Oh go away with that Christmas
Today I was roused out at about 8:30 again* . . . this time by the postman.** Two postpersons. I heard the first one [gender therefore unknown] and put a pillow over my head but I wasn’t quite asleep by the time the second one showed up and started hammering in that brisk, you-love-me-really manner that delivery persons are unappealingly prone to. So I did my slither-into-dressing-gown-front-door-key-grab thing and stumbled downstairs. Unnnnnh. One of the parcels wasn’t even about Christmas—and the one that was about Christmas was boring back-up stuff to the main event, which has already arrived.*** Now that’s just unfair.
There were handbells today just like any Thursday instead of three days before Christmas.† Hellhounds and I hurtled back to the cottage because I was desperate for an excuse to get away from my computer earlier rather than later—usually I throw all of us into Wolfgang at the last minute and hope to arrive before my visitors do††—which meant we were outdoors in daylight twice today, even if this latter was a fainting, fading, twilight sort of daylight. Better than nothing. Including the seeing what I’m tripping over and/or what canine effluvia I’m picking up. The electric torch clenched between the teeth mainly casts shadows, all of which look alike.
Abigailmm
Rejoice, for the longest night is past, and the sun is returning!
Yes. Totally. I am more conscious of daylight every year—every winter, when I am a year older than the last time I had to do winter. I’ve been hanging on a bit better this year than some by making a deliberate effort to have the hellhounds’ longer hurtle as near to midday as possible—it’s way too easy (especially for someone who keeps unsocial hours anyway) to hurtle briefly in the morning so as to get back to my desk sooner, and then do the longer hurtle at night when I have no brain left and might as well be outdoors shambling around after hellhounds. But I begin to feel as if I live underground or at least in the Arctic Circle—I would so not be a happy bunny living above 66°33’ north—and I know vitamin D is a wonder drug, but handfuls of the stuff is not as effective for me††† as a regular hour of midday daylight. As midday as you can get, this time of year, when the sun gives the impression of slinking around the horizon and looking for hedgerows to hide behind.‡
AJLR
I think there must be a bit of herbaceous plant in my ancestry because this time of year I’m a sere and crumbled being, just waiting for the sun to come back. Why didn’t we evolve with a hibernation option?!
Hibernation, yes. And in return, during the long days of summer, we don’t need to sleep at all. Think of all the GARDENING we could get done.
I took a couple of the biggest [non-rose] thugs out of the cottage garden this autumn so now standing in the kitchen door waiting for hellhounds to pee and come indoors again without sampling any of the dangling indoor-jungle foliage I keep looking at all this freshly available space. If I didn’t have A NOVEL TO WRITE and 1,000,000,000 more doodles still to do . . .
PamAdams
|
I am still doodling, of course, but I admit the factory conveyor belt has slowed. Nothing else is going to get there before Christmas |
Ha! Mine just arrived yesterday. And when I opened Deerskin to read a random page, I found myself in the chapter where she saves the puppies. ‘All still alive?’ So naturally, I had to keep on reading…..
Oh good. One of my nightmares at the moment is worrying about things that don’t arrive. There are a number of wistful people inquiring if theirs have gone out yet and the answer, I’m afraid, is usually no. ‡‡ But I’m challenging over three decades of bad postal karma by having run this auction/sale at all and I’m hoping that the sheer chutzpah of the assault will amuse the evil gods of such matters, and let me and my envelopes pass. Not to mention the doodle shop Blogmom is constructing for the future. One thing at a time.
Which at the moment is going to bed. . . .
* * *
* jmeadows
. . . a couple weeks ago there was a strange barking that kept me up half the night, too. Maybe it’s the same dog! I haven’t heard him since, so I guess he could have made it to England. . .
I hope he is well on his way to Indonesia. I’m sure he and komodo dragons will get along really well.
** Isn’t it charming the way the advertising says, ONLY £17.52 FOR THIS FABULOUS ITEM THAT NO ONE SHOULD BE WITHOUT IN OUR MODERN HIGH TECH WORLD!, and you think, okay, I need a Christmas present and the price is right . . . and then it turns out that to make the dranglefabbing thing work you need a spinglefropper for £123.19 and a zadazdad for £94.82, and if you’re wise you’ll also get the extended warranty for £1,377.40. Feh.
