Nonstandard Monday

 

Today has been a long spectacular hurtle that even almost six years with hellhounds ill-prepared me for.   I am expecting to fall off my chair and lie on the floor moaning and twitching feebly . . . probably before I finish this blog.  I can possibly semaphore to Darkness what buttons to press to hang it* but I do not guarantee my usual elegant peroration and epigrammatic finish.**

            I was so unnerved by Oisin’s praise last Friday that I’ve hardly known how to practise.  This is that old ‘something to lose’ thing.  The great thing about beginnings is that you don’t know how yet.  It’s all good.  Once you start learning anything . . . you have somewhere to fall.  Down.  It’s very frustrating having no particular talent—or in this case, voice—but it’s also liberating.  I don’t have to take it seriously.  I can obsess, because I will obsess, frivolously.  La la la la la la.  And (for better or worse) it’s not like I’ve discovered my inner Beverly Sills or anything.***  But there are increasing numbers of (fleeting) moments when there is maybe even something going on with my singing . . . and occasionally, thrillingly, a few of these moments string themselves together.  It’s not the high F in Che Faro—F is not high—it’s the terrifying sticking your head above the parapet.  This is your big moment . . . Noooooooo.  Eeeeeeeeep.  And I tend to sing it accordingly.†  Plus that ratbag ‘ben’ you have to sing it on, which is not singer-friendly and which does not help.  The other song I particularly wanted to look at is The Minstrel Boy—yes, I am a sap, sue me—because I start the run up to that first (unhigh) F without much trouble and it’s like ‘okay I can do this’ and then on the second run up to that same F I lose my nerve and get all thin and squeaky.  I think it’s something about emotional engagement—you may remember that this song got mixed up with Diana’s death for me—and it’s like suddenly, whoa, uh, no, maybe not.  But I love the song.  I want to sing it.  Singing is so frelling revealing, even when you do it badly.  Your Blasted Body Is Your Blasted Instrument, Get Used to It.  Um.  And I don’t know what Nadia did—I never know what Nadia did, even though she tells me††—but my last go through was rough and raw and rather awful, but there was something there, you know?  My problem is mostly about shutting down.  This was about opening up to the extent that I could no longer control it.  Speaking of eeeeep.  Eeeeeeep.

            The day was already going a lick.  I’d got down to the mews late (of course) and had my head down over my computer slightly longer than I should have and thus fed hellhounds lunch slightly later than I should have.  But they were milling around my feet looking for Mysteriously Dropped Chicken Bits Oops so I (foolishly) wasn’t expecting trouble.  Whereupon Chaos decided not to eat.  This was absolutely classic Chaos—he was clearly hungry, it wasn’t that he’d picked up some bloody tourist’s dropped chicken bones in the street yesterday—but some frelling ritual or other for a Monday in an even-numbered year when Aldebaran is in the ascendant and Jupiter aligns with Mars had been left incomplete.  ARRRRRGH.  At slightly after the last minute he ate after all YAAAAAAAY, and we then tore back to the cottage because I had an errand to run on my way to Nadia†††.

            I was at best going JUST to make it back to New Arcadia for Niall to pick me up and blast off to Curlyewe.  But I made it.  And then we sat outside the Curlyewe church for fifteen minutes because our handbell apprentices were late.‡ 

            We rang handbells till people started showing up for tower practise.  And then I grabbed my new tower.  And . . . the worst of it is, I like Curlyewe.  Nice bells.  Very nice bells.  And, furthermore, eight of them.  We rang Grandsire Triples.‡‡  The last thing I need is another Monday tower that is, furthermore, too far away. 

              And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to fall out of my chair. 

* * *

* No, you’re wrong.  If I can learn to circumvent the WordPress gremlins and hang a blog post . . . so can a moderately intelligent dog. 

               Of the local selection, Darkness is the one who is willing to find problems outside his immediate self-focus interesting.  Chaos . . . not so much.  Chaos does not speak the standard human-canine language.  There certainly are days when I shout YOU ARE THE DUMBEST ANIMAL I HAVE EVER MET . . . but I’m speaking to myself.^  Sighthounds have been bred for thousands of years^^ to make their own decisions.  They can’t be asking you for help when they’re flat out after a gazelle.  This has its drawbacks in modern urban life.  Darkness, however, is clearly trainable as most of the world understands dog training, and I am a Bad Owner because I am neglecting this because I don’t know what to do with his brother.  Chaos has his own view of the structure of the universe and while I am the centre of it—more theatrically so than I am Darkness’ holy altar of all—manifestations of his zealous dedication are his own and not particularly open to negotiation or adjustment.^^^ 

            Anyway.  If this post ends abruptly and there are a few short dark steely-grey hairs drifting across the margins, you know why. 

^ Today, for example.  I had a major hissy fit meltdown this afternoon—worst in some time.  Worst since I started singing when my computer is really pissing me off because screaming hurts my voice. +   The cause is that most of my ME symptoms, barring the really life-stopping no-brain, what planet is this, no-energy, never mind I don’t care worst ones, have all come back in a mean-spirited rabble, as a result of . . . wait for it . . . my daring to eat a little restaurant food with Fiona the other night.  I ordered carefully, it was a small meal and there was nothing in it I’m not allowed.++  All my joints hurt, sleep is something that happens to other people, and anything I eat makes me ill.  THIS IS SO GREAT.  THIS IS SO, SO, SO GREAT.  I was running upstairs at the cottage just before I shot off to a long rest-of-day series of events and one of my frelling knees gave out and I had suddenly  Had.  It.  Paroxysm ensued, complete with radical and substantial screaming.  This was right before my voice lesson.  It’s also a really idiotic waste of energy, when you already have ME. 

            I’ve never met a dog this stupid. 

+ I admit this works better some times than other times.  There was a fair amount of shouting at the Metropolitan Opera last night.  

++ Okay, what was in that tea bag? 

^^ No, really.  Salukis have been around recognisably since 7000 BC or so.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saluki 

^^^ See:  eating. 

** What?  

*** All right.  I admit it.  Siiiiiiigh. 

†  Siiiiiiigh.  Another category of sigh. 

†† Except occasionally.  When she invokes Teacher Secrets. 

††† My watchband broke.  Months ago.  It’s a perfectly good watch.  And they don’t make watchbands for it any more.  Finally about the third jeweller I took it to said that she thought their repairpersons could do it.  And they did.  But it still doesn’t close correctly and I predict the mend is not going to last long.  Then what.

            And so to cheer myself up, on the way back to Wolfgang, I made a lightning raid on WH Smith and bought . . . five knitting magazines.  Just to see what they’re like, you know?  The one I was looking for was Vogue Knitting, because they keep trying to sell me a subscription to my iPad, and I have this nostalgic craving to see it in hard copy first.^  On first glance, VK wins hands down for the yarn porn aspect.

            I need more stuff to read.

^ One of the ones I bought is American, so it’s not that imported knitting magazines are too subversive for the UK market. 

‡ It’s okay.  I was knitting. 

‡‡ Only a plain course.  But something went Horribly Wrong and I thought nooooooo I can’t even ring a plain course any more, kill meeeeee, but Niall told me afterward it wasn’t me, it was someone else.  Well, I’m sorry for the someone else, but I’m relieved to be permitted to go on living.  Even if I did make a, ahem, dog’s dinner of Cambridge.