Banana
I AM GIVING UP RINGING FOREVER AND JOINING A CONVENT.* A SILENT CONVENT. FURTHERMORE THERE WILL BE NO INTERNET CONNECTION AT THIS CONVENT. THEREFORE I WILL NOT BE FORCED TO DESCRIBE PUBLICLY THE PATHETIC PARTICULARS OF MY HUMILIATION.**
It’s all Bronwen’s fault. Hear that, Bronwen? IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT.
I haven’t been to Forzadeldestino in years because it intimidates the gorblimey out of me. Also in previous eras it was not always welcoming to ringers of a less than a Gadzooks Pentathlon level and you were made to feel it if you asked for plain bob doubles. Also it’s stonking huge. I’d kind of forgotten how huge. The abbey itself is the size of a small country*** and to get to the tower and then into the ringing chamber requires you take a tour. Now here is the capital city, and here are the major seaports, and here is the palace of the queen and the exchequer. And the llama farm. The queen is very fond of llamas, and her breeding programme is . . . Where was I? I have no idea. But there are mountains. Look, I think that’s snow.
There are mountains. And the steps that have been hacked into them are short, curly, and uneven. And they keep switching back on themselves till you’re pretty sure your heading is one of the more obscure of the wind’s twelve quarters, and with every twist the corridor you’re no longer walking along but climbing through gets smaller. You’re already hauling yourself hand over hand up the rope helpfully looped along the wall—now the ceiling is pressing in on you till you have to take your knapsack off and carry it the last few steps in your teeth. Where is a llama when you need one?
And then you creep out of the claustrophobic tunnel into a ringing chamber . . . the size of a ballroom. Or possibly a llama farm. And have I mentioned Forzadeldestino has forty-six bells? Well, maybe thirty-eight. Lots. You grab a rope and you have no idea where you are. You can pick out the tenor(s) because they’re the ones with massive boxes under the ropes but . . . towers with more than six bells (at New Arcadia, for example, where we have eight bells total) may ring the ‘front six’ or the ‘back six’. At Forzadeldestino they have the front eight, the back ten, the second-front six, the second-back fourteen, the middle eighteen, and the King Olaf Memorial Twelve and a Half. We rang plain hunt—plain hunt! One miserable frelling step beyond call changes!—on eight hundred and ninety six and I couldn’t count that high. I know the pattern—that’s one of the things about plain hunt, it’s EXACTLY the same pattern if you’re on four bells or four hundred. I had a minder for plain hunt and I still couldn’t do it.†
Did I say ‘humiliating’? Humiliating.
I’m not going to expound upon the touch of Grandsire triples that I only failed to derail because everyone kept ringing around me like stepping over a dead rat in the road. Except to say that . . . when you have so frelling over-many scrangblatted bells, if you’re only ringing eight of them, you aren’t ringing in a circle, you’re ringing in a line. This is HORRIBLY CONFUSING (to the tiny easily-confused mind). Also, having just been ringing on sixty-seven (plus tenor-behind) there didn’t seem to be enough of them, when under ordinary circumstances, eight bells all going at once seems like a lot.
I wanted to go home long before the practise was over. And the real problem is . . . shut up Bronwen, you’ve caused enough trouble for one evening†† . . . I have to go back. I mostly can’t be bothered having stuff to prove any more—this is one of the advantages of getting old: not having to care about so much dumb stuff—but tonight was real getting back on the horse that threw you territory. I have to go back.
I AM JOINING A CONVENT. A SILENT CONVENT. A CONVENT WITH NO BELLS IN ITS TOWER.
Oh, and the banana? Next time I’m going to eat a banana first. Very grounding, bananas. Plus a few calories to give the panicking mind something to chomp on. Unless I manage to find a convent between now and next Wednesday.
* * *
* Where I will take up origami and scrimshaw. I will also knit. And it has to be a convent that takes hellhounds. The Convent of the Goofy Little Friends of St Francis.
** Okay, wait. If I’m giving up ringing, I won’t have ringing humiliation stories to tell. I don’t have to join a convent. Although . . . no internet connection . . . hmmmmmm. It’s not that I don’t spend way too much time cruising. Or rather, it is because I spend way too much time cruising. Think of all the knitting I can get done without an internet connection.^ I might even, you know, finally finish something.
