Rose Contemplation in January
It’s been temperate enough that I’ve got out into the garden two whole afternoons in a row: Low to mid Fahrenheit 40s and crucially no wind. Sunlight would be nice but we can’t have everything.
For all my rose mania and general plant greed I am a pathetically fair-weather gardener. I get cold really easily.* But even in this weather I can’t keep my gloves on: I’ll notice that my hands seem to be going numb again and realise that I’m not wearing my gloves. Again. And since I have no recollection of taking them off I have no recollection of where I may have left them. . . . I tried harder to be out in all weathers at the old house–I had to: over 500 rose bushes is over 500 rose bushes, and no, I still didn’t anything like keep up–but I’ve turned into an utter craven wimp here.**
My days of voluntary wimphood may be numbered however. B_twin_1, drat her, found me this link: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2163640.htm about some insane Australian who has over 200 roses in her back yard. Okay, so ‘average suburban garden’ is probably bigger in Australia. But sitting here counting rosebushes in my head I realize I’ve got thirty, that’s thirty . . . oh, gods, I’ve forgotten the ones out front . . . okay, over thirty . . . oh, no, glory, I forgot . . . no, wait . . . uh . . . I’ve got over forty roses here at the cottage. Where the garden is so small that when hellhounds and I are all out there together not all of us can put all of our feet down at once. Possibly because there are over forty roses in the way . . . wait a minute . . . no, I’ve just counted again . . . I think it’s nearer fifty. Fifty isn’t possible! Fifty isn’t possible! Not in this garden! And this isn’t even counting the Rose Hedge or the four bare-root ones that I did manage to get heeled in before winter happened . . . or, of course, the ten I ordered the other day, but some of these will go to Third House.
And I haven’t even properly begun at Third House. I mean, yes, of course, I’ve planted a few roses: of course: am I breathing? But I haven’t Planned or Taken the Long View. Third House’s previous occupant liked roses, but her taste was fairly standard, not to say boring–and she had the appalling habit of now and then popping in an extra of the same rose. Doesn’t she realize that time and space are limited and there are thousands of different roses out there???? I like Zephirine Drouhin and Albertine but I don’t want two of either of them. Climbing Iceberg, a fantastically over-hyped rose, looks like she’s going to snuff it and take herself off my hands, but the giraffe-necked pink things leaning over my beautiful new fence in front must be the dreaded Queen Elizabeth: ubiquitous and unkillable. I am privately convinced that a lot of the rose’s bad rep as an ugly plant is down to Queen Elizabeth. She’s tough as old boots and a reliable flowerer, so people keep whacking her in everywhere. But she is an ugly bush–spectacularly so: every sneer every not-a-rose-person has ever sneered about tall gawky angular plants without enough foliage, apply to the Queen E with enough space left over to . . . dock the QEII. Her flowers aren’t even much. Okay, they’re pink, I’m required to like them, but that’s all they are. They create no particular shape, they’re just a kind of blob on the end of the stem, and they barely even smell. I wouldn’t have a QE rosebush . . . which is no doubt how I’ve ended up with four.
Although speaking of rants, rose trouble, and b_twin_1, the last named also sent me this link about Tipsy Imperial Concubine: http://www.rereviewed.com/thedeepnorth/?p=159 And then added insult to injury by including this one as well: http://www.rereviewed.com/thedeepnorth/?p=786 The blog author is an author, Jane Stevenson***, who lives near Aberdeen, ie here in the UK, which explains why she’s interested in the Peter Beales’ rose sale that was my downfall recently–and I want to know how she manages to grow Tipsy in Aberdeen. She doesn’t merely have a conservatory, she has a conservatory with triple glazing and under-floor heating and a punkah wallah to ensure the subtly warmed air circulates properly. . . . I would say that quite a few of the Teas and Chinas tend to long graceful stems, relatively few prettily-shaped leaves and then quite amazing flowers . . . but I haven’t grown Tipsy before so she may prove a revelation. I’ll let you know. Oh, and my Archiduc Joseph really was pink-deep-pink-gold-scarlet-salmon. Nostalgia. Okay, next year, when the building work is done and I’ve started taking Long Views.
