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.
Wet wet wet
It’s okay. I can write a blog tonight. Darkness ate dinner. *&^%$£@#~}+!!!!!!!!!!! Cathy, on the other side of the table, is breathing a deep sigh of relief. She’d made the perilous, not to say fatal, offer to write another guest blog if I found myself incapable on account of the extreme reprehensibleness of hellhounds and the resultant need to wail and rail incessantly all evening.* Which is to say, Darkness stopped eating. Yesterday.
I know, I know (and you regular readers know, you know). Normal dogs—well, normal sighthounds—miss meals occasionally. It’s not a big deal. It’s a big deal with these guys because of their history. And it’s a big deal to me because I’m the human supposedly in charge of managing they survive their history. And they are a lot better, about food, about eating food, and about stopping eating (food) and about looking like they’re at death’s door after about twenty-four hours of not eating. And I may have an ever so slight tendency to hit red alert before it’s absolutely necessary. But. . . .
If you graphed hellhound appetites and the amount of food I actually manage to get in them, the lines would swing up and down wildly anyway, like the surface of Lake Superior just before the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. I’m used to this. I don’t frelling like it, but I’m used to it. Occasionally, however, one or both hellhounds ship a really big wave and head for the bottom. If I hadn’t been distracted by having fun with Cathy—because I am an irresponsible dog owner and a horrible selfish thoughtless human being—I might have noticed that the current oh-well-maybe-I-will-and-maybe-I-won’t food mood was hardening into something more drastic. It had crossed my mind that the current lack of enthusiasm phase was going on a little long.
AND THEN . . .
It has not been a good day. Today was our last chance to get out into the country and look at bluebells. And it rained. Again. It’s been raining all week. It was raining when I picked Cathy up at the train station.** It was raining as we both arrived at and left the abbey.*** It was raining most of Sunday in both Hampshire and Bristol, although Cathy managed to find a little sunlight and follow it around for a few hours. It rained on my voice lesson.† It rained on our going to Glaciation to ring with Colin. It rained on our trip to Mauncester yesterday.†† IT’S BEEN RAINING FOREVER. IT IS GOING TO RAIN FOREVER.††† It is just about hip deep around town and squelching out over the countryside when Cathy only has two pairs of shoes with her is not really a credible option.
AND THEN DARKNESS STOPPED EATING. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
It has not been a good day.
But Darkness ate dinner. Enthusiastically. So I can revert to being all wet and soppy and droopy and soggy, not about the rain, but about the fact that Cathy is leaving tomorrow. . . .
* * *
* The deep sigh of relief may have been as much to do with the lack of incessant wailing and railing as the fearful prospect of coming up with another 1000+ words that could pass for a coherent synthesis of some damn thing or other only two days after the previous guest blog.
** It had only just started raining (again), fortunately, since I was late. Of course I was late. I’m always late. And then we had to hare off at extreme speed for the Reification of the Overgoddess at Forza. I have rung my first service at Forza del Destino.^ Eeep. This blood-freezing adventure began last Wednesday, when Ulrich said at practise that it was an all-hands-to-the-pumps situation Saturday afternoon for the reification. I looked away and shuffled my feet because I am not, after all, an abbey ringer, but Gemma said, oh, go on, I’m going to. So I checked with Cathy about train times and then, in fear and grovelling, although it’s difficult to get grovelling across in an email, I wrote to Ulrich, asking if they still needed extra hands for the reification, and he wrote back pretty much by return electron saying they’d be happy to see me. Oops. Now I’m for it.
In fact they didn’t need all of us shmo-level ringers, but they were nice enough to pile us all on for rounds on forty-eight. And Og came by with his clipboard and said to me, smiling in what I’m sure he was under the impression was a friendly manner, You are now on my LIST.
