Cuckoo. Cuckoo
I heard my first cuckoo this afternoon.* This is excellent. They’re endangered** and for several years now I’ve been hearing them later and later and later in the season–and often when I’d finally hear one at all it would sound frail and doubtful. This one today sounded ready to scam any number of mild-mannered dunnocks into raising young cuckoos. When I was first over here I used to hear cuckoos while I was trying to convince myself to get out of bed in the morning*** and it was all part of the amazingness of living in England.† The cuckoo’s song is so strongly part of that whole ‘I live here? Really?’ thing that even now, twenty years later, I still get a thrill of it when I hear that funny muffled cuk-coo, cuk-coo. I’m also a ‘summer is icumen in’†† girl from way back: give me a book of traditional ballads ††† and I’m happy. The call of the cuckoo is a kind of live traditional ballad.
There were three of us at the tower this morning: Vicky, Niall and me. What a good thing I’m back from Gloucestershire.‡ While we were loitering in hopes of someone showing up to save us from the frightfulness of more Full Pull Plain Hunt on Three ‡‡ we were examining the calendar for future events: lots of weddings ‡‡‡ and at least two church-embroiled festivals for which there need to be home made cakes for the teas: here Vicky’s gimlet eye wanders toward me. Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am–and I pull out my diary to write cakes for church teas on the appropriate days. When my attention returns to the conversation I discover to my horror that Vicky and Niall are discussing a quarter peal to be rung on the same day as the infamous handbell wedding next month and Niall is suggesting that his handbell wedding band come back and ring the quarter, and that’s four, so then he’s only got two or four more people to find. Are you out of your frelling mind? Well, yes. Niall is constitutionally out of his frelling mind; you can only spend so much time on a bell-rope, let alone a handbell strap, before permanent organic damage is done. §
Leo and Cordelia arrived before I could disabuse Niall of the wisdom of his–er–cuckoo plan, and we could ring some call changes on five. To restore my faith in the essential rightness of the universe however I bolted down to the florists’: Sunday morning after ringing is when I buy cut flowers, so while there’s been nothing§§ stopping me from going along any time this week since we got home, I haven’t. So I had serious botanical glutting to do to catch up.
But here is the thing that’s really ruining my evening: I’m going to London tomorrow, on my mysterious Radio 3 mission.
And Chaos has diarrhea.
* * *
* http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/c/cuckoo/
There’s a ‘play’ button that produces a quite reasonable cuckoo call, for anyone who has never been fortunate enough to be in England at the right time of year.
** Like almost everything else. I cannot get my head around the idea that house sparrows are endangered. That’s like saying air is endangered . . . well. Um.
*** The struggle is the same but it used to happen earlier.
† Especially in the middle of a spring so lush I felt I was living in a jungle, following on from a winter during which the grass stayed green. You have to cut the grass in January in England.^ Peter, when I say this, replies, very much on his dignity, not very often.
^ I know I’ve told you that before. But you can take the girl out of Maine, you can’t Maine out of the girl.
†† http://www.pteratunes.org.uk/Music/Music/Lyrics/summerisicumenin.html
I was born in 1952, and it was all about new then. I was into my teens before I was reasonably sure that planned obsolescence did not in fact mean that everything you possess is going to go ‘phut’ at midnight on some predetermined birthday built into its paint or wiring or fibre, and you wake up shivering on the floor some morning because last night was the end of the line for both your bed and your duvet, and your toaster went just yesterday. You know the urban myth that Henry VIII wrote Greensleeves? My own private urban myth is that King Arthur wrote Summer is icumen in.
††† And a piano. And–oh well–some manuscript paper. And a computer with Finale on it. Or something. Sigh. Oisin told me briskly on Friday–after our epic failure to improve Finale’s pipe organ playback–that I was to bring a print-out of my Just a Little Piece for Organ next week, and we’d take it to the church and play it. Aaaugh. I guess I’d better pretend to finish it. At least I’ll finally find out what it sounds like. This may or may not be a good thing.