And last . . . here is, perhaps, a demonstration of true rose mania. I know which rose she’s talking about when she says that the worst that Peter Beales has ever managed to bring himself to say of a rose is ‘a strange rose, whose addiction to mildew and other diseases renders it no more than a novelty’: Roger Lambelin. I used to grow her. I think he’s being a little harsh. Yes, she’s cranky, but I wouldn’t single her out as the worst–especially not among the little bundles of nerves and neuroses that many of Beales’ catalogue’s obscurities are.
Meanwhile we had another hard frost last night. I’m–reluctantly–getting good at this: the local weather had not told us we had a below-freezing night coming yesterday, but when hellhounds and I left the cottage to go back to the mews for supper, I Sniffed the Air like a hellhound suspecting the presence of rabbit, and said, that’s frost on its way. And bundled hellhounds in the car so I could re-swathe the geranium.† And it didn’t get above freezing again today till past ten am.
The other notable excitement of the day is that Atlas has finished and set up The Table. Months ago now when I was first resentfully hauling in dozens of plants every night and distributing them about the kitchen floor, Of Which There Is Not Much, I thought that life would be much simpler if some kind of table arrangement could be made over and around the hellhounds’ crate so I could put heavy things on it. Like plants in pots. Then of course this frost thing got out of hand and now I have a grow light, a jungle, and no sitting-room. But I’d already set Atlas onto the creation of a crate-table. So now I have a crate-table too. Yowzah. I now very nearly don’t have a kitchen either. And only Very Thin People can ever visit me here, at least if they’re expecting to be able to get past the kitchen table . . . to, like, the stairs, at the top of which is the loo. Anyone not suffering advanced emaciation is hereby warned not to stay long. The new table is a surprisingly handsome object, however, and . . . next winter it can hold some plants. A few. Since by next winter I’ll have the summerhouse insulated and the grow light rehung there, and everything–almost everything, I don’t want to waste this lovely weight-bearing piece of furniture–will be up at Third House. Tipsy may stay here. And the nectarine and peach trees. Which had better not grow much or they won’t clear the ceiling.
* * *
* Except, of course, when I get too hot. I frequently don’t like July either.
** Peter, at eighty-one, is finally beginning not to be particularly enthralled at the prospect of gardening in hail, sleet, flood, pestilence and so on. He was out there every day at the old house, and would come in all smiling and invigorated on icy winter days to find me clinging to three whippets and the fireplace. I don’t think I ever threw one of his own wellies at him, but I certainly considered it.^
^ And speaking of Peter, he had this to say about my difficult Damarian translation decisions yesterday: ‘In the Damarian antipodes (maybe), the locals ride knagafoos, commonly known as foos. They move at various paces, the foogallop, the foocanter, and, of courser, the footrot. So you may need it one day.’
I had actually taken note of the foo trot myself, but had somehow failed to carry it to its logical conclusion.
*** One of whose books I have just ordered, with six others of various provenance which I’d been (variously) thinking about. . . . Well, I couldn’t not look her up when it turns out she’s a writer, could I? And one thing leads to another . . .
† with its companion rose. One of fifty. Or so.
Miracle
My builder has started work.
Well. Okay, I exaggerate. He hasn’t started work. He hasn’t started work. But he has hung his shingle* on my fence.
Hellhounds and I were passing Third House in heavy twilight this evening and there was a pale blotch on my lovely new fence.** And I thought, WTF? They–whoever they are–had better not be using me as a frelling hoarding. And I went off into a teeny fantasy of how long this poster for the one Hampshire concert date of the Stupid Dead People and Bad Bogus Band had been up on my fence*** and how much less credibility I would have with my neighbours as a result than I already do.† Hellhounds and I thereupon approached more closely and . . . lo! Slowly through the darkling air cohered the name of my builder, shining black upon a field of grey.†† Please the construction gods this is a genuine sign††† and if we return tomorrow not only will the little wooden placard still be on the fence§ but there might even be like a van or a truck in the driveway with timber sticking out the back of it and people with tape measures behind their ears striding in and out of Third House’s doors in a purposeful manner. . . .
* * *
* The British don’t use this term: it’s in Chambers (British) dictionary as ‘U.S.’ It’s funny the things you don’t mean to hold onto, but that work for you. ‘Sign’ just doesn’t do it in this instance. Streets have signs. Large corporations have signs. Chicken entrails have signs. An independent working person has a shingle. Since my never-never-land pre-electricity faux-historical high fantasies, where the peasants are all way too clean and everyone has plenty to eat, are also vaguely (faux) British, I have always denied myself the use of this excellent term.^ This deprivation I remember being particularly annoying in ROSE DAUGHTER and SPINDLE’S END.
