Steeleye, yarn and death
Fiona tried to kill me today.
And after we were stopped, sweating and shaking and trying to drag our adrenaline levels back down out of the stratosphere but ALIVE, and beginning to get our breaths back, she turned to me and said earnestly, Think of the blog material!*
Okay. I’m thinking of it. On the whole I feel a near-death experience is carrying the relentless quest for blog material a little far.
I told you that Fiona and I were playing hooky today. We were going to play more hooky but I got caught in a time warp with a mild but annoying stomach virus and a non-eating hellhound. No, not Darkness—frelling Chaos. WHAT THE FRELL YOU FRELLING FRELLER. Arrrrrgh. I’ve been really enjoying the (relative) straightforwardness of feeding all three hellcritters lately—till Darkness fell off the cliff.** Fiona (this was before she tried to kill me) said that there should be some way to pool the appetites and food attitudes of my bonkers three and then redistribute the result more evenly. Yes. Although the hellterror could eat for England. WHAT IS IT? NO, NEVER MIND, I DON’T CARE, JUST HOLD IT THERE AND I’LL EAT IT. Pavlova’s appetite, bottled, and then judiciously sprinkled over entire kennels full of anorexic sighthounds, would have them all eating their heads off, and she would still be ingesting your All Stars if you don’t walk fast enough.
Anyway. We left finally in enough time to make it to another YARN STORE***.
It was on the way home from this escapade† that Fiona turned the wrong way down a one-way piece of major divided motorway and we saw a flotilla of cars bearing down on us at 70 mph.
In her defense, it’s a very confusing section of road. I don’t know that particular bit, but it’s in an area where a lot of the old Roman roads have been inefficiently widened, or extra lanes and slip roads have been kind of bolted on without sufficient signage to explain how they’re supposed to be used. It still might have been the end of a beautiful friendship† but . . . Fiona was holding both tickets to tonight’s Steeleye Span concert and even if I’d wrested mine away from her we were still sitting next to each other so whatever. My hair has only turned grey. Not a big deal.
. . . This is now the second time today that Radio Three has played Vivaldi’s GLORIA. What is this, a conspiracy? Has the Muddles’ musical director bribed the BBC to play it as often as possible between now and the end of May in an attempt to make us do some involuntary homework?††† But with last night’s choir practise rather dreadfully fresh in my mind‡ it was very interesting listening to some professional singers who aren’t off the top of the chart super-accomplished, super-super-schooled and super-super-super gifted opera-singer types, but people with voices more like yours and mine and who merely know how to deploy them. Nobody is going to hire Peter Knight to sing Parsifal, but he gets his point across, you know?
Also it was just a brilliant show. It was a brilliant enough show that I’ve had something like six emails from Fiona since she got home suggesting a series of reasons that we go to another concert on this tour. . . .
1969. Yeep. Although I don’t remember them till the 70s that’s because I was looking in the wrong direction.
* * *
* She was very embarrassed and contrite. But I’m not perfectly sure about the contrition. She might have been embarrassed that she missed. No, wait, I’m probably (relatively) safe till PEG III comes out. I’ve told you, haven’t I, that PEG II ends possibly even worse than PEG? Slightly depending on your definition of ‘worse’. But I think I can guarantee that it is not reader-friendly. And I can predict the hate mail. Sigh.
** I can’t wait for the hellterror to grow up so I can get her on the cereal-free kibble too. One of my recurring nightmares is the hellhounds getting into the puppy kibble. Mind you, if it weren’t that the puppy gets it they wouldn’t be the LEAST interested. But she does and they don’t, and it’s bad enough she exists. That she has Special Hellterror-only Food is just not okay.^ I’ve applied to Olivia and Southdowner about when I can put her on grown-up food—it seems to me she still has substantial growing to do but maybe the last burst happens slowly—the only cereal-free puppy food I know anything about is from the same line of rotblasted gold-standard kibble the hellhounds get ONCE a day because I can’t AFFORD it. The way the hellterror eats. . . .
^ Since I’d had no inkling of Darkness being out of my sight long enough to get into anything that could have caused the recent meltdown OF COURSE I wondered if it could have been puppy kibble, but I don’t think so. Also of the two of them Chaos is a lot more intent on snatching a mouthful. Darkness can’t quite bring himself to stoop to real interest—General All Encompassing Appalled Horror and Revulsion is his shtick+, of which pointed accusatory looks at bags of puppy kibble are merely one aspect of a unified tactical assault.
