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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

This time next week I will be sitting at the kitchen table here at the mews writing a blog post and . . . paralysed with fear by the music for the Muddlehamptons’ Christmas concert.*

            Yes, choir practise starts up again next Thursday, and right at the moment I’m chiefly remembering that Ravenel scares me.  I’m also remembering that I was sufficiently a damn fool to agree to sing for the bishop at Constantinople** in . . . gleep . . . three weeks.  And didn’t I start this doodling*** scam since the Muddlehamptons broke for the summer?  So I’m doing my adding more stuff thing again??†

            Sigh.

            Meanwhile, Thursday afternoon handbells having soaked up a couple of perfectly good gardening hours, I have a courtyard at the cottage still full of plants and the hellhounds, while very restrained and tactful most of the time††, do need a place to pee before bed, as do most of us.†††  I cut back another rampant geranium today.  And therefore have about eight more incipient geraniums sitting in a pitcher of water.  Anyone want a geranium?           

Ajlr wrote: 

I still think most of the standard cottage-garden herbaceous cranesbills are a dead bore. 

It’s a big world, there’s room for both our views.
*goes off to admire own collection of cranesbills*

I can’t get rid of mine.  My predecessor, who had Excellent Taste‡, had quite a few of them.  They’re frelling impossible to eradicate.  You hoick up several green-gardening-bags-full and next year . . . there they are again, creeping round the corners and trying to look placatory.  But I make a really poor ruthless tyrant because I start admiring them for their tenacity.  So, I have a few cranesbills.  Feh.  I’ve even got a new little fleck of alchemilla mollis at the cottage—gods know where it came from:  some daring raid over the wall some night when I had a pillow over my head—which I got all soppy over and allowed to live.  I had sworn undying vengeance on alchemilla mollis at the old house.

I like the willingness to flower/grow of pelargoniums but it’s the very distinctive smell of their leaves that puts me off. If someone came up with a smell-free variety I’d be very happy to give them houseroom. Until then, I shall have to stick with my couple of scented-leaves varieties.

I’d say it varies kind of a lot.  The standard bedding geraniums are the ones with the real geranium reek.  The fancy schmancy ones, not so much.  Appleblossom does have the smell, but it’s pretty restrained.  Depends on how much you loathe it, I suppose.  Many, many, many, many years ago I used to house-sit at a house with a conservatory that was nothing but racks of geraniums and I could barely stand to stay in there long enough to water them all.  PONG.  Maybe the experience inoculated me. 

Mrs Redboots wrote:  I love cacti, and I especially love Christmas cactuses, and I really, really want a new one this year.

I realized, reading yesterday’s post this morning, that any not-a-plant-person will have been confused by my use of the word ‘cactus’.  I didn’t think Christmas cacti actually were cacti—I thought they were succulents—but apparently they are:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_Cactus  The, er, point is that the spiny prickly barbed ones are flesh-eating monsters.‡‡  Succulents, and cacti like Christmas cacti, are soft little things, they just have a funny approach to leaves and stems.  And flowers.   I think my original pink Christmas cactus is one I took over back at the old house, which had been hanging on by a neglected thread for some time—which would make it over twenty years old.  You can keep them under some control by sheer abuse, but eventually your conscience will get the better of you and you will pot them on . . . and then they grow to the size of small rooms and all the cuttings root too.  Quite like geraniums.  ‡‡‡  

Mrs Redboots also wrote:  Amazon—and its minions, including, lately, audible—has no trouble keeping me permanently logged in.

I wish this forum did! Does anybody else find they need to log in afresh at least once a week, or have I done something peculiar? 

A lot of people have answered this already.  I will just add . . . me too.  Being admin is no help at all.   This is why I ALWAYS write posts in Word before cautiously copying and pasting in WordPress.                                

 * * * 

* Unfortunately they just did Handel’s Messiah.  I want to sing the Messiah.  I know it’s a low taste.  I DON’T CARE.  There are some old war horses that, for some people, just go on being transcendent however often you play/hear them.  Messiah—and La Traviata, and several of Beethoven’s symphonies—are that for me.^

            And speaking of Beethoven’s symphonies, I want to sing in the Ninth too. 

^ Ravel’s Bolero, however, should have been drowned at birth.  I probably wouldn’t have gone to see ‘10’ in the first place—the plot irritates me profoundly—but anything featuring Bolero is a Must to Avoid.

            How pleasing not to have to dither about it.  Not to have gone around wringing my hands and murmuring, Oh, gods!  It’s the greatest film ever made!  Only it has Bolero in it!  What shall I doooo? 

