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Redux, various
I WANT MY WOLFGANG. WAAAAAAH.
The good news is that Peter got out of Scotland about thirty seconds before they closed the border.* He came home this afternoon and instantly began reorganising my life.** This included ringing up the garage which, to my amazement, seems to think we can have Wolfgang back tomorrow morning. Fourteen year old cars and MOT tests are not usually a happy merger and I’ve been bracing myself for the conversation about the new car again.*** Even if we manage to limbo under the government bar however and get our sticker I imagine there will be a little list.†
Meanwhile today would be the day that I started to get out of bed and the ME sighed and stretched luxuriously and said, are you sure that’s what you want to do? Oh. Frell. You again. Well, yes, I do want to get up. I have hellhounds to hurtle and a piano lesson this afternoon and bell tower practise this evening.†† And no car.
I know we did this trooping up and down main street thing during the snow, but I’m not in the mood when I’m trying to hold it together with the ME riding me like a bulldogger with spurs. I am also reminded of how forcefully I object to walking anywhere without the hellhounds in attendance—two hours a day of hurtling is enough of the shanks’ mare option. Hey! It’s ten minutes to walk to Oisin’s from the cottage and back . . . having been back and forth to the mews to pick up my music and have a bit of a go at the piano.
Anyone who is paying the wrong kind of attention will have ascertained by now that I’m not posting the lullaby to PEGASUS this Friday either. I finally managed to get the freller printed off so that Oisin could actually see what he was playing . . . and he made several Small But Excellent suggestions††† that I now want to incorporate and I still have to relearn how to make dynamic markings on dranglefabbing Finale and then I will finally post it here. No, really. It exists.‡ It even sounds reasonably lullaby-ish. In fact I like it well enough that I’m going to ask Peter if he wants to write another verse so I can compose some variations.
I felt fairly dire while I was with Oisin although as I said to him I was expecting to feel suddenly a great deal better as soon as I left and any danger of my having to sing was past till next week. Sigh. I sometimes think I got into composing as a way not to have to perform.‡‡
I had already had an email exchange with Niall about tomorrow‡‡‡ and had warned him that I was feeling like something that ought to be pickled in formaldehyde in a jar on a mad scientist’s shelf but that I’d probably just about make it to tower practise, since we’re usually short handed these days and I ought to be able to manage rounds and call changes for our beginners. And then we had a funny band—three beginners and six hot bananas.§ And me. I was helping hold up one of the walls in a semi-comatose state while one of the beginners wrestled with ringing rounds on four, five and six §§ bells and then Niall made one of his passes round the room as a good ringing master will do and when he got to me he said, Are you ready to ring Cambridge?
Am I frelling what? No I am frelling not frelling ready to frelling ring frelling Cambridge. Am I clear?
Okay, said Niall. You can have a few minutes to look at the line.
Ah, adrenaline. What would I do without it. You know that’s one of the working definitions of ME? Exhausted adrenals? Yes. Well. At this point—Niall having passed on to fresh victims—I could feel my eyeballs throbbing to my suddenly heightened blood pressure. So I got out my diagram book and began staring at Cambridge while it went all glmxxxxxx on the page. Anthea came over to be supportive—two of our hot bananas tonight were Colin and his wife Anthea, who is one of my favourite people. You look at her face and you know It’s Going to Be All Right. Possibly Even When It Includes Ringing Cambridge. She is also a completely brilliant minder, which is a significant gift. Just because you can ring something doesn’t mean you can boost somebody else through it—especially boost them in a way that they learn something rather than merely collapsing into blindly doing what they’re told, which is probably more demoralising than breaking down. Anthea got me through my first couple of goes at Kent and it’s a lot of thanks to her that it began making sense to me as soon as it did.
I really did think that Cambridge was a bridge too far however. You don’t ring your first surprise method after a couple of sudden unexpected ten-minute cramming sessions because your ringing master(s) is/are wholly effing mad and your adrenals aren’t quite exhausted. Roger on the five was complaining that he didn’t feel like ringing Cambridge tonight and I said, don’t worry, this won’t last long, and Colin on the three, next to me on the two said, oh, yes it will.
And it did. We got through an entire plain course of Cambridge. I do wish to emphasize that this is absolutely due to Anthea’s crack minding . . . but I’ve been here before, learning something with Anthea at my elbow. We got through it. And I knew what I was trying to do even when I wasn’t seeing the bells to do it with.
