. . . Something to YAAY about.   Go look in the Forum Discussion list, there she is!  She’s back!  And we want MORE BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS!* 

I’d originally planned to put her at the end of Moan, but I decided she deserved her very own cheerful entry.  So here it is. 

And tomorrow I’m going to make a list of all these lovely links** that people are sending in.  More yaay.*** 

Tomorrow is another day.† 

* * *

 * Some of us badly need to be distracted. 

** One of them even pertaining to wearing socks with sandals 

*** More distraction 

† Rhett Butler was never one of my heroes^ but the theory remains sound

 ^ Nor was effing Scarlett

At about five there was anguished howling from the kitchen.  Chaos. 

And again at about 6:30. 

And again at about 7:30. 

And again at about 8. 

At 8:30 or so I rang Jenny to cancel riding Connie . . . again.  In the first place I’ve had no sleep*, and in the second place I don’t dare leave for two hours to go riding.   I went back to bed, just for laughs, and was promptly routed out by the postperson with a package that had to be signed for.  

I rang the local vet at 9, but they couldn’t give me an appointment with the, you know, good vet, till 5:15.  One of the peculiarities of my hellhounds, often remarked on by all who know them, myself included, is that they always look great:  bright-eyed, shiny-coated and alert.  So what’s a little diarrhea?**  So I said okay, 5:15.  

And then I took them for a walk.  It’s what we do, mornings, we go for walks.  And they look fine.  And they canter over the landscape like they’re fine.  Except Chaos continued to stream.  For a 40-pound carnivore, ie with a short bowel, he can sure produce it. 

By the end of the walk he was passing blood. 

I rang the vet again.  They tell me I can bring him in to the afternoon surgery and take pot luck on vets. 

Finally a little good luck:  the vet I wanted got back from rounds and was seeing patients at the surgery.  I went in and said, this has been going on two years and I am past the end of my rope.  I would be glad to be only at the end of my rope.  We get so far and never any farther with it, and then it breaks out again.  They only just had a course of antibiotics, two months ago or something?  And it did nothing, barring, presumably, ruining what gut flora they might have had, and the probiotics don’t seem to have restored it.  And then what, a fortnight ago?, Darkness had this same streaming and streaming till he was passing blood, and I brought them in to the vet then and spent a cool £110 on two jabs*** per hellhound and some stuff to give them at home. . . . Which worked till it ran out.  And pretty much the minute it ran out . . . well, it’s Chaos this time, leading the way.  Have I mentioned that I haven’t been out of town for more than a few hours at a time in over two years†?  Because I have hellhounds with diarrhea.††  

The vet made soothing/interested noises and gave me some different stuff††† for Colitis of Unknown Origin–which to my horror I gather is a not enormously unusual non-diagnosis–and some Specialist Veterinarian-Available-Only Sensitive Gut Dog Food‡. 

And on their afternoon walk, after the first dose of the new stuff, Darkness had the yellow streamings.  

Meanwhile . . . I’ve had toothache for several days‡‡, and it’s getting worse, and at this point I’m pretty sure this is another root canal slouching toward Hampshire to be born.‡‡‡  Tomorrow I ring the dentist.  Joy.  More joy. 

Meanwhile . . . Computer Men are coming again tomorrow.  There are various jolly little continuing issues but the real piranha in the bathtub is email mayhem.  This machine–it varies from computer to computer–is downloading hundreds of multiple emails . . . but I only realised in the last day or so that this does not necessarily include downloading even one copy of all the new ones.   I seem further to be in the process of discovering that not all the emails I’ve sent have actually gone anywhere, like to the people I sent them to.  The system also takes random bites out of my contacts list.  Just for laughs.  I have no idea how many people I may have lost permanently. 

And now, if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to bed early.  Having lit a candle to the Efficacy of Pills For Colitis of Unknown Origin and Sensitive Gut Dog Food.§ 

* * *

 * And the way you feel on no sleep is way too similar to how you feel during an acute attack of ME.  It varies enormously, of course, but I’ve talked to other people who say the same.   That sort of grey, achy, stupid, listless, pointless, half-sick feeling when you’re bored to death with how you feel but have no energy to do anything either.   And too little sleep is also one of the things that will bring the ME back for a visit.  And have I mentioned recently that insomnia is very common among ME-ers? 

** A lot.  It’s a lot, and it’s also a lot of yellow squirting. 

*** One of which hurt so much they both went briefly crazy–and Chaos is now afraid of the vet.  We were in the same treatment room today and he was slinking around the walls like the heroine of The Yellow Wallpaper http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_gilman_yw.htm, speaking of going crazy, instead of making friends with the nice young vet-smocked woman who was trying to blandish him, which is utterly unlike him, he loves everybody, and I’m thinking, great, swell, now I’ve got a neurotic hellhound with chronic diarrhea, that’s progress. 

† Almost.  There was a single disastrous overnight, using one of these national pet-sitting firms.  Never again.  

†† They throw up too.  Especially when the diarrhea is bad.

 ††† Cheaper.  Pills.  Painless.  Except for inadvertent collision of teeth with hand while poking pill down throat.  They’re actually very good about the poking, but accidents happen. 

‡ Which to my amazement doesn’t seem to have a huge load of crud and gruesome additives in it.  But I’d better reread the ingredients some day when I’ve had some sleep. 

‡‡ Yes, I had toothache on my birthday.  But I was still ignoring it.  Like I was still ignoring a certain slushy yellow quality of hellhound extrusion. 

‡‡‡ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

http://www.metalvortex.com/poems/secondcoming.htm 

But we’ve got Barack.^  Which maybe means there’s hope for hellhound digestion too somehow?  I told you, I haven’t had any sleep. . . . 

^ I hope we’ve got Hillary.  Say yes!  Say yes, damn it! 

§ But it’s still not an answer, even if it works.  What’s wrong with them?  And what can I do to fix it?  And why, out of eight puppies, is it only my two?  I think in the nonexistent cupboard under the stairs at the cottage there must be a Gut Demon.  Possibly cohabiting with a Tooth Demon.

 Whimper.

This more or less just in as I write.*  I almost woke Peter up to tell him . . . but I didn’t.  He’ll read it in the hardcopy paper tomorrow morning.  And when he rings me to tell me, I can say smugly, yes, I know.  I read it on line last night. . . .

