. . .  is fabulous.  FABULOUS.** 

            When I was signing up for this season’s Live from the Met operas I ordered a ticket for this one automatically when I read the cast list and it included Joyce DiDonato, but I wasn’t very happy about it.  It’s a pastiche, or a mash-up if you want to be groovy***, with the storyline bodged together from THE TEMPEST and MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and music stolen freely from all over the Baroque (I believe):  Handel, Rameau and Vivaldi (I think†) are the chief sources.  And there are Baroque costumes.  And Baroque sets.  I’d seen some stills and . . . ewww.  However, I had the ticket, and there was going to be Joyce DiDonato.

            I loved it.  And the production, which is way, way, WAY over the frelling top, is one of the best things about it—and therefore proves that not merely low-key or tactful things but positively reckless, attention-grabbing and silly things can be done successfully on the opera stage.††  Yesss.

            The singing is delicious, and even if I am prone to DiDonato worship, Danielle de Niese nearly steals the show.   The story:  Prospero, countertenor David Daniels, is sulking on his island.  This is one of the interesting choices ‘writer and deviser’ Jeremy Sams made:  this Prospero is a jerk.  I’ve never liked Prospero—all right, all right, I’ve never liked Shakespeare, but I’ve thought that the whole mage thing was over-emphasized:  he’s a self-pitying bully with some (fading) magic powers.  Which is exactly what comes through here.   Daniels does it very well:  I had no problem with his voice on that stage, and he has authority which Prospero must have.  He sends Ariel, played and sung with enormous charm and humour by de Niese, to shipwreck Ferdinand and then do the Puck trick with the potion to make sure he and Prospero’s daughter Miranda fall in love with each other.  But Caliban††† has stolen Prospero’s dragon’s blood so that his mother, Sycorax, can reclaim her powers, which Prospero, that fine upstanding gentleman, stole when he stole the island from her.  Without dragon’s blood the spell goes wrong, and Ariel instead wrecks a ship containing two honeymoon couples:  Helena and Demetrius, Hermia and Lysander.  Add Miranda and Caliban and there’s lots and lots of inappropriate pairings-off.  Ariel, in a panic, with Prospero having tantrums and threatening to lock her‡ back up in her holly tree, asks Neptune for help.   Neptune finds Ferdinand and gives him a shove in the right direction, the lovers are sorted, Prospero frees Ariel, Sycorax regains youth as well as power‡‡ (and her island), and all ends with general rejoicing except for poor Caliban who liked having a girlfriend and doesn’t have one any more.

            There isn’t enough of Sycorax.  Her first aria is amazing.  DiDonato goes from being a crippled hag to being a powerful woman in the prime of life over the course of the opera‡‡‡ but that first aria when she gimps out and yowls about what has happened to her—DiDonato makes some genuinely ugly noises, snarling below her range, and it’s riveting.  ISLAND is such an ensemble piece nobody gets a lot of solo time . . . but I still wanted more of Sycorax.  One of the dumb reviews that I’m refusing to link to says that ISLAND is all fluffy and throwaway—um, Sycorax is not fluffy.  And Caliban really is the one who isn’t saved.  He’s sung with dignity and pathos by Luca Pisaroni, who I had some caveats about as a rather too twitchy Leporello, but he’s excellent here.  He’s not a particularly nice monster, but he still has his feelings and his dreams, and he’s the only principal at the end who hasn’t got what he wanted.§  

            . . . I can’t frelling believe that the Met is so cheap and/or careless not to produce a complete cast list, but I’m failing to find it, and the synopsis they give you at the door of the theatre does not include the four MIDSUMMER NIGHT lovers.  How totally crap is that?   Miranda and Ferdinand are present, however;  poor Miranda, Lisette Oropesa, has one of the most thankless roles I’ve ever seen.  She comes on at the beginning singing, oh, dad, I Yearn For Something I Know Not What, and then wanders around falling for a new bloke every time Ariel makes another mistake with the fairy dust, till at the end she falls for Ferdinand.  It is done for laughs but I found it still a bit cringe-making.  I thought Ferdinand, Anthony Roth Costanzo, was one of their few real mistakes.  He’s another countertenor, but of the exquisite variety which does not do well on the opera stage, and furthermore he’s a willowy young man and they dress him in gold, white and peach.  Ick. 

            I’m trying to think how to tell you about the ridiculously glorious staging.  It’s—well, it’s Baroque.  There’s too much of everything, and it’s all curlicued and then super-curlicued.  But it’s also gorgeous and appealing, and the special effects, of the island and the high seas, are terrific—when the MIDSUMMER lovers’ boat is drowned it’s genuinely scary.  But the best—the best—is Neptune’s court.   Ariel comes on stage wearing a diving helmet so you know you’re supposed to be underwater, and there are mermaids floating overhead to reinforce this idea.§§  And the chorus breaks into ‘Zadok the Priest’ and everyone in the audience breaks up:  Neptune is played by Placido Domingo.§§§  But his court . . . well, there are all these ladies in semi-transparent leotards with scallop shells over their boobs, making wafty hand gestures, and behind them most of the chorus is standing behind, with only their heads showing, this gigantic series of painted props of naked people getting it on both with each other and with a variety of Things with Tentacles.  I loved it.  And Domingo is a cranky Neptune:  at one point he says, I’ll listen to you but I may be too old and tired and irritable to help you.  Here’s a god I could get along with.

            It was a splendid evening out.  I would guess ISLAND is still a work in progress;  it seems to me there’s stuff they haven’t quite figured out yet—the duet between Sycorax and Caliban at the beginning of the second act, for example, to my sensibility, isn’t quite there yet.  But it seems to me very much the best of Baroque:  the lovely music without all the sing, sing with twiddles, sing something slightly different, sing the slightly different with twiddles, then do it all over again several times, that tends to weary the uninitiated.  I was dismayed to hear the two women behind me not liking it and saying, well, why?  What is it for?, and that they wouldn’t see it again.  I’d see it again like a shot.  I want to see how it goes on evolving, and wholly in love with DiDonato (and now de Niese) as I am I’d also love to see what other singers might do with those roles.

              Yaay.  Five stars. 

* * *

* http://www.metoperafamily.org//opera/the-enchanted-island-tickets.aspx?icamp=Enchint&iloc=hpbucket

** Also, I knitted a fresh eight rows of my LEG WARMERS during intermission which I think I’m not going to have to rip out.  Which would be a first.  This is also my first attempt after having shifted to easier yarn—this is just basic, uh, pink, cheap, acrylic, 6mm.  Hellhound-blanket yarn in fact.  No variable threads, no confusing heathery colour notes. I can see what I’m doing and I’m not forever getting hung up in weird little fuzzy artistic filaments.  I’VE BEEN KNITTING FOR A YEAR AND I HAVEN’T FINISHED ANYTHING YET. 

*** Feh. 

† I could look all this stuff up, yes.  But I wasted way too much time trying to find a sensible review to link to and failed, and even if I don’t have to get up for service ring tomorrow morning^ I would like to get to bed some time.  

^ Waaaaaaah.  I was thinking, on my way to the theatre tonight, that it is a small kindness I have an opera on the night before my first official Sunday morning non-ring.  Sunday mornings after an opera, and especially after blogging about an opera, are—were—especially gruesome.  

††Moron from FAUST, take note. 

††† Somebody tell me why Microsoft Word has Prospero and Ariel in its dictionary but not Caliban. 

