Waiting to be knocked down and sat on
What is the name of the bully in Calvin and Hobbes, that–he’s way more of a ‘that’ than a ‘who’–has no eyes and no forehead, and, one can assume, no brain, just a scribble of hair to keep his ears warm, and calls Calvin ‘Twinky’? I’m being held off my feet by my neck, all right, but in the grip of several squazillion evil viruses. And I’m sure that if I strain my blocked-up ears I will hear a faint echo of ‘twiiiiiinky‘ floating in the aether.
I’m still hoping for a head cold. But it may be flu. Whatever it is, I feel like doom, death and decay, my throat is full of knives and my head is full of old computer components*, and I also know that when whatever-this-is** finishes arriving, I will not only be out for the count, but when the virus gets off my chest again the ME will be waiting jealously for its turn. I keep thinking of all those stories of younger siblings whose elder siblings objected if anyone else bullied them. The ME is like that. If the virus does me for two days, it’ll want four. If the virus extorts four . . . So when I cancelled Connie again this morning*** I told Jenny that chances are I’ll miss Saturday as well. Waaaaaaah. In the phrase that I’m not allowed to use any more, life sucks and then you die †.
At least I also got to cancel the dentist’s appointment. They still wanted me to come in. They said, oh, we wear masks, you know! It’s okay! -It is not okay. Anyway, I cancelled.
Although I then promptly leaped†† into the car and sped off to town to try and wedge a few errands in before I collapsed. MMmmphggghrrrrmp! Which I can’t tell you about because they mostly crucially concerned Peter’s birthday††† and Peter reads this blog. He drops casual little remarks into the conversation like, ‘what an extraordinary story about the dog’.‡ So, listen, here’s what I did: I bought him a purple shag carpet‡‡ for his office and a year’s subscription to the Big Truck and Crocheting Society Newsletter.‡‡‡
I think possibly I’m a little feverish.
* * *
*http://oldcomputers.net/ Oooh. I remember some of these.
** Virus 113VBX2h2h2h960.5, probably. It took out the Pentagon, Psychoheuristics Ltd and the International Tulip Database back in ’96.
*** She’s going to stop whinnying when she sees me^! She’ll turn her back and go stand in a corner of her stall with her shoulders hunched and her tail flat!
^ When she sees the carrots in my hat, more like
† Peter and I have an agreement: I don’t use it, and Peter doesn’t use ‘worse things happen at sea’
†† Well, perhaps not leaped. Perhaps dithered and titubated.
††† The World’s Most Impossible Man to Buy Gifts For has his birthday mid December. A week before Christmas. It’s got nothing to do with lack of sunlight that I have a nervous breakdown about this time every year.
‡ I’m still having a very nasty case of the whimwhams as a result of the reminder of all those shelters and all those puppy farms and all those dumped and deserted pets–all those critters that never have a chance. The betrayal of Small Dependent Creatures–so, children, and also all domestic animals who remain small and dependent whatever their body weight their entire lives–is one of my big issues. It bothers me so much I pretty well Can’t Deal With It, which is the wuss’ way out, sure, but you do what you can do. I give money to charity and keep my head down. Yaay Maren.
‡‡ Really hairy shag
‡‡‡ Here’s a shopping story I can tell you. There’s this insanely expensive necklace that I’ve been mooning over at the jeweller’s for years, every time I go in with a broken clasp or for somebody else’s birthday present.^ It’s just a short plain linked chain in gold and white gold but it’s a really nice chain and it would Work With Everything, for those of you out there who think about these things. I was mooning over it last week when the jeweller gave me the extremely unwelcome news that the company who makes it is stopping making it–or rather they’re going to stop making it in two colours, and only make it in gold, and part of its perfection is the white and the gold. So this was the Last One. Oh, gods, what do I do now? So I asked him, a little hysterically, to put it aside for me–how many stair risers or newel posts or floor boards for next year’s loft conversion at Third House is it worth–and went home wondering where I could come up with a silly amount of money for a necklace? I am not going to ask Peter, he not only bought me my composing software without fuss, he bought it sweetly, you know? And there are limits.
And then I thought of my bell ringing money.
