In which Mercury stops being retrograde at least briefly

 

CAMBRIDGE MINOR!  YAAAAAAY!

            The day did not start off brilliantly when I slept through my alarm again.  Or no, I didn't sleep through it:  I said, oh, stuff it, I'll get up in a minute, turned it off . . . and the post didn't come through the door till eleven o'clock today.  YAAAAAAH.  On the other hand I wasn't due at the mews to meet Raphael till 11:30 . . . *

            And when, having rung Raphael and obtained a half-hour reprieve, hellhounds and I shot out down the front steps for a brief hurtle, I discovered that some redolent ratbagging rhinoceros butt has broken another of my big plant pots.  May a fragment of pottery be working its insidious way into the tyre that did the deed, and may said tyre go flat at the worst possible moment—perhaps when they're lost in the Scottish Highlands, they had left the spare in Hampshire to make more room for suitcases, the last house they saw was twenty miles ago and it was empty, it's after sunset, their mobile phone can't get a signal, and the vampires are getting closer.**           

            However, I do have my old laptop back wheeeeeew.  So at least I can SEE what I'm doing today.***  And Oisin put his teacher hat back on long enough† to sympathise with my traumatic Wednesday, saying that it was not even all that surprising that I was knocked off my perch by all the strangeness and that he guaranteed that Nadia was not going to fire me and did not say to her husband that night that she loved teaching singing except for that elderly neurotic American git who furthermore has no voice worth training.††  And (Oisin added) I should be brave about hearing an unbearably fabulous opera singer have a whack at Dove Sei tomorrow at the Met Live.

            Tomorrow is a long way off.  First I had to be brave about being in charge of tonight's tower practise.  Gemma had asked yesterday if we were having practise and might she come, and I told her that I was torn between begging her to come and telling her not to waste her time, since with Niall and Penelope absent we might end up with three people, cut our losses and go home.  It didn't look good for about the first ten minutes:  there were only four of us.  We got four bells up (ready to ring) and started making bad jokes about rewriting Doohickey Panjandrum Maximus (twelve bells) for minimus (four bells)†††.  But then, lo!, there were feet on the ladder, and we were six.  Eventually we were eight. 

            I hammered poor Monty harder than I meant to.  He's learning his first inside method—plain bob doubles, it's always plain bob doubles—which tends to be the first method you learn to call too.  I can call weeny touches of both plain bob and Grandsire doubles, but I've got a bit stuck calling 'observation' which essentially means that you the caller sail grandly through the method making your calls so that everybody but you has to do something funny and you're ringing all plain courses.  This is somewhat acceptable for a first-conducting learner—it's appalling enough having to remember to call at all, and trying to remember how many times you've called and how many calls you have left before the wretched method comes round—and when it does come round, to call THAT'S ALL which I almost invariably forget to do.   But Roger, who is an evil grinning troll, said that it was past time I learnt some other touch where I'd have to play too.  Grrrr.  Well, I know the theory, so I declared that I would do this—and in the best best-value tradition, I put poor Monty to ring inside again, so that we could both practise something.  Having, sunk in my own torment, forgotten that Monty doesn't know how to ring a touch . . . fortunately one of our good ringers was 'minding' him so no blood was shed, although there may have been a certain amount of burning-the-deputy-ringing-master-in-effigy after it was all over.  After Roger called THAT'S ALL because I forgot. . . .

            We had, as I say, eight ringers, but only four of us knew what we were doing.  I wasn't sure we were safe for ringing even plain courses of Grandsire Triples, but I put Monty on the tenor and distributed Leo, Gemma and me variously around the rest—and I rang two courses on two different bells I had never rung before, which is one of those things you're supposed to do—not get stuck on ringing only one bell:  you SHOULD be able to ring a method you claim to know from ANY bell‡—so I was feeling fairly chuffed after this, when I risked saying, since we only had about fifteen minutes left, Any requests?

            Edward looked consideringly around and said, we could ring Cambridge Minor.  I had thought of this myself, and had discarded it instantly.  Furthermore we rang it on the back six (bells)—Edward's idea—which meant Those of Us with Overringing from Terror Problems have a real artery-bursting situation when we've yanked something into the stratosphere that weighs seven or eight times more than we do as opposed to three or four times (on a smaller bell), and then have to try to haul it back down again without totally losing our place in the row.  Ahem.

            BUT I DID IT.  YES.  I RANG A FULL PLAIN COURSE OF CAMBRIDGE MINOR AND NOBODY YELLED AT ME EVEN ONCE.  And, not to boast unattractively or anything, I managed this in spite of several other people going wrong at various points along the way‡‡.

            After this I may even get through Rodelinda and Dove Sei tomorrow without bursting into tears.  Hey, how many of Nadia's other students can ring Cambridge minor? 

* * *

* Remind me to go to bed early tonight.  Well, earlier.  Earlier ought to be possible.^ 

^ I say this every night. 

** Or the rabid hyenas.  I'm not fussy. 

*** Predicted arrival of new laptop now the middle of next week.  Siiiiigh.  However, Archangel Corp is only Raphael and Gabriel and they're always doing umpty-jillion things at once, only possible for archangels, who have special auxiliary time and dimensional clearances not vouchsafed to the rest of us.^  And I know from experience that if I'm in real trouble they'll take an extra fold in the time-space-gluon-sensitive-dependence-on-initial-conditions^^ continuum, and rescue me.  

^ I'm not sure archangels sleep either. 

^^ Hey, I'm suffering with this self-education schtick.  Therefore you have to suffer too.  

† I have got so accustomed to his taking-the-mickey hat—over a pot of tea as we discuss how the world and our respective weeks have gone horribly wrong—that sometimes I forget. 

†† He's just saying that to make me feel better. 

††† You can do this kind of thing—I can't, I hasten to add, but posh conductors can—but it's a manifestation of despair and the presence of only four ringers/bells. 

‡ But then I would never claim to know Grandsire Triples. 

‡‡ You may get away with this even when you only somewhat know what you're doing if the unscheduled behaviour is happening at the other end of the row from you.  One of my favourite/unfavourite things is when two or three of the really good ringers get into an argument WHILE THEY'RE STILL RINGING about what's gone wrong.^ 

^ These are all people who never forget to say 'that's all' at the end of a touch they're conducting.