Which reminds me that I never got round to responding to some of the comments about audiobooks.^^ It is very much a yes-it-works-for-me/NO-IT-DOESN’T-WORK-AT-ALL thing but I am having that late-convert’s where have you been all my life reaction. At the moment I’m listening to the 20th-anniversary revised edition of DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY, Everything You Need to Know about American History But Never Learned, by Kenneth C. Davis^^^ and am finding it absolutely riveting. He’s getting all of American history in 600-odd pages though so it does kind of careen past, with the concentrating listener going, Wait, wait, what happened because of what? Didn’t we miss out a president or two here?# I am a little testy, however, because I found out within the first chapter or so that I need the hard copy to go over after I’ve listened to the audio version, to fill in those moments when my mind wandered or I got stuck at the ‘wait wait’ point and didn’t hear what happened, or when something I was so sure I knew turns out to be wrong that the new version just bounces off the hard smooth well-muscled skin of my bum steer and disappears. I have the original book, and I’ve been reading along in that, but it ends twenty years ago. And it turns out that the new version is so frelling new it’s only available in hardback. The total sum I’ve spent on this book—which I now have in two paper editions and an audible download—it might as well be frelling Kelmscott’s frelling Chaucer. But my American history is probably the best it’s ever been, not that this is saying much.## http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00563S2IS&qid=1316647669&sr=1-1 ### This is the full 30-hour version—there’s an abridged six hour version and I can’t even imagine.
But on the subject of the mind wandering: I’m listening to an audiobook either when I’m knitting or hurtling hellhounds in town. And there are horrible knots, lumps and dropped stitches in the one or sudden encounters of a drooling pugnacious canine kind on the other that are overpoweringly distracting.
^ I know I’ve told you that I only bought my first computer because I could no longer get replacement parts for my IBM Selectric I typewriter of hallowed memory.
^^ And I now can’t remember which thread they’re on.
^^^ Who is now a brand name. Don’t Know Much about Geography, the [American] Civil War, the Bible, the Universe . . . and Anything Else. No, really. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Know-Much-about-Anything/dp/0061562327/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316645432&sr=1-12
# Yes. I do think it’s brilliant—and a medal as well to the reader-aloud who I think gets it just right—which is not to say that I don’t sometimes disagree with Davis’ choice of emphasis and what to leave out. But that’s inevitable in a book like this, and it’s got a massive bibliography as well as a scattering of ‘must-reads’ in the text.
## And not as if I’ll retain more than about 2.03% of it.
### I don’t know if the link is going to take you to audible.co.uk or inside my account to my own personal page, where it says ‘your rating is’. But yes, the single-as-I-write-this five-star rating is mine.
***Luxembourg, say. It’s definitely bigger than Monaco.
† Not in my defense—there is no defense—but further confusion is caused by the fact that the rhythm of lots and lots of bells is different from the rhythm of fewer bells. When there are so many of the wretched things clanging away you pretty well have to hold up and wait every stroke . . . and this, to those of us who already have trouble with both rhythm and ropesight, is diabolical.
†† She was having some trouble too. Nothing like as much as I was having. Stop talking to me in that kind, patient, sympathetic voice.
Epic hellhounds
The moment I have long dreaded arrived this evening.*
The hours I spend (not) listening to the bats in the walls are not, perhaps, optimally spent. It’s very very late when these concerts are going on and what I want to do is SLEEP, but this option being unavailable, I tend to read and/or knit.** This means that lately by the time the bats go to sleep so that I can, when I finally get up again I have to sprint through the rest of my days even later and more overwhelmed than usual.*** Today handbell practise was at Gemma’s house† which means an extra forty-five minutes of commute†† aaaand of course we ran late††† so when I got home‡ I was in a hurry to get hellhounds out and hurtled as efficiently as possible. I was thus led into error.
We hustled down to one of the big rec grounds where I have occasionally let hellhounds off lead, despite my general ban on letting them off lead anywhere in town, because my long view is pretty good, especially of the bottom gate where, if there’s trouble, it usually arrives, and hellhounds were doing major airs above the ground‡‡ and caroming off the hedgerows and me and making me not only crazy but oppressed by the old guilt-guilt-guilt-you-have-running-dogs-they’re-supposed-to-run-guilt-guilt-GUILT.
