Hurrah for Blogmom
Hurrah hurrah hurrah hurrah hurrah. Days in the Life has an opening page again instead of a screenful of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey*, also the head, ears, body, and legs, and what are all those cogs, wheels, driveshafts, sparkplugs and those aren’t really falchions, gisarmes and halberds, are they? . . . uh, pieces. Which is what it looked like last night. I’m also relieved it wasn’t my eyes.
Back to PEGASUS. Tick tock. Thank the gods for that five hours’ difference between me and Manhattan.
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* Or possibly pegasus, in which case there are also wings that need pinning
Technology is hell
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.
My guest blog folder has DISAPPEARED.
I have no idea, except that I assume it’s all a part of the recent ruckus with Outlook. Outlook has been stealthily eating my address book since our rebarbative association began; apparently the mere disappearance of a few contacts—which furthermore I probably have hardcopy of*–has become insufficiently infuriating. My blood pressure doesn’t go up more than a point or two when I discover someone else has vanished. Since—see below—I am likely to be visited by Computer Men some day very soon I will ask if my guest blogs can be retrieved from whatever ether-eal hell they have been inadvertently consigned to. But, because I am a well-tutored pessimist about all things computery, would every/anyone who has sent me a guest post which hasn’t appeared yet please send it to me again.* And this time, believe me, I will keep a back up copy on a memory stick.
Frelling frell frelling. FRELLING. FRELL.
And if that wasn’t quite enough . . . I’m off line again. I assume I’m going to be able to plug in either to Peter’s desktop connection or back at the cottage to post tonight but here on the mews laptop where I write probably five out of seven blog entries—which occupation requires constant application to Google and other there-are-certain-kinds-of-embarrassment-I-would-like-to-avoid fact-checking sites** not to mention the possibility of the insertion of fascinating links*** —I am dead in the virtual water. Arrrrrgh.
We also rang this morning like a bunch of one-armed dipsomaniacs the morning after tying a particularly rich one on. There were six of us, all of us theoretically method ringers, but we couldn’t get through anything without clanks, crashes, and frantic shouts of rounds! STAND! from the beleaguered conductor. Some Sunday mornings are like that. Are bells technology? Well, smelting metal usually counts as one of those basic technological-enabling skills so for the purposes of hellishness, bells are today honorary technology.†
When I snuck out of the tower—days like today you don’t want anyone to see you climbing down the ladder from the bell chamber—there was no Peter waiting for me. There is supposed to be a Peter waiting for me Sunday mornings after ringing unless the weather is completely filthy. Which it is not. †† I hung around long enough to start feeling faintly worried ††† and then started back down the hill . . . at last to see Peter toiling up toward me.
He had been having his own collision with technology. He’d had his shower and was getting dressed in his bedroom when both his smoke alarms went off. I’m sure that in the middle of the night when it’s saving your life a smoke alarm is a wonderful thing, but the problem is that smoke alarms are frellingly proof against any kind of tampering, in case it’s an electrical fire, so if they go wrong they go wrong with great stamina and determination.
Peter guessed that the steam from his shower must have set them off‡, so he opened all the doors and windows and got a terrific through draught . . . and the alarms kept on. He crawled into the crawl spaces and stuck his head in the attic in case it was an electrical fire, but there was nothing . . . except the alarms going on and on. He went next door to reassure his neighbours, and they came round and made helpful suggestions, none of which worked. I’ve had problems with those ‘reset buttons’ myself: you lean on one and the technology goes DON’T YOU TAMPER WITH ME! WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP! By this time the next neighbour in the row had turned up and made more useless helpful suggestions. The reset buttons had of course been pressed and prodded any number of times and each infernal machine would shut up briefly and then start yelling again.
Finally, as much by accident as anything, Peter pressed the reset button on the one upstairs while one of the neighbours was pressing the reset button on the one downstairs‡‡ . . . and silence fell. At last. And so, Peter says, the conclusion seems to be that you have to press both reset buttons simultaneously . . . which is difficult for a person living alone.
There are going to be a whole assortment of urgent phone calls going out at 9 am sharp tomorrow morning to professional technology-bashers from the McKinley-Dickinson ménage.
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* When I can find them. And of course every time I update the RaspBerry whatever Outlook has been up to gets transferred too, so back up becomes de-back up, or front down, or something.
* Whimper. And please the gods you’ve kept copies.