You get paid £10-12 pounds to ring a wedding. It’s not worth it: you don’t do it for the money, you do it because important events should have bells rung for them, so if you’re asked and you can, you do it. But you still go away with the £10, and I have been going home for the last four and a half years and sticking it in a jar. I raid the jar occasionally when I’ve forgotten to go to the bank, but generally speaking I’ve tried to let it accumulate, and I’ve been thinking for a while now that I should do something interesting with it.
So today I went in to the jeweller with an envelope bulging with small used presumably unmarked bills and asked if he minded if I paid him that way, that I could write him a cheque if he preferred but it would be much more satisfying to give him the money as it came from the hand of the bell tower bursar. And he maybe giggled a little but he said it was fine, no problem.
And I have a lovely new necklace.
^ Yes, I thought of buying Peter earrings, but turquoise isn’t really his colour.
Dog stories
This is just way too good a story to remain buried on the forum.
Maren writes:
Has anyone sent Robin the Daily Puppy yet? For one thing, I think Killer there is a prime candidate to be featured, and for another…well, cripes, how could we not have sent her the Daily Puppy?!
Indeed. How COULD you all not have sent me the Daily Puppy? Click on that link, all the rest of you who went ‘ooooooh’ over the pupdate.
And on a related note (/threadjack
THREADJACK?
as they say on some blogs)…right now I have illegally stashed in my apartment
Oh, yaay, the blog branches out! We’re into guerilla peacefare!
one stray lab mix of the black pearl variety.
Someone–it might have been you, or someone else posting to the blog–has been telling me recently that black dogs are always adopted last, that black is the least favourite colour, that therefore more black dogs are put down than any other colour. I can’t deny all this animal-rescue experience out there but it is so not what I seem to see–I would have said black labs are the most common dog on the bits of the planet I have lived on longest–in Maine twenty years ago I would have said they were ahead by a hair or two, in Hampshire I would say they aren’t just the commonest breed but the majority of the entire canine population. There’s obviously some strange negative alchemy that goes on between all those people buying all those black lab puppies and all those other people going to shelters looking to adopt a dog. Black whippets, for example, are rare and desirable–maybe there’s some hidden psychology to the fact they’re called ‘blue’–and the people who get the most excited about Darkness get excited because of his colour (although he’s a shiny dark grey with white speckles, not true black).
One thing that the black pearl site mentions that I couldn’t agree with more is the complete horrible unacceptableness of the slang phrase ‘black dog’ for depression. I want to rescue all those black dogs so cruelly stigmatised and, I don’t know, tie pink ribbons around their necks and teach them a Busby Berkley routine so people will stop being so stupid. Dogs are mortal like us so they have faults–and they can be opportunistic and manipulative or bullying or generically spoilt or positively dangerous–but ultimately they are entirely dependent on us. And what we do with that responsibility can be pretty goddam awful.
Yes, I agree. But I don’t know how the people who pull the plug live with themselves. I mean that literally, not judgementally.
but they have a wonderful large facility, a high adoption rate, and they appear to be rolling in dough compared to my local shelters. Hopefully all this will give her at least a little more time than she would have had here. Anyway, if anyone here needs a new (or another!) dog and is within driving distance of Jackson, please consider giving this sweet and friendly adolescent female another chance at a good life. PM me for pictures, more info, whatever. She should be up on the shelter’s Petfinder list within a few days.
We’ll have chapter two in a minute. First I’m going to spin out the suspense a little. . . .
LRK writes:
Oh, he is just adorable! And what a lovely colour
He’s beginning to pale out. His mum is pale gold, so we’ll see what happens to him.
- also I think he’s starting to develop a personality; he’s not just a – any – puppy anymore…
I entirely agree. That was in fact exactly my reaction to seeing him this week. He’s become himself, not just Puppy, or even Cocker Spaniel Puppy.
Diane in MN writes:
“you never saw a puppy so invested in the awareness that he rules:”
Yes, you can see that this little guy has definite expectations about how the world should treat him, and cute as he is, he doesn’t look like he’ll be a pushover.
