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And I was in such a good mood when I got up this morning.* I was going to get my iPhone set up today! Tra la! Traloo tralay! Happy happy happy!
GAAAAAH.
The first thing that went wrong was that I was sitting at the cottage reading back issues of The Ringing World surrounded by one cool pristine virgin iPhone4 and various pieces of sulky middle-aged malfunctioning technology while Gabriel was down at the mews wondering where I was.** Once he was installed at the cottage*** however the havoc fairies exploded out of the walls and got to work.
I don’t think I can bear to go through it all again point by point, even supposing I could remember the order of events, which I probably can’t, having burst quite a number of blood vessels over the course of the day†. The short form is:
At present I have no working mobile phone. You may remember that my sudden, slippery descent into the 21st century began with needing a RELIABLE mobile phone which would be turned on 24/7 and never leave my side††, because I’ve been feeling seriously freaky about Peter since he was so ill in the spring, and his mobile is now loaded to speed dial both the cottage and my mobile.††† Furthermore he came off his bicycle yesterday and has been limping around today complaining about his knee, and I’m having what-if visions of it suddenly giving out on him while he’s coming downstairs and . . . and I’m really looking forward to his saying to me disgustedly tomorrow, having read the blog: I’m fine. I have never been close to falling downstairs. I’m fine. ‡
The SIM card from the RaspBerry‡‡, with my old phone number, transferred beautifully under Gabriel’s masterful handling. There’s just one little problem: no signal. No. Signal. Yes, okay, this is an iPhone4, the one noted for signal problems—but there’s no signal when it’s lying on the desk, either, with no hot sweaty human in any kind of contact—except the steely-gaze kind of contact. The steely-work-you-freller-gaze kind. Now, New Arcadia is the Bermuda Triangle of southern England, but that’s why Orange: Orange works around here. Usually. And I’ve never failed to get a signal on the RaspBerry. It may take some waving and swearing, but eventually the little bars appear, like small goblin teeth, and I’m on. Oh, and have I mentioned that the iPhone4 case hasn’t arrived? The case which, according to both Apple and the sellers of iPhone4 cases, will solve the signal problem. Five working days, the case-selling web site said. That would be today. Nope. No case. I went out and fossicked around behind the water butt, where things get left‡‡‡, to make sure there wasn’t a small iPhone case sized package hiding among the half-used bags of compost, but no. Still no.
Gabriel talked to Orange while I got on with the new holes in the walls and the screaming. Gabriel eventually went away, stooped and careworn, with promises to return tomorrow with fresh artillery and Raphael in a vibrant new set of shining armour.
Meanwhile . . . no phone. No phone. And, obviously, no internet. No lovely fascinating iPhone cruising—the poor RaspBerry is hopeless about the web—no binging and biffing from hither to yon on my shiny black cutting-edge tech. No.§
The one thing that has worked is . . . setting up my account with the iPhone store. The thing may not work but it can still be a time-waster§§ and money-sink.
I got to level six of Fingerzilla in about an hour. I’m not sure how many levels there are, but I was feeling a trifle motivated by the shrieks of the dying. You do want to get to level six, however, because that’s when you get to start crushing San Francisco’s Victorian houses§§§ which offers a nice change from factories and glass skyscrapers. I spent a good deal of the afternoon honing my technique# while various iPhone aps downloaded incredibly slowly: the Chambers English Dictionary took thirty-five minutes, for pity’s sake. And slowed my computer down to early-Amstrad speed.
Somebody, please, tell me this wasn’t a horrible, gruesomely expensive mistake. . . .
* * *
* It was even raining! Yaaaay! I don’t have to do any watering! More time to play with my iPhone! Hellhounds, of course, not having any deep interest in the iPhone, failed to share my enthusiasm for the weather.
**However he contrived to give Peter’s spam filter a boot up the backside, so time was not wasted. Yet. At this point.
*** Having run an extremely thorough gauntlet of hellhounds. Gabriel’s problem is that he likes them and encouraging them only makes them clone at a terrifying rate. Twenty-four hammering tails! Thirty-six cold wet rootling noses! One thousand six hundred and forty-eight gambolling limbs!^ A mere archangel hasn’t a chance against them!
