Robin McKinley's Blog, page 98

Jolly jolly jolly jolly Easter technology

 

So a friend and I have been trying to figure out something new and amusing to do for the blog. *  It had got to the point by this week that we really needed to do a kind of run-through to see if it was going to work**, but I've been ill*** and she has, like, a job and a life† and scheduling has been a ratbag.  But we finally decided we could do it this morning.

            The first thing that happened is that I overslept.  SO WHAT FRELLING ELSE IS NEW.††  So when I finally texted my friend (as prearranged) she had also overslept††† arrgh arrgh arrgh arrgh so we both stumbled around finding caffeine (and clothing) and feeding/hurtling domestic fauna and so on.  As one does.

            Articulateness was beginning to emerge from the enshrouding mists.  Blah.  Gar.  We were tentatively going to do this by Skype instant messaging, but we were going to have a video-enabled chat about what we were trying to do first, in so far as I was capable of either speaking audibly‡ or hearing anyone speaking to me.‡‡

            The first thing that happened was that we couldn't get Skype to talk to us. . . . No, wait.  The first thing that happened was that Pooka was doing one of her little, Message?  Me?  Message?, deals, so my friend had texted back and I'm wondering why she hadn't because it wasn't showing.  Eventually I went hunting and there were like three new ones the last one being, Hey, where r u?  ARRRRGH.  It's sort of the modern tech version of catching your roommate with the empty plate in her hands and the crumbs on her face:  Chocolate cake?  What chocolate cake?‡‡‡

            Then, having re-established contact by text . . . Skype refused to connect.  R u there?  yes im here where r u . . . note that there are two iPhones, a Macbook and a desktop PC involved, and we are playing merry, merry musical gadgets . . . eventually Skype acknowledged both my and my friend's existence at the same time on one machine each and a sort of connection was established . . . except she couldn't hear me, I couldn't see her, and I was getting a helpful pop-up message saying 'your broadband is moving at a somewhat slower than measurable rate.  Glaciers are faster.  Liver flukes are evolving into diplodocuses while we wait for the signal from the historic maypole on your cul-de-sac.  We don't hold out a lot of hope for this conversation you're trying to have.'

            Eventually my friend and I gave up on the preparatory chat option.  She was still trying to reassure me (we were still texting, mostly successfully) that Skype IM was really easy, nothing could go wrong.  Yes.  And I'm the queen of Sheba.  My Skype kept claiming that my friend was off line.  My friend kept claiming that her Skype was telling her I was off line.  Shifting from one demonic piece of kit to another of course aggravates the situation.  I could sit there watching Pooka and the desktop pointing fingers at each other and saying:  She did it!§  I turned everything off and then turned it back on again.  Skype was now claiming I was back on line, but I wasn't allowed to change my status.  I WAS GOING TO BE ON LINE FOREVER.§§

            At this point I received another text from my friend.  Ur still off line, it said.  ARRRRRRRRRGH, I replied.  R u near ur landline? she next inquired (crisply).  I'm going to phone u. 

            Somebody tell me why I could hear her laughing through her texts.

            Um, I texted back, yes.  But I nvr use it because connection ALWAYS bad.

            She phoned me while I was standing in the middle of the office floor at the cottage, watched with some interest by relaxed and half-asleep hellhounds, and swearing like an entire regiment of troopers from low backgrounds, trying to UNTANGLE the frelling WIRING between the phone and the message machine§§§ and between the machine and the wall, which, because I never use any of it, mats itself into plastic dreadlocks.  HOW DOES IT DO THIS.  IT SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. PLASTIC FRELLING FLEX CANNOT FRELLING FELT ITSELF.  Sure it can.  It's like how coathangers breed in empty closets.  When the phone went BRIIIIIIIIIIING the way cheap landlines still do I was so startled I dropped the whole mess.

            We had the conversation.  She got me on Skype.  She got me on Skype's Instant Messaging, which was hiding.  No, really.  We had our run-through.  Our idea works.

            Mwa hahahahahahahahahaha.  Oh, this is going to be fun.#

            Stay tuned.           

* * *

* This is a long story which I'm about to start torturing you with hints about.  But for tonight, it's just murky, inscrutable background.^ 

^ Mwa hahahahahaha 

** Okay, maybe I'm starting to torture you now.  

*** You may have noticed.  

† She does stuff like hang out.  There aren't even any handbells involved.  I really don't understand why we're friends.  I suppose we each provide the other with variety in her social relationships.  

†† I'm not sleeping through the alarm.  It's just I keep putting it back as I thrash and flounce and periodically notice that another hour has gone by and I'm still not asleep.  I don't like missing half the day this way, but I like even less not being able to use ANY of the day because I'm too tired.  Conventionally the phrase 'her blood ran like fire through her veins' sounds exciting.  She's just caught sight of her true love—or possibly he/she has his/her tongue down our heroine's throat and his/her hand, um, but I don't usually write those stories—or her enemy on the battlefield.  Something is going to happen.  Something other than our stupid heroine being unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in her sodding unenchanted bed in her sodding unenchanted cottage in her sodding unenchanted little town.  ARRRRRRGH.  I will never feel the same about that phrase.  Also, I need to be able to breathe.  

††† She also has a lurgy.  SHE'S FIVE THOUSAND MILES AWAY.  I DIDN'T GIVE IT TO HER.  

‡  See:  Lurch.  Or a really really bad recording of Paul Robeson.  

‡‡ This didn't stop me hearing my ex-bells this morning.  Sigh. 

‡‡‡ I shouldn't say things like this.  Next time Pooka will eat them. 

§  Yes.  They both had chocolate cake crumbs on their faces. 

§§ Note that today's friend is THE ONLY PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE I EVER SKYPE WITH BECAUSE SKYPE IS ONE THE MANY SO CALLED WONDERS OF MODERN SO CALLED TECHNOLOGY I DO NOT GET ALONG WITH.  Hannah and I tried it once.  She hated it as much as I did.^

 ^ Us old people have to stick together.  Silver surfers, for godssake.  I nearly took myself off the grid permanently when I heard that term for the first time, and went to live in a cabin in the woods with oil lamps and a fireplace. 

§§§ Which I also never look at or play back because the connection is so bad I can't hear what whoever it is is saying and I probably don't want to anyway, who uses a landline any more?^ 

^ I give no one Pooka's number.  Peter has it.  The archangels have it.   Okay, Merrilee, Hannah, and today's friend have it.  Fiona has it.  That's about it.

               I don't like phones, okay?   I've never liked phones.

# After all, we have Blogmom for the blog.  Nobody messes with Blogmom.

Fresh Blood

 

So yesterday I was contemplating despairingly the likelihood that I would not make it to tonight's opera.*  Not only do I ache in every limb, including the extra leg and two extra arms I had been hitherto unaware of possessing**, but my head, throat, chest, stomach, back, hips and butt aren't doing brilliantly well either.  And I am still making antisocial noises—which while I doubt are contagious any more, I wouldn't really want to be sitting next to me in a theatre either.  And at this low point in morale and stark barrenness of future . . . I received an email.

            From Niall.

            Asking if I would like to ring handbells Saturday night.  That two of his beginners from Tuesday were coming round and he apologised for the lack of advance warning but he could really use some help.***

            Well now there's an idea.

