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*Sigh.*
This arrived in my inbox today:
I’m concerned about the copyright information published on your blog in your second contest for a glittery copy of the new YA Sunshine. I’m an attorney. I work in copyright fairly often, and I published a scholarly article on United States copyright law in the Journal of the Copyright Society a few years ago. I cannot offer and am not offering you legal advice (and I know nothing about UK copyright, except useless trivia: it started with the Statute of Anne in the 1700s), but as a matter of general reference: 1) for a host of reasons, recipes themselves cannot be copyrighted in the United States; 2) the individual and distinct language used to describe a recipe or a cooking technique can be copyrighted; 3) there is no magic number of tweaks (like three changes) that will protect you from a copyright violation; and 4) something does NOT need to be published OR to have a copyright notice at the bottom to be copyrighted. Technically, whenever you compose your own unique description of a cooking technique (or draw a picture or whatever) on an index card, it has copyright protection, and you can register it with the US Copyright Office and then sue anyone who copies it. So the idea that recipes can be copyrighted (and thus that most food bloggers working from cookbooks are intellectual property thieves, which they are not) and the idea that you need only worry about copyright if you copy from a published cookbook are both inaccurate under US copyright law.
That said, it’s very smart to have it as part of your individual rules that the recipe must be customized by the submitter. Even though changes in a recipe’s substance are not required by US copyright law, it means that nothing you get will be copied verbatim. Also, it does not seem likely that someone would be sued for copying a recipe if they made three changes to the language used to describe the recipe (even though it could happen, especially if the changes were insignificant – e.g., changing “t.” to “tsp.” – and the portion quoted was large). People lose music sampling cases all the time because of the musician’s belief in some magic-number copyright myth (it’s okay to take less than five seconds, etc.). Anyway, because you are posting recipes on your blog, and because copyright is close to your heart (or at least your wallet), I thought I would try to clarify some general information regarding the rules on this side of the Atlantic.
* * *
I’m not a lawyer, let alone a copyright lawyer. I haven’t got a clue. But the three-tweaks guideline was passed on to me as advice from a lawyer–as a guideline, not as a hard and fast unbreakable law cast in cement along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, but–apparently this should have been made more emphatic–yes the tweaks do have to be substantive.
So just be sure your recipes are yours, okay? The ones I saw earlier all looked pretty real. I could just about see the splatters and the Notes to Self in the margins.
Deadness and weather
I’m a beyond-dead knackered person. A beyond knackered dead person? Whatever. The weather is not conducive to coherent thought, or even retention of much vocabulary: it’s that kind of swampy fug that makes you feel like one of those several-thousand-year-old bodies buried in a peat bog. You may be well preserved for your age but . . . Could I convince you that my birth language is Gveltch*, and I tend to revert when I’m really tired? Gehgrug. Ardangle brak. Slomag. Dah. Fribkizam daldol rakpek, flob in jestru, dangwhammy. I’ve just told you that anyone who rings bells in this weather deserves to be winkledubbed by the gazortfuls till bragolindon. So there. Colin’s crew meets on Mondays, and they have a second tower to keep rung, like we at New Arcadia are responsible for Old Eden, ** so we were ringing at Little Warbling tonight. Little Warbling is known to be the coldest, dankest, clammiest tower in three counties—and the bells are furthermore rather lightweight, so ringing them doesn’t even warm you up much. Except tonight. By the time we’d rung them up, ready to do something with, I was already glad I’d forgotten to change out of my shorts into jeans. There was no air in that air in that bell tower tonight, and I rang like it.*** I had some company being witless and collision-prone, but the end result was nonetheless not inspiriting. Sigh.
I have a better reason for an absence of brain tonight than merely the weather however. I have, I think, referred to the fact that several crucial planets are apparently laying down the aetherial inter-spheroidal version of rubber in retrograde lately, and I have a whole slew of friends having a variety of really bad times. As most of you will know, there isn’t usually a lot you can do in these situations, except pester them with emails/phone calls and, if you’re close enough, cups of tea†.
