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Skylarks
The Skylark
by John Clare
The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside
The battered road; and spreading far and wide
Above the russet clods, the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize—
Up from their hurry, see, the skylark flies,
And o’er her half-formed nest, with happy wings
Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies,
And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed—not dreaming then
That birds which flew so high would drop agen
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud,
And build on nothing but a passing cloud!
As free from danger as the heavens are free
From pain and toil, there would they build and be,
And sail about the world to scenes unheard
Of and unseen—Oh, were they but a bird!
So think they, while they listen to its song,
And smile and fancy and so pass along;
While its low nest, moist with the dews of morn,
Lies safely, with the leveret, in the corn.
This is the third year in early spring that I’ve said to myself, the day I hear my first skylark I’m going to hang Clare’s* poem on the blog.** And then I forget. It’s a long time from morning hurtle—when we’re out somewhere we might hear skylarks—to the middle of the night when I’m squeezing the last remnants of semi-coherent thought out of my brain for a blog entry. I’m remembering this year, finally, perhaps because it’s so late—usually I start hearing skylarks in February. Apparently they haven’t liked this winter any better than us humans and hellhounds. I hope the extravagant cold has merely stopped them singing and that the local countryside is not dotted this spring with unmarked skylark graves. Skylarks are endangered, but not around here; we’re teeming with the things. I hope we’re still teeming with the things. I love them. Love, love, love, love, love. I can be in the blackest, bleakest mood, stomping grimly after hellhounds because hellhounds must be hurtled, and . . . for the duration of a skylark’s song I am the world’s greatest living writer, the Dalai Lama, the Archangel Michaela, and the inventor of Green & Black’s mint dark chocolate, all rolled up into one. It’s a thrilling sensation. It’s a thrilling song.
There are plenty of recordings of skylarks on the web, but I’m not even bothering with a link. They don’t sound like much, recorded. Oh, you can tell it’s probably an exciting noise—but it isn’t exciting when it’s tinging out of a computer at you. It’s like the difference between a poster of [insert name of chosen iconic heartthrob here***] and Zaphod Beeblebrox† himself. WOW.†† I like to say, grandly, that I’ll take skylarks over nightingales any day . . . but I’ve never heard a nightingale live.††† And I’m happy with my skylarks.
And I’m glad finally to have heard one this year. Except when I’m complaining about the weather I like the middle of March, because the days are suddenly as if impelled by rocket launchers getting longer—it’s about this time of year I always really notice that they’re getting longer. We had sunlight this morning too so hellhounds and I had a delicious hurtle, accompanied by a skylark who is apparently ready at last to set up housekeeping.
I had read very little John Clare before I moved over here; he’s one of those slightly obscure English English writers who [cheesy generalisation alert] while you may have admired them in a semi-engaged sort of way‡ suddenly make profound and exhilarating sense when you’re standing on English ground viewing English landscape. And, if you’re very lucky, listening to English skylarks. There’s a solidity, a reality, to Clare’s skylark that appeals to me—the song is the thing, but what produces it is a little brown dust-spot with ‘happy wings’—I like the happy wings. I also like the hare ‘like some brown clod the harrows failed to break’—which nests on the ground among those clods. None of the aerial high jinks of swallows, say; any metaphor you want to hang on a skylark has to include the low nest in the corn.
And my low nest among the corn at present is the frelling proofs of PEGASUS.‡‡ See you tomorrow.
* * *
* No, not frelling Shelley and frelling Shelley’s very famous skylark. http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Shelley/ode_to_a_skylark.htm
I think frelling Shelley is a big washy self-regarding pain in the behind. Sure he was talented. He wasn’t as talented as he thought he was and gods does he go on.^ He’d’ve been scary if he’d lived in the computer age, when everyone goes on too much.^^
^ HAVE YOU EVER READ ADONAIS? CHEEZUM ZORK.+ GAH. ETC.
+ Here speaketh the Phi Beta Kappa English lit major.
^^ Ahem.
