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Bleeeeerg etc
It has not been a good week, barring skylarks. You heard about Monday on Monday. Computer Men said they would return yesterday, bearing Peter’s computer and my printer, but they have decided they are coming tomorrow. They will, I hope, be able to return me to printability* here at the mews, but I have a Friday more Fridayish even than usual tomorrow, and so I will not be available to enable them to dedragon** the cottage desktop of its various little ways, like denying exit from the nuraddin address*** and refusing to open Windows all the way, so an open window scampers around the monitor like someone playing hopscotch. Nor can they investigate why the Walkperson refuses to take both CDs of an opera instead of merely overwriting the first with the second. Hey, it’s the same title, isn’t it? And the ‘disc 2’ probably gets lost after the repetition of the credits, containing as they usually do sixteen sopranos, a counterbassoonist, and the kookaburra for the mad scene at the end of the second act. I want my Gluck.†
Tuesday I bollixed my voice lesson. Whimper. I half knew I was going to; I was way too tired, I’d found two small but sordid inconsistencies in PEGASUS that I had to solve in exactly the same amount of space they were made in—your publisher will probably let you get away with resetting a very occasional line at the page proof stage, but that’s the limit—and the awful truth is that the five-star marketing plan is scaring me.†† So I went in there jumpy, distracted and underrehearsed, and sang like a person who was jumpy, distracted and underrehearsed, and it was pretty discouraging.†††
Wednesday I went to Ditherington bell practise for our first meeting on the sad new schedule of only second, fourth and fifth-if-any Wednesdays . . . except that it didn’t happen. Niall, Denis and I showed up . . . and spent an hour and a half ringing handbells—Niall never goes anywhere without his handbells—in a freezing cold transept because there was no one else there. I went home, emailed Marilyn and Wild Robert, saying, what happened?, and got a really annoyingly chirpy email back from Marilyn with a copy of the email she had sent all of us about the fact that there was only one Ditherington practise this month. Which Niall and I had both failed to write down.‡ Denis isn’t on Marilyn’s list; his honour remains unimpugned.
And I didn’t have a guest post.‡‡
Today because Colin cancelled and there were no handbells this evening‡‡‡ I decided to give myself a half day off from reading proofs and finish, or semi-finish, or get through draft 2B of, Frost and Fire and Ice to take to Oisin tomorrow: I will probably die of a broken heart if I frumple two music lessons in a row.
I’m a good girl: I hit ‘save’ a lot. I’d been working three hours or so, and was getting pretty tired, but I was also near the end of draft 2B and was feeling reasonably chirpy—ready for a hurtle, a cup of tea, and a return to page proofs. I was pretty sure when Oisin played it back to me tomorrow I’d go, yerp, what was I thinking of, at intervals, but that’s okay. I had something down to work with, and there were actual bits of it I liked. And I’d quite recently hit ‘save’ when I got an error message saying that Windows had a fit of the vapours coming on and was going to close Finale down. Yah boo sucks, I said, as it went KACHUNG off the corner of the piano, but, no big deal, I prodded it with a stick after a minute and woke it up again. And started resignedly putting the last few minutes’ work in again.
And noticed that there was kind of more missing than I was expecting . . .
It had eaten my entire afternoon’s work, despite the fact that I had ‘saved’ about ten minutes before the crash.§
I wasted about fifteen minutes trying to find a ‘contact us’ on the Finale web site that was a ‘contact us’ instead of a come on for lists of dealers and how you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook§§ or join their blog—GAAAAAAAAH—and then I emailed Oisin and a Wise American Friend, both of whom have suggestions for the possibility of ferreting the saved version from the bowels of the beast . . . but I still had to hurtle, read proofs, and write a blog entry, and I’m also a coward. A, furthermore, incompetent coward.
Maybe I’ll try their suggestions now.
Maybe I’ll just go to bed.§§§
* * *
* To the extent that I am ever ungleblarging printable
** Debug is nowhere near powerful enough
*** System Administrator says you’re a bad person and must not be allowed to run at large among the innocent populace
† I want my Gluck Orfeo with my Marilyn Horne and my other Gluck Orfeo with my Janet Baker—if the Walkperson can’t cope with 2 CDs of one opera it’s really going to have palpitations if I expect it to take on more than one recording of the same opera.
