Robin McKinley's Blog, page 99

A Peter Story

 

Peter found this in a drawer a few days ago.  He wrote it yonks and yonks ago*, for a magazine, and neither of us (!) can remember (!!) seeing it in any less ephemeral form, so he said yes, I could have it for the blog, since he hasn't written me a guest blog in, like, years.  Even if you've read it before, you probably haven't read it in yonks either, and I like it, and it's my blog.

            And I badly need a night off, so tonight's the night (as they say).  I'll tell you tomorrow about ringing at my old tower.** 

The Third Dormouse

 Anna lived on a farm with her father and mother and three brothers.  One day soldiers came.  They said they were soldiers, but really they were just robbers.  They drove all the farm animals away while Anna and her family hid in the desert beyond the fields.

            When they had gone Anna's family went back to the farm and worked in the fields, which were full of melons and corn.

            "At least you can't drive melons and corn away," said Anna's father.

            The melons grew and the corn grew and they harvested them and brought their crops into the barns for the winter.  While they were harvesting the corn Anna found a dormouse with a hurt leg.

            "Can I keep it until its leg's well?" she asked.

            "Perhaps," said her mother, not thinking.

            "Will it go to sleep for the winter?" said Anna.

            "Perhaps," said her mother, not thinking.

            "Is it a boy or a girl?" said Anna.

            "Perhaps," said her mother, still not thinking.

            So Anna took it home and called it Perhaps.  When it started to get sleepy she made it a nest in a pocket of her knapsack, which her mother had told her to keep packed with anything she wanted in case the soldiers came again.

            They did.  They were different ones, but still just robbers.  This time they took all the stores they could carry and burnt the rest.  They burnt the barns and the house too.  Hiding in the desert Anna and her family watched the flames.

            That night they slept in a cave.  In the middle of the night Anna had an odd sort of dream.  It was just a voice saying in her head "Go to your Grandad's."

            When they woke up next morning Anna's mother said "I heard a voice in the night, telling us to go to Grandad's."

            "So did I," said all the others.

            "It must be Him up There telling us," said her mother.

            "It will be a dangerous journey," said her father, "because of the soldiers."

            But Him up There had told them, so they set out, carrying their knapsacks.  The soldiers were everywhere, fighting each other and burning and stealing and murdering, but they didn't seem to notice Anna's family trudging quietly along.  It was very strange.

            At last they came to the valley where Grandad lived.  The soldiers didn't seem to have noticed him either.  He was busy building a big boat.

            "Ah, you've come," mumbled Grandad with his mouth full of nails.  "High time too.  The others will be here any moment."

            "What's going on?" said Anna's father.

            Grandad took the nails out of his mouth.

            "It's Him up There," he said.  "He's sick of all this murdering and robbery and stuff, so he wants to wash the whole lot out and start over.  But we've never gone in for any of that in our family, so he's letting us stay on and help him.  That's what the boat's for.  The grown-ups can give me a hand with that, and the kids will have to look after the animals.  Grandma will tell you what to do, kids."

            "Can I look after the dormice?" said Anna.

            "It'll be more than just dormice," said Grandma.

            Next day Anna's two uncles and her two aunts and her nine cousins arrived, and the day after that the animals started streaming in.  Tigers and bats and mongeese and lizards and wombats and rattle-snakes and tree-frogs and sheep and moles and porcupines and warthogs and . . .

            Anyway there was a list, and Grandma checked them off as they came.  Two of everything. 

            Yes, two dormice.  They were very yawny and cross because they'd been woken out of their winter sleep.

            "What would happen if there were three of something?" said Anna.  "I mean, if you took an extra warthog aboard because you were sorry for it?"

            "Him up There wouldn't like it," said Grandma.  "He was very definite.  Two of everything he said.  One male, one female.  No more, no less."

            "But what would he do?" said Anna.

            "Strike us with lightning, I shouldn't wonder," said Grandma.  "Or plague.  Or send a sea-beast to gobble us up.  You can't tell with Him up There.  Mysterious ways are what he moves in, and no mistake.  Anyway, you're doing the rodentia, so you'll be too busy to ask any more questions."

            And that was true.  The rodentia were the agoutis and the bamboo rats and the bandicoot rats and the beavers and the birch mice and the cane rats and the capybaras and the cavies and the chinchillas and the chipmunks . . . all the way through to the viscachas and the voles and the white-footed mice and the wood rats.

            And, yes, the dormice.  They weren't any trouble.  They curled up in opposite corners of their cage and went straight back to sleep.  Anna couldn't tell which was the male and which was the female, so she called them Possibly and Maybe.  She didn't tell anyone about Perhaps, in case they made her leave it behind.  It was still asleep in the pocket of her knapsack, so she just hoped it didn't count.

            The sky darkened, thunder rolled round the hills, Grandpa banged the last nail in and everyone went aboard.  Grandma stood by the gangplank and checked the animals off as they passed.  The only one she missed was Perhaps, asleep in Anna's knapsack. 

TO BE CONTINUED*** 

* * *

* On a typewriter.  Remember typescript?  Which is bumpy under your fingers, and the 'd' or the 'a' or something is a slightly crooked, and the quote marks are straight up and down and there's only caps and underlining, no bold and no italic?   And you make corrections by painting over them, or by cutting and pasting pieces of actual paper?  Nostalgia.  

** Nobody died.

***I know.  Famous last words.  But this story exists.

Technology the Damned

 

 

Many frells.  Many, many, many frells.  Outlook has comprehensively failed at the mews—and Pooka keeps saying she can't pick up the server rather than just going to back up, sod it, that's what back up is FOR* you . . . object.

            I have four pieces of semi-functional technology scattered around the table here.  First there is this laptop, the original elderly mews laptop which is where the trouble began, since it appears to be losing the battle with entropy slightly faster than I'm finishing SHADOWS** and as I keep saying, more and more wildly,*** I do not want to tackle a new operating system while I am trying to finish a novel.  Which means the octuply-damned new laptop is still sitting on the doodle desk at the cottage being a very, very expensive paperweight.†  However, the old laptop fell lethally off the air last Friday and has remained obstinately grounded since.  I have been filling in, irritably, with the knapsack laptop, because the carrying size is right††, but it has got used to living out its twilight years in the kitchen at the cottage and rarely being asked to do anything more strenuous than look up a plant whose unhelpfully stark name label is producing no memory whatsoever of what I should be doing with it.†††  It is not enjoying the rigours of being my chief mews source of on-line.  It sulks and hangs, crashes and, on its way to fiery death, throws up arcane error messages‡, and when it doesn't quite manage to dive off the air waves completely, molasses in January in inland Maine would be faster.  I am not enjoying its lack of enjoyment . . . so some time today because I was getting too much knitting done‡‡ I came up with the brilliant idea of using Astarte as back up—speaking of back up—on line.  While I waited for something to download on the little laptop I clicked a Twitter link on Astarte.  So that then made three—old laptop, knapsack laptop, and iPad—and now, this evening, I've got Pooka going as well, texting wildly to the archangels  . . . and her latest trick is that while I'm getting a big blue error message across the middle of the screen saying server not available if you look down at the bottom you will see the little spinning dial that says 'downloading'.  So I am getting mail, so long as I pretend not to. 

