Part One: Silly Day
It has been a Silly Day. It's very nearly too warm in a rather glorious and sybaritic way and we're all pretty unhinged, the way you get when serious seasonal heat finally makes contact with your still winter-braced muscles.* Not to mention your brain. I was trying to claw my bob major back to some semblance of . . . I started to say accuracy and realised this was extreme. Some semblance of bob major . . . this afternoon before our usual Thursday handbell practise and it was like I had never seen method lines before in my life, let alone two of them at the same time.** Hells, I was having trouble opening Pooka's case and turning her on. Wheeeee . . . is this an iPhone?*** How exciting.† And you tap these cute little bell drawing things and they make noise. . . .
Apparently Fernanda has run off to sea after all, because it was just Colin and Niall and me . . . and I had wasted all that time attempting to relearn bob major, which requires four pairs of hands. Whereupon we strove to ring St Clements minor, and because Niall and Colin are mean and cruel and they hate me, they made me ring the three-four. Generally speaking the middle pair or pairs are a more brutal and abominable experience than the outer pairs—and Niall and Colin are the ones who know what they're doing—so it was a bit like not only putting a saddle on your [hell]cow, but making her jump.†† Mooooo.†††
Meanwhile . . . I've been reading through the forum thread on heroine size and feeling . . . a slight sinking of the heart. Since I'm going to take some mild exception to a few of the comments, I'll leave off people's names, although of course you can go ferret through the appropriate page if you want to know.
I thought it was refreshing to read about short Sylvi, and I felt like she's the most feminine of your heroines so far. Still a strong, independent girl, but I do like that she's not as tomboyish as most of the others.
Beauty in ROSE DAUGHTER. Lissar. Sunshine. Mirasol. (Peony is probably cheating.) None of them are tomboys. I think I would also question this definition of 'feminine'. I feel that I'm a tomboy and feminine, for example: I am usually covered in hellhound hair and garden dirt and I wear make up maybe once every other year, but I always always wear jewellery—because I love jewellery—and my favourite pieces are my little coral rose and my pearls. Not to mention my thing for pink.
What interests me however is my guess that it's the first time a reader really engages with one of an author's books that provokes a sense that this author's plots or characters are 'usually' like this. Those of you who fell first and hard for Damar, for example, seem to feel that 'most' of my heroines are tall and clumsy. Aerin, just by the way, isn't more than middling tall—tall enough to count, but Harry's at least a hand (er—four inches) taller, and maybe more. Aerin is clumsy however—more clumsy than Harry, who's mainly just tall, and impatient with traditional femininity. I've been thinking about this marking effect about a first loved book because of Diana—what's your favourite Diana Wynne Jones book? Good gods, I couldn't possibly choose. But if I had to I realise I'd choose CHARMED LIFE—because it was the first one I read and it completely blew me away. I'd never read anything like it. And Diana had a besotted fan for life. Realising this does make me a little more patient with the people who still insist on telling me they love BEAUTY or the Damar books the best . . . although my impatience is for the people who tell me these are my best books and I've never written anything as good since. I wouldn't say that CHARMED LIFE is Diana's best book, merely the one that first took me captive.
. . . .both of them [Harry and Aerin] can ride a horse without stirrups… which means they can get on a horse sans stirrups, a WAR horse at that… and rock or no rock a short person wouldn't have the leverage to be able to manage that. . . .
Yes, Harry and Aerin are both tall, but Harry is very tall and Aerin is only middling. But you're mistaken about the vaulting. You've never seen vaulting at the circus? What the vaulter needs—this may vary, but the vaulting I've seen—is either a strap or a saddle-flap to grab, and then they do a kind of half-flip into the saddle. It's very impressive, but it's about skill, strength and dexterity, not height. (Indeed relative smallness is an advantage: less weight.) It's true that the vaulting my Damarians do tends to be the rather tamer putting your hands on front and back of saddle and heaving, which mostly does require some height, but Talat, you know, is short himself; you wouldn't have to be more than middle height to vault onto Talat—supposing he'd let you, and supposing you had the muscles and the agility. There is also the way less romantic method known to every child who's ever ridden a pony bareback, which is to spring-board yourself belly down over your pony's back, and then swing your leg over. Quite little kids can do that—if the pony stands still.
The best vaulter I ever knew was from my misspent adolescence. He was an ex-jockey; he'd started on the flat and graduated to steeplechasing when he got too big. He was still a good two inches shorter than I am (I'm 5'8", which makes me middling tall) and he could vault onto an 18-hand grand-prix horse by putting his hands on front and back of the saddle, giving a quick heave, moving the rear hand smartly for his leg to go over—and settling gently into the saddle. He was kind of a jerk, but I had a massive crush on him because he could do this trick, which over forty years later still seems to me almost miraculous. It's where my Damarian vaulting comes from. It's about as plausible as (as I've said elsewhere) an entire regiment of bridleless horses is, but never mind. It's possible.
The real point about any mounting and dismounting is that you want it as kind to the horse as possible. Therefore, use your mounting block. Totally unromantic. But it does mean you can be as short as you like, and you don't have to drag the saddle against the horse's back at all.
We have a houseful (or more than one houseful) descending tomorrow, which will include not only cancelling my semi-music-lesson, semi-cup-of-tea-and-rant ‡ with Oisin but also not going to sacred home tower bell practise. How Will I Bear the Shame. Well, dinner out at The Questing Beast will probably help a lot. And while I may be in an aggravated state of chemically assisted hilarity by the time I get home I will probably manage to produce Part Two.
Stay tuned.
* * *
* One of my winter-braced muscles went PING yesterday for no good reason so I've been hobbling around and telling it that I can't afford to have a knee out of commission so it's just going to have to cope, and does it want one of those stretchy marathon runners' bandages, which is the best I'm offering. Hurtling will continue. Gah.
** The usual phrase for the diagram of a method is 'the blue line'. Since you ring two handbells it tends to be 'the red and blue lines'. For all that it's much more gruesome on handbells^ 'the red and blue lines' or even 'the lines' somehow just doesn't have the fateful ominous ring of The Blue Line. One of life's many little injustices.
^ More than twice as gruesome. Trust me.
*** Note that rescheduled Computer Archangel Raphael is coming tomorrow. Possibly with news of iPad 2s. I can't even decide what to hope for. The cost/desirability flow chart is such a ratbag. Short of Steve Jobs reading SUNSHINE last week and having decided to give the author of such a brilliant book a free one.
† See previous footnote. At the price she'd better be exciting. —Who out there does not have 3G on their iPad? Are you happy?
†† Everybody knows about this, right? Especially suitable for a Silly Day. http://www.kansascity.com/2011/04/05/2776919/horse-dreams-dashed-german-teen.html
Although I have to say this one looks like he's having more fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee1pzhspKD0&feature=related
††† Not to worry. Much general silliness. They were infected by the weather too.
‡ Okay, the cup of tea is not semi.
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