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Chalice
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The saga continues
It’s still hot. And it’s doing that catching-up-with-you thing, when it doesn’t cool down enough at night so you’re already starting from half-warm the next morning. I have turned the Aga off. I’ve lived at the cottage for five years and this is the first time I’ve turned the Aga off. Usually even in gruesome weather we get enough of a through breeze on our hill that it gets sucked down through the cottage with all its windows open: and the Aga is on one side of the kitchen island, and the hellhound crate is on the other. But this is that dense, mostly motionless heat . . . and I was seriously freaked out by Darkness being so sick day before yesterday.
I was going to take tonight off. It’s hot. And there’s a pupdate. And there is also PEGASUS*, as there is always now PEGASUS** . . . and I have not one but two canons to try and thwack into a take-to-Oisin shape by tomorrow afternoon. I’ve decided I like canons. And one of them is specifically for posting on the blog. So it’s in your interests that I should take a little of tonight off. Really.***
But I didn’t want you to think that life has got all peaceful and everything and I haven’t got anything to write about.
Last night it was . . . ahem . . . late, even by my standards, when I finally went upstairs to run a bath and start winding down toward sleep. The adrenaline from the opera would keep thrumming. But it was going to be dawn soon and I needed to get back out of bed again to squeeze our slow dawdle in before we were at risk from sunstroke.
And I discovered I had no hot water. I have no idea why I had no hot water.† And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a cold bath even when it’s ninety degrees out there in the atmosphere. It took me another forty-five minutes to boil enough water to create four inches of tepid bath: remember I said I had turned the Aga off? This means I have one rather weedy little plug-in electric burner†† which takes forever to heat anything up, let alone a large pan of water to boiling, and an electric kettle, which boils about a pint. Sigh. It was dawn by the time I went to bed—dawn comes very early this time of year she adds hastily—having thoughtfully unplugged the phone first.
But the phone machine will pick up calls even when the phone doesn’t ring. And when I got out of bed at 9:30 there was still a striking lack of messages from the Bang & Olufsen engineer. So I rang B&O again.
I had been planning to begin this entry with Bang & Olufsen is a big weenie. Unfortunately I have had to stand down from my most emphatic condemnation. But I had not had a lot of sleep and I live by my B&O and had been without it for 24 hours at that point. And the frelling little git who picked up the phone told me that the engineer would get back to me ‘in due course’ and that ‘he was a working man, you know’! (*&^#@]+%$£”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I composed several letters to the president of B&O during the morning’s slow dawdle. And I had a funeral to ring this afternoon so I’d got down to the mews for lunch in a timelier manner than I might otherwise have done . . . whereupon the phone rang, and—calloo callay—it was the engineer. Saying that he could do it now, or he wasn’t sure when he could fit me in. . . .
(*&^#@]+%$£”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I want my B&O. I raced back to the cottage to let him in.
And my B&O is now working again. So that’s okay. And I’m not sure if the engineer rang up the office and said, a word in your ear, Jack—because I had perhaps made reference to my future letters to the president of B&O—but I received a good-customer-relations phone call from either the previous frelling little git or some frelling new git, which was basically five minutes of pressing the ‘apology’ button. But . . . the engineer is just a guy, like my builder: he’s impossible to get hold of, sure, and he rings you up and wants a decision now, which is annoying. But he’s only one guy, and the guys he hires are only more one-guys. B&O is a major frelling international company with a reputation as top end tech and customer relations so slick they leave a slime trail—and allow me to repeat, as I did to the apologising git—that this is the second time in five years my B&O has broken down, which suggests to me that perhaps it is not made of platinum and rubies after all—and I think possibly B&O might consider spending less money on glossy fliers and champagne parties [sic] and hire a second engineer and a secretary to keep track of them, at a particular local franchise.
I can hardly wait to get back to the cottage tonight and find out what happens when I run a bath.
* * *
* I think I’m probably getting to the stage where I mutter characters’ names in my sleep. I’m certainly at the stage that when I wake up I’m often—briefly—in a world where there are pegasi. This beats waking up to a world where there are—briefly—vampires, but the pegasi land has a lot of unfriendly things with teeth too, it’s just that—so far as I know—none of them are undead.
