It was such a gorgeous day today that hellhounds and I had a proper hurtle, despite my feeling about as lively as that mess in the bottom of your gutters, thanks to another of those ten-hours-in-bed, two-hours-of-broken-sleep nights.**  I’m catching up on back issues of magazines.  I’ve thrown a few more books against the wall.***  I finally downloaded BEJEWELED from the iTunes store because I’m keep hearing that it’s the original and still the best of those line-up-the-same-shape/colour-things-they-go-bang-and-you-get-points games.  It’s okay, although I could do without the Fu Manchu voiceover.  It’s not as good as MONTEZUMA. 

            But when I finally crawled permanently out of bed† it was a beautiful blue sunny day and the frelling birds were frelling singing and the hellhounds were all over me†† and I, drowning in guilt as I am because all things considered they’ve been very good about my less than impeccable maintaining of standards the last week and some†††, decided, okay, countryside is in order, and we went out to seek same.  And it really was pretty fabulous.  We didn’t even meet any unusually savage off-lead dogs.‡ 

katinseattle

I want more Mongo. I want a whole book of Mongo.

No pressure. 

Certainly not.  I’m very relieved, since I’ve been working to this plan since the last time we had this conversation.  Mongo did, in fact, break training in a big way today . . .  noooooooo you moron you were told to [mmrgllrrrmph].  This is not how this scene went last time.  Yelp!  Arrrgh!  Yaaaah!  —It’s going to go a lot differently with Mongo in it.   I so need sleep.  

blondviolinist

You know how there’s Team Gale and Team Peeta for the HUNGER GAMES trilogy? And Jodi Meadows wants Team Sylph and Team Dragon for her INCARNATE trilogy?‡ 

I’m on team Mongo. 

::Beams:: 

* * *

* Does anyone else keep having their eye caught by the ‘12’ of our new year and have brief dazzled moments of thinking that means it’s still last month?  Or is that just someone with a lurgy and a deadline the end of the month that unfortunately it is? 

** Colin and I have been emailing lethargically back and forth today, ostensibly about tower ringing tomorrow night, but a certain amount of reciprocal whining has crept into the conversation.  I admit I’m a bit relieved that not everybody else that has this lurgy is all shiny and new after three days.  Uuuuuuungh.  And unless I’ve developed bubonic plague by tomorrow I probably will go ringing.  I may not be able to do much but ring rounds for beginners, but Colin has beginners who need rounds rung for them, and it would at least mean pulling on a bell rope.  Maybe Colin and I can cough in harmony. 

*** I’m an even nastier reader when I’m ill and short of sleep. 

† Having wept through the sound of my bells ringing. 

†† I was talking to a friend today who’d been ill in the night too.  She has cats.  And while she was sitting in the bathroom at a totally untoward hour having a small private self-absorbed moan, as one does under these circumstances, the cats were of course all over her.  Hey!  You’re up!  Great!  Aren’t you glad to see us?  Aren’t you going to feed us?   Barring the ‘feed us’ part, hellhounds have a similar reaction.  Hey!  You’re up!  Hey!  All these critters that sleep about twenty hours a day and don’t care which four they’re awake for are very disorienting . . . when you’re pretty disoriented anyway.  But last night I kept coming downstairs for more (filtered) water and fetching more magazines, and then back upstairs again getting up for a pee because I’m drinking all this flaming water, and by the time I officially let hellhounds out of their crate they were all it took you long enough.  So, we’re going out NOW, right?  I wonder if they could learn the concept of ‘dressing gown’?^ 

^ Mongo could.  The problem with the Mongos of the world is that they do not sleep twenty hours a day, and they need stuff to do.  If you don’t give them stuff to do, they will find stuff to do.    

††† Here four bright beady little eyes roll significantly toward the sofa.  You just keep giving us extra sofa time, beloved hellgoddess, they say, and much may be forgiven.^ 

^ I’m also practising using the argleblarging new TV set up with the new freeview, non-satellite box and the forty-seven new remotes.+  I’m practising in case the Nice TV Man turns out to have more little stories he would like professional writers’ opinions on.  Why don’t people do their homework.  His manuscript starts with an elaborate description of what the first illustration should be.  Two seconds—okay, maybe twelve seconds—on any reputable how-to-write-for-kids site will tell you this is not what you do.    

          I realise the line about what is acceptable advice-seeking and what isn’t may be blurry in some areas.  I try to double-check before I ask Gemma any medical questions, for example, that I’m asking out of my natural, not to say pathological, inquisitiveness, and not out of a desire for free advice.++  And she’s also a friend, and I give friends a whole lot of slack because I think if you actually know someone who does something it’s reasonable to ask them first, and if she started asking me about illustrations in kids’ books I’d just tell her what I know.  Which is not, in fact, much, and she’d be better off researching some good how-to-write-for-children web sites.

          And if this joker had said, the first time he was here, oh, hey, wow, you’re professional writers?  Say, I’m writing a children’s book, and I wanted to know how detailed I should make the descriptions of the illustrations, maybe you can tell me?, I would have.  There wouldn’t even have been any blood loss (probably).  But he shows up on our (Peter’s) doorstep without warning one afternoon with his frelling story in his frelling hand?  No.  Not on.+++

            So I don’t want to have to ask him any more questions about the TV.  So I’m practising.  I’m not watching TV, mind you, but when I’m going to be lying on the sofa for a while, I turn it on. 

Ajlr

I’m so sorry to hear that The Cough is still unwilling to leave, Robin. I hate that feeling one gets where it seems as if one’s brain is going to be shaken out through one’s forehead at the very next convulsion. 

I tend to specialise in the brains-leaking-out-your ears cough.  Whatever that is that is causing intolerable pressure on my forehead is unlikely to be brains. 

            Yesterday while I was not watching television there was something so clearly bizarre on the screen that I found myself distracted from the book I was going to throw across the room in a minute anyway#.  Eventually I figured out how to call up ‘information’ and was apprised that this was a film called ‘The Trail of the Screaming Forehead’ in which a small harmless American town is taken over by . . . alien foreheads.  Ahem.  I think whoever came up with this idea was having a really bad case of flu-with-pounding-headache at the time and had been hitting the cough medicine a lot harder than is safe. 

+ They breed.  Like coathangers and odd socks. 

++ Even over here, where we do have the NHS, so the absolute question of money is not acute, doctors in their off-duty hours are off duty.  

+++ I am a curmudgeon.  But we knew that.  And I haven’t read it—that’s Peter’s self-immolation.  But Peter mentioned the illustration thing, and I picked the ms up off the table and . . . yup. 

# Carefully missing the Christmas tree.  I’m not even feeling shame about its continued upness yet.  Hey, I’m sick.  

‡ Although the herd of pygmy rhinoceros was a surprise. 

‡‡ Team Sylph and Team Dragon?  Ewwwwww.  I’m on Team Sam.

It’s after one frelling a.m. and I haven’t started the blog yet.  Since one of the ways I avoid thinking about how much time the bangleflandadblinging blog eats is by starting that night’s post in the (comparatively) early evening and then writing it in driblets while I work on something else at the same time* this is bad.  What else I’m doing may not be very demanding—if I weren’t half thinking about the blog I might not find out after it’s too late that I’ve once again ordered enough plants for next season to fill all New Arcadia’s gardens** for example—the point is merely that when it’s AAAAAAUGH o’clock and for frell’s sake I started the beastly blog hours and hours ago . . . at least it hasn’t all been the blog.  When I’m up against it like this there’s nowhere to hide.  I have to write it and I have to write it NOW.

