A frelling day
I am culpably absent-minded, especially considering that I know I’m absent-minded and SHOULD LEARN TO BEHAVE ACCORDINGLY. For example. I have this deeply unintelligent habit of not looking at my diary for the week because I never do anything* except sit around at home with the hellcritters. Oh, and, yeah, there’s like . . . bell ringing**. But I know when bell ringing is. Mondays, some Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, usually not Saturdays unless there’s a wedding, and twice on Sundays.*** I don’t have to look it up.†
And Monday afternoon is my voice lesson so with ringing in the evening too nothing is ever happening on Mondays. So I don’t have to bother looking in my diary.††
This means I frequently don’t look at the week ahead until . . . Tuesday. I may, furthermore, not have my mind [sic] on what I’m looking at even when I do finally turn that page because I THINK I REMEMBER ANYTHING IMPORTANT BECAUSE SINCE I NEVER DO ANYTHING I HAVE PLENTY OF MEMORY SPACE TO REMEMBER STUFF IN.††† This week, for example, I remembered that Fiona and I are playing hooky on Friday and that my second official zazen sit with Aloysius was Wednesday afternoon before the daily Lenten prayer service.‡
I did not remember that Peter and I were going to be thumped and squidged by Tabitha this afternoon. Tabitha is in one direction and Aloysius is in the other. Oops.
I didn’t waste any time engaging my brain. I rang up Tabitha to reschedule. She’s only one person, she’s not a clinic: she can’t fill holes at the last minute. Oops. Frell.
But she said she could take us earlier. Gleep. Okay.
I am not at my most clear-headed and active after an hour on Tabitha’s treatment table. We roared home—Wolfgang knows the way—and I made hellhound lunch in record time . . . and for a wonder they ate it without fuss.‡‡ Whereupon I leaped back into Wolfgang‡‡‡, who is learning the way to St Margaret’s, and roared off in the other direction.
I got there as Aloysius, on his ecologically holy bicycle, turned into the car park. Yaay. It was still frelling cold in the lady chapel. And the swirls on the carpet are no less hypnotising, but maybe that’s a good thing.§ After an hour with Tabitha it’s hard even to sit up.
So I tore back out of St Margaret’s, leaped back into Wolfgang§§ and raced home again to get two frelling shifts of hellcritters hurtled before I went to the abbey tower practise. Pant, gasp.
I was sitting KNITTING in a corner and wondering how bad an idea coming at all was, given the day I had already had, when Scary Man told me to come ring some Stedman Triples. A touch? he said briskly. Um . . . we could risk a touch I think, I said. Nervously.
Fortunately before anything too horrific happened Alfred materialised out of blank space and stood by to be my minder. Unfortunately I needed him. But . . it was actually not too bad. I knew what I was trying to do, I just occasionally got a little overexcited and started pulling in too hard and going clang. But. Stedman Triples. Yes. I am going to learn this . . .
And then I made a PIG’S EAR of ringing the frelling treble to bob major, which is like running the marathon in two and a half hours and then breaking your ankle tripping over a roller skate. ARRRRRGH.
So I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.
* * *
* Stop that laughing
** MUST look at Kent some more tonight. Niall and Colin are going to be expecting me to ring the wretched method tomorrow. And, speaking of handbells, Gemma opened her big fat mouth at the AGM last night, asking—innocently—if anyone ever uses the glamorous set of handbells impaled on the abbey ringing chamber wall. Everyone looked round hastily at everyone else: not me boss. Which probably leaves Gemma, me, Alfred and Leandra. So we may be going to try to wedge in another hour of handbells before or after some tower practise or service. Because we all have so much free time. We all sit around at home with our hellcritters waiting for the phone to ring.^
^ I don’t even have that excuse. The landline at the cottage only works when it feels like it and it doesn’t feel like it very often, and I don’t give anyone my mobile number.
