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Asking Robin more about the writing process
I shouldn’t be this tired. I feel like I must have just reinvented the wheel or something.* And I’m supposed to write a blog entry?**
However I did have an important bit of story delivery today. You can fake around the holes to some extent and for a while, especially if you can feel the main story dragging you on*** but eventually you do need to know certain things. In this case I have a war to direct.† And the particular consignment that arrived today had some fairly critical Background World Development stuff in it: I know this world fairly well at this point†† but I mainly know it as, ahem, I might know it. And I’m not a magician.††† Magic. Feh. If this were your standard swords, archery and leather armour with some chain war, I could just research the freller. As it is I have to wait for somebody to send me something. And you know how delivery companies are.
But I am reminded of some comments to the forum ten days or so ago, in response to The Cluelessness of Writers.
EMoon wrote: I have a character in peril. He may end up dead, or inhabited by a demonic presence, or suspected of same but not inhabited, or fine. I don’t know which it is. I have written all around the critical moments from other viewpoints. I have been inside his head to find out and…when I get near the critical moments there’s a blank . . . not one…single…person will share what’s actually happened. He’s important. . . . But they’re all in hiding from their writer. . . . thus I have to chase that fast-moving blurred shape down a very uninviting hole until I finally catch it and bring it up to the light, squirming in fright and biting my hands. . . .
Yes. Sometimes they bite. Sometimes you’re groping around in the dark and you know you’ve found something because it hurts. YOW YOU LITTLE RATBAG.‡
On the forum I answered: . . . I had one of those GOOD GODS OF COURSE moments out hurtling this morning–about some other story than PEG II of course, but it’s one that I even know the shape of . . . ‡‡ and there has been something Not Quite Right about it . . . which I think I now know. Where has it BEEN all this time? And what finally flushed it out where I could see it? (Actually . . . Pooka did the flushing. Which I hope means she IS in fact a force for good in this universe. There have been moments when I wonder. And I’m sure there will be MORE such moments.‡‡‡)
Aaron wrote: So I gather it is not always seeing new action that resolves these matters. Sometimes you realize you know something that you hadn’t realized you knew, perhaps because you asked yourself a different question. Do you also do detective work on the things you have seen? As if watching a mystery movie over again to see if you missed a clue?
Both ‘seeing’ and ‘action’ are mutable concepts.§ In this case it was more of a kaleidoscope turn: somebody moved the endpiece and all those same flecks and fragments fell into a new pattern. Eureka! Sometimes—as in this case—there is an almost physical jolt to it—like having something bite your hand in the dark.
Sometimes it is a kind of seeing that there’s been a cat curled up on the cushion all this time and it’s your own fault for thinking it was just a shadow—but cats are treacherous, and maybe it wasn’t there the last time you looked. –Don’t give me that fat purring sleepy-eyed thing.
I wouldn’t call it detective work, the way I do it, which sounds much too calm and rational. It’s more like looking for the car key (which is supposed to live in your pocket for just this reason) when you’re about to be late for an appointment, or trying to get your shoes tied while being cavorted on by a brace of happy hellhounds looking forward to their walk. It’s got to be here somewhere/aaaugh I can’t see what I’m doing if you’re licking my glasses. But going over and over stuff you already know—you think you know—you hope you know but you know you’ve missed something? Yes. Very much so.
Diane in MN quoted me: Meanwhile I’m well over halfway through PEG II and I still don’t know if Fazuur is a good guy or a bad guy. And this is starting seriously to get on my nerves.
And wrote: Do you find that this is a character who wants to grow as the story has grown? Given that you say he hasn’t been an important character yet, is he trying to become one? I can see that if you don’t know his ultimate role, he could really affect the arc of the story by becoming a bigger presence.
