Ramblings of a increasingly deranged author nearing deadline
PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEGASUS, PEG . . . SHUT UP, MCKINLEY.
Okay, wait a minute, there’s probably something I can talk about. Coherently. Well, coherently may be asking a lot.
I got to bed last night at my usual mmmph o’clock having once again somehow evaded the glorious opportunity to slide down my cul de sac on my butt*, with attendant hellhounds. It was 34°F last night at mmmph o’clock, which meant that everything had a nice little melt to make later this morning, at 28°F, scuttling to the tower at grotesque o’clock for service ring, almost more sublime than the human constitution can bear. ** I did finally see a sand truck today—one sand truck. Heading for the border and throwing fickle kisses over its shoulder.*** I think it may have left a token pebble at the crossroads at the bottom of main street. It’s supposed to snow tonight. This would be great weather for staying indoors and finishing my novel if I didn’t have hellhounds.†
And it being so frelling inconvenient as to be four days till Christmas†† this also means extra rings. I’ve told you before that I believe in bells for occasions, so for things like carol services I agree you really have to have bells. There was a carol service this afternoon at Old Eden. Oh dear. I wish more people had an awkward sense of responsibility about ringing their bells.††† There was poor Niall‡ . . . and then there was a blur of incompetence, including one beginner who really shouldn’t be ringing service yet anyway, and particularly not at Old Eden whose bells are possessed by especially large, spiteful demons in cold weather‡‡, which latter is why the rest of us were quite so blurred by incompetence.
Also there was a bat. This one was biggish, as I think of English bats: its wingspread the size of your two hands, and a little furry big-pointy-eared body between. It was not at all happy about the sudden lights and the bustle in the ringing chamber and went swooping frantically around in what looked a lot like the casting of a spell-web. I must be watching more cheesy TV than I realise. I’m aware that the getting-tangled-in-your-hair thing is an urban myth, but frantic does kind of mess up your judgement (ask me, I know) and I imagine it might mess up your sonar if you’re a bat. Teenaged Cordelia, however, was having a complete flashing-neon meltdown which was adding significantly to the unity and focus of the occasion.‡‡‡ We barely managed to ring rounds, and they weren’t very good. I could see even Niall beginning to fray around the edges . . . and when several members of the congregation came rushing out to thank us afterward . . . we tried to run away. §
Meanwhile . . . Peter asked me to be a little more forthcoming about certain aspects of the OBE ceremony the other day. I think I was not fully aware of this myself, but that is probably because I didn’t wish to be fully aware, which is that they apparently really want you to schlep up to the given venue and get conked by a royal. This having it done locally thing is mainly an option for the frail and infirm. Which unfortunately both Peter and I rather subscribe to. It would have been an all-day business to get to Windsor and back, neither of us stands around well,§§ Peter would have been trashed for days, and . . . I’m not at all sure the ME would have allowed me to do it at all. And have I mentioned that I have a book to finish? 
Person wearing his brand-new OBE whilst cutting into his 82nd-birthday cake. §§§
* * *
* Most of the time it’s only a minor nuisance that my garage is at the top of the hill while the cottage is halfway down it. In black-ice weather I know the gods are cruel.
** I have a new rule to live by. If you have weird aches, pains, bruises and gouges, and have fallen down recently, that’s why. Never mind if you didn’t fall on that bit. I actually haven’t fallen down today^ but I did yesterday and the day before and this morning when I put my hands over my head to pull up a bell, both shoulders said . . . ahem. No, no, I said, ringing will be good for you.
^ Yet. I still have to get back to the cottage
*** Speaking of shoulders
† Which is why I have hellhounds. It is a very good thing that I am dragged away from my desk at regular intervals. But the shining, grit-free footing out there is making me look longingly at my old rowing machine. If I could figure out how a rowing machine could be translated into stopping every five feet for a pee. The condition of my shoulders probably has quite a lot to do with the hellhounds. Although I will say with a certain fatuous pride that their ‘wait’ and ‘walk’ commands are a whole hell of a lot better than I realised—although that may merely be they recognise the panic in my voice, and are too good-natured to think, Now—let’s get her. But both my shoulders and the fronts of my thighs seem at present to be in a permanent state of hysterical paralysis.
†† AAAAAAAUGH
††† I’m in a permanent snark about Old Eden, as I’m pretty sure I’ve told you. It hasn’t had a regular band and a regular practise in years. Then someone who learnt to ring there back in its heyday decided to commute to get a regular practise started there again, with the idea of weaselling a few locals out of the woodwork to make a band. That was about three years ago. She got bored and just stopped showing up, leaving Vicky, Niall and me holding the baby. Tower. We have exactly one local ringer. One. After three years. And she is lord of the commonwealth or some such and is so busy knitting up the rents in the fabric of the universe that she has very little time for ringing and pretty well zero interest in learning anything past the rock bottom fundamentals. We regularly have members of the congregation rushing up to thank us for ringing their bells, but none of them ever offer to come to practise and learn to ring themselves.
After today there ought to be somebody who says, I can’t be any worse than that, maybe I’ll have a go. In which case the humiliation will have been worth it.
‡ Vicky should have been there but was called away. If it were anybody but Vicky I’d be snarky about her, but if Vicky is called away she is really called away.
‡‡ It takes twice as long to ring up bells at Old Eden than anywhere else because of all the demons holding on to the bells up in the belfry and not letting them swing. Demons are very strong.
‡‡‡ The poor bat jammed itself into a corner when we started ringing, but one of our number opened the trap into the belfry and it humped itself—you know that rather creepy way bats walk on all fours with their wings folded up?—over the threshold and disappeared into the darkness. Bats are (legally) protected, and a lot of church towers have a colony, Old Eden included, so they can’t mind the sound of the bells all that much.
§ Niall, meanwhile, is left short a ringer for not one but two quarters as a result of Vicky’s defection. No, I said. No, I said. No, I said. He’d given me a ride to Old Eden and back. No, I said. And as I got out of the car and slithered away down the driveway of the mews I heard him turning around to go back out again and then the car stopped, and I stopped and turned to look, thinking I must have left something behind, like possibly my head^, and Niall’s head emerged from the opened window, and he said, Why? And I said, I have a book to finish! It’s not like he doesn’t know this, but I’m not sure he believes it. . . .
^ No, can’t be the head, the eyes are working okay
§§ I don’t know if this is a marker for a future that will include ME, but standing up for long periods of time has always made me wonky, which is why I don’t have lots of fond tales of SRO at the opera, or, for that matter, at the re-opened Globe.
§§§ Credit line: Philippa Dickinson http://twitter.com/PDRandom Yes, it’s true, Peter is an empire. He has a daughter, son and second wife in the publishing business too, and his first wife, who was a multimedia artist, used to turn out the occasional book jacket.
I also took a rather evocative picture of Peter cutting his cake, but unfortunately it makes him look like a serial murderer. I like this one better.
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