Grumble grumble mutter mutter

 

Fate, sometimes, having got you round the ankle, enjoys shaking you up and down like a yoyo for a while.  I had been supposed to go to a concert with Fiona last night, in reward for our labours, and then at more or less the last minute I found myself in one of the typical communication crosswirings of the long married, which is that Peter arranged to play bridge last night as well, which would leave no one at (either) home to keep an eye on and, critically, feed hellhounds.  Dog lady not available on no notice*, it's never a good idea to play too fast and loose with hellhound eating schedules anyway and I'm still metaphorically leaping at small noises about Darkness.  So I had to stay home.  Sigh.**  Then I thought, okay, maybe I'll go bell-ringing at Forza, that's only about two hours away rather than four, and hellhounds are used to supper after bell practise.

            Then I remembered that I had just enough petrol left to get me to a petrol station to tank up.   Which was not going to happen at 7 pm.***  So I really was staying home. 

            Okay, I had photos for the blog, so that meant a short(er) post.  I could spend a little longer on SHADOWS and still get to bed early.†  Whereupon I became hideously embroiled in an argy-bargy with thrice-damned and quadrupally-frelling  WordPress, that rat's-ass of a programme, which didn't want to let me use Blogmom's photo-post template, which she created for me so I didn't have to get into argy-bargies with WordPress about PHOTOS.

            I did not get to bed early.††

            Today hellhounds and I drove out to Warm Upford to our old petrol station and mechanic, and when Blaze came out to pump diesel I asked him about Wolfgang's Erratic Fault, which is that he occasionally . . . doesn't start.  This is not allowed.  And I can't even think about buying a new, or even a new-er, car right now††† so some detente must be reached.  Erratic Faults are, of course, the quadrupally-frelling ratbags of all technology, and Wolfgang's symptoms are not helpful:  I have to have recently turned him off—just time enough, for example, to park, bring out the latest specially-ordered gigantic bags of dog kibble from the pet shop, sling them in the boot, and try, and fail, to drive away—so it's not about being cold;  and his butt has to be lower than his front end—so parked on a slope, but uphill.  Blaze looked puzzled.  And then he spoke the phrase:  you'll have to wait till the symptoms get worse, so we can try to reproduce them here. . . . ‡

            Peter's daughter is staying at the mews for a couple of nights, so I hit the piano early, while she's still at work.  It's taking me longer to sing myself 'in' and produce anything even remotely resembling a singing timbre—and simply to fill in the time, because exercises, without Nadia there to say 'do a little bit of this, now do a little bit of that', get boring and frustrating pretty soon because I don't know how to make them better, I've gone back to some old songs and am fascinated to discover that I'm singing them differently.  I'm going to hope this is progress.  I may test this theory by taking them to Nadia next week.  But the point today was to get me cranked up into singing mode, so I could go to Muddlehampton practise tonight.

            I didn't go (again).  I'm hoarse.  What the bleeding frangledab is going on?  At this rate I'm going to die of old age before my throat recovers from its megrims.  It wasn't even a serious head/upper respiratory cold.  But it won't frelling go away. 

            Meanwhile . . . this afternoon's handbells got cancelled yesterday.   Colin is on holiday, and Gemma pulled out at the last minute,‡‡ which only left Niall and me.  But that wasn't quite utterly tragic because Niall had invited me to ring at his house on Tuesday with a bob major band.  So I was going to have a second shot at learning to ring touches of bob major.‡‡‡  I was pretty excited.

            Niall rang me back this evening to say that next Tuesday's conductor has decided he wants to ring a full peal of minor with Niall and Caitlin.  Which means I've just been de-invited.   

            Whimper.

            I think I'll go doodle something. 

* * *

* The woman has a life.  Who does she think she is?

** Fiona says it was a lovely concert.  Sigh.      

*** I don't know what it is about the English and their petrol stations.   They close at 5, 5:30 pm, like dentists or accountants.  And even dentists usually have the occasional late evening.  It used to fascinate me, twenty years ago^, that even in London you couldn't find a chemist or ironmonger's^^ open in the evening—there'd be an emergency chemist, probably on the opposite side of London, if your doctor wanted to prescribe something to get you through the night, but in terms of walking down your local high street?  Forget it. 

            By the time we stopped going regularly to London this had begun to change.  Not in quaint old-fashioned village Hampshire however.

^ I have now lived in England for twenty years.  The anniversary went past without my even noticing, a few days before Halloween—I've even forgotten what day it was, although I could look it up.+ 

+ Well, sort of I could look it up.  It would involve looking in boxes of old paper files.  

^^ drugstore.  Hardware store.  

† HAHAHAHAHAHA.  Why do I ever think these outrageous things? 

†† And even after I went to bed, I had to play through several soothing levels of Rosecliff, which is one of these hidden objects games http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/5217/escape-rosecliff-island/index.html  and doesn't require as much swearing as Montezuma.^ 

^ Yes, I've completed it.  Yes, I'm playing it again.  Your point would be?  

††† And have I mentioned that my workhorse laptop is dying and I am going to have to buy a new one?  It would be nice if this would have some positive impact on my connectivity problems, but I'm sure that's much too easy. 

‡  Hellhounds and I did have a very pleasant hurtle at this point.  Due to various exigencies we haven't been on a proper country hurtle in over a week, and since our favourite field near New Arcadia has had its footpath fenced off from the rest of the space, hellhounds haven't had a sensible off-lead careen in that long.  Today they promptly took off . . .  straight over the horizon.  GAAAAAAH.  Usually they do laps, roughly speaking around me, which is a little easier to oversee.  They were persuaded, with some difficulty, to recall to mind that they're supposed to wait at all hedgerows and gates—the idea being that I go through first and make sure we aren't about to hurtle straight into the local hunt pretending to follow a drag trail, or Lady Featheringstonehaugh out walking her twenty-three long-haired Chihuahuas.  Hellhounds were off-lead for about twenty minutes (till we came to a road), and I was exhausted. 

‡‡ Sigh.  I am not feeling sanguine about Gemma's future as a handbell ringer.  You have to be kind of a geek, and I think she may be too normal and well-adjusted.  She has sensible priorities, you know?  This doesn't work if you want to learn to ring, especially handbells. 

‡‡‡ And the Mean Man is not a part of Niall's peripatetic Tuesday evening group, so he would not be there.