Handbells, and further bulletins on comparative ickiness
Niall and I went haring across the landscape this evening*, looking for Curlyewe. Our new lot of handbell ringers are from Curlyewe and last time they came to New Arcadia Niall suggested, despite my frantic gestures,** we come to them next time. ARRRRGH. I do not commute. Commuting is something other people do.***
Niall picked me up tonight, so all I had to do was hold onto my seat.† But Curlyewe is in the same section of enchanted landscape that Tir nan Og†† is, which is to say that you can’t get there from here, and even if you could, you’d miss it in the fairy mist. Maps lie, and signposts move around. Possibly Niall had in mind outrunning the magic.
I guess it worked, since we got there. Eventually. I had been even less enthusiastic about our expedition when I found out they were expecting us to ring at the church. Doesn’t someone have a sitting-room we could use? A nice warm sitting-room with mod cons like an electric kettle and a loo? Whimper. So I was wearing six extra layers and fingerless gloves††† and a good thing too. Although there was both a loo and a kitchen with an electric kettle . . . there was even an electric fire, which Enoch put up on a shelf and angled down at us as we sat in our little circle . . . and I was still freezing to death.
But handbells were rung. Farrell is back at university, but Oliver is beginning to ring little touches of bob minor; Enoch is beginning to get through plain courses of bob minor; and Olga . . . needs more self-confidence, and an iPhone with Mobel on it. She is bringing back horrible memories of Niall and Esme trying to teach me. . . .
But the main thing is, the three of them really aren’t ready to cope alone, and neither Niall nor I have a regular free evening left. I don’t know what we do now. Pity we can’t use a little of that fairy magic and call up a handbell-ringing golem. . . .
* * *
* At an extreme rate of speed. Frell it, honeybun, I want to live to my sixtieth birthday.
** You could see him thinking, poor thing, she has cramp.
*** Yes, I’m a cow.^ But it’s a little like judging a book by its cover. There are too many books. If I really, really hate the cover well, great, there’s one I don’t have to buy. DISCARD. YAAAY. There are too many interesting things to do and see and get involved in. If they take more than twenty minutes to get to, great, there are closer ones. DISCARD. YAAAY.
I admit there’s a sliding scale about this. If Nadia were a bell tower, I’d be looking for something closer.^^ And the Japanese conversation lessons I’m still promising myself after I finish SHADOWS, which is a little perverse, but there’s no way I have brain or energy to start now, will be farther away than Nadia. However, they have helpfully said that a good deal can be done via Skype.^ While they also, equally helpfully, send me occasional links to interesting events at the Japan Society in London.
Anyway. Niall is a nicer human being than I am. If it were up to me, if a bunch of beginners want to learn to ring handbells, they can come to us. A bit like I go to Nadia—or to the language school.#
. . . Oh, and yes, both my Japanese cookbooks arrived. Someone on Twitter (?) asked a few days ago. I think that’s one of the things that got buried in the post-flu avalanche of Missed Stuff. It’s not that the flu was all that severe—it was a ratbag but it wasn’t serious—it’s just that I’m always not quite coping as a way of life, so any spanner in the works really does me in, like a mild wind will knock over a cardboard house. I was going to blog about my new cookbooks—they’re lovely. Maybe I still will. I can pull them off the shelf## and add them to the pile of things to be dealt with NOW. RIGHT NOW. I MEAN NOW.
^ I’m also a cow with ME, and driving is a genuine bugbear.
^^ On a heavy Monday, let’s say when I’ve done a particularly intense stint of work before my voice lesson, and Niall isn’t going to Colin’s that night so if I want to go I have to drive myself, when I get home again I may be just beginning to see the little smoke wisps in my peripheral vision that mean STOP NOW.
^^^ Supposing Skype is in the mood. A language I know—which is to say English—is usually pretty challenging and video? Are you kidding?
# Which may indeed turn out to be too far. In which case I will have to find a Skype pixie/hobgoblin/troll and bribe the frell out of it.
## Yes. They’re on a SHELF. I hope you’re impressed.
† YAAAAAAAAAH. It’s amazing what a 15-year-old Peugeot can do.
†† Er—Tir nan Og, Hampshire. I have rung there occasionally. When I can find it.
††† NO NOT THOSE FINGERLESS GLOVES. They’re still in a bucket in the greenhouse.
Diane in MN
I’ve never had a plastic bag break, but oh how I appreciate the ewww grossness of your situation. I have taken to using plastic gloves–the disposable exam-glove kind–when doing public pick-up duty with my critters, and keeping an extra one in my pocket just in case of some unexpected disaster. So far so good.
