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

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

katinseattle

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

No pressure. 

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

blondviolinist

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

I’m on team Mongo. 

::Beams:: 

* * *

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

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

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

† Having wept through the sound of my bells ringing. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ajlr

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

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

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

+ They breed.  Like coathangers and odd socks. 

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

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

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

‡ Although the herd of pygmy rhinoceros was a surprise. 

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

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

            But SHADOWS is still going.†

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

†† Cough 

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

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

^ Ie making a virtue of Middle Aged Brain

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

            Yes, I missed service ring this morning.

            No voice lesson tomorrow.

            No second-Monday at Old Eden tomorrow.*

            Not in a good mood. 

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

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

blondviolinist:

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

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

LRK:

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

Or another:

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

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

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

A neutrino walks into a bar.†† 

* * *

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

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

Ajlr

Oh, Robin, that ring… *haz a envy*

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

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

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

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

Mrs Redboots 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ No, just handbell ringers.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, that’s not your average mixture.  Let’s have the good news first: 

http://www.jodimeadows.com/?p=525  

YAAAAAAAAAAAY.  It’s alive! 

* * *

. . . We are now, I fear, about to plunge down a steep slope.  I was feeling a little odd last night but in my current state of whatever it’s always easy to put oddness down to a surfeit of quantum physics.*  Unfortunately not so in this case.  I nearly didn’t get out of bed this morning, except that there are hellhounds.  And SHADOWS.  Which is still due the end of the month.  I can’t frelling believe I’m ILL again.  I was ill in October, for pity’s sake**.  I’m not sure yet whether this is merely (!!!!) a sick cold or whether it’s going to insist on the full panoply of flu.  At the moment the jury is still out.  But I feel like stale death on toast.  AND CRANKY. 

            So I got out of bed at about . . . noon.  I barely fell down at all.  There are hardly any bruises from caroming off the four-poster on the way to the bathroom, which had mysteriously moved to a new location overnight.

            I got dressed.  I don’t guarantee that my tee shirt is on the right way around (who cares?  It’s covered up by six woolly jumpers) but I got the shoes on the right feet.***  I hurtled hounds.  Yes.  I did.†  Twice.†† 

            And I worked on SHADOWS.  I did. 

            . . . And this is as much blog entry as I can hold myself together for.†††  Good night.  May you sleep better than I’m likely to. 

* * *

*  Brief, according to my present state of non-brain, update on ABSOLUTELY SMALL:  It’s all maths.  I don’t know how even a crazed mathematician/physicist can have had the effrontery to look Average Reader in the face in the introduction and claim that understanding quantum mechanics does not require mathematics.  You are so lying, Professor Award-Winning Scientist Bloke.  It’s all maths.^ 

            What is true is something else he said in the introduction however:  that in most physics books the author says something like, blah blah blah blah, and here are the equations to prove it.  And you’re supposed to read the equations.  What’s different about ABSOLUTELY SMALL is that he then tells you the equations over in words.  The equations are still there.  You still have to deal with equations.  They may not look like a lot of equations to Mr/Ms Science Brain but they are totally equations.  But once he gets away from those poor cats waiting trembling in boxes for the Killing Look, he explains stuff pretty well.^^ 

            If you’re up for it . . . it’s pretty fascinating.  It’s so insane.  It’s so not Newtonian.^^^  I also just love that most of it you can’t know exactly.  HA HA HA HA ALL YOU CREEPY OVERBEARING SCIENCE BRAINS WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL.  HA HA HA HA HA.  Granted I still don’t get it, but I’m a lot happier with the concept of a world that cannot be known/measured exactly—can’t be nailed down.  This sounds a lot more plausible to me—more like my experience of the daily life this book is supposed to let me fit quantum theory into. ^^^^   And as he says, approximate doesn’t mean wrong:  it means . . . approximate. 

            Anyway.  It’s fascinating.  But it’s probably not a book you want to strain to your bosom when you stagger off to lie on the sofa with hellhounds and minister to your brain-destroying illness. 

^ Now that I’m committed, which is to say I’ve bought the thing, twice, audio and hard copy,+ I notice with a jaundiced eye that the three encomiums on the back cover about how This Is The Book We’ve Been Waiting for to Explain Quantum Mechanics in Daily Life are all by hard liners.  There are two scientists and a lawyer.  I’m sure he’s a very hard-line lawyer.  And probably the author’s best friend since childhood.  I want a hat check girl/boy or a brewer or ballroom dancing coach to tell me it changed their concept of life. 

+ I cannot believe that anyone would survive the experience by audio only.  If audio helps you focus, as it does help me, then the audio is worthwhile, and audible’s reader gets a medal.  But you’re still going to have to have the hard copy.  For the equations.  If it takes the reader too long to say one of the frellers, you’ll have forgotten the beginning by the time he gets to the end.  Lambda squared of the hypotenuse of the lobotomy . . . um. . . . 

^^ I do wish he’d stay away from real-world examples.  Even I know that a baseball is not a free particle, even when it’s left the field and is busy arcing over the stands.  Speaking of the physics of gliding, however, is anyone playing Tiny Wings?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pT_2E5xI0   I don’t know what I think of the game, but I love the graphics. 

^^^ I have a new theory about why Newton was such an ugly piece of work as a human being.  It’s because in his secret heart he knew he was wrong.  

^^^^ Look at human nature.  Look at hellhound nature. 