I can’t remember now when I watched the much-hyped Met production of Orfeo ed Eurydice on Sky. Recently. I do try to be colour/gender/poundage blind—if someone can sing and act I will avert my attention from the fact that they won’t see forty or a size twelve again, and are playing a tubercular seventeen-year-old. But the k d lang look wasn’t doing our short-Coke-machine-shaped Orfeo any favours, whose acting also had a strong Coke-machine flavour. However I would have encompassed all of this—since she did have a big, thick, rich—one might almost say chocolaty—voice . . . until we got to Che Faro Senza Eurydice^, an aria so familiar that even people who wouldn’t know an opera if it bit them on the leg^^ often recognise^^^, when she kumquatted the ending. What? —Yes, my reaction exactly. WHAT? You mess with Che Faro, I hunt you down and kill you. A Metropolitan Opera mezzo can’t possibly be unable to hit a top F, for pity’s sake??+ So what happened? Goblins in the TV crew?
^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brGYq97Of6w
^^ And often assume it wants to when it’s only trying to, you know, play . . .
^^^ What is that? —Wasn’t it that ad for drain cleaner?
+ Even I have a top F, although no one in their right mind would call my voice thick, rich or chocolaty. I’ve been trying to ignore questions of range because as soon as I’m aware of being above C-above-middle-C I start closing myself down from sheer funk. But Blondel pointed out this week that as soon as I have a reliable G I can sing Dido’s Lament. Oh. Okay. Goal. Goals are good. Meanwhile, speaking of goals and Gluck, I have a new one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paride_ed_Elena
I am shamefully unfamiliar with all but about four of Gluck’s operas—the fact that he seems to have written almost as many as Handel is a trifle daunting—and I knew nothing about Paride ed Elena till Radio Three played one of Paride’s arias the other day which stopped me dead in my tracks. Want. To. Sing. That. It will be good if I can manage to find the frelling music; it’s not something that rolls to the top of your average search engine.
†† And then there’s stuff like the latest edition of SUNSHINE which I’ll show you as soon as I have a copy in my hot little hand. But due to Screw Ups By Persons Who Shall Remain Nameless^, this is having to be pushed through at the speed of a hellhound after a hellbunny, and I fall over too easily. This evening I got an email from my editor saying, hi, we need this cover text now. I sent it back to her in about an hour. But I’m still shaking like a leaf.
^Neither me, Merrilee, nor the editor in charge, which is all you need to know
††† And it may be just as bad next week, because I’ll only have just turned in the PEGASUS corrections on Monday, and will still be looking around trying to see where I left my life. I did tell Blondel that my so-called life has spells like this. But the week after that I’m planning to be brilliant. Um . . .
‡ We ring too many handbells. Really it’s bad for you.
‡‡ I have mentioned this on the forum, but just so no one gets the wrong idea, NO, even if no one sends me any guest posts between now and the 2nd of November, I am not going to keep printing bits of PEGASUS on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
‡‡‡ So last night was a good thing really.
§ And while this is not in the same category of meltdown, as I was typing that sentence, my email pinged. And when I went a few minutes later to look and see if anything cool was coming in^ I discovered that someone I have already put on my ‘blocked senders’ list has frelling come through again, as he/she has done several times already. What the bleeding (*&^%$£”!!!!!!
^ The Tyranny of the Ping
§§ Bite me
§§§ And furthermore Philip Langridge died. He actually died last Friday, but I didn’t hear about it till Monday and only caught up with the obituary yesterday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/mar/07/philip-langridge-obituary
He was, speaking of acting singers, an actor. Last time I saw him he was scaring you silly as the witch [sic] in Hansel and Gretel: an opera I’ve never had much use for, partly because it’s usually played for a high smarm level. Not this one. More Bluebeard’s Castle than Goldilocks. I have him on CD singing Britten’s Peter Grimes and the weak, venal captain in Billy Budd . . . both of which are so brilliantly evoked I find them hard to listen to: I like the occasional speck of dawn in my unrelenting darkness. I love Britten, but he was maybe a little too good at the snake pit that is humanity.
I never met Langridge, nor know anything about him but what I heard in a few interviews, but I feel like I’ve lost a friend.