I may have a bell tower again. That is, I admit, may. I’m still expecting them to pull themselves together and bounce schmos like me.+++ And I wish it weren’t a gigantic, ancient, tourist-magnet, one hundred and twelve bell frelling ABBEY. However, I’ll take what I can get. And they’re still, with an irony so shiny and sharp it needs a scabbard++++, my best practical choice for a new tower. Hahahahahahahaha. Ouch, that hurts.
^ I’m feeling just a trifle creeped out by my having long ago carelessly blognamed+ it The Force of Destiny.++
+ I invent a verb. I feel it could have wider application however.
++ It could be a lot worse. I could have named it La Traviata or Aida.
+++ Or I could revert to not being able to ring anything. Anything. But we are not considering this possibility. We reject it.
++++ And its name may be Doomblade.
*** With a spectacular escort of guards. Yeep. We never had guards at New Arcadia, but then we didn’t rededicate goddesses either. But Cathy and I crossed three different cordons, getting in—I’m a bell ringer! I kept squeaking, feeling a complete fraud—and two getting back out again. Our favourite was the nice German lady (in the scary guard uniform) who wanted to know about bell ringing.
† Yes. I took Cathy to my voice lesson. And if she tries to write a guest blog about that I will destroy her.^
It was pretty interesting though. I hadn’t thought about this when I asked Nadia if I could bring a friend that Monday, but it was the day after Diana’s memorial and I was going to be another jigsaw for Nadia to put back together, as well as in (fractured) avert mode because There Was Someone Else Listening. It was not my most brilliant lesson—but it was not, in fact, my most embarrassing either. Nadia says sometimes your worst practises and your worst lessons are the most educational—and this one taught me some stuff. Nadia spent some time talking about channelling emotion into your singing. The impulse—my impulse anyway—is to stomp all that slithery, squishy stuff down, and the stomping process is a lot of what breaks you up into jigsaw pieces. Feh. I’ve told you about the frelling chasm between what I can do at home when no one is listening, but where I don’t have all of Nadia’s tricks for getting a better quality of sound out of me, and what I can do for Nadia, whom I want to please and therefore am afraid to get stuff wrong for—I mentioned that I’d torn the heart out of Che Faro over the washing-up and Nadia said briskly, I look forward to hearing it next week. EEEEEEP. This is pretty much the same kind of exciting and same kind of terrifying as the prospect of maybe having a bell tower again. I would LOVE to work on Che Faro with Nadia, but I’ve assumed that was seriously down the line from where I am now. And it probably is, you know? I’ll take it in to her and . . .
^ No, wait, I can’t destroy her, she’s helping me with New Thing.+
+ And in answer to some forum question or other, yes, it will get a title, at least of sorts, as soon as you learn the protagonist’s name, which is in ep nine or so.
†† More *&^%$£”+=}]~#@!!!!!! Our trip was supposed to produce a certain outcome which was going to produce a particular blog post. And we were FOILED by . . . well, never mind what we were foiled by. I’ll get there in the end. And then I’ll write a blog post about it. Grrrrrrrrrr.
††† I tell myself, rain is good. We’re in a drought. We need this rain. I AM SURE I AM GROWING MOULD ALL OVER MY BODY.
Uncomfortably numb
It’s funny how different something looks from one perspective than it does from another. I thought that the first few words of the first sentence of New Thing* would clearly, unmistakably and irresistibly label it as fiction. People who read the blog even occasionally (I thought) would be aware that I mention Peter from time to time** as an ongoing part of my life***—and if people who don’t read the blog at all might be intrigued at the possibility of one of those scary train-wreck blogs where people describe their bosses as pustules and how they had it off with the plumber last Saturday† while their spouse was buying Marmite at the corner shop,†† hey, whatever keeps them reading. But it never occurred to me that even the least regular reader could get to the end of the first sentence, and we will pass over the reference to computers and conferences since not everyone knows who Peter is†††, absorb the reference to the fourth volume of The Epic of Flowerhair and not at least suspect the presence of a fragrant rodent. The Epic of Flowerhair? Seriously? I must be even farther out of touch with my genre than I realised.‡ And the only reason this blog exists is because I’m a writer. A fantasy writer. Um. People do read sidebars, don’t they? Where mine outs me as a fantasy writer. I always read sidebars. There is vastly, universe-crackingly too much content out there in internet land. You need a fast way to say ‘no’‡‡ occasionally. Sidebars (sometimes) provide one.