** I am trying to avoid scaring myself unduly about the fact that PEGASUS is going to go . . . on. Gods help me if I just stay in the ‘er—what world am I in? What do I need to be hiding under the bed from here?’ phase through a whole second book.
*** Slightly depending on how you feel about canons, of course. Although neither is exactly a canon as your average counterpoint tutor would recognise it. Fortunately Oisin is not average.
† Although I kept reverting—remember it was very late by this point—to a Very Much Earlier Era where I lived in an ancient flat dominated by a vast oil-and-gas monster which was not only the cooker/stove and the central heating, but also the hot water. But the Aga does not heat my water. I think. Or if it does, why do I pay both an Aga man and a boiler man for annual services? And what does the boiler do?
†† Mind you, I’m grateful for that. I turned the Aga off first . . . and then couldn’t find my two-burner countertop cooker, which I had foresightfully bought when I moved into a cottage with an Aga.^ I have no idea where I might have put it: the cottage is not exactly rife with substantial hideyholes. Little pieces of paper go missing constantly . . . but something the size of a two-burner thingummy in its cardboard box . . . no. I rang the ironmongers’, and of course they didn’t have any plug-in burners. And then, miraculously, they did: someone emerged from the back room blowing the dust off, and I went round and bought the sucker. I don’t actually like raw courgettes all that well, and I’m sure the hellhounds would be outraged by cold food, although it’s always cold again by the time they deign to eat it. I wasn’t even thinking about hot water.
^ I know the usual system is to have a second cooker/oven/whatever. There isn’t room.
Pupdate – and then there were five
by B-Twin
Pups are now six weeks old. Little bundles of tooth and claw. And cuteness. ;)
The “spare” girl has been sold and gone to her new home. It wasn’t the girl I was originally planning to sell but they way their personalities have turned out I changed my mind. Just the three boys to sell now.
The two being kept are Brighid and Bramble. (”Big Girl” and “The Shrieker”) Quite different temperaments so it will be interesting……
So. To the cute pictures. :)
It has been hard to get pictures the last few days because it has actually been raining. (Real rain. I don’t think we have had June/July rain like this for years.)
Me! Me! Me! Me!
Paws!
A Brief Moment of Quiet
A Wet Bramble
Human giving attention! Me! Me!
And some video. :)
Brighid playing with her mother’s “Donkey” toy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjTA1YLxE-Q
Naughty puppies “chasing a bit of skirt”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcehRRxwIyE
Norma
Made it.
And it was pretty fabulous.
* * *
I woke up this morning at 8 am because the phone was ringing.
My alarm was set for 8:30.
The person on the other end of the phone was a robot. From my credit card company. Their fraud division is having kittens (again) over my peculiar card usage. I suppose I do have peculiar card usage–I pay it off the end of every month, which is peculiar enough, so anything I do flags my account. Not to mention the fact that I’ve told them at least four gazillion times that I am not going to have an intimate conversation with a robot. This thing rings me up, says it’s from my credit card company, and wants my secret password? Go boil your hard drive.
The day was getting off to a great start.
Hellhounds and I went for another hot slow dawdle. When we got back and I went to turn on my hideously expensive, less than five years old Bang & Olufsen, which has already had one major breakdown, I discovered that its automatic doors were stuck open and it was making a pathetic cheeping noise, like a chick caught in a fence.
I rang Bang and Olufsen. They said their engineer would ring me.
At about this point Computer Man* showed up, bearing the new plug-in-the-wall internet connection, so I can waste time on the web all over the house. I’ve had the plug-in gizmo now long enough to be utterly disgustingly dependent on it . . . I have one both here and at the mews . . . which is why this one died thirty-six hours after the guarantee ran out and I’m sure the other one, which is a few months younger, is counting the days. I was totally not ready for what it cost. Gods, saints and devils, I could buy Grange Opera and install it at Third House for the money. Nearly. Oh well, said Computer Man, delicately accepting my cheque. At least the new ones don’t catch fire.
What?