^ Reminds me a little of something that happens toward the end of a book called SPINDLE’S END
† Making new holes in the walls of a three-hundred-year-old cottage with your head is surprisingly difficult. Not to mention painful, but in a situation like this, you desire pain.
†† Except in the bath, or when I forget
††† Of course the one time I can remember receiving an important call on it, to wit, Cathy, to say she’d arrived and was en route to Hampshire, I hit the wrong button in a panic and hung up instead of answering. And I was even expecting the call. Very slightly in my defense, tangling with machinery was made somewhat complex at that moment, as I was several miles from civilisation, surrounded by sheep, and in the company of two hellhounds who were expressing their dissatisfaction with my attitude toward things that would run away if chased.
‡ Peter doesn’t really do emphatic the way I do emphatic.
‡‡ Somebody tell me why, when the RaspBerry lost the SIM card, it kept the contacts list but banished all the telephone numbers. I am not joking. I wanted to ring Gabriel about some damn thing or other after he’d left for the day^ and automatically reached for the RaspBerry. There Gabriel’s name was and . . . that’s all. Phone number is gone. Warily picked up iPhone and clicked on Gabriel. Yep. Phone number. Next thing that happens is that I discover all the email addresses have disappeared from my old paper Filofax. Don’t ever try to tell me that technology isn’t self-aware and isn’t out to get us. The Borg are so out there.
^ He can run away. Just like a sheep.
‡‡‡ By delivery persons who bother to read the instructions. I’m always glad to see another box left on my front stoop bearing in large letters the directive: leave beside house behind gate and water butt.
§ And does it have a fabulous, breathtakingly sharp and vivid screen, as you scroll through the icons of stuff you can’t use because you can’t get on the web? I don’t know. I haven’t noticed.
§§ There are some really astonishingly icky aps available out there.
§§§ My favourite newspaper headline—you get the headlines at the end of each game—is: Mayor Feared Eaten
# I’m still having trouble nailing those pesky helicopters.
Yet Another of Those Days
Yet another. Other people have lots of Those Days too, right? It’s not just me?*
So, for those of you too sensible to waste your time reading other people’s maniacal screams on Twitter, yesterday . . . I ordered my iPhone 4. And no, Orange never did email me to say they were in stock. I’d been thinking I ought to go check their site again, in case they were being ungleblargers, which they were, and then I got an email from Computer Men wanting to come argue with the Nightmare That Is My Email yet again, plus little things I would like them to address like that the sound on the mews laptop is dying, which is very inconvenient when you need to listen to Dido’s Lament 463 times on YouTube. ** So we arranged that they’ll come on Tuesday . . . and my thoughts turned to my future iPhone.*** Because I will probably need help cracking the iPhone code†. So, you know, if I had my iPhone by next Tuesday, then I could gloat exceedingly over both Computer Men who only have 3s, no, no, no, I would be very grateful for their assistance.††
So there the iPhone 4s were on the Orange site and I ordered one.†††
And then I begged and whined and wheedled poor Peter into agreeing to cottage-sit today, because they will only deliver your glittering platinum gewgaw to the street address attached to the credit card you paid for it with, which delivery may happen any time between 8 am and 6 pm. I love delivery services so much it makes my teeth ache.‡ But I had to hurtle hellhounds and then I had to go to the dentist.‡‡
Meanwhile . . . Bronwen had decided she was driving down from Orkney‡‡‡ again and could she come handbelling tonight? Of course she could come handbelling. And then Colin phoned at about 11 o’clock this morning, as I was attaching leads to eight furry leaping legs and a lot of noise, to say that he wasn’t going to be able to make it till 6, 5 being our usual handbell foregathering time, and 5 being the time I had confirmed with Bronwen. Bronwen is by now on the road, of course, and her phone is turned off. I then email Niall at work, saying, can he meet Bronwen and me at 5 anyway, since I can’t get hold of Bronwen to tell her not till 6. Now I can’t get hold of Niall.
So I add my howls to the general din, and three of us scamper outdoors, leaving Peter quivering on the sofa with his hands over his ears. We have a very nice hurtle§ and come back to the cottage to an iPhone and a beaming Peter, who therefore gets to go home. We all troop down to the mews, including the iPhone, with which I begin the approach-and-placation process while Peter addresses the preparation of lunch.