            Tonight was one of Wild Robert's occasional rogue bell practises, and at Ditherington, furthermore, which I can find and get to.  Nostalgia.  Oh, the halcyon ringing days when Ditherington practise was a going concern, and Wild Robert ran it.  We only had seven show up tonight—and of the seven only Wild Robert and Roger knew what they were doing—so while we had an enlivening evening it was fairly ramshackle.  And then I hung around afterward to help Wild Robert lock up and we had an intensive hair-tearing session about ringing in this area‡‡‡  I'm not just a miserable git.  It really is frustrating.  Siiiiiigh.

            And tomorrow . . . is Gloriana's funeral, here at New Arcadia.  There will be ringing both before and after . . . and I have been specifically invited to come and pull one of the ropes.  And I will—I want to.  But I am not looking forward to it for all sorts of reasons. 

* * *

* When I buy that toggle for Astarte I'm going to get the special, whine-free edition, where your gizmo just gets on with business.  But that's really expensive, right? 

** Although I had a very good day today.

*** I am going to get my high C back at this rate. 

† I don't need a paperweight.  I have rocks.  The velvet-with-pink-peonies laptop cover is some consolation.  But not enough.  

†† My only other option being my also rather long in the tooth desktop.  Its ancient 'tower' is bigger than a Smart Car and would not fit nose in to the kerb.  If you put wheels on it, you'd have to parallel park like a Volvo estate/station wagon. 

††† It's been positively hot today, with the sun belting down^.  Which doubtless explains why I twice came back to the cottage to find a live-plant order being turned into ratatouille on the front step.  ARRRRRGH.  And in both cases, directly beside the street address—which, unless the deliverer is into reading tea leaves, presumably had to be applied to for location—is the instruction in large black capitals:  PLEASE LEAVE BEHIND GATE . . . which is in the shade. 

            I'd been worrying about my frost-free geraniums last night, sitting somewhere in an unheated warehouse and curling shivering up together for warmth.  They have a few dubious leaves but I think they're fine.  I potted them up today . . . and will have to bring them indoors again tonight.  With the sweet peas.  

^ Hellhounds in spring spare me.  They gimp around looking miserable and abused during the day, their tongues dragging on the ground for several yards behind us . . . and of course mealtimes are epic.+  But it's still cooling off drastically at night++ and since I'm trying to use all spare+++ hours of daylight in the garden, our final hurtle is usually late, and they tend to regain their joie de vivre.  Way too much of their joie de vivre.  They nearly knocked me over—twice—last night, which hasn't happened in a long time.  The first time—arrrrrgh—there's a local cat that has taken over the churchyard as its personal domain.  I comfort myself with the thought that it's not going to last long since it has a major death wish, but meanwhile its antics are hard on the shoulders.  Last night I saw it crouched in the MIDDLE of the pavement fractionally before hellhounds did, and even having hit the brakes on their leads they nearly knocked me over++++ going after it.  Then walking down the wide leafy stretch of road that used to belong to the Big Pink Blot when it was a great country house and not a lot of flats and mews cottages, they found a stick, and took off—which they often do.  They know where the ends of their leads are.  I had a split second to realise that they had forgotten, and to go pelting after them at the top of my paltry speed, so when they did, in fact, hit the ends of their leads they wouldn't knock me over—quite.  YOU.  GUYS. 

+ FOOD?  You're kidding, right? 

++ Snarl.  

+++ hahahahahahahahaha 

++++ There are skid marks on the tarmac. 

‡ The jeeperstix vk7r!!!!!!!!zongril cannot find the connection dingadingadinga subclassification B+2ykrq.  We are sorry for any inconvenience.  

‡‡ And furthermore I finally cast off the first leg warmer . . . and botched it.  It came off the needles in some transference of the Mobile Knitting Unit from one knapsack to another ARRRRRRGH.  But I am a resourceful bad knitter, and I bodged all the frelling little loops back together somehow . . . I think.  Meanwhile . . .  I have begun the SECOND LEG WARMER.  

‡‡‡ Everyone I have spoken to about the difficulties of ringing at the abbey, when asked for advice, have said 'Ring somewhere else'.  Wild Robert at least agreed that I had a problem because the abbey is pretty much what there is.

Frost

 

So after a (splendid) weekend of too much champagne and too little sleep and my usual over-effusive Monday, today of course I stayed home and applied myself strictly to work.  Of course.  Totally.  Except for the mmph-mumble hours in the garden. . . .

            And there's going to be a vile, putrescent THRICE BLASTED FROST tonight.  Atlas, bless him, who was here today working in Peter's garden, rang Peter when he got home and had listened to the local weather report—Peter listens in the morning, and I play musical weather apps on Pooka, none of which is worth the 69p or £1.23 I paid for it, but watching a series of them being clueless helps to focus the slowly-waking morning mind.  Atlas tends to be right:  he lives on a farm, he's a farmer's son-in-law, and he knows how to do that sniffing-the-air thing about coming weather.  If he agrees with the forecasters, you pay attention.  Anyway.  I was back in the cottage garden, out of earshot of either Pooka* or the landline** when Peter was trying to call me, contemplating saying the hell with it and planting my sweet peas, which are busy climbing out of the little plastic nets they arrived in, because potting on all those sweet peas is way too daunting a prospect.***  Providentially I was distracted by the six or a dozen little vases of things on various window sills that have grown roots and are wondering what happens now—I have this bad habit of putting prunings in water, just in case they'll decide to grow roots:  a surprising number of your average house plants will—and speaking of plants climbing out of what they're in, I think some of my geranium cuttings have learned to abseil:  there's got to be GROUND around here somewhere.

            So I was out in the cough-cough-cough potting shed† mixing compost and vermiculite and putting great fuzzy-rooted cuttings†† in small pots till dark.†††  And dark is about two hours later than it was a fortnight ago‡.   So IT'S SUDDENLY EIGHT O'CLOCK, and I race indoors to slam hellhounds into their harnesses‡‡, discover a phone message from Peter about a frost, howl in a singing-voice-threatening way, furiously put down a plastic sheet in the sitting room since the Winter Indoor-Jungle Table has been put away for the year, and start ferrying stuff through. . . .

            We'd better have a frost tonight. 

* * *

* For someone who is theoretically attached at the hip to her iPhone, I'm out of range far too often.  Most of my friends with iPhones who live in jeans like me keep theirs in a pocket, but noooooooo.  Maybe I just wear the wrong jeans.   

** This is less surprising since the landline only actually rings when it's in the mood.  Poor Cormac rang the cottage three times before the landline deigned to let us know someone was trying to make contact.  Hannah was beginning to worry:  Cormac said he'd call around now. . . . 