            Today’s problems began last night as they so often do.  Yesterday was seriously bad anyway because I had to get up whether I’d had any sleep or not (I hadn’t), so today I decided I would simply stay in bed till I’d had enough sleep.  It might be February.  Well, it wasn’t, but it took about twelve hours to get about six hours’ sleep, between the cough, the sleeping sitting up because of the cough which means that not only aren’t you sleeping very well even when you’re sleeping, when you wake up to pee again because you keep drinking water from the sad delusion it will dampen your flaming throat, you are crippled with muscle spasms.  Woman was not made to sleep sitting up.  Fortunately the hellhounds are so accustomed to ignoring my screaming at inanimate objects that they don’t react to my screaming at . . . me.  Which either says something rather ominous about the success of my tendency to anthropomorphize (or at least critter-morphize) computers, furniture, articles of clothing and little noodgy objects, or it says something even more ominous about my status the last few flu-addled days.  Or it may just be they don’t recognise the harsh rasping croaks that are the extent of my vocalisation lately as having anything to do with the hellgoddess.***

            Anyway.  Twelve hours eats a vicious hole in your day.  I’m still too enfeebled to think about pulling on a bell rope so, barring some half-speed hurtling and a cup of tea with Oisin†, all I’ve been doing ALL FRELLING DAY is working on SHADOWS.  So I haven’t got anything to tell you about. 

* * *

Maggie has (also) had a bad day, and last night was pretty stressful too.††  There have been skeletons coming out of closets and bogeys from the corners.  The world is not the shape she thought it was.  And she has just withstood a creepy-making conversation about when what you have is a relationship and when what you have is a parasite.  And why do we keep pets anyway? 

* * *

 I looked down.  Mongo hadn’t quite given up on the possibility of more sandwich.  He was sitting beside my chair with his head pressing rather heavily against my leg.  When he saw me looking at him his tail, of course, began to wag.  “Trombone,” I said, and he leaped up and shot away to look for his rubber trombone.  It wasn’t a fair command:  I should know where it was before I sent him after it.  You want to reinforce your training with success.  But I wanted my parasitic dog to show off how clever he was.  I heard him scurrying around the living room.  Not there.  He made a quick pass down the hall to the front door, but the dining room door was closed.  It wouldn’t be in the dining room.  He scampered upstairs.  I heard him nudging the door to my bedroom open.  It might be under the desk or the bed.  No.  Not in the bathroom either.  (Dog toys occasionally got in the bathroom as the result of the drama of baths.)  Damn.  It was probably in the back yard then.  Damn.  Use your brain, Margaret Alastrina, not your stupid emotions.  He’s not going to find it and he’s going to be unhappy and feel that he’s failed.  Which will be your fault.

Mongo flung himself downstairs again.  I might be giving up hope but he wasn’t.  I was just about to get up and open the back door, which was better than not doing anything, but dogs have a strong sense of fairness and Mongo would know I hadn’t played fair with him, even if he forgave me, which he would.  But he trotted to the back door himself without looking at me.  And reared up on his hind legs, took the handle in his mouth and pulled down.  The door snicked open.

I had never taught him to do this.

He ran outside and found the trombone under a rosebush.**  He came dancing back in with it again (I admit he didn’t close the door behind him) and laid it proudly at my feet.  “You are wonderful and amazing,” I said, “good dog.”  I got up and fed him the last slice of chicken from Val’s sandwich-making.  I also closed the back door.  Then I put the plate that had had the sandwiches on it on the floor so he could lick up all the crumbs.

“I can live with ‘parasite’,” I said.  “It doesn’t bother me.” 

* * *

* This does not include the hours I spend reading up on South American vampire bats when I meant just to be checking the spelling of ‘pipistrelle’, or trying to find a nice neat short definition of the difference between quantum theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum physics^ so that if I’m going to make a fool of myself I can do it forthrightly and in full cognizance, or googling not quite at random in pursuit of that perfectly off the wall metaphor that I know is out there waiting for me on . . . just . . . the . . . next . . . opening . . . screen. 

^ Which appears to depend on who you read.  A bit like asking what the difference between fantasy and science fiction is.  

** Hey.  It’s a small town. 

*** Hellhounds are actually being very patient with me.  They are not getting hurtled to their standard full extent due to human infirmity^ and I don’t dare let them off lead because I can’t call them back.  You don’t realise just how much you use your voice for things other than conversation till you haven’t got it to use. 

^ My dogminder costs.  Put me in my All Stars and I can still walk.  

† I forgot to remind him to boil the mug I used for forty-eight hours and then let it stand in bleach for a fortnight.  He’ll probably remember.  It’s a little hard to miss that there’s something wrong with me.  Oh, and he claims he’s going to write me another blog post.^  And he has the new Finale update.  Sob.  Lust.  Loooooonging. 

^ If this is pity, I’ll take it. 

†† Although there was a Very Cute Boy. 

††† Sic.  Maggie’s mom likes roses.

I am a walking cough;  a cough on two legs;  cough made flesh.  Cough.  Talking is a mistake.*  Eating is perilous.**  I think the arrival of the cough is supposed to indicate you’re improving.***  I’m too tired from coughing to tell.  Cough.

            But SHADOWS is still going.†

            I am however cranky†† about the bad news about ultrasonic jewellery cleaners.  I had thought part of the point of the ultrasonic gadgets is that they’re gentle on jewellery, possibly to the point of being so gentle they don’t really clean anything.  (I do know that you can’t do anything to pearls except smile at them and wear them against cashmere.)  I also didn’t know, or had forgotten, since I’ve barely worn my tourmaline ring in twenty years, that tourmalines are fragile.  Feh.  And yes, of course I can ask our nice local jeweller for advice about cleaning, but he will feel obliged to go all professional on me and I was hoping some of you guys might have the answer without the official hedging.†††  Ah well.  More little brushes and washing-up liquid in my future then.  I guess I can bear it.

            And before I bore you all to death . . . I am loitering frivolously with the thought of going ringing at Forza tomorrow.  This is a really bad idea.  I don’t have the time, I don’t have the energy, I have a novel to finish—the bells there are tricky sods, I already know Gemma is not going to be there, and I might find myself the only mediocre ringer present, with my usual additional burden of not being able to handle those particular bells and the supernumerary burden of the lurgy.

            Maybe I’ll just stay home, and post a recipe.   And cough. 

* * *

* Why do hellhounds insist on waiting till I say something?  Isn’t the mad waving of hands containing harnesses enough to tell them they should sit?  

** Eating is always perilous.  Ask Darkness and Chaos.  AAAAAUGH.  Having given the impression that he was on the mend last night, Chaos barely made it outdoors this morning to start the diabolical double-ended geysering all over again.  AAAAAAAUGH. 

