Performance opportunities, various

 

Other authors jet around the world, climbing on a new airplane every day and swanning into the Excelsior Suite where they will be tended lovingly by squads of specially trained steward persons*, disembarking at the next flashy new city into the arms of a platoon of swanky minders who will whisk them through security** and on down a swirl of yellow brick road in a Rolls-Royce Ghost to the twenty-star hotel with the gemstone mosaic check-in desk, the extra-large lift containing the cocktail pianist and her baby grand—if you want to keep your twenty stars, live elevator music is a must—and the gold lame shower curtains.  Where they*** will rest and freshen up before the day’s performance.

Well, I’m going to be part of the live performance tomorrow too.

It’s that handbell wedding I mentioned on Wednesday.†

And I have to wear a frock.††

That’s the big problem with public handbells:  you’re visible.  I can’t remember, and while I’m sure it’s on the blog, the archives of this thing are scary and I’m not going to try to look it up, how Niall inveigled me into ringing my first handbell wedding.  They don’t happen that often and the memory, especially the post-menopausal memory, fades, so when the next handbell wedding opportunity comes along you think, oh, sure, whatever, I didn’t die last time.

I did know that it was Gemma’s friend’s daughter getting married, and I did know that it was happening at St Colossus.  I also knew that this is Gemma’s first wedding with a set of handbells in her hands—and that she hasn’t been doing it as long as I had been when I rang my first, nor was it my best friend’s daughter I was doing it for.†††  Gemma, however, while not without nerves, is a much more sanguine personality than I am, and she’ll (probably) be fine.  But I am aware that Niall and I exist in this case to support Gemma. . . . And meanwhile the ME is not folding its tents and silently stealing away, it’s doing its big fat toad imitation in the middle of my life.‡

All of this suddenly got very real and dramatic and in my face this afternoon when we met up for the wedding rehearsal.  Niall’s usual bells are small, and even when the ME is bad I can usually ring them for a while.  But we are frelling swamped in St Colossus, so we’re going to be ringing—or at least we’ll be trying to ring—suitably colossal handbells, approximately as large as Sunshine’s cinnamon rolls‡‡.  And they WEIGH.  Gorblimey do they weigh.  And Gemma’s on the trebles, the littlest pair, because they’re what she knows the best, so I’m on the middle pair, whiiiine.  Today we kept swapping off between the big bells, because being familiar with the actual bells you’ll be ringing is a very good idea for something like a wedding when you’re going to be both nervous and distracted—people will come up and stare at you and say things like ‘oooh’ and ‘how long does it take to learn?’ while you’re frelling ringing. . . . Anyway.  We swapped off between the big bells so we’d know what they feel like and Niall’s little bells to save my blasted wrists and arms.  I’ll push it tomorrow but if I push it today I won’t have anything tomorrow to push with.  If we were ringing with Colin we’d do a once-through for what it’s going to sound like in all that space—I think I said on Wednesday that you tend to ring handbells at ye olde quainte littlee countrye churche, and even then the organ wins—and go for a beer.  But Gemma’s a bit out of practise . . . and she was kind of realising what it’s going to be like tomorrow. . . .

I have to go to bed early.  It’s a morning wedding, WHYYYYYYY?, there ought to be a law against morning weddings.  I have to get up early enough not only to sprint my hellcritters, but to figure out what I’m going to wear.  Gemma is going to be dressed for going-to-her-best-friend’s-daughter’s wedding and I don’t want to let the girlie side down.

* * *

* Note that I don’t envy this part of the deal at all.  Getting on a plane every day is never a good time.  Even business/first class isn’t always worth much.  As I say on this blog at regular intervals, my last proper tour was for SUNSHINE.  I already had ME, so one of the things my publisher agreed to do for me is that any flight longer than x, and I forget what x was, but a few hours, they’d guarantee me business or first class.  This doesn’t amount to a lot when ‘first class’ means the first several rows of a cattle-car plane and you get the same legroom and the same food as everyone else although they’ll give you an extra little packet of interestingly multi-coloured snacks, plus the plastic flute of warm prosecco.

** Ha ha.  Every time I start feeling guilty about refusing to go anywhere I think of airport security.  No way.  No frelling, fruitlooping, huzzahing dingleblatting way.  And now I’d be fighting the knitting needle battle as well, which as I understand from dispatches from the front, still involves Airline A agreeing that bamboo needles are okay but aluminium are not, Airline B refusing to have bamboo needles either but plastic ends on circulars are permitted, and Airline C being violently allergic to any twiddling with string whatsoever, including cat’s-cradles on your fingers to amuse the children.  And you won’t know this till you’ve already checked your bags and are stranded with your carry-on.

*** The authors.  You haven’t forgotten this is about authors, have you?

† Ringing handbells for a wedding, okay?  Stop interrupting.

†† Authors do not necessarily have to wear frocks, of course, even female authors.  But I’m sure I told you I eschewed the pink All Stars and black leather jacket to buy the First and Probably Only Power Suit of My Life for the SUNSHINE tour because I was not getting into vampire chic in any form.  Not.

Say.  Maybe I’ll wear my power suit tomorrow.

††† Unfortunately I will probably not have the opportunity to ring handbells for Hannah’s daughters’ weddings.  Sigh.^

^ I don’t have to remind anyone here that we ring ENGLISH CHANGE-RINGING METHODS not TUNES, do I?

‡ Yes.  Mixed metaphors alert.  The ME eats your brain.

‡‡ As Big As Your Head, if anyone who reads this blog hasn’t read SUNSHINE.