Peter is successful with lunch. I am not successful with the iPhone, which at present is a sleek gleaming paperweight, and whose directions, such as they are, are possessed by demons. Well of course. It’s not like I was expecting to figure it out.§§
And while I was questioning the parentage of the writers of iPhone quick-start instructions, I had an email from Bronwen saying that her car had broken down and she was not coming handbelling.
Whereupon I emailed Niall again, saying, never mind about 5 o’clock.
At this point, having managed approximately three mouthfuls of lettuce and olives§§§, I had to rocket off to the dentist. GAAAAH. So I got there with two minutes to spare . . .
. . . and discovered that they thought my appointment was at 3:45, not 2:30. GAAAAH. We will never know if this is my atrocious handwriting, a gremlin deep in their computer viscera, or a secretary with a mumble. But the end result was that I was adrift on the streets of Mauncester when I could have been at home eating lunch.
I went to Marks & Spencer and bought underwear. This is what Englishwomen under stress do. I have irrevocably gone native.
As dental affrays go, this was on the mild-skirmish end of the scale. I rang Peter to explain why I wasn’t back yet, and when I rang off I stood there staring at the soon-to-be-supplanted RaspBerry, thinking, I’ve finally learnt to do this.# Siiiiigh.
I got home at 4:59 to a phone message from Niall saying, happy to be there at 5 to ring with you and Bronwen. AAAAAAUGH. Frantically rang him. If I were going to be there at 5, I’d’ve left by now, he said. I only just got back from the dentist, I said. Good thing we’re not meeting till 6 then, he said.
So I staggered out with happy, frolicsome hellhounds, had three more mouthfuls of salad and olives, and addressed myself to handbells. And triumphantly rang the 3-4, which in the first place I haven’t done in months, and in the second place the middle pair are the most ratbaggy. So the combined agonies and exasperations of insubordinate iPhones and Cthuhlian dentistry have not yet destroyed me. This is good. I also have a novel to finish.
* * *
* Please lie if necessary.
** And I’ve just bought an iPhone. I am not buying a new laptop.
*** And my future Fingerzilla. Of course.
† I am not cracking anything else, you understand, which is why I already have a hard case on order.^
^ Pink. You had to ask? It’s not, I admit, a very thrilling pink, but I was compromised by what there was, what I could afford+, and the absolute need for a case that will survive both hellhounds and barbed wire. I fancy it will save my life some day, like Wendy and the acorn.
+ Try to imagine how much I don’t want Hello Kitty or a Coke bottle in Swarovski crystals. http://www.dsstyles.com/en/iphone-4-cases/swarovski.html
†† I will be very grateful. I will also gloat.
††† Not without some difficulty. As soon as I said I wanted the 32 GB instead of the mere 16, the person on the other end of the phone gasped and passed me on to someone else. This happened twice more. The woman who finally grudgingly sold me one said that everyone was buying 16s. Uh. As I have been saying since to everyone, didn’t we go through this with computers years ago? You always want more memory? You get as much memory as you can and then you stick extra memory cards in all the little slots? I’m not going to stop with Fingerzilla, you know.^
^ And the freller had better load multi-CD operas. The Walkperson totally sucks dead bears in storage and data retrieval. Totally. Sucks dead bears. It alphabetizes using ‘A’ and ‘The’. It alphabetises by performers’ first names. Not to mention the little matter of refusing pointblank to load multi-CD operas.
‡ Which possibly explains a lot.
‡‡ It is so unfair when you have to go to the dentist on a day when Your Life-Changing Technology is due to be delivered. You want to be at home ironing the floor and detoxing the wiring when it arrives.
‡‡‡ Or maybe Skye
§ To Sweeney Todd. Most of life’s frustrations are better for Sweeney Todd.
§§ Besides, I might give Computer Men heart attacks.
§§§ But the hellhounds ate their lunch!! It wasn’t really a bad day. The hellhounds ate lunch. And dinner.
# I even figured out texts. I found Merrilee’s from June. Um. I still don’t know how to send them, but I know where to find them. On the RaspBerry, that is.
