Varieties of vocal expression
The day plunged into an exciting start when hellhounds got off lead for a superhurtle the first time in probably a fortnight, mainly because it’s been too hot and they haven’t been interested. Yesterday the temperature dropped and you could see them sort of cautiously opening their eyes and looking around* and today we went on one of the walks where there are a couple of big fields that are sometimes sufficiently unoccupied that I can let them run havoc. There’s a nice bit of life jigsaw that summer when the crops are tall and there aren’t many fields available for hellhound tumult, there’s likely to be a lot of hellhound-oppressing weather. We were lucky today: the bigger, better field has a nasty habit of having horses in it** and the smaller field is much too near town (Ditherington in this case) and usually has someone tottering across it with their overweight pug, their six Labradors, or their screaming school group. Usually also hellhounds are pretty good about asking, and about taking no for an answer, but today it was like, Hey! You haven’t let us off lead in forever!—having conveniently forgotten that if I’d taken their leads off pretty much any time lately they’d’ve merely collapsed where they stood, until I went back after them with a forklift, or at least one of those wheeled shopping trolleys. Today, however, we hit Field #1 and Chaos was all over me, Darkness, and the landscape: you are not off lead yet, you big thug, mind your manners or I’ll tie all four feet together and hang you in a tree. And then they simply lucked out: Field #2 was also empty. They almost never get two goes in one walk—although that’s partly because I don’t want them to start thinking that off-lead is standard and not a thrill and a luxury. That’s life with a running dog: they are terrifyingly fast***, and unless you’re the owner of a large walled estate, they’re somewhat challenging companions in this regard. I’m working on my second generation of mostly-whippets, and it still amazes me how quickly they become little dots in the distance.
Field #2 was empty probably because it was raining. We need the rain; rain is fine†. But the frelling weather report said we were going to have teeming downpours this afternoon: that great fists of rain were going to mug us silly. So after being frolicked on by happy, muddy-footed hellhounds, I left them in the warm, dry kitchen while I sallied out to stake my delphiniums. Two of the three at Third House didn’t make it through the winter, but there’s one there and five [sic] at the cottage, only two of which have been staked already, because I am a lazy cow and have been busy potting on millions of little things that keep arriving in the post.†† I am a lazy cow who furthermore hates staking, especially in a garden under which runs all the plumbing in Hampshire.††† So I was outdoors in the rain at the cottage festooned in mud and green garden twine, fighting off the attentions of Mme Gregoire Staechlin and Lady Hillingdon‡, and breaking bamboo stakes right and left despite poking the holes first with A Long Thin Steel Tool of Unknown Original Purpose, ARRRRRRRRRGH. And shouting edifying adages like I hate my life! and *&^% you, you *&^%er!, feeling reasonably secure that there wouldn’t be anyone immediately over any of the assortment of garden walls around me—unless, of course, they were also staking their delphiniums, in which case why wasn’t I hearing their monologue(s) on the subject? Possibly because all the plumbing in Hampshire only goes under my garden.
And this afternoon‡‡ I had my first voice lesson in forever.‡‡‡ Wow. Gosh. And I went in there again thinking what a total disaster this was going to be—as I did the last time I had a long involuntary break—and, again, it wasn’t. I think there’s some kind of Magic Lintel or something over Blondel’s door: Cross Me If Thou Darest, for Thou Shalt Sing Beyond Thy Capacity. Mind you, we’re still talking back row of the chorus, but we’re talking back row of the chorus without the other chorus members turning purple with suppressed laughter. And what I want to know is, why can’t I do this at home? When I’m having lessons regularly every week, the magic-lintel aspect fades a little under the onslaught of simply learning the tune I’m going to be trying to keep with Blondel playing the frelling piano§ accompaniment.§§ But when I’ve been trying to claw myself back from silence and strange gargling noises to something more nearly resembling singing it’s like trying to . . . stake delphiniums in the rain with bamboo stakes in a garden full of local plumbing.
Some of the disparity is—rather blindingly—Blondel’s ability to define what you’re doing as opposed to what you should be doing, and then suggest how to do it. Some of it is just . . . I don’t know what it’s just. But I am cringingly aware that there’s a big difference in the way I walk under the magic lintel prepared to make noise and how at home I’m always worried about Peter and the neighbours and the fire station a quarter of a mile away and the ungodly terribleness of my piano playing§§§ and . . . I’ve got myself both coming and going: my voice is so negligible you can’t hear me across the room unless I drop into chest voice and bellow# . . . or, my voice is so terrible it will drive strong men to leap out of their upper-storey bedroom windows and run down the street to the fire station, begging the firepersons to come and put me out. I also really have to do something about my music stand. Which kept dropping bits off and falling over till Peter and I uttered a mutual cry of ARRRRRGH and threw it out, which means I’ve only got the music stand on the piano at present. But Peter has promised to replace it as soon as I find the Music Stand of my Dreams. I don’t feel worthy of the music stand of my dreams, but . . . you know, oooh! pretty! Shiny! It’s very hard to tell yourself, no, get the plywood one.
PS: There have been no torrential downpours this afternoon. At least my delphiniums are now staked.
* * *
* They are such wusses about heat. They make me look like Stanley and Livingstone. Or Allan Quatermain.
** Of course horses are lovely. But not when you want to hurtle your hellhounds.
*** I told you about Chaos catching one of the mews’ cats a little while ago. Came up alongside it, leaned over, and grabbed it across the shoulders, all in about two-thirds of a second. He’d’ve made a great rabbiter.
† Except in terms of Souvenir de la Malmaison’s flowers this year. Sigh.
†† We do seem to be down to a trickle now, unless my evil twin has done something I don’t know about yet.
††† Turns out that at least some of the plumbing in Hampshire runs under Third House’s little strip of front garden. But the delphinium is in the back, and the stakes sank in just fine.
‡ More climbing roses, right? This is Lady H’s second year and she’s been really moving so she should be pretty glam in a week or two.
‡‡ Still a little muddy around the edges
‡‡‡ He’s leaving in three months, so of course I’ve had to waste most of the last two being ill and floppy and having stupid deadlines and things. Gaah.
§ Speaking of pianos, Blondel may be about to be given a Bechstein grand. If I didn’t have my own sweet upright darling (as well as no space for a grand) I would be hideously jealous.
§§ I have two new songs to learn this week. Eeep. One of them is relatively straightforward but long. The other one is short but a ratbag.
§§§ Play and sing at the same time? You’re kidding, right? I will stumble through a few bars to find out what Blondel is going to be playing next lesson, but I learn the melody by playing the melody with one hand, and even that is pretty challenging. Because I’m also trying to count the beats and stresses and all that miserable stuff about which syllable goes with which note and . . .
# See: mind your manners or I’ll tie all four feet together and hang you in a tree.
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