I Brought My Knitting
It is amazing the adventures you can have when you live in the back-of-beyond-’burbs* of Hampshire and never get any farther than five miles out of the tiny town you live in. Although five miles is enough when you’re walking back in the dark. With hellhounds.
Wolfgang went in to the garage today for his MOT—the UK version of the Are We Going to Let This Car on the Road for Another Year test. And we’ve gone on using the garage** from our old village, which is now five miles down the road. There’s a perfectly good cross-country footpath between there and here, but it is cross country. And five miles. I’d been planning to drive out there midafternoon and stroll back in broad daylight. And then we’d had to reschedule the chimney sweep when they had the drive at the mews up again ***, and I’d written the appointment down for an hour earlier than he’d written it down, and he came to the mews first . . . which means that by the time he’d packed up his surprisingly tidy kit† at the cottage it was already getting dark. Bundled cranky hellhounds into the back of the car—they usually get their long walk in the morning, and had been increasingly doing Canine Outrage as the afternoon hours wore on—and shot off to Warm Upford.
We started back to New Arcadia at 5:50. That’s twenty minutes after sunset. I was telling myself that I know the footpaths around here so well I cannot possibly get lost. Mmph. Well, I didn’t—quite. But I almost took the turning that would have been eight miles home instead of five . . . the first half hour there was still enough light left to differentiate Darkness from his surroundings, and the mud puddle from the ravine, but by the time we got to the wood on the south side of New Arcadia it was pitch. And did I mention there was a heavy overcast? Along with all the other excitements there was the constant background worry: don’t-rain-don’t-rain-don’t-rain-please-don’t-rain. It didn’t. But there was no moon or lingering twilight either. The one other gleam in the darkness besides glimpses of pale-fawn Chaos was where rain-rivers had scoured the track down to chalk.†† I was by then navigating by smell, which as I said to Peter when we got back, works better if you’re a hellhound than a human. Hellhounds were entirely unfazed—and I think they forgave me their abbreviated morning hurtle.
I had three minutes—no, really—to scrape mud off hellhounds and sprint back out the door to make curtain-up of the opening night of THE OCTOPUS AND THE CHANDELIER. This aim was complicated by the fact that I was, of course, still on foot and I had no idea where the theatre was. This is not a large town; I knew it had to be Over There Somewhere . . . and fortunately it was.
And then there was a glitch, and they started late. But I had brought my knitting!!!! I almost didn’t, you know. I was bleating about this on the forum today: the Mobile Knitting Unit won’t fit in my current knapsack, and Pooka already has her own dedicated tiny bag since she goes with me on hellhound hurtles, which means I’m already schlepping around two pieces of luggage. A third . . . but I’m also resisting upsizing to a knapsack that would hold both the Unit and Pooka’s little bag. It did not come at a good moment that my new camera, compact though it still is, is about twice the size of the old one. . . . †††
But the important point is—I brought that third suitcase! I brought my knitting! And I knitted! And it was great! The lighting in the hall was, predictably, dire, and I wouldn’t have been able to read and would have had to just sit there. Aaaaaaugh! I am so glad I have discovered knitting!‡
But the glitch was unglitched at last and the show . . . is pretty damn cute.‡‡ The hall is smallish, and they’ve choreographed it both on the stage and down on the floor, so during the big numbers the chorus is in your lap as you sit in the audience, and you want to look like you’re enjoying yourself because they can see your face. This was not difficult. There are a few standouts: the heroine’s best girlfriend, who is a terrible flirt, sashayed around the stage like a combination of Marilyn Monroe and Mae West—even though in real life she’s about fourteen.‡‡‡ The kids’ chorus are all so adorable you could die, and there is one little boy among about thirty little and medium-sized girls. I remember him from my brief stint as a member of the chorus: in the first place he’s no taller than a hellhound and in the second place he has this utterly humourless look of intense concentration. Several of us were waiting for him to drop out; he so didn’t look like he was having a good time—the manifest concentration didn’t appear to be about anything going on in his immediate vicinity. But he is still there, still no bigger than a ten-pound bag of flour, still concentrating.
And yes, it is clearly a small local amateur theatre group. But it was very thoroughly staged and businessed and drilled, and that kind of movement and flow can carry you over a lot of wobbly bits—and there weren’t in fact a lot of wobbly bits. What they have particularly learnt is panache.§ It was snappy and bright and jolly and a hoot. Yaay Minnie. And big yaay Oisin—I couldn’t believe what he got out of his cough-cough orchestra—although I know he’s spent a lot of time doing arrangements as well as building the coral reefs and lichen-covered castles, still, you can only be clever with what you’ve got—and what he had wasn’t quite a tuba and a kazoo, but nearly. And Oisin himself of course, burning up the keyboards.
Hey, I’ll go to their next show.§§
* * *
* It used to be the back of beyond. It’s been colonised by bankers from London with turbo-charged Porsches.
** Despite the rising numbers of turbo-charged Porsches there are surprisingly few garages that work on cars around here . . . or anyway that you’d want to work on your car. Or anyway that you’d want to pay for working on your car.
*** Having the Drive up at the Mews is turning into the latest party game. I don’t want to play.
† He has a hoover that will suck paint off the walls if you wave it around carelessly.
†† Totally Kipling. We’re a part of the great swathe of southeast-England downland here, and sightings of the underlying chalk always give me a brief rhapsodic rush of this is England and I live here. And while I know we’re in the wrong area for Tolkien, there’s a lot of the Shire around here too. That’s not just me: Peter agrees.
However, I prefer my rhapsodic rushes in daylight.
††† Sigh. Here we go again. I’ve been carrying around enough basic kit to start a small colony on Mars since sixth grade. I still remember that really splendid red leather tote bag.
‡ I also knitted through intermission. Gods, this knitting thing is so wonderful. And when people came up to chat, as people will do . . . I kept knitting! If people come up to chat while you’re reading, you have to stop!
‡‡ Special mentions for the coral reef and the kraken.
‡‡‡ The heroine is your standard drippy ingénue. Fins, a tail and a green wig don’t really disguise the awful truth. And she has a standard drippy boyfriend. Musicals. Feh.^
^ Bring on Stephen Sondheim.
§ And am I sorry I dropped out? No. Not even a little? No. Why? Because . . . because the fun stuff is for the people who can walk and chew gum at the same time. Back row of the chorus is boring. And I can’t even begin to imagine how you organise your body to sing and dance at the same time. I don’t think I have that many neurons.
But am I now even more fixated on the New Arcadia Singers? Yes.
§§ And take my knitting. By the time they put on their next show I will be . . . still knitting more hellhound blanket squares.
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