I can do this. I am going to learn Cambridge.
Maybe I’ll even sing for Oisin next Friday.§§
* * *
*Joke. But apparently it’s pretty vicious up there. Our lot still have electricity and can feel their way through the snowdrifts, but a lot of people don’t and can’t. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/7325843/Wintry-weather-sweeps-Scotland.html
And then of course there’s New York. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=119564§ionid=3510203
And I was complaining earlier about being pummelled by a little hail. I’m such a wuss. But look what came in the post for me today from Hannah (in NYC):
I’m trying. Clearly my solar capacity isn’t quite up to 3500 miles.
(Yes. That’s what you think it is, underneath, on the table. I’ll give you a better view one of these days. I know, you can hardly wait.)
The thing that amuses me even more about this item however is the tag: 
Post consumer material???
** It’s shocking how much disorganization can creep up on you in a mere day and a half.
*** No. But I admit if we have two winters in a row like this one, this time next year I will be thinking hard about a new four-wheel drive car. With waterproof locks.
† Frushipergug rods and bistamudze belt need replacing. Gradundabble connections should be tightened. The whimmerwhammer needs realigning. And while you’re at it you need a new engine, four new tyres, and a CD player.
†† And a novel to write.
††† I asked him if he wanted credit and he said no, no, no, just keep writing the stuff.
‡ So do the little flute piece I promised Jodi and the truly tiny violin piece I promised violinknitter. I’m just . . . a horrible coward. And I keep thinking I want to twiddle them a little more. . . .
‡‡ I wonder if it would work with Blondel. . . . I am such a hopeless case. I’m afraid to sing for Oisin, and I’m afraid to take one of my songs to Blondel. What do I think is going to happen? The end of the world?
‡‡‡ The other reason the ME was kind enough to come back today, aside from not singing for Oisin, is being able to say no I am not going handbell ringing Saturday morning. Although . . . sigh. I would like to ring with Titus and Rupert.
§ So to speak.
§§ One of the reasons ringing seems, when you’re first learning, to be coming at you from all directions is that the eenie weenie difference in timing and rhythm between, say, four and six bells, which when you’re learning to handle you have no sense of, makes a drastic practical difference in keeping your place.
§§§ Or take one of my songs in to Blondel. Maybe I could get him to sing the lullaby.
Guest post (mostly) by Jeanne Marie
My First Fruitcakes
B-Twin’s post on her luscious wedding fruitcakes, and some of the subsequent forum remarks on wedding cakes* in particular and fruitcakes in general, took me back to my first year living in Memphis, Tennessee. It was my first year living on my own post-college, and I was big into fancy experimental cooking. In that vein, I decided around August that I wanted to make some fancy brandied fruitcakes for the coming Christmas.**
I looked up a few recipes for fruitcakes, and found several options. I particularly wanted one that needed to soak in liquor and “age,” and at last decided on one that I thought would be a good choice. But, I was not a fan of lots of candied fruits, so I decided to sub out ALL the candied fruits the recipe included for simple dried fruits. I made twelve mini-loaf cakes, which baked up like little bricks. I wasn’t worried, though, the recipe had warned that they’d bake up very hard, but would moisten up over a few months with some brandy. I followed the recipe specifications, wrapping them in cloth and then pouring on “some” brandy (I think the recipe called for a few tablespoons, but I was feeling generous), and left them in the bottom of my fridge in ziploc bags. I checked them periodically, and usually when I checked them, I’d add more brandy. Over the months between August baking and Christmas, I added an entire fifth of brandy to those twelve mini-loaves!***
Finally, the first of many Christmas parties arrived – the faculty afternoon luncheon party for the elementary school where I was working as the music teacher! I took two of the loaves with me. At the time, I noticed that they were rather redolent of brandy, but mentally shrugged, and figured that they were supposed to be that way. When the time for the Christmas luncheon arrived, I ate a smallish piece of my fruitcake and was OVERWHLEMED by just how potent my little fruitcakes were! YIKES, I started worrying about breathing too close to the festive candles on the table! I myself was only able to handle a very small piece – I’m a bit of a light-weight in terms of liquor capacity – but, two other teachers in particular, a second grade teacher and a fifth grade teacher, were VERY happy that I had brought the “brandycakes”… and, they were even happier after dividing the cakes between them!! Both were decidedly flushed and wobbly when they headed back to their respective classrooms!!
