The Most Beautiful Puppy in the Universe
And the most desirable. I will have to beat people away with sticks when I take her into town* because everyone will want her. And she’s MINE. MINE.
Pavlova. Mine.
It’s been pretty funny watching Olivia worrying about which puppy I should have. I’ve told you these are all mega-show-quality puppies so first choice goes to mega-show-quality bull terrier people**, and I’m standing humbly in a corner, hat in hand***, waiting for whoever is deemed to be the dregs. Simultaneously Olivia wants me to have the quiet one, supposing there is a quiet one in a litter of bull terriers, although since you probably want the sparkly outgoing one(s) to catch the judge’s eye at Crufts there is some hope that if there’s anything resembling placid I might get it.
But the other thing has been that Olivia has been terrified that I might not bond with a puppy I was simply presented with rather than allowed to choose, although she and Southdowner never were going to let me choose because I am a poor sad clueless vulnerable bull terrier neophyte and I couldn’t be trusted not to choose the puppy that was clearly going to grow up to be The Thing That Ate Schenectady. Olivia also knew that I had an early crush on Fruitcake but I was not going to be allowed to have a boy for my first bull terrier. So of course I was already going to be sulking about whichever little unwanted girl was vouchsafed me. —Are you kidding? I have been trying to tell both Olivia and Southdowner that I will instantly recognise my reject as actually the best puppy in the litter whom all the experts (including Olivia and Southdowner) were too stupid to recognise, that I will bond with her INSTANTLY and that in a year or two† I won’t be able to imagine that I could have ended up with anyone else.††
So Olivia told me a few days ago, trying to sound confident and decisive, that my puppy was going to be Pavlova. Great, I said, and I could frelling feel all my brain cells immediately realigning to crown Pavlova Queen of All. And furthermore, Olivia went on, Southdowner is going to be making a swing through in this general direction today†††, dropping off Croissant for a few hours with her future person, and she could come through here and leave Pavlova with me ditto.
This is, I have to say, a transparent ruse to get Southdowner involved with introducing Pavlova to the hellhounds and vice versa. Pavlova was fine with the hellhounds. Hellhounds, I admit, were totally traumatised by three puppies, even if they were only expected to meet one of them, but in my vague, I-find-the-weirdest-things-not-to-worry-about-or-maybe-it’s-just-I’m-still-not-quite-done-with-SHADOWS way, I was not expecting major eruptions and they weren’t . . . major. But there was a good deal of drama-queendom in the kitchen at Third House while the puppies gambolled and said, oh, neato, new territory! and the hellhounds said, Nooooooooooo, make it go awaaaaaaaay.‡ I had no idea Chaos could make a noise like that.
But we moved down to the mews after the initial shocking confrontation‡‡ and some lowering of the anguish level was discernable. Darkness went so far as to get up on the sofa between two people holding puppies, lie down, and at least pretend to go to sleep. It was noticeable that he had his butt to me and his head tucked behind Southdowner’s back . . . but he was on the sofa. Chaos continued to moan in corners like an unquiet ghost.
Southdowner and puppies left again tonight and you never saw two more crashed-out hellhounds. I feel a little unhinged myself. But . . . MINE. MINE.
The fatuousness. And the adoreableness.
* * *
* Which I will be doing a lot because you want to socialise your puppy anyway but Olivia and Southdowner have truly put the fear of God in me and I’m convinced that if you let your guard down for an instant the nicest, sweetest, most amenable bull terrier morphs into Bruce Banner in a bad mood and THEN. . . .
So we’ll be going to Mauncester a lot, possibly Zigguraton and . . . possibly bell ringing. Well, there are bell ringing dogs. Glaciation is not only out in the middle of nowhere^ it’s a ground floor ring. Since I’ll have to lock her up in her carrier while I’m ringing I don’t want any more kit to schlep any farther than I have to, and I can give her a bit of a walk around before/after without worrying about what we might meet.^^
^ It’s one of these Strange English Land Usage Traditions. It’s a public church, but it’s in the middle of a vast piece of private park land owned by some grandee. You drive forever from the front gate, winding around over little rivers and watching the deer bound away in the distance. Gaaah.
^^ I’m sure she’d be thrilled by deer. However my hand-brake reflexes are very well honed by six years with hellhounds.+
+ And sixteen of whippets before that, but whippets don’t weigh nearly as much. Hellhounds, like whippets, can reach pretty close to top speed in the 26 feet or so of extending lead—but with hellhounds if you fail to hit the brake in time they will knock you over when they hit the end . . . and long term readers of this blog don’t have to ask how I know this. Bull terriers don’t have the blistering speed but . . . they’re bull terriers. They go through things. Brick walls, armoured tanks, the ends of extending leads SPROINNNNGGGGGG, semi-attached human optional.#
# There have been moments these last few weeks when I’ve thought Olivia and Southdowner were trying to talk me out of getting my first bull terrier.