*** I was having an unusually bad spell of Why Am I Bothering recently, because it’s clear I’m going to go to my GRAVE with some ringing master’s epithets reverberating in my ears, and I don’t mean the good kind of epithets, and I thought, imagine the amount of EXTRA TIME I would have if I stopped ringing. Well, cut back seriously on ringing. Like one practise and one service ring a week, like a normal ringer.^ Brrrrr. The very idea gives me a palsy of withdrawal.
^ There are no normal ringers. That’s one of ringing’s attractions.
† Mostly the thought goes like this: I’m breathing. I must be ringing tonight. . . . I ought to IMPROVE for pity’s sake. I OUGHT to be ringing Turgid Taradiddle Doohickus Supreme by now. All right, stop that. I’ve already rejected the idea of pretending to be normal.
†† Note that this attitude has more than once got me into trouble. Do I learn anything? No, of course not.
††† I don’t have memory space for anything. I do not have memory. What did you say? Who are you?
‡ I was perhaps extra thrilled at the possibility of not freezing to death because the temperature has rocketed up by fifteen or twenty degrees—from longjohns and woolly scarf weather to light cardi and only one pair of socks weather.^ Hellhounds, who rather like having to hurtle to stay warm, are all, Wha’? Eh? While I haul on the leads and shout COME ON YOU MISERABLE SLUGS. IT’S SPRING. SPRING IS GOOD. I hope this is spring. . . .
^ But it’s supposed to RAIN. NO. NO RAIN. NOT TILL THE WALL IS FINISHED.
‡‡ Although Chaos clearly felt he was being BETRAYED when the moment after I’d picked their bowls up I started putting my shoes back on to go AWAY again, leaving hellhounds BEHIND.
‡‡‡ Hi-oh Silver and awaaaaaaaaaay.
§ I said that I found usually that the first ten or fifteen minutes [of the standard twenty-five minute sit] my brain is tearing all over the landscape in all directions simultaneously . . . and then as it begins to SETTLE THE FRELL DOWN the last ten or fifteen minutes go really fast, but I assumed that was because it was still a new discipline for me, that it was just lack of practise.^ Aloysius looked a little ironical and replied, not necessarily.
^ On the vanishingly rare occasions when I do a second twenty-five-minute sit immediately—as for example last Saturday morning—the beginning settling-down process happens encouragingly quickly. Instead however toward the end of the second sit the brain wakes up again and starts saying, No, no! This is sheer self-indulgence! We don’t have time for a whole second twenty-five minutes! Stop it at once and go do something useful!
§§ Who whinnied.
The fabulous loyalty of dogs
So Darkness is scarfing down his food and positively begging for more . . . you could almost mistake him for a normal, food-obsessed dog . . . and what’s coming out the other end is, you know, um, appropriate. YAAAAAAAY. Peter is better. My front door lock loves me again (at least today). It was a BEAUTIFUL day today—you know, like spring. Jolly jolly jolly. And I’m so tired after all the drama I want to sleep for a week.*
Now as a housekeeper I am a very good writer of fantasy novels, but I do have a few limits, usually to do with germs. I don’t leave washing up in the sink overnight. I did last night. There was washing up because I finally folded and started giving hellhounds a proper cooked supper, with, you know, chicken and chicken stock.** The purpose of that final before-bed snack was supposed to be to top the frellers up or to give me another chance to get food into them at all when they’re in one of their moods.*** This is also the one meal I feed them the gold-standard kibble that makes me weep over my credit card every time I have to order more. It shouldn’t need chicken too. But even the gold standard isn’t doing much good if they aren’t eating it. So . . . dispersal of more chicken. At the moment and I am making no predictions, but that third meal, did I say AT THE MOMENT?, AT THE MOMENT is their favourite. They’re all over me as soon as we get through the cottage door at night† and afterward there’s all this frelling washing up . . . which was what I was trying to AVOID by investing in gold-standard kibble. It’s okay, I’m fine with smug hellhounds as long as they frelling EAT.