‡  Her?  Him?  There are plenty of trouser roles in opera, so that de Niese is a girl is not definitive.  But Prospero calls Ariel ‘son’ and ‘boy’ in the first few minutes so I thought, okay, boy.  But at the end, when Prospero has done the miser-leans-against-wall-and-becomes-generous thing and gives Sycorax back her island, Caliban says he wants a queen, and Ariel looks nervous and steps backward into the shadows.  What?  Since Caliban had spent a happy scene or two as Helena’s lover, I don’t think we’re supposed to be second-guessing Caliban’s gender preferences. 

‡‡ Where can I buy some dragon’s blood?  Is it good for writing novels? 

‡‡‡ And oh how I want her dress from the beginning of the second act.  Not the bright upbeat one at the end, which is too cheerful, although it’s a very nice cape.  I want the dark cranky one with the sparkles. 

§ In this version Prospero and Sycorax got it on before Prospero cast her aside like an old shoe and stole her island, her son, and her sprite.  Such a nice guy.  I believe his apology at the end about as much as I believe the Count’s at the end of FIGARO.  Get out fast, Ariel, before he changes his mind (again), and Sycorax, keep your flying piranhas handy, and don’t be afraid to use them.  But because I have a low mind^ I’m thinking this may cast an interesting light on the father of Caliban and the mother of Miranda.  I totally see Prospero’s character coming through in his son. 

^ So what do fanged muffins get up to when no one is around? 

§§ Although the mermaids come back in the last scene, which is supposed to be on dry land.  Never mind. 

§§§ Maybe this is an in joke.  Never mind . . .

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.”

So it’s twenty and a half years ago.  Peter and I have decided to get married.*  All the important stuff has already been decided, like that I’m going to emigrate.**  But that means we have to get married:  the fiancée’s visa only lasts for six months.  That’s not a problem:  we’re both old-fashioned:  we want to get married, and I’m the kind of old-fashioned that furthermore wants a proper ring to go with the deal.  Hey.  I like jewellery. 

            I’d originally assumed we’d find one suitably old and hoary and glamorous and possibly mad in an antique shop somewhere for an engagement ring;  wedding rings to be practical need to be plain and could be dealt with separately when we knew what the flashy one looked like.  We spent some time in this pursuit*** but we were finding nothing nearly unique and fabulous enough, I had to finish DEERSKIN and we wanted to get on with the moving and the new life and so on. 

            I can’t now remember who recommended this jewellery designer to us.  But we went to see him and explained we wanted something definitively Maine for me to wear in England.  He suggested Maine tourmalines—I think I didn’t know about Maine tourmalines at that point—and we eventually agreed that he’d design and make not only an engagement ring with the tourmalines, but wedding rings that would all fit together as part of the same design.  Peter felt this was mostly my show† and I did try to tell the bloke the sort of thing I liked:  flowing lines, mainly, swirly or woven or floral.  Maybe sort of art nouveau.  I liked the stuff in his shop.  And I liked the idea of the Maine designer working with the Maine tourmalines.

            We went back to see the stones when they arrived.  I don’t know if the designer bloke asked for triangular, or if that was what he could get.  Okay.  This would make it unusual.  And pink and green are excellent.

            We never saw any designs.  We saw the rings themselves when they’d already been cast (if cast is what I mean) and although they weren’t finished yet it wasn’t like we could go backward and say, uh, no, I meant Charles Rennie Macintosh, not Cecil Balmond.††   The wedding rings had these little hooks in the middle like the two ends of a twist tie bent together—and with the squared-off ends sticking out up and down your finger.  Can you say CATCHES THE FRELL ON EVERYTHING?  My tourmaline engagement ring fit down over the top ensnaring bend of my wedding ring, but that still left the sharp bottom edge to cause havoc and mayhem.  They were certainly . . . different.  But they were not sensible, and while many of the details of that whole era of the beginning of my life with Peter are blurry with exhilaration and terror, I do remember Peter telling the bloke that he works with his hands a lot, he spends hours every day in the garden, doing carpentry and cooking and he needs a ring that won’t get in the way.

            The man smiled and nodded.  These creative types.  They’re so in their own little world.†††

            But part of the swoop and breathtakingness of a runaway romance like ours is that you do kind of want it to glide as far as it can before it founders on some ineluctable aspect of ratbagging reality.  The wife in the attic.  The outstanding warrant.  The gerbil fetish.  The chocolate addiction . . .  And I don’t think the designer bloke was cheating us in any overt way:  I think we paid an honest amount for his time and his materials.  He just didn’t listen. 

            Almost the first thing we did after the wedding was over was . . . run to the nearest ordinary jeweller and buy two utterly plain smooth gold rings and wear them.  The barbed designer versions came out for fancy occasions and the rest of the time lived in my jewellery drawer.  Sigh.  This had not been the plan . . . and while the plain gold ones worked fine as wedding rings‡ I was rather wistful about my Maine tourmalines wasting their glory in a drawer.

            I think it was around our tenth anniversary that Peter said, for our twentieth, we’ll have the tourmalines reset.

            So that’s what we did.  And this time we went to a jeweller we’ve been going to for . . . twenty years.  He listens.  He made my fabulous silver whippet belt buckle.‡‡  And we saw designs.  We saw several designs.  I wanted my new ring to look like it fit next to the plaited-gold-with-tiny-diamond-chips ring that was my fiftieth birthday present‡‡‡ and which I now wear as my wedding ring.  And it does, doesn’t it?

            This time it worked. 

Mmmmmm. ::Beams::

* * *

* And our friends and family are all going, what?  Well, it was a somewhat precipitate decision.  We’d known each other maybe sixty hours in total.^   

^ I’ve told you how we met, haven’t I?  I was on a Literary Tour of England and he was one of the speakers. 

** Somebody had to.  Peter originally suggested we divide our time, but I knew—and I’m sure I was right—we’d both hate it.  And Peter had lived in this area of Hampshire over forty years at that point, had four kids, the first two grandchildren, three brothers and their families, eight first cousins and . . . I had a whippet, and a background as a peripatetic military brat. 

*** This was the occasion of one of our most important Bonding Moments.  THELMA AND LOUISE had been bigger than god, Spacelab and Boris Yeltzin for months, and it was playing at a theatre in Portland, Maine, where we’d gone to cruise antique jewellery shops.  I’ve told you this too, haven’t I?  We walked out.  We walked right after the dumb one spends the night with Brad Pitt the robber on the lam AND THE MONEY IN THE FRELLING DRAWER while the smart (!!?!??) one goes off to have a deep, sensitive evening with her supportive boyfriend.  

† He’s got a much better eye for jewellery than he thinks he does—see:  silver whippet belt buckle, below—but it’s true that this was my Big Symbolic Thing about leaving Maine to live in England with him. 

†† http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14027083   Okay, I don’t know what Balmond was doing twenty years ago.  Designing engagement rings, possibly. 

††† I do wonder if Designer Bloke already had this idea in his mind and he wanted to use it, whether the triangular stones inspired it, or what.  But he sure wasn’t too interested in the interface with his clients. 

‡ Anybody aware of the standard behaviour about such things of English gentlemen of Peter’s vintage will be gobsmacked that Peter wears a wedding ring at all.  Well.  Yes.  I don’t think it ever occurred to me that he wouldn’t—I wanted us both to wear them—and that’s what happened.  It wasn’t till later that I realised that Peter was humouring me about this too.^

            ^ I tell myself that if I have to choose I’d rather he wore a wedding ring than remembered to shut the door behind him.+  I perhaps tell myself this rather often.  But romance over practicality?  Sure.  Why do I have sixty rose-bushes in a garden the size of a large ping-pong table? 

