In which the footnotes utterly take over
We have rain. Well, this is good, we could use some rain.* The high booming wind isn’t so popular however: things are likely to be torn up and/or knocked down** and the prediction of another frost tonight is the least welcome of all. Peter and I who periodically look at one another and say more or less in chorus, We need to do something together, ie other than sit at the same table playing Duelling Laptops,*** took advantage of a tipping-it-down afternoon to dash off together to the (plastic-roofed: terrific sound effects) garden centre and buy stuff. I bought more pots, of course, because they always turn out to be the wrong size when I get them home†, and we both bought large shoulder-and-biceps-enhancing bags of compost and a few plants.†† I decided, however, that even an excursion to indulge a shared madness probably doesn’t count as quite enough togetherness to allow me to say ‘yes’ when Niall rang late this afternoon to ask if I wanted to ring handbells this evening.††† Which would have meant I was out ringing bells five nights in a row. And Peter tiresomely plays bridge on Saturday evenings.‡
When I got back to the cottage I was mobbed by hellhounds who were not at all pleased that I then chose The Cold Windy Very Wet world for their evening hurtle–why does she ever choose this one? you can see them saying to each other–and when we finally got indoors, back at the mews, and dry again‡‡ there was a general rush to the sofa In Which I Was Helpless. So instead of getting a couple hours ahead, like maybe even writing the blog before the middle of the night, I was trapped by poor sad beseeching hellhounds who haven’t had a sofa in days and after they had had to put up with that very unsatisfactory second walk. . . .
I have to go play the piano. Friday is coming. There’s an extra service ring Friday afternoon I’ve promised for, since it’s hard to get a band together during normal working hours. I’m trying to decide if ringing right before a piano lesson in which I am going to go in and play a duet ‡‡‡ is a good thing or a bad thing. Distraction is good; lack of last hour of cramming is bad. No, no, don’t think about it, just go practise now. . . .
* * *
*Someone on the forum a few days ago–but can I find it? Of course I can’t find it–recommended some waterproof walking/hiking sneaker/trainer type shoes from Land’s End in response to one of my standard moans about knocking my All Stars to pieces on this landscape and spending way too much time with soaking wet feet, which is never pleasant but gets on toward positively life-threatening in the winter.^ I never, ever order shoes on the web because I’m very hard to fit and I walk a lot, so my shoes have to fit properly.^^ But I looked at them, and they looked plausible, and they were on sale, and Land’s End, in theory, will take something back at any point for full credit^^^ . . . so I ordered a pair. And wore them for the first time today–in the rain. And came home with the same two feet that I left with. So, I may have a new pair of waterproof walking shoes. Ask me again after I’ve worn them a few more times. Whoever you are, thank you for the rec.
^ Which is when I start wearing plastic bags over my socks. Which is deeply ungreen since a pair only lasts one walk. I have probably used up all my carbon-footprint savings from never getting on an aeroplane by wearing plastic bags on my feet in bad weather.+
+ As excuses not to tour, do you think this one will . . . fly?
^^ The ‘never, ever’ was reinforced a few months ago when I bought four pairs of All Stars on the web. How could this go wrong? I know my size in All Stars, and I know they fit.
In order of arrival:
Pair One was perfect. They, in fact, were the pale pink ones with painted roses on that I wore to the signing in London last year.
Pair Two, despite being the right size, were too small. I sent them back and asked for the next size up.
Pair Three were the wrong size. I ordered the right size, they sent me the wrong size, which were too big. This despite the fact that the size they sent me was the size I was now asking for for Pair Two because the right size was too small. I sent them back and asked them for the right size. Thirty years or so ago when I was first wearing All Stars, they were all made off the same lasts, you know? I think the new factories on Mars aren’t being given sufficiently exact measurements and possibly Martian canvas is made to a slightly different formula.
Pair Four were cancelled after several postcards telling me they were arriving soon, because they decided their warehouse had been broken into and all of that colour of All Stars had been stolen.
I never heard from the purveyors of Pair Three again.
A new pair of Pair Two eventually turned up. They were two and a half sizes bigger than the ones I had sent back which were a half size too small. I had ordered a half size larger.
I couldn’t face any more. I kept them. I have huge feet anyway, and you don’t wear All Stars to be shy and retiring in. I can wear extra socks.
^^^ How do they do this? And if they can do it, why can’t more catalogue companies do it?
** Or possibly torn down, viz., my Heath Robinson contraption at the cottage made of bubble wrap^ and string, to try and give my poor little magnolia half a chance against the ravages of whatever the hell they are–I was assuming pigeons, but Peter says they’re more likely to be tits^^–chomping off any tiny bud that attempts to show itself. Last year they only ate the flower buds; this year they’re eating the leaf buds too. I think the poor Stellata at Third House is already a goner–there are no walls to tack one’s Heath Robinsons to at Third House–but I may save the Nigra at the cottage. And then I’ll think what to do about a new Stellata: I’m not willing to give up without a struggle.
^ I get through a lot of bubble wrap. Some of you may remember my swathing Souvenir de la Malmaison in bubble wrap last summer to protect her persnickety flowers from the rain. I’ll get through even more bubble wrap if I decide to turn my garden into a greenhouse. At which point I will become a Carbon Yeti.
^^ All you Americans: stop laughing. http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/families/tits.asp
They’re the same family as chickadees, for those of you who live in chickadee country, as I used to, and pleasingly similar. Although I wasn’t trying to grow magnolias in Maine.
*** Peter is very good about being interrupted if you are unexpectedly possessed of a thought that needs to be shared, or, more likely, a Middle Aged Brain query such as ‘you know, the thing . . . the thing . . . you know . . . what’s the word for it?’ I am not very good about being interrupted. Not. Very.
† Not that this stops me using them. It amuses me kind of a lot that it turns out–not surprisingly or anything–that I garden very much the way I keep [sic] house, which is to say things on things tucked into things behind things in front of things over things between things and things. This tendency was somewhat obscured at the old house where, as I keep saying, we had two and a half acres, and when there’s only two of you (plus a bloke who cuts the grass and trims the hedges) and you also have to earn a living there’s an upper limit to the labour-intensivity you can lay on, although I tried. Also Peter had already been gardening there for forty years so I had to sort of come at manifesting my individuality indirectly^. The cottage garden is genuinely tiny, so any sane gardener is going to be looking for ways to squash more in, but there should probably be limits. Pots are, of course, one way of squeezing more in: you can have the thing in the ground and jammed up against it the thing in the pot. And then other things in smaller pots in the pot. Three stories of plants. I read an article not long ago in a copy of The Garden–the Royal Horticultural Society’s mag–about a very fancy very beautiful tiny London garden that is all pots. The owners had made a conscious decision to do it this way. I cheered up.
Now of course I have Third House to be getting on with. I was up there just yesterday slavering at all the empty ground.
^ I think Peter might at this point, if asked, insert a comment to the effect that over 500 roses is not indirect.
†† Yaaay. In my case, two delphiniums, two foxgloves, a peony, and a euphorbia. I’m not all roses, you know. Just nearly.
††† This did not stop us talking about bells for a quarter hour or so. He is way too pleased that I’m finally resentfully admitting that sweating frelling handbells is helping my tower ringing. He’s too British to say ‘heh heh heh’ but you can see it coming out of his head in a thought balloon. Even over the phone.
‡ I keep trying to stop this wasteful activity. There aren’t any bell practises Saturday evenings!
‡‡ I somehow get wetter in the process of drying off hellhounds
‡‡‡ Yes! I am! Yes I am! Yes!
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.