* It was on the six o’clock news in America, right?

            This is supposed to be about how people don’t notice things.  Well, maybe.  It was pretty striking as a newspaper story*** (they didn’t see a moonwalking bear?) but after watching the video I’m not so sure.  Maybe it’s just watching it on those teeny YouTube screens on an already-not-large laptop screen but . . . he’s not all that obvious as a moonwalking bear.  He looks like a slightly rogue black player who favours going backwards.

            And the other big question is, what have the people who are taking the test been doing with their brains recently?  Because this is the other thing I was thinking† as I peered at the screen:  I’ve been working and I haven’t got very many brain cells left:  about the only thing swishing through my peripheral vision that would catch my attention is chocolate.††  A moonwalking bear wearing a sandwich board that said ‘Free Green and Black’s this way’ would grab me instantly.  But a writer††† who’s just come off work has no attention left.  Hellhounds can stuff sticky, disgusting dog toys down my shirt front and gnaw up and down both forearms and I will say, wha’?  Nice doggy. . . .

            I sent in the extra words for the planned reissue of WATER about six hours ago.  You may happen to remember that this was on?  They’re going to reissue WATER with the new FIRE next autumn.  But to make WATER a more attractive proposition‡ they suggested we write something new for it.  I blanched violently at the idea of producing another short story . . . we know what me writing short stories tends to produce‡‡.  But then it turned out they only wanted 2500 words.  What the freaking blah can you do with twenty five hundred words?!?‡‡‡  They suggested we interview each other, but we know from rich, full experience that our dog and pony shows tend to be funny § which doesn’t suit the tone of the book.  So after a lot of passing Word files back and forth on memory sticks§§ and losing track of who’d done what with which and to whom, and a lot of small delicate crunching noises as the authorial voice was handed back and forth like a slightly cracked egg . . . this afternoon I sent the result off to Merrilee. 

            It’s . . . ahem . . . 6000 words.  But it has two new stories in it.  (One each.  Mine’s longer.  Surprise.)  Little teeny stories!  And a handful of teases.  All in 6000 words.  Aren’t you impressed?  Truly a bargain.§§§  It’s people sitting around in a Hampshire pub, telling stories.  It takes everything you know about stories, and us, and these particular stories, and how stories get made at all, and messes with it. ¤  We like it.  I hope they, as in They, as in the publishers do.  We hope you will too.

 * * *

 *  Word doesn’t recognise moonwalking.  What, no Michael Jackson fans at Microsoft? 

** I was watching for him hard enough that I only saw ten of the thirteen passes the white team made. 

*** http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/nov/16/transport-invisible-bear-cyclists-youtube   It’s a clever advertising campaign to make drivers more aware of cyclists, who are the moonwalking bears of modern traffic.  In the context it is perhaps unfortunate that the London Transport official is quoted as saying ‘we’re delighted at the number of hits’ even though he’s referring to people watching the video.  I also think they’re being just a trifle disingenuous not to mention an additional reason why cars run into cyclists, which is that cyclists are the bottom of the vehicular food chain:  if a pantechnicon^ is bearing down on you you’re going to change lanes first and ask questions later.  But if that bicycle that you and your SUV just ran into was another pantechnicon, you would have stayed where you were–grinding a hole in the road surface with your brakes and praying–not only because a pantechnicon is easier to see, but also because it’s going to do you damage if you run into it.  I remember this vividly from my motorcycle days.  The decent drivers, decent human beings, and people who cared about their paintwork gave you space.  The rest of ‘em Could.  Not.  Care.  Less.

            The real eye-opener of the article to me however is the news that the era of passing interesting web addresses around among friends, colleagues, and blog readers is over.  Behind the wave again, McKinley.  Please don’t stop sending me links just because it’s the virtual equivalent of wearing socks with your sandals.^^

 ^I should start keeping a list of words I want to see either reinstated or added to the working vocabulary:  pantechnicon.  Klutzim.  Fubsy.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/22/wordsandlanguage

 ^^ Depends on the socks. 

† sic 

†† Quote of the week:  ‘You have to be lacking in something not to want to eat chocolate every day’.^  Damian Allsop http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/16/foodanddrink

 ^ Yes I know there are people who don’t like chocolate.  It’s still a great quote. 

††† Or a composer.  Or [insert fabulously exciting and exhausting vocational or avocational choice here]. 

‡ To book junkies and other pathetic completist collector people who may also wear socks with their sandals 

‡‡ Novels 

‡‡‡ Write one and a half blog entries, approximately. 

§ Somewhere there is a photo of me at a convention over here with Peter^, dragging the corners of my eyes and mouth down with my fingers, and sticking my tongue out.  Maybe this is why I never made much professional headway in England. 

^ Peter, as I recall, is looking in the other direction.  This has nothing to do with poor Peter, except that I was feeling silly because we’d just been doing one of our riffs. 

§§ And screaming.  With me, you know there will be screaming 

§§§ You can wait for the paperback if you prefer. 

¤ Heh heh heh.  Actually there’s a third, framing story too.  More heh heh heh.

We’re just back from a splashy restaurant dinner . . . the problem with sensibly and responsibly booking a taxi is then you’re kind of honour bound to get sloshed.  I did the champagne okay* and looked far-away and lofty while Peter ordered a glass of red to go with his lamb–I was having scallops and sea bass–but then at the end when the sommelier** came round and asked if we wanted any dessert wine I heard myself saying, Do you have anything that will stand up to the chocolate mousse?  I think it was just sloshedness that made him more comprehensible*** by the end of the evening than he was at the beginning.  But the dessert wine was apparently from the south of France and full of juicy deep fruit flavours and complex tannins.  With hand gestures.  I liked it. 

Anyway. 

It’s my birthday and I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do.  Wrong.  I had to get out of bed in time to go ring bells.  And there were only five of us so a good thing I’m so sickeningly loyal.† 

Then Peter bought me Six Perfect Roses at the florist, who is open on Sunday mornings for people who want to buy flowers after they ring bells.

 . . . And a funny new houseplant I don’t even know the name of. 

‘Magic Bells’ is not something I can look up in my Royal Horticultural Society A to Z of Garden Plants.  It looks like a Kalanchoe hybrid, but–?

