Nonstandard Monday
Today has been a long spectacular hurtle that even almost six years with hellhounds ill-prepared me for. I am expecting to fall off my chair and lie on the floor moaning and twitching feebly . . . probably before I finish this blog. I can possibly semaphore to Darkness what buttons to press to hang it* but I do not guarantee my usual elegant peroration and epigrammatic finish.**
I was so unnerved by Oisin’s praise last Friday that I’ve hardly known how to practise. This is that old ‘something to lose’ thing. The great thing about beginnings is that you don’t know how yet. It’s all good. Once you start learning anything . . . you have somewhere to fall. Down. It’s very frustrating having no particular talent—or in this case, voice—but it’s also liberating. I don’t have to take it seriously. I can obsess, because I will obsess, frivolously. La la la la la la. And (for better or worse) it’s not like I’ve discovered my inner Beverly Sills or anything.*** But there are increasing numbers of (fleeting) moments when there is maybe even something going on with my singing . . . and occasionally, thrillingly, a few of these moments string themselves together. It’s not the high F in Che Faro—F is not high—it’s the terrifying sticking your head above the parapet. This is your big moment . . . Noooooooo. Eeeeeeeeep. And I tend to sing it accordingly.† Plus that ratbag ‘ben’ you have to sing it on, which is not singer-friendly and which does not help. The other song I particularly wanted to look at is The Minstrel Boy—yes, I am a sap, sue me—because I start the run up to that first (unhigh) F without much trouble and it’s like ‘okay I can do this’ and then on the second run up to that same F I lose my nerve and get all thin and squeaky. I think it’s something about emotional engagement—you may remember that this song got mixed up with Diana’s death for me—and it’s like suddenly, whoa, uh, no, maybe not. But I love the song. I want to sing it. Singing is so frelling revealing, even when you do it badly. Your Blasted Body Is Your Blasted Instrument, Get Used to It. Um. And I don’t know what Nadia did—I never know what Nadia did, even though she tells me††—but my last go through was rough and raw and rather awful, but there was something there, you know? My problem is mostly about shutting down. This was about opening up to the extent that I could no longer control it. Speaking of eeeeep. Eeeeeeep.
The day was already going a lick. I’d got down to the mews late (of course) and had my head down over my computer slightly longer than I should have and thus fed hellhounds lunch slightly later than I should have. But they were milling around my feet looking for Mysteriously Dropped Chicken Bits Oops so I (foolishly) wasn’t expecting trouble. Whereupon Chaos decided not to eat. This was absolutely classic Chaos—he was clearly hungry, it wasn’t that he’d picked up some bloody tourist’s dropped chicken bones in the street yesterday—but some frelling ritual or other for a Monday in an even-numbered year when Aldebaran is in the ascendant and Jupiter aligns with Mars had been left incomplete. ARRRRRGH. At slightly after the last minute he ate after all YAAAAAAAY, and we then tore back to the cottage because I had an errand to run on my way to Nadia†††.
I was at best going JUST to make it back to New Arcadia for Niall to pick me up and blast off to Curlyewe. But I made it. And then we sat outside the Curlyewe church for fifteen minutes because our handbell apprentices were late.‡
We rang handbells till people started showing up for tower practise. And then I grabbed my new tower. And . . . the worst of it is, I like Curlyewe. Nice bells. Very nice bells. And, furthermore, eight of them. We rang Grandsire Triples.‡‡ The last thing I need is another Monday tower that is, furthermore, too far away.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to fall out of my chair.
* * *
* No, you’re wrong. If I can learn to circumvent the WordPress gremlins and hang a blog post . . . so can a moderately intelligent dog.
Of the local selection, Darkness is the one who is willing to find problems outside his immediate self-focus interesting. Chaos . . . not so much. Chaos does not speak the standard human-canine language. There certainly are days when I shout YOU ARE THE DUMBEST ANIMAL I HAVE EVER MET . . . but I’m speaking to myself.^ Sighthounds have been bred for thousands of years^^ to make their own decisions. They can’t be asking you for help when they’re flat out after a gazelle. This has its drawbacks in modern urban life. Darkness, however, is clearly trainable as most of the world understands dog training, and I am a Bad Owner because I am neglecting this because I don’t know what to do with his brother. Chaos has his own view of the structure of the universe and while I am the centre of it—more theatrically so than I am Darkness’ holy altar of all—manifestations of his zealous dedication are his own and not particularly open to negotiation or adjustment.^^^
Anyway. If this post ends abruptly and there are a few short dark steely-grey hairs drifting across the margins, you know why.
