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Gardens
It stopped raining for a few hours yesterday, nicely timed for gardening, during which I went out and strove mightily with dahlias, which is to say earwigs, among other useful and semi-useful things,** and came indoors again as the Scary Mud Monster. Remember I told you that I’d actually staked all of my dahlias this year, and how this doesn’t happen in my garden(s)? It doesn’t work. Well, I suppose if you were out there with your bamboos and your twine every minute, or even every afternoon, you might stay ahead of the little sods, but I wouldn’t count on it. You may also remember that I’ve been complaining about my seven-foot dahlias—dahlias are supposed to be sort of four to six foot. Which is plenty. Even a six-foot dahlia has a slightly triffid air about it.*** But I’ve realised why my dahlias are all monsters this year: it’s so that they can hurl themselves over any foolish attempts to contain them. Several of my beautifully-staked dahlias have a fringe of flopped-over, head-down flowers tumbling gracefully, not to say vindictively, over the top loop of string. SIIIIIIIGH.†
This morning after service ring†† I was out in front of the cottage, deadheading.††† I’ve still got pansies in flower—I mean pansies that have been flowering since spring, and in a couple of cases since last winter. If you’re clever about it you pretty much can have pansies flowering all year long—although they may shut down in self-defense in a cold winter—but this usually requires waves of pansies. Some of this year’s have gone out back for a serious haircut, a feed, and a rest, but by no means all of them. Some of them are still frothing down my front steps, flowering determinedly. So I was determinedly deadheading them.‡ And my neighbour with the posh, national-collections garden at the top of the hill comes strolling down with a companion and says lugubriously to me, Oh, you’re losing that battle.
Thanks ever so. You’re a real friend.
Peter and I went to another posh garden this afternoon‡‡, one of those eye-wateringly so-English cottagey things that I have the almost overwhelming urge to speak loudly and frequently, saying things like Gee whillikers! and Gosh darn! This place is real gone! Peter and I used to have one of those gardens . . . but we never went in for the eye-watering aspect; ours was too clearly not under control, nor under anything resembling an all-over plan. And I get a little lip-curly about people with full time gardeners. (Or trust funds and no need to earn a living.) If I had a full-time gardener I could be opening Third House’s garden to the public in a couple of (somewhat frantic) years. The funny thing is that I don’t think I’d want to: the pleasure, if you want to call it pleasure,‡‡‡ of opening our garden was that we were the ones responsible. If you wanted to know about a plant, we were the ones to ask. We might not remember, but if we didn’t, there was no recourse.§ I’m just crabby because there was a lot to like about this garden . . . till you got to the two wide bays of really ugly orange roses. There must have been thirty of the horrible things. All orange. I like hot dazzling orange fine in neat little wool-and-silk cardigans such as the one I am wearing this minute. But neon orange is not a good colour in a rose. Especially not in ranks at the front of the sculpted topiary tunnel to the lily pond with the summerhouse and the tasteful statuary. Gah. No, Gee whillikers!
* * *
* Possibly my least favourite critter on the planet, barring things big enough to eat me and standing close enough to try
** Including potting on two camellias, which have been quietly getting on with things for two years in the pots they arrived from the mail-order nursery in. One of the best things about camellias is how patient they are. A kind word and a handful of well rotted chicken crap and they’re happy indefinitely. You think I’m anthropomorphising about the kind word, don’t you? HA. Show me a little old lady who talks to her plants and I’ll show you a little old lady who can barely get out her back door for being throttled by the botanical riot. No I am not talking about me. I am not little. And I haven’t fully arrived at the ‘old’. And while it’s perfectly true I talk to my plants^ I tend to say things like what are you doing that for, you frelling thing? and ARRRRRRGH. And, when dealing with rosebushes, OWWWWWW. But I’m mostly nice to my camellias. I’ve pretty much even stopped cursing Jingle Bells for being fabulously healthy, floriferous and UGLY.
^ I talk to almost everything except other people. Other people, feh. Way too complicated. Give me a rosebush or a hellhound any day.
