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Life with the Apocalypse
The problem with going to bed with a small pink hellhound* is that you lay her down on her shelf next to your glasses, you turn the light off, you roll over and snuggle down in your pillows, and all in the same motion you continue rolling till you’re facing the frelling shelf again and utterly without motive force or direction your hand reaches out, plucks her small pinkness neatly out from under your glasses and—because by this time your other arm is free too—you flick the nice pink case open and push the slider over and . . . you’re in business. All while your Higher Self and your Superego are yelling, No! No! No! No! It’s already past mmph o’clock because you were reading in the bath again and you have to get up tomorrow** before Niall and Colin show up for handbells*** because you have a novel to write!† Meanwhile my Lower Self and my Underego are arguing about whether we’re going to play a game or cruise the web†† . . . The situation is aggravated by the fact that not only is Apocalypse’s††† screen beautifully lit, of course, but most of the default settings of itty-itty-bitty are more easily read without glasses than with. I’m already blowing up enemy aliens‡ before my responsible adult synapses have had a chance to marshal their arguments. Have you noticed the way your flighty, impetuous side keeps the response times of a six-year-old while the sober, conscientious side that earns your living and puts chicken in the mouths of your hellhounds gets all elderly and creaky as the years pass?‡‡
The iPhone. Whose idea was an iPhone? Okay, where do I start? With Raphael and Gabriel. My own Computer Men.‡‡‡ I’m going to have to downgrade them to demons again.§ It all really began several months ago with that half hour on Raphael’s mere paltry iPhone3 and Angry Birds.§§ And while I didn’t get around to buying my own Angry Birds till after not only Fingerzilla but the Chambers Dictionary and Thesaurus and the Oxford Medical Dictionary, I nonetheless did buy it§§§. And I sailed through the first four or five levels of the first set and then started . . . slowing . . . down, because the truth is I’m an old retro fogey and all this hand-eye coordination stuff is kind of beyond me. I stuck on level ten for about three days, and then last night, HURRAH!, I did it! I flattened the sucker! Pigs and timbers everywhere! Yaaaay! . . .
And I still got level failed!! What do you mean, level failed, you . . . contraption? FAILED? If that was a failure, I’m a . . . well, angry robin is perhaps a phrase that oozes to mind. . . . So, having scorned Raphael’s suggestion a few days ago that I CHEAT and google angry birds walkthroughs, tonight, when I find myself mysteriously clutching Apocalypse after I’ve turned the light out and taken my glasses off, I’m going to zap on google and . . .
* * *
* Aside from making the original hellhounds JEALOUS, but fortunately they don’t recognise Apocalypse as a member of their clan. They haven’t heard her bark yet however.
** Er—today
*** At 5 pm. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Wait a minute, aren’t authors supposed to keep strange hours? Raphael rang me at nine thirty yesterday morning. Nine thirty! What does he think I am, a butcher, a baker of cinnamon rolls As Big As Your Head, a candlestick maker? No, but I am a bell ringer, and I have considered just staying up through service ring on Sunday morning and going to bed after. But that would make Sundays when we ring again in the afternoon somewhat challenging. And it would probably confuse the hellhounds.
† And hellhounds to hurtle. I’m trying to decide which would shorten my life faster: ignoring hellhounds or ignoring Story in Progress. There would probably be a tiny inverse pop^ and hellhounds, SinP and I would all disappear, and a microscopic sucking void would materialise, if materialise is quite the word I mean . . . and it would all become very Lovecraftian, or possibly Ripley’s Believe It or Not.^^
^ Sort of a . . . opo
^^ Did anyone else have the crap scared out of them by Ripley’s, passed around the playground at recess or the park after school? When I was a kid they were both in the Sunday papers and in horrible cheesy nightmare-inducing paperback books. When you’re nine years old your grasp of what constitutes ‘scientific method’ and/or ‘reliable witness’ may be a little wobbly. Fairy tales already gave me the whimwhams because they contributed too much range and detail to the things you knew lived under the bed and in the closet+, but at least you could tell yourself they were fiction.++ But Ripley’s was science fact!! It said so! And Ripley’s monsters were notoriously resistant to the standard repertoire of garlic, silver, buckets of water, etc. People disappeared a lot in Ripley’s too.
+ It occurs to me this may be where my habit of keeping the spaces under furniture tightly wedged with All Stars and boxes of books originated. Monsters, like the rest of us, prefer to be comfortable. Any sensible monster would look elsewhere than under any of my furniture. And I’ve already told you about the lack of closets in English houses.