** Constantinople Hampshire you understand.  I assume the Orient Express has wifi but I doubt it takes hellhounds. 

*** Pam Adams wrote:  But it would be nice to differentiate a Fast doodle from a Tsornin doodle, wouldn’t it?

Clearly, Fast is the one without a hellcat (Narknon) lolling at his feet. 

Well . . . probably not.  People who don’t themselves sketch or doodle^ mostly don’t realise how surprisingly complicated a few scrawly lines on a page is.  The reason the bats in the belfry doodle is going to have its own higher-price category is because it’s complicated.  The $10 doodle is basically One Thing.  The $15 doodle is either a repeat of the One Thing or a sort of . . . one and a half things.  A horse and a folstza is inescapably two things.  Bats plus bells in a belfry is at least two things.

            If I could get my ass in gear to tidy up a bats in the belfry doodle^^ enough for Blogmom to post it we could finally get this show on the road.  But . . . I’m hoping to leave the doodle option up for a while longer after the straight auction and the, er, not quite so straight book sale, finish.  If it turns out that doodles continue being popular with a small mad^^^ segment of the blog-reading population, after the bell fund is wound up, we’ll just choose a permanent charity^^^^ for doodle profits and keep on. 

            At which point, although I’ll have to check with Blogmom about all of this, I assume we could widen the intake a bit.  I don’t imagine the small blessed-with-sardonic-humour faction will keep me all that busy, you know?  So you could ask for a horse and a hunting cat (Two Things) for $20.  And the sad truth is I like being asked to draw stuff.  This self-motivation thing is a ratbag, it’s not one of my long suits, and it gets used pretty frelling hard elsewhere.

            Also, every new doodle is blog material.  And you know how I feel about blog material.^^^^^ 

^ Apologies if I’m doing anyone in injustice here.  Please remember, as you read on, I’m a very low grade doodler, and be merciful. 

^^ It has not been a good few weeks for much of anything but keeping my head down.  Sorry about that. 

^^^ No, wait, I don’t mean mad, exactly.  Um.  Er.  Yes.  Possessing a rich and sardonic sense of humour is what I mean. 

^^^^ Something to do with either critters or books, I think.  They haven’t started teaching Seeing Eye dogs to read aloud, have they? 

^^^^^ So don’t ask for anything embarrassing. 

† Not to mention Treasures of Montezuma.  

ajlr wrote:  I don’t think that Montezuma 2 and 3 are available for the iPad yet. Probably just as well.

I looked it up and you’re right.  I have just sufficient self-control not to poke around any farther and see if there’s a prospective release date yet.  Stop looking at me like that.  2 is available on the iPhone, and it’s clearly going to be better on the iPad.  Ergo.  And speaking of better on the iPad, I’ve just downloaded Osmos for iPad.  I have it on Pooka, and it will clearly be better on the bigger screen. . . . Clearly.

            Anybody know anything about Master of Alchemy?  Spirit?  Fruit Ninja? 

            . . . I’ll get over this craze in a minute, really I will.  I got over Angry Birds.  I did eventually have to install an adult-proof lock on Fingerzilla till the addiction waned, but it did wane.  It only took [gnzzzngt mumble] supplementary Green & Black’s. 

†† Usually.  I tweeted earlier about Darkness throwing up on the carpet.  Usually I get him onto the kitchen lino in time.  ARRRRGH. 

††† They’re BOYS.  It never ceases to amaze me how bad male aim is with those things^.   I am not going to attempt to teach hellhounds to use the toilet. 

^ Ever since I was introduced to Freud at an unnecessarily young age I have said that it is not penis envy it is directional pee envy. 

‡ Ewww 

‡‡ shalea wrote: 

I gave up cacti, because they bite. First thing this one did was bite me. Second thing it did was bite the clerk. Sigh.

Sounds like my cactus. I don’t do cacti anymore, but this one is, at lowest possible calculation, 30 years old and I grew it from a seed (so I have a responsibility to it, of course). 

Yes.  Things do have a way of weaselling themselves into one’s life, if not precisely affections. 

 I am more than a little afraid of it because not only does it bite, the spines have seem to have nasty, tiny little barbed tips that embed themselves and then break off.

Some of them are mildly poisonous as well, or maybe I’m just allergic.  Cacti.  Charming.  The problem is that I do find them charming, I just got tired of the pain.  I had an entire little forest of the things in a sink at the old house which I eventually managed to kill off by not getting them indoors fast enough one winter.  Whew.  The one I have left from that era is now this deranged clump of tiny but dangerous bristly nodules all rising off one flimsy stem . . . which I have to keep propped up on the pot edge.  It appears to be thriving in its peculiar way:  it even flowers occasionally just to unnerve me. 

