Beautiful Easter Day
It was hard to get into the bell tower this morning; the early service ran late, and the vestibule was still full of people who wanted to hang around for a word with the priest when we needed to get in to ring the second, main service. The ladder to the bell tower rises into darkness and mystery from the vestibule. As I was lurking by the outside door and wondering if it was worth making a rush for it, so what if I trampled a few little old ladies, this town has lots of little old ladies, we can spare a few,* a rather good-sized middle-aged lady who would take a lot of trampling stepped forward to block my entrance. I swear I’ve never seen her before in my life, but she took one look at me and said, Oooh! a bell ringer!, and nipped hastily out of the way. Ah, the oddness of fame. Ah, the oddness of living in the same place year after year. ** I keep seeing people I recognise when I’m being hurtled around town . . . Or who recognise me. ‘Oh, there’s the woman with the funny accent and the forty-legged dogs.’ And more of them know that I ring bells than what I do for a living.
It occurred to me as the alarm wrenched me out of profound sleep*** this morning at an intolerable hour that I am still completely on winter time. I haven’t sprung forward at all. Which means that Sunday morning is an hour more intolerable than it was a fortnight ago. I do need to address this situation. At the present, however, it means that this blog entry is being extracted from my flesh like porcupine quills from a dog.†
I have in fact spent most of the day in the garden at the cottage; it’s been such a gorgeous day†† that moving slowly around a tiny garden††† saying at intervals, Oh! You’re alive! has been quite a good way to spend it, and somewhat disguises that I’m not up to much more. Well, I did pot up 1,000,000 tiny plug geraniums, fuchsias, cosmos and some damn things that have lost their labels‡, and potted on 1,000,000 medium-sized little things that are bursting out of their first pots, including a few that are still in their first pots from last year, and stuffed 1,000,000 gladiolus and begonia tubers into planters where they can frelling stay for the season. Other than that it was a quiet afternoon. . . .‡‡
* * *
* Nah. Don’t want to get blood on the All Stars. Sometimes I think I belong to Amnesty because I like their colour scheme. It fascinates me that a big serious international justice and human rights organisation—possibly the big serious international justice and human rights organisation—has chosen hot pink as their signature colour. Their web site is covered with it too. 
** A military brat’s concept of home tends to depend on how many books she can wedge in her suitcase—since, back in the Palaeolithic Era when I was young, it often took months for your gear to catch up with you after you moved. And weren’t you tired of the three pairs of socks and miscellaneous underwear, three shirts, two sweaters, two pairs of shoes, coat, skirt, and pair of jeans. Your books were still your friends, however. And besides, you’d found the local library by then.
*** Profound sleep is rare enough I should be grateful for any I can get, but this morning I was having a repeating dream about losing my wallet^ so I was less sorry to be dragged out of it than I might have been.
^ Which would be returned to me only missing something—not the money but the crucial little bits of paper—and with that dream-creepy sensation of All Changed, Changed Utterly.+ Ugggggh.
+ Beauty optional. Terribleness almost certainly.~
~ I have tried, in the last two days, on Twitter, to make a joke about Singin’ in the Rain and another about the definition of ‘to frell’. In both cases I was promptly taken up by people who clearly have my best interests at heart. So, in case there are more of you out there reading this blog, yes, I am QUOTING Easter 1916 by WB Yeats.
† The hellhounds don’t realise how lucky they are. Hedgehogs are tame, kindly little things in comparison. Although Darkness almost had a faceful of cat’s claws this evening. Cat was doing one of those cat-drama things where it’s sauntering along a footpath in front of two fiery eyed hellhounds^ glancing laconically over its shoulder occasionally as we’re gaining on it and I’m yelling, Will you climb the goltarnation^^ fence for godssake and then it suddenly goes all George Booth^^^ and does go straight up the fence . . . whereupon Darkness nearly goes straight up after it, hellhounds having hind legs like kangaroos’. I can knock him sideways by yanking on the lead but he’s six feet overhead by then. The cat, who is having a really fine time and is looking forward to telling its mates all about it down t’ pub later, is still balancing on the top of the fence . . . and leans down to take a swipe at me as I walk past. Thanks a lot, cutie. I’ll bring a sack for you next time.
^ What if I didn’t have shoulders like a stevedore’s from ringing bells? Frelling cats.
^^ Which reminds me. Warning. Bad language. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/apr/02/kick-ass-bad-language?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Well, no. I don’t agree. I like the idea that the only widely-known and –used vulgar slang term for female genitalia+ is about to lose its status as the very, very, very worst word there is. It what? Why? Why are there a dozen common half-friendly or half-silly terms for penis and testicles, even if you wouldn’t necessarily use them to Great-Aunt Gladys, and no equivalents for vagina and clitoris++? And not only are there no friendly ones but the only important one is The Worst Word There Is? Cheeeez. This has been bothering me since I got old enough to swear, and yeah, I say it’s sexism, and yeah, I say it blows. Speaking of male-oriented slang.
Meanwhile, are we all going to die of creeping blandness and furry stagnant arteries if we can no longer evoke The Worst Word There Is? Well, suit yourself, but I’m not. I personally feel that when you really need to call someone a dog turd, you can get your meaning over. I saw the c-word article yesterday, shortly after hellhounds and I had come in from a hurtle around town, pausing occasionally to receive adulation from fans. We were bearing down on a mum and two little girls, when the little girls noticed us and went into a flurry of oooh! Pretty doggies! This was in town, mind you, on a street with houses on it. We were on the pavement, which had a tiny edge of grass on either side. In her enthusiasm for the hellhounds the bigger of the two girls took an unwary step backward off the pavement—but why should she have to be wary, for pity’s sake? THIS IS IN TOWN—and stepped into an enormous pile of dog crap. ENORMOUS. Like this dog had a bowel the size of the Worm Ouroboros. Not like the person in charge could have missed it. The mother, poor woman, used the hellhounds as distraction for her now deeply distressed daughter, and as I went on by I said, creeps like this give the rest of us a bad name. But what I was thinking was, if I had any way of knowing who this medina worm in human shape was, I would explain to them in an unmistakable manner that they are lower than dog crap. As I say, I think when you need to, you can get your point across with reference to Worst Words.
+ Well, yes, there’s tw_t, but I’ve never been able to take it seriously.
++ And this is possibly my age and generation showing, but I’ve always had a faint sense that clitoris is a dirty word anyway. It’s not about reproduction. Except maybe in terms of persuading her to stick around long enough to have a go at getting her pregnant.
^^^ http://www.pbase.com/csw62/image/38287157
I love George Booth. He’s probably where my soppy affection for bull terriers comes from. http://www.pbase.com/csw62/image/119575553
†† Yes! We do have them! Make a note!
††† I have got to get up to Third House and PLANT ROSES. Actually, I also have to get up to Third House and choose a few heeled-in-and-waiting-for-action roses to plant back at the cottage.
‡ Story of my life. I know that leaf looks familiar. . . .
‡‡ I’m going to try to leave early for my voice lesson on Tuesday so I can stop at the farm store and buy more compost.
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