Someone was playing the organ when the hellhounds and I hurtled past the church yesterday afternoon. It better not have been Oisin. He’s promised to ring me next time he’s going to practise, so I can soak up some live organ noise.
‡ They assure me that they had enough last weekend, so my guilt^ is assuaged.
^ At missing my first Sunday in what is probably years
‡‡ Things are serious when Dreaded Minimus looks like a desirable option.
‡‡‡ I’m looking eagerly forward to my next piece of frivolous jewellery bought from ill-got wedding-ringing gains.
§ Sigh. This isn’t actually all that funny. Yes, ringing a wedding and then going straight on to ring a quarter peal is one of those Manifestations of Lunacy that devoted ringers fall into^. Vicky and Niall are perfectly capable of ringing a wedding and then a quarter. But in the first place this isn’t just ringing a wedding . . . this is ringing handbells for a wedding, which is a whole extra order of appalling, first because handbells are harder–you don’t ring call changes on handbells; there is no comfort zone on handbells–and second because you’re visible. You’re not merely visible, you have to be pretty much in the congregation’s laps to make your point, because handbells are small and make a rather delicate noise. And this is my first handbell wedding and terminal nerves rule, and I really wish I weren’t, only Niall is obviously going to call round with a collar and chain if I don’t come willingly.
But the other thing is . . . I have acute ME. Still. Niall obviously thinks that having tricked me into a handbell quarter the other evening I’m now ringing quarters again. But I don’t really dare. I’m surprised I lasted the course the other night–but there is no additional physical strain with handbells^^. In the tower if you start to go wrong, dragging yourself back on track takes some physical effort–more if you’re overringing in panic. And if you fire out a minor method on handbells you’re only ruining two other people’s day. If you fire out a minor method on tower bells, you’re ruining five other people’s day–and the whole town hears you do it. I’m going to be doing well to get through the handbell wedding. I don’t even begin to have the stamina to come home and ring a tower quarter too: I don’t have the stamina to ring a quarter, full stop, not to rely on, not to say ‘yes, I can do it on thus-and-such a date’. I never know. I never know from one day to another. I often don’t know from one hour to another.
The hellhounds and I met one of the women from Jenny’s yard out riding today and she stopped to admire the hellhounds and to catch me up on what’s happening. I haven’t ridden in months and I find myself increasingly avoiding walking past the barns–which are one of our regular hurtling routes–because it’s too disheartening: the sound and smell, the reminder, of all those lovely horses, the clops, clinks and snorts, the rustle of hay and squeak of tack: the voices of the lucky people involved. Most of the things I do I can stop in the middle of, if I have to, and sit/lie down/collapse for a minute or half an hour: hellhound hurtling, writing PEGASUS^^^ or composing strange knotted scraps of music, gardening–even ringing bells. You can’t do that very readily on horseback: or anyway Connie and I hadn’t developed the sort of relationship where I could say, don’t take exception to any cows or butterflies for a few minutes, okay? You also can’t stop in the middle of a quarter peal.
Kelsey says that Roland has turned out to have a big jump in him: we don’t know how big, because he’s only four, and Jenny wants to keep him sound. But it’s there, and he enjoys jumping. Kelsey also says that he’s filling out, and is huge. Neither of these things surprises me at all. He always was going to be huge, and he jumped over cross-poles when he was three and still hadn’t figured out where all of his legs were as if he was sure his legs would organise better if he had something bigger to jump over: turns out he was right.
You should stop in some time, said Kelsey. Just come by and say hello. –Yes, I should. But one of the things about ME is that you feel sort of post-viral all the time: weepy and emotional. What if Connie whinnied at me?
^ After the permanent organic damage is done.
^^ Aside from your butt saying, yo, you want to do this again, you sit on a cushion, you hear me?
^^^ Or blog entries
§§ Barring the fact that I never have time. Note that I live a three minute walk from the florist. Sigh.
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