*** I'm saving my potting-on stamina for the 1,000,000,000 dahlia cuttings I always find I've ordered.   One of the many conundrums of the gardener's life is ordering early, before the things you particularly want have sold out, but which means you do your spring ordering while winter is clamped over the landscape like a giant iron hand, you're convinced everything in your garden is dead and you need cheering up, or ordering late, when the mere presence of more daylight is beginning to cheer you up, enhanced by the fact that all kinds of dead things are producing small green (or occasionally red or purple) bumps and nodules^, and you are at least slightly less likely to order enough stuff to overfill Sissinghurst^^.  But your nurseries will have run out of several of your absolute favourites without which your summer will be ruined, AND what you do successfully requisition will mostly arrive so late you will have gone to the garden centre and bought too much stuff there because you couldn't wait any longer.  On the whole I do better with choice A but it's not a perfect system. 

^ I've got a few gosh golly WOW ::cartwheels of joy:: surprises coming up . . . but I'm afraid to mention them officially for fear such acknowledgment and acceptance will promptly make them die after all.+ 

+ This probably also goes for mentioning that my snake's-head fritillaries are coming into bloom.  But I'm mentioning it anyway because if I don't tell you something I will explode.  They are slightly fussy, but we grew them at the old house, but I had been having disastrous luck with them for years at the cottage when Ajlr mentioned that the insanely evil red lily beetle also eats fritillaries . . . which I then realised was my problem too.  But while I have conclusive evidence that both the weather gods and the unexpectedly-living-plants gods read imprudent blogs, I'm hoping that the insanely evil red lily beetle god does not.   

^^ http://www.invectis.co.uk/sissing/

† Which is to say the all-purposes gardening shed, overflowing with pots, pot saucers, trays, tools, buckets of various sizes and materials, bags of compost and fertilizer and boxes and bottles of intensive plant food, my tiny barbeque and attendant charcoal, plastic sheets and fleece, etc etc etc etc ETC ETC ETC . . . and a robin's nest.  I was really excited when I saw that—I haven't had a nest since the blog's first year, and have barely had a robin.  I know he's around—there's always one robin in a garden:  they like gardens and they're territorial—but the blackbirds have become such thugs that he's kept a low profile.  Sadly the nest seems to have been rejected, and I haven't seen the happy couple in a while . . . but one robin is very much in evidence.  I also spent time I might have been spending planting sweet peas hoicking out frelling mats of crocosmia and lily-of-the-valley^ around Queenie and Souvenir de la Malmaison and I had a small feathered opportunist at my elbow.  I was reminded that when you're outdoors the whirr of small flapping wings is quite pleasant.  

^ Which are WEEDS in my garden.  Bullying invasive WEEDS. 

†† I also had one of my moments of hilarity and decided to do the full soft-wood cuttings nonsense from an obstinate house plant that has refused to die, the gallant thing, but needed serious pruning when I repotted it.  Sometimes obstinate plants can be very obstinate and what the hell.  It's only a pot, a plastic bag and some vermiculite.   To give it any chance at all, I used hormone rooting powder.  This is a story about egregiously bad design.  The pot of rooting powder—which was simply on the shelf in the store, it's not like I did a customer comparison^ or anything—is wider than it is tall, possibly to make the whole show short enough to fit on an average shelf, since it has a dibber^^ built into the cap like a slightly distrait unicorn's horn.  It also has a child-proof cap which is too wide to get your hand around to squeeze.  And I have big hands with long fingers.  I had to use the sticky-jar opener^^^ to get the frelling thing open.  The end of the dibber is also the lid, right?  Which means it's also . . . never mind it's too wide to get a proper grip on, you don't need a proper grip to make holes in compost.  But because the lid is so frelling vast you're busy destroying your previous hole, or knocking over your sad confused cutting, while you're trying to make the next hole. . . . 

^ I save that colossal time-suck for things like electric blankets.  I think I mentioned that mine died a few days ago.  I was hoping the frosty nights were over for the year.  

^^ Or dibble.  A long pointy thing that makes holes in the ground/compost for you to put seeds or cuttings in. 

^^^ I have the vicious-with-teeth variety, none of these wussy rubber rings. 

††† Muttering to myself, as I have been doing for seven years now, about getting the frelling shed wired.  Which would be dangerous for a lot of reasons, none of them to do with electrocution.^ 

^ What do you mean it's midnight and neither I nor the hellhounds have had dinner yet?+ 

+ Nor written the blog?# 

# If hellhounds would like to try, they are welcome. 

‡ One genuine, one fraudulent.  

‡‡ There have been little faces at the kitchen door increasingly often for the last hour or two. . . .

No Sleep Monday

 

I put Hannah on the train this morning.  Waaaaaaah. 

            I put Hannah on the train way too early this morning in an absolute sense aside from the losing-Hannah aspect.  I haven't been out of bed that early since I stopped service ringing. . . . and we just lost our frelling spring-forward hour this weekend.   I am seriously not of this planet right now.  But (being awake for) millions of hours of daylight is, I admit, rather jolly, and the weather goes on being spectacular* if spectacularly dry.**

            So I put Hannah on the train and, sobbing brokenly, parked Wolfgang under a tree near the station and took hellhounds for a hurtle.  Of course I brought them with me.  Doesn't everyone with companion canines take advantage of every possible excuse for hurtling? 

Mrs Redboots 

I love the way you stress that you know every pub in Mauncester by name only. . . . I have to admit I'd been wondering. . . . 

Well, there are critter-friendly pubs, but we're generally not going inside even when we can.  We're hurtling.  But Mauncester is a good walking town, I've lived in this area for twenty (and a half) years, and ferreting around in the twisty back bits is fun.  I don't remember when I crossed the line where I (mostly) stop worrying about getting lost because I know enough of Mauncester that I won't stay lost very long, but at this point I seek out the bits (especially twisty back bits) I don't know.  During the foot-and-mouth crisis when the entire countryside was closed we hurtled that generation of resident four-legs in Mauncester and Prinkle-on-Weald.***  Prinkle-on-Weald is now pretty much too far away for anything but an adventure, but Mauncester is closer than it was from the old house.  I also have a very minor fantasy about living in Mauncester—where you can be walking distance of a library†, a cinema and a train station, as well as some very nice English countryside.  It's not going to happen, but it makes an agreeable directional fantasy:  okay, do I want to live in this neighbourhood?  How does the pub look?

            After this we went back to the mews where I alternately poured cold water over my head and guzzled hot caffeine in a (mostly futile) attempt to wake up.  But I still managed to pretend to sing a little, and went off to my voice lesson.  You are probably aware by other standards that life is full of ratbaggishness?  Over the weekend I'd sung less well than I can, because I was busy being nerrrrrrvous about singing for someone.  While, perversely and simultaneously, I found myself able to ham it up more than I can for Nadia or Oisin—because my audience was a relaxed, friendly and nonprofessional one††.  Nadia, of course, heard what I was (or wasn't) doing almost immediately, sorted me out with rather embarrassing swiftness††† and then threw me into Dove Sei, which I had cornballed up in a shocking manner for Peter and Merrilee.  And of course I stiffened up and sang it like a funerary urn, if funerary urns sang—and this despite the fact that I was making a better quality of noise, if you follow me.  ARRRRRGH.  That's fine, said Nadia, that's a very nice tone, now sing it like you're ENJOYING it.