And then before you regain your balance and sense of cynicism they start deluging you with emails for bargain accessories.
*** It SHOULD be written in LETTERS OF FIRE all over both the post office and all local delivery system head offices that IF THAT VICIOUS COW AT ROSE COTTAGE ON THE MOUTH OF HELL CUL DE SAC ISN’T IN, LEAVE THE THING. Or prepare to lose body parts when she comes after it. Gah.
† I do have to fetch the Christmas stuff down from the attic at Third House. . . . soon.
Exchange between husband and wife in response to last mention of Christmas stuff on the blog:
From: PeterDickinson@famousBritishauthor.com
To: RobinMcKinley@crankyAmericanauthor.com
Subject: Brilliant Idea!!!!!!
Why don’t you put all the Christmas decorations up at the cottage?
From: RobinMcKinley@verycrankywithnosenseofhumourAmericanauthor.com
To: PeterDickinson@funnyfunnyfamousBritishauthor.com
Subject: !!!!!!!!
Ha ha ha ha ha. Because then we’d have to have CHRISTMAS here and YOU WOULDN’T LIKE THAT. Also, your sitting room is probably more photogenic. It’s all about the blog, all the time.
. . . Scuppered by his own argument a few days previous. Mwa hahahahaha.
†† Colin^ was early. Will you STOP with the early already??
But look what Gemma brought me. Isn’t she LOVELY? Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL? Hells. Maybe we have to go ahead with the whole Christmas show after all.
Hellhound bowls and homeopathic remedy to the left, breakfast apples at the top and TEA to the right.
^ Colin wanted to know if Bronwen had had a good time. Yes, I said, she’s threatening to come back.
Niall wanted to know if she was ringing handbells. I said I thought she was ringing tunes because that was what was available where she is, and he looked distressed.+ Oh, and have I mentioned we’re ringing handbells next Thursday as well? Hey, why not? Everybody else is on holiday.
+ There may have been hand wringing. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
††† Your experience may vary
‡ Except of course for those memorable occasions when it’s shining directly in your eyes no matter which direction you’re going. I blogged about this once: entire hurtles, so heading away from the cottage, the mews, or Wolfgang, making a big circle or other lumpy non-geometric shape and ending up at the point of beginning, and having had the sun in my eyes the entire frelling way. All right, you physicists! Explain that one! This is totally a medium-sized star in a nothing-much solar system in an obscure arm of the Milky Way having a snit!^
^ Clearly the sun doesn’t like winter either, since this only happens in the winter. I’ll worry about the implications of the southern hemisphere some other blog. Presumably it’ll have something to do with the sun picking on whoever’s available when it’s in a bad mood.
‡‡ Victim of my own success. Grovelling apologies. It’s a couple of things: neither Blogmom, who ran the admin end, nor I, drawing pen poised, were anything like ready for the response we had—thank you again, everybody—but even another fangs with muffin—I mean another muffin with fangs—requires a little trickle of brain energy to accomplish. Even if I weren’t frantically trying to get a novel written there’d be an upper limit on how many doodles I can turn out in a day that would have to do with focus rather than hours I’m (more or less) awake.
Bells, with stomachache
Today has been a stomachache, punctuated by way too many bells. And—when I’m feeling this rough—there are also too many hellhounds. Importunate they all are. Bong! Bark!* I fell out of bed this morning aware that all was not well in the nether regions but assuming (vigorously**) it wasn’t serious. Absorbed my first megadram of caffeine. Registered that strange green fog hovering over hellhound crate was a jungle.*** Oh. Eeep. Further register that it’s cold out there.† Extra reasons for objecting to getting up this early.†† Six woolly jumpers and two pairs of long johns. These prove useful when the Black Knight at the Ford leaps out from behind a geranium and demands my sword or my life. Don’t be daft, I say. This is my kitchen. There aren’t any rivers, with or without fords, in a kitchen.
There aren’t jungles in kitchens either, says the Black Knight, pressing the unpleasantly sharp end of his long pointy sword against my breastbone, which is protected only by six woolly jumpers, which are nonetheless better than nothing. Now, are you going to fight me or am I going to run you through for a lily-livered coward?
I’m going to set my fierce, slavering hellhounds on you, I say.