** I think it was October.  Autumn anyway.  A few months ago.  And my stupid throat hasn’t recovered from the last assault which is why the Muddlehamptons are forgetting my name.  ARRRRRRRGH.  And here I am again with an inflamed throat, a throbbing head, and that interesting kind of fever that makes you feel like you’re made of boiling aluminium.  I RARELY GET THESE MALADIES.  RARELY.  Except lately ARRRRRRRRRGH. 

*** One right foot.  One left foot. 

† I also deserve a medal.  But so do they.  At the ripe old age of five and a half, although generally speaking the advent of maturity is a little thin on the ground, they are very good about waiting till I get my crap together, even when I seem to be having unreasonably more trouble than usual with said crap, and of hurtling slowly, with pauses, once we get outside.  I know the location of every public dustbin in this town . . . I also know the location of every bench, not that kerbs won’t do in a pinch.  They probably just think I’m having a bad ME day.  Multi-application hellhound training. 

†† And the dog minder is going to take them out tomorrow.  Another medal. 

††† I told an American friend that what I really needed, Peter having made some excellent turkey stock for the bodily nutrition side, was someone to tell me Really Bad American Jokes.  So she’s taken it upon herself to send me Really Bad American Jokes all day at intervals—for the support of my suffering soul.  Here’s my favourite: 

It’s the old west, and a newcomer to town sees there’s a big crowd gathered in the town square.  So he spots the local newspaperman, and asks him what’s going on.
          ”It’s a hanging,” says the newsman.  “They’re hanging Brown Paper Pete today.” 
          “Brown Paper Pete?  Why do they call him that?” asks the visitor. 
          “Because he always wears brown paper pants, a brown paper shirt, a brown paper hat, and carries a brown paper satchel,” says the newsman.
           “Wow,” says the visitor, “What are they hanging him for?” 
           “Rustling.” 

She’s just sent me this one, but she says that I’m sick enough to worry her if I think these are funny. 

Guy walks into a bar, sits down and orders a beer.  While he’s drinking, he hears a tiny voice say, “Hey mister!  I like your tie!”  He looks around, but doesn’t see anybody.  A few minutes later, the same tiny voice says, “Hey mister! Nice shirt!”  Again, he looks around, but there’s no one around except him and the bartender.  A little while later, the voice says, “Hey mister! You look like you’ve lost some weight!”  So the guy calls the bartender over and asks him what’s going on.  The bartender says, “Oh, that’s the peanuts.  They’re complimentary.”

Not. 

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

            And there was a car parked in my space. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

^ sic 

EMoon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‡‡ It’s now raining hard.

Today has been a stomachache, punctuated by way too many bells.  And—when I’m feeling this rough—there are also too many hellhounds.  Importunate they all are.   Bong!  Bark!*  I fell out of bed this morning aware that all was not well in the nether regions but assuming (vigorously**) it wasn’t serious.  Absorbed my first megadram of caffeine.  Registered that strange green fog hovering over hellhound crate was a jungle.***  Oh.  Eeep.  Further register that it’s cold out there.†  Extra reasons for objecting to getting up this early.††  Six woolly jumpers and two pairs of long johns.  These prove useful when the Black Knight at the Ford leaps out from behind a geranium and demands my sword or my life.  Don’t be daft, I say.  This is my kitchen.  There aren’t any rivers, with or without fords, in a kitchen. 

            There aren’t jungles in kitchens either, says the Black Knight, pressing the unpleasantly sharp end of his long pointy sword against my breastbone, which is protected only by six woolly jumpers, which are nonetheless better than nothing.  Now, are you going to fight me or am I going to run you through for a lily-livered coward?

            I’m going to set my fierce, slavering hellhounds on you, I say.

            Hellhounds? says the Black Knight, blanching.  Oh, all right, have it your way.  Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice little set-to?  It would wake you right up.  Much better than caffeine.

            Not today, thanks, I say.  But feel free to stop round for a cup of tea some time. 

            . . . I was a minute or two late to the tower, but the other three of us were still standing shivering in front of the electric fire so that was all right.  We did eventually have six pairs of hands, but . . . it’s the week before Christmas, we have three service rings today, it would be nice to have a bit more than the skeleton crew. 

            After Ring #1 I went home and viewed the jungle.†††  Now beginneth the Great Windowsill Wedge.  How many leafy green pots of the cold-allergic can I winter over with the least amount of extra nonsense?‡  After about the six hundred and forty-third, however, which I hung in a sling dependent from a curtain rail, ‡‡ I had to lie down for a bit, and when I got up again to attend to hellhound obligations, somehow or other . . . the jungle sitting on top of the hellhound crate was just as thick and impenetrable as before.

            Sigh.

            So we hurtled, and then hellhounds had lunch and I did not, and then I stared at SHADOWS for a while and thought about late-mid-life career changes‡‡‡.  Then I went to ring the carol service at Old Eden.  Can’t you beg off? said Peter (and various friends by email).  No, I said.  We’ll be lucky if we have six ringers for the six bells.  In the event we had five to begin with, and I pleaded to be let off ringing up, and allowed to stick to the treble.§   I left afterward without finding out if the mince pies were going to be offered to the bell ringers.§§

            Then it was to do all over again at New Arcadia.  Five ringers for eight bells—eventually a sixth.  But no seventh and no eighth.  Can I ring a touch of Plain Bob Doubles while fading rapidly into the Shadowwraiths’ realm?§§§  Afterward I tottered back to the cottage and brought back in again everything I hadn’t managed to fit on windowsills earlier.  Plus several things I’d remembered too late last night and fossicked around for today . . . which do seem mysteriously still alive.  And got rid of a few more indoor slugs.