            Sigh.

Diane in MN 

. . . as an opera fan, I tend to cringe when opera singers decide to make crossover albums.  South Pacific may have worked for Ezio Pinza, but Placido Domingo as Tony in West Side Story was not a good idea.  And there is a cruel recording of Jose Carreras singing Jingle Bells. . . . 

JINGLE BELLS?  Oh my . . .  gods.  Oh.  Eeeep.  Did Domingo do a West Side Story?  OUCH.  I lose all respect, etc.  Kiri te Kanawa and Jose Carreras—poor old Jose is listening to the wrong advice, clearly—were bad enough:  I agree that crossover is mostly dire.‡  But I'd gladly—gladly—forfeit all possibility of singing Maria plausibly‡‡ in exchange for sounding like te Kanawa.‡‡‡ 

* * *

* Anthea tonight on the treble commented on the excellence of the view:  where you stand to ring the treble at Glaciation^ is opposite one of those little high arched church windows, and in this case you could see a shiny crescent moon and some glittering planet or other through it.  I had been ringing the treble before her, but I had been staring at the floor in an agony of concentration.  If I'd noticed the moon I would merely have instantly gone wrong. 

^^ I'm still in two wool jumpers to ring there, although it's shirtsleeve weather in daytime sun.  You wander down the path to the church in your t shirt with your bulging knapsack over one shoulder.  You walk through the vestibule and shiver.  You enter the main part of the church and pull out your first jumper and put it on.  Then you walk into the ringing chamber, hastily don your second jumper, and race to plug in the two electric fires. 

** I was out watering in the cottage garden this afternoon^ and thinking I ought to have a built in irrigation system with All the Plumbing in Hampshire running under my tiny plot of land:  I ought to be able to drill a few tactful little holes, attach those leaky-hose things, and bob's your uncle.  Pipes should have a nice colour-code system like electric wires, so you know you're drilling in the right pipe. . . .

^ And swearing.  Later in the year when I shift from my PINK wellies to my (brown) clogs because it's too hot to be in rubber to your knees, I become resigned to slopping water in my shoes.  It takes skill and dedication to pour water down the inside of your pink wellies.  

*** I missed telling you yesterday that the garden Hannah and I went to was in Chappington Fritworthy.  It's not like I get to mention it very often. 

† New Arcadia does have a library, but it's the two shelves and a plastic chair, open alternate Thursdays from 2:45-3 pm and every third Friday from 7-7:17 pm variety.  Mauncester has a proper library. 

†† Not to say clueless.  Clueless would be good. 

††† It's so obvious after the fact.  Sometimes it's obvious before the fact too, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can DO anything about it.  I was aware that my throat was only about half open, the roof of my mouth and my 'mask' were pretty well as bright and light as an anvil, and my abdominal support had decamped for Toulouse.    

‡ In both directions.  I HAAAAAAAATED Sting singing Purcell and Dowland.  HAAAAAAAAATED.  

‡‡  heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee 

‡‡‡ Or Deborah Voigt or Janet Baker or Marilyn Horne or Joyce diDonato or Beverly Sills or Tatiana Troyanos or Cecilia Bartoli or . . . see really I'm easy to please.

Spring Sunday with a friend

 

I've been singing.  I've been singing with Hannah and Peter in the same room.  It does happen occasionally that I sing when Peter's around—especially on Mondays when I have to warm up before I go to my lesson, and can't afford to get too precious about circumstances—but I do not sing for other people.*  I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed or not that it was kind of fun—especially the part with them shouting out suggestions.**  I want to say something rude here about neither of them being musical*** but Hannah . . . for pity's sake, Hannah goes to Broadway musicals.  It's not like she doesn't know what proper singing voices sound like.†  Hannah is a very good friend.

            And, more to the point . . . she's here.  I left you last night in a Perils of Pauline situation, with our heroine(s) suspended on the brink of being Lost Forever in Darkest Hampshire.  Or possibly not even Hampshire.  Outer Mongolia.  Aberdeen.  Saturn.††   I was just driving back to the cottage in despair††† yesterday when Pooka started barking at me again.  I managed not to run off the road—or more to the point did not run into either of the brick-and-flint walls that claustrophobically enclose the single lane of my steep little cul de sac—and further contrived to press 'answer' before the call was swallowed up by the entropic maw of the voice-mail system from which none escape unscathed, and . . . it was Hannah.  The driver has decided maybe it isn't the Egg and Custard, she said in Old High Manhattan Laconic, maybe it's the Toast and Marmite.  Or the Daffodil and Schnapps.  Or the Militant Stepdaughter . . .  More emphatic male quacking in the background.  Here, you talk to him, she said.

            But where is it, I said.  Whatever its name is.  There is no Caerphilly Road in Mauncester.

            Yes there is, he said promptly.  It runs north-south through the Doggleburies.

            What? I said.  The only road that runs north-south is the Hindu Kush Turnpike.

            After a good deal of witty repartee on the order of "You mean Banded Dogglebury or Sod-all Dogglebury?" and "The giant chalk boulder that looks like the anti-matter Darth Vader is in Gerrymandering, it's not in the Doggleburies at all," the driver, who by this time I had decided had no business behind the wheel of a car that contained my best friend, capitulated and said, "I'll meet you at the Ultimate Fishmonger."  "Great," I said.  "I can find the Ultimate Fishmonger, because it exists in this universe."  In fact he didn't meet me—he dropped Hannah and ran, possibly in some fear of heavy reprisals from a local who knows all the pubs in Mauncester‡  But at least Hannah was there.

            . . . And it's been another beautiful day today and Hannah and I went to a National Gardens Scheme‡‡ garden as the sort of thing one does on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in spring in England, and were swarmed by daffodils and crown imperial fritilleries and alpaca, and suppressed our giggles at the extreme High Tory-ness of the owners‡‡‡ and I bought a plant.§

            We also had two gorgeous hurtles with hellhounds over hill and dale and blowing white blossom in the hedgerows and blue, blue sky and general gloriousness and joy and the sap rising in the trees and the human morale . . . and bloody Chaos is celebrating the change of season by not eating. 

* * *

* Although I have made a rod for my own back, in that April's Visitor^ is here over a Monday and I'm taking her with me to my voice lesson.^^ 

^ I can't remember what her blog name is, and since my dramatis personae file isn't in any kind of alphabetical order and it's gotten rather long over the years I can't find it.  I could always name her again. . . . 

^^ She's the kind of friend who makes it sound like she means it when she says, Yes!  I'd love to!  But then I specialise in insane friends.  Regular readers of this blog may have some idea why. 

** Stop laughing.  Folk songs.  I sing a lot of traditional folk songs.  I can do a handful of the obvious ones on request.  Supposing I'm singing with you in the room, which is not likely. 

