Really really really big YAAAAY! Also HURRAH! Possibly an additional YIPPEEE!
Look what I found lurking behind the dustbin and which could have been sitting there for days (although I doubt it has been) because nobody put a card through my door saying that something had been left. I should concentrate on being thankful that whoever the Cardless Delivery Person is did leave it, instead of making me jump through various fetching-from-the-post-office hoops. . . I am also thankful that it was in a waterproof mailing envelope since it was left behind the bins which is to say out in the rain as opposed to behind the water butt where there’s a nice little roof. All right. Shutting up now.
Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL? And since it’s a 26th* and we haven’t had champagne in at least 48 hours, Peter had already put a bottle in the refrigerator.
I’m failing to get the embossing of the title to show up properly, but it is embossed, trust me. And even the SPINE is gorgeous. How terrific is that?**
And partly in honour of the marvelousness that is having the finished book here and three-dimensionally splendid and glorious and all that, and partly because I’ve spent the evening writing another
Guest Blog for some other lovely person who is willing to splash out about PEGASUS and I have no brain left for Days in the Life, I thought I’d give you the first few hundred words of Chapter Four, following on from the three-chapter excerpt available from the right-hand side bar of this very page. . . .
* * *
Sylvi got through the first part of the ceremony somehow, and she knew she must have remembered what to do and to say, because her father was smiling at her and Danacor (drat him) looked relieved. Thowara stood just behind Danacor’s right shoulder, looking 
exquisite; the flowers tucked among his primaries glittered like jewels. She wanted to pinch him, just to dent his dignity a little, even though she knew it wouldn’t’ve worked. He would have looked at her gravely and in mild surprise. Beyond Danacor and Thowara stood the rest of the family and their pegasi; the queen, Sylvi’s other two brothers, two of her uncles and three of her aunts. Lrrianay was absent; he would be escorting her pegasus into the Court in a little while. What her father did have to bear him company was the Sword.
The Sword was the greatest treasure of their house, and the most important symbol of their rule, for the Sword chose the ruler. Balsin, who signed the treaty with the pegasi, had been carrying the Sword; some histories claimed that it was the Sword that Argen wanted out of his country, not Balsin. For some generations now the Sword had passed from parent to eldest child, but when Great-great-great-great-uncle Snumal had died without direct descendents, the Sword had chosen which cousin the crown should pass to. Sylvie had never understood what happened when it passed—when the Sword had left Grinbad and come to Great—eight greats—uncle Rudolf, how did they know it had happened?
She’d asked her father this several times and he’d only shaken his head, but recently she’d asked again and possibly because she was going to have to swear fealty to him and it on her twelfth birthday, he stopped mid head-shake, stared at nothing for a minute and finally said, “It’s rather like a bad dream. You can see it in your mind’s eye, and it’s so bright you think it will blind you. You can’t move, and it comes closer and closer and . . . there is the most extraordinary sensation when it finally touches you, somewhere between diving into icy water and banging your elbow really hard, and even though you’ve seen it nearly every day of your life—and you know you’re in this fix because it’s already accepted you—you know that it’s the greatest treasure of your house and you’re suddenly and shamingly afraid it will cut you because you, after all, eldest child of the reigning monarch or not, are not worthy of it. But it doesn’t cut you, and you feel almost sick with relief. And then you seem to wake up, only it’s still there.”
He stopped looking at nothing and looked at his daughter, and smiled, but it was a rather grim smile. “And then you really feel sick, because you know what that’s just happened means.” Her father, Sylvi knew, had been given the Sword in a quiet ceremony of transfer on his thirtieth birthday, when his mother retired, but the Sword had acknowledged him as heir in the great public ritual of acceptance ten years before. “Afterward my mother said—” He stopped.