Oh, arc of the story, please, you’re going all rational again. The arc of the story is one of those hindsight things for me. Climaxes, for example—and all of PEGs I & II began with a climax that comes I think about halfway through PEG II—are merely the Really Exciting Bits that I don’t get to write unless I write all the stuff around them so they’ll be climactic enough. The pulling down of a mountain on someone’s head§§—which is where SWORD started—wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it hadn’t taken over two hundred pages to get there. There are writers who plan extensively—there are even writers who follow their extensive plans—I’m not one of them. The nice way of describing my lack of method is to call it organic: I write as the thing grows. It grows longer as it goes through drafts, and there are always the bits you know, the bits you don’t know, the bits you wished you knew, and the bits that you think you know and don’t. Fazuur is a bit I wish I knew and don’t. The fact that it’s bothering me that I don’t know is probably significant—like one of those hunches fictional detectives get just before they uncover an important clue. But whether Fazuur has a significant role to play . . . ask me at the end of the third draft. When I’m handing it in to my editor. I should know by then. I hope.
* * *
*The elimination process that involves dragging all those things that aren’t wheels is really hard work. It was a very thorough elimination process. And my condition has been intensified by my being too stupid not to go to Colin’s bell practice tonight—which for arcane reasons, was held in his garage. No, really. He has a mini-ring, which is to say a bunch of bells the size of flower-pots hung upside down above the specially-soundproofed ceiling of his garage (and under the specially soundproofed roof of his garage: there are neighbours). And they (the bells) have (teeny) ropes with (teeny) sallies on them and everything. But because the bells are so small and the wheels they turn on are also so small, your stroke—which is dependent on the rope going round the wheel to spin the bell—is very short. So your bells are making their 360 degree turns forward and back really fast. Which means you are ringing whatever method you are ringing really fast. And I can’t handle the flighty little monsters, they keep going grand battement SPROING at me—and because they’re all so little they sound way too much alike, dingdingdingdingding, so picking out the sound of your own bell or the treble for guidance is not an option—let alone ring the wretched things at twice the usual proper-big-tower-bell speed.
They didn’t quite put me out on the kerb after practise for the dustbin men to take away tomorrow morning, but nearly.
** Remind me what that is again? I believe I do it every night? Is it anything like falling asleep in the bath?
*** Author as square wheel
† I was really hoping I wasn’t going to have to run any more wars. Two^ of the several Third Damar Novels have fairly comprehensive wars in them, which are among my reasons for not having got round to writing them. Damar seems to be a curiously bellicose place.
^ Probably three.
†† !!!!!!!! How do people survive writing series?????
††† In this world. There have been worlds I could do magic in. Ahem.
‡ I think I’ve mentioned here that there are, as there always are, stories that I don’t dare let loose my feverish grip on PEG II long enough even to write down rough outlines of^ hanging around TORMENTING me. One of them, which I know I’ve mentioned, presumably here because where else is there^^, is about a middle-aged soldier who unexpectedly survived the assassination attempt she knew was coming, and now has to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. While she’s escaping further would-be murderers, since it seems ungrateful to let them get her after all, various of her old colleagues catch her up and say ‘I’m coming too’. The king who wants her dead is not popular. She’s perhaps a little cranky^^^ about picking up an entourage. . . . And now there’s a baby. A what? Her feeling exactly. And mine. I strongly object to being kept awake nights by the screams of a fictional baby I’m not even writing about.
^ I belong to the philosophy that says that if it’s important, it’ll either stick around or come back. And if it comes back as something else, that’s okay too.
^^ The idea of multiple blogs—which, for example, EMoon herself keeps—is more horrible than vampires to me.
^^^ Now, where would that have come from
‡‡ Tam Lin, in case you’re interested. It’s a sort of . . . long short story. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Short stories are a little like wars. I know going in I’m in trouble. Although the first draft of this one exists, and it is a short story. Well, maybe a novella. . . .
‡‡‡ Er. Yes.
§ I want, irrationally, to call them verbs. Which is perhaps a minor metaphor for the peculiarity of the writing process.
§§ Please admire my lack of spoiler here, although I’d be surprised if there are any regular readers of this blog who don’t know THE BLUE SWORD.