*** I can say something rude here about Peter not being musical.  Peter is aggressively non-musical, although not, in fact as aggressively non-musical as he likes to pretend.  Still.  If you are going to take singing lessons and are pathological about singing in front of another human being because you genuinely don't have much voice but (chiefly) because you are intensely neurotic, Peter is a very good person to be married to.  Sometimes fate is kind.  It was not on my list of husband requirements twenty years ago that he had to be able to put up with my singing. 

† . . . At this point I might, as an opera snob, say something about Broadway musical voices . . . but I'm not going to. 

†† Are there pubs on Saturn?  Discuss. 

††† And wondering how long it would take Wolfgang to start again once I'd turned him off.  Since our little erratic fault thingy is continuing.  Yes, I should be ringing up the mechanic and having a little discussion about the connection between the starter motor and the thing it starts, but I've fallen into the abyssal pit of 'I'll do it as soon as I get SHADOWS turned in'.  The post-SHADOWS agenda is getting a trifle long.  Headed, as it is, by doodles.  

‡ By name!  Only by name! 

‡‡  http://www.ngs.org.uk/ 

‡‡‡ Hannah got nailed as an American, but I escaped by mumbling.  An immigrant with no gift for accents quickly develops an instinct for when mumbling is appropriate. 

§ Surprise.  You're surprised, right?^ 

^ I'm waiting impatiently for my new roses.  . . . You know, seven years ago when I moved in to the cottage, I've told you this, right?, the previous tenant was a terribly proper gardener and the garden was full of terribly proper and high-brow plants.  And everyone said, oh, you're going to rip everything out and plant roses, aren't you?  And I got very huffy and said certainly not, I am only going to pull out the boring things, I like lots of plants that aren't roses . . . But seven years later I'm aware that pretty much every time anything dies I replace it with roses. . . .+

+ No, it was not a rose I bought today, it was a lychnis.  It's pink though.

Unnecessary excitements

 

So, last night, I had begun writing the blog*, and the frelling little Outlook pop-up box kept getting in my face and whining about not being connected.  Oh, shut up and cope, I snarled—I mean I murmured softly.  And then I went on line to check something—I forget what—and Internet Explorer declined to connect either.  Fie. 

            So then I went through the whole stupid exasperating tarantella** of unplugging and replugging and closing down and restarting and hanging from the ceiling singing a merry song and making dents in the plaster when you throw chairs at the wall.  ARRRRGH.  And I remained disconnected.  Hence the note from Blogmom last night that I was having Raging Technical Difficulties and would not be posting a blog.  Yes, I could write a blog off line and . . . uh . . . figure out how to send it to Blogmom and ask her to post that.  But writing a blog without internet back up is way too much like hard work.  At least when you have a sieve-like memory.***  I was thinking about this last night, while I was (fruitlessly) waiting for the mews wifi to shake itself loose from the grip of the doldrums and refrellingconnect.  My old hard copy Britannica is in Peter's bedroom, and he's asleep by the time I'm writing the blog . . . and the annual volumes, after Peter got cranky about the annual volumes,† now live at Third House.  This is not deeply convenient for when you're writing a blog entry right now.  At my end of the kitchen table at the mews I have within easy reach:  the 1977 edition of the Chambers [British-English] Dictionary which is fabulous††, the Penguin thesaurus, the Oxford Compendium of English lit, Brewer's Phrase & Fable and 100,000 Names for Baby, which is an unbelievably bad and badly edited book, but it serves the purpose of stimulating me to come up with names like Zgruban.†††   This still only gets you so far.

            So I read back issues of the London Review of Books for a while . . . and nothing happened ('the server is not available.  If this condition persists, please contact your administrator, however, blunt instruments are not recommended and we take no responsibility for the damage you may do to your singing voice').  So I emailed Blogmom from Pooka, telling myself that it was time I got an all-options plug-in toggle for Astarte because the keyboard on an iPhone is suitable only for flower fairy fingers . . . and went back to the cottage‡.

            Today . . . the plot thickens.  It's only the old mews laptop that won't go on line.‡‡  Peter's computer goes on line fine.  Astarte goes on line.  And my little knapsack computer, brought down to the mews for evidentiary purposes, goes on line.  Waaaaaah.  I just want stuff to work and leave me alone.

            Meanwhile . . . in the first place, of course, having been glued to Pooka all morning, the moment I left her hung over the back of a chair so I could get on more freely with watering 1,000,000 potted plants‡‡‡ she started barking at me.   Hannah has landed§ and will ring me again with a rendezvous point as soon as she meets up with her driver.  I've said I can find anywhere in Mauncester, just tell me where.§§

            . . . She rings back:  the driver says he's going to drop her at a pub, the Egg and Custard, on the Caerphilly Road.  The Egg and Custard? I said, under the just-proven-erroneous impression that I'd at least heard of all the pubs in Mauncester, the Caerphilly Road?

            Emphatic male quacking in the background.  Egg and Custard, confirmed Hannah.  On the Caerphilly Road.

            Okay, I said dubiously.  I can look it up.

            One frantic, husband-involving search later:  There is no Egg and Custard in Mauncester.  The nearest Egg and Custard is in . . . I don't know, Brittany, Alsace, Hokkaido, somewhere.  Not Mauncester.  It's a long way to Hokkaido.  Oh, and there's no Caerphilly Road in Mauncester either.

            And the mobile phone number I have for Hannah doesn't work. . . .  

TUNE IN THIS TIME TOMORROW FOR THE NEXT THRILLING INSTALLMENT.§§§           

* * *

 * And this is what I wrote (waste not, want not):

HANNAH IS COMING, HANNAH IS COMING, HANNAH HANNAH HANNAH HANNAH IS COMING.  YAAAAAAAY.

            . . . The consequent need to do housework.  Unyaay.  In fact, uuugggghhhh.

            Mostly visitors do just fine up at Third House.  Easier on everyone.  Everyone can go to bed when they want to^ and get up when they want to and make their own breakfasts (when they want to), and not only when they want to but as they want to, with no resident gremlin saying, You can't scramble eggs in that pan!  You aren't going to drink coffee out of that mug, are you?   There is also an extra loo at Third House for those occasions when the person in the bath falls asleep.  Third House has many advantages. 

            But there are a few people even in the life of a forty-eight-yesses-out-of-forty-six-questions-on-the-introvert-test introvert that one positively wants to have underfoot.  In my life one of them is Hannah.^^  Therefore I need to ensure that the cottage is not so frightening a habitat that she decides she has urgent and permanent business in the Azores.

            There are no mice nesting in the sofabed:  check.

            The coffee filter thingy is not wrist-deep in dust and dead beetles:  check.

            There is nothing living in the back of the refrigerator that bites:  check. 

            The cobwebs at the top of the stairwell that I can't quite reach, even with my telescoping dustbrush at its full extent, are staying at the top of the stairwell and have not descended to become over-friendly with stairway users:  check.