Pansies
Oh, stop that.* It’s not midnight yet.** It’s not.*** It can’t be midnight†, I’m still eating dinner.†† Um . . .
So I had Computer Men underfoot most of the day again today††† doing inscrutable clicky Computer Men things, and . . . my email now semi-works to a whole new unsettling schedule. Am I now getting all my email? I have no frelling idea. I’ve had less than usual the last two days but . . . sometimes you do just get less than usual.‡
Because I am also at present without a car‡‡ hellhounds and I are racking up the necessary daily miles commuting to and from the mews by various roundabout ways, and we were slightly late getting back this morning and discovered Computer Men draped over the flowerpots at the cottage. We were slightly late because . . . siiiiiigh. One of our two main routes from the cottage goes through the churchyard. It’s a very frisky churchyard, with lots of well-tended graves and floral offerings.‡‡‡ The floral offerings are the problem. I hate the tradition of laying cut flowers on a grave, where they wither in a few hours—bring a cheap jug, guys, and put them in water! I suppose the dead-flowers convention may be the transient cut-price modern version of those very grand tombs with really icky skeletons taking the place of the dearly beloved: all flesh, animal and vegetable, is grass.§ Bah. But I grit my teeth and pass those by.
The ones that give me the miseries are the live plants brought optimistically in pots and then . . . left to flop and die of thirst. ARRRRGH. I don’t like it, but I can at least sort of understand a non-plant person buying a pre-potted thingummy at the florist’s, and leaving it instead of the bouquet of cut flowers, with, I suppose, the vague idea that they’ll last longer. Well, they will, of course, but they’ll last longer yet if you WATER THEM.
And even then . . . someone coming from a distance, okay, they buy something at the florist’s, bring it along, leave it, and go home. It lasts a few days and croaks. C’est la vie. Or la morte. I still don’t like it—and it seems to me all wrong to kill plants as a way of honouring a dead human—but I can see it. Sort of.
But what about the obviously home-made offerings? The lopsided pansies in the plastic planter? You make the thing up with your own fair hands . . . and you still leave it mercilessly at the graveside to struggle, gasp, collapse and perish? Why not keep it at home, water it, and pretend that it’s at your beloved’s graveside? Your beloved is dead. They’re not going to care. And you’ll have some nice bright flowers to cheer you up.
Anyway. Watching ranks of little green things dying in the graveyard depresses me. And we’ve had no rain to speak of for weeks, so there have been more than usual numbers of little ex-green things dying in the graveyard lately. And—speaking of home-made efforts—there’s a rectangular plastic planter with five or six pansies in it sitting sadly at the edge of the path the hellhounds and I follow. I’ve been watching them go through the struggle-gasp-collapse-perish business. About three days ago I noticed a watering can half hidden behind one of the old tombstones and my nerve broke. I seized the can, found a tap and (shadowed by baffled hellhounds) watered the frelling pansies . . . knowing that it was too late. They’d been dead for two or three days by then.
No. Wrong. When hellhounds and I passed by again six or eight hours later there were signs of lumpiness—of some prostrate stems trying to stand up again. I still thought it was probably too late . . . but by next day they were all standing. They looked a little beat up, but they were all clearly alive. They’re even hopefully producing a few new buds. Tough little mothers, pansies. One of my favourite flowers.
So I was late back to the cottage today to let Computer Men in because hellhounds and I came through the churchyard . . . and my pansies needed a drink. And as long as I had to go re-steal the watering can and stand at the tap, I might as well fill the watering can and water a few of my pansies’ neighbours.
What worries me is that the careless leavers of potted plants at graveside will decide that this is the work of the garden fairies, and feel free to leave more little green things and more frequently. And I suppose it would be bad form to take them home. . . .
* * *
* Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! . . .
** Bing! Bing! . . .
*** Bing! Bing! Bing! . . .
† Bing! Bing!