I have a large-economy-size box of those disposable gloves because I seem . . . to get myself in icky situations, one way or another, somewhat regularly.^ But as a town dog owner, I go through one to four plastic pick-up bags a day. Even if we get out to the country for the long morning hurtle, the afternoon hurtle is pretty much invariably in town. That’s a lot of plastic. The local pet store, after listening to me whine about it for several years, finally found a source of biodegradable dog crap bags that seem to be genuinely biodegradable even after you’ve read the fine print . . . but it’s still a lot of plastic. I certainly use the gloves . . . but I’m under the impression the bags leave a smaller, you know, footprint.
Re Williams
As someone who milks cows on a dairy farm two days a week, I can tell you that it does wash off.
Well personally I draw AN ENORMOUS THICK LINE, LIKE MAYBE ABOUT A MEDIUM-SIZED ASTEROID WIDE, between herbivore crap and carnivore crap. I’ve spent years of my life mucking out stalls, but I think I’d have trouble working at a kennels, and I’m even a dog person. Herbivore crap is just not that big a deal.^^ I’ve come into direct personal contact with . . . well, an awful lot of horse, including scouring foal, which is pretty unpleasant, cow, which is always sloppy, goat, including scouring goatling, sheep and rabbit. There are probably others. But it never occurred to me in my barn days that washing my hands and putting my jeans and flannel shirts through the washing machine wouldn’t be enough.
PamAdams
I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse.
Oh gods. Oh gods. I’m not laughing. I’m really not . . . RRRMBGGLK. NOT. LAUGHING.
b_twin_1
| I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse. |
. . . given the number of people on the forum who have access to animals with copious excrement of all types I humbly suggest we don’t carry on with “mine’s bigger than yours”
::notgigglingeither:: ::NOT:: I don’t think that’s what was happening here, but you’re probably right we want to ensure that it doesn’t. But I’d differentiate between indoor pets and you farmers. I’ve worked on farms, and it’s also a different mindset. So PamAdams’ interesting experience and my exploding dog bag are in the same category, as are you and Re Williams in the same other category.
^ This includes in the garden. I scatter pelleted chicken manure by hand, because it’s quick, easy and efficient that way. The bags all say STERILIZED but I am much happier in gloves somehow. And I once had a carton of mealworms break all over the kitchen floor, and having very promptly shut up hellhounds, scrabbled (most of) the escapees out from under the corner overhang of cupboards and so on by hand. Speaking of mealworms I haven’t checked on the robin’s nest in a couple of days. . . .
^^ Which, since there’s so much more of it, is a very good thing.+
+ I don’t think I’d do too well mucking out the big cat cages at the zoo either.
Singing and a ’cello
I had FOUR new songs to learn, or to try on for size and choose from, the last fortnight, since Nadia, the lazy slut, was taking Easter Monday off,* they just don’t make voice teachers like they used to.** And then I had flu.*** I’ve only been really singing for about the last three days.† So, at rather a pelt, I learnt a song and a half: Long Time Ago arranged by Aaron Copland†† and half of When Daisies Pied by Thomas Arne†††.
In some ways the increasing gap between what I do or can do at home and what I do or can do for Nadia is INCREASINGLY FRUSTRATING. I do my most emotive singing . . . mostly over the washing-up. Please. But there’s something about having something that is just slightly distracting‡ to do with your hands and about one-tenth of your brain, as well as no audience‡‡, that enables all kinds of freedom. I caught myself breaking my heart over the dead Eurydice some time this weekend . . . and of course the moment I noticed it went away and I couldn’t get it back. Arrrrgh. But in terms of sheer howling frustration at the perversity of self-consciousness . . . I was doing scales at the sink. It was, again, some time this weekend. I’d been singing for a day or two at that point but this was my first attempt to get back into my top end. Oh dear, I thought, that A is still very squeaky. So I went to the piano because sometimes having the piano to lean on is comforting. And it wasn’t the A. It was the B. I don’t have a B—yet—but I’ve thought I probably will because I have the A# most of the time at home and an occasional chalkboard squeal above that. This was definitely a B, and while it was far from a thing of beauty, it was real enough that if I could make it on demand it would be useful in a choir where I’m being covered up by a lot of better Bs.‡‡‡
Of course it only lasted long enough for me to go, glibberglingglang, that’s a B! That’s a real, live B! Whereupon it went away so emphatically I could barely hack my way to the A. Siiiiiiiigh.
When I went in today the first thing Nadia did was make me do a lot of physical stretches to get the bits reconnected since, post-flu, they’ve all shut down in postures of rigid defense. The point being that I was even singing badly . . . but I had still managed to produce that top B I don’t have (yet) simply because I knew I had had flu and wasn’t expecting much. ARRRRRRGH.
