But SHADOWS is still still going*
I still feel like stagnant pond scum and the water in vases where the flowers have all died. I wrote something today when Maggie has a very large purring cat in her lap and she says that it makes her eyeballs buzz. Yeah. Only I’m like that just sitting here. **
The day did not begin well when I woke too early and lay there thinking about an intractable bit of plot machinery while my thriving young cough gleefully explored its rapidly expanding capacities. Eventually I decided there was more rustling*** going on than could be explained by my cough-driven blood pressure thudding in my ears, put on a dressing-gown, stumbled downstairs, let hellhounds out . . . and Chaos bolted out into the courtyard and began erupting in both directions. OH JOY. We’ve already been having hellhound follies the last few days which I haven’t told you about because they wind me up and I can’t afford to snap and run off into the blue, I have a novel to finish.† I do know what started this particular too-many-ringed circus: Darkness heard a monster at the cottage the other night while he was behaving in a reckless manner—which is to say eating—and isn’t going to make that mistake again any time soon. Chaos missed the monster†† and initially attempted to carry on with the eating . . . but you can’t just lie about eating when your brother and life partner is crammed into the back of the crate becoming one with the, um, darkness. You could see the Dawning Horror creeping over him, although Chaos isn’t so much a back of the crate hellhound as a floormat with large beseeching eyes hellhound. NOOOOOOO. NOT THE BOWL OF FOOD. NOOOOOOOOO. Anyway. Things have progressed. Not in a good way. Today we appear to have added reality to the mess.
As I was hosing down the hellhound courtyard there was one of those chirpy knocks on the door, you know the one: tap, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, tap, tap. GO AWAY. YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT I’M DOING. I answered the door.††† It was the postperson, who handed me a Large Wodge of Stuff. I staggered under the weight, being weak and infirm from coughing. Will you be here in half an hour? he said in a voice to match the knock on the door. I stared at him through puffy red-rimmed eyes, a large pile of post and a bad attitude. I couldn’t think of a way out of it. Yes, I said. Oh good, he said, I have some packets for you as well. EVERYTHING I HAVE ORDERED OR ANYONE HAS SENT ME IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS ARRIVED TODAY.‡
And then Raphael showed up‡‡ to (a) take the shiny new laptop away and make its possessed-by-evil battery spin 360° and spew green bile‡‡‡ so we can demand a new one and (b) tell frelling Outlook to stop playing silly buggers and function again. I mean, again Raphael told it. It giggles feebly while there’s an archangel in the house and instantly goes off the rails again as soon as he leaves.§ ARRRRGH.§§ Since I’m presently trapped at home with SHADOWS, two mentally- and digestively-challenged hellhounds and a cough, I’ve spent some time trying to sort out my dreadful email inboxes. I spent a good two hours doing this this morning while I was waiting hopefully for the fifth or sixth mug of tea to penetrate so I could get on with SHADOWS. And when we went back to the cottage this afternoon and I turned on the desktop—and the knapsack laptop just to doublecheck—NONE OF WHAT I’D DONE ON THE MEWS LAPTOP UPDATED.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM.§§§
* * *
* The end is actually in sight. It’s just nowhere near enough. I want to be able to see it without the assistance of the Hubble telescope.
** So maybe the ending is near enough. I just can’t make my eyes focus.
*** Nothing to do with brown paper.
Jabenami:
And, um, on the subject of bad physics jokes…
Heisenberg and Schrodinger are driving down the highway when they are pulled over by a police officer.
“Do you have any idea how fast you’re going?” the officer demands.
“No,” says Heisenberg, “but I know exactly where I am.”
“I’m going to need to take a look in your car,” says the officer and goes around to the back of the car.
“Did you know that you have a dead cat in your trunk?” the officer exclaims.
“Well NOW I do,” says Schrodinger.
