Fire
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Pink etc
I told you I’d show you my floral extravaganza again after I messed with it a little.*
Pink.
And just in case you think I’ve put all the pink in front to make an impressive photo, this is what it looks like from the other side. 
Meanwhile . . . it’s snowing. It’s not snowing like it’s snowing in Virginia, for which I am deeply thankful, but it’s still snowing. I’ve decided I want a conservatory. Once I finish recovering** from putting the weight-bearing floor in Third House’s attic I’m going to knock down the sitting-room wall into the garden and start putting up quadruple-glazed glass walls and solar baseboard heaters. I might put French doors in the main bedroom and have a sort of full-length bay window on that side too. And then I can fill it/them with tea and china roses and sasanqua camellias and orchids and greenhouse carnations and hippeastrums and freesias and maddenii rhododendrons . . . and chocolate cosmos and begonias and osteospermums and geraniums year round, and I don’t know what all else because I don’t have a conservatory and therefore try to avoid knowing too much about what I can’t grow.
And have I told you about the sedum roof? Yes. I also want to slap a green roof on Third House, which, unlike the cottage, has a nice gentle slope so the poor sedums won’t have to hold on with their fingernails. I’m not looking forward to getting planning permission*** for this but maybe by the time I get to that point† planted-up roofs will be commonplace and the government will be giving us eco-promoting grants to do it. A girl can dream.
Meanwhile I need to be grinding on with PEG II so I can finish recovering from putting the backlist-bearing floor in and begin saving up for the conservatory. And then Marechal Niel†† and I will sit with our feet up in the warm at Third House and admire the snow drifts.†††
* * *
* The kitchen magnet, which on my screen at least you can’t quite read unless you already know what it says, declares: They lied. Hard work has killed lots of people. It could have been a lot worse, given my collection of kitchen magnets.^ I tend not to remember to check for stuff like what’s behind something when I take pictures indoors, and this can be a dreadful mistake.^^
^ One tiny benefit to losing the old house and living in a cottage so small that everyone but the occasional urban flat-dweller suffers extreme claustrophobia upon stepping over the threshold+ is that I have felt free to get out my old collection of crass and insolent kitchen magnets and indeed to augment it. In the old house I used to worry about the grandchildren. Who are mostly by now too old to be disturbed by kitchen magnets, but they’re still all so polite.
+ Books not only furnish a room, they crowd you right out of it. Sometimes several rooms. Sometimes all the rooms in the house.= I was very amused when Diane in MN posted in the forum about lining hallways with bookshelves, and how well this works . . . till you run out of hallways. Yes.
= Okay, the bathroom only has books on the windowsill. Well, almost only.
^^ Some of the biggest cobwebs in England live in my cottage. This is a combination of deplorable housekeeping and a slight soft spot for spiders. I don’t want them on me, you understand, but a nice small tactful English spider that stays quietly in its corner will probably be left alone to get on with it. However any spider showing artistic initiative such as manifestations of ‘radiant’, ‘terrific’, or ‘some hellhound’ in web-weaving is totally welcome forever, and if it would like teeny weeny beakers of champagne or slivers of chocolate these will be provided.
** You’re all buying multiple copies of PEGASUS, yes?
*** Both Third House and the cottage are in a Conservation Area which means you need planning permission to prune your rosebushes—careful, you and your secateurs are altering the amenity level of the neighbourhood—and gods help you if you want to change the colour of your house. Which in fact I do. But not this year. I can’t face the paperwork. And Third House has this whacking monster Leylandii which is so frelling tall the army helicopters trip on it when they buzz overhead and I looooong to have the ugly thing down—and my neighbours are longing right along with me—but the Tree Removal Form is forty thousand pages long and looking at it makes me lose the will to live.
† After everyone has bought multiple copies of PEG II.
†† http://www.classicroses.co.uk/roses/m/marechal_niel.html We had one at the old house and while she was in a relatively sheltered position I don’t think her essential hardiness was the problem so much as her habit of trying to produce her first flush of big fat buds early enough to catch the last frelling late frost of a bad year. And unlike, say, Agnes, who is another early one, if she gets frosted, she sulks. Agnes heaves a deep sigh and starts growing a fresh lot of buds. But then Agnes is a rugosa and rugosas are tough. You have to be firm with your rugosas. Undisciplined rugosas eat unwary small children and absent-minded gardeners and are probably John Wyndham’s original source for triffids. I love rugosas. Just by the way. I have Agnes at the cottage. She’s doing really well. It’s a good thing I don’t get many visitors. With her and Souvenir and the three Mmes and a few others I have perhaps not introduced you to yet, it’s dangerous out there.
