I don't do nearly enough ringing. So I did some extra today.

 

Neither hellhound ate so much as A CRUMB last night at bedtime so—yet again—I went to bed streaming with adrenaline.  I can do the bad dreams.  I don't need to be asleep to have bad dreams.  But actual sleep?  In my . . . er . . . dreams.*

            I finally fell properly asleep seven and two-thirds minutes before the alarm went off, merely to have the joy of being brutally reawakened again.  Tea.  Must have tea.**  Clothing.  Must have clothing.***  Will someone please shut those frelling birds up.  Tottered down road to tower.†  Rang.

            This Sunday I got through Grandsire doubles.  Phew.  Grandsire doubles, for pity's sake, ought to be one of those methods now so driven into my neurons that I could ring it with perfect accuracy while simultaneously dictating rewrites to PEG II.††  That we haven't rung it at practise in some time shouldn't matter.  But I went up there today hyperventilating about the likelihood that (a) we would ring Grandsire doubles (b) I would go horribly wrong again††† (c) I Will Never Ring an Accurate Touch of Grandsire doubles ever again.  Ever.  And then Felix showed up.  Felix and Edward are probably our best ringers.  Edward is coming to practise a little oftener again since his kids are a wee bit older.  Felix we barely see from year's end to year's end, and this makes me want to tear his face off when he does come, because we need him so badly.  He's also Rather Intimidating.  Especially on a Sunday morning.  Especially when, as we're about to pull off, he says things like, mind everyone keep their backstrokes in, especially when the mrgumple frangledammit gzops, and the call takes the five off the back and makes it dance the fandango with the two.  What?  And we're ringing the back six, and I'm on a big enough bell that I can't gaily yank it back into place if I get it wrong, which I will.  AAAAAUGH.

            I don't guarantee my mrgumple frangledammit gzops, but I didn't make any of the kind of errors that make people yell at you.  Automatic pilot is a wonderful thing.  Mine was plugged in today.  Thank you, bell gods.

            Niall, who is mad, but we knew that, rang service, then rang a quarter peal, then went home and had lunch and a nap, and then came round the mews and picked me up to go ring handbells with Titus.  I'd been working.  On no sleep, Grandsire doubles, Felix, and working, I had no discernable brain activity left.  Mrgumple? I said.  Get in, said Niall.  It's okay, I'm driving.

            Niall had told me that Titus is trying to learn Cambridge on handbells.‡  But because of being one-handed, he specialises in the trebles, because they're the smallest and lightest—and it's the trebles that I am learning, to the extent that I am learning, Cambridge.  So, because I was ringing the tenors tonight, I got to ring off a piece of paper.  Yaaaaay.  And it was still hard.  I'm beginning to comprehend, a little, why people like Titus and Esme look at me in astonishment and consternation when I unfold a bit of paper, lay it across my knees, and prepare to ring by what it tells me.  It's happening with glacial‡‡ slowness, but I am beginning to learn handbell patterns by the structure,‡‡‡ and when you're holding the whole wretched thing in your head, trying to look at the lines on a piece of paper is going to make your ringing worse, not better.  However, I have not attained that lofty pinnacle of grasp and discernment yet, and we rang a lot of Cambridge.§  And then Niall had this really helpful idea of ringing not merely St Clements, which is another plain bob family variant, so you're already having to think carefully about which bits are the same and which bits are different, but also to ring College Bob, which is a variant on St Clements and I'm now so confused . . .

            I came home and doodled.

Studies for a doodle of Fast and a dja vine. And a baby dragon.

 

I had a technology failure with my first pink pen, so the colouring is a bit variable.

* I played some more Montezuma.  Hey, I've acquired my first fire totem.  I haven't figured out how to use him yet, but I have him.  I eventually had to go back and read the rules because just blowing stuff up and never winning anything or having new stuff to blow up or anything was getting old.  I admit this doesn't do a whole lot for the adrenaline situation.  Here I'd been thinking maybe I should give up the kick-ass urban fantasy chicklit as too exciting for bedtime reading.

** Where there is tea there is hope.

*** Where there is clothing there is a good chance of not being arrested. 

† Thinking evil thoughts about Bad Frederick.  Thinking that on a Very Low Sleep night half an hour more or less doesn't make much difference, and I could get up half an hour early and go round to Bad Frederick's and pull him out of bed by his hair.  I suppose his mother might try and stop me.^ 

^ And then again she might not. 

†† With the special bell-noise-filtering software that that famous bell ringer Edward Bulwer-Lytton commissioned a while back.  They've been very slow fulfilling the contract.  I've still only got the beta version. 

††† See last Sunday 

‡ I know I've told you that Titus is the one who rings one-handed, but I don't know if I've sufficiently impressed upon you that as these can/could-ring-anything-in-the-tower ratbags go, he's in the upper echelons.  It is rather heartening that he's having a struggle to learn mere Cambridge on handbells.  Note he doesn't like the plain bob family of methods because they're too easy.  Frell me. 

‡‡ Or perhaps, in these globally warmed days, with continental-drift slowness. 

‡‡‡ I call it the story.  Niall stared at me blankly for a minute and then said, oh.  Yes.  It is kind of like a story.  —He might have been humouring me but I actually think he wasn't. 

§ And if I now find that focussing on the lines for the tenors all evening has messed up my half-learnt story of the trebles, I am going to be cross.