She then asked me what, of whatever I was singing, I’d most like her input on, and I pulled out Long Time Ago. And here’s the thing . . . she didn’t say anything about the notes and all that basic stuff (despite the fact that they are not perfect). She went immediately into phrasing and interpretation.
You know this improvement scam is kind of intimidating. . . .
blondviolinist
|
cicatricella wrote on Fri, 13 April 2012 22:02 |
| Re: the violoncello thing. I know not how it might apply to voice, and why there would be both a ‘cello’ and a ‘violoncelle’, but ‘cello’ is actually an abbreviation (or was originally anyway). ‘Cello’ is a diminutive in Italian and a ‘violoncello’ is a ‘little (contra)bass’. That’s why some books (especially older ones) write it ” ‘cello” |
Yep. So the performer who listed it as “cello” was probably a nice enough person, and the performer who listed it as “violoncelle” was full of themselves.
I did wonder. It’s the ‘violoncelle’ performer that we missed. The cello player was a nice young man—and I think I remember he placed in the instrumental category. I did know about the “ ’cello” from reading lots of old books, but I assumed that since this was in some other language it must be some other instrument.
Diane in MN
Unfortunately he’s not the least interested in opera and unless he has a voice teacher at some point who wakes him up to the glories of the operatic repertoire I think we’ll lose him to the West End. Feh.
How good are you at subverting voice teachers?
SNORK. That approach hadn’t occurred to me. Well, the family have been threatening to move south, to be nearer the rest of the clan. . . .
I didn’t hear Traviata this afternoon and from your description, I would have disliked the production a whole lot. As when:
[. . .] she realises he’s asking her to give up Alfredo forever SHE TAKES HER DRESSING-GOWN OFF and trails around in her slip. Oh gods how I hate the wandering around in your underwear to indicate vulnerability and innocence thing. (She does it again later at the party. [. . .])
This would have taken me right outside the performance,
YES. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT IT DOES. ‘Surreal’ has rules (even if I’m not sure what they are) just like ‘fantasy’ does, and if you break them, you ruin the story, and the spell. The end of the first act, when she’s singing about how she has to be free, and then she hears Alfredo off stage singing about the power of love, in his wet way, and it stops her . . . in this staging, he comes on stage and confronts her, although I think you don’t have to know the standard set-up to recognise the dream-like quality of it here: she is confronting herself really. And it works. That’s one of the things that works a treat. It’s hard to believe that someone who came up with this would also come up with trailing around in your slip.
even if other elements (like Alfredo in his underwear) had failed to do so.
Indeed. I was having a little trouble, although I would have coped, with the cabbage roses. The boxer shorts broke my suspension of disbelief snap. Reasons Never to Be A Stage Actor: your director can make a fool of you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I dislike and am distracted by staging that wants to trump the music or libretto or both. Aaargh. It’s too bad that on top of that, the singers were not at their best.
Yes. And part of the frustration is that a good deal of this staging was really interesting. But . . . I was talking to someone else who saw it, who agreed that Dmitri sang like a stick. It may have been characterisation—Papa Germont is a stick—but it was not a good choice.
Blondviolinist
I haven’t seen many productions of La Trav, but I’ve yet to see one in which the 2nd act didn’t bore me. (Well, except for Papa Germond’s aria. He’s being a jerk, but oh! is it gorgeous music.) This includes two of Zeffirelli’s stagings. Maybe the act is simply hard to stage effectively.
We-ell. . . . I wouldn’t say boring, myself, but then I love the opera too much. I do absolutely know what you mean. For me the music, well sung, can deal with anything (and Dessay, even not in top voice, was well worth watching, and I’d see her in it again without hesitation). What I guess happens with me is that I look forward to all three scenes, and I would have said that it’s pretty hard to get both Germont and Violetta and the party scene wrong, they’re both oozy with easy drama. All right, it’s not hard: put Violetta in her dressing gown, and then make her take it off, and then wander brokenly around the rest of the stage pulling all the cabbage roses off the furniture. ARRRRGH. Anyway. It shouldn’t be hard to stage both those scenes. The rough one is the one between Papa the Thug and Alfredo the Wet Brat.
And yes, since you ask, I’m insane, we knew that, I’d love a chance to try. . . .
* * *
* I think this was a toddler-minding problem rather than a desire to loll around at home in her dressing-gown all day eating bonbons and watching soap operas.
** WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WHILE SHE’S ON MATERNITY LEAVE FOR TWO MONTHS? I’LL FORGET EVERYTHING.^
^ Drama queen? What? Clearly you don’t take music lessons from a Nadia.