            And so, offering up a modest little hymn to the normally evil gods of handbells, I wrote back without undue show of enthusiasm†, that I thought I probably could.  And I could hear his sign of relief half a mile away from inside the mews with the windows closed and a CD of CARMEN playing.††

            Frelling cowpats, I forget what hard work it is, drilling beginners.  The other night doesn't count—the only time I wasn't knitting, Colin and I were merely giving a woman who was two-thirds of the way there already an opportunity to consolidate her skills.  Tonight counts.  Also, Niall had told me there would be only two of them, but all three turned up.  On the assumption we will be seeing more of them, I will give them names:  Olga, Enoch and Farrell.  And suddenly Niall and I were outnumbered.†††  It shouldn't matter, when you're only inculcating them one at a time‡ but somehow it does.  Also, of course, although Niall and I both knew this going in, we'd be ringing non-stop the whole night.  And—because this is Niall—of course we ran late.  Although to be fair, as soon as you have that extra person, it takes that much longer to get the secret brainwashing electrodes fixed under everyone's skin.  And you don't want anyone to leave without their secret brainwashing electrodes in place.‡‡

            Poor Olga.  I hope there's a way to crank up the outflow on her electrodes.  She needs to fall in ardent and inexplicable love with handbells really soon or she's not going to stay the course.  I so empathise.  Niall has (conveniently) forgotten this, but it took me FOREVER TO LEARN ANYTHING.‡‡‡  Olga is that one in this group.  Enoch is a very experienced tower ringer, and he seems to be doing the Colin thing of juggling two blue (method) lines in his head so he can ring two (hand) bells, which is a perfectly good way to begin§ but at some point he'll have to make the leap over the bottomless abyss to handbells as handbells.  But we can worry about that later.  He'll certainly make a handbell ringer if he decides he wants to.  Farrell is tentatively our most interesting prospect . . . which is to say that if he keeps on like this he'll be soaring past me in a month or two and ringing full peals of Sordid Sod's Law Maximus by the end of the year.§§  But among other things this meant that every time we changed hapless victim to the next in the queue, Niall and I had to adjust for a different situation—much harder on Niall, who's also trying to mind as well as ring—but unsettling for me too.  You realise how much you do ring by both the tune and the rhythm when neither of these is happening—and when every time you shift your third the non-tune and non-rhythm changes too.   You do occasionally get learners who are more like each other than they are unlike, and then you can settle down a bit and just grind.  But that wasn't the situation tonight.  Also, particularly at the beginning, before the electrodes are working yet, you are tense with anxiety about whether your prey is having a good time.  You want them to enjoy it.  No, really.  It cuts down on electrode wear. 

            The situation tonight is that I am toast.  Which makes a change from the toast-free death a few days ago. . . .

 * * *

* http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/liveinhd/LiveinHD.aspx  I'm suspicious of the stability of this link.  At the moment it's showing Manon, which is what I want it to show, but it doesn't SAY Manon, and I suspect it's going to swim on to La Trav the minute my back is turned.  But I can't off-hand find the permanent page for the Met's 2012 production of Massenet's Manon Live on HD, which was tonight, and I don't feel like wasting any more time on it.  I personally feel that the Met's web site, like so many, suffers from Glossy Pain in the Ass Syndrome, where the concentration has been entirely on how pretty everything looks and entirely NOT on how easy it is to navigate. 

** Now that I've found the latter . . . two more hellhounds? 

*** Yes, he could.  Theoretically a single person can teach two beginners at a time to ring minor (six bells), but he (or she) won't live long.  The proper ratio is one beginner per two people who can ring whatever they're trying to hammer into the third person.  DING! 

† You have to be careful with Niall. 

†† Not at low volume.  I'm also deaf with sinus whatever. 

††† I also want to know how Niall got this one past Penelope at all.  Penelope declared Saturday a bell-free zone years ago.  Some time during the era that Niall was ringing eight or nine times a week.  I imagine he got it past her because of the festival of delight Tuesday was—Penelope is not hard-hearted, she just feels there is more to life than (whisper it) bells—but the truth may be that Penelope is not herself from Happy Grandmother Hormones.  Their youngest, and the only one who lives locally, produced her first offspring a fortnight ago, and Penelope is doting.  She showed me photos tonight:  very high on the awwwww goodgy goodgy scale.  You don't even have to be her grandmother to appreciate this.    

‡ We did ring some plain hunt on eight, which was somewhat exciting.  And Niall, because he is Niall, threw us into Grandsire Triples to finish—eight bells, but the treble and the two only plain hunt, and the eight is tenor-behind, so any ringer who can ring it in the tower only has to remember to go DING in last place with that other blasted bell every row.  This leaves the 3-4 and the 5-6 to do all the death-defying stuff.  Whimper.  

‡‡ You don't think anyone rings methods on handbells just because they enjoy it, do you? 

‡‡‡ Speaking of the hard graft of breaking down, I mean training, beginners. 

§ Even if it makes people like me who don't have that option gnash their teeth. 

§§ I am bracing myself to hate him which will be rather too bad.  When we broke for tea tonight we all stood up from our fairy-ring of hard, mentally stimulating^ chairs and went to the sitting-room end of the sitting room.  There is overstuffed furniture for four, the hard chairs, and plenty of floor.  I automatically sit on the floor.  I slightly tend to sit on floors anyway, depending on circumstances, and I've been sitting on Niall's floor during tea breaks for handbells for a long time.  I don't think about it any more.  And tonight I could use the change of position to give different aches and pains a chance to shine.  Farrell said, I thought only dancers did that—choose to sit on the floor.  (He's a dancer.)  I didn't want to get into the aches and pains—it's pretty obvious I have the lurgy^^, but he's also about one-third my age^^^, and I don't want to scare him.  So I said (truthfully) that I'm a fidget.  He grinned.  Yes, that's right, he said.  Dancing is just organising how you fidget.  

^ Stop that sniggering 

^^ I posted to Facebook last night that I sounded like James Earl Jones with laryngitis.  No.  Wrong.  I sound like Lurch. 

^^^ Oh those snappy young neurons.  If I'd learnt change-ringing on handbells at twenty . . . I still wouldn't have been able to do it because this brain is not the right shape. 

 

Better. Yes.

 

I'm better.  No, really.  This time I really am better. 

            I had thought I went to bed last night at least a little more cheerful, even if I still couldn't breathe and I think my back hurts quite so relentlessly and godsblattingly as much because of sleeping sitting up as because flu always makes me ache in places that the rest of the time I mostly forget are places, although the forgetting part does not in fact include my back, which has been a ratbag since I started falling off horses at the age of eleven.  Anyway.  I ache like fury, in both remembered and forgotten places, and the only reason to look forward to going to bed is to keep reading, since sleeping is an issue like global warming or the destruction of rainforest or the Republican nomination for president is an issue, and therefore if I was somehow feeling a little more cheerful this must be a good sign. 

            I got out of bed first try this morning.*  I was, furthermore, hungry.  How great is that.  My stomach has been convinced that we have been involved in a highly unpleasant storm at sea the last week or so, involving much pitching and yawing, and has behaved accordingly.  Calm seas today.**  I got dressed.  I had a cup of tea.  I had an apple.  I had . . .

            . . . I wasn't hungry any more.  Oh.  Well.  Okay.  Hellhounds and I went for a hurtle.  We've been going out for about the right amount of time, the last few days, but somewhat less than the right amount of mileage.  Today we were hitting nearer the mark.  Yaay.***

            Went down to the mews for lunch.  I'm HUNGRY.  And . . . I won't eat anything.  What.  The.  Frell.  It's like I woke up in the body of a hellhound or something.†  Fed hellhounds.  Even they are eating.  Me . . . nah.  Food.  Nasty.  OH COME ON.  I'M OLD, I HAVE ME, I'M JUST GETTING OVER FLU, I NEED FOOD.  I NEED PROTEIN.