            Finally re-hurtled (relatively) patient hellhounds at about 7:30 . . . and it’s already ice underfoot.  Crunch crunch crunch iiiieeeeeeeee. 

            Have risked supper.#  I should go home early, before the roads get too exciting.  But . . . maybe . . . I’ll . . . just . . . lie . . . on . . . the . . . sofa . . . for . . . a . . . bit . . . first. 

* * *

* I’m not sure I’ve ever recognised how similar bells and hellhounds really are.  Indecipherable minds of their own.  Mostly silent and quiescent but alarming when roused.  Needs yanking.  Needs regular yanking or grows cranky and morose.  Weighs more than you think when hits the end of the lead.  Unpredictably unbiddable—except you can more or less prophesy that they’ll be at their worst if anyone you want to make a good impression on is present.  Hates cold weather.  Medical bills expensive.  Not interested in food.^ 

            I rarely take bells to lie on the sofa with me however. 

^ Although in fact I have a hellhound beleaguering me at this moment.   Darkness is having a little holiday from not eating. 

            We haven’t eaten since yesterday, he says.

            You’ve eaten twice since yesterday, I reply.  Once at about 2 a.m. and lunch.

            Yesterday, he says.  You’re always moaning about how bad your memory is.  Lunch was yesterday.+  And furthermore, you’re eating chicken.  You can’t expect me to not eat since yesterday gracefully when you’re eating chicken.           

+ Hellhound time.  Okay, I wonder if we can cross it with Mandelbrot sets to get that thirty-six hour day? 

** This would be the last time all day I have been vigorous.  

*** Full of wildlife.  We won’t get into the slugs-in-the-kitchen situation, my stomachache is enough reality for one day . . . AAAAAAAUGH.  EXTRA PROTEIN JUST DISCOVERED IN MY BROCCOLI.^  Sodding flangdangling organic.  If this stuff were sprayed with Toxic Planet Death I wouldn’t have these problems. 

^ This is actually when it happened.  I am not juggling to make a better story. 

† So at least the indoor aspect of the jungle was worthwhile. 

†† Although when hellhounds finally got their first hurtle at about noon the footpaths were still frozen.  Crunch crunch crunch crunch. 

††† And the slugs.  And the Biggest Caterpillar in the Universe which is busy eating the geraniums in the sitting room ARRRRGH.  I found one Nearly the Biggest Caterpillar about a week ago and was hoping that was the end.  But no.  And the crap it’s leaving is about the size of ball-bearings at this point.  Why can’t I SEE it??  I’ve started having uneasy thoughts about those trompe d’oeil pictures where (for example) the hero is looking around for the dragon and is standing in the dragon’s mouth. 

‡ How much of it is still alive?  How much of it is planning on staying alive?  How many Caterpillars that Ate Brooklyn and Are Eyeing Up Birmingham are lurking among the foliage?  After all, there was a Black Knight.  And his sword.  And his horse.  Oh, didn’t I mention the horse? 

‡‡ Note to self:  prop curtain rails.  There are now four hundred and twelve plant pots dangling from them, variously attached. 

‡‡‡ I fancy something simple and straightforward this time.  Experimental physicist.^  Formula-one driver.  Nursery-school teacher. 

^ I’d be rubbish at the theoretical. 

§ This didn’t work, of course.  I was bumped off the treble—oh, you’ll be fine on the two, said Niall—as soon as our only-rings-treble sixth ringer appeared for a quick pull between passing around the mince pies downstairs.   This is one of those testing-your-auto-pilot moments.  Can you ring a touch of Grandsire doubles when your stomach feels like the Black Knight did run you through with his sword?^ 

            It was worse when we—even more briefly—had a seventh ringer.  Wonderful, I said, I can sit out.  Oh, Robin, said Niall.  Would you please stand with Monty?  —GODS.  I’d rather frelling ring than mind someone.^^

            Speaking of Niall . . . three service rings did rein him in a little, but he still said to me as we were leaving Old Eden, with forty-five minutes till ringing for the carol service at New Arcadia:  We’ve only got forty-five minutes.  We could teach Monty to ring handbells. . . .

            Does Monty want to learn to ring handbells? I said, grasping at straws.

            I haven’t the least idea, said Niall.

            Whereupon I ran for Wolfgang. 

^ Today?  Yes.  Tomorrow?  I hope to be recovered tomorrow.  I would rather go wrong and have no excuse than stay right and have this excuse. 

^^ Nobody died.  

§§ But see previous footnote. 

§§§ Yes.  But I wouldn’t want to count on it. 

# Have fed hellhounds.  They ate.

Mornings.  Gaaaaah.  Sunday mornings after an opera are always more than a little aggrieved, and I blew a few gaskets last night.*  GAAAAH.  

Nycteris

I’m not a traditionalist, and up in my wee brain is my own directorial take on Faust that takes place in a college town in the US during the Vietnam war that I will impose on some community center before I die. . . . 

IMO when a concept sucks is when it is unconcerned with telling the story or worse, it is trying to tell a different story than the one the music tells. 

I’m not a hand-on-heart card-carrying traditionalist;  if you promise you’re telling the story**  I’ll gladly come to your community centre.***   I’ve seen, for example, LA BOHEME in modern dress, and it works just fine.  Young impecunious artists still starve in garrets—and it’s still perfectly possible to die because you can’t afford medical treatment.†  But that’s the thing:  you’re not allowed to turn what something is into something it isn’t.  I wouldn’t automatically throw out Faust as Robert Oppenheimer†† . . . but you do have to tell Gounod’s story if you’re using his FAUST. 