Hellhounds? says the Black Knight, blanching. Oh, all right, have it your way. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice little set-to? It would wake you right up. Much better than caffeine.
Not today, thanks, I say. But feel free to stop round for a cup of tea some time.
. . . I was a minute or two late to the tower, but the other three of us were still standing shivering in front of the electric fire so that was all right. We did eventually have six pairs of hands, but . . . it’s the week before Christmas, we have three service rings today, it would be nice to have a bit more than the skeleton crew.
After Ring #1 I went home and viewed the jungle.††† Now beginneth the Great Windowsill Wedge. How many leafy green pots of the cold-allergic can I winter over with the least amount of extra nonsense?‡ After about the six hundred and forty-third, however, which I hung in a sling dependent from a curtain rail, ‡‡ I had to lie down for a bit, and when I got up again to attend to hellhound obligations, somehow or other . . . the jungle sitting on top of the hellhound crate was just as thick and impenetrable as before.
Sigh.
So we hurtled, and then hellhounds had lunch and I did not, and then I stared at SHADOWS for a while and thought about late-mid-life career changes‡‡‡. Then I went to ring the carol service at Old Eden. Can’t you beg off? said Peter (and various friends by email). No, I said. We’ll be lucky if we have six ringers for the six bells. In the event we had five to begin with, and I pleaded to be let off ringing up, and allowed to stick to the treble.§ I left afterward without finding out if the mince pies were going to be offered to the bell ringers.§§
Then it was to do all over again at New Arcadia. Five ringers for eight bells—eventually a sixth. But no seventh and no eighth. Can I ring a touch of Plain Bob Doubles while fading rapidly into the Shadowwraiths’ realm?§§§ Afterward I tottered back to the cottage and brought back in again everything I hadn’t managed to fit on windowsills earlier. Plus several things I’d remembered too late last night and fossicked around for today . . . which do seem mysteriously still alive. And got rid of a few more indoor slugs.
Finally re-hurtled (relatively) patient hellhounds at about 7:30 . . . and it’s already ice underfoot. Crunch crunch crunch iiiieeeeeeeee.
Have risked supper.# I should go home early, before the roads get too exciting. But . . . maybe . . . I’ll . . . just . . . lie . . . on . . . the . . . sofa . . . for . . . a . . . bit . . . first.
* * *
* I’m not sure I’ve ever recognised how similar bells and hellhounds really are. Indecipherable minds of their own. Mostly silent and quiescent but alarming when roused. Needs yanking. Needs regular yanking or grows cranky and morose. Weighs more than you think when hits the end of the lead. Unpredictably unbiddable—except you can more or less prophesy that they’ll be at their worst if anyone you want to make a good impression on is present. Hates cold weather. Medical bills expensive. Not interested in food.^
I rarely take bells to lie on the sofa with me however.
^ Although in fact I have a hellhound beleaguering me at this moment. Darkness is having a little holiday from not eating.
We haven’t eaten since yesterday, he says.
You’ve eaten twice since yesterday, I reply. Once at about 2 a.m. and lunch.
Yesterday, he says. You’re always moaning about how bad your memory is. Lunch was yesterday.+ And furthermore, you’re eating chicken. You can’t expect me to not eat since yesterday gracefully when you’re eating chicken.
+ Hellhound time. Okay, I wonder if we can cross it with Mandelbrot sets to get that thirty-six hour day?
** This would be the last time all day I have been vigorous.
*** Full of wildlife. We won’t get into the slugs-in-the-kitchen situation, my stomachache is enough reality for one day . . . AAAAAAAUGH. EXTRA PROTEIN JUST DISCOVERED IN MY BROCCOLI.^ Sodding flangdangling organic. If this stuff were sprayed with Toxic Planet Death I wouldn’t have these problems.
^ This is actually when it happened. I am not juggling to make a better story.
† So at least the indoor aspect of the jungle was worthwhile.
†† Although when hellhounds finally got their first hurtle at about noon the footpaths were still frozen. Crunch crunch crunch crunch.
††† And the slugs. And the Biggest Caterpillar in the Universe which is busy eating the geraniums in the sitting room ARRRRGH. I found one Nearly the Biggest Caterpillar about a week ago and was hoping that was the end. But no. And the crap it’s leaving is about the size of ball-bearings at this point. Why can’t I SEE it?? I’ve started having uneasy thoughts about those trompe d’oeil pictures where (for example) the hero is looking around for the dragon and is standing in the dragon’s mouth.
