Whinge snarl cavil
I have just been trying to book next season’s tickets to Live from the Met(ropolitan Opera) and . . . ARRRRRGH. Glasnost and jelly donuts THERE ARE A LOT OF FRELLING AWFUL WEB SITES IN THE WORLD. The heavy hand of my suspicion falls on the shoulder of the Met Opera itself in this case, although the home site of the national Rapscallion Cinema chain is not my favourite battleground either arrrrrrrrgh. But in the first place you have to book every individual opera separately. This is such a confounded nuisance it literally loses them some of my custom—if I’m wavering about whether I want to see The Pirate, the Anglerfish and the Epipelagic Zone* I’ll decide against it just so I don’t have to groan through their horrible purchasing system again. This includes timing you out if you take too long. They timed me out three times tonight. Once it was because their site had hung.** The other two times I wasn’t anywhere near the end of their so-called time limit, they just threw me out for laughs. And then I had to START ALL OVER AGAIN. Now, I am a member of the sodding Rapscallion community, for the single purpose of being able to book Live at the Met a week or something early before rank and file are allowed in***—which system is at least finally working.† When I log on it greets me by name, and is happy to present me with my back catalogue of many, many Met Live tickets. But the moment I try to book another one . . . they want my name, several times, my email address, several times†† . . . you’ve got something like ten screens to get through FOR EVERY GODSFRELLING SODBLASTED TICKET, including things like ‘choose credit/debit card’ and you click the drop down AND THERE IS EXACTLY ONE CHOICE: CREDIT/DEBIT CARD. But if you don’t tick it, the page wipes itself and tells you you need to choose a credit/debt card. There are also at least two screens that merely say ‘confirm’. One of them is the one that crashed me. One of them is also the screen that prevented me from booking Francesca di Rimini at all. It hung for a while and then said Oops! There’s a problem!, and crashed me back to the beginning. I tried three times and gave up. I don’t know whether I want to see Francesca di Rimini anyway.†††
The day did not get off to a good start when we had a frelling tourist invasion.‡ Go. Away. I feel you notice the ‘not our town, we don’t give a rat’s ass’ much more strongly in a village than you do in a city—I remember this from Maine. In New York City it’s the tourists who are at risk.‡‡ Today’s high points were (a) when hellhounds and I were rolling along the wide green way to the mews and found an SUV the size of at least one House of Parliament rolling down the PEDESTRIAN PAVEMENT straight at us. He wanted to park on the grass so he didn’t have to pay the fee in one of the car parks. Like it costs a lot in a town the size of New Arcadia, you know? But most of the green way is blocked off from the road by trees. If you want to be the world’s biggest asshole, you have to drive on the pedestrian pavement. ARRRRRRRRGH. And (b) when both hellhounds picked up chicken bones. I want to kill people who throw their trash around anyway, and I really want to kill people who throw food trash around . . . but I suppose it’s just conceivable that some of our overweight not-at-all-wild‡‡‡ ducks might eat sandwich-ends before the rats got there, but CHICKEN BONES? People who throw chicken bones on the street should be buried standing up under the cornerstones of important civic buildings, and thus be of some use to society at last.
Okay. I’m not in a good mood.
But, speaking of wildlife—and of tantrums—cross-species adolescence, I love it. After various responsibilities and crises had been dispatched I said THE HELL WITH IT and rushed out into the garden, where I dug and toiled and planted for . . . longer than I should have, but I came indoors much more cheerful.§ My adolescent robin was perched in the apple tree right outside the greenhouse—the greenhouse where the saucer of mealworms lives§§ having a complete paddy that dad wasn’t dedicated to bringing him mealworms. Hey, you big fat turkeybutt, go get your own mealworms.§§§
* * *
* They all die in the end. Including the entire crew of the bathysphere. But the soprano goes out on some amazing top notes from the helium.
** You’re sitting there, knitting furiously^, and glancing periodically at the large banner heading that says ‘do not hit refresh or not only will this transaction crash and burn but we will refuse to let you back on our delicate, easily disturbed site forever and your kitchen will blow up’. So you don’t and . . . tick tick tick . . . eventually you time out, and then you get a snooty message telling you that if you’re going to frell about you deserve what you get. ARRRRRRRGH.
