Lurgy Update*
It was such a gorgeous day today that hellhounds and I had a proper hurtle, despite my feeling about as lively as that mess in the bottom of your gutters, thanks to another of those ten-hours-in-bed, two-hours-of-broken-sleep nights.** I’m catching up on back issues of magazines. I’ve thrown a few more books against the wall.*** I finally downloaded BEJEWELED from the iTunes store because I’m keep hearing that it’s the original and still the best of those line-up-the-same-shape/colour-things-they-go-bang-and-you-get-points games. It’s okay, although I could do without the Fu Manchu voiceover. It’s not as good as MONTEZUMA.
But when I finally crawled permanently out of bed† it was a beautiful blue sunny day and the frelling birds were frelling singing and the hellhounds were all over me†† and I, drowning in guilt as I am because all things considered they’ve been very good about my less than impeccable maintaining of standards the last week and some†††, decided, okay, countryside is in order, and we went out to seek same. And it really was pretty fabulous. We didn’t even meet any unusually savage off-lead dogs.‡
katinseattle
I want more Mongo. I want a whole book of Mongo.
No pressure.
Certainly not. I’m very relieved, since I’ve been working to this plan since the last time we had this conversation. Mongo did, in fact, break training in a big way today . . . noooooooo you moron you were told to [mmrgllrrrmph]. This is not how this scene went last time. Yelp! Arrrgh! Yaaaah! —It’s going to go a lot differently with Mongo in it. I so need sleep.
blondviolinist
You know how there’s Team Gale and Team Peeta for the HUNGER GAMES trilogy? And Jodi Meadows wants Team Sylph and Team Dragon for her INCARNATE trilogy?‡
I’m on team Mongo.
::Beams::
* * *
* Does anyone else keep having their eye caught by the ‘12’ of our new year and have brief dazzled moments of thinking that means it’s still last month? Or is that just someone with a lurgy and a deadline the end of the month that unfortunately it is?
** Colin and I have been emailing lethargically back and forth today, ostensibly about tower ringing tomorrow night, but a certain amount of reciprocal whining has crept into the conversation. I admit I’m a bit relieved that not everybody else that has this lurgy is all shiny and new after three days. Uuuuuuungh. And unless I’ve developed bubonic plague by tomorrow I probably will go ringing. I may not be able to do much but ring rounds for beginners, but Colin has beginners who need rounds rung for them, and it would at least mean pulling on a bell rope. Maybe Colin and I can cough in harmony.
*** I’m an even nastier reader when I’m ill and short of sleep.
† Having wept through the sound of my bells ringing.
†† I was talking to a friend today who’d been ill in the night too. She has cats. And while she was sitting in the bathroom at a totally untoward hour having a small private self-absorbed moan, as one does under these circumstances, the cats were of course all over her. Hey! You’re up! Great! Aren’t you glad to see us? Aren’t you going to feed us? Barring the ‘feed us’ part, hellhounds have a similar reaction. Hey! You’re up! Hey! All these critters that sleep about twenty hours a day and don’t care which four they’re awake for are very disorienting . . . when you’re pretty disoriented anyway. But last night I kept coming downstairs for more (filtered) water and fetching more magazines, and then back upstairs again getting up for a pee because I’m drinking all this flaming water, and by the time I officially let hellhounds out of their crate they were all it took you long enough. So, we’re going out NOW, right? I wonder if they could learn the concept of ‘dressing gown’?^
^ Mongo could. The problem with the Mongos of the world is that they do not sleep twenty hours a day, and they need stuff to do. If you don’t give them stuff to do, they will find stuff to do.
††† Here four bright beady little eyes roll significantly toward the sofa. You just keep giving us extra sofa time, beloved hellgoddess, they say, and much may be forgiven.^
^ I’m also practising using the argleblarging new TV set up with the new freeview, non-satellite box and the forty-seven new remotes.+ I’m practising in case the Nice TV Man turns out to have more little stories he would like professional writers’ opinions on. Why don’t people do their homework. His manuscript starts with an elaborate description of what the first illustration should be. Two seconds—okay, maybe twelve seconds—on any reputable how-to-write-for-kids site will tell you this is not what you do.