** There are, I’m sure, plenty of copies of it on the web, but I’ve typed this one in so it’s here.
*** No, I’m not being coy. I don’t seem to get crushes on photogenic celebrities any more.^
^ I keep telling you old is better. Although maybe you enjoy your overheated fantasies more than I ever did. This may be a downside to having this vivid an imagination: coming back to ordinary reality always felt like waking up to discover I was a liver fluke. The better I’ve got at channelling this stuff into stories the happier I’ve become.
Although this does bring up a sensitive topic. I don’t like graphic on the page—I have a number of rants inappropriate for these (mostly) clean family pages on the subject of Bad Silly Literary Sex—and I’m damned if I’m going to write it. I think the best steam is produced in pressure cookers with the lids on.
† Oh come on you Windows programmers. You’re giving me a jagged red underline for Zaphod Beeblebrox?
†† Although in Zaphod’s case, probably not a good wow.
††† Peter says we ought to have nightingales around here, that it’s the right habitat. They don’t think so.
‡ For at least having the decency not to be William Wordsworth^
^ Yes. Another of my unspeakable prejudices. The English department at Bowdoin College and I really did not get on at all well. Even Peter has trouble with my attitude toward Wordsworth. Another of these fatuous spoilt self-regarding blokes who thinks that golden daffodils shine out of his backside.
‡‡ Not feeling too archangelish at the moment.
Another day like today
I can so do without days like today and furthermore I have frelling proofs to read. It started with getting out of bed later than I wanted to, but this happens a lot when the ME is using me as the birdie in a game of killer badminton, so it’s a kind of groan-where-are-my-glasses-groan-clothing-groan-greet-hellhounds-EEEEK*. I’m usually a lot more awake after the greeting-hellhounds ritual.**
So this morning I was in the middle period where I’ve got some clothes on and the curtains open and am wondering if I’m feeling strong enough yet to face sorting through the 5,637 catalogues that have come in the post, when I heard the beep-beep-beep of a commercial vehicle backing up the cul de sac.
Among my many pet hates are included delivery companies. The Royal Mail is dying because its ineptitude beggars belief*** and nine million delivery companies have sprung up like third cousins twice removed around an elderly emperor without a designated heir, and equally in it only for the money. The thing I like best about these malevolent tapeworms is the way they will give you no indication of when they might arrive—used to be they’d say morning or afternoon, which is at least dealable-with when you’re not a frelling office with a receptionist and you have hellhounds to hurtle, although even without hellhounds staying in for twelve hours for a sodding delivery would drive me bonkers.
The thing I like second best about these jokers is the way they say, oh, you can designate a safe location, we only need your signature in blood† and a small token as hostage—say the deeds of your house. But in the ensuing negotiations†† you discover that they don’t like your designated safe location. Never mind that you’re already signing their bloody triplicate form agreeing that you take responsibility for what happens to your parcel if it is so left . . . no, no, no, they couldn’t possibly, it needs at least six padlocks and a major in the SAS with an extra badge in martial arts on guard. FRELL.
I had just reached this stage with this latest gang of rice-krispie-brains when the weekend happened. And now here is a truck with their logo backing up my cul de sac. I may not have to kill anyone††† this week after all.
Among other distractions throughout this latest engagement with the enemy has been wondering what the hell this object is that it needs its own SAS major. Malevolent tapeworms with rice krispies for brains won’t tell you, which is always one of the most extraordinary aspects of these cases. They’ll deliver the thing—if you finally force them to the wall—but they won’t tell you what it is.
So I signed for it, exchanged pleasantries with the driver‡, took this incredibly large box into my (incredibly) small kitchen, and stood staring at it for a moment. No clue. No frelling clue. It didn’t weigh much for its size either.
I opened it.
Within, swathed in festoons of bubble wrap, was . . . a £15 knapsack I’d bought on sale. Fifteen. Pounds. Small nylon knapsack. And have I mentioned that this particular delivery company, for a mere additional ten pounds, will allow you to designate a specific delivery time?