†† This might have something to do with going bell ringing tonight. Colin is responsible for two towers, and one of them is farther away than the other one. It was the farther-away one tonight. I’ve been cramming Cambridge, of course, so first we had a frelling touch of frelling Stedman, where he called another frelling single nearly every (frelling) stroke—one of Stedman’s peculiarities is that you can call almost anywhere: most methods you can only call with reference to the treble leading. But then Stedman is a principle, not a method, and the treble is no different than any other bell. Which is why the conductor saying, Catch hold for a touch of Stedman! has a somewhat paralyzing effect. So, the adrenaline flowing nicely, he called for Kent. Kent! I haven’t rung Kent in months. Now, true, I was just thinking that I’m going to lose Kent, not that I ever exactly had it, by stomping it out with Cambridge—but they’re a bit diabolical to ring together when you’re at the frantic-mugging-up level, as I am—they’re too nearly almost a little bit alike. However, as I am fond of saying: nobody died.
††† Although I’m pretty sure I caught Gabriel playing Angry Birds^ on his iPhone. He was waiting for something to load or something. Sure he was. I am going to be in so much trouble as soon as I get my iPhone.
^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNzRyd1xz0 When I was playing with Raphael’s iPhone the other day and going ‘ooh, ah’ over the number of aps, he took it away from me for a minute, saying, nah, most of them are games, and then handed it back to me with Angry Birds loaded. Here, try this one, he said. My two-year-old loves it.
Hmmmm . . .
‡ And if I could train it to block all emails inquiring after a sequel to SUNSHINE it might be worth a little unreliability elsewhere.
‡‡ Wolfgang went in for a General Service + Make the Banshees in the Steering Go Away and Stay Away this Time + Bring the Passenger Door Lock Out of Its Rather Belated Winter Hibernation and Convince It This is May and Warm and That Being Permanently Frozen Is Old and Boring. He was supposed to come out again this afternoon. No. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe. I can’t decide what level of bad news this is. At least they’re finding something to fix. But when you start taking 15-year-old cars in for mending you start wondering what percentage of the price of a new car you’re going to be paying when you get them out again.
‡‡‡ And the occasional small ceramic dog or cat, most of which are dire and one or two are pretty cute.
§ There’s one at the local cathedral that’s for a bishop or someone similarly resplendent with all the struts and carved screens and stone draperies and things, and the requisite skeleton lying over the actual tomb. With a bit of stone drapery over its nether regions. It’s a skeleton. But it still needs its (departed) privates protected from the lurid gaze of the hoi polloi.
Brainscramble
It’s eleven o’clock on a Friday evening* and I have to write a blog entry. Chiefly I’m busy—and preoccupied by—wringing my hands over my email.** I have a variety of issues about my email*** which Computer Men† declared will all be gloriously solved†† by a change of server. I have a somewhat complex set up as it is, or rather, as it was, and shall be again†††, and the virtual digging of post holes while fending off the local rabid tarantula population, the (virtual) cementing of posts into their holes‡ and the stringing of barbed‡‡ computer-wire between them took Raphael four and a half hours‡‡‡ this morning/afternoon and he then LEFT announcing that I should just allow my computers to go on doing whatever they’re doing until they stop. §
Ten hours later they’re still doing it.§§ Whimper.
Maybe I can spend all of tomorrow in the garden§§§ and avoid noticing what my email is up to.
* * *
* And I’m still eating lunch. No, really. It’s been one of those days for a variety of reasons. And I was thinking, as I reeled back to the cottage after bell practise^ that hellhounds really do serve a purpose: the warm, furry, three-dimensional, glad-to-see-you purpose. Peter was playing bridge tonight so it was just me. Or it would have been, without the hellhound factor. With an armful of hellhound, suddenly my own feet remake contact with the ground, clonk, and the reason I feel so odd isn’t because I’m Finally Losing My Grip EEEEEEEEEE but possibly because I’ve had way too much caffeine and way too little food thus far today.
^ Cambridge. Oh gods. There are evenings, when I see Colin and Anthea coming up the ladder, my heart sinks. With Colin and Anthea, chances are we have a Cambridge band. Without them, chances are we don’t. And I’ve missed far too many practises lately and been far too brainscrambled when I’ve managed to go at all, and Cambridge looks like Mount Doom from the Dead Marshes+ at the moment.