Diane in MN

I like Faust a LOT, and despite people who get snarky about it because it has good tunes and big numbers, it can be very powerful in a good production.

It’s a 19^th century soap [opera].†††  A lot of the old war horses are—my favourite Verdis, for pity’s sake, LA TRAV, AIDA, RIGOLETTO . . . OTELLO too, although that’s much more of a well-made play underneath than most.  

The final trio raises the hair on the back of my neck every time. 

Ah.  Yes.  I burst into tears.  Every time. 

I thought the singing was terrific (although I have one quibble: Poplavskaya’s voice sounds too mature to my ear for Marguerite, who is very young and very naive; it’s hard to hear Poplavskaya as anything but a grown-up), 

I agree.  And while I like Poplavskaya’s voice, I’m a little nonplussed that she is quite such the flavour of the month . . . and last month, and next month . . . at the Met.  Surely she isn’t the only . . . um, well, I’d call her a lyric soprano, but I’m probably wrong.  Someone who has the proper range and warmth for roles like Marguerite.  But she does sound too old for Marguerite—one of the reasons you-the-listener shouldn’t just write Marguerite off as a stupid little misery is because she is that young and naïve—and she is also all alone.  Everyone but her brother is dead, and he’s off fighting . . . somebody or other.   But this is perhaps the one advantage that someone who saw it has over someone who only heard it—I’m not sure Poplavskaya puts over innocence, but she sure puts over tragedy.  The scene with her utter turd of a brother‡, after Faust (with Mephistopheles’ help) puts a sword through him, and he’s dying and blaming her at the top of his lungs, she’s kneeling beside him, holding out the medallion she’d given him when he went off to battle and that he’d yanked off in a fury when he found out she was dishonoured, oh my, she does that well.  And despite her being too old and having too much self-possession, I could suspend my disbelief for that third-act seduction.  Faust’s role is pretty straightforward—he wants to get laid, and he wants it now.  I’m not faulting Kaufmann in the least—he does it up prime.  But Marguerite has a much harder task:  she has to both want and not-want, and do it without just looking like a drippy virgin or a cock-tease.  I think Poplavskaya succeeds. 

but the introduction of the crying/silent baby didn’t go over well with me. 

That may be the low point of the entire opera for me—even worse than Faust’s suicide—perhaps because the infanticide is crucial to the plot and Faust’s suicide is just another of this idiot director’s high concepts.  But the way the baby dies is so repellent.  Marguerite has been besieged by devils at the church, poor wretch, and runs off.  Some of the chorus clusters round her for two or three seconds, blocking her from view, and then they move away and she looks exactly the same as she did two or three seconds ago except that her front is now flat, and she’s holding a distractingly bad doll approximation of a baby.  She kisses it absent-mindedly and then rushes over to the sink . . . ah yes, the sink.  It is a Symbolic Sink.  Faust drinks from it in the first scene, and Siebel—Michele Losier, another excellent singer‡‡—derives her holy water from it to rejuvenate her withered flowers.  SPARE ME THE HIGH CONCEPTS.  It also sits in the middle of the stage . . . being a sink.  ARRRRRRRGH.  Anyway.  Marguerite rushes over and thrusts the baby into it.   I think she’s supposed to make a mad grimace at this point, but if so, her nerve failed her, because what it looked like to me was—oh gods, get this bit over with fast.  

And the ending, as described by Margaret Juntwait this afternoon and you tonight, can only be called bogus. 

Yep.  Highly bogus.   Lowly bogus.  And in-betweenly bogus.

AnguaLupin

I think this is the first time my views on a Live in HD production didn’t match up with yours. I (mostly) liked this Faust. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that I actually don’t normally like Gounod’s Faust, so almost anything they do to it is an improvement. It’s so damn Victorian. “Oh, look, our favorite morality tale ever, do hold still while we hit you over the head with the morality bat. And while we’re at it, the religion bat, too. Wait, wait, you’re running away! Come back! We finish the opera with a paean to Jesus!” Gah. 

Yes but . . . you don’t like the opera.  I entirely agree that it’s a fairly sick-making morality play.‡‡‡  If you can’t suspend your disbelief that far—and no blame if you can’t—then this opera isn’t for you.  I don’t like Shakespeare, but I’m not going to praise a production of one of his plays for making it not Shakespeare.  Well, okay—I might—but only tongue in cheek.  No, really . . .  

* * *

* We had exactly eight ringers, one of them Monty, and so Niall, thank the gods, took the conservative course and we only rang call changes.  I am therefore still alive to tell the tale. 

** And you have the singers.  Ahem. 

*** I will bring several of my own cushions.  Community centre seats . . . 

† Although it’s harder in France than some places.  I believe their national health care is one of the better systems. 

†† And the fact that it’s been done isn’t necessarily damning either:  how many times has Beauty and the Beast been retold?  I’m not a John Adams fan, and one production of NIXON IN CHINA has been enough for me;  I heard highlights from DR ATOMIC and thought, right, that’ll do.  In theory backdating Oppenheimer to the most famous operatic FAUST sounds kind of interesting, and when someone sent me the link to the NYTimes review  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/arts/music/a-review-of-the-metropolitan-operas-faust.html?_r=1&ref=metropolitanopera I read it and thought oh, well, it’s a critic being a critic^ and tried to hope for the best.  I now think he was being kind and restrained. 

