GAAAAH. Also ARRRGH. And perhaps BLEEAUGH
PEGASUS still hangs* in the balance, the hellhounds are trying really hard to stop eating again**, and there’s supposed to be a widespread frost tonight. 
Return of the indoor jungle. 
And the swaddled geranium.
Okay, they were wrong a few days ago about how severe and determined the frost would be—some of the countryside did lose its dahlias but not us in town—but today they say They Really Mean It. And I was so out of my mind about PEGASUS by this evening that when I had a chance to ring Stedman Triples at tower practise I blew it. Twice.***
We also walked into a shoot this morning while hurtling, although we were only scampering along the perimeter, and while they were headed our way, they were heading our way from a long distance off, and we were going to be elsewhere by the time they arrived. I asked. I found a nice man wearing the right sort of clothes† to be involved in what was obviously a shoot and moving in a purposeful manner and—very important, this—he smiled at me when I caught his eye, which is to say that he didn’t immediately misidentify me as the kind of gratuitous wet liberal who was going to harangue him about the essential sinfulness of shooting.†† So I guess I get to count that as a plus for this egregiously minus day.
But I still have to ring another handbell wedding tomorrow. When I could be spending my valuable time setting fire to PEGASUS and starting a new novel named MEDUSA. Or possibly BLACK WIDOW SPIDER. May I please trade today in for some other Friday?†† I don’t like this one. Take it away. In fact let’s go back to . . . oh, maybe Tuesday.††† Or last month.‡
Well . . . I had a good piano lesson. And it actually was a piano lesson, for the first time for thousands of yonks. I’ve really enjoyed PLAYING my piano this week . . . even if the results were less than marvellous. Ugh. In the first place I am so out of practise; I haven’t played anything but Battle Hymn of the Republic (the original, not the McKinley in memory of Charles Ives version) and Drink to Me Only with Thine‡‡ Eyes types of things, and a little Clementi and Mozart and Beethoven. A really little. And only stuff I’ve already sweated learning and can now coast some distance on forgetting. It’s distressingly easy to startle me out of my comfort zone. Sigh. Oisin gave me two bits of Peter Warlock’s Capriole Suite last week . . . and they’re harder than they look. Especially the one in 9/4, for pity’s sake, you call that a time signature?‡‡‡ It’s got kind of an interesting rhythm, as you might expect, which frelling Warlock then makes more frelling interesting by tying the little bleeders in unexpected ways§ . . . and also since this is half of a duet you’re always tripping over yourself in preparation to having two extra hands on the same piano to trip over when your other half joins you. I failed miserably on the 9/4 §§ but I did make it through the other one (which was merely in 2/4 and was less mottled with ligatures) although, speaking of extra hands to trip over, it is very disconcerting to feel the notes your fingers are on dropping out from under you because someone else is borrowing them for a beat or two.
But it was fun.§§§ It was fun enough that Oisin has given me a third one to learn for this week. With the 9/4, of course. And Liszt’s first Mephisto Waltz. # 
* * *
* flapping gently
** Kill me
*** I blew it slightly less badly the second time. I still blew it.
† Leather gaiters. Not Gore-Tex. Everybody wears Gore-Tex (including me, when I remember to wear gaiters at all). Real leather gaiters. Just like a Hardy^ novel.
^ I know Hardy is Dorset. Dorset is next door. And the leather-gaiter-wearing countryman was ubiquitous before the Industrial Revolution and Gore-Tex and rare sightings of the species is still one of those ‘yes I live in England’ moments for me.
†† The fat smug corporate morons in their gold-plated SUVs I want to bludgeon to death with their hand-made walnut-stocked etched-barrelled Purdeys, but fat smug corporate morons need large tracts of countryside to indulge their fat smug egotistical selves in, and they are therefore one of the reasons more of green England is not asphalted over and are therefore a Good Thing even if for the wrong reason.^ Corporate shooting is one of the things that gets dropped first in recessions, however, so now is the time for my part of Hampshire to be discovered to harbour the only known population of the fire-breathing emerald-backed ruby-fronted six-legged mrrmgh toad or the fabled arrrgh orchid, which eats toads. Or possibly corporate morons.^^
^ And even if the sight of them engages my gag reflex. And I assume that they tend to hire the gamekeepers they deserve, which explains my run in a few weeks ago.
^^ I know. http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq5967.html But those pitcher-plant-shaped orchid flowers always make me think of, uh, pitcher plants.
††† Which would solve the Saturday problem
‡ I also found out yesterday that one of my bell ringers has been diagnosed with a particularly ugly kind of cancer. This is not raising anyone’s spirits, least of all his. And it’s the sort of news that takes a while to sink in, you know? So I’ll be sitting here thinking, I suppose I feel lousy because of PEGASUS or the hellhounds or . . . oh.
‡‡ It amazes me the things Word doesn’t know. It doesn’t know thine?
‡‡‡ Right. I’ll have to try it. McKinley the composer is a terrible magpie. Ooh. Shiny.
§ See previous footnote.
§§ I’ll nail it for next week. WHAM. WHAM. WHAM. I’m a subtle musician.
§§§ Despite heckling from the other side of the piano bench, where complaints about the 9/4 were not received sympathetically.
# AND JUST TO MAKE THIS PERFECT DAY COMPLETE, SODDING WORDPRESS LOGGED ME OUT WHILE I WAS EDITING THIS ENTRY WITH A BRIGHT LITTLE NOTE SAYING, OOPS! LOGGED OUT, COULDN’T SAVE POST! ^
^ AND TO MAKE THIS COMPLETELY PERFECT DAY EVEN MORE COMPLETE AND PERFECT, THE PHOTOS WON’T LOAD. I KEEP GETTING ‘IE CANNOT DISPLAY THIS WEB PAGE.’ YOU KNOW, IT’S ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. THIS DAY IS OVER. HOW ABOUT IF WE HAVE A BRAND NEW DAY THAT DOESN’T SUCK POND SCUM?
Good begonias though.
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