Another day like today
I can so do without days like today and furthermore I have frelling proofs to read. It started with getting out of bed later than I wanted to, but this happens a lot when the ME is using me as the birdie in a game of killer badminton, so it’s a kind of groan-where-are-my-glasses-groan-clothing-groan-greet-hellhounds-EEEEK*. I’m usually a lot more awake after the greeting-hellhounds ritual.**
So this morning I was in the middle period where I’ve got some clothes on and the curtains open and am wondering if I’m feeling strong enough yet to face sorting through the 5,637 catalogues that have come in the post, when I heard the beep-beep-beep of a commercial vehicle backing up the cul de sac.
Among my many pet hates are included delivery companies. The Royal Mail is dying because its ineptitude beggars belief*** and nine million delivery companies have sprung up like third cousins twice removed around an elderly emperor without a designated heir, and equally in it only for the money. The thing I like best about these malevolent tapeworms is the way they will give you no indication of when they might arrive—used to be they’d say morning or afternoon, which is at least dealable-with when you’re not a frelling office with a receptionist and you have hellhounds to hurtle, although even without hellhounds staying in for twelve hours for a sodding delivery would drive me bonkers.
The thing I like second best about these jokers is the way they say, oh, you can designate a safe location, we only need your signature in blood† and a small token as hostage—say the deeds of your house. But in the ensuing negotiations†† you discover that they don’t like your designated safe location. Never mind that you’re already signing their bloody triplicate form agreeing that you take responsibility for what happens to your parcel if it is so left . . . no, no, no, they couldn’t possibly, it needs at least six padlocks and a major in the SAS with an extra badge in martial arts on guard. FRELL.
I had just reached this stage with this latest gang of rice-krispie-brains when the weekend happened. And now here is a truck with their logo backing up my cul de sac. I may not have to kill anyone††† this week after all.
Among other distractions throughout this latest engagement with the enemy has been wondering what the hell this object is that it needs its own SAS major. Malevolent tapeworms with rice krispies for brains won’t tell you, which is always one of the most extraordinary aspects of these cases. They’ll deliver the thing—if you finally force them to the wall—but they won’t tell you what it is.
So I signed for it, exchanged pleasantries with the driver‡, took this incredibly large box into my (incredibly) small kitchen, and stood staring at it for a moment. No clue. No frelling clue. It didn’t weigh much for its size either.
I opened it.
Within, swathed in festoons of bubble wrap, was . . . a £15 knapsack I’d bought on sale. Fifteen. Pounds. Small nylon knapsack. And have I mentioned that this particular delivery company, for a mere additional ten pounds, will allow you to designate a specific delivery time?
The day has been kind of downhill from there. Computer Men were here for about two hours . . . but they have to come back.‡‡ I spent an hour and a half talking to Merrilee about the Marketing Plan.‡‡‡
And I went bell ringing. Tonight was the monthly Old Eden practise—the one when I phone round the day before stimulating people to come—and I don’t know if my touch was off or what but I managed to extract fewer high-pitched squeals of agreement than usual. Niall gave me a ride over tonight and I said nervously that I hoped we had an extra bloke or two show up or as second-in-command and, furthermore, not a mere wisp of a thing, as are our two beginners and Old Eden’s tower captain§, I’d find myself round the back end and while the tenor is not wholly lost to virtue the five is possessed by a remarkable assortment of demons. All of Old Eden’s bells are possessed by demons, but if you have to argue with your bell anyway and you’re not the world’s cleverest ringer, you’d rather have a lighter bell. Fortunately the gods, deciding that they’d had enough fun with me today, were kind, and not only Roger§§ but Colin§§§—and Anthea—were there. This responsibility thing is a pain.# But I do like being one of the ringers who ‘catches hold’ when some beginner needs bringing on. And we did zorple through a plain course of Stedman.
All right, all right. Must read proofs.
* * *
* Hellhounds are always very glad to see me in the morning. Hurtle now? they say. Hurtle? Put that apple/pear/grapefruit down, you’re always saying menopause means a higher plane of existence in which food is unnecessary^, which indeed we understand very well^^, we be of one blood, thou and I, even if you’re a funny shape and really slow, let’s hurtle.^^^
^Nobody asked me if I wanted to move to a higher plane of existence
^^ No you do not! I never saw two less menopausal creatures in my life! And all your ribs stick out!