And haven’t I been chirpy and upbeat about the New Thing? Well, I thought I’d been being chirpy and upbeat‡‡‡ about the New Thing.
Anyway. It’s fiction. There will be more of it. And, you know, thanks for worrying . . .
* * *
I know I promised you a What? You’re doing what? semi-explanatory blog tonight but I’m several leagues beyond shattered and I have to get up EARLY tomorrow.
About six weeks ago, I think, we received a very chirpy email, speaking of chirpy, from the parents of one of Peter’s grandchildren, informing us that the grandchild in question had reached the finals of the national division of the Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster Young Musician of the Year competition, which is being held in Dastardly, which is not impossibly far from here. So we’re going. Tomorrow. EARLY tomorrow. We’re going (EARLY) because we’re getting a ride—from Georgiana and Saxon who are getting out of bed even earlier to swing past here and pick us up. They are noble and wonderful human beings.§
It’s going to be a clan gathering—I believe they’re pegging off one whole section of the arena for us—but the finalist grandchild and his immediate family swooped through here a day early and stayed overnight last night at Third House. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like a good idea before I had this flu§§ and it still seemed like a good idea up until the electricity started flashing on and off like an urgent Morse code message yesterday morning. I was (serendipitously) out buying batteries when one of the other clerks came flouncing back in the shop and announced crossly that both our little local grocery stores were closed, allegedly because of automatic-till problems. Oh. My next stop was some little local grocery, for supplies for the troops who were arriving in a few hours. . . .
With reference, the other night, to the question of protecting your technology from erratic power delivery: I have this great boulder of an object under the desk at the cottage, which is both hard drive back up, enough battery to let you close your desktop down without data loss or meltdown if the power goes out, and a kind of super-whammy surge protector, in that it cost ridiculous amounts of money, but you don’t have to keep changing the freller every time something like yesterday happens. It has a major drawback, however, which is that while the power is out it screams. It screams incessantly for as long as the power is out—and it doesn’t stop screaming until the power is back on again AND you have reset the wretched thing.
It spent a lot of yesterday screaming. I did not enjoy this.
And then when I finally got to Third House to make up the beds, I couldn’t get the frelling heat to turn on. The OLD boiler§§§ was thirty (or forty) years old and it had pretty much two settings: On. And off. And it had a dial, so you could set the temperature. That was about it. It also made a reassuring roaring noise when you turned it on and it came on. I am capable of understanding this system. The new boiler, which was installed when I had all that fun having the Weight Bearing Floor built for the attic a couple of years ago, will make a cherry pie, sew a fine seam, and calculate pi to 1,000 places. All I want it to do is heat my house. And I couldn’t figure out WHY I COULDN’T TURN IT ON. I wasted a lot of time on this, to the detriment of the bed-making, but it was cold last night#. . . .
They had been keeping me up to date with their progress by text, including the indefinite delay when the M-something motorway stalled out due to a traffic accident. Then I didn’t receive the last two texts about their getting underway again, and the next thing I knew there was a sudden influx of tired, chilly human beings who were bemused by the fact that Wolfgang was preventing them from parking in Third House’s drive, and after everyone is home from work there never are spaces on the street. Oh. Technology, you ratbag. You get careless, when things are working. You assume they will go on working.
I have to go to BED. I have to get up EARLY. PS: our grandchild is going to blow the rest of those weaselly little suckers out of the water. . . . ##
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* It doesn’t have a name yet. You will be the first to know.
** See: I am my own best material because I don’t have to worry about taking my own name in vain or hurting my own feelings. And poor Peter suffers the disability of being the only other person who doesn’t have an alias. So I do try to protect him.