And from xkcd, that incomparable fount of scientific wisdom:
And, while we’re at it:
Yeah. This is the kind of thing I think about at 5 a.m. when I can’t sleep and Mr Military Man is going to start crunching gravel soon. Does xkcd’s little brother write fantasy? Has his little brother recently started reading brain-exploding quantum physics which is having no discernable effect (he thinks) on his actual story-writing, but is making him feel like his own doppelganger?
† In twenty-three days. In case anyone else is counting.
†† We were having a typhoon.^ Wind, rain, banshees. The banshees have never bothered the hellhounds, but there is, I am assuming, a sub- or supra-banshee who has infiltrated the area recently, to the dismay of some sensitive hellhounds.
^ And I am so tired of resetting my phone machine, and the alien-invasion-klaxon back-up battery that protects the desktop from berserkers and boiling oil and is worse than the banshees. The typhoon went on for several days. I can go for weeks without getting any messages on my phone machine+ except from people like the dentist++ but over the three days of typhoon I think everybody I’ve ever met tried to phone me and have subsequently been variously waspish or petulant about my yet-again-un-re-set phone machine.+++
+ Probably because I never answer them
++ And I’m certainly not going to answer him. The nice young receptionist is leaving me increasingly forlorn-sounding reminders about my check-up however.~ Go away. I have a novel to finish. You don’t want me till I’ve finished my novel, and got paid. And I don’t want you at all, but . . .
~ There’s a special module in Dental Receptionist School about sounding forlorn.
+++ It’s not like I ever, you know, answer the phone.
http://www.quotegarden.com/telephones.html :
The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875. In other words, if you had been living in 1850, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25 years without having to answer the phone. Bill DeWitt, 1972
Middle age: When you’re sitting at home on Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you. Ogden Nash
The situation is made additionally complex in my case because the phone that works doesn’t ring. The phone that doesn’t work does ring, but it’s the one in my office which is to say next to my bedroom and I certainly don’t want it ringing at me at an unsuitable hour, like any time before noon. So I leave it unplugged. Why should I plug in a phone that doesn’t work? Which means I don’t hear phone calls. Every now and then I’ll hear some clicking and muttering noises but by the time I figure out it’s someone leaving a message, they’ve rung off, and I didn’t want to answer the phone anyway, did I? No. I’ll listen to the message later. If I remember. If the banshees don’t wipe it first.~
~ I have a perfectly good email address. It’s not like people can’t get hold of me. Of course I don’t always answer emails either, but I do read them.
††† I have to draw the line somewhere. I already don’t answer the phone.
‡ Okay, I don’t know that it’s everything. Everything I know to worry about the non-arrival of. I’m well aware that anything that doesn’t arrive at its destination by Christmas enters an interdimensional time warp that laughs at both Heisenberg and Schrodinger, and re-emerges at an undivinable wave/particle node which generally involves being gnawed by dragons during the detranslocation and is most often rendered as March. But some of today’s haul was ordered/sent in November.
‡‡ I backed up politely, explaining that I had the lurgy. So do I, said Raphael cheerfully. I’ve had it since the beginning of December. And through two courses of antibiotics.
Moan.
‡‡‡ All right, I’m a little obsessed with undesirable effluvia at the moment.
§ It hasn’t tried undesirable effluvia yet. Small mercies. Or no, medium-sized mercies at least.
§§ So, arguably, I don’t have a perfectly good email address.
§§§ Don’t do this when you have a sore throat and a cough.
Audience
Bronwen emailed me the end of last week that she was going to be in this area on Monday, and could she drop in? Sure, I emailed back. I have my voice lesson Monday afternoon, but we can go ringing with Colin in the evening, if you like. I can meet you at the cottage after my lesson, at 6:30 or so.
. . . I was hoping I might come to your lesson, she answered.
WHAT? ARE YOU FRELLING JOKING?