I’ve wondered – if I had stuck with the candied fruit, would the cakes have been quite so potent? Did the dried fruit simply suck up way more brandy than candied fruit would have? Or, did I just overkill on adding way more brandy than any poor fruitcake needed? I’ve never tried to experiment with fruitcakes again, but at least those two teachers remember me fondly…if they remember that luncheon at all, that is!!
* * *
*HOLY CATS, I’m gonna NEED one of those!! gulp ^
^ Yes you are
**::cue ominous music::
***you see it coming, don’t you…
* * *
The hellgoddess continues:
Since Jeanne Marie has been so CARELESS as to lose this legendary fruitcake recipe and since of course reading about fruitcakes, with this audience, is going to lead to a lot of jonesing for fruitcakes†, I thought I’d offer one of mine. I seem to have quite a few. We had this conversation on the forum—most of us don’t like the candied-fruit-stuck-together-with-superglue style of fruitcake, but quite a few of us like the dried-fruit, brown-sugar-and-spices kind. I will spare you the defense of good candied fruit—the problem with maraschino cherries isn’t the maraschino, it’s the red food dye—and go (almost) straight to a dried-fruits-with booze recipe. I may post some of the others at a later date.†† The only way I like bourbon is in a pecan cake, for example.†††
And with reference to the conversation on the forum about fruitcakes for weddings, with several Americans saying they’ve never heard of such a thing and me saying er um, I’d have said at least half the American weddings I’ve attended had fruitcake under the white enamel and the plastic figures . . . my FANNY FARMER (copyright 1965) contains a ‘wedding fruitcake’ which is described as ‘the traditional dark rich fruit cake’, and even the alternative sponge cake (‘Bride’s cake’) is assumed to have a fruitcake top layer. Furthermore in my eternal quest to waste more time dorking around on the internet, I discover that good old bartleby.com has the 1918 FF on line and their ‘cake’ section is loaded with fruitcakes including not one but two ‘wedding cakes’ which are in fact fruitcakes. http://www.bartleby.com/87/0031.html (the wedding cakes are almost last, and don’t bother with the ‘search’, which is a baleful fraud and will keep trying to dump you in amazon).
Meanwhile.
I had been experimenting with mini fruitcakes for years before Judy Rosenberg’s Rosie’s Chocolate Packed Jam Filled Butter Rich No Holds Barred Cookie Book came out‡. I’ve got two sets of mini bread pans, half size and quarter size, and two or three little loaves of different varieties, wrapped up with different coloured ribbons around each of them, makes a very nice present for a whole lot less effort than making millions of frelling cookies.‡‡ Rosie took it a step farther and made her mini fruitcakes in muffin tins, which is also pretty brilliant, and that hadn’t occurred to me.
It was even more annoying when her recipe turned out to be a lot like mine—it amazes me how many drunken fruitcake recipes don’t tell you to soak your fruit in the booze first for example. She however dilutes hers with water. Bleh—and she likes pecans and almonds. The following recipe is enough like her mini fruitcakes you might think I started there but I didn’t. Great minds think alike in this case.
2 c assorted dried fruit (black and golden raisins, cranberries, blueberries, apricots, cherries, dates, whatever). The big stuff you want to chop to be about raisin/berry sized.
1 c chopped nuts: almonds, pecans and/or hazelnuts
1 c rum or brandy
1 c white all-purpose flour
½ c wholemeal/wholewheat/spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp mace
12 T (1 ½ c) lightly salted soft butter
1 c dark brown sugar
1 tsp (GOOD QUALITY) vanilla extract or ½ tsp orange essence (NOT ‘flavouring’)
1 T grated lemon or orange zest (if you’re using orange essence, I usually use more zest too)
2 large eggs at room temperature
Put the dried fruit in a shallow bowl and pour the rum or brandy over them. Put a plate over the bowl and leave for at least 48 hours and up to about a week. If your bowl isn’t shallow enough that all the fruit is in contact with the booze, stir occasionally.
Preheat oven to 350°F, and grease well your two-loaves-of-bread equivalent pans: so four half-sized loaf tins, eight quarter-sized loaf tins, or approximately 24 muffin cups. (If you’re using muffin cups . . . use paper liners. Life is short.)
Sift the dry stuff together.
Cream butter and sugar thoroughly. Add zest and vanilla or essence, and cream again. Add eggs. BEAT THOROUGHLY. Drain the fruit and add any liquid (not the fruit yet!), if there is any, to the batter. Mix.
