Unnecessary excitements

 

So, last night, I had begun writing the blog*, and the frelling little Outlook pop-up box kept getting in my face and whining about not being connected.  Oh, shut up and cope, I snarled—I mean I murmured softly.  And then I went on line to check something—I forget what—and Internet Explorer declined to connect either.  Fie. 

            So then I went through the whole stupid exasperating tarantella** of unplugging and replugging and closing down and restarting and hanging from the ceiling singing a merry song and making dents in the plaster when you throw chairs at the wall.  ARRRRGH.  And I remained disconnected.  Hence the note from Blogmom last night that I was having Raging Technical Difficulties and would not be posting a blog.  Yes, I could write a blog off line and . . . uh . . . figure out how to send it to Blogmom and ask her to post that.  But writing a blog without internet back up is way too much like hard work.  At least when you have a sieve-like memory.***  I was thinking about this last night, while I was (fruitlessly) waiting for the mews wifi to shake itself loose from the grip of the doldrums and refrellingconnect.  My old hard copy Britannica is in Peter's bedroom, and he's asleep by the time I'm writing the blog . . . and the annual volumes, after Peter got cranky about the annual volumes,† now live at Third House.  This is not deeply convenient for when you're writing a blog entry right now.  At my end of the kitchen table at the mews I have within easy reach:  the 1977 edition of the Chambers [British-English] Dictionary which is fabulous††, the Penguin thesaurus, the Oxford Compendium of English lit, Brewer's Phrase & Fable and 100,000 Names for Baby, which is an unbelievably bad and badly edited book, but it serves the purpose of stimulating me to come up with names like Zgruban.†††   This still only gets you so far.

            So I read back issues of the London Review of Books for a while . . . and nothing happened ('the server is not available.  If this condition persists, please contact your administrator, however, blunt instruments are not recommended and we take no responsibility for the damage you may do to your singing voice').  So I emailed Blogmom from Pooka, telling myself that it was time I got an all-options plug-in toggle for Astarte because the keyboard on an iPhone is suitable only for flower fairy fingers . . . and went back to the cottage‡.

            Today . . . the plot thickens.  It's only the old mews laptop that won't go on line.‡‡  Peter's computer goes on line fine.  Astarte goes on line.  And my little knapsack computer, brought down to the mews for evidentiary purposes, goes on line.  Waaaaaah.  I just want stuff to work and leave me alone.

            Meanwhile . . . in the first place, of course, having been glued to Pooka all morning, the moment I left her hung over the back of a chair so I could get on more freely with watering 1,000,000 potted plants‡‡‡ she started barking at me.   Hannah has landed§ and will ring me again with a rendezvous point as soon as she meets up with her driver.  I've said I can find anywhere in Mauncester, just tell me where.§§

            . . . She rings back:  the driver says he's going to drop her at a pub, the Egg and Custard, on the Caerphilly Road.  The Egg and Custard? I said, under the just-proven-erroneous impression that I'd at least heard of all the pubs in Mauncester, the Caerphilly Road?

            Emphatic male quacking in the background.  Egg and Custard, confirmed Hannah.  On the Caerphilly Road.

            Okay, I said dubiously.  I can look it up.

            One frantic, husband-involving search later:  There is no Egg and Custard in Mauncester.  The nearest Egg and Custard is in . . . I don't know, Brittany, Alsace, Hokkaido, somewhere.  Not Mauncester.  It's a long way to Hokkaido.  Oh, and there's no Caerphilly Road in Mauncester either.

            And the mobile phone number I have for Hannah doesn't work. . . .  

TUNE IN THIS TIME TOMORROW FOR THE NEXT THRILLING INSTALLMENT.§§§           

* * *

 * And this is what I wrote (waste not, want not):

HANNAH IS COMING, HANNAH IS COMING, HANNAH HANNAH HANNAH HANNAH IS COMING.  YAAAAAAAY.

            . . . The consequent need to do housework.  Unyaay.  In fact, uuugggghhhh.

            Mostly visitors do just fine up at Third House.  Easier on everyone.  Everyone can go to bed when they want to^ and get up when they want to and make their own breakfasts (when they want to), and not only when they want to but as they want to, with no resident gremlin saying, You can't scramble eggs in that pan!  You aren't going to drink coffee out of that mug, are you?   There is also an extra loo at Third House for those occasions when the person in the bath falls asleep.  Third House has many advantages. 

            But there are a few people even in the life of a forty-eight-yesses-out-of-forty-six-questions-on-the-introvert-test introvert that one positively wants to have underfoot.  In my life one of them is Hannah.^^  Therefore I need to ensure that the cottage is not so frightening a habitat that she decides she has urgent and permanent business in the Azores.

            There are no mice nesting in the sofabed:  check.

            The coffee filter thingy is not wrist-deep in dust and dead beetles:  check.

            There is nothing living in the back of the refrigerator that bites:  check. 

            The cobwebs at the top of the stairwell that I can't quite reach, even with my telescoping dustbrush at its full extent, are staying at the top of the stairwell and have not descended to become over-friendly with stairway users:  check.

            The vanguard of the outdoor jungle has not penetrated round either the door or the kitchen window frame sufficiently to be a danger to the urban unwary:  check.^^^

            The hoover hasn't exploded, and I can still use the freller . . . sigh.  Check.^^^^           

^ Hannah, sadly, is an early riser. 

^^ I will still tell her which pan to scramble eggs in however.  But she's allowed to use any mug.  Probably.  I can't be sure till I catch her using the wrong one. 

^^^ This becomes more of a problem later in the season. 

^^^^ I haaaaaaaate vacuuming.  HAAAAAAAAAAATE. 

** Spiders have a lot in common with computers when you stop to think about it.  They both have too many legs (material or immaterial), a bad attitude (graphic), and a ghastly habit of rushing at you (literal or metaphoric) when you're not expecting trouble.  But really you can tell they don't have your best interests at heart the moment you set eyes on one.  

*** This would be a sieve that has also been used for target practise by the local rifle club. 

† Which is cheek, you know, since he married me for my Britannica.  I've told you this joke, haven't I?  He married me—twenty years ago, remember, before the internet was a resource for commoners and the technically challenged—for my Britannica.  I married him for his membership in the London Library.  Peter has dropped his membership in the library—which means I'm groaning under the extreme subscription price by myself—I haven't pulled a Britannica volume off the shelf in years . . . and the annual volumes are accumulating at Third House.  

†† It and the old American Heritage Dictionary of 1969 are my favourite dictionaries.^  The OED is . . . second.  It's a very good second, but it's still second.  And neither the new Chambers nor the new American Heritage is a patch on the classics. 

^ The poor old AHD is in fairly rough shape as I spent several years sitting on it.  I wrote HERO sitting on my old AHD.  I've never had a proper desk with a proper desk chair, which means height adjustments must be made.  The AHD was the perfect extra thickness for that particular chair, and conveniently butt-breadth.  

††† And rather a lot of books on knitting and learning Japanese. 

‡ Where, yes, I can get on line, but that's not where I spend my evenings. 

‡‡ It really wants to retire.  Really really really. 

‡‡‡ We're going to have a hosepipe ban any minute:  driest March in meteorologically recorded history, I think.  Just so long as they don't have a madperson-carrying-a-gazillion-cans ban. 

§ . . . at the right airport.  In England. 

§§ I should know better than to say things like this. 

§§§ Hey.  You already know I'm a cow.  And I'm a cow who needs to go to bed early because Hannah does^ AND BECAUSE THE SODBLASTED CLOCKS GO FORWARD TONIGHT. 

^ Yes.  She's here.  You can relax.