I was, in fact, so blitherblathered, nonplussed and gobsmacked by this insane and unexpected request that I couldn’t immediately think of what to say, other than NO. AND NEVER DARKEN MY DOOR AGAIN WHILE YOU’RE AT IT.* Since I’m fond of Bronwen I restrained this natural impulse and . . . emailed Nadia. Do you have a policy about people sitting in? I said. Do you . . . by any chance . . . FORBID it?**
This was happening last night at about two a.m.*** when I am perhaps not at my best anyway.† For some reason†† Nadia hadn’t answered by the time I crawled out of bed again (later) this morning . . . and meanwhile the hours were ticking by and Bronwen was climbing in her car and turning the key in the little hole††† and . . . and . . .
And when I went to warm up today with my piano at the mews I couldn’t sing at all. Here I had been comforting myself that at least yesterday’s indisposition (which has much lessened, thank you) had had nothing to do with my throat . . . and I still couldn’t sing. I was producing these nasty horrible thready little noises.‡ Ugggh.
Beginning to panic now I texted Nadia saying, perhaps you didn’t see my email (which I sent at about 3 a.m. and you’re probably feeding your kid her oatmeal before facing your first student of the day and haven’t checked your inbox) and thank the gods this time she answered, and in Best Professional Manner, that she did not have a policy about sitters-in and she did not object to teaching with an audience, but that she felt that unless this was a run up to an exam or a performance it was not helpful to the student and advised against. YAAAAAAY. I pretty well burnt my fingers racing to email Bronwen: NOOOOOOOOO.‡‡
Then we’d managed to get the lesson time crossgartered somehow so I was waiting‡‡‡ for half an hour before Nadia was ready for me which did not help my tension level any. § So when it was finally my turn I went in and, setting my knapsack down and removing my music as if I were an insufficiently tested beta model, squeaked that I had been ill yesterday and today I can’t sing at all. When I admitted upon questioning that it had been a Digestive Issue Nadia said, well, of course. The bottom half of your body isn’t speaking to the top half, so you’re not getting any of the support you need not to sound thin and reedy. Lie down on the floor and breathe.
So I lay down on the floor and breathed.§§
And, after that, the lesson went pretty well.§§§
At the end she said, your homework for the next fortnight is to go home and ENJOY singing all these songs you’ve been working so hard on. ENJOY. You know about ENJOY, right?
Oh. Kind of.
And then I came home# and finally met up with poor Bronwen. And we went ringing at Glaciation.## We came back to the mews for supper and then she knitted while I got on with SHADOWS. It’s very . . . shadowy. In a good way. I hope.
* * *
* And you can post that knitting book you borrowed back to me.
** Please. Please forbid it. Please.
*** Having spent an unhealthy amount of time bringing the jungle indoors again. No frost tonight. Yaaaaaaay.
† I’d also just found out that I’d been a thundering and inexcusable scoundrel to a harmless and inoffensive member of the human race and was reeling from the karmic backlash. This does not serve to focus the mind in a positive way.
†† I realise this will come as a shock to all of you, but not everyone lives by their email, their texts, their DMs, and their tweets. Fancy. And a substantial number of these non-virtual people have children still too young for email, texts, DMs, and Twitter. Very real, small children.
††† I spent SIXTY ONE QUID filling Wolfgang’s petrol tank today. SIXTY. ONE. QUID. Strongest argument for internet shopping that I know. The next time I fall afoul of one of these barking and berserk sites that demand four passwords that add up to the square root of 19^ and then tell you that according to numerology your birthday declares you to be an axe murderer and/or a bad financial risk and therefore they are rejecting you and the credit card you rode in on . . . I will whisper to myself ‘sixty one quid’ and persevere.
^ 4.358898943540674 http://www.math.com/students/calculators/source/square-root.htm
‡ It’s all relative. Nastier, horribler, threadier. And definitely littler, which in the circumstances is just as well.
‡‡ Under most ordinary conditions I have no problem saying No, and please fall in a large mud puddle on your way out.^ But I know that I am a neurotic wet^^ about singing and performing, and—I also understand being interested in the process. What happens in a voice lesson with a good teacher is just interesting, and never mind if the student sounds like a hamster someone just sat on.^^^ I ought to want to spread the voice-lesson joy around. Well, I do. Just not in a way that involves someone having to listen to me sing.