“What did Grandmother say?” Sylvi only barely remembered her father’s mother, who had died when Sylvi was four years old: a Sword-straight and Sword-thin old lady who looked desperately forbidding in her official retired-sovereign robes, but who somehow became benign and comforting (if a little bony) as soon as she picked tiny Sylvi up and smiled at her.
The king looked at his daughter for another long minute and then said, “She said she felt twenty years younger and six inches taller.”
* * *
* Remember: 3rds and 26ths: if we need to celebrate something, those are our days.
** And when I opened it at random, as one does, upon receipt of one’s Brand Shiny First Advance Author Copy of New Book, it opened to the description of how pegasi are NOT flying horses. Slightly unnervingly however it’s on page 129 of the finished book as opposed to 128 of the bound galleys. I am going to assume this does not mean there is something terribly, horribly wrong.
Hee hee hee hee hee
http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/178218.html
Planting Pansies in the Dark . . .
. . . and other notable vegetative mishaps, most particularly The Return of the Indoor Jungle. 
I am already TIRED of bringing things in and taking things out the next morning AND IT’S STILL ONLY OCTOBER. The clocks haven’t even gone back yet.* Granted I slowly develop a system**: the stuff that’s going to have to come in lives near the door—either door, I’m not fussy, except for the icy wind tunnel caused by having both front and kitchen doors open at once—which means that the stuff from the very-well-back of the garden has to find, or have found for it, somewhere near one of the doors to put its feet or anyway its pot down. Fortunately the hellhounds don’t use their courtyard much any more. In the morning they can’t be bothered: they’re busy bringing the Beady Eyed Take Us for a Hurtle Stare into play.*** Last thing at night . . . it’s pretty much an obstacle course out there, made more exciting by me standing in the kitchen door (because I usually haven’t remembered to put shoes on) and hissing† (it being very late and sound carries†† and Phineas will leave his bathroom window open, even in cold weather †††) No—no—you don’t want to pee there—noooo—not on the pansies/snapdragons/salvia‡/rudbeckia/begonia/dahlia/pelargonium/ monarda/chocolatecosmos/gallardia/osteospermum/impatiens/echinacea/ pink/clematis/funnythingIdon’tknowthenameofbutIknowit’stender/rose! And in fact hellhounds seem to have decided that going outdoors merely long enough to make me say ‘no don’t pee there’ is a mysterious but salient part of the last-thing-before-bed ritual that leads to their bedtime snack which, mysteriously, they seem to like.‡‡
On frosty nights, of course, you could play six a side football out there because the plants are all indoors. Like tonight. Tonight is the third night this week I’ve played host to the indoor jungle. All that schlepping drastically cuts into my pansy-planting time too.‡‡‡ Not to mention PEG II writing. And singing. Ahem.
* * *
* And then I’ll really be planting pansies in the dark.
** Chiefly involving HOW MANY PLANTS CAN I GET ON THAT WINDOWSILL FOR THE WINTER?^ OH COME ON, I’M SURE I CAN GET AT LEAST ONE MORE ON. MAYBE TWO. AND IF YOU FALL OFF YOU LITTLE RATBAG(S),^^ I’LL LEAVE YOU OUT FOR MR FROST.
^ Some of which then settle down and get on with it so successfully that come spring they’re too big to move.
^^ Happy begonias and trailing fuchsias in particular can boil over the edges of their pots and down to a remarkable, not to say oversetting, degree, and you don’t know in advance which pots to put the osmium bricks in the bottoms of, because the relative happiness of pot plants is a riddle and a conundrum the finest minds cannot penetrate. And osmium is expensive, you know. You don’t use osmium bricks . . . lightly.+
+ Hee hee hee.
*** Chaos will quite often go stand by the kitchen door in the morning and look at me meaningfully. Okay, I say, and open the door. He goes out, looks around, does a 360° turn and comes straight back in again, now glaring at me and clearly affronted. —I have no idea. He is a fruit loop. Fruit loops frequently behave in a fruitily loopish manner.
