Death on Toast, revisited

 

Stale toast.  And it wasn’t nice bread to begin with.  Is what I feel like.  Ugggggh.  I’ve been praying [sic] if I can just get through this past weekend before the ME floors me—which it has been going to do, roughly since Ms OTP, but she’s had help—then I’ll try to disintegrate graciously.  And I did—get through the weekend, I mean, and I even made it to my voice lesson yesterday*, although to the extent that this is Headquarters interfering with my life that may be because I stopped on the way to take that paperwork to the Street Pastors office,** and Headquarters seems very hot on this idea that I join the SPs.

But today . . . unnnh.  I’m not so good at gracious but the disintegration went expeditiously.  Well I got another inch of leg warmer knitted.  Winter is coming.***  Which means I had maybe better start seaming up the six or eight leg warmers I’ve knitted since last year.

* * *

* Started learning Voi Che Sapete last night.  It’s mostly just learning the frelling Italian and slightly about what order the bits come in because I’ve listened to it at least 1,000,000,000 times and ought to know it off by heart first try.  The drawback to this is similar to the one about having to sing after Nadia:  I have Frederica von Stade and Joyce DiDonato and Cecilia Bartoli in my mind’s ear;  following that lot is not good for morale.

** One of the unexpectedly enjoyable things about not having a dog minder any more is that I’ve been taking hellhounds along on Mondays to my voice lesson and stopping somewhere, usually on the way home, to have a hurtle in an unfamiliar area.  The usual paranoias apply about other people’s dogs, but Nadia is backed up against some genuine countryside and there are some good footpaths.

The disadvantage to this system is that I can’t stop to do errands, at least not anywhere that doesn’t allow dogs, which unfortunately is most wheres.  I am totally, meltdowningly deranged about leaving dogs in cars any more—I’ve told you that dog theft is up by pushing 300%, depending on who you read, since we had the whippets and used to leave them in the car in the shade with the windows cracked open.  Ah the innocent days of yore.  This meant that leaving hellhounds for the ten minutes necessary to have Maxine’s and my papers examined was TRAUMATIC.  I was telling myself, it’s a church!  It’s a church car park!  I’m sure there are thieves Operating in the Area, but I doubt they bother much on a weekday afternoon when only a few beat-up staff vehicles are on show.^  As it happens there was a huge, extremely beat-up red van parked in a nice shady corner so I parked in its shadow, Wolfgang’s beat-up redness looking a lot like a strange extension, a sort of four-wheel version of a motorcycle and sidecar.  There was a hedge behind us and with hellhounds lying down no one would even know they were there.  Except for the staying lying down part.  They popped up again as soon as I got out of the car leaving them behind.

The point however is that they were still there when I came back out of the church again at a dead run—smelling of the friendly resident dog, to the hellhounds’ great interest when I greeted them.^^    And there were no strange scratches around Wolfgang’s doorlock.^^^

^ Let ’em wait till Sundays when the car park fills up with well-off parishioners.  I’ve been to this church;  it has ’em.

^^ You could see the thought-bubble forming:  we knew you were going off without us to have an interesting time.

^^^ And while I’m still officially on probation till I’ve survived, including that my teammates haven’t killed me, my first four SP patrols, I’ve got my posting:  second Fridays.  Us fresh post-trainees have also already been added to the mailing list—just received the first general request for a swap by someone who can’t do his usual scheduled night.  Eeeep.  It’s all getting increasingly real.

Since I haven’t been good for much else today+ I’ve been researching heated waistcoats, heated insoles, waterproof trousers, and . . . something to do with my hands that isn’t gloves and doesn’t involve keeping my hands in my pockets, which isn’t allowed.++  I’ll think about this again one of these days when I have a brain.

+ It’s a very good thing that the hellterror is self-exercising.  She’s been out caroming off the walls most of the day.  A few toys and the occasional interaction with a hellgoddess# or a hellhound and she’s happy, as well as in perpetual motion.  How did anyone survive bull terrier ownership before crates were invented?

# Generally of the No you may not eat the dustpan/brush/All Star/walking boot/mini collapsing snow shovel/feather duster/hellhound blanket/rug/furniture variety of interaction.

++ We’re also required to wear only navy blue and black.#  This had better not include All Stars or I’m in serious trouble.

# The official SP kit is all navy blue.  And dead boring.  Just by the way.  I am a frivolous person.  But you knew that.

*** I saw my first Brussels sprouts for sale today.  Winter is here.  I like Brussels sprouts.  Brussels sprouts are reasons to view the coming of winter in a positive frame of mind.

My birthday, and the aquisitive aspect of Christmas, are also good things to remember while the days get shorter and shorter and shorter.  I still haven’t chosen my SatNav.  Peter has also said he’ll buy me a wristwatch—it is just a trifle tiresome having to fish Pooka out every time I want to know what time it is—but I haven’t seen The Wristwatch yet.  I thought, briefly, that I had, flicking through a free magazine bundled with one that I actually, you know, buy.  Oh, that’s a really pretty watch! I thought, and looked at the caption.  £19,530.   WHAT?  What’s it made of, roc’s entrails?  . . . The search continues.