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.

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 21^st century, isn’t it?  We didn’t go backwards through the 20^th and pop out in the 19^th? 

§ 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 18^th, no, that’s the 25^th, what do you mean you’re gone on the 8^th?  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?

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.

 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&sectionid=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.

I rang Cambridge last night.*  My first surprise method, that holy of holies and scary of scaries.

            Well.  A little bit of Cambridge.  But even that is a substantial miracle, like . . . managing to sing for Oisin tomorrow afternoon, supposing I do.  It was also an excellent example of Wild Robert at his maddest.  I think I wasn’t blogging yet when he pitched me into Stedman after I’d been ringing about a year and a half and could just about struggle through bob doubles on a good day.  Stedman was like yanking the toddler off her tricycle and entering her in the Tour de France.  Gah.  However, the grind mechanism was engaged and I did, in fact, learn Stedman.  Grind, grind, grind.  Eventually. 

            Ditherington has been going through a bad patch for practise night ringers and Wild Robert clearly had a rush of blood to the head when there were more ringers than bells last night . . . and the fact that only three of them could ring Cambridge—himself, Niall, and Ditherington’s fearless tower captain Marilyn—he waved airily aside, and told Michelle and me to learn the line.  Now.  Right then.  This moment.  When we weren’t ringing little stuff for the learners, that is.  GAH.  Do you know how long learning a complex line takes?** Gerald, it must be said, should have been learning the line, but he is one of these people—all occupations have them***—who fancies himself a good deal more competent than he is, and I only mention it because his unique contribution makes our eventual semi-success that much more heroic.  We got through about half of it, and since the standard means of learning surprise† is by individual lead, of which Cambridge minor has five, we obviously all get medals. 

            The other interesting†† thing that happened last night is that I had to call some bob doubles.  You hardliners who actually read these posts when they’re about bell ringing may recall that Wild Robert informed me, like a clap on the ear, about a fortnight ago that I was to call a touch of Grandsire.  I did this successfully, to everyone’s amazement††† . . . but I could do it because for this particular touch you the conductor, by the calls you make, are calling yourself through a very easy sub-pattern within the entire method.  The other ringers are performing the sweaty bits.  Last night Wild Robert, grinning maleficently as he snatched my diagram book out of my hands, open, as it was, to Cambridge, stated that for my next trick I would call a touch of bob doubles.  Oh, I said warily.  I’ve been reading up, you know‡, and I ventured a remark about having perhaps some clue about the bob doubles equivalent of that Grandsire touch the other week.  No, no, said Wild Robert, grinning even more maleficently, Denis gets to ring that bell.  You have to call it from an affected bell . . . in other words I would be ringing all the sweaty bits and trying to remember to shout BOB at the correct intervals.  And learn Cambridge in my spare time.

            I admit that my calling was not quite the clean victorious sweep that it was for the easier Grandsire touch.  But we got through and I shouted BOB and . . . and I can learn this.  I really can.  I understood what I was supposed to be doing—I understood the concept.  How did this happen?  It’s a bit like realising a few months ago that I was, in fact, going to make it to ringing surprise—how did that happen?  And while I have thought that I ought to learn to call something, I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect with any enthusiasm.  So the second thing about the experience is that . . . calling is actually kind of cool.  So, yeah, okay, I’d like to learn to call a few touches. . . .‡‡

            I blasted out of bed this morning still slightly overheated (morally anyway) by last night’s unexpected manifestations of ability.  Which doubtless explains why today has been one long downhill skid.  Sigh.  However it began at the beginning of the month with me remembering that Wolfgang’s annual road test is due in February and dutifully booking in at the garage . . . who couldn’t fit us in till tomorrow.  Arrgh. ‡‡‡  And then Peter also wanted to go visit Luke § and there was some backing and forthing about this and it turned out to suit them if he went up for evening visiting hours today, and comes back tomorrow.  Which left me dealing with Wolfgang.  In the sluicing rain—usually I use either picking up or dropping off Wolfgang as an excuse to hurtle hellhounds in the other direction.  And because I don’t wake up anything like early enough to get him out there tomorrow morning for 7:30§§ I was going to take him in tonight.  Okay, I thought, we can hurtle back in time to let Colin and Niall into the cottage for handbells at five, handbells at 5 o’clock being my usual Thursday excitement . . . until I noticed that we were ringing at four and at Niall’s house, which is about a twenty-minute walk from here . . . and did I mention the rain?

            And then we couldn’t ring anything.   Toward the end of our two hours of self-immolation Niall looked at the other two of us and said, We aren’t usually this bad, are we?  Noooooo.  Sometimes we get through entire minutes without going, Crash!  Frell!  Sorry! 

            And have I told you we’re trying to learn Cambridge? 