One of my musical friends has a much-beloved little dog—who died last week. It’s not that she wasn’t due to go some time soon; she was. She’s been elderly for several years and stopped Going Everywhere with Him about a year ago. But? So? Who is ever expecting it when it happens? And who, having given his heart to a dog to tear††, is frelling ready for the final good-bye? †††
So I was possessed by the insane notion of writing a lament for a little dog. I’m not at all sure this was one of my better ideas, but it’s too late now.‡ I can always lose my nerve and retitle it Hellgoddess Railing at the Universe: why don’t our standard companion critters last longer, for pity’s sake? Unless you have a parrot or a boa constrictor you can figure on their checking out every decade and a half or so‡‡, destroying you utterly, and putting you through deciding whether to do it again or not.‡‡‡ So PEG II had a holiday today§ because after a few days of dorking around looking nervously at the ragged beginnings of my mournful little lament and failing to commit, I really wanted to get on with it, one way or another§§. I’d like to put it through his door§§§ by the end of the week.# Gulp.
* * *
* As spoken by the Gflytch. Long time blog readers may remember the Gflytch. They used to appear, scary and scowling, in the shadows of lj.
** And are occasionally dragged into service at Madhatterington on the grounds that it’s the same benefice or some such.^ I haven’t had an update on Madhatterington in a while, and I’m afraid to ask, because anyone who knows the answer is too likely to reply, Oh, that reminds me, what are you doing Sunday afternoon . . . ?
^ The Church of England hierarchy is seriously beyond me. But I like our priest. He wears that t-shirt that I spent years trying to think of someone to give one to: Jesus Loves You. But I’m His Favourite. –I haven’t quite had the face to ask our priest who gave it to him.
*** I am trying to remind myself that a year ago getting through Cambridge at all would have been a miracle beyond my grasp, never mind without being shouted at. One of the frustrating things about being a Not Very Good Ringer is the way everything makes a difference. If you can ring Cambridge, you can ring Cambridge (or Grandsire, or Stedman, or anything else), right? Wrong. Because each bell perforce must start at a different point of the pattern (like a kind of relay race), you will start learning a new method by ringing it always on the same bell, most often the two. That’s the same number bell, the second bell in the row/circle of six. Except that when you’re learning, you want literally the same bell. The exact same bell. The number two bell is a whole different experience at Little Warbling than it is at New Arcadia or South Desuetude. I have been hacking at Cambridge long enough now that I have rung it at Little Warbling before . . . but, as I now recall, the last time I tried was kind of a disaster. Maybe this is reassuring. I’m improving. Siiiiiiiiigh. I just want to be disgustingly brilliant, you know? Why can’t I be disgustingly brilliant? I must not have filled the form out right. I’m sure I ticked the ‘disgustingly brilliant’ box.
† With or without chocolate bickies. I realise this comes as a shock, but not everybody turns to chocolate in times of stress.
†† There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Rudyard Kipling gets it right (again). Don’t let the sentimental twaddle that has grown up around this poem fool you: he’s not in a good mood^.
http://homepage.mac.com/rmansfield/thislamp/files/72e33ce48fa33d32d561c2c2018483e7-165.html
^ And no, you’re right, it’s not Shakespeare. Be grateful.
††† Note that any reference to the rainbow bridge will be deleted. Does. Not. Work. For. Me.
‡ Most of my stuff sounds pretty lugubrious anyway, or at least weird. I wouldn’t tackle an epithalamium.
‡‡ You may get twice that out of a horse, of course, but that may almost be worse, because it’s still only about one-third of what you’re hoping for yourself.
‡‡‡ Probably. Critter people are like that. Which means that one of the saddest, most demoralising curses of our modern era is the no-pets-allowed at old people’s homes.
§ Yes, I know, horrors etc, I am an irresponsible cow, etc etc. Bite me.
§§ I have bottomless, ardent sympathy for people who find words intimidating when I’m trying to write music. Sticking notes together is so . . . is so . . . is . . . uh. . . .
§§§ No, he doesn’t read the blog.
# If Finale hasn’t driven me to running mad with an axe before then.
Post quarter
Yes, we got it—the quarter. The quarter peal that I’ve been obsessing about all this last week, the quarter peal to Daniel’s memory*, the quarter peal that Vicky managed to end-run me into organising. Forty-five minutes of Grandsire Triples with Colin conducting. Yes, we got it.
But it was not a thing of beauty, and that, I fear, was my fault. I was only ringing the treble, so straight out to the back and straight down to the front again with no scary zigzags, and no even more scary changes of the pattern when Colin makes a call. But I could not find my rhythm. Could. Not. Find.
Sigh. When success is not victory.
It wasn’t dreadful, and I didn’t get yelled at or anything; I didn’t go wrong, exactly, I just wasn’t particularly right, and as a result the band never settled down and the Grandsire was more of a stagger than a song. SIIIIIGH.