You know there’s this whole romantic fudge about the loyal dog—which you naively hope is the end result of putting your time in after signing on to the ‘a dog is the only love money can buy’ flapdoodle.†† I would agree that usually a well-treated dog behaves at least some of the time in the way 40,000 years of domestication by a master species that gets off on adulation would want. They’re still live critters with crazy little ideas of their own. Both Darkness and Chaos believe me to be the hellgoddess, dispenser of all goodness†††, mostly benevolent tyrant of all their days. But Chaos in particular is UTTERLY MY DOG. Although their favourite bed is in my office if I’m downstairs he won’t go upstairs. Off lead he checks back with me three or four times to Darkness’ once.‡ He’ll do aaaaaaaaaanything for me . . . except eat reliably. He’s a worse eater than Darkness. What is the one thing that would most improve my life with hellhounds? That they ate reliably. ‡‡
We would appear to be moving toward another of these poignant confluences of life as a dog owner. What single thing would most improve my life as a hellterror owner? That she crapped reliably. I’m already grimly aware that she has Her Places and if she’s not near one, well, too bad, she’ll just wait till she is. We’re going to Cornwall for the weekend?‡‡‡ Whatever. Imagine a hellterror insouciantly whistling a little tune.
It gets worse. The evidence is accruing that she’ll only crap for me.
This is not the kind of loyalty I had in mind.
* * *
* Tonight was the abbey tower AGM^. I went^^—it’s my first year as a member, it would be Beyond Tacky not to go unless I was saving the universe from another part of the galaxy. I took my KNITTING. Another slightly^^^ erratic pullover back is about to join its friends. This AGM was a much more dignified affair than the ones at New Arcadia, where we tended to sit around in the tower—possibly on the floor—with a plastic bin of biscuits or similar. The abbey AGM was held in some random cleric’s drawing room, complete with decanters and oil portraits of high-coloured nineteenth-century ladies wearing forbidding expressions and lots of lace. I nailed the rocking chair. I was ready to enjoy anything, sitting in a rocking chair and knitting, even being referred to as Mme Guillotine. Hey, I don’t speak a word of French and I doubt Mme Defarge was really into pink.
It was actually pretty interesting. Everything at the abbey is complicated, and prone to five-hundred-year-old traditions that would cause the Anglican Church to rock in its moorings if they were changed. And given the outcome of the recent vote on women bishops, the C of E can’t afford any rocking just now.
^ Annual General Meeting, which doesn’t seem to be an American usage.
^^ Which means I missed ANOTHER of the every-other-week extra learners’ practise at Fustian. ARRRRGH.
^^^ Well I hope slightly
** The hellterror gets kibble and cheese.
*** The hellterror has only one mood about food. I’M STAAAAAAARVING.
† Hellterror, who is given her two main meals after the hellhounds as befits not only her lowly station but the fact that she gets breakfast as well as a puppy kibble handful here and there throughout the day, receives her final snack first to shut her up. She is nonetheless moaning in her crate, Me! Me! You forgot about me! That wasn’t a snack, that was a crumb, a particle, a scintilla, a SPECK!
†† Somewhere a phantom Rowan is laughing. And a lot of other paid-for critters are doing species-appropriate indignation.
††† And a fair amount of not so goodness. YES. IT’S BEEN OVER FOUR MONTHS. SHE’S STAYING. SHUT UP AND GET USED TO IT.
‡ Since Chaos is by far the more lunatic, this is quite useful.
‡‡ This includes that reliable digestion follows.
‡‡‡ I wish.