+ This includes refrigerator doors.  Just by the way.

 ‡‡ I hope I’ve told you this story.  I told Peter I wanted something significant and wearable for my fortieth birthday. 

‡‡‡ Also bought in Maine.  Hmm.  My sixtieth is next year . . .

The front door of the mews since last night after dark.

Wreath.  Tactful, Peter-placating***, reusable wreath.†

Tree. You will note Large Box to the right.

I admit I didn’t manage to hang every ornament we own on it, but it’s definitely decorated.  The important baubles are up.  The robins.  The horses.  The roses.  The bells.  Some time between yesterday and New Year’s I’ll probably finish getting the tinsel over the lampshades, picture frames, candlesticks, and piano.

Another view of Large.

Yes.  It’s Large.  Peter said, You wouldn’t buy me a microwave.  I said, No, I wouldn’t, and it doesn’t weigh enough, unless they’re now making plastic microwaves in which case I’m not going to buy you one twice.

::LOUD RUSTLING AND RIPPING NOISES::

Highlights:

Gasp!

Yes.  It’s true.  I bought Peter a Kindle.  Now all we have to do is figure out how to use it.  Georgiana and Saxon will be here tomorrow:  I’m proposing they do it.  Hey, I bought it.  My job is over.††  But the point is that you can dial up the typeface size, and even with his reading specs Peter finds tiny mass market paperback type size trying.

Oooh! Roses!

Peter bought me a book on roses.  How . . . surprising.  Okay, so I’ve been eyeing it on line for months.  But the gorgeous slipcover is a surprise—as is the fact it’s signed and numbered.

Yes, it's still a thrill when other people sign their books.

I had assumed it was just another drop-dead-glam coffee table book full of glossy pictures but it’s a lot more, well, beautiful than that, and a pleasure to handle as an object and never mind its subject matter.†††  It’s smaller and fatter than a coffee table book—like a book you would, ahem, read—and the edges are gilt!—and the pages are matte not shiny, and it’s paintings not photos.  You even have a sewn-in bookmark.

La France. Usual historical suspect for first Hybrid Tea. Blah blah blah.

I grew her at the old house.  She was a frail heroine, prone to fits of the vapours, and a terrible head-hanger.

The GUARDIAN is always full of helpful suggestions this time of year, and look at what I found only a few days ago on offer at http://www.tattydevine.com/ :

Hee hee hee hee hee hee

I immediately turned to Peter and said, don’t you really want to buy me a Perspex bat necklace?  What? he said.

Oh and the large parcel/small coffin/medium-sized old-fashioned maiden aunt?

It's a bin.

No, really, this is a great present.  We have terrible bin luck at the mews.  This kitchen is where most of the heavy cooking happens, and you want a serious bin with a lid, and you want something that it doesn’t take both hands to open.  We’ve had a series of expensive foot-pedal-lid-opening bins which are the joy of our hearts for about six months and then they break.  But they’re so expensive you don’t just rush out and replace them.  Well, the last (broken) one is over a year old and . . . I saw this in a catalogue (yes, I have some strange tastes in catalogues) and it had all these rave customer reviews and . . . ask me in six months.

. . . And now I seem to be extremely full of turkey and champagne and Christmas pudding and brandy butter and . . . I forget . . . zzzzzzzz . . . .

Hope yours was merry.

* * *

* Not, perhaps, for very long.  But on four and a half hours of sleep I’m doing very well.  Bells were rung, hellhounds were hurtled, SHADOWS was gently drawn a little closer to being finished . . .  oh yes, and it’s Christmas.

For the first time in my life I have a Christmas cactus blooming on Christmas.  By garden centre error and mismanagement.  On one of those raids last autumn, when I went for a £2.99 replacement spool of green gardening twine and came home with so many plants I could hardly wedge them all in Wolfgang, I bought another Christmas cactus.  I need more Christmas cacti like I need . . . uh . . .  more rosebushes.  At least the roses live outdoors.  But this one was a particularly pretty pink with white edges.  It was just starting to come out.  So I bought it and brought it home.

And all its flower buds immediately fell off.  ARRRRRRGH.

Christmas cacti are generally extremely tough so I assumed that it would be fine next year but that this year was going to be a bust.  Nope.  About a month ago I noticed it was producing little pale tippy knobs . . . a fresh lot of flower buds.  Yaaaay.  I’m not even going to complain that it’s reverted to the standard pale pink of which I have lots.  I have lots because fallen-off or pruned-back branches root really easily.

Stop press! A Christmas cactus blooming on CHRISTMAS!

** And yes, I’ve been singing.  But I haven’t touched Dove Sei in three days.  I’m singing Christmas carols.

*** ‘I don’t need a wreath.’  

† With my eccentric bent for befriending inanimate objects, I find this is another advantage of things like fake, that is, reusable, wreaths and trees.  So every year it’s like, hey, how are you, how’s it going?, good to see you again.

†† I told the archangels when they were last here that I’d bought Peter a Kindle for Christmas and it was so sleek and shiny that if he didn’t like it I’d take it over.  Raphael and Gabriel exchanged a long look.  Robin, said Raphael after a minute, do you really want another piece of technology in your life?

No.  And besides, Astarte has Montezuma too.

††† Well, okay.  Do mind the subject matter.

They sang COLD HAILY WINDY NIGHT.  Steeleye Span, that is.  Tonight.  At the concert Fiona got me by the hair, forced** me into her car as I moaned feebly:  I have to work!  I have to work!***, and made me come to with her.†  I could be happy just looking at Maddy Prior’s clothing. ††

            I had brought my leg warmers.  That is, I brought a remarkably-crinkly-at-one-end skein of bitchy, tantrum-prone††† yarn, a pair of needles‡, and an increasingly battered-looking pattern, including the crib sheet Fiona wrote out for me MONTHS ago.  We had allowed lots of time to get lost in which we then didn’t need‡‡ so I had a good half hour to get started again.‡‡‡  Aaaaugh.  Counting.  Aaaaaugh.  And Fiona would keep trying to talk to me.  What do you think this is, a social occasion?  Just because she can knit an incredibly frelling complicated frelling sock pattern on forty-seven double-ended needles and look around at the crowd and chat to her neighbour, who is laboriously going, one, two, three, purl, one, two, three, knit, DOESN’T MEAN EVERYONE CAN.

            And just by the way, some of what Peter Knight does on that fiddle isn’t possible.§

            At the end Fiona said, so, are you glad you came?  There must be more Steeleye sheet music out there, I said, having had trouble not joining Rick Kemp for COLD HAILY.§§  I even asked Maddy herself about sheet music on the way out and she looked puzzled and suggested I write to Park Records. §§§

            And then we went back out to the car park, got in Fiona’s car and drove merrily away in the wrong direction because she had decided we didn’t need the satnav. . . . 

* * *

* It was a near thing.  Blogmom had sent along a last sale/auction order file which I had assumed was a few final sweepings-up, no big deal, and hadn’t even bothered to open it—Fiona could do it when she came.  AND THEN IT TURNED OUT TO BE GINORMOUS.  Gaaaaaah.  WAAAAAAAAH.  I knew I was not, in fact, going to get everything out before Christmas^ but I did think we were totally heading downhill for the final assault.  No.  Wrong.  So the first thing Fiona had to do, having been obliged to reveal the awful truth, was prevent me from murdering myself messily in an assortment of creative and unpleasant ways. 

