St Clements and others
Today has turned out a whole lot better than predicted.* This morning it had fangs and a really bad attitude. Tonight as I lie surrounded by having-eaten-their-supper hellhounds** it’s a pussycat.***
The fang part began last night. Pretty much the moment I signed off the blog and sat down at the piano I began to experience Dismaying Signs of Rapidly Approaching Manifestations of Food Poisoning. Unnnnnnnnngh. I did not have a good night.† I don’t think it can have been food poisoning because it’s passing off too quickly–although it has not felt quick ††–but this will do as a descriptive phrase to strike terror into the hearts of all those who eat.†††
So I finally tottered downstairs this morning–very very late, as I’d done a lot of groaning, turning over, and putting pillows over my head–and let hellhounds out. Hellhounds sauntered to the kitchen door, moseyed out in an offhand sort of way, and . . . Darkness began geysering all over the landscape–worse than Chaos whenever it was recently, except that Darkness did not bleed from the ass–and I stood leaning against the kitchen door, because I couldn’t stand up without help, and longed to clutch him to my bosom‡ and step into the Bottomless Pit and thus Have It All Over With Forever.‡‡
Hellhounds had a somewhat abbreviated morning walk and then we doddered down to the mews–all right, I doddered. Darkness, as usual, seemed fine, barring the geysering, and Chaos, as usual, was rarely in contact with this plane of reality. And I lay around (a) feeling sorry for myself (b) failing to get any work done and (c) sulkily contemplating the fact that it’s Colin’s tower’s practise night again, I had a really good time last week and really want to go again, and I’d really really really better not. Snarl.
It’s been a weather-lovely day, blue and almost warm, ‡‡‡ so I decided to see if a little gentle gardening§ might be restorative to the system. Got back to the cottage to a phone message from Colin doing a nose count and wanting to know if I was coming to practise this evening. Aaaaugh. Rang back and said I knew I shouldn’t come but could they give me two hours to make up my mind? They could. An hour later I came back indoors for a pee and found another message on the phone machine, this one from Niall, wanting to know if I was going to Colin’s practise tonight? AAAUGH. So I rang him back, my resolve melting like ice in July, and let him talk me into it. Hey, he’s driving.
So I hastily got my method book out and started re-cramming St Clements, that being the on-the-way-to-ringing-Cambridge-your-first-surprise method they had me ringing last week. The peculiar thing is that it didn’t take that long: once you’ve cracked the pattern it’s just learning to count it (you make thirds three times . . . ). I figured I was probably missing something obvious and horrible due to the pressure of my stomach on my brain, and that I’d find out what as soon as I had a bell rope in my hand. But later or sooner you do reach a point where learning it off the page isn’t doing you any more good: you have the ring the freller. Supposing your ME-laced post-food-poisoning lack of stamina lets you.
And then when we got there there were only six of us which meant that when Colin turned to me with a large evil smile (we having got off to a mild start with a diabolically long touch of Stedman) and said was I ready for St Clements I had to ring it without a minder..
But I did. Obviously, or I would not be describing this day’s end as a pussycat.§§ Crucial to this triumph is the fact that all five of the other ringers are terrifically accurate strikers, so as you’re looking frantically around for the next bell to ring over (and St Clements is a ratbag of a method in that all the ‘places’ you make, where you hang around somewhere for more than one blow, are over different bells. In other, kindlier methods, when you hang around somewhere, someone is hanging around there with you, so you get a half-second or so breather. Half a second is a long time in bell ringing) the bell that catches your eye will be the right one because the person pulling the rope will be dead on the place he or she ought to be. And then, because Colin is a malign monster really, he started making calls. Frelling WHAT? Even his wife said, now wait a minute, this is unfair. Um. I only rang the wretched method for the first time last week, and have only this minute got through a plain course (reasonably) accurately (with help as above). But Colin was getting out the pad of paper and drawing what happens for a call. Ah. Right. Urgh. So then we rang a touch. . . . And Niall, who is also a malign monster in his own way, said to me (predictably) on the way home that learning handbell methods is very good for learning methods in the tower . . . and I finally have to agree with him: in the first place because change ringing on handbells is the most difficult skill on the planet§§§ and so anything looks easier in comparison, and second because yes, okay, handbells and tower bells are beginning to make contact in my lumpy, unwilling brain, as opposed to being Two Entirely Different Things, each uniquely heinous. They’re still heinous, they’re just revealing themselves as heinous similarly.
