Peter’s Ferret Story
Robin’s laid low by some inconsiderate bug* and I don’t want her sitting up till 2.48 a.m.** keeping the world cheerful with bell-gossip, or whatever, so the world’s going to have to put up with a stop-gap.
Somebody mentioned ferrets.*** Almost all I know about ferrets I learnt from my mother, who got it from my father, who learnt it one Sunday in School Chapel at Eton in 1913. (He was bottom scholar in the worst year on record, until I came along in 1941.)
You’ve probably seen photographs of the school uniform. The school went into court mourning on the death of George III, 1820, and never came out,† so in my father’s day it was black pinstripe trousers, formal black morning coat with tails, and a top hat. (We only wore top hats on Sundays. It was part of the war effort.††) Those coats are more practical than they appear. Each tail has inside it a pocket large enough for several books.†††
A friend of my father kept a ferret in his room (illegally, of course) and used to take it rabbiting on Sunday afternoons. One Sunday he lost it down a rabbit hole, and by the time he got it out it was too late for him to take it back to his room before evening service, so he stuffed it into his tail pocket and took it into chapel. The boys sat in allocated places on banked pews facing each other down either side of the central aisle, twelve or so to a pew. Masters and their wives and families sat in the back pew, with one master per block of pews on either side to check that every boy was in his place and none of them misbehaved.‡
My father’s friend settled into his place at the end of a pew. The ferret, exhausted by the frenzy of rabbiting, slumbered through prayer after prayer, several hymns bellowed by six hundred young male voices, two readings from the Bible, a psalm, and a choir giving its all to a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, finally stirring into life half way through the sermon. My father’s friend, also near dormant after the rabbiting and further lulled by the ponderosities of the preacher, didn’t notice what was happening in time to prevent his pet slipping out of his pocket and away along beneath the pew. By sheer chance the boy at the other end of the pew happened to be looking down when the ferret emerged and poked its nose into the open. Being another friend of its owner he knew enough to lean down, under the pretence of a fit of coughing, and grab it by the scruff.
He straightened, passed it from hand to hand beneath his knees, nudged his neighbour in the ribs, and muttered to him out of the corner of his mouth to pass it on. Unawares the boy took it by feel. The ferret bit him. It is said to have bitten every one of the boys who handled it on its way back to its owner. Not one of the invigilating masters noticed anything amiss.
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* Yes. The world is spinning, etc. The hellhounds are in heaven. Not only have they been on the sofa most of the day but they were on the bed this morning. Uh oh. Dreadful precedent.
** Ha ha ha
*** I mention ferrets quite a lot because there’s this ferret on the forum that keeps insisting he can kill me with his brain. This has marked me you know.
† This is one of those, and the British ran an empire? stories
†† It was what?
††† Well, but this is tail coats generally, isn’t it? I have an old tail coat and it has pockets in the tails.
‡A whisper to one’s neighbour, if noticed, invoked a penalty of several hundred lines. Persisted in, a thrashing. I was present on one appalling occasion when an unfortunate canon on the staff, who minded terribly that he had never been asked to preach to the school, at last was allowed to stand in for the scheduled preacher. He began with a confident proclamation: “Boys! There are parts of the body that we cannot see . . .” Nobody heard a word after that. He didn’t help by desperately riffling through his notes under the microphone looking for a fresh place to begin.
Unfortunately he’d written them on paper that made a sound very like the rather severe toilet paper that was standard then. The masters’ children in the back rows joined in. Masters and their wives stuffed handkerchiefs into their mouths. The hysteria lasted almost ten minutes. Next day the headmaster thrashed twenty boys, chosen at random as far as anyone could make out. (A legendary Victorian head was said to have personally thrashed the whole school, I can’t remember what for, but that was over a series of days.)^
^ Yeeeep.
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.
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* 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.)
Christmas
Decorated tree. With presents.
The bookends on the TV, just by the way, are our pair of Mythopoeic Fantasy Award lions: Peter for THE ROPEMAKER and me for SUNSHINE. They asked, when I won the second in this household, which direction I wanted the lion’s head to be in? Did we want them as (say) bookends, or did we want to start a conga line?
Decorated hellhounds. With tree and presents.
Decorated hellgoddess with the top of her head cut off again by her photography-challenged husband. In my copious free time I must learn how to do delay firing so I can cut the top of my own head off.* And I hope those trousers look red on your monitor.