^ Today, for example. I had a major hissy fit meltdown this afternoon—worst in some time. Worst since I started singing when my computer is really pissing me off because screaming hurts my voice. + The cause is that most of my ME symptoms, barring the really life-stopping no-brain, what planet is this, no-energy, never mind I don’t care worst ones, have all come back in a mean-spirited rabble, as a result of . . . wait for it . . . my daring to eat a little restaurant food with Fiona the other night. I ordered carefully, it was a small meal and there was nothing in it I’m not allowed.++ All my joints hurt, sleep is something that happens to other people, and anything I eat makes me ill. THIS IS SO GREAT. THIS IS SO, SO, SO GREAT. I was running upstairs at the cottage just before I shot off to a long rest-of-day series of events and one of my frelling knees gave out and I had suddenly Had. It. Paroxysm ensued, complete with radical and substantial screaming. This was right before my voice lesson. It’s also a really idiotic waste of energy, when you already have ME.
I’ve never met a dog this stupid.
+ I admit this works better some times than other times. There was a fair amount of shouting at the Metropolitan Opera last night.
++ Okay, what was in that tea bag?
^^ No, really. Salukis have been around recognisably since 7000 BC or so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saluki
^^^ See: eating.
** What?
*** All right. I admit it. Siiiiiiigh.
† Siiiiiiigh. Another category of sigh.
†† Except occasionally. When she invokes Teacher Secrets.
††† My watchband broke. Months ago. It’s a perfectly good watch. And they don’t make watchbands for it any more. Finally about the third jeweller I took it to said that she thought their repairpersons could do it. And they did. But it still doesn’t close correctly and I predict the mend is not going to last long. Then what.
And so to cheer myself up, on the way back to Wolfgang, I made a lightning raid on WH Smith and bought . . . five knitting magazines. Just to see what they’re like, you know? The one I was looking for was Vogue Knitting, because they keep trying to sell me a subscription to my iPad, and I have this nostalgic craving to see it in hard copy first.^ On first glance, VK wins hands down for the yarn porn aspect.
I need more stuff to read.
^ One of the ones I bought is American, so it’s not that imported knitting magazines are too subversive for the UK market.
‡ It’s okay. I was knitting.
‡‡ Only a plain course. But something went Horribly Wrong and I thought nooooooo I can’t even ring a plain course any more, kill meeeeee, but Niall told me afterward it wasn’t me, it was someone else. Well, I’m sorry for the someone else, but I’m relieved to be permitted to go on living. Even if I did make a, ahem, dog’s dinner of Cambridge.
Doodah doodah
We rang a quarter peal tonight.
Huh? Yes, my reaction exactly.
Handbells are in some slight disarray at present, chiefly on account of Gemma being so inconvenient as to change surgeries/clinics and therefore change her Thursday evening schedule. At the moment Niall and I are double-booked for Thursdays with Colin and Fridays with Gemma, and I have said, in a squeaky, high-pitched voice that I can’t do two handbell evenings a week*, but people’s lives keep getting in the way** so what is getting rung (or wrung) from week to week mostly isn’t two evenings on handbells anyway.
Today has been somewhat overshadowed by yesterday’s extreme excitements and I got moving [sic] late even for me. I had also promised to take Peter to the garden centre this afternoon, this afternoon being the only time even remotely available for the foreseeable future, and if I didn’t do it quickly, this being the time of year when you really don’t want holes in your borders, and anything you plant will, if you’re lucky, riot and burgeon***, Peter might do something drastic like buy a garden gnome at the farmer’s market.†
I’m broke and my garden is already full of Little Things Waiting to Be Potted On (Again)†† and the only thing I wanted was pink snapdragons††† so I’d brought the hellhounds because while Peter was cruising I took them for a hurtle. The only problem with this diversion tactic is that the footpath possibilities around this particular garden centre are unusually excellent, so the temptation is to come back for a nice hellhound hurtle and while I’m in the area . . . ‡
So we zapped home again and I’d repotted the horrifyingly rootbound viola, which will probably reel and stagger a little and then come on again famously, when Colin showed up early. Niall usually is early. So we sat down and Niall started unveiling handbells and said, What do you want to ring? And I said, well, due to circumstances more or less beyond my control I have No Brain so it had better be undemanding.