I have neither excuse nor explanation for buying the New Vicious Beast yesterday.  Except that secretly I like cacti.  I just wish I had iron skin.  I swear the NVB hisses when I walk by.

I had come to a conclusion about a year ago that it probably needed repotting and spent a lot of time contemplating how I might do that with a minimum of blood and pain, but was much relieved when a reliable plant nursery employee told me that I probably shouldn’t try unless I really wanted to (cacti not only have very minimal root systems so it’s not root-bound, and apparently expect very, very poor soil). 

YAAAAY.  Thank you.  Meanwhile, however, I did finally buy some orchid compost yesterday.  I have two orchids that keep refusing to die.  

‡‡‡ Anybody want a Christmas cactus?

And to think I used not to like geraniums.  I can’t even remember why any more.*  Then three things happened.   First they invented the so-called ‘Appleblossom’ geranium, or anyway it started appearing in the gardening catalogues I read**;  second we moved into town and little gardens, so I had an excuse to mess around trying to keep frelling tender frelling plants through the frelling winter;  and third, the second summer I was here I walked past two wilted geraniums lying on the pavement.  They looked like they’d fallen out of someone’s by-the-yard crate of standard bedding geraniums—they still had their roots attached but they weren’t going to last long prostrate in the street.  I told myself if they were still there I’d pick them up on my way back to the cottage.

            Two hours later, they were still there.  I hate to see anything die that’s still trying, you know?, so I took them home and potted them up, not expecting much.  They barely hesitated.  They sprang back to life and flowered and flowered and flowered and flowered.  Anything that willing gets my vote.***  I’ve been buying geraniums ever since.  But my habit is getting a little out of control.†

            Since they’re tender there is a certain amount of predictable attrition every winter.   I’m both forgetful and disorganised, so even now that I have the perpetual-summer/greenhouse at Third House, first I have to get it ready to receive visitors†† and then I have to get the visitors into it before the first hard frost, including remembering where all the fetchingly dotted-around pots of tender things are . . . and then I have to keep the collected visitors watered and the evil indoor-plant bug population down, which latter, since I won’t spray, can be complex.†††  And things die anyway.‡  But most of the geraniums come through.  Year after year.  Meanwhile I keep buying them—just to make sure I don’t suddenly run out of pink flowers—and most of the windows at the cottage are now stuffed with (mostly‡‡) geraniums, and if one of the very long arms that indoor geraniums tend to produce‡‡‡ snaps off . . . I put it in water till I have time to pot it up and, lo, I have another geranium.§  I do occasionally manage to rotate the windowsill ones outdoors, and I usually then prune them back and feed them up.  And then I put the prunings in water, and . . .

            I spent four hours in the garden today.  I was planning on doing my avenging-flame thing toward clearing out some space to plant spring bulbs.§  Mostly I spent it potting up geranium cuttings.  Oh, so that’s where all my vases have been. . . .§§ 

* * *

* This is either because subsequent enthusiasm has blotted out previous inexplicable prejudice, or it’s another spasm of Menopause Brain.  Let’s go for the former.

** Which looks like this:  http://www.thompson-morgan.com/flowers/flower-plants/geranium-and-pelargonium-plants/geranium-appleblossom/p02824TM

Except when it doesn’t.  I keep meaning to do a blog post on All the Plants that Aren’t What’s on the Label, which has been particularly bad this year, and in the lead is Geranium/Pelargonium Apple Blossom, of which I have both purple double and hot pink single examples of this year. 

            Yesterday I tweeted about objecting to a pansy named ‘Sweet Pea’.  I had various responses, both those of you who think that plants named after other plants is just the way it goes, and others of you who don’t like it either.  Possibly as a result of coming to gardening late and marrying a passionate gardener and spending my first thirteen years in this country listening to him talking over my head with other passionate gardeners in Latin^ when we had the garden at the old house open on the National Garden Scheme^^ but I’m a little twitchy about confusing plant names.^^^   First there’s the whole Geranium/Pelargonium thing.^^^^  Then there’s the fact that ‘Appleblosson’ is usually advertised as ‘the rosebud geranium’.  Or pelargonium. 

            I like fake flowers.  They don’t require feeding or watering, they stay the same size, they don’t make messes on the floor, and you don’t buy them as little green nubs which grow up to be something else entirely.  

^ The ‘in Latin’ part also included his passionate-gardener brother and various friends.  Inferiority complex?  Me? 