But speaking of bad ringing news, Ditherington practise is no more. I went along on Wednesday for the first time in yonks, thanks to circumstances beyond my control++, and found Marilyn and Wild Robert in deep discussion about closing down. Marilyn is tired of trying to hold the local band together when none of the locals comes to practise and (sadly) discretion prevents me from describing the final, mind-boggling+++ confrontation that had just caused Marilyn to resign as tower captain.
But . . . waaaaaah. Ditherington has been my Wednesday night tower pretty much since I started ringing again five and a half years ago. Second in sacredness only to Friday night home tower practise. I like the Ditherington bells! I like ringing for Wild Robert, for whom I commit feats of successful insanity unimaginable in other circumstances, like the frelling touch of Grandsire doubles I called on this our concluding session! –I was standing there with my hand on the rope, Wild Robert having announced a touch of Grandsire doubles, and I said thoughtfully, I can’t remember the last time I rang a touch of Grandsire doubles, and Wild Robert said brightly, And furthermore, you’re going to call this one! No! Nooooo! This isn’t even the nice simple touch I sort of know, except I’ve forgotten! This one is WORSE! And furthermore we had two random ringers and Wild Robert was ringing two bells which is horribly confusing! It took us three tries, but we did get through. Gods know why. The ringing gods clearly like Ditherington, and Wild Robert. So why don’t they send us more ringers?
+ You can’t see Mount Doom from the Dead Marshes? Even better.
++ Hey, did you know it was ME Awareness Week? http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/13/me-chronic-fatigue-syndrome No, neither did I.
+++ I know people are bizarre, but this one was off the frelling graph. I think his wife must have run off with the plumber the same day he discovered he had gripples in his well.
** The fact that every time an individual email pops in or out of existence I get a little pop up box that says ‘Outlook is trying to retrieve data from the Microsoft Exchange Server Squaredumplingxct!!4.xchg’ is not helping my concentration.
*** Arrrrrgh. Blaaaaargh. Grrrrrrrr. You know.
† After the arduous translation process
†† Solved. Sure. And I’m Fred Astaire.
††† Please the computer gods. Please.
‡ Burying rabid tarantulas at the bottoms of post holes is said to be almost as effective as burying slaves under cornerstones of buildings.
‡‡ Which is much scarier than the ordinary, cattle-repelling kind
‡‡‡ It wasn’t all bad. I got to play with his iPhone some more.
§ I have three computers. Although there are only two of them downloading the entire history of the universe at the moment; I decided my nerves couldn’t stand all three of them simultaneously. To the extent that I understand any of this, I gather that everything on either/both computers first has to be uploaded to the new server . . . and then . . . and then . . . Um. Beats me. A very, very, very long staring match? But whatever it is it’s taking more than ten hours. The goal is that everything on all three computers will eventually be on all three computers, instead of inevitably on the one I’m not on at the moment I want it. And the sum total of my email is about four hundred thirty-two trillion bonzogigantibytes. And I haven’t got the fastest broadband ever seen either. It’s sort of the pony express version. Sort of the hamster pony express version. Sort of the retired hamster pony express version. Sort of . . .
§§ And it’s Friday afternoon. Raphael—possibly in fear of watching a 57-year-old woman cry, and he was here all by himself today—did promise to leave his (i)phone on this weekend and furthermore answer it if I get myself into too much of a flap. I was telling this story to Oisin, who is still wrestling with his new virtual organ and is perhaps not in the best of moods on the subject of computers. I added that I thought that was pretty nice of him, especially when he has two little kids. Oisin made rude noises and suggested ‘I’m sorry, darling, you’ll have to take the baby—ow you sodding little brute what are you doing—I have to answer this phone call’.
§§§ I went to a garden centre yesterday. It’s not my fault! There’s a garden centre immediately opposite that end of Gormenghast Hospital! Where I had to take Peter for some more useless tests yesterday. And I had to do something with myself, didn’t I? I’m not going to sit around inside a hospital unless I have a close family member chained to one of the beds! And I needed some more compost^. And I bought more compost! I did! I also bought two trays of snapdragons, a pansy, a hollyhock, two golden spirea^^ and about eight pots! Stop that sniggering! It could have been a lot worse! (Peter might have been late. . . .I might have seen a little rhodo I had to have. . . . )
^ At the rate I’m going through it . . . gah. And I had MORE little-green-thing deliveries today! Including a couple of boxes of FREE little green things! Yowzabella Dopplegrump! I’m such a frelling good customer they’re starting to send me FREE plants! Nooooooo!
