AJLR HAS HER BEES!!!!!!!*
On Tuesday, this arrived in my inbox from Ajlr:
To share the excitement, message below just received from our bee tutor. We’ll have our own bees in 48 hours! :) :) :)
Think of us on Thursday evening, driving around with a box full of bees…
Hi
I understand all went well at the weekend and . . . I’ve just looked at the nucleus and the queen is laying to the point that the little box is brim full of bees.
So if you would like to come and collect it, it’s yours. You will need to come late evening when they have stopped flying and we can seal the entrance and strap it closed for travelling. . . .
I suggest you take it to the apiary and put it where you are going to have the hive and let the bees get orientated for a couple of days. Then at the weekend or early next week you can move it to one side, put the hive in its place and transfer the occupied frames over. . . .
I replied in suitably modest, restrained hellgoddess manner:
YAAAAAY. Okay, I’m stoked. :):):)
Do I get to mention it on the blog? That Ajlr is driving around the east of England with a box full of bees???? :)
And she generously replied:
Yes, mention it by all means – lots of positive thoughts would be very welcome. :)
I won’t be back until about 8 on Thursday evening, but we’re going to go over then and pick the bees up, to move them straight to the apiary area that evening. I think I’ll have to be suited up when we unblock the entrance in their new home though…I’m not sure they’ll be that happy after 15 minutes in a car.
Oooh, my bees, my bees. ::goes into nurture mode:: :) **
If you think of it (and have time) send me an email. I’ve written it in my diary . . . but that still means I have to remember to look in my diary. And Thursday is handbells AND Muddlehamptons, so I will be distracted.
This then came in while I was Muddlehamptoning:
Off to pick up and move our box full of bees in about 15 minutes. Keep your fingers crossed that they don’t try and break out of it while we’re all in the car together! :)
And when I got back to the mews*** I wrote:
YAAAAAAAY. Well, you *must* be back by now . . . I hope ALL WENT WELL. :):):)
This then arrived with the subject line ‘A car with 5864 passengers’:
So, we picked up the nucleus box full of bees from out tutor’s home just now. She let us borrow a hive strap, so the lid was securely fastened for transit, and stuffed a good lump of foam rubber into the entrance hole of the nuc so no one could come out and start insisting on different driving techniques during the journey. And off we went, with our young colony of bees carefully wedged in the back of the car. I can’t say that was the most relaxing four miles we’ve ever driven, not with our ears constantly assessing the level of grumbling coming from the box. R drove as carefully as possible but small country roads are not noted for their level surfaces. When we got to their new home, I suited-up and put the box on its stand, removed the strap and then, from the back, leaned over and pulled out the plug from the entrance hole. A small and agitated cluster of bees immediately poured out of the entrance and looked around with an air of bewildered belligerence. However, there was no-one there for them to pick a fight with and when I tiptoed back 30 seconds later there were only 30 or so crawling over the front of the box, near the entrance. It was 21.45 by then, dusk, and chilly, and as I watched they all went back inside.
On Sunday we will move the colony into their full-sized brood box, on the same spot where they are now in their nuc box. It looks like being a fun morning!
I’m sure these are going to be the most wonderful bees in the history of beekeeping. I’m not sure how long it will take us to learn all their names though…†
If any of this is useful for the blog, it’s all yours. :)
THEY ARE ALREADY THE MOST WONDERFUL BEES IN THE HISTORY OF BEEKEEPING! YAAAAAAY!