^ And may you be wearing drycleanable-only.
^^ Possibly a neurotic muddy. And my ego absolutely needs the delicate cycle.
^^^ Shrill and flat.
‡‡‡ Knitting. I’m producing a very nice series of hellhound squares in varying textures of knit and purl. This activity is interspersed with ripping out the first half-dozen rows of leg warmer again.
§ Possibly the small-child-amusing CD of small-child songs Stella was listening to in a rapt and pensive manner had something to do with this. When someone is trying to lisp breathlessly and, as you knit, wait for your voice lesson and try not to think about the half a page of SHADOWS you could have got through in this half hour, you are thinking (testily) that they are probably getting paid for the noise they’re making, and here you are paying for the privilege of trying to sound less like this.
Okay, I have never lisped. And I’m only breathless when I forget, uh, to breathe. Still.
§§ Her mother came in with a cup of tea for her while this was going on. Don’t worry, said Nadia, she’s used to my students lying on the floor.
§§§ I was probably just really grateful that it was only the two of us.^
^ And the cat.
# Muttering about sixty-one quid
## Where I was pretty much a disaster on all fronts SIIIIIIIGH. I haven’t really got enough brain for a voice lesson and a tower practise in the same day. Especially when there’s a little matter of a novel to finish in six weeks.
Bells, with stomachache
Today has been a stomachache, punctuated by way too many bells. And—when I’m feeling this rough—there are also too many hellhounds. Importunate they all are. Bong! Bark!* I fell out of bed this morning aware that all was not well in the nether regions but assuming (vigorously**) it wasn’t serious. Absorbed my first megadram of caffeine. Registered that strange green fog hovering over hellhound crate was a jungle.*** Oh. Eeep. Further register that it’s cold out there.† Extra reasons for objecting to getting up this early.†† Six woolly jumpers and two pairs of long johns. These prove useful when the Black Knight at the Ford leaps out from behind a geranium and demands my sword or my life. Don’t be daft, I say. This is my kitchen. There aren’t any rivers, with or without fords, in a kitchen.
There aren’t jungles in kitchens either, says the Black Knight, pressing the unpleasantly sharp end of his long pointy sword against my breastbone, which is protected only by six woolly jumpers, which are nonetheless better than nothing. Now, are you going to fight me or am I going to run you through for a lily-livered coward?
I’m going to set my fierce, slavering hellhounds on you, I say.
Hellhounds? says the Black Knight, blanching. Oh, all right, have it your way. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice little set-to? It would wake you right up. Much better than caffeine.
Not today, thanks, I say. But feel free to stop round for a cup of tea some time.
. . . I was a minute or two late to the tower, but the other three of us were still standing shivering in front of the electric fire so that was all right. We did eventually have six pairs of hands, but . . . it’s the week before Christmas, we have three service rings today, it would be nice to have a bit more than the skeleton crew.
After Ring #1 I went home and viewed the jungle.††† Now beginneth the Great Windowsill Wedge. How many leafy green pots of the cold-allergic can I winter over with the least amount of extra nonsense?‡ After about the six hundred and forty-third, however, which I hung in a sling dependent from a curtain rail, ‡‡ I had to lie down for a bit, and when I got up again to attend to hellhound obligations, somehow or other . . . the jungle sitting on top of the hellhound crate was just as thick and impenetrable as before.
Sigh.
So we hurtled, and then hellhounds had lunch and I did not, and then I stared at SHADOWS for a while and thought about late-mid-life career changes‡‡‡. Then I went to ring the carol service at Old Eden. Can’t you beg off? said Peter (and various friends by email). No, I said. We’ll be lucky if we have six ringers for the six bells. In the event we had five to begin with, and I pleaded to be let off ringing up, and allowed to stick to the treble.§ I left afterward without finding out if the mince pies were going to be offered to the bell ringers.§§
Then it was to do all over again at New Arcadia. Five ringers for eight bells—eventually a sixth. But no seventh and no eighth. Can I ring a touch of Plain Bob Doubles while fading rapidly into the Shadowwraiths’ realm?§§§ Afterward I tottered back to the cottage and brought back in again everything I hadn’t managed to fit on windowsills earlier. Plus several things I’d remembered too late last night and fossicked around for today . . . which do seem mysteriously still alive. And got rid of a few more indoor slugs.
