In Which It is Revealed that Bell Ringers Are the Best

 

So, what happens when you find a lovely new dog minder, highly recommended and all that kind of thing, who furthermore is starting her own business minding dogs and you are in at the beginning and everything is beautiful and possible, and you get all excited about some of those possibles, and you ring her up almost immediately with two more dates to mind your dogs so you can run around and play in other parts of the world* and she says yes, that's fine, and puts them in her diary. . . .

            What happens is that she rings you back a few days later and tells you she can't do the next date. 

            As honeymoons go, this one may have just set a record for the swiftness with which it is over.  I'm not even particularly clear about why she can't do it:  I think it's something about her pre-dog-minding-business life refusing to take its teeth out of her arm.  I was sufficiently fixated on the fact that she was cancelling that I kind of lost the details.

            This happened this evening.  Fernanda and Niall and I were sitting around making pinging noises with Niall's handbells:  sometimes these pinging noises sounded more or less like plain bob minor.  Sometimes they did not sound like much of anything beyond pinging noises.  (Method ringing on handbells = chords = bad.)  Fernanda is still climbing the handbell equivalent of Nanga Parbat and Niall has a head cold, the kind that gets into your brain and starts rearranging the furniture.  And I am presently very easily distracted by thoughts of PEG II which are developing a kind of haunting, luminescent quality as the pub date of PEG I nears.

            And then Pooka started barking and I thought aaaugh!  Peter!, and ran for it**.  So the adrenaline was already surging when it turned out to be Mavis and when she told me (brightly) that she wasn't going to be able to do the 6th of November after all, my vision clouded over with a strange red glare, my eyebrows grew strangely tight and my hands curled into claws while I made small yeeping noises to prevent myself from biting a chunk out of the Aga, which would have been very bad for my teeth.  I haven't gotten over having a dog minder yet and she's just cancelled my second date.

            This is not a good beginning.

            I went back into the sitting room and cast myself on the sofa in a posture of despair. 

            Meanwhile I haven't told you yet why I need a dog minder on the 6th of November.

            There's a Ringing Education Day.

            They're doing Stedman Triples.

            Last Friday Vicky said to me, because Vicky is like this, although she already knows I will say no because I can never do ringing education days on account of the hellhounds—and I therefore never pay attention to any interesting education days coming up, because I do not enjoy the stabbing pain of thwarted yearning, and when Vicky tells me about them I try to forget—so, anyway, last Friday, she said, there's a day of Stedman Triples on the 6th, are you interested?  And, this being the day after I'd spoken to Mavis and the world was busy opening**, I whirled on her and shouted joyously, Yes! 

            Stedman Triples. Yowzah.  Geeeeeeeeeeeee.  I would love to do a day of Stedman Triples.  I think I actually had seen the notice on the board when it went up weeks ago, but I had resisted registering it, so it would have passed me by, as education days always pass me by, if Vicky hadn't said something.  So I rang up about it and they said that they were almost full but it was still worth sending an application in—so I did, and I was waiting, more or less breathlessly, till I heard, before I told the blog about it. 

            Yesterday I got a phone call pointing out, in a patient and friendly manner, that while my application and cheque had arrived, the SASE for details had not (because I'd forgotten to put one in, sigh).  I assume that means I've got in—?  Do I tell Days in the Life yet?  Maybe not quite yet, just to be sure. . . .

            And today my putative dog minder yanks the rug out.

            So.  Back to the posture of despair on the sofa.  I tell Niall and Fernanda my hideous situation.  They make commiserating noises.  After all, Stedman Triples—which both of them could ring in their sleep, just by the way, but they have both heard me on the subject of my frustration at the lack of opportunity to get on with my ringing around here. 

            And Fernanda says off handedly, I could walk your dogs.

            WHAT?

            Note that Fernanda lives in Mauncester.  It's not a negligible commute, just to do someone a favour.

            I don't have dogs now, but I've mostly had dogs in my life, she said.  I don't mind the plastic bag detail. 

            Gibble gibble gibble gibble I said, or equivalent.  Then I said, YES PLEASE.  Are you serious?  YES!  PLEASE!

            So I may still get to spend all day Saturday, 6 November ringing Stedman Triples.  Supposing I get on the list—after all this.  Whimper.

            But whatever happens, Fernanda now has a slave for life. 

            And I hope as Mavis extracts herself from her old life she may yet become the true and faithful dog minder of my dreams.  Hey, dreams are free. . . .                 

* * *

* Other parts of the world within a short train ride or even shorter drive away, that is. 

** I have to figure out a system about Pooka.  The reason she lives in a pocket or around my neck in a designer knock-off mini-bag or on the shelf beside my bed^ is because she's speed-dialed to Peter's mobile and to the Lifeline people who answer if Peter presses the button he wears round his neck.  That's what she's for.  But it makes sense that the occasional other person should have your mobile number:  like your dog minder.  Or Aaron, who is going to be picking you up at the train station.  But most of the time if it's not Peter I do not need to dive for it. . . . How many different ringtones can I face deciding on and remembering the subdivisions of:  (a) Peter;  (b) slightly less crucial;  (c) slightly slightly less crucial;  (d) everybody else.  Not to mention remembering to assign them.  Although if I stop diving I will have to learn how to pick up voicemail.  Sigh.  Modern life is so complex.  However.  If I can learn to text surely I can learn to pick up voicemail.  Excelsior.^^

^ Or possibly on the table in the next room while I'm ringing handbells

^^ I wish Excelsior would stop occurring to me at Excelsior-like moments.  Well, wrestling with my iPhone contacts is my idea of an Excelsior moment.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may be spinning in his grave at such disrespect, but then he deserves to be spinning in his grave for writing that bloody awful poem in the first place.  Gah!  Blech!  I am not the same species as this man! 

*** As far as a short train ride or an even shorter drive