** Carefully vetted for giving them lives as dogs. Southdowner has been known to turn down serious money from people who want a furry winning machine.
*** So to speak. Not being a hat wearer much.
† Assuming survival of puppyhood. I’m not worried about her surviving, I’m worried about the hellhounds and me.
†† And when Olivia or Southdowner shows me photos of a littermate winning Best in Show at the Intergalactic Dog Trials I will try to appear happy and enthusiastic and not make it too obvious that I know a better dog.
††† She’s got family down here somewhere. She stops in New Arcadia when she can.
‡ And as Southdowner pointed out after I said ‘hey guys’ to the puppies and Darkness leaped over the waist-high half-door blocking the way into the Third House kitchen because I was calling him, I will need a non-hellhound-reactive call for Pavlova. I was embarrassed at the time—first rule (as Maggie says early in SHADOWS): if your dog does something wrong it’s your fault—but in fact once she’s a member of the home pack, she’ll become ‘hey guys’ inclusive. But she will need her own call name. Life at present is a trifle complex because she has the name that Olivia uses, Pavlova that I use here^, and her ridiculous registry name. . . . But she still doesn’t have the name she’s going to have to learn to answer to. But now that I know who I’m naming . . .
^ ‘Chaos, Darkness and . . . Pavlova’? Hmmmm.
‡‡ And I went bell ringing. Wild Robert was there, and I asked if Nadia’s baby was learning to play the piano yet (no) and told him I was getting a puppy and he said, oh, that’s nice, that’s like having a baby except all your shoes get eaten too.
Bullie puppy bullie puppy bullie puppy. And a few bells.
Having a terrifying new nightmare* adventure rolling toward me like Boadicea’s spiked chariot . . . I mean, having the immediate** prospect of a delightful bull terrier puppy is obviously good for me.
I rang what passes in my case for not at all badly at the abbey this afternoon.***
AND I FOUND MY LENS CAP. It’s been missing for months. I find it the day after my FIRST OFFICIAL VISIT to see MY puppy†? This is clearly a sign.
Melissa Mead
Do the boys get along with puppies in their space?
I have no idea. But they’re going to have to learn. They adore puppies met out hurtling, but what they’ll do when they find out this one’s permanent and here may need to be negotiated tactfully. I’m sure it’ll be okay eventually, I just don’t know how long eventually is going to take. But to start with the New Member will be crated away from hellhounds, and all meetings will take place under my tyrannical eye.
skating librarian
I am trying to imagine you taking them all for a hurtle. Can a bullie hurtle?
Bullies are small square hurtle machines on little short legs that move in a blur. They don’t have the hellhound capacity to be in Kent before I’ve taken a breath for the recall, but they certainly hurtle. And I’m trying to imagine taking all of them for a hurtle too. I asked Southdowner, pathetically, about hurtling three dogs, when the possibility of getting a puppy next year first came up and she said oh, you get used to it. That’s really helpful, thanks.
One of the things both Southdowner and Olivia keep trying to impress on me is that bullies have no off switch. You do not want to wind a bullie up, because it will shortly enter orbit, wearing your roof as a hat. One of my favourite memories of Southdowner coming here with attendant bullie (not Nemo, whom you met on this blog, another one, Southdowner has several) was watching her trying to get its harness put on before it BURST out of the back of the van. First there was the frenzied scrabbling and mad barking as Southdowner opened the door, and then there was the rear view of Southdowner with bits of bullie shooting out first one side and then the other. Ear. Tail. Head. Foot. Another foot. Oh, there’s the head again . . .
Yesterday Southdowner dropped me off at Olivia’s while she went to find a parking space. Olivia was doing the washing-up and she said, you can go on into the puppy room but ignore Lavvy till she calms down a little. Yes. Well. This was a little like ignoring a heat-seeking missile with your name on it, but I took the point.
Speaking of Nemo . . . you may remember that the last time I took the train to Birmingham to look at bull terrier puppies I found an exit so obscure nobody, including station staff Southdowner asked for directions, knew it. This time I was going to make a prodigious effort to come out some, you know, normal exit. I was just about to get horribly lost again when . . . THERE WAS A BULL TERRIER. A FAMILIAR BULL TERRIER. I stopped in my tracks and yelled, Nemo! Southdowner said smugly, I knew you’d see a bull terrier. She was right—I would have walked straight past her.