I realise the line about what is acceptable advice-seeking and what isn’t may be blurry in some areas. I try to double-check before I ask Gemma any medical questions, for example, that I’m asking out of my natural, not to say pathological, inquisitiveness, and not out of a desire for free advice.++ And she’s also a friend, and I give friends a whole lot of slack because I think if you actually know someone who does something it’s reasonable to ask them first, and if she started asking me about illustrations in kids’ books I’d just tell her what I know. Which is not, in fact, much, and she’d be better off researching some good how-to-write-for-children web sites.
And if this joker had said, the first time he was here, oh, hey, wow, you’re professional writers? Say, I’m writing a children’s book, and I wanted to know how detailed I should make the descriptions of the illustrations, maybe you can tell me?, I would have. There wouldn’t even have been any blood loss (probably). But he shows up on our (Peter’s) doorstep without warning one afternoon with his frelling story in his frelling hand? No. Not on.+++
So I don’t want to have to ask him any more questions about the TV. So I’m practising. I’m not watching TV, mind you, but when I’m going to be lying on the sofa for a while, I turn it on.
Ajlr
I’m so sorry to hear that The Cough is still unwilling to leave, Robin. I hate that feeling one gets where it seems as if one’s brain is going to be shaken out through one’s forehead at the very next convulsion.
I tend to specialise in the brains-leaking-out-your ears cough. Whatever that is that is causing intolerable pressure on my forehead is unlikely to be brains.
Yesterday while I was not watching television there was something so clearly bizarre on the screen that I found myself distracted from the book I was going to throw across the room in a minute anyway#. Eventually I figured out how to call up ‘information’ and was apprised that this was a film called ‘The Trail of the Screaming Forehead’ in which a small harmless American town is taken over by . . . alien foreheads. Ahem. I think whoever came up with this idea was having a really bad case of flu-with-pounding-headache at the time and had been hitting the cough medicine a lot harder than is safe.
+ They breed. Like coathangers and odd socks.
++ Even over here, where we do have the NHS, so the absolute question of money is not acute, doctors in their off-duty hours are off duty.
+++ I am a curmudgeon. But we knew that. And I haven’t read it—that’s Peter’s self-immolation. But Peter mentioned the illustration thing, and I picked the ms up off the table and . . . yup.
# Carefully missing the Christmas tree. I’m not even feeling shame about its continued upness yet. Hey, I’m sick.
‡ Although the herd of pygmy rhinoceros was a surprise.
‡‡ Team Sylph and Team Dragon? Ewwwwww. I’m on Team Sam.
I’m not ready for January
I have turkey gravy on my bright green solid coloured shirt. It shows.
We finished the gravy* last night.
This is a clean shirt, put on gravy-free this morning.**
Do you suppose quantum physics can answer this one?
* * *
It’s December 31st, for about an hour and a half longer, as I write this. So, what have I done with my 2011?
FAILED to write PEG II. Sigh.
2012 is going to be better. Starting with getting some relatively readable the-end-is-in-sight form of SHADOWS sent in by the end of January.***
So, other prognostications?
By this time next year I will be halfway through the NEW PEG II.
I will also be ringing touches of Cambridge minor.†
And on handbells.††
And, this time next year, the New Arcadia Singers will be hurling impassioned emails at each other about the spring concert, because (after our unexpected success earlier in the year) we haven’t quite nailed the playlist yet and practise starts again the first week of January.
Fantasy, much? Oh . . . well . . .
HAPPY NEW YEAR
* * *
The woman wants her CHAMPAGNE.
1. And gods don’t they stare.
2. I left my jumper on. No one knows.††† And a good thing too. I was introduced to someone who reads me.
3. Those are my Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse All Stars. It seemed suitable.
4. I am now drinking my champagne.
5. I have to ring more bells in seven hours. Feh.
* * *
* Peter had to make more, of course. Next on the list: More brandy butter. Next on the list: living on lettuce for the entire month of January. Oh, well, in the circumstances I’d better have some protein too. Fried liver of rival publisher. Incompetent copyeditor roast.
** And I have to go ring bells in a few minutes^, and it’s so warm I’m going to have to take my jumper off and stand revealed as a slob. It’s also so warm that I didn’t have tricky winter weather as an excuse not to go ring bells at midnight. Which is to say yes, when I rang Felicity back this morning, having still not quite decided what I was going to say to her, she was so delighted to hear from me I heard myself agreeing to come along tonight. It’s now sheeting. Ugh. Also very unseasonable of it. But maybe all the staring villagers will stay home and watch Singin’ in the Rain or something. Much better value.