There was nothing coming.
There was nothing coming in ANY direction. We were ENTIRELY ALONE.
I let them off lead. And they took flight, the way they do—‘airborne’ is a poor, mingy sort of word for it. They had just made their first .07 second steel-grey-and-fawn-blur lap around this several-acre field, and I was just turning round where I stood to keep them in sight—for the joy of watching them run more than any intimation of doom—and saw another dog emerge from behind the hedgerow. On lead, trailing a person.
I’m sure the adrenaline spike left a hole in my skull, I just haven’t wanted to check. My guys are entirely friendly, but they’re also entirely manic, and will climb all over another dog, poor thing, and there are two of them. Most dogs don’t like this much, and I don’t blame them. And it’s one of my own most-hated things when an off lead dog comes and jumps all over mine on lead, even if it’s friendly.‡‡‡ And—what if this one wasn’t friendly? It was about twice the size of one of mine. . . .
This is all happening in less than a flash, you realise. The hellhounds were sweeping full-tilt around toward the other dog and its (riveted) owner. I saw the ears and the tails go up as I drew a frantic breath to scream Chaos’ name. Of the two of them, Darkness might conceivably come when called in full hurtle with an object in view—Chaos at best tunes out more than he tunes in. No frelling prayer he was going to hear me with another dog in range.§
I screamed—Chaos’ name first, then Darkness’. I’d taken my first one or two pathetic human running steps toward the blossoming catastrophe. And . . .
Chaos faltered. And looked back toward me. And, I think, saw Darkness, slightly reluctantly but still immediately and obediently arcing back to me. And Chaos followed.
They were still in high hurtle mode, and when they got to me they climbed all over me, and there was more biting than I usually allow on these let’s-play-with-the-hellgoddess occasions but I was way too glad to have them back to care and what’s a few bruises among friends anyway? And I had called them in before they’d finished running off that first ten minutes of total speed-madness, and they weren’t at all snarky about my putting them back on lead . . . and I think they’re total stars.
Mind you I am never letting them off lead in that field again.
* * *
* All right, one of the moments I have long dreaded. There are others waiting patiently and cackling to themselves. And giving me a prod occasionally to make sure I still care. AAAAAUGH. Yes.
** Please do not all fall on me in a body crying READING AND KNITTING ARE OPTIMAL ACTIVITIES. It depends on what you’re reading. Or knitting. At 5 a.m. you tend to choose things least likely to wind you up and make you want to throw them against the wall,^ since you’re still hoping to get some sleep eventually.
^ Although yes, I know I should blog more about books. (I also know I keep saying this.) I’ve read three this week worth a mention.+
+ And one that is not.
*** Also, there’s this auction. . . .
† She lives in a tall thin house at the top of one of Mauncester’s surprisingly steep hills. She says her best friend is from the southern Himalayas and that the friend says Gemma’s garden reminds her of home. Sitting in Gemma’s kitchen^ you look out mostly over the tops of trees and empty space—the garden drops away in a tiered precipice at your feet—with the occasional roof-peak poking through. It’s fabulous. And the tall thin house contains five people^^ and is in the middle of a city, and yet you have this sense of peace and space. And if you live there you have very strong thighs, and carry pitons in your pocket.
We rang both bob major and bob minor—throwing poor Gemma in at the deep end with the bob major, but if you have four people, either you ring major, or one of you has to sit out and knit—and golly is it hard work ringing slowly enough for a beginner to begin to find her own way through the thickets rather than rely on being dragged or shunted^^^. Do I know the 3-4 to bob major? Do I know the 3-4 to bob major?!? Um. Yes.
When Gemma went off to make tea however Niall and Colin caught me in a tackle as I was about to follow her and mooch about the garden, and forced me to ring Cambridge minor. Which was in fact not quite as horrific as I was expecting after being really embarrassing on Tuesday. Which is still not saying I can get through a plain course to the end. Siiiiiiigh. I AM going to ring Cambridge in hand^^^^, I AM. YES. But I’d wasted most of my practise time today arguing with frelling Abel, which is the full computer version of Pooka’s bell ringing ap, the latter being a little too stripped down for certain purposes. . . .