His pedigree is a dazzling read due to all the red-letter champions and I was again looking at him this week and wondering if he might in fact be a little bit extraordinary himself. Whether he has a suitable opportunity to express his extraordinariness is another question: he exists to make Daisy happy and to, um, enliven the rest of her family, and he’s already a complete success in that role. It’s a bit like my hellhounds: I suspect, guiltily, that they’d've made good working lurchers, and what they are is pets. But they’re much loved pets, and especially given the sheer number of domestic dogs there are in the world, that counts. Himself is also much loved, and will have a good life.
As I said here recently, once an English major, always an English major. Remember Dorothea in MIDDLEMARCH: she might have been great, but at least she was happy.
But how boring it would be if they didn’t have real personalities.
Indeed. Might as well have one of those battery operated twinkies that ‘dies’ if you don’t take care of it. I never could see the attraction of the tamagotchis: all the nuisance and none of the fun. I want something that wags its tail/whinnies/purrs. Although I guess tamagotchis are cheaper to feed. And the cleaning up after digestive distress is, I assume, virtual.
Have you come up with a nom de blog for the ankle-biter yet?
I started calling him Michelangelo because he’s such a . . . piece of work. And ‘Mike’ will suit him very well, because he’s such a little thug.
My little guy had a growth spurt last week when he got rid of the last of his puppy teeth. He’s now 65 pounds and about 27 inches at the shoulder. If he were a biter, he’d be a thigh-biter by now. Gosh, they grow fast.
Wait a minute, how old is he?? I feel as if you only brought him home a month or two before Mike’s arrival. I thought a big dog like a Great Dane grows up slowly. And, news note: there’s a Vast Hound of the Baskervilles Type Beast that we see the shadow of (and hear the thunderous bellow of) as we pass by on our walks–he’s on a route that we use a lot, but up a stair and behind an evergreen hedge, and from the size of the shadow I hope he does not get loose.* I had a better glimpse of him today, and I think he’s a Dane. Stay tuned.
“But the hellhounds also know they rule, in their slightly-less-likely-to-cause-blood-loss*** way. They are very interested in the smell of the ankle-biter on me, but this obviously causes them no distress of mind or loss of confidence whatsoever.”
The Alpha Bitch is seriously interested in Where We’ve Been when we come home with other dogs on our clothes, with a clear message that we went somewhere that might have been fun and made her stay home. This puts her nose out of joint. Distress of mind and loss of confidence don’t occupy large areas of her mental map.
The hellhounds are much better at my going off and leaving them than I am. (Granted they aren’t preoccupied with the state of their digestion. At least I don’t think they are. It’s one of dogkind’s attractions, that they so live in the minute.) They usually come out of the kitchen crate and watch me putting my shoes on by the door and those little eager, interested faces . . . aaaaaugh . . . I am such a wet. But when I come home smelling of Other Dog they merely get engrossed in whatever my hands and trouser-legs are telling them and then it’s on to the next thing: okay, you’re home, great, what are we going to do now?
Susan in Athens writes:
He looks like great fun on a “return to mummy” basis.
YES. EXACTLY. I am reeeeally enjoying someone else going through puppyhood. He’s adorable . . . and I don’t want one!!!!!! Not to mention that I have two two-and-a-quarter-year-old puppies of my own. They were out doing four-dimensional somersaults in midair this afternoon–the cold weather winds them up–and I was shouting, when are you going to grow up! You can see Chaos, who is always the wind-ier, the madder, the more frenetically perpetually in motion of the two, occasionally trying to remember that if he does x (again) the hellgoddess will yell at him (again) . . . but mostly the hellgoddess yells at him again. Sigh.
Dentist from R’lyeh**’s assistant, by the way, is busy holding out against a springer puppy. Her partner wants one. She does not. She does not want any puppies. I enjoyed tormenting her with tales of Michelangelo *** a fortnight ago . . . and again last week . . . and again tomorrow, since Dentist from R’lyeh is insisting I keep to schedule despite the toothache. † I like watching her face close down and screw up. Rather like a person with toothache. Us dental victims have to get our fun anywhere we can find it.
So. Chapter two:
Maren continues:
“Yeah, I’ll take her. She seems real sweet and she rode nice in the truck. I got a dog at home, and my wife likes ‘em too. Do you want my email so you can check on her?”