***  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/09/new-year-health-regime-last  The headline in the paper version is more eye-catching to me in my present state:  ‘Dr Luisa Dillner Says Switch Off the TV, Stop Snacking and Start Exercising to Ensure You Feel Good Beyond January.’  I haven’t watched TV in YEARS,^ I am post-menopausal and my daily energy allowance is 3.5 calories and I NEVER snack, and I walk an hour and forty five minutes to two hours EVERY DAY.  WHY DO I HAVE THE LURGY WHEN I AM A PARAGON OF VIRTUE?^^ 

^ I talked to Hannah today.  “Hi,” I said.  Cough.  “Wow,” she said.  She still hasn’t read CHAOS.  After she does we’re going to read either JANE AUSTEN or CHARLES DICKENS by Claire Tomalin.  Or both, because we have so much time to read.  She was telling me about the TV programmes her daughters are watching and I’ve never heard of any of them.  I haven’t been deeply involved in a TV show since BUFFY.  No, really.  ANGEL?  Too gruesome.  FIREFLY?  Eh.  It had its moments, but it never entered my heart and mind the way BUFFY did.+  It’s probably safe to say that I wouldn’t be writing my first high school novel at fifty-nine if I hadn’t watched BUFFY at an embarrassingly advanced age which was nonetheless more impressionable than it should have been.  Which may or may not be a good thing.

            Oh, and the mysterious non-cooperation affliction of our de-cabled TV?  We changed the batteries in the remote and it still refused to climb away from BBC 1.  So there was a knock on the door one afternoon and there was the Nice Man who had installed our freeview box who wanted to ask if one of us would read his CHILDREN’S BOOK MANUSCRIPT.  Fortunately Peter answered the door and dragged him into the sitting room and thrust the remote at him.  There are too many buttons on the wretched thing.  And Peter is reading his manuscript.  I had my mouth all open to do my rant on this subject which is that ASIDE from the fact that I am a cranky cow, what I think about an unpublished manuscript has no more to do with its chances of getting published than what Chaos or Darkness thinks of it.++  Go start researching AGENTS.  What you need is an AGENT who likes your work.  But I was forestalled by Peter’s old-fashioned gentlemanliness AKA the man is nuts.  

+ And I’m the only person on the planet who didn’t/doesn’t like THE SOPRANOS or David Tennant. 

++ Er—you aren’t expecting us to eat it, are you? 

^^ Of course they also tell you to get seven to eight hours of sleep every night.  They must be joking. 

† And my email seems to have settled down . . . for the moment.  Sort of.  Or, possibly, not, and I just don’t know it.  It was even weirder than I told you yesterday, as I eventually found out when I stopped abusing my damaged larynx with screams for vengeance and had a look for the easily findable stuff that had reappeared.  When I got back to the mews and turned the old laptop on—which is the one I’ve been using the last several flu-demented days of filing and deleting—I was braced for what I’d just seen on the cottage machines.  But what had come back was NOT what I’d deleted that morning.  It was some OTHER stuff.  Whimper.

            So . . . I basically have no idea.  GIBBERGIBBERGIBBERGIBBER.  Right.  Enough of that.  I have a novel to finish.

            As to why I still use Outlook . . . I forget.  I will ask Raphael to remind me.  I think it’s to do with my apparently somewhat unusual requirements combined with my total lack of patience, interest in, or skill in understanding anything to do with computers.  I think it’s what they’re willing to support me with.  The bright spot, such as it is, is that the shiny new laptop with the vibrantly hated Win 7 on it did in fact discharge its battery by 50% overnight despite being turned off.  YAAAAY.  For once something goes wrong even when there is an archangel present.

            However, those of you hopefully offering advice about the hellhounds:  I think you’re probably late to the party.  Long-time readers have heard all this before.  My hellhounds are five and a half years old and I spent the first two of their years of life on this planet trying to find out why they had diarrhea all the time.  The answer is, as I eventually figured out with absolutely NO help from any of the fantastic and expensive panoply of vets, specialist vets, and specialist vets’ laboratories and techno-gizmo whatsits that I consulted, that they are allergic to all cereal grains.  (Pancreatitis, as someone mentioned on the forum but I can’t find it now, is one of the things they were temporarily diagnosed for.)  I’d tried an elimination diet nearly first thing, but I took them off brown rice while continuing to use barley and oats, and then swapped.  It took me a long time to think of all cereals.  But two years of eating something they were wildly and violently allergic to has left them with some permanent damage. 

            And the only time they won’t eat when I’m nearby is when they’re already looking for an excuse not to eat, and me being an ogre will do.  (I think this has more to do with the fact that they know I want them to eat and I’ll be testy if they don’t.)  I’m actually not very fond of the alpha theory.  Why would a good leader want his/her colleagues not to eat?  The alpha business as the great comprehensive answer to everything is less popular than it was, for which I am grateful.  When it first came crashing out it was The Solution, and I thought, since it clearly didn’t apply all that well to my experience, that I just had weird dogs.  Well, I do have weird dogs, but the alpha theory has also lost centre stage.  I am, however, a great fan of what works.  If something makes you and your dog(s) happy and healthy and comfortable and satisfied, then it’s the answer for you.  

†† Cough 

††† Note to self:  The Answer never exists.

            I can’t very well ask the fellow who bought the stones for us.  That was twenty years ago in Maine and I have more or less deliberately^ forgotten everything about him except that he was a self-absorbed twit. 

^ Ie making a virtue of Middle Aged Brain

I still feel like stagnant pond scum and the water in vases where the flowers have all died.  I wrote something today when Maggie has a very large purring cat in her lap and she says that it makes her eyeballs buzz.  Yeah.  Only I’m like that just sitting here. **

            The day did not begin well when I woke too early and lay there thinking about an intractable bit of plot machinery while my thriving young cough gleefully explored its rapidly expanding capacities.  Eventually I decided there was more rustling*** going on than could be explained by my cough-driven blood pressure thudding in my ears, put on a dressing-gown, stumbled downstairs, let hellhounds out . . . and Chaos bolted out into the courtyard and began erupting in both directions.  OH JOY.  We’ve already been having hellhound follies the last few days which I haven’t told you about because they wind me up and I can’t afford to snap and run off into the blue, I have a novel to finish.†  I do know what started this particular too-many-ringed circus:  Darkness heard a monster at the cottage the other night while he was behaving in a reckless manner—which is to say eating—and isn’t going to make that mistake again any time soon.  Chaos missed the monster†† and initially attempted to carry on with the eating . . . but you can’t just lie about eating when your brother and life partner is crammed into the back of the crate becoming one with the, um, darkness.  You could see the Dawning Horror creeping over him, although Chaos isn’t so much a back of the crate hellhound as a floormat with large beseeching eyes hellhound.  NOOOOOOO.  NOT THE BOWL OF FOOD.  NOOOOOOOOO.  Anyway.  Things have progressed.  Not in a good way.  Today we appear to have added reality to the mess.