Gardens
It stopped raining for a few hours yesterday, nicely timed for gardening, during which I went out and strove mightily with dahlias, which is to say earwigs, among other useful and semi-useful things,** and came indoors again as the Scary Mud Monster. Remember I told you that I’d actually staked all of my dahlias this year, and how this doesn’t happen in my garden(s)? It doesn’t work. Well, I suppose if you were out there with your bamboos and your twine every minute, or even every afternoon, you might stay ahead of the little sods, but I wouldn’t count on it. You may also remember that I’ve been complaining about my seven-foot dahlias—dahlias are supposed to be sort of four to six foot. Which is plenty. Even a six-foot dahlia has a slightly triffid air about it.*** But I’ve realised why my dahlias are all monsters this year: it’s so that they can hurl themselves over any foolish attempts to contain them. Several of my beautifully-staked dahlias have a fringe of flopped-over, head-down flowers tumbling gracefully, not to say vindictively, over the top loop of string. SIIIIIIIGH.†
This morning after service ring†† I was out in front of the cottage, deadheading.††† I’ve still got pansies in flower—I mean pansies that have been flowering since spring, and in a couple of cases since last winter. If you’re clever about it you pretty much can have pansies flowering all year long—although they may shut down in self-defense in a cold winter—but this usually requires waves of pansies. Some of this year’s have gone out back for a serious haircut, a feed, and a rest, but by no means all of them. Some of them are still frothing down my front steps, flowering determinedly. So I was determinedly deadheading them.‡ And my neighbour with the posh, national-collections garden at the top of the hill comes strolling down with a companion and says lugubriously to me, Oh, you’re losing that battle.
Thanks ever so. You’re a real friend.
Peter and I went to another posh garden this afternoon‡‡, one of those eye-wateringly so-English cottagey things that I have the almost overwhelming urge to speak loudly and frequently, saying things like Gee whillikers! and Gosh darn! This place is real gone! Peter and I used to have one of those gardens . . . but we never went in for the eye-watering aspect; ours was too clearly not under control, nor under anything resembling an all-over plan. And I get a little lip-curly about people with full time gardeners. (Or trust funds and no need to earn a living.) If I had a full-time gardener I could be opening Third House’s garden to the public in a couple of (somewhat frantic) years. The funny thing is that I don’t think I’d want to: the pleasure, if you want to call it pleasure,‡‡‡ of opening our garden was that we were the ones responsible. If you wanted to know about a plant, we were the ones to ask. We might not remember, but if we didn’t, there was no recourse.§ I’m just crabby because there was a lot to like about this garden . . . till you got to the two wide bays of really ugly orange roses. There must have been thirty of the horrible things. All orange. I like hot dazzling orange fine in neat little wool-and-silk cardigans such as the one I am wearing this minute. But neon orange is not a good colour in a rose. Especially not in ranks at the front of the sculpted topiary tunnel to the lily pond with the summerhouse and the tasteful statuary. Gah. No, Gee whillikers!
* * *
* Possibly my least favourite critter on the planet, barring things big enough to eat me and standing close enough to try
** Including potting on two camellias, which have been quietly getting on with things for two years in the pots they arrived from the mail-order nursery in. One of the best things about camellias is how patient they are. A kind word and a handful of well rotted chicken crap and they’re happy indefinitely. You think I’m anthropomorphising about the kind word, don’t you? HA. Show me a little old lady who talks to her plants and I’ll show you a little old lady who can barely get out her back door for being throttled by the botanical riot. No I am not talking about me. I am not little. And I haven’t fully arrived at the ‘old’. And while it’s perfectly true I talk to my plants^ I tend to say things like what are you doing that for, you frelling thing? and ARRRRRRGH. And, when dealing with rosebushes, OWWWWWW. But I’m mostly nice to my camellias. I’ve pretty much even stopped cursing Jingle Bells for being fabulously healthy, floriferous and UGLY.
^ I talk to almost everything except other people. Other people, feh. Way too complicated. Give me a rosebush or a hellhound any day.
*** It’s not so much the height, it’s the posture. Forty-foot roses dangling from trees can be very intimidating, but they’re not at all triffidy.
† Clearly I haven’t been saying the right things to them.