+ ALTHOUGH I had THREE HELLCRITTERS IN THE SAME BED . . . for about five minutes a few days ago. ALL THREE of them LYING DOWN. No, I didn’t get a photo. My gimlet eye was part of what was holding them there, and getting up to fetch the camera would have been counterproductive. In a big noisy way.
It would be nice if they could share some space during the day, but they will always be crated separately and probably not allowed to frolic together unsupervised—at least not if Pavlova keeps all her bits. The people at the pet shop have already started saying, oh, six months old? A small dog could come on heat any time now. SHUT UP, OKAY?
*** Having exchanged Christmas presents first. Yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Fiona.^ Hers included a knitting bag that says ‘a day without knitting is like a day without chocolate’. Mine included an assortment of kitchen magnets, my favourite of which reads: I’d like to help you out. Which way did you come in? —Fiona knows me well, you think?
^ Or since Fiona has seen the hellterror. Hey, when did you trade in that sweet little thing for this RAGING MONSTER? —It’s true, Pav is getting to be quite an armful when she’s in frenzy mode. It still hasn’t occurred to her that one of these days I’m not going to be able to pick her up. Remind me to have her crate off the kitchen table and on the FLOOR before that happens.
† I DIDN’T BUY ANYTHING. No, really. I kept saying to myself, Wall. Remember the wall. Remember the SEVERAL THOUSAND POUNDS that wall is going to cost. WALL. WALL. WALL.
Fiona doesn’t have paying for a wall in her immediate future, sooooo . . .
†† Especially if we were both dead.
††† I almost didn’t go to choir practise yesterday—this generic all-over germ that has recently settled in my stomach is not making my life a joy and my energy level sublime. But they were very glad to see me when I did go since there were ONLY THREE SOPRANOS. THREE? SOPRANOS? WTF? Cheez.
‡ Even though one of us was the director’s wife, who has a nice strong voice and reads music deplorably well, when there’s only three of you, you are each relentlessly audible.
A frelling day
I am culpably absent-minded, especially considering that I know I’m absent-minded and SHOULD LEARN TO BEHAVE ACCORDINGLY. For example. I have this deeply unintelligent habit of not looking at my diary for the week because I never do anything* except sit around at home with the hellcritters. Oh, and, yeah, there’s like . . . bell ringing**. But I know when bell ringing is. Mondays, some Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, usually not Saturdays unless there’s a wedding, and twice on Sundays.*** I don’t have to look it up.†
And Monday afternoon is my voice lesson so with ringing in the evening too nothing is ever happening on Mondays. So I don’t have to bother looking in my diary.††
This means I frequently don’t look at the week ahead until . . . Tuesday. I may, furthermore, not have my mind [sic] on what I’m looking at even when I do finally turn that page because I THINK I REMEMBER ANYTHING IMPORTANT BECAUSE SINCE I NEVER DO ANYTHING I HAVE PLENTY OF MEMORY SPACE TO REMEMBER STUFF IN.††† This week, for example, I remembered that Fiona and I are playing hooky on Friday and that my second official zazen sit with Aloysius was Wednesday afternoon before the daily Lenten prayer service.‡
I did not remember that Peter and I were going to be thumped and squidged by Tabitha this afternoon. Tabitha is in one direction and Aloysius is in the other. Oops.
I didn’t waste any time engaging my brain. I rang up Tabitha to reschedule. She’s only one person, she’s not a clinic: she can’t fill holes at the last minute. Oops. Frell.
But she said she could take us earlier. Gleep. Okay.
I am not at my most clear-headed and active after an hour on Tabitha’s treatment table. We roared home—Wolfgang knows the way—and I made hellhound lunch in record time . . . and for a wonder they ate it without fuss.‡‡ Whereupon I leaped back into Wolfgang‡‡‡, who is learning the way to St Margaret’s, and roared off in the other direction.
I got there as Aloysius, on his ecologically holy bicycle, turned into the car park. Yaay. It was still frelling cold in the lady chapel. And the swirls on the carpet are no less hypnotising, but maybe that’s a good thing.§ After an hour with Tabitha it’s hard even to sit up.