            As I was hosing down the hellhound courtyard there was one of those chirpy knocks on the door, you know the one:  tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, tap, tap.  GO AWAY.  YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT I’M DOING.  I answered the door.†††  It was the postperson, who handed me a Large Wodge of Stuff.  I staggered under the weight, being weak and infirm from coughing.  Will you be here in half an hour? he said in a voice to match the knock on the door.  I stared at him through puffy red-rimmed eyes, a large pile of post and a bad attitude.  I couldn’t think of a way out of it.  Yes, I said.  Oh good, he said, I have some packets for you as well.  EVERYTHING I HAVE ORDERED OR ANYONE HAS SENT ME IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS ARRIVED TODAY.‡

            And then Raphael showed up‡‡ to (a) take the shiny new laptop away and make its possessed-by-evil battery spin 360° and spew green bile‡‡‡ so we can demand a new one and (b) tell frelling Outlook to stop playing silly buggers and function again.  I mean, again Raphael told it.  It giggles feebly while there’s an archangel in the house and instantly goes off the rails again as soon as he leaves.§  ARRRRGH.§§  Since I’m presently trapped at home with SHADOWS, two mentally- and digestively-challenged hellhounds and a cough, I’ve spent some time trying to sort out my dreadful email inboxes.  I spent a good two hours doing this this morning while I was waiting hopefully for the fifth or sixth mug of tea to penetrate so I could get on with SHADOWS.  And when we went back to the cottage this afternoon and I turned on the desktop—and the knapsack laptop just to doublecheck—NONE OF WHAT I’D DONE ON THE MEWS LAPTOP UPDATED.

             SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM.§§§ 

* * *

* The end is actually in sight.  It’s just nowhere near enough.  I want to be able to see it without the assistance of the Hubble telescope. 

** So maybe the ending is near enough.  I just can’t make my eyes focus.  

*** Nothing to do with brown paper. 

Jabenami:

And, um, on the subject of bad physics jokes…

Heisenberg and Schrodinger are driving down the highway when they are pulled over by a police officer.
“Do you have any idea how fast you’re going?” the officer demands.
“No,” says Heisenberg, “but I know exactly where I am.”
“I’m going to need to take a look in your car,” says the officer and goes around to the back of the car.
“Did you know that you have a dead cat in your trunk?” the officer exclaims.
“Well NOW I do,” says Schrodinger. 

And from xkcd, that incomparable fount of scientific wisdom:

http://xkcd.com/967/ 

And, while we’re at it:

http://xkcd.com/32/

Yeah.  This is the kind of thing I think about at 5 a.m. when I can’t sleep and Mr Military Man is going to start crunching gravel soon.  Does xkcd’s little brother write fantasy?   Has his little brother recently started reading brain-exploding quantum physics which is having no discernable effect (he thinks) on his actual story-writing, but is making him feel like his own doppelganger?  

† In twenty-three days.  In case anyone else is counting. 

†† We were having a typhoon.^  Wind, rain, banshees.  The banshees have never bothered the hellhounds, but there is, I am assuming, a sub- or supra-banshee who has infiltrated the area recently, to the dismay of some sensitive hellhounds.  

^ And I am so tired of resetting my phone machine, and the alien-invasion-klaxon back-up battery that protects the desktop from berserkers and boiling oil and is worse than the banshees.  The typhoon went on for several days.  I can go for weeks without getting any messages on my phone machine+ except from people like the dentist++ but over the three days of typhoon I think everybody I’ve ever met tried to phone me and have subsequently been variously waspish or petulant about my yet-again-un-re-set phone machine.+++ 

+ Probably because I never answer them 

++ And I’m certainly not going to answer him.  The nice young receptionist is leaving me increasingly forlorn-sounding reminders about my check-up however.~  Go away.  I have a novel to finish.  You don’t want me till I’ve finished my novel, and got paid.  And I don’t want you at all, but . . . 

~ There’s a special module in Dental Receptionist School about sounding forlorn. 

+++ It’s not like I ever, you know, answer the phone.  

http://www.quotegarden.com/telephones.html : 

The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875.  In other words, if you had been living in 1850, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25 years without having to answer the phone.  Bill DeWitt, 1972

Middle age:  When you’re sitting at home on Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you. Ogden Nash 

The situation is made additionally complex in my case because the phone that works doesn’t ring.  The phone that doesn’t work does ring, but it’s the one in my office which is to say next to my bedroom and I certainly don’t want it ringing at me at an unsuitable hour, like any time before noon.  So I leave it unplugged.  Why should I plug in a phone that doesn’t work?  Which means I don’t hear phone calls.  Every now and then I’ll hear some clicking and muttering noises but by the time I figure out it’s someone leaving a message, they’ve rung off, and I didn’t want to answer the phone anyway, did I?  No.  I’ll listen to the message later.  If I remember.  If the banshees don’t wipe it first.~  

~ I have a perfectly good email address.  It’s not like people can’t get hold of me.  Of course I don’t always answer emails either, but I do read them. 

††† I have to draw the line somewhere.  I already don’t answer the phone.  

‡ Okay, I don’t know that it’s everything.  Everything I know to worry about the non-arrival of.  I’m well aware that anything that doesn’t arrive at its destination by Christmas enters an interdimensional time warp that laughs at both Heisenberg and Schrodinger, and re-emerges at an undivinable wave/particle node which generally involves being gnawed by dragons during the detranslocation and is most often rendered as March.  But some of today’s haul was ordered/sent in November.  

‡‡ I backed up politely, explaining that I had the lurgy.  So do I, said Raphael cheerfully.  I’ve had it since the beginning of December.  And through two courses of antibiotics.

            Moan. 

‡‡‡ All right, I’m a little obsessed with undesirable effluvia at the moment. 

§ It hasn’t tried undesirable effluvia yet.  Small mercies.  Or no, medium-sized mercies at least. 

§§ So, arguably, I don’t have a perfectly good email address. 

§§§ Don’t do this when you have a sore throat and a cough.

Well I feel like death on toast.  Old, decrepit death on burnt, spongy toast that was nasty chemical-laden mattress bread in its heyday.  I also have laryngitis.  Well, half laryngitis.  I can croak, but it hurts.  There will be a cough later.  Joy.

            Yes, I missed service ring this morning.

            No voice lesson tomorrow.

            No second-Monday at Old Eden tomorrow.*

            Not in a good mood. 

            I did, however, meet Colin and Anthea while I was out hurtling hellhounds in slo-mo this morning.**  Colin has the lurgy as well so they were also moving in slo-mo.***  Oh, you sound much worse than he does, said Anthea admiringly.  Thanks, I rasped. 

            Clearly more bad jokes are needed.  All of you who read the forum will have seen (almost all of) these.  And if you’re feeling healthy and sharp and brainy you are permitted to skip.  The rest of you will enjoy seeing them again. 

blondviolinist:

A piece of string walks into a bar, and asks for a beer. The bartender looks him up and down and says “We don’t serve your kind in here.” The string walks back outside, stomps around, and ties himself all up. He then walks back into the bar, and asks for a beer. The bartender says “Aren’t you the piece of string that was just in here a moment ago?” “Nope,” the string replies. “I’m a frayed knot.” 

Us old married women are allowed to laugh and laugh at the following.  The rest of you have to pretend to be stern and poker-faced.  Mrrrnghmph.

LRK:

“Mrs Svensson, why did you shoot your husband with a bow and arrow?”
“Because I didn’t want to wake the children.”

Or another:

“My husband is a sailor – he’s only home one month a year.”
“That’s awful! I’d never stand for that!”
“Oh, I don’t know… a month passes so quickly…” † 

And here’s a joke from me.  I can’t remember where it comes from, except that I picked it up somewhere in the last few months of cramming physics and maths, probably several times: 

“We don’t serve your kind here,” said the bartender.

A neutrino walks into a bar.†† 

* * *

* This, I admit, may be as much blessing as curse.  Not my favourite bells in the universe, especially not in January when even nice bells may be dyspeptic.  But having not rung tower bells in seven days I’m starting to twitch.  