I’m glad to know you aren’t driving frantically for the Channel with 5864 angry bees in hot pursuit. :)
I’m quite glad we aren’t heading for the Channel, too. :)
. . . But by that time last night I was already most of the way through a blog entry about handbells and singing. Today I emailed:
I think it is VERY NOBLE of you not to have mentioned your bees on the forum. All this goes in TONIGHT.††
I haven’t mentioned it at all, thinking you might want to use it. And yes, I’m EXTREMELY noble, it’s almost unbearable. I’ll even add to it and offer to write ‘Steps to bee-keeping IV’ in about a month’s time, if you wish. Now, where’s my halo gone…:)
The rain is coming down stair rods here at the moment. My poor bees will be sitting in the entrance to their box, looking out gloomily at all the wet and probably squabbling with each other. And the queen will be humming ‘now children, children, settle down’. (Anthropomorphise? Moi?) †††
OF COURSE I WISH IT. DON’T BE SILLY. :) ‡
Yes, I’ve been thinking of your poor bees sitting in their new home and wondering drearily why they’ve been horribly magicked to this watery place. Stair rods here too. At least cranky hellhounds don’t sting. :)
Must go to bell practice. NIALL’S HOME!!! I’M NOT IN CHARGE!!!!! YAAAAAAAAY!!!!!
* * *
* And yes, I did ask her first.
** Aside: note that I am totally on board with the nurture thing. Oisin keeps telling me that I must apply for the bat-exclusion license whether I use it or not—that it’s sensible to be prepared. Noooooo, I keep saying, my bats, my bats! He says, look, I know you’re a pathetic wet knee-jerk liberal. Get the frelling exclusion anyway while you have a sympathetic Bat Lady. She could move to Canada^ and her replacement could decide that you are superfluous to bat requirements.
^ I’m sure there are lots of splendid bats in Canada
*** And had fed the hellhounds. And begun a blog post. First things first.
† Hmmmmmmm. Maybe we should have a bee-naming contest??? Hmmmmmmmm.^
^ As a happy, well-named bee might say.
†† I might even conceivably get another paragraph of PEG II written/bent/tied to the chair/negotiated for better terms with^ tonight. Or maybe I’ll ring some Cambridge on Pooka. I might even try to get the fragment of a song I wrote while I was waiting for Oisin to get back from looking at electric organs for other people onto Finale. It looks more singable than my stuff usually is. I wonder how that happened.
Or I could knit. ^^
The possibilities are dazzling.
^ I keep telling you we can’t grow llyri grass in this world.
^^ We are not discussing Sewing Up Secret Project #1.
††† Some of you may remember it was Ajlr who helped name my bats. Eadgyth is her fault.
‡ Okay, all you blog readers. Sign on the forum and leave an EAGER COMMENT about more bee-keeping posts.
The Day That Did Not Go as Planned
The phone rang at 7:30 this morning. This is my idea of an ungodly hour even on Sundays, when I drag myself groaning out of bed at 8 for service ring at 8:45. In theory I have the upstairs phone unplugged because I do not want to be disturbed by people who lead normal sorts of lives and keep normal sorts of hours. In practise I can hear the downstairs phone perfectly clearly and the more ungodly the hour the faster I answer it. I can get the flex jammed back into its connection while my eyes are still glued shut.
Sorry to trouble you, said Peter’s voice in his best I’m-fine-really tone, but I’ve just fallen down and bashed the back of my head against the bath, and there’s rather a lot of blood. Can you come?
This was—just by the way—the second fall in less than two days. Yesterday afternoon Peter had been hanging a picture I had unearthed at Third House and brought down to the mews . . . and there was this loud thud in the hall and a faint, startled moan . . . and I leaped over the kitchen table and wrenched open the door, and there was Peter, lying on the carpet. Other than the actual falling down part, he seemed unhurt.
Today . . . there was rather a lot of blood, trailing thrillingly all over the (dry) bath.* I’ll never feel the same about raspberry coulis.** I’m taking you to A&E***, I said.
No, said Peter. I’m fine. But thanks for coming down.
You are not fine, I said, having checked for things like pupils the same size and eyes tracking together. He’s already demonstrated that he can speak in complete sentences, he’s got his dressing-gown on right-side-up and is walking around. —The back of your head looks like someone hit it with a hammer.
I’m fine, said Peter. It’s just a graze. Here, feel it.