††† There are of course other problems with indoor gardening. One of the reasons the floors don’t get hoovered very often at the cottage^ is because I’m busy moving all the plants off the windowsills to clean the encrusted plant sludge off the window glass and the painted surfaces. Did you know that dark red geranium petals will stain your white woodwork? Gaah. And I want an entire conservatory? Well. Yes. I am insane. This is not news.
And you know those pretty little hyacinth vases? You put your bulb in the top and just add water? How about the fact that once the flower spike grows your hyacinth will plunge top-heavily over the side?
Creative use of large pile of magazines.
Creative use of Kleenex box. This bulb was a freller to begin with since it insisted on growing leaves at both ends.
^ aside from melting vacuum cleaners
More about bells (sorry . . . )
It has been way too exciting a day for a woman on no sleep. Well, not very much sleep. I went to bed at an acceptable Saturday-night-before-Sunday-morning-service-ring hour but . . . I have all these books on my bed. I get into bed and . . . and there are all these books. And they look at me. And they make little friendly murmuring noises. Last night I got involved in a quest for a remedy for an old homeopathic client* and this is research I love and that I don’t do as much of as I would like** and the . . . uh . . . hours fly by and . . . uh.***
So when the alarm went off something less than five hours after I turned the light off I was . . . not happy. Fell downstairs groaning and tipped about half a pound of strong black Indian tea into my teapot. Found clothes. Put them on.† Glug down tea strong enough to make my hair stand on end. Hellhounds, by the way, haven’t stirred. Why do you get up at this lunatic hour every seventh day? they say. Close the door after you quietly, okay?
Ran down hill and pelted along pavement in my usual Sunday-morning-and-I’m-late manner, praying that there are only five of us and one of them’s Cordelia.†† Aaugh. I’m the fifth and Leo and Cordelia haven’t arrived yet. And then it gets worse because Edward and Alex show up after Leo and Cordelia. Which means the crucial eight method ringers. Grandsire Triples! shouts Niall jubilantly.
Leo sprints for the tenor. Penelope sprints for the treble.
Which leaves me ringing inside.
Obviously I wouldn’t be setting you up like this if it had all been a big ugly smash. Anybody who has learnt—especially painfully, talent-free-ly learnt—a demanding skill which requires sinew-popping on both the physical and the mental levels, knows the way the process goes in jerks, lurches and gridlock. I’m just coming out of a gridlock period—partly caused by PEGASUS, partly caused by not having enough of the right people showing up for practise, partly caused by incurable native stupidity†††. A week ago I didn’t know I was coming out; a fortnight ago I made a mess of Grandsire doubles which I ought to be able to ring in my frelling sleep‡ and the following Wednesday practise it took most of the evening for me to start getting it back again. Anguish. Despair. Last Wednesday week tiddlywinks was looking like a really good alternative obsession.‡‡
And then this Wednesday . . . I’ve told you that I’d already decided I ought to learn to call call changes, but I’ve been sort of nursing this secretly and not getting out anywhere that anyone might make me try. And then this grisly business about Deputy Ringing Master happened and as DRM I really should be able to call something. Which has meant that I haven’t been struggling very hard when Wild Robert decided a few weeks back that he was going to teach me to call call changes.‡‡‡ This past Wednesday—when I almost didn’t go because PEGASUS was due the next day, but I decided that if I didn’t go ringing I’d probably just run away, and a useful thing about bell practise is that I have an entrenched habit of coming home afterward—Wild Robert gave me this NIGHTMARISHLY complicated pattern to call.§ And to my wholly dumfounded astonishment I did. I did it kind of slowly§§ . . . but I did it. What? I did what? Which also meant that I went home in an absurdly, a ridiculously good mood§§§ and this probably made my final few diabolical hours on PEGASUS much more efficacious and productive than they would otherwise have been.
And then Friday I rang Kent. And today . . . I rang a touch of Grandsire Triples inside. For Sunday service. I have to say that having a go with someone who’s rung exactly one rather shaky proper touch inside for Sunday service is pretty daft#, and I needed quite a lot of nodding, winking and shouting from other band members . . . but really it was not too bad. And ringing Grandsire Triples is one of my biggest, thumpingest ringing goals. Yes, I want to ring Kent because the next step is my first ‘surprise’ method and surprise is the seriously upper-level stuff and I’ve got this far frell and dranglefab it, so, yeah, I want to ring surprise, sue me. Grandsire Triples is a little different—Grandsire Triples is New Arcadia’s default method—when we’ve got the band. If I can ring Grandsire Triples inside it’s like I’m a real New Arcadia ringer. I get the secret handshake and the funny hat. I’ve been wrestling with this idea that I’m a real ringer for a while now—just being able to ring plain bob doubles, Grandsire doubles and bob minor reasonably reliably would make me popular in, I think, the majority of bell towers, and Stedman doubles is a bonus. But then six bells—which mean doubles and minor methods—are the commonest number of bells in English/British towers too. New Arcadia has eight bells—which mean triples and major methods. There are great frelling alpine ranges of eight bell methods, but I don’t care. If I can ring Grandsire Triples I say I’ve arrived.
