Beam
Sometimes, despite one’s best efforts to concentrate on the half-emptiness of the glass, things do turn out pretty well.
Sometimes someone’s beloved (ex-) maiden bitch has six fat gorgeous healthy puppies smack on due date and with no trouble AND turns out to be an exemplary mum. And someone else gets a blog entry out of it.
Sometimes southern-England weather is so glorious you involuntarily stop in the middle of a field to stare around in disbelief.*
Sometimes your roses start blooming in May.**
Sometimes. . . .
Yesterday did not start off well. It should have–B-twin had sent the puppy post so I knew I was having an Unscheduled Friday Night Off (since of course puppies should not be expected to wait for Scheduled Saturday Night Guest Blog). But mornings are, at the moment, the worst with the ME***, and I creep out of bed dreading finding out just how floppy I am today. If it isn’t immediately and gruesomely clear I find out by taking hellhounds for their hurtle. Yesterday I was pretty frelling floppy from the first levering-open of the heavy eyelids, with the result we didn’t even get off on our hurtle till late and I’m thinking, okay, so how long can I stay upright and moving? † Arrrgh. Phooey. Despite the beauty of the landscape. And by the end the sun was high enough and it was warm enough that my notoriously heat-sensitive hellhounds decided to go floppy too, and we all fluttered listlessly back to the car like a bunch of paper dolls. Frell.
Meanwhile, however, I’ve been working hard on Noises On (and On and On)†† to take in to Oisin. There are various life-sustaining balancing acts you learn when you have ME†††; you can probably do most things that don’t require sustained effort–so no riding and no quarter ringing‡–and you also don’t do them very fast. But you can do them. I can work on PEGASUS because I can stop and briefly lie down among hellhounds, or just rest my head on my folded arms for a spell. ‡‡ So yesterday I went (slowly) down to the mews for lunch before my music lesson and opened the Noises On folder in Finale and thought . . . uh oh.
A fortnight ago when Oisin played Just a Little Thing for Organ for the first time it was totally and absolutely not right. Some of this is, of course, that I am not JS Bach, nor even Poulenc. Some of it, however, is merely that I haven’t got a clue about the organ (yet, as I keep saying), and crucially cannot hear in my head what something written on the page is going to sound like. There were quite a few shocks to the system when Oisin played Just that first time. So I came home and tore it apart . . . and then didn’t know what to do to put it back together. Last Friday I asked if Oisin would just play organ music for me–it is so astonishingly different live, not to mention being able to point at a stop‡‡‡ and say, What does that do? §–and I can use all the sheer exposure I can get.
And then I came home and started Noises On. And now here it was Friday again.
Oisin liked Noises On.
Beam.
Mind you I’m sure that I’m his student enters into it: most of his students play the piano, and are doing sensible things like trying to pass their grade-level exams. I don’t think he has a lot of composers and/or madwomen, and the thrill of novelty is no bad thing. Also there is a tendency to like something you’re involved with past its merits: I used to get unnaturally fond of books I worked on back in my editing days§§. Also you want to encourage your students, keep them motivated, keep their little bleeding noses and fingers to that grindstone.
But I think he could have got out of liking it if it was total rubbish.
So I went home rather dizzy with elation.§§§
And showed up for ringing practise feeling that I’d probably blown both brains and energy out on my music lesson¤ but it is nonetheless incumbent upon me to show up. There were only six of us–but that was five good ringers and me. And Edward saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. . . . and called for Cambridge. Which is a ‘surprise’ method. Yeeeeeep. Which means I was treble bobbing: which is pretty much what it sounds like. You’re ringing the treble, and you bob--in this case you take two steps forward and one step back till you get all the way to the back (so on six bells this is sixth place), and then you hang around there for a while and then come back to the front again, again two steps forward and one step back: it means you need hellishly good bell control since you’re constantly changing direction and while you don’t have any ‘work’ to remember just the counting your places: (1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 6 . . . ) is terrifying enough. You miss a place and you’re dead. I think I blogged about treble bobbing for the first time in months with Wild Robert a few Wednesdays ago, and finding out I could. Since I feel Wild Robert’s practise is a lot less intimidating than my own home practise this was a Very Good Thing to have discovered recently. So last night was a great evening. Even if I did lose my place once or twice. Ahem. I wasn’t the only one. And I rang a touch of Stedman.
It’s all the puppies really. Puppies are very inspiring.¤¤
* * *
* While hellhounds go ping! Kerrroing! off the ends of their leads.
** We are seriously overdue for a garden post here at Days in the Life. We may have to have several in a row.
*** Everything varies with ME. I daresay that’s one of the doctors’ excuses for refusing to believe it existed for so long.^
^ And I’ve said before that I’m one of those who doubts it’s one exact thing; I think it’s likelier to be something like a syndrome.
† Mornings are also a ratbag because I used to ride in the morning and it’s like, lift a saddle up to a horse’s back? And then climb on said horse? Don’t make me laugh. Although I’m not sure I mean laugh. Things have been grisly long enough that at the moment I can’t imagine how I ever did manage to ride, especially in the morning.
†† This joke is dependent on being acquainted with the very-famous-over-here killingly funny play Noises Off, but I’m not sure if it’s an international phenomenon? If you ever have a chance to see it, go.
††† When you have a mild case of it, as I do. People with severe ME don’t get out of bed.
‡ Except by accident. I treasure the handbell quarter the other week because it happened. If Niall had tried to get me to promise in advance to ring one, I’d've said no.
‡‡ Although this tends to produce hellhound nose in the face or ear. This is rather more bearable when the hellhound is not carrying a sticky, disintegrating toy.
‡‡‡ Called something wonderful like diapason or bombarde
§ And then be hopelessly confused by the answer. It’s a bit like asking Edward or Wild Robert about the construction of change ringing methods.
§§ It went one way or another: I either thought it was better than it was or I thought the author should be drawn and quartered, shot, hanged, and made to sell vacuum cleaners door to door for the rest of his/her life.
§§§ And concentration and . . . nerves. In the first place an organ is such a public beast. I walk past the church a lot, and I can hear if someone is playing the organ.^ I have performance anxiety even when it’s not me who’s performing–even if nobody but Oisin knows that I wrote the thing he’s playing.^^ But trying to focus that intensely on what the music sounds like, so I have some idea what to do when I get it home again–the piano is only a little help and sodding Finale is almost no help at all–by the end of the hour, ease and relaxation not assisted by Oisin wanting suggestions for fripperies like dynamics--I felt not just light-headed but a little sick.
^ Sometimes I stop to listen.
^^ And there were about a dozen people having a meeting in the opposite corner of the church! As well as people like flower ladies wandering in and out! Arrrrgh!
¤ I came home and started yanking Just a Little around again.
¤¤ Real life has been trying to catch up again today however. The wedding Niall and Vicky and I agreed to ring for Colin’s short-staffed tower today ran an hour late, and hellhounds are on hunger strike again. Sigh.
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