I am not touching anything, I said. I know sod-all about concussion, but I do know that scalp wounds bleed like the levee breaking, and there’s a bathtub in the vicinity that supports this view. I am taking you to A&E.†
We compromised. Peter rang the out-of-office-hours emergency-doctor service—the one I got quite chummy with last spring—who of course immediately said, tell your wife to bring you in to A&E. I want my breakfast, said Peter, sullenly: you do not get between this man and his three and a half square meals a day. So we compromised again. I took very alarmed hellhounds†† for a quick placatory hurtle while Peter had breakfast.††† I then bundled still very alarmed but no longer suffering internal urgencies hellhounds back to the cottage, and Peter and I set out for A&E.‡
. . . Where they told us it would be at least two hours—Sunday morning after Saturday night, what can I tell you, although there were a lot of little kids who probably hadn’t been in bar brawls—and Peter sent me home. ‡‡ Hellhounds were not the least bit deflected/propitiated by a second abridged walk by a clearly distracted hellgoddess, but at least it lowered my guilt level somewhat—and when I drove back to the hospital, there was Peter sitting on a wall in the sunshine, dubiously pressing buttons on his mobile and failing to make Pooka ring, to tell me to come fetch him.
Peter is officially fine. They didn’t even put in any stitches. But he’s about as sore as you’d expect, if you were 83 and had had two heavy falls in less than two days, and he’s written a letter to his doctor that I put through the clinic door on our afternoon hurtle, and his doctor is pretty good about making contact.‡‡‡ Falling down has already got old, and we would like some alternatives.
Meanwhile, I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I go to bed early. Gods help me, I’m supposed to have a voice lesson tomorrow. . . .
* * *
* When we were first married, we used to shout, We be of one blood, thou and I! a lot. —Speaking of blood. But tripping over your own feet and into an empty bathtub is the sort of thing Peter and I do. No, I only got a few bruises, last time I tried it.
** And I’ve never liked the modern art approach to culinary performance anyway.
*** ER
† Let me tell you about living in a country with a national health service. There are several crucial aspects to arguments with one’s bleeding spouse when you live in a country with a national health service, to wit:
- It exists.
- It exists.
- It exists.
- One’s obstinate ratbag of a bleeding spouse cannot put forward the argument that you cannot afford to go to a doctor.
- One can, however, put forward the argument that if the bleeding spouse doesn’t come quietly to A&E, one will ring for an ambulance. 83-year-old man had a fall in the bath, blood everywhere? I could have an ambulance here in minutes. ^
- It exists. Did I mention that it EXISTS?
^ Probably. But response rate is pretty good in this area.
†† Dogs are funny. Warning: too much information follows. I’ve had about six cups of tea today, partly because I’m badly short of sleep^, partly in response to the horrible grey aftermath of a major adrenaline spike, and partly out of anxiety, something-to-do-with-my-hands, comfortable-familiar-ritual . . . and I wonder why I twitch at small noises . . . and as a result I’m peeing about every five minutes. Every time I get out of my chair to go have another pee . . . hellhounds bounce out of their bed and follow me. They know something’s up and they’re sure it’s not a good thing. They’re right, of course.
^ There was the little matter of lying in the (full) bath to read another chapter last night
††† Peter also phoned his second cousin once removed and apologised for not coming to the party. And I phoned Niall and said I wasn’t going to make service ring.
‡ You better believe the Mobile Knitting Unit came with me. When things calm down a little I will have to introduce you to the new range of Mobile Knitting Units. A Unit for Every Mobility! —I also brought four books.^ And Pooka, of course, although the intricacies of learning a new handbell method were wildly beyond me today.^^
^ . . . waiting for the iPad 2 to be released in the UK . . . waiting . . .
^^ It’s been a very good day for knitting. I knew I wanted a nice friendly obsession that you can do sitting down in the warm and brain dead, if you’re careful about your choice of enterprise. I can just about slash off a hellhound blanket square these days without—er—very noticeable error. Don’t ask me about the error rate of Secret Project #1. Siiiiigh.