++ Even if the best ones were hundreds or thousands of years old, and retold and retold and retold all that time, and where there’s smoke there’s fire. And yes, when I was nine, I still believed in monsters. I’d wised up to Santa Claus when I was four, and I never did believe in the tooth fairy, although money is always good. But monsters: I totally believed in monsters. Sigh. Life is not fair.
†† Or check frelling Twitter. Why did I load Twitter? GEEZUM. I can spend hours clicking through to other accounts, seeing who other people are following, checking out their web sites, reading excerpts, reading blogs, lengthening my wish lists for the next time I just happen to be on a book-selling site, and generally wasting time—while feeling as if I’m expanding my professional knowledge and savoir faire. It’s totally the 140-character limit that makes it so dangerous. You can skim forever, and . . .
††† AKA Pooka. Sometimes screaming APOCALYPSE, while it has an excellent way of clearing the road before you of superfluous dweebs bumbling about their unnecessary business, is just too many syllables. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pooka http://www.irelandseye.com/paddy3/preview2.htm , http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pooka
I prefer the benign but mischievous version myself, and something that might at any moment turn itself into a prancing steed of course is very popular with me.
‡ Earth Defender. Not really satisfactory. I bought it because the customer reviews all said it was too easy, and I thought, Great! That’s for me! Unfortunately it is too easy. And if I just want to blow stuff up, well, Fingerzilla is my shining paragon. Although . . . I think I posted here that I’d bought an add-on that was going to give me six new levels and new stuff to blow up. So last night—having tortured myself for a couple of abstemious days with pleasurable anticipation—I barged (Roar! Stomp! Crunch!) through the (apparent) hooking up of the six new levels, with various headlines witnessing my success appearing between games and urging me on to ever greater feats of destruction and depravity and . . . I got to the end, was congratulated for being a monster of monsters^ and . . . nothing has changed. No new stuff to blow up. No new cities. It’s enough to make a genocidal leviathan cry. I suppose I will have to email the proprietors and ask them what they’re doing with my 59p.
^ Ripley’s hasn’t contacted me yet. I can’t imagine why.
‡‡ Wasn’t I just saying something about unfair?
‡‡‡ It’s not like I bought her from them! Noooooo! They ensorcelled me from pure disinterested wickedness!
I am proud to say that I am passing the contagion on however. Fiona showed up this week with her apocalypse, I mean iPhone4, named Tilly, for PesTILential Device. Fiona, however, says she had to give up Fingerzilla because it was giving her repetitive strain injury. Oops.
What she needs is to take up bell ringing to strengthen her hands.
§ Exposing an innocent to the iTunes store alone is worth a Dantean circle or two. GAAH.
§§ http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=angry-birds
§§§ Also the Screetch, Earth Defend, Plants vs. Zombies, and Osmos. If you’re counting.
New and Old Toys
Well, it’s all about the iPhone. Oh, and handbells.
Let me see. Where was I? I’ve tweeted and/or forummed* some of this. About twelve hours after Gabriel retired from the field in defeat on Tuesday, I happened to glance down** and saw . . . that my latest small enigmatic black box was registering a phone signal. And, since then, it has—mostly—continued to fly a few tiny bars in the upper left-hand corner. It’s worst indoors, but that’s what landlines were created for, right? To back up your mobile? I managed to ring Peter this morning, waiting for it to cut out the minute he picked up, but—it didn’t. And the speaker-phone option works surprisingly well. Okay, I was surprised. But if I’m not expected to clamp it to my skull so I can listen to my brains frying, I might actually, you know, use it, like, as a phone.***
Raphael and Gabriel did come back yesterday and negotiate with management for better working conditions.† I didn’t want to know the details. But I did demand that they try loading a 2-CD opera before they left me to girn and greet alone.†† So we tried Gluck’s Orfeo, which was the vanguard last time that alerted us to the Walkperson’s treachery. And it . . . promptly loaded three discs of a two disc opera. Which is at least an interesting new approach.††† AAAAAAAUGH.
So let’s talk about handbells for a minute.
Some of you may recall that a fortnight ago I inadvertently stood up poor Titus—and not-so-poor, ratbag, advantage-taking Niall, when I’d thought that Colin was coming to ring handbells, which would mean there were still three of them before I got there. Only Colin wasn’t, so my absence meant that nobody was ringing anything till I finally arrived.‡ Whereupon I was overcome by guilt and shame and Niall immediately whipped out his diary and forced me, in my shocked and weakened state, to agree to ring handbells with one of his Demon Handbell Friends, who happens to live in Frellingham, which is too far away, as I keep saying, when I have said no thanks to repeated applications on the subject.