** Including on-line dictionaries and a thesaurus or two, since my Oxford reference shelf, never the most stable of delicate artistic souls, has lately taken to responding ‘iFinger did not find anything matching blah’ when blah is a perfectly good word like assythment or gorcrow or archfiend^ or piepowder. This is very undermining to the middle-aged brain, which is getting pretty gappy anyway. iFinger is also an absolutist: you either get an answer or you get ‘did not find’. The on-liners tend to offer alternatives from which you may be able to grope your way toward what you were looking for.
^ Just to be sure I wasn’t being unfair, I looked up ‘fiend’. It said, among other things,+ ‘see table at devil’. So I looked up the table at devil+ and found listed Arch-fiend. Okay, I said, and typed in ‘Arch-fiend’. iFinger did not find anything matching . . .
+ Synonyms included hellhound
++ Good book title: The Table at Devil. It’ll be scary. I don’t want to read it.
*** For example there’s an article today in the Observer Magazine called Sleepless? Stressed? Anxious? Exhausted? by William Leith, which is about the fact that this is increasingly the norm in the first world. Some of us go on to develop ME/CFS or some similar label-able but un-pin-down-able disturbance, and some of us are just tired. One of the key ingredients in the modern developed-world overload is its 24-hour-a-day-ness: and first in that list is the 24/7 internet. And before several dozen passionate web bunnies write in berating me for demonising^ the web, I’m not. I’m a web bunny too, in my cranky, middle-aged, Facebook- and Twitter-less, uncool way. But I’m also someone with no ‘off’ switch—which is why I’ve got ME. The web is like the biggest toy box you ever dreamed of when you were four—it’s not just the shopping, it’s the everything—but Mum doesn’t make you put your toys away and go to bed at 7 pm any more.
But the small personal irony here is severalfold: in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have read the article if I weren’t banned from on line. I spent last night—my Saturday night off—doing autumn plant orders, and I was hoping to finish^^ this afternoon. On line, of course. In the second place, I thought, blog. And wanted to go on line and find a link to the article for you. And in the third place, William Leith has written a book: ‘It’s about what it’s like to be middle-aged and exhausted. It’s called Bits of Me Are Falling Apart.’ I thought: okay, I’m there. And wanted to go on line and look it up, see if it’s out yet, and if there are any reviews.
Sigh.
. . . Okay, that was implausibly easy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/12/chronic-fatigue-stress-modern-life
Oh dear: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/09/philosophy.society
But take your pick: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/14/william-leith-falling-apart
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/902746/part_2/really-not-happy-at-all.thtml
^ or archfiending
^^ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I do try to do the majority of my plant ordering in two huge, terrifying wodges, summer and winter, for autumn and spring, so that aside from the lists that I fanatically keep+ I have some sort of sense of what and how much I’ve already ordered.++
+ keeping does not necessarily mean being able to lay hands on when desired
++ Too much! Too frelling much!
† Although strictly speaking it wasn’t the bells. Hey! It wasn’t me boss! Not this time!
†† Or only in random outbursts. We’ve been having random-outburst weather the last couple of days.
††† Peter is 81 and a half, and I worry easily
‡ The fire brigade—who was applied to at some point this morning—concurs that humidity can set the frellers off. But they had no magic for deaf and hostile reset buttons.
‡‡ The tall neighbour. The second smoke alarm requires a ladder to get at for ordinary humans, which is bizarre, not least because the previous tenant was seriously short. Maybe he had excellent aim with a broomstick.
SUNSHINE visible
So back at the beginning of April I got a polite little query in my email asking if a journalist named Jayne Nelson* who was writing an article for the Special Vampire Issue of SFX Magazine** might chat to me about SUNSHINE?
The first thing that happened is that I thought oh, cool, sure . . . and forgot to answer.
The second thing that happened, about a week later, is that I belatedly wrote back that I’d be happy to chat except it was probably too late–?, thinking, you moron, here’s a British magazine trying to pay some attention to SUNSHINE . . . and I’m being a cretin.***
Only it wasn’t too late. And we had an excellent chat, based on the simple fact that she really liked SUNSHINE, although I don’t envy her trying to take notes, since when I’m nervous–and interviews always make me nervous†–I tend to talk at a million miles an hour.†† I admit that some of the resulting ‘quotations’ make me giggle because I doubt that’s exactly what I said††† but she was nice enough to let me see the article before it went to the printer and while I’d begged for this favour I’d also promised I wouldn’t ask for changes unless she made me say something like ‘I think all women should be just like June Cleaver’ and she didn’t.‡
She’d said that they were going to do a ‘feature’ on SUNSHINE but I was still pretty startled when she sent me the layout, which is what you see here. ‡‡ Golly. They meant it, about the feature.