*** It’s not so much the height, it’s the posture. Forty-foot roses dangling from trees can be very intimidating, but they’re not at all triffidy.
† Clearly I haven’t been saying the right things to them.
†† During which I was Much Put Upon. Not only did I keep finding myself in the long-thirds position when a single was called for Grandsire, but I fell afoul of the Dreaded Three-Four Down Dodge Single in bob minor several times, about which mediocre ringers lie awake on Saturday nights worrying about being traumatised by if bob minor is attempted on Sunday morning. I did, by the way—get through all these trials—but I had to be carried home and fed chocolate to recover.^
^ And speaking of feeding . . . Peter has just spilt chicken broth—you know, the stuff that accumulates under a roast chicken—rather lavishly on the floor. Hellhounds did not stir. I called them. They stared at me. I called them again. Chaos, always the one more anxious about pleasing,+ crept out at last and crushed himself to me, as I knelt on the floor next to a pool of fresh chicken juice. Here, look at that, I said, extricating an arm and pointing. Chaos looked at the finger, the way dogs do++. I eventually persuaded him to have a sniff at the lovely chickeny puddle. To please me he did, with his feet braced, still leaning against me, and with his neck stretched to its furthest extent. He sniffed. He then looked at me with a ‘Can I go now?’ expression.
After he had fled back to the dog bed in huge relief, Darkness came nonchalantly out to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. He had a half-hearted lick and then turned around to fix me with a ‘You got us up for this? look.
Peter mopped up the spill.
+ Except, of course, when it comes to food
++ There was an article in a recent TIME magazine about the intelligence of critters, and how there’s more of it around than generally thought. Depends on who you ask, of course. I know a lot of critter people who have been sniggering at the scientists about this sort of thing for years. But one of the things the article cites is that dogs ‘innately’ understand about pointing fingers being about pointing, and not about the finger. Well, sort of. It depends on the dog and the context. Pointers certainly point, and they know they’re pointing. But your own pet dog is very likely to be interested in the finger, because it’s your finger. Chaos has a very bad case of this.
††† I should try to get someone to take a photo of me deadheading the Non Trailing Petunias in the hanging basket. I can feel how ridiculous—how increasingly ridiculous—I look, especially as the petunias themselves grow more ridiculous, ramrod straight and soaring out into the ozone.
‡ Kneeling on tarmac at least keeps the Scary Mud Monster somewhat at bay.
‡‡ In the rain. It came back.
‡‡‡ I didn’t, much. I’ve told you, I think, that Peter was always out there talking to people. I used to try to find an especially impenetrable thicket and spent the afternoon weeding. Peter would occasionally send people in after me who wanted particularly to talk about roses.
§ We did have a once a week body I used to refer to as our gardeneroid. His purpose was to move slowly around the garden looking like he was doing something, and adding rusticity to the view. He also mowed the lawn.
More contest winners!
It’s been a murky sort of day, both exteriorly and interiorly. Interiorly neither my brain nor my digestion is returning my phonecalls.* Exteriorly it’s been another dashing-among-the-raindrops day with slitty-eyed and grumbling hellhounds. This morning I eventually said All right! Fine! But if you think we’re going to play throw the tennis ball up/downstairs just because of a little rain** you are sadly mistaken! —And stomped back outdoors myself to stand with the rain running down my neck to deadhead petunias. Especially that frelling hanging basket at the foot of the front stairs, with the nonhanging petunias: gone-over petunia flowers are among the least attractive anyway, and even more/less so when sodden, and these are so awfully dranglefabbing conspicuous. Since the wretched plants insist on growing UP they are also getting harder and harder to deadhead. Even my gorilla-length arms eventually reach their limit. And getting smacked in the face with falling smeary wet ex-petunias is one of those remind-me-why-I-like-to-say-I’m-a-gardener experiences.***
I was lurking around the cottage in a restless and unable-to-concentrate manner because the Aga Man was due. Herself† has been cold for over two months because after a hot spell severe enough for me to decide to turn her off I couldn’t get her back on again and thought, never mind, it’s summer, we can wait till her annual tune-up and shampoo and get a refresher lesson on the proper ritual.††
My Aga is now on. I have an oven at the cottage again.
