Another Thrilling Thursday
I am indecently tired. It shouldn’t be allowed. Here, Mr* Policeperson, please arrest my red blood corpuscles, they are staging a lie-in and I have hellhounds to hurtle** and a novel to finish.
It is, however, remarkably tiring, sitting in your dentist’s glossy high tech office with the £100,000,000 river view that you are subsidizing, and listening to him list all the things all the things alllllllllllllll the things that need to be done. What does that cost, I say at intervals. His answers are the really tiring part.*** We go through this ‘treatment plan’ thing about once a year and it never gets shorter. How bad can teeth be? This bad.
I then galloped around town † pursuing errands, as one does, †† allowing (barely) enough time to get home and take a hellhound or two for a sprint before I had to . . . meet Niall and Colin††† . . .
. . . at the tea shop . . .
. . . to demonstrate handbell ringing to the proprietor. . . .
. . . whose daughter is the handbell wedding next month. Yes. It’s official. There was always the chance that once she’d heard us‡ doing our weirdness she’d say, no, no, bring on the ukuleles and the cimbaloms!‡‡ But she didn’t. We’re nailed. Frell. We’re also going to use Colin’s handbells, which are bigger than Niall’s and make more noise. They’re monsters. They’re the size of motorcycle helmets, and the harmonics per dong go on a remarkably long time, as if it’s several-times-six bells ringing. Because everything makes me nervous, including ringing sample excerpts for someone who is considering hiring us, ‡‡‡ and on strange bells, I insisted that we spend our practise time after the gig ringing plain bob minor on the motorcycle helmets so they’ll feel familiar on the day. They’re so heavy they make my hands shake. Which may be a good thing. Oh, it’s just the weight of the bells.
And, speaking of things that go dong:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204401/Clock-The-Big-Ben-replica-built-50-bales-straw.html
Keep scrolling. It gets better. I think I like the telescope best.
* * *
* Or possibly Ms, but I think one of our little bouncy young Ms Cops would want to call for back up to take on an obviously dangerous felon such as myself. Maybe they’re all black belts in hand-to-hand death, but they don’t look like it. They look like cupcakes.
They all wear the Kevlar waistcoats though. Even out here in the back of beyond, to the extent that the south of England ever gets to back of beyondness,^ where barring the Pub on the Corner^^ we’re all pretty painfully law-abiding.^^^ The burglars have to come down from London to give us some excitement.
^ As an ex Maine girl, I laugh drily.
^^ My corner. Of course.
^^^ Now that I’ve got my blog entry out of it+ Peter took his warrant++ to the framer.+++ The framer says he gets quite a few royal pieces of paper for framing. It’s that kind of area.
+ Peter does have the odd saintly quality here and there. In between leaving the refrigerator door open and putting the dirty dishes in the cupboard instead of the dishwasher.
++ Speaking of cops
+++ Peter asked me if I had any views about a frame. I said I didn’t want it to look like it had been done as a high-school wood-working project by a disaffected fourteen year old. Peter’s funny. I wouldn’t absolutely put it past him to look for a do-it-yourself particle board kit~ at the local handyman warehouse.
~ optional plastic curlicues
** Hellhounds finally decided to eat something last night at about . . . mmrmph. Late. I had already thrown most of it out—we’re talking about two days’ recycling here—and I looked down from the piano and saw Darkness thoughtfully trying to lick the design off the bowl. Aaaaugh. So late plus five minutes, hellgoddess on her knees by the bin, fishing out handfuls of only-just-thrown-out two-day-old squishy dog food.
We are presently Deciding Whether or Not to Eat Supper. Sigh. You’re destroying my quality of life, guys. . .
*** Especially when you’re living on fumes^ till you get a novel done.
^ You think money doesn’t have a smell?
† Feeling surprisingly small and bare without accompanying brace of red-eyed carriers of doom.
†† No, wait! Never mind the dentist! Never mind the dubiously semi-eating hellhounds! Never mind other assorted traumas I haven’t got to yet! They had jeans in my size! THEY HAD JEANS IN MY SIZE! This hasn’t happened in years! Last time my penknife and keys started coming through not merely pockets but the legs of my jeans and those permanent creases in intimate areas started letting the arctic blasts through I ordered jeans on line, which was not a happy experience. Who knew Levis would mess with the classic 501?^
So, JEANS! IN MY SIZE! It’s a good day! In fact it’s a good week!^^ Any of you out there who are a Nonstandard Shape will understand.
^ Although I personally wish the classic 501 had a zipper.
^^ Actually it is a good week. The Friday afternoon wedding bells have been cancelled. Not the wedding. Just the bells for the wedding. Rough on Vicky, who had performed heroics finding eight available ringers on a weekday afternoon but . . . Yaaaaay. Peter and I are going to a garden centre—any garden centre—any big garden centre—to celebrate.+
+ Now let me tell you about my rose orders. But not tonight.
††† Disastrous Monday bell practise was not in vain, by the way. We rang Kent last night at Chirpington. It was pretty funny. Only three of the six of us knew what we were doing, which would not include me, plus the treble had no clue and the two couldn’t keep her bell up so she was always in slightly the wrong place. Wild Robert was so busy keeping them sorted—plus half an eye on me—that he miscounted^ and we rang an extra lead. I wouldn’t have noticed—I got down to the front, discovered there was no treble to dodge with, decided I’d miscounted, and started toiling uphill again—but Niall and Marilyn noticed. They figured Wild Robert had enough to do, so they just kept ringing too.
^ It happens. Us hoi polloi are unduly . . . delighted.
‡ I only found out yesterday that we were doing this demo
‡‡ What is unclear to me is how this innocent woman generated the idea of handbells at her daughter’s wedding. I suspect the fell touch of Penelope^, who spells the proprietor in the tea shop kitchen.
^ Niall’s wife, some of you may recall, who would rather walk barefoot over hot piranhas than ring a handbell herself. It’s when Penelope stopped teaching night classes at the local university and was home in the evenings that we transferred handbell practise from Niall’s house to the cottage.
‡‡‡ Which is probably even worse than ringing with a lot of really good tower ringers sitting around watching you
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