Weekend
It was a fair old flaming rubbish tip of a weekend. And it started off so well. I made it to Aloysius’ early Saturday morning silent prayer meeting. Did I tell you* that in response to my nagging about a silent prayer service at a more civilised hour than eight frelling a.m. on a Saturday** he’s begun, just for the duration of Lent, a Wednesday afternoon silent service before the daily Lenten (ordinary) prayer service . . . which I think chiefly gets me off his back for three (?) more weeks but hey, whatever works. I had told him about taking a blanket to sit in the monks’ chapel and he looked thoughtful and said that I’d probably want a blanket for St Margaret’s lady chapel. So I went along this Wednesday with my becoming-well-travelled blanket and YAAAAAAARG &^%$£”#@???**{~] COLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! St Margaret’s*** chapel makes the monks’ look tropical.† St Margaret’s is relatively new build, but the electric fire on the wall in the chapel I swear is older than I am. And I was sitting RIGHT NEXT TO IT on Wednesday afternoon and all that happened was that the right side of my face got rather warm. Saturday morning at 8:30—and who is at their best at 8:30 on a Saturday morning—I had to sit against the wall so as not to block ingress (and heat) to other worshippers—all of whom, bar Aloysius and me, got to sit in CHAIRS††. As it happens we were—ahem—thin on the ground on Saturday††† so during the five-minute break to thump some life back into frozen extremities I also shifted over to sit next to the heater again. This meant that for the second twenty-five minutes of life-sapping cold I had a little hot space between my shoulder blades. . . .
But the rest of the weekend was a trifle dire. Darkness started his double-ended geysering trick again on Friday . . . which I initially thought was a one-off but was nothing of the kind, and indeed has been much more severe than his having-bolted-a-sandwich-end-found-in-a-hedgerow-when-the-hellgoddess-wasn’t-looking usual and . . . I’m kind of worried. This is not only hard on my nerves (and my washing machine) but on Darkness, whose gut is already not of the strongest and most resilient. I will probably take him in for a chat with the vet, but I don’t want to put him on ConMed drugs unless I absolutely, absolutely see no alternative. His ‘picture’ has changed and I’ve changed his homeopathic remedy accordingly, so it’s possible that next time we’ll be back to getting through it faster. But . . . I’m worried. He’s six and a half years old, which means he’s in his mid-forties in people time, and wear and tear starts catching up with you. . . .
I missed my Saturday evening service—my favourite church service of the week—with the monks, because I didn’t want to leave Darkness that long, and my concentration wouldn’t have been up to much anyway.
And then Peter went down with one of his streeeeeeeeeeeeaming colds, I will leave it to your vivid imaginations, but he does stream like no one else and his colds tend to roar up on him like a charging lion.‡ And while it does seem only to be a head cold, still, when you’re eighty-five, it’s all a little precarious.
Oh yes and then my front door lock at the cottage jammed and WOULDN’T LET ME IN AND MY HELLCRITTERS, one of them in a somewhat parlous state, WERE ALL CLAMOURING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR AND WONDERING WHY I WASN’T COMING IN TO TELL THEM HOW WONDERFUL THEY ARE.‡‡
I had very little sleep Saturday night between worrying and lurching awake every time I thought I heard a hellhound change position downstairs, and very nearly bottled out of ringing on Sunday. I only dragged myself to New Arcadia because I knew Niall and Penelope were away and so they were very likely to be short-handed—and I was out of bed and dressed and everything, I was just brainless. There were exactly six of us, and I was the weak link—and I tend to get buoyed up a level if the rest of the band is good. So not only did we sound not bad but it was fun. I’m really not used to Sunday mornings at New Arcadia being fun.
Darkness seemed to be stable enough that I went off, with only a few languishing backward looks, to the abbey for the afternoon service ring . . . and that was not bad either despite quite a plethora of rogues. I appreciate that they want to shovel as many unsteady learners as possible into a touch to give as many (unsteady) learners as possible time on a rope but having the gorblimey treble going walkabout when I’m ringing inside on bob major, which I haven’t rung nearly enough to have any automatic pilot for and am still very dependent on the treble being in the RIGHT PLACE, was not friendly. And there were three of us with erratic wanderlust in the Grandsire triples plus a rogue conductor and . . . nobody died. I wasn’t brilliant, but I kept my line, even when some of our other variables were not keeping theirs.