So what better day for an announcement about baking?
Anyone who’s been keeping an eye on the contest thread will already know that mayasings’ Bloody Doomsday Chocolate Raspberry Swirl (Vampire) Muffins won the recipe contest. Huzzah mayasings! Huzzah Vampire Muffins!†††
I also promised you‡ a random winner among the voters. And that winner is Stephanie, who very properly lists ‘baked goods’ among her interests, and while I will not breach her privacy by quoting her email address here, I wish to remark that it has a very pleasing and suitable Green & Black’s atmosphere about it.
Congratulations, you two! And now if you would please contact a mod—Ajlr, perhaps, since she’s done the actual work on the contest—with street-mail addresses and instructions for dedications, if any, I will go fish out two more glittery gold SUNSHINEs from my dwindling hoard and prepare to dispatch same.
Contests are good. Thanks, you lot, for making them good.
* * *
* Not that I have (i)Phones on the (missing) brain or anything. I had a seriously bad night last night. Sleep? What would that be again? And then the phone rang at 8:30 a.m. KrzzzznARRRRGHblhhhhhhhnnggg. I decided to go back to bed afterward anyway, despite the re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings apparently going on across the road and the four-part dog chorus^ at the top of the hill, no doubt in response to Devil Cat sitting just on the other side of the (closed) iron gate from them and washing his paws thoughtfully. I could seriously do without Devil Cat. I could probably even more seriously do without the 1,712 vehicles belonging to his owner, who has one parking slot on our cul de sac and therefore has to be creative with the other 1,711.
Anyway. I went back to bed. Whereupon Pooka started erupting with sound effects. I’m sure it’s very clever and thoughtful of the programmer to give different ringtones to email, voicemail, texts, twenty-one gun salutes and elephants, but it’s not at all popular when you’re pretending to sleep. I have noticed that there’s the odd ping, pong or trill overnight in Pooka’s live and lively company, but it hasn’t been a big deal. Maybe I’ve had the pillow arranged over my head better. Maybe I had been sleeping lately. Maybe I suddenly became fabulously popular overnight. But this morning it was the Chinese water torture only with dings, chirrups and gibbles. So the first thing I did when I finally gave up the unequal struggle with the Normans^^ was figure out how to turn the sound effects off.
^ Three dachshunds and a Labrador
^^ Norman arrows caroming off the English shield wall sound remarkably like messages arriving on your Apocalypse.
** It’s more to do with almost losing four shelves of books and china that hang at the bottom of the stairs, the last time we played this interesting game.
*** At least there were no earwigs involved. Ewwwwww. There are almost always earwigs involved when you deadhead dahlias. Note: if you are harbouring any seven-foot dahlias this year, stand at arm’s length when you deadhead.
† You’re right, I’ve never named her. Shameful. I think it has seemed impertinent since she was here long before I was. But I hereby declare that five—no, wait, six years, big yeep—six years is enough to presume upon the company of a nameless Aga, and address myself to the lack.
†† No, no, no, not a black goat. A bowl of virgin popcorn, and don’t forget the butter^.
^ Which I’m sure ought to be from a virgin cow, but this might be a little hard to arrange, milk being tied to the non-virgin end of things.
††† I’m convinced it’s the fang holes that did it. Although as Ajlr says: . . . which, as a title alone, may be one of the most all-encompassing collections of ‘Words Likely to Appeal to Readers of Robin’s Books’ that we’ve seen here.^ Add that to the end result of the recipe and we have a very worthy winner. And I may say that the recipes assembled through this competition are probably one of the best gatherings of foodstuffs with few socially-redeeming features^^ that I’ve seen for some time…
^ I wish to observe that on the contrary, this is a SUNSHINE specific recipe, and very appropriate too. A truly all-McKinley-encompassing recipe would have to include something about dragons, swords and horses, at very least. Which might prove challenging even to this reservoir of forum members.
^^ Few? You mean there are any? Oh dear.