^^^You have arranged about the weather, haven’t you? We feel you are not fulfilling this important duty of dog ownership quite adequately lately.
** Hair standing on end optional. No, wait, maybe I just forgot to comb it.
*** And I have no idea who’s at fault, and I don’t know enough about it to speculate. I only know there are some very nice posties out there, as well as some utter frelling ratbags . . . and an administration clearly made of mouldy string and old carburettors.
† And be sure to press hard, it’s a triplicate form.
†† You can have the paper clip off the deeds to my house, okay?
††† Snap! Crackle! SQUASH!
‡ Most of the drivers for these frelling delivery companies are nice.^ It’s just one more way the admin likes to mess with your head. —Is she crazy enough yet? Is she ready to commit disembowelment on sight? Great! Send her Smilin’ Joe with his fuzzy puppy photos!
^ Except the occasional really scary serial murderer one.
‡‡ Of course. Computer Men always have to come back.
‡‡‡ This conversation degenerated, as they usually do, to me moaning about how it’s the books that matter, promote the frelling books, the whole author as live entertainment thing is all wrong. I’ve decided that it was actually my good fairy who arranged for volatile, overreactive, digestively catastrophic hellhounds. They’re the best excuse for not touring I’ve ever had. Even if it does make me look like one of those pathetic old ladies whose every waking thought is in adoring response to her pet whatever(s). Well. Um . . .
§ Who is tower captain only because she’s our only local, she doesn’t ring much, and weighs maybe seventy-five pounds dripping wet. Wearing full scuba gear with air tank.
§§ Who said that he was responding to a frantic phone call. Hey, I said. Urgent, maybe. Not frantic.
§§§ And Colin turned to me after my stumble through conducting a touch of bob doubles, with a frown on his face—and I cowered, even though Colin is a sweetie and wouldn’t dream of scowling at you merely because you’re a hopeless imbecile—and said, these bells are a lot of work, aren’t they?
# And Vicky will expect a complete report when she gets back from Timbuktu this week.
Grand Matriarch
You all think I’m just plain Robin McKinley, middle-aged, mild-mannered* blogster, hurtler of hellhounds, ringer of bells, plonker of piano and tormentor of songs**, wrestler of roses*** and slave of chocolate, black tea and champagne. Oh yes and I write stories for money.
But I’m not these mere and simple† things. I’m a Grand Matriarch of Fantasy.†† I know this because Putnams’ marketing plan says so. Snork.
I’m still being used as a football by the ME, sod its little cotton socks†††, so I don’t remember the chronology perfectly. But I think it was the end of last week when Mignon, my editor’s assistant, sent Merrilee and me jpgs of the jacket of the ARC ‡ just so we could see how nice it looked with the art all of you blog readers have already seen. And it does look very nice. Except there was a marketing plan plastered all over the back of it.
Wait, wait! Marketing plan? I thought we were still waiting to discuss the marketing plan! I don’t want to do my own skydiving, deploying winged banners at 12,000 feet! I don’t like heights! And I never promised to translate it into blank verse for the 2010 international bardic convention in Swindon!‡‡
If certain parties, like, perhaps—ahem!—the author, had got her frelling rear in gear and turned her frelling manuscript in on time, ample and relaxed discussion about a marketing plan might conceivably have occurred.‡‡‡ As it is, the marketing department is doing very well not to have said, huh?, when they were told that the ARC of PEGASUS was on its way down the conveyor belt.
But what’s on the back of the ARC is only a teaser. The real howler came later when they sent us the full shiny brushed-up marketing plan which leads off with the positioning of McKinley as Grand Matriarch of Fantasy. Hooooooo. After Grand Matriarch and Deputy Ringing Master§, what can be left in this world to attain?§§
* * *
* this translates as ‘wimp who shouts a lot’
** Including the odd^ new one, now and then. I think I’ve got the second and final part of the lullaby to take in to Oisin tomorrow.
^ Yes. Odd.
*** ow
† There is nothing mere and simple about ringing Cambridge
†† The queue for hem-of-garment kissing forms to the left.