I know! said Colin brightly. We should ring a quarter (of bob minor)! Just to prove we can! Since it’s just the three of us again!
What?
I think I agreed‡‡‡ because it was going to be less awful than trying to struggle through plain courses of frelling Cambridge, which, now that Thursdays are the three of us again, is going to make my life a misery.
And it was less awful. It was even (whisper it) kind of fun.
* * *
* Which doesn’t take into account the occasional evening at Curlyewe. Curlyewe tower practise is Monday, so Niall has begun tentatively trying to get over there one Monday a month, they ring handbells before tower practise, and then he stays on—and Curlyewe, like pretty much everywhere else in this area, is hurting for ringers, so they’re glad to have a visitor, especially a good ringer like Niall. I’d quite like to ‘grab’ Curlyewe^ and supposing there’s nothing particularly strange about the tower or its bells I’m a good-enough mediocre ringer I can probably contribute something to the practise. Probably.
Except for the little fact that Monday is my voice lesson, and Curlyewe is well on the wrong side of Mauncester. Niall leaves New Arcadia at six . . . and I usually get home five or ten past. Niall suggested helpfully that I could just come straight on from my voice lesson, which would probably make up the time . . . uh huh. It’s twice as far as any of Colin’s towers, there’s handbells as well as tower bells and no break anywhere. . . and I’m shattered on a Monday that I have to drive myself to Colin’s practise and I’ve had a cup of tea and a sit-down between voice lesson and bell practise. I don’t think so.
And so, because I am deranged and Niall is my bad angel, I’m going to try to blast back from voice lesson on Monday, pick up an apple and a cup of tea with a lid on it^^, and be flattened into the passenger seat of Niall’s car^^^ as he stamps on the ‘go’ pedal a few minutes later than usual.
^ Grabbing a tower is going somewhere to ring where you’ve never rung before, specifically to say that you have. Quite a few good ringers do this in a low-key way because they’re good ringers and like to travel around ringing in different towers and that’s fine. Obsessive tower grabbing is kind of frowned on, but ringing somewhere you haven’t rung before because the opportunity arises is normal, in so far as bell ringing and bell ringers can ever be considered normal.
^^ Whoever suggested knitting a slightly oversized egg cozy for a tea mug cozy—thank you. I’m going to try that. Supposing I can figure out how. And whoever said that the steam from the cup is going to soggify the cosy past usefulness, well, I won’t know till I’ve tried it. I drink my cups of tea pretty fast+ but not quite fast enough, and I like it hot. Maybe I should knit several, and then I can string up a little tiny washing-line where I peg them out to dry . . . .
+ If I drank them SLOWER I would drink FEWER.
^^^ which is only a few years younger than Wolfgang, and has more miles on it
** Although, life . . . in Niall’s case this probably means that he’s had an offer to ring a handbell full peal of Snarkalepsy Draggleharrow and is cutting us.
*** Did I tell you WE HAD ANOTHER (*&^%$£”!!!!!!!!!! FROST A FEW NIGHTS AGO? THE MIDDLE OF UNGLEDAGBLAGUNDERING MAY IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND AND WE HAD A FROST? I’m assuming it was not severe and the stuff still underground is fine. That’s FINE.
† Which attracts some pretty disturbing riffraff. I haven’t seen any garden gnomes yet but then I’m usually hellhounded, and we don’t linger.
I could always knit the gnome something . . . inappropriate. Although ‘wire’ and ‘garrotte’ are the words that come first to mind, which, in relation to garden gnomes, are highly appropriate.
. . . Although I’ve always kind of wanted a flamingo . . .
†† And at least one juvvie robin. Yaaaay. Bumptious little so and so. There may be more than one, but so far I’m only seeing one at a time, and he’s so breathtakingly foolhardy—as far as he’s concerned, I’m the Mealworm Lady, and there are no ifs, ands or buts—I’m assuming the one I’m seeing is the same one, although I’m still hoping there may be a slightly more sensible, reserved one or two still lurking in the shrubbery. But he, and siblings if any, are clearly flying.
I’ve also clearly got two adults . . . where are you nesting this time? I’m not going to supply mealworms to ungrateful robins that go nest in other people’s gardens. Mum’ll be disappearing any minute now, I assume, to sit on the new eggs. Whiiiiiine.
††† I did very well. I somehow picked up a variegated-leaf so-called hardy fuchsia, which they never are with me, but if I keep ’em warm they usually do very well, and a fabulous rusty-orange osteospermum AND THEY HAD PINK SNAPDRAGONS YAAAAAAY^ so I dumped these three modest acquisitions in Peter’s cart and ran out the door.
