Uncomfortably numb
It’s funny how different something looks from one perspective than it does from another. I thought that the first few words of the first sentence of New Thing* would clearly, unmistakably and irresistibly label it as fiction. People who read the blog even occasionally (I thought) would be aware that I mention Peter from time to time** as an ongoing part of my life***—and if people who don’t read the blog at all might be intrigued at the possibility of one of those scary train-wreck blogs where people describe their bosses as pustules and how they had it off with the plumber last Saturday† while their spouse was buying Marmite at the corner shop,†† hey, whatever keeps them reading. But it never occurred to me that even the least regular reader could get to the end of the first sentence, and we will pass over the reference to computers and conferences since not everyone knows who Peter is†††, absorb the reference to the fourth volume of The Epic of Flowerhair and not at least suspect the presence of a fragrant rodent. The Epic of Flowerhair? Seriously? I must be even farther out of touch with my genre than I realised.‡ And the only reason this blog exists is because I’m a writer. A fantasy writer. Um. People do read sidebars, don’t they? Where mine outs me as a fantasy writer. I always read sidebars. There is vastly, universe-crackingly too much content out there in internet land. You need a fast way to say ‘no’‡‡ occasionally. Sidebars (sometimes) provide one.
And haven’t I been chirpy and upbeat about the New Thing? Well, I thought I’d been being chirpy and upbeat‡‡‡ about the New Thing.
Anyway. It’s fiction. There will be more of it. And, you know, thanks for worrying . . .
* * *
I know I promised you a What? You’re doing what? semi-explanatory blog tonight but I’m several leagues beyond shattered and I have to get up EARLY tomorrow.
About six weeks ago, I think, we received a very chirpy email, speaking of chirpy, from the parents of one of Peter’s grandchildren, informing us that the grandchild in question had reached the finals of the national division of the Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster Young Musician of the Year competition, which is being held in Dastardly, which is not impossibly far from here. So we’re going. Tomorrow. EARLY tomorrow. We’re going (EARLY) because we’re getting a ride—from Georgiana and Saxon who are getting out of bed even earlier to swing past here and pick us up. They are noble and wonderful human beings.§
It’s going to be a clan gathering—I believe they’re pegging off one whole section of the arena for us—but the finalist grandchild and his immediate family swooped through here a day early and stayed overnight last night at Third House. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like a good idea before I had this flu§§ and it still seemed like a good idea up until the electricity started flashing on and off like an urgent Morse code message yesterday morning. I was (serendipitously) out buying batteries when one of the other clerks came flouncing back in the shop and announced crossly that both our little local grocery stores were closed, allegedly because of automatic-till problems. Oh. My next stop was some little local grocery, for supplies for the troops who were arriving in a few hours. . . .
With reference, the other night, to the question of protecting your technology from erratic power delivery: I have this great boulder of an object under the desk at the cottage, which is both hard drive back up, enough battery to let you close your desktop down without data loss or meltdown if the power goes out, and a kind of super-whammy surge protector, in that it cost ridiculous amounts of money, but you don’t have to keep changing the freller every time something like yesterday happens. It has a major drawback, however, which is that while the power is out it screams. It screams incessantly for as long as the power is out—and it doesn’t stop screaming until the power is back on again AND you have reset the wretched thing.
It spent a lot of yesterday screaming. I did not enjoy this.
And then when I finally got to Third House to make up the beds, I couldn’t get the frelling heat to turn on. The OLD boiler§§§ was thirty (or forty) years old and it had pretty much two settings: On. And off. And it had a dial, so you could set the temperature. That was about it. It also made a reassuring roaring noise when you turned it on and it came on. I am capable of understanding this system. The new boiler, which was installed when I had all that fun having the Weight Bearing Floor built for the attic a couple of years ago, will make a cherry pie, sew a fine seam, and calculate pi to 1,000 places. All I want it to do is heat my house. And I couldn’t figure out WHY I COULDN’T TURN IT ON. I wasted a lot of time on this, to the detriment of the bed-making, but it was cold last night#. . . .