But this is also the good side of the maniac outgoingness of the bull terrier. Nemo wasn’t the least bit fazed by Birmingham frelling train station. He was a lot less fazed than I was. Granted he has been very very very well socialised but . . . he also has the personality. Even very very very well socialised hellhounds would be miserable in a mob like that.
Judith
Congratulations! I’m sure it will be a blast! (As well as the usual hell of puppyhood, with which we are all familiar, of course!)
Yes. It’s too soon. It’s only been six years—in, in fact, October—since the hellhounds arrived and I remember it all too clearly. Noooooooooo. . . . And they were only hellhounds. This is a bull terrier puppy. Southdowner’s standard line about bull terriers is that they’re just like dogs, only more so.
I got a Mastiff pup in April, and he’s the best, quietest, most well-behaved puppy I’ve ever had — housebreaking was a cinch, no separation anxiety, etc. — and I STILL was counting the weeks until those sharp puppy teeth fell out, and I’m STILL counting the months until he’s not a wild and crazy play monster and settles down… Yup — it’s all worth it.
Well . . . your adolescent probably weighs four or five times what my mini bull terrier will weigh. The gene pool for mini bullies is still fairly small so (as I understand it) they breed in a few standards to keep the lines strong. One of Southdowner’s foundation bitches—from whom I believe Lavvy descends—is a standard. I’ve met her. She’s old and mellow and a sweetie, but she’s HUGE. The first bullie I ever met, many years ago, and loved instantly, was also a standard and also HUGE. They are built like tanks, or bulldozers. The earth shakes when they gambol, and being bullies, they will gambol.
After the whippets died and I went into a Grey Fog of Dogless Despair, and which is why I was determined to do overlapping generations this time although I wasn’t planning on getting the next generation in quite so soon, I had a list of dog breeds or dog types I was considering. I’ve told you before that I had my hand poised over the phone to ring up the greyhound rescue when I saw the ad in the paper for hellhound puppies††, and sighthounds/lurchers of some ilk were in first place. But both bullies and Staffies were on my short list, both of them regretfully rejected because I wasn’t going to deal with a fighting breed. I’m thrilled I’m going to indulge the bullie fantasy after all, but I wouldn’t be if I didn’t know Southdowner, didn’t know that she or Olivia will answer questions and back me up if I need it, and hadn’t met several of Southdowner’s mad/charming bullies and have some sense of what they, or at least that branch of bulliedom, are like.
I also had thought the hellhounds might be my last puppies because puppies are labour intensive and I’m getting old. So, right, this makes sense, I’m getting a puppy for my sixtieth birthday of a breed known to be extra labour intensive. Never mind. I can still do the rescue greyhound/ couch potato thing later.
jjmcgaffey
Um. On the subject of “you do not want a male for your first bullie” – have they considered the fact that you have two entire males in your household (have you?)? Not a problem _this_ year, but unless you’re going to get her fixed (which I doubt, given her pedigree)… trouble down the line?
Please. I’m nuts, I’m not stupid. She—supposing my first bullie is a she—will probably board with Southdowner while she’s in season. No matter what the gender and personality mix I end up with however, hellhounds and bullie will not be left alone together at least till the bullie is past adolescence . . . which on conservative estimate will be two years or so, by which time if it’s a bitch, she’ll have come into season once or twice, and we’ll have the opportunity to find out how hot and come-hither she is, and whether the hellhounds notice, since some dogs and some bitches aren’t big into sex and procreation. Although this is more a sighthound/lurcher thing and a bullie bitch probably will be swinging her hips and suggesting that they come up and see her some time. †††
I think the deal is going to be that if I end up with a bitch that either Southdowner or Olivia would like to get a litter out of, I’ll keep her entire—do you say entire with girls?—till this feat is accomplished. If she’s not worth breeding and she’s a problem when she’s on heat I’ll get her fixed after she’s had a season or two. My default position is that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it—which is why the hellhounds are entire—so if she has nice tactful seasons she can keep her insides. I realise this is how accidents happen but . . . well, actually bull terrier is a popular lurcher cross. I met a quarter-bull three-quarters sighthound when I was casting around for lurchers that was about the most gorgeous animal I’d ever seen. If he’d had puppies out of a plausible bitch available I’d’ve had one. Or two.
More tomorrow. Yes, it’s true, the only reason I’m getting a puppy is for the blog material.
* * *
* Friday night I kept dreaming about bull terrier puppies charging around a big sitting room with cream coloured carpeting. Guess what happened to the cream coloured carpeting. Last night I simply didn’t sleep.