So I tore back out of St Margaret’s, leaped back into Wolfgang§§ and raced home again to get two frelling shifts of hellcritters hurtled before I went to the abbey tower practise. Pant, gasp.
I was sitting KNITTING in a corner and wondering how bad an idea coming at all was, given the day I had already had, when Scary Man told me to come ring some Stedman Triples. A touch? he said briskly. Um . . . we could risk a touch I think, I said. Nervously.
Fortunately before anything too horrific happened Alfred materialised out of blank space and stood by to be my minder. Unfortunately I needed him. But . . it was actually not too bad. I knew what I was trying to do, I just occasionally got a little overexcited and started pulling in too hard and going clang. But. Stedman Triples. Yes. I am going to learn this . . .
And then I made a PIG’S EAR of ringing the frelling treble to bob major, which is like running the marathon in two and a half hours and then breaking your ankle tripping over a roller skate. ARRRRRGH.
So I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.
* * *
* Stop that laughing
** MUST look at Kent some more tonight. Niall and Colin are going to be expecting me to ring the wretched method tomorrow. And, speaking of handbells, Gemma opened her big fat mouth at the AGM last night, asking—innocently—if anyone ever uses the glamorous set of handbells impaled on the abbey ringing chamber wall. Everyone looked round hastily at everyone else: not me boss. Which probably leaves Gemma, me, Alfred and Leandra. So we may be going to try to wedge in another hour of handbells before or after some tower practise or service. Because we all have so much free time. We all sit around at home with our hellcritters waiting for the phone to ring.^
^ I don’t even have that excuse. The landline at the cottage only works when it feels like it and it doesn’t feel like it very often, and I don’t give anyone my mobile number.
*** I was having an unusually bad spell of Why Am I Bothering recently, because it’s clear I’m going to go to my GRAVE with some ringing master’s epithets reverberating in my ears, and I don’t mean the good kind of epithets, and I thought, imagine the amount of EXTRA TIME I would have if I stopped ringing. Well, cut back seriously on ringing. Like one practise and one service ring a week, like a normal ringer.^ Brrrrr. The very idea gives me a palsy of withdrawal.
^ There are no normal ringers. That’s one of ringing’s attractions.
† Mostly the thought goes like this: I’m breathing. I must be ringing tonight. . . . I ought to IMPROVE for pity’s sake. I OUGHT to be ringing Turgid Taradiddle Doohickus Supreme by now. All right, stop that. I’ve already rejected the idea of pretending to be normal.
†† Note that this attitude has more than once got me into trouble. Do I learn anything? No, of course not.
††† I don’t have memory space for anything. I do not have memory. What did you say? Who are you?
‡ I was perhaps extra thrilled at the possibility of not freezing to death because the temperature has rocketed up by fifteen or twenty degrees—from longjohns and woolly scarf weather to light cardi and only one pair of socks weather.^ Hellhounds, who rather like having to hurtle to stay warm, are all, Wha’? Eh? While I haul on the leads and shout COME ON YOU MISERABLE SLUGS. IT’S SPRING. SPRING IS GOOD. I hope this is spring. . . .
^ But it’s supposed to RAIN. NO. NO RAIN. NOT TILL THE WALL IS FINISHED.
‡‡ Although Chaos clearly felt he was being BETRAYED when the moment after I’d picked their bowls up I started putting my shoes back on to go AWAY again, leaving hellhounds BEHIND.
‡‡‡ Hi-oh Silver and awaaaaaaaaaay.
§ I said that I found usually that the first ten or fifteen minutes [of the standard twenty-five minute sit] my brain is tearing all over the landscape in all directions simultaneously . . . and then as it begins to SETTLE THE FRELL DOWN the last ten or fifteen minutes go really fast, but I assumed that was because it was still a new discipline for me, that it was just lack of practise.^ Aloysius looked a little ironical and replied, not necessarily.
^ On the vanishingly rare occasions when I do a second twenty-five-minute sit immediately—as for example last Saturday morning—the beginning settling-down process happens encouragingly quickly. Instead however toward the end of the second sit the brain wakes up again and starts saying, No, no! This is sheer self-indulgence! We don’t have time for a whole second twenty-five minutes! Stop it at once and go do something useful!