** You have dogs, they have to go out.  If you’re incapacitated, you stuff a broomstick down your spine, tie the leads to your hands, and go out anyway. (My dog minder, bless her, took them out yesterday.)   Next time, I’m adopting an elderly, three-legged Chihuahua.  Or maybe I’ll go the amphibians in tanks route.  No, probably not.  I think the wingless fruit flies in the refrigerator would creep me out.  I have enough trouble with the mealworms for the robins. 

Ajlr

Oh, Robin, that ring… *haz a envy*

It’s good, isn’t it?  ::Preens::   It provides a little cheering-up in the present dark days uggggh.  I tell myself that winter is the logical time to have flu:  flu in the summer feels really unjust.  But I’m ready to notice that the days are literally getting longer.  Any time now guys, Apollo, Helios, Surya, whoever.

            My fabulous ring has one fairly fabulous drawback however, as some of you with jewellery fetishes will have already twigged, which is that it’s a ratbag to keep clean—all that surface area, those big flat facets—and the backs are worse, as they always are, because you have to fight your way through the setting, but if you don’t clean the backs the fronts look dull.  I’ve been doing the job with one of those soft mini toothbrushes that I can poke into the back, but it’s a fiddly business.  Do any of you have any personal experience and/or recommendations about the ultrasonic jewellery cleaners?  I know they get mixed reviews, but I’ve been the noxious chemicals route and I really don’t want to do that again. 

. . . but what else is there that sings in the middle of the frelling night? They can’t all be robins.
I’m not sure if you have street lights anywhere near you, but it’s quite common for some birds – blackbirds, particularly – to sit near the lights at night and sing. And as blackbirds are also among the first to nest each year, so they’re pairing-up now, that may well be a male blackbird starting to proclaim his territory that you’re hearing in the early hours. 

Blackbirds.  Thank you.  That’s it.  I even thought it sounded rather like blackbirds, but I can just about tell an eagle from a dodo on a good day^ and blackbirds at night?  But there is a streetlight at the end of my little cul de sac^^ as well as several down on the main road.^^^ 

Mrs Redboots 

I envy you your husband in his lovely choices of presents. Mine has to be told what to buy me (but then, to be fair, he does!). A lovely ring. 

Thank you!  Peter takes direction very well.  In this case he didn’t have to—he had the idea and then it was the jeweller’s problem.  But it was Peter who found this jeweller-who-listens twenty years ago, so the points are still all his.

And I would assume a blackbird – we are having them here in London, too. 

I want to say, good for them, and I suppose I do still mean good for them.  But the critters that manage most successfully to colonise human towns tend to be the thugs—blackbirds, foxes.  Rats.  Cockroaches.  Doesn’t speak well of us, although we knew that.  At least blackbirds have a pretty song.  But I barely see my robin any more because the blackbirds have taken over.  I’d rather have my robin. 

But the other night I was staying with my parents, in Sussex, and I heard an owl. I was almost sure it was an owl . . . I haven’t heard one there since my childhood . . .  But when we went out to the car to come home to London, the owl swooped overhead. 

What kind of owl?  Little owls are dead common around here, and we have tawny owls pretty much by the yard as well.  Occasionally if you’re very very good you’ll see a barn owl at twilight, if you’re out wandering the countryside.  Absolute magic.  No mere Harry Potter snowy owls need apply.  They’re also amazingly huge—you have that adrenaline rush at first sight which is both the thrill of it and a faint atavistic memory of pterosaurs or something when you think it might be coming for you.  Or at least a hellhound.  One of the things I’m not going to get around to, this life, is keeping a bird of prey.

            I’m currently having a fantasy about quail, though.  A tall thin tiered cage so they can fly and perch.  Nice little eggs.  This comes of faithfully reading COUNTRY SMALLHOLDING http://www.countrysmallholding.co.uk/  I should get out more. 

^ If it’s alive, it’s probably an eagle.   Unless we’re in a Thursday Next novel.

^^ Which is approximately the only way in which I’ve done better than my semi-detached neighbour, who has a cellar, despite being farther up the hill than I am, as well as an attic, four bedrooms, a dining room and two sitting rooms, a larger garden, room to park three or four cars and a chunk out of my tiny sitting room and equally tiny office to run his frelling plumbing.  But he has the streetlight. 

            Of course I have the hyperactive security light belonging to Mr Military and family immediately across the road from me, which is apparently carefully aimed to dazzle into my windows and make sure I’m not trading world secrets with Martians or anything.+  Yes, there are very likely hellhounds on the bed/sofa.  Sue me. 

+ No, just handbell ringers.  

^^^ I’ve never caught him at it, but I swear there’s one that sits on the wall six feet from my bedroom window and serenades the security light.  

^^^^ I rescued a small fluffy baby owl something a few years ago, sitting in the main road at the end of the mews’ drive, waiting for something to happen.  What happened was that I got out of Wolfgang and moved it.  What I remember is blogging that I’d pulled my sleeves down over my hands to pick it up and someone who knows more than I do posted to the forum that its mum wouldn’t have minded human smell on her offspring the way us mostly-clueless vague tree-hugging nature-lovers would expect. 

*** I don’t know what their excuse is.  They have cats.  They can’t possibly subscribe to the fallacy about fresh air being good for you?  In an English winter when you have the lurgy? 

† Negotiating acceptable comic rudeness is always a ratbag.  There’s something in the rule of thumb that says you’re only allowed to be gratuitously horrible about something you have personal experience of, so LRK and I can be rude about husbands.  It’s not the only rule of thumb, but it’s somewhere to start.  As I’ve told you before I was gobsmacked when I first started going out into the world as a published writer—a single published writer—and was accused of being a man-hater.  What?  Yes.  I have uppity heroines.  Siiiiigh.  I still get mail to this effect.  Hey, some of my best friends, etc, aside from being married to one.  For twenty years.

            I think these jokes are funny.  But I also think ‘I’m a natural blonde, please speak slowly’ is funny.  And I’ve only ever seen it on women’s t shirts, not men’s.   I was also a natural blonde through my twenties.

†† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly

You see it both ways—my way, and ‘we don’t serve faster than light neutrinos here’ said the bartender.  I realise my way requires that your auditor has been cramming on maths and physics lately too, but this way spoils the joke, I think.  I’d rather undergo the humiliation of having it explained.

I have turkey gravy on my bright green solid coloured shirt.  It shows.

            We finished the gravy* last night.

            This is a clean shirt, put on gravy-free this morning.**

            Do you suppose quantum physics can answer this one? 

* * * 

It’s December 31^st, for about an hour and a half longer, as I write this.  So, what have I done with my 2011?

            FAILED to write PEG II.  Sigh.

            2012 is going to be better.  Starting with getting some relatively readable the-end-is-in-sight form of SHADOWS sent in by the end of January.*** 

            So, other prognostications? 

            By this time next year I will be halfway through the NEW PEG II.

            I will also be ringing touches of Cambridge minor.†

            And on handbells.††

            And, this time next year, the New Arcadia Singers will be hurling impassioned emails at each other about the spring concert, because (after our unexpected success earlier in the year) we haven’t quite nailed the playlist yet and practise starts again the first week of January.

            Fantasy, much?  Oh . . . well . . . 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 

* * *

The woman wants her CHAMPAGNE.