^ I’d bought yellow and white elsewhere, but they were all out of pink which will not do.
‡ We got back to find Peter unloading his cart into the boot and I picked up the gorgeous black-leaved cimicifuga and said oh gods, I almost bought this, I love black leaves, and Peter said, helpfully, I can go back and get you one, I remember exactly where they are. Oh . . . all right, I said, folding instantly, and then, while he was off finding me a black cimicifuga, I was finishing unloading his cart and oh gods, they have dierama, I adore dierama, they just frelling keep dying on me . . . and I COULDN’T STAND IT so I locked the car (with hellhounds and my knapsack in it, and all the rubbish from the boot on the roof waiting to be restowed) and raced off to find Peter and the cimicifuga to ask where he found the dierama^, and then on the way back from the dierama I fell over a table of (horribly rootbound, just by the way) violas and HAD TO HAVE ALL OF THEM (I also adore pansies and that entire family) but pulled myself together and only bought one . . .
So, having gone for one plant^^, I came home with six. Which is really VERY GOOD.
^ WORD YOU RATBAG WILL YOU FRELLING STOP AUTOCORRECTING DIERAMA TO DIORAMA? IF I MEANT DIORAMA I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN DIORAMA
^^ Well, one tray of plants. Snapdragons are plebeian annual bedding plants. You buy them in trays. Six snapdragons counts as ONE PLANT. Yes it does.
‡‡ And I was fine with Ascension Day as soon as I was sure it was about Jesus and not the queen.
My life as a bell ringer . . .
IS NOT OVER. You will be glad to hear. Well. You are probably blinking slightly, having not realised there might be a question that it was over. Let me repeat: last Wednesday’s practise was really, really, really bad. Bad bad. Bad to the bone. B-b-b-b-bad. I’d been planning to go to the pub after and . . . I told you I ran out of there. I ran out of there because I couldn’t face the rest of them. Granted I’m a trifle thin skinned about things. Still. It was bad. And I really did come home and wail and moan and wring my hands and consider spending more time on origami.* Gemma was a little late to handbells on Friday, so I had time to do a Sarah Siddons** at poor Niall, who was feeling a bit low himself for having been (according to him, although I’m not sure I believe him) instrumental in losing a (tower) quarter (peal) the previous Sunday. We had got to the point where we were about to swear off tower bells forever and cleave exclusively to handbells, and in another few minutes we’d probably have nicked our fingers and made a blood pact, but fortunately Gemma showed up. She was quite startled at my Lady Macbeth imitation.*** She must be a fabulous family doctor†: she does that calm, patient, rational-as-if-you’re-rational-too-and-just-had-a-bad-minute-there thing superbly. She very nearly cheered me up. And she did at least convince me that my ignominy Wednesday evening had not been complete.
As previously (often) mentioned, I sometimes think my single virtue is frelling obstinacy.†† Sheer mindless persistence I can do. So there was never any real doubt that I would show up at the abbey for Sunday afternoon service ring . . . but I can’t say I was looking forward to it. The not looking forward was getting pretty disagreeable by last night and by the time I got out of bed this morning I wanted to change my name††† and run away. It’s a beautiful gardening day.‡ I could stay home and garden.
What if I turn up and they stare at me in disbelief and say, For pity’s sake go away? —Even if Gemma keeps insisting this isn’t going to happen.
In the first place there were only, and exactly, eight of us. Including me. Which meant that with me they could ring triples. Without me they could ring doubles or minor with the seventh sitting out. Triples is much better. So yaay. I’m useful. (Which has been one of Gemma’s strongest arguments right along: they need Sunday afternoon ringers. You get lots of brownie points if you ring Sunday afternoon service. As well as more time on a rope.) So we rang Grandsire Triples—with me (relatively) safely on the treble.
But the best thing was that I had a chat with Albert. I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t be there for practise next Wednesday‡‡ but that after last Wednesday I thought I should probably revert to doubles and minor till I had adjusted a little more to the (frelling) abbey’s (frelling) bells. And he looked surprised and said oh no, you don’t have to do that, everyone has trouble getting used to these bells, they’re not the easiest bells anyway, the ringing chamber is huge, and the sound is muddy and erratic.
Well . . . yes.