† Speaking of which, Phineas is already letting the hellkitten out. He’s still hardly big enough to make a hellhound hors d’oeuvre, not that food is ever high on the hellhound agenda . . . but they love things that run, and it’s not going to matter that I never ever ever ever ever ever let them chase him, after they’ve seen him streak across the landscape once or twice they’re going to be coming out of the cottage spring-loaded, like the English archers at Agincourt. I may start taking them back and forth to the car blindfolded.
†† It sure does. All summer long I get a front row/back bedroom seat/pillow over head^ to the Troll and Nightingale’s weekend live tribute bands. You know, there are a lot of bands that were sufficiently ghastly in the original that the concept of tribute conjures up a rather Necronomicon-ish vision, with fewer stringed instruments and a lot more blood . . . especially very late at night with a pillow over your head.
^ And no cover charge! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
††† Ie into my garden. Yet another clear piece of evidence that the builder responsible for the conversion was planning to put his hated mother-in-law in my cottage.
‡ Which is tender and it has no business being tender. Whoever heard of a tender salvia? All right, all right, don’t everybody yell at me at once. But you can’t kill common purple sage with fire, drought, heavy shade, no root room due to all the plumbing in Hampshire, criminal neglect or having large heavy things dropped on it repeatedly. Or hard frost. Ask me how I know this. Eventually I dug it up and took it to Third House where it went YOWZAH and is now taking over the universe. Although my Greater Thigh of Nymph^ is saying, not my universe, honeybun.
I thought my pretty blue sage was merely a particularly good blue. Not that it was a particularly good blue because it was going to turn out to be some frelling tender fainting heroine. The thing’s HUGE. I wouldn’t have potted it on so generously IF I’D REALISED IT WAS GOING TO SPEND THE WINTER IN THE SITTING ROOM. Actually, it isn’t, but I’m not sure it’ll fit in Wolfgang to go up to the summer/greenhouse at Third House either. Aaaaugh.
And my frelling hardy fuchsias are frelling tender too. I don’t know what it is about me and fuchsias. I knew I was going to have to bring the long frilly trailing petticoat ones indoors, and have dug them up and put them in pots, and most of them are yielding with good grace to this discourtesy but one of them isn’t, but the hardy ones in the garden are busy going all wilty and sad (like the salvia). You’re hardy. I still have the catalogue that says you’re hardy^^. Meanwhile: starspawn in a small Hampshire garden. 
Siiiiiiigh. I can’t go on doing this all winter.
^ Or possibly Thigh of Greater Nymph. No, really. But you only get it in the original French. When the prudish English translate, it comes out as Maiden’s Blush. You’ve figured out by now I’m talking about a rose, right? I’ve probably made this joke before too because I like it. http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/maidens-blush-great/
^^ I’ve been through this before. Oh, it’s just the stuff above ground, I’ve said. It’ll come back next year, like the dicentras. No. Wrong.
‡‡ Possibly because it’s the Third-Mortgage Kibble. The reason it costs so much is that it’s laced with heroin, to make sure dogs really like it and come back for more. I’m not sure I care if they eat it.
‡‡‡ Have I mentioned my 13 million pansies? I have? I was planting out wodges of the several trays of unknowns today. The damp muddy piece of paper may have told me that I was the glad recipient of lots and lots and lots of Ratbag Rosencavaliers, Bilateral Bandoliers and Toxic Pterodactyls, but the trays themselves still have no labels on them. It seems rather suitable to be planting unknown pansies in the dark.
On becoming a bellringer, Part One. Guest post by CathyR
The Birth of an Obsession
Ropes up
I’m not sure how most people get drawn into bell ringing. Of course, we know the influence exerted by the owner of this blog on certain readers in counties and continents far and wide. I’d already become a ringer, however, before discovering Robin by searching for blogs about bell ringing. The obsession began just over two years ago. I’d gone to a small village church (St Michael’s) to take photographs of the ringers on a practice night. (I was one of a small internet photography group who had been asked to create a folder of photos to keep in the church for visitors). So, I turned up with the camera, not knowing what to expect. What struck me immediately as I watched was the way in which the ringers were all aiming to achieve something as a team that none of them could achieve alone – and how much they enjoyed what they were doing. Wow, I thought. I like that idea. I’d like to be part of something like that ….