 1.  And gods don’t they stare. 

2.  I left my jumper on.  No one knows.†††  And a good thing too.  I was introduced to someone who reads me. 

3.  Those are my Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse All Stars.  It seemed suitable. 

4.  I am now drinking my champagne. 

5.  I have to ring more bells in seven hours.  Feh. 

* * *

* Peter had to make more, of course.  Next on the list:  More brandy butter.  Next on the list:  living on lettuce for the entire month of January.  Oh, well, in the circumstances I’d better have some protein too.  Fried liver of rival publisher.  Incompetent copyeditor roast. 

** And I have to go ring bells in a few minutes^, and it’s so warm I’m going to have to take my jumper off and stand revealed as a slob.  It’s also so warm that I didn’t have tricky winter weather as an excuse not to go ring bells at midnight.  Which is to say yes, when I rang Felicity back this morning, having still not quite decided what I was going to say to her, she was so delighted to hear from me I heard myself agreeing to come along tonight.  It’s now sheeting.  Ugh.  Also very unseasonable of it.  But maybe all the staring villagers will stay home and watch Singin’ in the Rain or something.  Much better value.  

^ And sulking, since I want my champagne now. 

*** AAAAAAAAAAAUGH.    

† With what band and in what tower, I have no idea.  I’ll worry about that next year.  In an hour and a half. 

†† HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 

††† Except you, of course.

Okay I’m having some trouble with Mr Fayer and his ABSOLUTELY SMALL.  Has anyone else read it?  In the first place.  His Schrodinger’s cats.  He suggests 1000 boxes with 1000 cats in them, one each.  The cats—ALL the cats, each and EVERY ONE of the cats—are a mixture of 50% alive and 50% dead.  Already I’m confused.  What do you MEAN 50% alive and 50% dead?   What?  How?  Why?  By what MEASUREMENT (which of course is The Question*) are they 50% alive and 50% dead?  What does this mean to the CATS?  And then, having shut up all these possibly ailing and distressed cats in boxes, which cannot be a positive reinforcement of whatever their level of well-being might have been before you did shut them up in the boxes**, you start . . . opening the boxes.  And by the fact of your opening the box and peering inside the cat magically—yes, I said magically—mutates into a pure state of either 100% aliveness or 100% deadness.  WHY?  THIS IS NOT HOW A CAT IN A BOX BEHAVES.***   Unless of course it DIES of a HEART ATTACK the moment it sees you.  And after the first few hundred boxes you have a nervous breakdown as a result of your sense of responsibility for the deaths of (approximately) 500 out of 1000 cats.  Not to mention the prospect of trying to support the liveness of 500 frelling cats until you can convince the RSPCA to come and take them away . . . and also try to convince the RSPCA that they shouldn’t sue the crap out of you for animal abuse, although, supposing they arrive before you run out of cat food, the vibrant, 100% healthiness of the 500 live cats should at least confuse the issue.

            I don’t think I’m getting out of this example what I’m supposed to be getting out of it.†

            And then there’s the whole ‘absolute’ size thing.  He goes through the business of how we interpret size as relative.  Something is large or small as soon as we have something to compare it to.  A photograph of two rocks with a blank background tells us nothing about the size of the rocks till the background is adjusted to have a piece of human being in it for scale.  I don’t myself see how this is a difference in kind with his ‘absolutes’ of ‘large’ being something you can set up an experiment to observe with a negligible alteration to the thing observed compared with ‘small’ being something you cannot set up an experiment to observe with negligible alterations—‘small’ means all experiments create non-negligible, which is to say substantial, alterations, no matter how clever you think you are, which pretty well futzes your experiment.  How is this not relative?  It’s relative to your ability to create an experiment with this or that outcome.  It’s relative to your size and galumphingness.  If we were the size of photons, we could create a sufficiently sub-photonic experiment to measure photons,†† photons being one of those absolutely-small things.  I get it (I think I get it) that large means you can straightforwardly create useful experiments and small means you can’t, but—to this English lit major—this just means some science bozo is inventing new definitions for ‘small’ and ‘large’.  That’s fine.  The small and large part works.  It’s the stuff around it I’m having some trouble with.

            And then . . . back to reality . . . He says, ‘Imagine that a small boy weighing 50 pounds runs into you going 20 miles per hour.’  WHAT?  How is this small boy weighing 50 pounds managing to run into you going 20 miles per hour?  Turbo-charged roller skates?†††  His parents should be had up for criminal negligence.  Then he says, ‘Now imagine that a 200-pound man runs into you going 5 miles per hour. . . . The small boy is light and moving fast.  The man is heavy and moving slow.’  EDITOR’S NOTE:  that should be slowly.  ‘Both have the same momentum. . . . In some sense, both would have the same impact when they collide with you.  Of course, this example should not be taken too literally.  The boy might hit you in the legs while the man would hit you in the chest. . . .’  Emphasis mine.  He never does mention the boy’s propulsion system.  I’m still worried about the chances of a small boy with negligent parents and turbo-charged roller skates living long enough to grow up and become a famous Olympic sprinter.

            And finally . . . the maths question.  On the VERY FIRST PAGE of the preface Fayer says that all we have to do is develop our ‘quantum mechanics intuition’ which is what this book is for.  He says:  ‘This lack of a picture of how [certain quantum-challenged] things work arises from a seemingly insurmountable barrier to understanding.  Usually that barrier is mathematics.’  To understand these things not immediately obvious to the unenhanced human eye ‘ . . . requires an understanding of quantum theory BUT IT ACTUALLY DOESN’T REQUIRE MATHEMATICS.’  Emphasis again mine.  ‘ . . . the presentation in this book is descriptive.  Diagrams replace the many equations with the exception of SOME SMALL ALGEBRAIC EQUATIONS—AND THESE SIMPLE EQUATIONS ARE EXPLAINED IN DETAIL.’

THIS IS MATHS! THIS IS TOTALLY MATHS!

 I don’t think it’s merely an excess of figgy pudding pressing on my brain here.‡ 

* * *

* See:  absolutely small, which means that you can’t create a means to observe it without also creating non-negligible change to what you’re trying to observe.  This is also a working definition of ‘spitchered’.  

** Speaking of altering what you were trying to observe. 

*** This is much more my experience of cats in boxes:  http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+womens_dark_tshirt,137590640 

† He says demurely ‘I have to admit to simplifying a little bit here. . . .’  Um.  But it turns out all he’s referring to is the number of live and dead cats.  You probably would not get exactly 500 of the one and 500 of the other.  Oh.  Okay.  Like that addresses any of my problems with this parable. 

†† And if he gets his totally-ignoring-reality Schrodinger’s cat metaphor then I get this totally-ignoring-reality itty-bitty extremely molecularly dense human metaphor.  

††† Aren’t there some physics, speaking of physics, about how fast it’s literally possible for a substantially shorter rather than a substantially taller person to run, aside from talent and fitness and so on?  Which means a small boy—fifty pounds is little—is even more unlikely to be going 20 mph.  Without turbo-charged roller skates. 

‡ EMoon:

Where is the digestion I had in my 20s, when immense amounts of anything I liked could be ingested without discomfort or weight gain or…whatever? 