I was thinking on the way home that it’s a pity more of you don’t live in Hampshire and aren’t getting married. I could auction off handbells at your wedding.
^ Eating flapjacks+ made with local honey.
+ English flapjacks are what I grew up calling oatmeal bars, something like this: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/401/flapjacks.aspx
^^ Approximately, said Gemma thoughtfully. The children tend to bring friends home unexpectedly.
^^^ The ‘ringing by beckoning/available gap’ method. It only works if everybody else is dead accurate.
^^^^ Or for that matter in the tower. SIIIIIIIIGH.
††Although that’s forty-five minutes I didn’t spend boiling around the cottage sweeping up hellhound hair and dropped geranium petals (again) and throwing the nearest twelve pairs of All Stars under the bed^ and stuffing the dirty laundry into the laundry bags instead of all over the floor, scrutinizing the bathroom sink, tub and toilet for having been scrubbed out within recent memory^^ and that there are enough clean mugs to offer everyone a cup of tea.
^ First checking carefully that I’m not going to hit any roosting bats
^^ Ie fifteen minutes before I invited the last person round for a cup of tea. I disapprove strongly of drop-ins.
††† This partly because Gemma’s two sons made injudicious appearances and were grappled into having a go at plain hunt on handbells. We’re a vicious crew, we handbellers. We take prisoners. We missed her husband and daughter. Next time.
‡ And after Niall spent 4.5 seconds sorting me out on Abel.
‡‡ With audio
‡‡‡ Pretty well 100% of irresponsible moron dog owners out there don’t get it that WHATEVER the personalities involved are, an on lead dog is at a DISADVANTAGE with an OFF LEAD dog. Jeezum crawdaddies, you humans, don’t you have any brain to engage?
§ Yes, any dog can be trained, and therefore my training methods are at fault. But sighthounds are notorious for being a trifle training resistant—what they’re good at is what they’re bred for, which is chasing things, and I’m wasting mine really, since they bring their (occasional) kills to me naturally—and if Chaos has had a chance to draw a bead on something, you could hit him over the head with a giant sequoia and he wouldn’t notice.
Fearsome Things
FIRST THINGS FIRST. There have been several wistful queries on the forum, Facebook and via email, about the London signing: can you bring copies of my books that you already own for signature? On the understanding that you will also buy a copy of PEGASUS at the store, YES. As to how many other titles you can bring . . . well, be a little restrained. I don’t myself mind all that much—I’m pretty good at signing my name, and I’m not JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer and I’m not likely to have damaging numbers of readers show up with shopping bags of books—but if the queue is long, expect to have fewer extra titles signed, and if the queue is short I’ll sign ’em all and the cake boxes.*
There’s also an interesting conversation on the forum about suitable clothing for this peak London season event. Ajlr is going to get the diamante pink catsuit back from the Folies Bergere understudy who was called up for duty unexpectedly**, and I, in an expression of solidarity with the mod who is dedicated to making this event unique, have offered to wear the black leather mini.*** We will, however, need support.† There may even be a dressing up to the nines competition if we can figure out how to do it without frightening the horses.††
* * *
Meanwhile . . . I had another of my Silly Adventures today. Oisin was going to be playing in a music festival halfway across the frelling planet no no no no only a (relatively) few miles down the road. Except that I hate motorway† driving. Hate. Hate. I especially hate anything to do with the MfortysixthousandandtwelvewithTEETH which was going to be involved if I was going to get to Dranglefabbingford in less than three days with obligatory Sherpa accompaniment. Oisin had given me directions so I knew that at least theoretically this was something I could do.
So I set out with trepidation and lots of spare time to get lost in. And the first thing that happened was that the slip road on to the MfortysixthousandandtwelvewithTEETH was backed up to the roundabout most of a mile away where you have to choose to get on the slip road. . . . The temptation to hang a left and go to London three days early for the frelling party was very strong.††† However the thought of eight legs, four pleading golden eyes and two whipping tails stopped me. Thus do critters make fools/responsible adults of us all.‡
The problem with traffic jams is that they’re difficult to knit during. A known long stoplight is the perfect two-row activity. A traffic jam when you may be expected to surge forward another five feet or fifty yards at any moment is not. I did not produce my best work. On the other hand, I didn’t jump out of Wolfgang, yank out an overpass stanchion, and start beating to death the moron in the SUV at the head of the queue either, so I feel it was a worthwhile trade-off.