ARRRRRRRGH. NO, THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU SEE HERE, BECAUSE IT HAS DISAPPEARED. I WILL ASK BLOGMOM TO REINSTATE AT AT HER EARLIEST CONVENIENCE. ARRRRRRRRGH.
[Blogmom: alrighty then]
And while I can’t find any mention of it on the SFX site‡‡‡, the Special Vampire Issue is supposed to have hit the stands today. So please go buy it and revel in a terrific plug for SUNSHINE.§
She also said the editor said I could ‘quote a few paragraphs’, so:
What comes before Twilight? Sunshine, of course.
. . . The book did well in the States but struggled in the UK (not for want of good reviews, however; SFX gave it five stars). While Meyer’s vampire saga ran off with the book sales . . . Sunshine has stayed on the sidelines. And yet everybody who does read it seems to adore it. §§ . . . McKinley is . . . inundated with requests for a sequel . . . the author is waiting for the ‘Story Council’ to send her the inspiration for the next part (“It’s so frustrating,” she says, of the people who beg her to write it, “I got another email just yesterday saying, ‘Won’t you please reconsider?’ Reconsidering has nothing to do with it! I would love to write a sequel!”).
. . . Excuse us if we don’t mince words here – Sunshine deserves to be bigger than Twilight. With a cast of well-rounded characters . . . a fully realised universe and its strong sense of the otherworldly . . . this book is so intricate and beautifully shaped it’s almost criminal that it’s not The Next Big Thing. . . .
. . . Buy Sunshine. It’s The Next Big Thing That Should Be.
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* http://jaynenelson.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/nelsons-column-er-blog
*** Expletives deleted. I worked for that restrained, courteous ’cretin’.
† Like ringing handbells for weddings
†† I’ve told the story several times that the first speech I ever wrote, which I think was after BEAUTY came out, but it might not have been till after SWORD, lasted me years, because I read it off so fast no one could hear me and therefore wouldn’t recognize it if they heard it again.
††† And then again it might be. Nerves have an effect on brain function too.
‡ http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_P-0bkMcgIVE/SEX6ILPwbcI/AAAAAAAAAuw/ADH9YTnYfM8/s400/june_cleaver.jpg
I was hoping to find a photo that had not only the pearls but the cocktail dress and the high heels under the apron while she makes cookies. Pearls alone are not conclusive–I wear pearls while I make cookies. I like pearls. (I like cookies.)^ But this will have to do.
And anyone culturally deprived enough not to know about Leave It to Beaver . . . lucky you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver It was one of the many plagues and blights on my young proto-feminist life.
^ I even occasionally wear an apron. Possibly the one that says, I want it all. And I want it covered in chocolate.
‡ It is now obvious that she wouldn’t. But I didn’t know that to begin with. And I’ve had some very peculiar dealings with other journalists. Very peculiar other journalists.
‡‡ The quote with my name after it that they’ve decided to pull out and headline–which I think you can’t quite read^–says: “I’m not terribly interested in graphic sex or endless foreplay”. Siiiiiiiigh. Context is all.
^ Jayne originally sent me the layout pdf as my copy of the text too. And I couldn’t read the freller: the type kept breaking up. So she sent it to me as a Word document as well. But this afternoon when I was trying to stick the layout into tonight’s blog entry as a photo, it suddenly got all huge and clear. Arrrrrgh. Jayne had said that SFX didn’t mind if I quoted from the article . . . but I doubt they’d be pleased if I inadvertently published the whole thing. So Blogmom shrank it for me.
‡‡‡ More siiiiiiighing.
§ Any BUFFYites out there, Jayne says there’s an interview with James Marsters in it too.
§§ Mmm. . . . she should see some of my mail. . . .
Doom
Niall will be picking me up for the handbell wedding in less than twelve hours.*
I feel sick.
I’m so demoralised I actually cut a rose and brought it indoors. I’ve told you I can’t bear to cut anything, haven’t I? Well, in a garden this small I can always just stand in the door and look at it, whatever it is. But you don’t get the smell while you’re working, that way. And the smell of a rose makes you work faster. No, really. You should try it.
This is Mme Isaac Pereire. And she smells divine. She’s one of the roses–Souvenir de la Malmaison is another one–a single one of whose flowers will positively fill the room with scent. Granted this is a small kitchen. Even so.