‡ How much of it is still alive? How much of it is planning on staying alive? How many Caterpillars that Ate Brooklyn and Are Eyeing Up Birmingham are lurking among the foliage? After all, there was a Black Knight. And his sword. And his horse. Oh, didn’t I mention the horse?
‡‡ Note to self: prop curtain rails. There are now four hundred and twelve plant pots dangling from them, variously attached.
‡‡‡ I fancy something simple and straightforward this time. Experimental physicist.^ Formula-one driver. Nursery-school teacher.
^ I’d be rubbish at the theoretical.
§ This didn’t work, of course. I was bumped off the treble—oh, you’ll be fine on the two, said Niall—as soon as our only-rings-treble sixth ringer appeared for a quick pull between passing around the mince pies downstairs. This is one of those testing-your-auto-pilot moments. Can you ring a touch of Grandsire doubles when your stomach feels like the Black Knight did run you through with his sword?^
It was worse when we—even more briefly—had a seventh ringer. Wonderful, I said, I can sit out. Oh, Robin, said Niall. Would you please stand with Monty? —GODS. I’d rather frelling ring than mind someone.^^
Speaking of Niall . . . three service rings did rein him in a little, but he still said to me as we were leaving Old Eden, with forty-five minutes till ringing for the carol service at New Arcadia: We’ve only got forty-five minutes. We could teach Monty to ring handbells. . . .
Does Monty want to learn to ring handbells? I said, grasping at straws.
I haven’t the least idea, said Niall.
Whereupon I ran for Wolfgang.
^ Today? Yes. Tomorrow? I hope to be recovered tomorrow. I would rather go wrong and have no excuse than stay right and have this excuse.
^^ Nobody died.
§§ But see previous footnote.
§§§ Yes. But I wouldn’t want to count on it.
# Have fed hellhounds. They ate.
Eight days till Christmas
I’ve just been ordering Christmas presents for me on Peter’s credit card. Mwa hahahahahahaha.
Well, he asked. He says, I don’t have enough Christmas presents for you. Gee that’s really too bad, I say, trying not to slaver too openly. I’m sure (I add hastily) what you have is fine. [Crosses fingers behind back.] * Do you have any suggestions? he says, politely averting his eyes from both the drool and the crossed fingers. Um . . . well, I say, trying to sound bashful, there’s that fabulous new book on ROSES that you found the review for, that I keep not quite committing to buying for myself**, and you know maybe an extreme book of scary origami?***
Do it, he says. My wallet is in my leather jacket.† And then he ambles gently over to the sofa and lies down for a nap.
The power. The power.††
Christmas. Great big feh.††† I’ve spent most of the day‡ hacking my way through excruciatingly slow web sites overburdened with other frantic people doing last-minute Christmas shopping. My memory, not one of my strong points at the best of times, managed to let me down disastrously in a couple of instances—most of the last-minute sites let you order up till Monday but I’d managed to forget that one or two in my mind’s eye aren’t last-minute sites. ‘Five to seven working days’ does not ravish me with joy, ‘five to ten working days’ makes me whimper and ‘out of stock, we will contact you when available’ makes me fling myself on the floor in a transport of I don’t know what, but it looks interesting to the hellhounds.
Meanwhile all these gorblimey physicists going on about the impossibility of everything. How about if they whiffle some of those infinitely complex non-boundaries of the Mandelbrot set into/out of time? I’m sure the answer to the thirty-six hour day is tucked away in there somewhere, if they’d settle down and apply themselves. There’s a Nobel Prize in it for sure. Come on, guys! Function!
* * *
* I’ve tried the ‘if you have an overwhelming desire to help me pay for the new laptop please don’t restrain yourself’^ but he says, no, no, you need something to open. Aw gee. He’s always been like this—for someone who has to overcome deep-rooted repugnance at the very idea of receiving a gift^^, he has a very romantic notion about giving them. And furthermore, he says, with a gleam in his eye, you need something that will look good on the blog.
Hmm. Okay, he has a point.