            Come any nearer with that olive/frond of dill/blameless scrambled egg and I will grow violent.  Why yes, thank you, I would like another cup of very strong black tea.††

            ARRRRGH.

            So I was thinking, okay, what do you do when you have some stupid little cow who's been sick for so long she's forgotten how to eat?  What might not only tempt her but provide something nearly enough resembling nutritional value as might draw her further back toward sanity . . . and protein?  How about . . . 

Carrot Cookies 

Even with my history of telling you to judge your own ingredients and your own batter, this one is a bit mad.  I've got notes all over the margins of wildly varying quantities.  Note that both grated carrots and honey can have SPECTACULARLY variable water content.  If your batter is runny, stop.  Do not bake.  Add flour or oatmeal.  You want the batter sticky.  These are drop cookies.  They should behave like drop cookies. 

2-3 c flour.  Half wholewheat/meal is good

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

pinch to ¼ tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon (I round it up pretty generously)

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp cloves

2-3 c quick oatmeal

1 c raisins (I like golden in this recipe)

1 c chopped nuts (I recommend pecans)

½ c soft butter

1 c grated (raw) carrots

½ to 1 c honey, depending on how sweet you want it, including how sweet your carrots are.  No, really.  Taste your batter.

2 eggs, beaten frothy 

Mix the dry stuff together:  I'd start with 2 c flour and 2 c oatmeal.  I don't think I ever start with the full cup of honey;  I usually start around the scant ¾ c level. Now beat the honey into the butter.  Usually I'm a little carefree about the whole 'soft' butter thing, but if you want to beat it into honey your life will be a lot easier if it's genuinely soft.  Then beat in the eggs.  Then the carrots.  Now beat in the flour mixture gradually, as your arm or your electric whizzer can stand the strain.  (If you're using electric, you want it on slow enough it doesn't pulverize your raisins and nuts.  Ask me how I know this.  I think food processors are a mixed blessing and I've mostly gone back to the wooden spoon technique, but then I don't bake a lot any more.)  If the texture is right, taste.  If you need to drizzle another ¼ c of honey into the batter, it's not rocket science, just do it, and beat it in, maybe with a few more flakes of oatmeal.  If it's too runny . . . well, you're going to need more honey too because of the more flour/oatmeal you're going to be adding, and if you're adding more than a sprinkly handful you'll probably want to cast in a little extra cinnamon.†††  Practical Physics in Your Kitchen.  You just want instructions, right?  Sorry.

            Drop in biggish globs on greased cookie sheets.  350° F, about 15 minutes.  

* * *

I wish to note for the record that I ate a large piece of fish for supper.  I'm sure strength is pouring back into my valiant cells.  Feh. 

* * *

* There was some whimpering and clutching of bedposts, but we can't have everything. 

** I might even try putting my belt back on.  This would be a good thing, since I've been eating so little the last few days my jeans are showing some alarming signs of falling off. 

*** Mind you, I still can't breathe, and I am terrifying on the phone. 

† I thought I was having more trouble typing than usual . . . 

†† How many hours before I can start on the cider? 

††† Or you can shout, Wrangledabnag it!, and then pack the whole sloppy mess into a big baking dish.  I think 13 x 9 will do it—I know I have done this but I didn't bother to write down what size pan I used.  It'll probably take kind of forever to cook and be a trifle fragile.  But it'll taste just fine.

 

Unnnngh, continued indefinitely

 

Diane in MN

Your condition reminds me of the last time I had real, honest-to-goodness influenza, a couple of decades ago. I made it worse by attempting to go to work on the days I felt marginally better–that was the first week; the second week I just stayed home. My husband had been out of town the first week, but since he caught it as soon as he got home, we were both knocked out the second week, barely able to stagger downstairs to heat up soup. I hope you do NOT have honest-to-goodness flu and see the end of your current affliction very soon. 

Yes, along about the third day you have trouble getting out of bed you start thinking about the Spanish flu that killed 50 million (or so) people in 1918, right?  A little learning is a dangerous thing, especially when you're ill and less emotionally stable than your usual calm, sane self.*

            I finally heard from Hannah today (we having missed connections mainly due to germ ramifications this last week) that she got home and went down with bronchitis.  Joy.  I can't wait to find out that's next on my agenda.  At the moment it's mostly a really alarming head cold with this bloody cough, and some fantastically exciting gastric complications.  And I didn't fever-spike last night which I want to believe is a good sign.  I'm getting the hellhounds hurtled.  Where is my medal.  But I do miss breathing.  And tasting my food.  And my eyes not starting to go fuzzy after about two hours of reading or staring at a computer screen.  Yet another mark for the excellence of knitting:  you can knit when your eyes are too fluy to focus on print.  

EMoon 

I agree–don't know how I survived waiting and boring events before knitting.  

Boring events including having flu.  Here I thought it was just about badly organised handbell evenings and very long stoplights on your way to your voice lesson. 

jmeadows 

I don't think I've mentioned that I am not merely working on the second leg warmer, but that I cast on and immediately started ribbing—not only without having to redo the first few rows about forty-seven times, but without even thinking about it. I cast on and started knitting. Yaaay. Progress.

YAY!!! *so proud* 

Well at least you're continuing to accept responsibility for your part in my yarny downfall.

Isn't that an awesome feeling? Just . . . casting on and knitting? 

Um. . . . Okay.  Yes. 

I won't lie and say you'll never have to fiddle and retry ever again 

If at the point where I can do the exact same ribbing I just did for 1,000,000,000 rows for the first world's longest leg warmer without thinking about it for the second, there were no challenges left ahead of me . . . knitting would clearly be unworthy of us.  So what a good thing I HAVE MANY HOURS OF BEING DRIVEN OUT OF MY TINY FREAKED-OUT MIND to look forward to. 

 – because it happens to EVERY knitter no matter how long she's been knitting – 

Especially if she keeps being drawn farther and farther into the dark side.  A friend is sending me the pattern for a rose intarsia pullover—or I think it's intarsia;  I don't actually need to know at this stage—that I have about as much chance of making successfully as I do making the world safe, happy, peaceful and environmentally sound by pointing out that the majority of our heads of state are morons.  And blondviolinist tweeted me this today:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0307586715/ref=sib_dp_pt/181-5660244-9068349#reader-link which I instantly found over here and ordered, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure even the flowers the author has labelled 'starting out' will be beyond me—and besides, I want to knit the rose, which is probably in the 'resolute' category. 

but that's a great step. 

Yes, actually, it is, isn't it?  Hee.  Also, I really need to FINISH something.  

Mockorange 

But may I just say that it amuses me that yesterday's blog, preoccupied as it was with not only handbells but the miseries of illness, roused comments about what on the forum? Knitting

Well, naturally. Some of us are knitting again for the first time in years entirely due to your proselytising on this blog. Let's see if we can derail to knitting again. KNITTING! KNITTING! KNITTING! KNITTING! 

All right, you woodwork-lurking knitters:  go for it.  And I'm delighted to be able to provide the evil role model of degradation and despair for a few of you that jmeadows and blondviolinist so generously offered to me.  

Birdreader 

I hope you feel better soon. Of course you had your knitting. It can be an ice breaker, with some curious person coming over to be interested in what you are making. (We shy people are absolutely not hiding behind handiwork – of course not!)  

Well—are you certain it is shyness?  Shyness has the implication that you can't talk, that your mind goes blank or you're overwhelmed or something.  Maybe you just don't want to talk, maybe you don't want to be in this situation, whatever it is, and knitting is a way of preventing you from doing something you might regret later, like throwing a chair through the window and running away.**   Most social occasions make me uncomfortable and I'm mostly bad at them, but it's more about being introverted and cranky with it.  