Add the flour mixture. Stir in well. Now add the fruit and nuts. Stir again. This is the moment you may have to use your judgement. Flour varies, as does how much liquid there is left after the fruit has been soaking in it. You may need to add a little liquid–orange juice, apple juice or water–or a little flour.
Pour into your pans: depending on the size of the pan your baking time is anywhere from about 20-25 minutes (muffin tins) to about an hour and a quarter (9 x 5 inch normal bread pans). When the middles puff up and start looking solid, stick a toothpick in. When the toothpick comes out dry, etc.
Let cool in the pans half an hour or so. An hour won’t hurt. But don’t try to get them out too soon, they’ll be too fragile. (They would be less fragile if you used less butter. But . . . why would you want to use less butter?)
These don’t need to ripen, although you can turn them into little leglessness bombs if you want to (in theory the baking will have removed all the alcohol) by wrapping them in cheesecloth and dripping a little further rum on them—in which case keep them wrapped up in plastic or tin foil in your refrigerator, like Jeanne Marie did with hers, till wanted. I did this once and . . . wheeeeee. Don’t use an entire fifth, okay? (They’ll probably fall apart if you do, and then you’ll have leglessness bomb pudding.)
And I feel that, when it’s time to eat it, the true perfect drunken fruitcake should also have frosting. Frosting that goes something like: 1 c confectioner’s/icing sugar, 2T butter, cream together till smooth, and then add enough rum/brandy (2-3 T) to make it spreadable. Go for it.
* * *
† B_twin has promised a fruitcake recipe, but at the moment she’s deep in the Australian bush somewhere—with no internet connection—becoming further educated in some arcane Australian-bush skill, so she cannot be applied to in this extremity.
†† I keep meaning to post more recipes like I keep meaning to post some favourite poems (other people’s poems) and I was going to start posting book reports/reviews again this year and it’s the middle of February already and . . .
††† If I’m going to get seriously wasted in some manner that does not involve champagne, it’s going to be single malt Scotch, probably Laphroaig.
‡ Which is the follow up to Rosie’s All Butter Fresh Cream Sugar Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book. If there’s a third one, I don’t want to know.
‡‡ She says feelingly. But I’ve made millions and millions of frelling cookies too. Home made food is the answer when you have too many friends and no money.
In which learning is not a curve
It’s a zigzag, a squiggle, a wriggle, a looping of the loop (and a biting of one’s own tail).
Last Wednesday—last Wednesday week, not two days ago—I told you I managed to call a really vicious ratbag of a pattern of call changes, thank you Wild Robert, thank you very much—I mean I succeeded in calling it. And at Sunday service I got through (and on no sleep) a touch of Grandsire triples ringing inside which was a bit like winning the Grand Prix formula one in my 14-year-old VW Golf.
Monday I made a mess of calling a much simpler course of call changes at Old Eden, as well as just generally ringing like a neurologically damaged axolotl.* This Wednesday at Ditherington we had a somewhat challenging band in that there were only five of us and only Wild Robert knew what he was doing. But he rises to occasions like this and at the end of an evening of call changes and plain courses in which I got to pretend to be a jaded old veteran who had seen it all, Wild Robert turned on me with a gleam in his eye and said, and now, Robin, you can call a touch of Grandsire doubles. —MEEP. You’re joking . . . you’re not joking.
And guess what? I did it**. I withdrew from my wounded axolotl aspect and reinhabited my half knows what she’s doing some of the time aspect. This is not a reliable transformation. It was especially impressive in this case because we had beginners on both the treble and the tenor who tended to wander rather. Even Wild Robert—who had been busy with the treble and the tenor and ringing two bells himself and therefore perforce left me to my own devices—was surprised.*** Have you done this before? he said to me. No.
I then made the ghastly mistake of mentioning my triumph to Niall and Colin last night during handbells—this partly because I had confessed to Colin a few weeks ago that this Deputy Ringing Master thing was unhinging my sense of self-preservation and that I had decided that I had to learn to call something, and he’d said in his jolly chirp-chirp manner, which is a great deal more appealing than Niall’s evil mwa ha ha ha ha manner, that there were a couple of dead easy touches that I could absolutely learn. Unfortunately Niall was there too, when I was telling Colin, and Niall said, predictably, mwa ha ha ha ha, you can call Grandsire tomorrow at New Arcadia practise.