*** I know. I still owe you a what? blog about how the New Thing came to be. It may be some help if I mention now that ‘raving with fever’ had something to do with it.
† And I still have one spectacularly blocked ear which is very, very boring.
†† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D8wqsmkYT8 So I have a thing for baritones. Sue me. Of the half dozen that come up immediately on YouTube this is my favourite. And having listened to all of the ones I liked twice (and this one three times) I have STOPPED because Nadia doesn’t like me listening to YouTube—I told you this, that she believes that you pick up interpretations without meaning to and she wants her students making their own mistakes. And their own not-mistakes. As recently as when I was first learning Dove Sei I thought she was straining at gnats with me—I could certainly see why she’d be thinking about this with a student who, you know, had a real voice and was really singing—but . . .
Um. Okay. Yes. I’ve crossed that line too.^ Granted that Long Time Ago (or When Daisies Pied) is a simple song, but my excuse for heading for YouTube was to learn the actual line as quickly as possible without worrying about my eccentric piano-playing. But I was pretty much ignoring the melody because I knew I could pick it up, and listening to the phrasing. How does he do that—oh. Oops.
EMoon
It is amazing, as I take more lessons and crawl slowly forward in the singing, how much more I can hear in others’ singing.
Yes. Exactly. I’ve been aware of it increasingly—as I mentioned again on Friday after the Pan-galactic finals, that your listening is different in kind if you’re having even a feeble and talent-free stab at doing whatever-it-is yourself. But I don’t think I had realised till I started listening to good professional singers singing Long Time Ago the other night just how far down this road I’ve come. Oh wow. Look. Elephants. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.
All I need is more work, more work, more work, and no other things interrupting it. (Bwah-ha-ha-ha! she sings, with expression and only the right amount of vibrato. . . .
Well . . . that might be true with you people with voices. It’s certainly true that I could use more practise time to good effect but . . . I’m still going to hit the wall with this voice-equivalent sooner rather than later. Good reasons to keep singing off the McKinley Obsession List.
My friend Susan . . . mentioned today that a great contralto died a few days ago at age 90, Lili Chookasian. I knew nothing about her, but Susan gave a link to one of her recordings and I was completely wiped out by it, tears and all. Well below both our ranges, on the low end, but in case you’re interested, here’s a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrZTUm8IUAU&feature=relat ed
Oh my. Yes. (Which is why I’m sticking it in here, for musical blog-readers who don’t look at the forum.) I would love Kathleen Ferrier anyway, but I also love her because she’s the only true contralto I’ve pretty much ever frelling heard of.
I also sing Blow the Wind Southerly and even though I love the song and there’s no reason I shouldn’t, still . . . why? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjvHg9cBriw ^^
^ For better and worse. Generally speaking I’m fine with the fact that I’m not going to be a (very) late-flowering Beverly Sills. But I do kind of catch myself wishing that I had the chops+ to be a big frog in even a very small pond. Some of this is worrying about the future of the Muddles: I’ve told you we’re going to be getting a new director and Who Knows. And thanks to having more throat trouble this last year than I have had since I was a bronchitis-prone preteen and that the Muddles have lots of long breaks from rehearsal, I’ve never quite fully committed to them. If our new leader wants us singing medleys of old Beatles hits I’ll be out of there so fast I’ll give myself road burn.
+ Er . . . croaks?
^^ And Che Faro. And He Was Despised. And O Waly Waly. She sang a lot of my favourite repertoire. And I am a glutton for self-punishment.
††† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxiTrRwsW0E
‡ There are good musical moments out with hellhounds too.^ But you can never afford to be too distracted from continuously scanning your surroundings for sudden perils. And I’ve never had a spoon or a tea mug leap out of my hands and go scalding off after a rabbit.
^ Even if Chaos will not stop looking up at me earnestly when I sing. When we’re out hurtling he trots at my side. At home he gets out of the nice comfy dog bed to stand near me and stare. No, I’m not in pain. Go away.
‡‡ Other than a deranged hellhound.
‡‡‡ Or at least Griselda. You really only need Griselda.