* * *

 *Translation:  I won the lottery.  I was crowned Queen of England.  They just gave me the Nobel Prize for Literature.  I discovered the Elixir of Happy Creative Middle Age that Lasts Longer Than a Few Decades.^  I found the answer for world peace.^^ 

^ See previous blog posts for remarks about how old is better. 

^^ It was behind the sofa.  

** Hint:  it took me months to learn Stedman.  Although that was my first diabolical method, and nothing can be quite that diabolical again.  It’s like learning to ring inside for the first time.  You will never learn it and furthermore it is going to kill you.  And then it doesn’t.  Oh. 

*** I find the level of self-delusion rather interesting.  Lots of people think they’re, oh, say, better, ahem, writers than they are.  But bad writing does not literally go CLANK. 

† Which includes knowing in advance so you can have studied the line before you came to practise 

†† I am so living in interesting times 

††† And then Niall the Ratbag made me do it again at New Arcadia 

‡ Steve Colman, The Bob Caller’s Companion, http://www.ringingbooks.co.uk/     No self-respecting Deputy Ringing Master would be without. 

‡‡ WHAT DID I JUST SAY????

‡‡‡ Note to self:  next year remember in January.

§  No real change.  Please keep those candles burning.

 §§  AAAAAAAUGH

I got up what passes in my case for betimes today because I was having an early lunch with Penelope and wanted to have hellhounds well hurtled beforehand. 

            Except that it was raining.  Not just raining:  RAINING.  Rain on a mission to dissolve planet Earth and leave a large muddy spreading splodge in the solar system.**

            While I was waiting for either a break in the downpour or the void to open at my feet when both the road and the ground underneath were washed away*** I discovered that I had a dead phone.  I had a dead phone because a hellhound had chewed through one of the wires. 

            Eighteen kinds of panic at this point.  He’s eating WIRES????  I know who it is—Darkness, usually my better behaved, more mature hellhound.  He does get into random acts of mastication occasionally.†  He actually chewed the spines off a couple of books, and the fact that he’s still alive since I discovered this proves what a soft option I really am.  I’d caught him having a go at the phone wire a few weeks ago, lectured him SEVERELY and, as I thought, tidied the wire out of reach.  But tidied is not really a concept that applies to the cottage and obviously . . . it didn’t stay where it was put.  Very like the hellhounds themselves.

            BUT . . . HE’S EATING WIRES?!?

            We finally got out on our walk.  What with rain, wind and appropriate headgear I don’t hear too well and at one point we were slopping along a farm track and I whirled around, convinced that we were about to be run down by one of those tractors with tyres so tall the driver wouldn’t be able to see a woman and two hellhounds down at ground level, especially in this weather . . . and I dropped one of my pink suede gloves and TROD on it.†† 

            It’s barely worth mentioning that the hellhounds shook themselves violently the moment we got indoors again.†††  This is not really the best means by which to have your house plants misted.‡  One of the reasons the carpets don’t get hoovered often enough is because I spend so much time mopping the kitchen floor.  And walls.  And cabinet fronts.  And snarling.‡‡

            Lunch was a bright spot.  Obviously I was under Penelope’s protective aegis for the duration.

            And then back to RATPEGASUSBAG.  Maybe I’ll just email everybody the ending.  You don’t really need all the details, do you?

            And because I haven’t had a good practise ring in long enough to feel my fragile grip on [name any method here] slipping I decided I was going to go to Colin’s tower practise tonight.  And Niall was even going to come along quietly.‡‡  I was already standing out at the end of the long mews driveway wondering what was taking Niall so long when there was a small breathless voice behind me and Peter had come pelting down the same long driveway to tell me that Niall had just rung to say that Colin had just rung to say that they couldn’t start practise till eight.

            So I frelling cancelled.  EXTENSIVE AND CREATIVE RUDE GESTURES HERE.  I know I don’t go to bed till most people are thinking about getting up, but most of that late time is spent doing stuff.  RATPEG or blog or something torturous with the piano, and I don’t dare be out too late or my brain refuses to go back to work.  It’s late! it says.  I’m not supposed to have to work this late!  I’ll have the union on you!  Nyah nyah nyah nyah!

            And speaking of something tortuous with the piano, I have a voice lesson tomorrow.  I haven’t got Evening Hymn anything like learnt, I’ve been so busy trying to learn the wretched thing I’ve not got any further on It Was a Lover AND I committed the CARDINAL ERROR of taping myself singing last night.  JEEEEEZUM.  What the hell was I thinking of?  

* * *

* FRELL FRELL FRELL FRELL FRELL I AM SPENDING WAAAAY TOO MUCH TIME ON THE BLOG STILL AGAIN ETERNALLY ETC ARRRRGH. 

** In all the dystopian returning-to-a-changed-Earth-after-years/generations/centuries SF I’ve read I don’t recall anyone exploiting the large muddy spreading splodge denouement.  

