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Three, count ‘em, three chapters of PEGASUS
NOTE FROM AUGUST 30TH: DON’T USE THE ORIGINAL LINK FROM THIS POST (BELOW). THIS ONE IS MUCH BETTER AND EASIER TO READ: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36512923/Robin-McKinley-Esampler
Here:
http://issuu.com/penguinyoungreaders/docs/robin_mckinley_esampler
Knock yourselves out. Please.*
And, while you’re at it, feedback would be welcome about how easy (or otherwise) you find it to navigate and read. Hint: I find it neither. I’m asking Putnams to please sort it anyway, but reader reaction is always good for the bolstering of a viewpoint that is not going to be popular.
I’ve already asked the mods for their reaction, and Maren has come up with these suggestions for the untechie-minded like yours truly for making the experience a little less like [MMMGLRMNTH: censored to keep Robin out of trouble]:
1. The default view you’re in when the page loads is called “magazine view.” When you zoom in while in magazine view and it goes all jumpy, click the button at the top that I suppose looks like an eye? It’s between the envelope and the +/- slider. When you click on the eye, you get a menu that says “read” and “drag.” Counterintuitively, you are already in “read” and you want to switch to “drag”–it will stop jumping around.
2. OR before you even zoom in, hover your cursor over the button at top left between Fullscreen and the globe. (I don’t care for the wordless buttons at all, either.**) This will allow you to choose either “presentation view” or “paper view.” Presentation view displays one page at a time and you have to click the arrows every time you want to turn the page. The page still moves when your mouse does, but only vertically. Paper view is closer to a .pdf file–you get the whole document at once and scroll like normal. The text is a bit blurry in paper view, though–it looks best to me at 125 or 150%, but still not great. To get out of paper view again, click the button to the right of the search box at the top.
* * *
* The beginnings of both SUNSHINE and CHALICE are excerpted there too^, but you’ve all read them already, right?^^
^ Not very eptly.
^^ I still think the idea of an author blog is a bit bizarre. She eats! She sleeps! She has hellhounds (and ME)! Who cares! I’m going to go read some fiction!
** This was one of my original complaints about it. How are we supposed to know? Telepathy?
)](**&^%$£”+={:@?#}[!!!!!!!!!!
And I was in such a good mood when I got up this morning.* I was going to get my iPhone set up today! Tra la! Traloo tralay! Happy happy happy!
GAAAAAH.
The first thing that went wrong was that I was sitting at the cottage reading back issues of The Ringing World surrounded by one cool pristine virgin iPhone4 and various pieces of sulky middle-aged malfunctioning technology while Gabriel was down at the mews wondering where I was.** Once he was installed at the cottage*** however the havoc fairies exploded out of the walls and got to work.
I don’t think I can bear to go through it all again point by point, even supposing I could remember the order of events, which I probably can’t, having burst quite a number of blood vessels over the course of the day†. The short form is:
At present I have no working mobile phone. You may remember that my sudden, slippery descent into the 21st century began with needing a RELIABLE mobile phone which would be turned on 24/7 and never leave my side††, because I’ve been feeling seriously freaky about Peter since he was so ill in the spring, and his mobile is now loaded to speed dial both the cottage and my mobile.††† Furthermore he came off his bicycle yesterday and has been limping around today complaining about his knee, and I’m having what-if visions of it suddenly giving out on him while he’s coming downstairs and . . . and I’m really looking forward to his saying to me disgustedly tomorrow, having read the blog: I’m fine. I have never been close to falling downstairs. I’m fine. ‡
The SIM card from the RaspBerry‡‡, with my old phone number, transferred beautifully under Gabriel’s masterful handling. There’s just one little problem: no signal. No. Signal. Yes, okay, this is an iPhone4, the one noted for signal problems—but there’s no signal when it’s lying on the desk, either, with no hot sweaty human in any kind of contact—except the steely-gaze kind of contact. The steely-work-you-freller-gaze kind. Now, New Arcadia is the Bermuda Triangle of southern England, but that’s why Orange: Orange works around here. Usually. And I’ve never failed to get a signal on the RaspBerry. It may take some waving and swearing, but eventually the little bars appear, like small goblin teeth, and I’m on. Oh, and have I mentioned that the iPhone4 case hasn’t arrived? The case which, according to both Apple and the sellers of iPhone4 cases, will solve the signal problem. Five working days, the case-selling web site said. That would be today. Nope. No case. I went out and fossicked around behind the water butt, where things get left‡‡‡, to make sure there wasn’t a small iPhone case sized package hiding among the half-used bags of compost, but no. Still no.