^ Which is perhaps a rant for another day 

††† http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=soapopera seems to think opera is an ironic choice, but I’m not so sure.  The reason I can’t watch soaps^ is because nobody does anything except have sex and nervous breakdowns.  When does anyone earn a living or do the housework?  But you need some kind of plot, probably implausible, to hang the sex and nervous breakdowns on, and opera is pretty much the same thing only with tunes, and it’s also over in a few hours. 

^ Barring a flirtation with DARK SHADOWS in my youth but I couldn’t actually, ahem, stick it for long either 

‡ Admirably played and sung by Russell Braun.  That’s a hell of a cast to keep up with, especially when you’re playing the scum from the bottom of the black lagoon, and he did it really well.  

‡‡ One of my minor pleasures is a really good cross-dressing girl.  You know the theatrical swagger that a good female actor playing a man puts on?  I love this when it’s done well.  Losier did it well. 

‡‡‡ And when the CHRIST IS RISEN comes up in the subtitles I’m sitting there thinking . . . um . . . sometimes I’d rather not be reminded what they’re saying.  I’m not a Christian, so that is my bias, but it also does seem to me a trifle inappropriate here.

TONIGHT’S FAUST FROM THE METROPOLITAN OPERA IN NEW YORK IS ONE OF THE WORST, STUPIDEST,  MOST PERVERSE PRODUCTIONS I HAVE EVER SEEN AND I HOPE THE DIRECTOR’S NEXT PROJECT INVOLVES  CARDBOARD, DENTAL FLOSS, AND MARKER PENS..   

            I HAAAAAAAAAATED IT.  AND I AM HAVING PROBLEMS HERE TONIGHT NOT USING LANGUAGE.

            Oh yes, and there will be spoilers.  Ironic in this instance. . . .

            There are two ‘worst’ aspects to tonight’s large expensive cowpat.  The first is that Gounod’s FAUST is a big, soppy romantic wallow, which either does or does not go fatally over the ‘sentimental’ line, depending on the point of soppiness saturation in your own personality.  I love it.  It’s one of my desert island operas (with most of Verdi, about half of Mozart and one or two Rossini and Donizetti and . . .).  But it needs to be treated gently.  Try to take it too far out of its milieu at your peril.  This is to a great or lesser degree true of anything stageable, I would imagine, but opera generally is to my eye/mind/ear already dancing on the edge of irrecoverable silliness, and it’s just not a good idea to distract an audience from the glory of the music to vexed and vexatious questions of plot and continuity.  IT’S ABOUT THE MUSIC.*  And that’s really all it’s about.  Any director who doesn’t get this is a moron.

            There are a lot of morons out there.  I’m sufficiently hard-line about this that I further think that anyone responsible for a production that calls too much attention to itself is an up-himself prat.**  I know the arguments about ‘freshness’.  I think they’re mostly bunk.  I think that the majority of the opera-going audience doesn’t have the chance to get tired of non-controversial productions because due to time, money, other things in their lives and how many operas are performed in a given year they don’t see them often enough to get tired.  I think that most of the excuse for ‘exciting’ new productions is SELF INDULGENCE on the part of the theatre admin.  Bored with straightforward productions that give the singers the best possible chance to bring the audience to its knees?  Go sell washing machines.  And don’t let the door bang you in the butt on your way out.

            I don’t even know where to begin.  And I have to go to bed so I can ring bells tomorrow morning.  But here’s the second ‘worst’ about tonight’s show:  it was an absolute dream cast.  Jonas Kaufmann as Faust***, Rene Pape as Mephistopheles and Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite.  Gods.  What they could do with this music.  And they mostly even managed it, despite very long odds against, like running a marathon on one leg and blindfolded.   Some of the close-up stuff did work a treat—the famous act-three seduction is pretty great, for example.†  But the bullsh—I mean, the poor creative decisions of this production kept getting in the way.

            So.  Anyway.  FAUST is a big, gorgeous, soppy, 19^th century tragedy, with melodies to die for and buckets of emotional melodrama.  Gounod laid it in 16^th century Germany, with probably about as much historical accuracy as Puccini lavished on MADAMA BUTTERFLY, so I’m not terribly fussed about slavishly following the libretto about this.  But the director has decided that his Faust is one of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project.  What?  Mind you, you only know this because Joyce Di Donato tells you, as tonight’s broadcast host.  There’s no particular clue to the initial backdrop of an anonymous ruined building, a vaguely laboratory-looking stage, and some limping, blackened people who cross Faust’s path. (He doesn’t seem too perturbed by them.)  These unidentifiable victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki do however have a strange similarity to the blackened, jerking devils of Walpurgis Night.  Er, why?  And if those are WWII uniforms in act two, I’m Pippi Longstocking.  Although even if they are . . . wait a minute . . . this is after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?  Then who are these soldiers and where’s the war?

            And what is the giant puppet-soldier about?

            And why does a bloody death’s-head in a cape come on stage and glower at Mephistopheles at the end of some act or other, I forget?

            And if that’s supposed to be a mushroom-shaped cloud at the beginning of act five (I think), how about if you locate a better piece of film for it?

            I’m getting ahead of myself.††  I acknowledge that what to do on stage while the overture unrolls can be a problem, but how about . . . nothing?  This is the orchestra’s moment.  Let’s listen to them.  But we have Kaufmann lurching around looking like a young man wearing a slightly greyed-over moustache, and a brief cameo appearance by some refugees.  Until Kaufmann started singing it was BORING—and there’s nothing wrong with the music. 