†† During which I was Much Put Upon. Not only did I keep finding myself in the long-thirds position when a single was called for Grandsire, but I fell afoul of the Dreaded Three-Four Down Dodge Single in bob minor several times, about which mediocre ringers lie awake on Saturday nights worrying about being traumatised by if bob minor is attempted on Sunday morning. I did, by the way—get through all these trials—but I had to be carried home and fed chocolate to recover.^
^ And speaking of feeding . . . Peter has just spilt chicken broth—you know, the stuff that accumulates under a roast chicken—rather lavishly on the floor. Hellhounds did not stir. I called them. They stared at me. I called them again. Chaos, always the one more anxious about pleasing,+ crept out at last and crushed himself to me, as I knelt on the floor next to a pool of fresh chicken juice. Here, look at that, I said, extricating an arm and pointing. Chaos looked at the finger, the way dogs do++. I eventually persuaded him to have a sniff at the lovely chickeny puddle. To please me he did, with his feet braced, still leaning against me, and with his neck stretched to its furthest extent. He sniffed. He then looked at me with a ‘Can I go now?’ expression.
After he had fled back to the dog bed in huge relief, Darkness came nonchalantly out to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. He had a half-hearted lick and then turned around to fix me with a ‘You got us up for this? look.
Peter mopped up the spill.
+ Except, of course, when it comes to food
++ There was an article in a recent TIME magazine about the intelligence of critters, and how there’s more of it around than generally thought. Depends on who you ask, of course. I know a lot of critter people who have been sniggering at the scientists about this sort of thing for years. But one of the things the article cites is that dogs ‘innately’ understand about pointing fingers being about pointing, and not about the finger. Well, sort of. It depends on the dog and the context. Pointers certainly point, and they know they’re pointing. But your own pet dog is very likely to be interested in the finger, because it’s your finger. Chaos has a very bad case of this.
††† I should try to get someone to take a photo of me deadheading the Non Trailing Petunias in the hanging basket. I can feel how ridiculous—how increasingly ridiculous—I look, especially as the petunias themselves grow more ridiculous, ramrod straight and soaring out into the ozone.
‡ Kneeling on tarmac at least keeps the Scary Mud Monster somewhat at bay.
‡‡ In the rain. It came back.
‡‡‡ I didn’t, much. I’ve told you, I think, that Peter was always out there talking to people. I used to try to find an especially impenetrable thicket and spent the afternoon weeding. Peter would occasionally send people in after me who wanted particularly to talk about roses.
§ We did have a once a week body I used to refer to as our gardeneroid. His purpose was to move slowly around the garden looking like he was doing something, and adding rusticity to the view. He also mowed the lawn.
Possibly Papua New Guinea
This has been one of your Almost Total Sod weeks when everything that can go wrong does, and everything that can’t possibly go wrong does anyway. Plus I have an Apocalypse in my pocket.* I keep reminding myself that one of the reasons I have an iPhone rather than some other instrument of technological torture is because they’re so intuitive. I know this because this is what everyone tells me. GAAAAAAAAH. I was at the tears-of-rage-with-blood-pressure-headache stage** with Pooka yesterday afternoon, out hurtling hellhounds***, trying to play music on her, and every ten or twenty seconds there would be a little trilling noise and a new track would start playing. ARRRRRRGH. So, clearly, there’s a shuffle-by-shaking button enabled somewhere† but I couldn’t FIND IT and meanwhile the countryside was getting an earful about what I thought of my Apocalypse.††
So today Peter (who hasn’t had the best week of his life either) and I decided to cheer ourselves up and go visit a garden. It sounded like quite a nice garden too—National Garden Scheme garden descriptions are written by the owners, so caution and large handfuls of salt and cynicism are advised when reading that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have been lovingly recreated in rural Hampshire—its only drawback being that it is far enough away that there was room for debate about the route taken to get there.
Peter won.
We got lost.
We saw most of West Sussex as well as great swathes of Surrey and possibly a glimpse of Papua New Guinea††† on our way. Fortunately most of it was pretty.‡ And the garden, once we got there, was excellent. Listen: a serious English garden with lots of dahlias. Not enough roses, but maybe they’ll get around to more roses: dahlias are a lot more movable, since you have to get the frellers up every winter,‡‡ and the admin at this garden are obviously having a good time with their colour schemes. Yaay for orange and purple and scarlet. Together. If they need suggestions on good orange and purple and scarlet roses. . . .
We drove home my way and got there in about a third of the time it took us on the way out. Not so scenic though. Not a single Queen Alexandra Birdwing‡‡‡. But there’s always next Sunday afternoon.