They had been keeping me up to date with their progress by text, including the indefinite delay when the M-something motorway stalled out due to a traffic accident. Then I didn’t receive the last two texts about their getting underway again, and the next thing I knew there was a sudden influx of tired, chilly human beings who were bemused by the fact that Wolfgang was preventing them from parking in Third House’s drive, and after everyone is home from work there never are spaces on the street. Oh. Technology, you ratbag. You get careless, when things are working. You assume they will go on working.
I have to go to BED. I have to get up EARLY. PS: our grandchild is going to blow the rest of those weaselly little suckers out of the water. . . . ##
* * *
* It doesn’t have a name yet. You will be the first to know.
** See: I am my own best material because I don’t have to worry about taking my own name in vain or hurting my own feelings. And poor Peter suffers the disability of being the only other person who doesn’t have an alias. So I do try to protect him.
*** I suppose, since I’m always reminding you how much I don’t tell you, you could have leaped to the sudden, horrified conclusion that our marriage is actually a seething rancorous mass of barely restrained mutual loathing, and that this had broken out at last. Um. No. And even Gelasio isn’t a villain. At least I don’t think so. At least not yet. I suppose he could . . . mmmph mrgle gmmmph.
† Cheaper than weekend overtime rates. If the plumber fancies you.
†† Sorry, you hopefuls. I don’t write that kind of blog. Nice knowing you.
††† http://www.peterdickinson.com/
‡ Hoist by my own petard again. I also keep saying that I’m very under-read in everything because I’m a very slow reader and read over too wide a range. True.
‡‡ Or even ‘yes’, unfortunately. Noooooo! I do not want to receive email updates! Noooooo! I do not want to be on your RSS feed! Nooooooooo!
‡‡‡ And annoying.
§ I believe there is also a classic Jag involved. Oooooooh. May I be awake enough to appreciate it.
§§ There was a noxious miasma hanging over Bologna this year. I know several people hitherto innocent of any crime who went home plague-bearers.
§§§ Furnace
# Yes. I am extremely tired of bringing this year’s baby plants indoors every night.
## PPS: The boiler had turned itself off at source. I guess because it got tired of the Morse electricity. It did allow itself to be turned back on again—when someone other than me figured this out.
Thrilling, thrilling news*
THE ROBINS’ NEST IN MY GREENHOUSE IS INHABITED. Er. By, you know, robins.
It was time for the day to start improving by then. It had not begun well. It had not begun well several days ago. The old mews laptop has been off line since last Friday, which is a mega frelling pain in the patootie, since while the little knapsack computer is a gigantic patootie-saver, in all other ways it is too dagblaggingly SMALL. Somebody sends you something you want to look at? Forget it. You have to scroll around so much it’s a seven blind persons and the elephant show. The keyboard is almost big enough, so you type on it as usual, only you’re making as many errors as Frodo the Nine Fingered would, playing Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes.
I had emailed the archangels the beginning of the week, and Raphael had responded that he’d be in touch Tuesday or Wednesday to come out Wednesday or Thursday. By last night—Thursday night—I hadn’t heard from him so I sent him a one-word email: whiiiiiiiine.** This morning there was an email back saying that he’d left a message on Pooka on Wednesday. WHIIIIIIINE. In which one’s technology lets one down again. New phone calls or texts are supposed to show up ON THE OPENING SCREEN of your semi-reliable*** iPhone, and I never think to go looking for them as I go looking for email. There it was, sure enough: but Pooka had apparently been having the vapours when it came in, and failed to put it where I could see it. Meanwhile, however, the little laptop was beginning to emit dark smoke and chittering noises—and the mews had been entirely off the air for about three hours one evening and two hours the next AND I was getting very tired of writing the blog on the off-line mews proper-sized laptop and putting it on a memory stick to plug into a live socket somewhere. †
So Raphael, who is a wonderful human being, I mean archangel, rejuggled his Friday and came out anyway. I texted Oisin that I might be a little late . . . I guess maybe. Two and a half hours later I texted Oisin again, saying, cup of tea or do you want to kill me? Raphael had walked in the door, pressed ONE MYSTIC SYMBOL—I mean it’s not even a button or a key it’s a perfectly flat, non-contoured symbol—on the semi-dead†† laptop and LO! it was live again. Kill me.††† However . . . nothing else was the slightest bit straightforward and two and a half hours later he had to leave because he had to leave‡ . . . and while he had convinced the iPad update not to delete everything stored in my library, iPod, photos, etc, he hadn’t convinced it to, you know, update either.