I phoned Niall later on to moan, poor man, and I could hear him trying to figure out ways to be tactful. Insofar as he had any advice, regular blog readers will be able to chorus the answer: Ring more quarters.
Which leaves me in an interesting quandary. In pure, absolute terms, he’s right. The best way to ring good quarters is to ring lots of quarters. Works like a charm. But I don’t ring quarters because of the ME;** I don’t do anything that I can’t suddenly sit down in the middle of. It doesn’t happen often out on hurtles, but it happens, and hellhounds just flop down too and wait for me to reintegrate my component parts. I haven’t had to pull Wolfgang over and wait for the glitter-fairies to stop dancing on the windscreen so I can see the frelling road in a long time—but it has happened and it could happen again.
Quarter peals are scary because they’re planned and organised and scheduled, and you’re letting down the rest of your band if you splinter one. If you go wrong during a touch during practise or even service ring, the band just stops, and either tries again or does something else. It can be very exasperating, but you haven’t wrecked anyone’s day. And because quarters are planned and organised and scheduled, and you will be the Jerk That Blew It if you blow it***, I can’t help obsessing about it. Almost everything annoys the ME, but obsessing annoys it more than most things.
The only way to obsess less is to ring more quarters. You see the problem. But . . . another but . . . the forty-five-minutes part is perhaps less of an issue than I’ve made it. Yes, it’s a risk, especially because I go in there terrified of the forty-five minutes, and terror is tiring. But I’ve rung pretty frelling nearly nonstop at thinly-attended practises at all my regular towers—and practise lasts an hour and a half. I was surprised when I heard the bells come back into rounds this evening and Colin say ‘that’s all’. I didn’t think we were anywhere near the end yet. So I may have a bit more slack about this than I think.
Hmmmm. . . .
Meanwhile, however valid or invalid the cause, I’m shattered.†† And then there was a little trouble about the champagne. Well, of course there was going to be champagne, right? Did any of you doubt it? Peter fished one of the bottles I’d bought on sale at Tesco’s††† a while ago out from the cupboard under the stairs.‡ It had come in a box. He opened the box and discovered . . . the bottle is wearing one of those big plastic tamper-proof stopper thingies over its cork, so we can’t actually open it.‡‡ Fortunately we are not a one-bottle household: Peter went back under the stairs and found another bottle of champagne. And he’s offered to ring up Tesco’s tomorrow and try to find someone to reason with. No of course we don’t have the receipt from several months ago.
Daniel rang in my very first quarter, eleven years ago, when the rest of the band carried me through trebling to plain bob doubles. I haven’t come as far as I might like, but I am a ringer. Thanks, Daniel. One slightly wonky quarter of Grandsire Triples and a champagne toast to you.
* * *
* One of several. Colin’s already run one at South Desuetude and Rupert, my old ringing master from over ten years ago, has organised one after the funeral at East Persnickety, my old tower and Daniel’s home tower. Those are only the ones I know about; I bet there are others.
** I was having a bleak moment, as one does after one has not lived up to one’s own standards, and wondering if I should be ringing at all. There are of course two answers to that: yes and no. And even I admit that ‘no’ looks a bit like ‘if you can’t do it PERFECTLY then NEVER MIND,’ and we just had a lecture about that in Black Bear’s guest post last night, which a lot of forum members seem to be agreeing with. And ‘yes’ includes not only that RINGING NEEDS RINGERS but that I have the first, crucial virtue, which is that I keep showing up.
*** The correct ringing term is ‘fire out’. You lose a quarter, you fire out. A quarter that fires out in the final few minutes ruins everyone’s day big time.
† I called a tiny harmless touch of plain bob doubles at service ring this morning and it went on forever because being the conductor makes even tiny harmless touches go on forever, partly because with every successful call my terror level cranks up a notch: Oh gods I’ve got this far. . . .
†† I’m also half-sick with adrenaline aftermath—no, nothing to do with bell ringing. I took hellhounds out for their final perambulation^ after the quarter, and was doddering along behind them when I heard someone using a loud dog-commanding voice: the kind of loud dog-commanding voice that tells you immediately that the owner of the voice is not in control. And I dragged my weary eyes up and there was a frelling off lead Rottweiler standing there looking at us.
We have more or less unpleasant encounters with aggressive off lead domestic fauna^^ rather too often, as you know. But most of the time as I’m bracing myself for grappling hooks and hostile boarders, I’m thinking, okay, it’s a spaniel, it’s a (small) terrier—it’s usually a frelling terrier—it’s a frelling-frelling Lab—we’re probably not going to die. I do not feel this way about certain breeds: Alsatians. Staffies. Bullies.^^^ Rottweilers.