^ And sulking, since I want my champagne now.
*** AAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
† With what band and in what tower, I have no idea. I’ll worry about that next year. In an hour and a half.
†† HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
††† Except you, of course.
Ringing, singing and remembering
It’s Remembrance Weekend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day which tends to mean extra ringing.* But it means extra ringing with the clappers half-muffled** which is surprisingly disconcerting to the less-than-fabulous ringer. Half-muffled means that the handstroke bongs out as usual, but the backstroke has leather, rubber or padded neoprene between the clapper and the bell wall and produces a dull thud. Suddenly you discover that while you’ve always believed you were wholly dependent on ropesight you use your ears more than you had any idea of—till now. Which is to say since the last time you rang half-muffled, which may be this time last year.*** Leading is particularly obnoxious, because you probably can’t hear the last bell’s backstroke as you’re yanking off your handstroke, and ropesight when you’re leading is at best only half-helpful because that’s where the break in the row comes—from handstroke to backstroke or backstroke to handstroke, as the first bell in the row follows the last bell of the previous row. If you’re the treble for call changes endlessly following the tenor while the other bells are swapped around at the conductor’s discretion it can get a bit hallucinatory, not in a good way.
We rang—call changes—on Friday midday to coincide with the procession around the churchyard. I managed to lose track of time (how unusual) and was racing hellhounds home while the veterans were marching up Sheep Hill during the two-minute silence and as we spun round the Sheep Hill corner there was a Moron with a Dog—at least the dog was on a lead, but it was a loose lead and the moron was paying no attention to it whatsoever, and it promptly made a lunge for the hellhounds and . . . the two-minute silence was not successfully preserved. But I did blast back to the tower in time to ring (clumsily). Practise Friday night, still muffled, was extremely odd, with the good ringers shrieking themselves silly at us poor lost adrift nongood ringers as we attempted to ring methods, not merely call changes . . . although I had furtively staked out the five. Number five bell is at the bottom of the ladder to the belfry, and the two trap doors between you and the bells are not the aural equivalent of double-glazed and even half-muffled you can still hear the backstrokes. Mwahahahahaha. This morning at Old Eden . . . well, I’m glad it was only call changes.
* * *
Meanwhile . . . between the rocket up the backside of this prospective hour-long lesson thing and the fact that the ME is still limiting my activities† I’ve been singing like a mad creature.†† Whatever this frelling mutant virus is it does seem to be showing some signs of clearing the hell off which means not only sitting down less during practise sessions††† but my throat may finally be shedding its load of persistent gloop‡ which would be great news.
blondviolinist
. . . it wasn’t necessarily a lack of dynamics that were my problem: it was a lack of the tone colors and phrase direction. I could hear the music in my head, but I couldn’t make my violin sound like that. (Partly, I didn’t have either the left- or right-hand facility yet to make the tone colors I heard in my head, but I didn’t know that yet.) Everything coming out of my violin was bright and not nearly connected enough, and I was missing all the rich texture I wanted. Of course, I couldn’t articulate any of that. I simply was frustrated.
. . . Yes. It’s not even that I’ve listened to too much Beverly Sills and Cecilia Bartoli—it’s not only them I’m hearing in my head, it’s what I’m trying to do, even more or less within the limits of the voice I have to use. If it weren’t for Nadia constantly reminding me that the voice is a muscle and you have to build fitness carefully, correctly, and over time, I would assume that I merely have the vocal version of my maths brains.‡‡ You’d think, for example, that as I become capable of being louder I should also retain the ability to be softer, right? Well . . . sort of. But it doesn’t seem to mean anything somehow. Sometimes I’m louder. Sometimes I’m softer. Not nearly connected enough. Missing the texture. Yes. Exactly. I can do loud, and I can do soft. It’s like bumping a couple of bricks together. No flow. No connection. No progress—no, you know, journey, from one end of the song to the other. Bleeeaugh.
Mismatched Socks
. . . you may be talking about dynamics, but not quite in the way you mean (if I’m right in thinking that you’re thinking about the dynamic markings as something that would make the piece feel musical if only you could manage to follow them correctly).