Then hellhounds and I went for a walk.

Then we went down to the mews to open presents.

(I managed to forget to bring the ones various friends sent.  This is just Peter.  Peter says Finale may have to have been for Christmas.)

Good t shirt!

(Sorry about the fixed smile.  Peter is still having trouble with my camera.  And in the other two attempts he’s cut the top of my head off.  Again.)

(Good socks!)

 Then I refused to do any work, and decided to order camellias instead.††  I cruised slowly††† through the online catalogue‡ telling myself three.  I can do three.  No more than three.  I ordered seven.  I hope they’re telling the truth when they say things like ‘remains small and compact’ and ‘narrow and upright growth’.

Then I spent something like two hours on one phrase of the Lyke Wake Dirge.   Remember speech rhythms! says Oisin.  Why am I driven to set frelling poetry! I say.  Why can’t I stick to little wordless piano thingummies!  And why does Finale hate me!

Then I took hellhounds for another walk.

Then I got seriously dressed up to go out to dinner.‡‡

And look what was sitting on the table waiting for me. ‡‡‡

And then I ate too much.  And that was before the chocolate mousse.§

Ooooooh.

And after. It was excellent.

And now I am going to put hellhounds out and go to bed and I may not get up at all tomorrow.

* * *

 * Surprise! 

** sic 

*** Just pour the stuff and go away 

† Approximately four of the five of us were being sickeningly loyal.  Penelope had been planning on a lie-in, Edward and Alex rarely make it for Sunday mornings because they live inconveniently far away, and never on a morning when Edward is also ringing a quarter in the evening, which he was today, and me who was having a birthday.  Niall is a bell junkie with no excuses.  He was just there. 

†† Patio fruit trees to live in pots and dahlias to come. 

††† Not to say lasciviously 

‡ I’ve already told you:  I like Trehane Nursery:  http://www.trehanenursery.co.uk/   I’ve bought camellias, blueberries and rhodos from a few other places with mixed results but Trehane’s stuff has always arrived fat and healthy 

‡‡ Sorry.  Forgot to get photo.^  Meant to ask waiter to take photo of Peter and me clanking champagne glasses together and . . . forgot.  All this blog stuff so goes against decades of training/being a photophobic crank.  Also, I’ve always hated people firing off endless camera flashes in restaurants and I’m having trouble fitting into the role of being one of those people.  And I’m now in my dressing gown so even if I were in any mental state to figure out how to set up camera to fire remotely, which I’m not, it’s too late. 

^ I was even wearing make up again.  Three times in three months, it’s a record.  And remind me, next time, to grit my teeth and buy the expensive stuff.  Cheap mascara is nasty.

‡‡‡ This photo is fraudulent.  The one I took at the restaurant is all weird and glary and flat.  So I just did it again.  (Roses don’t come home and put their dressing gowns on.) 

§ You don’t expect me not to have chocolate mousse, do you?

 . . . to an assortment of lines.  Or not, as the case may be.  Mostly not in my case.

            Connie was a pill this morning.  Saturday mornings are a little complex when you can’t use the outdoor arena–and the outdoor arena is likely to be a no-go area now till spring–because the indoor school is small.  Today was due to be (and, in fact, for a wonder, was) a very soft, mild day, the sort of autumn day that could almost be spring.*  And Liz was looking for someone to hack out with.  Caprice apparently had a serious meltdown a few weeks ago and Liz has been having trouble getting her nerve back.**  I’ve been in the situation of having a horse who is a pretty fair nightmare to hack out alone*** so although I’ve come to dislike Caprice I still like Liz, so I agreed.

            I think it’s quite possible that Caprice was winding Connie up–or maybe it was I Caprice was winding up and I was transmitting this information to Connie.  We were in a big field at one point–a biiiig field–with the little road between Jenny’s town and mine on one side, and a small stand of maize on the other.  We were going down pretty much the middle of it, and Liz was saying, oh, sweetheart, I know you don’t like lorries . . . What?  What lorry?  If the QE II was ploughing down the road† you might have been able to see her.  And you’d need a pheasant the size of a helicopter flying out of the maize to cause reasonable alarm.

            After most of an hour of this I guess both Connie and I were starting to climb out of our respective skins.  But we reached a new low when she took exception to a man, a girl and a dog walking together–who had got off the path, very reasonably, seeing the Ride of the Valkyries passing a little too near and not wishing to be carried off to Valhalla quite yet–and having booted her past this manifestation of the reopening of the Hellmouth in southern Hampshire, we caromed the rest of the way down that last bit of bridleway, shying at large metal field watering tanks, cows–cows!  Aaaaaaugh!–geese, farmhouses, mud, goblins and simurghs.  We finally got back down to the road again–this is the one-lane lane that runs past Jenny’s farm–and when I asked her to trot past a car that had politely stopped for us to squeeze by, she climbed the bank to get away from it–not, I might add, that this was a climbable bank;  we sort of levitated at an angle–and then about fifty feet from the yard turn-off there was a Mini†† that had been parked end on into the hedge with its nose just poking out, Minis not being a great deal bigger than SmartCars, and Connie was not going to go past the awful thing.  –You’re almost home, stupid!

            And in fact we’re still out there, facing down a grey Mini in the dark.  Oh, okay, no we’re not.  I whispered in her Connemara ear and told her to get her thoroughbred side under control.  Horses, like dogs, are shameless:  the fact that I wanted her hide for a hearthrug after all this had no impact whatsoever on her clear noisy assumption that I would give her her carrots and apple as usual after I’d cleaned her up and put her away.  They are, after all, her just tribute.  Feh.  And–of course–I did give them to her.  I know all the books that say that reward and punishment must be immediate in the critter world, and that withholding something later because you’re in a snit won’t do anything but confuse and dishearten your critter.  I can also hear the sniggers behind my back:  heh, heh, heh, heh, don’t anybody let on that we can remember:  just stare ‘em in the face and look earnest and a bit dim. . . .