So it was a choice between an uncertain future at the shelter and a firm offer of a home. Needless to say she rode off in the tow truck (with my car, which I’ll have to go pick up when it’s fixed), and I got in the rental car and came home to Lola. My mom called the shelter again and they said it was obviously meant to be, as they just got several more lab mixes in today and this one would have been just another face in the crowd.
Southdowner wrote in response to this last:
After all the experiences like that over here I’d guess she probably had a male cream shih tzu
. . . And in defense of confused older women everywhere I want to point out that someone who has lost her dog is very likely crazy with misery and any FOUND poster is going to be worth a call just because she so desperately wants it to be her dog, whatever the description states. I’m glad she got her Dalmatian back.
* * *
* Unless Sherlock Holmes wants to start coming on our walks.
** Who, as well as an Olympic-prospect event horse, has two dogs: a black lab bitch. And a Great Dane.
*** In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo. –Sorry.
† He seems to think what he’s going to do will make it better not worse. Why don’t I feel calm and reassured?
Camellias, redux
My camellias arrived yesterday. Remember I decided I could wedge in three more camellias . . . and ordered seven?* I feel like writing a sharp note to the poor nursery**, which is only doing its job well: hey, you, you don’t have to show me up so fast! I came home from some swoop past/through something yesterday, found two long thin cardboard boxes*** . . . my delivery instructions read: beside house behind gate beside bins, and that’s where they were. † I said ‘arrrgh’ or similar and went straight past them.
This morning when the alarm went off†† it was 37° and sleeting. Joy. Hallelujah. I lingered long enough to get around a cup of tea and then had to bolt for it–but then I usually have to bolt for it, and bolting is quite a good thing in cold falling slush. ††† It had nearly turned to rain by the time we got out again but Peter for some reason had still not climbed on his bike and come up the hill to meet me.‡
Sunday morning is the one morning a week I may actually do a little pottering. You know pottering, puttering, messing about? There are seasons of my life when I forget. But Sunday mornings after ringing I buy flowers, chocolate, and a copy of THE WEEK‡‡ and then I come home and put the chocolate in the cupboard, throw out the old flowers and cough cough arrange the new ones‡‡‡ and drink tea and–probably–do the rest of last night’s dishes. Peter plays bridge Saturdays so hellhounds and I will have eaten dinner at the cottage and I will not have finished doing the dishes because I will have been running out of time to get the blog posted before 2 am so I can get to bed early enough not to need a wheelbarrow§ to get me to the tower Sunday morning.
This Sunday morning I broke my camellias out of their cardboard dungeon§§, with sloppy little bursts of wet cloud drizzling down the back of my neck and causing the necessary expenditure of bad language to increase dramatically. It was done at last, however, and I have a tiny forest of dazed-looking camellias . . . including one, poor thing, which is in flower. That’s my little ringer, a sasanqua, which is to say it’s supposed to be trying to flower now, not next spring, and I bought it because they had an OFFER on any of three sasanquas, and this was the cute one. I’ve been thinking about trying one anyway–I’m always looking for things that flower either early or late, although many have a nasty habit of being tender that comes with this feature, as it does indeed in this case–but it is also fragrant (I think sasquanas generally are?), and I’m a sucker for smell. I’ve been at the mews all afternoon, but when I took the hellhounds out for their afternoon walk§§§ we marched smartly back to the cottage where I left bemused hellhounds in their harnesses while I wrapped my new tender creature in swathes of bubblewrap–oh, gods, the Swathes of Bubblewrap tyranny: the winter version of the Too Many Pots to Water tyranny–and tucked her next to a house wall. Note: she smells divine. Foie gras to unknown luminescent leftovers in the back of the fridge, if she makes it through this winter I’ll buy another one of her ilk in time for next autumn.
However, for your delectation, I have wasted far too much time cruising the internet for camellia photos, and here’s my latest assemblage. I told you I was going for formal doubles this time.