So last night was the night. And while we had not discussed it I was not entirely surprised when, in the car on our way over, Niall said brightly, okay, we’ll ring a quarter peal first, and then you can get some practise in on other stuff.
A quarter. Of course. Of course we were going to ring a quarter.
And . . . we did. The Demon Handbell Friend—let’s call him James—is actually one of these extremely nice, easy-going, laid-back ringers who just happens to be able to ring anything.‡‡ And while I won’t say I exactly relaxed and enjoyed it,‡‡‡ I will admit that it was a very pretty noise, which isn’t usually the case when Niall and Colin and I are hacking away together: Niall’s a good handbeller, but Colin and I outnumber him. Last night the good ringers outnumbered me. And the truly awful thing is that the experience has made me rather wistful about, oh, learning bob major§ or something. Which would mean coming to one of Niall’s other handbell practises. . . .
No, no, no, no. I have a novel to write and an iPhone to fill up with apps.
* * *
* So, what do you think? Does forummed have one ‘m’ or two? I vote for two, because then Microsoft’s dranglefabbing autocorrect doesn’t change it to ‘formed’.
** Probably from my hunched and heavy-breathing posture over the iTunes Store. Good Golly Miss Molly, a kid in a candy shop doesn’t begin to suggest the instant oversatiation and crazy-mad craving which assaults the new iPhone owner when entering the unhallowed portals of the iTunes Store for the first time. Or even the second or third. Or fourth.^ And we’re not even talking all the other stuff, the you-need-never-do-anything-again-but-keep-your-incredibly-battery-hungry-iPhone-topped-up-who-needs-to-eat stuff. We’re only talking apps. And the big problem with apps is that far too many of them are far too cheap, which provides you no useful barrier against which to brace yourself against the storm-tide of desire.
It all started with Fingerzilla, of course. If I ever go for the digital Olympics, Fingerzilla is my honey. I’m even getting better at the helicopters. I—or possibly Cathy—told you that I was particularly taken by the fact that the little people, when you eat them, scream. Some of them have labels. Some of them are just little tiny people and they run away and you stomp after them, roaring.^^ But sometimes you get a teeny pop-up banner: lawyer, it says. Or banker. Or tax collector. Or stockbroker. I would go for one that says irresponsible dog owner. Or queue barger. Or voter for prop 8. Roarrrrr.
But one can’t stop there.^^^ And Raphael had kept me quiet for a good half an hour months ago, before Peter got ill or the RaspBerry started misbehaving, with a lunatic exercise called Angry Birds.+ This is the dumbest thing I ever saw, I said, eyes riveted to the screen and finger stretching the virtual elastic on the next autodestruct bird-bomb yet again. This is so dumb. It even has dumb sound effects.
I downloaded it right after Fingerzilla. Or rather Gabriel did it for me, because at that point we were still in the early screaming++ stage of iPhone integration. But he was trying to be, I don’t know, adult or something+++, and only downloaded the lite version. It only has three levels!! I had to go back and download the full rich massive 59p version myself later.~
Okay, now, somebody tell me why there are never any instructions~~ to any of these games? We’re all telepathic now? Or maybe everybody but me already has that usb slot in the backs of their necks? Take The Screetch, for example, which is very pretty and rather hypnotic in a Tetris-on-hallucinogens sort of way. And if you read the info page in the iTunes shop carefully, you will learn that you’re supposed to line up three swirly spheres of the same colour and they will explode, and if you explode enough of them you win, and go on to the next level. But . . . but . . . or am I looking for logic where there is none? Shut up, McKinley. Turn on, tune in and drop some spheres.
^ You know I’m strangely short of sleep. . . .
^^ The roars are almost as good as the screams. The roars could be louder though. Hey, this is Fingerzilla, crusher of continents.
^^^ No, really. It’s in the fine print. Read your contract.
+ Raphael said, my two-year-old loves it.
++ Speaking of screaming. I needed to play Fingerzilla.
+++ He really should know me better by now.
~ There’s a cheat app for Angry Birds. In fact there are several. Dear gods. Now I’m getting frightened. Hey, guys, it’s a game.
~~ Except for Plants vs. Zombies. There is a truly excellent ‘help’ screen which reads in its entirety: When the Zombies show up, just sit there and don’t do anything. You win the game when the Zombies get to your houze. –This help section brought to you by the Zombies.