** IMMEDIATELY. AAAAAAUGH. Although even if I’d had a year’s run at it I’d probably still be melting down three weeks before the event.
*** Warning: ringing geekspeak follows. I’m increasingly short of sleep due to a variety of stresses. And while I had somewhat recovered myself at practice last Wednesday after ringing like a three-legged goat last Sunday^ I still went in today with a large sense of doom following like a balloon on a string. And then there were ten or eleven of us^^ and I thought maybe I can just sit out and knit.
But no, here was Scary Man, saying in a tired and resigned voice, Robin, come ring Grandsire triples. And I did. Scary Man did that encouraging/alarming teacher thing of not standing beside me Because I Could Do It Myself. It was not a thing of beauty, as I usually say of my best ringing efforts, but it wasn’t embarrassing. My impression is that Scary Man cheered up slightly at this point, gave me the treble for bob major and asked me what else I had been looking at, ie what other method I might like to try. Blither blither, I said, um, bob triples or bob major?^^^ And he said, Stedman triples?# Oh, yes please! I said, fool that I am, and I did go wrong, but I had help##, and it still wasn’t dreadful, and he’ll probably let me ring it again.
^ An intellectually challenged three-legged goat.
^^ Including a visitor I found on the doorstep. Unless you’re St Paul’s or York Minster towers are usually pretty friendly . . . and the abbey lets me keep coming, after all. So I brought him up, indicating which dark mullioned+ path led through the accumulated maze of twelve hundred years of history at which point, feeling a complete fraud, and turned him over at once to Albert.
It is perhaps worth noting that he was unusual in that he didn’t have to stop every 300 (vertical) feet, lean on a triforium or a reredos, and gasp. I almost asked him if he had hellhounds he hurtled regularly.
+ Well all right maybe not mullioned exactly
^^^ Any ‘plain bob’ method is the shallow end of whatever follows: so plain bob doubles is the first method you (usually) learn, five working bells and tenor behind; bob minor is six working bells and likely the first minor method you learn. Grandsire triples is usually considered more musical than bob triples and a lot of towers don’t bother teaching you bob triples at all, although Grandsire is harder. Bob major is eight working bells, and so on. The point is I was trying not to ask too much.
# Which is a lot harder. In theory I can ring a plain course. In theory.
## It’s easier to ignore someone going wrong when he’s not going wrong in your vicinity.
† Whoever s/he is
†† And I know I’ve told you that. I really thought I’d told you about how I got Chaos as well as Darkness, but apparently not. Okay. I will. Just not tonight.
††† Olivia says Lavvy really enjoyed getting it on
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
I went to Birmingham on the train again today.* Southdowner picked me up at the station and took me off to Tiptoe on Cludge to play with Lavvy and her puppies . . . again. I’m spending kind of a lot of money and travel time on some random litter of puppies, aren’t I? Even if they are southdowner’s grandpuppies** and as cute as a box of Green & Black’s.***
Well.
Um.
So . . . Olivia rang me up out of the blue this week. Oh hi, I said, puzzled, since even if she were coming to Hampshire again with a load of the small, furry and four-legged, New Arcadia isn’t that much on her way, and it’s not like I’m one of her . . .
Um.
Olivia believes in cutting to the chase. One of my buyers has dropped out, she said, and I might be able to talk her into changing her mind, but I don’t want to. I want my puppies to go to people who really want them.
Oh? I said, my mind instantly leaping off its flywheel and spinning till it smoked.
And I wondered if you might be interested, she went on.
My mouth fell open. I may have said ‘aaaaugh’.
You don’t have to decide immediately, she said hastily. But—well—you seemed fairly serious about wanting to be put on the list for next year, and I just thought . . . if you wanted to think about it and get back to me. . . .
I don’t have to think about it, I said. I want one.
Olivia laughed. Southdowner seemed to think you might say that, she said. But you really can take some time to think about it. Talk to your husband or whatever.
My husband will be delighted when he gets over the shock, I said. He’s worrying about what to give me for my sixtieth birthday this autumn. He can give me a puppy.
So of course I had to go look at them again. Olivia works insane hours, and pretty much my only opportunity to see them before they get much older was this afternoon.
So I went this afternoon.
Oh my gods I’m about to have a BULL TERRIER PUPPY.†
Upside down puppy. He looks pretty chilled. No, no! said Olivia. You don’t want a male for your first bullie!
I can’t go on calling them ‘white girl’, ‘coloured girl with broad blaze’, ‘coloured girl with narrow blaze’, and Little Prince Charming. So in keeping with the food theme in this family . . . Scone is the white girl, Croissant has the narrow blaze, Pavlova has the wide blaze, and the boy is . . . Fruitcake.