‡ That is, I promised after I had double-checked with Blogmom
Possibly Papua New Guinea
This has been one of your Almost Total Sod weeks when everything that can go wrong does, and everything that can’t possibly go wrong does anyway. Plus I have an Apocalypse in my pocket.* I keep reminding myself that one of the reasons I have an iPhone rather than some other instrument of technological torture is because they’re so intuitive. I know this because this is what everyone tells me. GAAAAAAAAH. I was at the tears-of-rage-with-blood-pressure-headache stage** with Pooka yesterday afternoon, out hurtling hellhounds***, trying to play music on her, and every ten or twenty seconds there would be a little trilling noise and a new track would start playing. ARRRRRRGH. So, clearly, there’s a shuffle-by-shaking button enabled somewhere† but I couldn’t FIND IT and meanwhile the countryside was getting an earful about what I thought of my Apocalypse.††
So today Peter (who hasn’t had the best week of his life either) and I decided to cheer ourselves up and go visit a garden. It sounded like quite a nice garden too—National Garden Scheme garden descriptions are written by the owners, so caution and large handfuls of salt and cynicism are advised when reading that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have been lovingly recreated in rural Hampshire—its only drawback being that it is far enough away that there was room for debate about the route taken to get there.
Peter won.
We got lost.
We saw most of West Sussex as well as great swathes of Surrey and possibly a glimpse of Papua New Guinea††† on our way. Fortunately most of it was pretty.‡ And the garden, once we got there, was excellent. Listen: a serious English garden with lots of dahlias. Not enough roses, but maybe they’ll get around to more roses: dahlias are a lot more movable, since you have to get the frellers up every winter,‡‡ and the admin at this garden are obviously having a good time with their colour schemes. Yaay for orange and purple and scarlet. Together. If they need suggestions on good orange and purple and scarlet roses. . . .
We drove home my way and got there in about a third of the time it took us on the way out. Not so scenic though. Not a single Queen Alexandra Birdwing‡‡‡. But there’s always next Sunday afternoon.
* * *
* Some of the people I have flashed my pink leather case at have been inclined to be humorous at Pooka’s and my expense. This seems to have less to do with the colour than the fact that I went for the full clamshell deal rather than a ‘bumper’ which just protects the back. Most of these bumpered-only models also live in pockets, like Pooka, but—even supposing I can be expected to remember reliably to keep my penknife in the other pocket with my keys^—most people don’t spend quality time hitting themselves in the belly and thighs with bell ropes.^^ Repeatedly. Heavy bell ropes.
I was thinking about this this morning. You may remember a plaint earlier that I was going to be ringing six times this week—I generally try to keep it down to three. My usual whacking-myself-in-the-midsection activity is ringing down in peal. You’re supposed to take a loop in the rope before you do yourself any serious damage, but I don’t always manage this. Keeping my place in the row is much more important than a few weals. But yesterday I rang at Madhatterington for the second Saturday in a row^^^ where the bells, as previously observed, are Possessed By Demons,+ and one of the ways the demonic presence manifests is by the fact that the ropes want to beat you to death, not merely when you’re ringing down in peal, but all the time. I was delighted to notice yesterday that Felicity on the three, which bell had been my chief misfortune last week, was having to wrestle the rope as one might wrestle a hungry boa constrictor. And it’s been raining this week, so all bell ropes are heavier, solider and meaner than usual, even basically good-tempered ones such as we have at New Arcadia. So by this morning, when I was ringing down in peal after service—WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP—I was thinking I was about ready for a surcease of this self-flagellatory activity. Except I’m ringing at Little Warbling tomorrow. ++
But at least Pooka is safe.
^ I don’t know how anyone actually wears skinny jeans. Does a minion with a backpack come free with every purchase?
^^ This includes most bell ringers. Grace is not one of my greater attributes under any circumstances.
^^^ The week before wasn’t too good for only ringing three times either.
+ This is also the tower where practise is forbidden by cranky locals, so the poor bells are only rung very occasionally for services. It’s enough to make even the most virtuous bells vulnerable to seduction by unholy elements.
++ I also seem to be ringing handbells at Frellingham again on Wednesday. Niall strode purposefully up to me after service ring this morning. Ah, Robin! he said.