When I finally got on the MwhatsitwithTEETH I was immediately surrounded by gigantic gurning lorries, so I could neither change lanes nor read any of the road signs. ARRRRGH. I recognised enough bits of the passing countryside however to make a break for freedom at the right moment, got off the godsblasted motorway . . . and then of course became instantly, astonishingly lost in the eleven-dimensional super-reality that is village Hampshire. HECATE ON A POGO STICK. GAAAAAAH.
I arrived at last, more by luck than judgement. And then for my next trick I got to try and find the festival parking. You get to the T-junction in the middle of Dranglefabbingford and you know where you are and are about to burst into tears of joy when . . . you notice that that sign for parking is to the right when (according to your directions) the church with the organ in it that you’ve come to hear Oisin play is to the left. As you hopelessly turn right, you glance back over your shoulder and . . . yup . . . there’s the church. Diminishing in your rear view mirror.
The parking is a very, very, very long way away from the church. Very. It’s also across a very large, very lumpy field that probably seemed like a perfectly good plan for the parking last year when they were organising the practical details, and before we had three months of drought followed by three weeks of solid, gravity-enhanced rainfall. My next car is going to have four-wheel drive. ‡‡
I got out of Wolfgang and looked around dubiously. Fortunately there were other cars boing-boinging across the field and coming to muddy, juddering halts on either side of me, lending credence to the idea that possibly there was a music festival‡‡‡ and this was the parking. I was now completely lost again. It’s all very well that I managed to follow the signs successfully, but WHERE had they led me? I addressed myself to the elegant gentleman getting out of the car to my right. I was somewhat comforted by his aura of bewilderment and mild outrage. And then we found out we were both there because we knew Oisin, and decided to combine forces in our quest to refind the frelling festival church before either the concert was over with or we died of exposure.
. . . I was the only person knitting. And, just like at the opera, I had several people say, oh, what a good idea!, and ask me what I was making. (Er . . . ) The problem with the concert, I’m embarrassed to admit, which we did arrive in time for, is that I’m now used to Salisbury Cathedral in Oisin’s music studio, on his electronic megamonster. This was a quaint little old organ in a little old church§ and you kind of wanted to pat it on its beautiful etched pipes and hand-fitted cabinet and say there, there, very nice, dear.
Oh yes and when I left the church afterward I had no grangblatting idea where the car park was.
I got home. I hurtled hounds. I went to tower practise. I rang Grandsire Triples (more or less). And I have HOOKED A NEW HANDBELL RECRUIT.§§ Mwa hahahahaha. Ask me again next Thursday§§§. Survival rates vary.
* * *
* I believe there will be details about the cake aspect soon.
** Ajlr lives in a very interesting neighbourhood. And clearly herself has a very interesting past.
*** From my interesting past.
† Stop that sniggering.
†† Okay, I know I’m old, do people still use Mrs Patrick Campbell’s all-purposes quote, Does it really matter what people do, so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses?^ The original reference was to illicit canoodling, but it has much wider applications. And I think a pink diamante catsuit—with feathers—might very well frighten the horses.
^ A quick riffle through the internet produces three different versions, but this is the drift.
† Highway.
††† There are yarn shops in London.
‡ Peter would cope. The hellhounds, however, would go into Tragedy Mode, which would be hard on Peter.
‡‡ I did snicker a little at the thought of all those standard music-festival goers arriving in their Mercedes and BMWs, looking at the field, and having the vapours.
‡‡‡ Or anyway something to attend.
§ I was tempted to go up during the break and examine the space between the benches and the screen in the choir stalls, but I didn’t want to force Oisin to pretend he didn’t know me.
§§ Poor, poor, poor woman.
§§§ We’re having a special early practise this week to get it in before Peter and I go grab some culture. We weren’t going to meet this week because Colin is gone and I was cinema-theatring, but you don’t want to give your novice time to change her mind.
High Drama
It has been a day of such protracted high drama I feel I should do tonight’s blog in bullet points. I will restrain myself. Well, from bullet points.