Gabriel talked to Orange while I got on with the new holes in the walls and the screaming. Gabriel eventually went away, stooped and careworn, with promises to return tomorrow with fresh artillery and Raphael in a vibrant new set of shining armour.
Meanwhile . . . no phone. No phone. And, obviously, no internet. No lovely fascinating iPhone cruising—the poor RaspBerry is hopeless about the web—no binging and biffing from hither to yon on my shiny black cutting-edge tech. No.§
The one thing that has worked is . . . setting up my account with the iPhone store. The thing may not work but it can still be a time-waster§§ and money-sink.
I got to level six of Fingerzilla in about an hour. I’m not sure how many levels there are, but I was feeling a trifle motivated by the shrieks of the dying. You do want to get to level six, however, because that’s when you get to start crushing San Francisco’s Victorian houses§§§ which offers a nice change from factories and glass skyscrapers. I spent a good deal of the afternoon honing my technique# while various iPhone aps downloaded incredibly slowly: the Chambers English Dictionary took thirty-five minutes, for pity’s sake. And slowed my computer down to early-Amstrad speed.
Somebody, please, tell me this wasn’t a horrible, gruesomely expensive mistake. . . .
* * *
* It was even raining! Yaaaay! I don’t have to do any watering! More time to play with my iPhone! Hellhounds, of course, not having any deep interest in the iPhone, failed to share my enthusiasm for the weather.
**However he contrived to give Peter’s spam filter a boot up the backside, so time was not wasted. Yet. At this point.
*** Having run an extremely thorough gauntlet of hellhounds. Gabriel’s problem is that he likes them and encouraging them only makes them clone at a terrifying rate. Twenty-four hammering tails! Thirty-six cold wet rootling noses! One thousand six hundred and forty-eight gambolling limbs!^ A mere archangel hasn’t a chance against them!
^ Reminds me a little of something that happens toward the end of a book called SPINDLE’S END
† Making new holes in the walls of a three-hundred-year-old cottage with your head is surprisingly difficult. Not to mention painful, but in a situation like this, you desire pain.
†† Except in the bath, or when I forget
††† Of course the one time I can remember receiving an important call on it, to wit, Cathy, to say she’d arrived and was en route to Hampshire, I hit the wrong button in a panic and hung up instead of answering. And I was even expecting the call. Very slightly in my defense, tangling with machinery was made somewhat complex at that moment, as I was several miles from civilisation, surrounded by sheep, and in the company of two hellhounds who were expressing their dissatisfaction with my attitude toward things that would run away if chased.
‡ Peter doesn’t really do emphatic the way I do emphatic.
‡‡ Somebody tell me why, when the RaspBerry lost the SIM card, it kept the contacts list but banished all the telephone numbers. I am not joking. I wanted to ring Gabriel about some damn thing or other after he’d left for the day^ and automatically reached for the RaspBerry. There Gabriel’s name was and . . . that’s all. Phone number is gone. Warily picked up iPhone and clicked on Gabriel. Yep. Phone number. Next thing that happens is that I discover all the email addresses have disappeared from my old paper Filofax. Don’t ever try to tell me that technology isn’t self-aware and isn’t out to get us. The Borg are so out there.
^ He can run away. Just like a sheep.
‡‡‡ By delivery persons who bother to read the instructions. I’m always glad to see another box left on my front stoop bearing in large letters the directive: leave beside house behind gate and water butt.
