Interesting weather
Unfortunately we had to turn left at this point. We’ve been having one of those ‘mostly dry but with sudden sharp showers’ days.* This morning when we went out I squinted at the sky and thought we would get away with it. And we went striding along under blue sky with a pleasant light breeze despite the hot sun and all was well. But then as we slowly bent round to come back to where we started, we discovered that the big black stuff had been chasing us, and was now between us and Wolfgang. Frell. Hellhounds always hold me personally responsible for unseemly meteorology too.
But . . . it’s actually autumn. Look at that harvested field. I’ve been thinking about this the last week or so, because we’ve been having Indian Summer—about a month early. Indian Summer (in the McKinley definition) is when it gets summer-hot during the day but then undercuts itself (agreeably) by cooling off dramatically at night. Hellhounds are not looking like long-legged toast racks because by midnight** it has cooled off enough that they will probably suffer me to confront them with their dinner again***. Today it cooled off so early I had to wear a fleecy warm thing over my t shirt when I took them out for their late afternoon hurtle.† Which may perhaps also explain why they ate their dinner (almost) when I first presented them with it. The drawback to this essentially desirable outcome is that they have learnt to keep a low profile if they aren’t eating but since they have pleased the hellgoddess by taking in calories at the appropriate hour for the first time in several days they want to romp around in a ludicrous manner, including relentless hellgoddess-incorporating persuasion of the leaping, poking, barking and gnawing variety. You’re three years old, guys. That’s twenty-one in dog years. You’re grown-ups. Are you listening to me?
Hellhound chorus: arrrrng arrrrng arrrrng. We had lovely new toys for our birthday! Play with us!
Meanwhile . . . I’m supposed to be going up to London for the day tomorrow to have high glossy tea with black and white waiters, tiers of silver pastries,†† and a piano player, with American friends who are only here for a few days, and whom I haven’t seen in forever. And my internal weather includes . . . a touch of The Hellhound Disease and a general sense that up might be sideways.††† What Will Tomorrow Bring? I have never liked cliffhanger stories.‡ I might almost say arrrrng arrrrng arrrrng.
* * *
* I suspect early experimental prototypes of cloud ships. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1205040/Cloud-ships-cancel-effects-global-warming-century-5-3bn.html
Try harder, please.
** or . . . later. . . .
*** which has now gone soggy and disgusting, of course, but one of the hellhounds’ many oddities is that this doesn’t seem to put them off. If they’re in the mood to eat, they eat. If they’re not in the mood to eat, wild cantrips couldn’t pry their jaws open.
† Which happens to say MAINE on it.^ I bought it . . . ahem . . . at the Bangor airport several decades ago^^ when some frelling flight to Boston was delayed. It used to be a law of the universe that American Eagle flights to Boston were always delayed.
I also happen to be wearing a t shirt with Penobscot Bay on it. This really is decades old and you have to take most of the faded geography on faith. I do not think that the hearty gentleman who, with his little band of hearty friends, accosted me for directions this morning while we were all out hurtling among the raindrops, was paying attention to my shirtfront. He said, Is this the Via Britannica Australis?
Probably, I replied. There’s a lot of it around here.
Ha ha ha, he said, patronisingly. By your accent, you don’t have any idea.
Okay. Granted I annoy easily. And maybe southern England is cram-full of middle-aged Americans dog-sitting for the English on holiday as a way of getting a cheap walking holiday for themselves here. And maybe I speak as a Dog Person. But my first assumption, when I see someone with dogs, is that the dogs are theirs.^^^ My second, admittedly more tentative assumption, is that they’re local. People do take their critters on holiday, but they more often don’t take their critters on holiday. Mostly they’re at home with their critters.
I live here, I said. I have lived here for a long time. But the Via Britannica is all over the place here, and I don’t pay attention to which bits of footpath are it and which aren’t.^^^^ I can tell you, however, that if you take that turn you’re looking at, you will end up in a bog.
^ As opposed to ‘Maine, New England’ which was a British clothing brand for ignorant dorks a few years ago
^^ nearly
^^^ Also anyone with two-thirds of a clue about hellhounds would recognise by the body language that our particular little group is a single integrated human-hellhound unit. But that’s probably asking a lot of the average clue-free goofus.
^^^^ Not to mention the way it moves around. I don’t know if this is poor map-reading on the part of the footpath-sign-erecting subcommittee of the local council, the English college-freshperson equivalent of putting bubble bath in the library fountain some time during the autumn term at Bowdoin College every year+, or the inevitable result of conflicting historical theories. Local famous civil war battles move around a lot too. It’s this field. No, it’s this field. No, no, it’s this field. . . .
+ . . . that was a long time ago. One hopes they’ve come up with an interesting new tradition since. Maybe something about moving historically significant signposts around. Especially if when they rebuilt the library they got rid of the fountain.#
# And now there are tales of the terrible foaming ghost fountain which appears during the first full moon of the autumn term very year. And anyone so unlucky as to see it will fail their midterms. . . .
†† Perhaps I mean silver tiers of pastries. Just at the moment neither sounds very attractive.
††† Although that may also be the effect of a Very Good Day with Pegasus.
‡ . . . [Hums a tune, averting her eyes from the extreme cliffhanger ending of Pegasus I].
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