^ And he did help with the iPad. Although that was before I realised PEG II was an evil fiend from hell/second book in a tr*l*gy and that I wasn’t going to turn it in last August and was therefore about to run out of money instead.+
+ This means that the old laptop will lurch on almost failing for at least another year. If I hadn’t bought the new laptop it would have blown up in a toxic cloud of sticky purple smoke last week, melting the William Morris oilcloth, leaving a very nasty mark on the table, and causing me to run away to sea.~ Yes, this is still the old laptop. I don’t have time to learn a new frelling operating system.
~ I don’t think they take fifty-nine-year-old women as able-bodied sailors, do they? Well that’s out then.
^^ He was unusually well-mannered yesterday.+ I don’t think he ran out of the room even once. And he seems quite pleased with his phone.
+ The big problem with visitors is the absence of leftovers. Like, a glass of soothing champagne tonight.
** I’ve now spent easily its list price in maths and physics books. But then I didn’t already have umpty-gazillion books on maths and physics.
*** No, I have at least twelve thumbs. I also have a slight problem about empty flat surfaces to practise folding on.^ But maths and physics are not enough! Origami is also important in SHADOWS and I need to know something about it too, before I Schrodinger’s-cat^^ it all up for the story! Why couldn’t I write about something easy, like vampires or dragons?
^ Now even worse than usual. I spent most of an hour I didn’t have this evening bringing the jungle indoors. But we’re apparently supposed to have several degrees of frost tonight and . . . I, er, folded. I have lost remarkably little so far and I see all those gallant geraniums pressing themselves against the warm house-wall and shivering and I feel like a murderer. One of the curious aspects of going back to the cottage at, oh, 3 a.m. or so is that you probably know by then if you’re having a frost or not. Ahem. The mews courtyard freezes at least two degrees sooner than I do at the cottage so if I have to claw Wolfgang free of the clutches of the Ice Giants it doesn’t necessarily mean that those faint popping noises you hear are geraniums giving up the ghost back at the cottage. We’ve had two or three frosty nights thus far when I’ve gritted my teeth and gone to bed anyway^^^ but last night caught me out. I didn’t think it was going to freeze and then it did, and pretty smartly too. The geraniums are definitely looking a little crumbly around the edges. ARRRRRGH. So when I went back to the cottage on the second hurtle with crisp-weather-enlivened hellhounds and it was already only about two degrees off freezing I . . . brought everything I could find in the dark . . . indoors. And the best thing about this? The BEST? That my kitchen—and I hope it will only be my kitchen—will be full of revitalised slugs tomorrow morning which were hibernating and believe that spring has come early. . . .
^^ http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+tote_bag,137590655 Hee hee hee hee.
^^^ I don’t have TIIIIIIIIME. Listen, all of you, at approximately 9:30 GMT tomorrow morning, I want any of you who happen to be awake to face in a Hampshire-ward direction and shout, YOU DON’T HAVE TIIIIIIIIME, because that’s when Niall, as we pull our coats on and prepare to descend the ladder after service ring, will tackle me (again) on the subject of handbells with Titus tomorrow evening.
† Last year’s Christmas present, you know.^
^ Last year? Two years ago? I’m too old to be bothered to make fine distinctions between mere years.
†† Sigh. Yes, he does read the blog.
††† I don’t have time for Christmas. And I have to get the frelling Christmas stuff down from my attic at Third House this year. It’s been at the mews before this, so I’ve been able to flounce and sulk at Peter for not hotfooting to accomplish this. Not only do I not get to flounce and sulk at someone else, I have to frelling do something.
‡ Barring bringing the jungle indoors
Wet and Shrill
It’s absolutely tipping it down out there. Again.* Yesterday Peter had warned me that the weather was going to turn torrential by evening, so hellhounds and I had had an extra-specially hurtley hurtle in the morning, looking over our shoulders at the vast sneering grey bulk of the coming storm.** I then had my head down over SHADOWS all afternoon and ignored the warning signs of tempest.*** By the time we got out it was sheeting and hellhounds were not amused. I have raincoats for them and they were still not amused. Look, guys, I said, pee and crap fast and we can go indoors again. I think internal systems tend to shut down under meteorological abuse, however, and we didn’t have a long walk but we didn’t have a short one either—with me hauling them along at the farthest extents of their long leads while they gave me the full treatment: tucked tails, humpy backs, flattened ears, and laser-eyed reproachful looks. Mind you I’d much rather have lap-of-luxury-prone hellhounds than these hearty bounding things that think weather trying to beat you to the ground the better to drown you is an adventure—I’ve dogsat too many working hunting dogs who can’t wait to rush outside and look for grouse or tapirs or whatever the hell and can’t understand why you’re being such a poor sport about a little rain/hail/hurricane-force wind/alligators. But yesterday was extreme. Today would have been even more extreme except that the dog-minder tells time better than I do and she took them out on their afternoon hurtle before it started getting dangerous out there. It was starting to rain ominously when I came out after my voice lesson, and the wipers were on high-extra-plus by the time I got home.