Alba plena
http://www.growquest.com/Camellia%20&%20azalea/Alba_Plena.jpg
http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/Camellias/Camellia%20Alba%20Plena.htm
Ave Maria
http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/Camellias/Camellia%20Ave%20Maria.htm
http://www.nzcamelliasociety.co.nz/Jap1/1.jpg
Dahlohnega
http://www.esveld.nl/htmldiaen/c/cajdah.htm
http://www.camellias-acs.org/display.aspx?catid=3,137,149&pageid=210
Elizabeth Weaver
http://www.camellias-acs.com/display.aspx?catid=3,137,150&pageid=244
http://www.trehanenursery.co.uk/product_info.php?id=45
E G Waterhouse
http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/Camellias/Camellia%20E%20G%20Waterhouse.htm
http://www.camellias-acs.com/display.aspx?catid=3,137,150&pageid=230
Les Jury
http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/sitePlant.php?plantid=1427
http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/Camellias/Camellia%20Les%20Jury.htm
and Gay Sue, the sasquana
http://www.rhododendrons.com/camellias/product/17915/1
http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/Camellias/Camellia%20Gay%20Sue.htm
* * *
* At least I don’t do this with dogs. Like other people we could possibly mention. Ahem.
** Trehane, www.trehanenursery.co.uk I’ve mentioned them before. I’ve bought camellias from several different nurseries but I’ve found Trehane to be pretty seriously the best.
*** Anybody else out there buy big plants by mail order? The good nurseries really have their shipping act down. You get a long skinny cardboard box with the pots, first wrapped up individually in plastic bags, tied or stapled at either end facing inward, so the fragiler part of the plants themselves are protected. Heavy boxes have plant stakes in the corners as stiffeners. Getting the little suckers unwrapped again, however, is an experience redolent of bad language, tantrums, and little scraps of plastic drifting away on the breeze like butterflies. Other than that, it’s a great system.
† It’s always nice when delivery persons can read. I once spent a fortnight wondering where a package had gone. Eventually discovered that it had been put in next-door’s conservatory, the delivery man having been under the impression (somehow) that this L-shaped building, with two front doors with two different name plates beside them and two different house wall colours, for pity’s sake, and a clear demarcation line between, were all the same house. And my neighbour had gone on holiday, and the person picking up the post very reasonably never looked in the conservatory for rogue packages.
†† I get to bed after 2 on a Saturday night, I set an alarm.
††† Then I messed up Grandsire Doubles. Well, it was not kind of Edward on a Sunday morning to call a single on the very first return to lead when I was going to have to do long thirds. This is where a sense of rhythm would be handy: someone with a sense of rhythm could just ring a few extra blows in thirds place and never mind not being able to see what bells she’s over because it’s Sunday morning and the sleet has made her brain cold.
‡ Wimp.
‡‡ Which I’m about to subscribe to because the newsagent ran out of the issue following the American election and I was so cross. There may be only one American who lives in this town, but he might have anticipated that even the English would be interested in the outcome.
Speaking of which, Blackbear sent me this link the day it came out: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us/politics/22obama.html?ref=us ^ about Hillary and her secretary of state prospects, which clearly wants to make ‘yes’ official but has to content itself with ‘is said to’ and ‘would’ and how they’re not going to announce it till after Thanksgiving. And meanwhile the Chicago Tribune published this today:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-hillary-clinton_sun_finalnov23,0,5813736.story
although if someone wanted to tell me that the CT was an impenetrable bastion of hardline Republicanism, I would be very happy.
And now this looks pretty hopeful, which is also from today: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/us/politics/23hillary.html
^ And don’t miss clicking through to the sweet potato and butternut squash soup, although I don’t put white potatoes in mine any more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/health/nutrition/20recipehealth.html?em
‡‡‡ I’m going to do a little photo series on Flowers Indoors some day too
§ with driver
§§ Somebody tell me why a freshly sharpened pair of secaturs which can chomp through clematis stems and apple tree and jasmine twigs like me through a block of Green and Black’s gets all hopeless and sissy and jellyfishy at the prospect of cardboard–wet cardboard–and plastic string.
§§§ In the dark: and it’s still another month till the solstice
Glamour
I did manage to go riding today. Jenny was chuffed because someone who went off to be famous a year ago has had enough of being famous, sold her (successful and very nice) fancy horse and all his fancy kit to someone who wants to spend their lives on the road and plaiting manes every morning at 5 am, has taken a deep breath and become ordinary again. And wants an ordinary horse. Not too ordinary. Connie would do. No. Jenny keeps telling me she’s not going to sell Connie, but people do hang round her (Jenny’s, but Connie’s too) neck occasionally, weeping, and offering ridiculous amounts of money. Connie will never go to Horse of the Year but she’s top drawer ordinary.