And I did. I braced myself when I saw Niall coming and I did it. I called my little touch again.† Which begins to suggest that it—this tiny simple-minded touch—will become something I can, in fact, do.†† Notch on the butt of my gold-handled cane. If I had a gold-handled cane. I would, however, like to get to the point of not trembling so hard I can barely tie my rope up at the end, after I’ve said ‘stand’ and the bells fall silent.
Of course—back to the learning zigzag again—I then made an unlovely glurdge of ringing Grandsire triples inside . . . sigh . . . but I had help. Someone who shouldn’t be making glurdges made a glurdge, and I’m still only barely holding my line when everyone else is perfect. The joke came when I went humbly round to Edward, who had been calling it, while Niall was torturing one of our beginners, and asked if Edward would tell me what he’d been calling so I could at least figure out what I should have been doing.
I then made the really awful mistake of asking Edward how he kept track of a long touch and he started telling me. Numbers! Aaaaaugh! Numbers! The problem with these bell ringer chappies is that they loove their bell ringing so much that they can’t stop, even when their audience clearly wants to run away and hide . . . why are you looking at me like that?
* * *
* With a little help from the bells. I tell myself this is good both for my handling—a Truly Useful Ringer Can Ring Any Bell Accurately—and for my character. It’s good to fail. It keeps you humble. It also keeps you awake at night obsessively replaying being a dork in your mind’s eye.
** I’ve been trying to decide if I want to risk your sanity, not to mention your patience, by trying to explain what calling a touch means. Um. You’ve got it that method ringing involves patterns, right? You start out ringing rounds, which is the bells in order from lightest (treble) to heaviest (tenor), 1 2 3 4 5 6 (or however many: if you’re ringing doubles, you’re ringing a pattern involving five bells with the tenor always ringing last: every bell must ring once before any bell can ring again). Then the conductor yells Go [name of method]!, and the next ‘row’ of six bells will have begun swapping places, so—for the beginning of Grandsire for example—the three stays in third place for one more ‘blow’ before moving toward the front, seconds place, then lead, while the treble moves from second place to third place and the second bell spends two blows in lead before following the treble toward the back. These patterns are set. You learn them as such. Grandsire ALWAYS begins as I’ve just described, and each bell proceeds in a prescribed order through the series of swaps and zigzags (speaking of zigzags) which is that method’s individual hallmark. And yes, if you are not good at patterns or at Things That Involve Numbers, learning your first change-ringing patterns will crush your brain like a bug.
But this was not enough for those pesky method creators (who clearly were good at patterns and Things That Involve Numbers). They invented a further-mixing-up-the-bells system which is called a touch. A plain course is just the basic pattern where all the bells run through all the pieces of ‘work’ till they each get back to the point in the pattern where each individually started. A touch is when the conductor shouts Bob!, or Single!, before they get there, the purpose of which is to mix the bells up further and prevent them from coming back into ‘rounds’ as soon as they would in a plain course. Depending on where you are in the pattern, and whether a bob or a single is called, what you do next varies: but in the course of learning to ring a method, you have to learn this too, so you can ring a touch of the thing, whatever it is. Only sissies stop at plain courses.
However only total frelling madpersons ever take it a step further to conducting. The sad sweating conductor has to know when and what to call and where that then leaves everybody because said sad sweating conductor has to get them out of wherever that is again so that the band eventually do come back into rounds and can stop. Or be ringing forever like a kind of campanological Flying Dutchman^. . . .
I never wanted to be a conductor. I have had no aspirations whatsoever to being a conductor. And then they made me frelling Deputy Ringing Master. And suddenly . . . cheez. I’m scary when I’m aroused. Lock up your sharp objects.
^ This is actually mathematical nonsense. There’s a limited number of mixes you can make out of only five items, in this case bells. But there are a lot of other rules involved in change ringing. Which you will be delighted to hear I am not going to get into. Not tonight anyway.
*** I probably shouldn’t try to explain why I could do it, should I? It’s okay, if you have a headache you can skip this bit.
I’ve told you that in a plain course all the inside bells do all the bits of ‘work’ that comprise the pattern, following each other in what’s known as coursing order. As soon as you start throwing calls into the muddle, all kinds of untoward things can happen, including that one bell or another can get stuck doing the same piece of work over and over. The particular touch Wild Robert taught me involves the bell you-the-conductor is on cycling through only two pieces of work . . . and every time you get to the second one again you call. Then you just have to remember (a) whether you’re calling a bob or a single (b) what you called last time which helps with (a) and (c) how many times you’ve called either of the above so you know when you’re about to get back to rounds and can escape.
