Something New to Worry About

 

So this evening I spent about ten minutes staring hopelessly at the line for Grandsire Triples—hopelessly because I know the sodblasted line, that's not the problem—carefully negotiated taking hellhounds back to the cottage and giving them their final hurtle around the fact that I apparently have a car that doesn't like to start when it's warm* . . . and set off for the abbey.  I haven't rung there in over a month, I think, due to a combination of family visitation, annual road tests that don't cover the connections to the starter motor, fancy practises for the upper echelons to essay Thirty Two Bell Marshmellow Lime Jello Cottage Cheese Surprise**, and random consecrated events suitable to an abbey requiring silence. 

            I didn't ring there tonight either.  There was another random consecrated event (requiring silence).  I didn't find this out, however, till I got there, having turned off my car that doesn't like to start when it's warm about two minutes before.  And the abbey town is one of these places that closes at 6 pm, barring the odd pub, and I did not fancy wandering its streets in the dark while I waited for my car to cool down.***

            So I sat in the driver's seat, getting cold, since it's still frelling winter here†, and looked up the abbey calendar on Pooka, which I should have done before I drove over, and . . . yup.  7 March:  bell practise cancelled due to RanConEvReqSil.  RATBAGS.  BULGING RATBAGS.

             . . . And then I turned the key and Wolfgang sprang immediately to life. ††  

* * *

I had an extremely friendly and polite email from a non-blog-reading doodle-buyer wondering if hers had got lost in the post.  Guuuuuuilt.  No.  It's still in the ink sloshing around in the pen lying on the doodle desk at the cottage.  I was thinking about this again as a result of the recent blogs and subsequent conversations about singing.  The chief reason I'm not getting on with the doodles any faster is because all doodling, even the umpty-seventh fanged muffin, takes at least a tiny fraction of a sparkle of creative energy, and at the moment ALL sparks, and sub-sparks, sub-sub-sparks, and immeasurably infinitesimal fractions of sparks are carefully swept together and hoarded for SHADOWS.  Which is, as you may have already surmised by the fact that I haven't mentioned it recently, running late ARRRRRGH.†††  It's multiply frustrating because really it's going very well, it's just going to its own frelling pace, which is not rapid.  It's not even slow as I measure my writing in glacial degrees . . . but it's slow for a book that was supposed to be finished in five months.  Siiiiiiigh. 

            And meanwhile, I have ME, and yet I insist on rushing all over the landscape, hurtling hounds, ringing bells . . . singing.  Pretending to learn Japanese.  Knitting is restful, right?  I don't have to list that among my vices.  I've blithered to you often before about coping with ME:  while forcing yourself to do stuff when you feel like death and yesterday's tea leaves is a really really bad idea and I don't care how many experts say otherwise, the other side of this is that you have to work at staying as fit and active as you can because the ME will take you down at the first sign of weakness.  'Use it or lose it' has extra resonance (and teeth) when you have ME.  Hellhound hurtling has as much to do with how much physical exertion I can stand and keep standing‡ as it does with how much hurtling two manic whippet cross deerhound longdogs want.  Fortunately this is a fairly successful overlapping series.

            Mental, emotional and creative energy are a different scale.  And, as with the physical, you use it or lose it, whether you have ME or not, but more dramatically if you do.‡‡  Bell ringing knocks the flimsy stuffing out of my brain and, especially on cranky bells, does a fair bit for upper body strength and flexibility too.  The algebra, pre-calc, quantum physics and the Japanese are . . . hahahahahahaha . . . well, I have a strange idea about what's amusing, okay?  And if I want to fall asleep in the bath with THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS or in bed at mmph-mumble o'clock in the morning learning a few kanji, well, it's better than slashing tyres and sticking chewing gum in parking meters.  It's still all pure mental, with a little frill of mostly frustrated and occasional flares of delighted, emotional energy.

            But I've had a sudden unsettling thought about the singing.  Singing lessons and joining the Muddles have been about making more and better noise, and about learning a little more music and a little more about music, and about producing what I'm learning a little more accurately and less excrutiatingly.  I do still play the piano, but I do it strictly for fun and goofiness and I haven't had a real piano lesson from Oisin in over a year.  I stopped composing somewhere around the time that PEG II began to demonstrate recalcitrance, although long before I realised what the recalcitrance was about.   I am just beginning to feel the stirrings of singing self-expression, and in my relentlessly naïve and credulous way am excited about this . . . . But that's not going to count as creative energy, is it?           

* * *

* We'd had our morning hurtle around stopping at the farm-supply store to buy more bagged, composted manure for the garden(s).  Where they had one till open, and a queue of about 637 people, two thirds of whom had complicated questions that required phoning the warehouse, consulting clipboards, and filling out complex forms.  ARRRRRGH.  But Wolfgang had plenty of leisure to go dead cold by the time I got back out there again and he started fine.  

** Who says technological progress is a myth?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tWuG2oPL3o

The last time this pinnacle of the singer's art^ was mentioned here, this was not available on YouTube. 

^ Hmmmmm.   

*** I had my knitting with me.  I could have gone to a pub.  And yes, I do belong to one of those roadside-recovery groups^ but by the time they got there Wolfgang would be cool enough to start on his own.  Probably.  

^ This one:  http://www.rac.co.uk/breakdown-cover/ 

† I am tired of winter.  I am very very tired of winter.^ 

^ I hope it's not feeling obliged to stick around till I get my extra-long leg-warmers finished.  I've been thinking about them and their unfinishedness a lot the last few days because these jeans are too short and I really need leg-warmers to block the ankle draft. 

†† Hellhounds were, of course, delighted.  Since they're usually reasonably interested in supper I think they do clock the difference between getting fed on time and getting fed late:  if I'm there they mob me if I am still sitting at the computer when I should be cutting up chicken, and if I'm late they mob me at the door:  you don't need to take your coat off to chop up some chicken.  But Peter was playing bridge tonight, and I don't leave hellhounds unsupervised at the mews, so we had to get back down there.  And I have this little car problem. . . . I put Wolfgang's nose up against the corner of the brick-and-flint wall around my neighbour's parking slot in case the handbrake failed and left him running.  I also left the rear hellhound-access door open—flung open the door of the cottage, beckoned hellhounds out and they ran straight down the stairs and into Wolfgang.  Yaay hellhounds.  In my experience dogs don't much like going near a turned-on car.^  I locked up the cottage, threw their harnesses in after them, and we were off again in about twenty seconds.  

^ Would that this kept them safely out of the street.  

††† Not shouting!  Not shouting!  But I may have a few bruised fingers and possibly a new hairline fracture in my keyboard! 

‡ The cute side of this is that by focussing on your ME you don't have to think about how much of it is age creeping up on you. 

‡‡ ME, particularly what is (as I have to keep reminding myself on bad days) a mild case, is way, way far from the worst restraint and constriction you can have on your life.  I'm just talking about me here.