            The vanguard of the outdoor jungle has not penetrated round either the door or the kitchen window frame sufficiently to be a danger to the urban unwary:  check.^^^

            The hoover hasn't exploded, and I can still use the freller . . . sigh.  Check.^^^^           

^ Hannah, sadly, is an early riser. 

^^ I will still tell her which pan to scramble eggs in however.  But she's allowed to use any mug.  Probably.  I can't be sure till I catch her using the wrong one. 

^^^ This becomes more of a problem later in the season. 

^^^^ I haaaaaaaate vacuuming.  HAAAAAAAAAAATE. 

** Spiders have a lot in common with computers when you stop to think about it.  They both have too many legs (material or immaterial), a bad attitude (graphic), and a ghastly habit of rushing at you (literal or metaphoric) when you're not expecting trouble.  But really you can tell they don't have your best interests at heart the moment you set eyes on one.  

*** This would be a sieve that has also been used for target practise by the local rifle club. 

† Which is cheek, you know, since he married me for my Britannica.  I've told you this joke, haven't I?  He married me—twenty years ago, remember, before the internet was a resource for commoners and the technically challenged—for my Britannica.  I married him for his membership in the London Library.  Peter has dropped his membership in the library—which means I'm groaning under the extreme subscription price by myself—I haven't pulled a Britannica volume off the shelf in years . . . and the annual volumes are accumulating at Third House.  

†† It and the old American Heritage Dictionary of 1969 are my favourite dictionaries.^  The OED is . . . second.  It's a very good second, but it's still second.  And neither the new Chambers nor the new American Heritage is a patch on the classics. 

^ The poor old AHD is in fairly rough shape as I spent several years sitting on it.  I wrote HERO sitting on my old AHD.  I've never had a proper desk with a proper desk chair, which means height adjustments must be made.  The AHD was the perfect extra thickness for that particular chair, and conveniently butt-breadth.  

††† And rather a lot of books on knitting and learning Japanese. 

‡ Where, yes, I can get on line, but that's not where I spend my evenings. 

‡‡ It really wants to retire.  Really really really. 

‡‡‡ We're going to have a hosepipe ban any minute:  driest March in meteorologically recorded history, I think.  Just so long as they don't have a madperson-carrying-a-gazillion-cans ban. 

§ . . . at the right airport.  In England. 

§§ I should know better than to say things like this. 

§§§ Hey.  You already know I'm a cow.  And I'm a cow who needs to go to bed early because Hannah does^ AND BECAUSE THE SODBLASTED CLOCKS GO FORWARD TONIGHT. 

^ Yes.  She's here.  You can relax.

No post tonight

Robin is having connection problems.

Here is a little something to tide you over.  Young serviceberry against a background of Miscanthus x giganteus stems.  With a little help from Photoshop.

This Miscanthus is from the stock grown in biomass experiments at the University of Illinois where many acres of it have been established. Interesting reading:  Growing Giant Miscanthus in Illinois

Caveats and clarifications

 

Ravenel is leaving the Muddlehampton Choir (in the lurch)!*

            He's retired, for pity's sake, but like a lot of other old people who are only old chronologically**, he's a consultant, and they love him in Bandar Seri Begawan.  He's been out there several times and that was supposed to be the end of his contract—but they've just offered him a longer-term one and he's TAKING it, the ratbag.

            I was all ready to be devastated . . . and then he started us on a new song*** last thing tonight which is so unutterably loathsome I found myself unable to pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth and sing it.  Arrgh.  People have frelling quit choirs for less.  (It's supposed to be funny.  It isn't.  And the music is BORING.)  So maybe I'll like having Ravenel in Bandar Seri Begawan better than I expected.  Meanwhile . . . the post of director/conductor is open† and to some extent the structure of the choir with it.  NOW IS THE TIME FOR OISIN TO START THE NEW ARCADIA SINGERS.  AND WE WILL SING NO LOATHSOME SONGS.†† 

* * *

 The problem with writing the blog on fumes is that you tend not to say what you mean to say, or you leave stuff out, or you fail to express yourself clearly enough, or you don't make all the caveats you should make.  Caveat number one:  I know I've said much of what I said last night before.  But the doodles remain undone, and I owe you an update occasionally.  Blogmom also needs to be able to say something useful to understandably plaintive non-blog-readers about what's going on.  

Catlady

Well, I am the one who originally suggested 2017 as a possible mailing date for the doodles, 

Yes, I remember you '17ers.  I like you a lot.  

and I'm sticking to that, so by my count, you've got five and a half years (if we're counting to the Christmas season in 2017, so that we can, if we desire, give doodles as gifts. To ourselves.). 

I'm also a strong believer in self-selected gifts.  Who needs surprise when you can have exactly what you want?††† 

And I am quite looking forward to Shadows, and am glad that it's taking the time that the doodles would take. The motto I've been trying to live by recently is: there are always important things I'm neglecting in favor of the important things I'm doing, but that doesn't mean what I'm doing is wrong. 

Yes.  I'm with you all the way on this one.  Prioritizing, and all those clever punchy annoying business-speak words, only work so far.  We're still waiting for our thirty-six hour day.  With the brain stamina to go with it.‡ 

katinseattle 

Robin, stop whacking yourself over the head. 

Huh?  Um.  How am I whacking myself over the head?  I'm fairly cranky at fate, but then I am often cranky at fate.  And I might have handled last year better, but that would mean going back to about this time last year and realising expeditiously that PEG II had a serious and insoluble from the then-current approach problem,‡‡ and when one's critical errors start fading into the mists of time . . . maybe it's just my short attention span, but I'm much more interested in coping with now.  And it's more what catlady said:  I may be screwing up, but that doesn't mean what I am doing is wrong.  I've prioritised:  SHADOWS must come first.  This isn't getting the doodles done.  And I'm sorry about that—as I should be.  That's not whacking myself over the head.  That's being fate's hellhounds' chew-toy. 

We're here because we like and admire you. 

Thank you!  But some of the people who ordered books and doodles last autumn just wanted their merchandise.

Personally, I'm sorry for your sake that Shadows is taking longer than you wanted, but I'd much rather have quality McKinley than earlier McKinley.  

Well, so would I . . . but it's also not really my choice.  The Story is the Story, as I keep saying.  I can only do what it lets me do.  And if it doesn't like the quality of the blood flow it'll make me find another vein.  Ow.  

lorelibrarian

As for the doodles, well, I've forgotten I sent off the money now, so it will feel like I'm getting a free amazing gift from the universe whenever it does arrive.  

I love this.‡‡‡  

* * *

* jmeadows

She doesn't knit because nothing happens fast enough? Hee. Someone is clearly not a process knitter. I like the way knitting feels! I'm perfectly happy to wait for something to happen. (Though I don't like waiting TOO long. I'm not made of patience, you know.)

 This would be me too.   Especially given that I'm still doing the knitting equivalent of moving my lips when I read, if I were into product I would be in big trouble.  Certainly at my level—squares, and Very Basic Ribbing, knitting is meditative, and I can use all the calming options I can get.  And wasting time winds me up something vicious, so it serves a dual purpose:  the knitting itself is soothing, and the not wasting time is sort of soothing-plus.  And I was casting off The World's Longest Leg Warmer during break tonight.  Because I'm not made of patience either^ and I would like to wear these things, that's things, plural, as in TWO of them, next winter. . . . 

