Robin McKinley, Famous Author and Deputy Ringing Master
Aaaaaaugh! I’ve been had! I’ve been busted! Dranglefabbed! Zackblowed! Blah! Agh! Argh! Mrrgggff! I was elected Deputy Ringing Master at our annual tower meeting tonight!
I have a variety of reactions to this, primary being Agh! Argh! etc, as above. My other chief reaction is, Remember I told you that Edward standing down from being Ringing Master was a disaster, because that leaves us with only Vicky and Niall as our good reliable ringers? It’s even worse than I thought, if they’re electing me anything.*
And I didn’t even see it coming. I knew Niall would get hijacked into being Ringing Master** but till last year we hadn’t had a Deputy Ringing Master. Niall was theoretically a cathedral ringer, ringing Spliced Seraphina Duplex Cantabile Maximus*** and so on, except he mostly rang with us because Penelope (his wife) rang with us. And then we finally managed to wrench him away from the cathedral and promptly took advantage by making him Deputy Ringing Master as a way, I suppose, of indicating how urgently we needed him. But till then we’d just done without a Deputy Ringing Master, and I assumed that we would retreat and retrench at this old position.
It’s not like Niall didn’t know it was coming: we all turned on him when Edward made his shocking announcement a fortnight or whatever ago.† And tonight when Edward reiterated that he was resigning and we all swung round again to pin Niall with our collective gaze poor bloody Niall blithered something about the enormous debt we all owe to Edward (true) and that he wasn’t going to be able to do it the way Edward did it, and Vicky said soothingly, of course not, you’ll do it your way and anything else either of them said was drowned in the tumult of voices nominating and seconding Niall.
Then we all relaxed and reached for our next piece of cake†† and from across the room I saw Vicky lean toward Niall and heard her say quietly, Do we want a Deputy Ringing Master?
I had about ten seconds. I thought, We haven’t got anybody for Deputy Ringing Master. All our other good ringers have erratic attendance records at best†††, and our other most reliable pairs of hands on a rope are the three of us most (barring beginners) erratic ringers, Penelope, who works way too many and too many strange hours at her café, and Leo who keeps being snabbled at inconvenient times for church warden business, and . . . uh oh.
What was I just saying on Sunday about Madhatterington and inadvertently becoming the third in the little triumvirate of travelling New Arcadia ringers? About not getting out of the way fast enough? About not being very good, but being there?
So. I had my ten seconds, and I knew I’d fallen in a tiger pit. What I want to know is if Niall and Vicky had worked up this little routine beforehand.
. . . And then I came home to Chaos not wanting his dinner, finally deciding to eat, throwing it up half an hour later all over the carpet, and then having the EXTREME yellow squirts all over the courtyard, ‡ AND HAVE I MENTIONED THAT PETER IS GOING AWAY FOR THE WEEKEND?
* * *
* I was going to make a joke here about ‘anything but chief floor-sweeper^ and bottle-washer’ but I’d suck at that too. I melt vacuum cleaners. And I’m sure I could think of something deviant to do with bottles.
^ Certainly not chief cook. Between the increasingly comprehensive menopausal calorie allergy and the—ahem—unusual frelling professional strain of the last few months my digestion has been even more possessed by devils than customary and I’ve kind of given up cooking.+ One of the more painful manifestations of this situation is that for the present I’m abstaining from flour. Is there a worse fate for a lifelong obsessive baker? Well. I am assuming this is temporary.
Penelope met me at the top of the bell tower ladder tonight. We usually have snacks for our tower AGMs as a way of persuading people to attend. I used to bake for these, and Vicky and Penelope still do. Penelope said to me, I’ve made you a flourless cake. So you have to eat it.
Oh. Okay.
+ Which is also why I seem to have nearly given up posting recipes. I’ve been thinking I shouldn’t be wasting this short blog post resource, and that I should think of them like the photo albums old people bore young people to death with. Oh, yes, that was me winning the chandelier-eating contest at the Lambent Festival in ’72. Oh, that’s the giant hollyhock that grew from that magic bean I traded our cow for. I needed both hands for the axe when the ogre started climbing down, so I didn’t get a good picture of him.
Maybe I could post one of my recipes for diamonds and toads.
** I called it ‘shanghaied’ here http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/01/09/more-winter/
*** I’ve told you about THE BELLS OF MAZAHAN, haven’t I? It’s one of the several contestants for the much-sought-after^ position of Third Damar Novel. Before CHALICE became a novel and before PEGASUS became two novels^^ BELLS was in the contract that bought me Third House. It has now been released from this awful responsibility and is free to frolic^^^ among the . . . bell towers. I had started it a decade ago, when I started ringing the first time and was suffering serious bell besottedness. I started writing it because it wanted me to start writing it, but even writers get a little slack about the stories the Story Council sends them, and I took it out in the names of the methods my adepts rang on their magical bells. Spliced and Maximus exist in this world however. But I can’t ring them. Although they were ringing Spliced around me on Wednesday^^^^, which was amusing. I like that sense of havoc and mayhem at my elbow.
^ cough cough cough
^^ Oh, gods, does this mean that my first attempt at an EARTH story will turn into a trilogy?
^^^ This is also the book I’ve sporadically nagged b_twin for alpaca tales in support of, because it’s got a camelid in it, and all the ‘raise your own alpaca’ books are long on feeding regimes and short on personality. Keep raising alpacas, b_twin, I’ll be getting back to you again about this.
^^^^ This is dependent on Wild Robert calling it so nothing horrible happens to the bell I’m on.
† He may have staggered backward and put his hand on the wall.
†† Tomorrow I’ll be sorry when my belt won’t close
††† Special opprobrium reserved for Richard, who is not merely top-class but the kind of ringer who drags everybody else ringing with him up a level, who spends about ten months of the year in Madeira or some damn place. Wherever it is, it doesn’t even have bells.
He was there tonight. He seconded my nomination, the ratbag.
‡ this complete scenario for the first time in months
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