*** Except I hate phones. Okay, scratch that idea.
† One of management’s apparent requirements is WiFi. Sigh. I’ve kept putting off getting the cottage wired, because I sleep there. All those wandering waves are implicated in ME. But it’s increasingly the case that there’s so much of it around that you’re swimming in it anyway—it’s like I wonder how much my initial savage acute phase of ME was aggravated by the fact that at the old house we were surrounded by agrochemicalled farmers’ fields. So having prospectively yielded to the inevitable, last night back at the cottage I turned on the iPhone’s WiFi search . . . and was offered a choice of five networks. Soon it will be six. But I’m going to have a password on mine.
†† The Walkperson not only declined to load more than one CD of any given opera—we tried three, just in case it was a production glitch—without merely overwriting what went before, I also later discovered that it was harbouring nine copies of Beethoven’s ninth symphony.
††† It was, for reasons which escaped all of us, objecting to Che Faro, which is the famous aria that every mezzo-soprano in the universe sings, even me. It decided that this aria was just so special it should have a disc all of its own.
It did, however, agree to load all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies.^
^Well, I think. I admit I haven’t tried playing any of them back yet. . . .
‡ I don’t know why nobody seems to ring minimus—four bells—on handbells. But apparently nobody does.
‡‡ They’re a different species. Homo campana. I’m sure I have more genes in common with chimpanzees.
‡‡‡ You enjoyed that, didn’t you, Niall said firmly, on the way home in the car. Erm, I said. And any of you out there keeping track, yes, Thursday is our usual handbell evening and yes, we rang handbells tonight too. I think I’m probably chiming gently when I move. No, wait, that’s the iPhone.
§ Which is roughly speaking the same pattern as bob minor, but on eight bells. Which means some extra twiddles.
Same bat time, same bat station*
I have bats. No, really. In fact I have a lot of bats. Stop that laughing.** These are real bats. Pipistrelles, in fact: the common pipistrelle, which is also the commonest bat species in the UK; but all bats are protected, and you’re not allowed to disturb a roost. Not that I want to. Eat bugs! Eat more bugs! Bats are my friends! Yesssssss!
There are about a million and a half links for info about pipistrelles*** but here are a couple to get you started. I admit that the opening screen of the first one is not exactly reassuring, but they’re tiny and furry and they eat millions of bugs so never mind about the teeth, and I persist in finding them cute. Which is a good thing, as it turns out.
http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/bats/britishbats/batpages/commonpipi.htm
http://www.arkive.org/pipistrelle-bats/pipistrellus-pipistrellus-and-pipistrellus-pygmaeus/
My bat odyssey began about three weeks ago. I was out in the garden at oh . . . ten o’clock or so. In the evening, I mean. It was an evening Peter was playing bridge and I was not bell ringing and it wasn’t dark yet†, so I was still out there. I don’t know why I happened to look up—well, I like watching flying things swoop around†† and something must have caught my eye. I looked up. There were several of them, whatever they were, darting and swooping. My eye was drawn to where they seemed to be coming from . . . which was a corner of my house. As I stood there another one shot out from under the eaves. And another one. And another one. Eeep.
I assumed they had to be swifts or house martins or similar because they were so noisy. I did think of bats because they were emerging at dusk, but anything that likes bugs might very well come out for a cruise at twilight—and, as I say, they were noisy. Bats are silent, right? Their echolocation pings are out of range unless you have very good hearing, and I haven’t had very good hearing in a couple of decades.††† I stood there getting a crick in my neck and watched them blip into existence, one after another after another after another after . . . little dark winged bodies materialising in the dusk and then zinging off in all directions, whoop zap. I counted about thirty after I started counting, and there’d probably been a dozen or so before that. Golly. Whatever they are, they like it here. They’ve brought all their sisters and cousins and aunts. And however many came pouring out, the mad chittering under the eaves didn’t seem to be getting any less.
I went indoors thoughtfully (rubbing my stiff neck). Next day I went up into the attic and stood in the corner where the things had come from the night before . . .and I could hear them chittering away like anything—I’m glad I sleep a floor down and on the other side of the house—but I could see no traces of them inside (whew).
I told Penelope about them the next time I saw her, because she’s very good on natural history, and her first reaction to the chittering was the same as mine—us old folks can’t hear bats. It must be some kind of bird. But she agreed to come round one evening the following week and watch the exodus. I took her up into the attic first‡ and she listened to the chittering—so far as I can tell they sit around up there and talk all day—and said, Mammal. That’s definitely a mammal noise.
We then retired to sit‡‡ in the garden and wait for the air show. First one popped out and Penelope said, bat. Yup. Bat. You have bats. This time of year it’ll be a nursery roost: mums with babies. And the next day she sent me the contact info for the Hampshire Bat Group [sic].
