Further applications of hot water
I am tired of pouring kettlefuls* of boiling water over the car door locks so I can get my frelling car open and, like, put hellhounds in it and drive away. Tired. Tired.** And at 1 am under the neighbours’ bedroom windows***, like last night, for example, I can’t even use language.† And of course the more times I have to do it the more likely it will happen again because by now the locks are green and squishy and swamplike and won’t dry out till July and it still keeps on freezing again every night and I’m pretty tired of that too aside from car door locks.††
I did at least make it to Wednesday evening tower bell practise tonight.††† I could see the temperature dropping as I drove over there–something about the long-fingered ice demons clawing at the windscreen–and I locked the door thinking, it won’t freeze in an hour and a half–will it? Remind me to buy a cigarette lighter.‡
But no, I didn’t have to knock on the vicar’s door and beg a kettle of boiling water after practise. Or a cigarette lighter. And it’s now 31°F, and falling gently, like snow. No, no, no, not snow. . . .
* * *
* kettlesful? Like spoonsful?
** The ME says: Yeah. You leave her alone, she’s our helpless plaything.
*** Under Peter’s too, for that matter. He’s used to me but there are limits. My husband goes to bed at about 10:30. Yes, it’s true, we have a few hours in the middle of the day when we meet and exchange notes.
† Hellhounds go out to the car, at 1 am under various bedroom windows, on their leads, even though the car is about six feet from the front door, so I don’t find myself needing to Use Language to corral self-distributing hellhounds, who feel that all ventures into the outdoors can be improved by a little dashing about and general hilarity.^ Although this time of year–the melting-your-door-lock-before-you-can-open-it season–when I pitch them out into the cold in the middle of the night the general tone is more Reproachful than Hectic. Hectic happens later in the morning, in daylight, when they can see the pheasants exploding out of the hedgerows. And as I watch them winning their fraught and frenzied battle with their 1,000,000,000th stick I find myself wondering, a little fraught and frenziedly myself, if they are ever going to grow up.^
But wait! There are signs of encroaching senescence–I mean maturity. The Day of Falling Water^^, when they refused to go for a walk, I was braced for hellhounds dangling from the overhead pots and pans rack by afternoon, as well as Exciting New Manifestations of Refusal to Eat. At very least they were going to get me up in the night because their digestion was feeling deranged (how unusual would that be).
And they were perfect little gentlemen. Gentlehounds. This would not have happened this time last year: there haven’t been too many Days of Falling Water^^^, but I can remember one or two, when we went out for four walks, half an hour each, which was as long as any of us could stand, because I quite like my cottage in its present configuration, and did not approve of the threatened redecoration.
Hmm. This has possibilities. We might lie on the sofa more, and watch more movies.
^ Oh, well, in the usual equation for dog time, they’re seventeen years old. In which case I have it easy. No drugs, no rock ‘n’ roll, no smuggling into the semi-oblivious parental abode of inappropriate romantic partners. And the vocab of the back chat is restricted. Although Darkness does a really excellent adolescent smirk, he just doesn’t mean it. His trick is to sit–plonk: the plonk factor is very important–back on his haunches, draw his head back as far as it will go as he contumeliously holds your gaze and then . . . snaps his jaws together. If you do this back at him you can have quite the conversation before one or the other of you breaks into helpless giggles. Dog giggles appear to present as sneezing and tail-wagging. This blog’s resident Dog Expert says that the initial jaw-snapping is an Inhibited Bite and some kind of invitation to play. I’m sure it’s profound and complex really+ and he’s offering me the secrets of the universe++ and is laughing because he knows I’ll never get it.
Hey. I’m a meal ticket. Oh–well–possibly not to hellhounds. I’m a walks and sofa ticket. I’m sure they’re a little fond of me too. As much as you can ever be fond of so obvious a patsy.
+ Darkness, remember, is the intellectual one: the one who can pick up both front feet sequentially . . . and in either order. I mean, how clever is that? On bad days I can’t get my harness on at all.#
# Please. You have such low minds. My harness is usually a Hewlett-Packard but right at the moment it’s an ancient Fujitsu-Siemens because it’s small enough to fit on the kitchen table at the cottage while I eat a solitary dinner~, this being another bridge evening for Peter.
~ Soup. Widely disseminated. See previous entry. Consumed in the somewhat unlikely shade of two furiously flowering patio fruit trees. Very pretty pink flowers, my little peach and my little nectarine. You just don’t really expect them indoors. Sitting on the top of a dog crate. In February.%
% In the Northern Hemisphere
++ Or at least of a steady supply of Green & Black’s gingerbread chocolate
^^ Wham, thump, crash, etc
^^^ Ibid
†† The green garden-rubbish bag isn’t waterproof and the cardboard box is disintegrating. And the airbags are losing most of their air. If I’d realised, when I put the first cardboard box over the geranium and its rose, months ago, that we were embarking on the worst winter in eighteen years, I’d've . . . I’d've burst into tears.
††† Which was possibly even more shambolic than usual. I can–usually–ring plain courses of Grandsire doubles no matter what mayhem is occurring on the other ropes. But when someone starts calling bobs and singles I can only cope with limited variables. Barring Niall and Wild Robert we were pretty limitless tonight. Now as I keep saying, anyone who has had to put in as much hard graft as I have to attain the lofty rank of Inside Ringer^ is pretty well bleeding at the ears in eagerness to give a few thousand of those hours back by ringing endless whatevers for new generations of beginners to bounce off of. And being able to go on stolidly ringing Grandsire doubles no matter WHAT is going on elsewhere in the ringing chamber is a Pearl of Great Price in the ringing community and time well spent on the end of a rope, and I do not repine nor repent. But I wish we more often had people to ring touches of Stedman doubles too.
^ The talented are another country
‡ Furthermore, remind me not to keep it in the glove box
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