^ Once again, grovelling apologies.  There Is Too Much Going On.  And I really do have to finish SHADOWS before I can no longer afford to keep the hellhounds in a manner to which they have become accustomed. 

** I would make three of Fiona.  Well, two and a half anyway.  But she’s very persuasive.  Especially when she shakes out a length of yarn in this sort of garrotte and clamps sharpened knitting needles between her teeth. 

*** And I have an opera tomorrow.  COGNITIVE DISSONANCE ALERT.^ 

^ I would like to say I’m going to a Metallica concert the night after that, but . . . no.  And the truth is I don’t think I have the—er—mettle to go to a heavy metal concert any more.  I don’t know what the audience at a Metallica concert is like these days, but back in my misspent youth+ I went to several fairly scary concerts where I was glad that my companion was a six and a half foot bloke, who, while soft-spoken and mild-mannered, looked like Mess With Me and Die.     

+ Remember that I misspent most of my youth in my thirties, so we’re talking about the eighties. 

† You realise it’s Friday.  Sacred Home Tower Bell Practise.  Only Steeleye Span could drag me away from my responsibilities.^ 

^ . . . But make me an offer.  A stroll across the Kalahari?  Sunbathing in Antarctica?  A new diving bell attempt to reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench?  Sure.  After all, Niall left me to cope last Friday.  

†† I am forcibly reminded, pretty much every time I go to a concert—or, for that matter, watch a clip on YouTube—that the one great thing about performing is the costumes.  It’s pretty much the only thing I miss about being a travelling, live-appearance author:  the opportunity to dress up. ^  And Maddy’s clothes are prime.  I was thinking about this tonight—while I sang along to All Around My Hat^^—that this is the one flaw in my choir-joining plan^^^:  choir members don’t get to dress up.  I like a long black velvet skirt as well as the next woman but Maddy’s flounced blue satin is waaaay to be preferred.  Unfortunately being a soloist involves . . . soloing.  I don’t see a way around this.  Unless that’s in a chapter in CHAOS I haven’t got to/figured out yet. 

^ As demonstrated at Forbidden Planet a few months ago.  

^^ Maddy came to the front of the stage, thrust her microphone in our direction+ and dared us to be louder than Margate. 

+ Literally.  Fiona and I were in the front row.~ 

~ Fiona orders the tickets.  I just go where I’m told.  Chiefly into the passenger seat of her car. 

^^^ Supposing my incredibly tiresome throat stops being a frail heroine and lets me return to two-and-a-half-hour practises with the Muddlehamptons.

††† Yes I am thinking about simply buying a couple more skeins of hellhound-blanket yarn^ and using that.  Wait . . . did I just say BUY MORE YARN?^^ 

^ The pink option, of course. 

^^ I was reading Yarn Harlot the other night+ about stash, one of her favourite topics, and how the fact that you have more yarn than an infinity of monkeys could knit into bobble hats while waiting for that other batch of monkeys to produce King Lear++ doesn’t necessarily mean you have anything to knit with.  Yes.  Her ratiocinations on this subject will not be mine, but in my case all my nice yarn is Waiting for Me to Learn What I’m Doing.  I can’t just carelessly pluck a couple of skeins out of some tote bag and start on leg warmers.  Horrors.  

+ In the bath, of course.  Paperback editions of Yarn Harlot are ideal for the task.  

++ Macbeth would do.  And it’s shorter. 

‡ Yes in the right size.  Please.  

‡‡ We will come to the topic of the drive home again in a minute. 

‡‡‡ The lights went down mid-row, of course.  Oh, now I’m in trouble, I said, and the woman on my other side . . . laughed.  So during the interval I said to her, do you knit?  I used to, she said.  I keep thinking I should start again.  Don’t let me put you off, I said.  I’m a beginner, and this yarn is possessed by demons.  We parted amicably at the end:  next time bring your knitting, I said.

            Postscript:  I knitted five rows.  And then I ripped them all out again.  Sigh.  However, it more nearly resembled ribbing than my previous efforts.  It just wasn’t ribbing. 

§ This is clearly stated in chapter mrrmngph of CHAOS.^ 

^ I’m reading/listening to it AGAIN, okay?  This is challenging stuff for someone whose idea of higher maths is a touch of St Clements minor on handbells. 

§§ He may be a great bassist.  He is not a great singer.  I admit that my crossover tendencies may not always stand me in good stead when judging folk singers, but I mostly feel that to be a lead singer of anything you either have to sound great, like Maddy^, or at least have a characterful voice, like Dick Gaughan—or Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen.  

^ Although she’s still singing when a classical singer would have had to give up. 

§§§ http://www.parkrecords.com/  In case you’re interested.  I mean, yes, I could figure out the tunes, and most of the lyrics are on line somewhere, but what am I going to give Oisin?  . . . Had I but world enough and time, I might write my own accompaniments, of course, but they would be a little non-standard.

But we had eight ringers this morning.  EIGHT.  I’m trying to remember the last time we had eight ringers for our eight bells.  After a howling gale with rain hammering on the windows at 7:45 am when the frelling alarm went off, and me lurching swollen-eyed around the cottage saying, I don’t want to go out in this, I don’t WANT to go out in this . . . at 8:45 it suddenly cleared off and became blue and dazzling and glorious.  And all the bells rang out. . . .

            Another day passes as a seventeen-year-old named Maggie.**  I envy her the amount she can still eat, but other than that I’m okay to stick with the elderly decrepit me.  She’s also a lot better constructed*** to cope with the intrusive magic besieging her landscape than I am.  I was thinking about this again after posting about how unsettling I found Aeon Flux the other night at the cinema:  I’m what you might call professionally off balance, I’d really rather not fall down the rest of the way, I might hurt myself†.  So if a dragon†† flew into the courtyard at the mews††† tomorrow would I be more or less likely than the average bystanding human to say, oh, hey, cool, that’s a dragon, or run screaming?

            Blither blither blither blither.  It’s been another good day as a seventeen-year-old named Maggie and as a result (a) I have no brain and (b) I’m having some trouble climbing back out of the vocabulary of an alternate-reality teenager.  I was also thinking‡ about the way I think of SHADOWS as my first ‘genuine’ teenage high school novel, which probably ought to be DRAGONHAVEN.  Except that Jake’s a grown up by the end with a kid of his own‡‡ . . . and more crucially, since a lot of my protagonists start out teenagers, he doesn’t go to high school.  Maggie goes to high school.  Yeep.  She takes algebra.  Double yeep.  With reference to my saying on these virtual pages some time recently that my hard sciences/maths phobia is probably largely due to very bad teaching . . . it’s probably taken me these forty-plus years also to come to a point where I can face going with a character back through the doors of an average suburban high school.  Well, maybe not quite average, but . . . ‡‡‡

            Meanwhile, speaking of hard science, I’m about to download§ James Gleick’s CHAOS.  www.Audible.co.uk, that ratbag, is having another 25% off sale for members so I was cruising for more tasty hard(ish) science.  As I’ve told you before I tend to avoid customer reviews of fiction—what ordinary readers want out of fiction is just too, um, various—but I usually do read reviews of nonfiction because there I am a very ordinary reader and may learn something from the same.  Not infrequently you see some aggrieved and outraged person saying, you’re going to have to buy the hard copy too!  You’re not going to be able to make sense of the maths from the audio!  Snork.  I wouldn’t frelling dream of trying to cope with any of this stuff without having the underlinable-paper copy also at hand.  Self-improvement is expensive.§§

            Having said that, I got out of step with BRIEFER HISTORY OF TIME and, having finished the audiobook a couple of days ago, the paper version finally fell through my door yesterday.  And . . . um . . . well, there are no equations§§§ but the illustrations make it worse.  Electron interference (p 98)?  Feynman diagram of Virtual Particle/Antiparticle Pair (p 123)?  What?  If I’d picked it up in a shop, instead of on Audible, I’d’ve put it down again.