*** Hey!  Stop that!  I have roses to plant! 

† Although it was Chaos—I’m sure I’ve told you this story, but it remains vividly etched in my mind—who bit through the cable plugging my electric keyboard into the wall at the cottage.  UNGLEBLARG GLURP.  Cheez.  I was at my desk, and there was this funny sharp alarming noise, and . . . there was a half-grown hellpuppy smiling at me with the two halves of the severed cable lying over his paws.  Why he didn’t electrocute himself I have no idea. 

†† It’s actually not ruined.  I think.  It’s pretty handsomely waterproofed or I wouldn’t be wearing it in this weather in the first place, and the mud is cracking nicely, like Death Valley in August.  I think it’s going to brush off.  What is really miraculous however is that . . . this being a farm track and all . . . it seems to have fallen in honest mud rather than slurry. 

            Oh, and no, there was no tractor. 

††† Raincoats have no effect on this behaviour.  They still shake, and they still irrigate the vicinity. 

‡ Maybe the reason I’ve still got a little of a certain three-week-old bouquet left is because it is regularly misted by hellhounds.

‡‡ Relatively quietly.  He did tell me that Titus’ wife loves dogs and does not love handbells, that he had told her my flimsy excuse for declining Saturday morning handbells and her response was that if I wanted to bring the hellhounds some Saturday morning she would walk them while I rang bells.  I asked Niall how large she is and if she has shoulders like a football player.  I am not sure I was satisfied with his answer.

 I’m doing my wha’?  Huh? on five hours’ sleep today.  Sigh.  Saturday night has lately become the night I go to bed early because I have to crawl out early for service ring on Sunday . . . good so far . . . and then get overinvolved in the books that just happen to have come to bed with me.  There tend to be rather a lot of these.*  And since it’s early and I’m still feeling at least half-awake and half-clever I figure I’ll tackle something a bit more substantial than usual and . . . **

            Wha’?  Huh?***

            A surprising amount of this weekend has been spent in the garden despite snow, sleet and freezing rain.†  Friday night Peter was playing bridge so we were already locked in at the cottage when the temperature plunged;  last night I had the full-bore ice-in-the-mechanism†† car-doors-won’t-open-car-doors-won’t-shut thing when hellhounds and I went back to the cottage from the mews.  But the days themselves are making coy little dashes at spring between cloudbursts;  I even got up to Third House today to view the situation, which comes down basically to either sprouting or dead.  Surprising numbers of both of these.†††  But between winter and Atlas—who did a major jungle-bashing for me last autumn—and my own creeping determination to have only plants I like in my garden(s) no matter how well this or that great ugly thug is doing—great ugly thugs have their uses, but as soon as I start running out of room their days are numbered—I HAVE SOME VERY NICE EMPTY EARTH.  It won’t last.  Every time I hit another bump in the PEGASUS road I go on line and order more plants. 

* * *

* Every fortnight or so I have a clear-off before the bed-frame breaks.^  You’d think that changing the sheets would force me to grapple with the problem, but not at all.  I just put the books, magazines and other people’s manuscripts^^ in tidy^^^ piles on the floor which gives me somewhere off the floor to put the bedding. 

^ Having your attic floor reinforced for carrying your and your husband’s professional backlist is one thing.  Having your bed-frame reinforced because you are a cheap literary slut+ seems to me a fortification too far. 

+ Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton live in separate houses too.  Pass it on.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/feb/06/helena-bonham-carter-interview  . . . ‘There’s a snoring issue’ . . .

 ^^ Yes.  Very occasionally.

^^^ Sic.  So they don’t fall over and let the pillows tumble onto the not-very-recently-hoovered carpet. 

** Last night along with the predictable homeopathic quest for my latest gnomic case I decided to have a look at a short easy touch for plain bob doubles.  I am a sad, sick person.  At least I could be resisting more.  I think Vicky or Niall put something in my beer after making me Deputy Ringing Master.

            We had another bad turn-out on Friday and spent most of the evening ringing stuff for beginners—although at the end there were just enough people for Niall to ask me to do my Grandsire-calling trick again.  We had a beginner on the tenor, which as a result wandered rather, and the treble wandered a bit too . . . aaaugh.  No, it’s okay, I got through, but having an AWOL bell going CRUNCH in your ear and then having the treble disappear . . . when you call depends on where the treble is. . . .  I remind myself that the truly useful Deputy Ringing Master can soldier on through anything. 

            After practise Niall came up to me, eyes glinting.  He’s never to be trusted anyway, but he’s worse when his eyes are glinting.  He said, Titus told me to tell you that you’d be welcome to come ring handbells at his house on Saturdays.  I’m going tomorrow.  I could give you a ride.