The day has been kind of downhill from there. Computer Men were here for about two hours . . . but they have to come back.‡‡ I spent an hour and a half talking to Merrilee about the Marketing Plan.‡‡‡
And I went bell ringing. Tonight was the monthly Old Eden practise—the one when I phone round the day before stimulating people to come—and I don’t know if my touch was off or what but I managed to extract fewer high-pitched squeals of agreement than usual. Niall gave me a ride over tonight and I said nervously that I hoped we had an extra bloke or two show up or as second-in-command and, furthermore, not a mere wisp of a thing, as are our two beginners and Old Eden’s tower captain§, I’d find myself round the back end and while the tenor is not wholly lost to virtue the five is possessed by a remarkable assortment of demons. All of Old Eden’s bells are possessed by demons, but if you have to argue with your bell anyway and you’re not the world’s cleverest ringer, you’d rather have a lighter bell. Fortunately the gods, deciding that they’d had enough fun with me today, were kind, and not only Roger§§ but Colin§§§—and Anthea—were there. This responsibility thing is a pain.# But I do like being one of the ringers who ‘catches hold’ when some beginner needs bringing on. And we did zorple through a plain course of Stedman.
All right, all right. Must read proofs.
* * *
* Hellhounds are always very glad to see me in the morning. Hurtle now? they say. Hurtle? Put that apple/pear/grapefruit down, you’re always saying menopause means a higher plane of existence in which food is unnecessary^, which indeed we understand very well^^, we be of one blood, thou and I, even if you’re a funny shape and really slow, let’s hurtle.^^^
^Nobody asked me if I wanted to move to a higher plane of existence
^^ No you do not! I never saw two less menopausal creatures in my life! And all your ribs stick out!
^^^You have arranged about the weather, haven’t you? We feel you are not fulfilling this important duty of dog ownership quite adequately lately.
** Hair standing on end optional. No, wait, maybe I just forgot to comb it.
*** And I have no idea who’s at fault, and I don’t know enough about it to speculate. I only know there are some very nice posties out there, as well as some utter frelling ratbags . . . and an administration clearly made of mouldy string and old carburettors.
† And be sure to press hard, it’s a triplicate form.
†† You can have the paper clip off the deeds to my house, okay?
††† Snap! Crackle! SQUASH!
‡ Most of the drivers for these frelling delivery companies are nice.^ It’s just one more way the admin likes to mess with your head. —Is she crazy enough yet? Is she ready to commit disembowelment on sight? Great! Send her Smilin’ Joe with his fuzzy puppy photos!
^ Except the occasional really scary serial murderer one.
‡‡ Of course. Computer Men always have to come back.
‡‡‡ This conversation degenerated, as they usually do, to me moaning about how it’s the books that matter, promote the frelling books, the whole author as live entertainment thing is all wrong. I’ve decided that it was actually my good fairy who arranged for volatile, overreactive, digestively catastrophic hellhounds. They’re the best excuse for not touring I’ve ever had. Even if it does make me look like one of those pathetic old ladies whose every waking thought is in adoring response to her pet whatever(s). Well. Um . . .
§ Who is tower captain only because she’s our only local, she doesn’t ring much, and weighs maybe seventy-five pounds dripping wet. Wearing full scuba gear with air tank.
§§ Who said that he was responding to a frantic phone call. Hey, I said. Urgent, maybe. Not frantic.
§§§ And Colin turned to me after my stumble through conducting a touch of bob doubles, with a frown on his face—and I cowered, even though Colin is a sweetie and wouldn’t dream of scowling at you merely because you’re a hopeless imbecile—and said, these bells are a lot of work, aren’t they?
# And Vicky will expect a complete report when she gets back from Timbuktu this week.
Ice This
Okay, what is this?
I mean, I know what it is. It’s ice. It’s a very strange ice self-sculpture as discovered in my rain gauge this morning. I’ve been trying to remember if there’s been any weird ice effects before this; we’ve been having hard frosts pretty much every night for a week or so I think—certainly last night and the night before. And we’ve had lots of hard frosts all winter long.