What with everything else going on I think I haven’t mentioned that I’ve had rotten week for singing. I think there’s been some rudeness from a minor virus involved, but the result has been that I haven’t wanted to risk aggravating the scratchy-almost-sore croaky situation. ARRRRRGH. This is the sort of thing that if I weren’t trying to sing I wouldn’t even notice. † This is why singers are so neurotic, Nadia said cheerfully. I’ve told you that before.
Yes, but . . . Okay, it’s much worse— much worse—for a professional singer. But if you sound like Jonas Kaufmann or Deborah Voigt it’s understandable that you get a little stressed if your shining, high-mettled thoroughbred comes lame out of its loose box one day. As a singer I’m one of those Thelwell ponies where you can’t tell how many legs it has, let alone whether it’s sound on all of them or not. When I get discouraged because I’m sounding even more rubbish than usual it’s like don’t be frelling ridiculous.
So it hasn’t been a good week.†† Also when you can’t practise enough you can’t derive the benefit of practise either, so I went in there today for my third hour-long lesson thinking, she’s going to tell me the hour was a mistake and we should go back to forty-five minutes. And she’ll do it kindly.
She didn’t. She told me that everyone has to learn how their own voice works, but that I’m extremely unlikely to be doing mine any damage, so to go ahead and keep experimenting with the limitations imposed by rude viruses. The hour shot by. The teacher-magic worked and I sounded better than I have since . . . at least last Monday.
I’m even noticeably learning Dove Sei.
* * *
* My poor garden. I swear, when I hand SHADOWS in and doodle my last paid-for-already doodle, whichever comes second, I am going to spend a fortnight DOING NOTHING BUT GARDENING. I may come indoors for meals.^ The blog will devolve to photos of mud and large green bags of future compost.^^ But at the moment I am grateful not to be watering pots.
We had our first hard frost three nights ago and I just threw up my hands—I haven’t got two hours to bring everything in and take everything out again—I don’t even have two hours to finish getting the summer/greenhouse set up, stocked up, and then regularly watered—speaking of watering. Meanwhile I got off much more lightly than I deserved three nights ago. I know it was a hard frost because we came home in it—I had to chip Wolfgang’s windscreen clear^^^ and we then came home sideways. Geraniums and snapdragons often come through a degree or two of frost, although you can’t count on it, but the begonias and fuchsias usually don’t, and they did the other night. I think the only thing I lost were the chocolate cosmos, and they are a ratbag to drag through the winter indoors so while I’m sorry I’m also relieved. Maybe I can find two hours somewhere before the next frost. . . .
^ Especially if this is happening in February.+
+ I wish.
^^ Especially if this is happening in February.+
+ I wish.
^^^ This is the third year in a row I’ve told myself I need to get a serious scraper instead of the shy little doodad I do have, clearly made for ornamental use in the Maldives. It’s still better than fingernails.
** Sunday morning hurtles are always at least a little aggrieved because of this bell ringing shtick, and the prospect of an extra-long Sunday morning hurtle is not always welcome. By Sunday afternoon/evening hurtle I’m significantly brain dead, but I’m also full of caffeine. I’m beginning to think that Monday evening practises are also always at least a little aggrieved because of this voice lesson shtick, although at least I can mainline a little more molasses-coloured tea between getting home from the one and going out again to the other. Once-a-month Old Eden tonight, and a better turn-out than usual^, but this included one beginner and two people only just learning to ring inside, so the rest of us were mostly filling in for learners to bounce off of. Minimal brain necessary. Yaay.^^
^ Thanks to McKinley’s phone wiles, but they’re pretty much the same phone wiles every month, it’s just this month they worked.