Next week, you know, I’ll get tangled up in my rope and find myself hanging upside from the ceiling. . . .
* * *
* Who won’t go away. Go away! I say periodically. Go to a real homeopath! No, she says. Keep reading your weird books.
** There is nothing, of the things that I like doing, that I do enough of. It’s all a sliding scale of exasperation.
*** I did find a remedy however. You’re always looking for the ultimate cure and . . . well, the journals seem to be full of ‘cured cases’ but that doesn’t seem to be the sort of person-who-won’t-go-away that I attract. I attract the ones that month to month you think ARRRRRGH but then you look back several years—or they look back several years when you’re trying to make them go away—and you realise that they’re in fact a good deal better off than they were x years ago. Good. That’s what you want. But . . . Sigh.
† Okay, wait. This goes over the head. And this is a sleeve. And these are my jeans. I know they’re my jeans because of all the stuff in the pockets. Some of which will fall out as I put them on.
†† Cordelia can only ring call changes, and if there are only five of us we’ll want all of us ringing. Which means no brain-jangling methods.
††† No I’m not stupid stupid, but I am stupid about most of the basic knacks and aptitudes that make learning to ring feasible. I keep telling you I have a genius for obstinacy.
‡ Ie on Sunday mornings
‡‡ Except that tiddlywinks is also hard. Sigh.
‡‡‡ Not that struggling would do any good, so I might as well go quietly.
§ No, I’m not cruel and/or deranged enough to try and explain it to you. But I will add in a small, humble voice that it would not be nightmarishly difficult either for someone who knows how to call call changes or for someone with those basic knacks and aptitudes referred to above.
§§ A good crisp conductor snapping out commands will get you through in about two minutes. It took me . . . about ten.
§§§ There is this to be said for learning something you are constitutionally very very badly equipped to learn—when you succeed it feels like being number one on the New York Times best seller list. Not that I would know.
# That would be Niall. And I know if I say anything to him about my triumphant touch of Grandsire Triples he’ll look at me blankly for a minute, say something along the lines of ‘of course you can ring Grandsire Triples inside it’s JUST LIKE Grandsire doubles only with two more bells etc, etc’ and then he’ll say, ‘but have you memorized the first lead of Cambridge for handbells on Thursday?’
Guest Post by Diane_in_MN
NATIONAL SPECIALTY (Part 2)
Wednesday had no competition events, and we had appointments for both dogs at the cardiac clinic. But we went to the show site early because of more ribbon duty: I had to meet with the Top Twenty chairperson to proofread Top Twenty rosettes. The Top Twenty is an invitational event for the twenty Danes that have done the most winning in Best of Breed competition in the previous year. As well as recognizing the dogs, this event recognizes the owners, who’ve usually spent megabucks on entry fees, traveling expenses, and probably handlers to get the dog into the Top Twenty. All entries get a huge fancy personalized rosette, and entrants can buy additional ones if there are multiple owners, as is frequently the case. (Megabucks, right?) No one wants to see names misspelled on the huge fancy rosette, and if there should be an error, the Top Twenty chairperson wants to know about it first, so she can tell the owner(s) that the mistake will be corrected. We had a lot of proofreading to do. They were pretty rosettes, though, and from what I heard, everyone liked them.
The best part of the Top Twenty proofing was that it meant the end of my involvement with ribbons. The only things left in the boxes were the rosettes for the conformation show, which would start on Thursday, and they were now the trophy chairperson’s responsibility. Yes!
We left the Top Twenty people trying to get the ring ready to decorate, and took the dogs over to the cardiac clinic. For a number of years now, GDCA has sponsored a cardiomyopathy screening clinic at the National. Dilated cardiomyopathy, an enlargement and weakening of the heart muscle that leads to congestive heart failure, can develop as a disease of old age, but in Danes and some other breeds (notably Boxers and Doberman Pinschers), it can also appear as a hereditary condition in young dogs. Research into the mode of inheritance has been going on for at least a decade, in hopes of being able to identify carriers before they are bred. Until that’s possible, echocardiograms (cardiac ultrasounds) can determine whether a given dog has a normal healthy heart. There are two big advantages to having the ultrasounds done at the National: the same group of cardiologists has been doing them for the last three or four years, so they are developing a nice database, and because the Great Dane Charitable Trust subsidizes the testing, it costs the dog owners much less than they would pay anywhere else.