            Meanwhile . . . Hannah is going to read CHAOS too.  We’re going to have a book club of two.  And if anyone had told me thirty years ago that Hannah and I were going to agree to read a book describing The Third Great 20^th Century Revolution in the Physical Sciences (after relativity and quantum mechanics) at all, let alone over the Christmas holidays for light distraction from the figgy pudding, I’d have probably made myself sick laughing.

            Menopause Brain Rules. 

* * *

 * I was distracted from the passage of time by reading UNDER MILKWOOD.  Haven’t read it since college, I think.  Golly.  I may have to blog about this.  I read Dylan Thomas in my teens, of course, As One Does, or at least As One Did if one fancied oneself a sensitive literary intellectual in the 1960s (adolescence, I believe, optional).  But . . . GOLLY.  Also WOW. 

** Over-identification with fictional characters?  What you say?

 *** You should forgive the term 

† Also being elderly, decrepit etc. 

†† Although there aren’t any dragons in SHADOWS.  I don’t think.  Er. 

††† And good luck to it:  parking is already an ordeal and a torment. 

‡ Which is generally considered to be a function limited to those in possession of brains 

‡‡ This is not my idea of a spoiler, but if it is any of yours, apologies.  

‡‡‡ It’s not as if all my teachers were dire.  I had a lovely algebra teacher—I’ve told you about her.  We left Japan, and the algebra teacher who told me I was the stupidest child she’d ever taught, mid-school-year, and when we got back to America two months later the principal at my new school laughed a lot and tried to put me back a grade.  I could cope with the catch-up everywhere but algebra—and they would have put me back a grade if it hadn’t been for Penelope Windsor Curry.  If you’re out there anywhere, and have taken to reading fantasy writers’ blogs in your retirement, thank you very much. 

§ I hope I’m about to download . . . insert a few practise screams of rage and frustration here.    

§§ And it’s not, it seems to me, as if they’ve got all the bugs out of the electronic delivery system yet either.  An iPhone is a finite entity.^  After I’ve listened to something I delete it, of course:  if I want to listen to it again I can always re-download it^^ from my Audible ‘library’.   But—as the little iPhone warning box tells you—if you delete it you will lose all your notes and bookmarks.  Gee.  Thanks guys.  That’s really foresightful programming. 

^ Speaking of finite, as in computer memory, I had an email from Raphael, Computer Archangel, on Friday, and he says what a good thing I went for the ridiculously huge hard drive, that he’d been doing the sums, and . . .

            I should have my new laptop next week. 

^^ . . . theoretically 

§§§ As I recall this was one of the red herrings about the previous one—there were no equations, how hard can it be?  Um. . . .

Best.  Voice.  Lesson.  Ever.

            Being fifty-nine-years-old-minus-two-days I am reminding myself that this is a high and won’t last.  Learning stuff—at least in my experience of learning stuff—always follows a jagged line with nearly as many downs as ups—assuming that ‘learning’ indicates the eventual tendency will be up even if there are moments when you doubt it.*  So . . . brief triumph.  Still. 

            It has been pretty much a ratbag of a week as regular readers know.  This stupid eternal head/throat/possible bronchial involvement virus morphed into a proper Chest Thing.  The ME hates me to get sick on anyone else’s dance card, so it came back and smacked me around for infidelity.  I missed SIEGFRIED plus two attempts at the same concert, as well as not one but two opportunities to ring handbells with a good band—and my standard Thursday handbells.  I didn’t even try to go to Forza tower practise last week.  There are at least two Ongoing Social Crises It Would Be Tactless of Me to Discuss in Public.**  Hellhounds have been underhurtled.    Blah blah blah blah snarl blah. 

            There were two bright spots.  SHADOWS***.  And singing.  Singing, it turns out, fits into kind of an interesting niche.  Most of what available brain I’ve got lately has to go on SHADOWS.  Practising handbells, even though one can do it sitting down, for example, is way too mentally demanding†, and trying to concentrate on two jagged blue lines, speaking of jagged lines, makes me lightheaded and the hot pincers grasping my temples start to bite in.  But I can still sing—sort of.  But even sort-of singing involves, well, singing, and at my level it all frelling counts.  You can also learn the tune and practise mouthing your Italian even if you’re leaning on your piano with the other elbow while you pick out the melody with one finger.  Also singing is cheering.  I think I’ve told you I tend to be an easy endorphin high—it may not last, but the break in the heavy cloud cover is worth trying for.  I assume it’s all that breathing that brings it on when you sing, and very useful this is when Extreme Hurtling is not an option.

            So I’ve been singing—what the hell.  I also had that seriously traumatic experience of trying to record myself singing to get over:  sheer back-on-the-horse-that-threw-you stuff.  And I’m pretty sure I did tell you that I was giving myself a few days to tackle the Chest Thing with homeopathy and if I made no progress I’d go to a doctor.††

            I think I noticed that the Persistent Gloop in my throat was thinning before I noticed that the Chest Thing seemed to be weakening.  But over the weekend I’ve been singing almost frantically, like I was up for an audition or something.†††  And today before I went off to my lesson it did cross my mind that I was in what passes in my case for good voice.  It’s like the last few weeks of taking forever to sing ‘in’‡ have strengthened the critter generally.‡‡

            I think Nadia may even have been startled.‡‡‡  We got me sung in so quickly we had more than the usual amount of time to work on pieces, which since I had two I particularly wanted her to hear was convenient.  She was very good about it when I admitted I was singing Se Tu M’Ami anyway, despite the fact she had more or less told me not to—but everything I’ve been singing is so frelling MOURNFUL and this one isn’t.§   So I asked if she’d be kind enough to provide a little damage control on the Italian.§§

            But the real exit-stage-left-BEAMING moment was at the end.  The other song I wanted her to hear was The Roadside Fire, the Vaughan Williams setting of the Stevenson poem §§§ which I’d sung [at] some months back.  I hadn’t touched it again till recently, when I was looking for things to sing in with.#  And I found I was singing it . . . really rather differently than I had done only a few months ago.  Hmm, I thought.  I think this is a good thing.  I think I’m singing it more forward, with more voweling and less gargling.  I think there may even be some expression going on, of my affection for the song.

            Yes, said Nadia.  Better vowels, more space, looser jaw, more flow—you’re also about three times louder than you were.  Clearly these last weeks, however frustrated you’ve been feeling, you’ve also been learning.  Well done.  With the voice you’re demonstrating here today## you can certainly hold your own in a choir.

            Exit beaming.

            Mind you, tomorrow I’ll sound like Tom Waits.  Or Florence Foster Jenkins. ### 

* * *

* I may perhaps have a severe case.  I made reference to this system once to my first shrink in terms of thirteen steps forward and twelve steps back.   He said drily that the standard phrase was something more like three steps forward and two back.  Oh. 

** ::Spits nails::         

*** Trust me, you aren’t anywhere near as glad as I am. 

† Not to say just mental  

†† Ewwww. 

