Puppy

 

There was a PUPPY.

            Of course that's why I agreed to sacrifice my Sunday evening away from SHADOWS.*  Niall had rung up yesterday saying that he'd just heard from Jasper, their usual Sunday evening third, that he was contagious [convincing sound effects, I understand, were deployed here], and could I be persuaded to free Sunday evening to ring handbells with Niall and Titus?

            I was out hurtling when the message came in, and after I got back it took me about half an hour to consider the matter.**  By the time I'd rung back Niall had already rung Caitlin, since time was short and I might have a manticore-vanquishing scheduled, and Caitlin had already said yes.  That's great! said Niall to me.  Now we can ring major!  Titus should ring more major!***

            And we did ring major.  It was rather . . . exciting.  Moan.  Well, I mean, we did ring major.  We rang quite a few plain courses and staggered through most of a few touches, although these latter tended to find all the bells but Niall's swapped around to baffling and unseemly locations.  (You can't have been doing parallel five-six down!  I was doing five-six down!  No, you were making seconds and dodging at the back!  Well, maybe I should have been, but I can assure you I wasn't!)  And then Titus sat back and said his hand needed a rest, and that the three of us should go ahead and ring a quarter of bob minor.  I don't do quarters! I said.  Oh, go on, said Titus, you can get your name in The Ringing World.  Niall, whom I do know not to trust by now, said, oh, don't worry, we'll start with a 120 [this is a short touch].  I wasn't at all surprised when we were clearly not doing a 120.  And we went on, and we went on, and I was already tired because I had done a sizable whack of SHADOWS before I came out† and I was totally losing it . . . and then, having gotten through most of the freller, Niall called us round because he said he'd lost track, and so we lost it.  I just need more practise conducting quarters, said Niall.

            Fortunately there was a PUPPY.

            It's still only about the size of my hand although it's thirteen weeks old, because it's a Jack Russell/Border terrier cross.  Little terriers are not generally my favourite thing in the whole world but . . . a puppy.  And of course it liked me because I smell of its friends and relations.  So I had a puppy on my lap during tea while everyone else had cake.††  And it's no doubt because of the puppy that I seem to have agreed to do this again next Sunday evening. . . .  

* * *

* Well, no.  I'd entirely forgotten about the puppy.  Niall, who is not a big critter person, had mentioned there was now a puppy, but I have Things on My Mind^ and since I had no immediate expectation of meeting it this fascinating fact was allowed to slip into the . . . er . . . shadows. 

^ Mind?  Things? 

** Voice One:  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  Ringing with Titus^ is terrific practise and last Thursday's handbells were cancelled because two of us were unavailable!

            Voice Two:  No!  No!  I have to keep on with SHADOWS!  I have to keep on with it every minute!^^

            Voice One:  If I keep on with it every minute I will melt and run through the cracks in the floor!

            Voice Two:  You are an irresponsible feather-brained flibbertigibbet!

            Voice One:  Thank you!  I'm ringing Niall now to say yes! 

^ He's the one who had a stroke fifteen or so years ago and has only one functioning hand.  So he rings both bells in one hand, held in a cross shape, so his hand—and the bells—go in four different directions depending on which stroke of which bell he's ringing.  This is more confusing than you can begin to imagine for the rest of us.  Especially because he rings the treble and the two, and everyone learning handbells learns to depend on knowing where the treble is.  If you can ring something with Titus successfully, you can REALLY, REALLY RING IT.  We're a spiffing crack troop, we with-Titus ringers.  Serious upper-level super-surprise ding-dong doo-dah million-peal handbell ringers have been known to burst into tears when attempting to ring with Titus, and to have urgent appointments in Nevis when invited for another opportunity to do so. 

^^ That I'm not hurtling, singing, ringing tower bells, writing the blog, studying Japanese or reading maths+ in the bath.  Or—sigh—doodling.++ 

+ Or, possibly, Peter Dickinson, after pulling out GLASS SIDED for the blog the other night.  In the conversation on the forum about where to start if you haven't read him before, I don't think anyone has mentioned EMMA TUPPER'S DIARY yet?  I would add my voice to those who have suggested THE KIN, THE ROPEMAKER, THE BLUE HAWK and TULKU.  I also have to remind you of CHUCK AND DANIELLE (which was in the auction/sale merely because I love it so much) which is the littler-kids' book about Danielle and her whippet, which I think is totally darling, and I would think so even if it weren't based on one of our previous generation of dog-hair factories, because I am a critter person.  Peter himself has a particular soft spot for THE DANCING BEAR which is about a slave and his dancing bear in Byzantium in 558 going after his master's daughter, who has been stolen by the Huns who killed her father.  But speaking of his murder mysteries, which is where we came in, I want to mention THE LIVELY DEAD which has always been a favourite of mine because of the heroine, who is very much a (grown-up) girl who does things:  the first line of the book is 'Bending to adjust the claw of her crowbar against a joist, Lydia saw the man's feet.'  The copyright is 1975:  back in 1975 you didn't have women who do major house renovations, as Lydia does, let alone also have a strong happy relationship with a non-standard bloke like her husband (she also has a nice non-standard son).  It would have been so easy to make Lydia a ball-breaker and Richard a wuss, and that's not what they are at all.  I may have to reread that one after I finish SLEEP AND HIS BROTHER. 

++ I had an email yesterday or the day before from a new blog reader wanting to know if there was any hope for someone who hadn't been paying attention last autumn and longed for her very own doodle(s).  There are, of course, a good many people still wondering if there's any hope for people who were paying attention (and money) last autumn.  Yes to both questions.  The little pile of doodles on the other desk in my office is beginning to mount up—slowly, I admit.  But I really am going to do NOTHING BUT DOODLES for as long as it takes to catch up as soon as something possibly resembling the finished SHADOWS is off my desk for long enough to concentrate on anything else.  As I've said before, the one-offs like the musical composition, the commissioned cartoons and, for that matter, the knitting, will still take a little longer after that. 

            Meanwhile Blogmom has found a gizmo so that we can—eventually—have a permanent doodle box on the blog.  But she's not going to put it up till I've fulfilled last autumn's orders.  Check back in . . . um . . . I think someone on the forum suggested 2017 as my new deadline. . . .   

*** On the way there Caitlin, who has two young sons, and I, who have two hellhounds and an assortment of refrigerator magnets that say things like 'housework is evil and must be stopped' and 'a mind is a terrible thing to waste on housework', agreed that Jasper's flat is the cleanest domicile we have ever visited and we slightly suspect him of not being human.  That might also explain the extreme precision of his handbell ringing. 

† Points out Voice Two smugly 

†† My stress-reactive digestion has been more often in a bad mood than a good one for months.  I'll be glad to have both SHADOWS and doodles off my desk(s) for a whole assortment of reasons.