But yesterday was positively warm, so anything that might have happened the night before that would have melted. I also did some gardening yesterday and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed gnomish* water. But is there some inscrutable Memory of Water going on here?
All the ice crystals held hands/tentacles/tendrils/teenyweeny subatomic appendages when they melted yesterday and last night as they hardened up again since they were all friends now they started building a cheerleader pyramid? 
I haven’t dumped the rain gauge out since falling lake over the weekend—maybe it has something to do with the drastic slope of the gauge? Beats the heck out of me. Maybe I’ll send it to the New Scientist and ask them. They like stuff like this.
And it was a nightmare to photograph. I must have taken two dozen photos** and they’re all out of focus.*** These are merely less out of focus than the others. My camera has these little orange squares that tell you what it’s going to focus on . . . wrong. It can’t stand shiny translucent ice, so it just ducks around the orange squares and finds a nice daphne or plant pot or dead thing to focus on.
I emailed Blondel last night and said that I’d lost about half of this week to ME, that I’d just tried singing for the first time since about Thursday and . . . oh dear. That I still wanted to come for my lesson† but not to expect much. He emailed back that he was sure we could ‘make good use of the time’†† if I was feeling up to it.
Right at the moment about ninety percent of what I learn about singing every week happens in that single hour in Blondel’s tiny spare-bedroom studio. The ten percent is just me at home picking out the melody on the piano with one finger, or urgently re-re-listening to selected youtube tracks.††† I am hoping that eventually I can do some of that what-needs-supporting, where-it’s-tight stuff for myself, but at the moment all I ever seem to do at home—aside from trying to learn the frelling tune‡—is recognise that the noise I’m making is more good or less good‡‡ and beyond that it’s all unfathomable . . . squeaking.‡‡‡
Sigh.
I had forgotten more than I had learnt since last lesson § but at the end Blondel still said, I’ll have a new song for you next week. Your coloratura is really very good,§§ I’ll look for something else with coloratura in it.
Squeak.
* * *
* Gnomish: to do with gnomes. Yes, I want to say gnomic but that’s about aphorisms. Hmm. Aphoristic water. Woo ooh.
** I looove my digital camera. It took a little while. I was last on the block. I might still be last on the block without a digital camera except that Peter bought me one because he thought I was being silly about them. Silly? Me?
Now who’s going to fix my attitude toward my little videocam? Yup. I have one. Poor thing. It sure has stamina. It’s been buried in a heap of early draft manuscripts for months. I finally fished it out about a week ago and gave it a charge, expecting it to tell me that it had eaten itself and all its software, the way rechargeables do if they aren’t. Nope. Still working. So then I put it on its bendy feet, pointed it at the piano, and sang the lullaby from PEGASUS in front of it.
BIG MISTAKE.
The bottom of a pile of early draft manuscript isn’t nearly far enough away. Not in the same county.
*** And sometimes I don’t love my digital camera quite so much.
† Have I told you that my fourteen-year-old car passed his road inspection first go? That they couldn’t even find anything wrong? Evidently there hadn’t been a hard frost recently when they went to unlock the doors.
†† Good use of the time. Sigh. I might as well be ringing Cambridge and singing and composing the second parts of lullabies^ for all the forward I’m getting on PEG II. I’m getting tired of that blank screen. This happens to me; in itself it’s not a big deal; after the fairies^^^ finish moving the furniture around they’ll let me back in the house again. Meanwhile . . . well, if I miss getting it turned in on time, you’ll just have to wonder/put off reading PEG I^^^^ a little longer.
^ Did I tell you Peter wrote me a second verse? With variants. In case I want the stress on a different part of a line, he said. Golly. We’re collaborating more on this than we ever have for ELEMENTALS.
^^ Maybe I should take up knitting.