Uncomfortably numb
It’s funny how different something looks from one perspective than it does from another. I thought that the first few words of the first sentence of New Thing* would clearly, unmistakably and irresistibly label it as fiction. People who read the blog even occasionally (I thought) would be aware that I mention Peter from time to time** as an ongoing part of my life***—and if people who don’t read the blog at all might be intrigued at the possibility of one of those scary train-wreck blogs where people describe their bosses as pustules and how they had it off with the plumber last Saturday† while their spouse was buying Marmite at the corner shop,†† hey, whatever keeps them reading. But it never occurred to me that even the least regular reader could get to the end of the first sentence, and we will pass over the reference to computers and conferences since not everyone knows who Peter is†††, absorb the reference to the fourth volume of The Epic of Flowerhair and not at least suspect the presence of a fragrant rodent. The Epic of Flowerhair? Seriously? I must be even farther out of touch with my genre than I realised.‡ And the only reason this blog exists is because I’m a writer. A fantasy writer. Um. People do read sidebars, don’t they? Where mine outs me as a fantasy writer. I always read sidebars. There is vastly, universe-crackingly too much content out there in internet land. You need a fast way to say ‘no’‡‡ occasionally. Sidebars (sometimes) provide one.
And haven’t I been chirpy and upbeat about the New Thing? Well, I thought I’d been being chirpy and upbeat‡‡‡ about the New Thing.
Anyway. It’s fiction. There will be more of it. And, you know, thanks for worrying . . .
* * *
I know I promised you a What? You’re doing what? semi-explanatory blog tonight but I’m several leagues beyond shattered and I have to get up EARLY tomorrow.
About six weeks ago, I think, we received a very chirpy email, speaking of chirpy, from the parents of one of Peter’s grandchildren, informing us that the grandchild in question had reached the finals of the national division of the Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster Young Musician of the Year competition, which is being held in Dastardly, which is not impossibly far from here. So we’re going. Tomorrow. EARLY tomorrow. We’re going (EARLY) because we’re getting a ride—from Georgiana and Saxon who are getting out of bed even earlier to swing past here and pick us up. They are noble and wonderful human beings.§
It’s going to be a clan gathering—I believe they’re pegging off one whole section of the arena for us—but the finalist grandchild and his immediate family swooped through here a day early and stayed overnight last night at Third House. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like a good idea before I had this flu§§ and it still seemed like a good idea up until the electricity started flashing on and off like an urgent Morse code message yesterday morning. I was (serendipitously) out buying batteries when one of the other clerks came flouncing back in the shop and announced crossly that both our little local grocery stores were closed, allegedly because of automatic-till problems. Oh. My next stop was some little local grocery, for supplies for the troops who were arriving in a few hours. . . .
With reference, the other night, to the question of protecting your technology from erratic power delivery: I have this great boulder of an object under the desk at the cottage, which is both hard drive back up, enough battery to let you close your desktop down without data loss or meltdown if the power goes out, and a kind of super-whammy surge protector, in that it cost ridiculous amounts of money, but you don’t have to keep changing the freller every time something like yesterday happens. It has a major drawback, however, which is that while the power is out it screams. It screams incessantly for as long as the power is out—and it doesn’t stop screaming until the power is back on again AND you have reset the wretched thing.
It spent a lot of yesterday screaming. I did not enjoy this.
And then when I finally got to Third House to make up the beds, I couldn’t get the frelling heat to turn on. The OLD boiler§§§ was thirty (or forty) years old and it had pretty much two settings: On. And off. And it had a dial, so you could set the temperature. That was about it. It also made a reassuring roaring noise when you turned it on and it came on. I am capable of understanding this system. The new boiler, which was installed when I had all that fun having the Weight Bearing Floor built for the attic a couple of years ago, will make a cherry pie, sew a fine seam, and calculate pi to 1,000 places. All I want it to do is heat my house. And I couldn’t figure out WHY I COULDN’T TURN IT ON. I wasted a lot of time on this, to the detriment of the bed-making, but it was cold last night#. . . .
They had been keeping me up to date with their progress by text, including the indefinite delay when the M-something motorway stalled out due to a traffic accident. Then I didn’t receive the last two texts about their getting underway again, and the next thing I knew there was a sudden influx of tired, chilly human beings who were bemused by the fact that Wolfgang was preventing them from parking in Third House’s drive, and after everyone is home from work there never are spaces on the street. Oh. Technology, you ratbag. You get careless, when things are working. You assume they will go on working.
I have to go to BED. I have to get up EARLY. PS: our grandchild is going to blow the rest of those weaselly little suckers out of the water. . . . ##
* * *
* It doesn’t have a name yet. You will be the first to know.
** See: I am my own best material because I don’t have to worry about taking my own name in vain or hurting my own feelings. And poor Peter suffers the disability of being the only other person who doesn’t have an alias. So I do try to protect him.
*** I suppose, since I’m always reminding you how much I don’t tell you, you could have leaped to the sudden, horrified conclusion that our marriage is actually a seething rancorous mass of barely restrained mutual loathing, and that this had broken out at last. Um. No. And even Gelasio isn’t a villain. At least I don’t think so. At least not yet. I suppose he could . . . mmmph mrgle gmmmph.