^ Got a couple more inches done yesterday, thanks to a forty-five minutes late bride. Who as a result got about seven minutes of ringing because most of the band had to go on to another wedding. Why it’s not in the contract that you’re hiring your ringers for exactly one hour from the time your wedding is scheduled to be over . . . I have no idea. Us hoi polloi keep suggesting this and the higher-ups keep muttering inaudibly and not doing anything.
*** After three years I have my seat. If My Seat is ever already taken I may have palpitations. I even found myself, this time, thinking, as I viewed with deepest gloom the six hours of Parsifal, that I wouldn’t book now, I’d wait till nearer time and if My Seat wasn’t taken . . . ^
^ This won’t actually help me much. It won’t be taken. The long Wagners are only attended by the faithful, which doesn’t often include me. There are many valid excuses for staying at home and doing your knitting from the comfort of your own sofa. I have ME. ‘I can’t stand that misogynistic Aryan bully, I don’t care if he knew a few chords’ is also valid. One of the things I have against Shakespeare is he goes on so. Wagner?? Dear merciful gods.
† First year I tried it, they took my membership money . . . and then declared ‘special events’, as for example the Met Live broadcasts, were not included. GAAAAAAAARGH.
†† They will also throw me out randomly for having ‘non matching email ID’. The first time, maybe. Typos are always a possibility. The second, third and fourth times, no. I guarantee my email address was accurate. But the gremlins were clearly getting bored.
††† And I decided I really can’t face Rigoletto in 1960s Las Vegas. Gods, demons and bell-bottoms. Why are directors allowed to pull idiot feckless crap like this? WHY?^ Stick to Broadway, honeybun. They love you there.
^ If every critic in the solar system gives it five stars, I’ll reconsider.+
+ But My Seat will have been taken, for a five-star Rigoletto.
‡ Trippers who stroll up my cul de sac because it’s quaint and part of their Sunday afternoon expedition should have boiling oil or at least hot borscht poured on them from an upper storey windows. I keep thinking about it. You know how beetroot stains—? So, you want a memento of New Arcadia? It can be arranged.
‡‡ ‘Hey, wanna buy a nice bridge?’
‡‡‡ And Darkness is going to nail one, one day. I’m just hoping he doesn’t take both himself and me into the river in the process. There would be language.
§ Until I decided to tackle the Met Live.
§§ I wouldn’t dare show my face in the garden if I didn’t top up the saucer both when I come out and when I finally go in again. In between I may be sworn at, but there are some limits.
§§§ Although speaking of the robin’s unbridled passion for mealworms: while I was inconveniently using the potting table in the greenhouse, I’d put the saucer farther in, on a shelf near the other door. Dad robin was not best pleased with this arrangement, and kept whirring in and out trying to dodge around me (and the paddying offspring in the apple tree. Dratblast it, where is the new nest?). I’d come back to the greenhouse when, apparently, he wasn’t looking, and was bending over to fetch a trowel off the ground as he came fizzing back in again—more or less as I was starting to straighten up. Both of us were dismayed—and neither of us stopped fast enough, and I briefly had a robin on the back of my neck. He trampolined off again . . .
Sunday night after Sunday afternoon
I’m bored with only chewing on one side of my mouth.* And Gemma was not at the abbey this afternoon which made me feel more put-upon. We had eight, however, which meant we could ring triples. Watch me frelling dive for the treble. . . . At least it wasn’t seven Brilliant Ringers and me: our eight included two of the middling band members—they’re better than I am, but that still doesn’t take much**—so at least I didn’t have to humiliate myself further by saying ‘no’ when they asked me if I could treble bob to major.*** It wasn’t even seven blokes and me†; Leandra and Moira were both there. Moira is consolingly middling level; Leandra is a major frelling hot shot, but has the gift for treating morons and gibbering twits like human beings. I aspire to being worth her time.††
Other than that, it’s been SHADOWS. And maybe a little New Thing.
KatydidNL
Am I the only one who really wishes she had a copy of these Flowerhair books?
Snork. Because I am a depraved human being I’ve been thinking about inserting the occasional excerpt. I’m just not sure how far this parody thing will stretch. Carooooooooooooom WHACK.
. . . And it’s not going to freeze tonight. I don’t think. I hope. I planted a lot more tender little green things today.††† I may just bring the potted-up dahlia cuttings in. Just because I can.
* * *
* Because I am a hysterical twit one of my first thoughts after the bloody crown^ chunked out last night, after the screams of horror etc, was, ohmigods can I SING? I have a voice lesson on Bank Holiday Monday! —Yes I can sing. Good grief. Chewing is, however, problematic.