^^ http://www.ngs.org.uk/ 

^^^ Some of the answering tweets suggested cabbage roses and tea roses, and the ‘lettuce-leaved’ rose.  Personally I draw a line between something that is essentially descriptive—cabbage roses are supposed to be cabbage-shaped+ and tea roses smell like tea,++ and something that is specifically and individually attached to something else as its, you know, call name.  It’s like naming your hammer ‘Tin-opener’ and then if you ask someone to pass you Tin-opener, they pass you a tin-opener and what you need is something to hit nails with.  Or naming your computer Typewriter and asking an archangel to come fix it.  Although if I rang up Raphael or Gabriel and asked them to fix my typewriter, they would say there, there, Robin, why don’t you lie down for a while and we’ll be along as soon as we can?+++ 

+ Cough cough cough 

++ To other people.  And Bullata’s leaves don’t look like lettuce to me either.  http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=77  All the centifolias—and a lot of old roses generally—have crinkly leaves.  But—lettuce?  I wasted  too much time trying to find out if ‘bullata’ translates into anything lettuce-like but my google skills are letting me down again.  Since it turns up in a number of plant names it clearly means something.  The closest I got is http://www.plantzafrica.com/plantnop/ocoteabull.htm  whose elegant nickname is ‘stinkwood’, and which includes this description:  ‘The leaves are dark and glossy green with blisters or bubbles on the upper surface, known as bullae, hence the specific epithet bullata.’   I’ve seen Bullata-the-rose but I haven’t grown her.  Surely if she were lumpy someone would have mentioned it?  So where did she get the name?~  I have—it will amaze no one—several weird old books on weird old roses and I will pursue this further in my copious free time.  But not tonight. 

~ There’s also a marine snail.  It’s beige and swirly.  Not helpful. 

+++ http://www.cathtatecards.com/products_by_range/photocaptions/in_a_hurry/ 

^^^^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelargonium  

*** My conversion is patchy however.  I still think most of the standard cottage-garden herbaceous cranesbills are a dead bore.  It figures that the hardy members of the family are boring.

            PS:  Apologies if I’ve told you this story before.  I kinda think I have.  But even aside from Menopause Brain, in a daily blog this is going to happen.

† Do I have any habits that don’t get out of control?   Am I capable of developing a repetitive behaviour that doesn’t plunge directly forward into out of control?  

†† With significant help from Atlas, who does all the hard stuff, like rehanging the sun lamp and making The Timer Thing Work. 

††† Read ‘unsuccessful’. 

‡ Somebody tell me how to winter over a chocolate cosmos.  Including getting it started again in the spring without it changing its mind and dying anyway.   

‡‡ Also begonias, a Christmas cactus which is getting as big as a small room and its rather-too-many offspring:  turns out bits of Christmas cactus root rather easily, several Unknown Things bought at plant fairs and open gardens, the occasional orchid, busy lizzie, fuchsia . . . 

‡‡‡ Some day when I have lots of money I will install plant lights over all the windowsills.  Geraniums will flower anyway but they would clearly prefer outdoor levels of sunlight. 

§ Until I fell off the cliff of lucidity last night I’d been planning on telling you about spending the afternoon ordering spring bulbs.  I was way too tired and frazzled yesterday to do much work^ so I thought I’d get my bulb orders in.  This may or may not have been a good idea.  Ask me mid-September when whatever I did starts arriving.  

^ It’s true that even near the uttermost reaches of frazzledness I can still work.  But since the ME moved in the cost is too high.

§§ Er . . . the footnotes are longer than the blog tonight too.  But not as badly.

I have just put Alicia in a taxi.*  It has been an eventful day.**  You know about how I slept badly and thus overslept and have been rushing around to catch up, right?  We can take that as read.  As part of the rushing I was sweeping the kitchen floor again this morning and muttering.  I sweep the kitchen floor at least once a day*** on account of all the creatures that live with me, which include not merely my exuberant brace of four-legged hair factories, but a lot of geraniums.†  I love geraniums, they’re such triers, but crumbs are they messy.††  Whose stupid idea was it to have handbells at the cottage?†††

            It has cooled off again so we had a more hurtle-like hurtle this morning, acknowledging the fact that it was also raining, so hellhounds were motivated to keep moving—the end of the rain must be just right up there—yes—no—okay, not quite here after all, then there . . . .

            And then I was so dazzled by hellhounds eating their lunch as if there was no problem and had never been a problem‡ that we left a little late to pick Alicia up at her hotel‡‡ and had barely got back through the door of the cottage again when Niall showed up, eyes and teeth gleaming, with a large bag of handbells over his shoulder.

