Even more KES comments. And a little ranting and raving.

 

I was running late this morning.  Well.  So surprising.  Not.  And I came blasting into the courtyard at the mews about mid-afternoon, didn’t quite spurt gravel into West Sussex as I spun Wolfgang into his corner, flung open the door and . . . almost stepped in a Gigantic Pile of Dog Crap.

I attained orbit a whole lot faster than those slow rockety things from Cape Canaveral ever did.  ARRRRRRRGH.

Among other things I get so frelling tired of feeling that I’m permanently bent over in a posture of abject apology for having dogs at all.*  And I believe there aren’t any full-time dogs at the mews/Big Pink Blot—which is run as a kind of Grangerford/Shepherdson cooperative—I think dogs may not be allowed in the articles of whatsit.  But there’s at least one other regular canine visitor . . . whom I’ve yet to see on a lead . . .

ARRRRRRRRGH.

And of course everyone around here gives me the hairy eyeball, because our multi-legged (and hairy) comings and goings are extremely conspicuous.  I PICK UP AFTER MY HELLCRITTERS.  AND THEY’RE NEVER, EVER OFF LEAD EXCEPT UNDER MY [EXTREMELY HAIRY] EYEBALL IMMEDIATELY OUTSIDE THE FRONT DOOR FOR A PEE BEFORE THEY GET BACK IN THE CAR.

People are slime.  Make a note.**

On the other hand I had a rush of blood to the head and had a look at bobs and singles for St Clements minor and Colin and Niall and I had an Amusing Time this evening trying to ring touches of something besides plain bob minor. Of course Colin had to louse this up by splicing in plain courses of plain bob when I’m trying to grapple with the essential horror of ringing any bobs and singles on handbells.  I don’t need any additional abominations of random courses, however plain, of some other frelling method.  I am meanwhile welded to the St Clements trebles*** till further notice.

Kalimeg

Yes. One might ask “Where is Kes going to sleep? Not even Cademon can guard against such antics as these!”

SLEEP?  You think anyone is thinking of SLEEP in current circumstances?†

And WHERE is she? Is this really taking place in a house she rents? In the same world as the motel and the truck? Really?

Oh, now, let’s not get all literal here.  Is Sunnydale any less Sunnydale just because the hellmouth happens to yawn evilly on a corner near you?

I also wouldn’t count on Merry being . . . normal.

Julia

There’s a corpse on the floor and a man speaking High Forsoothly, but I, like Kes, am most immediately concerned about bloodstains on her books.

Yep.  Under stress we revert to type.  Me too.

Oh wait, why didn’t we see Sid next to the body? Did she move out of the way in time? Last thing from last week was Sid biting the shadowy attacker’s arm, and now our shadowy attacker is bleeding all over the floor, dead.

No, no, no, no.  Not to worry.  This is a McKinley story, right?  Can you possibly imagine that I would let anything dreadful happen to Sid?  If I would defy the Story Council to give Kes a dressing-gown if she wasn’t wearing a nightgown, do you really think I’d let them do anything nasty to Sid?

Although this is another example of the weirdness of tiny-chunk serials.  You’ll see Sid again this Saturday.  I couldn’t get her and the books into last Saturday’s.

Watermelon Shoulders really isn’t terribly good at explaining, is he?

Well, High Forsoothly is very bad for the mental processes.  Think of all the drivel Gandalf could spout when he reverted to Ancient Mage mode.

Dear me… poor Kes. If she knows how much blood is in the human body, she’s doubtless well aware of what it means when your sword has a name.

Yep.  After all she writes that stuff.

And what a place to stop! “We have need of thee”!? … Can’t wait for Saturday!

Kes, on the other hand, would be very grateful to hide under the bed.  If she had a bed to hide under.

Diane in MN

doing a serial in tiny chunks like this

No problem with tiny chunks. Big problem with tiny MEMORY!

Yes.  Now try and imagine what it’s like being the author with a tiny memory.  No—wait—no—wasn’t it urglfwiddy in ep 4012?  Didn’t the attack mushrooms eat Gelasio’s new inamorata?  Was Serena’s to-die-for crumble pear, plum, peach or rambutan?

There will probably be quite a lot of tidying-up to be done for the hard-copy version . . .