            The basic set had metal stairs with lots of open mesh walkways running up either side of the stage—like the sort of thing you see in factories and military installations and nuclear power plants.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with what was going on, although I suppose it provided one of those theatrical grails, Different Levels.  It was a daft place for Marguerite to fall finally into Faust’s arms however—but the worst in that scene was the Thing that Ate Schenectady-sized red roses that bloom up the back screen on Mephistopheles’ command.  WHAT?  WHAT’S THAT ABOUT?  WHAT’S THAT GOT TO DO WITH THE ATOM BOMB, IF WE’RE RIFFING ON THE ATOM BOMB HERE?  Arrrrrrgh.  And speaking of Mephistopheles—Pape was good.  He had the authority and just the right sneer—as well as the voice.  Faust is a tick, so you need someone with some charm as well as the voice, and Kaufmann (ahem) has these;  and what I’m coming to like best about Poplavskaya—aside from the voice—is that she gives dignity to these awful die-away soprano-heroine roles her voice dooms her to.††† 

            I really thought they might manage to wreck the end, it’s so badly staged—gibbergibbergibber no I want to go to bed, it’s not worth ruining a working Sunday for—but when Poplavskaya, on her knees, looks up and starts in on her final ‘blessed angels, save me’ music, it came together for me anyway.  IN SPITE of her then climbing some of that ugly laboratory ladder toward what we assume is heaven—in spite of the chorus standing around in lab coats singing ‘Christ is risen’—what?  Speaking of yanking something out of its context, this is just ghastly—and then Mephistopheles sucks Faust down into hell.  Er . . . that’s not how the opera ends.  He’s saved too, through his pity for Marguerite, and remorse at his part in her ruin.  So you’re staring blankly at the stage and . . .  the phony old guy from the beginning, with the moustache, reappears up through the floor, and this time he does drink the poison that Faust was about to drink at the beginning, except Mephistopheles showed up and promised him fame, fortune and babes.  He drinks the poison and dies.  WHAT?  HOW IS THIS SAVED?  By any context this opera is capable of fitting into, suicide means you’re damned. 

            GIBBERGIBBERGIBBERGIBBER.  But I really have to go to bed. . . . 

* * *

* Just to be sure my colours are nailed to the mast here, I have no time for people who want to talk about opera as drama with singing.  Very very frelling few operas are well-made plays under all the twiddly bits.  You go to an opera, you park your intellect—not all your brain, but the logical part—at the door.  I’ve talked here before about the emotional reality of opera—I can forgive almost any absurdity as long as the big numbers give me a scalp-tingling rush. 

** Or herself, of course, but tonight’s prat was a bloke. 

*** Be still my heart.   What has happened lately, that there are suddenly hunky opera singers?^  When I was still young enough to have fantasies, who was there?  Luciano Pavarotti? 

^ And what’s a little drool among friends.  

† Not that this would have anything to do with my attitude toward Kaufmann. 

†† I PARTICULARLY hated the ending. 

††† Although I have a little rant I do about Marguerite:  she’s got the devil against her, for pity’s sake.  She was never going to win.  The particular challenge to Marguerite is to let her go mad convincingly.  She has plenty of excuse—her lover has run off leaving her pregnant, her brother, her only family, curses her for a slut with his last breath.  Nice guy.  Then when she goes to the church to pray she sees and hears devils.  Well, she is seeing and hearing devils.  It’s in the libretto.  So it’s not surprising she kills her baby—and a half decent production brings this out—infanticides generally not being wildly sympathetic.^  One of the WORST bits of tonight’s big ugly redolent mess is the baby-murder, which happens on stage, with the pacing and the emotional resonance of buying a newspaper at the corner shop. 

^ Although Hetty Sorrel and Tess of the D’Urbervilles both come to mind.

Computer Archangels were here for about two and a half hours today* and . . . an hour after they left I was writing pathetic HEEEEEEEEELP emails to Raphael.  This was once again out of office hours** and I was merely trying to get on his list for tomorrow earlier than I would be crawling out of bed to phone him, but hellhounds and I were out hurtling in the dark when Pooka started barking at me, and it was Raphael.  I explained that I was standing in the middle of a dark field about a quarter mile from my computer—through a good deal of juvenile hilarity going on in the background at Raphael’s end.  I’ll put the kids to bed, he said, good dad all the way**, and ring you back.  Which he did.  Which is why this blog post is coming to you at all. 

            The good news is that yes, indeed, I have a Brand New Very Shiny Laptop.***  The bad news is that it’s up the wazoo with new frelling updated frelling software frelling, which, first, means it won’t play with some of my old programmes and, second, that both my old computers which are all networked together are having tantrums.  OH HOW I HAAAAAAAATE MICROSOFT.  HAAAAAAATE.†  This also means, of course, that I can’t USE the shiny, (allegedly) magnificently overpowered beast, because I don’t understand all the weird  (if shiny) new stuff.††   This is, you know, a trifle counterproductive in a new computer. . . .

            Raphael PROMISES that the old Word file with the tender new SHADOWS on it will run just fine on Shiny and New.  Of course I trust him totally—implicitly, explicitly, and dancing the fandango—that’s what archangels are for, to nurture and cherish mere mortals and to know more than we do about everything.  But . . .  

katinseattle

I want to hear more about Mongo. A lot more. Preferably a whole book with Mongo in it.  