I was awakened this morning at an Ungodly Hour by the sound of someone knocking on my door. I opened one eye. And heard someone saying . . . in case they want to move their cars first. I was considering answering the door—I usually do consider answering the door if someone knocks on it: I realise this will come as a shock to those of you I have trained in my hellgoddessy approach to life—but fortunately the implications of ‘move the car’ penetrated before I got very far. Get dressed enough to move the car? Move the car where? Get dressed enough to walk back from Third House having moved the car? No. Whatever drastic thing was about to happen, Wolfgang would just have to bear it.
I closed the eye again. ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR grumblegrumblegrumblegrumble THUNK. BANG. creakycreakyleverleverlever FWANG. I rolled over and put a pillow over my head (again). This was arguably worse than bats. FRAKFRAKFRAK CLANG. I gave up on sleep eventually and got up and got dressed, but it was too late to move Wolfgang. Whatever the roarer and gnasher was about, it was up at the top of the hill, and Wolfgang was behind it.
So I rang the Bat Conservation Trust. Polite young man on the other end of the phone, very professionally soothing . . . until I got to the FOUR HUNDRED AND TEN bats part and I could hear him moving my spot of bother up a category or two.* I’ve had several people who Shall Remain Nameless tell me that the last thing I should have done is ring up the official bat admin, because all they are interested in is bat welfare and if the bats want my house I can move into a tent in the back garden. Too late now. But I don’t want to drive my bats out or close down my nursery or anything—to try to do which would be illegal, just by the way—I only want them out of my attic, and it seems reasonable that the Official Bat Admin People would know the most about bats . . . ? Well. The Nice Young Man said he’d send me a Trained Bat Worker to advise me on my problem.
The attic in daylight looks very much like it always used to. Attic. Carpet. Chair. Geraniums. Small chest of drawers. Ridiculous paper star-lanterns left over from my predecessor. Yoga mats. Wall of Sweaters.** Stuff. This is the horror-movie element: you know how the pathetic, traumatised survivors of the night strike of the vampires/zombies/triffids/extra-large termites/killer rabbits totter out after dawn to stare hopelessly at the landscape that used to be theirs? Yes. And when I want a sweater or a pair of All Stars I brace myself. . . .
The Roarer and Gnasher was still at it, so I finally went out to inquire. Nice smiling man looked up from where he was obviously striving with a major underground demon*** despite the (presumed) assistance of a very large vehicle making loud lurid noises. Main sewer blocked up, he said cheerfully. Oh, ah, I said. Doooooo carry on.
Atlas arrived at about the point that the R&G and its wrangler moved to the bottom of the hill for a fresh assault on the demon. We conferred, and then hellhounds and I went off for a belated hurtle. When I got to the mews I felt the need to moan to additional people† so I emailed Niall, who replied:
….you lucky person….they’re not bats…they’re the embodied souls of your readers that have passed away and can’t bear to be parted from you. They know that if they just suck a little bit of your blood,…….they can become handbell ringers too!
Thanks. Never go to a bloke for sympathy. No, wait, never go to a handbell ringer for sympathy. But in fact I’ve been thinking . . . Tabitha gave me a stern lecture on Creating Your Own Reality/Positive Thinking, and the downward spiral of fretting. Yes. I know. It does no good at all, it wastes your energy, and it’s a downer. I still fret. But I can’t help feeling somehow mythically at least a trifle responsible for the Largest Bat Nursery in Hampshire: what more appropriate way for hellgoddess energy to manifest in this world? I may confuse the issue with bells and roses and knitting and singing . . . but the warm beating hearts at the cottage belong to two hellhounds and a hellgoddess. And ninety squillion bats.
So after this unsatisfactory exchange with Niall I settled down to a little handbell practise and . . . discovered, of course, that (almost) successfully ringing Cambridge in the tower last night has pretty well trashed my handbell Cambridge. GAAAAAH. Here I’ve just been thinking that I can finally see some useful relationship between learning methods on handbells and in the tower and . . . GAAAAAAH.†† I mean, I did a little homework last night, just in case I was going to get to ring Kent or Cambridge, and I felt I was risking enough by looking at two methods at the same time: this tends to result in Kridge or Cament. I suppose getting away with it last night had to come out somewhere. GAAAAAAAH. But I persevered. Because I am a sap.