§§ Who whinnied.
Weekend
It was a fair old flaming rubbish tip of a weekend. And it started off so well. I made it to Aloysius’ early Saturday morning silent prayer meeting. Did I tell you* that in response to my nagging about a silent prayer service at a more civilised hour than eight frelling a.m. on a Saturday** he’s begun, just for the duration of Lent, a Wednesday afternoon silent service before the daily Lenten (ordinary) prayer service . . . which I think chiefly gets me off his back for three (?) more weeks but hey, whatever works. I had told him about taking a blanket to sit in the monks’ chapel and he looked thoughtful and said that I’d probably want a blanket for St Margaret’s lady chapel. So I went along this Wednesday with my becoming-well-travelled blanket and YAAAAAAARG &^%$£”#@???**{~] COLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! St Margaret’s*** chapel makes the monks’ look tropical.† St Margaret’s is relatively new build, but the electric fire on the wall in the chapel I swear is older than I am. And I was sitting RIGHT NEXT TO IT on Wednesday afternoon and all that happened was that the right side of my face got rather warm. Saturday morning at 8:30—and who is at their best at 8:30 on a Saturday morning—I had to sit against the wall so as not to block ingress (and heat) to other worshippers—all of whom, bar Aloysius and me, got to sit in CHAIRS††. As it happens we were—ahem—thin on the ground on Saturday††† so during the five-minute break to thump some life back into frozen extremities I also shifted over to sit next to the heater again. This meant that for the second twenty-five minutes of life-sapping cold I had a little hot space between my shoulder blades. . . .
But the rest of the weekend was a trifle dire. Darkness started his double-ended geysering trick again on Friday . . . which I initially thought was a one-off but was nothing of the kind, and indeed has been much more severe than his having-bolted-a-sandwich-end-found-in-a-hedgerow-when-the-hellgoddess-wasn’t-looking usual and . . . I’m kind of worried. This is not only hard on my nerves (and my washing machine) but on Darkness, whose gut is already not of the strongest and most resilient. I will probably take him in for a chat with the vet, but I don’t want to put him on ConMed drugs unless I absolutely, absolutely see no alternative. His ‘picture’ has changed and I’ve changed his homeopathic remedy accordingly, so it’s possible that next time we’ll be back to getting through it faster. But . . . I’m worried. He’s six and a half years old, which means he’s in his mid-forties in people time, and wear and tear starts catching up with you. . . .
I missed my Saturday evening service—my favourite church service of the week—with the monks, because I didn’t want to leave Darkness that long, and my concentration wouldn’t have been up to much anyway.
And then Peter went down with one of his streeeeeeeeeeeeaming colds, I will leave it to your vivid imaginations, but he does stream like no one else and his colds tend to roar up on him like a charging lion.‡ And while it does seem only to be a head cold, still, when you’re eighty-five, it’s all a little precarious.
Oh yes and then my front door lock at the cottage jammed and WOULDN’T LET ME IN AND MY HELLCRITTERS, one of them in a somewhat parlous state, WERE ALL CLAMOURING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR AND WONDERING WHY I WASN’T COMING IN TO TELL THEM HOW WONDERFUL THEY ARE.‡‡
I had very little sleep Saturday night between worrying and lurching awake every time I thought I heard a hellhound change position downstairs, and very nearly bottled out of ringing on Sunday. I only dragged myself to New Arcadia because I knew Niall and Penelope were away and so they were very likely to be short-handed—and I was out of bed and dressed and everything, I was just brainless. There were exactly six of us, and I was the weak link—and I tend to get buoyed up a level if the rest of the band is good. So not only did we sound not bad but it was fun. I’m really not used to Sunday mornings at New Arcadia being fun.
Darkness seemed to be stable enough that I went off, with only a few languishing backward looks, to the abbey for the afternoon service ring . . . and that was not bad either despite quite a plethora of rogues. I appreciate that they want to shovel as many unsteady learners as possible into a touch to give as many (unsteady) learners as possible time on a rope but having the gorblimey treble going walkabout when I’m ringing inside on bob major, which I haven’t rung nearly enough to have any automatic pilot for and am still very dependent on the treble being in the RIGHT PLACE, was not friendly. And there were three of us with erratic wanderlust in the Grandsire triples plus a rogue conductor and . . . nobody died. I wasn’t brilliant, but I kept my line, even when some of our other variables were not keeping theirs.