^^ Brute strength, however, is required for the frelling bells. I wonder what chaos theory says about possessed-by-demons change-ringing bells? What’s the physics of a 360-degree-turning bell, first 360° degrees in one direction and then 360° degrees in the opposite direction, securely riveted on a rigid frame, and you’ve just about got it figured out how hard you have to yank the wretched thing to make it complete its circle and suddenly between one yank and the next it comes down on you like a stooping falcon?, which is to say it doesn’t rise from straight down 0° to 180° straight up, it rises perhaps twelve degrees and sticks like it’s just hit a wall, and there you are turning purple and hauling on the bellrope till you can feel the blisters coming, trying to hoick it back into place again, and meanwhile you’ve probably totally fallen off your line through the pattern and you may have two or three people yelling at you, but then again maybe not, because they’re out of breath hauling on their own anvil-like bells.
*** Long whippy rose stems beating against the windows like chains and the occasional thud of a raindrop the size of a latke.
† I’ve been trying to remember how much of this nonsense I put up with when I was singing for Blondel. It doesn’t seem to me it was this bad, but I’m hoping that’s because all of my singing at the beginning was basically a kind of undifferentiated wizened squeal, and by now I’d be noticing the somewhat better days from the very much worse ones whoever I was singing for . . . and not that I’ve angered the Upper Respiratory deity and it’s going to be a ratbag from here on. I also don’t yet have a clue, besides finding out the hard way, when I can sing through an incursion of throat crud and when I’d better not.
†† Turns out there’s a serious drawback to gaining a slightly better grasp of, um, music. I don’t sing favourite arias out hurtling because they’re too hard. I keep going wildly adrift and can’t find the tune. But this is changing. I was, for example, singing Marguerite’s final music—the angels-save-me bit^—pretty accurately this morning. Except it’s my voice.
^ ‘Anges pur, anges radieux, Portez mon ame au sein des cieux’ is what my libretto says.
A Keeping My Head Down Day
Today has been mostly head down over the writing desk (or the writing kitchen table, as it may be), looking up occasionally long enough to regret a good gardening afternoon . . . the things I do to get paid.*
Atlas has been hacking back Mme Alfred Carriere who was showing signs of pulling down my semi-detached neighbour’s house wall, and while Phineas is an exceptionally easy-going fellow, I think even he might protest being involuntarily catapulted into my back garden. I wouldn’t like it either: the garden’s small enough already, I don’t want the contents of two bedrooms, a study, a kitchen and a bathroom scattered around** although loose bricks are popular as plant-pot stands. Since I don’t do heights, Atlas is the one who’s been out there with the ladder and the loppers. It’s astonishing how much more light there suddenly is: Mme Alfred is kind of a monster. But the best kind of monster: the kind that produces lots of big fat roses. She needs her autumn feed, as does everything else in this garden and Third House’s. Meanwhile I’ve got the autumn bulb orders arriving any day now—yeep. With less of Mme Alfred shadowing that side I can get more tulips in.
Autumn has kind of snuck up on me*** partly due to the coldest August in seventeen years†† . . . I am not ready for it to be autumn.† I used to like autumn better than I do now; that first crackle of cold meant adventure; it used to feel like the time of year I woke up after the sultry hedonism of summer. But I’m not very interested in adventures any more—or rather the adventures I am interested in are things like learning to ring Cambridge minor or having a high A available during choir practise, and not only erratically after midnight and a glass of champagne on a good day. Back in the days when autumn meant adventure I didn’t have increasing numbers of tender begonias, geraniums, dahlias, cosmos, fuchsias, blah, blerg, blug to try and frelling overwinter. Have I told you I keep thinking about buying a second, extra-small grow-lamp and hanging it over the Winter Table that goes over the hellhound crate at the cottage—? The summer/greenhouse at Third House is starting to get kind of crowded.
* * *
* Yes, in many ways very like what most people do to get paid. I keep telling you writing is not glamorous. It has its brilliant moments, but glamorous?^ No. And I splattered salad dressing on my white shirt today (again).^^ Frelling springy frelling lettuce frelling leaves.