††† Hahahahahahahaha 

‡ This is Nadia’s phrase, but it’s very useful.  I don’t know if this is a function of being wobbly and new, similar to what I’ve read or been told more than once by athletes, that the concept of your ‘second wind’ just means you aren’t fit yet.  But there’s a stage, at least when you’re a wobbly new singer, between warming your voice up and like waking it up so you can actually do something with it—besides sing scales.^  The last few weeks, possibly because of this virus I’ve been unwillingly harbouring, it’s been taking me forever to ‘sing in’. 

^ And possibly Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes 

‡‡ The Recording Trauma may have been a kick in the rear too.  Move it!  Don’t just stand there!  Move on!     

‡‡‡ Which made two of us.  She led me briskly up to G#/Ab^.  I haven’t been above F#, and often just F, since the Virus Drama began, and I’ve never been above G in a lesson, so a whole half-step higher, and I hadn’t anything like run out of top end yet. 

^ Bless her understanding of the soprano personality:  she called it ‘Ab’+ which makes it sound, you know, higher. 

+ It’s the same note:  A flat.  G sharp.  But A is the note above G on the keyboard.  So you want to claim the A. 

§ She acknowledged this point.  The thing about all these gloomy morbid things is that you tend to sing the nice long legato lines more slowly and it’s easier to grab a little time to think, which is comforting to the new and wobbly.   

§§ From my notebook:  Mah delyee wohmeenie Il conseelio io pair may non segweeroh Non pair kay mee pee ah chay Il geelyio lyee altree feeyoree spretzeroh.  Heavens help me.  I’m sure she’ll have adjustments to make next week.

            She also said she’d think about something more jolly for someone at my level to sing.^ 

^ It’s not like I’m not contributing to my own downfall.  I picked up another song from the book She’s Like a Swallow is from . . . Down by the Salley Gardens.  Because I love it.  But it still goes:  ‘But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.’  Oh good.  Nice and cheerful. 

§§§ Yeah, so I like singing baritone songs, sue me.  Here’s Thomas Allen again.  I wish I could find one with piano instead of the full orchestral flapdoodle which I think makes it gooey rather than romantic, but if it’s out there YouTube isn’t finding it for me.  And the problem with most hot professionals singing (relatively) simple songs is that they feel they have to yuck it up.  Allen knows just to sing it.  The sound quality isn’t awfully good either.  But . . . well, it’s Allen.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQll2FLrtPc 

# You can only sing Drink to Me Only so many times.  Roadside Fire is actually a terrible choice since in its simple way it’s pretty complicated.  But I love it, it’s in English, and it does have a nice flowing line. 

## Remember that voices are fickle little ratbags:  your-body-is-your-instrument.  The voice you have today means very frelling little about the voice you may have tomorrow.  Persistent Gloop is only the beginning. 

### http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtf2Q4yyuJ0&feature=related

Yesterday’s luck wasn’t all bad.  I got my post up earlier than usual*, noticing in a distant, detached way** that it was sheeting with rain and going back to the cottage was going to be interesting.***  I was standing at the sink doing the last washing-up and watching the solid wall of water sliding down the kitchen window when . . . the lights went out.  About a second later there was an almighty crack of thunder and lighting in Jehovan, Greater-Trump mood.  Gleep.   I was in the process of working out where the nearest torch† was—you may have noticed the way ordinary reality takes on strange whorls and slipstreams in sudden near-absolute dark—when the lights came back on again.††   My first thought had been for the hellhounds—especially the part about tripping over them in the blackness while I’m still deaf from the thunder††† and cannot hear the click of claws on lino.  But hellhounds don’t mind thunder, lightning or fireworks all that much, although Chaos has been known to try and chase the funny lights/shadows of the local Guy Fawkes celebration which teems in the windows at the mews.  Last night they remained crashed out in the dog bed.

            My second thought was for my computer.  I Have Perhaps Mentioned that I am about to buy a new workhorse laptop because this one is dying.  It has been stalwart and uncomplaining for several years and in laptop terms it’s about 200 years old and it has withstood an awful lot of keyboard-bashing when Word, Outlook or broadband is being particularly grotesque, which is often.‡  But the breaking point‡‡ was a few days ago when I unplugged it to put it into my briefcase-equivalent to take back to the cottage, and a little orange light started blinking in a subdued but urgent fashion.  Now I could spend £65 or so on a new battery . . . or I could recognise the handwriting on the wall. ‡‡‡  I’m trying to remember the last time the power went out.  But the day I say ‘yes’ to the specs proffered by Raphael § . . . the power goes out. 

            Twice.  The second time the bang was louder.  The lights came on again a few minutes later, and the laptop is still functioning. §§  Not so, however, the router, which was fried to a cinder.  Fortunately—which is where we came in—I got my blog post up earlier than usual last night. . . . 

* * *

 I was moaning to Oisin about SHADOWS which, as I keep saying, would be going very well if it was due in August§§§.  For the end of January, not so much.  I have a great idea! said Oisin.  You can cut it in half (January is halfway, right?) and end it on a cliffhanger!# 

* * *

 Second check:  I was a few minutes late## to bell practise and as I scuttled down the road to the tower I wondered why I wasn’t hearing anyone ringing up.###  I panted up the ladder and discovered Penelope lounging on a bench in a ringing chamber magnificently devoid of bell ropes.  We have not worked on our telekinetic skills to the extent perhaps we should have, and our ability to ring bells without ropes is poor.  There were murmurs and thumps from upstairs.  Vicky came down a few minutes later to say grimly that Felix had been supposed to put the ropes back on on Wednesday~ but had . . . clearly failed to do so.  Roger, Niall and Leo were up in the belfry being manly, and we were more than happy to let them get on with it.~~    Rehanging ropes is always a ratbag:  having crippled yourselves and got covered with cobwebs, the ropes are never the right length.  The two was so short we had to climb on each other’s shoulders to reach it, and the four is now long enough for Rapunzel’s prince to climb up it.~~~  However, the ropes did get hung in time for us to ring a little.  There was a certain quality of whoa, what is this thing%, since our bells have been out of action for one reason or another the last three weeks and at least for the hoi polloi (ahem) one loses one’s edge rather quickly.%%  And after Christmas our bells will be taken away for months.  Whimper.

            Uh-oh.  It’s raining again. . . . 

* * *

 * No, I still got to bed at dawn, which is easier again since the clocks went back.  Personally I’d rather have the afternoon hurtle in daylight, but cranky letters to the Time Authority^ have no more influence than cranky letters to the Story Council. 

^ And so, okay, you might decide that they’ve just come down officially on the mucking-us-about-twice-a-year side+ but I’m sure there’s a unilaterality to the weeping and gnashing of teeth over the Time Authority’s inexplicable refusal to give us a few more hours in the day. 

+ And what does any bureaucracy live for but to muck us about? 

** FRELL. FRELL FRELL FRELL.  

*** More frelling. 

† flashlight 

†† And my printer went mad.  CHUNTER CHUNTER CHUNTER WHACK WHACK WHACK CLICK.  Repeat.  Repeat again.  Repeat several more times, till unplugged. 

††† It was nearly that loud. 

‡ ‘Most of the time’ is probably more accurate. 

‡‡ Speaking of breaking points, and the fact that a car must start:  Diane in MN suggested I ask-a-mechanic on www.cartalk.com about Wolfgang’s ominous erratic fault.  Has anyone out there ever done this?  They want you to pay for the privilege, which is reasonable if they’ve got real mechanics on call, but they want your credit card #—not PayPal—and I’ve never heard of Just Answer, and yes, I am extremely twitchy about brandishing my credit card on the internet. 