I cringed.
James and Darcy are away for a fortnight, he said, attempting to appear ingratiating and failing. I see the ogreish gleam in his eye. The gleam that says, Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of someone who might be bullied into ringing handbells. Titus, continued Niall, is hoping that we might convince you to ring with us in their absence.
Once, I say. I’ll do it once. If they come here.
Niall looks shifty. I usually go there, he says. And Titus can only come, you know, if his wife drives him.
I know, I say. So teach her to ring handbells.
I’ll drive us there, of course, says Niall. To give the ogre his due, he is always willing to do the driving.
Once, I say again. Okay. I’ll come to Frellingham once.
Once? says Niall, sensing weakness. But you know how Titus loves his handbells—
ONCE, I say. If he wants any more he can come here.
You realise that I’ve been end-ran—end-runned?—again. I haven’t got time to ring handbells twice a week even if it was always here, and we’ll be ringing with Colin as usual on Thursdays. But I will bet you Jane Austen to yesterday’s newspaper that I ring handbells with Titus at least twice in the next fortnight, and that Niall will try his best to make it three times. I at least had the good sense not to complain about pounding myself into swiss steak with a succession of bell ropes, since Niall’s advice would inevitably be that I need to ring more handbells. It is relatively more difficult to hurt yourself with handbells, but it can be done. Scratching your nose with a handbell in your hand, for example. Ask me how I know this.
** As I emailed to Fiona, who is volunteering to teach me to text. Texting! Oh gods! I promised Merrilee I’d learn how to text! This morning William Gibson retweeted someone saying that he (Gibson) had invented the internet while sitting at a manual typewriter. Yes. I remember. I was there. I am old. Siiiiiiiigh. And I bet Gibson texts away like anything. Just like Merrilee, who is almost as old as I am.
*** Who were slinking along at a distance, pretending they didn’t know me.
† Either that or they sent me the wrong model, and this is the prototype for the one that you really do just plug into your brain.
†† Eventually I gave up and turned the frelling iPod function off and stormed on in silence^. And got home, and swam around the home screen for a while, went into settings, and finally found the thrice-frelling button, poked it VIOLENTLY to ‘off’, and today played an entire album through without difficulty. However I am probably Marked for Life by James Findlay’s As I Carelessly Did Stray which is the music I was being tormented with^^, which was probably a nice album originally, for those of us who like trad folk. But what is INTUITIVE about having to climb OUT of the programme you’re IN and find some miscellaneous group of totally UNRELATED stuff whose only common denominator is that it lets you muck around with what goes on elsewhere? Grrrrrrrr.
^ barring some fairly heated muttering
^^ and vice versa, in a grand, epic sense
††† Okay, I made the Papua New Guinea part up
‡ Especially Papua New Guinea. I liked the rainforests and the cassowaries.
‡‡ Although a lot of us don’t, which means we have to start over next year.
‡‡‡ http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/van_anim_buttrfly.htm
Pink etc
Last night’s blog was over 1500 words . . . plus the links. So I thought tonight I’d give everyone a break and hang some photos.
Which I think I had better number, given Wordpress’ villainous ways with photos. Siiiiiigh. How many updates have we had? How many times have they done nothing about this?
So, please meet Apocalypse, my third hellhound. (1) The small demure-looking one.* Who finally has her case.** What an epic that has proved to be.*** However, she is now suitably accoutred for travelling around in a pocket, and having keys and penknives absent-mindedly dropped on her head. Yes, the wallpaper on her opening screen is a rose.† (2) And yes, she’s sitting on a plant catalogue. J Parker’s Wholesale Autumn 2010 catalogue, to be precise.
But I thought we might have some photos of things that aren’t roses. Just so you’ll know. I do grow other stuff. Although pink is always good. (4) 
[Gaaaah. See footnote ** for photo (3) ]
This is Brackenridge Ballerina. (5) Speaking of pink. And I was thinking recently, in a rather dazed manner, that this year I’ve got all my dahlias staked. Which it’s a good thing, since BB is about six foot tall. Stop, stop! Four foot is plenty!