This time of year official bat group members are out every night counting bats. My local pair had trouble fitting me in. But they said they could come round tonight, at about 9 pm. And I said that I probably wouldn’t get home till about 9:20‡‡‡ but I’d leave the greenhouse door open and they could come through into the garden for the bat spectacle.
I got home to find two wired-up people in my back garden, staring up at my roof, listening to their radio gizmos on headphones, and clicking their counters furiously as my bats dove out of their hideaway and into the bug-laden air. Go bats! Eat! Eat! Click click click clickclickclick click click . . . Blimey, said the man. Turns out there’s a second exit round the corner in the peak of the roof, so he was getting more bat-clicks than his wife. They told me my tenants are the common pipistrelles, but while they’re not endangered, all bat populations have been dropping, which I knew, and the woman said that by percentages the pipistrelles have dropped more drastically than some—which I did not know—so it’s always good to see them thriving somewhere.
Okay. Are you ready for this?
Final count: 410. I have four hundred and ten teeny-weeny pipistrelle bats living between my roof and my attic ceiling.§ And maybe a few more, since any late babies may not be flying yet.
They said that this is the biggest mum-and-baby roost they’ve seen, and that it’s a sign of the good health of the environment—well, I don’t spray, so all the bugs they’re eating in my garden are finest kind, and I use eco-green stuff indoors, so there are no noxious fumes in my attic either.
I don’t just have bats. I have serious bats. Beam.
* * *
* And no, actually, I am not a huge wet nostalgic fan of the old Adam West TV show. As far as I’m concerned it came out at exactly the wrong time with the result that my life was made a misery for several years by teenage boys saying, Hey, Robin, where’s Batman?, and then laughing like drains.
Although my then-boyfriend did convert me to comic books when The Dark Knight Returns came out in 1986. Ah, yes, the 80s, when I finally got round to having my adolescence. I was way too weird and serious when I was a teenager. Aggravated, possibly, by a lot of teenage boys shouting HEY ROBIN, WHERE’S BATMAN during a delicate transitional period.
** You’re going to hurt my feelings.
*** And an awful lot of video. Once you get on YouTube you could be there for a week, although a lot of it isn’t very good, and some of it is rather alarming, like one of someone letting a pip crawl through his fingers. I don’t think the pip is having a very good time.
Bats apparently count pretty high on the ick-o-meter though because I notice that the come-hither column of other video clips down the right hand side moves into monster spiders pretty quickly. Anyone out there remember Attack of the Fifty-Foot Spider^ last autumn? I posted photos. I’m also still suffering traumatic flashbacks and view the approach of this autumn nervously. One of the videos shows someone letting one of these gigantico house spiders climb over his hand. Although I don’t think the spider is having a good time either.
^ Which Black Bear kept insisting was a male looking for a mate. It was a FEMALE, okay? F-E-M-A-L-E. Females are bigger. It was not a male. Not. Very, very, very not.
† It kills me that less than a month after the longest day the nights are already closing in again. I know they do this every year. Every year I get all whiny about it.
†† Yes, this predates PEGASUS.
††† The Bat Conservation Trust^’s own downloadable pdf tells you that you can’t hear the radar pings and doesn’t say a thing about social calls.
^ which I belong to. Just by the way. Conserve a critter? You bet. Where do I sign.
‡ And derived the distinct impression that she looked round at everything up there a little wildly.
‡‡ Yes! Sit! As any crazed gardener knows, the last thing you do in your garden is sit in it!!
‡‡‡ I went bell ringing. With Niall. To Colin’s tower. I said to Colin, so, on a scale of one to ten, how bad was yesterday’s quarter? And he said (more or less), lighten up. The striking was not 100%, no, but I don’t like Grandsire Triples^, I call by the treble, and if you hadn’t led bang right every row, we wouldn’t have got the quarter.
Whatever. I still need more practise. Aside from needing more practise anyway because bell ringing is like that and time on a rope is the only grail there is, I need practise ringing on eight. And I don’t know how I’m going to get it, since eight-bell bands are kinda rare in my bailiwick, even where we’ve got the bells, drat it.
However I rang several touches of Stedman doubles (six bells) and a not-all-that-bad-and-was-only-yelled-at-twice plain course of Cambridge minor (six bells) tonight, which was very good for morale—and feels pretty idiotic that I’m ringing comparatively high level stuff on six when I can barely stagger through trebling on eight. I said as much to Niall on the way home and he said, crossly for him—neither he nor Colin does cranky like readers of this blog know cranky—stop beating yourself up, okay?
I still need more practise on eight bells.