This would be Tasha’s fourth echocardiogram and Teddy’s first. The Alpha Bitch can be a fusspot, but she was on good behavior—possibly she recognized the vet– and zipped right through. Teddy, who is not a trusting dog, took a little more time. He was okay in the exam room and had no objections to meeting the vet, but he was not at all sure he wanted to go near the ultrasound machine, and he was positive about not liking the contact gel and scanner. Persistence (human) paid off, though, and he did get through the entire examination. (Whether he will be resigned to the process next year remains an open question.) I’m happy to say that both of them have healthy hearts, a relief to me and also to their breeder. And as an aside, the newest portable ultrasound machines are really slick and provide a fantastic look inside the body. Every year, the images get clearer and the data printout more detailed. I’m impressed every time.
On Thursday morning, we headed off for the conformation show. Teddy was in the twelve-to-eighteen month class and wouldn’t be in the ring until early afternoon, but we wanted to watch judging, and I wanted to bring him in ahead of time to get used to the noise and the crowd. His class was pretty big—seventeen dogs–but Teddy made the first cut. He’d been behaving very well, but by the time the judge started sorting out his final placements, he’d been in the ring a long time and was getting a little restless. The judge was looking at him quite a lot. I was looking at him too, and trying to beam messages into his brain (“Don’t blow it! Behave! Stand still!” etc. etc.) He did behave—his handler was working hard to make sure he did—and got pulled for second place. He stayed in second after the judge moved them around the ring for the last time. BIG YAY! (Any placement at a National is a big deal.) His handler had to work almost as hard for his photo as she had in the ring—Teddy took exception to the photographer’s sign, so getting him stacked took some time—but the picture came out well and he looks very nice indeed. (Photo c 2009, Jen Ashley Photos)
Dog judging finished Thursday afternoon. Bitch judging started on Friday. My husband was coming down with a cold, so I left him at the B&B with meds and tissues and went off to watch the girls and SHOP. I’d had my eye on a pair of earrings and since my boy had done so well, it was necessary to celebrate. How could I pass these up?
Best of Breed judging finished up the show on Saturday. There was a big entry of a hundred and twenty champions. Teddy’s sister received an Award of Merit and his father won Best of Breed. The Top Twenty results are announced after breed judging is complete, and the winner was Tasha’s sister. So it was a good day for the family.
And all in all, it had been a good week. We saw friends from different parts of the country. I attended an obedience training seminar, and the dogs got their annual cardiac exams. We found some good places to eat. The dogs stayed healthy, even if my husband and I didn’t, and we came home with ribbons and a trophy. We were glad to get home, but we’ll be ready to do it again next year.
And a few weeks after we got home, my new jacket arrived, complete with Teddy’s portrait. The expression is pure Ted.
One of the show photographers took ringside shots throughout the competition. Here are pictures of Teddy and me in the rally trial, and Teddy and his handler in the Futurity and in the conformation show.
I Have the Nicest Mods in the Universe*
I overslept this morning.** Hellhounds and I got back*** to the cottage after our morning [sic] hurtle and found: 
It’s from my mods. Congratulating me on getting the frelling† corrections on PEGASUS done on time.††
THANK YOU. YOU ARE WONDERFUL HUMAN BEINGS.†††
I was hoping to save some of the wrapping paper which you will note has roses on it, but it’s so damn fragile I’m hoping it’s biodegradable to comfort me for failing. And while I love the new standard cut-flower delivery thing where they come with their stems in actual water . . . there is the little matter of removing the bulge of plastic wrapping that contains the water . . . remember I said about fragile? There was language. As well as water all over the floor.
But hey. There are flowers. Beauuuuuutiful flowers. Beam. Awwwwwww.
I may have to post another photo tomorrow after I, you know, arrange them. It’s been a ridiculously busy day. I have no idea what I’ve been doing.‡ I was going to spend all day on the sofa. Pardon me, what happened? I got about twenty minutes on the sofa. Hellhounds couldn’t believe it when I turfed them off again after less than half an hour.