^ An interesting image. Sort of Charles I.
** I’m getting better. I am. My mind still goes blank. But sometimes it comes back. Sometimes it even comes back bringing the blue line of the method we are (theoretically) ringing with it.
But just walking over from the car park the middle of a Sunday afternoon . . . the world is full of frelling tourists, and one of the things they’re gaping at is the abbey, which is gigantic and impressive and all that. And beautiful. I’ve loved it for years, and when I didn’t seem to be DOING quite so much, including before I started bell ringing, I used to creep in for evensong sometimes, to listen to the voices and the organ in that extraordinary space. I look at it and I think and I frelling RING there? You’re kidding, right?^ It takes you a couple of minutes’ hard walking to get round this vast building to the door to the tower, and by the time I climb the ninety thousand stairs, including the rope ladder over the oubliette at the end, I’m in no fit state to do anything but sit in a corner and gibber.^^ So when Og or Albert calls out the name of a method and expects people to step forward and grab ropes, I’m like, Nooooooo! I’m knitting! I climbed ninety million stairs (including the rope ladder over the oubliette) to sit in a corner and knit!
I really want to get over this stage. Really. Want. It’s boring. Speaking of boring.
^ I seem to be uttering this phrase kind of a lot lately. It turned up in New Thing recently which was probably a mistake because we all know life follows art.+ I ordered a bunch of stuff from one of these on line organic save-the-planet sites including six tins of Spicy Lentil Soup which I’m fond of and it’s faster than making it when you’re ringing that night and besides you’re only allowed nine calories a day which means cooking is mostly kind of demoralising. Five tins were in the box they sent me. So I emailed them saying, just reassure me you didn’t charge me for the sixth, okay? And they wrote back saying, we need more information about your order, and then we can respond to your concerns. One of their list of questions was What colour was the TAPE used on the packaging? What? Clearly an occasion when the only possible response is, You’re kidding, right?
+ Yes, I’d be worrying about those attack mushrooms if I were you.
^^ . . . And get out my knitting.+ Knitting is very good for the blood pressure++ as I have just been telling Hannah.
+ Can anyone out there recommend or point me at a pattern for a mug cosy—and before you send me six hundred and forty-nine links to patterns for those wrap-around mug cosies which seem to be a major fashion accessory these days (including some very cute ones on Ravelry), what I want is a mug cosy that looks like a tea cosy only smaller. This is one of those things that supposing I live long enough to get casual with knitting the way I’m casual with baking (‘okay, fine, that looks about right’) I assume I’ll be able to invent, or devent, from a tea cosy pattern, or a circular hat pattern, or something. Right at the moment I need to be told what to do, in words of one syllable, and not very many of them either.
++ Which, after ninety thousand stairs, is banging in your ears anyway. I only have breath to gibber with because of all that hellhound hurtling.
*** Major is eight bells. And the fancy upper level methods have a frelling fancy upper level line even for the lowly treble. I can treble bob to minor—six bells—at some tower that isn’t the abbey. Eight . . . well. I’d like to have a try, some practise night, after I’ve stopped freaking out.
† This should not matter. A ringer is a ringer is a ringer and there have been women ringers for the last hundred years or so (although I’m very glad I didn’t have to be one of the first). But I start feeling all patriarchally oppressed when I’m surrounded by blokes who are all better at something than I am. This is my problem, not the blokes’.
†† Along with being a sweetheart to the dim and wussified, Leandra is tiny and fierce. She’s Albert’s wife and, like him, a major feature in the local guild. She’s also one of the comparatively few top-flight women ringers: there are plenty of girls down at my level, but it’s usually only the boys who are obsessive enough to go on to great things.^ There are still a few lingering sexist assumptions in bell ringing, among them that women don’t ring at the back on the big bells. Colin likes to joke about this, after he’s handed me the rope for the tenor.^^ The back bells at the abbey are seriously large. Entire fleets of aircraft carriers weigh less than the tenor. When we’re ringing on eighty-four, look around: Leandra will be at the back somewhere. She’s so little that if you’re on a bell on the opposite side of the aircraft-hangar ringing chamber you can barely frelling see her. The abbey band wouldn’t dream of messing with her, but I’m rather hoping to see her tangle some day with an old-fashioned visitor who doesn’t think women ring big bells.^^^
^ I’m obsessive enough. I’m just not good enough.