And, he added, last Wednesday was a bad practise. People who have been ringing Grandsire Triples for thirty years were going wrong. It wasn’t your fault.
Oh. Um. I had actually thought there was a little variability elsewhere, but . . .
But the thing he said that really sent me away with a song in my heart if not precisely on my lips, was that when he’d first been ringing here he’d had trouble focussing on each bell rope because, the blasted room being so big, the ropes were so far apart.
Focus. Yes. That’s exactly the right word, and it hadn’t occurred to me (so not a word person as I am), because it’s counter-intuitive. Ropesight is the ability to see which bell you should follow next by PRECISELY where the person ringing it is in their stroke (since everyone ringing will be in a slightly different place than everyone else). Part of the problem at the abbey is that since it has ninety-seven bells, if you’re only ringing six or eight or ten or twelve, you’re in more of a queue than a circle, and you have got used, in smaller towers with fewer bells, to ringing in a circle,‡‡ and your ropesight has probably developed from looking around a smallish, more or less circular, group of bellropes. You would think that having them more spread out would mean each comes into much sharper individual focus but in practise, as I have dreadfully discovered, it seems to have the opposite effect: they all blur together.
So Albert and I have something in common besides being bipedal air breathers with opposed thumbs. Yaaay. And then he said, let’s ring a couple of plain courses of Grandsire Triples, and you ring inside, and you can practise looking. So we did that.
I may still have a future as an abbey ringer. . . .
* * *
* I was just writing to a friend that I’d bought a couple of books on basic origami to remind myself what folding feels like, for SHADOWS, since Maggie is a folder, and a couple of books of extreme origami to see what the . . . er . . . extremists can get up to, and that I could feel the attraction of another obsessive-friendly activity but that I didn’t have time for any more all-consuming pursuits and would probably stick to cranes, which are hard enough, frankly, if you are over-equipped with thumbs. The mere fact of possessing twelve thumbs wouldn’t stop me, you understand, since I don’t hold out for things I have some talent for. See: bell ringing.
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Siddons
*** Out, damned bell rope! Out, I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky, just like my ropesight!
† Which is what she is
†† Not just plain obstinacy. The frelling kind. Which is much gnarlier.
††† Possibly to K MacFarquhar. Hee hee hee hee hee hee.
‡ Old Blush is out. Barely the middle of May is early even for her. It’ll be another fortnight or so before she’s in peak hurrah, but she’s got three roses full out now. And I have two robins again, so there must be a second nest in prospect. Robin #1 was rushing around yesterday dispensing mealworms but robin #2 sat in the apple tree and stared at me as I galumphed haphazardly, potting things on and swearing. Robin #2 is gigantic. I am not seeing anything about size differential between the sexes in robins—having just hit three robin-info sites^—but if it’s true that dad sticks around to feed the fledglings, the gigantic one is mama. And she’s probably deciding if she wants to risk me. I don’t know if robins re-use their nests? I won’t clear this one away till the end of the year so it’s available at a very reasonable rate, not to mention all the mod cons, like trays of mealworms on the balcony.
^ One does mention that robins are so crazy about mealworms they will take them from human hands. That does, however, mean that the human hand has to be holding the mealworms. I will pick mealworms up when I drop them+ but the idea of standing there . . . um. Peanut butter for the chickadees back in Maine was less lacerating to one’s delicate sensibilities.++
+ And did you know they CLIMB? You want to be certain of your containment vessel.
++ When I first moved over here one of the things I missed the worst was all the wild critters I was used to. Chickadees were very high on that list. It’s hard not to love something that little and cheeky. British robins are out of the same box: little and cheeky. And the funny thing is that I feel that I’ve always lived with British robins.# I know my love of skylarks and brown hares and beech trees is only twenty years old. British robins . . . I can’t imagine life without them.
# American robins are fine. But British robins are the real deal.
‡‡ Fiona and I are going to get into trouble. Unfortunately there were only tickets available for trouble on Wednesday evening.
‡‡‡ Mind you there are some fairly strange layouts in small towers too. But the small part does limit the grievous possibilities.
ME Awareness Week. And some bad bells.
Hey. People. I read the forum. But you don’t seriously believe I’m going to post the second part of Corellia’s saga right away, do you? Blow off two guest posts in a ROW? If I had two nights in a row off I’d have established a habit of lying on the sofa covered with hellhounds during blog-writing time, eating bonbons and reading trashy novels. Marabou-trimmed satin lingerie optional. No, no, no. Besides, torturing blog readers is one of my few pleasures.