            We were out a bit longer than I meant††† which then inevitably meant the rest of the day seemed to be happening about an hour later than planned.  I walk hellhounds in the dark often enough during this unfriendly end of the year but on riding days when the morning hurtle is curtailed I try to get them out both in daylight and out into the countryside in the afternoon.  Today this meant the second half of the walk was in the dark, pretty serious dark with a heavy cloud cover and no streetlamps.  We didn’t get lost–this is a piece of ground I know extremely well, although we kept being not quite where I thought we were on it.  Which included discovering rather too late that we were walking up the wrong side of a hedge:  one lot of tractor ruts running in the right direction look very much like another lot of tractor ruts running in the right direction.  Oh well, I thought.  Tractor ruts along the side of a field usually mean there’s space for a tractor to get out at the top (or bottom) of the field when another hedgerow runs in from somewhere and produces a corner.  Not this time.  Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

            I thought I’d seen a good gap on the way up that we could probably all fit through, although it would involve me lifting hellhounds over a barbed wire fence and climbing after them.  We’ve done it before.  Fortunately slightly before I had a hellhound in my arms I realised that the strange shadows I was looking at were a WHACKING GREAT HOLE on the far side of the fence, the sort of hole where Mr and Mrs Badger could hold a patio party.  Chastened, then, we went back aaaaaaaall the way down to the bottom and turned up again into the right set of tractor ruts.  Darkness was by now absolute, and my Darkness was only tangible by his spring-loaded extending lead taking in and letting out nylon tape, and the occasional dark flicker passing over stubble-field straw or a bit of path that has worn to white chalk,‡ and Chaos, were I of a nervous turn of mind, looked a lot like one of those pale things in an MR James story that paces you as you grope your way through mysterious woodland, and you’re pretty sure it does not have your best interests at heart.

            But we got back eventually, in time for me rush off to ring handbells.   How do I get into these things?‡‡  Six of us are learning to ring handbell carols so we can ring a Christmas party at a local old folks’ home.  I hope we’re all fast learners . . . I’ve never been a fast learner in my life. . . .  

* * *

 * My Souvenir de la Malmaison is still flowering.  Old Blush–AKA Parson’s Monthly Rose for good reason–keeps throwing out flowers and Sombreuil is too, but Malmaison?  If the rain doesn’t spoil her^ you get a very spectacular midsummer flush out of her, but in England she does not repeat.  The odd flower just to torture you with, but not a proper repeat.  I hear rumours, not to say fairy tales, of repeating Souvenirs, and despite that brand-name commercial roses are all little clones, the same rose can be remarkably individual from bush to bush in the same five-mile stretch of Hampshire:  I have several roses behaving differently here than they did at the old house.  Wouldn’t it be brilliant if I had one of those legendary repeating Souvenirs?  Then I could be driven mad by rose-ruining rainfall more extensively. 

^ See previous entries. . . .  

** Pollyanna as this blog’s presiding spirit or not, I am not the only person at Jenny’s yard who thinks Caprice would make better dog food than he does a riding horse, and he’s getting worse. 

*** However my old horse had some counteringbalancing virtues.  

† Instead of running into sandbars off Southampton 

†† http://damox.com/cars/thumbs/Mini/2005_Mini_Cooper_John_Cooper_Works_kit.jpg only this one was grey 

††† Because the footing was so lousy that there wasn’t even much trotting, let alone cantering.  Although given the mood Connie was in this was possibly a good thing.  

‡ And there were bats.  Yaaaay.  Bats are endangered.

‡‡ I am a schmuck.

Translated by Anthony H. Chambers 

You have to read it just for the title, don’t you?   And it’s a beautiful little book too 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Moonlight-Translations-Asian-Classics/dp/0231139128 

with black-and-white prints inside, although I wish I could find attributions for them.                  

           Chambers’ introduction begins:  ‘Tales of Moonlight and Rain (Ugetsu monogatari), nine stories by Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) published in Osaka and Kyoto in 1776*, is the most celebrated example in Japan of the literature of the strange and marvellous. . . . Japanese scholars regard it, along with The Tale of Genji (early eleventh century) . . . as among the finest works of fiction in the canon of traditional Japanese literature.’

            I lived in Japan for five years when I was a kid–my father was in the US Navy and was posted there.  I can’t remember how much I’ve blogged about this, but that experience of living in an utterly alien culture was, and for that matter still is, hugely important to me, and left me with a deep if entirely goofy and impractical** connection to and fascination with Japanese culture.  I am therefore embarrassed to say that I don’t recall having heard of Akinari before*** but I immediately tore this review 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jan/27/featuresreviews.guardianreview32 

out of the paper.† 

            The stories are both delicious and deliciously creepy.  A man is gone seven years on a business trip when civil war breaks out and prevents him from returning home.  He finally decides he must discover what has become of his wife, and is overjoyed when he finds his old house still standing and his wife answering the door.  They exchange stories of the long years they’ve been apart, and then fall asleep . . . you can see where this is going, can’t you?  When the man wakes up, he’s alone in the remains of a ruined house:  what woke him is rain on his face, because the roof is gone.  Another man leaves his virtuous wife to run off with his girlfriend;  the girlfriend dies, and the man meets the servant of a recent widow at the graveyard where his girlfriend is buried.  The servant suggests he speak to her mistress because they will understand each other . . . you see where this one is going too, don’t you?  The mistress is the vengeful spirit of his deserted, now also deceased, wife.

            But the plots of course aren’t the point;  the plots serve to hang the interesting stuff on.  And the interesting stuff is about the very different ways–as well as the very similar ways–people go about being human.  Love, lust, rage and jealousy are common to every culture, but one story begins:  ‘In the ancient Tranquil Land, people toil and enjoy their tasks and in their leisure hours relax under blossoms in the spring, visit brocade forests in the fall, and, thinking they must know Tsukushi of the unknown fires, rest their heads on rudders, and then turn eager thoughts to the peaks of Fuji and Tsukuba.’  It took me a second read through to figure out what was going on, not because it was strange–people take holidays and travel–but because it’s expressed in an unfamiliar way.  Brocade forests.  Don’t you love brocade forests?††  The stories are full of gorgeous little throwaways like that. 