The reason I could do it is because the pattern is: single bob bob, single bob bob, and you don’t really need to use numbers. You can get away with: one thing. The other thing. The other thing again which means the first thing next time. Then the other thing and the other thing again and then it’s over. See? No numbers. I’ve broken down a lot of my (ahem) method ringing into these sub-number bits which is a lot of how I’ve contrived to learn change ringing at all. And yes, you could call it binary if you were feeling deeply unkind, but I wish you wouldn’t.
† But see previous footnote. I can do it for very specific reasons of not having to count anything. This does not pertain to conducting generally.
†† Vicky, who doesn’t go for the mwa ha ha ha ha thing much, said crisply, well done. And, somewhat dryly, added: We need more people who can call in this band. —Vicky doesn’t do disingenuous either, or I might accuse her of it. You can pretty much assume that barring St Paul’s and York Minster, all change ringing bands need more people who can call. Change ringing itself is awful enough. Conducting change ringing means you’re probably a danger to society. I’m sure MI5 keeps files on it.
Pink etc
I told you I’d show you my floral extravaganza again after I messed with it a little.*
Pink.
And just in case you think I’ve put all the pink in front to make an impressive photo, this is what it looks like from the other side. 
Meanwhile . . . it’s snowing. It’s not snowing like it’s snowing in Virginia, for which I am deeply thankful, but it’s still snowing. I’ve decided I want a conservatory. Once I finish recovering** from putting the weight-bearing floor in Third House’s attic I’m going to knock down the sitting-room wall into the garden and start putting up quadruple-glazed glass walls and solar baseboard heaters. I might put French doors in the main bedroom and have a sort of full-length bay window on that side too. And then I can fill it/them with tea and china roses and sasanqua camellias and orchids and greenhouse carnations and hippeastrums and freesias and maddenii rhododendrons . . . and chocolate cosmos and begonias and osteospermums and geraniums year round, and I don’t know what all else because I don’t have a conservatory and therefore try to avoid knowing too much about what I can’t grow.
And have I told you about the sedum roof? Yes. I also want to slap a green roof on Third House, which, unlike the cottage, has a nice gentle slope so the poor sedums won’t have to hold on with their fingernails. I’m not looking forward to getting planning permission*** for this but maybe by the time I get to that point† planted-up roofs will be commonplace and the government will be giving us eco-promoting grants to do it. A girl can dream.
Meanwhile I need to be grinding on with PEG II so I can finish recovering from putting the backlist-bearing floor in and begin saving up for the conservatory. And then Marechal Niel†† and I will sit with our feet up in the warm at Third House and admire the snow drifts.†††
* * *
* The kitchen magnet, which on my screen at least you can’t quite read unless you already know what it says, declares: They lied. Hard work has killed lots of people. It could have been a lot worse, given my collection of kitchen magnets.^ I tend not to remember to check for stuff like what’s behind something when I take pictures indoors, and this can be a dreadful mistake.^^
^ One tiny benefit to losing the old house and living in a cottage so small that everyone but the occasional urban flat-dweller suffers extreme claustrophobia upon stepping over the threshold+ is that I have felt free to get out my old collection of crass and insolent kitchen magnets and indeed to augment it. In the old house I used to worry about the grandchildren. Who are mostly by now too old to be disturbed by kitchen magnets, but they’re still all so polite.
+ Books not only furnish a room, they crowd you right out of it. Sometimes several rooms. Sometimes all the rooms in the house.= I was very amused when Diane in MN posted in the forum about lining hallways with bookshelves, and how well this works . . . till you run out of hallways. Yes.
= Okay, the bathroom only has books on the windowsill. Well, almost only.
^^ Some of the biggest cobwebs in England live in my cottage. This is a combination of deplorable housekeeping and a slight soft spot for spiders. I don’t want them on me, you understand, but a nice small tactful English spider that stays quietly in its corner will probably be left alone to get on with it. However any spider showing artistic initiative such as manifestations of ‘radiant’, ‘terrific’, or ‘some hellhound’ in web-weaving is totally welcome forever, and if it would like teeny weeny beakers of champagne or slivers of chocolate these will be provided.
