Late

 

It is unduly late.*  Well, I slept nearly ten hours last night.  That Grandsire Triples will really take it out of you.**  And so everything has been late today, including slamming on with SHADOWS till about six minutes ago.***  ARRRRRGH.†

            And there were handbells.  Hellhounds and I had only barely got down to the mews when we had to slap ourselves back into our coats again†† and crunch back to the cottage.†††  We're still beating bob major to death but . . . we're beating it to death more briskly.  Gemma missed ringing at the abbey last night but she was full of back-patting encouragement and positive remarks today‡ as I went blither-blither-blither rounds-on-ninety-three‡‡ leopards-in-the-shadows. 

CathyR

Oh gosh, I know that feeling exactly (Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, huge industrial ringing chamber, 12 bells, heavy – and having to stand on a doughnut-like 3ft raised platform to ring!!!). Total nervous breakdown, looking into the abyss. 

I would not have done it.  I would have taken one look into the abyss, and turned around and fled.  I think I've told you about ringing at Chichester Cathedral?  It has a separate tower . . . which is the size of Arundel Castle ‡‡‡ I swear.  The ringing chamber is nearly the size of Forza's and it's long draft§ and . . . the whole experience still makes me wake up in a cold sweat swearing that I'm going to forget bells and take up knitting.§§ 

. . . It's the heaviest and highest peal of bells hung for change ringing in the world. . . .

Mind you, it's skill not brute strength (although it does usually take two people to ring the tenor up). I've seen a fairly slight teenage girl ring that tenor. 

I watched them ringing up the tenor at the abbey last night—they started off with three.  Once they got it going the third person dropped out (panting).  They do have one madman who likes to ring it up by himself when he's there and in the mood, but I don't think I've met him yet.§§§  And yes . . . these little wisps of people who ring colossal bells are a little daunting to those of us . . . who would be happy to be able to ring a touch of Grandsire Triples on ordinary bells reliably. 

We've probably a second visit there in a couple of months. Hopefully I'll do better. I'll think of Robin to give me strength! 

THE LAST THING YOU WANT TO THINK ABOUT TO GIVE YOU STRENGTH IS ME.

            We will, however expect a full report. . . . 

* * * 

            It's still snowing. 

* * *

* It's also SNOWING.  And I left my yaktrax at the cottage.^ 

Julia

I had [to walk to school in the snow] this week. . . . I'm currently in France (working as an English teacher in a primary school), and it snowed over the weekend. The French aren't used to dealing with snow… and so the buses weren't running. In order to get to work on Monday, I had to walk. Through the snow.  Uphill.^^ It took an hour. I only fell down once, so I felt quite successful when I finally arrived! 

I would like to eschew the standard falling-down part.  I did manage to fall down on Chaos yesterday or the day before, but that was one of those everybody-in-slow-motion-AM-I-REALLY-FALLING-DOWN-RATS-YES moments and I was lifting Darkness off his feet with my death-grip on his (short) lead with the other hand as counterweight, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been.  I'm not entirely sure Chaos noticed.  He may have just thought it was a sort of upside-down lying-on-the-sofa-but-outdoors thing.

            But the 'not used to dealing with snow'.  Yes.  I leave Wolfgang wherever he's parked after the third snowflake falls not because he's hopeless in the snow, which he isn't, but because most of the locals are hopeless in snow.  One of my least-favourite fantasies is a side-on SUV coming at you at frictionless speed. 

^ You don't want to know.  Living in two (or three) houses has serious drawbacks especially if you're perhaps a trifle disorganised in the first place.  See, my yaktrax mostly live in my canvas briefcase equivalent when the weather gets hinky, but occasionally they are transferred to some other mobile living unit.  I took them with me to the abbey last night because while the main roads are all clear, the footpath from the abbey car park to the enchanted portal is a mixture of 14th-century cobblestones and 16th-century paving, a trifle unevenly worn, and mostly in shade all day.  I thought it might be yaktrax or hands and knees last night, and I preferred yaktrax.  As it happened, extreme measures were not required, and then when I got home again my knitting came back out of the small evening knapsack and went back into the large day knapsack+ but the yaktrax, somehow, did not.

            There.  You didn't want to know, did you? 

+ Which frankly wouldn't fit up the last flight of flower-fairy stairs at the abbey anyway. 

^^ Both ways! 

** Grandsire Triples, hell, it was the rounds on eighty-four.  Or was it eighty-seven? 

*** I talked to Hannah today, who is approximately the only person besides agent, editor and husband who gets a look at a book before it's done, and she said that she thought I got the emotional reality of a teenage girl (ie in the particular opening set-up of this story) down really well.  I was pleased, of course, but after we rang off I was thinking . . . is it a good thing to be able to write a persuasive modern, if alternative-world, seventeen-year-old—who goes to high school and lives with her parent(s)—when you're sixty?^  Don't answer that.  Besides, I need to earn a living, and I'd be really bad at robbing banks. 

^ Okay, I know I'm not the only elderly kiddie/YA writer around.  But it hits me harder when it's FIRST PERSON AND SHE'S GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL.  Good grief.  High fantasy seventeen-year-olds are different.   

† I also talked to Merrilee today who said, you, that is, I, do need to remember that I may not make the deadline and SHADOWS may not come out in the spring of '13.  WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.  Yes.  True.  I know.  One of these years my hurtle toward the last possible scheduling moment is going to fail.  Merrilee was giving me the standard agent lecture about not hurrying but taking the time the story needs and I said, MERRILEE.  HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN WORKING TOGETHER?  I can only write as fast as the story will let me.  If the third draft takes longer than I'm hoping^ then . . . it does.

            So this is your warning too.  

^ The good sign is that her list of notes matches mine.  There were no, What do you mean, you were not convinced by the history teacher who turns into a manticore and eats the students that piss her off?  Have you forgotten what high school is like?+ 

+ Merrilee is nearly as old as I am.  

†† OOOOOWWWWWWOOOOOOO, say the hellhounds. 

††† It was afterward, Colin, leaving, who said, in sepulchral tones, It's snowing.  

‡ She's a GP and has three kids.  She absolutely knows how to be supportive and encouraging. 

‡‡ Yes.  They breed.  

‡‡‡ http://www.arundelcastle.org/_pages/03_visitor_info.htm 

§ Which means the ceiling is very, very, very far away, and the rope is a million feet long.  In the first place that much rope tends to flap around unless you have FLAWLESS handling skills—do I need to tell you I do not have flawless handling skills?—and in the second place . . . the weight of the rope has an effect on how a bell rings, depending on how heavy the bell is and how much rope there is.  This can be DISCONCERTING—and on long draft, probably is.   

§§ I've been having this nightmare for years.  When you wake up out of an old familiar nightmare you may not remember acquisition of recent skills that may have a bearing on your equally old and familiar escape mantra.  

§§§ I want to know how he gets ringing-up-the-tenor-by-himself shoulders up that last flight of stairs.