Finally re-hurtled (relatively) patient hellhounds at about 7:30 . . . and it’s already ice underfoot. Crunch crunch crunch iiiieeeeeeeee.
Have risked supper.# I should go home early, before the roads get too exciting. But . . . maybe . . . I’ll . . . just . . . lie . . . on . . . the . . . sofa . . . for . . . a . . . bit . . . first.
* * *
* I’m not sure I’ve ever recognised how similar bells and hellhounds really are. Indecipherable minds of their own. Mostly silent and quiescent but alarming when roused. Needs yanking. Needs regular yanking or grows cranky and morose. Weighs more than you think when hits the end of the lead. Unpredictably unbiddable—except you can more or less prophesy that they’ll be at their worst if anyone you want to make a good impression on is present. Hates cold weather. Medical bills expensive. Not interested in food.^
I rarely take bells to lie on the sofa with me however.
^ Although in fact I have a hellhound beleaguering me at this moment. Darkness is having a little holiday from not eating.
We haven’t eaten since yesterday, he says.
You’ve eaten twice since yesterday, I reply. Once at about 2 a.m. and lunch.
Yesterday, he says. You’re always moaning about how bad your memory is. Lunch was yesterday.+ And furthermore, you’re eating chicken. You can’t expect me to not eat since yesterday gracefully when you’re eating chicken.
+ Hellhound time. Okay, I wonder if we can cross it with Mandelbrot sets to get that thirty-six hour day?
** This would be the last time all day I have been vigorous.
*** Full of wildlife. We won’t get into the slugs-in-the-kitchen situation, my stomachache is enough reality for one day . . . AAAAAAAUGH. EXTRA PROTEIN JUST DISCOVERED IN MY BROCCOLI.^ Sodding flangdangling organic. If this stuff were sprayed with Toxic Planet Death I wouldn’t have these problems.
^ This is actually when it happened. I am not juggling to make a better story.
† So at least the indoor aspect of the jungle was worthwhile.
†† Although when hellhounds finally got their first hurtle at about noon the footpaths were still frozen. Crunch crunch crunch crunch.
††† And the slugs. And the Biggest Caterpillar in the Universe which is busy eating the geraniums in the sitting room ARRRRGH. I found one Nearly the Biggest Caterpillar about a week ago and was hoping that was the end. But no. And the crap it’s leaving is about the size of ball-bearings at this point. Why can’t I SEE it?? I’ve started having uneasy thoughts about those trompe d’oeil pictures where (for example) the hero is looking around for the dragon and is standing in the dragon’s mouth.
‡ How much of it is still alive? How much of it is planning on staying alive? How many Caterpillars that Ate Brooklyn and Are Eyeing Up Birmingham are lurking among the foliage? After all, there was a Black Knight. And his sword. And his horse. Oh, didn’t I mention the horse?
‡‡ Note to self: prop curtain rails. There are now four hundred and twelve plant pots dangling from them, variously attached.
‡‡‡ I fancy something simple and straightforward this time. Experimental physicist.^ Formula-one driver. Nursery-school teacher.
^ I’d be rubbish at the theoretical.
§ This didn’t work, of course. I was bumped off the treble—oh, you’ll be fine on the two, said Niall—as soon as our only-rings-treble sixth ringer appeared for a quick pull between passing around the mince pies downstairs. This is one of those testing-your-auto-pilot moments. Can you ring a touch of Grandsire doubles when your stomach feels like the Black Knight did run you through with his sword?^
It was worse when we—even more briefly—had a seventh ringer. Wonderful, I said, I can sit out. Oh, Robin, said Niall. Would you please stand with Monty? —GODS. I’d rather frelling ring than mind someone.^^
Speaking of Niall . . . three service rings did rein him in a little, but he still said to me as we were leaving Old Eden, with forty-five minutes till ringing for the carol service at New Arcadia: We’ve only got forty-five minutes. We could teach Monty to ring handbells. . . .