. . . ‘Pleasures’ certainly not including bell ringing. Oh gods. Practise tonight at the abbey was unbelievably awful. Awful. As I said to Albert as I raced out the door* to escape as soon as possible, this habit of taking one step forward and two steps back is getting discouraging.** Profound and utter humiliation is disagreeable at best but in this case I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve only ever learnt . . . well, pretty much anything, but particularly bell ringing . . . by grind. Relentless grind. You don’t get to grind at the abbey—there are too many ringers at too many different levels (especially upper) to have time for grinding any of them.*** I’d been hoping that I was far enough down the ringing road generally that I wouldn’t need to grind the way I used to . . . wrong. But the big spiky unmediatable situation here is that it’s specifically the abbey that’s the problem: those bells, that frelling ringing chamber, the fact that it’s the abbey. I can ring Grandsire Frelling Triples at other towers—not gloriously well, but I can ring it. Or I could. I think I’m forgetting, because what I’m chiefly doing lately is failing to ring it at the abbey. I cannot begin to tell you how WILDLY FRUSTRATING it is to listen, or to stand behind and watch someone else ringing, something that in any other tower I’d give my eyeteeth† to have a go at—I should be consolidating my Grandsire Triples and practising bob triples and major, Stedman triples, Cambridge minor, treble bobbing to surprise major. But I can’t ring at the abbey.
I wasn’t even expecting the worst tonight. Usually I’m horribly good at expecting the worst. Tonight when I pulled off the bell felt familiar—it is not, in fact, the bells, it’s the ballroom-sized ringing chamber and the abbeyness of it. And I thought, pulling on this familiar bell, oh good. I’m getting there. I’m making progress. This is, or at any rate is going to be, my new home tower.
Does anyone have a bridge handy that I could throw myself off?
* * *
Meanwhile . . . @cambridgeminor/CathyR tweeted me this today:
I know there have been ME awareness weeks—possibly every year at this time, one of the symptoms is really bad memory—but I’d missed we were having one now. And ME, like way too many other badly understood and/or scary don’t-want-to-think-about-it-because-it-might-happen-to-me afflictions and ailments, can use all the good press it can get. Yes, it’s a real disease.†† No, we’re not all malingerers.††† Hurrah for journalists who write articles‡ saying that ME is a nasty kick in the head from fate and to take it seriously. And I’m very glad to see someone making a noise about the appalling so-called ‘treatment’ of enforced exercise, which I’ve railed about here before. If you have ME the last thing you should do is force yourself to do stuff. That only makes it worse. As I’ve also said—but to me, being someone with ME, this is all worth saying again—there may be a few ME-diagnosed people out there for whom enforced exercise worked . . . but I’d personally doubt that in that case what they did have is ME. It’s a fairly slippery disease/syndrome and there’s a lot of overlap with other fateful kicks in the head.
But I want to add (again) that my experience of it is also that what energy, physical and mental, you do have you MUST USE, because if you don’t it will not only go away again—but you’ll feel worse, just like if you forced yourself to do too much. The Lack of Slack Syndrome. One of the things this article also mentions, and good for her, although I’d put quite a few underlines around it too, is the good days and bad days thing—you may also have good half days and bad half days, good hours and bad hours . . . good minutes and bad minutes. She mentions people who have to put their lives on hold because they can’t do anything consistently. Yes. This is one of the big ratbags about managing it—and leads to why I seem to get away with so much. I’ve told you (often) before there are a lot of smoke and mirrors on the blog—well, if I have to lie down for an hour or a day, I just do it. I don’t have to tell you or my boss about it—and the hellhounds adore it, of course. But one of my bottom lines is that I have no stamina, despite all that hurtling. I gave up horses (several times) because I can’t ride regularly enough. I don’t ring quarter peals because I never know when I’m going to have a bad day or a bad hour, and you’re letting down five or seven other people if you fold up unexpectedly. I don’t travel for a variety of reasons, but head of the list is the ME. Managing it on the road is . . . well. I’d rather have bell practise nights like tonight, when throwing myself off bridges seems like a rational reaction, than cope with a bad ME day away from home.
This is one of the things I’d like to see more recognition of—that most people with ME are still capable of doing something—and most of us want to: who wants to be helpless, hopeless, dependent and bored?—but we need SLACK from the healthy, functioning world. We need FLEXIBILITY. The business/working/income-oriented world is still lousy about people who don’t fit their pattern. It’s like the colossal waste of energy and talent of parents who want to, you know, raise their kids themselves. The corporate world still seems to think that kids are something you do in your spare time, and that making widgets and earning money is the real centre of the universe. What is wrong with this picture.