            I looked at Niall.  That’s nice, I said.  Please thank him for me.  How far away is Titus?

            Oh, said Niall airily.  He’s on the way to Frellingham. 

            Define on the way, I said.  Frellingham is most of an hour from here.  What time do you ring?^

            Oh . . . said Niall, attempting further airiness.  Maybe . . . around ten.

            TEN O’CLOCK? I said, thinking of the mornings I am barely out of bed at ten.  So you leave around NINE?  I have hellhounds I have to hurtle first.

            But you could do Saturday morning at ten? said Niall, sensing an opening.  I’ll see if I can get Titus and Tom to come here some time. 

            ARRRGH, I said, poised to flee down the ladder . . . but not quite.  Hey, I said, you wouldn’t like to come (tower) ringing Monday to Colin’s practise, would you?^^ 

            Niall looks at me.  I look at him.  Possibly, he says, still looking at me.

            Some Saturday morning in my near future, I predict, is doomed. 

 ^ You’re absolutely right.  I shouldn’t even be asking.  

^^ Grind only works when you get to grind.  I want to grind at Grandsire Triples, which means there have to be eight bells, five other inside ringers and a treble and a tenor-behind, none of which—except the bells themselves—have prevailed recently at New Arcadia.    

*** We had a fairly grim turnout for service ring today too.  Niall offered me call changes to conduct but I decided this was dangerous on a Sunday morning.  I need more practise calling call changes.  Kill me.  Please.  

† COME ON, GUYS, YOU WEATHER GOD RATBAGS, LIGHTEN UP, WILL YOU? 

†† Have I mentioned that the locks on both front doors now have an interesting charcoal-and-bronze streaked patina from being melted open with matches? 

††† I want to know what’s gone wrong in the greenhouse though.  The geraniums, nemesias, begonias and chocolate cosmos are all croaked.  I’ve got a couple of snapdragons left—but snapdragons are perverse:  I have at least one each still alive outdoors at the cottage and Third House which is frankly not possible—and two frothy little New Zealand clematis, but mostly the stuff that’s come through is the stuff that is relatively borderline anyway.  Tipsy Imperial Concubine looks pretty happy . . . and I have a daylily that is getting ready to flower.  It was sharing pot-space with a geranium, now defunct, but I’m afraid if I put it outdoors now the shock will make it cry.  Although speaking of crying if my two year old wisteria is an ex-parrot I am going to blacken my face and rend my garments.  It does not look at all sappy and burgeoning.  Sigh.  The flipping plant is supposed to be hardy, it’s the sudden last-minute May frosts that take out the flowers.  At the old house, which had a killer wisteria, we had flowers about one year in three.  Arrrgh.

            Life was simpler in Maine, where I had gigantic sculptural boulders in the back garden, a fabulous sugar maple that went flame-red in autumn in the front garden, a stream that went past the porch, and huge overgrown lilac bushes everywhere.

            The good news however is that the heeled-in roses from last autumn all look dormant as opposed to deceased.  The soil at present is that delightful combination of squishy and still frozen, so I’m not planning on a huge lot of planting right away, but soon. . . .

Okay, we are not coming from the best place I’ve ever been in terms of morale and achievement.  It took me FOUR HOURS to write two paragraphs of PEG II today.  Mind you, they were pretty interesting paragraphs, once I got them nailed to the page so they couldn’t escape.*  But it was not a happy four hours and this has cast a pall.

            Also it’s been tipping down rain most of the day, to hellhounds’ and my lasting unjoy and antidelight.  At least the garden(s) got watered;  I have been noticing the last few days with something like shock that some things are beginning to try and grow, despite the fact that we’re still getting down below freezing about one night in three, and things that grow tend to need water.  Yesterday I was staring at the plants in pots on my front steps at the cottage and muttering, I object to using watering-cans outdoors in February.**  Feh.

            Handbells this evening.  Hellhounds and I arrived back at the cottage only moments before Niall;  I’d been waiting for the rain to let up so we could walk.  Ha.  Eventually we walked anyway, so I was still in mid-towelling-off stage when Niall knocked on the door. 

            So, how did you enjoy handbells on Tuesday? said Niall.

            Wet dog, I said briefly, still towelling.

            You need to ring more bob major, said Niall.

             I need dry socks, I said.

            You did really well ringing the trebles, said Niall.

             And the floor is a lake, I said.

             The trebles are really hard, and your striking was very good***, said Niall.

             I HAVEN’T GOT TIME TO RING HANDBELLS MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK, I said, hanging wet socks and dog towels over the Aga railing.

             You should come again, said Niall, I know you’ll pick up major† really quickly.    

             Fortunately Colin arrived at this opportune moment.††  And we wasted some time talking about conducting.  Grrrrraaaaaugggh. . . .