Old bell
This bell, the heaviest of the original three, was cast in 1664, and has been on display in St Michael’s since 1938, when the ring was augmented to six, as it was not in good enough condition to be reused. *
And so I returned the following Friday, for a few more photos, and was persuaded (not that it took much persuasion) by Frank (the Tower Captain) and the others to “have a go”. A few pulls on the backstroke (of course, I didn’t know it was “the backstroke” at that stage, it was just the end of the rope), and I’d actually made the bell sound! I knew straight away that I wanted to learn more, but was a bit hesitant about the whole “church” aspect, to be honest. Was bellringing only for those with Christian religious belief? Would I be obliged, once ringing on Sundays, to attend church? Just how much commitment would be required? Somewhat tentatively, I asked Frank, and was immediately reassured that not all bellringers are churchgoers by any means, and that the only “church” commitment would be ringing for two Sunday services a month. (Little did I know then, that a year down the line I wouldn’t be able to get enough ringing)!
Reassured, I started my first individual lessons, with a tied bell. To tie a bell, Frank (aged 75) goes up into the ringing chamber, clambers over and around the bell frame, and grovels around in the dust and muck under the bells in order to tie the clapper of the practice bell so that it doesn’t swing. In this way, although the “feel” of the bell is somewhat different because of the lack of clapper swing, early ringing can be practised without any noise disturbing anyone else.
One of the St Michael's bells
There was so much to think about in terms of just being safe and handling the rope and bell that initially it was quite overwhelming. One of the very first instructions Frank gave me was “don’t ever let go of the rope. BUT, if I say ‘let go’, then let go immediately!” Initially I was just ringing the backstroke, or just ringing the handstroke; by lesson three I was putting the two actions together. That’s when it gets really tricky! It’s the “feeling” for and of the bell that is so crucial, its weight and momentum, its behaviour and how to recognize that behaviour from below via 50 feet of rope. Many times the rope went loose and floppy, spiralling out of control, as I tried to use it to *push* the bell back up again because of something I’d done wrong. “Let go!”, and Frank would rescue me yet again. The Indian Rope Trick is definitely unsuccessful in these situations!
Despite all this, I did make good progress, and when I could by and large ring a bell under (some semblance of) control, the time came to join a practice evening and ring a bell “aloud” for the first time. Now I had to look at other ringers and ropes, and try to keep in time and sequence with them, as well as manage my own ringing! Concentrating on trying to ring in the right place, and any semblance of bell control vanished. As I tried to focus on bell handling and control, I was nowhere near the right place in the sequence! Would I ever master this? I doubted it often, and in the early days there was such frustration – but also huge elation and satisfaction when small goals were achieved.
Slowly, things improved. I became less of a hazard to myself and others. I could be trusted to ring without such close supervision. About seven weeks after starting, I visited another tower for the first time. I went with Frank, just to have a look. “I’m NOT ringing in a strange place, I’m not good enough, I can’t do it”! So, we got there and again, I was persuaded by Peter, the Tower Captain, to have a go on my own. He stood close by me, things remained under control … so far, so good. Then … ” take hold for rounds around Cathy”, and all of a sudden five other ringers were there, ringing with me! I still remember just how good that felt; ringing rounds almost without going wrong and losing my place. I had a grin like a Cheshire Cat for the whole evening! Frank was so proud of me, and I was so pleased to have made him proud.