And you know what? We’re beginning to stagger through to the end of a plain course of the wretched method—Cambridge, I mean, on handbells, not Kridge or Cament.††† I went into tonight’s practise thinking, you know, Cambridge on handbells may literally be too much for me. ‡ I may not be able to do this. And came out the other end thinking, no, damn it, I can do this. I just need a little more practise.
And so, suddenly and absurdly confident that I can do anything . . .
I went to Muddlehampton Choir practise tonight. Yeeeeeeeeeeep. . . .‡‡
* * *
* He also attempted to be reassuring by telling me that bat mums only have one offspring per year. I KNOW, I said. THAT’S STILL EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY BATS. —All right, more like six hundred and fourteen, assuming half of last year’s are the babies and half of them are boys. And that the girls all lived to grow up and get pregnant. And that my arithmetic has more of a clue than usual. Whatever. Lots of bats. Which seems to be the theme recently. Lots of bats.
** And backlist. The All Stars shelves climb up the chimney.
*** Possibly a zombie or vampire.
† And Peter has his own problems. We need a roarer and a gnasher down here to deal with his kitchen sink. I said this morning, it’s better than bats. I’m not sure about that, Peter said thoughtfully.
†† Niall is not helping. He says I should be learning third or fourth place bell for the tower because it will blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and then Colin joins in and says oh yes blah blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH and pretty soon they have peace in the Middle East and Obama elected for a second term. And I can ring a quarter peal of Bristol Surprise Maximus.
††† Although Colin has this hilarious habit when he and I have derailed yet another attempt—since it usually is one of us, it’s rarely Niall, although he goes wrong occasionally just to make us feel better—of saying, Robin, ignore me, you just hold your line and I’ll figure it out. CHANCE WOULD BE A FINE THING.
‡ I’ve said this before, haven’t I? It feels kind of familiar. Hey, Cambridge is hard. Even on one bell.
‡‡ Hint: all their sopranos were home with flu/young lovers/knitting deadlines. There were about twelve altos and . . . two sopranos. One of the altos switched sides. That made three sopranos.
I sang with the sopranos. And when he needed first and second sopranos that meant there were two of us. . . . I was not a credit to either Nadia or Oisin—or Blondel—but I sang.
Wildlife indoors
The story thus far, as reported on Twitter this morning:
I had an uninvited guest last night at the cottage. A Chiropteran guest. Small. Furry. Winged.
I was lying peacefully in my bath, reading (as it happens) a homeopathic journal on the treatment of shock and trauma. And there was a funny noise. A sort of light thumping and whacking noise. But not light enough, if you follow me, if you’re lying in your bath in the middle of the night and are expecting only to hear the mellifluous tones of Radio Three, the gentle lap of water, the hush of turning pages, and maybe the occasional snore of a hellhound. Any loud or startling noises should clearly be coming from outdoors.
Thud*-thud-thud-thud-fluff-fwuff-fuff-fwip-fwup-whack.
What are those wretched dogs getting up to, I muttered, and rose from the depths, nothing at all like Botticelli’s Venus except for the sheeting-water bit. I dripped into my office and there . . . were two utterly crashed out and oblivious hellhounds. Hellhounds are perfectly capable of shooting back to the dog bed, hurling themselves down and peering at me warily when caught, or semi-caught, in delinquency; but they aren’t good liars. These were crashed out hellhounds. And as I stood there (dripping) I could still hear the fwuff-fuff-whack going on elsewhere. Indoors. Behind me. Oh gods.
Totally bizarre shadows in the hall. Whatever it is, it can move, and I don’t think it’s happy. A little dark spot coalesces, zigzagging furiously, over my windowsill shelf of medical textbooks. It pauses, briefly, grasping my ancient Steadman’s Medical Dictionary.** But nothing else flies like that, that ducking, dodging, sideslipping motion, and the odd crooked wings and the little square body. Once I’d seen it I knew what it had to be.
It was a bat.***
I went back in the bathroom and slammed the door. When I came out again I was drier and clothed. Bats don’t totally freak me out, and the urban myth that it’s going to get tangled in my hair doesn’t register. But I don’t like wildlife indoors, and I can’t believe that its echolocation isn’t disturbed by the panic it must be feeling—and it’s big enough to do me some damage as well as itself, if it slams into my geraniums or riffs off some of the more fragile of the Little Noodgy Things that (sigh) line my bookshelves.† And it was now in my office, and I thank the Gods of Natural Perversity that the hellhounds, for reasons known only to themselves, did not respond to this clear and one would have thought irresistible provocation. Darkness is mad for birds, but possibly he had opened one eye, murmured ‘doesn’t fly right’ and shut it again. Whatever. I had a bat in my office. Aaaugh.