             * * *

* The image that comes to me involves cats, cat carriers, and vets.  In a relatively low-cat existence, I’ve nonetheless had some very exciting times in situations involving cats, cat carriers, and vets. 

** Indoors, of course, I spend half my life carrying watering-cans around.  There are afternoons when I’m running late^ when hellhounds and I walk back to the cottage, stay just long enough for me to water the plants^^ and then turn around and go back to the mews. 

Nontraditional use of small heavy lamp.  Originally I had the hippeastrum turned around the other way, so the lamp was merely propping it.  But the second stem has been growing over-enthusiastically toward the light, so I figured I’d better turn it around.  Which meant bondage.

I am going to be in so much trouble when the roots on these get going.  Those of you with gardens and too many plants making a mess on your window sills will know the way that however many pots you have, of all sizes, shapes and materials, the one(s) you want will have moved to Montana when you weren’t looking.  Unless you live in Montana, in which case they will have moved to Sri Lanka.  This is what there was. 

And these too. 

Aren’t these pretty glasses?  I love the swirl through the stem. 

But what the hell do you do with them?  They’re for champagne, and I realise that if you give grand parties where there are lots of ladies in wasp-waisted dresses and crimson lipstick and gentlemen with slicked-back hair and dubious moustaches and the champagne flows like the rain in Hampshire flat glasses are probably elegant and fashionable.  But those of us who nurse our one or two glasses of champagne over the courses of long evenings at our computers^^^, want flutes.#   I float broken-off flowers and pruning accidents in these glasses occasionally, or pot pourri, which is to say handfuls of petals from my garden. ##   But I HOPE we’re getting late enough in the season that when these flower-stalks start diving over the brims I can just prop them against the windows### without coming downstairs to hyacinthicles some morning after a cold night.

 ^ ie most afternoons 

 ^^ tripping frequently over hellhounds, who have taken up locations in the middle of the floor the better to glare at me since they want me to come upstairs and sit down at my desk so they can lie in their favourite bed in my office.

 ^^^ SIGH

 # Cheap flutes.  So if we break one, we’re only crying over the champagne.

 ## They will dry out nicely if you remember to stir them with a finger every time you walk past

 ### And I wonder why my windows are so smudgy

 *** Horsemucky, just by the way.  My striking was not good.  What was remarkable, however, was that while I was chiefly being dragged through by the other ringers, I did have some concept of the shape of the pattern and what was happening.  This is bad.  This means I want to do it again.

 † Major is eight bells, remember.  The point about Niall’s Tuesdays is that there are enough people—enough people who know what they’re doing^—that we can ring major.  Colin, Niall and I on Thursdays can only ring minor because there’s only three of us, and so six bells.

 ^ Especially Fred.  Fred is a Legend in His Own Time.  Fred would be scary if he weren’t so nice.

 †† My neighbours across the road often return from somewhere while our Thursday evening handbells are going on.  I never draw the sitting-room curtains—only my across-the-road neighbours could see in anyway, their house is very well set back and the cottage’s ground floor is a long half-stair up from road level.  If they can see us at all through the heavy windowsill foliage, they will see three heads bent forward in a kind of circle, nearly motionless and clearly intent.  They might conceivably see the occasional flash of a raised bell.  It amuses me to imagine what they might surmise we’re up to. . . .

How did it get this late?  Arrgh.  This is why I try to have only ONE extracurricular per day—Fridays, with piano lesson and home tower practise, remind me every week what a good idea this is.  But somehow or other I got roped into handbells tonight*—the lure of bob major is very strong**—and about once a month Niall has a handbell party for some of his fancy ringers and the only way I ever am going to ring bob major, which is eight bells, is if I come along to Niall’s Tuesdays.  Unless Niall and Colin and I kidnap someone and keep them chained up in the cellar*** with only books of handbell patterns for company.† 

            But first there was the voice lesson.  Whose stupid idea was voice lessons anyway.††  Gods, I so don’t NEED something else to be obsessive about.†††   Did I tell you last week that Blondel sent me home to learn It Was a Lover and His Lass from (Gerald) Finzi’s Let Us Garlands Bring, which is where Fear No More (the Heat o’ the Sun) comes from, which was the last thing I learnt‡ before my inadvertent very long holiday? 