The one . . . the one thing to be said for having spent the last forty frelling years fighting my own personal daily battle with my waistline is that when I hit menopause and the diet wars became dirty, scorched-earth and take-no-prisoners, I was to some degree ready.  I mean, I wasn’t ready, I’m appalled at how little I get to eat^ and how much I pay for it when I stray a spoonful of brandy butter over the line.  But I am used to the mindset of Calories Are the Enemy, and most of my menopausal friends weren’t, aren’t and won’t be.  I’m not utterly without, you should forgive the term, form in the matter of assuming all food is guilty until proved innocent.^^  This is not to say I won’t eventually get old and tired and say THE HELL WITH IT.  I WANT TO EAT TOAST AGAIN.  WITH BUTTER.  AND MARMALADE.    But at the moment—and this is a conversation I have had with myself at least every winter solstice holiday period for several years now, and at various less predictable times dotted about the calendar, and the situation is getting relentlessly more extreme—I’m still thinking about my rather ramshackle skeletal system, its weight-bearing capacity, and the hurtling of hellhounds, and I figure I can live like this a while longer.  Which is, I repeat, not to say there will not come a day when I decide on toast.^^^  But preferably after SHADOWS—or the PEGASUS trilogy—has made me a multi-zillionaire and I can afford to replace my entire wardrobe. 

^ And how much less than that I do in fact eat, so I can keep my CHOCOLATE and sugar in my tea. 

^^ And in this courtroom, it won’t be proved innocent.  

^^^ One might almost say ‘plump for’.

IF WHAT FOLLOWS IS MORE OF A MESS THAN USUAL, PLEASE WRITE A LETTER OF APPRECIATION TO WORDPRESS, WHO LOGGED ME OUT AS I WAS FINISHING THIS POST.  I WRITE OFF LINE, BUT IT TAKES ME A GOOD HALF HOUR MOST NIGHTS TO TWEAK AND TIDY BEFORE I PUBLISH AND I WAS ALREADY LATE POSTING.  I HATE WORDPRESS.  I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE WORDPRESS. 

The day did not get off to a good start* when I discovered that my desktop is frelled.  I was only halfway through my first cup of tea of the day, it’s Christmas Eve, I have a novel due in five weeks and there’s something wrong with my bottom line everything backs up HERE desktop computer. 

            Joy.  Possibly not to the world, but to my world.  This leaves me in the interesting position of relying for the duration of the holidays on one elderly, increasingly doddery laptop, one brand shiny new laptop with a hidden and still unknown canker gnawing at its vitals and a brander shinier new OS I can’t use and gives me a blood-pressure headache every time I turn it on**, and one knapsack computer too small too use except bunched up on a train or having a bohemian moment at a café.*** 

            Um.  Well, hellhounds and I had a very nice hurtle this morning.  I had frustrations to run off.

            And the rest of the day has been a blur of wrapping presents and getting the tree up.  Yes!  It’s up!  It’s even decorated (mostly)!  And Peter put the wreath on the front door (after dark†, but dark comes early these days)! ††

            And I even got a couple of hours in on SHADOWS.  Aren’t I fabulous.

            . . . . I’m also exhausted, and I have to ring bells in way too few hours. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS 

* * *

* We’re skipping over the standard ‘did not sleep and therefore overslept’ part. 

** While we were waiting for other people not to show up last night at the tower we were talking about Operating Systems We Have Known . . . and Penelope offered to drag me through enough of Win 7 to get me started.  Next week, when she’s on holiday.  Penelope is a wonderful human being.  And I’m the kind of low scoundrel who will take her up on it. 

*** I’ve happily done a good bit of writing (serially) on each of my (two) knapsack computers, back in the days when I was going up to London on the train regularly.  There’s something about being able to work on the road that blergs the exasperation of the too-small screen that doesn’t open quite wide enough and the too-small keyboard that engenders even more typos than usual.  Taking notes on it lying on a sofa with hellhounds at home is also excellent but using it for producing text under ordinary working conditions, which is to say my office or the kitchen table at the mews^, and it makes me nuts in about half an hour.  Context is everything.

            Speaking of computers and of context . . . I’ve been reading reviews of another of these WE UNPLUGGED AND LIVED memoirs which, as these things usually do, is tending to polarise its readers.  I probably won’t read it^^ so I’m not going to name it or crank on about it specifically.  But one review refers to the author’s astonishing discovery that life is still possible without their laptop.  This is the point at which I decide I’m not going to read the book.  What does this person do for a living?  If they’re a journalist, how are they pursuing their craft, pray?  How did they write their book? 

            As I have mentioned on this blog with what is probably distressing regularity, I bought my first computer because I could no longer get parts for my typewriter.  I don’t want to learn frelling Windows 7, I just have to—Microsoft, that despicable ratbag, demands it^^^.   I don’t watch television because I don’t have time, and I am attached at the hip to my iPhone because she’s the phone number that my 84-year-old-husband’s emergency service will ring if he falls downstairs.  And yes, my iPad is a pretty toy.#  Sue me.  I could live without Montezuma and Fingerzilla if I had to, but is playing them really different in type from reading a no-brainer murder mystery or LOTR for the 1,000,000,000,000^th time because I’m too tired to do anything else but too wired to sleep?  People have always needed (ahem) downtime . . . and have always wasted good time and good brain on the latest fashion in glitz.  I’m very interested in what computers and the internet are doing to our brains and our society but it’s not simple.    

^ I tend to forget how silly this is.  It’s normal to me. 

^^ I finished CHAOS!  In spite of reading/listening to most of it two and sometimes three times . . . I couldn’t put it off any longer!  I am bereft!+ 

+ I will probably download ABSOLUTELY SMALL~ tonight.  Or possibly YOU ARE HERE.~~  Decisions, decisions.~~~ 

~ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Absolutely-Small-Quantum-Explains-Everyday/dp/0814414885/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324772668&sr=1-1