^^^ Or possibly gnomes
^^^^ Which of course you’ve already bought
††† Now that I’m beginning to learn it a little, Alfred Deller’s performance of Purcell’s Evening Hymn is much. Too. Slow.
‡ And all those horrible where-you-come-ins
‡‡ Or possibly more bad or less bad
‡‡‡ I have the video to prove it
§ SIGH
§§ Remember that this is teacherspeak and relative. It’s true that given the general level of direness my coloratura is better than you’d expect.
Look at what arrived in the post today:
Another writer friend—let’s call her Rosalind—sent it, saying that I could take notes on PEG II in it, and included a bookmark with a teeny weeny pegasus on it.* And if you want such a notebook, you can get it here: http://longbarnbooks.com/ , where indeed it appears in a number of guises. Oooh. I may have to have the tea mug too.**
This is the same friend who gave me a tote bag*** with Erasmus’ deathless remark on it: ‘When I get a little money, I buy books. And if there is any left over, I buy food.’ † It’s good to have friends. After the previous few days and the immediate few days to come in the world of publishing††, friends are even more necessary than usual.†††
And I have to go to bed early so that I can be not merely awake but functional by 8:30 a.m. tomorrow. Sunday service ring isn’t till eight forty five.‡ Fedex’s delivery hours are any time from 8:30 to 6. Isn’t that lovely? Isn’t that charming? I don’t understand why we are swamped in terrible delivery services—there must be a dozen of the wretched things, all of them with oversized logo-besmirched vehicles clogging up our roads and polluting our atmosphere—when there is obviously a gigantic market niche for a good one. Eight thirty a.m. to six p.m.: this means, for example, that if you’re a private individual who maybe needs a pee occasionally, let alone has hellhounds with a high hurtling requirement, you can’t even get your friendly local health food store to take delivery for you‡‡ because ordinary shops are open something like 9 to 5:30. I may or may not get a cup of tea and a rant with Oisin tomorrow‡‡‡ at the end of the day—but if Fedex doesn’t arrive till 6:05 I’ll be hanging from the ceiling and eating the wallpaper.§ If it arrives at all, of course. Fedex: Sure We’ll Guarantee It. Ptttht. We Don’t Give A Damn, and We Don’t Care Who Knows It.
* * *
* I have, however, got the wind up badly about pegasus merchandise. I hadn’t thought about this—not that thinking has ever got me much of anywhere about the books I write—till Tasmin sent me about a dozen pegasus-decorated refrigerator magnets, each one more terrifyingly ugly than the last. Zowie. I was afraid to put them up because they might give the hellhounds nightmares.^ I disengaged with unicorns decades ago as a result of unicorn merchandise. ^^ Maybe I could write a novel about warthogs. Or threadworms. I think it would be hard to attract many corporate investors with threadworm kitchen magnets.
^ For those of you not over-acquainted with the floor plan at the cottage, I have a kitchen the size of a Smart Car. It contains a table, a tallboy, an Aga+, and a hellhound crate. With difficulty. And an assortment of dwarf appliances crammed under the stairs. The refrigerator is immediately opposite the hellhound crate. The crate door has just enough clearance to open past the refrigerator. Just. Sometimes it hooks a magnet or two in its sweep.
+ http://www.johnwraycountrystoves.co.uk/image20.html Theirs is a lot cleaner. Also you don’t get the same effect when it’s not WEDGED among its environs.
Mine came with the cottage. I like green, it’s okay. But I didn’t know they came in pink. http://www.aveccookers.co.uk/aga-cookers-choosing.htm Never mind. Pink would be really hard to keep clean.
^^ I have elsewhere mentioned my rage and despair when unicorns insisted on invading ROSE DAUGHTER. I keep telling you what happens in my stories is not up to me.