^ Shock horror.  Film at eleven. 

**  . . . Ahem. 

*** Remember I said that nobody knows the playlist for the summer concert? 

†Nice young Japheth is going to a new job inYorkshire or somewhere equally extreme at the end of the year, so he's not a candidate.  But we may have him through the summer concert if Ravenel slopes off early. 

†† I will be sure to be on the board, and the first rule we will pass is that all items on the musical programme must be okayed by the board.^ 

^ The Muddles are looking for more board members . . . NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.+ 

+ Not unless we can pass this one little new rule. . . .  

††† And some people want vampire muffins.

 ‡ Last night as I lay sleepless in my icy cold bed^ I was thinking about kinds of energy:  creative, which overlaps with but is not the same as intellectual;  emotional, which also overlaps with and adds resonance to creative, but is definitely not the same as, and which is in a constant running fire-fight with intellectual which is inconvenient, wasteful and stupid;  and physical energy, which is a crucial support for all the rest, as well as necessary for hurtling, gardening, and singing exercises at your computer.^^  I no longer remember what it's like to be juggling all this as a normal, un-ME'd^^^ person, but with ME you also have the spoons issue.^^^^  Different kinds of energy also demand different numbers of spoons.  And I'm terrible at maths. 

 ^ My electric blanket went phut the moment the temperature dropped back to gelid again.  Thanks so much.  Maybe there will be a nice sale on electric blankets in April. 

^^ There's at least one more but I'm not sure what to call it.  Moral energy, possibly, which is a kind of immaterial resilience or fortitude. 

^^^ And possibly younger.  Something else I've said here before, I'd rather blame the ME for being stupid and feeble, than just that I'm getting old.  

^^^^ http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

This link is also in the 'about' section of this blog.  I have a very mild case, as ME—and lupus, and fibro, and a lot of other auto-immune things that lead with tiredness and pain and general offness—goes.  

‡‡ And, you know, there's a first time for everything.  I could do expeditious one of these years.  I could.  

‡‡ This is also the argument for, for example, pre-ordering books.   You can forget they're coming.  And then . . . what's nicer than a desirable new book to read??

The Continued Non Arrival of Doodles

 

I went ringing at the abbey again tonight.

            Pause.

            More pause.

            Even longer pause.

            . . . I wonder how long before they ask me politely not to come back?

            SIIIIIIIIIIIIGH.*

            I then came home to a query from Blogmom about all those doodles and doodled books I haven't sent out yet.  Yes.  I haven't sent them out.  I said that I was going to have the rest out by the end of March.  I lied.  I didn't mean to lie, but I lied.  I was at that time in the grip of the delusion that I would have finished SHADOWS . . . about a fortnight ago.** 

            I'm still working on SHADOWS.  And as I keep moaning to everyone who doesn't quickly run away from me, it's going fine.  It's just not going fast enough.  I've had to slow down, indeed, precisely because I've been ramming it through slightly faster than it's wanted to go, and I came to the point with the third draft—which is usually my final one—that I had to slow down or risk botching the job.  As it is I'm skating over stuff I didn't want to skate over.  I'm hoping I might get to use this world again—like ALBION takes place in SUNSHINE's world—which might give me a chance to poke more ignorant fun at quantum physics and chaos theory.  But I think the algebra is specific to this book, and the Japanese language and culture, which appear to be settling in for the long haul in my life***, are tied in SHADOWS to a specific character which is inconvenient since I don't write sequels.†

            And it's hard to judge what to put on the blog—about anything, really.  I'm never in a good mood when I wonder what kind of an absolutely weird impression of Robin McKinley I'm giving by the public persona who appears here.  I don't think I'm quite as TOTALLY FRELLING SELF OBSESSED as you'd be forgiven for thinking I am from these (virtual) pages:  it's just that I'm my own safest material, since I don't have to worry about hurting, humiliating or infuriating anyone else when I talk about me.††  At the same time I'm so conscious of what I'm not saying about me that I genuinely can't guess what I look like to all of you.†††

            And . . . I don't like whiners.  If I whine here, I'm very sorry.  My judgement was off that day(s).  So I'm not telling you how the undone doodles pray on my conscience and how grim my office at the cottage is, full, as it also is, with heaps of books, lists, and mailing envelopes.  Circumstances conspired—PEG II crashing and burning, and my then urgently trying to get on with SHADOWS as fast as possible—but that still leaves you waiting over six months for something you paid for last autumn.

            Since I mostly write here about all the rushing around doing too much that I do, you would also be more than forgiven for thinking‡ that if I stopped flitting about the landscape and concentrated I would be getting both SHADOWS and doodles (etc) done a lot faster.  You'll just have to take my word for it both that it doesn't work that way—and that there's perhaps less flitting than you think.  I work seven days, remember, and I don't take holidays, or anyway I can't remember the last time I took one.  For one very minor example of this wombly balance:   I guarantee that if I weren't whacking myself silly over SHADOWS I would be getting on with learning how to ring the beastly abbey bells at least fractionally faster than I am.‡‡  Indeed I'd be getting on with bell ringing generally at least fractionally faster if I didn't pretty invariably have no functioning intellect left by the time I go to bell practise in the evenings.‡‡‡

            But believe me, you will be the first to know when I send SHADOWS to Merrilee and instantly morph spectacularly into a Doodle Factory. 

* * *

* Well . . . I'm getting a lot of knitting done while I sit out.  There's no point even watching Stedman on twenty-seven:  it's just a storm of ropes to me.   But I can sometimes learn something standing behind someone with his or her hands on a rope, and intently watching what they're doing.   And at the abbey I can use all the help about anything that I can get.  So I stood behind the treble for some Cambridge Major^, because in other towers I can treble bob, which is what the treble does in Cambridge . . . and got horribly lost.  So when, later, they called for Bristol Major, which is another treble-bobbing method, I decided to stick to knitting.  But I've been tagged as a stander-behind—it's one of these how-you're-wired things:  some people find standing behind of zero use—and one of the other ringers said to me afterward, oh, but you should have stood behind the treble again!  I decided it would be impolitic to say I'd rather knit.

            I was knitting on Monday at (bell) practise and Anthea, who did use to knit, and quite glamorous things too, says she doesn't knit any more because 'nothing happens fast enough'.  But I knit in waste time:  those three minutes at that exasperatingly long light on my way to Nadia's, sitting out in bell towers, during break at the Muddles, waiting for my computer to stop sulking and do something.^^  And all that effort, even at my knitting speed, does blerg or bludge into something eventually:  I now have the world's longest leg warmer and I'd better cast off and start the other one.  It would be nice to have a pair by November. . . . 

^ To the extent that I ring it inside, I ring minor, which is six bells, not eight. 

^^ Yes, I can sing while I knit.  As necessary. 