She was also rather loaded for bear again today. Jenny managed to wedge me in for a lesson–I having missed my normal Tuesday lesson due to press of canine circumstance–and every time we went past the (closed) door of the indoor school Connie got several inches taller and, you know, elevated. What price self-carriage. Once there were actual feet visible under the door: I mean, feet. How totally alarming.* Jenny had clipped her again this week, so at the moment she looks like a contour map, and she’s probably feeling a bit chilly. And Jenny said she’s short of exercise because Jenny hasn’t had time** to get her out often enough. I’ve been worrying that she seems to be having too many loaded-for-bear days–oh gods I’m a bad rider and a bad influence–but it occurred to me that your fit horse is your lively horse***, and Jenny makes a point that work is to work, and is impatient with people who let their horses slop around at a shuffle on a slack rein. None of that with any horse of hers. Which suits me very well, since shuffling on a slack rein is boring. But there’s a certain amount of reaping what you sow involved. Fortunately Connie’s saddle is a nice old Stubben and it kind of bends around and helps hold you on. Chains and padlocks would be better but Connie probably wouldn’t like the clanking.
Then I raced home in time to feed hellhounds lunch before I clattered off to my next thing, which was handbell practise for this carol gig at the old folks’ home.† We’re improving: several of the carols were recognisable this week. We’re only working on a few of the really, really obvious ones because we’re hoping our audience will sing along and drown us out. I suggested passing out lyric sheets.
Then I finally got down to the mews. †† We had some old friends of Peter’s coming by–well, they’d been there for lunch †††. Cough. Cough. Ahem. ‡ Fortunately they’re used to me, although they hadn’t heard the ‘handbell carol’ excuse before. But I was listening to what they’ve been doing and are about to do–they’re both taking half-year sabbaticals and going to India–Henry was last seen on his tailor-made kryptonite-alloy bicycle‡‡, pedalling from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. She has a pilot’s license and we get occasional postcards from her in Turkey or Alaska or wherever her little group of small-planes pilots have gone for fun this time. She and Henry go to New York City for the weekend occasionally for the shopping. They also have a sailboat. I’m tired–and more than a bit dazzled–just thinking about it.
Except I’m just as bad, in my stay at home way. I was thinking about glamour–Henry had, of course, bicycled down from London (it’s only about 75 miles, he said carelessly), which meant he could flash his bike at us: it really does look a bit like a rocketship without the rockets–we see Georgina oftener, so I’m a bit more inured to her flying. I know if I accused either of them of being glamorous they’d look nonplussed and then burst out laughing. I, of course, know that I am not the least bit glamorous, and any‡‡‡ reader of this blog knows it too. But I get an awful lot of book mail taking the glamorousness of Being a Writer as a given. And riding a round ten-metre circle§ is glamorous, as is ringing a touch of Stedman Doubles§§. Glamour is not only in the eye of the beholder, it has a lot to do with the angle of the light at the time.
* * *
* Jenny went out, told Miles that Connie was having a silly day, and to please play somewhere else.
** Guilt. Guilt.
*** Being exercise girl at a race track never appealed to me, and you read these very blasé interviews even with top flight dressage riders who say, oh yes, my Olympic-gold winning horse, Piffling Panjandrum, likes to drop-kick me over the perimeter fence and then dance along the roofs of the cars in the car park. Ha ha ha, he’s so funny.
† We’re a peculiar mixture: two teenagers and the rest of us won’t see fifty again (nor have seen it in a while). I don’t suppose the old folks will care. I’m looking forward to the conversation about performance dress code.
†† Having thoughtfully swung past the cottage to pick up hellhounds, who are feeling that there’s been too much of this ‘leaving hellhounds behind’ thing the last couple of days: yesterday there was puppy visiting, going to the dentist^, and bell practise.^^ Today there was Connie, and handbell carols. Hellhounds are beginning to contemplate forgiving me now however since I haven’t been out of sight of their beady little eyes since midafternoon.