† Cheaper than weekend overtime rates. If the plumber fancies you.
†† Sorry, you hopefuls. I don’t write that kind of blog. Nice knowing you.
††† http://www.peterdickinson.com/
‡ Hoist by my own petard again. I also keep saying that I’m very under-read in everything because I’m a very slow reader and read over too wide a range. True.
‡‡ Or even ‘yes’, unfortunately. Noooooo! I do not want to receive email updates! Noooooo! I do not want to be on your RSS feed! Nooooooooo!
‡‡‡ And annoying.
§ I believe there is also a classic Jag involved. Oooooooh. May I be awake enough to appreciate it.
§§ There was a noxious miasma hanging over Bologna this year. I know several people hitherto innocent of any crime who went home plague-bearers.
§§§ Furnace
# Yes. I am extremely tired of bringing this year’s baby plants indoors every night.
## PPS: The boiler had turned itself off at source. I guess because it got tired of the Morse electricity. It did allow itself to be turned back on again—when someone other than me figured this out.
Jolly jolly jolly jolly Easter technology
So a friend and I have been trying to figure out something new and amusing to do for the blog. * It had got to the point by this week that we really needed to do a kind of run-through to see if it was going to work**, but I’ve been ill*** and she has, like, a job and a life† and scheduling has been a ratbag. But we finally decided we could do it this morning.
The first thing that happened is that I overslept. SO WHAT FRELLING ELSE IS NEW.†† So when I finally texted my friend (as prearranged) she had also overslept††† arrgh arrgh arrgh arrgh so we both stumbled around finding caffeine (and clothing) and feeding/hurtling domestic fauna and so on. As one does.
Articulateness was beginning to emerge from the enshrouding mists. Blah. Gar. We were tentatively going to do this by Skype instant messaging, but we were going to have a video-enabled chat about what we were trying to do first, in so far as I was capable of either speaking audibly‡ or hearing anyone speaking to me.‡‡
The first thing that happened was that we couldn’t get Skype to talk to us. . . . No, wait. The first thing that happened was that Pooka was doing one of her little, Message? Me? Message?, deals, so my friend had texted back and I’m wondering why she hadn’t because it wasn’t showing. Eventually I went hunting and there were like three new ones the last one being, Hey, where r u? ARRRRGH. It’s sort of the modern tech version of catching your roommate with the empty plate in her hands and the crumbs on her face: Chocolate cake? What chocolate cake?‡‡‡
Then, having re-established contact by text . . . Skype refused to connect. R u there? yes im here where r u . . . note that there are two iPhones, a Macbook and a desktop PC involved, and we are playing merry, merry musical gadgets . . . eventually Skype acknowledged both my and my friend’s existence at the same time on one machine each and a sort of connection was established . . . except she couldn’t hear me, I couldn’t see her, and I was getting a helpful pop-up message saying ‘your broadband is moving at a somewhat slower than measurable rate. Glaciers are faster. Liver flukes are evolving into diplodocuses while we wait for the signal from the historic maypole on your cul-de-sac. We don’t hold out a lot of hope for this conversation you’re trying to have.’
Eventually my friend and I gave up on the preparatory chat option. She was still trying to reassure me (we were still texting, mostly successfully) that Skype IM was really easy, nothing could go wrong. Yes. And I’m the queen of Sheba. My Skype kept claiming that my friend was off line. My friend kept claiming that her Skype was telling her I was off line. Shifting from one demonic piece of kit to another of course aggravates the situation. I could sit there watching Pooka and the desktop pointing fingers at each other and saying: She did it!§ I turned everything off and then turned it back on again. Skype was now claiming I was back on line, but I wasn’t allowed to change my status. I WAS GOING TO BE ON LINE FOREVER.§§
At this point I received another text from my friend. Ur still off line, it said. ARRRRRRRRRGH, I replied. R u near ur landline? she next inquired (crisply). I’m going to phone u.
Somebody tell me why I could hear her laughing through her texts.
Um, I texted back, yes. But I nvr use it because connection ALWAYS bad.
She phoned me while I was standing in the middle of the office floor at the cottage, watched with some interest by relaxed and half-asleep hellhounds, and swearing like an entire regiment of troopers from low backgrounds, trying to UNTANGLE the frelling WIRING between the phone and the message machine§§§ and between the machine and the wall, which, because I never use any of it, mats itself into plastic dreadlocks. HOW DOES IT DO THIS. IT SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. PLASTIC FRELLING FLEX CANNOT FRELLING FELT ITSELF. Sure it can. It’s like how coathangers breed in empty closets. When the phone went BRIIIIIIIIIIING the way cheap landlines still do I was so startled I dropped the whole mess.