‡‡‡ ‘Buy a new computer, stupid.’ 

§ Hard drive bigger than god, crumbs-and-tea proof^ keyboard, sufficient muscle to recharge the iPad and an electromagnetic clamp for hanging grimly on to wonky broadband signal.  

^ The drip-prone filling of Green & Black’s mint is not mentioned.  I should ask. 

§§ Note to self:  buy new surge protectors. 

§§§ to wit^, a year from when I started it. 

^ There’s a joke here . . . but I’m too tired. 

# No jury would convict me.  

## Hellhounds and I were very comfortable on the sofa.             

### At least they had finally got the alarm in the bank on the corner turned off.  It has been going all day.  It was going last night when hellhounds and I finally got back to the cottage, and at rmmph o’clock in the morning, in the dark, with no one around but you and the floodwater sluicing down the road the moooop moooop moooop noise sounds like an announcement of the end of the world.  And fortunately it’s cool enough to have the windows closed on that side of the house, and my bedroom is on the other side anyway.  But by the time hellhounds and I hurtled past the bank, the corner and the alarm in daylight it had outstayed its welcome.  

~ Apparently there had been one more day after the one more day after the one more day before the forces of imposed order finally declared the job done. 

~~ This is an occasion where being larger and stronger is a boon, but since I’m taller than either Niall or Roger . . . I will plead ME.^ 