Diane in MN 

You were absolutely primed to be a knitter by ringing handbells. You HAVE TO COUNT if you're a knitter, too. (You also have to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Knitters get plenty of arithmetical practice.) 

I am not hyperventilating.  I am not hyperventilating.  I no longer fear and dread maths.  I don't.  No. 

            . . . But I've told you, haven't I, that the tower captain at my old tower—East Persnickety, a million years and a century ago—used to say that his wife picked up change ringing instantly because she was a lifelong committed*** knitter? 

PamAdams 

Then I went back to bed (which was popular with hellhounds†)

I find that cats are equally helpful in an emergency such as this. During my own bout with the Martian Death Bug earlier this year, I was constantly surrounded by and/or covered in cats. 

Oh, the Martian Death Bug?  Maybe that's what I have?  NOBODY SHOULD FEEL THIS CRUMMY.  ESPECIALLY NOT DAY AFTER DAY.  Oh, and let's have a little sideswipe at 'the wisdom of the body', okay?  I love homeopathy, and I do think it keeps me on the road—and, for example, is the reason why hellhounds are still being hurtled right now and I'm not in an oxygen tent at the local hospital—but there are times when the la-la-la aspects do get to me a little, and now is one of them.   So, in the depths of my illness, what does the wisdom of my particular body declare?   Chiefly that it craves strong black tea and champagne†, and it doesn't want ANY FOOD AT ALL.††  And if I attempt to remonstrate with it, it turns nasty.  Oh, and 'if you feed a cold you will have to starve a fever'?  Bulltiddly.  Or maybe this depends on what stage of life and/or immune system you are.  But I have to eat.  Aside from being dragged out behind a brace of hellhounds twice a day.

† Oh reckless dog owner beware of precedent.

On the other hand, they do make adequate substitutes for the electric blanket…… 

It's the self-motivating factor I find problematic.  This includes the bizarre hierarchical struggles to do with Contact with the Hellgoddess.  The last generation got this sorted pretty well immediately.  These guys are still at it after (almost) six years.

            . . . . Is it late enough?  Can I go back to bed yet? 

Ajlr

I am an obsessive listener to Radio 3

I'm more of a Radio 4 addict – sleep comes peacefully after listening to the Shipping Forecast. 

That's it!  I need an endless loop of the Shipping Forecast! 

* * *

*  Who?  What?  

** Not an option the other night.  In the first place we were in the undercroft, and in the second place, Niall was my ride home.  I wasn't going to make seven leagues on foot, thank you very much, especially not this week. 

*** No remarks please 

† Cider, prosecco, whatever.  Alcohol with bubbles.  But it needs to be alcohol.  Fizzy water is inadequate.  And my wise body wants more than its two units. 

†† Not even chocolate.  I am truly not myself.

Placeholder

 

Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah SICK.  Blah.  SICK. 

            I'm actually better—sort of—but not all that much, and after hurtling hellhounds twice and doing some work, now by evening blog time I'm pretty much cole slaw again.*  Not being able to breathe really takes it out of you.  And I have a cough to frighten small children.  Hell, it frightens me.  I have to stop and lean against a wall, or a hellhound, if that's what's available.  I'm also at the my-nose-has-been-running-for-so-long stage that smiling makes the entire centre of my face crack painfully.  My ears and forehead throb.  My stomach doesn't want to know about food.  Since I realised last night was going to be grim I left the radio on—Peter sleeps with the radio on pretty much every night which I am sure has a detrimental effect on the quality of his sleep but we won't get into that here but I close the book and turn the light and the radio off in the same habitual gesture.  Last night I left the radio on and it was comforting in the dark unpleasant hours.**  And then—I can't remember if it was at 6 or 7 o'clock—it suddenly got all chatty.  I am an obsessive listener to Radio 3, which is classical, with a few unappreciated-by-me forays into jazz, and they don't do the in your face DJ thing on classical stations.  But they can get fatuous*** and they can certainly get garrulous.  And apparently the given wisdom is that people staggering around getting ready for their office jobs want chat.   Uggh.  People late (even for them) in bed with demonic head/upper respiratory colds do not want chat.  Blah.  Sick.

            It took me three tries to get out of bed at all and then I only remained upright long enough to shiver downstairs and let poor patient hellhounds out of their crate.  Then I went back to bed (which was popular with hellhounds†).  It was after noon by the time I managed to make and drink my first cup of perilously strong tea . . . gods.  It's PERFECT gardening weather†† and I'm too wasted to take advantage.  My fritillaries are blooming away like anything, my robin is still sitting on her nest and my new roses came three days ago and I haven't been up to anything but ripping the packages open and making sure the roots are damp.  Today I at least got them heeled in and roses will last a surprisingly long while merely heeled in . . . ahem . . . although planting them would be preferable.

            Blah.  Sick.  Blah.

            I'm also reading another perfect book for low lurgified distraction—Patricia C Wrede's A MATTER OF MAGIC, which many if not most of you know since many (if not most) of you have recommended it.†††  And now, if you'll forgive me, I think I'll go lie down again and read some more of it.‡  Well, no, first I'm going to go back to the cottage and bring the frelling sweet peas indoors again.

            Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah blah STILL FRELLING THRICE BLASTED SICK BLAH. 

* * *

* And I'm sure my mayonnaise has gone off.  

** I can't believe the timing of my electric blanket going phut.  I'd managed to buy a new one before the lurgy prostrated me . . . but I presently haven't got the energy to spare to rip the bed apart^ and put the freller on. 

^ It's an under-your-bottom-sheet one, which seems to be standard over here, and what I've got used to. 

*** As during the week of non-stop, all Schubert all the time, which is finally over.  I love a lot of Schubert, and Schubert lieder make me want to get to German sooner with Nadia^, but not continuously, relentlessly, day after day after day after frelling day.   

^ Although this is a classic case of, we have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, so why?  Stick to Jingle Bells, honey.  

† Oh reckless dog owner beware of precedent.  

†† Except for the fact that we're having ANOTHER FROST TONIGHT and since I didn't know that earlier everything at the cottage is still outdoors . . . but in fact I probably will get home earlier than usual tonight.  Like . . . maybe now. 

††† For any of you who read the originals, it's a one-volume of Mairelon the Magician and The Magician's Ward. 

‡ But may I just say that it amuses me that yesterday's blog, preoccupied as it was with not only handbells but the miseries of illness, roused comments about what on the forum?  Knitting.  Most of you remembered to say off handedly 'oh, hope you feel better soon!' but clearly your focus was on the knitting.

Death on Toast

 

. . . and hold the toast.  I can't immediately remember when I've been quite this ill* . . . and as I was whinging last night, I don't actually get these aggravated head cold/flu/upper respiratory evil things very often, and I just had one recently.  And I think I'd had one fairly recently before that.  One of the curious, ahem, benefits of ME is that it tends to be a jealous god and doesn't want you consorting with other, vulgar ailments.  I wish I thought this meant I was going to be shut of the ME at last, but a case of Taittinger's against a case of plastic dog crap bags says it doesn't work like that. 

            There was minimal hellhound hurtling today.   On some earlier occasion of haplessly abbreviated hurtling Diane in MN remarked that it was very nice when puppies grew up and became dogs.  Yes.  If I'd had to try to hurtle two hours today . . . I wouldn't have come back.**

            Unfortunately there was also abbreviated sofa lying.  I didn't get down to the mews till very late*** and then I tried to . . . ahem . . . do some work.  Silly me.  But I've said here before that it's disconcerting† how little effect my physical and mental state have on my writing:  if I'm in a bad way all that happens is that I become very slow.  The story is the story.  It's like you have x miles to cover:  you can choose to walk or to run††, but the journey from y to z doesn't change.