*** I suppose, since I’m always reminding you how much I don’t tell you, you could have leaped to the sudden, horrified conclusion that our marriage is actually a seething rancorous mass of barely restrained mutual loathing, and that this had broken out at last. Um. No. And even Gelasio isn’t a villain. At least I don’t think so. At least not yet. I suppose he could . . . mmmph mrgle gmmmph.
† Cheaper than weekend overtime rates. If the plumber fancies you.
†† Sorry, you hopefuls. I don’t write that kind of blog. Nice knowing you.
††† http://www.peterdickinson.com/
‡ Hoist by my own petard again. I also keep saying that I’m very under-read in everything because I’m a very slow reader and read over too wide a range. True.
‡‡ Or even ‘yes’, unfortunately. Noooooo! I do not want to receive email updates! Noooooo! I do not want to be on your RSS feed! Nooooooooo!
‡‡‡ And annoying.
§ I believe there is also a classic Jag involved. Oooooooh. May I be awake enough to appreciate it.
§§ There was a noxious miasma hanging over Bologna this year. I know several people hitherto innocent of any crime who went home plague-bearers.
§§§ Furnace
# Yes. I am extremely tired of bringing this year’s baby plants indoors every night.
## PPS: The boiler had turned itself off at source. I guess because it got tired of the Morse electricity. It did allow itself to be turned back on again—when someone other than me figured this out.
Mouth breather
There will be an ANNOUNCEMENT at the end of this post.
Oh, stop it. It’s not one o’clock in the frelling morning. That’s an optical illusion. The kitchen clock hates me, and I’m sure I need a new prescription for my glasses.*
I was thinking, as I snarled my way out of bed this morning, that I’m very grateful that horrible as this flu has been it’s not maintaining the extreme fevered purple-spotted torture level forever . . . but it would still be very nice to be able to hear and breathe again some time soon.** I was too busy being a pain in the neck last night*** to let reality deflect me from my malign purpose, but Peter and I had an adventure yesterday, visiting a friend who has recently moved to this area. Not all that recently. She and her husband have been here several times. But I keep bottling out—or the ME bottles out for me—of going to visit them. You know, driving. On the roads and everything. I’d rather be knitting.
But I wanted to get it over with, that first assault on Everest† . . . not least because she and I are supposed to be going to a concert together next week at her local hall. Which means I need to be able to get there. And on the whole I’d rather wreck Easter Monday lunch with the anticipatory nervous breakdown than a concert you’ve bought tickets to. So Peter and I added two boxes of tissues to the emergency kit in Wolfgang’s boot†† and set off.†††
Hey. Wow. Gosh. Actually the way there is pretty straightforward. I can do this.‡ And their new house is adorable—it has no right angles in it anywhere, and a Charles Rennie Macintosh surround on the (tiny) dining room fireplace—and the typical town garden that isn’t much wider than you can spread your arms, except this one goes on and on and on. And on and on and on. And on. It’s like the far end is in Norway‡‡ it’s so long.
But my point is . . . it’s more embarrassing having a lurgy in someone else’s house, even when you’re pretty sure you’re not leaving it behind for them to enjoy in your absence. Oh gods I’m a mouth breather. No one will ever invite me anywhere again.
Niall is forced to make use of me, however, because I can hold the line even against the worst assaults of beginner handbellers. Niall is applying the high-intensity inauguration system with this new group—he’s booked them (and me) in for next Tuesday too.‡‡‡ Mind you, Farrell is starting to scare me: you just hand him a pair of bells and say ‘do this’ and he does. I won’t be ringing with him much longer because I’ll be beneath his notice. § But Enoch is needing the standard beginner grind, and they’d brought a tasty new mutton chop, I mean person, with them tonight, Olga being unavailable, whom we will call Oliver. Oliver once in the dark days of foolish youth had begun to learn to ring handbells and had sensibly given it up . . . I’m not sure what Enoch has on him that he agreed to come along tonight. A good grind was had by all, one way and another, although whether or not it was a pleasant evening might be open for debate. But . . . carrying around a superfluous lurgy was not on my mind when I was developing my nascent handbell habits. I tend to look down—I only want to see the bells out of the corners of my eyes, although in my peripheral way I’m watching the treble like a hawk waiting for that rabbit to wander just another step farther away from the hedgerow—and looking down makes all that crap in my head shift forward and lodge like cement in a slurry pit. Mouth breather. Arrgh. This too will pass. I hope.
