A Life Uncancelled
I may have to cancel my life till I get PEGASUS done. No, till I get the proofs read. No, till I get the proofs read and PEGASUS done. You know it would simplify my life a lot if SUNSHINE would just become a somewhat late-blooming best-seller. Not worrying about where the next bag of dog food is coming from* would not make me lazy and smug and never out of bed before 10 am**. I would write faster because I wasn’t wasting time worrying.***
Meanwhile. . . .
First piano/music lesson in three weeks. I admit it’s been kind of nice having slow fuzzy Friday afternoons† but I’ve missed Oisin. One of the pillars of my parquet existence disappeared and when you walked around in that corner the floor creaked alarmingly. Of course I had all these plans about all the stuff I was going to get done while he was gone†† but I . . . seem to have foundered on trying merely to get the music I’ve written so far tidied and organised and . . . what am I saying? Tidied? Organised?
Well that explains why that plan failed. But I did have my Violin Crumpet to take in to show him, and about half of a so-simple-minded-I-might-even-be-able-to-play-it piano accompaniment to my transposed-down Miller of Dee.
And the first thing that happened was that he wasn’t there. Oh. Well, I have a key to his music room and the door wasn’t double-locked so either he was expecting me or he forgot to put the bolt on when he left for Tanzania a month ago. So I let myself in, fired up my laptop, and went on arguing with the Miller.†††
When he finally appeared, about half an hour later, I said, If you’re not expecting me, I’ll go away, and he said, ripping off his tie, no, it was a wedding.
Ah yes. Weddings. I know them well. But in the annals of extreme misbehaviour on the part of the members of, this bride deserves an honourable mention. Having decided she didn’t want an organist, she decided that possibly she did, but she wasn’t sure. Oisin said, I’m going away for three weeks, would you please let me know before I leave?
She didn’t, of course. He left messages. He got no answer. He threw up his hands. He went to Kuala Lumpur. He had a good holiday. He forgot about indecisive brides.
She rang him on Wednesday at 4 am‡ in Minsk. It didn’t matter, he said. I was already awake. I had a plane to catch. She rang him on Wednesday to say that she wanted him to play organ for her wedding on Friday.‡‡ Nobody’s surprised she was late showing up, are you?
Oisin may have sniggered a little about my ‘tidying and organising’ nonsense‡‡‡ and I think his face got a little peculiar when I said I’d written something for violin§ but he sorted out my time signature for me—I am severely rhythm-and-beat challenged, as an assortment of bell ringers could also tell you, and I was so thrilled that I’d finally figured out how to get what was in my head on paper at all without giving up bar lines completely§§ that I have been refusing to tackle the fact that the result is a trifle . . . nonstandard. And he didn’t give me a hard time (nearly) at all about writing something playable-by-morons for the Miller.
I’m so glad he’s back. Even if he is a part of my life I should cancel till I get PEGASUS done.
Then I went back to the mews and worked on PEGASUS. Which flew like a lead kite on a windless day. Sigh.
Then I went bell ringing. More of my uncancelled life. Friday is sacred home tower bell practise and Peter’s playing bridge: sit in the cottage with my fingers in my ears? I’d rather die with a bell rope in my hands. As I tottered down to the tower after the evening hellhound hurtle I thought, I have no brain and my muscles are . . . what muscles? This could be bad. It was going to get worse too because there were nine of us, and most of us were good. Edward sidled up to me and asked me what kind of Stedman Triples I wanted to ring. Er—the easy kind? If you’d tell me what page of the method book the easy kind are on, I’ve never found that page?
Sometimes you just luck out, as I said only a few days ago. Either that or I’m learning the beastly method. Stedman Triples, I find, is a little like Kent: underneath the ohmygodswhat, the notmeIcan’tpossibly, there’s a little voice saying, um, actually this is not impossible, there’s quite a lot of it that looks positively familiar. Listen, all you baby bell ringers who have got started partly as a result of reading the ravings about bell ringing on Days in the Life, and I know there are several of you out there even if you don’t all post to the forum§§§: it really is the early days that are the worst. It’s not quite all downhill from ringing the two to bob doubles¤, and Stedman doubles may very well look like it’s going to kill you or at least permanently disable a large percentage of your mental faculties¤¤. By the time you get to Stedman Triples you may begin to feel you’ve got pitons and crampons for scaling this glass mountain. But ask me again after my next practise. And I don’t want to ring it at Sunday service any time soon. Or Kent either.
* * *
* No, no, say the hellhounds. We would happy to contribute to bridging the shortfall by giving up eating entirely. Except for a little fresh roast chicken now and then.
** except on Sundays
*** Well. Let’s not get carried away. Let’s say I would worry less about money.
† There’s been a bit of a conversation on the forum about synaesthesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
I don’t figure I’m a true synaesthete because my odd perceptions change and move around—and where’s the line with metaphor and story-telling anyway? Haven’t you ever finished a conversation with a sour, bitter person literally tasting vinegar on your tongue? Never saw a sunset when listening to a favourite piece of music? The last three Friday afternoons without a lesson with Oisin have been distinctly fuzzy.
†† Write first symphony. Compose song that is clearly an aria out of an opera. Decide on story for opera^ that will fit around aria. Contemplate writing libretto. Learn to play French horn. Write first string quartet.^^ Learn to play kazoo. Compose another song that is clearly an aria out of a different opera. Panic.
^ Something about roses.
^^ For violin, viola, mandolin and harp. You can pluck violins and violas, can’t you?
††† Discussing things calmly and thoughtfully with the Miller. Arguing with Finale.
‡ Ah the wonders and mixed blessings of global mobile phones.
‡‡ While I was there someone else rang about a wedding. That’s the third time she’s rung since I’ve been back, Oisin said. Her wedding is in April.
‡‡‡ He should know. He is similarly challenged.
§ He did want to know why crumpet. Well, it’s like a bagatelle, only different, I said. It started life as ‘Fiddle Tune’. When I rewrote it it morphed into Violin Crumpet. These things happen. It’s like fuzzy Friday afternoons.
§§ I’m not sure Finale would have worn ‘1,000,000/4’ as a time signature
§§§ Cheaters
¤Which is most people’s experience of the mind-boggling awfulness that is beginning to learn to ring inside
¤¤ Damn! I really meant to find that equation for faster-than-light travel!
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