Everybody would be happier if they could work and live to a model that suited them better, you know? You don’t have to have ME or little kids. Elasti-world! Now all we need is a logo and catchy tag line.
* * *
* Not a good idea from this tower. GERONIMOOOOOOOOOO!
** I’ve also started wondering again how long before they tell me not to come back.
*** Except in terms of ‘into little pieces’. I came home in a basket.
† As if anyone would want these eyeteeth. I did, however, get my crown glued back in today.
Dentist from R’lyeh was on holiday, so I saw An Extremely Chirpy female dentist. Extremely Chirpy. Except that I guess you aren’t allowed to make jokes about doctors on drugs I’d say she’s on drugs. Nobody is that chirpy without chemical assistance. I commented, as I produced the small offending object, that it was remarkably clean, as was the post-stub it used to be stuck to. This is, in fact, a crown put in by Dentist from R’lyeh himself, so they could look it up in their records and the chirpy dentist went off into peals of tinkling laughter when the assistant declared that he’d glued it in originally with Glurpbggg™ ^ which is a temporary cement. Oh, that’s why the crown was so clean! sang Ms Nitrous Oxide. Temporary cement always dissolves over time!
Erm, I said, spitting out the crown, which she had spronged back in place to check rapport and congruity with the surrounding teeth, and then couldn’t dislodge again, why?
Oh, because it’s such a good fit! she trilled.
Um. From where I’m sitting . . . the temporary cement was always going to dissolve? Therefore I was always due to be back here in this chair having spent x number of days chewing on one side of my mouth and worrying there was something actually wrong, and then spending an afternoon I might have spent getting on with novel-in-progress schlepping into Mauncester to have it put back in?
Um. Why?
^ I can hardly wait to see what WordPress does to the TM symbol. I wonder if I need popcorn.
†† Although I personally think it’s a syndrome. As I keep saying. If I were going to guess more, I’d guess that it’s caused by a variety of sensitivities to the extremely not-what-we-evolved-for life we lead now. A kind of uber-allergy.
††† Note that of course there are malingerers among us. It’s like some accountants embezzle. That doesn’t mean the definition of an accountant includes ‘embezzler’.
‡ Although please the frelling gods couldn’t they have hired a PROOFREADER? Text as bad as this undermines both the message and the professionalism of the journalist or the paper or both . . . or maybe that’s just that I’m a professional writer with ME.
Sunday night after Sunday afternoon
I’m bored with only chewing on one side of my mouth.* And Gemma was not at the abbey this afternoon which made me feel more put-upon. We had eight, however, which meant we could ring triples. Watch me frelling dive for the treble. . . . At least it wasn’t seven Brilliant Ringers and me: our eight included two of the middling band members—they’re better than I am, but that still doesn’t take much**—so at least I didn’t have to humiliate myself further by saying ‘no’ when they asked me if I could treble bob to major.*** It wasn’t even seven blokes and me†; Leandra and Moira were both there. Moira is consolingly middling level; Leandra is a major frelling hot shot, but has the gift for treating morons and gibbering twits like human beings. I aspire to being worth her time.††
Other than that, it’s been SHADOWS. And maybe a little New Thing.
KatydidNL
Am I the only one who really wishes she had a copy of these Flowerhair books?
Snork. Because I am a depraved human being I’ve been thinking about inserting the occasional excerpt. I’m just not sure how far this parody thing will stretch. Carooooooooooooom WHACK.
. . . And it’s not going to freeze tonight. I don’t think. I hope. I planted a lot more tender little green things today.††† I may just bring the potted-up dahlia cuttings in. Just because I can.
* * *
* Because I am a hysterical twit one of my first thoughts after the bloody crown^ chunked out last night, after the screams of horror etc, was, ohmigods can I SING? I have a voice lesson on Bank Holiday Monday! —Yes I can sing. Good grief. Chewing is, however, problematic.
^ An interesting image. Sort of Charles I.
** I’m getting better. I am. My mind still goes blank. But sometimes it comes back. Sometimes it even comes back bringing the blue line of the method we are (theoretically) ringing with it.
