Blerg etc
Yesterday was pretty much a ratbag day. We had weekend visitors*, and the ME said, whoa! You aren’t thinking about having a good time or anything, are you? We’re not having any of that. So we didn’t. And on top of bad timing and general ratbaggery I had another frelling wedding to ring.** And I had to give Vicky a lift to the church.
Vicky’s car is so clean it hurts. I always feel I should roll myself up in Saran Wrap or thereabouts before I sit on the upholstery. But it was occupied transporting household appliances (no doubt first swathed in Saran Wrap) about the landscape yesterday. And Wolfgang . . . oh dear. The original plan had been that I’d hoover him out at the mews after lunch, and after I’d swept two dustpans-full of gravel out of the foot-wells and mopped off the dashboard and sundries, I . . . wasted twenty minutes (with some help from Peter) trying to find some combination of extension cords that resulted in the hoover actually turning on when I pressed the button. Gaaaaah. At which point I had to leave, dustily and smudgily, because I knew Vicky, who is also prompt to a fault, would be waiting on the corner. She was.
We hung around about forty minutes before it was time to ring, which is about standard. But I now like hanging around complaining about late brides. Because I can knit. I can’t do much else . . . reading while waiting to ring is pretty much hopeless: you can’t concentrate, and you end up more frustrated with the waste of time than less . . . but I can KNIT. FREE KNITTING TIME. YAAAY. LATE BRIDES. YAAAAAY. *** I’m clearly going to become the Knitting Woman of weddings as well as the Knitting Woman of opera.† And my careless brilliance in assigning Mobile Knitting Unit status to little old handbags means you can just hook the current Unit over your shoulder, feed the yarn out and . . . knit, standing up in a (damp, but not streaming) churchyard, say. Love love love love. I am so glad you dreadful people bullied me into learning to knit.††
Today has mostly been about more bloody rain††† . . . and potting up my 4,311 dahlia cuttings. Well, maybe only 4,302. Lots. That early-to-mid-spring gardening moment when you think you might keep it under control this year? —is over. All that lovely space I cleared is now full of seed trays and little potted-on things which are busy getting less little and which I am going to have to pot on again soon AND THEN FIND SPACE TO PLANT OUT.
***
* GAAAH. I have to figure out a way to PRACTISE SINGING SILENTLY. There’s always my old electric keyboard for playing the piano—plug in the headphones, and Bob’s your (inaudible) uncle. But I keep resisting the CPU socket under my collarbone option. I’m so retro I won’t even have my eyes lasered!^ I’d rather wear spectacles!^^ Another reason to get Third House functioning: it is guest space, and my piano is at the mews. As were this weekend’s visitors. And yes of course we’ve had overnight visitors at the mews since I’ve been taking voice lessons, but I’ve just missed three weeks in a row of voice lessons because Nadia leads a complicated life and I want to sing.
^ Don’t You Come Near Me With That Thing.
^^ Although I admit to having hopes about the dental implant plan. The idea of teeth that don’t get cavities or need root canals is just unbearably exciting. Now all I need is six or seven best-sellers to pay for them.
** Although the flower arch at the door of the church was so divinely pretty it was almost worth it. 
If I were going to get married again and had so much money I couldn’t think of ways to give it away fast enough^ and was going to do it in a (picturesque village) church next time, just for variety . . . I’d have a flower arch. Although mine would have more roses.
^ But see previous footnote
*** This afternoon I was doing my phoning-round for Old Eden practise tomorrow night, and Felicity is on my permanent list although she never comes. The problem with Felicity is that she rules, which means that (a) she never has time to do anything you want her to do, like come to tower practise and (b) she usually has something she wants you to do. Can you ring a wedding on the 21st? she said. Application to my diary reassured me that I didn’t have an opera that day. Yes, I said. I hope the bride is late.
† I’m getting on fabulously with Secret Project #1. Indeed I’m nearly done with the knitting part^ and am soon going to have to face the Sewing Together of the Jigsaw part. Uh oh. ::Deep breaths. Taking deep breaths.:: I keep saying, I can do hand sewing! I’ve done lots of hand sewing!^^ Hand sewing holds no terrors! . . . Er. I’ve never hand-sewn bits of knitting together before, and this whole weaving-the-ends in thing . . . holds lots of terrors. All those ends. Very . . . Cthulhuian.
^ One more wedding should do it
^^ Many, many years ago.
†† But if anyone tries anything else similar, you will be instantly killed. Do I make myself plain? I am the hellgoddess. Fear me.^
^ Cthulhu and I are old friends really. We have tea with Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath occasionally. Mind you, you don’t want to know what’s in the tea.
††† I had a singularly tactless friend^ tell me piously that I wasn’t allowed to complain about the rain after a two-month drought. In the first place I can frelling well complain if I want to. In the second place, my singularly tactless friend doesn’t have a twenty-by-ten-by-five foot rosebush with easily 200 flowers on her in her back garden having been effing well destroyed by an inch of rain in the last forty-eight hours thank you very dranglefabbing much. Life with Souvenir de la Malmaison is always a crap shoot . . . but to have two months of drought followed by torrential, delphinium-mashing, beetle-drowning, hellhound-miserabling downpours at exactly the moment that Souvenir is a quarter to a half out . . . is way over the sodding line.
^ I’m thinking of a nice woolly garrote for her next birthday
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