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It’s the hellhounds’ birthday!
And we’re having duck and champagne.*
Well, they get a little. Or would. If they ever get around to, you know, eating. Sigh.
. . . Later. Okay, they’re eating. So, one more day down and 5475 to go (seventeen is a pretty good age for a dog. Or maybe they’ll suddenly DISCOVER EATING when they get old). SIGH.
However, I’m telling you the duck is lovely. And the champagne. Maybe they were waiting for the champagne. If they’re holding out for champagne, it’s going to be a long 5475 days.
* And stuffing and gravy! And I’m not going to weigh myself tomorrow!
Continued caresses
I keep thinking today must be Sunday, because I had a bell rope in my hands early in the day. Of course I had a horse in my hands even earlier in the day, which is a proper Saturday thing.* Speaking of caresses. There’s nothing nicer than a silky horse (except possibly a silky hellhound**). And I’ve realized Connie positively likes having her ears mauled. I think she stands on her head secretly in the field at midnight*** so she can come in in the morning with disgraceful ears. But today I was scrubbing away and discovered that her head, eyelids and bottom lip were all drooping lower . . . and lower . . . I put her away with very clean ears.
Ringing a wedding at my Wednesday tower is weirdly hermetic. At my home tower we have, you know, windows. That you can see out of. And we have them on three sides of the tower, including one that looks inside the church, so you can see what the bride is wearing and whether she was into torturing her bridesmaids. This is very useful; we can see at once when we need to leap to our ropes.† At towers without convenient windows you have to post a scout. At my Wednesday tower the only window is ten feet overhead, which you don’t think about during evening practice, and the scout has rather a way to come, so we’re poised for the sound of feet thundering up the stair. I suppose the locals are used to it but it makes me nervous. I also miss seeing what everybody is wearing.††
However. Enough of the chat. Here’s what you all have been waiting for.††† Elspeth is wasted on the literature-chopping industry. If she has a holiday in England I hope I can at least meet her for a cup of tea so we can fulminate together. Peter can come along if he wants to, but he’s really too mild-mannered to fulminate properly. Maybe it’s an American gene.
Subj: “Caress”
From: Elspeth.Winkle@Pancake.com
To: FamousWriter@Thingummy.com
Mr. Dickinson,
Thank you for your kind email! Nothing would please me more than to have a list of no-no words. However, this is an unwritten list and very fickle to say the least.
Each State Department of Education assembles various committees (during the test development period) that will consist of various types of people, cutting across the layers of their populace. Various educational levels, variations in financial status, religion, color and creed. Every single member of the committees has the right to reject words (or complete stories) that are offensive to the individuals and the community which they represent. The final decisions do not always include all the craziness that is suggested, but it does get pretty “funny” some times. One wonders what kind of world these people live in, or have they been around children lately.
As far as the testing industry is concerned
children are never hungry,
they do not get lost or hurt,
they are not exposed to any abuse,
they never fight or are witness to any fights,
they love everyone and everyone loves them,
no one ever passes away,
or is very ill,
there are no floods,
hurricanes,
tornados
or fires…………….ever.
Children also will only be able to concentrate during specific word count numbers, or else.
I am most likely forgetting several other disasters that are not allowed, but I have to stop, because I am getting very depressed thinking of all this bad stuff. There are times where Alzheimer’s comes in handy.
Depending on the state, the passages may be found by teachers, contracted passage finders complying with specific state standards and grade levels, and also by the development team here and at the state level. Between what is available in the public library or can be found on the internet, the world is their oyster.
I hope that this will not prompt you to drink too much wine………or maybe it should. In any case, keep on writing.
Thank you for your understanding!
Best to you!
Elspeth
Elspeth Winkle
Permissions - Intellectual Properties
Pancake Publishing
* * *
* ‘Early’ is of course relative. I did not get to bed ‘early’ last night.
** Yes, yes, and silky cats, ferrets, rabbits–are birds silky? I wouldn’t really have characterized Angel as silky–and various other caressable creatures.
*** Since midnight is early evening to me, I should go have a stroll that way some time,^ and check.
^ Do not take hellhounds, they will see it as a precedent.
† Unless you are on one of the back bells and very gymnastic with it^ you can’t see out the window over the front door while you’re ringing but you can usually hear the tumult of a wedding ebbing away from you, even through the noise of the bells. We have at least one window open pretty much year round: eight people pulling briskly on ropes in a small room, it gets pretty sultry in there. And bell tower windows tend to be first cousins to arrow slits.