** You’re all buying multiple copies of PEGASUS, yes?
*** Both Third House and the cottage are in a Conservation Area which means you need planning permission to prune your rosebushes—careful, you and your secateurs are altering the amenity level of the neighbourhood—and gods help you if you want to change the colour of your house. Which in fact I do. But not this year. I can’t face the paperwork. And Third House has this whacking monster Leylandii which is so frelling tall the army helicopters trip on it when they buzz overhead and I looooong to have the ugly thing down—and my neighbours are longing right along with me—but the Tree Removal Form is forty thousand pages long and looking at it makes me lose the will to live.
† After everyone has bought multiple copies of PEG II.
†† http://www.classicroses.co.uk/roses/m/marechal_niel.html We had one at the old house and while she was in a relatively sheltered position I don’t think her essential hardiness was the problem so much as her habit of trying to produce her first flush of big fat buds early enough to catch the last frelling late frost of a bad year. And unlike, say, Agnes, who is another early one, if she gets frosted, she sulks. Agnes heaves a deep sigh and starts growing a fresh lot of buds. But then Agnes is a rugosa and rugosas are tough. You have to be firm with your rugosas. Undisciplined rugosas eat unwary small children and absent-minded gardeners and are probably John Wyndham’s original source for triffids. I love rugosas. Just by the way. I have Agnes at the cottage. She’s doing really well. It’s a good thing I don’t get many visitors. With her and Souvenir and the three Mmes and a few others I have perhaps not introduced you to yet, it’s dangerous out there.
††† There are of course other problems with indoor gardening. One of the reasons the floors don’t get hoovered very often at the cottage^ is because I’m busy moving all the plants off the windowsills to clean the encrusted plant sludge off the window glass and the painted surfaces. Did you know that dark red geranium petals will stain your white woodwork? Gaah. And I want an entire conservatory? Well. Yes. I am insane. This is not news.
And you know those pretty little hyacinth vases? You put your bulb in the top and just add water? How about the fact that once the flower spike grows your hyacinth will plunge top-heavily over the side?
Creative use of large pile of magazines.
Creative use of Kleenex box. This bulb was a freller to begin with since it insisted on growing leaves at both ends.
^ aside from melting vacuum cleaners
More about bells (sorry . . . )
It has been way too exciting a day for a woman on no sleep. Well, not very much sleep. I went to bed at an acceptable Saturday-night-before-Sunday-morning-service-ring hour but . . . I have all these books on my bed. I get into bed and . . . and there are all these books. And they look at me. And they make little friendly murmuring noises. Last night I got involved in a quest for a remedy for an old homeopathic client* and this is research I love and that I don’t do as much of as I would like** and the . . . uh . . . hours fly by and . . . uh.***
So when the alarm went off something less than five hours after I turned the light off I was . . . not happy. Fell downstairs groaning and tipped about half a pound of strong black Indian tea into my teapot. Found clothes. Put them on.† Glug down tea strong enough to make my hair stand on end. Hellhounds, by the way, haven’t stirred. Why do you get up at this lunatic hour every seventh day? they say. Close the door after you quietly, okay?
Ran down hill and pelted along pavement in my usual Sunday-morning-and-I’m-late manner, praying that there are only five of us and one of them’s Cordelia.†† Aaugh. I’m the fifth and Leo and Cordelia haven’t arrived yet. And then it gets worse because Edward and Alex show up after Leo and Cordelia. Which means the crucial eight method ringers. Grandsire Triples! shouts Niall jubilantly.
Leo sprints for the tenor. Penelope sprints for the treble.
Which leaves me ringing inside.
Obviously I wouldn’t be setting you up like this if it had all been a big ugly smash. Anybody who has learnt—especially painfully, talent-free-ly learnt—a demanding skill which requires sinew-popping on both the physical and the mental levels, knows the way the process goes in jerks, lurches and gridlock. I’m just coming out of a gridlock period—partly caused by PEGASUS, partly caused by not having enough of the right people showing up for practise, partly caused by incurable native stupidity†††. A week ago I didn’t know I was coming out; a fortnight ago I made a mess of Grandsire doubles which I ought to be able to ring in my frelling sleep‡ and the following Wednesday practise it took most of the evening for me to start getting it back again. Anguish. Despair. Last Wednesday week tiddlywinks was looking like a really good alternative obsession.‡‡
And then this Wednesday . . . I’ve told you that I’d already decided I ought to learn to call call changes, but I’ve been sort of nursing this secretly and not getting out anywhere that anyone might make me try. And then this grisly business about Deputy Ringing Master happened and as DRM I really should be able to call something. Which has meant that I haven’t been struggling very hard when Wild Robert decided a few weeks back that he was going to teach me to call call changes.‡‡‡ This past Wednesday—when I almost didn’t go because PEGASUS was due the next day, but I decided that if I didn’t go ringing I’d probably just run away, and a useful thing about bell practise is that I have an entrenched habit of coming home afterward—Wild Robert gave me this NIGHTMARISHLY complicated pattern to call.§ And to my wholly dumfounded astonishment I did. I did it kind of slowly§§ . . . but I did it. What? I did what? Which also meant that I went home in an absurdly, a ridiculously good mood§§§ and this probably made my final few diabolical hours on PEGASUS much more efficacious and productive than they would otherwise have been.
