Handbells, and further bulletins on comparative ickiness

 

Niall and I went haring across the landscape this evening*, looking for Curlyewe.  Our new lot of handbell ringers are from Curlyewe and last time they came to New Arcadia Niall suggested, despite my frantic gestures,** we come to them next time.  ARRRRGH.  I do not commute.  Commuting is something other people do.***

            Niall picked me up tonight, so all I had to do was hold onto my seat.†  But Curlyewe is in the same section of enchanted landscape that Tir nan Og†† is, which is to say that you can’t get there from here, and even if you could, you’d miss it in the fairy mist.  Maps lie, and signposts move around.  Possibly Niall had in mind outrunning the magic.

            I guess it worked, since we got there.  Eventually.  I had been even less enthusiastic about our expedition when I found out they were expecting us to ring at the church.  Doesn’t someone have a sitting-room we could use?  A nice warm sitting-room with mod cons like an electric kettle and a loo?  Whimper.  So I was wearing six extra layers and fingerless gloves††† and a good thing too.  Although there was both a loo and a kitchen with an electric kettle . . . there was even an electric fire, which Enoch put up on a shelf and angled down at us as we sat in our little circle . . . and I was still freezing to death.

            But handbells were rung.  Farrell is back at university, but Oliver is beginning to ring little touches of bob minor;  Enoch is beginning to get through plain courses of bob minor;  and Olga . . . needs more self-confidence, and an iPhone with Mobel on it.  She is bringing back horrible memories of Niall and Esme trying to teach me. . . .

            But the main thing is, the three of them really aren’t ready to cope alone, and neither Niall nor I have a regular free evening left.  I don’t know what we do now.  Pity we can’t use a little of that fairy magic and call up a handbell-ringing golem. . . . 

* * *

* At an extreme rate of speed.  Frell it, honeybun, I want to live to my sixtieth birthday.   

** You could see him thinking, poor thing, she has cramp. 

*** Yes, I’m a cow.^  But it’s a little like judging a book by its cover.  There are too many books.  If I really, really hate the cover well, great, there’s one I don’t have to buy.  DISCARD.  YAAAY.  There are too many interesting things to do and see and get involved in.  If they take more than twenty minutes to get to, great, there are closer ones.  DISCARD.  YAAAY.

            I admit there’s a sliding scale about this.  If Nadia were a bell tower, I’d be looking for something closer.^^  And the Japanese conversation lessons I’m still promising myself after I finish SHADOWS, which is a little perverse, but there’s no way I have brain or energy to start now, will be farther away than Nadia.  However, they have helpfully said that a good deal can be done via Skype.^  While they also, equally helpfully, send me occasional links to interesting events at the Japan Society in London. 

            Anyway.  Niall is a nicer human being than I am.  If it were up to me, if a bunch of beginners want to learn to ring handbells, they can come to us.  A bit like I go to Nadia—or to the language school.# 

            . . . Oh, and yes, both my Japanese cookbooks arrived.  Someone on Twitter (?) asked a few days ago.  I think that’s one of the things that got buried in the post-flu avalanche of Missed Stuff.  It’s not that the flu was all that severe—it was a ratbag but it wasn’t serious—it’s just that I’m always not quite coping as a way of life, so any spanner in the works really does me in, like a mild wind will knock over a cardboard house.  I was going to blog about my new cookbooks—they’re lovely.  Maybe I still will.  I can pull them off the shelf## and add them to the pile of things to be dealt with NOW.  RIGHT NOW.  I MEAN NOW.   

^ I’m also a cow with ME, and driving is a genuine bugbear. 

^^ On a heavy Monday, let’s say when I’ve done a particularly intense stint of work before my voice lesson, and Niall isn’t going to Colin’s that night so if I want to go I have to drive myself, when I get home again I may be just beginning to see the little smoke wisps in my peripheral vision that mean STOP NOW. 

^^^ Supposing Skype is in the mood.  A language I know—which is to say English—is usually pretty challenging and video?  Are you kidding? 

# Which may indeed turn out to be too far.  In which case I will have to find a Skype pixie/hobgoblin/troll and bribe the frell out of it. 

## Yes.  They’re on a SHELF.  I hope you’re impressed. 

† YAAAAAAAAAH.  It’s amazing what a 15-year-old Peugeot can do. 

††  Er—Tir nan Og, Hampshire.  I have rung there occasionally.  When I can find it. 

††† NO NOT THOSE FINGERLESS GLOVES.  They’re still in a bucket in the greenhouse. 

Diane in MN

I’ve never had a plastic bag break, but oh how I appreciate the ewww grossness of your situation. I have taken to using plastic gloves–the disposable exam-glove kind–when doing public pick-up duty with my critters, and keeping an extra one in my pocket just in case of some unexpected disaster. So far so good. 

I have a large-economy-size box of those disposable gloves because I seem . . . to get myself in icky situations, one way or another, somewhat regularly.^  But as a town dog owner, I go through one to four plastic pick-up bags a day.  Even if we get out to the country for the long morning hurtle, the afternoon hurtle is pretty much invariably in town.  That’s a lot of plastic.  The local pet store, after listening to me whine about it for several years, finally found a source of biodegradable dog crap bags that seem to be genuinely biodegradable even after you’ve read the fine print . . . but it’s still a lot of plastic.  I certainly use the gloves . . . but I’m under the impression the bags leave a smaller, you know, footprint.

Re Williams

As someone who milks cows on a dairy farm two days a week, I can tell you that it does wash off. 

Well personally I draw AN ENORMOUS THICK LINE, LIKE MAYBE ABOUT A MEDIUM-SIZED ASTEROID WIDE, between herbivore crap and carnivore crap.  I’ve spent years of my life mucking out stalls, but I think I’d have trouble working at a kennels, and I’m even a dog person.  Herbivore crap is just not that big a deal.^^  I’ve come into direct personal contact with . . . well, an awful lot of horse, including scouring foal, which is pretty unpleasant, cow, which is always sloppy, goat, including scouring goatling, sheep and rabbit.  There are probably others.  But it never occurred to me in my barn days that washing my hands and putting my jeans and flannel shirts through the washing machine wouldn’t be enough. 

PamAdams

I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse. 

Oh gods.  Oh gods.  I’m not laughing.  I’m really not . . . RRRMBGGLK.  NOT.  LAUGHING.

 b_twin_1

I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse.

 

. . .  given the number of people on the forum who have access to animals with copious excrement of all types I humbly suggest we don’t carry on with “mine’s bigger than yours” 

::notgigglingeither::  ::NOT::  I don’t think that’s what was happening here, but you’re probably right we want to ensure that it doesn’t.  But I’d differentiate between indoor pets and you farmers.  I’ve worked on farms, and it’s also a different mindset.  So PamAdams’ interesting experience and my exploding dog bag are in the same category, as are you and Re Williams in the same other category.  

^ This includes in the garden.  I scatter pelleted chicken manure by hand, because it’s quick, easy and efficient that way.  The bags all say STERILIZED but I am much happier in gloves somehow.  And I once had a carton of mealworms break all over the kitchen floor, and having very promptly shut up hellhounds, scrabbled (most of) the escapees out from under the corner overhang of cupboards and so on by hand.  Speaking of mealworms I haven’t checked on the robin’s nest in a couple of days. . . . 

^^ Which, since there’s so much more of it, is a very good thing.+ 

+ I don’t think I’d do too well mucking out the big cat cages at the zoo either.