Alicia had posted to the forum:

Alicia, gods help me, is coming to visit this week . .

This is known as being between a rock and a hard place: if she doesn’t pick up those handbells, I’ll eat her.

Wow! There’s nothing like knowing that a friend a) is looking forward to one’s visit and b) has prepared a gentle and enjoyable addition to the visit, is there?!

. . . and I had carelessly not got round to answering:  But Alicia, I’m so looking forward to torturing you with handbells!!

           —And then we were a disaster.‡‡‡  Gemma’s only a beginner herself, and she arrived late, by which time Colin and Niall and I had proved that there was no hope for any of us, and Alicia is no doubt doing a general email right now to all of you saying, Pssst:  it’s all a big hoax.  These people can’t ring handbells at all. 

           We couldn’t, tonight.§  When the others left and I prepared to creep out in a humiliated sort of way to re-hurtle hounds, Alicia, having (for some inexplicable reason) declined to accompany us, declared her intention to explore my garden.

           No, I said.  Forbidden.  You can pretend the glass has been blacked out, and a handbell-ringer-eating monster§§ lives out there.

           Alicia looked at me.  Give me some secateurs, and I’ll do some deadheading, she said.

           DONE! I said, leaping to throw open the door.

           It’s okay though.  (I think.)  Peter had roasted a very nice chicken for supper.  And I did point out to her that she needs to tell her company to stop having meetings in Hampshire on Thursdays.  Thursdays are handbells. 

           I’ll keep it in mind, said Alicia. 

* * *

* I offered to stay sober and drive her back to her hotel!   I did offer!^

^ Ah, what it is to have an expense account.

** Especially the part about the hellhounds eating.  Especially especially the part about Chaos eating.

*** Not very well.  But I do sweep it.

† Also begonias, although they are generally not quite so fiendish.  But I do have a trailing one up at Third House which DESPITE weighing her pot down with several medium-sized boulders—there’s barely room for the begonia any more—will keep leaping off the porch shelf and prostrating herself on the floor.  You know, trailing plants are supposed to trail.  What exactly are garden-plant breeders thinking of when they breed a modest little something whose trailing flowers are the size and weight of watermelons?  They’re like bulldogs that can’t breathe or basset hounds that keep treading on their own ears.  Plants like this should at least come with a warning label ‘only put in a container you can nail down.’  And while you’re at it, you need to tie the frelling plant in place.  I stopped having trailing begonias in hanging baskets when they started ripping themselves out of the compost to plunge to their doom.  I have now roped the runaway begonia at Third House to the window latch, which usefully has a little hole to thread twine through.^

^ Remind me to tell you the adventures of my latest stephanotis.  I sometimes think houseplants are as mad as hellhounds.  It’s like bringing them indoors is the step of domestication too far.  Not that my garden plants aren’t mostly possessed by demons.

†† One of their least appealing aspects is that all those tiny individual petals weigh nothing and therefore get caught up in all the spider webs^ so I have these eye-catching cascades of pink-embellished gossamer flowing down the corners and under the furniture.^^

            And when I have both spiders and bug-eating bats, why do I still have clothes moths??  I haven’t found someone yet who speaks spider fluently enough, but I did think it was in the final contract with the bats.^^^

^ I told you I didn’t sweep well. 

^^ Although if you’re down on your hands and knees peering under my furniture, you have a more serious problem than my housekeeping.

^^^ Speaking of bats, Diane in MN sent me this link:  http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=138953002&m=138962547

It’s about vampire bats.  It’s only three and a half minutes long and it’s pretty interesting, so do listen to it.  You want to make it through to the end, where they’re talking about bat DNA.  You remember, right?, because you read it right here, that bats are not flying rodents.  They’re their own order, Chiroptera+.  Well apparently they’re not even closely related to rodents:  they’re nearer moles, cows and horses++, and so rather than flying mice you want to think of them as tiny flying horses. . . .

            ::falls down laughing::

+ A word that, six months ago, I could only half-remember and certainly couldn’t spell without looking up.

++ Moles, cows and horses seem to me a trifle strange as a group, but what do I know?

††† . . . Niall’s.  Penelope is a little handbell-resistant.  The unexpected drawbacks of having your own house separate from your husband’s. 

‡ ‘Please sir/madam, I want some more.’