Does Monty want to learn to ring handbells? I said, grasping at straws.
I haven’t the least idea, said Niall.
Whereupon I ran for Wolfgang.
^ Today? Yes. Tomorrow? I hope to be recovered tomorrow. I would rather go wrong and have no excuse than stay right and have this excuse.
^^ Nobody died.
§§ But see previous footnote.
§§§ Yes. But I wouldn’t want to count on it.
# Have fed hellhounds. They ate.
Eight days till Christmas
I’ve just been ordering Christmas presents for me on Peter’s credit card. Mwa hahahahahahaha.
Well, he asked. He says, I don’t have enough Christmas presents for you. Gee that’s really too bad, I say, trying not to slaver too openly. I’m sure (I add hastily) what you have is fine. [Crosses fingers behind back.] * Do you have any suggestions? he says, politely averting his eyes from both the drool and the crossed fingers. Um . . . well, I say, trying to sound bashful, there’s that fabulous new book on ROSES that you found the review for, that I keep not quite committing to buying for myself**, and you know maybe an extreme book of scary origami?***
Do it, he says. My wallet is in my leather jacket.† And then he ambles gently over to the sofa and lies down for a nap.
The power. The power.††
Christmas. Great big feh.††† I’ve spent most of the day‡ hacking my way through excruciatingly slow web sites overburdened with other frantic people doing last-minute Christmas shopping. My memory, not one of my strong points at the best of times, managed to let me down disastrously in a couple of instances—most of the last-minute sites let you order up till Monday but I’d managed to forget that one or two in my mind’s eye aren’t last-minute sites. ‘Five to seven working days’ does not ravish me with joy, ‘five to ten working days’ makes me whimper and ‘out of stock, we will contact you when available’ makes me fling myself on the floor in a transport of I don’t know what, but it looks interesting to the hellhounds.
Meanwhile all these gorblimey physicists going on about the impossibility of everything. How about if they whiffle some of those infinitely complex non-boundaries of the Mandelbrot set into/out of time? I’m sure the answer to the thirty-six hour day is tucked away in there somewhere, if they’d settle down and apply themselves. There’s a Nobel Prize in it for sure. Come on, guys! Function!
* * *
* I’ve tried the ‘if you have an overwhelming desire to help me pay for the new laptop please don’t restrain yourself’^ but he says, no, no, you need something to open. Aw gee. He’s always been like this—for someone who has to overcome deep-rooted repugnance at the very idea of receiving a gift^^, he has a very romantic notion about giving them. And furthermore, he says, with a gleam in his eye, you need something that will look good on the blog.
Hmm. Okay, he has a point.
^ And he did help with the iPad. Although that was before I realised PEG II was an evil fiend from hell/second book in a tr*l*gy and that I wasn’t going to turn it in last August and was therefore about to run out of money instead.+
+ This means that the old laptop will lurch on almost failing for at least another year. If I hadn’t bought the new laptop it would have blown up in a toxic cloud of sticky purple smoke last week, melting the William Morris oilcloth, leaving a very nasty mark on the table, and causing me to run away to sea.~ Yes, this is still the old laptop. I don’t have time to learn a new frelling operating system.
~ I don’t think they take fifty-nine-year-old women as able-bodied sailors, do they? Well that’s out then.
^^ He was unusually well-mannered yesterday.+ I don’t think he ran out of the room even once. And he seems quite pleased with his phone.
+ The big problem with visitors is the absence of leftovers. Like, a glass of soothing champagne tonight.
** I’ve now spent easily its list price in maths and physics books. But then I didn’t already have umpty-gazillion books on maths and physics.