ARRRRRRGH.
I’m also trailing around at one-quarter speed because I was comprehensively shattered by yesterday’s events. I had slept badly night-before-last in dread of yesterday, and I couldn’t really separate out grief for Gloriana and Gloriana’s family and simple fear of walking into my old ringing chamber. I also wanted to go to the funeral, but where was I supposed to sit? With the ringers because I was ringing or not with the ringers because I’m not a member of the band? I don’t think this is covered by Miss Manners.
I was also, of course, terrified that I was going to put my foot or my head through the frelling rope, or break a stay, or fall down in a fit, or something. . . . But in fact in terms of blood and horror it was a complete failure. I’m pleased to say. Admin was extremely gracious and I was gracious right back. And I’m not a good ringer, and I’m a twitchy, jerky ringer but I’m still a ringer, and the feeling of my hands on a bell rope is automatically steadying. And those bells are—aside from the crucial health and safety stuff that made the work necessary—noticeably easier to ring.‡‡ I had thought it was ‘open’ ringing where everyone who knew how was welcome to come have a pull, but there were only eight of us for the eight bells. We rang. Hands on ropes: bong. Bong. Bong. This is what the bells are for: well, change ringing was invented by Christian bell ringers for Christian churches, but I cast the net wider: for me the sound of the bells is a declaration: there is something beyond us. You want it at a wedding, but—for me—you need it at a funeral.‡‡‡
Admin wanted to try to ring after the funeral too. I had been planning on opting out, but that would have left them with only five—six is a good number, and five isn’t really. So I stayed. The funeral itself was pretty gruelling—the church was packed out; she had a lot of friends, and quite a few of them spoke—and when we got back to our ropes we just rang rounds: one-two-three-four-five-six, one-two-three-four-five-six, the bells in order, smallest to largest, over and over and over and over. Your heart lifts at the same time as you’re trying not to burst into tears. . . .
So. Yes. I went. I faced all those people§. I rang on several of the bells in the ringing chamber that used to be as familiar to me as my own furniture in my own sitting room. It was a bit miserable, but then it was a funeral, and Gloriana will be much missed. And . . . it was still a good decision for me, quitting my tower. I don’t like that it was a good decision, but it was a good decision. And I think I slept fine last night, I just need a month or two of hibernation.§§
. . . So I went along to Oisin’s nearly two hours late this afternoon. And I drank several cups of tea and raved, chiefly about bell ringing and computers§§§ and after I eventually wound down a little Oisin asked if I’d like to sing something? I’d even brought my music. How about that. I must be beginning to believe in the system. So I sang something. And it wasn’t too bad. I may even learn my entries on Dove Sei. It is very confusing having some piano galumphing along with you and throwing you off.
And then I came home and rushed out into the garden because there was a little daylight left and since I don’t dare plant the frellers I’d better pot up the blasted sweet peas . . . and there was a little robin face peering out at me from the shelf in the greenhouse.
* * *
* Books? Why would it be about books? No, it’s not about books.
** He’s used to me. It’s a good thing.
*** This is similar to ‘a little bit pregnant.’
† Diane in MN
On a typewriter. Remember typescript? [ . . .] Nostalgia.
Yes–but it’s tempered nostalgia. I like word processors a whole lot. I think of my mother, going to work out of high school in a lawyer’s office and having to retype entire documents for a single error because corrections weren’t allowed . . . I really really like word processors!
I have also spent time typing contracts that you couldn’t make an error on—and while I’m sure that someone on salary who wasted hours retyping wouldn’t be long for that job, it was immediately critical for a free lancer like me who got paid by the assignment. So. Yes. And I love the internet, but a lot of the frenzy of that love is on account of needing underpinning and maintenance for the sodblasted blog which itself wouldn’t exist . . . without the internet. You didn’t get error messages with typewriters and they broke or blew up only RARELY. You didn’t have to buy a new one every few years . . . and when you did buy a new one you were not legally required to buy with it a new keyboard layout, a new return mechanism, a new brand of error cover-up paint (with a new dispenser), a new dictionary, new encyclopaedia, a new language . . . all of which you would have to LEARN TO USE.