It was a beautiful, very nearly spring day today . . . and Darkness has eaten both lunch and dinner with evidence of pleasure . . . and no unseemly results (I think). Maybe the week is going to improve. . . .
* * *
* I looked back in the blog and I don’t think I did
** Not that a freelancer cares that it’s a Saturday. But it’s the principle of the thing. Also, eight o’clock . . . no way. It’s almost cruel that they decided to move it to 8:30. Because then I did have a chance. Rats.
*** I seem to have named St Margaret’s of Scotland a little too well.
†Of course I’m not sitting on the frelling floor at the monks’, where there are definitely polar winds. Yet. I haven’t yet clawed my courage together to ask a monk if it would be acceptable for me to sit zazen—cross-legged on a cushion on the floor—so long as I pulled myself together and behaved once the service starts. They know Aloysius—and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t know something of the Zen Christian subset in the Christian contemplative tradition—so this won’t be entirely bonkers-sounding. I hope. Except for the polar winds of course. Maybe I’ll just not get around to asking till later in the season. Although I kind of suspect that while St Margaret’s chapel may warm up by June, the monks’ old stone sanctuary with the vaulted roof is going to stay brumal.
†† I know. I’ve just been saying I’m going to ask the monks if I can sit on their floor. I’ve never been sane, rational or consistent, why should turning Christian make me morph into someone else entirely? I will merely become a sort of heightened insane, irrational and inconsistent. Or maybe God will improve my circulation. He’s known to move in mysterious ways.
††† There’s a lot of flu going around. That’s a lot. What is it about March? Doesn’t this happen every year? It’s like all the bad evil germs and dormant viruses that have been lying around going la la la la all winter suddenly wake up and think, Hey! Spring! I was going to cause way more mayhem before spring! —And explode into unseemly activity.
‡ I guessed wrong about the homeopathic remedy for him too. The problem with Peter’s head colds is that they come on so fast you don’t have time to change your mind if the first thing didn’t work. It’s not this simple, of course, but it is this frustrating.
‡‡ I got in eventually. Atlas took the freller apart today and OILED THE CRAP OUT OF IT and at the moment it is working beautifully.
‡‡‡ Even if I did have to go to my voice lesson today without having practised properly first because Peter had A Guest and the cottage was full of Atlas.
Moan, etc
So yesterday I thought I was dying* or at least coming down with combined typhoid and cholera** . . . which might very well have had a sinister effect on my life expectancy.***
Today . . . I am not too bad. A little wombly, but not too bad. Despite the arrival of the new refrigerator which . . . remember the good old days when you ripped your appliance out of its cardboard and Styrofoam and plugged it in? This one is apparently a doctoral thesis in practical engineering ARRRRRRRRGH. Atlas is coming tomorrow to examine the problem.
* * *
* Or at least losing the will to live. A new foreign edition of BEAUTY arrived recently.
Moan.
I’m really delighted when my message of active roles for women successfully crosses the translation/culture barrier.
** As a result of the little adventure with the hellterror the other night. I can’t have Lady Macbethed hard enough. Although my hands were positively sore afterwards. I did try.
*** I spent the day frantically popping homeopathy pills^—I have an assortment of hellcritters to hurtle! I have a copyedited manuscript to painstakingly de-correct^^ someone else’s idea of standard^^^ punctuation and word usage through 273 pages of in the next I-think-it’s-ten days! I have Green & Black’s to eat! I can’t be ill!
^Mockorange
I was appalled at the statistics quoted for conventional drugs, particularly the cost of treating the side effects of those drugs.
Yep. Iatrogenic—doctor-caused—illnesses are a major killer. Depending on who you read, the third biggest killer in America, after cancer and heart disease.
Abigailmm
I understand the bafflement, though I don’t condone the vitriol, of the establishment. I was trained in cause and effect, and I sure wish somebody could explain to me a mechanism that makes sense. Not to mention how an umpty-umpth dilution of a deadly poisonous heavy metal can help the innards.