Oh yes, and that is George V and Queen Mary on the vase. Well–unless you’re a royal fetishist you may not have ID’d precisely which monarchs you behold, but you’ll have noticed it’s some royals. Yes. Back in the States I had a very, very minor collection of tacky British-royal china–tacky and expensive, just by the way: what price your favoured kitsch–and then I moved over here and discovered that the British take their royal family seriously. Okay, leaving now. But Peter thought it was so funny that I collected the stuff that periodically he breaks out and gives me a piece. This vase is one of his. Okay, I admit it, I like it.
And this is Mme Isaac outdoors. Listen, you’re just going to have to resign yourself to The Standard Photo of a few of my favourite roses rolling round every year. Like this shot of this year’s Mme Isaac. And her raspberry smell is as strong as her raspberry pink. (If she’s not coming over as a really dark raspberry pink, move your screen around till she does.)
And Queenie (Konigen von Danemark). Another favourite, and my standard answer to, What’s your favourite rose? She’s also got a fabulous smell but it’s lighter and sweeter than Mme Isaac or Souvenir.
There was a precedent for bringing a Mme Isaac indoors: I’d cut two of the rain-damaged Souvenirs when I took her raincoat off, and put them in the kitchen, and coming downstairs in the morning was like walking into a sea of rose-smell.
I lost half a dozen Souvenirs to the rain, but the rest of ‘em are blooming like anything. Pale flowers are almost impossible to photo en masse because they white out against the foliage, but you get the idea. The white rose along the right-hand wall is Souvenir. Up at the top spreading along the left wall is Sombreuil. And that’s next door’s climbing Cecile Brunner coming over the wall. I don’t mind this at all. Climbing Cecile is a monster–I have her at Third House, although she hasn’t really got going yet–the bush one is a modest little creature: I have her here, in Mme Isaac’s and Fantin Latour’s shadow. That’s Fantin climbing over the (daphne) shrub slightly left of centre: she’s not a climber, but she’s slightly more of a monster than I had entirely allowed for (I knew I was being silly planting a climbing Souvenir in this garden) and so I’m kind of stapling her down where I can. Unfortunately I can’t get a good photo of the entirety of her.
. . . .IT HAS TAKEN FRELLING WORDPRESS AN HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES TO LOAD A FEW MISERABLE LITTLE PHOTOGRAPHS. I HAVE WASHED THE DISHES, SWEPT THE FLOOR [sic], PUT ON A LOAD OF LAUNDRY, CAUGHT UP WITH MY BACK ISSUES OF THE RINGING WORLD AND FINISHED GOING OUT OF MY MIND.
I HOPE YOU GUYS APPRECIATE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.
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* You all think I’m a complete bell junkie, don’t you? Niall is ringing a (tower) quarter (peal) tomorrow morning and a tower wedding after our handbells. I knew about the tower wedding, which I danced narrowly out of the clutches of myself^, but I only found out he was also ringing the quarter tonight, when he and Leo (who is in the quarter, but Leo is not ringing any weddings) were discussing it at practise. You’re ringing the quarter too? I said, appalled. He blinked at me. Yes, he said. But I am a sad, sick person.
^ Which I think may have been more of been a foot-shooting really. In Vicky’s absence I’m responsible for the band for the wedding on the 20th, and one of the ways you get people to agree to ring for you is by ringing for them. One of the reasons Vicky is so effective a tower secretary is that everyone owes her favours. And with frelling Niall around the plea that you’re already ringing one wedding that day suddenly sounds really feeble.
Blog tech
There were undesirable off stage excitements last night. I have no excuse for writing my entry late yesterday* except that PEGASUS is in a phase where it likes to torment me by producing words about one every ten minutes, including ‘a’ and ‘the’. Long term I’m not hugely bothered**; I can feel the story is there. Short term . . . I wish I’d grown up to be a fireperson. Or a sous-chef. Or a motorcycle messenger. Or a bookbinder. No. Not a bookbinder. Anyway. . . . And I have–ahem!–perhaps mentioned once or twice that my ME seems to be here for an extended visit. So I find myself working later in the evenings . . . which means I get to the blog later . . . and I haven’t time for it to be later because the ME is telling me I need more sleep.***
So last night I wrote the entry on the laptop over (late) dinner at the cottage†, saved it as a draft on the blog, closed down in the kitchen and moved upstairs to my desktop.††
And the blog wouldn’t let me in. Oh, hi, Robin, that’s not your password. No. It’s not. No, that isn’t your password either. And furthermore that’s not your email address. Go away, horrible fraudulent person. –In theory I don’t have to log in: it’s supposed to remember the computer(s).††† But about once a week it makes me log in just because it feels like it. Usually the automatic password gadget works. Every now and then it doesn’t, because the administrative ghoul chooses to remember the wrong password. I know this because it’s the wrong length. Thereupon the blog usually grandly denies me entry . . . freezes . . . then coughs, groans and flickers for about ten seconds, and dumps me inside after all with bad grace.