Er. Hurrumph. I like word processors too. But I’m not a whole-hearted fan. Especially not after a week like this one. And if you’re going to go all snippy on me and say that a word processor has nothing to do with internet connection . . . I shall become CRANKY.
†† Very like ‘semi-reliable’ and ‘a little bit pregnant’.
††† Oisin having declined.
‡ I think this may be very like being paid by the assignment.
‡‡ Siiiiiiiigh. Nicest set of bells in the area just got nicer.
‡‡‡ I know this isn’t going to happen, but I wish ringers were on retainer, so more weddings and particularly more funerals had bells. We ring ordinary services as part of our charter, but bells for your individual event are expensive.
§ Most of whom, in a few cases to my surprise, are apparently still talking to me.
§§ And, tension level? I seem to have sprung just about every muscle in my body. Pulling a big, ratbaggy, awkward bell, you may feel it—or anyway I¸ who am not very good at it, may feel it—in my shoulders and stomach. Ordinary ringing on ordinary bells, no.^ But yesterday . . . my chest, shoulders, arms, belly and back . . . all of them were telling me that I had been toting barges and lifting bales all day. Good grief.
^ It’s never about sheer strength. It’s always about (sheer) skill.
§§§ And the continued non-existence of the New Arcadia Singers
No Sleep Monday
I put Hannah on the train this morning. Waaaaaaah.
I put Hannah on the train way too early this morning in an absolute sense aside from the losing-Hannah aspect. I haven’t been out of bed that early since I stopped service ringing. . . . and we just lost our frelling spring-forward hour this weekend. I am seriously not of this planet right now. But (being awake for) millions of hours of daylight is, I admit, rather jolly, and the weather goes on being spectacular* if spectacularly dry.**
So I put Hannah on the train and, sobbing brokenly, parked Wolfgang under a tree near the station and took hellhounds for a hurtle. Of course I brought them with me. Doesn’t everyone with companion canines take advantage of every possible excuse for hurtling?
Mrs Redboots
I love the way you stress that you know every pub in Mauncester by name only. . . . I have to admit I’d been wondering. . . .
Well, there are critter-friendly pubs, but we’re generally not going inside even when we can. We’re hurtling. But Mauncester is a good walking town, I’ve lived in this area for twenty (and a half) years, and ferreting around in the twisty back bits is fun. I don’t remember when I crossed the line where I (mostly) stop worrying about getting lost because I know enough of Mauncester that I won’t stay lost very long, but at this point I seek out the bits (especially twisty back bits) I don’t know. During the foot-and-mouth crisis when the entire countryside was closed we hurtled that generation of resident four-legs in Mauncester and Prinkle-on-Weald.*** Prinkle-on-Weald is now pretty much too far away for anything but an adventure, but Mauncester is closer than it was from the old house. I also have a very minor fantasy about living in Mauncester—where you can be walking distance of a library†, a cinema and a train station, as well as some very nice English countryside. It’s not going to happen, but it makes an agreeable directional fantasy: okay, do I want to live in this neighbourhood? How does the pub look?
After this we went back to the mews where I alternately poured cold water over my head and guzzled hot caffeine in a (mostly futile) attempt to wake up. But I still managed to pretend to sing a little, and went off to my voice lesson. You are probably aware by other standards that life is full of ratbaggishness? Over the weekend I’d sung less well than I can, because I was busy being nerrrrrrvous about singing for someone. While, perversely and simultaneously, I found myself able to ham it up more than I can for Nadia or Oisin—because my audience was a relaxed, friendly and nonprofessional one††. Nadia, of course, heard what I was (or wasn’t) doing almost immediately, sorted me out with rather embarrassing swiftness††† and then threw me into Dove Sei, which I had cornballed up in a shocking manner for Peter and Hannah. And of course I stiffened up and sang it like a funerary urn, if funerary urns sang—and this despite the fact that I was making a better quality of noise, if you follow me. ARRRRRGH. That’s fine, said Nadia, that’s a very nice tone, now sing it like you’re ENJOYING it.
Sigh.