            There are at least two problems here.  No, three.  One:  Enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm is deadly.  It gets you into all kinds of trouble.‡‡  It means I make eager little rushes at all kinds of inappropriate things:  ooooh, I like that!  Let me try!  Two:  I think Blondel has either forgotten, or, more likely, never known, how frelling DIFFICULT singing is, and while he is a good and patient and encouraging teacher, if he is confronted by a student saying, ooooh, I like that!  Let me try!, he probably will.  And third, my lessons tend to run long anyway, so we suddenly notice the time and think, yeep, okay, quick, what are we going to do next week?  He could of course make me work harder and longer on individual pieces . . . but I’m actually glad he doesn’t;  at my level of non-skill this would quickly become demoralising.  He does say things like this song needs more mischief, or more passion, or more something, but I haven’t got mischief or passion I can produce vocally, so better I should do what I can and keep moving—keep being enthusiastic.  And I am making progress.  I noticed it particularly today, I think because it’s been almost like starting over from the beginning after so long a break . . . except it isn’t.  I sound a whole lot more like a singer than I did in August.‡‡‡

            Anyway.  We got rather past the end of our time last week and . . . quick, what was I going to work on for this week?  I’d meant to have a go at It Was a Lover over the break, and didn’t, frelling deadlines and novels and things having got in the way, so Blondel said fine, you can look at that this week.

            So I did.  

            And I thought Fear No More was hard.  Well, it is.   It Was a Lover is worse. The gods frelling wept.  The only thing that saved me from utter humiliation is that I’ve got Bryn Terfel singing Let Garlands Bring§ and I have played It Was over and over and over and over and over and over and over and . . . quite a few more times this week.  The wretched song changes key and key signature with mad abandon and the singer keeps coming in just after you think you should, and while Bryn makes it all sound easy as tripping over your own feet§§ IT IS NOT. 

            I did not, in fact, make an ignominiously inglorious hash of it.  It was recognisable.  This counts.  And Blondel had one or two muttered asides about the accompaniment.§§§  And I am going to work on it some more this week.  But when we got to the end this week# he acknowledged that Lover was, in fact, difficult, and maybe I should have something easy to spell myself with this week so I wouldn’t become despondent and decide to take up curling or morris dancing or knitting or something.  And he picked a book up off the side of his piano because in fact he does think ahead sometimes but see (2) in the ‘problems’ listed above.  He’s given me a Purcell song.  So far, so English, so excellent.##  It’s called An Evening Hymn.  Any of you out there who know it should start falling off your chairs laughing at this point, at the idea that this is supposed to be easy.  Well, you don’t have any extremely weird comings-in in weird places in the bar, no###.  What you have instead is a lot of the Purcell Twiddles.  You know, twiddletwiddletwiddletwiddledeedeedee on the same syllable, bar after bar after frelling bar.  This will be very good for your breathing, says Blondel.  Gfffghfffzzzzgft!!!  Also, ARRRGH!

              . . . I’m going to have to pack this entry in despite everything I haven’t told you about yet~;  the kitchen lighting at the mews has always been possessed by demons and the light immediately over the kitchen table where my laptop and I sit communing keeps dying off and then coming back on again a second or several seconds later with a kind of rush like someone nodding off during a lecture or a concert and trying to pretend they aren’t.  Peter rang the electrician yesterday who was kind enough to stop by on his way home after work today . . . and of course the miserable thing stayed on perfectly.  It was flashing like bloody Morse code~~  at lunch and again now and my eyes are rebelling.  And I’ve Fiona coming again tomorrow to organise me and it would probably be a good thing if I were not only up and dressed and caffeinated but had possibly even swept the flooooor. . . . 

* * *

 * I only just started voice lessons on Tuesdays again last week after something awful like two months

 ** I am crazy 

*** I don’t think any of us has a cellar 

† And lots of chocolate.  It wouldn’t be a bad life, you know, being our handbell slave. 

†† A common shriek in this household, with minor variations:  Whose idea was hellhounds!  Whose idea was handbells!  Whose idea was a third house with a weight bearing attic floor for storing backlist!   

††† Especially with this voice.  

‡ make that ‘learnt’ 

‡‡ Hellhounds.  Handbells.  VOICE LESSONS. 

‡‡‡ If I went on making progress at this rate I would be opening at the Met just before I died of old age.  I suspect however that a final plateau of physical possibility will be reached rather sooner. 

§ I’ve posted this before, haven’t I?  The Vagabond & other songs by Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Finzi, Ireland;  DG, 1995.  One of my favourite albums.  And I want the coat he’s wearing on the cover.   I think I’ve also said that it’s actually easier listening to a baritone to die for than a mezzo to die for.  I don’t expect to sound like a baritone when I open my own mouth, and the ‘to die for’ shock is therefore somewhat tempered.  

§§ Or a hellhound 

§§§ Hee hee hee.  There’s nothing like watching a teacher struggle for cheering up a student.  Never mind that I’m thirty years older than he is.  He’s still the boss. 