Scone. Plotting.
Fruitcake, getting on with his nap. Yes, he’s out cold. Are you sure he’s not truly and beautifully chilled? I said. NO, said Olivia and Southdowner in unison. YOU DO NOT WANT A MALE FOR YOUR FIRST BULLIE.
I nearly did a complete Photo Essay on Fruitcake Having a Nap because I find this so hilarious. (And I don’t care what the experienced bullie owners are saying, he is demonstrating a splendid natural floppiness.)
Pavlova keeping an eye an eye on you.
Scone, ready for some trouble. Yo, honey, I suggest you take out Mr Sausage Man behind you. I’m sure he’s up to no good.
I am AMAZED Lavvy is still putting up with them. They have TEETH. Ask me how I know this.
That level look again from a not-quite-so-tiny puppy as at Third House a fortnight ago.
Pavlova having a go at the sofa throw. Puppies may have 1,000,000 toys, but they still want to chew on you, your jeans, or the sofa.
Fruitcake, who is really excellent at sleeping.
I do have some puppies-in-action photos, but they’re mostly blurry: this was indoors in poor lighting. But I might post a few more anyway . . .
PUPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
* * *
* Which was amazingly fine for a Saturday, until a bunch of drunk out of their gourds football hooligans got on at Barnstorming on the way back to Mauncester. I hate Barnstorming. Barnstorming is where the famous occasion when Peter and I nearly never made it home at all happened. . . . Train staff? Are you kidding? They didn’t want to stick around to deal with this lot either. Arrrrgh. At least they were the friendly end of drunk.
** In Fiona’s admirable phrase
*** Anybody here not know that G&B makes my FAVOURITE DARK MINT CHOCOLATE, without which I CANNOT LIVE?
† And no, I don’t even know which one!!!^ I don’t hang out with show dog quality much. I’m used to the see-which-puppy-comes-up-to-you-I’ll-have-that-one school of choosing, plus performing a few probably bogus tests to help you avoid the pushy thug and the cringing neurotic. Darkness came up to me immediately and started untying my shoes, and Chaos . . . you’ve heard the story of how I ended up with Chaos, haven’t you? So as I’ve told both Olivia and Southdowner, I’ll love whoever I end up with, and two or three years from now I won’t be able to imagine anything else, like I can’t imagine life without Chaos (so to speak). But apparently this is an unusually nice litter—Southdowner says that if you’re looking for breeding/showing quality you usually choose by discarding, and there are no obvious discards here. So the head of the puppy-acquisition queue hasn’t quite made up their minds yet—and Olivia and Southdowner are both a little anxious about me as a first-time bullie owner, so of whatever’s left they’re going to give me the quieter one.
^ Where am I going to PUT IT in my miniature book- and yarn-stuffed cottage? I can’t move around in the kitchen now, because of the hellhound crate. And what will the hellhounds think?
The puppies will be ready to go to their new homes the beginning of October. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH
Happy happy happy. Happy. Happy. Grrrrrr.
IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF A THREE-DAY BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND. AND THE CROWN ON ONE OF MY HORRIBLE STUPID TEETH HAS JUST FALLEN OUT. I’m so happy. Happy, happy, happy, happy.
It has not been a brilliant day and furthermore Peter is in Cardamomlinghamshire visiting relatives so I don’t even have him around to blame.*
Gemma told me last night, cheerfully, on her way out the door after handbells** that she probably won’t be there for afternoon ringing at the abbey on Sunday. She saw the stark panic flood my face and said hastily, you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine, eggs grow on trees, teabags make the best tea, and Charlemagne was a girl. AAAAAAUGH. Last Sunday it was five fabulous male ringers . . . and Gemma and me. AAAAAAAAUGH.
I’ll be fine. Yes. I’ll be fine. I’ll take my knitting. . . .
AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A FROST TOMORROW NIGHT. A FROST! A FRELLING, FRELLING, FRELLING, FRELLING FROST! IT’S MAY! IT’S MAY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND! WE’RE ALLOWED TO PLANT LITTLE TENDER GREEN THINGS OUTDOORS IN THE GROUND IN MAY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND!***
Usually.
I had quite a nice time in the garden a couple of days ago—when it finally stopped raining long enough to make this practical—playing eenie meanie with all the racks and rows of little green mail-order things that arrived during the floods and are still waiting to be put somewhere they can settle down and grow.† I planted the sweet peas, finally, some begonias, some (tender) fuchsias, most of the rest of the glads, some petunias. Today . . . today I (furiously) planted the dahlia cuttings in pots two or three sizes smaller than I meant to—I don’t have TIME for endless potting-on: stuff goes in an intermediate pot and then it goes into the ground or into its big permanent pot—so they’d all fit on a tray in case I’m bringing them indoors tomorrow night. The stuff that is already in the ground is going to have to take its chances†† . . . but the sitting-room is going to be frelling impassable if I have to bring in all the unfrost-proof things in trays and pots or still in their mail-order plastic cells. . . .