*** No, I have at least twelve thumbs. I also have a slight problem about empty flat surfaces to practise folding on.^ But maths and physics are not enough! Origami is also important in SHADOWS and I need to know something about it too, before I Schrodinger’s-cat^^ it all up for the story! Why couldn’t I write about something easy, like vampires or dragons?
^ Now even worse than usual. I spent most of an hour I didn’t have this evening bringing the jungle indoors. But we’re apparently supposed to have several degrees of frost tonight and . . . I, er, folded. I have lost remarkably little so far and I see all those gallant geraniums pressing themselves against the warm house-wall and shivering and I feel like a murderer. One of the curious aspects of going back to the cottage at, oh, 3 a.m. or so is that you probably know by then if you’re having a frost or not. Ahem. The mews courtyard freezes at least two degrees sooner than I do at the cottage so if I have to claw Wolfgang free of the clutches of the Ice Giants it doesn’t necessarily mean that those faint popping noises you hear are geraniums giving up the ghost back at the cottage. We’ve had two or three frosty nights thus far when I’ve gritted my teeth and gone to bed anyway^^^ but last night caught me out. I didn’t think it was going to freeze and then it did, and pretty smartly too. The geraniums are definitely looking a little crumbly around the edges. ARRRRRGH. So when I went back to the cottage on the second hurtle with crisp-weather-enlivened hellhounds and it was already only about two degrees off freezing I . . . brought everything I could find in the dark . . . indoors. And the best thing about this? The BEST? That my kitchen—and I hope it will only be my kitchen—will be full of revitalised slugs tomorrow morning which were hibernating and believe that spring has come early. . . .
^^ http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+tote_bag,137590655 Hee hee hee hee.
^^^ I don’t have TIIIIIIIIME. Listen, all of you, at approximately 9:30 GMT tomorrow morning, I want any of you who happen to be awake to face in a Hampshire-ward direction and shout, YOU DON’T HAVE TIIIIIIIIME, because that’s when Niall, as we pull our coats on and prepare to descend the ladder after service ring, will tackle me (again) on the subject of handbells with Titus tomorrow evening.
† Last year’s Christmas present, you know.^
^ Last year? Two years ago? I’m too old to be bothered to make fine distinctions between mere years.
†† Sigh. Yes, he does read the blog.
††† I don’t have time for Christmas. And I have to get the frelling Christmas stuff down from my attic at Third House this year. It’s been at the mews before this, so I’ve been able to flounce and sulk at Peter for not hotfooting to accomplish this. Not only do I not get to flounce and sulk at someone else, I have to frelling do something.
‡ Barring bringing the jungle indoors
Peter’s birthday
Fortunately the food was good. Also the company. And Peter liked his presents. He’s polite that way.
I had a typical Lying Awake Worrying About Unscheduled Plot Developments* night/morning last night/this morning so when the alarm went off I took the pillow over my head away** long enough to shout YOU MUST BE JOKING! and turn it off again, and woke up again at nearly noon to the sound of the postperson banging on the front door. EEEEEAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGH. He might be bringing Christmas presents.*** I’m getting pretty good at making a single† fluid dive for both dressing gown and front door keys on my way downstairs.
Yes. Christmas presents. And strange look from postperson, but I’m used to that.
Then followed long and bitter argument with my wardrobe. I may have referred previously to the fact that I like clothes and that while the omnipresence of mud and hellhound hair does constrain me in certain directions I am not going to allow it to turn me into an indeterminate-colour-listless-baggy-sweatshirt woman. At the same time, I am also lazy†† and one epic battle a day is sufficient. Today was Peter’s birthday and I wanted a party frock equivalent that I could put on now and wear through till evening.
Feh.
You know the ‘This is the TOTAL GARMENT! It does anything! It goes anywhere! You can wear it as a dress or over jeans! You can impress the stockholders or—er—hurtle hellhounds!’ advertising line. Like hell you can. In the first place, if you’re going to wear it over jeans you probably need it in a bigger size. This was one of my catalogue sale specials and I did order a bigger size, since there is no way I am ever going to wear this, you know, seriously, but . . . well, it would fit great if it were a dress, I was twenty years younger, and knew how to sashay. But it’s purple and it has great silly flowers blasting all over one shoulder. So there began a long wrangle about how to make the wretched thing drape properly. I was going to wear it. I had decided I was going to wear it. I was in a mood to wear it.†††
You're just going to have to guess about the dress part.