Not last night. Last night it was iron maiden and thumbscrews all the way.‡ After about ten minutes of inputting, re-inputting, vari-putting, retro-putting, flaming-pain-in-the-backside-putting, thumping, whacking, closing down and starting up again, and screaming–screaming is the basic currency of all computer communication–I wrote a desperate email to ALL my moderators, saying, HEEEEELP, is anyone out there???–and several of them were, fortunately, and after another ten or so minutes of frelling around I got in . . . although I don’t know how or why‡‡ because I don’t think it has anything to do with anything I did or was told to do. I think the blog spontaneously recovered from its psychotic break and started frelling functioning again, like the hum of the electricity coming back on after the snowstorm/hurricane/Uncle Japheth got drunk again and wrapped his truck around the power pole, no, he’s fine but the power pole is kindling and all the wires fell down.‡‡‡
Thanks to all my mods. My heroines. And Blogmom today told me what to do to try and prevent this all happening again.
. . . Last night, however, I was left drenched in adrenaline§ and it took me hours to go to sleep . . . and then Atlas knocked on the door at 9 am this morning, which is a perfectly reasonable hour to knock on someone’s door, except when they have ME and are attempting to sleep in after a really rotten night. So I am only nominally either awake or operative today. But Blackbear, last night painfully reminded of STAR TREK’s The Paradise Syndrome§§, today sent me this, which I thought I would share with you. Two pinnacles of filmic glory here twined together for their greater conjoined effulgence. Yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ieOaPWQUEY
Actually several mods have sent me Extremely Strange Links today. Hmmmmmm.
* * *
*I do have an excuse tonight. Handbells. Niall’s secret cadre of handbell ringers from the other side of the county came here, which with Colin and me made five. Mostly we rang major–eight bells–since royal–ten bells^–felt a little beyond most of us. There was some vying to be the person who got to sit out.
^ Ugh. I think ten bells is royal. My ringing books are all at some other house and I’m failing to find it on line. I don’t venture into the stratosphere of super-multi-bell ringing all that often.
** Bothered, yes, I’m always bothered. Being able to write stories-that-strangers-will-pay-me-to-read at all seems like the most extraordinary luck and why me? I have to hope that the streak continues, however, since after over thirty years of talking to myself and keeping weird hours I assume I’m unemployable. Not to mention that I like it this way.
*** And I will eventually simply run out of hours between, oh, midnight and six a.m., say.
† Or to be more precise, dinner over the laptop. I had no idea I was such an untidy feeder until there was a computer screen involved. I used to eat over my typewriter and barring crumbs between the keys it never seemed that hazardous an undertaking. I think computer screens attract salad dressing and soup the way they attract dust.
†† To the hellhounds’ delight. Eat faster! they say. We want to sleep in our favourite bed in your office! Poor sad hellhounds however are so brainwashed after two and a half years of being almost constantly under my eye, on account of extreme digestive behaviour, that they won’t go upstairs–or anyway stay upstairs–without me. They come creeping back downstairs again and flop down in the crate in the kitchen with put-upon looks. Eat faster! they say.
††† Computers may of course be the problem, but I feel the internet should be up to it. It can juggle planets and figure out pi to sixty-three gazillion places, it can remember more than one computer on a blog.
‡ I wonder if it’s in league with PEGASUS?
‡‡ And am I worrying about posting tonight? Especially since it’s already late? Yes.
‡‡‡ No, I hadn’t tried going downstairs again and turning on the laptop. If I hadn’t roused a few mods, that would have been next. I’d've had to bring it upstairs, of course: the hellhounds would never have forgiven me if I’d dragged them back downstairs. And how stupid are you going to feel using a laptop on your knees when there’s a perfectly good and several-times-the-size desktop sitting six inches away?
§ Which, barring those occasions when you’re sprinting away from the hungry tiger or the furious husband/wife/black knight at the ford, is not desirable anyway, but especially so when you’ve just done the adrenaline spike thing a few days ago when your hellhound started bleeding out of his ass^ and oh by the way you have ME, one of whose definitions is ‘dead adrenals from overuse’.
^ There has been no return of this devoutly to be eschewed symptom. He’s even, you know, eating. Sometimes.
§§ Perhaps fortunately she’d already helped me break into my own blog before she had the chance to read the entry