^ It does have its uses.  You’d just far rather find your excuses somewhere else. 

~~~ There would be a problem when he got to the arrow-slit window however. 

% Clearly not the Staypuft Marshmallow Man. 

%%  Grandsire?  Why don’t you just call him Granddad or Gramps like a normal person?

The latest item to be left in the pouring rain was the authors’ copies of the new trade paper edition of FIRE.  In this carrier’s defence, the space under the little roof by the dustbins is not large, and the box was an awkward shape.  Still.  Feh.  However, the knight in her shining raincoat* arrived before the damsel drowned.  I’d forgotten the trade-ed FIRE was due—I mean, I assume it was due.  Publishers have been known to be delayed or to push things back to a later list, but they rarely produce books at random.**

            It can now stop raining till my final box of auction-ordered backlist is scheduled to arrive***, and then it might want to get a head start on the ankle-deep puddles†.   The ankle-deep puddles are doing really well at the moment:  one of our standard hurtling routes is navigable only by wellies†† and I made an effort to be back at the cottage yesterday on time so that my handbellers did not have to stand around in the rain waiting for me.†††

            Speaking of handbells . . . tonight at tower practise we had a progress report on the bell fund, and gobsmackedness was generally expressed‡ at the amount the Days in the Life auction/sale has raised.‡‡  At the moment the bell fund is not only on track, it’s ahead of the game.  Yaaaaaaaay.  Of course we’re also busy finding out that just as the original £10,000 quote was low, the £12,000 it was raised to probably isn’t going to cover it either, so we may not be as ahead as all that.  However I’ve already said that I don’t mind where our—that is yours and my—bell money goes as long as it goes to bells.  There are at least two bell-restoration charities that work within the central council—I know this because we’re eligible for grants from them—so if we end up with money left over when all is said and done I’ll simply plough the Days in the Life money back into someone else’s bell restoration.‡‡‡

            Meanwhile Vicky said that we might consider making up a wish list§ for what might be done if we can afford it.  And Niall’s eyes went to a certain plain wooden cabinet that hangs on the wall of our ringing chamber.  We could get those old handbells repaired and retuned, he said.§§

            Yesssssss.  

* * *

* Actually it’s an extremely old, hard-used and beat-up raincoat and the zip doesn’t work any more.  I’m still wearing it.  I’m fond of it.  As soon as it starts getting cold as well as wet I will shift over to my fabulous raspberry pink Goretex coat bought in that dazzling crescendo of serendipity at the end of the season last year.^ 

^ I blogged about it, but I think I’d be sorry to hear you remembered. 

** I have this sudden vision of the entire sales, editorial and marketing departments of this or that megapublisher at one of those epic twice-yearly meetings crouched around a table with two dice on it.^  Or possibly a roulette wheel.^^ 

^ Did you know that slot machines—the one-armed bandits of yore—are now digital?  You don’t get to pull anything?  Hey, what’s the fun of that? 

^^ And the devil plays the croupier. 

*** This one, for once, is not my fault.  The hardback BLUE SWORD was between printings and out of stock when I ordered it back in August or so—which of course explains why it was our biggest bell-fund-sale title.  I had a few copies but nothing like enough.  But they reprinted about a fortnight ago so, barring further postal malfeasance, all is well. 

† I was thinking comfortably that the book depository  http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ always sends books individually, so they fit through the mail slot in my door.  If it’s going to keep raining, however, perhaps they would like to make an exception.  I am sure there’s an amusing equation to be had out of the penetrability of cardboard to rain depending on the cube root of the hypotenuse of the contents.^ 

^ Because moderation is not my best trick and because the end of January is very soon and because I don’t, in fact, know what I’m looking for+, and because I have been a math phobic for thirteen months short of sixty years++ and I’m waiting somewhat nervously for it to kick in now and would like to get this over with+++, I picked up a book I’d given Peter last Christmas:  PROFESSOR STEWART’S HOARD OF MATHEMATHICAL TREASURES.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/18/ian-stewart-curiosities-treasures ++++

Which is a hoot.  Not all of it is puzzles and equations.  The third snippet is about Bhaskara, a twelfth-century Indian mathematician.  After he screwed up his daughter’s marriage prospects, he wrote one of his most famous brain-bending treatises and named it after her:  Lilavati.+++++  As Stewart puts it:  Hey, thanks, Dad. 

+ And thanks to you generous maths-and-hard-sciences folk out there who have offered assistance.  I am compiling a list.  Meanwhile, or in the very very short term, like between now and the end of January, I suppose my generic question is, if you had an elderly hellgoddess, not awfully bright but given to enthusiasms and capable of considerable stubbornness, who wanted to know something about how mathematicians and physicists grapple with numbers and theorems and things (and possibly each other) to Define the Universe, what would you tell her?  

++ Yes, since you ask, I do remember lying in my bassinette and thinking, inchoately, because words were still some months off yet, ewwww.  Maths.  Ewwwwww.  

+++ Arnica at the ready.  Phobias can kick very hard.  I am really going to have to register a protest with the Story Council on this one~.  Which they will no doubt file in the ‘no action’ bin with all my other protests.~~ 

~ But not till after the end of January 

~~ If pressed, some harassed flunkey will probably snarl at me, You said you wanted something in a hurry.  You got it.  So stop complaining. 

++++ I’ve now got the first one on my book depository wish list.  The other book of Stewart’s that, by its description, I really want is WHAT DOES A MARTIAN LOOK LIKE? which is out of print.  Like I need more stuff to read.   

+++++ Nice name.  Hmmmm.   I’m sure, after having the standard life path closed to her~, an intelligent~~, well-educated young woman would want some adventures.  Hmmmm. 

~ Indeed she may have engineered this.  

~~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilavati 

†† No I am not going to carry you.  You can jump.   

†††  The little roof beside the dustbins is definitely too small for two people and a bag of handbells.  Not to mention that it’s only about shoulder high. 

‡ I believe ‘gibble gibble gibble’ might be a rough translation of Vicky’s reaction—as tower secretary and all-purposes dominatrix she’s been pretty much single-handedly responsible for the running of the bell fund:  organisation, keeping track of money coming in and money promised, follow ups, resulting reporting to the church and various councils and so on and so on and so on.  She must have a flow chart the size of Balmoral.  

‡‡ I gave a ‘not less than’ figure since I haven’t even booked my appointment with the Tax Man yet. 

‡‡‡ There are at least two local towers I’d be delighted to contribute to the rehabilitation of, so if it comes to that I’ll keep you posted.  It being my name on the cheque I’d be able to assign where it goes.

§ New ropes cost a fortune for example, and there are a lot of really grotty hateful old ropes out there still in service because the tower in question can’t afford to buy new ones.  And no tower puts up a new rope till the old one is at least somewhat grotty and hateful. 

§§ You know he hadn’t even NOTICED that yesterday was the first time I’d got through to the end of Cambridge on frelling handbells without resort to reading it off a piece of paper with the lines on?  Lksdjfhgkjdsfjkliowerunvn&^%$£”!!!!!!!

A few of you already know this, and I’m sure some of you have guessed.  That doesn’t make the official announcement any more fun, for you or me. 

            PEG II is not coming out in 2012. 

            The reason I’m guessing a fair number of you have figured it out is because there has been a notable lack* of eager queries about how I’m getting on.  And while a lot of you don’t know that it (usually) takes about a year for a book to grind through the publishing process and appear on shelves and e-screens near you, quite a few of you do know.  And is there any screaming red doolally chance that I wouldn’t have told you that I’d turned PEG II in?

            No.  No chance, screaming red doolally or otherwise.  It’s also true that I sent PEGASUS in several times, trying to hang onto the schedule of getting it out last year, so that my editor could keep an eye on its progress and warily hold space in the schedule open for it as I ran later and later and LATER over deadline.  I think the final version went in in December—occasionally having a fading memory is a comfort—I remember more than I want to of the heart-bursting race to finish.  Some authors produce a beautiful new book every year and never break a sweat.  Some of us develop hernias and sunspots** over every adjective . . . and don’t produce a beautiful new book every year.

            The story thus far:  PEG II has been an indescribable, demon-infested nightmare pretty much from the minute I sat down to go on with the story after PEG I was accepted and passed into the publishing machine.  I had quite a lot of story left over from when I whacked PEG I in half—well, in two-thirds and one-third.  I knew a fair amount of the remaining one-third was going to need rewriting because PEG I had moved the goalposts around in some pretty significant ways.  But that was okay;  I was still ahead.  I wasn’t starting from zero the way I usually am when I begin a new novel.  And it’s true I wasn’t starting at zero:  I was starting at minus forty-six bazillion, but it took me a while to figure this out.

            Anyway . . . writing PEG II has been gruesome.  It’s been so gruesome that I’ve had a few of those dark nights of the soul when I wondered if I was, you know, broken somehow, and couldn’t write.  These moments were very, very bad.

            Very, very, very, very bad.

            So.  It’s August.  I have kind of given up, but I don’t know what else to do except try to keep writing this thing that won’t be written.  There’s all kinds of stuff going wrong—I know where I should be headed but the plot line keeps twisting out my hands and slogging off somewhere else.  People and sub-plots emerge and disappear;  the landscape shifts and blurs;  the words won’t come, and when they do they’re the wrong ones;  it’s bricks without straw, and there’s a gritty, crumbly mess where there should be a story.  And then I’ll hit some scene, some conversation, some development that is absolutely clean shining crystal clear . . . amid so much fog and muck I don’t know what to do with it or how I got there or how I get on to the next thing.

            Despair.  I start thinking about alternate careers.  Ditch-digger or something.  Maybe Jenny can use a stall-mucker.  She’s usually short on staff.

            I don’t know when, if I weren’t so adamantly set against any such idea, the truth would have occurred to me.  In hindsight I should have known pretty goddam soon, because of the way PEG II wouldn’t let itself be written.  But hey, I never claimed to be intelligent, only imaginative.  But there was this sense, if I hadn’t been too stubborn to see it, of cramming several gallons into a pint-pot. . . .

            PEGASUS is a trilogy.  That thing I said I would never write.  Arrrgh.  Also eeeeep.  And yaaaaah.

            Oh, and the second book ends even worse than the first.  The second one is called*** EBON, which should more or less answer the burning question all of you who have read the first one have, but having dealt with that little matter something even more appalling happens.  Well, slightly depending on your idea of more appalling, but . . . mmmrmmph.  You’ll see.  But you won’t see next autumn.

            The third book is—I think—called THE GOLDEN COUNTRY.  That’s what it’s called at the moment anyway:  that’s what it introduced itself as.  And . . . um . . . I hope the frell that’s the end.

            Meanwhile . . . my first reaction to this revelation of a third book (even if that did mean trilogy) was relief.  Gigantic, overwhelming relief.  I wasn’t broken!  I was just—stupid!  I can live with stupid!

            It still took me about a month to tell Merrilee.  I was sure she and my editor would hate me forever, and who could blame them?  Schedules are schedules and publishing is a business.  Dither.  Haver.  Twitch.  So I did what any sensible having-found-out-she’s-still-an-author-after-all writer would do.  I started another novel.

            Listen:  I can’t face PEG right now.  Cannot.  It needs to relax out of the knots I made of it.  I’m going to have to go back to the beginning of PEG II and unpick the strands, thread by thread, and lay them out flat again and try to see what they are this time.  I’m going to have to rewrite it . . . pretty much as if this last year never happened.  (Siiiiiiiiigh.)  And first I have to get my breath—and my courage—back.  So does poor PEG, I suspect.  The Client Complaints department of the Story Council has probably heard a lot about my shortcomings this last year.  Well someone could have told me. 

            So, I started this new novel.  And it actually went, like a novel should.  My first drafts are always fairly painful, but they should accumulate, paragraph after paragraph.  Like this one seems to be doing.  Like PEG II never did.  After about a month I told Merrilee what had happened.  I knew something was up with you, she said.  I just didn’t know what.   She promised to tell my editor while I hid under the bed.  And then my editor was wonderful about it.  Oh, a new novel, she said.  That’s terrific.  When can you hand it in?

            Have I mentioned I’m running out of money?  I was supposed to turn PEG II in, oh, last month or so.  I need to get paid.

            Well, I said to my editor, I was kind of hoping to have it in for spring ’13.

            Great, said my editor.  I’m looking forward to it.  I need it the end of January.

            It takes me a year in a good year to write a book.  A good year when I have some idea what I’m doing and where the story came from, and haven’t spent the previous ten months believing I’m broken.  And I’m presently trying to write a book that I had barely spoken to before the middle of August . . . in less than six months.

            So, am I even more totally over the edge crazed than usual?  Yes, I am.

            To be continued. . . . 

* * *

* For which I am extremely grateful 

** Sic.  It’s a very rough life, being this kind of writer. 

*** I think.  At the moment I’m trying not to be too categorical about anything.  My poor editor tried to announce this a while back and I said NO NO NO NO NO, which again in 20/20 hindsight, or possibly 751/751 hindsight, was a precursor to all the other eruptions and meltings down and chemical metamorphoses unknown to science and literature that were about to occur.  The second book has always been called EBON, since the moment I knew PEGASUS was going to be two (cough, cough) books.  The reason I lost my nerve, I think, was that I hadn’t yet seen there was a third beyond it.