broadband is sent over your copper phone lines . . .  if your standard phone line is crappy due to interference, then that has a direct affect on your broadband performance, it will likely manifest as random disconnects all over the place and sometimes trouble getting connected.

Also I recommend getting a powerfilter . . .  it may spike badly enough over time to damage your router or anything else electrical plugged into it. 

SIIIIIIIIIGH. . . . I thought I'd talked about this before.  Well, I probably have, but given the several gazillion words that have passed over this opening page in the last few years. . . . Anyway.  Yes, I know.   This entire area sucks for landline service, and the wiring in my little cul de sac makes linemen burst out laughing and have to grab hastily at their poles before they fall off.  This is probably sixty years old, one of them told me, wiping the tears of mirth off his face.  There is not a thing I or any other mere citizen can do about it.  It's all owned by British Telecom and they don't give a flying bugger.  BT, just by the way, and I know I've told this story, informed me, when I tried to get Third House plugged back in a few years ago††, that there was no phone line to that house and I would have to pay several hundred pounds to have it installed.  Pardon me.  This is a 1930's cottage in the centre of town and there is a phone jack in the kitchen.  But that's the kind of thoughtful, efficient mega-mono-incredible-o gigantic-o national corporation it is.  There are regular rumours that we're going to have our broadband area-wide upgraded—although meanwhile it's getting worse because of all the new build and new people and more of them wanting broadband—but I'll frelling believe it when I frelling see it, and even when it happens it's not going to happen to my cul-de-sac till the very, very, very, very, very, very end.  If they remember it at all.  Grrrrr.

            And I have a surge protector.  I have several surge protectors.  I even replace them. 

Diane in MN

who uses a landline any more?

Well, I do. 

Well . . . so do I.  But don't tell anyone.  And my ways around my interference issues are of the tin-foil-hats-to-keep-the-alien-probes-out-of-my-brain level.  I don't care. 

 Despite the presence of multiple towers in our area, our cell phones are mostly non-functional at the house because we don't get a signal. I assume we are in a hollow or something. 

No.  It's the alien probes.  (But don't tell anyone.)  It sodblastingly amazes me how often the old 'we can't get a signal' is trotted out.  Our horizons look like angry hedgehogs or secret military intelligence encampments with the numbers of phone masts and at this point most of the people I know—and I would include myself in this sad, misguided number—are addicted to their mobile phones and feel vulnerable and endangered (and cranky) when they can't get a signal and check their Twitter feed regularly to see if @rhinestoneAllStars or @pinkcentifolia has answered their tweet yet.  And it is a monthly wonderment to me—which is to say when the chirpy message about the bill comes in—what I pay for the privilege of . . . sometimes being able to pick up a signal.  What is the deal here.  And whatever it is I want to upgrade my package.  

Ajlr

(We use Skype all the time at work, including holding 10-participant team meetings on it. Mostly, it's fine.)

I CANNOT BEGIN TO IMAGINE A SKYPE MEETING INVOLVING TEN PEOPLE.  I think I have to sit down.  Oh, wait, I am sitting down.  Maybe I'd better lie down.

Looking forward to hearing about The New Idea. 

::Beams::

 EMoon

If having us feel tortured with your Mystery Fun was the goal, then yes, I feel tortured. Silent but intense screams of agony are even now wafting across the land between here and the Atlantic and will soon be wafting across the ways, you-ward, to give you the satisfaction of knowing your torture plan was successful. 

YAAAAAAAAY.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  You cheer me immeasurably.

blondviolinist

::dies of curiosity::

::enters afterlife furious that premature death has prevented her from FINDING OUT WHAT ROBIN WAS TALKING ABOUT!!!:: 

There, there.  Send me a forwarding address.  In these digital, immaterial days I'm sure we can work something out. 

serenityruler

As for the surprise, I'm intensely interested. Because the reader forum is detached from the blog itself, I'm not sure if the blog exists to create conversation or just to hear from Robin. It has to be her style and humour in the writing seeing as it isn't excerpts from the books or exclusively book related subjects. Hmmmm…. 

The blog exists because my agent told me, five years ago, that all authors have blogs these days and I had to have one too.  I am naïve.  I thought this was more or less the literal truth.  Feh.  But it was too late by the time I found out she was exaggerating for effect . . . and it is certainly too late now.  The blog is supposed to be a marketing tactic.  It's supposed to be getting Robin McKinley, Author, out there as a concept.  It doesn't (said my agent reassuringly) have to be literally marketing.  Which is the good part.  Unfortunately it—and you—are stuck with what I can do, as I keep saying.  Days in the Life are what I can do.

            However . . . 

* * *

* Ask any of my friends.  I Do Not Tease Well.  Peter spent years being startled at having his head ripped off and handed back to him.^  I was teasing, he'd say.  So?  Your point would be? I would respond.   Didn't anyone ever teach you how to, you know, play? he'd say.  I'm American, I'd say.  Life is real!  Life is earnest!  Art is long, and Time is fleeting!  And our hearts, though stout and brave!  Still, like muffled drums, are beating!  Funeral marches to the grave!^^  No messing around! 

^ Remember we had spent exactly one weekend together when we decided to get married.  There were lots of surprises. 

^^ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-psalm-of-life/   Maybe it's just that I went to Bowdoin College.  But Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is like this great informing spirit in my life.  He's not alone, mind you, but he's sure as hell there.  Great thundering humourless New England patriarchal Puritan thug.  The Protestant frelling work ethic.  Get me the Katahdin out of here. 

            Mind you, I do have time for Longfellow, possibly because (last I knew, maybe he's come back), he is Not Fashionable.  I am (almost) always willing to give a fellow unfashionable an extra break.  Maybe it's just that I went to Bowdoin.  And am sort of from Maine.  But Paul Revere?  Hiawatha?  Totally.  I'm not at all sure that there's much of Longfellow you can read for the first time as a grown-up without deciding you'd rather be weeding the cat or painting the dishwasher, but when I was a kid those stories with their fancy metrical shimmy were hot fudge sundaes with extra sprinkles.    

 **  ::trembles and looks around anxiously:: 

*** Ask me how I know the never-checking-messages part. 

† How I'm going to attach hellhounds to my body for the ascent I don't know, but I'll worry about that after the person with the rope ladder answers their phone.  

†† It had stood empty long enough that the phone got turned off.