Some months after my first lessons, I was deemed good enough to begin Sunday service ringing. Ringing in public, when it really matters! On display! I was so anxious, I couldn’t eat any breakfast the morning of my first service ring! But at the same time, I recognized it as another milestone in my ringing progress. But service ringing always caters to the least able ringer present, and with the simplest ringing possible, I got through my first service rings unscathed!
I had become a bellringer!
* * *
* And very sadly, this bell has just been stolen whilst the church was, as usual, unlocked and open during the day for visitors. It seems that the bell was somehow dragged out of the church and through the churchyard to a distant corner, and tipped over the low wall onto the back of a truck parked in the quiet lane, away from the village itself. No reputable scrap metal dealer would deal with something so obviously stolen, and of such obvious historical and cultural value, but it will undoubtedly have been melted down by now by the thieves’ associates. A very sad loss for the church, the bellringers, and the public.
Excitements, various and noisy
Looky looky looky at what arrived today!* 
YAAAY! (The hand, please note, is just to give you a sense of scale, although if you choose to admire the pink and purple stripes you are welcome to do so.) I know Putnams has all sorts of plans about Fabulous Robin McKinley Publicity Packs, but I feel we are going to have to have a signed poster contest on the blog some day soon.
And PEGASUS gets a starred review from PW [Publishers Weekly, the big American trade mag]:
Leisurely in its pacing, but rich in language and character development, this lovely tale concerns young Princess Sylvi and her singular bond with her pegasus, Ebon. Humans and pegasi have maintained an alliance against their land’s other murderous species–taralians, norindours, and rocs–over many centuries, despite an almost complete inability to communicate with each other except, with great difficulty, through the aid of human magicians. But Sylvi and Ebon are different. From the moment they meet, they form a telepathic bond, something that could be a boon to both species. The powerful magician Fthoom, however, seeing their relationship as both heresy and a danger to the magicians’ power, has vowed to end it. McKinley (Chalice) does a wonderful job of developing the pegasi culture, particularly their art and largely gestural language, as Sylvi and Ebon’s relationship grows over the course of several years. Because this is only the first part of what is presumably a two-volume novel, readers may find the book’s inconclusive ending frustrating**. Despite this, it’s an enchanting fantasy that the author’s many fans will love.
And in other local news . . .
I sang for Oisin today. Yes. Truly. LA LA LA LA LA LA. Well, no, actually: I sang that old warhorse of mezzo warhorses Che Faro Senza Eurydice and Finzi’s Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun, which is usually sung by a baritone but hey.
And we both survived.*** More or less. † After last week’s dire and horrifying challenge I have been singing rather earnestly this week, which is to say trying to claw back some of what Blondel could manage to trick out of me on a good day. ARRRRGH. And then this morning I overslept again and when I got down to the mews post-hurtle and was wrapping myself around some much needed caffeine while I checked my email and calculated that I could just about manage to get hellhounds fed and do a little pre-Oisin warm-up . . . there was an email from Oisin asking if I could come early.
I was not quite as early as requested and when I got there he was playing some scary thing on the organ, so I sidled past him and put my music on the piano bench—well muffled up so if you weren’t actually expecting there to be sheet music present you wouldn’t necessarily notice the presence of sheet music. Then he played some other scary thing on the organ while I listened to my blood pressure rise and then he turned to me with an evil look comprised of three parts Fu Manchu, two parts Blofeld and a ghastly dash of Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter, and asked me what we were doing today.
And so, beaten, I unwrapped my music. I had kept, ahem, forgetting to make copies for my accompanist, and had thought that I would race back to the cottage last thing and do it on my way, but this early deal had spoilt that plan. But I didn’t seriously expect this to foil the diabolical Oisin: he has the technology. He made his own copies.††
On a scale of one to ten. . . . Uh. Well, with Florence Foster Jenkins††† as one and Beverly Sills as ten. . . . No! No! I don’t want to go there! I can carry a tune!‡ That means I have more in common with Sills than Jenkins! It does! Oisin, of course, half ruptured himself being encouraging, but then he would. And I have to say it’s rather incredibly glorious having a proper accompanist. It’s a little ridiculous, like driving a Lamborghini to the farm store to buy compost for your thirteen million tiny seedling pansies, but it’s pretty frelling nice.‡‡ We may even do it again.