It was a beautiful, very nearly spring day today . . . and Darkness has eaten both lunch and dinner with evidence of pleasure . . . and no unseemly results (I think). Maybe the week is going to improve. . . .
* * *
* I looked back in the blog and I don’t think I did
** Not that a freelancer cares that it’s a Saturday. But it’s the principle of the thing. Also, eight o’clock . . . no way. It’s almost cruel that they decided to move it to 8:30. Because then I did have a chance. Rats.
*** I seem to have named St Margaret’s of Scotland a little too well.
†Of course I’m not sitting on the frelling floor at the monks’, where there are definitely polar winds. Yet. I haven’t yet clawed my courage together to ask a monk if it would be acceptable for me to sit zazen—cross-legged on a cushion on the floor—so long as I pulled myself together and behaved once the service starts. They know Aloysius—and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t know something of the Zen Christian subset in the Christian contemplative tradition—so this won’t be entirely bonkers-sounding. I hope. Except for the polar winds of course. Maybe I’ll just not get around to asking till later in the season. Although I kind of suspect that while St Margaret’s chapel may warm up by June, the monks’ old stone sanctuary with the vaulted roof is going to stay brumal.
†† I know. I’ve just been saying I’m going to ask the monks if I can sit on their floor. I’ve never been sane, rational or consistent, why should turning Christian make me morph into someone else entirely? I will merely become a sort of heightened insane, irrational and inconsistent. Or maybe God will improve my circulation. He’s known to move in mysterious ways.
††† There’s a lot of flu going around. That’s a lot. What is it about March? Doesn’t this happen every year? It’s like all the bad evil germs and dormant viruses that have been lying around going la la la la all winter suddenly wake up and think, Hey! Spring! I was going to cause way more mayhem before spring! —And explode into unseemly activity.
‡ I guessed wrong about the homeopathic remedy for him too. The problem with Peter’s head colds is that they come on so fast you don’t have time to change your mind if the first thing didn’t work. It’s not this simple, of course, but it is this frustrating.
‡‡ I got in eventually. Atlas took the freller apart today and OILED THE CRAP OUT OF IT and at the moment it is working beautifully.
‡‡‡ Even if I did have to go to my voice lesson today without having practised properly first because Peter had A Guest and the cottage was full of Atlas.
Good enough. Mostly. Sometimes.
I should be carrying on with the copyedits for SHADOWS which are at this point overdue . . . I’ll finish tomorrow, really I will. But by this stage of a book I can’t frelling focus on those frelling words any more* and I don’t think that right this minute I can stand to handle the pages any more tonight . . . which is my own fault for needing hard copy, but if I were doing it only on screen I’d have pixelated eyes by now as well as an advanced case of Technicolor heebie-jeebies. As it is the heebie-jeebies are displaying quite a tactful, restrained palette of peach to salmon to rust with occasional highlights of green. . . .
I’m raving.
Part of the problem is that I’d be a perfectionist if I could . . . but I can’t. My brain won’t hold that sharp an edge, however energetically you hone the soggy thing. So you have to go for good enough. What you hope is good enough. What, some of the time, you believe is good enough. Is sometimes even . . . plain unmodified good.
But not while you’re dealing with copyedits.
But good enough is something I’ve been thinking about since last night’s blog—since Bratsche’s first harp post and my Monday singing lesson. I think good enough is sometimes really hard to define.
I’m a good enough dog owner. My three hellcritters have daily walks—walks plural—a warm place to sleep, the almost constant presence of the hellgoddess (which is supposed to be a good thing in dog pantheon terms) and tasty sustaining food (when they eat it). They are not trained to a high standard**, especially not the recent addition to the family***, but they have some concept of what training is, and they’re nice to have around (mostly). I’ll share a sofa with them any time. They’re all bonkers, of course, but I pretty sure they’d be bonkers anyway, although a more dedicated trainer might have reshaped the bonkersness more than I have done.