            But the handbell seminar was tonight and I was going to go if I had to borrow a sack trolley so Niall could wheel me from the car park.†††  When has there ever been a proper, organised education-day-by-the-local-guild handbell seminar?  I was even going as a helper.  I'm generally in the peon category at ringing events.

            So I was all excited.  Or as excited as I could presently manage.

            Um.

            Fortunately I had brought my knitting with me.‡

            The seminar was perhaps not as beautifully and thoughtfully organised as it might have been—?‡‡  I may have expressed myself with some force on the drive home to Niall about this.  The other thing is . . . if you're going to learn handbells, you have to ring frequently and at length.  This whole show will have been for nothing if there's no follow up for any of the beginners who'd like to give it a proper shot to find a group that will drill their tiny brains out, which is what they need.

            . . . I'm sure there's something else I could talk about.  But I can't stay in this chair any longer.  You'll excuse me if tonight's post is a trifle compact.  

* * *

* Well, in my current state of unhealth I can't remember anything much.  Give me a minute, I can probably come up with my name . . . Chaos?  Darkness? 

** And hellhounds could perform the Lassie ploy and guide the ambulance crew to my motionless and raspy-breathing body.  

*** Last night was epic.  Not in a good way. 

† Not to say downright humiliating 

†† Or to crawl, moaning

††† Peter says he nearly tried to me forbid to go.  This would not have gone over well.  Even if he was right, which he probably was.  I tried not to breathe on anyone.  Niall is getting over his lurgy.  Whimper.    

‡ I don't think I've mentioned that I am not merely working on the second leg warmer, but that I cast on and immediately started ribbing—not only without having to redo the first few rows about forty-seven times, but without even thinking about it.  I cast on and started knitting.  Yaaay.   Progress. 

‡‡ Urgle yurgle gleep arrrrgh.  Colin and I were in a group with four helpers and two learners—and only three sets of bells.  So three of us were always sitting out.  Er.  Why?  Niall was in a group with three learners and two helpers . . . and he said he could have used more help.  Colin, who is a forceful sort of fellow, after the tea break, went off and fossicked for an extra set of bells for the leftover three of us in our group.  He found three pair of buckets . . . I'm not sure they even count as handbells:  I think you could hang them in a tower with a sally.  But they were better than nothing.  I mean, I'm happy to knit, but if I was just going to knit I could have stayed home. 

            Also, handbell ringers—remember I'm talking about change ringing on handbells, not tunes—are not thick on the ground.  To arrange something with twenty or thirty people attending, and enough helpers to give all the learners a chance, meant that some of these people were coming from a considerable distance.  But the entire evening was scheduled for only an hour and a half—and we spent a good twenty minutes milling around having vague awkward conversations with people we thought we half knew^ at the beginning and another fifteen minutes for the tea break. 

            At least I had brought my knitting.^^ 

^ Okay, I'm projecting.  I'm not good at milling, even when I'm healthy.  And I was happy to chat with a few of the people I did know.  But we only had an hour and a half. 

^^ I am already—after only slightly more than a year with needles, and still not having finished anything yet—wondering how I managed before I had knitting to take with me.  I've always had a book with me everywhere, but reading really is anti-social.  I couldn't have pulled my book out tonight.  But I could perfectly well (well, I  think I could perfectly well) pull out my knitting, and prove that I'm still paying attention by making the occasional comment.  (You HAVE to count!  You ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY HAVE to count your places when you ring handbells!!)  I have the occasional backwards advantage as a beginner teacher, in that I'm not such great shakes that I don't remember with painful clarity what it's like learning your first appalling method on handbells.  (YOU MUST COUNT.  I don't care what any of these hot guys are telling you.  YOU.  MUST.  COUNT.  YOUR.  PLACES.)

 

Poor overwhelmed exhausted lurgified person

 

My dog minder didn't show up today. 

            Ordinarily I don't absolutely need a dog walker to give hellhounds their second long sprint of the day Monday or any other day.  But I found out the hard way that if you don't get your dog minder on retainer, so to speak, she's less likely to find time for you when you really need her for the exciting one-offs of life*.  So I have her every Monday, and then I can come home and have a nice cup of tea after my voice lesson and before I have to go ringing.** 

            We had a traumatic morning*** when I bundled hellhounds into Wolfgang and went out to Warm Upford for fuel.  It is insane that there are no petrol stations within about five miles of New Arcadia† but that's the way it is.  New Arcadia has several thousand residents and Warm Upford has several hundred, but it's Warm Upford with the petrol station.  It took sixty one quid to fill Wolfgang's tank.  I nearly had heart failure.††  Granted the tank was unusually empty, thanks to the petrol-strike panic-buying nonsense which I wanted to give a miss if at all possible (and there was no sign of it today), but for sixty-one quid in the current economic climate I could buy a perfectly serviceable. low-maintenance pony.†††

            We did still have an excellent hurtle—it's the beginning of April, the progress of the bluebells must be closely monitored from here on.‡  And this is the beginning of my favourite time of year:  from the daffs and forsythia and the first little bluebell florets and the swelling lilac buds through to the great midsummer hurrah of my roses:  everything is rushing out at increasing speed and your mission, Ms Briggs, should you decide to accept it, is to try and frelling keep up.  I squeezed nearly an hour in the garden out of a schedule that had time for no such foolishness in it‡‡ and I did think, as I pelted off to Wolfgang‡‡‡ and Nadia, that it was odd my dog minder hadn't come yet.

            Nadia was teaching in a new place—and fortunately I met her previous student leaving or I might never have found it, hidden away as it is behind some trompe d'oeil hedges.  It's a nice if fairly ordinary looking bungalow and then you get inside and . . . golly.  Serious music room.  Yeep.  Intimidating.  But it was still Nadia.  And it was Nadia who had told me during my last lurgy§ that often enough to be hopeful about it, you can sing through a lot of head, throat and upper respiratory malfeasances, and this is (so far) one of those.  It's positively bizarre, to sing as well as you ever do§§ and then as soon as you stop, to be sneezing and talking in a hoarse, scratchy voice.  And I have not one but two new songs to learn over the Easter break§§§.

            I then came back to the cottage, feeling a trifle worn, wanting only to pick up well-hurtled hellhounds and sweep down to the mews to have a nice cup of tea and perhaps some extravagance like an apple before ringing . . . and my dog minder hadn't come.  Weep.  Weep.

            I hurtled hounds—perhaps a little slower than usual, and with more pauses for nose-blowing.  I rang Niall to ask if he was going ringing tonight.  He answered the phone sounding like me.  I will if you will, he croaked.  So we went, trying to breathe shallowly, although a bunch of ringers is not so unlike a classroom of virusy children, and you all know how that works out.#  It was a particular ratbag to be tottery and brainless too because my old ringing master, from the veriest deeps of time before ME and the turn of the century, was there, and he can ring anything.  He does, however, need the band to ring any/everything, and . . .

            I am so going to bed early.##           

* * *

* Or possibly the opera-season-offs. 

** I like that have to go ringing.  Well, I do.  Ringing is necessary to my life.  Which is a good reason for living in England, which still has the highest density of change-ringing bell towers anywhere on the planet.^ 

^ Not to mention the beginner handbell education seminar tomorrow.  Did I tell you about this?  Niall got me into it.  Of course.     

*** Aside from the 'getting up' part.  Lurgies share with ME the delightful business of making you need more sleep and allowing you to get less.  La la la la la la la.  Well, my TBR pile has lowered noticeably, although I may be throwing the rejects against the wall sooner than usual. 