* * *
* Some of the people I have flashed my pink leather case at have been inclined to be humorous at Pooka’s and my expense. This seems to have less to do with the colour than the fact that I went for the full clamshell deal rather than a ‘bumper’ which just protects the back. Most of these bumpered-only models also live in pockets, like Pooka, but—even supposing I can be expected to remember reliably to keep my penknife in the other pocket with my keys^—most people don’t spend quality time hitting themselves in the belly and thighs with bell ropes.^^ Repeatedly. Heavy bell ropes.
I was thinking about this this morning. You may remember a plaint earlier that I was going to be ringing six times this week—I generally try to keep it down to three. My usual whacking-myself-in-the-midsection activity is ringing down in peal. You’re supposed to take a loop in the rope before you do yourself any serious damage, but I don’t always manage this. Keeping my place in the row is much more important than a few weals. But yesterday I rang at Madhatterington for the second Saturday in a row^^^ where the bells, as previously observed, are Possessed By Demons,+ and one of the ways the demonic presence manifests is by the fact that the ropes want to beat you to death, not merely when you’re ringing down in peal, but all the time. I was delighted to notice yesterday that Felicity on the three, which bell had been my chief misfortune last week, was having to wrestle the rope as one might wrestle a hungry boa constrictor. And it’s been raining this week, so all bell ropes are heavier, solider and meaner than usual, even basically good-tempered ones such as we have at New Arcadia. So by this morning, when I was ringing down in peal after service—WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP—I was thinking I was about ready for a surcease of this self-flagellatory activity. Except I’m ringing at Little Warbling tomorrow. ++
But at least Pooka is safe.
^ I don’t know how anyone actually wears skinny jeans. Does a minion with a backpack come free with every purchase?
^^ This includes most bell ringers. Grace is not one of my greater attributes under any circumstances.
^^^ The week before wasn’t too good for only ringing three times either.
+ This is also the tower where practise is forbidden by cranky locals, so the poor bells are only rung very occasionally for services. It’s enough to make even the most virtuous bells vulnerable to seduction by unholy elements.
++ I also seem to be ringing handbells at Frellingham again on Wednesday. Niall strode purposefully up to me after service ring this morning. Ah, Robin! he said.
I cringed.
James and Darcy are away for a fortnight, he said, attempting to appear ingratiating and failing. I see the ogreish gleam in his eye. The gleam that says, Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of someone who might be bullied into ringing handbells. Titus, continued Niall, is hoping that we might convince you to ring with us in their absence.
Once, I say. I’ll do it once. If they come here.
Niall looks shifty. I usually go there, he says. And Titus can only come, you know, if his wife drives him.
I know, I say. So teach her to ring handbells.
I’ll drive us there, of course, says Niall. To give the ogre his due, he is always willing to do the driving.
Once, I say again. Okay. I’ll come to Frellingham once.
Once? says Niall, sensing weakness. But you know how Titus loves his handbells—
ONCE, I say. If he wants any more he can come here.
You realise that I’ve been end-ran—end-runned?—again. I haven’t got time to ring handbells twice a week even if it was always here, and we’ll be ringing with Colin as usual on Thursdays. But I will bet you Jane Austen to yesterday’s newspaper that I ring handbells with Titus at least twice in the next fortnight, and that Niall will try his best to make it three times. I at least had the good sense not to complain about pounding myself into swiss steak with a succession of bell ropes, since Niall’s advice would inevitably be that I need to ring more handbells. It is relatively more difficult to hurt yourself with handbells, but it can be done. Scratching your nose with a handbell in your hand, for example. Ask me how I know this.
** As I emailed to Fiona, who is volunteering to teach me to text. Texting! Oh gods! I promised Merrilee I’d learn how to text! This morning William Gibson retweeted someone saying that he (Gibson) had invented the internet while sitting at a manual typewriter. Yes. I remember. I was there. I am old. Siiiiiiiigh. And I bet Gibson texts away like anything. Just like Merrilee, who is almost as old as I am.
*** Who were slinking along at a distance, pretending they didn’t know me.
† Either that or they sent me the wrong model, and this is the prototype for the one that you really do just plug into your brain.