When I was still riding, I was a good enough rider for a certain kind of horse; a horse I suited I could groom and exercise and have (mutual) fun with, and even bring on a little in its training, possibly with the help of a trainer for me. I’m a good enough cook.† I’m even—marginally—a good enough bell ringer, since there’s a shortage of any kind of ringer in this area, and bells and the upkeep of bells still exist in exchange for calling Christians to church services. I’ve rung a lot of services where I as an available pair of hands was absolutely good enough.
But the line about good enough is always blurry, and sometimes it’s so blurry it’s just a smudge. Would those horses whose training I contributed to have done better with a better rider? Probably. I’m a good enough cook if you like brownies and roast chicken—not so much if you want Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska. And I’m not a good enough ringer to be invited to ring quarter peals any more often than some patient teacher type can bear to organise.
The farther you go over a different line into territory that might be considered art, I think the concept of good enough gets harder and harder to define—or possibly to accept. As long as you’re tending to a critter’s basic needs—and that includes comfort and contentment, not just food and shelter from the weather—good enough is fairly straightforward. Brownies and roast chicken hit the spot, even if they’re not glamorous.†† And you don’t have to be able to ring Snorkel Upstage Flugelhorn Major to tell people to get their shoes on and stop dozing over their coffee.
I don’t know what good enough singing or piano-, harp-, violin- or flugelhorn playing is. I think music does fulfil a basic human need, but I’m not sure how to describe it. I’m really enjoying the conversation going on in the forum right now, beginning with the response to Bratsche’s first harp post and gaining momentum last night after my Monday-singing-lesson-aroused response to one of Bratsche’s comments. I hope you’ll keep talking. Please.††† I think I’m learning something.
* * *
* Except for those occasional, flaying moments when you realise THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER MAKES NO SENSE/CONTRADICTS WHAT YOU SAID IN CHAPTER TWELVE/UNDERMINES THE ENTIRE PLOT IN A SUBTLE WAY THAT NONE OF YOUR READERS PICKED UP WHEN YOU STILL HAD ENOUGH BRAIN LEFT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT/IS GENERALLY SENSATIONALLY, PRODIGIOUSLY, SUPERABUNDANTLY STUPID . . . etc. But you’re frelling lunchmeat about this book by now, and you just have to hope none of your other readers will notice either, because any significant change you tried to make now would probably turn out to be like adding chopped liver to the strawberry shortcake. Unwise. This is, however, when you start reading the job ads for openings for shelf restockers and file clerks. I didn’t know they still had file clerks. Maybe only in small backward Hampshire villages.
** ::falls down laughing::
*** ::injures herself falling down laughing::
† When in doubt, add chocolate.
†† Although I feel this depends on your brownie recipe. Brownies can be very glamorous.
††† Not only because I can probably get another comment post out of what’s been said so far. . . .
Sunday, not a day of rest
I was supposed to go to a different Saturday morning prayer group yesterday—it starts half an hour later than Aloysius’, I might make it to this one. I was awake and caffeined and dressed and everything . . . and it started to snow. And sleet. And rain. And sleet. And hail. And sleet. And snow.
I didn’t go, because I just don’t push anything about driving. When it started its variable precipitation performance it did look like it was lying, as in nasty slippery stuff on the roads, but it didn’t after all—but I would have spent the entire meeting not thinking about God, but staring out the window and worrying, so I was still better off staying at home.*
Sigh. I don’t seem to have been made for Saturday morning prayer groups.**
This morning I got up early again*** and went through the awake-caffeine-dress thing again† and sprinted for the New Arcadia bell tower. I’d kind of forgotten that the sprinting is not merely a time thing but a good way to reinforce the effect the caffeine is having on your unwilling body, which is trying to be floppy and hopeless and moaning, Normal people have a lie in on Sundays. Niall called for Grandsire doubles, which is fine, a nice little touch of Grandsire and we can all sit down again. But Roger, who was calling it, was having a brain spasm or something and the touch went on and on and on and on and ON and ON and ON and there was a frelling call nearly every lead and I swear I did about three-quarters of the frelling long thirds†† and my hands are bleeding. Finally we came out into rounds and he let us stop and I hung up my rope thinking, I didn’t go wrong! I didn’t go wrong! First crack out of the box on Sunday argleblargle morning, an endless touch of Grandsire with me ringing inside and catching most of the ratblasted long thirds AND I DIDN’T GO WRONG. YAAAAAAAAAY.†††
I dunno, this getting up in the morning thing might catch on.
