Wet and Shrill

 

It's absolutely tipping it down out there.  Again.*  Yesterday Peter had warned me that the weather was going to turn torrential by evening, so hellhounds and I had had an extra-specially hurtley hurtle in the morning, looking over our shoulders at the vast sneering grey bulk of the coming storm.**  I then had my head down over SHADOWS all afternoon and ignored the warning signs of tempest.***  By the time we got out it was sheeting and hellhounds were not amused.  I have raincoats for them and they were still not amused.  Look, guys, I said, pee and crap fast and we can go indoors again.  I think internal systems tend to shut down under meteorological abuse, however, and we didn't have a long walk but we didn't have a short one either—with me hauling them along at the farthest extents of their long leads while they gave me the full treatment:  tucked tails, humpy backs, flattened ears, and laser-eyed reproachful looks.  Mind you I'd much rather have lap-of-luxury-prone hellhounds than these hearty bounding things that think weather trying to beat you to the ground the better to drown you is an adventure—I've dogsat too many working hunting dogs who can't wait to rush outside and look for grouse or tapirs or whatever the hell and can't understand why you're being such a poor sport about a little rain/hail/hurricane-force wind/alligators.  But yesterday was extreme.  Today would have been even more extreme except that the dog-minder tells time better than I do and she took them out on their afternoon hurtle before it started getting dangerous out there.  It was starting to rain ominously when I came out after my voice lesson, and the wipers were on high-extra-plus by the time I got home.

            What with everything else going on I think I haven't mentioned that I've had rotten week for singing.  I think there's been some rudeness from a minor virus involved, but the result has been that I haven't wanted to risk aggravating the scratchy-almost-sore croaky situation.  ARRRRRGH.  This is the sort of thing that if I weren't trying to sing I wouldn't even notice. †   This is why singers are so neurotic, Nadia said cheerfully.  I've told you that before. 

            Yes, but . . . Okay, it's much worse— much worse—for a professional singer.  But if you sound like Jonas Kaufmann or Deborah Voigt it's understandable that you get a little stressed if your shining, high-mettled thoroughbred comes lame out of its loose box one day.  As a singer I'm one of those Thelwell ponies where you can't tell how many legs it has, let alone whether it's sound on all of them or not.  When I get discouraged because I'm sounding even more rubbish than usual it's like don't be frelling ridiculous.

            So it hasn't been a good week.††  Also when you can't practise enough you can't derive the benefit of practise either, so I went in there today for my third hour-long lesson thinking, she's going to tell me the hour was a mistake and we should go back to forty-five minutes.  And she'll do it kindly. 

            She didn't.  She told me that everyone has to learn how their own voice works, but that I'm extremely unlikely to be doing mine any damage, so to go ahead and keep experimenting with the limitations imposed by rude viruses.  The hour shot by.  The teacher-magic worked and I sounded better than I have since . . . at least last Monday. 

            I'm even noticeably learning Dove Sei.    

* * *

 * My poor garden.  I swear, when I hand SHADOWS in and doodle my last paid-for-already doodle, whichever comes second, I am going to spend a fortnight DOING NOTHING BUT GARDENING.  I may come indoors for meals.^  The blog will devolve to photos of mud and large green bags of future compost.^^  But at the moment I am grateful not to be watering pots.    

           We had our first hard frost three nights ago and I just threw up my hands—I haven't got two hours to bring everything in and take everything out again—I don't even have two hours to finish getting the summer/greenhouse set up, stocked up, and then regularly watered—speaking of watering.  Meanwhile I got off much more lightly than I deserved three nights ago.  I know it was a hard frost because we came home in it—I had to chip Wolfgang's windscreen clear^^^ and we then came home sideways.  Geraniums and snapdragons often come through a degree or two of frost, although you can't count on it, but the begonias and fuchsias usually don't, and they did the other night.  I think the only thing I lost were the chocolate cosmos, and they are a ratbag to drag through the winter indoors so while I'm sorry I'm also relieved.  Maybe I can find two hours somewhere before the next frost. . . . 

^ Especially if this is happening in February.+ 

+ I wish.   

^^ Especially if this is happening in February.+ 

+ I wish.  

^^^ This is the third year in a row I've told myself I need to get a serious scraper instead of the shy little doodad I do have, clearly made for ornamental use in the Maldives.  It's still better than fingernails.  

** Sunday morning hurtles are always at least a little aggrieved because of this bell ringing shtick, and the prospect of an extra-long Sunday morning hurtle is not always welcome.  By Sunday afternoon/evening hurtle I'm significantly brain dead, but I'm also full of caffeine.  I'm beginning to think that Monday evening practises are also always at least a little aggrieved because of this voice lesson shtick, although at least I can mainline a little more molasses-coloured tea between getting home from the one and going out again to the other.  Once-a-month Old Eden tonight, and a better turn-out than usual^, but this included one beginner and two people only just learning to ring inside, so the rest of us were mostly filling in for learners to bounce off of.  Minimal brain necessary.  Yaay.^^ 

^ Thanks to McKinley's phone wiles, but they're pretty much the same phone wiles every month, it's just this month they worked. 

^^ Brute strength, however, is required for the frelling bells.  I wonder what chaos theory says about possessed-by-demons change-ringing bells?  What's the physics of a 360-degree-turning bell, first 360° degrees in one direction and then 360° degrees in the opposite direction, securely riveted on a rigid frame, and you've just about got it figured out how hard you have to yank the wretched thing to make it complete its circle and suddenly between one yank and the next it comes down on you like a stooping falcon?, which is to say it doesn't rise from straight down 0° to 180° straight up, it rises perhaps twelve degrees and sticks like it's just hit a wall, and there you are turning purple and hauling on the bellrope till you can feel the blisters coming, trying to hoick it back into place again, and meanwhile you've probably totally fallen off your line through the pattern and you may have two or three people yelling at you, but then again maybe not, because they're out of breath hauling on their own anvil-like bells.

 *** Long whippy rose stems beating against the windows like chains and the occasional thud of a raindrop the size of a latke.  

† I've been trying to remember how much of this nonsense I put up with when I was singing for Blondel.  It doesn't seem to me it was this bad, but I'm hoping that's because all of my singing at the beginning was basically a kind of undifferentiated wizened squeal, and by now I'd be noticing the somewhat better days from the very much worse ones whoever I was singing for . . . and not that I've angered the Upper Respiratory deity and it's going to be a ratbag from here on.  I also don't yet have a clue, besides finding out the hard way, when I can sing through an incursion of throat crud and when I'd better not.  

†† Turns out there's a serious drawback to gaining a slightly better grasp of, um, music.  I don't sing favourite arias out hurtling because they're too hard.  I keep going wildly adrift and can't find the tune.  But this is changing.  I was, for example, singing Marguerite's final music—the angels-save-me bit^—pretty accurately this morning.  Except it's my voice.  

^ 'Anges pur, anges radieux, Portez mon ame au sein des cieux' is what my libretto says.