Lawnmowers, vampires, and bathroom tiles
And kitchen tiles. And piano lessons. Well, one piano lesson. And potting up nemesias in the dark.* And being interviewed by a nice lady** for SFX.*** It’s been a mixed kind of day.
I was right: getting all ten fingers† pointed all in the same direction by noon†† for a piano lesson was not on. I realise this is wimpish in the extreme, but I plead not getting to bed till MMMPHRMP††† and getting off to a somewhat ME-battered start in the mornings. I can just about remember to keep my fingers closed around hellhound extending-lead handles, before noon. How fortunate, therefore, that Oisin was somewhat preoccupied with counting 2,442 pages of sheet music into 22 identical piles for his choir, because they’d rearranged his schedule on him at the last minute. So I escaped with my life, my laptop, a few new instructions on how to get out of Finale what you want as opposed to what it wants to give you, and a fresh bit of Bach and a bit of Reubke‡ to look at. And a load of old Mozart.
So I shot back to the mews, stuffed down some lunch, and went in much-belated quest of lawnmowers and tiles.‡‡ I brought Peter with me to look at lawnmowers‡‡‡ and then left him to buy green beans and hummous while I went off to engage with tiles, wall, kitchen and bathroom, one each.§ Whimper. I want slate! I want marble! §§ And have you ever noticed the way stuff in catalogues (and on line) which is trying to look like other stuff but cheaper, mainly looks cheaper when you see it in person?? Whimper.
And having reunited with Peter and the green beans we sailed for home again§§§ and I–ahem–finished lunch, calling it tea, in time for the Nice SFX lady to ring me for the interview. What an unconventional pleasure it is to talk to an interviewer whose forebears appear to have originated on the same planet as your forebears. I’ve had some lovely interviewers . . . but I’ve also had quite a few of the Other Kind, the kind who want you to discuss the spiritual effect of the sport of boxing on global society¤ and similar, and while I can frolic along without a lot of trouble (usually) if you give me a familiar path¤¤ it’s also pretty easy to shoot out a foot and watch me fall over it.¤¤¤ This interview appears to have produced no bruises. SFX is, she tells me, publishing a special vampire issue this June, and they want to feature SUNSHINE. Stay tuned.
And then I potted up some nemesias in heavy twilight because they’d been waving their little fronds at me from their cardboard carton in the kitchen sink since yesterday, and then I finally took sad neglected hellhounds for their second hurtle in full dark, and now I’m writing this entry and wondering if I could possibly squeeze a page of PEGASUS in (or out) before my brain deliquesces into its nightly . . . Hmm. I’m not sure what it is. It’s sort of shiny . . . and semi-translucent . . . and tacky . . . indeed it possesses an unhealthy similarity to the light fixture in the master bedroom at Third House.
* * *
* I am being mercilessly tormented by a constant barrage of small cardboard boxes full of even smaller green things. I can barely walk hellhounds without coming back and discovering that someone has left another small cardboard box on my doorstep. Who would do this to me? Who is it who has discovered this fiendish new way to drive me mad? Who . . . um. I suppose it’s possible I may have ordered all of them.
** Nice lady = likes my work.
*** http://www.sfx.co.uk/ No, really.
† Ten! TEN! Ten fingers! Whose idea was ten fingers? Why didn’t we evolve with a more reasonable number like . . . four? I know lots of people who only need two to type.^ Alternatively we could get up in the morning with only four, and after the caffeine kicks in the other six can warily emerge one at a time.
^ Although it’s true I’m a genuine touch typist. I use all ten fingers. Er. Nine. I’ve been thinking for forty-six years now+ that there ought to be something that spare thumb can be doing with its time while everybody else is pressing keys.
+ Summer school the year after sixth grade. I remember it well. These were old business manual typewriters and almost bigger than we were. Well, than I was. It was mostly high school kids and a few housewives looking to go back to office work. I remember that I had trouble seeing over mine.
†† Mozart? Please. Where’s your Grade One arrangement of the Ode to Joy^ when you really need it?
^ http://www.music-scores.com/skill/composer2.php?name=Piano&skill=1 I know everyone has to start somewhere, and easy Christmas carols and folk songs are great, but I admit I quail rather at the idea of a Grade One piano arrangement of Beethoven’s 9th whose proper effect, I feel, is partly based on there being kind of a lot of people playing/singing rather well.
††† From his Sonata for Organ on the 94th Psalm
‡ Hi Peter!^ How’s it going!
^ My disgustingly early-rising husband, who thinks I keep untowardly late hours. And who reads the blog.
‡‡ And various other things. Having chosen this afternoon to do a lot of stuff I keep putting off because bell practise was cancelled this evening because it’s Good Friday . . . almost everything was closed because . . . it’s Good Friday. Duh. The lack of traffic was nice but. . . .
‡‡‡ Don’t bother me with details! Does it cut grass! Will it fail to leave large bleeding wounds on my feet because the back of mower/position of blades/angle of handle is not perverse? Is it easy enough for me to figure out what you pull and where you put the petrol in?^ Fine, I’ll take it.
^ Risky, that one. But there’s always Atlas. I’m afraid it’s certainly going to be Atlas who tackles Third House’s savannah in its current state of wilderness. Damn, I forgot the machete.
§ One kitchen and one bathroom. Millions of tiles. It’s quite extraordinary how many tiles quite modest sized rooms will soak up: and they get you both ways, because the greater range of more interesting tiles are only available in the larger sizes, suitable for larger rooms. Belonging to people with more money, of course.
§§ Hmmm. Maybe I want to be J K Rowling after all. Just briefly. Just long enough for some really nice tiles. Well. And new carpeting. And new light fixtures. Every time I look at the–I don’t even know what to call it–it’s a kind of plastic mother-of-pearl–in the master bedroom I want to kill something. The terrier next door doesn’t realise what a precarious life he leads, every time I go into that bedroom while he’s performing his neighbourhood alert. There are hellhounds next door! Hellhounds! Bark! Can’t you hear me? I said hellhounds! Bark! Hellhounds! Bark barkbarkbarkbarkbark! I believe I have blogged about this before. But he keeps barking.
§§§ A little high in the bows from having a stern full of bags of compost.^ No, not a lawnmower. The lawnmower wouldn’t fit. The shop I bought it from delivers. For £10 and you have to stay home all day because they will give you no indication of arrival time. Shipping and transport companies are proliferating like mosquitoes in stagnant water, each one of them more expensive and more whimsical than the last. A company that would so much as tell you morning or afternoon–and had at least a 50/50 record of neither destroying nor losing the items on its bill of lading–would so clean up. Meanwhile I said no thanks and took some pleasure in ripping the delivery order into tiny jagged pieces. Which means I have to go back out there tomorrow with some rope. Arrrgh.
^ I’m going to have to plant all those dahlias one of these days. The day before the last hard frost, no doubt
¤ Actually I’m not kidding. It was a long time ago, but the memory lingers.
¤¤ So, how do you feel about princesses who hang around wringing their hands and waiting for princes to rescue them?
¤¤¤ Furthermore she already knew There Is No Sequel to SUNSHINE and Probably Never Will Be. An interviewee can hardly ask for more.
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