But the comprehensive staking of dahlias doesn’t happen in my garden(s). Although if it weren’t for the slug problem Recumbent Dahlias might catch on. I was using them as ground cover at Third House last year but the disbursement of slug bait was extreme. This is Rothesay Reveller (6) whom I love to pieces and grow every year—as the season progresses her swathes of white and purple will become ever more dazzling—and if you look closely you’ll see that the serrated quality is not just colouring. I swear by my copper rings for the thwarting and contravention of slugs, but anything that grows against something else has to be protected from circuitous assault. The Reveller grows up against the little picket fence that marks off the hellhounds’ courtyard, and the slugs had been doing an upper-storey cat-burglar number on poor Reveller when she was still only picket-fence height before I unhooked one of the copper rings and hung it flat against the fence. ::Tiny cries of slug indignation::
And here are my famous trailing petunias. (7) Have I posted this photo—or one like it, they’re into their second flush right now—before? It’s just that they are extremely eye catching, especially to me, since I walk out my front door and there they are. Trailing. 
Not. Covering up all that excellent plastic baggery which is in fact working a treat for keeping my hanging baskets from cracking like the Sahara this year—and while geraniums will put up with a surprising amount of abuse, petunias really need their water. Oh well. I have let down the posh elegance of my little street every year, why should this year be any different? It’s just that I prefer to let it down by deliberate affront, like the Reveller††, rather than by simply screwing up. But speaking of petunias and delicious affront, aren’t these good? (8) I hope they’re available again next year. They could become a regular, like the Reveller. 
* * *
*Although her default ringtone at the moment is barking. No, I mean literally, although that too.
** Of course it’s pink. Don’t be silly. However, when I was changing the hellhound bedding in the car recently it occurred to me that my pink thing could conceivably be thought of as out of control. [OH GODS. Do I number the photo according to its place in the text, which would make it (3), or do I number it for its position on the screen . . . which I don’t know yet because I write the footnotes as they happen . . . ] 
*** No postpersons have been killed, although the one this morning had a narrow escape.
† I was cruising the iTunes store for garden and plant identification apps—which is an entirely exasperating and unsatisfactory category, by the way, if there are any gardening programmers out there—and was offered Plants vs Zombies. Snork.
†† Dahlias still generally are so not done by serious gardeners. The same serious gardeners, pretty much, who won’t grow roses, although roses are slightly less déclassé than dahlias. Serious gardeners can stick it up their respective . . . noses. Even Peter, who after all married me, and while our courtship was brief it was intense and he can’t say he had no idea what he was getting into, had trouble with my instant attraction to dahlias. Roses he could handle^ but it took me a couple of years to force him to compromise his high principles and allow dahlias. He now grows them happily at the mews. I don’t even have to yell or pout or anything. Principles haven’t a prayer against a determined spouse.
^ Well, he thought he could, till I started putting them in by the hundred
A Sunday Adventure
I’ve told you that after service ring* I go down to the florist’s, who is mad enough to open on Sundays, and scarf the . . . uh, and buy a few cut flowers**. Peter usually meets me outside the church door with his bicycle, and we trundle down to the florist’s together***.
The florist has a few potted plants with all the cut flowers. I’ve been known to indulge in these too.† Today Peter took a fancy to a salvia. Oh, it’ll go in my knapsack, he said. Er—don’t you want me to take it back to the cottage? I can bring it down in the car later, I said. No, no, he said. It’ll be fine in my knapsack.