We had the conversation. She got me on Skype. She got me on Skype’s Instant Messaging, which was hiding. No, really. We had our run-through. Our idea works.
Mwa hahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, this is going to be fun.#
Stay tuned.
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* This is a long story which I’m about to start torturing you with hints about. But for tonight, it’s just murky, inscrutable background.^
^ Mwa hahahahahaha
** Okay, maybe I’m starting to torture you now.
*** You may have noticed.
† She does stuff like hang out. There aren’t even any handbells involved. I really don’t understand why we’re friends. I suppose we each provide the other with variety in her social relationships.
†† I’m not sleeping through the alarm. It’s just I keep putting it back as I thrash and flounce and periodically notice that another hour has gone by and I’m still not asleep. I don’t like missing half the day this way, but I like even less not being able to use ANY of the day because I’m too tired. Conventionally the phrase ‘her blood ran like fire through her veins’ sounds exciting. She’s just caught sight of her true love—or possibly he/she has his/her tongue down our heroine’s throat and his/her hand, um, but I don’t usually write those stories—or her enemy on the battlefield. Something is going to happen. Something other than our stupid heroine being unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in her sodding unenchanted bed in her sodding unenchanted cottage in her sodding unenchanted little town. ARRRRRRGH. I will never feel the same about that phrase. Also, I need to be able to breathe.
††† She also has a lurgy. SHE’S FIVE THOUSAND MILES AWAY. I DIDN’T GIVE IT TO HER.
‡ See: Lurch. Or a really really bad recording of Paul Robeson.
‡‡ This didn’t stop me hearing my ex-bells this morning. Sigh.
‡‡‡ I shouldn’t say things like this. Next time Pooka will eat them.
§ Yes. They both had chocolate cake crumbs on their faces.
§§ Note that today’s friend is THE ONLY PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE I EVER SKYPE WITH BECAUSE SKYPE IS ONE THE MANY SO CALLED WONDERS OF MODERN SO CALLED TECHNOLOGY I DO NOT GET ALONG WITH. Hannah and I tried it once. She hated it as much as I did.^
^ Us old people have to stick together. Silver surfers, for godssake. I nearly took myself off the grid permanently when I heard that term for the first time, and went to live in a cabin in the woods with oil lamps and a fireplace.
§§§ Which I also never look at or play back because the connection is so bad I can’t hear what whoever it is is saying and I probably don’t want to anyway, who uses a landline any more?^
^ I give no one Pooka’s number. Peter has it. The archangels have it. Okay, Merrilee, Hannah, and today’s friend have it. Fiona has it. That’s about it.
I don’t like phones, okay? I’ve never liked phones.
# After all, we have Blogmom for the blog. Nobody messes with Blogmom.
Poor overwhelmed exhausted lurgified person
My dog minder didn’t show up today.
Ordinarily I don’t absolutely need a dog walker to give hellhounds their second long sprint of the day Monday or any other day. But I found out the hard way that if you don’t get your dog minder on retainer, so to speak, she’s less likely to find time for you when you really need her for the exciting one-offs of life*. So I have her every Monday, and then I can come home and have a nice cup of tea after my voice lesson and before I have to go ringing.**
We had a traumatic morning*** when I bundled hellhounds into Wolfgang and went out to Warm Upford for fuel. It is insane that there are no petrol stations within about five miles of New Arcadia† but that’s the way it is. New Arcadia has several thousand residents and Warm Upford has several hundred, but it’s Warm Upford with the petrol station. It took sixty one quid to fill Wolfgang’s tank. I nearly had heart failure.†† Granted the tank was unusually empty, thanks to the petrol-strike panic-buying nonsense which I wanted to give a miss if at all possible (and there was no sign of it today), but for sixty-one quid in the current economic climate I could buy a perfectly serviceable, low-maintenance pony.†††
We did still have an excellent hurtle—it’s the beginning of April, the progress of the bluebells must be closely monitored from here on.‡ And this is the beginning of my favourite time of year: from the daffs and forsythia and the first little bluebell florets and the swelling lilac buds through to the great midsummer hurrah of my roses: everything is rushing out at increasing speed and your mission, Ms Briggs, should you decide to accept it, is to try and frelling keep up. I squeezed nearly an hour in the garden out of a schedule that had time for no such foolishness in it‡‡ and I did think, as I pelted off to Wolfgang‡‡‡ and Nadia, that it was odd my dog minder hadn’t come yet.