* * *
* You made my crown fall out! You did! You know you did!
** Have I told you we seem to have morphed into Thursday and Friday handbells?? Wait, wait, I have a novel to finish and I do need to reserve some brain. I think I’ve told you Gemma is a doctor, and she’s just changed clinics/surgeries which means her schedule has changed, and Thursday afternoon handbells are no longer possible. So we had, I thought, moved handbells to Fridays right before New Arcadia bell practise^ . . . except that it turns out Colin can’t do Fridays but was too polite to say so.^^ I have this habit of not really paying attention to details and therefore found myself saying to Niall and Colin, well, okay, we’ll just have to keep on with Thursdays, and Niall and I can ring with Gemma on Fridays . . . WHAT AM I SAYING. This week was the first of the new schedule and . . . two days in a row of handbells is . . . intense.
^ Which means I will now stuff hellhounds into their harnesses and pelt out the door so as to be out of earshot by the time they start ringing up. I’m getting better at sleeping through Sunday mornings though.
^ The British. ARRRRRRRGH.
*** I’m having another of those ‘why do I DO this to myself??’ moments. I moaned this to Peter tonight over the phone and he said, because you’d think less well of yourself if you didn’t^, which is true as far as it goes, but it still begs the question why do I have to choose activities where terror will be my natural environment? Why couldn’t I collect stamps or go to more films?^^
^ And given my standard level of self-appreciation this could get dangerous.
^^ No horror, of course.+
+ Avengers Assemble is playing semi-around here this weekend and I am half-tempted to go except for two things: (a) it’s in frelling 3D, and my loathing for (frelling) 3D was renewed and reinforced by (multi-frelling) THOR and (b) I haven’t got time. If I’m going to ring bells and sing and rescue all the little green things drowning in my garden(s) and finish a novel before the hellhounds and I have to stop eating, although the hellhounds wouldn’t mind, I haven’t got time.# And, just by the way, Sunday morning ringing at New Arcadia is forty minutes plus a one-minute bolt from the cottage to the tower and a more leisurely several-minute stroll back. Sunday afternoon ringing at the abbey is an hour, plus a half hour commute. Also, terror is tiring.
# And the blog is a not insignificant eater of time.~
~ And there are a lot of doodles waiting to be doodled. Siiiigh. I should draw you a Venn diagram of Available Energy Usage by Robin McKinley some time. I don’t know if this is the frelling ME, or advancing age, or just that I’ve always been peculiar, but what I can and can’t do isn’t just about whether I feel (relatively) alert and intelligent or as if I have ham salad for brains and limbs made of half deflated inner tubes. It’s more of a Chinese-menu situation where you want stuff from as many columns as possible. And your fortune cookie is still going to tell you you’re frelled.
*** Meanwhile friends in the Midwestern prairie are having temperatures pushing ninety (°F).
† I’m still seeing disturbingly few little feathered things in the shrubbery.^ I wouldn’t have thought literal drowning was all that likely in my garden-on-a-hill, and there’s still the greenhouse to take shelter in. Nor would I have thought I have many predators out there, although what is that unpleasing line about there always being a rat within five feet of you? I’m sure my local rats would be more than happy to tuck into adolescent robin. But dad robin is still hanging around for mealworms. Robins are such fearless little critters^^ that you get a prime view of what’s going on with them. There were still two adults^^^ when I started putting mealworms out but they were very chary of me—which served to reinforce my guilt about how little gardening I’ve been doing recently and it’s not all down to the weather—but robins don’t really do chary and dad, at this point, pretty well gets in my face and says, Mealworms? Where are the mealworms?, if he’s dispatched the previous serving. I put them out twice a day, and he must be feeding them to someone because if he ate all of them himself he’d explode. The mealworm saucer normally lives on my potting table in the greenhouse but I put it out in the courtyard by the kitchen door when I want to use my table, on top of a tall pot that will have a dahlia in it eventually. He knows this. So first he sits in the apple tree next to the greenhouse and stares at me, and then he perches on that pot and looks at me meaningfully. I may have to start buying more mealworms.