Meanwhile it was spontaneous combustion temperature outdoors. As I was waving Computer Man off, my eye was caught by the little old clock that sits on the cabinet by the front door, which was saying nine o’clock instead of noon. I hate it when I let clocks run down. It makes me feel like a Bad Person. So I picked it up to wind it and discovered it didn’t need winding: it had stopped. I looked at the ceiling, on the other side of which stands my Bang & Olufsen.** I looked back at the clock. I rang the clock shop. I had paid almost half a B&O’s worth to get this clock running again: It had been sitting on a shelf at the old house for the last 200 years or so and I like it: it’s sort of good fake chinoiserie. It’s one of the things that made the final cut when we left the old house, but I’m never satisfied, I wanted it to run. The local fancy clock shop said oh yes, well worth repairing . . . and then told me what it would cost.*** When you pay enough to buy a new car† to get a clock running you kind of expect it to stay running. Oh dear, said the clock shop today. Bring it in.
At this point I was thinking, I don’t dare go to the opera: a chandelier will fall on me and I will die of perforations. And the hellhounds will never eat again because no one can exert moral force†† the way I can.
I actually spent lunch not working on PEGASUS††† but cravenly looking up reviews of Norma at the Grange Opera . . . and discovered, okay, if I was walking and unperforated and the heat hadn’t killed me yet either–have I mentioned that I get spectacularly heat sick too? It’s not just the hellhounds–I had to go. So I put on the same dress I wore to Glyndebourne in a heat wave last year . . . and a pair of Birkenstock sandals, because I was not going to cope with walking across a field in lady shoes, and I don’t have a footman.‡ They’re really very nice sandals, with a thin white leather strap, and no one could possibly object.‡‡
It was so hot I nearly had to hire a porter to carry me. And the Grange is trying pretty hard to be another Glyndebourne, which, for those of us who are allergic to the Very Wealthy‡‡‡, is a little trying. But the Very Wealthy are always good for frock-watching.
And then the opera. In the first place I’d forgotten it was another front-row seat. I could get used to the front row.§ It’s a small theatre and a small stage–and what I want to call a tiny orchestra, although there are about 40 of them, so it’s not all that tiny–and you really are right there. I had some trouble with the production–when do I ever not have trouble with the production–it’s trying to be modern and relevant and I don’t think grand opera really does modern and relevant. I think more and more indeed that the attempt to make opera ‘relevant’ as a way of dragging in more punters is inclined to backfire: much better to say opera is the best fantasy going, and come along for the melodrama and the swash.§§
But the reviewers who say that Claire Rutter is a Norma for the ages . . . yes. She’s divine. Not only does she have a heart-stopping voice–she made me cry twice, and while I’m an easy crier generally I’m a bit resistant to deliberately over the top effect-pulling singing–but she projects a real human warmth and emotional truth despite some astonishingly grisly surtitle translations. And this Adalgisa, whom I have irresistably been calling Analgesic for thirty-odd years, manages to hold her own against Norma, despite some Very Weird Acting Tics, particularly of turning the corners of her mouth down like a cartoon clown or a four year old about to have a tantrum, and jutting her chin like she’s trying to be the new Joan Sutherland, which is not really the Sutherland characteristic you want to be remembered for. But their second act duet, the one I call One of the Best Things Opera Has Ever Produced, was glorious. And I was pleasantly surprised in the Pollione: it’s a completely thankless role and there’s basically no frelling way to make the jerk sympathetic. And this fellow isn’t one of your rivetingly subtle actors either: he’s the classic twitch-and-stagger-to-show-emotion school. But in the final act when it’s all over and it’s only a question of how he’s going to get his, he develops some real authority: you at least half believe that the character is accepting his death as his redemption.
And it’s true that I unsettle easily–there are down sides to having an extremely well developed imagination–but watching Norma and Pollione’s pyre being built while they sing their last is creepy. And at the very end they climb up it, and she puts her head on his shoulder and he puts his arms around her (and anyone who has read anything about being burned to death is thinking : smoke inhalation: pray for smoke inhalation) and these guys come on stage with real frelling torches lit with real frelling fire and start waving them around in a way too practical manner under the pyre . . . and then suddenly the whole front of the stage goes up in flame. Briefly. But those of us in the front row may have jolted backward just a little.