Nadia was teaching in a new place—and fortunately I met her previous student leaving or I might never have found it, hidden away as it is behind some trompe d’oeil hedges. It’s a nice if fairly ordinary looking bungalow and then you get inside and . . . golly. Serious music room. Yeep. Intimidating. But it was still Nadia. And it was Nadia who had told me during my last lurgy§ that often enough to be hopeful about it, you can sing through a lot of head, throat and upper respiratory malfeasances, and this is (so far) one of those. It’s positively bizarre, to sing as well as you ever do§§ and then as soon as you stop, to be sneezing and talking in a hoarse, scratchy voice. And I have not one but two new songs to learn over the Easter break§§§.
I then came back to the cottage, feeling a trifle worn, wanting only to pick up well-hurtled hellhounds and sweep down to the mews to have a nice cup of tea and perhaps some extravagance like an apple before ringing . . . and my dog minder hadn’t come. Weep. Weep.
I hurtled hounds—perhaps a little slower than usual, and with more pauses for nose-blowing. I rang Niall to ask if he was going ringing tonight. He answered the phone sounding like me. I will if you will, he croaked. So we went, trying to breathe shallowly, although a bunch of ringers is not so unlike a classroom of virusy children, and you all know how that works out.# It was a particular ratbag to be tottery and brainless too because my old ringing master, from the veriest deeps of time before ME and the turn of the century, was there, and he can ring anything. He does, however, need the band to ring any/everything, and . . .
I am so going to bed early.##
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* Or possibly the opera-season-offs.
** I like that have to go ringing. Well, I do. Ringing is necessary to my life. Which is a good reason for living in England, which still has the highest density of change-ringing bell towers anywhere on the planet.^
^ Not to mention the beginner handbell education seminar tomorrow. Did I tell you about this? Niall got me into it. Of course.
*** Aside from the ‘getting up’ part. Lurgies share with ME the delightful business of making you need more sleep and allowing you to get less. La la la la la la la. Well, my TBR pile has lowered noticeably, although I may be throwing the rejects against the wall sooner than usual.
† I suppose one positive side effect of all the new-build we’re going to get whether we like it or not, or whether we sign petitions till we’re blue and purple in the face or not, or whether we attend town meetings twice a day for the next sixty years or not, is that we may finally get our own petrol station. I guess that’s positive. . . .
†† I nearly bit the attendant, who was way too jolly and perky. I could probably have claimed it was an uncontrollable spasm.
††† I tweeted the £61 and had a few tweets and emails in reply that I should stick to walking, biking, buses and trains. In a perfect world. Nadia is twelve or twenty-plus miles away. When she’s twelve miles away the bus service between here and there exists, but it would take me all day, and I could probably knit cardigans for all of you in the time I spent waiting around for my next connection. When she’s twenty-plus miles away . . . I don’t think you can get there from here.
I will not bike on Hampshire roads. People certainly do and they shouldn’t. They’re a danger to themselves and to fossil-fuel-powered traffic. The little country roads are mostly barely two lanes wide—at least when they’re one lane wide you jolly well ought to be driving carefully—and usually close-bordered by hedgerows, but most of those tiny roads nonetheless have a 60 mph speed limit, which most cars are eager to take advantage of. And then you hove around a blind corner and find a bicyclist pedalling slowly down the middle of the road, either because he is a careless moron, or because he’s read or been told that it’s safer to occupy your lane and make cars slow down than to hug the edge and encourage them to blast past whether they’ve got room or not. I don’t know why we don’t have gruesome bicycle fatalities a lot more often. I personally slow down on blind corners, but then I’m a wuss.
And local trains are a species of fiction out of P G Wodehouse or Dornford Yates.
The pony-trap could at least carry my music. But it would still be a long jog to Nadia on Monday afternoons.
‡ Yes, gods willin’ and the crick don’t rise, there will be the Ritual Sea of Bluebells Photos in a few weeks.
‡‡ The robin is still sitting on the nest. Yaaaay. The first time I saw her she was sitting high and proud but as the days pass she seems to be sinking lower and lower. I wonder if the fault in three-dimensional space on that shelf is likely to spread. I could use some hidden space for empty plant pots, which breed like mosquitoes in a marsh, but only if I can get them back out again at need.
‡‡‡ I half-expect his fuel tank to Glow with an Unearthly Light
§ Generally speaking I rarely get this kind of dumb short-term bug. I resent being ill AGAIN.
§§ Poised under the ceiling dormer with the glass sun roof, where the acoustics are a bit friendlier
§§§ And a third if I’m feeling silly. I do need to be kept away from Una Voce Poco Fa for another . . . decade.
# The seminar tomorrow may sound like the ear, nose, throat and pulmonary ward.
## EARLY! EARLY! EARLY!