Sunny Sunday
Fortunately I had a pretty good night last night, and when the alarm went off much too early it was agonising but not unendurable. And it’s been another thrillingly beautiful day so I tottered down to the tower completely failing to be in a grim, lowering mood suitable for having had to get out of bed early to ring bells.* Ringers were outside hanging around the font and soaking up sunshine while the early service spilled out.** I arrived with one other, which made us five, and by the time we got upstairs we were six. My initial elation subsided abruptly, however, as I registered that while two of our number were different individuals than on Friday, the line up was the same: five good ringers and me.
Uh-oh.
We rang up the back six and Edward said***: Cambridge Minor. And everyone laughed when I said, I was afraid you were going to say that.
Well, the title gives it away, doesn’t it? I suppose I could have been going for irony. But I wouldn’t be setting you up this extensively to tell you we crashed and burned. I don’t mind telling you when I’ve made a complete pig’s ear of something, but I’m not likely to go on about it. So we rang a touch of Cambridge Minor and there were a few lumpy moments–not all of them mine!–but we did it. And by the end of our service-ring time two more people had turned up, so we finished with a quick touch of Grandsire triples–all eight bells flying–and I’d also been pressed into ringing Grandsire doubles inside, which I haven’t risked on a Sunday morning in a while–so when I tottered back out into the sunlight again I was seriously tottering. And because it was already rather warmer than hellhounds consider ideal I got home and only one grapefruit later went straight out again for our hurtle.
Beautiful Sunday morning in May and a bank holiday weekend, the countryside was pullulating with frelling visitors. I got to give directions a couple of times though, which is always good for a laugh (“er–no–you’ve gone straight past it.” “Er–no–not that way. That way”), including watching their faces change when they hear my American accent. No, actually, I live here, and, trust me, I know every permanent mudhole, every vicious dog, every rusty loop of barbed wire not quite buried in the hedgerow, every falling-down and/or lifting-hellhounds-over stile in a seven-mile radius, and I usually know which kind of critters are in which field. I am Practical Wisdom. Revere me.
And as if that wasn’t enough sunlight, I spent most of the afternoon/evening fighting ground elder at Third House.† With attendant hellhounds. Teaching the hellhounds gardening is proving an uphill struggle, and is one of the reasons the Third House garden remains rather more neglected than it might be. I don’t want to lock hellhounds up while I swan around with a trowel. This is one of those what-dogs-are-for things. Dogs are to hang out with. I don’t expect them to come to the opera with me. I do expect them to learn to stay out of the flowerbeds, to lounge on the grass, and to refrain from torturing snails, which I find upsetting. Although I find taking cat crap‡‡ away from them over and over again pretty upsetting too–they’re so much better at finding it than I am–today I took crap away from Darkness twice and Chaos once in the first fifteen minutes we were there, and the next time I looked up and they were very intent on something it turned out to be the severed leg of some fairly large bird in a rather advanced state of decay . . . ewwwwwwwwww.
But there’s another reason for wanting hellhounds cavorting on the lawn, and that’s the cavorting part: after three hours digging holes I’m dead, and the last thing I want to do is go back to the cottage to lively bright-eyed hellhounds who’ve had a nice sleep and are now wanting their afternoon hurtle. I did eventually manage to persuade them that a rubber ring was more fun than a decomposing appendage–remarkably little tensile strength to decomposing appendages, I’ve noticed this on previous occasions–and to give them what credit they perhaps deserve, if you catch them at it they do ‘drop’ on command, and they don’t have the ooooooh, chocolate reaction to sterilised-manure fertilizer that a lot of dogs have. It’s still not an efficient way to get your gardening done. But I feel we progress. And it does mean hellhounds have been markedly horizontal and undemanding since. And they ate dinner.
* * *
* Early is, of course, relative. Edward and Alex’s two-year-old daughter Louise regularly gets them out of bed at 5.
** Slowly. We have a very nice, very chatty priest, who asks after everyone’s kittens and bunions.
*** I’m probably imagining that he said it savouringly. Like an oenophile getting out the corkscrew. Like a headsman getting out the axe.
† After the obligatory assault on PEGASUS which the closer I get to the end of the slower it goes. Whole scenes are dropping out of nowhere like Green Berets with parachutes. At least May has thirty-one days in it, a whole extra twenty four hours to finish a second draft in. Arrrgh.
†† I hate cats. Frelling sue me. All right, I hate outdoor cats. . . . I hate local outdoor cats. I hate whichever local outdoor cat(s) uses my garden for crap deposit. I especially hate it because aren’t cats supposed to BURY it?? –And yes, I’m sure it’s cat. I’ve cleaned enough litter boxes to recognise it. Snarl.
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