And I was still almost late for bell practise tonight. Niall after a mere fortnight as Ringing Master is rapidly morphing into a major demonic fiend. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But I don’t recall Machiavelli mentioning the horns and the spinal plates. I’m sure I can see the glitter of incipient green and purple scales on Niall’s forehead and his teeth are definitely growing. There were only six of us plus two beginners so we were ringing pretty much all the time, but because I am also Niall’s partner in handbell crime he picks on me.‡‡ You, do thus and such, he says. —Regretfully repressed rude gestures.‡‡‡
Including making me ring Kent. I haven’t rung Kent in at least a couple of months. Leo is also learning Kent, but he’s rung it more recently; last time we had a good enough band I rang Stedman. I grabbed the treble and held on, which worked the first time through, while Leo got his practise in . . . although I hadn’t actually rung the complex treble on a treble-bob method in probably two months either, so it was a little more exciting than was strictly desirable. I then slunk off to rememorize the inside line frantically in case Niall remembered me later, except I kept getting dragged out of my corner to ring rounds with beginners. Somebody else can do it! I’m busy! You, said Niall. Ring the four. Fiend.
But I got through Kent. It was, as I have a habit of saying about touches I’ve been ringing in, not a thing of beauty, but we got to the end. I was trying not to congratulate myself audibly when Richard started giving me one of his little frelling essays on ringing—I like Richard’s essays, and I particularly like the way he presents them in this calm, reasonable tone of voice as if you have half a clue what he’s talking about—but this one began with the shocking declaration that the line for Kent was easy to learn, it was the practicalities of ringing it accurately that are the problem, and I lost focus a trifle. Easy to learn. There speaks someone who has been ringing for sixty years.
I’m not going to get my day on the sofa tomorrow either. I have a frelling wedding to ring at Ditherington. Never mind. I will come home to flowers.§
* * *
* No, I haven’t warned them to brace themselves for a deeply embarrassing public expression of appreciation. What would be the fun in that?
** Don’t even ask.
*** And it’s been a beautiful day. April in February, as I said on Twitter earlier. Nearly shirtsleeve weather and sunny.^ Wha’? Huh? Hellhounds and I couldn’t cope. We tottered around feeling unstrung and looking nervously in the shadows. Sunlight produces such dramatic shadows. And shivering keeps you awake.
^ Mud to the ankles though. Whew. Some connection with familiar reality.
† The card does not say ‘frelling’. I’m not sure if this is restraint on the mods’ part or an understandable desire not to complicate matters. That’s f, r, e, l, l . . . oh, never mind. I know from experience florists’ clerks can be rather creative even when you spell things out really carefully.
†† They apparently arrived in English, too, which is a bonus. I wasn’t at all sure. By the time I hit the ‘send’ button yesterday evening the stuff on the screen was starting to swim around and form strange new clusters, racemes and inflorescences hitherto unknown to science, botany, or human visual range. But I got a note from my editor’s assistant today saying that she was working her way through them and while you can’t get bloodstains on email it didn’t break off in the middle of a word or anything.
††† There are moments when this frelling blog is worth it.
‡ Oversleeping. And I had another cup of tea with Oisin. Who is going all mean and fierce and telling me he’s expecting something musical out of me next week. Just because I got my novel turned in! What a big bully!^ He had even finally got me my own copy of the Capriol Suite^^. Mind you there is no reason I couldn’t go on playing off the photocopies he’d made for me^^^. I also may have led him on a little because I said that some of my blog people had suggested I set the lullaby at the beginning of PEGASUS and he replied kindly and sympathetically that while he will look forward to it, the thought of what I might consider a suitable lullaby for a three-armed witch and a feminist dragon gives him pause. Ha ha ha ha very frelling funny ha ha. You be nice or I’ll write it for organ.
^ Blondel will probably whap me around on Tuesday too
^^ Which has been OS at the publisher forever. Sheet music publishers make book publishers look like unfallen archangels and shiny harp-plucking seraphim.
^^^And because I am a lazy slut I will undoubtedly continue to play off the photocopies for some time because they’ve got all my painfully worked out fingering on them, and the large red slashes that mean pay attention to this bit, you idiot, and I’m going to resist going to the extra effort to move it all over. Aside from the fact that I am intimidated by all those glossy new clean pages with, you know, covers on either end.
‡‡ I am surrounded by musical male bullies.^ Where did I go wrong?
^ Of course this includes the hellhounds. It does not include Peter, however, who is slightly prouder of being unmusical than the facts support. But it will do for keeping him off this list.
‡‡‡Vicky would not approve of rude gestures. Our tower is even cleaner than this blog. Sigh.
§ More beaming. More awwwwwww.
PEGASUS Thursday
YES. IT’S REAL.
I have something like fifteen books out and this moment never gets old. Looky looky looky what my editor sent me today.
And yes, I met my deadline. . . . by about an hour and a half. Hey, I made it. That’s all that counts.