I crank my guys in and we stand dead still. The woman with the loud voice follows her four-legged killing machine as it walks slowly toward us. I’m looking at those jaws . . . and she gets a lead around it. GAAAH. ARRRRGH. SERIOUSLY RUDE RELIEF-EXPRESSING LANGUAGE. But it is, furthermore, worse than that. The mews is set well back from the main road, tucked away behind the Big Pink Blot which still looks like the local big house but is now condominiums. The wall around its parkland is still there, as is the avenue of trees. There’s a nice wide swathe of grass between the wall and the trees, then the pavement/sidewalk and the road. The busy main road. No one with the sense the gods gave a quahog would let their dog off lead along this stretch. And yet several of my ugliest encounters have been here. As today. My stomach hurts just thinking about it. Quarter peals are nothing to the fight-or-flight hormone surge caused by being in the company of your friendly goofball hellhounds and seeing something like this coming your way. One of the additional points is that if you meet death on legs out in the middle of nowhere you always have the final resort of letting your guys off lead: nothing is ever going to catch hellhounds. But you can’t do that with a busy road right there.
^ They probably wanted a hurtle, but I wasn’t up to it.
^^ Actually this does include cats. But that’s a rant for another day.
^^^ I love bullies.+ I love Staffies.+ I love Alsatians. I love Dobes and Rotties. But they scare the crap out of me sauntering stiff-legged and off-lead toward me.
+ And yes, I know they’re terriers too. But you rarely die of being bitten by a Jack Russell.
††† The moral to this story is, support your local independent grocer and wine shop.
‡ The mews has a cupboard under the stairs. Unlike some people’s cottages.
‡‡ Just by the way, what is the point? If you’re the kind of person who pinches bottles of champagne, you’re probably the kind of person who will just break the neck of the freller. The big plastic dealies on clothing make more sense; you can’t get them off without damaging the fabric.
Big dumb yuck
How has it been a bad day? Let me count the ways.*
The phone rang at mmph o’clock plus four, and I’d forgotten to unplug the sucker.**
The weather is like being suspended in wet foam rubber. Wet grey foam rubber. You can’t see, you can’t breathe, and sudden gestures, supposing you have the energy to make any, make the air squelch. But will it RAIN? Noooooooo. It keeps dripping, like a leaky pot, and every time hellhounds and I venture forth it dribbles a little harder. It extravasates just enough to soak your All Stars, muddy your jeans-bottoms and make your hellhounds cranky. But rain? I wouldn’t go that far. I have put on and taken off my raincoat several times today in a hopeless, ritualistic manner . . . I want it to rain hard enough to need to put it on, you know? But the pressure of the soggy foam meteorological rubber makes the weight of a raincoat across my shoulder and the contact of Gore-Tex against my bare arms feel like burning brands, or at least a large boa constrictor. And yes, this weather has a severe effect on brain function, aside from being woken up after four hours of sleep by the phone going off like a hand grenade.
So maybe it’s a good thing that Blondel stood me up. Maybe he had an aural vision*** of me practising my Italian,† and decided he couldn’t cope with that and being wrapped in wet grey foam rubber. But I was then already in Mauncester, and I didn’t want to waste the journey . . . so I went to a garden centre. AAAAAUGH.††
And then I stood up my new osteopath††† because I am a stupid cow, and they’re going to rescind my hellgoddesshood if I’m not careful. This missed appointment I will of course have to pay for.
We will not discuss PEG II at all.
And I will only briefly animadvert on the topic of my New Least Favourite Mail from Readers, of which there have been several prime examples in the last few days, all of which begin, thematically if not literally: I know you said you aren’t going to write a sequel to SUNSHINE, but . . . You’re not getting it, guys. You. Are. Not. Getting. It. And I hope this blog is not leading you into the error of believing that I have a sense of humour. No. Wrong. I have tanks, swords, bazookas, hand grenades, hellhounds, boa constrictors, and extra-extra-extra large, hungry pitcher plants . . . but no sense of humour whatsoever. I suggest you make a note.
I am, however, reading a delightful book, which I look forward to blogging about in due course.‡ What this stupid, dank, revolting day needs is a nice bath and the last few chapters of a delightful book ‡‡. And may tomorrow be better. Gaaaah.