# Because it is late and I am brain-fried and chronology is never my best trick anyway, I have neglected to tell you about arriving for my lesson in the pouring rain and discovering Blondel standing in it, staring at his car and looking dismayed.  I’ve lost my visitor’s permit, he said, rain trickling down his forehead.  He lives in one of these overcrowded Park Here And Die areas, and visitors have to display large flashy visitors’ permits on their dashboards or expect to find a small blot on the pavement when they come looking for their illegally parked car.  He had used his permit on his rental car while his own was in the shop, and somewhere between the garage and home the permit had disappeared.  After we had both stood around in the rain for a few minutes he devised the impromptu plan of going to the cathedral and using their practise room which, he said, midafternoon on a Tuesday, would probably be empty.  I was in the process of (a) following him the mysterious back way to the cathedral (we’re turning right here??) and (b) working myself up into a state of extreme panic at the idea that the room might not be absolutely one hundred per cent soundproof OR that we would not be allowed to have a PADLOCK on the door and someone might COME IN while we were there when . . . he pulled over, got out of his car, ran back to my car (it’s still pouring with rain, by the way), and said, I’ve remembered what I did with the permit.

            So we turned around and went back.  Whew.  Except for the part where he said, you know, we should book to go to the cathedral some time.  It would be good to practise somewhere different occasionally. 

            Eeep.  And here I was almost used to the idea that he has neighbours. 

 ## I’m not going to be let off German forever.  Just for now.

 ### Although I notice the singer has to come in alone occasionally, my favourite thing in the world as we know 

~ Like ringing the trebles to bob major on handbells, which I’ve not done before.  On the rare occasions I’ve rung major at all, I’ve clung to the seven-eight which are the easiest pair.  The trebles in a plain course are the hardest, but I’m only half-crazy really, and the trebles suddenly become the easiest as soon as people start calling touches. 

~~  Help help I’m being kept prisoner in a cellar and being made to ring handbells.  No, on second thought, ring the boss and say I quit.  It’s not a bad life being a handbell slave and there’s plenty of chocolate.

It’s a zigzag, a squiggle, a wriggle, a looping of the loop (and a biting of one’s own tail).

            Last Wednesday—last Wednesday week, not two days ago—I told you I managed to call a really vicious ratbag of a pattern of call changes, thank you Wild Robert, thank you very much—I mean I succeeded in calling it.  And at Sunday service I got through (and on no sleep) a touch of Grandsire triples ringing inside which was a bit like winning the Grand Prix formula one in my 14-year-old VW Golf.

            Monday I made a mess of calling a much simpler course of call changes at Old Eden, as well as just generally ringing like a neurologically damaged axolotl.*  This Wednesday at Ditherington we had a somewhat challenging band in that there were only five of us and only Wild Robert knew what he was doing.  But he rises to occasions like this and at the end of an evening of call changes and plain courses in which I got to pretend to be a jaded old veteran who had seen it all, Wild Robert turned on me with a gleam in his eye and said, and now, Robin, you can call a touch of Grandsire doubles.  —MEEP.  You’re joking . . . you’re not joking.

            And guess what?  I did it**.  I withdrew from my wounded axolotl aspect and reinhabited my half knows what she’s doing some of the time aspect.  This is not a reliable transformation.  It was especially impressive in this case because we had beginners on both the treble and the tenor who tended to wander rather.  Even Wild Robert—who had been busy with the treble and the tenor and  ringing two bells himself and therefore perforce left me to my own devices—was surprised.***   Have you done this before? he said to me.  No.

            I then made the ghastly mistake of mentioning my triumph to Niall and Colin last night during handbells—this partly because I had confessed to Colin a few weeks ago that this Deputy Ringing Master thing was unhinging my sense of self-preservation and that I had decided that I had to learn to call something, and he’d said in his jolly chirp-chirp manner, which is a great deal more appealing than Niall’s evil mwa ha ha ha ha manner, that there were a couple of dead easy touches that I could absolutely learn.  Unfortunately Niall was there too, when I was telling Colin, and Niall said, predictably, mwa ha ha ha ha, you can call Grandsire tomorrow at New Arcadia practise.

            And I did.  I braced myself when I saw Niall coming and I did it.  I called my little touch again.†  Which begins to suggest that it—this tiny simple-minded touch—will become something I can, in fact, do.††  Notch on the butt of my gold-handled cane.  If I had a gold-handled cane.  I would, however, like to get to the point of not trembling so hard I can barely tie my rope up at the end, after I’ve said ‘stand’ and the bells fall silent. 

            Of course—back to the learning zigzag again—I then made an unlovely glurdge of ringing Grandsire triples inside . . . sigh . . . but I had help.  Someone who shouldn’t be making glurdges made a glurdge, and I’m still only barely holding my line when everyone else is perfect.  The joke came when I went humbly round to Edward, who had been calling it, while Niall was torturing one of our beginners, and asked if Edward would tell me what he’d been calling so I could at least figure out what I should have been doing. 

            I then made the really awful mistake of asking Edward how he kept track of a long touch and he started telling me.  Numbers!  Aaaaaugh!  Numbers!  The problem with these bell ringer chappies is that they loove their bell ringing so much that they can’t stop, even when their audience clearly wants to run away and hide . . . why are you looking at me like that? 