†† Eventually I gave up and turned the frelling iPod function off and stormed on in silence^. And got home, and swam around the home screen for a while, went into settings, and finally found the thrice-frelling button, poked it VIOLENTLY to ‘off’, and today played an entire album through without difficulty. However I am probably Marked for Life by James Findlay’s As I Carelessly Did Stray which is the music I was being tormented with^^, which was probably a nice album originally, for those of us who like trad folk. But what is INTUITIVE about having to climb OUT of the programme you’re IN and find some miscellaneous group of totally UNRELATED stuff whose only common denominator is that it lets you muck around with what goes on elsewhere? Grrrrrrrr.
^ barring some fairly heated muttering
^^ and vice versa, in a grand, epic sense
††† Okay, I made the Papua New Guinea part up
‡ Especially Papua New Guinea. I liked the rainforests and the cassowaries.
‡‡ Although a lot of us don’t, which means we have to start over next year.
‡‡‡ http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/van_anim_buttrfly.htm
Ringing from the trenches, guest post by southdowner
It all started so well. Sunday ringing, service ringing, is what bell ringing is FOR. It is the reason that bells were attached to ropes and we (well, I can’t take the credit here, but I am a member, if the least, of generations of campanophiles) began to work out mathematically organised knitting (Robin’s shown you the lines, and I know some of you knitters out there have taken to making socks out of them, which sort of proves the point…) umm, I mean the patterns which grown up ringers call methods and principles; I’m not letting them pull the wool over MY eyes – it’s knitting, and it’s only too easy to tie yourself in knots.
Come practice night and you can stand outside our tower and hear clanging aplenty – how else can we improve? But Service ring is sacred; we owe a duty to ring our best, and our Tower Captain only asks us to ring well within our competency on a Sunday.
So it’s Sunday again. As I reach the church car park several ringers loiter purposefully in the heat of a late summer afternoon. We straggle up the spiral stairs (and I spare a momentary thought for the agility in climbing while turning which I have acquired as a by product of ringing; it is a pretty non transferable skill [any suggestions?], but essential for bell ringing).
In our tower the bells are left in a down position , and need to be rung up in order to make music (hmm – it is still a matter of opinion whether ringing bells creates music… just ask some of the people who live next to bell towers). And ringing up, especially musically, in peal (that is, keeping in order) is a hard won skill (and in some cases never won at all!) Often only 6 of our 8 bells are rung up simultaneously on a Sunday as there might not be 8 ringers present who can be trusted to ring their own bell up AND stay in the right order of bells 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (called “rounds”) during the whole process.
I sit out the ringing up – I can think of few things currently more likely to cause me grief than attempting to ring up in peal. Bells up, the ringers tie the rope into the prescribed knots, making them safe – stray ropes have been known to cause burns, lift people several metres high and worse – and sit down. Jean looks around sizing up the strength of her team; her eagle eye alights on me and “treble to Grandsire” she cries.
I take my rope and wait for the rest of the band to be appointed, each taking hold of their rope ready for the off. “Look to, Treble’s going… and gone” (it’s usually called as “she’s gone”, and ringing for centuries was a solely male activity – draw your own conclusions…*) and we’re off in rounds. On the treble I’ve struggled for months now to get the precise speed at both hand and back stroke (hand stroke and back stroke together are called a “whole pull”), and now I start slowly but feel my way to what I think is a good speed within 3 whole pulls, trying to keep steady once I reach it. Ringing the treble as a learner feels a bit like riding a horse with your arms crossed and no bridle, or driving a car without holding the steering wheel… Arrrgggghhhh!
The treble leads the whole procession; it’s the 1 of 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Ringing “between” two other bells gives you a snug place to be, and twice as much information about where you should be, in relation to each of your neighbours. On the treble you are out there on the prow of the ship and it can get lonely out there in stormy weather.
Today it all starts swimmingly – my speed is right, the ropes rise before my eyes in a clear order and my bell goes where I place it, without fighting me or falling out of the sky when I want to hold it up over much larger slower-rotating bells.
