Cold January
Very cold. I am tired of this weather. And it’s going to go on several more days. I don’t think it ever quite got above freezing yesterday, and I left the geranium’s hat, coat, woolly scarf, bulletproof vest and diving bell on yesterday, but the problem with diving bells is the way they block the sunlight and the whole hot-cross-bun potential alternative to photosynthesis is, I believe, restricted to my sitting-room.* So today I took the array off again for a few hours and told the sun, here, right here, will you please shine HERE? Today was a pretty horrible raw heavy grey day–but it was a degree or two warmer than yesterday, when we had one or two minutes of actual sunshine. I’m still feeling fairly flimsy so I am kind of keeping my head down and ploughing after hellhounds on our walks, and there was a point yesterday when I was thinking, I don’t believe how cutting that wind is, I’m sure there is an ice god with an axe involved**, gee, but it’s weirdly bright out here somehow and [looks up] hey, the sky is . . . blue? But it didn’t last.
I did make it to the bell tower this morning. I put on several extra layers and bolted, as one does. Sigh. If your feet never quite touch the pavement they can’t get cold. All Stars were not really made for this weather: it’s nice not walking on mud for a change*** but the frozen ground beats up through the puny rubber soles and by the time you get home again your feet no longer bend. I may have to try again with the hiking boots: oh joy: more money for shoe manufacturers, more contributions to Oxfam, and I still have cold feet. And All Stars don’t actually like getting frozen either: they crack.
But we had six to ring this morning.† This is dramatically up from last week when there were two. Last Sunday morning when I finally crawled out of bed at about 10 I was impressed at how ill I really was, I’d slept straight through the bells. Wrong. There were no bells: three is your absolute bottom limit for change-ringing. I talked to Niall a few days ago and he told me, he and Penelope having been the two. But I’m back this week, and Vicky’s back, and Dorothy’s back, and Leo is back, although I think Leo may actually have been on holiday as opposed to flu-felled like the rest of us. There was a certain jostling for position: I caught it from you, no, I caught it from you.†† And it’s still writhing through the populace: Edward’s still out, and Alex. But we were six today, and we can worry about next Sunday next Sunday.
I, however, have been shamelessly manipulated. I may have mentioned on one or two occasions that one of the reasons that Vicky is such an excellent tower secretary is that not only does she burn through ordinary obstacles like a sprinter bursting the finish-line banner but she is a Managing Female.††† And we were standing around today having just finished ringing down when she bustled over to where I was standing beside the bulletin board and thoughtfully and as if carelessly tapped the calendar and said, Oh, Monday week is the Old Eden practise, you did it so well last month, would you ring round again and make sure we have enough people coming?
I–! F–! Eh! Blah! I rang round last month because Vicky was going on holiday to visit her other son in Montana or some outlandish place‡ and she was busy dividing up the tower-sec stuff to get done in her absence. I’ve been had. But I also feel a kind of permanent low level guilt about the amount of work Vicky does for the tower so I had my notebook out this morning before the brain-flare of I WHAT? had quite finished fading. Grrrr. Among other things I’m going to have to remake the frelling list surreptitiously, because after I’d done the ringing-round last month I threw the list out because I wasn’t going to need it again. I’ll hook Niall in on that one though–he’s been nailed by Vicky himself and will enjoy sniggering–and it’s in his interests that we have ringers since he runs the Old Eden practises now (speaking of having been nailed by Vicky). There are reasons I have traditionally preferred solitary pursuits.
So I came home again muttering to myself and spent some time tidying up the jungle while I waited for the temperature to rise a few degrees so hellhounds and I wouldn’t die of exposure on our walk. Generally speaking I try to curb my love of houseplants because plants don’t really like living indoors, but in an unusually unfriendly January–especially with half my garden occupying three-quarters of my sitting-room floor‡‡–I’m losing my grip rather and I have flowering bulbs–hyacinths and daffs–all over the place as well as a couple of mini roses‡‡‡ and several cyclamen and my Christmas cactus, which flowered in October, as usual, my aspidistra§ and my new Christmas-present stephanotis and the Funny House Plant from my birthday, and the rhodochiton §§ that arrived as a little finger-height thing in a plastic pot in September for planting out next spring and is now about three feet tall and I’m having to swirl it around the kitchen window.§§§ And if the jungle is going to be here a while it might as well have its face and hands washed.
And while I was trimming and primping there was an ominous rhythmic noise from the kitchen. I dropped my secateurs and raced in to the kitchen to fish Darkness, as it happened to be, out of the crate before he threw up all over the blankets–and in this weather I haven’t got any to spare–and having successfully done so and I was groping for the newspapers I keep tucked behind the cook-book-case for the purpose he broke away from me, dashed through the left-open-in-my-haste puppy gate into the sitting-room, and threw up on the carpet.
Life. With hellhounds.
* * *
* Where there are now SEVERAL osteospermums putting out itsy bitsy 50p-piece sized flowers.
** And where is Allan Quatermain when you need him.^
^ And no, I don’t approve of Alan Moore’s version. Quatermain was a major hero to me when I was a kid reading British Empire novels, and even close to half a century later I object to having him turned into a wussy drug addict. I would mind less seeing Haggard turned into a wussy drug addict, for what he did to Allan’s wife.
*** although there’s still a surprising amount of mud out there, waiting to suck you down and then slash your ankles with invisible brown ice.
† Everybody else comes in a car.
†† Or we could all have got it from Boadicea.
††† There are kind of a lot of Indomitable Women in bell ringing. All those great booming brass mouths shouting out over the countryside appeals to us, maybe. Well, it appeals to me.
‡ That’s a joke. I’m cross that I never made it to Montana when I was still doing a lot of business travelling.
‡‡ I’m also washing sheets. I hang sheets on this lovely plug-in heated airer thingy, since I don’t have a dryer, which I set up on the sitting-room floor, of which at present there is none. I am therefore presently swathed in clammy damp sheets every time I go in the bathroom, and I still have dog blankets to wash. There’s a perfectly respectable horror story here. The Revenge of the Sheets. The Attack of the Wet Dog Blankets. Usually I try and get my jeans done at the same time. Arrrrgh. Life. Winter.
‡‡‡ Which I consider longer-lasting cut flowers: mini roses and I don’t get on.
§ http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/716.shtml
§§ Did I tell you I thought I’d managed to kill my aspidistra? The famous unkillable plant and I call myself a gardener?^ I was thrilled when after months of sitting around looking miserable it put up a couple of new leaves which are now unfurled and growing like . . . the rhodochiton.
^ Well, actually, I don’t. I call myself a person who grows some plants with varying degrees of success.
§§§ And I’m eyeing Peter’s hibiscus covetously. The local flower shop has hibiscus: I should know, it’s where I bought Peter’s.
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