This is, of course, not the author’s fault. But I am quite looking forward to some future date when Kes will be available in one BIG chunk

. . . toward that BIG chunk we are ALL looking forward to.††

Katinseattle

I’ll also just add here that while forum members don’t rank in the millions or anything, if I posted a birthday KES for every forum member who had a birthday . . . I WOULD BE VERY BUSY WRITING KES.

Helpful comment: No matter how many millions of readers you get, you’d still only have 365 KES episodes to write.

Oh, another frelling literalist.  In the first place there are weird odds and statistics about people’s birthdays:  http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22978,00.html

Never mind the logic of how you get there, twenty-three people doesn’t seem anything like enough to produce two with the same birthday.  These odds however were made vivid to me in junior-high chemistry [sic] and there weren’t even quite twenty-three of us in that class—but another girl and I had the same birthday.  So what’s the other end of that—how many forum members would we need to produce birthdays EVERY DAY of the year?  And if there are more than one birthday person on a given day, will one episode satisfy them?  Or if person x got an episode this year, would person y—with the same birthday—expect their episode that day the next year?

I prefer to reject the whole birthday-ep notion unilaterally.  It’s so much easier.  For me.

Dhudson

1. I am going to start calling someone, anyone, really, “Watermelon Shoulders”, cause it cracks me up.

Assuming that you will apply this to someone whose physique includes large powerful shoulders I hope you will tactfully ascertain in advance if the cognomen will be appreciated in a positive manner.

2. I am not sure whether to be glad or upset that I will never have strange apparitions in my house as I have not one, but two techies.

I’d go for grateful.  Kes is not going to be having a good time for a while.

 3. I am saying this quietly as to not get hurt, while I love Kes, I just recently reread Pegasus and the ending is a killer and I would really love to read Pegasus II. So please, Robin, please, keep writing both!

Hey.  I want to keep eating.  I have a desire so overwhelming to read PEG II—and PEG III—in their perfect, finished entirety that your mere readerly longing is comparatively speaking a rose petal drifting in the bottomless ravine.

* * *

* Let alone three dogs, which anyone but Southdowner might find excessive.

** Pav took against someone for the first time in weeks the other day.  This jerk has three or four working-hunter type dogs, spaniels.^  Because he is a working-hunter type bloke he is clearly superior to the rest of us with our wispy pet dogs, and while his dogs do obey him, they are always off lead and he clearly doesn’t feel any great need to curtail their fun in terrorising the riff-raff.  His big male thug doesn’t like my hellhounds, and they return the sentiment.

I saw this delightful crew coming toward us and I picked Pav up.  I don’t need the hassle and she doesn’t need to be intimidated by testosterone-poisoned idiots.  The human jerk sauntered up to me and said, in as sneering a tone as humanly possible, Are we frightened?  I said in as neutral a tone as possible, There are rather a lot of you.

I think it was probably because he stank of ciggies, and Pav is passionately anti-smoking^^, but it may have been that I didn’t sound as neutral as I wanted to.  But she went ballistic, which Jerkface, fortunately, found amusing.  He sauntered off . . . and I staggered, with my ballistic bullie, to the nearest bench^^^, where we sat for a long time before she finally morphed back into my Pav and we could continue our hurtle.  Meanwhile we’d lost the last of the daylight.  I think Parliament might pass a law ordering more daylight in December.  Christmas is fine# but I want daylight.

^ In his case this is definitely too many.

^^ Passionately enough I wonder if something happened with a cigarette-stinking human when I wasn’t around.

^^^ This only works if your exploding critter weighs under thirty-five pounds.  I’m glad I don’t have to try and Hold a . . . Great Dane, say.

# Sort of.  Christmas, for this still-new Christian, starts the countdown to Easter again.  I know I got through Easter last year—and I know about the resurrection, thank you—but it still scares the frzzlmp out of me.

*** In the first big fat tier of ordinary methods, the treble only goes straight out to the back and straight down to the front again with none of the jiggy bits that make inside ringing so . . . entertaining.  So if you’re ringing the one-two on handbells, the amount of mayhem that bobs and singles can cause is limited because only the two is affected;  the one just keeps on truckin’.  It’s still bad enough that the two goes doolally, because that changes the relationship between your two bells.

† Granted that the author/recorder’s difficulties with the whole concept of sleep may be muddying the ground here.  OH LOOK.  AN INARGUABLE REASON NOT TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP.  MODIFIED RAPTURE.

†† Well, I hope many of us are looking forward to.  Please.^

^ See:  keep eating.