There Is Hope, continued

 

GEEZUM FRELLING RATBAGGING CROW IT'S COLD.  COOOOOOOOLD.  We've had this super-mild winter when after last year we're all jumping at shadows* and going AAAAAAUGH, was that a snowflake?  It hasn't been.  But February has come in with teeth.  And ice giants.  And a hard bleak ridgy landscape that looks like a dress rehearsal for when hell freezes over.  And a wind that leaves lash marks on your skin.  My hands, wrapped around leads, even in gloves are too cold.  And hellhounds vary from manic to petulant.  First it's WOWIEEEEEEEE, WATCH ME CLIMB A TREE LIKE A SQUIRREL** and then it's MAKE IT GO AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY and then it's, if you're not going to make it go away, take us HOOOOOOOOOOOME.***  This evening when I took them out before bell ringing we got back in plenty of time for me to have another bootless glower at Grandsire Triples† because none of us could stand it out there.††

            I almost didn't go to practise.  Well, no, I thought about almost not going.  And I'd even forgotten that I'd announced last week that I was going to Forza again this week.†††  But while SHADOWS is still moving, it was not moving today with the free and gallant gait it had been yesterday. ‡  So I thought about staying home and keeping working.  I also thought about not having to go anywhere else in this weather.

            But I'd programmed myself too well.  I found myself putting my jacket and shoes back on, and stuffing my bell-method books (and my knitting) in my little knapsack, and trudging off to fetch Wolfgang. Ugggggh.

            And then . . . there is hope.  I almost bottled out of the Grandsire Triples (which the Scary Man cheerfully called for and beckoned to me) thinking that since I'm having such trouble with these bells and I'm safer on six, and it was minor last week that was finally the first thing I'd done right, maybe I should just ring six for a bit and leave triples for later.  But I grasped my rope and clenched my teeth . . . and the Grandsire was not a total drooling foozle.  I had to be fetched out of a hole twice, I think, by the Scary Man shouting in my ear, but I managed to see quite a bit of what I was doing.  There is hope.  THERE IS.

            Although I'm still intimidated out of my tiny feeble mind by the sheer scope of the abbey.  We rang rounds on eighty-four, because the abbot rings a little, and this gave him a chance to pull on a bell rope, and I almost died of terror.  Rounds, for pity's sake, McKinley!  It's only rounds!  The bells going 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 up to eighty-four and then over again!  NOTHING to remember!  All you need is the most primitive bell-handling skill!  But it's rounds in a GIGANTIC room and I feel bizarrely vulnerable as if there are leopards in the shadows.‡‡  I feel all sort of wavery and reed-like, out in the middle of the floor like that—I'd grabbed the eight, just for variety, since I've been ringing exclusively round the front.  Which—the front few bells—happen to stand relatively near the wall at that end of the room—the rest of the ropes career out into the middle of nowhere.  It's not like you lean against the wall—on the contrary, ringing too close to a wall in a tiny ringing chamber is pretty uncomfortable—but it's there.  You know there isn't room for any leopards behind you.  We rang rounds for, dunno, maybe three minutes by the end of which I was howling silently:  please stop!  Please stop!  Please stop!

            I am pathetic.

            I am also going again next week.  

* * *

* . . . you should forgive the term 

** Chaos, who, as we know, has no attention span and after four and a half years of wearing a harness instead of a collar, cannot reliably remember to pick both front feet up to have it put on, remembers EVERY TREE he has ever chased a squirrel into.  This is, as you may believe, a lot of trees.  And a tree at whose feet he almost caught a squirrel he has to be dragged past moaning.^  I am particularly afflicted by two of these exceptionally trying trees at the moment.  

^ Like you have to drag him past his girlfriend.  The border collie.  Who bites.+  I have to put him on short lead and frog-march him past her gate, while he moans.  She loves me, he says.  Moan.  She does really.  Moan.  It's her way of showing affection.  Moan. 

+ Mongo does NOT bite.  He wouldn't DREAM of biting.# 

# Except curtains, sofa cushions, electric flex, etc. 

*** The corollary to this is and GET THESE HORRIBLE COATS OFF US.  Darkness, as usual, is the more stoic.  Chaos, who feels the cold much worse, prances like a hackney pony the whole time, with a wild butt-swing that would get him marked down if he were a hackney pony, and tries to rub his coat off on walls and bollards and hedgerows and anything else he can get alongside.  STOP THAT.  Our one tentative breakthrough on the subject of winter warmth is that when I put them in the car I drape two bits of old blanket over them, one bit per hellhound.  They seem to have figured out that if they lie down without the standard pacing and clawing first, their blankets stay on and they stay warmer.  My mastermind hellhounds.  Maybe intense cold has a wits-sharpening effect?^ 

^ Not on me.  It has a bunker-mentality effect on me.  Not unlike make it go AWAAAAAAAAAAY. 

† I know the frelling line.  Knowing the frelling line is not the problem. 

†† TMI warning: avert your eyes NOW. 

            Neither of my hellhounds is prompt about the bodily-functions business.  Chaos does have a crap almost immediately, but he will have two or three more over the course of an hour's walk.  Darkness unloads about ninety percent of his delivery in one colossal lot . . . but it takes him anything up to half an hour to feel moved to do so.  And they stop for a pee every five feet, or do if I let them.  Forever.  If I walked them six hours, fourteen hours, ninety hours, they would still be peeing every five feet (if I let them).  Anyway.  Usually this is not a problem:  in two hours of sprinting over the landscape there is time.  Last few days, while the morning hurtle is merely a bit extra brisk, the evening hurtle is yaaaaaaah get on with it you have FIVE MINUTES.  

††† I'd also forgotten Forza's bell practise was going to have visitors this week.  The Royal Loyal Grand Panjandrum and the chief abbot.  The chief abbot looked more or less like a normal priest.  Possibly his frock was more flowing than standard but that may just be that he is a tall abbot.  The Royal Loyal was wearing a gigantic Seal of Office around his neck.  I keep forgetting about the English and their 800 year old traditions to go with their 800 year old abbeys.  The what?  And he was wearing what?  But it's worse than that.  Today's the something anniversary of the Queen swimming the English Channel or bungie-jumping off the Forth Bridge or the day she dropped the Black Prince's Ruby down the loo during an especially tedious reception, or something really important.  So in honour of this significant global event and since we had visitors someone had brought a couple of bottles of (cheap) fizz—no, really—and about halfway through practise we all gathered around the tower captain who gave a little speech about whatever^ which ended with everyone raising their glasses and intoning, To the QUEEN.

            I am not joking. 

            I love England.  I love the landscape, the public footpath system, the cider, the sausages, the bell towers, the ringing, the roses, the National Trust, the V&A museum, the double decker buses, the fact that there is a train system even if it's going to pieces, and many of the people.  I don't, theoretically, even mind the percentage of your earnings they take away from you because I believe, for example, in socialised medicine.  I object a lot to what they do with your money (for example, they are currently trying to destroy the socialised medical system as they have already destroyed the trains), but that's another story.

            I do not love the monarchy. 

^ The Heroic Deeds of the Plumber 

‡ Maybe Fiona would like to relocate and open a YARN STORE in New Arcadia? 

‡‡ There's that word again.