§ And does it have a fabulous, breathtakingly sharp and vivid screen, as you scroll through the icons of stuff you can’t use because you can’t get on the web? I don’t know. I haven’t noticed.
§§ There are some really astonishingly icky aps available out there.
§§§ My favourite newspaper headline—you get the headlines at the end of each game—is: Mayor Feared Eaten
# I’m still having trouble nailing those pesky helicopters.
Yet Another of Those Days
Yet another. Other people have lots of Those Days too, right? It’s not just me?*
So, for those of you too sensible to waste your time reading other people’s maniacal screams on Twitter, yesterday . . . I ordered my iPhone 4. And no, Orange never did email me to say they were in stock. I’d been thinking I ought to go check their site again, in case they were being ungleblargers, which they were, and then I got an email from Computer Men wanting to come argue with the Nightmare That Is My Email yet again, plus little things I would like them to address like that the sound on the mews laptop is dying, which is very inconvenient when you need to listen to Dido’s Lament 463 times on YouTube. ** So we arranged that they’ll come on Tuesday . . . and my thoughts turned to my future iPhone.*** Because I will probably need help cracking the iPhone code†. So, you know, if I had my iPhone by next Tuesday, then I could gloat exceedingly over both Computer Men who only have 3s, no, no, no, I would be very grateful for their assistance.††
So there the iPhone 4s were on the Orange site and I ordered one.†††
And then I begged and whined and wheedled poor Peter into agreeing to cottage-sit today, because they will only deliver your glittering platinum gewgaw to the street address attached to the credit card you paid for it with, which delivery may happen any time between 8 am and 6 pm. I love delivery services so much it makes my teeth ache.‡ But I had to hurtle hellhounds and then I had to go to the dentist.‡‡
Meanwhile . . . Bronwen had decided she was driving down from Orkney‡‡‡ again and could she come handbelling tonight? Of course she could come handbelling. And then Colin phoned at about 11 o’clock this morning, as I was attaching leads to eight furry leaping legs and a lot of noise, to say that he wasn’t going to be able to make it till 6, 5 being our usual handbell foregathering time, and 5 being the time I had confirmed with Bronwen. Bronwen is by now on the road, of course, and her phone is turned off. I then email Niall at work, saying, can he meet Bronwen and me at 5 anyway, since I can’t get hold of Bronwen to tell her not till 6. Now I can’t get hold of Niall.
So I add my howls to the general din, and three of us scamper outdoors, leaving Peter quivering on the sofa with his hands over his ears. We have a very nice hurtle§ and come back to the cottage to an iPhone and a beaming Peter, who therefore gets to go home. We all troop down to the mews, including the iPhone, with which I begin the approach-and-placation process while Peter addresses the preparation of lunch.
Peter is successful with lunch. I am not successful with the iPhone, which at present is a sleek gleaming paperweight, and whose directions, such as they are, are possessed by demons. Well of course. It’s not like I was expecting to figure it out.§§
And while I was questioning the parentage of the writers of iPhone quick-start instructions, I had an email from Bronwen saying that her car had broken down and she was not coming handbelling.
Whereupon I emailed Niall again, saying, never mind about 5 o’clock.
At this point, having managed approximately three mouthfuls of lettuce and olives§§§, I had to rocket off to the dentist. GAAAAH. So I got there with two minutes to spare . . .
. . . and discovered that they thought my appointment was at 3:45, not 2:30. GAAAAH. We will never know if this is my atrocious handwriting, a gremlin deep in their computer viscera, or a secretary with a mumble. But the end result was that I was adrift on the streets of Mauncester when I could have been at home eating lunch.
I went to Marks & Spencer and bought underwear. This is what Englishwomen under stress do. I have irrevocably gone native.
As dental affrays go, this was on the mild-skirmish end of the scale. I rang Peter to explain why I wasn’t back yet, and when I rang off I stood there staring at the soon-to-be-supplanted RaspBerry, thinking, I’ve finally learnt to do this.# Siiiiigh.
