Geekiness, various

 

I GOT THROUGH AN ENTIRE TOUCH OF GRANDSIRE TRIPLES TONIGHT!! WITHOUT GOING WRONG OR GETTING YELLED AT!!!!! Okay, it was a short touch. Still. I think this may be the first time I've survived a touch that wasn't clearly organised around making it easy for me. My other moments of comparative glory tonight have to do with hanging grimly onto my own line when all about me were losing theirs—which is actually a gift more highly prized, in your average mostly-just-about-holding-it-together band, than pearls, rubies, or the ability to conduct full peals of Triple Surprise Banana Split Delight Caters, and which sadly I only have erratically. But I had it tonight.

Clearly I was inspired by the first opportunity to harass Oisin about blogs and singing in a month. He's been doing the holiday thing. Cheez, these thoughtless slobs who go on holidays. What is the world coming to. What we need is more DEDICATED UNSWERVING MANIA.* Anyway. He is now saying 'next week' for a guest blog—I did tell him that we'd had a few outbursts on the forum about the continuing absence of a guest blog from Oisin, especially from the other musicians and music teachers, and he said, Good. —Don't give me this good twaddle, give me a guest blog**.

I have potentially interesting news on the Oisin front however: Minnie is retiring. She's been headmistress at the local whatsit forever and ever and has got to the 'amen' point.*** This means—apparently—that she will be hurling herself into the New Arcadia Players' fray with added energy and enthusiasm† and the Players have all these plans to diversify, whereupon I said, in my best insinuating way††

::GRAH ARRRGH BLERGLEBLERGLEBLERGLE BAD LANGUAGE LOTSA LOTSA BAD LANGUAGE BAD BAD BAD LANGUAGE. THERE'S OUR RAIN. THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF LAKE SUPERIOR IN THREE AND A HALF MINUTES. EVEN SUPPOSING THAT SOUVENIR DE LA MALMAISON DOESN'T TAKE A TOTAL PET, WHICH SHE WILL DO, EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T WROUGHT IRON IS NOW A PANCAKE. MEANWHILE, BECAUSE THE GROUND IS SOMEWHAT HARDER THAN OSMIUM, ALL THAT RAIN WILL HAVE FRELLING BOUNCED AND RUN OFF, SO WE'RE TALKING BEING WORSE OFF THAN WE WERE BEFORE. GRAAAAAAAAAAAH.::

. . . In that case wouldn't the New Arcadia Players like to diversify into the New Arcadia Singers? Silence from the man behind the teapot. Minnie even sings. Unfortunately her idea of a sufficiently large choir is about 120. A hundred and twenty? Good grief. I'm saying twelve. Oisin, when he can be forced to say anything at all, tends to say forty is a good number. Forty! I say to Minnie. Assuming it's an SATB situation, that's ten of you! Surely nine other people to hide behind—because I am far from unsympathetic to the concept of hiding—is enough! And since there's usually more women, it's probably more like eleven other people to hide behind!

I appear still to have my work cut out for me here. Siiiigh. I will attempt to get Oisin in the mood however by beginning to bring stuff to sing next week.††† This may of course be counterproductive, but I hope it will show willing. I said we can play a little game—Nadia having told me that Oisin is a very good voice coach, and that he'd prepped her for her audition to music college—we can pretend that I'm working toward an audition for one of those singing groups I'll never be a member of partly because the idea of an audition makes me turn green and croak like a frog.‡ He liked this idea. His eyes lit up and his teeth started to glisten.

Whereupon I ran away up to Third House‡‡ and squirrelled about frantically to drive the awful thought of even pretending to work toward an audition away, and fed and watered and fed and watered and fed and watered and . . . all of last year's chocolate cosmos have died after all, and I don't know why except that they are perverse little ratbags. Damn. But I was crossly yanking a lot of drought-stricken, collapsed forget-me-nots out of a crumbly-dry terra cotta pot with clearly nothing else in it . . . and found myself trailing something from the forget-me-not midst that was not a collapsed forget-me-not and was clearly still alive, if a trifle thirsty. Yeep. Back in the pot, honey, sorry about that, here, food, water, petting, shall I recite a wonders-of-green-nature poem to inspire you? Something by Gerard Manley Hopkins possibly? John Clare?, and a nice clear spot to sit next to a friendly rose till I figure out what you are. I think you're one of these tiny patio clematis which are reputedly rather fragile, but mine tend to cling on despite all. The one in the hanging basket back at the cottage which should be several times dead after this winter is about to flower—and the one in the big pot in the hellhound courtyard which clearly was dead in about February is the size of a small plantation and flowering like something auditioning for the Chelsea Flower Show (speaking of auditions). I'm still tragic about my chocolate cosmos however—especially since my new ones are now pancakes (see above) and my back-up ones apparently spent a fortnight in the back of a Royal Mail van and arrived brown and slimy. Siiiigh.

However . . . then I rang a touch of Grandsire Triples.‡‡‡  The world is still a good place.

* * *

* Niall would be very good at this if Penelope didn't occasionally say 'Put that handbell down, we're going to Orkney.' Peter who, like Penelope, believes in moderation, doesn't have a chance. I have hellhounds and ME. Mwa ha ha ha ha. One might as well embrace one's disabilities and turn them to one's advantage where possible. And of course having more than one crazed obsession has a kind of smoke-and-mirrors effect on the bemused onlooker.

** Or two. Two would be good. Three would be better.

*** Mind you she is much too young to retire. She's my age.

† I asked Oisin if they'd chosen a follow-up to the Octopus and the Chandelier, and when he said that they had, Minnie from the next room said, quietly but carryingly, in that Best Headmistress voice, that the Official Announcement wasn't for a fortnight or so yet, and if Oisin told me now there would be Blood on the Floor. —I admit this was an interesting prospect, but it might lower my chances of a guest blog.

†† I'm crap at insinuating. It will probably not amaze you to hear. I'm much better with the crowbar and the shouting.

††† I was going to do it this week. No, really. But Oisin and I became Caught in a Loop of Miscommunication and I thought he was still in Shigatse or somewhere and when he rang me up irritably this afternoon to ask where I was it was too late to Warm Up and Focus, so I didn't try. I just went over there and stared meaningfully at the teapot.

‡ I briefly considered pretending that I was working toward being one of the sacrifices, I mean performers, at the New Arcadia Players' next money-raising gala, but I decided that was pushing even fantasy a little far.

‡‡ For the next six days I can just sing! I don't have to think about this till next Friday morning! —Although I suppose I might tell Nadia. Maybe. Possibly.

‡‡‡ Oh, I was going to show you my new yarn, speaking of Geekiness, various. Tomorrow. . . .