I won’t know till tomorrow if I’m going to pay for all this wonderfulness very severely or not. You never know about adrenaline and ME–and I can assure you there was a lot of adrenaline involved tonight. But right at the moment it feels worth it.
* * *
* Understatement Alert
** You might not think two forty-pound dogs could do much surrounding but you’d be surprised. The size of this kitchen–Peter is playing bridge, so I’m at the cottage–has something to do with it of course. Hamsters would be large in this kitchen.
*** If it’s a pussycat it better stay on top of the hellhound crate.
† This is, I think, three bad nights in a row. I object.
†† But that may also be that I remembered to start stuffing myself with Ars Alb earlier rather than later this time. I tend to go all Mindlessly Stoic–emphasis on the mindless–when I’m sick, despite the homeopathic library and the remedy machine in the next room, and the simple frelling and oft used for other people knowledge of a few basic first-aid things.^ Most stuff, even simple acutes, I still look up in a book or twelve because it’s way too easy to get caught in push-button thinking when if you paid some attention there might be a better answer. But Ars Alb for food poisoning–Nux Vom for overindulgence–should be as automatic as Arnica for injuries. Although I’m perfectly capable of going mindlessly stoic for injuries too–but watch me snap at Peter to take some Arnica when it’s his blood dripping on the floor. And whether it was literally food poisoning or not last night, it was an Ars Alb situation, and it was positively magical–as homeopathy often is–to put the little white pill under your tongue and feel all the Bad Stuff sliding away. It kept coming back, but that’s about how severe it was, like how many aspirin you take for a headache, and I was also giving myself quite a low dose because I didn’t want to piss off the ME, and too grand a manner from a remedy will do exactly that.
^ Aside: good grief, McKinley
††† I used to laugh at those New Age at One with the Higher Power nutters who claimed not to eat at all, they can get everything they need by the purity and intensity of their breathing. I’m not laughing any more. You don’t need to mess with Higher Powers. All you need is menopause. Maybe the blokes have to use a Higher Power. Mind you I’d rather eat.
‡ During a geyser-free moment
‡‡ Although I’d have to take Chaos too because he would not want to be left behind, and I’m not sure I can clutch them both to my bosom simultaneously any more. Although perhaps for the final step into the Bottomless Ravine I might make a special effort. One wants to do these things with dignity.
‡‡‡ Note that we did get a frost last night, so at least all the anguish–not to mention the floor-mopping^–was to some purpose.
^ I’d hung the towel I’d used as a reverse moat around the roses last night outdoors this morning, but come evening it was still pretty damp with best-quality run-off so I brought it in to hang by the Aga in case I was going to need it again tonight+ . . . and when hellhounds and I came back from our final hurtle Geezum crow the smell. There are drawbacks to organic fertilizer, although you don’t generally meet them in your kitchen.
+ Please the gods no
§ I want more stuff to plant. That’s the problem with this time of year: the frost may come back and meanwhile you want to get on with spring. In two months’ time I’ll be knee-deep in little root-bursting plug plants fretfully waiting to be done something with. At the moment I’m staring at all the bare earth out there and whining.
§§ Presently curled up on a pile of clean dog towels in the farthest-from-hellhounds corner of the top of the crate. She’s black and orange with a white front. Just in case you’d like to know.
§§§ Possibly excepting training a hellhound in obedience
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