‡‡ He tried to tell me he’d take the bus home whereupon I threatened not to leave in the first place. Marriage. The art of compromise.
‡‡‡ If he fails in this case I will hunt him down and suck the marrow out of his bones.
PEG II: It Lives
Today has been the first day in . . . probably two months when I positively wanted to get to my desk and Find Out What Happens Next. It has been a very very crummy couple of months in terms of writing and all that comes with that—my self identification as A Writer*, the need to earn a living, sheer morale or lack thereof**, and the morbid imaginings of what you all will do to me if I don’t get PEG II turned in on time.*** But about a week ago I had what I frelling well hope is the last delivery of major plot business—and yes I’ve been having several well-populated hells of a time trying to write around this lack: making apple pie without apples, your top crust keeps falling in, never mind that the smell and the taste are all wrong—and I’m very much afraid that when I go back (again) for rewrites there is going to be a lot of stuff I can’t use any more. Arrrrgh.† HOWEVER. Whatever the system is, it’s now working.†† Don’t make any sudden moves or loud noises and scare it.
So let’s celebrate with an Ask Robin.
I’m wondering, were you at all inspired and/or influenced by Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast film in writing either of your Beauty and the Beast retellings?
Short form: No. Slightly longer form: Not quite no, but almost. I didn’t like the film.††† I didn’t find it stylized and dreamlike, I found it awkward and tiresome. Of course I don’t know what I would have thought of it in 1946 when it came out and broke cinematic rules right and left (so the critics say) but I don’t think context would change my basic problems with it. I am resistant to beauty presented as beauty-and-therefore-it-doesn’t-have-to-be-anything else, which Cocteau does (I feel) with both Josette Day and Jean Marais. All right. They’re pretty. And your point would be? I also hated the doubling of the Jean Marais character, and felt it undermined both Beauty‡ and the story. I didn’t like the Beast being so manifestly a lion. This is one of my lifelong bugbears. He’s not called the Lion, or the Wolverine, or the Walrus. He’s called the Beast. He should not be caged and constrained by one beast and the myths and folk wisdom we have about that one creature.
The single thing I took away with me—the shiny thing that the magpie-storyteller stole and put in her hidden cache—is the liveness of the Beast’s house. The image that has stayed with me is those arms holding the candelabra—and swinging them toward Beauty as she walks past them. It ought to be a grotesque image—disembodied arms sticking out of a wall, ewwwww—but it isn’t. And there are various eyes and at least one statue’s head that follow Beauty as well. I liked this a lot. I tend to think of things generally counted as inert as alive‡‡ and this appealed to me. And while the Beast’s palace in ROSE DAUGHTER was alive from a lot of different sources, those images from LA BELLE ET LE BETE were one of the shiny things I took out of my magpie hoard.
Postscript: I can pretty much guarantee that BELLE didn’t affect the writing of BEAUTY because I hadn’t seen it yet. I saw it for the first time during the several months between the time I sent my manuscript to Harper & Row, as it then was, and when I received the little white envelope containing a letter saying they wanted to publish it. I may have not been in the best frame of mind for it, therefore, but I saw it again a few years later and didn’t like it any better. Mooooo.
* * *
* Although the bottom line under the bottom line is storyteller, how I tell my stories is in words on a page.
** And December-January-February is the pit of the year weatherwise in the Northern Hemisphere—cold, sunless, bleak, and in southern England, wet. Or occasionally when it’s a skating rink.
*** Killing me outright would be counterproductive, however tempting. But there is plenty of opportunity on this side of the final solution. Small dark rooms and chains have featured prominently. But you should also know that the flow of inspiration, such as it is, feeds on things like sunlight, roses, hellhounds and chocolate^ so really you’re probably best off just letting me crush myself with guilt.
^ Not to mention music and other people’s stories
† Only faint silver lining is the possibility of some bloggable outtakes. All nights off the blog are good nights off.
