Brainscramble
It’s eleven o’clock on a Friday evening* and I have to write a blog entry. Chiefly I’m busy—and preoccupied by—wringing my hands over my email.** I have a variety of issues about my email*** which Computer Men† declared will all be gloriously solved†† by a change of server. I have a somewhat complex set up as it is, or rather, as it was, and shall be again†††, and the virtual digging of post holes while fending off the local rabid tarantula population, the (virtual) cementing of posts into their holes‡ and the stringing of barbed‡‡ computer-wire between them took Raphael four and a half hours‡‡‡ this morning/afternoon and he then LEFT announcing that I should just allow my computers to go on doing whatever they’re doing until they stop. §
Ten hours later they’re still doing it.§§ Whimper.
Maybe I can spend all of tomorrow in the garden§§§ and avoid noticing what my email is up to.
* * *
* And I’m still eating lunch. No, really. It’s been one of those days for a variety of reasons. And I was thinking, as I reeled back to the cottage after bell practise^ that hellhounds really do serve a purpose: the warm, furry, three-dimensional, glad-to-see-you purpose. Peter was playing bridge tonight so it was just me. Or it would have been, without the hellhound factor. With an armful of hellhound, suddenly my own feet remake contact with the ground, clonk, and the reason I feel so odd isn’t because I’m Finally Losing My Grip EEEEEEEEEE but possibly because I’ve had way too much caffeine and way too little food thus far today.
^ Cambridge. Oh gods. There are evenings, when I see Colin and Anthea coming up the ladder, my heart sinks. With Colin and Anthea, chances are we have a Cambridge band. Without them, chances are we don’t. And I’ve missed far too many practises lately and been far too brainscrambled when I’ve managed to go at all, and Cambridge looks like Mount Doom from the Dead Marshes+ at the moment.
But speaking of bad ringing news, Ditherington practise is no more. I went along on Wednesday for the first time in yonks, thanks to circumstances beyond my control++, and found Marilyn and Wild Robert in deep discussion about closing down. Marilyn is tired of trying to hold the local band together when none of the locals comes to practise and (sadly) discretion prevents me from describing the final, mind-boggling+++ confrontation that had just caused Marilyn to resign as tower captain.
But . . . waaaaaah. Ditherington has been my Wednesday night tower pretty much since I started ringing again five and a half years ago. Second in sacredness only to Friday night home tower practise. I like the Ditherington bells! I like ringing for Wild Robert, for whom I commit feats of successful insanity unimaginable in other circumstances, like the frelling touch of Grandsire doubles I called on this our concluding session! –I was standing there with my hand on the rope, Wild Robert having announced a touch of Grandsire doubles, and I said thoughtfully, I can’t remember the last time I rang a touch of Grandsire doubles, and Wild Robert said brightly, And furthermore, you’re going to call this one! No! Nooooo! This isn’t even the nice simple touch I sort of know, except I’ve forgotten! This one is WORSE! And furthermore we had two random ringers and Wild Robert was ringing two bells which is horribly confusing! It took us three tries, but we did get through. Gods know why. The ringing gods clearly like Ditherington, and Wild Robert. So why don’t they send us more ringers?
+ You can’t see Mount Doom from the Dead Marshes? Even better.
++ Hey, did you know it was ME Awareness Week? http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/13/me-chronic-fatigue-syndrome No, neither did I.
+++ I know people are bizarre, but this one was off the frelling graph. I think his wife must have run off with the plumber the same day he discovered he had gripples in his well.
** The fact that every time an individual email pops in or out of existence I get a little pop up box that says ‘Outlook is trying to retrieve data from the Microsoft Exchange Server Squaredumplingxct!!4.xchg’ is not helping my concentration.
*** Arrrrrgh. Blaaaaargh. Grrrrrrrr. You know.
† After the arduous translation process
†† Solved. Sure. And I’m Fred Astaire.
††† Please the computer gods. Please.
‡ Burying rabid tarantulas at the bottoms of post holes is said to be almost as effective as burying slaves under cornerstones of buildings.
‡‡ Which is much scarier than the ordinary, cattle-repelling kind
‡‡‡ It wasn’t all bad. I got to play with his iPhone some more.
§ I have three computers. Although there are only two of them downloading the entire history of the universe at the moment; I decided my nerves couldn’t stand all three of them simultaneously. To the extent that I understand any of this, I gather that everything on either/both computers first has to be uploaded to the new server . . . and then . . . and then . . . Um. Beats me. A very, very, very long staring match? But whatever it is it’s taking more than ten hours. The goal is that everything on all three computers will eventually be on all three computers, instead of inevitably on the one I’m not on at the moment I want it. And the sum total of my email is about four hundred thirty-two trillion bonzogigantibytes. And I haven’t got the fastest broadband ever seen either. It’s sort of the pony express version. Sort of the hamster pony express version. Sort of the retired hamster pony express version. Sort of . . .
§§ And it’s Friday afternoon. Raphael—possibly in fear of watching a 57-year-old woman cry, and he was here all by himself today—did promise to leave his (i)phone on this weekend and furthermore answer it if I get myself into too much of a flap. I was telling this story to Oisin, who is still wrestling with his new virtual organ and is perhaps not in the best of moods on the subject of computers. I added that I thought that was pretty nice of him, especially when he has two little kids. Oisin made rude noises and suggested ‘I’m sorry, darling, you’ll have to take the baby—ow you sodding little brute what are you doing—I have to answer this phone call’.
§§§ I went to a garden centre yesterday. It’s not my fault! There’s a garden centre immediately opposite that end of Gormenghast Hospital! Where I had to take Peter for some more useless tests yesterday. And I had to do something with myself, didn’t I? I’m not going to sit around inside a hospital unless I have a close family member chained to one of the beds! And I needed some more compost^. And I bought more compost! I did! I also bought two trays of snapdragons, a pansy, a hollyhock, two golden spirea^^ and about eight pots! Stop that sniggering! It could have been a lot worse! (Peter might have been late. . . .I might have seen a little rhodo I had to have. . . . )
^ At the rate I’m going through it . . . gah. And I had MORE little-green-thing deliveries today! Including a couple of boxes of FREE little green things! Yowzabella Dopplegrump! I’m such a frelling good customer they’re starting to send me FREE plants! Nooooooo!
^^ Well, I’ve wanted one for years and then I couldn’t decide,+ and Peter was by now waiting, and . . .
+ I was going to give you photo links, and Golden Princess is fairly easy, but the only half decent photo of Firelight I could find–which is to say a photo where it looked interesting rather than boring–had an address so long it repeatedly made my URL-shortener barf and refuse to function, so I gave up.
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