^ Which would not be I
†† Note there were a second pair of Converse All Stars ringing the wedding this afternoon.
††† And yes I did ask her if it was all right if I posted her email on my blog.
Going to bed early
I am going to bed early. Which is going to be a good trick, because it’s already late. It’s always late on a Friday (so to speak) because of bell practise. It’s August* and everyone’s on holiday, so practises are rather hit or miss lately, although I’m worrying that this area seems to be having a downturn in ringing numbers generally. They cancelled last week’s Wednesday practise, and that tower never cancels. And slow tool that I am I need my second practise a week. As well as my once-a-month third: and last Monday Niall and I were stiffed for the second month in a row** by that ringing master–or anyone else with a key to the bell tower–and I won’t be going back next month. Niall was happy, however, he got one of the other two would-be ringers in a head lock and dragged her home to ring handbells with him and me. Local handbell ringing is in even worse shape than local tower ringing.
I’ve recently realised that I’ve crossed one of those invisible boundaries. I am pretty much still in the category of Any Time on a Rope Is Good Time in terms of practise, and even the stuff I theoretically know still needs shoring up, but the stuff I’m really trying to learn now requires skilled support from the rest of the band. I can spend weeks, sometimes, never getting out of my comfort zone, because the available band, which is to say the people who showed up to ring, isn’t up to it–except that there is no comfort zone in ringing, you can always have a mental spasm and go wrong. And I frequently do.
Tonight we were only seven–which means ringing on six bells–and five of us, which is to say them, were some of our good ringers. When you’re the only wavery one the others can kind of straitjacket you in place. First we rang bob minor, which is one of the methods I should know, but I’m kind of out of practise–which is the other drawback to learning new methods; the fools and hopeless optimists around you expect you to remember what you’ve already learnt–so I was glad of the opportunity. Now the terrible, mind-rending, 3 am and sweating thing about bob minor is the Dreaded Three-Four Down Single, when you’re quietly coming down toward lead with a little, harmless three-four down dodge on the way, and the Evil Conductor calls a single. Calls make a mess, it’s what they’re for. So if you’re about to do a three-four down dodge in bob minor and Evil Conductor calls a single, you hang around in thirds place for two blows and then turn around and go up again. Trust me, this is horribly confusing, including the physical confusion of making a u-turn and going back the way you came. You ring a little differently going up (slower, because there’s one more bell coming between you and the front at each blow) and coming down (faster, because there’s one fewer bell, etc, as you all weave your way through the pattern), and while good ringers place their bell perfectly every stroke, for those of us who are not so good, momentum is also an issue with several hundred pounds of bell. And I had four three-four down singles in a row. I was preparing to stand my bell, leap across the room, and strangle Niall–who was conducting–when he called a fifth.*** Yes, all right, it was great practise. And I did get through all of them.
And then near the end Niall–who is ringing master in Edward’s absence–called for Grandsire. I dove–hopefully–for a rope, because Grandsire is slightly my bête noire–the method I’ve never really had the opportunity to learn properly but ought to know by now, by osmosis or something. The terrible horrible no good really bad call in Grandsire is a single when you’re making seconds, because then you have to make long thirds–four blows in thirds place–which come at you from a funny angle and then sort of duck and dive at you while you’re trying to balance in thirds place and it’s surprisingly hard to count to four. Which is one of the reasons double dodging (which you also do in Grandsire) is so gruesome–you can just about remember under, over, under (as you swap places and then back again with the bell you’re dodging with). . . but do you do it again or have you already done it again? It’s not like you have time to think, when you have two-thirds of a second to pull on your rope so your bell goes dong in the right place. There is only one right place and there are so many wrong ones . . . Anyway, this was a long touch with lots of calls and I galloped through any number of long thirds and came out the other end in the right place–good heavens, what am I doing here? At the end Roger, who had been conducting, complimented me. I don’t think he meant to sound surprised. . . .
But, speaking of bells and galloping, I have to go to bed early because I have a horse to ride tomorrow morning, followed by a wedding to ring at my Wednesday tower–because they’re so short handed they haven’t got enough locals–in the very early afternoon–having hurtled hellhounds first thing so they’ll let me. Usually after a walk they’ll crash out, but Chaos has taken to standing by the door gazing at me mournfully as I suit up to do something that does not involve hellhounds. Aaaugh. I’m already staying home for the next fifteen years on account of their undomesticated digestion, this dog cannot be making me feel guilty.