Diane in MN
. . . as an opera fan, I tend to cringe when opera singers decide to make crossover albums. South Pacific may have worked for Ezio Pinza, but Placido Domingo as Tony in West Side Story was not a good idea. And there is a cruel recording of Jose Carreras singing Jingle Bells. . . .
JINGLE BELLS? Oh my . . . gods. Oh. Eeeep. Did Domingo do a West Side Story? OUCH. I lose all respect, etc. Kiri te Kanawa and Jose Carreras—poor old Jose is listening to the wrong advice, clearly—were bad enough: I agree that crossover is mostly dire.‡ But I’d gladly—gladly—forfeit all possibility of singing Maria plausibly‡‡ in exchange for sounding like te Kanawa.‡‡‡
* * *
* Anthea tonight on the treble commented on the excellence of the view: where you stand to ring the treble at Glaciation^ is opposite one of those little high arched church windows, and in this case you could see a shiny crescent moon and some glittering planet or other through it. I had been ringing the treble before her, but I had been staring at the floor in an agony of concentration. If I’d noticed the moon I would merely have instantly gone wrong.
^^ I’m still in two wool jumpers to ring there, although it’s shirtsleeve weather in daytime sun. You wander down the path to the church in your t shirt with your bulging knapsack over one shoulder. You walk through the vestibule and shiver. You enter the main part of the church and pull out your first jumper and put it on. Then you walk into the ringing chamber, hastily don your second jumper, and race to plug in the two electric fires.
** I was out watering in the cottage garden this afternoon^ and thinking I ought to have a built in irrigation system with All the Plumbing in Hampshire running under my tiny plot of land: I ought to be able to drill a few tactful little holes, attach those leaky-hose things, and bob’s your uncle. Pipes should have a nice colour-code system like electric wires, so you know you’re drilling in the right pipe. . . .
^ And swearing. Later in the year when I shift from my PINK wellies to my (brown) clogs because it’s too hot to be in rubber to your knees, I become resigned to slopping water in my shoes. It takes skill and dedication to pour water down the inside of your pink wellies.
*** I missed telling you yesterday that the garden Hannah and I went to was in Chappington Fritworthy. It’s not like I get to mention it very often.
† New Arcadia does have a library, but it’s the two shelves and a plastic chair, open alternate Thursdays from 2:45-3 pm and every third Friday from 7-7:17 pm variety. Mauncester has a proper library.
†† Not to say clueless. Clueless would be good.
††† It’s so obvious after the fact. Sometimes it’s obvious before the fact too, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can DO anything about it. I was aware that my throat was only about half open, the roof of my mouth and my ‘mask’ were pretty well as bright and light as an anvil, and my abdominal support had decamped for Toulouse.
‡ In both directions. I HAAAAAAAATED Sting singing Purcell and Dowland. HAAAAAAAAATED.
‡‡ heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee
‡‡‡ Or Deborah Voigt or Janet Baker or Marilyn Horne or Joyce diDonato or Beverly Sills or Tatiana Troyanos or Cecilia Bartoli or . . . see really I’m easy to please.
Unnecessary excitements
So, last night, I had begun writing the blog*, and the frelling little Outlook pop-up box kept getting in my face and whining about not being connected. Oh, shut up and cope, I snarled—I mean I murmured softly. And then I went on line to check something—I forget what—and Internet Explorer declined to connect either. Fie.
So then I went through the whole stupid exasperating tarantella** of unplugging and replugging and closing down and restarting and hanging from the ceiling singing a merry song and making dents in the plaster when you throw chairs at the wall. ARRRRGH. And I remained disconnected. Hence the note from Blogmom last night that I was having Raging Technical Difficulties and would not be posting a blog. Yes, I could write a blog off line and . . . uh . . . figure out how to send it to Blogmom and ask her to post that. But writing a blog without internet back up is way too much like hard work. At least when you have a sieve-like memory.*** I was thinking about this last night, while I was (fruitlessly) waiting for the mews wifi to shake itself loose from the grip of the doldrums and refrellingconnect. My old hard copy Britannica is in Peter’s bedroom, and he’s asleep by the time I’m writing the blog . . . and the annual volumes, after Peter got cranky about the annual volumes,† now live at Third House. This is not deeply convenient for when you’re writing a blog entry right now. At my end of the kitchen table at the mews I have within easy reach: the 1977 edition of the Chambers [British-English] Dictionary which is fabulous††, the Penguin thesaurus, the Oxford Compendium of English lit, Brewer’s Phrase & Fable and 100,000 Names for Baby, which is an unbelievably bad and badly edited book, but it serves the purpose of stimulating me to come up with names like Zgruban.††† This still only gets you so far.