I still haven’t heard from the Bang & Olufsen engineer. And the hellhounds, of course, did not eat for the dog minder.
And it got to 95°F in my garden this afternoon.
* * *
* We have kissed and made up about yesterday. I think.
** Which is no longer making a funny noise because I pulled its plug. It’s still stuck open though.
*** You are saying, well they would say it was worth mending. I think they were probably telling the truth: they have a reputation to keep up. They’re the sort of place that when you go in there in your jeans and All Stars you can feel them being liberal and tolerant about it.
† Okay, a small car
†† Colloquially known as bullying
††† Bad me! Very bad me!
‡ Although it turns out the Grange has porters, for those of you who take your picnicking really seriously. I imagine I could hire one to carry my shoes . . . but I didn’t.
‡‡ Maybe I’ll wear them to Buckingham Palace.
‡‡‡ I tried to take a picture of Wolfgang and 400 BMWs, 80 Mercedes, the odd Rolls and a large double handful of glittering tank-sized SUVs, but it didn’t come out. The thing I found especially funny is that as you walk along the unpaved road at the edge of the field, with the car park on one side and the house on the other, there are a couple of short rows of cars on the house side of the car park field, and these are all normal cars, like Wolfgang, some of them old and beat up–like Wolfgang. All was explained when I saw the little sign that said ‘cast and orchestra parking’.
§ And the crick in my neck from trying to read the surtitles. Norma is not one of the operas I know by heart, and I can use a little prompting on where we are in the plot.
§§ I may talk some more about this tomorrow. But just for example: Norma has two sons by her faithless lover, and she considers killing them to save them being slaves when they’re discovered. In the first place, how has she managed to keep them secret for oh, eight years or so? Not to mention the two pregnancies that produced them? And second, in a trying-to-be-realistic setting I become a little testy at the idea that kids aren’t going to be a little freaked out by waking up to find Mum holding a knife at their throats and then pick up their teddy bears and go along with it when instead of killing them she gives them to their dad’s new girlfriend.
Hysterical
None of the emails I’ve sent in the last two days went out. Did you get that? None of the emails I’ve sent in the last two days went out.
I got suspicious when I had an email from Merrilee wanting to know why I wasn’t answering the phone at the cottage when I’d emailed her this morning to please ring me at the mews. So I went investigating the back cupboards of Outlook, because it won’t tell you these things, and . . .
None of the messages I’ve sent in the last two days had gone out. They’re all sitting there with the same FRELLING error message.
This might make a jolly sparkling uproarious blog post . . . if I were in the frelling mood. But I’m not. Can you say ‘really really really bad day’?
It’s still hot.
Tomorrow, you know, the day I’m supposed to be going to the opera, is still on to be The Hottest Day of the Year. I haven’t been to the Grange before, so I don’t know just how outdoors it all is, but I do know it’s based around another of these big old country houses open to the public, this one more of a literal wreck than usual—Peter and I went there once, when it was still just a romantic ruin—but those are certainly tents people are eating under, in the photo on the opening screen, and you park in a field*, so there’s quite a lot of outdoors involved.**
. . . But this is when it starts getting interesting.
We had a hot slow dawdle this morning. We have had hot slow dawdles before. I’m terrible in the heat. The hellhounds are worse. What was it Robert Frost said about the world ending in ice rather than fire?*** The hellhounds are from that place. But we’ve had hot slow dawdles before. Today Darkness came home, lay down for a while . . . and then threw up five times in an hour† and when taken outdoors, which is what he seemed to be requesting—at which point I figured the news was about to get even worse than mopping the floor five times††—had the streaming yellow squirts.