I got home at 4:59 to a phone message from Niall saying, happy to be there at 5 to ring with you and Bronwen. AAAAAAUGH. Frantically rang him. If I were going to be there at 5, I’d’ve left by now, he said. I only just got back from the dentist, I said. Good thing we’re not meeting till 6 then, he said.
So I staggered out with happy, frolicsome hellhounds, had three more mouthfuls of salad and olives, and addressed myself to handbells. And triumphantly rang the 3-4, which in the first place I haven’t done in months, and in the second place the middle pair are the most ratbaggy. So the combined agonies and exasperations of insubordinate iPhones and Cthuhlian dentistry have not yet destroyed me. This is good. I also have a novel to finish.
* * *
* Please lie if necessary.
** And I’ve just bought an iPhone. I am not buying a new laptop.
*** And my future Fingerzilla. Of course.
† I am not cracking anything else, you understand, which is why I already have a hard case on order.^
^ Pink. You had to ask? It’s not, I admit, a very thrilling pink, but I was compromised by what there was, what I could afford+, and the absolute need for a case that will survive both hellhounds and barbed wire. I fancy it will save my life some day, like Wendy and the acorn.
+ Try to imagine how much I don’t want Hello Kitty or a Coke bottle in Swarovski crystals. http://www.dsstyles.com/en/iphone-4-cases/swarovski.html
†† I will be very grateful. I will also gloat.
††† Not without some difficulty. As soon as I said I wanted the 32 GB instead of the mere 16, the person on the other end of the phone gasped and passed me on to someone else. This happened twice more. The woman who finally grudgingly sold me one said that everyone was buying 16s. Uh. As I have been saying since to everyone, didn’t we go through this with computers years ago? You always want more memory? You get as much memory as you can and then you stick extra memory cards in all the little slots? I’m not going to stop with Fingerzilla, you know.^
^ And the freller had better load multi-CD operas. The Walkperson totally sucks dead bears in storage and data retrieval. Totally. Sucks dead bears. It alphabetizes using ‘A’ and ‘The’. It alphabetises by performers’ first names. Not to mention the little matter of refusing pointblank to load multi-CD operas.
‡ Which possibly explains a lot.
‡‡ It is so unfair when you have to go to the dentist on a day when Your Life-Changing Technology is due to be delivered. You want to be at home ironing the floor and detoxing the wiring when it arrives.
‡‡‡ Or maybe Skye
§ To Sweeney Todd. Most of life’s frustrations are better for Sweeney Todd.
§§ Besides, I might give Computer Men heart attacks.
§§§ But the hellhounds ate their lunch!! It wasn’t really a bad day. The hellhounds ate lunch. And dinner.
# I even figured out texts. I found Merrilee’s from June. Um. I still don’t know how to send them, but I know where to find them. On the RaspBerry, that is.
Howling, various
Today has NOT been one of my better days. Let’s start over. It’s 3 am and I’m already asleep.
Blondel had a wedding in London to sing today and it had occurred to me after we’d already made our plan of a second voice lesson Thursday afternoon that, in my experience of weddings, he might be being a little optimistic about timing. So I had a plan for an alternate afternoon in Mauncester. What a pity I didn’t use it. It would have had to have been more successful than the one I lived through. Blondel was in fact a little late, but more to the point he arrived tired and ruffled—having managed to get lost finding his way back out of some London labyrinth*—so we ran a little later yet while he had a glass of water** and de-ruffled.***
And then . . . oh gods . . . the lesson itself was a disaster. Dido? Dido is spinning in her grave. And Janet Baker probably has an unimaginably ghastly stomachache of metaphysical, not to say necromantic, origin.† I was then so freaked out by the destruction I was wreaking that when Blondel suggested we try something else I couldn’t get through Fear No More. I can sing Fear No More.†† But not today. AAAAAAAUGH.†††
There were two brief moments when I wasn’t looking around for a sword to impale myself on. One of them was that Blondel has given me a goofy new exercise that I very nearly have to learn like a new song—but it’s amusing. Kind of a lot of your warm-up exercises are a snore, they’re just excercises for the purpose of waking your voice up and telling it has to work for a living.††† It’s not a big deal; I like scales. But this one’s fun.