††† Out staggering around after hellhounds today, I met Jenny on Connie. I didn’t quite burst into tears but it was a near thing. I asked after everyone—Roland’s been sold on and replaced by two young Irish mares—and inquired, pathetically, if I might drop round just for a cup of tea and some gossip some day and Jenny said absolutely that I must. I keep saying two things about horses: first, that of all the kicks to the head the ME has delivered, the one that apparently means giving up riding is the one that hurts the worst; and, second, that it’s not riding I miss so much as horses. Well, it’s not Jenny that’s keeping me away from her yard, it’s me. So maybe there is a semi-answer to this conundrum if I can develop a bit more flexibility of outlook.
‡ These are still bound galleys for all of me, but somewhere along the line when I wasn’t paying attention they started being called Advance Review Copies. They’re still bound galleys. When your manuscript is first typeset by a proper printer, the resulting pages are the page proofs or galleys. They look—or anyway they should look—like the pages of the finished book will look, but they’ll get proofed several times before the final pages start rolling off the press. Bound galleys or ARCs are when those early pages are bound and sent out to various people in the trade in the hopes of getting a buzz going before pub date. It’s nice when the bound galley pages have had at least one cursory proofing, but we’re running so late on PEGASUS thanks to the fecklessness of the author that these pages are going to be the rawest of the raw, so I hope there’s nothing too drastic wrong with them. I could tell you stories. . . .
‡‡ It may be Peoria this year. They’re a tough audience, those Illinoians, and they’ll heckle the iambs right out of you if your lines don’t scan.
‡‡‡ Of course it might not have too. People in publishing have no more available time than the international average, which is to say thirty-six hours are to be squeezed out of twenty four, and downtime^ is a philosophical construct, like quarks were originally invented to plug a hole in the visionary physics of itty bitty particles.
^ I found this article more interesting than I thought I was going to http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/03/a-week-without-books?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
although I found her easy equivalence of ‘genre’ with ‘junk’ just a trifle frelling irritating: ‘ . . . if what you’re reading is mostly . . . well . . . pulp, then sometimes you end up feeling as if books are eating you up instead of the other way round. Sure, there’s a smattering of literature and high art-type stuff in there, but mostly it is whatever I have fished off the shelf at my nearest Oxfam that morning – detective stories, romances, horror, sci fi . . . any kind of fiction that I can gulp down in large enough, quick enough bites. . . .’
Excuse me? THE MOONSTONE? THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS? PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? JANE EYRE? CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER? FRANKENSTEIN? DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE? RAPPACCINI’S DAUGHTER? GULLIVER’S TRAVELS? FAUST? THE TEMPEST? BRAVE NEW WORLD? 1984? . . . Almost anything by Dickens—many of whose are detective stories as well—and I think MOBY DICK is sf/f, but my prejudices may be showing.
Grrrrrrr.
But the question of when necessary downtime starts taking over what ought to be up time is interesting, and I think any compulsive reader will acknowledge that there’s a . . . well, a compulsive aspect. On the other hand I found this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/04/evolutionary-psychologists-romantic-fiction?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter totally irritating. Romance isn’t my chosen form of bathtub reading but everybody needs downtime. This scans to me like a thinly veiled attempt to equate women with their hormones again. This is the 21st century, isn’t it? We didn’t go backwards through the 20th and pop out in the 19th?
§ Handbells tonight. I am seriously brain challenged at the moment so we stuck to bob minor, but it could have been a lot worse. At the end as we were synchronising our diaries, which requires a lot of, no, I mean the 18th, no, that’s the 25th, what do you mean you’re gone on the 8th? Colin said, are either of you coming on Mandy’s outing for the May Bank Holiday? We both allowed that we had not heard of Mandy’s outing. Well, said Colin, we’re going to Herefordshire and Wales, and it was going to be Saturday-Sunday-Monday, but everybody is having outings and it’s too hard to get towers, so she’s moved it back to Thursday-Friday-Saturday. Oh, said Niall thoughtfully, that sounds interesting. I think I’d like to come. Not me, I said resignedly. I don’t go overnight anywhere.^ . . . And then what Colin had said finished sinking in. THURSDAY, FRIDAY, AND SATURDAY? I squeaked. Niall, you’re not allowed to be gone on a Friday evening between 7:30 and 9 o’clock!
Yes I am, replied Niall. I have a Deputy Ringing Master.
^ Yes. We’re having a little trouble with the ‘national author tour’ part of the marketing plan.
§§ Fabulous global best seller in eighty-seven languages including several unknown till they emerged from the shadows and negotiated for translation rights?