* * *
* And my quotation-mangling doesn’t scan. This is the sort of thing Peter will point out tomorrow morning after he reads the blog.^
^ I am trashed to the depth and breadth and height
My hand can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the lead-ends of Darkness and Chaos.
I am trashed to the level of everyday’s
Unjust wallop, by sun and vampire night.
I am trashed freely, as trashings blight,
And I don’t think anything rhymes with ‘Chaos’
At least not when you’re trashed
Beneath your station.
I am trashed with every bruising breath,
Screams, tears, etc, etc, and if fates so lash,
I shall be but better trashed
In my next incarnation.
** Thus the punishment of a Deputy Ringing Master organising her first quarter peal. I’ve already done it. Go away. I don’t want to hear any more about it till 5 pm next Sunday when everyone bounces jovially up the ladder beautifully on time. What I particularly don’t want is the phone call Saturday night . . . or Sunday afternoon at 3:30 . . . saying that something has come up and they can’t make it. Vicky has a lot of these stories. I’m avoiding Vicky this week too.
*** Auralion. Aurision.
† KEY VA JEH JAR POO MAHEE
†† Furthermore, while it is a very large, very shiny garden centre, which is why I do occasionally go there in spite of tearful pleading from my good angel, it is the sort of suspicious, ill-natured large shiny garden centre that chains all its trolleys up in a long awkward cordon. To wrest one away from its gulag, you have to stick a pound coin in the slot on the handle and slam it forward, which makes the end of the chain drop out on the far side. You get your pound—or somebody’s pound—back again at the end when you reverse the process and slam the end of the chain into the rear of the slot and the pound springs out. But the system is a nuisance, aside from needing a pound coin when your pocket is full of pence and 20p pieces, and it means that when the trolley you have freed for your very own turns out to be possessed by demons you probably don’t go to the customer service desk and ask for change for a fiver and go wrestle with chains and pounds till you find a well-behaved one, you probably just stagger around with it while it tries to drag all of your joints out of their sockets and then ram the nearest wall, causing passing staff members to wonder if you need a breathalyzer test. Several hours later you will be sitting at your kitchen table writing your blog entry for the evening and wondering if your rheumatism has taken a shocking turn for the worse or if it was that damned trolley.
††† Whom, you understand, I really needed today. I needed him before I was bested by a garden-centre trolley too: I was seriously peeved at Darkness^ this morning and as he was walking primly on short loose lead to have time to contemplate his dreadful sins without distraction by interesting smells and little rustling things in the hedgerows my hand rather froze on his lead, and the paralysis went zinging up my arm and sank KA-CHUNG into my shoulder. At present my head only turns to the left. Until I can rebook with the osteopath.
^ No, really? Lovely adorable sweet obedient only-lives-to-please Darkness?
‡ I seem to be amassing positively an alp of books to be blogged. I should get my literary butt in gear.
‡‡ Which she had better not frelling frell up. The way this day is going . . .
Daniel
Niall came up to me almost as soon as I got up the ladder into the tower for practise tonight. Very bad news, he said. Daniel died Wednesday evening.
There are several people I consider responsible for making me a bell ringer: Daniel is one of them. I met Daniel the very first time I climbed up into the magic space that is a bell tower ringing chamber. This was nearly twelve years ago, at the beginning of my learning to ring the first time. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this story, have I? I’ve loved the sound of change-ringing bells from the first time I heard them—in England as a tourist, about thirty years ago.* I’m sorry, I’m going to invoke ‘magical’ again: everything about bells, especially change-ringing bells, is magic, especially the sound they make.** I can remember stopping dead on a London street—what is that noise? It’s bells, it must be bells—church bells—but how are they doing that?
So about ten years later I moved over here and married Peter, and lots and lots and lots of things about England were wonderful or overwhelming or both*** and while change-ringing was on the life-in-England list I never quite got around to pursuing it.†
And then twelve years ago Peter and I went to a nearby village one Sunday afternoon where a dozen private gardens were open to the public—proceeds to the village hall, or possibly the church roof—plus free demonstration of bell ringing. We didn’t find out about the bell ringing till we were there paying for our tickets. Oooooh, I said. Peter viewed me with no great enthusiasm. I had to drag him through the gardens so we could get to the bell tower before the end of afternoon.
