November 7, 2009

I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it. -- Dorothy Parker

Sacrilege

 

I missed sacred home tower bell practise tonight.  I missed it.  I didn’t mean to.  I hauled myself up off the sofa at the mews post-hellhound-hurtle (to the hellhounds’ considerable annoyance:  it’s only been about twenty minutes, they said.  We’re supposed to have at least half an hour on the sofa.  You promised) and humped all of us and various bits of paraphernalia (chiefly concerning supper) back to the cottage (Peter being so inconvenient as to be playing bridge tonight), climbed the endless stair to the cottage’s front door . . . thought, that endless stair thing is a clue to my current state of well-being . . . grappled us and the baggage through the front door . . . got the hellhounds’ harness off . . .

            And collapsed.*

            It’s been a tiring fortnight, and I still have a novel to finish.  We had been planning to launch me on Facebook and Twitter—it having been handed down on tablets of stone that I Should Be on Facebook and Twitter—as part of the burst of whatever over the publication of FIRE, and then I got a trifle bogged down in the fandangulation about WATER, which may have reached its tiny apotheosis yesterday (see blog entry).  And, meanwhile, I have been launched on Facebook and Twitter . . . can you say Steep Learning Curve?  I’m too dranglefabbing old for this new-world schtick.  I was the last person on the block to get a computer.**  I held out for years against email.  And here I am at the end of 2009 trying to figure out Twitter.***

            Meanwhile I’ve been neglecting the forum because I haven’t had time.†  

Katinseattle wrote: 

The Seattle Public Library has or has ordered at least one copy or copies [of FIRE]. The computer frustratingly tends to throw me out when I look up information, so I don’t know how many. I did see that there are 21 holds on it already.

 Twenty one holds.  Mmmmmmm.

Jaccairn 

Track my parcel on amazon says that it was delivered at luchtime today. I’d like to know where as it wasn’t to my house! I’ve even been in all day so couldn’t have missed them.

You have semi-striking Royal Mail like I have semi-striking Royal Mail, where they’ve hired from the temp agencies people whose backgrounds are in card tricks and advanced floor polishing.  I hope it eventually showed up. 

Rainycity1 

. . . and presumbably, Robin, once you’re rested again, you’ll clue us in on the missing footnote for ‘§§§’? Just curious… the blog gremlins appear to have eaten it…

I did say coherence not guaranteed.  I hadn’t noticed (obviously) that it had slipped into an alternate reality, but it was supposed to be a nod to recent or infrequent readers who don’t necessarily recognise every obscure reference, and as I recall I got a trifle entangled in my own supplementary referential silliness. 

blondviolinist

I think she puts in the occasional false footnote just to see if we’re paying attention. Either that, or the hellhounds run off with the missing footnote.

 What she said.

 Shalea 

You do carry some flavor of mobile phone on your hurtles, don’t you Robin? (The Raspberry, perhaps?) Just in case some unsavory sorts aren’t walking past you and the hellhounds? 

Yep.  The RaspBerry goes with me everywhere.  Although it has an unfortunate habit of making the occasional bid for freedom.  It leaped out of my pocket this evening while I was unpacking traumatised flora, and had made it most of the way across the courtyard before a hellhound nailed it.  It’s still working though.  I got the titanium clamshell case that goes with it.

 Equus peduus 

Going by a very informal poll of the clients who bring their dogs to the veterinary hospital where I work, I would say it’s more than half who don’t get walks. Apparently, the backyard is “pretty big” and Fluffy runs around a lot, must be getting plenty of exercise. Most dogs also don’t get much mental stimulation; no walks and no training (we’re lucky if they know “sit”) and not very interesting toys.

 This makes me want to go take the hellhounds out for another hurtle, despite the hour and the fact that it’s tipping it down.††  Some people’s back gardens really are that large, and Fluffy does run around a lot, and furthermore Fluffy gets to play tug-of-war and chase with the kids every day and lies on the sofa all evening while everybody (else) is watching TV.  For the rest . . . how many of the ‘problem dogs’ out there are only sad and lonely and frustrated?  Don’t answer that.  But I know I’ve also said here many times that while Darkness might have learnt to adapt to a less than (cough cough cough cough) optimal situation . . . Chaos would have been in a rescue centre labelled as ‘crazy’ before he was a year old.

            And as early proof that my Facebook page is going to be good for a few laughs, this appears on ‘make a comment and be added to the free drawing for a signed copy each of FIRE and WATER’†††: 

I’m lucky enough to be a middle school ELA teacher and I’m getting to teach The Hero and The Crown to a bunch of 12-year-olds. AWESOME. Can I just say, my kids particularly enjoyed Aerin giving Galanna a black eye in the second chapter? I’m pretty sure that was the point at which they decided it was gonna be the kind of book they enjoyed.

           And now maybe I’ll go tweet something about my piano lesson and go to bed. 

* * *

* I should have stayed at the mews however.  Here at the cottage I have to listen to them ring.  Even with all the doors and windows shut and the radio on.  For pity’s sake where is my hard-of-hearingness when I want it?  And they could have used me tonight;  it was a beginners’ night all the way.  I stood at the kitchen door for several minutes, unpacking recent plant orders^ and arguing with myself: I could still go—I could go late—I am relatively bombproof at the bottom end of ringing, I am, as I have said many times here, still a recent enough ringer to remember what it’s like to long to be one of those good ringers who responds to ‘fill in’ for a beginner—and whatever I do or do not remember, it takes an entire band of steady ringers to bring on one beginner.  Frell.  Frellfrellfrellfrellfrell.  

^ And spitting with fury.  The magnolia stellata has lost almost all its leaves, the aquilegias have lost all their soil, and the black thingummy whatsit—can’t remember its Latin name, very nice tall chocolate-black-leaved plant that pops these insane little white flowers in spring, begins with ‘ph’—had been bent round nearly 360 degrees to jam it in the box.  Last time I use that nursery. 

** No, second last.  Peter was last. 

*** Anybody know why 140 characters?  Not 150?  Not 219?  Is this another of those algorithm things? 

† And just at the moment I find myself embroiled in precisely these anxieties about having more than one venue on the web b_twin sent me this link:

http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/208655.html

Oh dear.  That’s what I’m afraid of.  In the first place, to the extent that webbing yourself is a marketing tool for those of us who live on selling stuff that has our name on it, you have to repeat yourself a lot.  And to the extent that ‘getting yourself out there’ involves anecdotes of your life, because what else is there, and you have a fairly powerful sense of privacy and where the ungleblarging line about what you’ll talk about and what you won’t  . . . yeah.  You’re going to repeat yourself.  Important stuff, it seems to me, you even ought to.^  I find already that I’m trying to adapt to the individuality of the platform—with a lot of help from Blogmom, I might add—but it’s still pretty much the same stuff.  Not everything that appears here appears on Facebook and Twitter, obviously, because they’re shorter^^ . . . but it’s also true that not absolutely everything that appears on FB and Twitter appears, or will appear, here.  Big overlap.  Not everything.  McKinley completists will have to read all three.  But please don’t complain about the overlap.  I can’t help it.  I’m only one person.  And when I finish PEG I I have to go straight on to PEG II. 

^ It’s like telling your husband three times not to forget to order the fresh box of Green & Black’s.+

+ Peter is actually very good about remembering this crucial directive.~  But you know what I mean. 

~ He has an understandable dislike of watching his wife howl and gnaw on the carpet. 

^^ Let me see, how many tweets would it take me to send an average blog entry—? 

†† Again.  

††† Just in case any of you missed this announcement 

November 7, 2009 | Filed Under Piffle, comments, critters, real world 

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