So I read back issues of the London Review of Books for a while . . . and nothing happened (‘the server is not available. If this condition persists, please contact your administrator, however, blunt instruments are not recommended and we take no responsibility for the damage you may do to your singing voice’). So I emailed Blogmom from Pooka, telling myself that it was time I got an all-options plug-in toggle for Astarte because the keyboard on an iPhone is suitable only for flower fairy fingers . . . and went back to the cottage‡.
Today . . . the plot thickens. It’s only the old mews laptop that won’t go on line.‡‡ Peter’s computer goes on line fine. Astarte goes on line. And my little knapsack computer, brought down to the mews for evidentiary purposes, goes on line. Waaaaaah. I just want stuff to work and leave me alone.
Meanwhile . . . in the first place, of course, having been glued to Pooka all morning, the moment I left her hung over the back of a chair so I could get on more freely with watering 1,000,000 potted plants‡‡‡ she started barking at me. Hannah has landed§ and will ring me again with a rendezvous point as soon as she meets up with her driver. I’ve said I can find anywhere in Mauncester, just tell me where.§§
. . . She rings back: the driver says he’s going to drop her at a pub, the Egg and Custard, on the Caerphilly Road. The Egg and Custard? I said, under the just-proven-erroneous impression that I’d at least heard of all the pubs in Mauncester, the Caerphilly Road?
Emphatic male quacking in the background. Egg and Custard, confirmed Hannah. On the Caerphilly Road.
Okay, I said dubiously. I can look it up.
One frantic, husband-involving search later: There is no Egg and Custard in Mauncester. The nearest Egg and Custard is in . . . I don’t know, Brittany, Alsace, Hokkaido, somewhere. Not Mauncester. It’s a long way to Hokkaido. Oh, and there’s no Caerphilly Road in Mauncester either.
And the mobile phone number I have for Hannah doesn’t work. . . .
TUNE IN THIS TIME TOMORROW FOR THE NEXT THRILLING INSTALLMENT.§§§
* * *
* And this is what I wrote (waste not, want not):
HANNAH IS COMING, HANNAH IS COMING, HANNAH HANNAH HANNAH HANNAH IS COMING. YAAAAAAAY.
. . . The consequent need to do housework. Unyaay. In fact, uuugggghhhh.
Mostly visitors do just fine up at Third House. Easier on everyone. Everyone can go to bed when they want to^ and get up when they want to and make their own breakfasts (when they want to), and not only when they want to but as they want to, with no resident gremlin saying, You can’t scramble eggs in that pan! You aren’t going to drink coffee out of that mug, are you? There is also an extra loo at Third House for those occasions when the person in the bath falls asleep. Third House has many advantages.
But there are a few people even in the life of a forty-eight-yesses-out-of-forty-six-questions-on-the-introvert-test introvert that one positively wants to have underfoot. In my life one of them is Hannah.^^ Therefore I need to ensure that the cottage is not so frightening a habitat that she decides she has urgent and permanent business in the Azores.
There are no mice nesting in the sofabed: check.
The coffee filter thingy is not wrist-deep in dust and dead beetles: check.
There is nothing living in the back of the refrigerator that bites: check.
The cobwebs at the top of the stairwell that I can’t quite reach, even with my telescoping dustbrush at its full extent, are staying at the top of the stairwell and have not descended to become over-friendly with stairway users: check.
The vanguard of the outdoor jungle has not penetrated round either the door or the kitchen window frame sufficiently to be a danger to the urban unwary: check.^^^
The hoover hasn’t exploded, and I can still use the freller . . . sigh. Check.^^^^
^ Hannah, sadly, is an early riser.
^^ I will still tell her which pan to scramble eggs in however. But she’s allowed to use any mug. Probably. I can’t be sure till I catch her using the wrong one.