** I’d love to know the context; a hasty Google^ isn’t bringing up anything useful. But Louisa was a character—a single, income-earning, family-supporting woman who worked for women’s rights in an era when all of this was frowned on—she could be saying it in a story or out of it, and with almost any level of irony. Is anyone still reading her thrillers? BEHIND A MASK and so on? They’re dreadful. Really, really, really dreadful . . . but with a kind of intoxicating, page-turning, gothic fascination. They make Wilkie Collins’ THE WOMAN IN WHITE, say, seem positively inhibited.
^ I have to go back to work here in a minute. —Sleep? That would be what?
*** Or I’d probably be looking at the Alcott tote bag as well. I may be anyway. A woman can never have too many tote bags. The Erasmus is full of plant catalogues at the moment. I was ordering snowdrops yesterday to cheer myself up. And I’ve only just discovered that magnolia stellata comes in pink. http://www.hort.net/gallery/view/mag/magksjp/ Speaking of pink. As I often am.
† I’d give you a photo of it too only it and my camera flash don’t get along. I can’t find it on the web, although other editions of it exist. http://www.zazzle.co.uk/when_i_get_a_little_money_i_buy_books_bag-149606564280811630
Or how about this incarnation: http://www.cafepress.co.uk/brownbagdesigns.79598963
†† Mmmmngghthrmmph. Professional prudence—and a judicious fear of Merrilee’s wrath—keep me silent. Unfortunately. Mmmmmngghthrmmph.
††† I also made a dog’s dinner of ringing last night. Siiiiigh. Niall, who occasionally has pity on the feckless, did not mention my diabolical new status at our home tower to the assemblage at our usual Wednesday practise in Ditherington. He exercised no such restraint tonight at handbells with Colin: feh. And Colin is on the list of Top Ten Worst Teases in the Universe. Feh. However we were all going radically wrong tonight. That was you! No, that was you! No, that was all of us, plus hellhounds and the ghost.
‡ And I don’t have to sign my name Sunday mornings. Although with the new electronic berserker screens all the delivery services have now that you scrabble at with a plastic sylus, neither legible nor identifiable is an issue any more.
‡‡Our friendly local health food shop is happy to take delivery occasionally for good customers. Peter orders my Green & Black’s mint chocolate from them. By the box. You don’t need to know any more, do you?
‡‡‡ I’ve done a little work on my choral masterpiece A Pox Upon Their Heads this week, but not really enough to be worth showing.
§ The cottage doesn’t have wallpaper.
Reformation (sort of. Maybe)
I am sitting here surrounded by huge tottering piles of old newspapers and magazines. And it’s all Fiona’s fault. This catalyst thing can go too far.
Those of you with disgracefully tenacious memories* may remember that I went to the Steeleye Span concert** back in November with a friend named Fiona. Fiona runs a folk-music club*** and sings for a little local band who might well be wealthy and famous if they weren’t all cripplingly shy and polite.† Which is to say that Fiona is another of these starving artist people.††
So I had a brainstorm a couple of months ago one evening at the cottage, fighting my way through the accumulation on the stairs, on the ladder to the attic, in the hall space behind the ladder to the attic, on both sides of my desk, between, on and behind the two small tables behind my desk, stacked up against the wall in my bedroom†††, on and under the kitchen table downstairs, and let’s not discuss the attic at all‡. I thought, I wonder if Fiona is silly enough to let me hire her for an occasional day of accumulation-bashing?
She was.
Today was her first day.‡‡
She got started on alphabetising my rose photos from the old house.‡‡‡ She has gone some considerable way toward alphabetising the fiction/lit at the mews. She may have taught me how to load music § onto my little non-iPod§§. I’ll know tomorrow.§§§
And she packed up and took 1,000,000,000,000 parcels to the Post Office.# I have a Post Office phobia. It’s very sad. Maybe the next time she’s here we’ll catch up as far as last year’s Christmas presents.