And now Oisin owes me a blog post.
* * *
* Also . . . thirteen million more pansies. I tweeted earlier that I CAN’T have ordered this many, and I’m sure all my Twitter followers sniggered to themselves. Well . . . I HADN’T ordered them. I hadn’t. I opened the first box with a sinking heart. It contains my MYSTERY PLANTS! TO THANK ME FOR BEING SUCH A GOOD CUSTOMER! THEY’VE SENT ME FIFTY WALLFLOWERS. FIFTY. I can use about twelve . . . except I’ve already GOT twelve, I put them in last winter and they’ve pretty much flowered all year, and I have no intention of taking them out while they’re still on a roll.
So, after clutching the kitchen counter and sobbing for several minutes I turned to the other boxes. There are three of them, all taped^ together. Only the top box has my address on it, and none of them have any labels whatsoever. I opened them. Pansies. Yup. More pansies. Unknown pansies. Lots and lots of unknown pansies. Finally, in the bottom of the first box I find a small, damp, muddy sheet of paper. It says: we are very sorry we cannot send you the four Piccadilly Peccadillo pansies you ordered as part of the dozen total mixed tray of Piccadilly Peccadillo, Bilateral Bandolier, and Ratbag Rosencavalier pansies. So because we’re so nice we have sent you twelve MORE SUPERFLUOUS Ratbag Rosencavaliers and nine hundred and forty-two Toxic Pterodactyls which you’ve never heard of, aren’t on our web site AND we aren’t going to tell you what colour(s) they are Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.
^ Prodigiously taped. Fearsomely taped. Whoever did the taping believes in the Great Postal Dragons. In fact may have a personal vendetta with the Great Postal Dragons. Maybe we should start a club. I wonder if the same dragons eat mail-order plants as eat books? Or do they specialise, like different bees specialise in different flowers?
** ‘Frustrating’ is the polite version. I’m just hoping to escape without blood loss.
*** I’m not really waiting for the polite little email from his wife saying that the Octopus and Chandelier is unexpectedly oversubscribed, and while they deeply appreciate my willingness to give up my Sunday afternoons for four months to be in the back row of the chorus, my presence will not be required. Don’t come, okay? Don’t show up.
† Although I did catch him whispering to his wife just before I left.
†† Except for the leaving out of one page of Che Faro part. Oh, never mind, he said, I’ll make something up.^ And he’d’ve got away with it if that old sneakypants Gluck hadn’t gone and written a new bit at the bottom. WHICH I HAD TO SING UNACCOMPANIED. I GET EXTRA POINTS FOR THIS, YOU KNOW.
^ This was kindness. If I had to stand there another minute and a half while he fired up his scanner again I’d’ve fallen down on the floor in fits. He was probably afraid I’d start gnawing on his pedalboard. It’s a small studio and a rather large computery organ thing. And I was at the organ end so as to be as far away from that bloke at the piano as possible. I also faced away for that top F in Che Faro. The F is still there, but it has never been a thing of beauty.
††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins Be sure to click on the clip of her Queen of the Night. There’s a lot more on YouTube but you need a really strong stomach.
‡ Usually! Having the accompanist tactfully giving me my notes even when that’s not what the composer^ wrote is very nice! Oisin said that if he’d been doing it right I wouldn’t have noticed. Pleeeeeeease. This is the kind of thing us voice students work on, when we have teachers, and will work on again. Soon. My first catastrophic confrontation with the Cherub is 1 November. Unless he starts making like a dog minder and cancels.
^ Finzi is another sneakypants.
‡‡ As long as you don’t, you know, think about it too much.