            The eerie stuff is vividly strange too:  of a snake-demon who has taken the form of a woman to seduce a beautiful young man, an old priest says:  ‘Having a lascivious nature, it is said to bear unicorns when it couples with a bull, and dragon-steeds when it couples with a stallion.’  In the prefatory notes to this story there is a reference to another snake-woman story:  ‘When he failed to return to her, as he had promised, her jealous anger transformed her into a serpent and she pursued him to . . . where he had taken refuge inside the temple bell.  She coiled herself around the bell and roasted him to death with the heat of her passion.’

            Chambers makes another good, obvious but often overlooked, point about reading across time and culture in his introduction:  ‘Moonlight and Rain has been called a collection of “ghost stories,” “gothic tales,” and “tales of the supernatural.”  In Japanese they are called kaidan. . . and the word kaidan means “narrating the strange.” . . . [but]“supernatural” is probably an inappropriate word. . . .  Belief in revenants, spirit possessions, and other phenomena that we might call “supernatural” was widespread in eighteenth-century Japan. . . .’††† 

            Possibly my favourite story is The Chrysanthemum Vow because it’s romantic and sad and has that samurai sense of honour that I can’t get my head around‡ but it works a treat here.  Yes, I’m about to ruin another plot for you, but you always know what’s coming in these stories;  it’s the context and the getting there that are why you want to read them.  A poor scholar nurses a samurai back to health;  they fall in love.‡‡  The samurai eventually decides he must find out what became of the political wrangle he had been escaping when he fell ill, but he promises to come back on the day of the Chrysanthemum Festival.  The scholar waits all that day, but it isn’t till nightfall that he sees the longed-for figure of his lover approaching–but cannot understand why his friend seems so sad.  He had been detained by a suspicious lordling:  ‘. . . I asked for leave to go;  but Tsunehisa looked displeased and ordered Tanji not to let me out of the castle. . . . Imagining how you would regard me if I broke my pledge, I pondered my options but found no way to escape.  As the ancients said:  A man cannot travel a thousand ri in one day;  a spirit can easily do so.  Recalling this, I fell on my sword and tonight rode the dark wind from afar to arrive in time for our chrysanthemum tryst. . . .”  The Guardian reviewer calls this ‘morbid’ but I don’t see it that way;  it’s just another story about star-crossed lovers:  Romeo was really stupid not to check that Juliet was really dead first.

            The reviewer also suggests that there are perhaps too many notes, prefaces, afterwords and expositions.  I know what he’s talking about but I don’t agree‡‡‡–he doesn’t entirely agree with himself, saying ‘[Chambers'] introduction and copious notes are diligent–sometimes to a fault . . . the notes . . . [give the stories] a cluttered feeling. . . . On the other hand, these are sophisticated literary works, embedded in often quite complicated historical situations, dense with cultural allusions. . . .’  Yes.  I love all the notes.  You read the story, then you read the notes, then you read the story again.  Maybe you read the notes again too.  It’s a short book;  you have time to read everything twice;  and if this is your sort of thing, you’ll want to. 

* * * 

* 1776, forsooth.  I feel that it’s somehow pleasingly off-the-wall appropriate to do a book report on this book in the month that America returned not only the first Democrat in eight years to the White House, but the first person of any flavour whatsoever but pure anglo. 

** I could not, for example, give you the name of a single modern Japanese politician. 

*** Lafcadio Hearn ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn ) must have known of and written about Akinari, and I read Hearn.  (And Genji, of course.)  So I am having a senior moment.  I have so many. 

† . . . which was then instantly buried in the detritus on my desk, from whence it was only unearthed this spring. 

†† Thank you, Mr Translator. 

††† ‘. . . Tengu are goblins said to live deep in the mountains.  In Japanese art, they often resemble birds but sometimes take human form, with wings and a beak or a long nose. . . . Tengu were apparently brought under control by the . . . government, which issued commands to them and expected them to obey.’ 

‡ Okay, why is it the noble thing to sit down in the middle of a battle that is going against you and disembowel yourself, thus leaving your friends and colleagues in even worse shape by your terminal defection? 

‡‡ The falling in love part is disputed.  I think it’s pretty obvious the way the story is told or anyway translated and  ‘In early modern Japan, the chrysanthemum blossom was a common symbol of homosexual intercourse because it was thought to resemble an anus . . . chrysanthemum vow is a euphemism for homosexual intercourse.’ 

‡‡‡ He does get it wrong occasionally.  Akinari’s preface is a brief invocation to classic writers:  ‘Look at their writings:  each depicts many ingenious scenes and stories;  their silences and songs are true to life . . .’  Chambers glosses this:  ‘”silences and songs”:  style, rhythm, and tone.’  Please.

Blackbear says: 

Orange horse is fabulous. I am a little bit in love.   

It’s funny that so many of you like him, because these photos are not good.  He really didn’t have any butt when he came, although he’s beginning to grow one now, but he has a perfectly nice neck and a nice clean throat latch, and you’d never know it here.  And of course he’s half asleep.  I keep thinking that I hope that people who know what they’re looking at when they’re looking at a horse can see the potential there and I haven’t totally disguised it. 

Particularly like the one where he’s got one leg delicately back, gives him a rather insouciant look… Is the dog on the left the terrier you’ve mentioned? He’s pretty charming too.

She.  Yes, that’s Clover.  Clover is a fruit loop, as terriers so often are*, although she is a very nice fruit loop**.  I don’t think I’ve told you the Car Story?  She has me pegged as a soft touch, so when she’s been let out of durance vile in the tack room*** she tends to follow me around, flinging herself on her back at intervals so that I can rub her tummy.†  It didn’t take long for her to start following me back to my car.  One day, when I opened the door, she jumped in.  I laughed appreciatively, picked her up, and put her back on the ground.  She immediately jumped back in the car again.  I tried getting in the car before I put her out and she could still get back in before I could close the door:  I swear she turns in midair, like a boomerang.  So I thought okay, fine, started the car, and rolled downhill to the gate:  Clover sat happily in the passenger seat:  Great!  Where are we going?  Is it fun?  Does it involve food?††  I left the door open while I opened the gate.  Clover waved her tail madly when I got back in the car.  I left the door open when I went back to close the gate. . . . Clover was still sitting in the passenger seat waiting for her next adventure.  At this point I fished her out, grasped her firmly, and went in search of Jenny. . . . Clover still follows me out to my car pretty often, and has a nice little ride down to the gate, but she usually then gets out of her own accord.  Usually.  Sometimes I still have to go find Jenny.