Counting places I work slowly to the back of the order, letting bells move ahead of me
12345678,**
12345678…
Finally I reach 7th place and turn for home, passing bells in the same order as going out but ringing faster to get back to the front place; when I’ve gone back into the lead I remember to slow up slightly and lead steadily. I spare a moment to feel pleased with myself, but not too long – I have so MUCH to think about, and not much time to spare.
Off again, a different order taking me up to 7th place, shorten my grip on my rope and quickly back to leading again. I’m enjoying this. And then it all goes pear-shaped. I look for a first bell rope to follow and see two – no time to hesitate, I ring steadily and then look for the next two bells. Eeek!! Another pair of ropes rise together and I try to remember to breathe and to ring steadily again, hand and back.
Only 2 more bells – these are considerate and separate themselves so I can follow first one and then the other. OK. I know where I am, I’m at the back, and though I know pairs to follow, I’m not sure which is first or second… which at this instant is making me very confused. I try looking at two bells at once, which just happen to be on my extreme right and my immediate left and keep ringing at what I hope is a good speed. (They never told me, but good peripheral vison and a supple neck are VITAL for bell ringing . )
Counting away to remember where I am (7, 6, 5 …) and “BOB” shouts the caller. Bobs (where most of the bells do a 3 point turn and swoop off in a new direction) are only called when the treble is about to reach 1st place, at the prow of the row of bells, and ready to lead.. Noooooooooo!!!!!
I’ve been good. I’ve counted, I’ve rung at the right speed, I haven’t even indulged in my favourite habit of dropping my rope (not to be emulated!); most important of all no one is shouting at me! I keep the faith and try to believe that I’m right, and I count down again (…4, 3…)
… and the world and its whippet shriek at the caller (..2, 1 ) Phew! Back to lead and start all over again. Things get worse, then the fog clears and I can see individual ropes again – a slight ruckus just before the end of the “Touch” (this is what a short piece of ringing which includes those 3 point turns is called) and we make it and back into rounds.
“Stand!!” and we all knot ropes and step away. I’m disappointed. Trebling to Grandsire isn’t a hard skill as ringing goes and I so want to ring “perfectly” – chimes which are balanced and equally struck; sounds which lift my heart. The captain (“Our Leader”) has a quick word with me about clipping the large bells and leaving too much space among the smaller bells and then it’s time for a different group to take hold for another method.
I stop at the end of ringing and wait until it’s only the captain and I. I have to ask her how I did. The answer is heartening – my speed was good, I kept ringing (this is a cardinal rule and is to be seen printed in LARGE capitals on many tower walls) and she explains that if all she has to tell me is about fine tuning of my bell placement that’s good news; best of all, it wasn’t me that went wrong and I rang well to stay in the right place despite some degree of chaos and disorder around me – “be positive” she cries with enthusiasm, “ringing takes YEARS!” – and I’m too old to wait that long – I may well expire before I reach the glories of Bristol and the grandeur of London – and I want want WANT to ring Wangaratta surprise major .
It will take me years to become a ringer – it will take me years and YEARS to get ropesight AND bell control AND memory AND rhythm AND listening skills co-ordinated, but I’m not sure whether it might take me even longer to remember what dyed in the wool ringers know – if no one says anything about your ringing, that’s high praise and you’ve done exceptionally well!!!!!***
* * *
* ringing is replete with “ooh err! missus!” phrases and expressions, which strike the beginner’s ear oddly; it seems to me a measure of bell immersion that these same phrases now run smoothly past the acoustic oddity-filter they were so recently snagged upon.
** and for those of you who like the full explanation, imagine Bell 1 moving to 7th place -
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
2, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
2, 3, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8
2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 6, 7, 8
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 7, 8
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 8
- and that’s the simple version where none of the other bells move or swap places :)
*** ringer’s joke:-
1st ringer – “When I started ringing there would be a queue of 3 people waiting in line to tell me where I’d gone wrong once I finished”
2nd ringer “Only 3? You must have been ringing Minimus!”
(Guess how many ringers it takes to ring Minimus?)
Hellhound birthday!!!!
[Note: four exclamation marks because they're four years old.]
The humans are having champagne.*
I had been foolishly and light-headedly planning to post a photo of hellhounds eating, as a dramatic contrast to their birthday last year. They do now mostly eat, most of the time, and we seem to be in a goodish** patch right now. I was aware that I was being imprudent, not to say positively rash, to assume that this scheme could be brought off successfully.