* * *
* Since the weather changed its mind and went away quietly^ I did go back to the monks last night. Saturday evening prayer is my favourite monkish service because there’s half an hour of silent contemplation before they start singing, and sitting in company is good.
I think I’ve told you that one of the peripheral things I like about the monks is how ordinary and matter of fact they are, barring the distracting business of the long black frocks. They are less homogenous-looking a group than a church choir, say, which seems to put on a desire to blend with their choir robes—which of course the choir will take back off again in an hour. The nearly identically black-robed monks however are unmistakably each who he is. I’m beginning to be able to guess who is walking past me^^ as they file in (I prefer to get there early) or out by the sound and what I suppose I might call the displacement of air—none of them are all that large, but they carry themselves differently, aside from height, breadth and choice of footgear.^^^
This includes matter-of-factness about certain aspects of the ritual. At the end of evening prayer, the abbot sprinkles the monks and the congregation with holy water. That’s what the little what’s-going-on book that you pick up on your way in says.# It says sprinkles. Well, he sprinkles the monks. Then he comes down to the edge of the dais and hurls it at the rest of us. He’s got a censer-y looking thing, it’s just got water in it instead of smoke. The wind-up is more Sandy Koufax than St Paul. There are never very many of us, and he is very punctilious about including us all in, even if we’re spaced out over the entire area, which we probably are. You can hear the water splatter, and if it hits bare skin it may sting faintly.## I’m always wearing my heavy leather jacket for warmth but it will do as protection as well.
I love this. I love it that holy isn’t necessarily prim.
^ It didn’t go away nicely—sunlight would be nice—but it went away.
^^ I don’t know if you’re supposed to keep your eyes down, but I do.
^^^ Several of them wear sandals.+ In that freezing icy brumal algid SIBERIAN chapel?!? Now let’s discuss how many monks have coughs and colds.
+ Birkenstocks. Of course.
# Mind you, it still leaves an awful lot out. I should badger Aloysius with more questions. Christians remind me a lot of bell ringers. The old hands have forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner.
## Possibly the stinging only happens to hellgoddesses. Standard mortals merely get slightly damp.
** Maybe I was expressing solidarity with my origins. I don’t guess anyone got to their Saturday morning prayer, yoga, mud wrestling or knitting groups in the northeast USA yesterday.
*** Eeep. Uggh.
† Hellhounds opening one eye (each) and shutting it again, hellterror going YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH SOMETHING’S HAPPENING WHATEVER IT IS ME TOO. OH, AND ABOUT BREAKFAST—?
†† Long thirds are probably the worst of the ‘work’ in Grandsire, and you only have to ring them if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time when the conductor calls a single. I don’t myself think they’re nearly as grisly as the Dreaded Three-Four-Down Single in plain bob, but they do need paying attention to, especially on Sunday mornings.
††† No, it wasn’t all downhill from there. I rang Grandsire triples—not dazzlingly well, but I rang it and I didn’t go wrong—at the abbey this afternoon, and while we went off the rails ringing Cambridge major with me on the treble it wasn’t me.
And I went to St Margaret of Scotland tonight for what I was expecting to be an ordinary mild-mannered Sunday evening service and discovered the place packed out and a large plastic swimming pool installed beside the altar. They go for immersion baptisms. Golly.
But I have to go back to work. My copyeditor hates hyphens. What did a hyphen ever do to her? Poor little hyphens.