            Clover’s mum, Sparkle, has her own variation on a theme of human interaction, hijacking, and tummy rubbing.  She likes to lie down in the road in front of the gate and roll over on her back.  She rolls over on her back for cars, because she has figured out that cars have people in them, and when they get, crossly, out of their cars to move her, chances are they will relent when she waves her paws madly, wags her tail like sixty and flattens her ears at them.  There are days that between the two of them–since chances are I have Clover in the passenger seat while I’m moving her mum–I wonder if I’m going to get home at all.

Vikkik says: 

And he looks a lovely horse, but surely he’s chestnut rather than orange? 

Mmrmph.  Er, yes.   I’m afraid I’m having my little joke about his colour because I do not like chestnuts.  I didn’t like Palominos even when I was a little girl.  I think it’s against the law for horse-mad girls not to like Palominos.

(Of course, I have practically zero experience of horses…) Any way, I think he’s a gorgeous colour.

Many people like chestnuts.  There is no accounting for these things.

*pets Roland cautiously* 

He’s a very sweet horse.  He will put his head in your chest so you can rub his ears better.  That is, in fact, what he’s trying to do in those pictures, and why he won’t stand still.  He thinks there’s a perfectly good human on the other end of the lead rope and he doesn’t want to stand over here when she could be making herself useful by petting him.

R and B says: 

He’s lovely–looks built uphill even at this age! How old is he–did I miss that? He looks to be about 16h? 

He looks extremely nice going under saddle–there’s enough in the front and enough in the rear to balance.  He’ll be four in March, and he’s 16.3.  That’s another case of the camera lying–Jenny’s quite small, but I must be shooting them at more of an angle than I realise, because if she’s small he must be about 15 hands and I can say, having stood in his shadow, that he’s large. 

But he really is a chestnut, right??

Snork!  No, he’s ORANGE!  Diane in MN says that horse people call her fawn Danes ‘golden chestnut’ which I find peculiar–dog fawn ought to be dun or buckskin in horse terms, which would then say certain things about its breeding.††† 

Lucy Coats says: 

But maybe orange only in the way that turning beech leaves in autumn are orange.

Oooh.  Imagine a copper-beech-coloured horse.  (Note to those of you who have never seen a copper beech:  they’re, um, purple.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacqamoe/166343428/ ) 

 I am looking out at a magnificent tree in our field as I type–and it seems like exactly his colour. He looks as if he has what is known up here as ‘a kind eye’.

Yes, he does.  They’re a little small–mind you, I’m spoiled, Connie has those enormous deer eyes that Connemaras are prone to–which is one of the things I didn’t like about him when I went with Jenny to look for a horse, but as soon as he turns it on you you change your mind.  Especially after he’s craned over his stable door to put his head in your chest and say ‘pet me’.  

Diane in MN says: 

Am I right in thinking that mares come in season quite frequently until they’re bred? 

Yikes, no.  Well, sort of.  They’re like a lot of other critters in that they tend not to come in season during the winter, and lengthening days bring them back into their fertile cycles–racehorse breeding mares live in barns with sunlamps so they can get them cycling early in the year, for example–and the cycle is usually around three weeks.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_reproduction   And there are certainly people who won’t touch mares because mares can be moody on account of fluctuating hormones.  Well, yes.  And there are certainly mares who are a real pain to have around when they’re fertile–and if you were sensible you would not breed them so as not to produce more mares like that.  I mean, they do come into season if they aren’t bred and pregnant, but most working mares are fairly low key about it, or at worst are only a bit twitchy a day or two per cycle during high summer.  Jenny is extremely cross about Connie because she says she’s never been ‘mare-ish’ before, and she’s had her three years or so–and that furthermore it’s spreading and here it is November when the estrous cycle should be closing down for the winter and there are several mares on the yard who are prancing around and whinnying and peeing.  Roland is a gelding.  Get a grip, girls.

Judith says: 

Puppies are adorable — and puppyhood is also hell, and when I’m going through it with one I can’t wait for it to be over! I really don’t understand people who keep puppies until they grow up and then want to give them to the pound; they’ve paid their dues and are about to get their reward, for heaven’s sake! Old dogs just get richer with age.

The people I totally take my hat off to are the ones that raise seeing-eye puppies.  Year after year after year of puppy–as you might say ‘hay fever’ or ‘foot rot’–as soon as it’s old enough to start proper training, it’s gone, and they have another wretched puppy peeing on the floor and eating their shoes.  I repeat:  puppies are darling, but puppyhood is still something you get through to have dogs.  But some of the idiots who take their post-puppies to the pound are in shock from adolescence.  You hear a lot about puppyhood but the facts of adolescence are downplayed.  She says feelingly, her aging adolescents being fast asleep about three feet away.  But people forget that brains take longer to grow up than bodies do and foolishly despair. 

Diane in MN says: 

This puppy is obviously very good at looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It would be interesting to know how long it takes, after he settles in, for the halo to slip. Of course, he may be like MY puppy, whose halo has barely budged.

He arrived halo-free:  don’t let that face mislead you.  Look at those calculating little eyes.  This is not a hearts-and-flowers puppy but a right little bruiser.  I understand that the sock population in that house has already dropped dramatically.  However given that he’s still about three inches square and has been pitched into a family of about fifteen (technically it’s only Daisy and Roy, but in practise it’s also three kids, three spouses/spouse equivalents, eight grandchildren, and the odd in law) this is exactly what he should be.

            You want to encourage your perfect puppy to eat the occasional small noncrucial piece of furniture or when he hits adolescence he’ll suddenly think, yeep, what am I missing, and start staying out all night and coming home drunk and disorderly in the company of girls of dubious virtue. 

Southdowner says: 

Some people think that having more than one pet makes you love them all less 

Pet [sic] peeve alert.   This philosophy–and I get it too, although I only have two critters instead of eleven‡–makes me nuts.  What is the matter with these people?  Hearts are infinitely expandable.  There are critters, just like there are people, which are easier and harder to love, but the more people of all ages, sexes, species, etc you have in your life, the more room(s) in your heart you have.  The end of a well-lived life your heart is going to look like Gormenghast Castle, only cheerfuller. 

