Well the Iron Dragon part was fun
The ME would decide it wanted to close me down the weekend we had visiting family. OH FRELL. It could have been a lot worse—I haven’t done any falling down, my eyes focus more or less on what I’m looking at—and I’ve got quite a lot of knitting done.* I was supposed to go to the opera yesterday and went to bed instead. I did listen to it** on the radio but I was kind of drifting in and out. The bits I heard sounded rather nice. SIIIIIIGH. At least the dog minder gave hellhounds their afternoon hurtle.
I was beginning to notice a slight scorching of synapses on Thursday, Friday was bad, Saturday was dire, and today is better although I’m still not quite up to leaping tall buildings with a single pole vault. I made it to service ring this morning although I was late, and I came in on the end of the six people who were there on time ringing the first six up in peal. Niall picked up the rope of the tenor and looked at me meaningfully so I automatically took the seven’s rope, coiled it up and pulled, and as all forty-five tons of the thing went noooooo—I don’t think so, the way biggish bells do when you first interrupt their inertia, I thought, McKinley, what are you DOING?, but by then it was too late because basic ringing drill had taken over. Basic ringing drill is a very good thing on a Sunday morning when chances are you have no brain. Well, I have no brain.*** But occasionally it leads you into error. I could have done without ringing up the seven today.
We’re also having to go through this miserable dranglefabbing taxpayer money wasting nonsense with another gah arrgh [muffled swearing noises] Criminal Records Bureau check. Not that many years ago everybody who ever laid hands on a bell rope had to go through this bad Disneyland ride, and the form was a lot longer and sillier—like anyone is going to give the details of their bank accounts to some large faceless frelling government bureaucracy, especially with large faceless frelling government bureaucracies having such an excellent rep for security and privacy. This time around only those of us with titles in the bell world are targeted—which unfortunately would include me, as Deputy Ringing Master. Gaaaah.† But why the great powers that be, who are busy elsewhere slashing minor superfluous amenities like libraries can’t merely run an update on those of us so fortunate as still to be under suspicion—Has This Person Killed Anybody, Robbed Any Banks or Allowed His/Her Off Lead Disobedient and Aggressive Dog(s) to Harass Innocent Passersby?††—rather than going through the whole stupid EXPENSIVE business again . . . I have no idea. Anyway. This morning Vicky told me I have not merely to fill out the wretched, if abbreviated, form, I have to go round with my passport, my driving license, my national insurance card and a recent utility bill to be cross-examined by one of the church officials GAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGH.
Everyone else in the family party went down to Gallimaufry to have lunch with Georgiana and Saxon, and I stayed home to do more lying down and knitting.††† I also thought I’d get my passport etc out because I’m going to need to lurch over to the church office tomorrow morning to brandish same, and this would help me REMEMBER.
Aaaaaaaaand my passport wasn’t where it should be. Aaaaaaaaaand I had no idea where else it could be.
Cue very large unaffordable adrenaline spike.
I did find it eventually. Pant, pant, whimper. Not as if I’m going anywhere, but it’s like the tin of mackerel in the cupboard and the packet of peas in the freezer‡: they’re there just in case of emergency. Or in case of proving to a large faceless frelling bureaucracy that you exist within acceptable parameters.
. . . And then I spent twenty minutes rescuing a bumblebee from my kitchen windowsill. I was just posting to the forum earlier that I’m rescuing up to several bees a day at present—but it’s usually down at the mews. Peter does not have eleven-inch-deep windowsills that are obviously begging for you to cram too much stuff on them: I do. First there’s the layer of plants, and then there’s the layer of . . . everything else. The indoor watering can lives on the kitchen windowsill, the box of plant labels, the bottle of plant food, the tall glass of brushes and bamboo skewers of countless and divers uses, the windowsill weather station, the washing-up apparatus, the soap dish . . . the various little broken-off plant bits in various little containers water that might grow roots‡‡ . . . there’s a lot for a bumblebee to get lost in, even when you’ve ascertained by glimpses through the foliage that that’s where she is. Just clearing the windowsill is not necessarily a guarantee of success: then she flies to some other windowsill . . . which is just as well populated.
She was one of these thumb-sized monsters, and the temptation is just to put your hand (gently) around her, because chances are she won’t sting you.‡‡‡ But I didn’t. And I did eventually get her between a glass and a bit of cardboard, and toss her outdoors again, where I hope she raises a nice family. And this experience was not exactly an adrenaline spike, but it was still undesirable.
I had just enough presence of mind left to win a game of Iron Dragon§ with the assembled down at the mews. Which is to say I had enough presence of mind to say ‘yes thank you’ when Peter’s grandson offered me free use of his track if I would please beat his dad.
I have to try and sing tomorrow. Oh . . . golly.
* * *
* In hindsight I’m a little surprised that re-learning to knit didn’t occur to me that eighteen months I spent on the sofa during the first vicious acute stage of my ME. Possibly I’d decided that failure was failure, I’d already failed at knitting and once was enough.^ Possibly I was not surrounded by demon knitters. Possibly the fact that my hand-eye coordination was about 10% was daunting. And the hallucinations were kind of a bore too. Still. I might have tried. In which case by now I would be yarnbombing Buckingham Palace, or at least Runnymede. The fact that the Magna Carta had to wait for the American Frelling Bar Association to buy a memorial makes me nuts in a next-you’re-going-to-tell-me-the-original-Captain-Kirk-was-played-by-George-Hamilton kind of way. The memorial really needs yarnbombing, and it would be poetic justice if it were done by an American.
^ I thought I’d already done failing to learn method ringing too.
** Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, which I’ve never seen. Rats. And it had Juan Diego Florez and Joan DiDonato in it. Double rats. In fact, quadruple rats.
*** And hey. I survived a touch of Stedman doubles. Yaay.
† I could resign. . . . No, maybe that would look suspicious.
†† Had a good one today. It’s been another beautiful day so there’s no point in even trying the footpaths around town, they’ll be choked with off lead dogs, at least some of whom will make my adrenaline spike, and I can’t afford any adrenaline spikes this weekend. So we were on a track that is usually relatively free of incident and . . . met three LARGE SNARLING OFF LEAD DOGS all of whom came barrelling toward us with all their hair up and suitable noises. The bloody idiot woman with them said and did nothing. NOTHING. My guys thought hiding behind me was appropriate, and I couldn’t blame them. As it turns out these sodding animals were all mouth and no trousers (so to speak) and as the woman sauntered unhurriedly up to us she drawled, they’re friendly, they’re just a little noisy. There are THREE OF THEM! I said. AND THEY’RE OFF LEAD! They’re off lead because they’re safe, said the woman self-righteously. MY DOGS DON’T KNOW THAT! I said. Speaking of unaffordable adrenaline spikes.
††† I also got a few sweet peas planted. I love this time of year. Gardening post as soon as I can stand up unwaveringly enough to take some photos. That anti-shake thing on your camera wasn’t meant for people with recurring ME.
‡ And the six bars of Green & Black’s in the refrigerator.
‡‡ Unfortunately just enough of them do to encourage me in this folly.
‡‡‡ I’ve done this inadvertently several times and not been stung, although I always say ‘thank you’. And yes, they’re just as fuzzy as they look.
§ http://www.gameslore.com/acatalog/PR_Iron_Dragon_Board_Game.html
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