This is in the process of being arranged.  I think he may even save the universe once or twice.

Aaron

A new record, a sequel request before the manuscript has even been submitted. 

MONGO IS A MAJOR CHARACTER IN THE CURRENT NOVEL.  I’M PLANNING ON FULFILLING THIS REQUEST IN THIS STORY, OKAY?  DON’T YOU HAVE SOMETHING ELSE YOU COULD BE DOING?  SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING OR SOMETHING?  OR WRITING A GUEST BLOG?

* * *

* During which I DOODLED.  There was one utter ratbag of a request^ that I did over and over FOUR TIMES before it was unlousy enough that I could bear to sign it and put it in an envelope.  

SarahAllegra

Just let it be said that I think being able to order [doodles and doodled books] on command later is a FABULOUS idea. 

Oh good.  I may even get to the point in another decade or so that I don’t nearly have heart failure every time I raise a drawing pen over an open page in a book.  I got used to signing the frellers decades ago, but doodling is scary.   

BurgandyIce

I am going to miss [doodling] when I finish the last one.

Wait… can we help you with this and request random doodles?! 

Totally.  Just not yet.  

^ And no I’m not going to tell you what it was first because I wouldn’t dream of being rude about a paying customer, but also because it’s a perfectly reasonable request and if you don’t draw yourself you aren’t likely to know what is and is not drawable.  Or, possibly . . .  he/she responsible does draw, and cheers him/herself up on bad days thinking about the tortures of the damned he/she has committed me to.  In which case I hope the wall you hang it on—because of course this will be one of the special doodles that is framed and hung on a wall—is infested with both damp and deathwatch beetles and that one morning you will be uneasily awakened by a vague heaving sensation like a boat at anchor and then with a terrible roar that whole damp and beetled end of the house will collapse and you break a rib coughing in the resulting roiling clouds of plaster dust, not to mention shattering your great-grandmother’s ornate Victorian bedhead, which was not built to fall ten feet through the first floor to ground level.

            The doodle itself, of course, will have been rendered into to tiny dusty atoms, which will mean that no one will ever again be able to pronounce on whether or not I successfully broke the unlousy barrier. 

Katinseattle

May I say, you do a really terrific line in curses. 

I get cranky.  

** Urgencies always happen outside office hours.  As any critter owner can tell you.  In this case I think computers totally count as critters. ^ 

^ There’s a critter right now trying to convince he needs to be fed again.  This is so exciting a development—hellhounds soliciting food—that I’ve kind of fallen into the habit of feeding them four times a day. . . . REMIND ME AGAIN.  WHOSE IDEA WAS DOGS?

            . . . Pardon me.  Back in a minute.^

            The thing is, the underlying problem—that hellhounds believe that eating is optional—remains.   Therefore I have now created a situation where I have four times a day to get it wrong, instead of only two or three.  I’ve just let myself be seduced by the idea that if they’re engaged in the process by asking for food, maybe . . . uh . . . 

^ ::Munching noises:: 

*** I assume Mum is in the next room getting around her second double Scotch.  The kids are both small and excitable.  

† I know.  If I were a Mac girl I could have pink.  As it is I have to make do with brushed aluminium.  Feh.  But I’m just not going to make the shift now, and fifteen or so years ago when I was first buying computers, you couldn’t get Macs over here unless you were a geek and could do the support thing yourself.^  Also . . . I now have a pink-clad iPhone and a pink-clad iPad.^^  I don’t need a pink computer.  But brushed aluminium?  Give me strength.  It’s brushed circularly around the frelling HP logo.  Fortunately it will spend its life open and I will not be forced to look at it much.  But the exquisitely brushed aluminum makes Raphael’s heart beat faster, and he wouldn’t let me put the power cords and so on into the same tote bag with the computer in case I scratched it.  What is a frelling computer doing being made of something that scratches that easily.  Clearly the only answer is a laptop sleeve.^^^ 

^ Which would not be me.  Ahem.  

^^ And, Mac stuff?  It’s not the second coming.  I’m just sayin’.  

^^^  http://www.coxandcox.co.uk/products/velvet-laptop-sleeve  And of course I’m going to spend another fifty quid to save six on postage.  

†† I’m too tired to work out a suitable curse for Microsoft.  It would have to be pretty intense.^ 

^ My mind will keep running on Gotterdammerung.  Magic gods-and-world-consuming fire.  Yes.  Although I have never been able to like a woman who rides her horse into a funeral pyre.  Your choice, honey:  leave the horse alone. 

††† The screen’s pretty dazzling.  I could just stare at all the crisp new little icons and admire their sharpness and clarity.  Never mind what they might do if I risked clicking on them.^ 

^ Eeeeeep.

I had my voice lesson today this week, rather than last Monday.  It was my first full-hour-long lesson. 

            And it was dire.  I will be falling on the carefully sharpened points of my music stand shortly.*

            I should have been able to predict the day was going to be bad when I got dressed this morning.  Regular readers will be aware that I like bright colours.  I have a special fondness for pink, but orange, yellow, lime or emerald green, royal or turquoise blue, purple and cherry red are all good.  I bought a turtleneck on sale that has several-shades-of-pink plus red and orange flowers all over it.  So far so excellent.  And I discovered to my delight that the dark pink-red flowers beautifully match a rose-red v-necked pullover on my shelf.  So this morning I fell out of bed, started the Urgent Survival Caffeine, let hellhounds out of crate, dragged on jeans, turtleneck, pullover, drank caffeine, hit myself up longside the head a few times till my eyes started to focus . . . looked at myself in a mirror and sprang back with a cry of alarm.  The only flowers that SHOW in the v-neck are the WRONG COLOUR.**

            So—because at that point I was not going to change***—I have spent the entire day looking like someone who doesn’t know how to dress.†  And furthermore NONE of my All Stars went with any of it.  NONE.  Life is bleak and grim.