I got to a shingley spot in the first draft of BELLS OF MAZAHAN and scowled at it for a moment, girding myself for circumlocution, and then I suddenly thought, No, wait! This is Damar! I can pluck the Damarian word out of the ether/ make one up if the words that come from the ether today are for alligator^^ and footrot^^^! Yaaaay!
^ Although it wouldn’t surprise me if I had a brain spasm and have used it anyway, and some British person with an excellent memory, possibly who even reads this blog, is going to write to me some day and say, Huh! Appalachia, maybe, not the Pennines!
^^ They certainly have something like alligators, down in the south. You haven’t met them yet. I haven’t met them yet. I’m in no hurry.
^^^ Anywhere there are feet there is footrot. And in the Third Damarian Novel that doesn’t have a working title+ there’s even a reference to it. The heroine grows up on a farm. I don’t offhand remember which ungulate was suspected of having footrot, but I remember worrying if there was a Damarian word for it. This is one of the weirder aspects of writing a novel that is supposedly taking place in another language: when you want to use one of its words untranslated. If, for example, you’re talking about a thing that isn’t quite an alligator called a coorang, you might as well call it a coorang++. But footrot? It might sound more romantic in another language. But the question perhaps becomes do you want romantic footrot?
+ Regular readers of this blog will be aware that there are several Third Damarian Novels in various states of incompletion
++ Which also appears to be an Australian aboriginal word for sand dune. Hmm. Well, I’ll worry about that when I meet the Damarian alligators.
** The lovely new fence was put up by Atlas, after I found myself hauling hellhounds back through the old one by the tail. It had looked relatively hellhound-proof–well, hellhound-resistant–to the casual eye, and since they’re never out in the front garden unsupervised I thought I could put fence-replacement a few items down on the list. Wrong. Way too many dog-walkers use the footpath on the other side of my hedge. And I particularly didn’t want to wait till the day some lithe and aggressive creature with a nasty attitude and lots of teeth came through it to my side. I’ve already had the iniquitous little terrier that lives next door to Third House rush into my driveway to attack my dogs. Have I mentioned lately that I want to live in a distant wilderness? Except there would probably turn out to be coorangs^. And postal delivery is bad enough in town. Not to mention internet connection.
^ The alligator kind
*** Between guilt and frustration poor Third House is sadly neglected. But it’s like holding my breath every time I go up there: I can’t really do anything till the frelling building work gets done. This was all all ALL founded, as you may or may not remember, on having somewhere to put Peter’s and my–extensive–backlists. I mean, no, not even I would buy a Third House for an attic to put backlist in. But having fallen in love with Third House on sight^ one of its purposes was clearly that its excellent full-length-and-width-of-house attic was there to put backlist in, and, even more amazingly, to put backlist in in such a fashion that one could find the specific book one was looking for. Be still my heart.
Meanwhile backlist sits in boxes all over all the floors, and prevents making any practical decisions about anything.
^ Shortly after we moved into town, have I told you this story? I was wandering forlornly around my new neighbourhood, pathetically trying to feel as if I lived here, and I saw this little house. It’s nothing special, as I’ve probably also told you; it’s a roughly 1930′s, two-thirds stucco one-third wood bungalow. It’s just . . . mine. The cottage had had exactly the same effect on me: in the shock and misery of leaving the old house, here was a little new/old+ house saying, Here! I’m the one! Buy me! It was rather disconcerting to be looking at Third Houses when we hadn’t settled into our first two yet–and this was before the idea of a third house had formally revealed itself to me either–but I did look at Third House and say, never mind, when you come on the market I’ll buy you. And then . . . good gods . . . two years later it did come on the market. And I said great, I’ll have that++, and I’ll put Peter’s and my backlist in the attic.
Which is when all the trouble began. Because the attic floor was not built to carry the weight of lots and lots+++ of books. I do get it that it’s a bungalow and all, so the ground floor walls holding up the attic aren’t cleared for, oh, spare-tower-bell storage++++ or something, but the impression I get from builders, architects and building-regs enforcers is that the attic in its present manifestation is ornamental. In which case why did the previous owner carpet it and put in two Velux windows? Very misleading to future buyers.