^^ Well, I’ve wanted one for years and then I couldn’t decide,+ and Peter was by now waiting, and . . .
+ I was going to give you photo links, and Golden Princess is fairly easy, but the only half decent photo of Firelight I could find–which is to say a photo where it looked interesting rather than boring–had an address so long it repeatedly made my URL-shortener barf and refuse to function, so I gave up.
Hail and farewell
Did you know that Peter Porter died? http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/23/peter-porter-obituary
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1709
I am nowhere near as good on modern poetry—hell, on poetry, full stop—as an unrepentant English major* who dotes on, oh, say, Yeats, Auden and Frost, to name the first three that drift to the surface, should be. And an awful lot of Porter is, well, hard. But I think either of these ought to make you want to read more:
http://www.clivejames.com/guest-poets/peter-porter/great-poet
And down at the bottom of this page, Sleeping with the Alphabet: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article389448.ece
Because I’m usually sitting down at 11 pm or so pretty well mind-blown and urgently fishing for details of the day just past that I can ridiculate** in a blog entry it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to salute the passing of even a great poet. But as it happens my Peter was playing bridge tonight*** so when I got in from bell ringing† I turned radio three on although it was 9:15 which meant Invisible Talking Heads. Peter will put up with classical music but neither of us will put up with the other’s talking heads (Peter listens to a lot of radio four when I’m not around). And the Friday night arts programme was doing a tribute to Peter Porter. And they read this poem aloud:
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/10/mort-aux-chats-peter-porter.html
I don’t myself think it looks like much lying cold and still on the page—for one thing it makes all of us raised on poetry that rhymes and scans start to hunch our shoulders and snarl a little—and if your eye scans ahead too easily, as mine often does, the satire will look blunt and awkward, and you’ll spoil it. But get someone to read it to you and it’ll give you gooseflesh.††
I’m sorry he won’t be writing any more of his gnarly, difficult, surprising, funny, wounding poems. And I’ll probably do that useless thing now of going back to reread him, having been reminded of how good he is by his death, by his going away from us.
* * *
* Well. I’m pretty repentant about the years wasting my time and first the taxpayers’ and later my own money in a series of so-called educational establishments. But I’m not repentant about what made me an English major. I am what made me an English major.
** I don’t mean ridicule—or mock, or tease—I mean ridiculate.
*** First time since he’s been ill. Yaaay. He came home exhausted. Not so yaaay.
† Yes, you’re all dying to hear about my first tower practise as Ringing Master, aren’t you? Well, nyaaaaaah. I’d been sweating this a bit^, trying to decide what I might reasonably manage to hold together, depending on what troops showed up, or didn’t. Basically all you have to do is order people around, and let them do all the work, but the point about Ringing Mastery is that if there’s any fallout, you as Ringing Master have to catch it and clean up after it. So you shouldn’t call for Bristol Maximus if you’re only ringing plain bob doubles yourself.
I had a very tentative plan of action^^, and was nervously hoping that people wouldn’t turn out in force as a gesture of solidarity, which sort of thing ringers are quite capable of: we have a few rotten cads and arrogant swine, but mostly we’re ludicrously supportive for sheer practical reasons.
And then we had a frelling Bristol Maximus^^^ evening. The first few of us had just about got the bells up—under my constantly-deferring-to-Vicky guidance—when all these accidental, non-local Amazing Heroes and Heroines of Ringing started pouring up the ladder—GAAAAH! I’M NOT GOING TO TELL THESE PEOPLE WHAT TO RING!!!!—and the moment Edward’s head emerged through the trap door I fell on him feverishly and asked him to take over.
Which he did.
And I got to ring a touch of Grandsire Triples with a minder, whom I needed, and a plain course of Stedman Triples . . . and I did not get offered the treble for Cambridge Major^^^^ but I kind of wish I had.
