Cold
. . . And I have a kitchen floor covered with plants again. And a kitchen sink. Actually not a kitchen floor: I put down a few layers of old towels to protect the carpet and dragged them through to the sitting room, beyond hellhound domain . . . both hellhounds eat dirt* as well as chocolate cosmos flowers. I didn’t think about this until this morning when I was going to have to leave both hellhounds and jungle while I rang bells and it was still too cold to put the jungle outdoors. So I staggered downstairs at a revoltingly early hour, and Sunday mornings are never my best nor cleverest time, looked at the indoor shrubbery and the thermometer, which helpfully said 28°, and thought . . . oops. Uh. . . . And furthermore I only have half an hour to scrape myself together and bolt for the tower, Sunday mornings, lately, because I keep staying up later and later and . . .
It took till 11:30 to climb above freezing. I spent part of my Sunday Morning Pottering time figuring out how many of the blasted plants I can cram on windowsills and call houseplants for the duration. Feh. Peter says the Met Office is now saying we’re due an unusually cold winter. Thanks a lot guys. I think it’s a bit rough when you have to do horrible penance for global warming, like maybe the end of the human race etc, and still have unusually cold winters. Although I suppose if the human race ends soon enough I won’t care.
The car key crunches in the lock and there are mad frost hieroglyphics on the windscreen, and the car doors don’t want to unlatch and you have to wrestle them open involving making noises as if for a Boris Karloff film**, while hellhounds are standing around with their fur on end like cats’ only nowhere near as impressive.***
We did have a very beautiful walk if a trifle exuberant as previously observed about hellhounds in cold weather, and it is certainly inspirational weather for anyone suddenly possessed by a desire to torture Christmas carols.† We had to rush back to the cottage this afternoon from lunch at the mews (and the piano) however to get the jungle back indoors again as the temperature plummeted: 31° by 5 pm, I object.
Meanwhile Niall, who is a ratbag, is insisting on our going ahead with our once a month bell practise at the village next door tomorrow evening. Those bells are on plain bearings††, so called, which in practise means cranky: plain-bearings bells are cranky anyway, and worse when they’re only rung occasionally, as these are, and worse yet in cold weather. I was told this morning at service ring that the grease used on plain bearings solidifies in the cold, which does help to explain why ringing the things sometimes feels like trying to roll something with corners. Plonk plonk plonk plonk splat. So anyway since Niall is being intransigent I was forced to go through with the phone calls: usually Vicky does the ringing-round to chivvy, horrify or otherwise compel people to come to an extra practise on crabby bells that aren’t theirs. A thankless task. And she forgot to leave me the blackmail list. How am I supposed to get people to agree if I can’t say ‘and if you don’t come we’re going to publish that photo of you shaking hands with George W Bush and smiling‘? One of the people I phoned declined on the grounds that there isn’t even a decent electric fire in that tower, so that you can bear to take your coat off to ring. True. I’m getting more depressed by the minute. But if I don’t go . . . I’m not sure what they’ll do. I can assure you there is no photo of me shaking hands with W and smiling.
* * *
* And are especially fond of rich well-fertilised pot plant compost, which is far superior to the rather dull stuff in the ground
** The door goes creeeeeeeeeak and I go unnnnnnnngh
*** The fur on hellhound tails doesn’t seem to have the capacity for bristling at all. How are you going to scare off the mountain lions and Velociraptors without a bottlebrush tail?
† This was slightly additionally motivated by the fact that I inadvertently heard Britten’s Lyke-Wake Dirge on the radio this morning. Aaaaaaugh. I’d half forgotten how unspeakably brilliant–creepily eerily hauntingly brilliant–it is. Never mind. I’ll finish mine anyway, rip out the lyrics, and retitle it something obscure in Sanskrit.^
^ Given my pianistic skills, I could merely have meant I was going to play some Christmas carols. Well, I can do that too. Speaking of creeeeak and unnnngh.
†† I was trying to find a decent description of the varieties of bell bearings and . . . failed. But both of these, if you feel like wading through them and/or possibly being alarmed, give you an idea about the diversity of the simple physical facts of ringing a bell, and of the considerable responsibility and complexity of keeping a ring of bells ringable. I especially like the blunt ‘A ring of bells will typically involve 1 to 5 tons of moving metal and so should be considered as heavy machinery.’ Yes. But it’s easy, in these modern days of being bullied and humiliated by our computers, to fall into an erroneous mindset of believing that low tech is therefore simple.
http://www.cccbr.org.uk/education/thelearningcurve/pdfs/200603.pdf
http://www.diochi.org.uk/downloads/DAC/Bells.doc
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