ANNOUNCEMENT: THE NEW THING WILL DEBUT TOMORROW.§§
* * *
* The many advantages of touch typing. Also most of the letters on the keys have worn off.
** Also I have a cough that scares small children, but that has its uses. Not being able to hear has its uses too^, but not enough of them. Not being able to breathe has no uses at all.
^ Take 1,000,000 empty bottles to the dump, dear? Sorry, I can’t hear you.
*** Heh heh heh heh heh
† She lives on a HILL. Do you have any idea how much I loathe parallel parking on a HILL? Especially a crowded residential hill where the spaces are all at best .0326 inches longer than your car? When there are any spaces?
†† trunk
††† Leaving hellhounds to sulk at the dog minder about the rain. At least it’s good rain—it’s a bit whimsical, liking to lure you outdoors with the blue-and-sunny trap before it yanks the black wall of water on and lets you have it—but it is raining determinedly while it’s raining, and gardens and ponds and frogspawn and reservoirs are liking it. Not so the hellhounds. FOR GODSSAKE GUYS YOU WON’T MELT. Darkness is tentatively willing to take this on faith. Not Chaos. Chaos can feel every drop penetrating his liver. Rainy days it’s always a dice roll: do I put their raincoats on them so they comprehensively hate the entire hurtle, Darkness affecting stoicism and Chaos doing his upside-down backwards and sideways Maybe I Can Shake It Off dance with much tail-lashing, or do I leave their raincoats off so they only hate the part when it’s raining, but then spray house, car and me with strangely knife-edged mud droplets which furthermore have an inexplicable capacity to stain more damningly than black tea? They also sulk longer post-hurtle if they’re wet . . . but this is English weather. If you’re lucky it won’t rain while you’re out in it, and there are four little beady eyes, when I pick up harnesses in preparation to going out, beaming the message noooooooooo raincoats. . . .
‡ I had a revolutionary thought. I could learn to drive slower. Ugggh. I get behind the wheel, I want to get it over with. And the speed limit on motorways and A roads is 70, which is Mario Andretti’s idea of a crippled amble, but it’s my idea of pedal to the metal, and if the sign says 70, I go 70. But the faster you’re driving, the more acute that hyper buzzy awareness you’re using to stay alive is, whether you’re aware of it or not, and this is tiring . . . which is where the ME comes in in my case, and why I drive as little as possible. I’m not sure the neurological stress level is that much different between driving 45 and 70 . . . but I could find out. Sigh. I’d rather just have a chauffeur. Then I could knit.
‡‡ What? There’s a bridge over the North Sea, of course. It’s long and narrow too.
‡‡‡ We’re going to them next week. I think this may be Penelope losing patience and wanting her sitting room back. I don’t think I can get five people in the cottage. Maybe I should suggest Third House.
§ Very scary. Remember I told you he’s a dancer? He auditioned—and won a place for the Olympic opening day ceremonies. Yeep etc—better him than me. But I hope he’ll tell us about it.^
^ I hope he keeps ringing handbells. Despite the immediate prospect of my being discarded for insufficient skill, I want to hold onto this boy for the greater good of our mutual art.
§§ Unless of course I change my mind again.
Jolly jolly jolly jolly Easter technology
So a friend and I have been trying to figure out something new and amusing to do for the blog. * It had got to the point by this week that we really needed to do a kind of run-through to see if it was going to work**, but I’ve been ill*** and she has, like, a job and a life† and scheduling has been a ratbag. But we finally decided we could do it this morning.