+ 1700′s, probably
++ Pause while I sign a contract for 1,000,000 books so I can afford it
+++ and lots
++++ Our tower’s littlest bell is slightly over 600 pounds; the heaviest is slightly under 2000
†I have no credibility with my neighbours. This may be a good thing. But I’m not sure I want it with the aid of the Stupid Dead People and Bad Bogus Band.
†† He definitely counts as an Independent Working Person. It took me a while to discover that the address on his very professional-looking letterhead is his home and the very efficient lady who answers the phone is his wife. Nothing like keeping your overheads down. Especially when I’m paying your bills.
††† Sic. As in chicken entrails.
§ And not a mirage of ME and thwarted hope
January windowsill
We had another nearly three-quarters of an inch of rain last night–it never bothered with the threatened frost: the temperature just headed straight up and then the precepitory faction started sheeting–and after hanging around most of the morning because the weather report said it was supposed to clear up, hellhounds and I went out in what we hoped was at least a lull. I suppose it was a lull. It still came on to sheet again before we made it back to the car again, although this time it was attractively mixed with hail.
I really need flowers in January.
So this was the chief windowsill before I got the sitting-room jungle organised. I have four plant-usable windowsills, two in the kitchen and two in the sitting-room, but this is Pack Leader. Among other things it’s the one I stare at the most: that’s the kitchen table at which I sit reading the six or twenty months’ accumulation of magazines, or writing blog entries.* The one over the sink is unfortunately cluttered up with riffraff like bottles of washing up liquid and non-scratch cream cleaner and a small china George V and May pitcher containing rubber bands, which means less room for plants, and I’m usually staring over their heads out into the garden at everything I could be doing if I weren’t washing up. Although staring has become difficult lately since the abutilon which lives on this sill and which is, as are so many, waiting for spring, is about six feet in all directions and I have all its various stems curled up like hawsers on a (vertical) deck**, with the result that that windowsill*** is kind of the sub jungle.
What I Have Learnt about Wintering Over: chocolate cosmos hate central heating. Really, really, really hate it. I think I’ve only lost one; the others look like they’re recovering under the grow light. But here you see the osteospermums saying, oh? Hmm? Okay? And putting out flower buds in a slightly confused way.
Here’s Pack Leader Sill now, with the cosmos and the osteospermums (and the inadvertent snapdragons and the fuschias and whatever) recovering some of their poise under the grow light†. 
When in doubt, more hyacinths. Also daffodils. And rhodos. Isn’t that pink-edged white ruffly one darling? I just hope it survives to be repotted and grow on: you never know with florist’s as it were occasional plants, like occasional tables, as opposed to nursery ones, which are assumed (sometimes incorrectly) to have a will to live–instead of collapsing after a few weeks like cut flowers that only happen to have roots.
But, as I say, in January I need flowers.
However, please note geranium. 
Now she’s the sister of the two outdoors which are fighting for life. Last summer they were the lucky ones, in big pots with lots of root room. The mystery, however, is that while she should be an apple-blossom geranium, which is to say intensely double and somewhat resembling little pink roses††, for life on a windowsill in winter, she’s gone single. Go figure.
Next summer, supposing enough of the jungle survives to be carried outdoors to make all my neighbours’ tiny new cuttings and plant plugs look sick, I am going to be peering narrowly at a lot more of my tender perennials and thinking, okay, would you thrive in a pot small enough to bring indoors††† next winter?
* * *
* The wiring dangling down behind the chair on the left plugs into the tiny old laptop that lives in one of the drawers in the tallboy that is just outside the picture frame. The tallboy contains mostly shirts, jeans, etc^ . . . and one computer.
^ It also has two small Miscellaneous Drawers but I think I’ll save them for some other evening when I’ve been working late on PEGASUS and am a trifle brain-blasted.
** I have to allow it to uncurl on freezing nights, so it doesn’t get frostbite through contact with the window glass: it then resists me the next morning as I want to be able to get to the kettle and the tea caddy again.
*** With the assistance of my Funny Birthday Present Plant
† Life is short, and I didn’t bother to clear off the twenty months’ collection of magazines for the photo this time.
†† Yes, of course this is why apple-blossom geraniums appealed to me in the first place. But in January single is completely charming.
††† Indoors in the insulated summerhouse at Third House, mind you.
Get Thee Behind Me, Rose!