And then it looked like I had just got lucky. Hellhounds have developed the charming, normal-canine-like habit of coming out and cruising for dropped scraps while I’m chopping up the roast chicken that gets mixed into the dog food *** to encourage them to EAT IT. I’m so totally thrilled at the idea of their contracting an 
interest in food (much better late than never) that I push bits of chicken off the counter deliberately. Usually they mill for a bit and then slouch back to their bed so I have to call them out when I actually put the food down.† Tonight Darkness came out of his own accord and stood there looking alert and hungry. So if Darkness was being all forward and everything, Chaos decided he could do it too.
So I had two hellhounds standing up and eating in the middle of the kitchen floor—PERFECT for a photo. . . .
In the time it took me to get my camera out, Darkness had suddenly realised that he was eating in the middle of the kitchen floor!!!!, had recoiled with suitable emphasis, and had gone and wedged himself back in his corner by the refrigerator, where he usually goes, weary in every limb and generally deeply depressed of demeanour, when I call them out for a meal. 
Chaos, who, while generally the nutsier of the two, does have normal moments, looked around, noticed that Darkness had left him all alone in the middle of the kitchen floor, paused (I held my breath)—wavered—and decided that was Darkness’ business, went back to his supper, and finished the lot.
Darkness was still lying in his corner, staring at me. I was supposed to bring him his dish, you see. I have mostly learnt only to put it down by the refrigerator so he can’t do this to me, but tonight I got all excited and lost my head.
Chaos looked around for his treats. They get two little bits of neat chicken for afters. So with Darkness’ eyes boring into me, Chaos got his treats and went (smugly) back to the dog bed.
Fortunately at this point Darkness broke—the truth is that if we were in a bad eating patch I would have brought him his dish—rushed over to his dinner and hoovered it up with remarkable speed. And then smacked his butt down on the floor and looked around for me again—because he wanted his treats.
I am a sap, of course. Chaos got seconds. He came shooting out of the dog bed when he saw Darkness getting his, and hellhound memories are short. Fine. Whatever. They ate their dinner. I get to sleep tonight. Maybe.
But we can still have a few other photos celebrating the beauty, grace and elegance of hellhounds.††
* * *
* I need the champagne. I’m just back from another long evening of handbells. I got suckered into it this time because last week’s quarter of bob minor sounded so pretty and went so well I’ve got all pensive and yearning about learning bob major^, which requires a fourth person with a fourth pair of hands. We were two fours tonight—positively a heaving mob. And I did get to ring major, with Niall and James, but our fourth was Titus. Didn’t I say a fourth pair of hands? Ringing with Titus^^ is exciting enough when you know the method.
It took us two tries, but we did get through a plain course. At the end of which James turned to me, beaming, and said, you’ll be ringing a quarter of bob major soon.
As I say, I need the champagne.
^ Bob major specifically because you’re two-thirds or so already there by knowing bob minor. Any other method you’re starting all over from scratch. Starting from scratch in handbells is like growing your own wheat and milling your own flour and catching your own wild yeast when you want a slice of toast.
^^ Who has to ring both his bells in one hand. He holds them crossed, at ninety degrees, and shakes them up and down to make one ring and sideways to make the other ring. This does work, after a fashion, but there are kind of a lot of rows with too many or too few pings in them, which is disconcerting since you ring handbells largely by counting, and since he usually rings the trebles—because they weigh the least—you haven’t a prayer of seeing when the treble is leading, which is kind of crucial.
** So long as I don’t alarm them by toxic superfluities like leftover lamb mince, etc.
*** Yes, I know about BARF^. We had a couple of traumatic skirmishes with raw chicken wings and once with sheep bones—I think it was sheep: something large, anyway—and I retired from the field in confusion and dismay.
^ Bones and Raw Food
† No, of course they don’t just come out on their own. These are hellhounds.^
^ Hmm. I wonder if they’d do any better on raw goblin.
†† And last but not least, on the subject of eating and not eating, I love this: 
English speakers are dumber. You have to tell them louder.
