Weirdness
Hurtling hellhounds this morning was even more exciting than usual since the rain was even more exciting than usual. I put off strapping them into their raincoats . . . pretty much till we see the ark floating toward us. Partly, I admit, because I am a Bad Mean Cheese-Paring* Scrooge of an owner and their raincoats aren’t actually all that waterproof. They do slow seepage down a bit, and they make the difference in getting Chaos outdoors at all in winter sleet** but mostly . . . if the weather is all that foul, I don’t want to be out in it any longer than it takes a hellhound to soak through either. And hellhounds are self-drying***, more or less, although it does confound me, as I tweeted earlier, how many wet towels you can accumulate in the process of failing to assist the canine self-drying feature.
We had a round-the-block sprint from the cottage and piled, panting, into Wolfgang† and water-skied down to the mews. There, daring greatly, because we were pretty much all three pacing the floor, I took them into the field in front of the Big Pink Blot, the house that Peter’s little house is one end of the ex-mews to, and which is usually full of sheep††, and let them off lead. I almost never let them off lead in town anyway, I certainly don’t let them off lead around the mews, where the politics among the various resident factions is as good as a play and I do not wish to contribute superfluous dramatic material, and I also have a rule that I let them off lead toward the end of their hurtles, so their edge is already worn down a bit and I can worry fractionally less about their disappearing over the horizon. It is a big field and it was still barely big enough—a motoring hellhound is approaching escape velocity and they were motoring. But at least afterwards when we went (streaming) indoors again they were no longer doing the pacing-tiger thing. I was.
We finally got out properly when what I wanted at that point was lunch but breaks in the cloud cover do not negotiate. Squish squash splish splash bleh. And walking around town tends to include skirmishes with other frelling people. One such encounter was curiously unsettling. We’d just hove round a corner downtown, coming out of the churchyard onto the main street, hellhounds on short lead in case of embranglements. There was a young woman standing on the kerb. She was wearing white jeans and black cowboy boots. I looked at the whiteness of the jeans and thought, better you than me, babe, and then I contemplated the boots because I like cowboy boots. She was with two young men; as I looked up from the boots one of them caught my eye. He was saying something to the other one, who then turned to look at me as well.
It was one of those moments when you suddenly see yourself in someone else’s eyes . . . not in a good way. I had an abrupt flash of myself as a sad old bag in her ugly parka and babushka, for godssake,††† who wears headscarves but the truly hopeless?, and her ridiculous striped fingerless gloves and hot pink All Stars, it being a hot pink All Star day.
I’m fifty-seven; 57-year-old women, especially those who slouch around in jeans and beat-up parkas, are invisible. This is fine with me; I was visible when I was younger, and I like being invisible. It’s part of what’s good about getting old.‡ This town has the local high school/secondary school in it, and is always thronging with kids; I like watching them; mostly they don’t see me, except the few who exclaim over the hellhounds. Invisibility for an inveterate people-watcher is a great advantage. But you do get used to being invisible.
Every now and then—and I can offhand only think of one occasion that shook me the way this afternoon shook me—some teenager notices me and launches—propels—his, since in both cases it’s been guys, that projectile scorn that is the prerogative of adolescent arrogance. I got it both barrels today. Huh? Wha’? What did I do? I’m just walking my dogs and breathing. And wearing a headscarf.
Never mind. Nothing a cup of tea can’t solve. But aside from feeling I need the auric version of sheep dip . . . I wish I knew what their story was. And why a 57-year-old woman in a headscarf was the villain.
PS: OH FOR FRELLING SAKE IT’S CHUCKING IT DOWN OUT THERE AGAIN AND THE WIND DEMONS ARE OUT IN FORCE MAJEURE.
* * *
* I’ve just been trying to find the origin of ‘cheese-paring’ and Google wants to tell me which wines go with which cheeses, and my OED is demanding its validation disc (this is a stupid system) which is at the other house, feh. But why cheese-paring? Why not sausage-skinning? Trouser-patching? Dregs-swilling? Sides-to-middling? Stamp-steaming? Candlestub-hoarding? Pieces-of-string-too-short-to-saving?
** No, no, I’m fine! I can keep my legs crossed for at least two more days!
*** And have an excellent consumer rating for energy use^
^ Partly because ‘chicken’ doesn’t appear in the standard stats
† Wolfgang’s resident banshee was caused by a leak in the ‘steering rack’ from which the power-steering goop was departing, in a slow blurg. Not a big deal, said Blaze^. I said, in a fourteen-year-old car, I assume we’re beginning to look at things going phut in an ultimate and conclusive way. Blaze said, There’s nothing obvious wrong with this one. The body’s all right^^, which is what usually kills cars, when have you last had a general service?
General service? I said.
. . . So he goes back to the garage week after next for them to look at all the bits they didn’t have to look at for the road test. Maybe I’ll ask about the locks.
^ Well, he was a national moto-cross champion in his adolescence, before he settled down to help run the family garage.
^^ Which given my predilection for bouncing over jeep tracks and squeezing every fraction of an inch of turning space at the mews by letting Wolfgang roll backwards till he womps into the wall . . . not very hard . . . is impressive.+
+This is some of why I don’t want a new car. I hate banging a new car into things. I hated banging Wolfgang into things when he was new. I still did it.~ And I didn’t have turning-radius problems when he was new either. I don’t think I’ve ever run into anything at more than about 3 mph, but you can still take paint off at that speed, and stub the bumper a little. Actually my habit of running my car into things began with Wolfgang, who has curiously sloping bumpers and lousy driver view.~~ But I’m now used to the running-into-things system.
~ So did Peter. It was almost a contest.
~~ I told you. Peter did it too.
†† The field, not the house
††† I wrap the ends round my neck too, but it still looks a lot more babushka than Audrey Hepburn
‡ I am occasionally visible to old blokes. I find this funny.^
^ I had a wild youth, okay? I’ve earned the right to like being retired.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.