Well sort of! I’m a natural going-off-the-rails person, and besides, I’m not trying to pass any tests, so if I want to disagree with the particular edition of a song‡‡‡ in a book, I will, unless it’s Britten’s or Schubert’s own, religiously preserved.
I began learning to sing five years after beginning to learn to play an instrument (violin), and one of the things that still trips me up all the time (seven years after my first voice lesson) is the difference between the way I deal with dynamics as a violinist and the way I deal with them as a singer. For instrumentalists, and for members of a choir, dynamics are a tool you use consciously in order to create the impression of a particular emotion, and hopefully to get your audience to feel that emotion. For a singer who is making her/his own artistic decisions, dynamics are the natural (ok, natural plus a bit of exaggeration) result of feeling the emotion yourself– the causal relationship is reversed (this goes double for tone color, and maybe half for phrasing). I think, although I’m not positive about this, that this difference fundamentally stems from the your-instrument-is-your-body issue.
Yes. I am certainly struggling with this—and you’re right, it is different when your-instrument-is-your-body. One of the things Nadia said to me last week—taking flamingly unfair advantage of knowing that I’m not only a writer, but a writer who talks about the story telling me what to do—is that singing is a form of channelling. I channel my stories: I need to get out of the way and let them tell themselves, with me as the fingers on the keyboard. She says it’s pretty much the same thing with singing: you train yourself to be as good a channel as possible . . . and get out of the way. I get this. Moan. I so get this. I can’t do it, but I get it.
Personally, I find that when I can’t make a (vocal) piece feel musical, it means that I haven’t yet made my peace with the text– maybe I find the lyrics too over-the-top to relate to, and still can’t imagine myself actually saying them under any circumstances, or maybe I’m still a bit hung up on the foreign language I’m singing in (this often happens to me when I’m at the stage where I know what the phrases mean but not which word means what). However, I know an awful lot of singers who are not nearly as text-oriented as I am, and can manage to be musical even when they have no idea what their lyrics mean, or even which ones come next, so obviously different people approach this in different ways.
It may just be that it’s still early days for my singing. I don’t at the moment need to know what every Italian word means; I need to know what a phrase is about, and then the music . . . erm . . . tries to tell me how to channel it. With greater or, mostly, lesser success. At the moment the wall I’m banging my head on is the connectedness, the flow. That’s why Nadia suggesting I think of every phrase of Caro being a sigh was so helpful.
Julia:
. . . Not just with music teachers either- when I worked in the WritingCenterat my university, the same thing would happen to me. Time and time again, I’d find myself calmly and clearly explaining to a student about how he or she might proceed in organizing, clarifying, or simply beginning a paper… and I could help them. But when it came to fixing or even facing the same issues in my own work, I was just as stuck as the students I was working with had been. It took my professor or another member of theWritingCenter staff to drag me out of the hole. . . .
Uh huh. This is why I talk so little about writing, and am so reluctant to give ‘advice’ or even describe much about how I do it: I feel like such a dork. Yes, I’m a professional writer, have been a professional writer for substantially over thirty years (gleep): obviously I have workarounds, I have ways to keep going, I have markers on the road. Yes. I do. And they’re all embarrassing.
* * *
* Except when it doesn’t. I turned up for service ring this morning and . . . there was no one there. Dorothy showed up shortly after me and we looked at each other in consernation. Occasionally our flawless communications system breaks down. I knew about the extra ring at Old Eden this morning, but that doesn’t mean anything about New Arcadia; usually on an OE day we merely ring both. Dorothy didn’t know about Old Eden, had made other plans and couldn’t stay—which meant we were only five at OE. I could have used that extra hour in bed. When I cornered Niall after we rang down at OE he said he and Penelope would have been at NA this morning too if it weren’t for a chance conversation with one of the Inner Circle^ last night. I would have phoned you, he said, only it was too late. It was after eleven.
Snork.^^
^ Apparently Ringing Masters and Deputy Ringing Masters don’t count
^^ Although it’s true I consider a ringing phone after about 9 pm a crime against humanity. This is a tangential reason why I like staying up late.+ He could have texted me.