^^ The tenor at Glaciation is not particularly large but it is very deep set which means you need six friends to help you drag it off its perch. Thus a little innocent merriment may be had on a dull ringing evening.
^^^ Although watching Wild Robert casually handle a monster bell is as good as a play. He’s half a head taller than I am but probably weighs less.
††† While dad robin dealt with an extra serving of mealworms. I’m going to run out. I’m going to have to buy maggots till the next delivery.
Happy happy happy. Happy. Happy. Grrrrrr.
IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF A THREE-DAY BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND. AND THE CROWN ON ONE OF MY HORRIBLE STUPID TEETH HAS JUST FALLEN OUT. I’m so happy. Happy, happy, happy, happy.
It has not been a brilliant day and furthermore Peter is in Cardamomlinghamshire visiting relatives so I don’t even have him around to blame.*
Gemma told me last night, cheerfully, on her way out the door after handbells** that she probably won’t be there for afternoon ringing at the abbey on Sunday. She saw the stark panic flood my face and said hastily, you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine, eggs grow on trees, teabags make the best tea, and Charlemagne was a girl. AAAAAAUGH. Last Sunday it was five fabulous male ringers . . . and Gemma and me. AAAAAAAAUGH.
I’ll be fine. Yes. I’ll be fine. I’ll take my knitting. . . .
AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A FROST TOMORROW NIGHT. A FROST! A FRELLING, FRELLING, FRELLING, FRELLING FROST! IT’S MAY! IT’S MAY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND! WE’RE ALLOWED TO PLANT LITTLE TENDER GREEN THINGS OUTDOORS IN THE GROUND IN MAY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND!***
Usually.
I had quite a nice time in the garden a couple of days ago—when it finally stopped raining long enough to make this practical—playing eenie meanie with all the racks and rows of little green mail-order things that arrived during the floods and are still waiting to be put somewhere they can settle down and grow.† I planted the sweet peas, finally, some begonias, some (tender) fuchsias, most of the rest of the glads, some petunias. Today . . . today I (furiously) planted the dahlia cuttings in pots two or three sizes smaller than I meant to—I don’t have TIME for endless potting-on: stuff goes in an intermediate pot and then it goes into the ground or into its big permanent pot—so they’d all fit on a tray in case I’m bringing them indoors tomorrow night. The stuff that is already in the ground is going to have to take its chances†† . . . but the sitting-room is going to be frelling impassable if I have to bring in all the unfrost-proof things in trays and pots or still in their mail-order plastic cells. . . .
* * *
* You made my crown fall out! You did! You know you did!
** Have I told you we seem to have morphed into Thursday and Friday handbells?? Wait, wait, I have a novel to finish and I do need to reserve some brain. I think I’ve told you Gemma is a doctor, and she’s just changed clinics/surgeries which means her schedule has changed, and Thursday afternoon handbells are no longer possible. So we had, I thought, moved handbells to Fridays right before New Arcadia bell practise^ . . . except that it turns out Colin can’t do Fridays but was too polite to say so.^^ I have this habit of not really paying attention to details and therefore found myself saying to Niall and Colin, well, okay, we’ll just have to keep on with Thursdays, and Niall and I can ring with Gemma on Fridays . . . WHAT AM I SAYING. This week was the first of the new schedule and . . . two days in a row of handbells is . . . intense.
^ Which means I will now stuff hellhounds into their harnesses and pelt out the door so as to be out of earshot by the time they start ringing up. I’m getting better at sleeping through Sunday mornings though.
^ The British. ARRRRRRRGH.
*** I’m having another of those ‘why do I DO this to myself??’ moments. I moaned this to Peter tonight over the phone and he said, because you’d think less well of yourself if you didn’t^, which is true as far as it goes, but it still begs the question why do I have to choose activities where terror will be my natural environment? Why couldn’t I collect stamps or go to more films?^^
^ And given my standard level of self-appreciation this could get dangerous.
^^ No horror, of course.+
+ Avengers Assemble is playing semi-around here this weekend and I am half-tempted to go except for two things: (a) it’s in frelling 3D, and my loathing for (frelling) 3D was renewed and reinforced by (multi-frelling) THOR and (b) I haven’t got time. If I’m going to ring bells and sing and rescue all the little green things drowning in my garden(s) and finish a novel before the hellhounds and I have to stop eating, although the hellhounds wouldn’t mind, I haven’t got time.# And, just by the way, Sunday morning ringing at New Arcadia is forty minutes plus a one-minute bolt from the cottage to the tower and a more leisurely several-minute stroll back. Sunday afternoon ringing at the abbey is an hour, plus a half hour commute. Also, terror is tiring.
