Hellhounds and handbells
I have a new measurement of coordination.* You know the old rub your tummy and pat your head model? Piffle. Stroke a hellhound with one hand . . . how much can you do with the other one without cold wet nose and heavy leeeeaning suggesting that you’re not CONCENTRATING? I can get my shoes off one handed, which is a better trick than you think since I double-knot the laces, but getting my coat off without interrupting the flow, or briefly imprisoning contiguous hellhound in fallen raiment is difficult.** We are in another stretch*** of No, No Food for Us Hellhounds This Week, Thank You, Please Don’t Trouble† and presumably because they know this winds me up Chaos in particular wants an awful lot of reassurance.†† Therefore I’m developing my one-handed skills. Hey, I can get a London Review out of its plastic wrapper and unfold it, one-handed—with the other hand keeping up a steady hellhound-trancing stroke stroke stroke.†††
It’s all about handbells of course really.‡ That awful thing of trying to keep two complex patterns going in your mind at once and in accurate parallel.‡‡ Ow ow ow ow ow. ‡‡‡ I can feel pieces of my brain shearing off like a glacier calving. Although I wish I could figure out how to apply the pain of handbells to writing two books at a time.§ But even obsessive grind has its limits§§ and tonight I declared to my two partners in crime that I didn’t think I could learn Cambridge on handbells—which in theory has been my assignment for about the last month—at least not right now. Barring that there’s a way to earn a living at it and I could thus devote more precious brain energy to the problem. They acquiesced to my pitiable weakness with surprising grace.§§§ Now I only have to learn Kent instead.# Remind me how I got myself into this.##
* * *
* HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
** I don’t even try it when I’m wearing my real black leather fake pilot’s jacket. It weighs a TON. Descending from a height it could do a tender hellhound damage.
*** siiiiiiigh
† Since We Won’t Eat It Anyway
†† What about me? Who reassures me? Peter has suggested that this current paroxysm may be caused by the change in the weather—spring does seem to be arriving at last, with mouldy, slug-encouraging rain as opposed to the icy January stuff. I suppose that’s reassuring.
††† Occasionally he’ll purr. It’s not the standard happy-dog-moan although it’s more of a mmmmm than a rrrrrr. Darkness is the moaner. Darkness is the voluptuary. Being stroked is being stroooooooked to Darkness; for Chaos it’s reassurance. But it’s interesting—to the bedevilled and maddened human at least—Darkness is also the one who easily learnt to pick up each of his forefeet—briskly and high—to have his harness put on. Darkness would have learnt the Spanish Walk—which was the plan for a while two-plus years ago—no problem. Chaos still doesn’t get it about picking his feet up for his harness. ARRRRRRGH. I keep resisting calling him stupid because . . . he’s not stupid. He’s the one, for example, figured out that the sound of my computer closing down means WALKIES—so I’d better not close my computer down and then decide to do some filing.^ Southdowner, a long time ago now, asked me what I realised was a very perceptive question: Is he aware of his body? No. He’s not. He lives there, but he doesn’t inhabit. Darkness inhabits. Chaos’ body is a means to an end: streaking over the landscape, say, or broadsiding Darkness.^^ I suspect this lack of inhabitation is also why he’s an even worse eater than Darkness—and why picking his feet up for his harness to be put on remains a mystery to him.
^ This isn’t hard. I never decide to do my filing.
^^ I have this really really good thing going at the moment. After they’ve circled the globe two or three times at top speed and are starting to slow down to visibility by mere human eyes again, Chaos starts thumping Darkness because this is Chaos’ idea of a good time. Darkness then rushes up to me and says, Please put me back on lead! Pleeeeeease! —Because they aren’t allowed to fight on lead. They can fight over something like a stick, but sheer battering and pounding is not allowed. And Chaos, despite his thuggishness, is a very sweet-natured hellhound, so at this point he says oh, well, and waits to have his lead put back on too. I don’t know how long this will last. If Chaos ever grows out of wanting brutishness and mayhem I may have a problem. I’m sure Darkness would like to linger in contemplation over Very Dead Things if he weren’t barbarically interrupted.
‡ Niall would be the first to agree. Also the last. Also most of the middle.
‡‡ Note that in fact you’re not supposed to. You’re supposed to learn to read the frellers in blocks, or boxes is the correct term. Niall has wasted a certain amount of time trying to teach me this. But I had a profound One More Thing reaction^ and I subsequently discovered that a lot of quite good handbell ringers ring by the two individual lines of tower bell patterns and I think I’m stuck with it now.^^
^ No, no! Not one more thing!
^^ Whew.
‡‡‡ Last night at Ditherington we were frelling heaving. I’ve never seen so many people in one small ringing chamber. This was slightly off-putting—especially because Wild Robert had specially imported Vicky and made sure Niall was coming because he wanted to put a Cambridge band together . . . for me. Which was extremely nice of him. But as it happened we had five people who could ring Cambridge, me—and 1,000,000 beginners. All watching. I’d retreated to the stairway and was trying to hammer the hideous Cambridge front work^ into my resistant brain—I generally know roughly where I am in the rest of the pattern—while the beginners rang beginner things, and when Wild Robert took me by the ear and dragged me back inside . . . there were all these eyes. Ranks and ranks of eyes. This is why I hate ground floor rings! People tend to loiter to watch! I don’t expect a frelling audience practise night at Ditherington (which has a nice shut-in ringing chamber on the first floor)!
We got through it. You don’t not get through things with Wild Robert around. And at the end the audience clapped. I want to go hooooooooome. I’ve changed my mind about singing back row in a chorus some day. Live audiences! Aaaaugh!
^ Which goes: dodge, lead, dodge, seconds, lead, dodge, seconds, dodge, lead, seconds, dodge, lead, dodge . . . The second seconds is where you turn around and go back out the way you came, but . . . jeez . . .
§ People who aren’t even method handbell ringers manage to write two books at the same time. . . .
§§ Which in my case probably also includes writing two books at once. I’d be happy to write only one if it would write. We’re back to the plastic teaspoon at the granite^ rockface again. Sigh. I can see the shape of the eventual Colossa of Rhodes staring out at me, but the plastic teaspoon is not ideal for the job.
^ Marble would be grander, but I’m a Maine girl. I think in granite.
§§§ Colin has been ringing fifty years. Niall has been ringing twenty. I have been ringing five. Give me a frelling break.
# http://www.guildfordguild.org.uk/assets/applets/Kent_Minor_Crib_Sheet.pdf
## And yes, ‘this’ includes hellhounds.
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