Unnnnh
Yesterday was a totally lost day. Uggh. From a sane, rational, grown up, mature standpoint that Cambridge at Friday tower practise which fried my eyeballs was a mistake. You push something like ME, it pushes back. Harder. But I’m not sane, rational or mature (just old), and I refuse to see it as a mistake. As I crawled around the house(s) yesterday in a grey fog of bleh I kept whispering to myself: I ring Cambridge.* The woman who didn’t go back to ringing a decade ago, after she got up off the sofa again after eighteen months horizontal with acute ME, because she was too stupid to learn to ring inside, is ringing Cambridge.** Life is funny. Leaving the old house nearly killed me, but the reason I started ringing again is because the cottage is two garden walls over from the church and its bell tower and I couldn’t frelling stand it. I swear they were ringing about three quarter peals a week that summer, and you can’t escape the sound of the bells at the cottage.*** I know I’ve told this story. Maybe someone else remembers how long I held out. Six weeks, maybe. And then I was on the phone to Vicky, asking if they would take on a recidivist beginner. A stupid recidivist beginner.
Well.
The other thing about choosing to be unwise on Friday is that we don’t get a Cambridge band around here that often; there are crack bands at some little distance but I scare easily and I haven’t got the nerve or the time.† And Anthea was going to be my minder. Anthea is armour. The Light Brigade would have come right out of that valley again if they’d had Anthea with them. What noise is this? Give me my longsword, ho! †† We ring Cambridge!††† But I’ve been whingeing in these virtual pages, I believe, not long ago, that one of the inevitable dilemmas about gaining competence in something obscure like bell ringing is that it becomes harder and harder to find the necessary band of adepts more competent than you to haul you on that next step, that next method, that next incomprehensible dimension.‡
So I’m not sorry.‡‡ But that didn’t make yesterday any more fun. And I clung, blearily, to the treble this morning for service ring: No! Mine! That didn’t stop Niall‡‡‡ from fishing a small bit of paper out of his pocket and handing it to me however (as I held onto the treble rope with the other hand). Did you see this in Ringing World? he said. I didn’t want you to miss it.
Handbells for sale, said the little piece of paper, and a phone number.
HANDBELLS FOR SALE? I DON’T NEED A SET OF HANDBELLS. I ONLY RING HANDBELLS AT ALL BECAUSE NIALL IS THE IRRESISTABLE FORCE, AND HE HAS HANDBELLS. HE HAS LOTS OF HANDBELLS.§
I took the little piece of paper home§§ and stared at it for a while, thinking, if I wait long enough, and this week’s issue arrived a couple of days ago, the bells’ll be already gone by the time I ring up about them. Yes.
Late this afternoon I rang up. I’m third on the list.
Pray for me. I don’t need a set of handbells.
* * *
* Almost.
** Almost.
*** This is why I’m such a fabulously reliable Sunday service ringer. Well, I’m fabulously reliable about being there.
† This is not entirely my fecklessness. Of the three local crack bands that I know exist, I have had direct experience of two of them, and you could cut their total indifference to anyone who isn’t as good as they are into large bricks and build an impregnable fortress with it. I believe one of them is nice to its own beginners if they’re clever enough—so I would have failed there too—the other one isn’t even nice to its own beginners, how the hell do they think they’re going to keep their bells ringing? Immortality? A really good zombie spell? The third one is supposed to be the friendliest, but they’re also the farthest away.
†† Give me my bell of burning gold and something something something something, till we have rung out over England’s green and pleasant land. With apologies to Mr Blake. And Mr Shakespeare. And Mr Lord Tennyson.
††† Almost.
‡ Speaking of incomprehensible. 
This is the line for Cambridge—which you saw louring from under YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE the other day. I’ve had it out because I’m supposed to be learning the frelling trebles—the one and the two—for handbells. Handbells you ring by counting frantically and watching the treble like it’s your last hope, which it is; there’s not a lot of physical skill in ringing handbells, although there is a right way to do it, and quite a few wrong ways. Tower ringing is far more physical because of the size of the bells, and while again you ring by counting you also engage individually with the other bells: you’re feverishly looking around for the bell you’re passing in seconds place, then the new bell you’re passing in thirds place, then the bell or bells you dodge with, which is where the line goes jagged. Tower ringing is inevitably slower although it doesn’t feel like it—I’ve told you before you have about a third of a second to ring in the right place: or of course the wrong one, always a too-attractive option—but you haven’t got time to look around when you’re ringing handbells.