# And the blog is a not insignificant eater of time.~
~ And there are a lot of doodles waiting to be doodled. Siiiigh. I should draw you a Venn diagram of Available Energy Usage by Robin McKinley some time. I don’t know if this is the frelling ME, or advancing age, or just that I’ve always been peculiar, but what I can and can’t do isn’t just about whether I feel (relatively) alert and intelligent or as if I have ham salad for brains and limbs made of half deflated inner tubes. It’s more of a Chinese-menu situation where you want stuff from as many columns as possible. And your fortune cookie is still going to tell you you’re frelled.
*** Meanwhile friends in the Midwestern prairie are having temperatures pushing ninety (°F).
† I’m still seeing disturbingly few little feathered things in the shrubbery.^ I wouldn’t have thought literal drowning was all that likely in my garden-on-a-hill, and there’s still the greenhouse to take shelter in. Nor would I have thought I have many predators out there, although what is that unpleasing line about there always being a rat within five feet of you? I’m sure my local rats would be more than happy to tuck into adolescent robin. But dad robin is still hanging around for mealworms. Robins are such fearless little critters^^ that you get a prime view of what’s going on with them. There were still two adults^^^ when I started putting mealworms out but they were very chary of me—which served to reinforce my guilt about how little gardening I’ve been doing recently and it’s not all down to the weather—but robins don’t really do chary and dad, at this point, pretty well gets in my face and says, Mealworms? Where are the mealworms?, if he’s dispatched the previous serving. I put them out twice a day, and he must be feeding them to someone because if he ate all of them himself he’d explode. The mealworm saucer normally lives on my potting table in the greenhouse but I put it out in the courtyard by the kitchen door when I want to use my table, on top of a tall pot that will have a dahlia in it eventually. He knows this. So first he sits in the apple tree next to the greenhouse and stares at me, and then he perches on that pot and looks at me meaningfully. I may have to start buying more mealworms.
^ I did get a couple of photos of the babies, but they’re not very good. The nest is tucked back behind various jars and plastic boxes of plant food and it’s dark. I didn’t want to blow a flash in their tiny fluffy faces and I haven’t been very lucky with the right angles of sunlight . . . or any angles of sunlight, lately. They’re only in the nest about ten days, I think—maybe two weeks. Not long at all. And I didn’t notice they’d hatched immediately—they were already beginning to grow feathers by the time I saw them—since I’d been trying to leave mum alone so she’d go on sitting. But I’m reasonably sure there were five of them to begin with. Five’s a lot.
^^ Unlike their human namesake
^^^ If there’s only one parent left, it’s probably dad, because mum has sashayed off to start a new nest somewhere else.
†† I may raise the odds a bit by throwing a bit of bubble wrap around. After potting up the frelling sweet peas—usually I just slap them in the ground to begin with—and bringing them in and out for about a fortnight I am VERY RELUCTANT TO LOSE THEM NOW.
Wet wet wet
It’s okay. I can write a blog tonight. Darkness ate dinner. *&^%$£@#~}+!!!!!!!!!!! Cathy, on the other side of the table, is breathing a deep sigh of relief. She’d made the perilous, not to say fatal, offer to write another guest blog if I found myself incapable on account of the extreme reprehensibleness of hellhounds and the resultant need to wail and rail incessantly all evening.* Which is to say, Darkness stopped eating. Yesterday.
I know, I know (and you regular readers know, you know). Normal dogs—well, normal sighthounds—miss meals occasionally. It’s not a big deal. It’s a big deal with these guys because of their history. And it’s a big deal to me because I’m the human supposedly in charge of managing they survive their history. And they are a lot better, about food, about eating food, and about stopping eating (food) and about looking like they’re at death’s door after about twenty-four hours of not eating. And I may have an ever so slight tendency to hit red alert before it’s absolutely necessary. But. . . .
If you graphed hellhound appetites and the amount of food I actually manage to get in them, the lines would swing up and down wildly anyway, like the surface of Lake Superior just before the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. I’m used to this. I don’t frelling like it, but I’m used to it. Occasionally, however, one or both hellhounds ship a really big wave and head for the bottom. If I hadn’t been distracted by having fun with Cathy—because I am an irresponsible dog owner and a horrible selfish thoughtless human being—I might have noticed that the current oh-well-maybe-I-will-and-maybe-I-won’t food mood was hardening into something more drastic. It had crossed my mind that the current lack of enthusiasm phase was going on a little long.
