Nuts nuts nuts. Business as usual then.

 

I don’t think I told you I was ringing three services today?  Feh.  But I tend to feel that if people want bells they should have bells and it’s Palm Sunday.  Especially they should have bells on Palm Sunday.*  So when Amy phoned me on Friday and asked if I could ring a service Sunday afternoon at St Obdurate in Gentle Dribbling I thought about how, with two service rings plus a bell-free church service, my Sundays are a bit of a wipe anyway, and said okay.

Today started with me having set my alarm wrong leaving me with twenty minutes instead of forty-five to get my rope-pulling hands to the tower YAAAAAAARG and so of course this is the morning that Pavlova would rather shadow-box with the rose-bushes** than crap.  I therefore got to the New Arcadia tower five minutes late, direly undercaffeinated, and only about one-third awake.  And went wrong in Grandsire Doubles which is usually one of the methods I have a reasonably good Sunday-morning-brain automatic pilot for SIIIIIIIGH.***

I went home and drank a lot of tea.  And gave everybody a good hurtle because the afternoon was a trifle overbooked.  And the Easter Bunny had brought me an early present:  the hellhounds ate lunch.  YAAAAAAY.  So I got off to the abbey in both plenty of time and with a song in my heart.†

Where we were five.  FIVE.  It’s the abbey, it’s Palm Sunday, we have four hundred and ninety-two bells and FIVE ringers?  At least I had a chance to redeem myself by ringing Grandsire Doubles . . . and without a tenor-behind, what’s more. ††

Gemma and I managed to lose an hour over a cup of tea††† and I came PELTING back to the mews to whizz first hellhounds and then hellterror around block-facsimiles for the purpose of eliminatory relief—but the weather is SO SUCKY that I don’t think anybody minded.  Then I leaped back into Wolfgang and drove off in all directions for Gentle Dribbling.

To my complete astonishment Amy’s very simple directions were adequate.  I feel that your average directions-giver fails to take into account when, for example, they say ‘next left after the rhinoceros’ there is that ancient aurochs trail that no one has used in thousands of years between the rhinoceros and the road you’re supposed to take, which a very determined person in a very old car that has seen worse and has the scars to prove it, could force herself down.  But in this case both Gentle Dribbling and St Obdurate were right where they should be.  And the bells were not possessed by demons so even on an insufficiency of sleep and getting on toward the end of a rather long day I didn’t do anything that might make the wrong sort of history. . . .

And I joined St Margaret’s tonight.  Officially.  The vicar was holding forth in a businesslike way when I burst through the doors—late as usual.  Lotte said oh, don’t worry, he’s just talking about voting for the council‡ but you have to be a member.  She looked at me thoughtfully and said, you’ve been coming six months, haven’t you?  You’d be eligible to join, if you wanted to.  But you need to fill out a form.

I filled out the form.  And the vicar snatched it away from me and said Welcome.  We’re glad to have you.

I belong to a church.  Yeep.

* * *

* Or Easter Sunday, or Christmas, or their wedding day, or whatever.  Occasions that happen anywhere near a bell tower should have bells.  If anyone is asking me, which anyone rarely does, I would say that includes the town fete, school graduation and the local something or other team winning its first game in twenty years.  Of course I also think that the town council should subsidize us, so . . .

** Which are leafing out, poor blind fools.  MAY I JUST REITERATE HOW MUCH I HATE THIS HARD FRINGLEFRANGLING FROST EVERY NIGHT AND EVERY DAY NOT MUCH BETTER WEATHER.  I was tweeting furiously about this yesterday.  My twenty-three thousand sweet pea seedlings arrived in the post this week . . . and it’s too cold to put them outdoors during the day, never mind needing to bring them in overnight, nor do I have anywhere to put them indoors, let alone somewhere to put them where they can get enough sunlight not to turn ashen and die.  I think I’ve only lost a couple of my begonia tubers—from having brought them in at midnight instead of at sunset about a week ago—and they’ll put up with staying indoors in the dark for longer, but they won’t start growing till they get some sunlight and warmth, and in my experience they’re a little slow off the mark anyway^ and therefore the spectre of having them finally in full flower just in time for the first autumn frosts manifests like a snow-fog vision.  ARRRRGH.^^

^ Unlike, say, dahlia cuttings, which grow like crazy.  If my dahlia cuttings arrive before the weather changes I am so screwed.    

^^ I had only barely taken on gardening as a practical concept that last summer I was in Maine, when Peter came to visit the end of July and drastically altered my view of the future.  But I do remember that the ordinary backyard gardener didn’t buy begonia tubers, you bought plants already in full leaf and just coming into flower.

*** Very slightly in my defense, I yanked myself back on my line again.  Good ringers can do this so fast the rest of the band doesn’t even notice.  This did not occur in this case.

† Possibly I Wanna Be Your Dog

†† It’s perhaps a good thing that I was the one who caught the Dreaded Long Thirds when our conductor called a single.  The thing about abbey ringers is that they are CLUELESS about methods on fewer than seventy-eight bells.  I, on the other hand, am much more likely to get through a touch on five or six bells without humiliating myself.  I did say to Gemma on the way out that it amused me, in a dry sort of way, to be telling someone—ie her—who can ring frelling Grandsire Caters (nine bells with tenor-behind) how to ring plain bob doubles (five bells with tenor-behind and usually the first method you learn to ring).

††† I am short of sleep, time is the evil empire anyway, and I FORGOT I had a third ring . . .

‡ Do I mean council?  I can’t remember the word she used.  Church admin.