+ Although this has been known to cause other problems. That extra hour in bed this morning wouldn’t have done me that much good since Crunching Driveway Gravel at 7 a.m. on Weekdays Man across the road started his frelling leaf blower at about 9.# It sounds like a replay of the Assyrian descending on Sennacherib. I’m assuming the Angel of Death in that case was noisy.
# Nine in the morning on a SUNDAY. At the mews they’re not allowed to use ANY noisy machinery ALL DAY on Sunday.
** I’ve told you this, haven’t I? There are proper muffles and half-muffles for bells, and for £14,635.99 you too can have a set for your bells. Or you can go to your local tack shop and buy a few pairs of strap-on fetlock brushing boots and a few pairs of rubber pull-on overreach ankle boots and get out again for under £100, for the same effect. The bells don’t care.^
^ If you’re Liverpool Cathedral, where the treble weighs about as much as a small town and the tenor is vast on a Cthulhuian scale, you probably do need tailor-made muffles. The rest of us lesser mortals have a simpler situation.
*** We do ring funerals occasionally, and occasionally-occasionally we ring them half muffled. Half-muffled is terribly effective, and if you know whoever died it may be a bit rough on you. Note that I want half-muffled for my memorial service, and then at some later date a really cracking quarter peal, unmuffled, possibly Stedman Triples.^ And a quarter of Yorkshire on handbells. And if you fire out you have to do it again till you GET it.
^ Or possibly Frelling Whose Idea Was This Gigantighastadon Megalolithic Sarcophagic Triples.
† It is ebbing, it’s just not doing it with any grace or finesse.
†† No, not Lucia. I have no designs on her at all. But I am totally having a hack at Rosina in a year or twelve.^
^ I wonder how many seventy-two-year-old Rosinas there have been?
††† And hellhound hurtles
‡ Persistent gloop: you can look it up in any medical dictionary.
‡‡ Although I’m continuing to have a rather goofy good time with my hard science books. I did a little unseemly hooting over the maths puzzle in Awakening^ this evening however. It’s clearly aiming for the preteen girl client base which is fine^^ but I would have said that even preteen girls can do a little more than count to fifteen without dangerous mental overheating.
^ http://www.gamezebo.com/games/awakening-dreamless-castle/walkthrough
^^ I’d like the incredibly anodyne princess a good deal better if she had dreadlocks and a confusing genetic background.
‡‡‡ I’ve also listened to Oisin, and even Nadia, rant too often about bad editing to take dynamic markings any more seriously than I feel like it in some paralytically classic teaching text. I think someone on the forum has for example referred disparagingly to the plinkety plinkety accompaniments in the hoary old standby Italian Arie book that I, and every other trainee classical singer who has ever lived in the last sixty years, has.
Doodle update
Fiona was here today, so the first wodge of auction stuff has finally been shipped out. Everything takes longer than it’s supposed to. The wodge that was posted today was much smaller than it should have been, for a variety of reasons, chief among them that I’m trying to write a novel in five months, and two of them are already over. The irony is that one of the reasons the auction finally went live so late is because I was preoccupied with the final throes of this summer’s PEG II crisis—and then I hurled myself into SHADOWS, needing to believe this was a story and I could write it—and now of course I’m slowly doodling my way through all your lovely bell-supportive orders—while continuing with this madness of trying to finish* SHADOWS by the end of January.** I was telling Fiona that most days I keep thinking I can maybe extrude one more paragraph, one more sentence, and then I will certainly do a stint of doodling . . . and what happens is that I hammer away on story-in-progress to the point of collapse, pirouette through about three doodles, and fall off my chair.***
Roses for ROSE DAUGHTER. Not all the book + doodles are so . . . um . . . um . . . snork.
Also there was a terrible accident with a cup of hot tea about ten days ago which I will leave to your imaginations because it was far too emotionally scarring for me to describe it in all its graphic horror here. Then Darkness frightened me half to death† with the projectile geysering, and as a result this week my general energy level has resembled an underachieving pancake or a badger-gnawed doormat.