I was webless for several hours again today: semi-webless: email, blog and web site went into candlelight and quill pen mode,* although my internet connection was still scintillating. So instead of briskly answering a few emails as a way of sharpening up my brain for using the English language and plunging thence into work, I spent way too much of a (shamefully enjoyable) afternoon choosing roses. Some of you** may remember that I mentioned a few days ago that Peter Beales Roses is having a twenty per cent off sale.*** I had ordered from them for this past autumn† and . . . it’s not my fault! They require your email address! I can’t help it that they send me bulletins of special offers!†† And the sale is over the end of January! You wouldn’t want me to miss it!
I was chiefly just going to, you know, cruise . . . which is the worst really. You need to have a list, and then you need to Get In. And. Get Out. Which I signally failed to do. My single mandate was that Peter wants a rose for a north wall.
I seem to have bought ten. . . .
Aimee Vibert
Duchesse d’Auerstadt
Long John Silver
Lady Waterlow
Phyllis Bide
Prosperity
Bishop Darlington
Cameo
Margo Koster
Marie Jeanne
. . . Which I will annotate for you some other dark freezing evening. This is already long enough††† and hellhounds, in these ME-hagged days, have grown accustomed to the idea that we spend some of our evening on the sofa and I’m being importuned. . . .
* * *
* I want a head to roll. And I am gonna roll that sucker.
** With perhaps similar preoccupations
*** Of course several of the roses that ended up on my short^ list weren’t eligible for the sale. Of course.
^ relatively
† That’s the rose hedge, now climbing the side of the kitchen sink at the cottage, saying hello to the camellia on the stool by the door (which, when it isn’t holding camellias, is extra cough-cough counter space), and peering over the edge of the sink at the dish drainer on the far side, no doubt estimating distance. –I can hook that wine glass! I can! The rose hedge, for full disclosure, consists of
1. Tipsy Imperial Concubine, which is where the trouble started this cold winter since she’s known to be tender and cranky^
2. Danae, which is, at least in England, a seriously underappreciated Hybrid Musk, and I’ve only not replaced her since we moved because she’s a trifle, uh, enthusiastic. But I find increasingly as the years pass that I buy the roses I miss the most and figure out what to do with them later. Well. I have always bought roses I want the most and figured out what to do with them later, I just used to have two and a quarter acres to do it in.
3. Comtesse du Cayla, which is, or anyway was for me, one of the tougher Chinas and comes under the new-small-house category of, oh I can put her in a pot which in rose-greed-think means ‘won’t take up any room’^^. Uh huh. In practise I’m going to have to ask Atlas to design pot-rose shelving.
4. Mutabilis . . . for the third time.^^^ Although number two is not definitively dead yet, I didn’t feel like hanging around. I know Mutabilis of old: she has a perverse sense of humour. If I didn’t buy another one for this year, number two will absolutely die. Since I have bought another one, number two may very well pull herself together. Really I brought this on myself, having thought to plant her over the grave of my cranky and perverse first whippet, Rowan, although I did it feeling that they’d get along. They’re obviously getting along famously. But it’s nice really to know that Rowan is still yanking me around from the next world.
Even if it weren’t for Tipsy Imperial I’d've had to bring the hedge indoors, because a new bare-root Mutabilis would take a degree of frost as an excuse to croak. Never mind that The One That Grew at the old house (as opposed, you understand, to the One That Did Not Grow), shot up spectacularly above the wall that was supposed to be protecting her and stood in the teeth of any number of gales going ‘nyah nyah’ and blossoming like crazy every summer. Chinas, like teas, are often tender. If they feel like it. Or not. If they feel like it. Louis XIV, who is sharing the geranium’s cardboard igloo^^^, is also a China, and this winter I’d probably be nervously wrapping her up even if she weren’t sharing planter space with a geranium. I shouldn’t have Chinas–or geraniums–in that corner in front of the house: Note to self. Which I will, of course, ignore, because there’s nowhere to move that particular planter to. At least not till Atlas builds me some shelves.
^ As a general rule, anything that is exclusive to Peter Beales is going to be tender and cranky. They’re often a lot of fun in a challenging sort of way, but they are not anything you stick in the ground and forget about.
^^ Margo Koster, Marie-Jeanne and Cameo of today’s order all come under this category also. Sigh.
^^^ I’ve got Mermaid coming for the third time from David Austin. And Souvenir du Docteur Jamain for the second. Or fourth, depending on how you’re counting: it took me two tries to get her+ going back at the old house.