At about this point I remembered I hadn’t wrapped the presents yet. And hellhounds were prostrating themselves all over the floor in attitudes of despair and manifest neglect. ARRRRRRGH.
So, anyway. Moving right along. Presents.
There are several books involved. As well as ginger chocolate.
Great minds think alike. This is from one of his kids.
The big rectangular sunflower one is a new mobile phone. It’s the same size as the standard non-iPhone-style credit-card or undernourished After-Eight mint mini mobile, which is what Peter has now because he doesn’t want anything that calls attention to itself‡ . . . except that this new one flips open and is twice the size of an undernourished After-Eight mint. The point is that it was advertised as having big buttons!!!!, and while they aren’t anything like as big as they looked in the catalogue and/or on line‡‡, still, they’re better than twice as big as the ones Peter has been refusing to learn to use. ‡‡‡ Er . . . how do we set it up? said Peter. We ask Georgiana and Saxon when they get here, I said firmly.
Then the food . . .§
Four salmon and dill blini, triple roasted with heavenly sauce duck legs, and trimmings
You noticed the CHOCOLATE TART? I don't want you to have missed the CHOCOLATE TART.
That's a very nice bottle of claret. Peter likes claret. AND A HALF BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE TO BEGIN. Because he's married to me.
Unfortunately Georgiana and Saxon, techno wizards that they are, had left again§§ by the time I found out I couldn’t turn the TV on. GAAAAAAH. I mean, it turns on, but it doesn’t do anything else. I’m trying to remember when I last asked it to do anything but hold up our matching set of Mythopoeic Society lions. Months. Generally speaking, evenings, I’m working. Or singing. Or even . . . reading. I don’t think I’ve engaged the TV in an active manner since we had our cable pulled out because we never watch TV any more. Which was months ago. Peter, who used to watch cricket, snooker, and American football§§§ occasionally, seems to have forgotten it exists. Siiiiiigh. Birthday parties. They’re bad for you. If the food had been less great I wouldn’t have been lying on the sofa in a stupor, trying to watch TV. The hellhounds were very happy however. Although I’m pretty sure they will consider this a precedent, and tomorrow after dinner. . . .
* * *
* I haven’t got time for unexpected plot developments! It’s due in six weeks! It’s really simple! Mongo saves the universe! The End!
** Although Mr Early Riser Man with the crunchy gravel and the three-foot-wide tyres one narrow cul-de-sac width^ from my bedroom window seems to have got himself reassigned to some office that starts later.
^ And I mean narrow. We have a little memorial cairn at the top of the hill to all the drivers who drove up here by mistake and didn’t get out alive.
*** Love the proliferation of web sites saying, order by 11:59 pm 24 December and we’ll get it to you by Christmas! —Although we recommend you plan to open said presents rather late in the day, our enchanted reindeer do get tired. . . .
† One might almost say parabolic.
†† And always running late.
††† I was in a mood all right.
‡ Like by ringing. I understand this.
‡‡ I think they have another line in women’s party frocks.
‡‡‡ The cottage and Pooka are speed-dialed into his phone book. What else does he need?
§ Niall said to me yesterday, I owe you a thank-you. You do? I said, trying frantically to remember if I might have agreed to any superfluous bell ringing that hadn’t got into my diary.^ Yes, he said. You told Penelope about that caterer you liked, and we had our anniversary dinner at home the other evening. It was really excellent. Oh good, I said, trying to slow my heart rate and unplug the adrenaline booster.
^ I don’t have TIIIIIIIIIIME.
§§ An admirably working new mobile phone sparkling in their wake. They also added their mobile numbers to Peter’s phone book.
§§§ No, I have no idea why I married him