The second not-nearly-long-enough moment was . . . Blondel sang Fear No More—upon request, and I suspect he only agreed because he too wanted to end the Hour That Should Not Have Been Born(e) on a better note than any of them thus far—so I’ve finally heard him sing. Ooooooh. My.‡ Maybe I should revert to the impaling scenario. Siiiiiiiigh.
It was now a good deal later than I realised. And I had handbells at 5 pm. Well, I was supposed to have handbells at 5 pm. I rang Penelope and asked her to please tell Niall I was going to be late. Half past latest, I said. But I was still in Mauncester at that point.‡‡ And you may have noticed the way they joyfully rip up the roads in high tourist season.‡‡‡ So by the time I got home I had written several sharp letters to the Hampshire County Council in my head and I was flatlining in both energy and morale—and I had to give poor sad patient hellhounds at least a token hurtle before I went off and left them again. But my presence for handbells wasn’t crucial, because Titus was coming—which was why it was at Niall’s house instead of my cottage, he of the big enough and relatively tidy sitting-room—so he and Colin and Titus could get on with minor (six bells: three people) while I sat down for five minutes and ate a nectarine. And I hadn’t looked at the bob major (eight bells: four people) enough anyway, so—especially after the voice lesson I’d just had—I wasn’t minding the idea of putting off the revelation of my handbell deficiencies a little longer still.
So it was more like 5:45 when I arrived . . . to find Niall and Titus sitting alone in silence. Because Colin was not there. Which I should have known, but I’d forgotten, and I hadn’t written it down. OH. GODS. And the only reason they didn’t kill me is because they’re British. Also, I suppose, because they still wanted to ring handbells. Which was what we were there for after all. Some of us sooner than others.
Handbells, once begun, were relatively successful. I’ve told you about Titus: he’s the one had the stroke fifteen or so years back and only has proper use of one hand—so he rings both bells in one hand, and I cannot BEGIN to tell you how confusing this is, not to mention the inevitability of rather a lot of rows that have seven or eight dings in them instead of the statutory six. But I stayed late enough that we could stop when Titus’ hand started getting tired, by which time people were even smiling at me again. Although Niall, who has no conscience whatsoever, while I was still in grovelling and whimpering mode, whipped out his diary with an evil gleam in his eye, and booked me in for handbells in Frellingham with one of his demon ringers on a Wednesday they haven’t got a third ringer. He’s been trying to get me to Frellingham for months, and I keep weaselling out of it, but this has got harder since I don’t have Wednesday Ditherington practise as a permanent shield and defense any more. GAAAAH. I think I’m nailed on this one.
And now I have a little dog to finish. The way this day is going . . . well. I’ve already decided I want to put my lament through my friend’s door on my way back from my piano lesson tomorrow.§ It won’t be finished, but the friend is, as I’ve said, musical, and if he doesn’t just throw something large and heavy at me the next time he sees me, he might have some editorial input. Also I want to have made the gesture some time before the new puppy he brings home in six months or so reaches its second birthday.
Okay. Onward. And I’m hoping for upward.
* * *
* My immediate reaction was, you drove? When you’ve got a train station in your back garden? I’ve got the American’s view of the British train system too—it may make you frelling crazy, and it often does, but it exists. After almost twenty years here I am still blown away by the sheer fact of the public footpath system, and of the national rail network. Even if the reason I finally broke down and bought my first mobile phone is so that I could make ‘I’m sitting in a train a hundred yards^ outside Waterloo and have been for the last twenty minutes, and I’m going to be late for lunch’ phone calls. Which I suppose is the answer to why he didn’t take the train. The day you’re late to perform for a wedding is the day the wedding will run on time.
^ Or metres, if you prefer
** Normal people would have a cup of tea or a double scotch. Singers are always thinking about their throats.
*** And we compared notes on the weird stuff some people lay on for the euphonious exaltation of their weddings. I am forced to conclude that the average level of musical education among the general populace is even worse than the boffins say.