            It’s no wonder I was already disquieted and off balance when I set out for my voice lesson.

            Nadia was going to sit in on one of her teacher’s master classes on Monday††, but if I wanted a voice lesson this week, she was going to be teaching from home on Wednesday.  And she was willing to slot me in for my first hour.  I thought I was looking forward to this.  A whole hour!  And furthermore it was going to be an ADVENTURE.  I admit I was a little anxious about finding her house, my navigational gifts being what they are, but . . .

            The only thing that didn’t go horribly wrong was finding her house.  Which is a good thing because I used up nearly all the time I’d allowed for getting lost in being stuck in traffic in Mauncester.  I have no clue.  And I had finally escaped the sucking vortex and . . . found myself behind an ambulance going less than 20 mph.  ARRRRRRGH.  At that point of course I didn’t know I wasn’t still going to need that (lost) time to get lost in. 

            After all of that I arrived a few minutes early and decided to knit a soothing row or two while taking deep breaths and focussing.  I did know I was feeling anxious about Being Worthy of An Entire Hour and about Dove Sei.  But I’ve put my practise time in, for pity’s sake, and the last day or two I’ve finally started humming it around the house while I do some washing-up or make yet another cup of tea or something, which is usually a good sign that a new song is getting driven into the synapses.

            AND THEN I COULDN’T KNIT.  OR PURL.  I COULDN’T FRELLING KNIT.  I COULDN’T REMEMBER WHICH WAY ANYTHING WENT.  I could make stitches that hung on the needle, and then I could make more stitches that hung on the stitches that hung on the needle . . . but I had no idea what they were, and I was pretty sure they weren’t what they were supposed to be because they Looked Funny.  It hadn’t frelling occurred to me that I needed to bring my knitting book.†††

            And staring blankly and helplessly at my knitting needles was clearly a prediction because I got indoors to Nadia AND COULDN’T DO ANYTHING.  Like sing.  My best guess, and it’s neither a good guess nor an encouraging one, is merely that I was absurdly and humiliatingly discomposed by everything being different.  My worst fear was unrealised—her husband the Really Scary Professional Musician was not there—but Stella’s babysitter was another one of Nadia’s students, someone who actually can sing, which is almost as bad as the husband.  Nadia teaches in the tiny half-bedroom that has just space for an electric piano and lots and lots of shelves of sheet music . . . and a student standing crouched and hollow-chested, waiting for the ceiling to fall.  Gah.  You are breathing in a very narrow column, said Nadia, and told me to put my hands in front of my face before I began to sing, take a deep breath and spread my hands, like opening the curtains.  Kinaesthetic retraining, said Nadia.  Teacher magic.  I have to do it at home too.  It did help.  I stopped sounding like a drowning rat.

            Dove sei . . . I’ve somehow managed to give myself a complex about it and after today it’s going to be worse.  I don’t know why I’m finding it quite so steep a learning curve.‡  But by golly I’ve decided it’s hard and am making it so.   But today I was doing insane things like mispronouncing the Italian in ways I never have mispronounced it—and when Nadia went to correct me I shrieked, I’ve never done that!  I have no idea why I did that! 

            It was a very long hour.  When I was finally allowed to escape, muttering anguishedly, I have no idea, I have no idea, Nadia said, Robin, don’t beat yourself up.  Right.  Next thing, someone is going to start explaining to me why it was inevitable that pigs should have evolved alate. 

            And then I got lost coming home again.  We’ve already established that ‘left’ and ‘right’ are difficult concepts for me, and doing something backwards—turn right going out because you turned left coming in and so on—is not simple and straightforward, I was traumatised, and furthermore by then it was DARK.

            And since we’re back on the usual schedule next week, I ONLY HAVE FIVE DAYS TILL MY NEXT LESSON.  Where’s that hellhound-sharpening tool . . . .

 * * *

* Wait a minute.  I don’t have a music stand.  Peter and I were so demoralised by the immediate failure of the one he bought me after I started with Blondel that we’ve never replaced it.  I’ll have to sharpen a hellhound or something. 

** Stop that laughing.  One of the things that a good or a bad day depends on is being able to look down without flinching. 

*** Although I thought about it.  There are the occasional mornings when my bed is even more extensively covered with discarded clothing than with books.  I wasn’t like this when I was a teenager.  I’m like this now.  

† All right, yes, there is the faction who believes that I clearly don’t know how to dress, but that’s another issue. 

†† She said they were mostly fancy-schmancy Oxbridge students, and that 90% of his teaching is about trying to make them stop thinking and SING.  She looked at me meaningfully as she said this.  I can’t imagine why. 

††† Like my knapsack doesn’t weigh ENOUGH. 

‡ That naked octave leap in bar 34 is mysteriously one of the things I did less badly.  I spent the first few days of practise at home bottling out every time, and then started doing octave leaps as part of my warm up and eventually stopped panicking.  I even managed the near-octave plunge in bar 22.^  But the twiddly bits do me in.  

^ I’m not sure how many keys Dove Sei may appear in.  My version, the octave jump is G to G and the plunge is E to F#