** Positive thinking doesn't always work.  Sometimes even putting something on the blog to make sure I do it doesn't work. 

*** Have I mentioned that I've found a language school in Hampshire that offers Japanese?   I've told the woman who is my contact that I can't commit to lessons till I've dealt with an overdue work project.  Ahem.  But this is so much old-unfinished-business-coming-back-to-bite-me, not a brand-new, for-godssake-McKinley-get-a-grip fascination.  I'd be more inclined to see it as some kind of serendipity rather than actual unfinished business if it weren't that Damarian has a certain amount of Japanese grammar in it—as well as some funny alphabet stuff.  I only started writing down what I think I know about the Damarian language in the last ten or so years, when I would have told you I remembered nothing of Japanese except how to count to ten and say 'hello' and 'thank you'.  That's true, but the Story Council apparently saw an opportunity and pounced.  

† PEGASUS is one story in three books!  It's not a trilogy!  The word 'sequel' will not be bandied here! 

†† I have arguments with myself all the time. China is sometimes broken. 

††† Don't tell me.  I'm sure I don't want to know. 

‡ Simultaneously grinding your teeth optional 

‡‡ This is hardly a silver lining, but it did occur to me that . . . the abbey has always been my best local opportunity to learn some of the slightly-more-upper-level stuff that the New Arcadia band can't reliably support.  But given how steep the learning curve for adapting to the abbey's bells is, the only way I'd ever have stuck the course is by something like this—having cast myself off from New Arcadia first.  As it is . . . I'll stick the course unless they tell me to go away. 

‡‡‡ I write the blog every night on fumes, okay?

 

Technology and gardening

 

Gardening wins.*

            Pooka, as previously observed, has a battery life that is always looking for bridges to jump off of.  I'd wound her back up to one hundred percent last night before I went to bed.  This morning I had errands to run (with attendant hellhounds) so we were a good twenty minutes into our hurtle before I was ready to plug in for my top-up of Japanese**.  I stuck the headphone jack in, turned her on . . . and discovered she was down to ELEVEN PERCENT.  This is about twelve hours after she'd been at 100% and the first time I'd turned her on.

            Meltdown.***

            Upon calm, considered reflection, I think what happened is this:  I am still gnawing away at this app that refuses to download off my computer and onto a device where I can frelling use it.  Preferably the iPad.  So last night, in bed with Astarte†, I asked her technology what the problem was, and she claims she needs an update.  I looked at the specs in the app store and . . . okay, requires IOS 5.  Feh.  But . . . I'm a little freaked by the update thing after the first time I updated Pooka she froze so solidly I needed an archangel to unfuse her again.  I do get 'wanna update?' messages on Pooka occasionally, and I've been ignoring them till I have a list of stuff and it's worth sacrificing an Eveready bunny rabbit and examining its entrails for the perfect time to supplicate the archangels.  I have received no such blandishments for/from Astarte.  I didn't know there were any iPad updates.

            THIS IS A STUPID SYSTEM.

            But it's even stupider than that, if I'm right about what happened.  Because when I turned Pooka on today, and found her trying to redline on me (again), there was a little message box saying, 'This app won't download without an update.  Retry?'  So I assume what happened is that my fossicking around in Astarte's innards somehow woke up the equivalent gremlin in Pooka's, which started blindly trying to download this frelling app.  Again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  All night long.  All morning long.  Till I turned Pooka on and interrupted the endless, useless, ridiculous loop, just before she sizzled herself out into exgizmo-hood and became a pink paperweight.

            THIS IS A REALLY, REALLY STUPID SYSTEM.††

            However, I did get out into the garden for maybe two hours this afternoon which was excellent.  Foiled of my gladiolas††† I got all my pansies planted, the snowdrops I never quite got around to planting in the ground last year‡, and potted on a rhododendron and a day lily.  By this time it was pretty well pitch dark out . . . but one of the advantages of a tiny garden you know very well after seven years is that you can pretty much garden by feel.  Ow.  Mostly. 

* * *

*I can truly not suppose

A gizmo lovely as a rose.

With apologies^ to Joyce Kilmer. 

^ But not very many.  It's a dire poem.  'A tree whose hungry mouth is prest/ Against the sweet earth's flowing breast'?  Huh?  I cannot help but think, in my vulgar, literal-minded way, that the anatomy here is suspect especially when you also have a tree wearing a nest of robins in her hair a stanza or two later.  EWWWWWW.   This one's right up there with that other paradigm of poetic inspiration:   'A garden is a lovesome thing God wot'.  Lovesome?  Since the second line cites roses, if in a meretriciously plonking manner, it pains me to reject it, but it would pain me even more to keep it around.

            This, however, almost makes it worthwhile:  http://wordsmith.org/words/godwottery.html  Godwottery.  Indeed.  A word for regular use. 

** I was going to try to figure out ratbag in katakana for you, which is the syllabary used for borrowed foreign words, but I still haven't got the Japanese writing system(s) installed on this computer yet^, and furthermore I'm reasonably sure WordPress will have a nervous breakdown.  We'll try it some evening.  But not tonight. 

^ One of my sources says it's easy.  Me and technology?  Hmmmmmmmmmmm. 

*** Ee, ah, eeee, ah, eeee aaah, eeee ah.  Standing in the middle of a country lane, singing at my smartphone while hellhounds pretend they don't know me.  Are there no depths to which eccentric artistic types will not plunge?  Speaking of batteries and bridges.  Yes, someone saw/heard me.  They're moving out of town tomorrow. 

† You may take that any way you please.  If you prefer you can replace it with:  in bed with Chaos and Darkness. 

†† It's official.  In the McKinley Standard, Apple is every bit as stupid as alternative OS technology. 

††† Planting my glads, that is.  Which are now instead in a tense, slightly gravity-defying huddle on top of the little refrigerator, since Atlas did take the Winter Table down today and I haven't got any place to put them.^  However Hannah and I will be able to sit at the kitchen table at the same time.  But I hope there isn't a fire drill.  And you have to open and close the refrigerator door gently. 

^ He also found several more potential bat ingresses to block up. 

Diane in MN

And yes, I have ordered the mosquito netting to drape over my bed. Just in case.

Hopefully you have ordered a nice supply of garden mesh for your guest, too. Just in case. 

I did think of it, but I decided against it.  My bed is a four poster—the infrastructure is already in place for swathing and swaddling.  Not so the fold-out sofa.  And I boggled at the idea of buying the agricultural frame for the mesh to drape over.  There is a lack of ground to stick the pegs in, in my sitting room, you know?  If I find myself inconveniently bebatted I will either escort my gibbering, hand-wringing visitor to Third House at an unseemly hour as necessary^, or she can spend the rest of that night in the other side of my bed^^ and spend the next night at Third House.

            I knew there was a reason I bought a third house. 

^ You do get used to small furry flying visitors, as you will remember from last year, but they do remain startling when you find one in bed with you. 

^^ After I clear books, journals, iPads and/or hellhounds to make space 

‡ Snowdrops' unwillingness to thrive in pots is exaggerated.