‡‡ Alicia looked perfectly calm and unperturbed as I pulled up, although she would be forgiven for a certain moderate anxiety.  She’d sent me the details of her hotel, let’s call it Chatsworth, and I thought, what?   I thought I knew all the hotels around here but I’ve never heard of that one.   So I looked it up and discovered it was what I know as Chartwell, and they’d renamed it.  So when I helpfully texted Alicia that I’d be at Chartwell at the arranged hour, she texted back . . . Chartwell—?

‡‡‡ Possibly very slightly in my defense my Damaged Forefinger started throbbing aggrievedly and I had to figure out a Strange Weird and Distracting way to hold the bell in that hand.  And this typing with seven instead of eight fingers has got old. 

§ Although the chocolate biscuits were rather good.

§§ Who would have been perfectly justified in eating us tonight, and thus keeping the handbell bloodlines pure.

It’s finally HOT here.  Yesterday shorts were maybe still optional, today they are life-support, like the reed you breathe through while lying in the swamp among all the other reeds to escape from your enemies.  The old ways are the best ways sometimes, just so long as the surgically enhanced bloodhounds still can’t smell underwater bodies, the technologically enhanced humans still can’t hear that one of the reeds is breathing*, and the magician-mercenaries can’t hear you thinking.**

            Mmm.  Nice cool swamp.  Nice cool wet swamp.  Nice cool wet restful swamp.  Mmmmm.***

            I’m not at my best.†  The ME, having indicated its intention to sidle along outta here, honey, and good riddance, you and your cheap pickup and your cheaper pick-up lines, got a few miles out of town, did 180° and shot back to cradle me in its arms again.  ARRRGH.  Or rather, unnnnnnnh, since I haven’t really got a good arrrgh in me.  Had hours and HOURS and hours of sleep last night and could still barely crawl out of bed this morning . . . one of the purposes of hellhounds is to get me out of bed so I told myself that the noise of my across-the-road neighbour’s . . . I think it’s a car vacuum, like you need a special hoover for your car . . . but it sounds more like a giant woodchipper, like what you’d hire when you needed to grind up a small city†† . . . that the noise it was making was disguising the forlorn pathetic whines of hellhounds wanting to begin the day and despairing at the protracted nonappearance of their hellgoddess.  Hellhounds were, of course, crashed out and motionless when I got downstairs and they objected to being prodded into wakefulness.  There’s way too much sunlight out there, they said.  They were right.

            I just about managed the morning hurtle by slinking from shady bit to shady bit, trailing hot cranky panting hellhounds.  At least I didn’t fall down.  Got to the mews and thought unnnnnnh, as above. . . .

            And cancelled my voice lesson.  I did not want to.  I did not want to.  But Italian was clearly beyond me, I’m behind on practising anyway between the ME’s previous onslaught and the distracting presence of visitors†††, and there’s also the little matter of the drive.  Driving a car when the ME is turning your neural pathways into peanut butter is not advised. 

            Whimper.‡

            However I was copied in on an email exchange between Colin and Niall concerning tonight’s entertainment and when Colin said we were ringing his tiny flowerpot bells because Titus was coming‡‡, and that there would be eight of us so we could ring triples and major I decided I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a fool of myself over Stedman triples.‡‡‡  I can’t handle those wretched little bells anyway, I can always blame my handling.  In fact I know the frelling line to a plain course of Stedman triples just fine—and I might conceivably make my way through a touch of bob major, although we only rang plain courses tonight—but ringing something you know the line to is another matter and as I keep saying I’m someone who only learns by grind.  So we all ground.  Some of us ground worse than others.  Ahem.  Actually I did get through both the Stedman and the bob major, so it counts as a successful evening.§  I still can’t handle those frelling flowerpots . . . but I’m improving.  I was thinking tonight that I need to be careful about appearing to get too adept—skanky handling is such a great excuse for going wrong.  However I don’t think the ‘too adept’ is likely to be a problem any time soon. 

The second part of the discussion of epic fantasy went up today. 

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/epic_interview2/

It’s . . . er . . . a little long.  Well, I suppose it makes sense that writers of epic fantasy should naturally go on rather.§§   My single comment is waaaaaay down near the end, under ‘any last words’.  

* * *

* Presumably in these situations you choose the edge of the reedbed, so there’s room for you to lie down without making a human-shaped hole in the reeds, which would probably give the game away even to the non-enhanced sort of enemy.

** What is that crawling down my shirt???  And what—AAAAAUGH

*** Okay, maybe not.  I don’t like things crawling down my shirt.  And you can never be sure that this isn’t the swamp where the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is about to emerge.  Or that you’re not in the wrong alternate universe, and in this one Swamp Thing’s personality was ruined by the transformation from mild-mannered lab coat to giant walking vegetable. 