† I suppose one positive side effect of all the new-build we're going to get whether we like it or not, or whether we sign petitions till we're blue and purple in the face or not, or whether we attend town meetings twice a day for the next sixty years or not, is that we may finally get our own petrol station.  I guess that's positive. . . . 

†† I nearly bit the attendant, who was way too jolly and perky.  I could probably have claimed it was an uncontrollable spasm. 

††† I tweeted the £61 and had a few tweets and emails in reply that I should stick to walking, biking, buses and trains.  In a perfect world.  Nadia is twelve or twenty-plus miles away.  When she's twelve miles away the bus service between here and there exists, but it would take me all day, and I could probably knit cardigans for all of you in the time I spent waiting around for my next connection.  When she's twenty-plus miles away . . . I don't think you can get there from here.    

           I will not bike on Hampshire roads.  People certainly do and they shouldn't.  They're a danger to themselves and to fossil-fuel-powered traffic.  The little country roads are mostly barely two lanes wide—at least when they're one lane wide you jolly well ought to be driving carefully—and usually close-bordered by hedgerows, but most of those tiny roads nonetheless have a 60 mph speed limit, which most cars are eager to take advantage of.  And then you hove around a blind corner and find a bicyclist pedalling slowly down the middle of the road, either because he is a careless moron, or because he's read or been told that it's safer to occupy your lane and make cars slow down than to hug the edge and encourage them to blast past whether they've got room or not.  I don't know why we don't have gruesome bicycle fatalities a lot more often.  I personally slow down on blind corners, but then I'm a wuss. 

            And local trains are a species of fiction out of P G Wodehouse or Dornford Yates. 

            The pony-trap could at least carry my music.  But it would still be a long jog to Nadia on Monday afternoons. 

‡ Yes, gods willin' and the crick don't rise, there will be the Ritual Sea of Bluebells Photos in a few weeks. 

‡‡ The robin is still sitting on the nest.  Yaaaay.  The first time I saw her she was sitting high and proud but as the days pass she seems to be sinking lower and lower.  I wonder if the fault in three-dimensional space on that shelf is likely to spread.  I could use some hidden space for empty plant pots, which breed like mosquitoes in a marsh, but only if I can get them back out again at need. 

‡‡‡ I half-expect his fuel tank to Glow with an Unearthly Light 

§ Generally speaking I rarely get this kind of dumb short-term bug.  I resent being ill AGAIN. 

§§ Poised under the ceiling dormer with the glass sun roof, where the acoustics are a bit friendlier 

§§§ And a third if I'm feeling silly.  I do need to be kept away from Una Voce Poco Fa for another . . . decade.  

# The seminar tomorrow may sound like the ear, nose, throat and pulmonary ward. 

## EARLY!  EARLY!  EARLY!

Lurgy Reading

 

I am tired.  I am tired.  I am tired of this lurgy.*  I am also garblattingly tired of schlepping plants indoors and then back outdoors.  We may or may not have had a frost last night—I think we didn't quite, but it was near enough to be putting towels on the windscreen** and I certainly brought an awful frelling lot of frelling plants indoors last night.  And slapped them down on a plastic sheet on the sitting room carpet.  My dahlia cuttings haven't even arrived yet and I can already pretty much fill up the sitting room carpet.  This may say more about the size of my sitting room*** than the number of my tender young plantlings . . . but it's still way too much haulage of leaking pots ARRRRGH.†  And then you get to do it all over again in reverse the next morning.  BORING.  BORING BORING BORING.  Especially the part about tripping over hellhounds, who want to go out themselves.  I haven't yet dropped a pot and sprayed the kitchen with wet compost and terra cotta shards . . . but it could happen.  Especially when I'm already kind of seeing double from the lurgy.  And I had to bring the little green frellers all in again tonight. . . . with Chaos standing in the middle of the floor looking outraged because we wasted good hurtling time last night doing the same stupid thing.  I couldn't agree more.††

            Meanwhile I've spent a lot of time on the sofa, reading.  I've thrown several books at the wall in the patented hellgoddessy way, and there are at least a couple that I will probably tell you about later, but the one I finished today which is perfect for someone with a lurgy, is TO BE A CAT by Matt Haig.  It's a kids' book, the hero is having his twelfth birthday on this the worst day of his life, and it's written in rather deceptively simple language.  But it's full of good stuff for any age with a sense of humour.

            Barney Willow's parents divorced a couple of years ago, which was bad enough, but what was really awful is that ' . . . two hundred and eleven days ago (Barney was counting) his dad disappeared altogether.  He'd never seen him since, except in dreams. . . . This was the first birthday he'd had without his dad being there.

            'If that wasn't bad enough it was also the first birthday he'd had at his rubbish new school.  And school meant Miss Whipmire, the head teacher from hell.  He didn't know if that was her exact address, but it definitely shared the same postcode.'  And then there is the bully, Gavin Needle, who thoroughly has it in for Barney, and Miss Whipmire, who seems to hate Barney even more than all her other students, blames Barney.  Even a best friend named Rissa Fairweather who lives on a barge (with no TV although her mum does make fabulous carrot cake) and loves astronomy can't entirely make up for these defects.

            And the title?  Things get so bad for Barney that he wishes—really really hard—that he was a cat so he didn't have to be Barney Willow any more.

            You can guess this does not go well.

            It's a cracking good story anyway and all the stuff that I, as a cranky elderly person who has read many, many, many evil-teacher stories before, and even a certain number of magical-cat stories, was sitting there thinking, well, what about—? are all answered satisfactorily.  But the best part (to this cranky elderly person who has perhaps spent too much time reading) is some of the throwaway stuff:

            'He saw books with spines as tall and wide as doors, large names on them:  William Shakespeare.  Leo Tolstoy.  Mark Twain.  Voltaire.  Barney had no idea that all four of these very famous dead writers had, at one time or another been cats.  Or that one of them had even admitted to having been a cat.  (That one was Mark Twain, who had written very brilliant books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, who were both boys but acted more like wild and adventurous cats and were based on Mark Twain's own early years as a tomcat . . . ) . . . most of the really brilliant people who have ever lived have been cats . . . because many of the great cat geniuses, in cat form, get very fed up of not having the kind of wiggly thumbs and fingers that let you write a book.'

            Also, Rissa is totally cool.  'This isn't just weird, she told herself.  This is over the hill from weird.'

            And I love the illustrations.†††  There's also a little repeated series of a leaping cat in the lower-right-hand corners of the pages so if you run your thumb over the edges really fast so they fan down, it looks like a cat really is leaping. 

            Also . . . you know there's the whole business of how much blood and gore are suitable for kid readers.  I can't deal with horror in most of its graphic modern incarnations, but on the other hand the whitewashing of fairy tales because they'll be too distressing for children makes me crazy because it is utterly wrong-headed.  There's enough real blood and real death and real cruelty in TO BE A CAT to give it an edge that—particularly as it's also so funny—it would be less engaging and effective without.

            I liked it a lot.  I recommend it.‡  And I know Matt Haig is a big deal for some of his other books, but this is the first one I've read.  I'll have to go look him up now.  I need more books on The TBR Pile.             

* * *

* It's all Hannah's fault!  She left it here!  And her grovelling from three thousand miles away does not appease me in the slightest!  . . . Moan.  

** You would not believe the racket an ice-scraper makes at mmph o'clock in the morning 

*** Made a good deal smaller, of course, by three walls of bookshelves 

† It's like how many ways can you confound yourself?  We haven't had rain in months so of course you're watering everything by hand.  And the best way to be sure you've watered thoroughly enough is if it oozes a little out the bottom end.  This is not a problem outdoors.  