^Even Colin has faults
§ And no, I don’t have to worry about this. I knew bats weren’t rodents and don’t gnaw, but I didn’t know they don’t do anything but crawl into spaces that are already there and hang out. And their droppings are dried-up insect bits, and unless the roof leaks, they disintegrate into dust. As tenants go you can’t really ask for better. So long as you aren’t trying to sleep in the next room.
Cascades of notes and . . .
I actually got to bed early last night because I was so frightened of handbells at the cathedral. Even on enough sleep I’m pretty much a zombie at morning service ring* but the handbell gig was at 1:45, which meant plenty of time to wake up, caffeinate, and have a nervous breakdown. And then there was a convocation of incompetent drivers at the mews so I couldn’t get out because everyone was flapping and fluttering and refusing to back up because they’re cack-handed twits and they don’t want to scratch their paintwork, which meant Niall was already waiting for me while I was madly slinging hellhounds through the door of the cottage and failing to have time to change into one of my really amusing pairs of All Stars.** We spent the drive to the cathedral city comparing bruises: neither spouse had been overjoyed with our choice of Sunday afternoon activity.*** And then we couldn’t find a place to park† so by the time we arrived at the cathedral door I, at least, was already in a state of advanced trauma.
We never did figure out either whose idea we were or why. Three handbell ringers at a cathedral is like a pea†† at the bottom of a tall stack of mattresses: only the truly sensitive and discerning are going to notice. First they had us round at the front door which is like two storeys high and the length of a short city block. Then they arranged us at the side door, which is only about six times the size of a normal door†††, and then they brought us inside . . . at about the point that the rock band began tuning up. No, really. This was some kind of outreach thingy, which is fine, but you don’t really want to outreach handbells and Spinal Tap simultaneously.‡ It was excellent practise for our concentration, but that’s about all it was.
The best moment however was when one of the priests, decked out in a flashy blue dogcollar, and who had been trying to arrange us to best effect without grasping that there was no best effect available, got out his programme and a pen and said, What do you call yourselves? We looked at each other blankly till it occurred to me that he must be expecting a name like Spinal Tap or Steeleye Span or Harry Christopher and The Sixteen or Bells of Death.‡‡ We don’t! I said, and he said, oh, I’ll just put handbell ringers then, shall I? —If we get into the local paper as Handbell Ringers‡‡‡ I’ll let you know.
And then I came home and was swamped by hellhounds§, finally ate my lunch§§, wrote a few paragraphs of PEG II §§§ and plunged out into the cottage garden to deadhead roses and . . . check for damage. Last night, I’d had a hasty bath#, pulled the plug, as one does, and while I was climbing into my dressing gown was somewhat distracted by the loud noise of falling water. Surely the bath draining doesn’t usually make that much noise—?
No. It doesn’t. When hellhounds and I got downstairs for hellhounds to go out one last time and (possibly) have a snack, there was water sheeting down the outside of the kitchen window##, soapy, steamy water, to the considerable consternation of the rhodochiton atrosanguineum and the dark maroon geranium which is not Lord Bute on the kitchen-window shelf. AAAAAAAUGH. I have no idea. I moved the rhodochiton and the geranium, which were being hammered, and myself getting fairly re-drenched in the process, thinking owlishly that I had not wanted to meet that water again, and . . . waited. It’s a small bath and I don’t fill it very full even when I do have time to read, but it took a remarkably long time to pour out all over the back of the house. Today there’s a certain grey haze to the window and the glass door—and cleaning windows is so my favourite thing. NOT—but the plants all look okay. And tomorrow I am going to ask Atlas to climb on a ladder and look at the funnel where the bath pipe drains: as far as I can tell the water was simply bouncing off the connection: like maybe a blackbird had built a nest in it.
* * *
* I’m also badly missing Ditherington practise, where we do—did—stuff like endless Grandsire doubles for our beginners—which gives people like me the opportunity to grind it into our synapses. Not only do I only learn by grind, I start to lose stuff if I don’t keep grinding.
** Grumble grumble. If I’m going to be tortured by public attention I might as well get some fun out of it. I’m sure I’ve told you that my idea of a great party is to get dressed up, make an entrance . . . and then go home and put my jeans back on and spend the time reading.
*** You may remember that I named Penelope Penelope because she’s a bell widow? Niall is out most nights ringing with Menelaus and Hector and Iphigenia. Peter merely gets on me for Doing Too Much. Yes, the monthly Old Eden practise is tomorrow. Yes, I spent about half an hour phoning round this evening to wheedle enough ringers into coming that Niall, Vicky and I won’t be wasting our time, and Vicky won’t be mad at me. When people hear Vicky’s voice on the phone they tend to say yes, ma’am, how high? When people hear my voice on the phone, they say, who?