† Statistics:  1,000,000,000,000 blog posts where I am not at my best.  3 blog posts when I am. 

†† Or possibly the wrong-alternate-universe Swamp Thing in a really bad mood.

††† Not to mention a slight lingering trauma concerning Percival and singing

‡ I spent a certain amount of the afternoon moving slowly around the (seriously neglected) cottage garden and moaning.  Alicia, gods help me, is coming to visit this week^, and I’m considering blacking out the kitchen window and the glass-paned garden door and saying, Garden?  What garden?  Don’t open that door, that’s where the monster lives.^^   

^ On Thursday.  There will be handbells.   

^^ The handbell ringer eating monster.  This is known as being between a rock and a hard place:  if she doesn’t pick up those handbells, I’ll eat her.  

‡‡ So no physical exertion necessary 

‡‡‡ And Niall would be doing the driving 

§ Also, it was cooling off a little once the sun stopped thundering away like a car vacuum disguised as a woodchipper. 

§§. . . by which standard I clearly am an epic fantasy writer, even if it doesn’t show very often in my books

Frell and damnation, it’s already the middle of the night and I still have a blog post to yank out of aetherwhere.   I’ve shipped off a lot of photos to Blogmom so that she can start creating the masterwork that will be this auction.  I was just saying to her that I take some comfort in the thought that my bells will not need serious restoration work again for another century or two.

            Meanwhile I’m very pleased that people on the forum are expressing interest and enthusiasm.  I feel my neck is sticking out pretty far.  I will be glad if this auction is a relative success not only for my bells’ sake but for mine, so I don’t look like an utter drooling prat.   So thank you all once already, and please keep those bid-button-pressing fingers limber.

Gonetotervs:  Another suggestion to raise money — if you still own the e-rights to any of your earliest short stories, put them individually on Amazon for $2.99 and see how many of us will buy them…..

Merrilee and I have a Cunning Plan—although probably not in time for the auction.  Watch this space.

Texturedknitter:  Lots of attractive things in your auction list. I’ve never cared about collecting autographs, but regret now that I didn’t get one at Balticon, lo those many *mumble* years ago.

Nothing to regret!  I’m still writing my name on things!  (I’ve still got the Balticon 1898 mug somewhere, holding pencils or paperclips or dragon baby teeth or rose petals or something.  The date on it is a little startling, I agree.) 

Also, maybe offer a little bat doodle thank you, alternate to the bells doodle thank you? I’m kind of unreasonably fond of the bats (distance helps with this, I expect).

I’m fond of the little frellers myself.  I like hearing them enjoying themselves in the accommodations provided . . . just not so much at 5 a.m.  I’m not quite sure how we’re going to arrange this, but doodle-buyers will be allowed some say in what the doodle will be.  Certainly anything that appeared in last night’s extravaganza is fair game.  Although doodles evolve, as anyone who doodles knows.  Last night’s Hermione or spider or running hellhound may not be next week’s Hermione or spider or running hellhound.  The map of Damar will probably stay fairly constant however.  

librarykat:  once things get going, I’ll see what I can bid on, or simply donate (depends on how crazy bidding gets)

Donations are good*—but you can at least buy a doodle!  (Or three!)  I’m hoping to offer both $5 and $10 doodles (there is also going to have to be some add-on for postage, but I haven’t faced this yet), but I’m dependent on what Blogmom tells me about the tactical technology of all this.  I’m also hoping that there is some clever way I can say/offer that if any biddable item is particularly hot, if it’s something I’ve still got spare copies of, I’ll make available extra copies at top bid price. 

Diane in MN:  Which we are going to be expected to sell tickets to. We’ve already had one pep talk, not to say exhortation, from Vicky about this.
Oh gods. I spent four years in high school having to sell things as part of fund drives, and made a solemn vow that I would NEVER SELL ANYTHING AGAIN. Which has meant, on more than one occasion, buying a lot of raffle tickets that I wasn’t about to try to unload on my friends and acquaintances. You have my very sincere sympathy for this. Do you suppose Vicky would let you off if your auction brings in a pile of cash?

THIS IS EXACTLY THE PLAN.  THIS.  IS.  THE.  PLAN.   I am totally hoping to lay a startling cheque in Vicky’s lap and add ‘and I’m not selling any frelling tickets.’  So, listen, everyone, not only are you contributing to the bell fund, you’re contributing to GETTING ME A REPRIEVE FROM TICKET SELLING.   Going around confronting people with stuff you want them to buy is the worst.  You know all those studies that say that public speaking is the majority number one fear?  I can do public speaking.  But selling things?  The mere idea makes me feel slightly ill.   Brrrrrrr.  So, bid in the auction.  Buy doodles.  Please.  I’ll stay up late drawing portraits of your Aunt Fanny and setting Chesterton’s Lepanto to music.   Anything.  Just don’t make me sell tickets.    