But just walking over from the car park the middle of a Sunday afternoon . . . the world is full of frelling tourists, and one of the things they’re gaping at is the abbey, which is gigantic and impressive and all that. And beautiful. I’ve loved it for years, and when I didn’t seem to be DOING quite so much, including before I started bell ringing, I used to creep in for evensong sometimes, to listen to the voices and the organ in that extraordinary space. I look at it and I think and I frelling RING there? You’re kidding, right?^ It takes you a couple of minutes’ hard walking to get round this vast building to the door to the tower, and by the time I climb the ninety thousand stairs, including the rope ladder over the oubliette at the end, I’m in no fit state to do anything but sit in a corner and gibber.^^ So when Og or Albert calls out the name of a method and expects people to step forward and grab ropes, I’m like, Nooooooo! I’m knitting! I climbed ninety million stairs (including the rope ladder over the oubliette) to sit in a corner and knit!
I really want to get over this stage. Really. Want. It’s boring. Speaking of boring.
^ I seem to be uttering this phrase kind of a lot lately. It turned up in New Thing recently which was probably a mistake because we all know life follows art.+ I ordered a bunch of stuff from one of these on line organic save-the-planet sites including six tins of Spicy Lentil Soup which I’m fond of and it’s faster than making it when you’re ringing that night and besides you’re only allowed nine calories a day which means cooking is mostly kind of demoralising. Five tins were in the box they sent me. So I emailed them saying, just reassure me you didn’t charge me for the sixth, okay? And they wrote back saying, we need more information about your order, and then we can respond to your concerns. One of their list of questions was What colour was the TAPE used on the packaging? What? Clearly an occasion when the only possible response is, You’re kidding, right?
+ Yes, I’d be worrying about those attack mushrooms if I were you.
^^ . . . And get out my knitting.+ Knitting is very good for the blood pressure++ as I have just been telling Hannah.
+ Can anyone out there recommend or point me at a pattern for a mug cosy—and before you send me six hundred and forty-nine links to patterns for those wrap-around mug cosies which seem to be a major fashion accessory these days (including some very cute ones on Ravelry), what I want is a mug cosy that looks like a tea cosy only smaller. This is one of those things that supposing I live long enough to get casual with knitting the way I’m casual with baking (‘okay, fine, that looks about right’) I assume I’ll be able to invent, or devent, from a tea cosy pattern, or a circular hat pattern, or something. Right at the moment I need to be told what to do, in words of one syllable, and not very many of them either.
++ Which, after ninety thousand stairs, is banging in your ears anyway. I only have breath to gibber with because of all that hellhound hurtling.
*** Major is eight bells. And the fancy upper level methods have a frelling fancy upper level line even for the lowly treble. I can treble bob to minor—six bells—at some tower that isn’t the abbey. Eight . . . well. I’d like to have a try, some practise night, after I’ve stopped freaking out.
† This should not matter. A ringer is a ringer is a ringer and there have been women ringers for the last hundred years or so (although I’m very glad I didn’t have to be one of the first). But I start feeling all patriarchally oppressed when I’m surrounded by blokes who are all better at something than I am. This is my problem, not the blokes’.
†† Along with being a sweetheart to the dim and wussified, Leandra is tiny and fierce. She’s Albert’s wife and, like him, a major feature in the local guild. She’s also one of the comparatively few top-flight women ringers: there are plenty of girls down at my level, but it’s usually only the boys who are obsessive enough to go on to great things.^ There are still a few lingering sexist assumptions in bell ringing, among them that women don’t ring at the back on the big bells. Colin likes to joke about this, after he’s handed me the rope for the tenor.^^ The back bells at the abbey are seriously large. Entire fleets of aircraft carriers weigh less than the tenor. When we’re ringing on eighty-four, look around: Leandra will be at the back somewhere. She’s so little that if you’re on a bell on the opposite side of the aircraft-hangar ringing chamber you can barely frelling see her. The abbey band wouldn’t dream of messing with her, but I’m rather hoping to see her tangle some day with an old-fashioned visitor who doesn’t think women ring big bells.^^^
^ I’m obsessive enough. I’m just not good enough.
^^ The tenor at Glaciation is not particularly large but it is very deep set which means you need six friends to help you drag it off its perch. Thus a little innocent merriment may be had on a dull ringing evening.
^^^ Although watching Wild Robert casually handle a monster bell is as good as a play. He’s half a head taller than I am but probably weighs less.
††† While dad robin dealt with an extra serving of mealworms. I’m going to run out. I’m going to have to buy maggots till the next delivery.