On the extremely unlikely chance you’re interested, what the one (the real treble) is doing is treble-bobbing: treble bobbing is always that pattern; in a treble-bobbing method, that’s what the treble is doing, whatever kind of mayhem the other bells are getting up to. The red line is the mayhem that is particularly Cambridge. I was ringing the two on Friday and the four last Wednesday: all the bells (except the treble) ring the same pattern, they just start at different places. So I was starting at the beginning on the two, but I started at the top of the fourth column when I was ringing the four . . . and then I rang the fifth column to the end (ignore the knitting to the right of the fifth column: that’s one of the many superfluous forms of method notation I don’t begin to understand), then dropped off the edge of the universe and climbed back on again at the beginning. And no, the bells don’t necessarily arrange themselves in order: that would be way too easy. The six starts at the top of column two. Go figure.
But. Yeah. You have to have the entire line memorised to ring the freller. You learn it in bits, of course, and some of the bits, by the time you get this far in your method book, look familiar.
Even so.
‡‡ Although I’m going to be in a seriously bad mood tomorrow evening if I haven’t improved enough to go ring at Colin and Anthea’s home tower. Did I tell you that Ditherington on Wednesday is about to go onto a fortnightly schedule? So I have an excuse to go out an occasional extra evening a week. Peter just needs to find a Monday bridge club.
‡‡‡ I’ve finally figured it out. Nothing stops Niall.
§ He has about twenty. Most people who change ring (as opposed to ring tunes) on handbells have six or eight or maybe ten. Even twelve. Not twenty. Niall has twenty.
§§ Peter has been laughing like a drain. Even my own husband doesn’t take my agonies seriously.
Redux, various
I WANT MY WOLFGANG. WAAAAAAH.
The good news is that Peter got out of Scotland about thirty seconds before they closed the border.* He came home this afternoon and instantly began reorganising my life.** This included ringing up the garage which, to my amazement, seems to think we can have Wolfgang back tomorrow morning. Fourteen year old cars and MOT tests are not usually a happy merger and I’ve been bracing myself for the conversation about the new car again.*** Even if we manage to limbo under the government bar however and get our sticker I imagine there will be a little list.†
Meanwhile today would be the day that I started to get out of bed and the ME sighed and stretched luxuriously and said, are you sure that’s what you want to do? Oh. Frell. You again. Well, yes, I do want to get up. I have hellhounds to hurtle and a piano lesson this afternoon and bell tower practise this evening.†† And no car.
I know we did this trooping up and down main street thing during the snow, but I’m not in the mood when I’m trying to hold it together with the ME riding me like a bulldogger with spurs. I am also reminded of how forcefully I object to walking anywhere without the hellhounds in attendance—two hours a day of hurtling is enough of the shanks’ mare option. Hey! It’s ten minutes to walk to Oisin’s from the cottage and back . . . having been back and forth to the mews to pick up my music and have a bit of a go at the piano.
Anyone who is paying the wrong kind of attention will have ascertained by now that I’m not posting the lullaby to PEGASUS this Friday either. I finally managed to get the freller printed off so that Oisin could actually see what he was playing . . . and he made several Small But Excellent suggestions††† that I now want to incorporate and I still have to relearn how to make dynamic markings on dranglefabbing Finale and then I will finally post it here. No, really. It exists.‡ It even sounds reasonably lullaby-ish. In fact I like it well enough that I’m going to ask Peter if he wants to write another verse so I can compose some variations.
I felt fairly dire while I was with Oisin although as I said to him I was expecting to feel suddenly a great deal better as soon as I left and any danger of my having to sing was past till next week. Sigh. I sometimes think I got into composing as a way not to have to perform.‡‡
I had already had an email exchange with Niall about tomorrow‡‡‡ and had warned him that I was feeling like something that ought to be pickled in formaldehyde in a jar on a mad scientist’s shelf but that I’d probably just about make it to tower practise, since we’re usually short handed these days and I ought to be able to manage rounds and call changes for our beginners. And then we had a funny band—three beginners and six hot bananas.§ And me. I was helping hold up one of the walls in a semi-comatose state while one of the beginners wrestled with ringing rounds on four, five and six §§ bells and then Niall made one of his passes round the room as a good ringing master will do and when he got to me he said, Are you ready to ring Cambridge?
