The necessity of Mozart

 

 

Mozart.  I need Mozart*.

Nina, Ignatius and I went to a concert tonight.  I was looking forward to it, but I was looking forward to it a trifle sulkily because the concert I really wanted to go to was last week, and I can’t now remember if it was the ME, which has been bad lately, or another outbreak of hellhound interiors, but I do remember I didn’t go.  Tonight’s was more of a wild card:  one of these singer-songwriter bozos with the forty-seven guitars and the flugelhorn.

He sounds like a great guy to have a beer down t’pub with:  his inter-song patter is very jolly.  The music . . . unh.   Well.  He belongs to the great tradition of Maudlin Folk and I was ready to run outdoors and find a river to throw myself in during the interval . . . except there was no interval.**  By the end I was catatonic and incapable of throwing myself anywhere.  Walking back to the car was challenging enough.

Meanwhile I’d had another disconcertingly good voice lesson earlier today.***  I’ve had several weeks in a row of ravening bulltiddly out here in the life space that should be shutting me down—it always used to—but my voice has struck for freedom or something.†  NEVER MIND THAT THE MARTIANS/BORG/BODY SNATCHERS/THING/SCUM OF THE UNIVERSE LANDS TOMORROW.  LET’S SING.

I did wait till I’d closed the car door and Ignatius and Nina had driven away tonight before I started on Un moto di gioja.††

* * *

* Although let me say that if this blog sounds bittier and more distracted even than usual it may have something to do with attempting to train the hellterror in Long Down while I’m writing (?) it.^  She knows ‘lie down’^^ perfectly well^^^ as part of the whole sit-stand-down-sit-paw-otherpaw-down-stand-down-sit-paw-stand-otherpaw# itinerary##, but that involves food which keeps her focussed.  My attempts to teach her go lie down, which, with sit, tend to be my bottom line about life with dogs, has met thus far with utter failure.###

^ No, that’s lie down.

^^ No, that does not include chewing on the towel I have put on the floor next to my chair as a bed-facsimile.+

+ Or the frelling table leg

^^^ No, that does not include chasing your tail even within the confines of said towel.

# We’ve begun rolling over, but we haven’t got past the hellgoddess-helpless-with-laughter stage and since that brings on all the hellterror sense of humour, knowing she’s nailed her audience, we’re not at the moment getting too far.

## Yes, I will allow sitting—quietly—within the confines of the towel—but the look of heartbroken yearning for freedom doesn’t actually work all that well on a face involving a large Roman nose and tiny beady evil eyes.

### Dogs are so different.  I think all my previous puppies, once they’ve resigned themselves to having to do things like sit and lie down at all (mostly) on command have been happy to accept their usual bed, crate or otherwise, as the place they Go to Lie Down.  Pav settles down (relatively) contentedly in her crate at the times of day/night she knows there’s no point arguing, but during the hours^ when she knows she should be OUT any interruption of the outness is looked upon with extreme disfavour.  So we’re trying a different approach.

The goal is so that we can all hang out in my office at the cottage together.  I’m EXTREMELY BORED with working downstairs with the laptop—or occasionally the iPad—balanced on top of stacks of books, magazines and packets of critter treats on the kitchen counter.^^  But Pav has to be able to lie down and stay lying down.

^ ‘Hours’ is another of those mutable terms, mostly relating to whether I’m doing anything that can be stretched to include a frelling puppy underfrellingfoot.  Frelling puppy often has an opinion about this too.+

+ So do hellhounds:  Noooooooooo.

^^ Critter treats are a growth market.  Amazing variety of critter treats out there.  We’ve tried just about every cereal-free available.+  Hellhounds don’t like any of them and hellterror likes all of them.

+ The hellterror is nearly cereal-free and will be as soon as I finish feeding her some polluted kibble that I bought in error but with a walking roly-poly dustbin about the place couldn’t be bothered to send back.  Cereals aren’t brilliant for dogs anyway, even dogs that aren’t allergic to them, and you can’t have accidents with something that isn’t there.

** And it’s really too cold for throwing yourself in rivers.

*** Despite the relentless ignominy of following Nadia’s star baritone which is the usual order of events.  I positively like getting there early enough to hear him sing, but when it’s my turn I always have to climb over that little hump of ‘no, no, never mind, I’ll just sit here and keep knitting.’

† It’s also to do with that increasingly weird sense, which I’ve mentioned here before, of it being something like another critter I have to keep fed and hurtled and if I don’t it pines and looks at me sadly.^

^ Within the menagerie concept it and Pav make an interesting contrast.  Pav doesn’t do mournful and despondent worth a dead scorpion, but she is very beautiful.  My voice, poor stunted unbeautiful thing, does forlorn to make Little Nell look like a stand-up comedian.  Although they both tend to hit the ends of their leads when out hurtling.

It’s kind of interesting having enough voice to hit the end of its lead-facsimile.  But the rules change when you have something to work with.  Hanging a bridle on the back of a chair is just . . . hanging some tack on a piece of furniture.  If you put it on a horse however. . . .

I am, as we know, a control freak.  This is part of why it’s taken poor Nadia two and a half years to get some relatively usable noise out of me.  But I admit that the current uncharacteristic state of lack of control is kind of fun.

†† Frell the neighbours.