†† Thank the wicked gods that I have not tried, or rather had to try, to write a sequel/second half of the story book before now. There have been two things I have been holding in front of myself like a sword and shield, the last two months: One: the story is there. I may be totally failing to hear it accurately—hear it accurately enough to write it down—write it down in a way that isn’t immediately obviously wrong. I may have spent far too much time playing with the king’s hellhounds—er—hounds—because I haven’t been given anything better to do. But the story is there. I can hear it rustling and muttering to itself in the next room.^ Which meant I’d get my hands on it some day. Two: I’ve always been like this. I’ve always written in manic bursts followed by falling into the silent void^^ for some unguessable span. I don’t like it—I will not abuse you with how much I don’t like it—but that’s the way it is. I know this by now. I haven’t lost everything^^^. I’m just having another of these spells. But if I’d been trying to do this two-book thing a couple of decades ago when I still thought that my writing and my career as a writer were a kind of transitory joke that were likely to be over with at any moment^^^^, I would be bunged up in the padded room by now.
I was hoping I was going to finish PEG II before I fell into the void again—I’ve been worrying about this since I first realised that PEGASUS was two books. DRAGONHAVEN-CHALICE-FIRE-PEGASUS came out four years in a row, and I’ve never had four books out in four years before, even when one of them is half my husband’s. Surely I’ll get through the second half of PEGASUS before . . .
Given that the gaps between my novels have been more often longer than two years than less, don’t stop lighting those candles. But we’re okay at the moment.
^ Talk louder.
^^ Except it’s not silent, so it’s not the void, because voids don’t have noise either, they’re void. But the void-like place is full of nasty little chittering noises: some of them are demons of long acquaintance. Some of them are new.
^^^ I hope. I find it hard to believe that any professionally creative person—anyone who makes stuff up for a living in any medium—doesn’t have hours or days or middle-of-the-nights when they’re afraid they have.
^^^^ Possibly mid-sentence
††† You can’t kill me, remember? I have to finish PEG II. And then there’s ALBION and TAM LIN and the FORTY SIX NEXT DAMAR NOVELS and the rest.
‡ I have a snarly, having-grown-up-reading-books-about-boys-because-there-were-no-books-about-girls-doing-things reaction to this: ‘Right, of course, they’re going to undermine the GIRL’. Mustn’t let those uppity women be strong or brave or clear-sighted or self-aware or anything. Grrrrr.
‡‡ A basic tenet of shamanism is ‘Everything that is, is alive’. Yes. And, speaking of stealing, I stole this for A Pool in the Desert, when Zasharan says ‘Everything that is, is real’.
Noises, various
It’s a great pity I didn’t LEARN TO KNIT a few months ago. The Octopus and Chandelier rehearsals kick into high gear on Sunday, and we have a six hour dress rehearsal in—I think it’s a fortnight. Six hours?? The sad truth is that the back row of the chorus doesn’t have enough to do, and rehearsals were making me kind of crazy, and Minnie, our fearless director, has let me off the last two, on the proffered excuse that I was getting the music from Oisin and could learn the back row of the chorus at home.* This sounds quite plausible. Except for the ‘getting the music from Oisin’ part, which greatly resembles getting two blog posts from Oisin.** I’ve been reduced to writing him menacing emails. He punished me for this discourtesy today however by making me WAIT for my cup of tea while he printed the pages off. Tea . . . tea, I said feebly: it was already late, Oisin having had a funeral to play organ for***, and if I don’t get my second mug of serious tea by 4 pm I start blurring around the edges. Mwa ha ha ha ha, said Oisin.
But if I knew how to knit, I’d have something to do for the five hours and forty-five minutes of the dress rehearsal that they don’t need the back row of the chorus for. I’ll probably try to read, which means I’ll get home and discover that I haven’t taken in anything except a vague sense of the passage of words, with a lot of ‘a’s and ‘the’s and I can’t remember what else. Although I suppose if I took knitting I’d come home with a lot of dropped stitches and strange lumpy . . . things.