There’s a short loop around the mews, out to the road and curl around through another bit of the old estate, and back onto the mews drive again. I don’t do it very often because it’s only about a ten minute walk, and the hellhounds and I specialize in distance. But in this case I thought we’d come back that way. Today as we turned onto the curl we were sharply addressed by an ugly old woman with one of those faces that brings to mind what your kindergarten teacher used to say to you when you were sulking, What if your face froze like that? This nasty old cow’s face did. And she told me we were on private property. Now, I’m quite capable of walking on dubiously unpublic property, but usually only if I know the farmer or it’s one of those places everyone does walk and you figure there’s safety in numbers. This was genuinely news to me. But we live at the mews, I said, nonplussed—the gate opens on the drive. The gate is for our private guests only, snarled the old bat. I was extremely sorry that Darkness did not choose that moment to have another yellow squirt. Preferably over her shoes.
It was after this that I got back to the mews, was wondering why Merrilee wasn’t ringing me, got her message, and . . .
To sum up. I have various people mad at me for yelling at them.††† My email is working again, for the moment: apparently‡ Outlook had decided—nine months or whatever it is since Blogmom set up @robinmckinley.com—that it wanted authorization. It didn’t tell me it wanted authorization or anything: it just stopped sending my emails, and kept its error message hidden close to its chest. I believe ‡‡ I have resent all the blocked emails—including one or two that will probably make more people mad at me for being late, and for not realizing that the fact they hadn’t answered meant that they can’t have got mine. I hate organized people. I’m supposed to notice someone hasn’t answered by return electron?
Have I mentioned that it’s still hot?
And Darkness still has the streaming yellows. I have my hellhound minder lined up for tomorrow night and everything—and Peter has said he’ll cancel bridge and stay home if that would help—but if Darkness is no better tomorrow, I won’t be going to the opera. I’ll be at home shooting electrolytes down his throat. And damning the universe. Anyone thinking of contacting me about anything, you might want to wait at least till after tomorrow’s blog entry, unless perhaps you’d like to join in a chorus of universe-damning. . . .
* * *
* They want you to dress as if . . . you were going to Buckingham Palace to see your husband gonged. What are you supposed to do about your shoes? Hire a footman to carry your pink diamante heels^ to the door of the theatre, and take your plimsolls back to the car?
^ I wish.
** Especially for anyone foolish enough to be going alone. There is no provision for loners at this lovely-evening-out-opera-experience. For frell’s sake, I can’t be the only person who is an opera nut and/or within (relatively) easy driving distance and who, at those prices, doesn’t want to drag a husband or a friend along merely to save herself from the Awful Stigma of Being Seen Alone in a Public Place Having a Good Time? You can’t book a single seat at a table; you can’t order a meal for one; you can’t even order a picnic for one; they don’t sell champagne by the glass—or even by the half bottle, although it still takes me two days to get through a half bottle unless Peter helps—but they’ll sell you a single ticket for an extreme amount of money and you’ve still got something like an hour and half’s interval to eat your supper in. I feel like the little match girl.^ I am planning to go back to Wolfgang (in my plimsolls) and eat a pack of Organic Roast Cashews, which are my idea of hard rations, and almost worth eating supper in a car to have an excuse for^^. I am debating taking a quarter bottle of champagne in an ice bucket in an insulated cool bag.
^ Only hotter. Dying in the snow right now sounds pretty good.
^^ But not very often, in these menopausal days, when half a cashew is at least an eighth of a pound on the scales the next morning.
*** http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fire-and-ice/
† At which point I rang the vet, who said wipe his feet in cold water to help him cool off.
†† Four times. I didn’t get there fast enough the fifth time, and he threw up in his bed.
††† And the even more distressing truth is that I don’t care as much as I should. I wasn’t blaming them. I was damning the universe. I am fifty-six years old and have regrettably little self control? Fine. Anything you like.
‡ According to Computer Men, who are among those who are mad at me.
‡‡ But belief is a chancy freller
My OBE-winning husband
It is much too hot. It was 91 in my garden this afternoon, according to my maximum-minimum thermometer, when the hellhounds and I had panted back to the cottage from the mews in what should have been the cool of the evening but was reading 86 on the as-it-happens thermometer. Note that both the max/min and the as-it-happens are in the shade.*
I have blown what few unmelted brain cells I had available today on PEGASUS, so how fortunate that the pertinent issue of one of the Hampshire newspapers that interviewed Peter arrived today. And yes, I have already phoned the journalist Amanda Barnes to ask permission to quote her friendly and positive article on my blog. She was amused. She also said yes.**
‘A tall, elderly, bony, beaky, wrinkled sort of fellow with a lot of untidy grey hair and a weird hooting voice***’ is how Peter Dickinson describes himself.