†† I have no idea how I'm getting hellhounds hurtled, but the odd and surprising truth is that I am.  This is one of those absolute confirmations about coping with ME—whatever your level of capacity is, you have to use it frelling DAILY or you will, by the gods, lose it.  And if you do use it to the absolute last whisker there will (probably) be some left even when you're going through a bad patch, or a lurgy.  I wonder if they've done any studies of people with ME or similar having holidays?  I'd say the ten days or a fortnight doing nothing kind of holiday is positively harmful to someone like me, but this is probably one of the many, many things that varies with the individual.  I think the trick is recognising where the last whisker is.  You go over your limit and you will pay.  But if you don't tap yourself out, tomorrow you will have less to tap.  

†††  By Pete Williamson  http://www.petewilliamson.co.uk/books.php 

‡ This is not an April Fool.

Peter Story, continued

 

I've got the ratbagging lurgy again.  Arrrrgh.  Although I admit it's a bit of a relief that there was more going on on Thursday than sorrow, loss and existential dread—it seemed to me I was overreacting a bit even for me.  But if there were germs involved. . . .

            So what possible better excuse than to give you the rest of Peter's story? 

The Third Dormouse, part two 

The boat didn't look nearly big enough from the outside, but inside there seemed to be room for everyone, and what's more in one place it was cool enough for the polar bears and in another place it was hot enough for the salamanders.  Strange. 

            Then the rain began.  Rain like no one had ever seen before.  Rain like buckets being emptied, like baths being emptied, like swimming-pools being emptied, like ponds and lakes and seas being emptied out of the sky.  Soon Grandad's boat was floating.  Soon the water was over the tree-tops, soon it was over the fields and over the hills, soon there was nothing but water as far as Anna could see.  The waves bellowed and the wind howled and the thunder roared and the lighting flashed and flashed again.

            Anna was scared by the lightning, and wondered if she hadn't better throw Perhaps over the side after all, but it didn't seem fair, and besides the lightning kept missing Grandad's boat, and she felt quite well and she couldn't see any sea-beasts, so she went off to look after the rodentia instead.

            The animals didn't seem to mind about the storm.  They ate and slept and dirtied their cages as if they'd lived on Grandad's boat all their lives.  It was a lot of work feeding them and cleaning the cages.

            That was the great thing about Possibly and Maybe (and Perhaps).  They didn't need any feeding or cleaning.  They just slept.

            Then the rain stopped and the clouds blew away and the sun came out and the wind died and the sea stopped surging around and everything was calm and still, as if winter was over, and at that point the animals started getting interested in each other.

            The elks got very interested in each other and the mandrills got very interested in each other and the sloths got slightly interested in each other and the hedgehogs got very interested in each other and the giraffes got very interested in each other. . . .

            "Don't look," said Grandma, on her way round checking the cages.  "I must say Him up There isn't wasting much time about starting over. . . ."

            "The dormice aren't," said Anna.  "They've woken up, but they're just sitting in their corners yickering at each other."

            "Waiting for a bit of privacy, I expect," said Grandma.

            "You don't think they're both boys?" said Anna.  "Or both girls?"

            "Nonsense," said Grandma.  "Him up There wouldn't get a thing like that wrong.  It's probably just something dormice do before they get started."

            She checked the rest of the rodentia and hurried on to the artiodactyla.

            When she went back to her cabin Anna heard a scratching and squeaking coming from her knapsack.  She realised that Perhaps must have woken up, but she wasn't qick enough when she opened the pocket.  Out popped Perhaps, dropped to the floor and scuttled out of the door.  Dormice aren't sleepy when they're awake.  This one was really nippy.  Anna tried to catch it, but there was a lot of clutter in the corridor and it kept slipping behind things and darting away.  Anna chased it all along the corridor and down a flight of stairs and into the animal quarters.  At least its hurt leg looked to be all right now.

            It seemed to know just where it was going, and scuttled and darted among the cages until it reached the rodentia, where it climbed up the bars of the red squirrel's cage and started yickering at Possibly and Maybe.  They got wildly excited, so Anna grabbed Perhaps, opened the door and popped it in.

            The first thing that happened was that Possibly and Maybe started fighting each other.  They really went at it.  Perhaps just sat and watched, but Anna was afraid one of the others might get hurt, so she grabbed the nearest one—she didn't know which it was, maybe Possibly, possibly Maybe, but it wasn't at all happy about it—and shut it in an empty box which had pine nuts in it for the squirrels.

            By the time she got back to the cage, Perhaps and the other one were very interested in each other.  Perhaps was the female, it turned out.  That's nice, thought Anna.  I shan't have to call her "it" any more.

            She went on to clean a few more cages, but the next time she came past she heard an amazing racket coming from the pine-nut box.

            It didn't seem at all fair, so Anna just swapped the males over.  Perhaps didn't seem to mind, nor did the one in the cage with her.  They were still very interested in each other.  But the one in the box set up a terrible scratching and squeaking.

            Grandma will be sure to notice, thought Anna.  I've got to get it to go to sleep somehow.  So she took it along to the polar bears' cage and hid it in the coldest place she could find.  The dormouse in the box decided it must be winter again and went to sleep.  Anna asked her cousin Josh, who looked after the ursidae, not to touch it, but she didn't tell him what was in the box.

            So the voyage went on.  From time to time, trying to be fair, Anna swapped the males over.  Perhaps was perfectly happy with either of them, and there were always just two dormice in the cage when Grandma checked them.  Soon it was easy to tell which was the female, because Perhaps started getting fatter.

            "Told you so," said Grandma.

            Then there was a lot of business with Grandpa sending ravens out to look for land, and them not finding any.  And then it was a dove, and it came back with a bit of twig in its beak so they knew there had to be land somewhere, and then they came to an island and the humans all landed.  And the water went down and down, and they saw that the island had to be just the top of a mountain, and Grandad said it was time to let the animals go.

            So he and his sons lowered the gangplank and Anna and her cousins went through the boat opening the cages one by one so that there wasn't a mad scrum.  When they did the polar bears Anna took the box with the dormouse in it and put him back in the cage.  Perhaps was really pregnant by now, so the other two weren't interested in her any more and didn't start fighting.  Anna left them to the end before she let them go.

            When she got to the entrance Grandma was busy checking the animals, but everybody else was staring at the sky.  Anna looked, and saw a wonderful rainbow arching right across from one horizon to the other.

            "Look, Grandma!" said Anna.

            Grandma looked up, and the three dormice went scuttling out.

            "What does it mean?" said Anna.

            "It's Him up There," said Grandad.  "I've just heard him say that's it.  He's not going to try this washing out and starting over stuff again."

            "I heard him too," said Anna's cousin Sara.

            "Me too," said everyone, except Grandma and Anna.

            Grandma was looking at her lists.

            "I seem to have missed the dormice," she said.  "Did anyone see the dormice go?"

            "I did," said Anna.

            "How many were there?" said Grandma.  "Just the two?"

            "Probably," said Anna's mother, not thinking.

            Now Anna thought she heard something.  It might have been distant thunder, or it might have been somebody laughing at a private joke.

            She watched Perhaps, very fat and pregnant, with Possibly and Maybe yickering beside her, scuttle down the slope and disappear into the clean new world.

Thrilling, thrilling news*

 

THE ROBINS' NEST IN MY GREENHOUSE IS INHABITED.  Er.  By, you know, robins. 