AND THEN . . .
It has not been a good day. Today was our last chance to get out into the country and look at bluebells. And it rained. Again. It’s been raining all week. It was raining when I picked Cathy up at the train station.** It was raining as we both arrived at and left the abbey.*** It was raining most of Sunday in both Hampshire and Bristol, although Cathy managed to find a little sunlight and follow it around for a few hours. It rained on my voice lesson.† It rained on our going to Glaciation to ring with Colin. It rained on our trip to Mauncester yesterday.†† IT’S BEEN RAINING FOREVER. IT IS GOING TO RAIN FOREVER.††† It is just about hip deep around town and squelching out over the countryside when Cathy only has two pairs of shoes with her is not really a credible option.
AND THEN DARKNESS STOPPED EATING. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
It has not been a good day.
But Darkness ate dinner. Enthusiastically. So I can revert to being all wet and soppy and droopy and soggy, not about the rain, but about the fact that Cathy is leaving tomorrow. . . .
* * *
* The deep sigh of relief may have been as much to do with the lack of incessant wailing and railing as the fearful prospect of coming up with another 1000+ words that could pass for a coherent synthesis of some damn thing or other only two days after the previous guest blog.
** It had only just started raining (again), fortunately, since I was late. Of course I was late. I’m always late. And then we had to hare off at extreme speed for the Reification of the Overgoddess at Forza. I have rung my first service at Forza del Destino.^ Eeep. This blood-freezing adventure began last Wednesday, when Ulrich said at practise that it was an all-hands-to-the-pumps situation Saturday afternoon for the reification. I looked away and shuffled my feet because I am not, after all, an abbey ringer, but Gemma said, oh, go on, I’m going to. So I checked with Cathy about train times and then, in fear and grovelling, although it’s difficult to get grovelling across in an email, I wrote to Ulrich, asking if they still needed extra hands for the reification, and he wrote back pretty much by return electron saying they’d be happy to see me. Oops. Now I’m for it.
In fact they didn’t need all of us shmo-level ringers, but they were nice enough to pile us all on for rounds on forty-eight. And Og came by with his clipboard and said to me, smiling in what I’m sure he was under the impression was a friendly manner, You are now on my LIST.
I may have a bell tower again. That is, I admit, may. I’m still expecting them to pull themselves together and bounce schmos like me.+++ And I wish it weren’t a gigantic, ancient, tourist-magnet, one hundred and twelve bell frelling ABBEY. However, I’ll take what I can get. And they’re still, with an irony so shiny and sharp it needs a scabbard++++, my best practical choice for a new tower. Hahahahahahahaha. Ouch, that hurts.
^ I’m feeling just a trifle creeped out by my having long ago carelessly blognamed+ it The Force of Destiny.++
+ I invent a verb. I feel it could have wider application however.
++ It could be a lot worse. I could have named it La Traviata or Aida.
+++ Or I could revert to not being able to ring anything. Anything. But we are not considering this possibility. We reject it.
++++ And its name may be Doomblade.
*** With a spectacular escort of guards. Yeep. We never had guards at New Arcadia, but then we didn’t rededicate goddesses either. But Cathy and I crossed three different cordons, getting in—I’m a bell ringer! I kept squeaking, feeling a complete fraud—and two getting back out again. Our favourite was the nice German lady (in the scary guard uniform) who wanted to know about bell ringing.
† Yes. I took Cathy to my voice lesson. And if she tries to write a guest blog about that I will destroy her.^
It was pretty interesting though. I hadn’t thought about this when I asked Nadia if I could bring a friend that Monday, but it was the day after Diana’s memorial and I was going to be another jigsaw for Nadia to put back together, as well as in (fractured) avert mode because There Was Someone Else Listening. It was not my most brilliant lesson—but it was not, in fact, my most embarrassing either. Nadia says sometimes your worst practises and your worst lessons are the most educational—and this one taught me some stuff. Nadia spent some time talking about channelling emotion into your singing. The impulse—my impulse anyway—is to stomp all that slithery, squishy stuff down, and the stomping process is a lot of what breaks you up into jigsaw pieces. Feh. I’ve told you about the frelling chasm between what I can do at home when no one is listening, but where I don’t have all of Nadia’s tricks for getting a better quality of sound out of me, and what I can do for Nadia, whom I want to please and therefore am afraid to get stuff wrong for—I mentioned that I’d torn the heart out of Che Faro over the washing-up and Nadia said briskly, I look forward to hearing it next week. EEEEEEP. This is pretty much the same kind of exciting and same kind of terrifying as the prospect of maybe having a bell tower again. I would LOVE to work on Che Faro with Nadia, but I’ve assumed that was seriously down the line from where I am now. And it probably is, you know? I’ll take it in to her and . . .