And then Friday I rang Kent. And today . . . I rang a touch of Grandsire Triples inside. For Sunday service. I have to say that having a go with someone who’s rung exactly one rather shaky proper touch inside for Sunday service is pretty daft#, and I needed quite a lot of nodding, winking and shouting from other band members . . . but really it was not too bad. And ringing Grandsire Triples is one of my biggest, thumpingest ringing goals. Yes, I want to ring Kent because the next step is my first ‘surprise’ method and surprise is the seriously upper-level stuff and I’ve got this far frell and dranglefab it, so, yeah, I want to ring surprise, sue me. Grandsire Triples is a little different—Grandsire Triples is New Arcadia’s default method—when we’ve got the band. If I can ring Grandsire Triples inside it’s like I’m a real New Arcadia ringer. I get the secret handshake and the funny hat. I’ve been wrestling with this idea that I’m a real ringer for a while now—just being able to ring plain bob doubles, Grandsire doubles and bob minor reasonably reliably would make me popular in, I think, the majority of bell towers, and Stedman doubles is a bonus. But then six bells—which mean doubles and minor methods—are the commonest number of bells in English/British towers too. New Arcadia has eight bells—which mean triples and major methods. There are great frelling alpine ranges of eight bell methods, but I don’t care. If I can ring Grandsire Triples I say I’ve arrived.
Next week, you know, I’ll get tangled up in my rope and find myself hanging upside from the ceiling. . . .
* * *
* Who won’t go away. Go away! I say periodically. Go to a real homeopath! No, she says. Keep reading your weird books.
** There is nothing, of the things that I like doing, that I do enough of. It’s all a sliding scale of exasperation.
*** I did find a remedy however. You’re always looking for the ultimate cure and . . . well, the journals seem to be full of ‘cured cases’ but that doesn’t seem to be the sort of person-who-won’t-go-away that I attract. I attract the ones that month to month you think ARRRRRGH but then you look back several years—or they look back several years when you’re trying to make them go away—and you realise that they’re in fact a good deal better off than they were x years ago. Good. That’s what you want. But . . . Sigh.
† Okay, wait. This goes over the head. And this is a sleeve. And these are my jeans. I know they’re my jeans because of all the stuff in the pockets. Some of which will fall out as I put them on.
†† Cordelia can only ring call changes, and if there are only five of us we’ll want all of us ringing. Which means no brain-jangling methods.
††† No I’m not stupid stupid, but I am stupid about most of the basic knacks and aptitudes that make learning to ring feasible. I keep telling you I have a genius for obstinacy.
‡ Ie on Sunday mornings
‡‡ Except that tiddlywinks is also hard. Sigh.
‡‡‡ Not that struggling would do any good, so I might as well go quietly.
§ No, I’m not cruel and/or deranged enough to try and explain it to you. But I will add in a small, humble voice that it would not be nightmarishly difficult either for someone who knows how to call call changes or for someone with those basic knacks and aptitudes referred to above.
§§ A good crisp conductor snapping out commands will get you through in about two minutes. It took me . . . about ten.
§§§ There is this to be said for learning something you are constitutionally very very badly equipped to learn—when you succeed it feels like being number one on the New York Times best seller list. Not that I would know.
# That would be Niall. And I know if I say anything to him about my triumphant touch of Grandsire Triples he’ll look at me blankly for a minute, say something along the lines of ‘of course you can ring Grandsire Triples inside it’s JUST LIKE Grandsire doubles only with two more bells etc, etc’ and then he’ll say, ‘but have you memorized the first lead of Cambridge for handbells on Thursday?’