But I agree, if it helps Darkness, it’s not just a placebo.
There’s some fairly well-documented evidence out there about what is usually called ‘the memory of water’—that water that has been succussed, which means whacking your bottle against the palm of your hand or a big heavy book or thereabouts+ has undergone permanent structural changes by the now ex-presence of the remedy base: white arsenic (Ars Alb) or club moss (Lycopodium) or whatever. So after you’ve diluted it beyond the likelihood of any atom of the ‘remedy’ remaining . . . the water is still different than it was before it was treated.
And the foundation philosophy is ‘like cures like’. Ars Alb is likely to help people presenting symptoms similar to arsenic poisoning. ::HIDEOUS OVERSIMPLIFICATION ALERT::
Placebos are another tool. The placebo effect is real, and useful. I’m sure that sometimes it’s placebo causing positive change rather than the drug—homeopathic or allopathic—but homeopathy isn’t placebo, any more than allopathy is.
True skeptics would say that Darkness’ difficulties had merely run their course and it was nothing to do with the homeopathy. I know better, of course, since it took me four or five years to figure out what worked with least trauma on these occasions—it’s a ratbag having a patient that won’t talk to you—and I remember how protracted these affairs were before I figured it out.
But you only have to see homeopathy work like magic a couple of times to realise there’s something in it. Some bruises fade as you watch, after you’ve taken your Arnica. I stopped getting black fingernails AGAIN after I shut my hand in a door AGAIN after I discovered Arnica. I’ve told you my Cantharis story, haven’t I? Speaking of being a moron+++. I’ve been baking for fifty years but I CANNOT learn not to grab a handle . . . even if it’s been sitting in a hot oven for the last hour. A few years ago I grabbed the handle of an iron skillet that had been in the Aga’s hot oven—really grabbed it, and so couldn’t let loose fast enough, and heard my flesh sizzling. By the time I let go I already had a big angry red welt . . . and I knew what a burn like this was going to be like. Among other things I wouldn’t be ringing any bells for weeks.
I ran for the Cantharis with my hand going THROB THROB THROB THROB. And started popping pills. In an ‘emergency acute’ situation like this you take them pretty rapidly—say five minutes apart—and you keep taking them till they start working. Hellhound digestion and a bad burn both take pretty serious application.
But the Mare-Crisium-sized blister that was coming up by the time I got the bottle open paused and . . . went down again. I don’t remember how many pills I took. But finally all I had to show for the experience was a faint reddish mark. It didn’t even peel. I didn’t have to interrupt my bell ringing. And I am not kidding about hearing my flesh sizzle.
. . . Did I ever tell you how Chaos got his notched ear? That’s another Arnica story.
(And Diane . . . I bookmarked the anti-bloat stifle acupressure point the last time you posted it. I don’t mean to discourage you from posting it again++ as the subject comes up again, as it will do, because the hellhounds and I are surrounded by careless idiots who throw sandwiches into the hedgerows, but it hasn’t worked for me. I don’t know if that’s because the hellhounds’ problems don’t respond or I’m doing it wrong. I incline to the latter, since I can rarely learn even a simple three-dimensional skill without someone demonstrating in three dimensions.)
+Homeopathic pharmacies have machines to do it of course.
++ http://www.hmgdc.org/Links/It_Simply_Works.pdf
+++ For which so far as I know there is no homeopathic treatment
^^ Under extreme duress, the splitting of infinitives is permitted.
^^^ Well it very well may be standard. Ask me if standard is likely to be the method I adhere to.
Chorus of Cold People
Yes, the Purcell. And yes, we sang it. And yes. Twelve Saints and a Hedgehog is COOOOLD. Jeepers jeepers jeepers jeepers. Cold-duh-duh-duh-duh.
So, yes—I got there. And . . . cough cough cough, shuffling of feet . . . it was, um, pretty easy. Peter last night kept saying, you’ll recognise it, we did it dozens of times, you come off the main road at Trollfall, turn left at the cat (the tortoiseshell, not the tabby, it’s easy to get them confused at car speed), take the fork toward Middling Dinglebeech and just keep going. You’ll know you’re on the right road because you’ll pass the Goat and Necktie.
The Goat and Necktie is on that road? I said. Oh . . . dear.