+ I’ve told you all roses are she, haven’t I? And of course who’s to say Dr Jamain wasn’t a Nicole or a Musetta? Although since she’s from 1865, it’s not very likely.#
# I’m totally failing to convince Google to produce the name and date of the first French woman doctor.
^^^ Ah yes, the cardboard igloo. After almost an inch and a half of rain in forty-eight hours+, last night we had another hard frost, for which the new igloo system was initiated, which involved a second, inner cardboard layer. Tonight we’re going to have another pretty serious frost . . . and then it’s going to warm up and start raining by morning. Great. Thanks. Given my usual hours I suppose I could just stay up . . . but even if it happened as predicted, which it wouldn’t, I don’t actually fancy going out on the street, even my tiny side street, at 3 or 4 am in my dressing gown. Not that the neighbours would bat an eye: in the first place, any eye open at that hour deserves what it gets, and in the second place, they’re already well-broken-in to my being out there somewhat earlier in the day and saying What the hell is the matter with you you stupid piece of lion-maned tamarin dung, or words to that effect, when the cardboard box hangs up on the stake as I’m putting it on, which it always does.
So: the answer: large black plastic garbage bags over the igloo! –The neighbours really are going to report me to the Landscape Fashion Police. I’d better check when the Posh National-Collections Garden at the Top of the Hill is open–because they start being open soon, for snowdrops++–and get my igloos down betimes on those days.
+ I bought my new rain gauge just in time for some really great complaining. Yesssssssss.
++ I saw my first snowdrops today! Yaaaaay! Crazy little beggars, out in this weather. Mine aren’t, yet, but they’re coming: the white is cracking through the green.
†† They also sent me notice of their sale on standard roses. Uh . . . a pair of nice little weeping standards for Third House’s front door. . . .^
^ Note that when I spoke to my builder week before last, work was going to start last week. It didn’t. Are any of you amazed? I didn’t think so. Neither was I.
††† !!!!!!!!!!!
Alicia speaks
Handbells, Hellhounds and Hampshire
Remember that scene in ‘Some Like it Hot’, where Jack Lemmon in his character as a female band-member has just come back from an evening of dancing the tango, undertaken in order to keep his millionaire admirer away from said millionaire’s yacht for the evening? Lemmon reclines on his bed back at the band’s hotel, still with the maracas in his hands, twitching and muttering, compulsively reliving the dancing and unable to respond sensibly to Tony Curtis’ questions. Well…that’s a shadow of an analogy for the state of a staid middle-aged female, rigid* on her hotel bed at the end of her first introduction to bells and ringing.
It started with my hotel’s inability to understand that everyone in the locality doesn’t know exactly where they are in the city and so might need a bit of help – signposting, lights, that sort of thing.** With a 10 minute delay, therefore, in Robin’s collecting of this handbell-virgin for the packed schedule planned for the evening, our subsequent journey through the dark back lanes of the city and out onto the road to Niall’s house was necessarily swift.*** Niall, and Colin, were extremely welcoming when we arrived but it was obvious they were itching to get on with the purpose of the evening. So 20 seconds later I found myself catapulted onto one of the four upright wooden chairs that had been arranged in a square, facing in, Robin on my left, Colin on my right, and Niall opposite me. The handbells were distributed, two each, and I found I had numbers 1 and 2 – those with the highest sounds of the set of eight. Niall explained the basics – the ring made at the upstroke of the bell and that of the down-stroke count as two separate elements in the pattern, it’s essential to keep count in your head of the numbers to know when you next need to ring your correct bell, and you need to tie a knot in your right elbow to remind you that the right hand leads each time – except when the pattern changes, you must move the knot to your left elbow, and then the left rings first. Oh – and once the pattern starts it goes with some speed.† Yes…right…well, that’s both sides of my brain knotted for a start and I’m no longer sure whether I have the normal two arms or possibly an extra set as well! The next 15 minutes passed in something of a blur. I dimly remembered how to count up to eight and that didn’t seem to have changed much but that’s all I can say for my input. Niall, nobly counting both my numbers and his in his head with total precision and urging me on to the correct bell stroke with almost telekinetic fervour, was working extremely hard and smiling in an unnervingly friendly and encouraging way†† while doing so. Robin seemed to me to be ringing with carefree but exact rapture†††, while Colin was obviously a rock of stability in the pattern. The wobbly element of all this – yours truly – was so hypnotised by what was being done that the words ‘oops’ and ‘sorry’ can’t have passed my lips more than, say, once every other second…! Anyway, after we were judged by Niall to have come to the end of what could be attempted with a nithing‡ in the pattern, I was allowed to sit out for the next set – during which bells were rung with such mind-bewildering exactitude, great speed, and total concentration from the three involved that one could practically see a golden glow unifying them – they looked something like Zen-masters doing a simple little thing like re-arranging the pattern of the Universe.‡‡
It emerged after this, while we were consuming tea and biscuits at half-time, that Niall and Colin had been ringing tower bells for most of the day and regarded this as a little light relief to slow down with and calm the mind before sleep. Bell-ringers like these three obviously have spare brains they can retro-fit when the ordinary ones have given up.‡‡‡ But the discussions – and terminology used – during that break were really fascinating. (No, no, I haven’t got the brain for this sort of thing, I must not get interested.§) At the end of the evening, Niall directed at me the sort of smile that warns while it warms and asked what I was doing the following Thursday…gulp!
