News of Fresh Disasters

 

Last night the frell . . . I mean, the adorable clever obedient hellterror and I had just come indoors from our final struggle of the day for the Domination of the Young Canine Large Intestine and there was the most colossal ROAR—and the house shook.  I reverted, as one will do, to an earlier and more blizzardy era and thought eeep, I didn’t think we’d had enough snow for it to come off anyone’s roof like that, and I’m glad the hellterror and I weren’t outside when it happened.  There are at least three roofs that slope into my garden*:  my own, Phineas’, and the mini-cottage at the end of my detached neighbour’s garden.  I reopened the kitchen door cautiously and stepped out.  I couldn’t see anything unusual in the dark:  it just looked like my garden, covered in somewhat patchy and trodden-on snow.   I had to go back indoors briskly because Pavlova was terrorising Darkness again.**

By morning*** I’d forgotten about it.  Maybe the new proprietors of the Troll and Nightingale had had a visit from some of the old clientele.  And then coming back from hellhound hurtle one of my neighbours said gravely, I’m so sorry about your wall.

WALL?  I said.  WHAT ABOUT MY WALL?  WHAT WALL?

You don’t know? he said, his eyes opening wide and getting all shiny.

TELL ME, I said.

He pointed up the half-flight of outside stairs to my greenhouse.  That wall, he said.  Between you and Theodora.  It’s fallen down.

Yes.  It has.  There is a gigantic hole ripped out between my garden and Theodora’s, taking the back of my greenhouse with it, and crashing into what used to be her lily pond, of about ten foot square of (ancient) brick and flint wall. 

And neither of us had noticed.  In her case it’s a little niche-y place next to the mini-cottage and not in straight view of any of her windows, and in my case because my windows all look either front or back and this is to the side, and hidden by my extremely enthusiastic little apple tree.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

. . . However, Noble Wolfgang, my seventeen-year-old scion of German automotive engineering, started at the first twitch of the key after three days sitting undisturbed in a snowbank.  Looking for the positive here.  I need some positive.  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah.†

* * *

* Plus the Blight.  The Blight is on the top-ten list for the Ugliest Shed in the Universe, and it sticks up over my wall from one of the grand gardens on the main street.  I hate rich people.  The richer you are, the more selfish and careless of the hoi polloi you also are.  I’m sure there are exceptions.^  But none of them live around here.  I can pretty much tell what you’re worth by how much of a jerk you are. Grrrrrr.  And one of the non-exceptions has a blightingly ugly shed roof that ruins the view from my office window—but it’s at the far end of their garden so they couldn’t care less.  ‘Conservation area’ status—the nonsense that prevented me for several years from cutting down a 900 foot Leylandii at Third House that terrorised the neighbourhood every time there was a wind—only counts if the tourists can see it, whatever it is.  I’d be curious to know if my predecessor tried to stop them from building the Blight.  It was too late when I moved in.

^ Shovelling acres of money into good causes and new opera productions may get you into heaven, but it doesn’t necessarily make you kind and sympathetic to the lower classes.  There are some serious disconnect issues among the unnecessarily well-off.

** We walked home again as a quartet last night.  And I find there is a down side even to the potentially excellent possibility of being able to hurtle three hellcritters together occasionally, which is that Pavlova clearly feels that she is GAINING GROUND and SHOULDN’T SHE BE A FULL MEMBER OF THE BAND NOW?  No.  Next question.  —Moaning ensues.

*** I’m trying to roll myself forward so that morning has some practical meaning in my life again.  If I’m going to try to start ringing Sunday morning service at New Arcadia again (and, very tentatively, I am), and, more importantly, if I’m ever going to make it to Aloysius’ silent prayer group at 8:30 on Saturday morning—and if I’m going to try to make morning Mass at the monks once a week—I need to get up earlier.  A lot earlier.

I told you that Aloysius sent me home with an armful of books on Zen and Christianity, or even Zen Christianity.  One of the things everyone seems to say on all sides of all available fences is that you need a community.  The pure-Zen lot say the same, and I know my experience of sitting at the zendo in Maine supports that.  Granted that I started sitting zazen because I was having a very bad stretch of life, but however rosy and pink your personal circumstances, you are going to do better in company.^  Therefore it seems to me that Aloysius should be holding his silent prayer group at least twice a month, which means—if I’m going to go along and be ballast, because while I’m a very new Christian I’ve been sitting off and on for decades, and silent prayer is something I settle into with a grateful sigh of welcome familiarity—getting up not just early enough to go, but to have given hellcritters a token hurtle first.  See:  being able to hurtle all three together occasionally, like last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

^ I say this with all the teeth-baring resistance of the extreme introvert.

† Inspecting the damage and discussing what the *&^%$£”!!!! we do now with my equally unfortunate neighbour, etc, meant that I missed my voice lesson.