^ A friend was telling me about the book convention she’s just back from and I was thinking yes, I remember why, when I moved over here, I wasn’t particularly sorry to be too expensive to import to most American book cons any more. It’s the same thing in a different medium as book mail: most of the people who want to talk to you about your books are really nice, or at least complimentary, even if both of you are so desperately embarrassed and uncomfortable by the encounter you each run away afterward to hide under the bed. But it’s the skirmishes and confrontations—including the occasional downright scary one—I remember.+
The main drawback, for someone like me, lacking in most public social skills++, is that I have totally lost what habituation I once had+++, and when my poor publisher starts talking about promotion and that of course they’ll pay my travel expenses I’m like, What? Are you kidding? I only so much as cross the Hampshire border with a written permission from Queen Mab. She’s not noted for her good temper either, and I don’t want to press her too far. An extra thimble of Laphroiag is acceptable as a thank-you for allowing me to go to London for the day: I don’t want to imagine what she’d demand for a trip to New York.
+ And the frelling patronising ones. The whole ‘oh, when are you going to write a real book?’ brigade, and its outliers, like the hug from the perfect stranger who says, BEAUTY was such a sweet little story. I want to believe there’s a lot less of that around these days when YA is hot, but thirty years ago . . . especially with this face which thirty years ago looked about sixteen. I looked like someone who might have written a sweet little story. This involuntary circumstance was not good for the development of my attitude toward my public. I’ve told you all this before, haven’t I? Sorry. The unexpected shaping experiences of one’s life are, I find, harder to integrate and forget. —Grrrr. There’s one stranger-hugging woman I could probably still pick out of a police line up . . . but that scrimmage was also when I was still in the early, first-book, I’m a Published Author! phase, and hadn’t started biting people yet~. She probably went away thinking she’d brightened my sweet little life.
~ Yes, Jodi, I’m looking at you. But I don’t think you’re the natural viper that I am.
++ And for anyone who has met me at a con and thought I came off fairly human: thank you. Clearly you made it easy for me.
+++ And gained a sweet little case of ME . . . and more lately, a sweet little couple of majorly flaky hellhounds.
^^ Yes, I should wear a bib or an overall or something. Except that I hate it. It makes me feel like a drooling idiot.+ Of course I’m not thrilled with using spot remover several times a week either. These critical dilemmas of life.
+ If the shoe/bib fits . . .
** Not to mention the potential for highly distressing contact between the ex-hellkitten and the hellhounds.
I think I tweeted about the hellhounds attempting to chase the statue of a cat. I entirely agree it’s a very lifelike statue of a cat but I thought dogs had a highly developed sense of smell?? And yes, I know, sighthounds, but they pick up scent-trails like foxhounds and cruise along with their sterns in the air and their noses to the ground. Maybe there’s a switch buried deep in their medulla oblongatas^ that auto-sets for whichever stimulus comes in first, eyes or nose, and then turns the other one off. But hellhounds have taken this daunting rebuff to the way things are supposed to be—cats are cats, and they run away—very much to heart. Chaos checks that statue now every time we hurtle by—he has grasped that there is something wrong with this cat: it doesn’t run away and, upon closer investigation, it smells funny—but he’s still sure he’s missing something. Darkness keeps an eye on Chaos keeping an eye on the non-cat.
Today we met a cat—a live, breathing, tail-twitching cat—of very much the same colouring and demeanour as the non-cat . . . and the hellhounds didn’t know what to do. Ears and tails went up, and butts sank halfway to the ground in that ready-for-anything posture and . . . nothing happened. I’d already put the brakes on the leads in case anything did happen. But the cat just went on lying there, curling the end of its tail up and down, and the hellhounds went on looking at it, waiting for it to prove that it was not a non-cat . . . and eventually we pottered on, befuddled hellhounds following on a loose lead.
^ Or equivalent. My knowledge of the architecture of the canine brain is nil. +
+ Yes I know I could google it. Tomorrow. If I remember.
*** Not that everything to do with the passage of time isn’t, in my experience, essentially sneaky.
† Ho hum. Like I don’t say this about every season, month, year, week, hour, blog post, bolting hellhound. . . .
†† Which is fine with me. And reminds me that when I first moved over here we used to have English weather, which is to say cold and wet, including in August. Ah, nostalgia.