Unexpected Handbell Jubilation

 

We rang a quarter peal!  Of bob minor!  (Sitting down!  In my WARM* sitting room!)   And I was on the tenors!  This is my first quarter not on the trebles!

            It was starting off to be a bad evening when Fernanda cancelled at the last minute.**  I have been working hard at my bob major, and I'm getting anxious to find out how all this time on iPhone Mobel and Pooka is going to translate.  I know it will have done me significant good, but I want to know how much and how significant.  And then there it was just Colin and Niall and me . . . BLAAAH.  So we settled down to ring some bob minor, and I was on the tenors, which are what I'm trying to learn this decade.  And Niall started calling bobs and things . . . and about ten minutes in I thought, oh . . . fiddlesticks.  I wonder if he . . . and another ten minutes went by and I thought, oh, dreck, he is.  At which point my hair started tickling my face and my nose began itching like crazy, which is what happens when you're ringing a quarter peal. 

            We did it!  We did it!  We rang a quarter peal in honour of heat and hot water! 

And in similarly frivolous mood, here is a link to a frivolous interview and she's also running a giveaway:  http://iamareadernotawriter.blogspot.com/2010/12/bir2010-book-giveaway-pegasus-chalice.html 

* * *

*WarmwarmwarmwarmwarmWARM!  And there was hot water to wash the tea mugs!!!  YAAAAY!  And I'm looking forward to a HOT BATH tonight!^  . . . Not that this happy outcome was achieved without some struggle.  I dragged myself out of bed this morning in time to be capable of remembering what to do with a ringing phone^^ by 9 am.  When the plumber was supposed to ring me. 

            No one rang me.

            I took everything back out of the bathroom cupboard again, wrapped a few Christmas presents, and was stared at by hellhounds.

            At 10 am I rang the plumber.  Oh I do apologise, said the bloke on the other end in the standard meaningless British phrase.  Your plumber called in sick today and we've had to shift everybody else's schedule . . . give me ten minutes and I'll ring you back.

            At 10:30 I rang them again and got their receptionist who is (of course) the only person you can ever get any sense out of.  I will ring you back, she said, and she did.  I then rang Peter, who toiled back up to this end of town to house sit again while I briefly hurtled some increasingly restless and inclined to be indignant hellhounds.

            Came home to a plumber.  This was plumber #2 from yesterday.^^^  Clearly plumber #1 had called in sick from shame.  Either that or he was light-headed from fever when he was here yesterday.  But plumber #2 seems to have been the business:  because I have HEAT!  I have HOT WATER!~

            Now tell me why everything that has fit beautifully~~ and, forgive me for reminding you, repeatedly, on the utterly unchanged middle shelf in the cupboard, which is where the sixty-three duvet covers and four hundred and ninety-six pillow cases live, suddenly no longer fit, now that I'm putting them back in for the last time.~~~

^ I'm getting behind on my reading. 

^^ AAAAAUGH!  STEP ON IT!

^^^ Who, just by the way, is a member of a multi-dog household. 

~ I have a terrifyingly large hole in my bank imbalance.  The Forbes list is entirely made up of plumbers, right?

~~ Well, not beautifully, exactly, but it fit 

~~~ I hope it is the last time.

** Poor Fernanda needs a new plumber.  She's now been without heat and hot water for eleven days.  And after another futile wrangle with her current nest of vipers, she broke, and has gone off to Whortleberry to stay with her son, who has heat and hot water.  The last three days while I've been doing a certain amount of snapping and snarling on the subject of plumbers, I have kept reminding myself that my lot at least perform.  Eleven days in this weather?  Shouldn't this be illegal or something?  I admit I don't see Fernanda, who is rather precise and ladylike, happy at a local homeless hospice, but. . . .