 - no! it just means there is fur to bawl into when the time comes…

 That too of course.  Sigh. 

Mrs Redboots says: 

Having a new puppy is like having a new baby - thankfully, though, the “must-be-aware-of-what-she’s-doing-every-second” phase only lasts about six months, compared with about five years in humans!

Six months!  You have had much mellower, more amenable puppies than I have!  (However, all mine have thrown up in the car on the drive home from the breeder, so obviously I’m doing something wrong!)  The saving grace of puppies over human children, if you’re asking me, who never raised any of the human variety, is that you can lock them up in their crate and run away for a few hours if you have to. 

Skating librarian says 

Susan from Athens says:
Well it’s a very nutty taste. In purree form it is very thick and sticky in mouth - somewhat like peanut butter (the smooth kind, obviously - but I don’t particularly like peanut butter).

Ewwwww!  I love peanut butter and I love chestnuts, glaceed, pureed, or any thing else, but I deny that chestnut puree is anything like peanut butter.  It’s much lighter and airier than any nut butter, smooth, barely sticky, and while chestnuts are nutty, they always taste to me like a near relative of a real nut rather than like a nut themselves.  Chestnut puree tastes to me like something with nuts in it, not like nut puree. 

Melissa Mead says: 

I’ve always thought they taste vaguely maple-y. Sort of like a rich smoked maple hazelnut? I didn’t like them as a kid, either, but I’m slowly coming to. Roasted, they have an almost soft texture.

 Soft and a bit crumbly, yes.  And yes . . . almost mapley.  And yes, a bit more hazelnutty than . . . well, than peanuts, or cashews or something.  Mapley hadn’t occurred to me (although crumbled chestnuts are good in waffles. . . . But then since I like chestnuts I’m liable to throw them experimentally into all kinds of things) but I think you’re right.  They aren’t themselves sweet but they taste like they might be somehow.  

Rachel says: 

My mother had a version of this recipe , known as Slut’s chocolate chestnut log because it was so quick and easy. She used icing sugar and rum instead of caster and orange juice.  And wrapped the whole thing in silver foil instead of putting it in a tin.

 I don’t myself use tin foil–it’s also implicated in those of us with auto-immune problems–but icing sugar works fine, and rum is excellent.  My original recipe called for orange liqueur rather than orange essence, but I prefer the essence if you’re going for orange. 

Southdowner says: 

We ARE a cult! Yaay! Robin has a cult following!!! 

I’m still worrying about this. . . . Following me where . . . . 

* * *

 * All right, name me a dog family that doesn’t have serious fruit loop tendencies.  But they do vary.  Terrier fruitloopery is significantly different from hellhound fruitloopery for example. 

** And my Exhibit A when the hellhounds and I have just been jumped by another nasty, aggressive little, or, worse, not-so-little s.o.b. of a terrier and I’m shouting that I hate terriers

 *** Or when she escapes, which also happens.  It is very difficult to get into a tack room carrying a saddle and not let a terrier bent on freedom out.  Then you rack the saddle hastily and go in pursuit.  I’ve chased her into the schooling ring where Jenny is giving a lesson more than once.  Generally speaking it’s very nice using Jenny’s tack room instead of one of the two bigger ones for the boarders, but the terrier situation is problematic. 

† I’m with Jodi about fuzzy tummies.  I’d be an instant ferret slave too. 

†† Clover, unlike other dogs we could mention, has a positive attitude toward food. 

††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_coat_color   This is not really satisfactory and only barely scratches the surface.   But there’s a lot out there about colour types and genetics . . . which I’ve just wasted most of half an hour on and I still have to play the piano tonight. . . .

 ‡ Or is it fifteen now, and you’re just afraid to tell us?

            But you kind of had to be there to enjoy that aspect.

            I got up terrifyingly early** to give hellhounds a brief hurtle before I went*** off to frolic with hellcolts and nightmares, and arrived in such good time I had to bring Connie in myself.  You realise just how large Jenny’s fields are when the horse you want is standing at the far end of one.  Connie turned around when she heard the gate† and then turned back again.  No help there.  I toiled up the hill toward her and after she’d enjoyed her joke she did turn again and walk to me with her ears up and a faint whinny, although that may be because I had a bucket with a handful of horse nuts†† in it. 

            I said gaily to Jenny that Connie would probably behave worse than Roland and she said grimly, she’d better not, that’s exactly the sort of thing that would set him off.  Whereupon I instantly changed horses midstream and said that Connie would probably go all nursemaidy, as she’d done when Miles rode her a few weeks ago.  Mmmmm, said Jenny.

            At least they didn’t insist on billing and cooing, although they’d discussed world politics at length while we tacked up.  Jenny had told me to keep our distance, as Roland’s legs all grow to twice their length when he cavorts, not to mention being young enough still that he loses track of one or another of them occasionally†††, and we wanted as many of us to come home again undamaged and in one piece as possible. 

            Most of the local countryside is stubble fields at the moment–muddy stubble field–so we were spoilt for choice about where we could go.  And there were a few pheasants–and a few deer–and a few madly waving fronds and heavy low rustlings which were obviously alligators, and Connie did take mild exception to these on one occasion.  And Roland couldn’t bear all that lovely open space once or twice–Connie meanwhile was expressing deep displeasure at this nonsense of staying trotting‡–but us humourless humans prevailed.  And indeed the ground is so deep and soggy that a long uphill slope at the trot is quite enough, and poor Roland had his tongue hanging down to his knees, and Connie’s blood vessels were all standing out like a racehorse’s which I always thinks looks so cool.‡‡

            But the point is we all came home in the same state of cohesion as we’d left.  This is good.  We might even do it again some time I suppose.

Now, these photos fail miserably to do our orange horse justice.  I told you at the time that he had no clue about standing up for the camera and wasn’t interested, and he had also just been worked‡‡‡ and that was before he had any stamina whatsoever and he was tired.  He’s put on weight and muscle in the last few weeks and has begun to look like a genuine horse rather than a gawky baby.  But these are the photos I’ve got, and it would be a pity to waste them, you can at least admire his colour.§

 * * *

 * Therefore, because I’m like this, I felt guilty about not being out there with hellhounds.  But by heroic self discipline I got them out before dark for their afternoon walk. 