Am I frelling what? No I am frelling not frelling ready to frelling ring frelling Cambridge. Am I clear?
Okay, said Niall. You can have a few minutes to look at the line.
Ah, adrenaline. What would I do without it. You know that’s one of the working definitions of ME? Exhausted adrenals? Yes. Well. At this point—Niall having passed on to fresh victims—I could feel my eyeballs throbbing to my suddenly heightened blood pressure. So I got out my diagram book and began staring at Cambridge while it went all glmxxxxxx on the page. Anthea came over to be supportive—two of our hot bananas tonight were Colin and his wife Anthea, who is one of my favourite people. You look at her face and you know It’s Going to Be All Right. Possibly Even When It Includes Ringing Cambridge. She is also a completely brilliant minder, which is a significant gift. Just because you can ring something doesn’t mean you can boost somebody else through it—especially boost them in a way that they learn something rather than merely collapsing into blindly doing what they’re told, which is probably more demoralising than breaking down. Anthea got me through my first couple of goes at Kent and it’s a lot of thanks to her that it began making sense to me as soon as it did.
I really did think that Cambridge was a bridge too far however. You don’t ring your first surprise method after a couple of sudden unexpected ten-minute cramming sessions because your ringing master(s) is/are wholly effing mad and your adrenals aren’t quite exhausted. Roger on the five was complaining that he didn’t feel like ringing Cambridge tonight and I said, don’t worry, this won’t last long, and Colin on the three, next to me on the two said, oh, yes it will.
And it did. We got through an entire plain course of Cambridge. I do wish to emphasize that this is absolutely due to Anthea’s crack minding . . . but I’ve been here before, learning something with Anthea at my elbow. We got through it. And I knew what I was trying to do even when I wasn’t seeing the bells to do it with.
I can do this. I am going to learn Cambridge.
Maybe I’ll even sing for Oisin next Friday.§§
* * *
*Joke. But apparently it’s pretty vicious up there. Our lot still have electricity and can feel their way through the snowdrifts, but a lot of people don’t and can’t. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/7325843/Wintry-weather-sweeps-Scotland.html
And then of course there’s New York. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=119564§ionid=3510203
And I was complaining earlier about being pummelled by a little hail. I’m such a wuss. But look what came in the post for me today from Hannah (in NYC):
I’m trying. Clearly my solar capacity isn’t quite up to 3500 miles.
(Yes. That’s what you think it is, underneath, on the table. I’ll give you a better view one of these days. I know, you can hardly wait.)
The thing that amuses me even more about this item however is the tag: 
Post consumer material???
** It’s shocking how much disorganization can creep up on you in a mere day and a half.
*** No. But I admit if we have two winters in a row like this one, this time next year I will be thinking hard about a new four-wheel drive car. With waterproof locks.
† Frushipergug rods and bistamudze belt need replacing. Gradundabble connections should be tightened. The whimmerwhammer needs realigning. And while you’re at it you need a new engine, four new tyres, and a CD player.
†† And a novel to write.
††† I asked him if he wanted credit and he said no, no, no, just keep writing the stuff.
‡ So do the little flute piece I promised Jodi and the truly tiny violin piece I promised violinknitter. I’m just . . . a horrible coward. And I keep thinking I want to twiddle them a little more. . . .
‡‡ I wonder if it would work with Blondel. . . . I am such a hopeless case. I’m afraid to sing for Oisin, and I’m afraid to take one of my songs to Blondel. What do I think is going to happen? The end of the world?
‡‡‡ The other reason the ME was kind enough to come back today, aside from not singing for Oisin, is being able to say no I am not going handbell ringing Saturday morning. Although . . . sigh. I would like to ring with Titus and Rupert.
§ So to speak.
§§ One of the reasons ringing seems, when you’re first learning, to be coming at you from all directions is that the eenie weenie difference in timing and rhythm between, say, four and six bells, which when you’re learning to handle you have no sense of, makes a drastic practical difference in keeping your place.
§§§ Or take one of my songs in to Blondel. Maybe I could get him to sing the lullaby.