^ I did get a couple of photos of the babies, but they’re not very good. The nest is tucked back behind various jars and plastic boxes of plant food and it’s dark. I didn’t want to blow a flash in their tiny fluffy faces and I haven’t been very lucky with the right angles of sunlight . . . or any angles of sunlight, lately. They’re only in the nest about ten days, I think—maybe two weeks. Not long at all. And I didn’t notice they’d hatched immediately—they were already beginning to grow feathers by the time I saw them—since I’d been trying to leave mum alone so she’d go on sitting. But I’m reasonably sure there were five of them to begin with. Five’s a lot.
^^ Unlike their human namesake
^^^ If there’s only one parent left, it’s probably dad, because mum has sashayed off to start a new nest somewhere else.
†† I may raise the odds a bit by throwing a bit of bubble wrap around. After potting up the frelling sweet peas—usually I just slap them in the ground to begin with—and bringing them in and out for about a fortnight I am VERY RELUCTANT TO LOSE THEM NOW.
New Thing, New Thing, nanny-nanny-boo-boo, tra la la New Thing
::dandles New Thing::
::dandle-dangle-dandle-twinkle-dingle-dangle::
::hums idly::
And, finally, bursts into loud roars of evil laughter. MWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . . . Sorry guys. Ordinarily I loathe and despise people who tease* other people but . . . but . . . well I’m having a good time with the New Thing. I think you will too** . . . or if you don’t I will crawl away into a corner and cry . . . but the thing thing is that the blog is such a lot of work. I’m increasingly aware that I can’t do this forever, even if there were enough people who wanted me to, but that while the obvious answer is to change the wretched thing somehow, I am hideously constrained by what I can do . . . which includes the limitations of the peculiar personality that does it. Just declaring ‘less often, fewer words and more other people’s books’ does not work.
I think . . . I think . . . I’ve found something that will work.
It’ll make better sense after I post the beggar. And then I’ll tell you more about it too. Meanwhile . . .
::dingle-dangle-glitter-flourish-swank::
Tomorrow? I might post it tomorrow. I might. Or maybe I’ll post it Wednesday. Or Thursday . . . or . . . decisions, decisions . . .
::twinkle::
Catlady
I have so far avoided getting a cell phone because the very idea that someone could call me at any time is so terrifying that I’d rather get stuck halfway home and have to walk my broken bicycle straight to the dentist than have the ability to call someone to come rescue me.
Um. Not that I wish to damage the perfect bloom of your paranoia—having a number of healthy, well-nurtured paranoias of my own—but you do know you can turn it off, don’t you? There are, so far as I’m aware, two options for the turning-off thing: you can either merely make it not make noise by setting it to ‘vibrate’ which means it will undulate embarrassingly against your leg—GADFRELLINGZOOKS I HAVE A RAT IN MY POCKET—oh, wait, it’s the phone. Or you can turn it off off, and then you’ll never know that you won that voucher for a free glass of champagne the next time you’re at Charlie’s, because of course you never check your messages.*** But this does at least mean that when you’re lying at the bottom of the muddy ravine you can ring someone with a rope ladder.†
BlueRose
Your comment about the phone lines always being bad . . . unless you have had fibre installed then your broadband is sent over your copper phone lines . . . if your standard phone line is crappy due to interference, then that has a direct affect on your broadband performance, it will likely manifest as random disconnects all over the place and sometimes trouble getting connected.
Also I recommend getting a powerfilter . . . it may spike badly enough over time to damage your router or anything else electrical plugged into it.
SIIIIIIIIIGH. . . . I thought I’d talked about this before. Well, I probably have, but given the several gazillion words that have passed over this opening page in the last few years. . . . Anyway. Yes, I know. This entire area sucks for landline service, and the wiring in my little cul de sac makes linemen burst out laughing and have to grab hastily at their poles before they fall off. This is probably sixty years old, one of them told me, wiping the tears of mirth off his face. There is not a thing I or any other mere citizen can do about it. It’s all owned by British Telecom and they don’t give a flying bugger. BT, just by the way, and I know I’ve told this story, informed me, when I tried to get Third House plugged back in a few years ago††, that there was no phone line to that house and I would have to pay several hundred pounds to have it installed. Pardon me. This is a 1930’s cottage in the centre of town and there is a phone jack in the kitchen. But that’s the kind of thoughtful, efficient mega-mono-incredible-o gigantic-o national corporation it is. There are regular rumours that we’re going to have our broadband area-wide upgraded—although meanwhile it’s getting worse because of all the new build and new people and more of them wanting broadband—but I’ll frelling believe it when I frelling see it, and even when it happens it’s not going to happen to my cul-de-sac till the very, very, very, very, very, very end. If they remember it at all. Grrrrr.