^^^ This becomes more of a problem later in the season.
^^^^ I haaaaaaaate vacuuming. HAAAAAAAAAAATE.
** Spiders have a lot in common with computers when you stop to think about it. They both have too many legs (material or immaterial), a bad attitude (graphic), and a ghastly habit of rushing at you (literal or metaphoric) when you’re not expecting trouble. But really you can tell they don’t have your best interests at heart the moment you set eyes on one.
*** This would be a sieve that has also been used for target practise by the local rifle club.
† Which is cheek, you know, since he married me for my Britannica. I’ve told you this joke, haven’t I? He married me—twenty years ago, remember, before the internet was a resource for commoners and the technically challenged—for my Britannica. I married him for his membership in the London Library. Peter has dropped his membership in the library—which means I’m groaning under the extreme subscription price by myself—I haven’t pulled a Britannica volume off the shelf in years . . . and the annual volumes are accumulating at Third House.
†† It and the old American Heritage Dictionary of 1969 are my favourite dictionaries.^ The OED is . . . second. It’s a very good second, but it’s still second. And neither the new Chambers nor the new American Heritage is a patch on the classics.
^ The poor old AHD is in fairly rough shape as I spent several years sitting on it. I wrote HERO sitting on my old AHD. I’ve never had a proper desk with a proper desk chair, which means height adjustments must be made. The AHD was the perfect extra thickness for that particular chair, and conveniently butt-breadth.
††† And rather a lot of books on knitting and learning Japanese.
‡ Where, yes, I can get on line, but that’s not where I spend my evenings.
‡‡ It really wants to retire. Really really really.
‡‡‡ We’re going to have a hosepipe ban any minute: driest March in meteorologically recorded history, I think. Just so long as they don’t have a madperson-carrying-a-gazillion-cans ban.
§ . . . at the right airport. In England.
§§ I should know better than to say things like this.
§§§ Hey. You already know I’m a cow. And I’m a cow who needs to go to bed early because Hannah does^ AND BECAUSE THE SODBLASTED CLOCKS GO FORWARD TONIGHT.
^ Yes. She’s here. You can relax.
The Continued Non Arrival of Doodles
I went ringing at the abbey again tonight.
Pause.
More pause.
Even longer pause.
. . . I wonder how long before they ask me politely not to come back?
SIIIIIIIIIIIIGH.*
I then came home to a query from Blogmom about all those doodles and doodled books I haven’t sent out yet. Yes. I haven’t sent them out. I said that I was going to have the rest out by the end of March. I lied. I didn’t mean to lie, but I lied. I was at that time in the grip of the delusion that I would have finished SHADOWS . . . about a fortnight ago.**
I’m still working on SHADOWS. And as I keep moaning to everyone who doesn’t quickly run away from me, it’s going fine. It’s just not going fast enough. I’ve had to slow down, indeed, precisely because I’ve been ramming it through slightly faster than it’s wanted to go, and I came to the point with the third draft—which is usually my final one—that I had to slow down or risk botching the job. As it is I’m skating over stuff I didn’t want to skate over. I’m hoping I might get to use this world again—like ALBION takes place in SUNSHINE’s world—which might give me a chance to poke more ignorant fun at quantum physics and chaos theory. But I think the algebra is specific to this book, and the Japanese language and culture, which appear to be settling in for the long haul in my life***, are tied in SHADOWS to a specific character which is inconvenient since I don’t write sequels.†
And it’s hard to judge what to put on the blog—about anything, really. I’m never in a good mood when I wonder what kind of an absolutely weird impression of Robin McKinley I’m giving by the public persona who appears here. I don’t think I’m quite as TOTALLY FRELLING SELF OBSESSED as you’d be forgiven for thinking I am from these (virtual) pages: it’s just that I’m my own safest material, since I don’t have to worry about hurting, humiliating or infuriating anyone else when I talk about me.†† At the same time I’m so conscious of what I’m not saying about me that I genuinely can’t guess what I look like to all of you.†††
And . . . I don’t like whiners. If I whine here, I’m very sorry. My judgement was off that day(s). So I’m not telling you how the undone doodles pray on my conscience and how grim my office at the cottage is, full, as it also is, with heaps of books, lists, and mailing envelopes. Circumstances conspired—PEG II crashing and burning, and my then urgently trying to get on with SHADOWS as fast as possible—but that still leaves you waiting over six months for something you paid for last autumn.