† TOURISTS. ARRRGH. You know they’re tourists, all the locals are at home watching the World Cup.
†† or even three peas
††† plus Tudor roses and gargoyles
‡ You know, the film unaccountably missed handbells. Think of it: Gnomehenge and handbells.
‡‡ I’m tempted to turn this into a contest. Come up with the best name for a method-ringing handbell group of varying size and membership, and win . . .
‡‡‡ Or Bells of Death
§ Who said, we not only ate our lunch we ate it early and what is our reward? You go off and LEAVE US for HOURS? What have we LEARNED FROM THIS?
§§ And had a nice cup of very strong tea to give myself an excuse to be still trembling like a clueless SUV driver faced with the prospect of backing around a corner. I was thinking, however, that three of us ringing handbells in public is fabulous practise for singing in Oisin’s future barbershop duodecuple.
§§§ ‘Afterward, she had planned to take the king’s hounds for a canter round the park with herself and her pony, and with the sixth sense dogs have for the immediate prospect of such excursions, five hounds had followed her out. But she spent the next hour hidden in a window embrasure in her bedroom—with a carpet of hounds at her feet.’
# It’s almost not worth having a bath if I can’t read in it. But I get dizzy in those big dry cleaning cylinders.
## I am sooo glad I had closed said British screen-free window when I turned the light on.
Some days
Some days you get to the end of them and you’re still trying to decide if they’ve been a good day or a bad day. Today, for example.
Mondays usually get off to a bad start by oversleeping. This is because I usually forget about the flowers till it’s already later than I meant it to be and I’m closing down the laptop and about to start thrusting hellhounds into their harnesses* so we can all go back to the cottage and go to sleep. And then there’s this bucket of cut flowers arrrrgh. I’ve told you I go round the florist’s after Sunday service ring and drop rather too much cash and she usually gives me a bunch or two of whatever is too far gone for her to sell, but still has bits worth salvaging. I do a posy or two for the cottage and bring the rest of it down to the mews, put it in a bucket and . . . forget about it till I’m three-quarters crashed out and want to go to bed.** Peter tells me on nearly a weekly basis that he’d be happy to do them—but I like stuffing flowers in vases. I just like doing it about two hours earlier than I usually wind up doing it.
So today got off to . . . a late start.*** But it’s a holiday Monday, so the phone didn’t ring while I still had a pillow over my head. But it’s a holiday Monday, so there’s no post. I love the internet, but I still love large flashy paper catalogues and the occasional letter involving stationery and stamps.† But it’s a holiday Monday, so main street ISN’T jammed frelling solid with delivery lorries while Wolfgang is trying to take hellhounds and me out of town. But it’s a holiday Monday, so there are incredible numbers of trippers out there where we’re trying to hurtle, mooching over the landscape and going ‘ooooh’. ††
It’s holiday Monday, so Computer Men aren’t coming till tomorrow and MY EMAIL IS POSSESSED BY THE SPIRIT OF TSATHOGGUA†††. Although Blogmom has been expostulating with the spam-filter side of it, which may (she whispers) be working.‡ But since it’s holiday Monday, I don’t have to wait in for Computer Men‡‡ and then fidget around the house trying to think of things to do that don’t involve computers while they wield their vorpal blades and sonic screwdrivers and so on.‡‡‡
And it’s holiday Monday, so we probably won’t have tower practise tonight . . . which is just as well, I need to work . . . no! Wrong! Practise at South Desuetude! Niall will pick me up! Yaay! I don’t need to work that badly!§
And then the wrong car pulls up in front of me, as I’m standing at the end of the driveway at the mews. It’s Vicky’s car . . . uh oh. And when we get there, Niall and Vicky and me, Isolde climbs out of the car that pulled in just ahead of us . . . I’m starting to have a very bad feeling . . . South Desuetude has eight bells. And it’s beginning to look like we’re going to have not merely eight ringers, but eight good ringers. I mean, no, seven good ringers and me.§§ Did I tell you about mashing Grandsire Triples like a boiled potato at home tower practise on Friday? Siiiigh. New Arcadia is a Grandsire band, and we have eight bells; I have got to crack Grandsire Triples. At present the cracking is going in quite the opposite direction. Colin’s Monday practises are usually on six—it helps that Little Warbling only has six bells, but we were at South Desuetude tonight and we had all these ringers.§§§
So first I hacked my way through a plain course of Grandsire Triples#, and even I should be able to manage a plain course. And then we rang Cambridge—my Cambridge, and on six which ought to be the number and the rhythm I’m used to—and I MADE A TOTAL FLAMING RAT’S ASS BALDERDASH OUT OF IT. Great frelling gods. At that point I was only prevented from falling on my sword by Colin’s immediate command for Stedman Triples! Stedman! Triples! Aaaaaaugh! So then I made a mess of that, although I had some help from Gordon.