Meanwhile . . . I told you that Niall and I had hatched a Cunning Plan. I don’t ring quarter peals because of the ME. While—as blog readers know—I get through a remarkable amount of stuff in an average day† I have no stamina, and I never know when I’m suddenly going to have to sit down in the middle of whatever. At the computer this is not necessarily either tragic or conspicuous, although I’d probably have fewer superfluous clothes†† if sale catalogues, on line and off, weren’t a favourite retreat during phases of brain mush.††† On the end of a bell rope, you’re in trouble, and so is your band—and people tend to mind losing quarters, when they’ve turned up to ring one. But I miss ringing quarters—I particularly miss the spectacular practise opportunity a quarter is: forty-five minutes of the same method. A ten-minute touch on practise night is good going.‡ So I’ve kept muttering to myself about practise quarters—where the goal is forty-five minutes of the same method, and if you get a quarter out of it, great, and if you don’t, you just ring as many touches as you need to fill up the forty-five minutes, depending on how many times you break down. You can put the woman having her ME moment on the treble or the tenor as necessary: my autopilot, after six years of tower ringing, probably just about is strong enough. And it’s way less pressure, and less-good ringers (including those that don’t also have ME) have an opportunity to ring too.
I’d begun to think that perhaps my opportunity was coming round at last, because New Arcadia used to ring a lot of quarters and now rings hardly any‡‡ and I have been able to watch Niall getting increasingly twitchy and a few of our other ringers perhaps a little wistful about this. So I brought up the idea of practise quarters to Niall the other night in the car‡‡‡ coming home after handbells and he went for it.§ First stop: a conductor. We tackled Colin about this last night after handbells and Colin, who is not only a bell junkie but probably too nice for his own good§§, thought about it for a minute and then said that he thought it was a good idea, and he’d be happy to conduct. Second stop: permission from our tower captain and tower secretary, who is Vicky. We approached her (one does not tackle Vicky) tonight . . . and in hindsight I think she agreed too quickly. Our idea is to have a practise quarter once a month on a set day, like every third Friday before ordinary practise, but Vicky, with perhaps a fell light in her eyes, is suggesting that we sometimes have them . . . on Sundays, like our old service quarters, as if for service. No, no! we say. If we’re ringing a quarter for service, it has to be a good quarter. Oh, says Vicky insinuatingly. If they’re not commissioned, they can just be ordinary quarters, that would be fine. And then Niall, with an even more fell light in his eyes, says, well, maybe on those months we could have two practise quarters . . .
I may have created a monster. Stay tuned.§§§
* * *
* Note that the back row of the chorus doesn’t move around or anything. Presumably we will be told when and where to come on and when and where to come the hell off—and adjured not to trip over or break anything which I have to say is worrying me a lot more than the music is.
What I am aware of carefully and painstakingly not thinking about is the whole on-stage thing. I’m the back row of the chorus! Barring throwing up or going off in fits, no one is going to notice me. Also, we mostly sit down, so the white knuckles and the rubbery knees should be inconspicuous. But . . . even the back row of the chorus has to come on for at least one curtain call, don’t they? Do I have to smile? Ewww. I should so not be doing this. It’s all Oisin’s fault. I told him we needed a nice little singing group. Twelve or so. I’ll sing anything from high baritone to second soprano as long as there are at least eleven other people around.^
Or maybe it’s Blondel’s fault, for not bursting out laughing^^ at my first lesson and telling me to go home and . . . learn to knit.^^^ Or Blondel’s for leaving. I’m still waiting to hear from my second new voice teacher, that the kitchen refit is complete, and she can get into her studio again, or whatever. If a second singing teacher spurns me I’m going to start developing a complex.
^ There are reputed to be eight in the back row of the O&C chorus, if we were ever all there at the same time. Eight is enough when there’s all this nonsense going on stage front.
^^ Speaking of providing good laughs. See below.
^^^ You realise that I spent years coming away from bell practise threatening to give it up and learn to knit? I only stopped saying this . . . probably when I started wrestling with Cambridge. If you’re trying to learn your first surprise method, you’ve come too far for frivolous comminations. But this empty threat clearly had some protective quality, and now . . .