There seem to be about a dozen new books in this family. I am very fully full of turkey, Christmas pudding and champagne, and I’m going to go lie on the sofa and read two or three new books. Or four or five. There are a couple of Peter’s I thought about keeping, not that book ownership is a very absolute custom around here.** Happy Christmas. See you tomorrow.
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* Does anyone know how to get rid of mirror-reflecto-eyes? The only eye correction that seems to get any press is red-eye and I don’t think modern cameras do red-eye any more. But this Little Orphan Annie eye thing is no better. It’s true Chaos is not long on intellect but his skull isn’t hollow nor lit up by floodlights. I can’t even find anything on the web about it, except generic come-ons for photo software.
** At least not very often. Touch my signed LOTR without permission and you die.
Holiday yeep
It seemed like a good idea at the time–as well as a way to say a perhaps somewhat bizarre ‘thank you’ to my Eight Heroines who paddle away like mad underwater while I get to pretend to be a swan.* And I have had a huge amount of fun writing the thing. But . . . even if Oisin has not taken leave of his senses** I am still in the very, very early phase of this composing schtick and everything I do, including torturing Christmas carols, is a long steep learning curve and is a lot more interesting to me (and possibly my teacher) than to the rest of the world as music. And I’m still nothing like up to speed with Finale either, including, in this case, little things like getting the hyphens between syllables of lyrics to appear, or to have two separate words appear under the same note. I also can’t figure out how to get the lyricist(s) to appear on the score–they should be on the vocal line page, which you do have to download, but it is thoughtfully included in case any of you have had too much eggnog and would like to sing along–Peter wrote 90% of the first verse and I wrote 90% of the second. One of the things that went slightly awry is that the words were done while I was still frelling around with the music, and by the time I’d finished espaliering the quavers, crotchets and minims*** there wasn’t time to try to refit the lyrics. If I’m thinking about doing anything like this again next year I need to start earlier. Like July. Or maybe February.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Excuses, excuses. Post and shut up, McKinley.
So a ROUND OF APPLAUSE to Oisin and to Blogmom for making it all possible and on Christmas Eve Eve as well: I didn’t get the thing into let’s-call-it-finished shape till Monday and Oisin had one or two other things to do with his time† than provide supernumerary recordings and so didn’t get the sound file to me till Tuesday and I sent it on instantly to Blogmom who was, I believe, outdoors in her steel suit nailing down the corners of the house against ice tornadoes at the time. I got an email from her at one point saying laconically that the power had been out for the last three hours and would probably be going out again at any moment but she’d get my bent carol†† up if she could.
And now I have to go decorate the frelling tree. Peter’s already gone to bed and I have to get up early tomorrow morning to ring bells. †††
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* to distort ever so slightly something ajlr said about the matter some time ago
**which I do not in the least guarantee. All teachers who actually give a rolling doughnut about their students learning something, who do things like let their students veer violently off the official tarmac of the educational road and plunge into the undergrowth shouting, This way! I’m sure it went this way!, must eventually become a trifle . . . eccentric. Although I’m acicularly^ aware that my main function is that I’m fun to watch. I am very grateful that Oisin is easily amused. I couldn’t afford him if he charged what he’s worth.
^ Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls+
+ So, how many of you are as old as I am?
*** British terminology is so much more charming than American quarter notes etc
† He has, I believe, a Holiday Clone, so this time of year he can play for simultaneous carol services
†† I like that she’s called it ‘Christmas song’. Very tactful.
††† Rang somebody else’s carol service this afternoon–rang somebody else with an open ground floor ring‘s carol service this afternoon, so the congregation is all sitting there looking at you.
Christmas song
Flash version. Will play inside your browser.
Non-Flash version. Click on link to download MP3 and play in your music player or Quicktime plugin.
Download PDF of sheet music for vocal line
We Eight Heroines lyrics
We eight queens of Internet are
Following Robin’s peculiar star
Patiently reading,
Carefully weeding
Anything likely to jar
Ooooooh
Blog of humour, blog of taste,
Blog with roses and recipes graced,
Hounds are hellish,
Bells are bellish,
Nothing must go to waste
Heroines we glorious are
Bearing code we traverse afar
Commenters stating,
Debating, orating
Verbosity rules okay
Ooooooh
Posts of folly, posts of farce
Posts banged out in the wee small hours
Posts of inanity,
Adding insanity,
Heroines save the day
Heroines save the day