My first tower was everything a dazzled American could want. The church was quite big and grand for a village church, with some unusual architectural features and a baptismal font that medieval historians†† argue about. To get into the tower you go down this very long, very dark, very high-ceilinged nave past the famous font, till you arrive at a set of narrow open steps that lead you up and up into the blackness with nothing but a wispy railing between you and a plunge into the abyss. At the top of the stair you take a vertiginous wriggle . . . and then go up another set of stairs . . . except it’s not stairs, it’s a ladder. It’s a ladder through a tunnel. And finally you emerge, blinking, into the ringing chamber, at least half convinced you’re on another planet.
Daniel was one of the ringers on display that day, and he’s the one who came over to welcome Peter and me and answer any questions we might have. I’ve done the on-display thing myself: you take turns to talk to the strangers that straggle in, except that in any average group of six ringers, there will be two who would rather be roasted over a slow fire than walk up to a totally unknown person and say hi, there will be two for whom the saying hi wins out over the roasting but only barely, and there will be two who are actually capable of conversing like normal human beings.††† Daniel was a member of the third category. I asked all the standard idiot questions which he answered very patiently and without letting on that he’d heard them all ninety-four times that day already. And I specifically remember asking him how long it took for someone to become a useful member of the band, ie whom they’d want to turn up for service ring. A few months, he said cautiously. It varies from person to person.
So it all began with Daniel being nice to me. Unless I’m really cranked for something I’m pretty frelling timid and easily put off. If my sample bell ringer had been peremptory or derisive that would probably have been that.‡ But he wasn’t. He was really nice.‡‡ He went on being really nice when I started coming to practises. I never heard him yell at anyone and he is—was—one of those ringers who could ring anything. He rang in my first quarter (peal), which is to say he is one of the five good ringers who carried me through to the successful conclusion I totally hadn’t earned. I stayed in touch with him and his wife after the first disastrous 18-month attack of acute ME made me drop out of ringing,‡‡ and when Peter and I moved into town five years ago and I found myself next to a working bell tower, it was Daniel I phoned to ask if he knew anything about the local band. Were they, you know, friendly?
Daniel also rang handbells, although it was hard to make him do it. But when Darcy broke her wrist just before My First Handbell Wedding, um, was it two summers ago?, it was Daniel who stepped in so the Show Could Go On.
He was diagnosed with lung cancer this past winter: mesothelioma, from—they believe—asbestos exposure over forty years ago when he was in the Navy. He took it quietly; no muss, no fuss, no bother; an English gentleman. He hasn’t wanted to ring because he didn’t want to inconvenience his old friends with his cough. His old friends would have been happy to have him, cough or no. . . .
And now he’s gone.
We were all a little subdued at practise tonight. And when Niall called for Cambridge and fixed me with his patented gimlet eye I was sure it was a bridge too far. I’m wiped by the relentless continuing heat, I’m working too hard, I’m worried about Peter, and since Ditherington practise folded, I’m not getting enough time on a rope. But Niall was right, it was too good an opportunity to miss; we don’t have Cambridge-worthy bands that often, and tonight there was even one person spare for a minder—Richard, who is one of our best ringers, and who spends most of his time any more in Mozambique or some-damn-where far away and with no bell towers. Richard is only just back after months on the other side of the globe. And I thought, grasping my bell rope with sweaty hands (but then it is very hot), okay, if I get through this, it’s for Daniel. §
I got through it. Richard said, meaning it, How far you’ve come. Yes, I thought—and it all started with Daniel.
And then I came home and opened the bottle of champagne we tend to keep in the refrigerator just in case. And I’m drinking it now.
Here’s to you, Daniel. Thanks.
* * *
* I didn’t even know there were change ringing towers in America till I’d started ringing over here.
** This is why there are change-ringing bells in Damar.
*** And there’s a lot of feculent bullfeathers too, but that’s because England is also the real world.
† Possibly I was very occupied planting roses.
†† I think it’s medieval: it’s a lot older than the present church.
††† I belong to the second category. Niall belongs to the first.
‡ Unless whoever it was had pissed me off. Pissed-offness is my secret weapon. See, crabby and volatile is good really.
‡‡ It still took a month of my wandering around the house going ‘hmmmm’ before Peter got tired of listening to me haver and rang the tower secretary himself to ask about practise times and what they did with beginners.^
^ Well, we have a pit of rabid wolves out back, and . . .
‡‡‡ The fact that they had a house full of Border Collies had a little something to do with this. Daniel’s wife bred, trained and showed them.
§ There will undoubtedly be several quarter peals rung in his honour, but because of the ME I don’t ring quarters.
