Possibly Papua New Guinea
This has been one of your Almost Total Sod weeks when everything that can go wrong does, and everything that can’t possibly go wrong does anyway. Plus I have an Apocalypse in my pocket.* I keep reminding myself that one of the reasons I have an iPhone rather than some other instrument of technological torture is because they’re so intuitive. I know this because this is what everyone tells me. GAAAAAAAAH. I was at the tears-of-rage-with-blood-pressure-headache stage** with Pooka yesterday afternoon, out hurtling hellhounds***, trying to play music on her, and every ten or twenty seconds there would be a little trilling noise and a new track would start playing. ARRRRRRGH. So, clearly, there’s a shuffle-by-shaking button enabled somewhere† but I couldn’t FIND IT and meanwhile the countryside was getting an earful about what I thought of my Apocalypse.††
So today Peter (who hasn’t had the best week of his life either) and I decided to cheer ourselves up and go visit a garden. It sounded like quite a nice garden too—National Garden Scheme garden descriptions are written by the owners, so caution and large handfuls of salt and cynicism are advised when reading that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have been lovingly recreated in rural Hampshire—its only drawback being that it is far enough away that there was room for debate about the route taken to get there.
Peter won.
We got lost.
We saw most of West Sussex as well as great swathes of Surrey and possibly a glimpse of Papua New Guinea††† on our way. Fortunately most of it was pretty.‡ And the garden, once we got there, was excellent. Listen: a serious English garden with lots of dahlias. Not enough roses, but maybe they’ll get around to more roses: dahlias are a lot more movable, since you have to get the frellers up every winter,‡‡ and the admin at this garden are obviously having a good time with their colour schemes. Yaay for orange and purple and scarlet. Together. If they need suggestions on good orange and purple and scarlet roses. . . .
We drove home my way and got there in about a third of the time it took us on the way out. Not so scenic though. Not a single Queen Alexandra Birdwing‡‡‡. But there’s always next Sunday afternoon.
* * *
* Some of the people I have flashed my pink leather case at have been inclined to be humorous at Pooka’s and my expense. This seems to have less to do with the colour than the fact that I went for the full clamshell deal rather than a ‘bumper’ which just protects the back. Most of these bumpered-only models also live in pockets, like Pooka, but—even supposing I can be expected to remember reliably to keep my penknife in the other pocket with my keys^—most people don’t spend quality time hitting themselves in the belly and thighs with bell ropes.^^ Repeatedly. Heavy bell ropes.
I was thinking about this this morning. You may remember a plaint earlier that I was going to be ringing six times this week—I generally try to keep it down to three. My usual whacking-myself-in-the-midsection activity is ringing down in peal. You’re supposed to take a loop in the rope before you do yourself any serious damage, but I don’t always manage this. Keeping my place in the row is much more important than a few weals. But yesterday I rang at Madhatterington for the second Saturday in a row^^^ where the bells, as previously observed, are Possessed By Demons,+ and one of the ways the demonic presence manifests is by the fact that the ropes want to beat you to death, not merely when you’re ringing down in peal, but all the time. I was delighted to notice yesterday that Felicity on the three, which bell had been my chief misfortune last week, was having to wrestle the rope as one might wrestle a hungry boa constrictor. And it’s been raining this week, so all bell ropes are heavier, solider and meaner than usual, even basically good-tempered ones such as we have at New Arcadia. So by this morning, when I was ringing down in peal after service—WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP—I was thinking I was about ready for a surcease of this self-flagellatory activity. Except I’m ringing at Little Warbling tomorrow. ++
But at least Pooka is safe.
^ I don’t know how anyone actually wears skinny jeans. Does a minion with a backpack come free with every purchase?
^^ This includes most bell ringers. Grace is not one of my greater attributes under any circumstances.
^^^ The week before wasn’t too good for only ringing three times either.
+ This is also the tower where practise is forbidden by cranky locals, so the poor bells are only rung very occasionally for services. It’s enough to make even the most virtuous bells vulnerable to seduction by unholy elements.
++ I also seem to be ringing handbells at Frellingham again on Wednesday. Niall strode purposefully up to me after service ring this morning. Ah, Robin! he said.
I cringed.
James and Darcy are away for a fortnight, he said, attempting to appear ingratiating and failing. I see the ogreish gleam in his eye. The gleam that says, Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of someone who might be bullied into ringing handbells. Titus, continued Niall, is hoping that we might convince you to ring with us in their absence.
Once, I say. I’ll do it once. If they come here.
Niall looks shifty. I usually go there, he says. And Titus can only come, you know, if his wife drives him.
I know, I say. So teach her to ring handbells.
I’ll drive us there, of course, says Niall. To give the ogre his due, he is always willing to do the driving.
Once, I say again. Okay. I’ll come to Frellingham once.
Once? says Niall, sensing weakness. But you know how Titus loves his handbells—
ONCE, I say. If he wants any more he can come here.
You realise that I’ve been end-ran—end-runned?—again. I haven’t got time to ring handbells twice a week even if it was always here, and we’ll be ringing with Colin as usual on Thursdays. But I will bet you Jane Austen to yesterday’s newspaper that I ring handbells with Titus at least twice in the next fortnight, and that Niall will try his best to make it three times. I at least had the good sense not to complain about pounding myself into swiss steak with a succession of bell ropes, since Niall’s advice would inevitably be that I need to ring more handbells. It is relatively more difficult to hurt yourself with handbells, but it can be done. Scratching your nose with a handbell in your hand, for example. Ask me how I know this.
** As I emailed to Fiona, who is volunteering to teach me to text. Texting! Oh gods! I promised Merrilee I’d learn how to text! This morning William Gibson retweeted someone saying that he (Gibson) had invented the internet while sitting at a manual typewriter. Yes. I remember. I was there. I am old. Siiiiiiiigh. And I bet Gibson texts away like anything. Just like Merrilee, who is almost as old as I am.
*** Who were slinking along at a distance, pretending they didn’t know me.
† Either that or they sent me the wrong model, and this is the prototype for the one that you really do just plug into your brain.
†† Eventually I gave up and turned the frelling iPod function off and stormed on in silence^. And got home, and swam around the home screen for a while, went into settings, and finally found the thrice-frelling button, poked it VIOLENTLY to ‘off’, and today played an entire album through without difficulty. However I am probably Marked for Life by James Findlay’s As I Carelessly Did Stray which is the music I was being tormented with^^, which was probably a nice album originally, for those of us who like trad folk. But what is INTUITIVE about having to climb OUT of the programme you’re IN and find some miscellaneous group of totally UNRELATED stuff whose only common denominator is that it lets you muck around with what goes on elsewhere? Grrrrrrrr.
^ barring some fairly heated muttering
^^ and vice versa, in a grand, epic sense
††† Okay, I made the Papua New Guinea part up
‡ Especially Papua New Guinea. I liked the rainforests and the cassowaries.
‡‡ Although a lot of us don’t, which means we have to start over next year.
‡‡‡ http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/van_anim_buttrfly.htm
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