But EVERYTHING takes longer than it’s supposed to. I wanted to get the first load of books off today, but the auction is finally forcing me to do something I should have done years ago, which is hire a frelling mail box for a return street address that isn’t where I live and that has business-hours staff who will sign for parcels that require a signature.†† The nearest mail-box-hire is in Zigguraton, which is not ideal, but it could be a lot worse. I examined the web site carefully, and nowhere does it say that they need a blood sample, a retina scan and £400,053.27 collateral. So I sent Fiona in to do it for me, while I kept doodling. Which, when she got back again, is how I found out about the extra requirements. ARRRGH.
Fox. With tail. Tails are IMPORTANT.
Fortunately my bank’s local branch office is a full-service agency so I obtained a blood sample and a retina scan from the clerk, and then I wrote ‘£400,053.27’ on a piece of paper and he stamped it††† with the bank’s seal of authorised fiscal reality‡, and I sent Fiona off again. About half an hour later I received the critical text on Pooka: SUCCESS!
Sleeping dragon. You don't want to be downwind.
Meanwhile, however, the day was mostly over. Fiona has printed off the rest of Blogmom’s batched orders and organised as many of them as I’m likely to get through in the next fortnight, when she comes back again for a Special Auction Put-Through Day, which will include an awful lot of book-packaging, and I will keep doodling. I want to emphasise here that I enjoy the doodling‡‡—including the excuse to doodle—what is turning my eyeballs red and my hair white is the time. I don’t like making all of you wait, although I am making you wait, and the complicated stuff—the doodle-icious books, the knitting, the musical composition—is at the bottom of the pile. I’m sorry. But I am a disorganised scatterbrained‡‡‡ dipstick at best, and I do need to keep eating. . . .
But look at what Fiona brought me:
Hermione the hellbat
Why do I doubt the original pattern called for PINK?
* * *
* Well, ‘finish.’ No way in any of the eleven hells^ am I going to finish finish. But I’m hoping to have it to the final-frantic-yanking phase by the end of January.
^ According to Damarian cosmology
** If I’d been in any shape to think, I should have slammed the auction into action (Blogmom did keep asking me when I was going to provide her with x or y so she could get on with building the thing) as early as possible. But although blaming myself for being a purblind git is one of my favourite leisure-time activities, it’s hard to get around the fact that when you’re in the middle of a book crisis, one of the symptoms of its being a crisis is that you can’t think.
*** I should never attempt to pirouette.
† No, three-quarters
†† Curses! snarl the carrier companies. We’ll have to think of something else!
††† Sucking on his sore finger
‡ Which is at least as reliable as anything else in the in the global financial market these days
‡‡ Although I reserve the right to laugh hysterically at some of the special requests. More about these in future blog posts.
‡‡‡ —brain?
Oooh. Shiny.
Hammacher Schlemmer has come to the UK. I don’t know how long it’s been here—it certainly wasn’t twenty years ago when I moved over here—but a catalogue fell through my door today saying ‘now serving the United Kingdom’. I have missed its insanity.* Who wouldn’t want to spend several million dollars on a scale replica of the Chrysler Building, at least vicariously? Or a 14-karat gold pogo stick?**
It’s still full of some pretty great stuff. How about a glow in the dark jigsaw puzzle of Washington DC? And it doesn’t only glow in the dark—it’s in FOUR dimensions! No, really. I admit I’m not quite grasping the historical aspect—yes, DC has a lot of old buildings. Are there the 1792 jigsaw pieces and the 1901 pieces? Do you accumulate your miniature plastic White House in suitably historic increments? Is there a charred version for 1814? Are there peel-off stickers for when countryside became urban sprawl? But the best is that it’s advertised as the Only Luminescent 4-D Washington DC Skyline Puzzle. The only one. Gosh. http://www.hammacher.co.uk/the-only-luminescent-4d-washington-d-c-skyline-puzzle.html
For the person who has everything, and has tired of the Chrysler Building*** there is The Authentic New York Hot Dog Vendor Cart for a mere £4400. You’d better read this one for yourself. http://www.hammacher.co.uk/the-authentic-new-york-hot-dog-vendor-cart.html I’m totally on board with wanting to continue New York City’s robust street food tradition. Never mind the hot dogs though. Bring on the hot pretzels.