* * *
* Although you’d never know by the weather. It’s been RAINING AGAIN^ and while today has been a really beautiful day it’s been a really beautiful autumn day and everybody is putting their duvets back on their beds, except those of us who never took them off. I like to complain as much as the next person, and I feel pretty silly wearing wool in August, but if you’re asking me I’ll take chilly summers to hot ones any year. The hellhounds agree.
^ This is one of those towns that has a municipal hanging-basket system, where anyone who lives or has a shop front anywhere on the two main streets can hire a pre-planted hanging basket. You’re expected to do the deadheading, but The Man comes round with a tanker, and waters them. The tanker is this extraordinary little vehicle, about the size of half a Smart Car+ whose engine not only trundles it along but also pumps the water up through the hosepipe and thus into the short access pipe buried in every overhead basket. I love the nuts and bolts of things. Hanging flower baskets on Main Street are a great idea, very Town Pride . . . unless people forget to water them++ in which case they’re a very bad idea and will repel all those money-spending tourists every town wants.+++ Hence the motorised Gunga Din: he’d need shoulders like an Olympic shot putter if he didn’t have a pump, let alone an engine. You see him out there in all weathers, including torrential downpours. Um. I figured, okay, you’ve paid for your hanging basket and you’ve paid for it to get watered, so by golly it gets watered. But he says it’s not as silly as it looks: rain runs right off because the baskets are so densely planted.++++ Oh. They really are densely planted too. It’s perhaps slightly a pity however that they are densely planted in job lots of whatever was cheapest at the Hanging Basket Store. This year’s would have just about got away with the all available shades of pink, purple and blue colour scheme . . . till the scarlet geraniums on top started flowering. Ow, my eyes.
+ Not sure what they call them in the States. Those little half-length things that you can pull frontwards (or backwards) into a parallel-parking situation and have room for another one of you in the other half
++ Or go away on holiday and their neighbour forgets to water them
+++ Barring the odd curmudgeon living up a side street
++++ Well hurrah for carelessly home-planted hanging baskets that do get watered by rainfall.
** And a month ago it wasn’t even August
*** Note that the way methods fit together, every time a call is made, all the bits of work in that method have to be made by some bell. Some methods you can cushion a beginner a little more than others–my first quarter (peal) of bob minor, for example, Edward called around me so I never had to ring a Dreaded Three-Four Down Single. There are also various practise patterns where the poor suffering learner is made to ring The Thing She Fears Most over and over and over again. But in the ordinary free-for-all of a touch no one bell should be expected to ring the same beastly bit of work over and over and OVER again. But these things happen. Conducting is a total mystery to me^ but I have these visions (especially at 3 am) of bell geeks bending over bits of graph paper and cackling madly at the prospect of calling their next touch of Splendiferous Dork Major.
^ And I plan for it to remain that way
Clear days on the publishing front . . .
. . . a title I believe I’ve stolen from The New Yorker, which used to publish lovely little bottom-of-column fillers about various insanities of modern life, including publishing life.
The following is an excerpt from Peter’s A BONE FROM A DRY SEA. The novel is two stories: one about an ancient prehistory when humans were, perhaps, first becoming human; and one about a modern archaeological dig that is discovering those early almost-humans’ remains. Each story features one of Peter’s signature scarily intelligent preadolescent girls, who sort out the slow local grown-ups, because the grown-ups are incapable of doing it for themselves. This bit is from the prehistoric story; the tribe has just successfully hunted a shoal of fish with the help of some dolphins.
Read carefully, there will be a test in a minute.*
. . . Twice more the cycle was repeated before the remains of the shoal escaped, scurrying along below the southern crags. As Li stood panting on the rock spit two of the dolphins came cruising through the clear water beside her. All around her lay dead and dying fish. She picked a couple up and flung them out, and the dolphins rose and took them just as they hit the surface. Almost at once the other dolphins arrived and hung below her, waiting expectantly. Ma-ma, Hooa, and Rawi were already harvesting the fish on the other side of the [harbour] entrance. Goor was carrying one up for Presh. The ones this side, Li felt, were rightly the dolphins’ share.
When she had all but cleared the rocks around her she picked up the last two, slid down into the water, and kicked gently toward the dolphins. They backed away, so she waited, treading water, with a fish held in each hand until they became inquisitive and drifted in. Two of them took the fish, but suddenly they backed away again.
Goor had appeared beside her. She made a Be still sign and then they waited, rising to the surface only when they needed air. Li knew the dolphins were still nearby, because of the sounds they made, their wailing whistles and clicks, call and answer, filling the sea around her. Shadowy shapes loomed, neared, took shape, came close, circled until she could stroke the long flanks as they passed, and returned to caress themselves against her body.