† Okay, Janet Baker does not have a stomachache of unknown origin today, because if she had a stomachache every time some voice student—even the slightly smaller category of voice students who think she walks on water—mangled something she is famous for singing heartbreakingly superbly, she’d be too weak to get out of bed in the morning, and I’d prefer to think she is still enjoying her retirement.
†† I didn’t say well, okay?
††† Note to self: Do not agree to a second voice lesson in a week. Not even if you’re planning on spending all night at the piano and beating that frelling G into submission (while Peter is safely elsewhere playing bridge). Clearly the pressure is Too Great for a spindly amateur.
‡ Think Keystone Kops.
‡ Golly gosh wowie zowie eeep. Geezum. Gazinklebats. Bryn Terfel had better look to his crown. Although one of the things about Terfel is the size of his voice. He could fill Heathrow. Tear out all those ugly terminals and put in some bleachers. And Blondel says that his own voice is not that large. You couldn’t prove it by me: he was pasting me to the back wall of his studio clearly without trying. I can see/hear why people keep giving him jobs. Although I kinda wish he’d been having an off day when he applied for the job he’s going to the end of August.
‡‡ Sort of the backwards version of the ‘I’m sitting 100 yards outside of Waterloo’ mobile-phone call.
‡‡‡ This makes some sense in Maine, where the temperature may drop below freezing and snow begin falling any time, you just get to complain if it happens in June. In southern Hampshire. . . .
§ My voice lesson today was the little dog’s fault. I may have spent most of last night at the piano, but quite a bit of it was about a lament for a little dog, not for a queen of Carthage.
Limitations
I apologise for ‘stay home or buy a second seat’ at the end of Opera and Handbells the other night. It was unnecessarily inflammatory—and tactless.
But that’s as far as my apology goes. The underlying protest remains the same: It is not okay that the woman sitting next to me ruined my evening because she couldn’t help being too large for her seat and therefore was also sitting on mine.
One of my mods wrote me a heads up that ‘stay home or buy a second seat’ was going to get me some flak. I said that if there were at least three complaints on the forum, I’d respond with another blog entry. There have now been three.
The third protest includes this line: ‘The argument that people who can’t fit into one seat should buy a second would effectively keep me from travelling, attending any function where seats were limited, or otherwise doing anything that might impinge on others because it would cost me twice as much, and I don’t have that kind of money.’ Can’t travel? Don’t have that kind of money? Really? Tell me about it. I have ME. [Blogmom explains: ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, the British term used in preference to the American usage Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)]
I haven’t been back to the States since the SUNSHINE tour—because of the ME. I haven’t been on a book tour since SUNSHINE—which is a bad thing for my career, you know, the thing that earns me the money to live. I’ve missed seeing Hannah’s kids grow up because I can’t travel. All my old friends are three and four thousand miles away, and I can’t travel. Problems with hellhound minders (and worry about my 82 year old husband) are contributing factors to my staying at home. But the bottom line is: I have ME. I can’t even drive more than about half an hour because the stress of that split-second attention you must have behind the wheel does me in. I haven’t been to see Luke because it would involve two long days on a train, and I can’t do that either. If I could afford first-class, maybe I could do it. I don’t know. I don’t know because I don’t have the money. I don’t go to social events because I’m a cranky, cross-grained cow—but also because social events are way too expensive in terms of energy. My digestive troubles at this point are so extreme as to be (almost) funny; but as a result we almost never go out for a meal any more because it’s just so much frelling effort—unnecessary effort being the thing someone with ME most wants to avoid. And then there are all the other allergies, intolerances and sensitivities that tend to be a part of the ME package.
I don’t ring quarter peals (forty-five minutes without a break on the end of a bell rope) any more because I can’t. I’ve given up riding because of the ME—my favourite animals my entire life have been horses, and I had to quit riding when, for the very first time I had a lovely horse at a price I could afford, a lovely place to ride her, and a lovely instructor.* This sucks very big time.