I can imagine few things I want less than The Wellness Monitor however. I keep thinking I will buy a pedometer some day, and see how close I come to the notorious 10,000 steps mean†, but this ‘ . . . fits in the included wristband while you sleep and tracks tiny tremors . . . to determine how long it took you to fall asleep, how often you woke up, and how long you were actually asleep, not just lying in bed. . . .’ I DON’T WANT TO KNOW. I KNOW MORE NOW THAN I WANT TO KNOW. Not to mention the fact that the wristband would help keep me awake. http://www.hammacher.co.uk/the-wellness-monitor.html
. . . No, since you ask, I did not have a good night last night.†† And I’m croaky today, frell it, so no, I didn’t sing for Oisin: indeed after an hour’s mere conversation my voice was starting to drop out again.††† I was thinking irritably that both Griselda and Ravenel were head-cold-hoarse last night and Griselda even has a cough—but they can sing. Why can’t I have their mutant virus instead of the one I’ve got? And we had six at tower practise tonight—which is still one more than we had on Monday‡, let’s look on the dranglefabbing bright side.
At least the hellhounds are eating. ‡‡ And, speaking of . . . watch this. Just click on through. It was sent by an old friend of Peter’s and had me literally crying with laughter. http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=EVwlMVYqMu4&vq=medium#t=125
* * *
* I learned to take out my frustrations reading gardening catalogues instead. Who knows, a lack of Hammacher Schlemmer catalogues may be partly responsible for the 500+ rose bushes I planted in the garden at the old house. Of course I’m still taking my frustrations out reading gardening catalogues. Yes, a 100-foot magnolia campbellii would be terrific. Where am I going to put it?^
^ Actually . . . if I were going to go for a magnolia tree I’d go for one of the scented ones. They tend to run only about thirty feet . . . and it probably takes them a few years to get that big . . . MCKINLEY. GET A GRIP.+
+ Meanwhile I lost my third magnolia stellata this year. Siiiiiiiiigh. Maybe I’ll try some other little shrub magnolia.#
# But not until I’ve got the frelling auction/sale stuff over with. My poor garden . . . all I’ve been doing with it lately is going out to pick apples. One of my roses could have sported blue and I wouldn’t know.
** Originally they were 18 karat. But 18 karat gold is too soft, and the pogo sticks got shorter and shorter and there were complaints. . . .
*** And took a credit rather than a replacement on the pogo stick
† http://www.thewalkingsite.com/10000steps.html Although between hellhounds and pathological fidgets, if I don’t come pretty frelling near 10000 steps there’s something wrong with the pedometer.
†† I’m not sure I’d know a good night if I saw one. Hi, cutie, what are you?
Last night I turned the light back on and started folding more paper.^ Siiiigh. Thanks to all of you who recommended origami books: most of the frellers are out of print. I’ve got a couple on order however and . . . I really don’t want to add another Abe Books quest to my life.
But I was afraid someone was going to say ‘find someone to show you’. Yes. I was introduced to origami fifty years ago in Japan, so before it took off in the west. I had major culture shock even as an insulated American military brat and most of the ‘Japanese culture’ classes we were obliged to attend were too, well, foreign for me—they didn’t really give us a starting place, you know? It was like putting someone who’d never been on a horse before in the three-day event at Badminton. And I was and am terrible at languages. Japanese script fascinated me—it was the first time I’d really absorbed the idea of other working alphabets: hieroglyphs were history—but since I was failing to pick up any of the words this didn’t take me too far. My attention was finally caught by some of the folklore and fairy tales (in translation), and I’m pretty sure I’ve told you that after I got ‘home’ again I discovered that Japanese culture had crept under my skin without my realising it.
But origami: you didn’t have to start anywhere but with a piece of paper to begin with origami. We were given a few origami lessons, and a lot of the kids who were Japanese or had some Japanese family knew it already, and helped the rest of us. I was pretty terrible at origami too—but I liked it. I haven’t got a lot of decades left for catching up on stuff that I dropped for stupid reasons and, well, hmm, lack of talent, I’ve decided, is a stupid reason. I want to fold critters. So I’ve ordered a Montroll critter-folding book.
^ This is not ideal in bed. I am somehow resisting taking a lap desk to bed with me too. There’s barely room left in the bed for me now.
††† It wasn’t the talking. It was all the dramatic gestures.
‡ Niall is back from the wilds of Canterbury or Chicago or Calcutta or wherever they went.
‡‡ Mostly. Only someone with hellhounds would call Chaos’ current approach to food ‘eating’.