Then they swam together, dolphins and people, through the greeny-golden sea world, not in a wild dance full of rush and foam but in a slow, close, gentle weaving of bodies in the friendly water, while the dolphins’ song went on and on, filling the sea like the wavering sunlight. Li understood it to be song because the only sound she knew at all like it was the song of the tribe waking in the morning to greet the returning day.
The dolphins left without a signal, but the song continued in the water, dwindling as it went, until they rounded a headland and it was lost. Li and Goor waited a long while, hoping, but they didn’t come back.
Subj: Pancake permission request
From: MFidgit@FamousWriterAgency.co.uk
To: FamousWriter@thingummy.com
Dear Peter,
I hope you are well. We’ve had a permission request from the publisher Pancake, who would like to include an extract of 792 words from A BONE FROM A DRY SEA on their website http://www.politicalcorrectnessrunmad.com/ and as part of their secured on-line testing through that site. The material would be available for the academic year 2010-2011. We would suggest a fee of US$notnearlyenough. Please do let me know if you’re happy for this to go ahead on these terms.
Best wishes,
Melusine Fidgit
Assistant to the Hon. Fabian Thrib, Famous Writer Agent
Subj: Re: Pancake permission request
From: FamousWriter@Thingummy.com
To: MFidgit@FamousWriterAgency.co.uk
Thanks for sending me the extract from BONE that Pancake want. I see that they’ve marked the word “Caress” “edit”. I’d much rather they left it as it is, but if they still want to change it would they please consult me about how they do it. Thanks, PD
Subj: Dickinson permission
From: MFidgit@FamousWriterAgency.co.uk
To: FamousWriter@Thingummy.com
Dear Peter,
Further to your email about the use of the word ‘caress’ in the permission extract, here is the response from the American publisher. How would you like us to respond? We’d be quite happy to insist that they use the word as originally written! But if you’re happy for them to run some suggested compromises past you, then please let me know.
Best wishes,
Melusine
From: Elspeth WinkleTo: Melusine Fidgit
Subject: RE: DICKINSON permission
Melusine,
Thank you for your email. The word “CARESS” is a “no-no word” in the assessment test development world. It cannot be used. I understand Mr. Dickinson and his concerns. However, if that word is not edited out, we will not be able to use the work.
When the passages are presented to our client for passage review, many committees will scrutinize each work, looking for all kinds of potential problems and sensitivities. Since the taxpayers’ money is used, the entire populace must be taken into consideration. That can get pretty ridiculous sometimes, but that is the world in which we are trying to function.
Elspeth
Elspeth Winkle
Permissions - Intellectual Properties
Pancake Publishing
I was grist to a similar mill when HERO was young: after it won the Newbery it came up a lot for textbook excerpts. I was an intransigent brute, however, and refused to let them change ‘witchwoman’–which kept me out of at least one textbook. And, you know, what were they going to change it to? Elf? Gnome? Nice old lady? Peter’s going to let them change caress, but he’s asked if there’s a list of the no no words. Stay tuned.
* But any typos are my typing
AJLR speaks further
So, last night . . . er, this morning . . . I had FINALLY got to bed, late even for me, and I have this really terrible habit of lying there as I’m drifting off to sleep, running through the day just past and looking for, you know, holes. There always are holes. And every time I hit a hole, of course, I trip, and wake up again. Sigh. Here follows a yesterday’s hole. I almost got out of bed again to post it and then I thought Go to sleep, McKinley, it’ll be freaking dawn in about half an hour. So I did. But I meant to get this up about twelve hours ago. . . .
Btw, update on the survey results - 19 people have, in the last 48 hours, indicated their enthusiastic wish to come to a London signing or publicity event. I’ve written to the Transworld email address myself and if others of the potential Londonites could do the same…(perhaps mentioning the positive cloud of book-buying friends and relations slavering to come along too) ?
Nineteen people are not, obviously, going to make balance-sheet logic for a signing (although you’re already sixteen and a half more readers than I believed I had in Britain) but I would have thought that nineteen emails would at least be annoying, and nineteen emails promising enormous extended families and friendship networks of people with vast disposable incomes, a mysterious, unslakeable desire for literary blood, and the habit of popping in to London to see if there are any authors signing books in town that day. . .might rouse a flicker of interest.
I’ve written to Merrilee, to see if she has any advice about bringing off this unlikely achievement we’re aiming at.