Peter
Have I mentioned recently that Peter is a Wonderful Human Being?
I tend to try and protect him from the full brunt of the blog: he’s the only other person who appears as himself here, because it’s just too beyond weird to give my husband an alias when a lot of people who come here because they know my books also know that I’m married to the writer Peter Dickinson. And Life, in my experience, is more or less one long bouncy pratfall*, and perhaps I should say that one of Peter’s and my grounds for attachment is a tendency to screw up.** And it’s okay to pin your own ridiculousness to the wall and throw darts at it, but it’s not so okay to pin someone else’s, especially someone identifiable else’s.***
And while he has MANY TRUE FAULTS† he has this strange false idea that he’s not good at presents. He’s not good at receiving presents, although he’s gradually grown better about it over the years: people who live with me are given presents. Get used to it. He doesn’t twitch half as much as he used to and he only rarely runs out of the room any more. †† But he’s very good at giving presents†††. Hey, I could barely stagger back to the cottage with my post-Christmas book bag‡.
But the thing that just blows my mind is this. When we were opening presents yesterday he pointed to one and said, Open that last. It was approximately the size, shape and flex of a large-trim-size paperback graphic novel, or a fattish comic book anthology. How very odd, I thought. Then the red berserker haze of present-opening descended over me and I thought no more of it till . . . it was the only thing left. I opened it thoughtfully. . . .
It was the sheet music for Olivier Messiaen’s piano work Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant-Jesus.
I just sat there staring at it for most of a minute, probably with my mouth hanging open. How did you know–? I said.
You mentioned it on your blog, he said.
Some of you may remember–yes, I did mention it on my blog. Radio Three had Messiaen as their Composer of the Week a little while ago–it’s also the centenary of his birth this year so there’s been a lot of him around–and C of the W played some of the Vingt Regards and I was fascinated, not only as performed music but also as an example of some of the sort of thing I’m stumbling toward myself as a coughcoughcough composer, as a three-legged Shetland pony may stumble after the winner of the Grand National, and I wanted the sheet music so I could see what some of those chord progressions were.‡‡ And then it turned out that while you could get the other stuff I was particularly looking for separately, you could only get the Vingt Regards together, and they cost a bomb. So much for that idea.
Except for my wonderful husband.
* * *
* Like walking on ice in sneakers: whoops bam. Whoooops–bam. Whoops. BAM. And so on.
** I keep wanting to believe that everybody is like this . . . but I make a point of not investigating too far. Sometimes it is better not to know. Although I do think this is one of the great draws of biographies: not to learn more about someone you admire (or possibly don’t admire) but to find out if they screwed up a lot. This person is amazing and famous and they still screwed up! Yaaaaay!
*** Although sometimes the temptation is . . . almost . . . too . . . much.
† Which I’m not going to get into! MMMMMmmmPHHH! I’m not!^
^ And in exchange he’s not going to start a blog and talk about mine!
†† . . . Occasionally, calling brightly over his shoulder, Must check how the turkey is doing, darling!
††† Including Taking Directions Well. Finale.^ And we were at a Christmas market last Sunday and we’d stopped at a jewelry stall because . . . well, because I always stop at jewelry stalls, but also because there is always next year and I like giving people jewelry. And Peter was rather despairingly turning things over and saying, they all look nice, I have no idea. I picked a necklace up and handed it to him, saying, I like this. Buy it. And he did. –What gets me about his particular brand of male helplessness is that when he goes away on a business trip and brings something back it’s always good. Granted I may be feeling husband-deprived and merely glad to see him and any new accoutrements are bathed in the same rosy glow but . . . I don’t think so. The rosy glow doesn’t last, and I’m still wearing the stuff years later.
Peter is probably also responsible for the fact of my finally resentfully Discovering Brown. I don’t like brown! Brown is dull! Brown is icky! But he kept giving me brown jewelry including a pair of really to die for amber earrings. Now I looove brown. He did me a favour too because I should wear brown and amber and so on rather than black and pink. (Well I haven’t given up black and pink. . . . )
^ We’ve just come through our second gift-giving occasion since he bought me my Finale to order last summer that he has wrung his hands and said he hadn’t found anything really good, and I have shouted, Finale! Finale! You bought me FINALE! –But two opportunities to cash in is my limit. Next year I’ll let him sweat again.
‡ All of them, I think, deeply weird nonfiction hardbacks. If he ordered these in person–which he probably did: his discovery of the internet is still Early Paleolithic–the clerk must have a very strange idea of him. Or possibly of his wife.
‡‡ I’ve also always liked Messiaen . . . as a concept more than a composer. His stuff has up till very recently all been too rich for me, but the birdsong and the mysticism–especially together–really appeal to me, and the idea that I’m beginning to have a faint clue about some of it (by no means all of it) is thrilling. –Peter asked, possibly a trifle nervously, if I was planning on learning to play any of the Vingt Regards. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. I’m going to have to take it to Oisin (who knows all about my Christmas present, of course: he ordered it for Peter) just to have some of the notation explained. I also swear some of it is unplayable by human hands (which may cast a whole new light on the quality of his mysticism. Or of the origins of his second wife, for whom he wrote it. Next stop: to see if her recordings are still in print.)
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