Since I mostly write here about all the rushing around doing too much that I do, you would also be more than forgiven for thinking‡ that if I stopped flitting about the landscape and concentrated I would be getting both SHADOWS and doodles (etc) done a lot faster. You’ll just have to take my word for it both that it doesn’t work that way—and that there’s perhaps less flitting than you think. I work seven days, remember, and I don’t take holidays, or anyway I can’t remember the last time I took one. For one very minor example of this wombly balance: I guarantee that if I weren’t whacking myself silly over SHADOWS I would be getting on with learning how to ring the beastly abbey bells at least fractionally faster than I am.‡‡ Indeed I’d be getting on with bell ringing generally at least fractionally faster if I didn’t pretty invariably have no functioning intellect left by the time I go to bell practise in the evenings.‡‡‡
But believe me, you will be the first to know when I send SHADOWS to Merrilee and instantly morph spectacularly into a Doodle Factory.
* * *
* Well . . . I’m getting a lot of knitting done while I sit out. There’s no point even watching Stedman on twenty-seven: it’s just a storm of ropes to me. But I can sometimes learn something standing behind someone with his or her hands on a rope, and intently watching what they’re doing. And at the abbey I can use all the help about anything that I can get. So I stood behind the treble for some Cambridge Major^, because in other towers I can treble bob, which is what the treble does in Cambridge . . . and got horribly lost. So when, later, they called for Bristol Major, which is another treble-bobbing method, I decided to stick to knitting. But I’ve been tagged as a stander-behind—it’s one of these how-you’re-wired things: some people find standing behind of zero use—and one of the other ringers said to me afterward, oh, but you should have stood behind the treble again! I decided it would be impolitic to say I’d rather knit.
I was knitting on Monday at (bell) practise and Anthea, who did use to knit, and quite glamorous things too, says she doesn’t knit any more because ‘nothing happens fast enough’. But I knit in waste time: those three minutes at that exasperatingly long light on my way to Nadia’s, sitting out in bell towers, during break at the Muddles, waiting for my computer to stop sulking and do something.^^ And all that effort, even at my knitting speed, does blerg or bludge into something eventually: I now have the world’s longest leg warmer and I’d better cast off and start the other one. It would be nice to have a pair by November. . . .
^ To the extent that I ring it inside, I ring minor, which is six bells, not eight.
^^ Yes, I can sing while I knit. As necessary.
** Positive thinking doesn’t always work. Sometimes even putting something on the blog to make sure I do it doesn’t work.
*** Have I mentioned that I’ve found a language school in Hampshire that offers Japanese? I’ve told the woman who is my contact that I can’t commit to lessons till I’ve dealt with an overdue work project. Ahem. But this is so much old-unfinished-business-coming-back-to-bite-me, not a brand-new, for-godssake-McKinley-get-a-grip fascination. I’d be more inclined to see it as some kind of serendipity rather than actual unfinished business if it weren’t that Damarian has a certain amount of Japanese grammar in it—as well as some funny alphabet stuff. I only started writing down what I think I know about the Damarian language in the last ten or so years, when I would have told you I remembered nothing of Japanese except how to count to ten and say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’. That’s true, but the Story Council apparently saw an opportunity and pounced.
† PEGASUS is one story in three books! It’s not a trilogy! The word ‘sequel’ will not be bandied here!
†† I have arguments with myself all the time. China is sometimes broken.
††† Don’t tell me. I’m sure I don’t want to know.
‡ Simultaneously grinding your teeth optional
‡‡ This is hardly a silver lining, but it did occur to me that . . . the abbey has always been my best local opportunity to learn some of the slightly-more-upper-level stuff that the New Arcadia band can’t reliably support. But given how steep the learning curve for adapting to the abbey’s bells is, the only way I’d ever have stuck the course is by something like this—having cast myself off from New Arcadia first. As it is . . . I’ll stick the course unless they tell me to go away.
‡‡‡ I write the blog every night on fumes, okay?