^ When I had the opportunity. Computer Man B+, let’s call him Gabriel,++ was here for almost three hours. This computer is still fatally, blood-thunderingly, whimsically slow, and it’s a three day weekend and therefore Computer Men won’t be back till Tuesday to Try Stuff. However . . . my newly snorting, ground-pawing, souped-up RaspBerry is working . . . but only because I had the paranoid, life-saving notion to have a Computer Man around when I put the new SIM card in. You break it out of its little cardboard frame, you open your phone gizmo of choice, you take out the old SIM card, you put the new one in. . . .
Okay. Here is an terse, abbreviated list of what went wrong:
The phone didn’t work. The internet connection worked brilliantly. But the phone—the reason for the upgrade, so I never had to worry about leaving the phone on all the time and Peter could press his speed-dial button any moment day or night and the thing would blast me where I sat/lay/crawled/hurtled. The phone didn’t work. You got a robo voice saying, This number is not available right now. Please leave a message . . .
Upon application to the paperwork, it was observed: The SIM card is described as not needing to be activated. You don’t have to do anything but stick it in the phone.
They spelled my name wrong.
They spelled my address wrong.
They got the phone number wrong.
Both customer service numbers on the paperwork were wrong.
When I finally got onto a human being, she immediately dumped me—because of course this was another wrong number—back into still another robo system. This one insisted that I enter my phone number before it could possibly begin to aid me. I did this three times—using the phone number on the paperwork that came with the new SIM card—because no, I do not have my mobile phone number memorised because I never use the thing, and this one looked all right. It was close.
It wasn’t close enough. Each time the robo voice came back on and said, this number has not been recognised. Please enter your . . .
After the THIRD time, I didn’t do anything. USUALLY a robo system under these circumstances will give you a human being again. Not this time.
After about twenty seconds’ silence, the robo voice cleared its throat and said coolly, We cannot continue this call. And frelling hung frelling up. FRELLING.
At this point I was screaming words even I didn’t know I knew. And Gabriel, fortunately, being made of True Heavenly Steel Or Something Like That, took the (landline) phone away from me, rescued the RaspBerry from being hammered to death against the floor, chained me to a convenient ring in the wall+++ and got out the brazier and the magic herbs. From where I hung, yanking on a link occasionally to see if there might be a weak one, I had the opportunity to discover that the phone number on the new paperwork looked quite reasonably familiar—it was out by one number.
Gabriel eventually ensorcelled a human-like being to talk to him.
The SIM card needed to be activated.
They have me listed as having some other contract than the one I agreed to over the . . . the phone a week ago.
And . . . I having said, a week ago, I can keep my old number, can’t I, and the then-I-thought-nice-friendly-helpful-woman-but-whom-I-now-understand-is-a-foul-member-of-the-forces-of-entropy said, of course . . . Gabriel fortunately had the presence of mind to check and . . . no. Down at the bottom of the label on the throw-away small plastic bag that the SIM card came in—it is NOWHERE ON THE ACCOMPANYING PAPERWORK—in little tiny almost illegible print except that my secret weapon is that when I take my glasses off I can see how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin as long as they’re no farther than .0000001 millimetre away from the end of my nose—is the new phone number. Which Gabriel then politely requested them to change.
The RaspBerry’s phone now works. On the old number. But I’m a century older.
+Computer Man A was obviously correct, the operation to separate them was a success. Neither of them even limps much.
++ He has mentioned reading this blog occasionally so I think I’d better move away from my great joke of calling Computer Men after demons. So we’ll make Computer Man A Raphael. Asmodeus, by the way, has moved on to conquer larger empires. I believe he was last seen wearing a crown and heading west.
+++ Makes you wonder about the previous owner, doesn’t it?
^^ Defer constantly to Vicky
^^^ My little bitty joke. We have eight bells. Maximus requires twelve bells. But we had twelve ringers capable of maximus.
^^^^ I’m learning Cambridge minor inside. Six bells. Eight—major—is a whole new world. Like Grandsire Triples (seven bells with tenor behind) from Grandsire Doubles (five bells with tenor behind). And I’m so gruesomely out of practise after the last few weeks I’m very glad we did not want to waste our extra ringers on a Cambridge minor band.
†† It’s probably read aloud on YouTube somewhere, but in this computer’s present insalubrious condition I’m not going to make myself rampantly crazier trying to find a video that runs well enough to decide it’s a good performance or not.
