Hurtling. And not hurtling
I would like to put my extreme mental and physical horizontality* down to having had a really good bash at PEGASUS today** but the stupid boring truth is that I got out of bed this morning feeling like soggy dog kibble.*** Sigh. I was supposed to go pick up my new lawnmower this afternoon and by midafternoon–as I sat toiling away at PEGASUS partly as a good excuse not to be picking up lawnmowers†–it was pretty obvious it wasn’t going to get picked up. At least not be me this afternoon. Maybe I could get Atlas to do it next week.
And then Peter swept out of his phone booth wearing his superhero costume and offered to do it for me. He is a Wonderful Human Being. So he got home again and I opened the boot and peeked in. Eep. It’s a lawnmower. I’ve never owned a proper lawnmower before–well, I’ve never owned a proper lawn.† I had a little human-fueled rotary number in Maine, for my small patch of knobbly turf, which I mostly hired a Boy to run, and did it myself when he didn’t get around to showing up.†† That mower was small and dark green, and everything was, you know, visible. This one has a bonnet with an engine under it, and a petrol tank. And it’s red. What is it about its being low slung that makes me sure there are teeth involved? I mean, a lawnmower is supposed to have sharp cutting blades. That’s what it’s for. It needs a name. It’ll be less threatening-looking when it has a name. And I may still need Atlas to help me get it through the maze of six skips††† and sufficient semi-dismantled scaffolding for the QEII in drydock that is presently festooning the driveway and front garden of Third House.‡ At present I have it cravenly tucked away in Peter’s shed at the mews.
It’s Saturday, which means Live at the Met, and it’s the Ring, which means today’s instalment, Die Walkure, goes on nearly all day. This is difficult when there are hellhounds to be hurtled. I was going to totter out as soon as the first interval began but as I was feebly putting harnesses on hellhounds the Met Opera Quiz was announced, which is one of my favourite things, and I thought I’d just listen to the first question or so . . . muffled rustlings from the front hall . . . but it was a brisk, funny one with a capable guest celebrity so I sort of stayed, leaning against the threshold into the kitchen . . . and then the beginning of the second act is when Brunnhilde bounds onstage, declaiming valkyrically, and I decided that since I’d hung around this long I might as well find out if this soprano was going to hit those Bs‡‡ with an oomf or a skitter‡‡‡ . . . soft, pathetic moans of despair from the front hall. . . .
I am glad to be forced to admit occasionally that hellhounds can be extremely good. They must have lain, with no worse than muttering and susurrating, for at least twenty minutes, waiting for me to lever myself away from the kitchen door again and take them out. They had their harnesses on! Their leads were attached! I had tied my shoelaces! We were already late for the afternoon hurtle! What was the hold up! But they waited. And waited. And waited.
With the result that by the time we did get outside they went off like rockets, and while I’m usually a bit severe with this kind of behaviour in this case I thought they’d rather earned it. So we fore-fired and back-fired and sideways-fired all over the landscape for the first ten minutes or so, which included wrestling them to a standstill long enough to get them across the big main road opposite the Big Pink Blot§ that Peter’s little house is the end of the old mews of, and, having climbed the steep bank on the opposite side, unreeling them again on the playing fields. They’re always a bit manic on the playing fields. There happened this evening to be a burly middle aged gentleman coming down the pavement toward us while we were wrestling–perhaps he admired the strain of my shoulders against the Goretex of my anorak§§–and he turned and followed us up through the (illegal but heavily used) track into the fields. I was ever so faintly nervous about this. Hellhounds and I go where we like and I rarely worry about anything but other people’s loose dogs, but this fellow looked like a proper bruiser: shaven-headed, no neck, shoulders to here, barrel chested, a slight roll to his walk–and about my height, which, with that build, means about fifteen stone.§§§ And it was just about twilight, and there was nobody else around. I wasn’t really worried, but I did experience a mild thrill of alarm.
We were, as I say, bombing around left, right and centre, while he was taking a fairly direct line from A to B. As we spiralled past him at one point he said in obvious amusement, Who’s walking who there? –which is a line I hear kind of a lot from passersby, for some reason¤. Oh, they’re walking me of course, I panted. We pelted off again and came round again and as I staggered past a second time I said, They don’t knock me down very often.
* * *
* All right, metaphorical horizontality. I am sitting, more or less, upright (more or less) in a chair. Although I dunno, isn’t a brain horizontal when the body is upright? And it’s on end when the body is lying down? –Maybe I’ve just discovered why we dream. Your brain is trying to lie down.
** Which I did have.^ I was saying this years before the ME joined the party: that I can still write pretty much no matter what else is wrong with me: raving with fever, bent over with food poisoning, keeping a dog on long down with a foot on her leash and a fierce expression^^ . I started SUNSHINE because it was supposed to be a short story^^^ and I didn’t think I had the stamina for a novel. I didn’t stop when it turned out it wasn’t, however, and the story kept me going, as stories will.
It does take longer. The words come from farther away and the fingers keep having to kind of . . . reinvent themselves. (I’m staring at them as I type this, trying to think of a better metaphor.) And the no-energy thing gives the proceedings a rather fey quality. Maybe I can keep going because I write fantasy. I probably couldn’t do WAR AND PEACE in this condition.
^ And I find it strangely frustrating not to tell you about it, but I can’t, for the obvious reasons. Hey, I finally got to the scene where Grrmmph and Urgggggh find out Mmmmmmmng. When I wrote this bit the first time I was sitting there thinking, No, no, that’s not what’s going on, that’s not what it means. This time I’m going through it again and tweaking it a little to make it plainer/obscurer and thinking, oh yes that is what’s going on. Oh yes that is what it means. Well, it’ll make the ending that much more . . . poignant.
^^ Holly spent a fair proportion of her early years on long down. I could feel her staring at me, of course, but I found that I didn’t have to glare at her: scowling grimly at the typewriter/computer screen worked too.
^^^ For the FIRE ELEMENTALS anthology, you know
*** A subject I know rather a lot about. Chaos is a very polite hellhound. He always leaves something for Miss Manners. Sigh.
† Absolute priorities are different from practical day to day ones, you realise. And I only need one lawnmower.
†† ‘Proper’ is always a bit under discussion. Third House has a swathe of green stuff in the back garden you can cut short. I don’t think a lot of it is actual grass, but I’m not fussed about details: tansy, yarrow, dandelions, moss. It’s green, it grows, I don’t care.
†† Which was a little oftener than I felt was entirely necessary. He had a busy schedule of creating dirty laundry, watching reruns on TV, and being the despair of his mother.
††† British dumpster equivalents
‡ I can only see my tiny new flowering forsythia by peering at it over the fence from the street.
‡‡ I think they’re Bs? I’m in the wrong house for my Grove Opera and I’m failing to find ‘Brunnhilde’s top notes’ on Google.
‡‡‡ She apparently went over handsomely with the audience, but I thought it was more of a skitter. Maybe it’s the radio.
§ It is now a Big Apricot Blot. Pink was better.
§§ It’s finally raining. Maybe it’s April after all. Okay, you can stop again.
§§§ 210 pounds
¤ But no one ever says, Who’s walking whom.
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