Our journey back to the hotel, with a diversion to collect hellhounds en-route (I’m in love, I’m in love! Their fur is so soft and they are so gorgeous§§) passed in a blur and I soon found myself – as noted earlier – lying rigid on my bed and muttering things like ‘bob’, ‘grandsire’, ‘ring it up’, to myself to the extent that I couldn’t even spare the mental energy necessary to direct my hand towards one of the little bottles of restorative brandy that someone had thoughtfully arranged close by…
It was a lovely evening§§§ and there was more that I’m not recovered enough to describe at all adequately! Colleagues that I had a meeting with this morning seemed to be looking slightly askance at me and repeating v..e..r..y…s..l..o..w..l..y.. anything I needed to take in, so I may still have appeared a tad distracted.¤
Thank you, Robin, very much. :)
And you’re very welcome.¤¤
* * *
* Oh, I’m sorry about the rigid. You were supposed to be all floppy, like a toy stuffed animal put through the washing machine too many N. I’ll have to consult with Niall about refining our approach.
Niall, by the way, came up to me at tower practise tonight, very worried that we might have done you permanent harm. I said you were threatening to come back and he cheered up immediately.
I do apologise for the white hair however. Although it looks extremely fetching. And you know it will always be appropriate with bloodshot eyes, which is a consideration.
** I’ve decided it’s some kind of elaborate plot. The hotel is a front. It’s hard to find and DARK because they don’t actually want people there. Guests cramp their style. So the next time you stay there, I want you to pack a good torch and a pair of rubber-soled shoes, and then get up in the middle of the night and poke around. Unfortunately I have no idea what you should be looking for. I’m not very good at conspiracies and deep secrets.
*** Here I thought I was the soul of vehicular discretion. Hey, you have to whizz around the corners through the rat run in the medieval part of town, or you don’t get the proper effect.
† Yes it certainly does. Gak. Handbells go about as quickly as you can flick your wrists. Terrifying.
Niall said tonight that he hasn’t tortured a . . . I mean, started a genuine beginner in a while, and he should have made us ring slower. But we’re evil! Of course we ring quickly!
†† Some of us have been known to find Niall’s ringing smile somewhat frightening. Sharklike, even.
††† Snooork. I’m aware of beginning to develop The Ringing Smile, however.
‡ Pause for extreme hilarity. My OED defines ‘nithing’ as ‘a vile coward; an abject or despicable wretch; a villain of the lowest type.’ It also calls it ‘now only archaic or historical.’ I was trying to remember when I last encountered it: it has echoes of my misspent youth as an English lit major. I’m sure I met some nithings in Henry Fielding. But neither you nor Jack Lemmon in drag deserves such an epithet.
‡‡ Mfffffphhhhhhtttttttt! Even snork doesn’t cover this one. Dear lady, are you feeling quite all right?^
^ No, no, what am I saying? You’ve just been introduced to handbells! Of course you aren’t feeling all right!
‡‡‡ We all wish. Niall and Colin can however at least ring. I seem to exist in the gaps between the nuts, bolts, hasps, screws and other attachments of the retro-fit.
§ This is what we all say. You are doomed.
§§ Beam. Of course if you were ever planning on returning to this town, these are wise words to be on record as having spoken.
§§§ Oh good! I mean . . . no, no! You had an awful time! You’re traumatised! We’re evil!
¤ Heh heh heh. That’s more like it.
¤¤ Mwa ha ha ha ha ha . . .