** Minnie is married to him. She knows what he’s like. Never mind. She probably got a good laugh out of my foolishness. I wouldn’t deny a good laugh to the director of a small local theatre society in the middle of rehearsals for a new show.
*** He came in to me picking out another of my strange, crabbed little tunes on his piano. I’ve got sheaves^ of manuscript pages of strange, crabbed little tunes^^ scattered all over my piano. I hadn’t realised till I said it to Oisin today that the reason for this is that as soon as I put them on Finale they become serious. And PEG II is so dedicated to kicking me in the head that at the moment I’m a complete wuss about giving anything else the opportunity to behave similarly. Sigh. The music I write is a lot more legible on Finale.
^ Er—sheafs?
^^ For a variety of instruments. Including organ. Oisin told me today he’s finally getting ready to order the manuals—the keyboards—for The Beast. But he’s planning on buying the wrong ones. He’s trying to placate me with a lot of whining about cost.+ I am not moved.
+ We’re talking the approximate difference between Third House and Kensington Palace. All right, all right. It’s not my bank account. But a woman has her (slightly bizarre) fantasies. Yarn pets? One of these hand-crafted-by-enchanted-goblins organ manuals would be a fantastic pet.= Or rather, three, since Oisin needs three of them. We could name them. . . .
= I wonder if anyone has tried to yarn bomb an organ.
† I don’t think I actually know what an average day is.
†† Is a cute little cashmere-blend cardie ever superfluous? Discuss.
††† I can somehow still punch in my credit card number. Damn.
‡ Although a ten minute touch on service ring morning is a generous plenty, thank you.
‡‡ Chiefly because service schedules got juggled, but I suspect also because even Vicky has an upper limit on the amount of hassle she wants to go through organising quarters.
‡‡‡ You will doubtless be relieved to hear that the driver’s door has been reattached and the gremlins chastised.
§ I’m so persuasive. No, he’s so a bell junkie. I’m a little anxious that there’s going to be some quid pro quo in invisible ink in the contract, however, concerning handbells. I’ve rung four handbell quarters so far and none of them voluntarily.
§§ Ask his wife.
§§§ There are towers who ring quarters every week—I know one or two that ring two every Sunday, for morning and evening service—but we don’t, and we don’t really have the ringers. If we go from the occasional quarter to two quarters a month it will be a lot. Well, I think it’ll be a lot, and I’m in the firing line.
The Return of an Old Friend and a Surprise Meeting
Also to say that as washed-out, dumb-as-a-brick, you-overdid-it-yesterday*-and-today-you-will-PAY, ME-ascendant days go, this one has not been too bad. But this is still likely to be a motlier**-than-usual entry because I haven’t got the brain to tie it together.***
I brought Wolfgang home today.† If it weren’t for the yawning ravine in my bank balance you’d never know. He’s all red and smooth and shiny and clink-clink-rattle-free†† . . . and when you put your foot down on the go pedal of a 16-year-old Golf VW as opposed to a six-month-old two-bobbin Citroen something happens beyond the distant hum of a worried sewing machine. Also while I am going to try very determinedly not to run into anything again, driving the pristine little blue wonder was very hard on the nerves.††† When one of the monster Hampshire buses comes flailing around a tight corner at me—as happened today, on my way to fill up the wonder’s tank before taking it back to the garage—I want to dive into the hedgerow first and fret about the paintwork later.
On my way home from the garage I stopped at the vet surgery for wormer. There was a vaguely familiar-looking gentleman at the counter in front of me, who stood aside while someone went off to rootle in the back room for what he wanted. I gave my name and my hellhounds’ names and the vaguely familiar gentleman winced and said something terribly British like ‘one might want to ask how they’re doing.’ I looked at him and he said, they were our puppies.