* * *

 * With a little help from the bells.  I tell myself this is good both for my handling—a Truly Useful Ringer Can Ring Any Bell Accurately—and for my character.   It’s good to fail.  It keeps you humble.  It also keeps you awake at night obsessively replaying being a dork in your mind’s eye. 

** I’ve been trying to decide if I want to risk your sanity, not to mention your patience, by trying to explain what calling a touch means.  Um.  You’ve got it that method ringing involves patterns, right?  You start out ringing rounds, which is the bells in order from lightest (treble) to heaviest (tenor), 1 2 3 4 5 6 (or however many:  if you’re ringing doubles, you’re ringing a pattern involving five bells with the tenor always ringing last:  every bell must ring once before any bell can ring again).  Then the conductor yells Go [name of method]!, and the next ‘row’ of six bells will have begun swapping places, so—for the beginning of Grandsire for example—the three stays in third place for one more ‘blow’ before moving toward the front, seconds place, then lead, while the treble moves from second place to third place and the second bell spends two blows in lead before following the treble toward the back.  These patterns are set.  You learn them as such.  Grandsire ALWAYS begins as I’ve just described, and each bell proceeds in a prescribed order through the series of swaps and zigzags (speaking of zigzags) which is that method’s individual hallmark.  And yes, if you are not good at patterns or at Things That Involve Numbers, learning your first change-ringing patterns will crush your brain like a bug.

            But this was not enough for those pesky method creators (who clearly were good at patterns and Things That Involve Numbers).  They invented a further-mixing-up-the-bells system which is called a touch.  A plain course is just the basic pattern where all the bells run through all the pieces of ‘work’ till they each get back to the point in the pattern where each individually started.  A touch is when the conductor shouts Bob!, or Single!, before they get there, the purpose of which is to mix the bells up further and prevent them from coming back into ‘rounds’ as soon as they would in a plain course.  Depending on where you are in the pattern, and whether a bob or a single is called, what you do next varies:  but in the course of learning to ring a method, you have to learn this too, so you can ring a touch of the thing, whatever it is.  Only sissies stop at plain courses.

            However only total frelling madpersons ever take it a step further to conducting.  The sad sweating conductor has to know when and what to call and where that then leaves everybody because said sad sweating conductor has to get them out of wherever that is again so that the band eventually do come back into rounds and can stop.  Or be ringing forever like a kind of campanological Flying Dutchman^. . . . 

            I never wanted to be a conductor.  I have had no aspirations whatsoever to being a conductor.  And then they made me frelling Deputy Ringing Master.  And suddenly . . . cheez.  I’m scary when I’m aroused.  Lock up your sharp objects. 

^ This is actually mathematical nonsense.  There’s a limited number of mixes you can make out of only five items, in this case bells.  But there are a lot of other rules involved in change ringing.  Which you will be delighted to hear I am not going to get into.  Not tonight anyway. 

*** I probably shouldn’t try to explain why I could do it, should I?  It’s okay, if you have a headache you can skip this bit. 

           I’ve told you that in a plain course all the inside bells do all the bits of ‘work’ that comprise the pattern, following each other in what’s known as coursing order.  As soon as you start throwing calls into the muddle, all kinds of untoward things can happen, including that one bell or another can get stuck doing the same piece of work over and over.  The particular touch Wild Robert taught me involves the bell you-the-conductor is on cycling through only two pieces of work . . . and every time you get to the second one again you call.  Then you just have to remember (a) whether you’re calling a bob or a single (b) what you called last time which helps with (a) and (c) how many times you’ve called either of the above so you know when you’re about to get back to rounds and can escape.

          The reason I could do it is because the pattern is:  single bob bob, single bob bob, and you don’t really need to use numbers.  You can get away with:  one thing.  The other thing.  The other thing again which means the first thing next time.  Then the other thing and the other thing again and then it’s over.  See?  No numbers.  I’ve broken down a lot of my (ahem) method ringing into these sub-number bits which is a lot of how I’ve contrived to learn change ringing at all.  And yes, you could call it binary if you were feeling deeply unkind, but I wish you wouldn’t. 

† But see previous footnote.  I can do it for very specific reasons of not having to count anything.  This does not pertain to conducting generally. 

†† Vicky, who doesn’t go for the mwa ha ha ha ha thing much, said crisply, well done.  And, somewhat dryly, added:  We need more people who can call in this band.  —Vicky doesn’t do disingenuous either, or I might accuse her of it.  You can pretty much assume that barring St Paul’s and York Minster, all change ringing bands need more people who can call.  Change ringing itself is awful enough.  Conducting change ringing means you’re probably a danger to society.  I’m sure MI5 keeps files on it.