I Always Need More Pots
Tiiiired again. Booooooored now. Booooooored.*
And I got down to the mews late for supper due to wrestling plants in the dark. And I was wrestling plants in the dark because America is already on summer time, and our clocks don’t spring forward till the end of the month.
There, that was perfectly clear, wasn’t it? I had a phone call booked with Merrilee this afternoon for what I blithely assumed was 4:30 and then later realised with a cold thrill of horror was 3:30. Three-thirty is like barely lunchtime in my lexicon. And Peter and I were planning on a bolt to the garden centre this afternoon: we both need alpines, so called, little things to put in tiny little-things beds, and I need that pair of large pots for the two weeping standard roses I had managed to forget I had ordered.**
So we bolted. And I was somehow irresistibly drawn to the plant tables . . . well I do need alpines, I have two sinks*** that are just lying there tapping their little cementy† fingers and waiting to grow something. And I bought some little bitty things which are too cute when they’re flowering, of which there will be photos in due course if I remember††. I also bought two more hellebores. Even as I put them on the cart I said–out loud, to the distress of the two well-dressed, plummy-vowelled County Types discussing phormiums in the next aisle–McKinley, you need more hellebores like you need a sled team of greyhounds. But they’re doubles! I wailed (using a different voice, to the further consternation of the County Types who could be seen to be sidling farther away, bearing their phormiums in front of them like shields). I don’t have any doubles! And they’re so pretty! And they vary a lot so when you order them out of catalogues you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get!
Right. A lot of little things, two hellebores,††† and two Large Stately Pots. And by then we were late, so we hared home and I made a dive for the telephone because Merrilee is always on time when I’m late.‡ And then because it was a whole hour earlier than it usually is after I’ve talked to Merrilee, I went back to my desk and Forgot About the Passage of Time, and when I looked up it was nearly dark, and I was only looking up then because the pressure of two pairs of beady golden eyes staring was becoming oppressive, and so I had to take them–the owners of the beady golden staring eyes–out for their hurtle first by which time it was dark, and because of the diving for the phone the car was still full of plants, and I couldn’t get hellhounds in till I got plants out.‡‡ Plus I don’t like the bite of the evening air, so I had to bring the jungle indoors again and I have to go to bed early however late I started supper, so as to be up and at least dressed if not fully coherent by (ahem) 9 a.m. tomorrow when Atlas shows up. This sleeping nine hours a night is very high on the Booooooooored Now list.
* * *
* I’m having Truly Horrible Thoughts about having to give something up permanently. Life is too godfrellingdamn short. Why are there so many interesting things out there if we only have time to investigate .000000000000000000000000000000001% of them? What kind of a set up is that? And I’m definitely to the stage of recognising that I haven’t got time. When you’re twenty-five there’s time. You can take up belly dancing, sky diving, horse vaulting^ and translation of Kalaallisut next decade. Although you might want to get started on learning Kalaallisut now. I know, we’ve had this conversation before, and I may have a minor deluge in my inbox tomorrow, or on the forum, about people becoming lawyers or marine biologists at seventy-nine and hiking across Mongolia at eighty-four, pausing for a spot of polo^^ on the way. Yes and there are women who have their first children at my age, but I’m not one of them. Aging is an individual process, and there are probably women who would not have brought home a pair of hellhound puppies at fifty-four. But the bottom line is still that you’re running out of time and you’d better choose carefully. I have chosen carefully! It’s just a slightly too-long list! And I still want to get back to drawing! And one or two other things! And I did not choose to have ME!^^^
^ I remember coming out of the Big Apple Circus about twenty years ago, when I was in my mid-thirties, having adored watching the acrobatics on horseback. After that part of the show one of the rider-gymnasts announced to the audience that they ran a summer programme in teaching people horse vaulting, and anyone interested should pick up a form or a flyer or whatever. I don’t remember anything about the rest of the show: what I remember is my sense of outrage that it was already too late for me to learn horse vaulting. I made a poor companion for the taxi ride home: my friend was very glad to get rid of me. And in hindsight, I was right too: it was already too late for me. My life already didn’t have time, space, energy or focus for something like horse vaulting–taking the seminar as an adventure and letting it go at that is not likely to have been my reaction–and that’s aside from any questions of how well you still bounce when falling off horses at speed in your mid thirties.
^^ Horse and camel
^^^ I didn’t exactly choose to run a blog. But I now can’t imagine not knowing some of you.
** Having now had another raid on the garden centre and its large pot selection I assume that other parcel of fifteen^ roses I’ve forgotten I ordered will arrive tomorrow.
^ Fifteen?
*** also so called, but old ceramic sinks are actually very popular for this use
† You’re supposed to cover your old ceramic sink with cement to make it look more, uh, rustic. Or at least less shiny.
†† If I really am being driven to reduce and retrench, there may be more garden photos. You can still potter in the garden even when you’re incapable of much else, signing your name to accept delivery on ten copies of the bound galleys of your new book^, overwhelming hellhounds, rational thought, etc.
^ I managed it in the end, but this deliveryman has known me ten years or so, and doesn’t take the signs of extreme effort as manifestations of fraud. Also you don’t sign your name for deliveries any more: you make a few occult slashes at the screen of a little plastic box. Occult slashes are easy.
††† . . . one or two other things . . . or three . . .
‡ Note with reference to Other Media, which has come up on the forum lately. Merrilee says there is no longer any question that we aren’t looking to make my books available in Other Media, ie various electronic thingummies^–we most definitely are. It’s negotiating what the blistering contracts are going to look like and who owns what and with whom and why that is taking time.^^
^ We are not talking about film. See my FAQ. It is extremely unlikely any of my books will ever be made into films. Although I seem to have another option contract to sign. It ain’t for much, but as Merrilee cunningly pointed out–she being well aware of my feeling about filmed books–it’s another few risers of Third House’s new stair.
^^ . . . and they argued all night/ About who had the right/ To do what, and with which, and to whom
‡‡ Although hellhounds are missing their final little one a.m. jaunt home. They look wistfully at the archway out of the mews courtyard as I’m busy bundling them toward the restored and legal Wolfgang.
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