It was now clearly a bad day.
Colin, dauntless, clawed his troops back together again and demanded a replay of Stedman Triples.
We did it this time. We even did it not too badly.## Okay, maybe it isn’t such a bad day.
And then Niall—that shoggoth! That Cthulhian star-spawn!—suggested bob major! Major! Major is with ALL EIGHT BELLS IN THE PATTERN. Are you following me? Triples has the tenor-behind, so it’s only seven working bells. As you’re counting your place, you only have to count to seven. You’d be amazed how many more bells seven is than six. And eight bells? Forget it. For-frelling-get it. It’s not just the counting, of course, it’s all the wiggly bits, that are what makes one method different from another. Why is Niall still alive? I would be happy to loan him my sword for falling-on purposes.
I’ve never rung major! I screamed.
Yes you have, chorused Vicky and Niall.
—Aside. I have not. This is not something I would not remember. Vicky is doing the old encouraging trick. You tell them they have, and they believe you and they do it. This may work with the young, the talented, and the brave. It does not work with the elderly, the learners by grind, and the terrified. Niall, however, is having his little joke. I’ve rung bob major in hand. I’ve rung it badly, but it’s true, I’ve rung it. GAAAAH.
So we rang bob major. The funny thing is, I got through it.###
So maybe it’s a good day after all.~
* * *
* Long term readers may remember^ that my silly idea of teaching the hellhounds the Spanish walk so we could all high-step down main street together and frighten the locals foundered on my inability to teach Chaos anything. Remind me to tell you about my Great Chaotic Revelation. Almost makes me start thinking about the Spanish walk again. . . .
** No. Wrong. I never want to go to bed. I want to get into a nice hot bath and read till the water goes cold.
*** It was daylight when I went to bed. Yuck. Usually I don’t have to put the pillow over my head till after I’ve been asleep for a while.
I did actually think—briefly—about trying it on: going back downstairs again, brewing a mind bogglingly strong pot of tea, and starting the day over again. I could use a few unscheduled morning hours. But . . . no. It would confuse the hellhounds. Not to mention not making it to bell ringing tonight. And not being coherent after about noon. And annoying the ME may be amusing in the very short term, but the joke doesn’t last. ME has no sense of humour.
† Except when they say, When are you going to write that sequel to SUNSHINE/Damar?
†† And peering intently at their maps. Occasionally they ask directions. —Glasgow? Uh, no, you must have taken a wrong turning a while back. No, that’s not Hill House, that’s Montmorency’s Folly.
††† Lovecraft’s, of course, not mere Clark Ashton Smith’s.
‡ Blogmoms apparently have no holidays. Quite like hellgoddesses that way.
‡‡ Which is to say I don’t have to get out of bed and get the caffeine working in time to let them in.
‡‡‡ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Where do I begin. Look at that—eeeek—dust rhinoceros! Look at those cobwebs! Look at that pile of unsorted . . . uh, what is that pile(s) of unsorted—?^ Look at all those buttons waiting to be sewn on! Look at that attic!^^ —I know! I’ll go pot on some little green things! Anything to get out of the house!
^ Shut up, Fiona+
+ She who comes and attempts to Sort Me once a month or so.
^^ No, don’t look at that attic. Whatever you do, don’t look at that attic.
§ Yes I do.
§§ No, saved from the ignominy of preventing the other seven from ringing something really clever. Six good ringers, and me, and Gordon. Gordon’s about my level. We wrestle imprudently beyond our capabilities.
§§§ I should be delighted, thrilled, transported, etc. The problem is that I only learn by grind, and neither South Desuetude or New Arcadia—the only eight bell towers I ring at regularly—regularly have enough good ringers to teach someone who only learns by grind a seven-with-tenor-behind (triples) or eight-bell (major) method. So I have been for some time in a more or less permanent state of mangling Grandsire Triples, on the rare occasions I meet it, like a puppy pulling the stuffing out of an expensive new toy. This gets demoralising. ^
^ Not for the puppy, but for the buyer of the toy.
# Gordon dove for the tenor-behind, the ratbag.
## Gordon and I exchanged high fives.
### So did Gordon. Do I get to mention that he went wrong and had to be hauled back onto his line, and I didn’t?
~ Need to do something about that Cambridge though. Shudder.