            It was time for the day to start improving by then.  It had not begun well.  It had not begun well several days ago.  The old mews laptop has been off line since last Friday, which is a mega frelling pain in the patootie, since while the little knapsack computer is a gigantic patootie-saver, in all other ways it is too dagblaggingly SMALL.  Somebody sends you something you want to look at?  Forget it.  You have to scroll around so much it's a seven blind persons and the elephant show.  The keyboard is almost big enough, so you type on it as usual, only you're making as many errors as Frodo the Nine Fingered would, playing Liszt's Transcendental Etudes.  

            I had emailed the archangels the beginning of the week, and Raphael had responded that he'd be in touch Tuesday or Wednesday to come out Wednesday or Thursday.  By last night—Thursday night—I hadn't heard from him so I sent him a one-word email:  whiiiiiiiine.**  This morning there was an email back saying that he'd left a message on Pooka on Wednesday.  WHIIIIIIINE.  In which one's technology lets one down again.   New phone calls or texts are supposed to show up ON THE OPENING SCREEN of your semi-reliable*** iPhone, and I never think to go looking for them as I go looking for email.  There it was, sure enough:  but Pooka had apparently been having the vapours when it came in, and failed to put it where I could see it.  Meanwhile, however, the little laptop was beginning to emit dark smoke and chittering noises—and the mews had been entirely off the air for about three hours one evening and two hours the next AND I was getting very tired of writing the blog on the off-line mews proper-sized laptop and putting it on a memory stick to plug into a live socket somewhere. †

            So Raphael, who is a wonderful human being, I mean archangel, rejuggled his Friday and came out anyway.  I texted Oisin that I might be a little late . . . I guess maybe.  Two and a half hours later I texted Oisin again, saying, cup of tea or do you want to kill me?  Raphael had walked in the door, pressed ONE MYSTIC SYMBOL—I mean it's not even a button or a key it's a perfectly flat, non-contoured symbol—on the semi-dead†† laptop and LO! it was live again.  Kill me.†††  However . . . nothing else was the slightest bit straightforward and two and a half hours later he had to leave because he had to leave‡ . . . and while he had convinced the iPad update not to delete everything stored in my library, iPod, photos, etc, he hadn't convinced it to, you know, update either.

            ARRRRRRGH.

            I'm also trailing around at one-quarter speed because I was comprehensively shattered by yesterday's events.  I had slept badly night-before-last in dread of yesterday, and I couldn't really separate out grief for Gloriana and Gloriana's family and simple fear of walking into my old ringing chamber.  I also wanted to go to the funeral, but where was I supposed to sit?  With the ringers because I was ringing or not with the ringers because I'm not a member of the band?  I don't think this is covered by Miss Manners. 

            I was also, of course, terrified that I was going to put my foot or my head through the frelling rope, or break a stay, or fall down in a fit, or something. . . . But in fact in terms of blood and horror it was a complete failure.  I'm pleased to say.  Admin was extremely gracious and I was gracious right back.  And I'm not a good ringer, and I'm a twitchy, jerky ringer but I'm still a ringer, and the feeling of my hands on a bell rope is automatically steadying.  And those bells are—aside from the crucial health and safety stuff that made the work necessary—noticeably easier to ring.‡‡  I had thought it was 'open' ringing where everyone who knew how was welcome to come have a pull, but there were only eight of us for the eight bells.  We rang.  Hands on ropes:  bong.  Bong.  Bong.  This is what the bells are for:  well, change ringing was invented by Christian bell ringers for Christian churches, but I cast the net wider:  for me the sound of the bells is a declaration:  there is something beyond us.   You want it at a wedding, but—for me—you need it at a funeral.‡‡‡

            Admin wanted to try to ring after the funeral too.  I had been planning on opting out, but that would have left them with only five—six is a good number, and five isn't really.  So I stayed.  The funeral itself was pretty gruelling—the church was packed out;  she had a lot of friends, and quite a few of them spoke—and when we got back to our ropes we just rang rounds:  one-two-three-four-five-six, one-two-three-four-five-six, the bells in order, smallest to largest, over and over and over and over.  Your heart lifts at the same time as you're trying not to burst into tears. . . .

            So.  Yes.  I went.  I faced all those people§.  I rang on several of the bells in the ringing chamber that used to be as familiar to me as my own furniture in my own sitting room.  It was a bit miserable, but then it was a funeral, and Gloriana will be much missed.  And . . . it was still a good decision for me, quitting my tower.  I don't like that it was a good decision, but it was a good decision.  And I think I slept fine last night, I just need a month or two of hibernation.§§

            . . . So I went along to Oisin's nearly two hours late this afternoon.  And I drank several cups of tea and raved, chiefly about bell ringing and computers§§§ and after I eventually wound down a little Oisin asked if I'd like to sing something?  I'd even brought my music.  How about that.  I must be beginning to believe in the system.  So I sang something.  And it wasn't too bad.  I may even learn my entries on Dove Sei.  It is very confusing having some piano galumphing along with you and throwing you off.

            And then I came home and rushed out into the garden because there was a little daylight left and since I don't dare plant the frellers I'd better pot up the blasted sweet peas . . . and there was a little robin face peering out at me from the shelf in the greenhouse.           

* * *

* Books?  Why would it be about books?  No, it's not about books. 

** He's used to me.  It's a good thing.  

*** This is similar to 'a little bit pregnant.'  

† Diane in MN

On a typewriter. Remember typescript? [ . . .] Nostalgia.

Yes–but it's tempered nostalgia. I like word processors a whole lot. I think of my mother, going to work out of high school in a lawyer's office and having to retype entire documents for a single error because corrections weren't allowed . . . I really really like word processors! 

I have also spent time typing contracts that you couldn't make an error on—and while I'm sure that someone on salary who wasted hours retyping wouldn't be long for that job, it was immediately critical for a free lancer like me who got paid by the assignment.  So.  Yes.  And I love the internet, but a lot of the frenzy of that love is on account of needing underpinning and maintenance for the sodblasted blog which itself wouldn't exist . . . without the internet.  You didn't get error messages with typewriters and they broke or blew up only RARELY.  You didn't have to buy a new one every few years . . . and when you did buy a new one you were not legally required to buy with it a new keyboard layout, a new return mechanism, a new brand of error cover-up paint (with a new dispenser), a new dictionary, new encyclopaedia, a new language . . . all of which you would have to LEARN TO USE.

            Er.  Hurrumph.  I like word processors too.  But I'm not a whole-hearted fan.  Especially not after a week like this one.  And if you're going to go all snippy on me and say that a word processor has nothing to do with internet connection . . . I shall become CRANKY. 

†† Very like 'semi-reliable' and 'a little bit pregnant'.  

††† Oisin having declined. 

‡ I think this may be very like being paid by the assignment. 

‡‡ Siiiiiiiigh.  Nicest set of bells in the area just got nicer.  

‡‡‡ I know this isn't going to happen, but I wish ringers were on retainer, so more weddings and particularly more funerals had bells.  We ring ordinary services as part of our charter, but bells for your individual event are expensive.  

§ Most of whom, in a few cases to my surprise, are apparently still talking to me. 

§§ And, tension level?  I seem to have sprung just about every muscle in my body.  Pulling a big, ratbaggy, awkward bell, you may feel it—or anyway I¸ who am not very good at it, may feel it—in my shoulders and stomach.  Ordinary ringing on ordinary bells, no.^  But yesterday . . . my chest, shoulders, arms, belly and back . . . all of them were telling me that I had been toting barges and lifting bales all day.  Good grief. 

^ It's never about sheer strength.  It's always about (sheer) skill. 

§§§ And the continued non-existence of the New Arcadia Singers