^ No, wait, I can’t destroy her, she’s helping me with New Thing.+
+ And in answer to some forum question or other, yes, it will get a title, at least of sorts, as soon as you learn the protagonist’s name, which is in ep nine or so.
†† More *&^%$£”+=}]~#@!!!!!! Our trip was supposed to produce a certain outcome which was going to produce a particular blog post. And we were FOILED by . . . well, never mind what we were foiled by. I’ll get there in the end. And then I’ll write a blog post about it. Grrrrrrrrrr.
††† I tell myself, rain is good. We’re in a drought. We need this rain. I AM SURE I AM GROWING MOULD ALL OVER MY BODY.
A whangblamming thunderstorm and dazzling blue sky kind of day
. . . in more ways than one. In the first place yes, the weather is completely crazed. Because of other issues* the hellhounds got a series of short hurtles today rather than one long and one medium-length one, and trying to fit these in between cloudbursts was all part of the jolly fun. So I’d just had the latest bit of bad news about the weekend’s Adventure** and I was blitzing around the cottage in a dangerous, bruising torpor because the archangels were due ANY MINUTE*** . . . and I finally thought to check my email and the archangels were going to be an hour later than scheduled.
I could have had a little more sleep.
I could have given the hellhounds a little more hurtle.
I could have hung from the rafters screaming about the reality of Sunday travel a little longer.
I did make myself a second cup of tea, left it on the Aga to stew, and took hellhounds for their second sprint of the day. And got back to the latest parcel of little live green things, longing to be potted up and too tender to leave outdoors. I’m hauling in trays of the little ratbags every night—and back out in the morning. I’m running out of trays. And the sweet peas, which arrived weeks ago, are starting to need repotting. ARRRRRRGH.
The archangels arrived†, were here for two hours . . . AND COULDN’T DO ANYTHING I WANTED THEM TO DO. With the exception of a few bits and pieces, and getting the kanji-support Japanese download installed.†† But I need both Pooka and Astarte, both i-gizmos, frelling updated . . . and they couldn’t do it because my broadband is TOO SLOW. Meanwhile, my so-called provider has changed hands, changed its name and logo, raised its prices and lost my Direct Debit details. And claimed never to have received the archangels’ email, attachment and fax from a month ago about upgrading . . . they plainly raised their prices to pay the designer for the new logo which is undoubtedly larger, flashier, and in full colour, and which will cost more money to produce every month at the top of your invoice.
So the archangels sent it all again, and then went back to wrestling with various gremlins, ogres and unidentified snarly things.††† Raphael checked in with my nonproviders in about fifteen minutes. No, they hadn’t received the resend. Half an hour. No, they hadn’t received it. An hour. No, they hadn’t received it, hahahahahahahaha, isn’t this comical? Meanwhile Gabriel had taken the lid off my phone housing, or whatever you call it, where the wires come in from outside, and did a hissing-between-his-teeth equivalent. You will remember when this came up a week or something ago, that there’s nothing I can do about Brit Telecom’s utter indifference to the connectivity trials and tribulations of a small cul de sac in New Arcadia, and BT owns all the wiring. Gabriel stared thoughtfully out the window at the telephone pole that various hysterically-laughing linemen have nearly fallen off. Your Problem Is Obvious. However between them they think that Raphael can bedevil my provider into providing something, and Gabriel can do something about the connection between Outside and Inside.
But meanwhile . . .
I took hellhounds for another sprint and fulminated. Work did not go at all well in what remained of the afternoon. Also meanwhile . . . I had to go to Forza tonight. I’d missed last week’s practise due to family arrivals and Morse-code electricity, the week before was some rangleblagging scheduled cancellation or other, and I’m going to miss next week because they’re having one of their forty-six-and-a-half bell practises.‡ I didn’t want to go tonight. I didn’t want to go a lot. I’m completely demoralised on the subject of tower ringing and I’ve pretty much turned the fact that I can’t deal with the abbey into a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom, and I’m short of sleep, dreading the pogo-stick journey on Sunday, and totally furious with my technology. I’m clapped out on adrenaline and I’m exhausted.