But I think this author, who was appointed OBE this month, is selling himself short.
With two Whitbread Book Awards, two Carnegie Awards (and shortlisted nine times!), two Phoenix Awards, on the shortlist of three for the first children’s laureate, and over 50 books under his belt, Peter Dickinson is at the top of his game. Even at 81 years old.
His ‘game’ is literature. Whether it be crime novels and science fiction or children’s writing and poetry, Peter has excelled at them all. His achievements will be recognised as he goes to Buckingham Palace later this year for his appointment as OBE.
‘I never “became” an author,’ said Peter. ‘I was never taught at school how to write a story. I had my last English lesson aged 11.’
. . . Peter was clearly bound for a career in writing even though it seemed unlikely when he turned up for his first job interview covered in blood and dirt after being run over by a tram. He got the job and wrote for Punch magazine for 17 years.
His inspiration for writing ‘comes from nowhere’ as he says. But perhaps you could be forgiven for thinking it comes from everywhere when you listen to his anecdotes of a funny looking history teacher who waddled into his life and set off his fascination for ancient history or his tales of playing with baboons in his school playground where he grew up in Africa.
But like all great storytellers it is not what has happened to Peter, but the way he tells it that translates into captivating literature.
“My first book came from a dream,” he explained. “I had a nightmare and I lay awake telling it over to myself in order to put the story to sleep. I found myself telling an interesting story!”
The dream became The Weathermonger, a children’s story. It was published in 1968 with Skin Deep, his first adult book, which won the CWA’s Gold Dagger while the other became a television series.
Since then he has gone on to write over 50 books spanning 40 years. Peter’s writing still appeals to readers young and old and he attributes this to setting his novels historically.
‘I have set books in the past which means I do not have to keep up with the way more modern people talk!’ he said modestly.
But his novels are not just set back to his own time as a child but often set in quite different worlds. Take for example one of his most accomplished works The Kin—a set of four stories about homo sapiens travelling through Africa 50,000 years ago.
Peter certainly inhabits a different world to most people. With a thoughtful gaze and a cheeky glint in his transparent blue eyes†, it is clear that whatever daydream he is playing out in his mind is far more interesting than what you or I might see.††
Indeed, sharing his vagabond thoughts was one of the only ways to keep his children quiet on long car journeys many years ago when his family regularly travelled between Hampshire and London.
‘I used to tell the children stories in the car to stop the boys fighting in the back seat,’ he remembered. ‘There was a particular pub we passed that was when I started the story. That way it gave me a few moments to think of something!’
Peter has clearly been an inspirational father to his four children (two daughters and two sons), two of whom work in writing or publishing.
The author is married to his second wife the American fantasy writer Robin McKinley with whom he occasionally collaborates.†††
He spends his days as a ‘seriously keen gardener’, playing bridge and, of course, writing.
‘What I would like is to be shortlisted for the Carnegie one more time,’ he said teasingly about his next ambition. ‘That would make it a round ten!’
* * *
* Please do not feel compelled to write in to say, It’s 111 in the shade here! 91 is way too hot for me. I used to tell Peter that if he lived in a two-up-and-two-down on a paved-over housing estate in the city^ I’d’ve still married him, and I meant it. I’m not at all sure I could say that I’d’ve married him if he lived somewhere that it routinely hit 111 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.
^ There would indeed have been certain advantages if I’d never discovered gardening. . . . two rose catalogues arrived last week. Moan.
** I’ve also made a few tactful corrections of howlers. There may be more that I missed. Or felt came under the heading ‘oh well, interviews are like that’.
*** I have described him to American friends as sounding like he just stepped out of a BBC costume drama.
† Okay, I’ll let the cheeky glint pass, but transparent blue eyes???
†† Speak for yourself.
††† It would be less occasional if she would get her butt in gear.