The final roundabout will say Smedley-on-Cucumber, Peter went on encouragingly, and there you are.
Sure. Yes. And the moon is made of compacted cider pomace.
So last night I got to bed early. Early! Early! Cha-cha-cha! —And then I couldn’t sleep. Of course. When the alarm went off I couldn’t believe it, not least because it was so dark out it looked like dawn hadn’t happened yet. It was throwing it down—rain. HAMMER HAMMER HAMMER. The hellterror was not amused. Crap now or I’ll leave you out here, I said. Maybe she heard the edge of frenzy in my voice. She crapped.*
It was raining so hard the windscreen wipers couldn’t quite keep up and you had to drive slowly because one of those large wobbly elephants wandering through the thick grey mists in front of you might be a real elephant, or at least another car. I’m on a hill, but between my cul de sac and the next village there’s a lot of downhill, and Wolfgang and I had bow-waved through three little fords by the time we got to the main road. If it goes on like this I may just turn around, I thought. I might swim for Beverly Sills** but not for just any excellent, well recommended vocal coach who is willing to take on a church-full of amateurs.
Just after the turn past the cat*** it stopped raining. I did recognise the road, and the Goat and Necktie was right where it should be.†
Except for the COOOOOOOLD, did I mention it was COOOOOOLD?, the seminar was fun and probably useful.†† At my level of attainment all opportunities to sing in company, and, better, all opportunities to sing in well-conducted company are to the good. But with reference to my lack of attainment, I had never sung any of the music before, which was a trifle frustrating, although I suppose it was good for my picking-it-up-in-a-hurry skills. I did wonder why we weren’t told in advance what we were going to attempt, but my guess would be it’s because she doesn’t know what kind of a group of 100 random singers she’s going to be facing and needs to hear us first.††† We were issued two booklets of highlights of the choral repertoire and did a page of Mozart and a couple of pages of Brahms . . . and the Purcell. And a lot of singing exercises. I liked the singing exercises: I know where I am with singing exercises—there are fewer things to remember and I concentrate better.
Then I came home.‡ The road looked familiar in the other direction too.
. . . And now I have to go back to work. Monday is soon.
* * *
* She received an indecently large breakfast as reward. Which then about halfway through the seminar I started worrying about. The dogminder took the hellhounds out as I was leaving—they weren’t amused either—and took her nibs out after that. It was still going to be three-plus hours before I got home.
** Who died in 2007. Just by the way. And while Nadia keeps making vague threats about organising a master class with her teacher^ and I would sign up like a shot, I would NOT sing for him, but I would gratefully pay to sit in. I should poke around and see if there are any recordings of Sills’ master classes. Although . . . Simon Boccanegra was on Radio 3 on Thursday, and I was listening to those voices on the way to Muddle rehearsal and thinking, this may be counterproductive. It’s possible that listening to a Beverly Sills master class would have the same effect.
^ which plan I think is probably now on hold till her kids are in school
*** For anyone who doesn’t recognise it, I stole this out of Gaiman and McKean’s THE DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH. It’s one of my favourite lines and I steal it a lot.
† Until I arrived on Smedley’s high street and . . . there was no sign for Church Road. Fortunately there was a small invisible sign saying church which made itself known to me telepathically and, Guided By A Spirit Not My Own, I made the correct turn and arrived at the correct church. Which is how I know someone else was driving using my hands. I don’t do things like this. I get lost. Even when the signs are there.
†† It’s a bigger church than St Frideswide. So it may have been even colder, although there were a hundred of us breathing warm steamy air into the atmosphere instead of around twenty.
††† Because I am thick as a brick, I managed to sit with the altos, so by the time I scuttled to join the sopranos I was inevitably on the edge, with the basses thumping in my ear and everyone else as through a glass, um, darkly. But our fearless leader-for-the-day was very taken with the tenor section and swapped them out for moving the altos closer in so she could stimulate them to greater enthusiasm. Us sops, eh. Everywhere but at the Muddles sops are superfluous to requirements. We were by some margin the largest section. But at least some of us were the real thing, and not just hiding where the melody usually hangs out, because our top notes sounded pretty nice. Those of us who knew where they should come because they knew the music.
‡ And no one had crapped in her crate.