* * *
* Suddenly we have people. We have not been having people and there have been some pretty grim times, both practise and Sunday service. Lately we’re overflowing. This has its good side and its bad side, and both of them are called Grandsire Triples. I will never learn to ring triples unless there are seven other people who know what they’re doing to ring with me. Often. I don’t learn anything except by relentless grind, and seven (or six working plus tenor-behind) other people who—crucially—know what they’re doing and come to practise^ are in short supply around here, especially as this area is rife with six-bell towers, so people tend to learn to ring six-bell things. And you can have twenty-nine people who know how to ring triples in a six-bell tower and you can still only ring six-bell methods.^^
The other problem with learning triples is that you’re not at all likely to have exactly seven^^^ other triples-ringing people at a practise; and the more people there are, the more different things are going to need to get rung to keep everyone happy, which means us lower echelons get less time on a rope. So I have been despairing lately about Grandsire Triples, which I must learn to ring, because New Arcadia is a Grandsire Triples tower. By far our most commonly rung quarters~ are Grandsire Triples quarters.~~ Meanwhile I’m stumbling on with Cambridge Minor—six bells, so I’m getting some time in at other towers—and while I still can’t ring it reliably, it is obvious that I will, eventually, and this is not at all obvious about Grandsire Triples. Which is a bit like being an aspiring Formula One driver when you’re still falling off your tricycle.
Last Friday Niall offered me a nice touch of Stedman doubles and I said, sweating, could I please have another go at Grandsire Triples (having bollixed the penetralia out of it the first time), and he blinked a couple of times (I love Stedman doubles) and called for Grandsire Triples.
And it wasn’t exactly a triumph, but it was a bit like the G in Dido’s Lament. It sounded pretty awful, but it was 
recognisable. For the first time. There’s enough there to work with (I hope). Now if seven people who can ring it will please keep showing up for New Arcadia practise. . . .
But the point about today at service ring is that there were enough of us to ring Grandsire Triples. And I went to my usual humble place on the treble with better heart than recently. And at the end we rang down all eight bells in peal and it was brilliant.
^ Very very very large pet peeve is the really good ringers who can’t be bothered to come to practise and provide ballast for beginners.
^^ Niall likes to saunter in to bell gatherings and declare that he rang major (eight working bells) at Ditherington (six bells) or Madhatterington (five bells) and when everyone looks at him like he’s lost his mind, grin. I don’t fall for this any more. He means only three other people showed up, so he forced them to ring handbells. Niall never goes anywhere without his handbells. I dread being present at these occasions because of course I can ring handbells, which makes it much harder for the other one or two to weasel out. Even Niall is a bit challenged by trying to get three people who haven’t a clue all pointed in the right direction on handbells.
^^^ Better yet eight, so you can have a minder.
~ Not that I ring quarters—much—but it’s the principle of the thing
~~ Our quarter for Daniel the other week was Grandsire Triples. And I noticed just yesterday that my first limping, terrified quarter, on the treble to bob doubles, back in my previous existence, was rung in honour of Daniel’s retirement—I have the official quarter announcement in a cheap plastic frame leaning against a bit of wall at the cottage not covered in bookshelves. I’d forgotten that bit. This was a good joke too because Daniel kept de-retiring. He had three or four quarters rung to his retirement over the years.
** Since I can’t bear to cut my own. I couldn’t bear to cut my own even when I had two and a half acres of ’em.
*** Possibly stopping at the newsagent’s to buy chocolate. Mostly Peter orders Green & Black’s Mint by the fifteen-bar shop display box^ but occasionally the system breaks down.
^ I would not joke about a serious matter like the possession of a sufficiency of chocolate.
† We’re probably also slightly suffering from the day after the day before. We went to one of the private-gardens-open-to-the-public-for-charity yesterday and it just about knocked our socks off.^ I am turning into an Evil Cow on many fronts, however, and I kept thinking, how many frelling gardeners are involved in this work of art? Among other things there was an astonishing amount of topiary, which is fabulously labour-intensive—it was also pretty charming, because there were teeny weeny blobs of topiary tucked away in corners all over the place, like there is a colony of gnomes living in the cellars, who rush out with their clippers as soon as all the dull humans are asleep, like the elves and the shoemaker.
And further on the subject of Evil Cows, my single tiny, hard pruned, semi-espalliered apple tree looks better than their orchard which furthermore has no 
peaches at all. Maybe the gnomes don’t like peaches. This fell off into my hand today. There are, I think, four or five more where it came from. Not bad for a tree two foot high that lives in a pot.
^ Perhaps that’s why I’m in sandals today. Nothing to do with the sudden return of hot.