And speaking of Christmas presents . . . in an excess of hectic enthusiasm I’ve already tweeted this but it bears repeating . . . I TOOK ALL THE ORNAMENTS OFF THE CHRISTMAS TREE TODAY AND PACKED THEM UP!! And it’s not even the end of January yet!!!## See, Fiona was a GOOD idea! Not only does she not have a Post Office phobia, she is such a good INFLUENCE! You can’t have someone alphabetising your books while you sit slumped over your computer trying to make PEGASUS II magically emerge from the screen-mist. Or maybe I should say, if PEGASUS II is not going to emerge magically from the screen-mist you might as well be doing something useful like taking down the Christmas tree, rather than clicking on all the links that all the people you follow on Twitter are posting.### Which is why, unfortunately, I’m now surrounded by large tottering piles of ancient magazines. You also can’t have your books halfway to being beautifully alphabetised and let those cobwebby heaps of newsprint remain unchallenged. After she left I shot back to the mews and started pulling out three-year-old Guardian REVIEW sections. Stop! Stop!
Although that was a little later than you might think because Thursday is handbells and I made her stay to be tortured . . . I mean to have her first exciting experience of the glory that is method ringing on handbells with Niall and Colin. Hey, she was ringing plain hunt on eight before the end of the evening, never having seen a handbell in her life before. Niall and Colin and I, who are used to ringing on six, were having trouble counting that high, but she tried her best to keep us in order.
And she still agreed to come back. She really is 35,000 feet over the North Sea on a no-return ticket, isn’t she?
* * *
* You also remember^ I hate you, right?
^ What? What are we talking about?
** http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2009/11/20/fangirl/
*** I think she should write a guest blog about this, don’t you?
† Think Nell Gwynn! Think Benjamin Disraeli! Think Freya Stark! Think David Tennant! You don’t have to be cripplingly polite even if you are British!^
^ Think Beau Brummell (1778-1840), who, when cut by the Prince of Wales, turned to his companion and said, Who’s your fat friend?
†† Literally, I sometimes think. She would certainly far rather buy a front-row ticket for a Steeleye Span concert than eat.
††† There’s no room under the bed, you know, because of the boxes of books. Oh, and shopping bags of vitamin pills. You want to know how I maintain my ridiculous level of activity with ME? Vitamin pills and homeopathy. But homeopathic pills take up a lot less space.^
^ The frelling shelves of homeopathy books take up a lot more.
‡ And no I don’t want merely to haul it all down the road and stuff it wholesale into Third House’s attic. No. Noooo.
‡‡ And before she left she agreed to come again. Although I don’t know that her email just now saying she’d got home okay^ was necessarily sent from home. She may have been sending from 35,000 feet over the North Sea. Wireless is getting pretty amazing these days.
^ Having had a rather unnecessarily Amusing Time getting here this morning
‡‡‡ Sic. Next time she’s going to scan some in so perhaps on some particularly gruesome February day with the banshees howling through the gutters and the hammering rain crushing hellhounds and hellgoddess to the sodden earth, I can post some rose photos to cheer myself up.
I’ve actually got plenty of rose photos from the last few years in town, it’s just I have this really bad habit of not marking the ones I’ve already used here . . . yes, this is the same mindset^ that has produced brilliant ideas like buying third houses and converting their attics to contain eighty (heavy) boxes of backlist.
^ All right, let’s take a moment and consider the words ‘mind’ and ‘set’.
§ Starting with Steeleye Span. Naturally.
§§ Okay, what is the non-BlackBerry RaspBerry version of a non-iPod? The oMoya?
§§§ Mmm. Not necessarily. She didn’t tell me how to make it play back.
# Including one that’s been lying (mostly) on the attic stairs^ since July. Yes. That one. You Know Who You Are.
^ I moved it around occasionally so it didn’t get too bored
## Peter takes the tree itself down. It’s a rather plausible fake one, but the problem with it is that most of the branches are supposed to come out so you have to detach them all carefully and wrap them up in tiers so you can figure them out again next year, but he would have done it weeks ago if he weren’t waiting for me. . . .
### GAAAAAAAAH. I’ve never been so current evented in my life. GAAAAAAAAAAH. I’m not even sure I want to know that Obama’s approval rating is .007% and dropping fast.