And I have a surge protector. I have several surge protectors. I even replace them.
Diane in MN
who uses a landline any more?
Well, I do.
Well . . . so do I. But don’t tell anyone. And my ways around my interference issues are of the tin-foil-hats-to-keep-the-alien-probes-out-of-my-brain level. I don’t care.
Despite the presence of multiple towers in our area, our cell phones are mostly non-functional at the house because we don’t get a signal. I assume we are in a hollow or something.
No. It’s the alien probes. (But don’t tell anyone.) It sodblastingly amazes me how often the old ‘we can’t get a signal’ is trotted out. Our horizons look like angry hedgehogs or secret military intelligence encampments with the numbers of phone masts and at this point most of the people I know—and I would include myself in this sad, misguided number—are addicted to their mobile phones and feel vulnerable and endangered (and cranky) when they can’t get a signal and check their Twitter feed regularly to see if @rhinestoneAllStars or @pinkcentifolia has answered their tweet yet. And it is a monthly wonderment to me—which is to say when the chirpy message about the bill comes in—what I pay for the privilege of . . . sometimes being able to pick up a signal. What is the deal here. And whatever it is I want to upgrade my package.
Ajlr
(We use Skype all the time at work, including holding 10-participant team meetings on it. Mostly, it’s fine.)
I CANNOT BEGIN TO IMAGINE A SKYPE MEETING INVOLVING TEN PEOPLE. I think I have to sit down. Oh, wait, I am sitting down. Maybe I’d better lie down.
Looking forward to hearing about The New Idea.
::Beams::
EMoon
If having us feel tortured with your Mystery Fun was the goal, then yes, I feel tortured. Silent but intense screams of agony are even now wafting across the land between here and the Atlantic and will soon be wafting across the ways, you-ward, to give you the satisfaction of knowing your torture plan was successful.
YAAAAAAAAY. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You cheer me immeasurably.
blondviolinist
::dies of curiosity::
::enters afterlife furious that premature death has prevented her from FINDING OUT WHAT ROBIN WAS TALKING ABOUT!!!::
There, there. Send me a forwarding address. In these digital, immaterial days I’m sure we can work something out.
serenityruler
As for the surprise, I’m intensely interested. Because the reader forum is detached from the blog itself, I’m not sure if the blog exists to create conversation or just to hear from Robin. It has to be her style and humour in the writing seeing as it isn’t excerpts from the books or exclusively book related subjects. Hmmmm….
The blog exists because my agent told me, five years ago, that all authors have blogs these days and I had to have one too. I am naïve. I thought this was more or less the literal truth. Feh. But it was too late by the time I found out she was exaggerating for effect . . . and it is certainly too late now. The blog is supposed to be a marketing tactic. It’s supposed to be getting Robin McKinley, Author, out there as a concept. It doesn’t (said my agent reassuringly) have to be literally marketing. Which is the good part. Unfortunately it—and you—are stuck with what I can do, as I keep saying. Days in the Life are what I can do.
However . . .
* * *
* Ask any of my friends. I Do Not Tease Well. Peter spent years being startled at having his head ripped off and handed back to him.^ I was teasing, he’d say. So? Your point would be? I would respond. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to, you know, play? he’d say. I’m American, I’d say. Life is real! Life is earnest! Art is long, and Time is fleeting! And our hearts, though stout and brave! Still, like muffled drums, are beating! Funeral marches to the grave!^^ No messing around!
^ Remember we had spent exactly one weekend together when we decided to get married. There were lots of surprises.
^^ http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-psalm-of-life/ Maybe it’s just that I went to Bowdoin College. But Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is like this great informing spirit in my life. He’s not alone, mind you, but he’s sure as hell there. Great thundering humourless New England patriarchal Puritan thug. The Protestant frelling work ethic. Get me the Katahdin out of here.
Mind you, I do have time for Longfellow, possibly because (last I knew, maybe he’s come back), he is Not Fashionable. I am (almost) always willing to give a fellow unfashionable an extra break. Maybe it’s just that I went to Bowdoin. And am sort of from Maine. But Paul Revere? Hiawatha? Totally. I’m not at all sure that there’s much of Longfellow you can read for the first time as a grown-up without deciding you’d rather be weeding the cat or painting the dishwasher, but when I was a kid those stories with their fancy metrical shimmy were hot fudge sundaes with extra sprinkles.
** ::trembles and looks around anxiously::
*** Ask me how I know the never-checking-messages part.
† How I’m going to attach hellhounds to my body for the ascent I don’t know, but I’ll worry about that after the person with the rope ladder answers their phone.
†† It had stood empty long enough that the phone got turned off.