** Before 8 am is sufficiently terrifying to anyone who seems to have become incapable of turning her light out before 2:30 

*** cruelly 

† The now-famous Giraffe Gate after Roland jumped it in its pre-giraffe condition a fortnight or so ago.  Jenny shot awake to the pitter-patter of little feet on the lane outside her bedroom window. 

†† Thirty years ago in America I would’ve called these ‘pellets’.  I am not up on modern lingo. 

††† And a loose unsupervised almost-four-year-old colt leg can get into all kinds of mischief. 

‡ And. I. Was. Riding. Her. In. The. Milder. Bit. She. Likes.  Never occurred to me not to.  Well, as I’m fond of saying, nobody died. 

‡‡ So were mine.  It doesn’t look nearly so cool on me. 

‡‡‡ Note saddlemark  

§ Ewwwwwww.                                                                 

 ( . . . Pardon me, but don’t tell me this insert-multiple-photos-into-your-entry thing worked.   Yeep.  I’m almost afraid to hit the ‘publish’ button . . . )

It’s way over time for a recipe.*  Also, I’m hungry.**   And this time of year I always think of chestnuts.  I love chestnuts.  Although you can perfectly well get tinned chestnut puree all year round, and this is a chilly thing so not really suitable to November.***  Never mind.  The point is there is a world beyond crumbled whole chestnuts in your Brussels sprouts.† 

Chestnut and chocolate pudding†† 

Yes, it’s in horrible metric.  But 300g chocolate is merely 3 100g bars of Green and Black’s, and over here anyway 435g is a standard size of chestnut puree tin.  Also I have a kitchen scales which is in fact very sleek and pretty and a pleasure to use and it converts.  

Oh, and this freezes beautifully.  You might consider if it’s worth pre-slicing it, so you can just crack off a slab or two at a time:  there’s a lot of good group food out there which you can’t do this to, so it’s very useful for those of us with small households and waistline problems.  The original recipe says you can slice it frozen, with a knife dipped in hot water.  Maybe they used a different kind of knife and a different kind of water.  My experience is that this doesn’t work and makes a nasty smeary mess. 

300g plain (dark) chocolate (semi-sweet cooking chocolate, approximately.  Do I have to remind you you want good quality chocolate?)

435g can unsweetened chestnut puree

175g/6 oz slightly salted butter (call it 12 T:  http://www.ez-calculators.com/measurement-conversion-calculator.htm )

175g/6 oz caster/superfine sugar (call it ¾ c).  I made it with granulated once and it was not crunchy.

¼ c orange juice

1 tsp orange essence

You can use an ordinary big (9″) loaf tin, but if you have a drop-sided one, use it.†††   Grease it, whatever it is.

You’re supposed to beat the puree on its own till it’s light and fluffy but my experience is that chestnut puree on its own does not get light and fluffy.  I melt the butter and chocolate (gently‡) together and then pour it slowly into the puree, and beat like mad–use your electric mixer.  Then beat in sugar.  Then add orange juice and essence and beat again.

Pour and scrape the result into your loaf tin.  Smooth the top [duh], cover with greaseproof paper and chill overnight at least, and in the cold part of your refrigerator.  Then let the sides down and pluck it out.  I find that in an ordinary loaf tin you can slice it in the tin and ease the individual slices out. 

* * * 

* Also, I have to get up at what passes in my case for the crack of dawn tomorrow morning–Connie and I are going to baby-sit young Roland and Jenny on a nice hack over the beautiful Hampshire countryside, which we have to get in before Jenny’s first lesson of the day.  This could be extremely amusing in several different directions.  In the first place, while Connie is a perfectly good trail horse, she is far from what you could call bombproof, and I think I told you that I was delighted when Jenny told me a few weeks ago that she’d taken her out on a hack and she had been shying constantly in every direction^ at shadows, falling leaves, imaginary pheasants^^ and so on:  I mean, she does it to Jenny too.  My guess would be that Roland will be better-mannered than she is.  However the second gremlin in the soup is that Connie and Roland are seriously sweet on each other–Connie, drat her, has come back into season again, and they spend a lot of time murmuring fondly to each other through the bit of grating at Connie’s end of Roland’s stall.  I have no idea how this is going to translate riding out together–in the usual run of things they both have a good attitude toward their work–but I’m sure it’s going to make some variation on a theme of oops, wheee and arrrrrgh. 

Meanwhile it’s already late in the evening because I’ve been ringing handbells. . . . 

^ Simultaneously.  

^^ She is, in the curious way of horses, usually rather good about real pheasants.+  The answer to this would be that it’s not an imaginary pheasant, she wouldn’t be frightened of a pheasant, it’s an imaginary tiger.  This would make a certain amount of sense if she didn’t also shy dramatically at butterflies and dandelion clocks and so on.   Okay, wait, the butterflies are the eyelashes of the blinking dragon++ who is invisible except for his eyelashes–this is a story passed down through thousands of years of domestic horse life from mare to foal.  And the dandelion clocks are the subterranean goblin outpost antennae.  Okay.  Got it now. 

+ I said usually 

++ Not the friendly kind of dragon 

** But then, I usually am hungry.  Sigh.  Menopause.  Lose Your Interest in Food or Gain a Whole New Wardrobe. 

*** Unless you’re in Oz, of course, or some other place down there. 

† I also love crumbled whole chestnuts in my Brussels sprouts. 

†† No, not an ideal recipe for a crabby menopausal woman who suddenly finds herself gaining weight by profligate breathing.  I’m sure typing the dadblatted recipe is going to cost me a pound or two.  At the signing last week I ate two tiny brownie-y things, one spider^, and a glass of hot chocolate.  And I had carrots and hummous for supper, going home on the train.   And I was almost two pounds up next day.  Arrrrgh. 

^ No, no–it’s a kind of butter cookie 

††† I only have one–cupboard space is limited–and it’s too small.  After agonies of custard cups for the overflow I just used an ordinary loaf tin which works fine, although you have to be a little careful.  You’ll feel safer using drop-sided. 

‡ Chocolate does burn easily, and it will taste scorched before it burns.  But it doesn’t burn or taste scorched as easily as its reputation says it does, and melting it with butter gives you a much better quality of barrel to roll over Niagara in.