^ To no avail. The moment I rang up and rather than just letting me cancel next week’s appointment like sensible people, insisting instead on dragging me in for a consultation yesterday, the tooth subsided like sticking a pin in a balloon. It’ll be back next Tuesday afternoon, when he steps on the drill pedal.
^^ I rang a near-perfect touch of Stedman last night, including both the doable cat’s-ears call and the undoable coathangers’ call. At the end of which . . . nobody said anything. They just went on with tying up their ropes and going on to the next thing. I know what this means: it means I am considered to have arrived. It means Robin Now Rings Stedman Doubles. This should be good, yes?+ No. It also means Robin in a permanent panic on Sunday mornings for months, in fear–no, in utter pop-eyed terrified dread–of the possibility of touches of Stedman Doubles. I’m still most likely to go wrong slightly after a successfully negotiated coathanger, when I start shaking from shock. No, I’m afraid I’m not exaggerating for effect. Stedman is a castle you storm. They should hand out medals.
+ Although it’s good too. Golly! I ring Stedman! I ring touches of Stedman, not just plain courses! Lots of ringers never get this far! I’m the real thing! I’m a bell ringer!~ Eeep! . . . And for my next trick, I will start memorising Cambridge. Cambridge is a ‘surprise’ method–I have no idea, although when you look at your first ‘surprise’ method line, the surprise could kill you if you have a weak heart. But I’m under the impression that if you survive Stedman you’re assumed to toil on and fall over the edge of the ravine into surprise. Besides, I’m convicted out of my own mouth: I want to ring Yorkshire, which is a very nasty surprise method indeed, only it sounds so pretty.
~ It doesn’t feel like it. Being a real ringer still feels like something that happens . . . later.
††† Lunch! I knew I was forgetting something! Well, hellhounds had theirs!
‡ I got there just in time for the rugby.^ Ewwwwwww.
^ I may mean football. I don’t know and I don’t care.
‡‡ sic. Well, maybe not the kryptonite.
‡‡‡ sane
§ Round is the issue, as any rider will tell you
§§ Wearing a false moustache so none of the little old people at the old folks’ home will recognise you behind the handbells is not glamorous.
Pupdate
I’m a Seeing Eye puppy sponsor–you sign on for a puppy and they just keep rolling you over, unless you stop them. One puppy grows up and goes off to Seeing Eye college* and you get a postcard through the mail slot of the next one. It’s addictive. Anyway, they send you cosy little flyers about ‘your’ puppy’s progress. They’re called Pupdates.
So, a pupdate. 
I’ve gone round the last two Fridays to see Daisy and the ankle-biter, brandishing my camera.
He’s so cute it’s probably illegal and I love him to pieces . . . although at the same time I have done the puppy thing quite recently enough, thank you very much, and don’t in the least long to be going through it again.
There’s also nothing better for making your own heart go pittypat than to indulge in a wicked flirtation with a miniature tyrant–you never saw a puppy so invested in the awareness that he rules: my guys used to suffer occasional doubts, although that’s probably the difference between spaniel personality and sighthound–and then come home to a pair of little pointed faces with flattened ears and lashing tails who are thrilled to see you.**
But the hellhounds also know they rule, in their slightly-less-likely-to-cause-blood-loss*** way. They are very interested in the smell of the ankle-biter on me, but this obviously causes them no distress of mind or loss of confidence whatsoever. Dog slavish adoration is very restful.
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* I’d always wondered how much of the stuff they send out to us hoi polloi with the chequebooks was mocked up for the purpose–the stand-in, the poster puppy for all the puppies we are sending our pennies in for. And then one of the poster puppies failed–wasn’t going to make a Seeing Eye dog and got rehomed. Whereupon my respect for the system went up a few points. The puppy in question, by the way, had been my favourite thus far. Good thing I’m not picking ‘em.
** Sigh. If only we could get their digestion sorted out.
*** I missed most of this by having two puppies. Of course Chaos has grown up to be a forearm-gnawer, and Darkness likes to scale you like a rock face. And a Cocker spaniel is never going to grow up to be able to hit 40 mph within the span of his 26 foot extending lead, and yank you into orbit.
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. . . Last time Daisy came to visit me, she brought roses.