Squeaking

 

DON'T FORGET.  THE AUCTION AND SALE FOR THE NEW ARCADIA BELL RESTORATION FUND GOES LIVE TOMORROW.  TOOOOOOOOOMORROW.* 

Meanwhile, back at the maelstrom. . . .

            Niall emailed me, How did it go at Forzadeldestino last night?  I told him.  He answered:  Don't worry – the rope-sight problems of ringing in an aircraft hangar are prone to inducing paranoid sensations of agoraphobia.  When we foregathered in a handbellish way this afternoon Colin added, plain hunt on forty-seven is more complicated than just counting the same old pattern on higher numbers.**  And Gemma, whose home tower is Forzadeldestino***, said, oh, it would be great if you kept coming.  You get used to it!  Really!  —If you get used to it, I said suspiciously, why were you the only other middling-level ringer there, besides Bronwen and me?

            Erm, said Gemma, looking shifty.†  Come anyway.  It will be good for your character.

            Feh.††

            But the good news is . . . my high B is back.  Whoa, howdy, nice to see you.  I seem to have taken one of those weird lurches forward that every learner in every activity does;†††  last week was a Despair Week when singing was next thing from strangling myself with my own hands.  This week . . . well, all these things are relative, especially when applied to my singing, but I've noticed that I'm warming up more easily and the stretch-and-relax aspect is more like dealing with bread dough than cement.  I admit I've been working on the top end because I want to stay a first soprano for a while longer, and the Muddlehamptons aren't quite as tin-pot as I had been counting on.  I need that A.  Today the A came without my having to get a broom to prod it, snapping and snarling, out from under the bed, and I thought oh, ha ha ha ha, I wonder if there's a B above it?  And there was.  Golly.  So I'm now on to be a more or less functional three octaves again, although as I keep saying, and speaking of bread dough, I wish there was a way to kind of fold it over and . . . I don't know, add cinnamon or something . . . I mean, I'd be happy to have fewer notes that sounded better. 

            But I did go to choir practise tonight feeling like slightly less of a fraud than I have been.  And . . . frell and double frell, that damn A is the least of my problems.  Major sodgangblanging learning curve.  And Griselda is going to be away for the next fortnight—while the alarming Ravenel is going to be back next week.  And when I asked Gordon about extra sopranos for this wedding—the wedding we're learning Os Justi for, with the high A and some kitten-and-yarn harmonies‡—he looked surprised and said oh, yes please. . . . so despite my skill in missing concerts, I seem to have just booked myself for a Public Performance.  A visible public performance.  With your audience sitting there looking at you.  Why didn't I stick to ringing bells.  Anthea even asked if I could ring a wedding that same day and now I have to go and tell her no.  

* * *

 * And Saturday's blog will be all the caveats.  

BurgundyIce wrote:  I'm so excited!! 

Oh good. 

I have been dreaming about whether I could ask for a Tsornin w/ Narknon sitting under lashing her tail as if they just leapt the Outlander station wall and startled everyone and were smug about it. A smug Tsornin and Narknon. Doesn't that sound worth dreaming about? But the teapot… NICE!! And that clock!! I think I will be happy asking for something completely random, like a Surprise Me Thingame. 

The Surprise Me Thingame I can certainly do. ^  A smug Tsornin and Narknon?  Probably not.  I can do a Narknon^^, and I can certainly do a Tsornin, but together is too complicated for the doodle levels I'm offering here, and I'm not sure I could lay on smugness at all.  Other amateur doodlers out there will understand that you need to think simple.  The rest of you will have to take it on faith—that you need to think simple.  Any professional artists out there, please don't break any ribs laughing.

            Mind you, I'm enjoying doodling, and having the excuse to spend the time on it.  And I am nursing a little fantasy that if doodles do prove to be popular we might choose a nice charity for the loot if any, and make them available indefinitely. ^^^ Whereupon complexity, and price, would become negotiable. 

^ I'm a little anxious that anyone in receipt of one of my actual, real-live, smudgy piece of paper in your hand, doodles, is going to find it . . . surprising.  Not necessarily in a good way.  Those of you who grew up with your fingers glued to a computer keyboard mostly won't know about the astonishing credibility that your lame, fumbling words develop when you type up your handwritten scrawl.  I have the sinking feeling that the computer screen does something similar with doodles.    

^^ Any comments on her resemblance to Tsornin with a cat's head, feet and tail will not be appreciated. 

^^^ Which might also help assuage my guilt over refusing to sign books by post.  You can buy a doodle!   Given the cost of postage it will be cheaper!

** He ruined this comforting effect however by adding that it takes him a good thirty minutes into a peal attempt to feel really comfortable on a strange bell in a twelve (or more) bell tower he's never rung at before.  Thanks.  That makes me feel a lot better. 

*** If Forzadeldestino were my closest tower, I'd move.  And being two garden walls over from it^, as I am from New Arcadia's tower, would not have irresistibly started me ringing again. 

^ Aside from the fact that this would put me in the serious high rent/low square footage district of the little medieval town it used to be.  A terraced house there would make my cottage look generously proportioned . . . but the taps would be gold and the counters palladium.+  And the hellhound crate diamond-studded teak.   

+ Platinum is so last century.  

† Gemma is one of these annoying people who learnt ringing as a teenager and then stopped when her life filled up with other things.  Now her kids are mostly grown she's taken it up again.  This is a common pattern.  The problem with this common pattern from the perspective of someone like me is that these people suddenly get their feet under them and soar off into the empyrean, knocking off full peals of Dictum Sapienti Vigesimal with their mates on slow Sunday afternoons when there's nothing on TV. 

†† Further on the subject of feh:  It was just yesterday, right?, that I was telling you how great audiobooks are and how I've joined audible^ and my first download is fabulous and thrilling and so on?  Did I mention that one of the great things about all this is that it's surprisingly SIMPLE?  EVEN I CAN DO IT?

            Today, out hurtling, I ran to the end of part three.  And part four refused to play.  It claimed to need downloading.  I downloaded it when I downloaded three, which picked up at the end of part two without my having to do ANYTHING.

            I have no idea.  After screaming and throwing things for a while, I emailed audible.  And to give them credit, they emailed me back promptly.  I'm under the impression I had already done everything they suggested.  But I did it all over again—possibly in a slightly different order—and I believe I have Part Four to fascinate and horrify me during tomorrow's morning hurtle.

            Never Praise Technology.  It makes stuff short out and go gleep.  

^ http://www.audible.co.uk/ 

††† Some of us, of course, are lurchier than others. 

‡ I didn't know Bruckner had it in him.  It's really really pretty.  I just can't sing it.