CathyR:  Can’t wait for the auction! *so excited* !!

This is the right attitude.  We support and encourage this attitude. 

AJLR:    *sits poised on edge of computer chair, with finger flexed over the PayPal button*

Yes!  Yes! 

B_twin:  I’m eyeing off that copy of ROWAN and SUNSHINE…

AJLR:  OK, BIDDING WAR in prospect!  And if R and I have to live on bread and dripping for a week in aid of Robin’s bells, well, I’m sure he won’t mind…

Someone married to a bellringer has to understand.  (Please quote me.)

Glinda:  I’d go for a bell doodle. Or a bat doodle. Or how about both together, for a bit more money?

This is the idea behind the $5 and $10 options.  Or two doodles. 

Black Bear:  Hey all, eyes off that copy of Rowan!!!

AJLR:  Gonna make me, huh, huh?
*squares up to Black Bear* 

Umm . . . ROWAN is one of the ones I have extra copies of . . . ::whistles nonchalantly:: 

Amyrose:  What about just selling autographed copies of various books? I would gladly pay $10-$20 in addition to the price of the book, especially since it’s for such a good cause.

 I’d consider this.  Anyone else out there interested? 

Of course, then who would ship them out? And who would order the necessary books? I suppose that would be a logistics nightmare.

Well, me.  That’s who’s doing all the grunt work anyway.**  But I wouldn’t expect the demand to be all that overwhelming.  Famous last words, I suppose.

But – *wistfully* – it would be nice to get a copy of Spindle’s End with a signature. And maybe a doodle of a spider… or a fox..

I could do that.  Oh, fox!  I could do a fox.

PamAdams:  I would certainly buy a doodle or maybe two. (Plus I’m hoping for some Peter books–any chance for King and Joker or Skeleton-in-Waiting?)

Another thing about an auction list is you probably can’t let it get too long and overwhelming or people will take one look and go back to reruns of THE WEST WING.  Unless you’re Sotheby’s, which I am not.  And I think KING and SKELETON don’t appear because we haven’t got spare copies.  Peter had this appalling habit of giving ALL his copies away and neglecting to order more.  And then the book goes OP and that’s that.  

AnguaLupin:  …Now I really have to find money in the budget to bid on the Serious Doodle. 

Oh good.  Yes please. 

Mrs Redboots:  Is there anything the Hellgoddess can’t do????

Write books that sell millions of copies.  Knit like you can.  Ring a touch of Stedman Triples.  Ring even a plain frelling course of Cambridge minor in hand.  Stop my roses from getting blackspot.  Convince my hellhounds to eat every day.  Sing like Beverly Sills/Marilyn Horne/Janet Baker/Joyce DiDonato/Bryn Terfel.  Fly like a pegasus.  End world hunger. . . .

I love the doodles!

Oh good.  Thank you!  Thank all of you! 

Meanwhile . . . you won’t remember this, but a couple of months ago I made reference to a Secret Gardening Project.  Look. 

First fruits. Er, vegetables.

My very first edible crop . . . of anything but apples off my predecessor’s tree, and my little patio peach and nectarine trees (this year’s harvest are ripening nicely, thank you).   Peter used to grow our vegetables but his back has not been cooperating this year with the basic gardening concept of lots of bending over.  I saw a tray of six-inch broad-bean seedlings out in front of the florist’s and thought oh . . .  feh . . . nothing ventured.  And they take up a huge amount of room, demand to be watered all the time, and totally refuse to be staked in any way I understand staking*** . . . and then you get this weeny handful of pods after all that, which are mostly pod.† 

Mostly pod. Sigh.

            But then you bite into a broad bean that was still on the plant an hour ago and you say ‘oh.  Wow.  Yes.  This is why.’  So I probably will do it again next year.    Maybe I’ll try a few more plants.   Maybe . . . 

* * *

* I’m also thinking that after all of this I will have to figure out how to get a recording of us ringing our newly cleaned, pressed and mended bells.  I’m the one going CLANK. 

** And Fiona, of course. 

*** Note to self:  broad beans are not dahlias. 

† I should get about this much again, I think, unless the next lot of pods decide they’re not having a good time and decamp to the Bahamas.