Unscheduled Excitement
So I overslept again, although this may be due in part to having turned the light off rather late, and went pelting out with hellhounds at about which point I noticed that it was a beautiful day although chilly which meant that if I was going to slam any more bulbs into the ground* I should do it at once. Really the last thing I want to do when I get in from the morning hurtle is go straight back out again and haul large bags of compost around including climbing over the hellhound fence because like cats and doors you’re always on the wrong side of it. I want to make a nice pot of tea and sit down and drink it. But I went out anyway while the sun was still pretending to be high and warm, and planted lots of bulbs**.
Then I did come indoors, and I wrestled with Various Computer Things for a while, and then settled down to try and finish the first of my WATER, uh, anecdotes. I’ve told you, haven’t I, that Putnams wants to reissue WATER with the new FIRE next autumn? But they’ve suggested, in a sort of jolly, carrying-all-before-them manner that we might like to add a little new material to make the reissue more interesting. Peter and I have been engaging this idea in a variety of tentative, experimental methods, as you might first use the long pole and then the dart gun on the large tiger which has suddenly materialised immediately in your way as you attempt to go on about your normal business of planting bulbs, writing novels, etc,*** and with the brutally clear awareness of McKinley as the person who can’t write little short drop-in extra-material things, she writes novels.† Anyway we may have a plan. So I was attempting to put my part of the plan into words††, and then it got dark, and I had to walk hellhounds in the dark, because it’s November and it’s dark all the time now till March, and then I had to go to bell practise.
We were a bit thin on the ground for bell practise. I was the third up the ladder and then there was a pause, and then there was a fourth . . . and the magical fifth, which means doubles methods are possible . . . and then the crowning sixth person which means you can ring your doubles methods properly, and you can also ring minor. Deep sigh of relief.
No! Wrong! No sighing! No relief!
Edward looks at Vicky and Vicky looks at Edward, and Vicky says, we could ring a quarter peal. And Edward says, in the similarly offhand way of someone else who has rung hundreds of quarter peals and thinks no more of them than of brushing their teeth or putting their shoes on, yes, we could do that.
We could do frelling WHAT???
So. We rang a quarter peal this evening. Eeep. Plain bob minor. I rang inside. I survived–with a little help from my friends. I even survived a couple of Evil Three-Four Down Dodge Singles. We got the quarter. Because of the ME I’ve been lying kind of low about ringing quarters; this one is my first in months, anyway, and possibly this year, because the last one I rang, while we did get it, we got it because Edward dragged me through about the last ten minutes. My stamina and/or ability to concentrate simply ran out. And I have been reluctant to go through that, or put anyone else through that, again (although Edward claims not to remember it).
But we did it tonight. And it wasn’t awful. Happy Halloween. Big trick or treat.
I am now eating chocolate to soothe my nerves. And then I am going to bed early.††† I have a horse to ride tomorrow morning.
* * *
* I mean pots: I don’t do bulbs in the ground any more
** There’s a lot to be said for doing it in pots. It’s so easy. You just scrape off x amount of compost, toss the little beggars in–pause to straighten them out so the fat ends are pointing down and the pointy ends up, although the truth is the stems will grow 180° around if they have to: ask me how I know this–and sling the meanwhile-sterlised-chicken-crap-fertilizer-enriched x amount of compost back in again and pat it all down. Not forgetting the netting to depress the mice.^ None of the horrible wrestling with bulb planter, other plants, weirdly solid impenetrable earth and amazing numbers of flints and assorted buried rubbish, etc.
^ At present, but it’s only the beginning of November, the trick seems to be that they come to a nice freshly-patted-down stretch of clear earth and say, Ah! Lunch! Then they fossick around a little and discover the netting, have a half-hearted go at it and think, oh, I’ll have another try later, just now I think I’ll take the soft option . . . SNAP. The festoons of mouse traps are even less lovely than the edgings of visible netting, and if a nice rodent-eating owl family would come nest in the camellias, I’d be planting things like pansies over the bulbs as I used to, but I am going to have spring bulbs this year. This afternoon I bought more mouse traps.
*** Next venture will be turning around and running away.
† And blog entries, of course. And footnotes.
†† Short words! A FEW SHORT words!
††† Earlyish. Less late.
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