Oh—! The last time I’d had any contact with their breeder was nearly three years ago, when I was still completely at a loss about what was wrong with them. It is still mysterious to me that out of eight puppies apparently only my specific two have a cereal allergy—but since that’s clearly what it is, or at any rate going off all cereal has been the thing that works—I don’t really care any more. So I chirruped on for several minutes about how beautiful and charming and excellent my hellhounds are—and observed that he looked relieved. But the thing I wanted to tell all you animal folk out there is that I couldn’t remember his name to save my life. I could look it up, I’ve still got it among the hellhounds’ papers. But his dogs’ names . . . totally present and available. Asked after them individually, while I could only say ‘you’, ‘your wife’, ‘your daughter’. The reason I remember the daughter’s existence is because she was the one responsible for puppy socialisation (and an excellent job she did too). But pigeon frelling feathers and stale cookie crumbs—I run into the hellhounds’ breeder on maybe the only day in the last four years I haven’t had hellhounds in the back of the car if I’m driving around New Arcadia. So I finished by saying, if you would like to see them again, give me a shout. . . .
I now have to pull myself together to cram madly for tomorrow’s handbells, sigh. I’m 99% certain that three hours of learning a plain course on the 3-4 to bob major yesterday on the train will have served chiefly (a) to dislodge the plain course on the 1-2 to bob major which I had learnt (mostly) and (b) to render me incapable of learning to ring a touch on the 3-4 to bob minor which is what is going to be expected of me tomorrow. Brain, brain, brain, brain. . . . ‡
* * *
* I am so glad I did not make it to handbells last night or I would probably be a little smudge on the floor today. There is no credit union option for overspending your energy supply.
** motleyer? Eww. More motley. Whatever.
*** I’m sure I’ve got plenty of green garden string . . .
† And he smells like wet dog. Five days in the body shop and he smells like wet dog. Which is nonetheless an improvement on the alarming New Car Smell^ of the little blue wonder. But I think I might nonetheless change the hellhounds’ car bedding which I perhaps tend to be a trifle cavalier about.
^ I always feel that if I breathe too much of it I’ll start to glow in the dark.
†† Except for the steering. Sigh.
††† Negotiating with a gear box where all the gears are trying to duck away and hide in the back seat is also bad for morale.
‡ And one last piece of semi-news: I may have my first voice lesson with my new voice teacher Monday week—the week after next.
. . . This is the last day of the Everything Mozart Ever Wrote, Quite a Lot of It Several Times, twelve-day Nothing-But-Mozart-Fest on Radio Three. They’ve done several of these one-composer-only marathons and as a rule I think they’re a dumb idea; nobody can stand being obsessed over to this level.^ Well. Um. I’m going to miss him^^ when it’s all Strauss and Tchaikovsky and Schoenberg tomorrow. Especially Schoenberg.
However as I’m writing this the last Mozart programme is on, which is for listeners to ask for and dedicate favourite bits, and the presenter has just read out a dedication from ‘Robin’ to ‘all things beautiful’. Ewwwwww. That’s not me. Just in case you might have wondered. But the chosen piece is Horowitz playing the Rondo ala Turca . . . which might very well have been me. Or something from the Marriage of Figaro. I have pretty simple-minded tastes about a lot of things I’m afraid. Chocolate. Champagne. Beethoven’s symphonies. Mozart’s piano sonatas and The Marriage of Figaro.
^ The JS Bach-athon still holds first place however for the Fatuous Prat award for dipstick audience comments. Jeez. This is a problem for an All-Star wearing guttersnipe listening to classical music: it’s the literature of music. We’re all so frelling exquisite. And I’ve mostly lost my cheap-genre touch. I know, I know, I could get it back . . . but I need to listen to the Eroica or La Traviata or K 331 again first. Or Una Voce Poco Fa because I want to sing it.+
+ No, I don’t yet know how good my new voice teacher’s sense of humour is.
^^ Although I’m pretty sure I said this about Beethoven too, and he wrote a lot more rubbishy bits than Mozart lived long enough to.