http://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/absolutely-small/

 ~~ http://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Are-Here-Portable-Universe/dp/0099502429/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324772752&sr=1-1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5291540/You-are-Here-a-Portable-History-of-the-Universe-by-Christopher-Potter-review.html 

~~~ Also dependent on the download working.  Speaking of Life with Tech. 

^^^ I hope to live long enough to see someone bring this monumental creepazoid down.  

# On a somewhat related subject . . . the Mac thing.  I’m not going to shift from PCs at this point for a variety of reasons, starting with that if I’m snarling about having to wade involuntarily into Win 7 I certainly do not want to learn a whole new solar system with too many moons and a binary star, and ending with the fact that Blogmom doesn’t do Macs.  But . . . in fact I am yearn-free.  I love my Pooka and my Astarte.  But they’ve got important stuff wrong with them from the stupid-end-user viewpoint—stuff that makes me wonder if their programme designers were off their meds that day.  Ultimately my little pink darlings are still gizmos like other gizmos.  Mac?  Feh.  

† If we’re counting, I had lunch after dark.  

†† Peter is worrying about his Very Large Present.  I already have a garden shed! he says.  I don’t have space for whatever it is!  —Mwa hahahahahaha.  When I showed up with it tonight—and it did not want to fit into Wolfgang^—he looked at it dubiously and said, well, at least it’s a flatpack shed.  

^ It would have fit fine into the boot but the boot tends to be full of wellies and compost and Mysterious Sticky/Crumbly Objects.  And yes I could have put a clean hellhound blanket down or something but . . . I got it into the front seat.   Where it sat stiffly and disapprovingly upright like a combination of a small coffin and an old-fashioned maiden aunt, and hellhounds sulked because everything else was in the back seat with them.  GAAAH.  CHRISTMAS.  I fall farther out of the loop every year.  I’m not, as I also keep saying, Christian, but I do respond to the still, contemplative, something-larger-than-you-are aspect, and ‘Christmas’ makes me feel as if I’ve landed on a strange planet and the how-to manual I shipped out with is not only several hundred suspended-animation years out of date but was already wrong when it was new.  Wait.  Christmas is about what?  And we do what to celebrate?  Never mind.  Please pass the champagne.

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.

Not. 

I got back to the cottage last night later than I meant to, as I had gone on with SHADOWS rather too long after Bronwen left and was late tackling the blog . . . and there were archangels coming in the morning, I mean, you know, morning, before-noon-type MORNING, and while hellhounds (when all is well) have amazing sphincter control, I did want to take them out before archangels arrived, in case I became absorbed in biting the carpet and screaming. 

            And there was a car parked in my space. 

            I have sufficiently impressed upon you that the cul de sac my cottage is on is not merely narrow and land-mined but a seven-dimensional jigsaw and you’re required to take six months’ advanced driver training at Silverstone before you’re allowed to buy a property there?   Every micron of pavement is privately owned and you encroach on someone else’s territory at extreme risk to life and limb.  And have I mentioned that it was 3 o’clock in the morning?  If I’d known where the miscreant was hiding I would have been happy to bang on the correct door till they or their severed body parts emerged, but I wasn’t going to go looking at that hour.  I managed, by good fortune and fury, to wedge Wolfgang in next to Phineas’ car, left a CRISP note on the windscreen of the brigand, went indoors and . . . called the cops.*  They are not allowed to draw blood, more’s the pity, but they could at least locate the little rat turd and tell him to move his gorblimey vehicle.  Yes, of course I thought of letting the air out of his tyres, but with modern tyres that’s more of a faff than it used to be in the rough days of my youth, and the car was middle-aged and in even worse shape than Wolfgang, so he probably wouldn’t notice if I did key the thing. 

            But adrenaline is not your friend when you want to go to bed and sleep.  I turned my computer on which (frighteningly) is pretty much my default response to any and everything any more**, which gave me the opportunity to discover that my email was NOT WORKING.  I did all the unplugging and replugging and closing and restarting and dancing and shouting things you’re supposed to do in these situations and . . . no.  Okay, at least Computer Archangels are coming . . . in about six hours.  I sent Raphael a text saying, please don’t come before eleven. . . . volleyed through the whole teeth-bath-and-hellhound-snack pre-going-to-bed business, turned the light out and . . . lay there thinking about . . . well, about Maggie’s mom and her sisters, and about some of Mongo’s friends, and about . . . um . . . never mind.  Thinking.***

            The alarm went off way too early, except I was already awake.  Moan.  The gorblimey vehicle was gone, and there was a note through my door from Phineas’ son apologising for his contemptible low-life of a friend.  You may gather I am not appeased.  I found moth holes in one of my favourite sweaters.†  Computer Men were there for over two hours and . . . the new laptop is still eating its battery like a lion tucking into a wildebeest and they never figured out what was wrong with the email, it just started working again.  And then stopped again.  And then started again. . . . ††

            While this was going on there was an exciting Christmas delivery!   No.  Wrong delivery.†††  Boring boring delivery.  I have about thirty-six Christmas things coming and one boring one.  So the one that arrives. . . .

            After we finally had our proper morning/afternoon hurtle‡ and loaded up Wolfgang to traipse down to the mews . . . there was a large delivery truck parked in the archway into the mews courtyard.  I think the driver was eating his lunch.  Parked in the archway, so that no one could get past.  The courtyard behind him was empty.  He could have parked in the courtyard to begin with, or he could have backed up six feet and parked in it now.  But he didn’t.  He saw me, got out of the truck, opened the side door in a leisurely fashion, examined his hand-held electronic gizmo for instructions, unhurriedly selected a parcel, ambled over to one of Peter’s neighbours, knocked on the door, had a nice chat . . . and frelling FINALLY drove out of the *&^%$£”!!!!!!! archway.

            And now I am going to try to go to bed early.  Beginning with driving calmly back to the cottage and parking in my space.‡‡ 

* * *

* Who were gratuitously polite.  I have insurmountable philosophical problems with the fact that High Tories in positions of modest social authority in small towns in Hampshire are pretty well universally well-mannered and considerate.  It’s true that for all my bellowing I’m (mostly) extremely law-abiding^, so when we have contact the fuzz and I tend to be on the same side.  It’s still disconcerting.

 ^ I would be capable of letting someone’s tyres down—ideologically if not practically—probably not keying.  I’d feel sorry for the car. 

 ** . . . and chocolate.  Between turning your computer on and chocolate, most of the exigencies of life are covered.  

***Maggie  As far as I’m concerned, learning that Shadows has Mongo and maths and physics AND origami is an excellent Christmas present… 

Oh glory.  Are you one of these scientific people?  Brace yourself.  Your namesake is not.  She has certain scientific principles thrust upon her, but she bends the physwiz^ out of them whenever possible. 

^ sic 

EMoon

You said: I haven’t got time for unexpected plot developments! It’s due in six weeks! It’s really simple! Mongo saves the universe! The End!

Yes. That. My idiot book has been changing its plot in the last few weeks and even today, dadblast its fiendish excuse for a mind. Idiot person riding from A to B to tell X that Y is coming for a visit changed his mind on when (actually Y changed his mind on when to send idiot person) leaving fossil bits of conversation relating to the earlier decision scattered across several chapters. 

Riding.  That’s your problem.  Riding.  There are no horses in SHADOWS.^  But I wholly concur about the ‘dadblast its fiendish excuse for a mind’.  

^ Okay, two or three ponies in the background.  But they’re little ones, petting-zoo burn-outs.  And if you tried to ride them they would bite you. 

† They’ll mend.  But I’ll need to take my wounded garment in to the craft shop to look for the right colours of embroidery floss.  No I am not going to spring for an entire two skeins of yarn.  Probably. 

†† After they left I rang Penelope and cancelled going to see HUGO with her tonight.  I knew I shouldn’t be sloping off to the cinema but this was not how I wanted to get out of it.  Should I tell Niall you aren’t going to stop round for handbells then either? she said.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. 

††† Had another of those extremely enjoyable experiences on line today.  Got to the check out.  It wouldn’t (a) accept my email address (b) accept my password (c) let me re-register (because my email address is already on their database.  I knew that) (d) accept the new password they sent me after I hit ‘forgotten password’, even though I hadn’t forgotten it.    I wrote to customer service and was rewarded almost immediately with a robo letter thanking me for contacting them and promising to respond some time in the next twenty-three years. 

            . . . Meanwhile as I write this I have received confirmation of an order put through the end of last week within their stated Christmas deadline.  This is one of those delivered-live-plants things, and I’ve fired off plants to half my address book.  When you buy more than eight hundred and forty three they let you choose a few free ones for your home address.  The confirmation is telling me that the free ones coming to me have been dispatched . . . and none of the others is now guaranteed to arrive before Christmas.  Thanks.  Thanks loads. 

‡ In the rain.  All forecasts for today said ‘sunny’.  It’s been raining off and on all day.  Oh, and there wasn’t supposed to be any frost last night?  There was.  I now have several fewer pots that will need bringing indoors the next time we have an official frost. 

‡‡ It’s now raining hard.