I withdrew to consider my options: I couldn’t think of any. That didn’t take long. But as I was moaning and clutching myself the bat stormed out of my office and streamed upstairs into the attic: I pelted up after it and prepared to close the trap door. My last sight of it was of it cozying up to my . . . er . . . bank of woolly-things shelves, specifically the cashmere shelf. You leave claw-holes in my cashmere, I will track you down and boil your bones for soup. Nonetheless, I closed the trap door.
I did not have a good night last night. I kept thinking about the four hundred and ten bats counted streaming out of my eaves last summer—the biggest mum-and-baby bat nursery the Hampshire Bat Group had ever counted. Last summer I was pleased. Last summer I didn’t have any bats indoors. When and how did this one get in? And why? The Velcro-and-scotch-tape screens I have on my windows probably wouldn’t stop a bat fixed on entry, but it would leave signs of its passage. My screens were all undisturbed. I assume it must have darted in when I was carrying garbage bags out to put in the bin last night, Monday morning being dustbin morning . . . but still, why? Every time one of the hellhounds turned over, or the house, being an old house, gave an old-house creak, I shot awake again, thinking about four hundred and ten bats living in my immediate vicinity.
This morning I opened the attic door again . . . cautiously. I assume that it went to roost . . . somewhere. I’m not going to go poke my cashmere†† sweaters and find out exactly where. No sign. No sign of either it or . . . four hundred and nine of its fellows. So far so good. I went downstairs again and rang the nice people who are the head of the Hampshire Bat Group and said, pardon me, but you counted four hundred and ten bats living in my house last summer, and last night I had a bat on my side of the barrier and neither of us is pleased. And she laughed lightly and got that soothing tone in her voice, that there, there tone, like a kindergarden teacher soothing a kid who has rejected its graham cracker. They rarely come indoors, she said. Just leave a window open, and it’ll go back out again at twilight.
I’m writing this at the mews. I haven’t been back to the cottage since twilight.††† I really, really don’t want to think that this was one of the early scouts for this year’s nursery, and it’s now having a beer with its—her—friends and saying, listen, forget last year’s cramped quarters—I don’t care if it’s traditional. Let me tell you about cashmere. . . .
* * *
* It should be thudlet really. But thudlet-thudlet-thudlet doesn’t really put it over. Or mini-thud, which is even worse. But it wasn’t a tap or a pat. It was a thud. Unmistakably a very small thud.
** I mean ancient. Us homeopaths are expected to read the foundation texts, the oldest of which was first published in 1810. Sometimes you really need an old medical dictionary to bail you out of total confusion.
*** My frivolous mind will revert to Gilbert and Sullivan: It was the (c)at. http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pinafore/web_opera/pin18.html
† We’ve had this conversation. I swore I would never put stuff in front of books on shelves. I am an oathbreaker. It is very sad.
†† BY THE WAY. In the conversation that has been going on in the forum about one-space-or-two after a period/full stop, and how modern computer technology has rendered the need for a double space null and void because unlike on typewriters, all letters are the same size, or anyway occupy the same amount of space on a computer screen: wrong. I am amazed no one has mentioned the occasionally highly erratic little spacing ways of Word. I’ve asked not only my Computer Archangels but the occasional programmer geek and they shrug and say, oh, yeah, that’s a known issue but Microsoft doesn’t feel like doing anything about it. This comes to mind because it’s usually ‘e’ that decides it feels unduly constricted by the standard spacing, and demands about half a space’s extra range. This has just happened with the first ‘e’ in cashmere, as I write this post in Word before pasting it in the blog. It will have disappeared by the time it has been through the new frelling WordPress system, which may even out Word’s vagaries but now eats all my double spaces and I hate it. Just by the way. . . .
††† I was going to tell you about the brilliant lesson I had with Nadia today but . . . this is long enough and I want to go to bed. I had a bad night last night. . . .