I had to go.
I went.
Oh, and did I mention it was TIPPING it down? On the way over in Wolfgang we were creeping along in third gear because I couldn’t see out of the frelling windscreen.
And when I got there there were people crawling around with cameras. What? Leaving now. And the Scary Man was in charge. Whimper. Why was I ever born?‡‡
The Scary Man swooped down on me and said, Come ring some Grandsire Triples. —Wait! No! I was going to run away!
. . . I actually haven’t dwelled on how bad it’s been, the last few times at the abbey. I had what I thought was that little breakthrough ringing on six bells rather than eight a while back . . . and then it went away, and I couldn’t ring on six either. I am not joking about the demoralisation. If it weren’t that it felt like either go on facing the abbey or give up ringing, I’d be staying home with a good book.
Anyway. Yeah. Clearly I’m setting you up to say . . . it was okay. It was okay. I didn’t ring frelling Grandsire frelling Triples flawlessly, but I was ringing it. I wasn’t just blindly pulling on a rope and doing what my minder was shouting in my ear, which is mostly what it’s been so far. I am going to do this. I am going to learn to cope with the abbey. Which is to say I may even have a bell tower again. I’m sorry it’s a frelling abbey . . . but it remains the nearest tower that rings methods if I’m not going back to New Arcadia and, hint, I’m not, and therefore my best option is an abbey. . . . where things like BAFTA-winning documentary makers come round and frelling film you. Apparently we’re going to be part of a son-et-lumiere deal for some Hampshire festival. We had exactly thirty-seven ringers for our thirty-seven bells and the Scary Man told us all to catch hold which therefore . . . included me. We just rang rounds . . . but I’ve told you about this before: when you’re ringing rounds on four hundred and twelve or even only thirty-seven you pull off and then hold up for frelling EVER while you’re waiting for the other thirty-six bells before it’s your turn again. This doesn’t happen on six. It’s very disconcerting to someone who is used to ringing on six and finds eight a stretch. Oh, and if you see the film . . . I’m wearing a bright turquoise cardigan which would not have been my choice if I’d known I was going to be immortalised. I’d have gone more for dark brown and a bag over my head.
I also have to say a big fat shiny word for Gemma here. She’s an abbey ringer, and she knows what a struggle I’ve been having. She’s the one who’s kept saying, no, no, they will not tell you to go away and furthermore you will catch on. She’s also the one who suggested that I try a different bell for triples because she found it easier to see from . . . and she’s right. I think that’s one of the things that helped tonight. She does keep smiling at me in this Rather Amused Fashion, but I have this effect on some people for some reason. And I was so giddy tonight that I let her convince me to come to the pub after. . . .
I may have a bell tower again. My life is not over.
And the OTHER THING? I HAVE A NEST FULL OF ADORABLE FLUFFY BABY ROBINS IN THE GREENHOUSE. They’re so cute you could die. I rushed out and bought mealworms.
* * *
* Including sleeping really badly because I’m starting (early) to stress out about an Adventure I’m slated for this weekend that I am dreading extremely. So . . . of course. I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep in one fluid movement. The sleep I’d spent the last x hours not getting.
** You cannot go ANYWHERE on a Sunday in this country. They close the roads^, they close the railway lines, they lock all the barn doors before and after the horses have fled, they glue the wheels of all locally-flying airplanes to the runways, and the Sunday dog sled teams are booked years in advance. Maybe if I started walking now. . . .
^ Including bicycle paths and rickshaws.
*** And I’d overslept. See above.
† Gabriel reported that they had been given a very suspicious look by one of my neighbours. Hey, two young men in hoodies. And Gabriel has a two-day beard.
†† Do I even have to tell you that this did not go the way it was supposed to and I would have gotten totally screwed up and berserk if I’d tried to do it myself? Whatever. They pulled out one of their Magic Discs and made the software(s) talk to each other. And now my Learn Japanese site isn’t mostly little empty rectangles.
††† I sat on the floor and knitted. With some help from hellhounds.
‡ The half is the tower captain’s gerbil.
‡‡ Don’t answer that.