That third forum commenter also says: ‘But I do think that someone here ought to have some Green and Black’s and calm down’.
‘Buy a second seat’ may be a hot button for fat people. ‘Calm down’ is a hot button for this ME sufferer. I imagine that ‘if you would only calm down’ sounds a lot like ‘if you would only eat less’. If it were only that easy. Do I believe I’m implicated in the fact that I have ME? Yes. I’m a wired, intense, overrreactive, anxious person. Not every wired, intense, overreactive anxious person has ME, but I would guess it’s a risk factor, like high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart trouble. I don’t know what the risk factors for fatness are—aside from an inconvenient metabolism rate—but I doubt that very many of them are under anyone’s conscious control, any more than ‘calming down’ is under mine.**
Life’s a bugger. Given. But the stuff you didn’t have (much) choice about, you have to deal with, as best you can. I have to deal with the ME. I miss a lot of stuff I would like to do. I do manage to do a lot, but in the first place it’s carefully chosen not to press too hard on my weak places. In the second place, as I’ve often said, as ME goes I have a mild case. And in the third place . . . for the purposes of this blog, I lie by omission a lot. You have no frelling idea. You’re seeing the swan, not the frantically paddling little legs under the surface of the water.***
Yes, I am thin—and yes I am proud of being thin because I do have to work at it—but I’m thin because it’s something I can do.† There are many things I can’t do—like calm down—and I am not pointing any fingers. You don’t necessarily get the choices you want. You can only make choices about the stuff that you’ve been given.
I’m not pointing any fingers until someone behaves in a way I consider irresponsible. I object to SUVs bulldozing down the middle of the road. I object to aggressive off lead dogs. And I object to being sat on at the opera.
Did I react extra fiercely to my opera evening being wrecked because of the other restrictions of my life? Possibly. But the fact remains that I believe my neighbour behaved selfishly and irresponsibly. The way she behaved is not okay and it is not okay that she ruined my (expensive, much-looked-forward-to) evening.
And this discussion is now closed. I’ve asked a mod to close the forum thread to Opera and Handbells, and there will be no thread to this post.
* * *
* Not too long ago there was a big kerfuffle in the British Horse Society about fat riders—that no one over x weight should be allowed to ride a horse. Interestingly it seemed to target women, or maybe it was only women who were willing to speak up about it, or maybe it was only the women’s letters to the BHS journal that caught my eye. My reaction was, What? As a blanket veto this did seem to me sheer anti-fat prejudice. If you have a horse up to your weight, then why not? And yes, the essential, crucial thing is the suitable horse, but I’ve seen absolutely gigantic men out on the hunting field, with absolutely gigantic horses, cannon bones so big I can’t get my hands around them, as I had cause to discover once or twice when I was putting tendon boots on them. I don’t feel the horse is the real issue. And if you can handle your own weight safely around and on your weight-carrying horse, then why ever not? There’s also the well-known fact that sheer avoirdupois is a somewhat mutable thing from the horse’s point of view: there are good heavyweight riders and bad lightweight riders. I’m also aware that gravity is increasingly not your friend as you get bigger, and falling off is never a good time, but I would have said that is your choice: to ride and take that risk.
** And yes, I pray/meditate/attempt to plug into the higher power, whatever it is. Somehow I don’t stay calm very well when I reinterface with the real world.
*** Very, very, very small tasteless joke: at least fat is clearly real. Nobody tells you it’s all in your head and you just need to stop malingering.
† And, it seems to me, as a thin person who has to work at it, this society is so set up to make you fat if it possibly can—and then to make you feel bad if you are fat. As a thin-end-of-normal person I think I’m in a good position to say that fetishizing the anorexic-eleven-year-old look is weird and unhealthy—as is the automatic condemnation of the fat for being fat. Now can we just be practical for a minute? There are a lot of fat people. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to cope with that? Like more extra-wide whatevers? I’d much rather my tax dollars/quid were spent on bigger bus—and theatre—seats than on bombs.
But that’s a long complicated rant for another evening.