The first thing that happened is that I overslept. SO WHAT FRELLING ELSE IS NEW.†† So when I finally texted my friend (as prearranged) she had also overslept††† arrgh arrgh arrgh arrgh so we both stumbled around finding caffeine (and clothing) and feeding/hurtling domestic fauna and so on. As one does.
Articulateness was beginning to emerge from the enshrouding mists. Blah. Gar. We were tentatively going to do this by Skype instant messaging, but we were going to have a video-enabled chat about what we were trying to do first, in so far as I was capable of either speaking audibly‡ or hearing anyone speaking to me.‡‡
The first thing that happened was that we couldn’t get Skype to talk to us. . . . No, wait. The first thing that happened was that Pooka was doing one of her little, Message? Me? Message?, deals, so my friend had texted back and I’m wondering why she hadn’t because it wasn’t showing. Eventually I went hunting and there were like three new ones the last one being, Hey, where r u? ARRRRGH. It’s sort of the modern tech version of catching your roommate with the empty plate in her hands and the crumbs on her face: Chocolate cake? What chocolate cake?‡‡‡
Then, having re-established contact by text . . . Skype refused to connect. R u there? yes im here where r u . . . note that there are two iPhones, a Macbook and a desktop PC involved, and we are playing merry, merry musical gadgets . . . eventually Skype acknowledged both my and my friend’s existence at the same time on one machine each and a sort of connection was established . . . except she couldn’t hear me, I couldn’t see her, and I was getting a helpful pop-up message saying ‘your broadband is moving at a somewhat slower than measurable rate. Glaciers are faster. Liver flukes are evolving into diplodocuses while we wait for the signal from the historic maypole on your cul-de-sac. We don’t hold out a lot of hope for this conversation you’re trying to have.’
Eventually my friend and I gave up on the preparatory chat option. She was still trying to reassure me (we were still texting, mostly successfully) that Skype IM was really easy, nothing could go wrong. Yes. And I’m the queen of Sheba. My Skype kept claiming that my friend was off line. My friend kept claiming that her Skype was telling her I was off line. Shifting from one demonic piece of kit to another of course aggravates the situation. I could sit there watching Pooka and the desktop pointing fingers at each other and saying: She did it!§ I turned everything off and then turned it back on again. Skype was now claiming I was back on line, but I wasn’t allowed to change my status. I WAS GOING TO BE ON LINE FOREVER.§§
At this point I received another text from my friend. Ur still off line, it said. ARRRRRRRRRGH, I replied. R u near ur landline? she next inquired (crisply). I’m going to phone u.
Somebody tell me why I could hear her laughing through her texts.
Um, I texted back, yes. But I nvr use it because connection ALWAYS bad.
She phoned me while I was standing in the middle of the office floor at the cottage, watched with some interest by relaxed and half-asleep hellhounds, and swearing like an entire regiment of troopers from low backgrounds, trying to UNTANGLE the frelling WIRING between the phone and the message machine§§§ and between the machine and the wall, which, because I never use any of it, mats itself into plastic dreadlocks. HOW DOES IT DO THIS. IT SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. PLASTIC FRELLING FLEX CANNOT FRELLING FELT ITSELF. Sure it can. It’s like how coathangers breed in empty closets. When the phone went BRIIIIIIIIIIING the way cheap landlines still do I was so startled I dropped the whole mess.
We had the conversation. She got me on Skype. She got me on Skype’s Instant Messaging, which was hiding. No, really. We had our run-through. Our idea works.
Mwa hahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, this is going to be fun.#
Stay tuned.
* * *
* This is a long story which I’m about to start torturing you with hints about. But for tonight, it’s just murky, inscrutable background.^
^ Mwa hahahahahaha
** Okay, maybe I’m starting to torture you now.
*** You may have noticed.
† She does stuff like hang out. There aren’t even any handbells involved. I really don’t understand why we’re friends. I suppose we each provide the other with variety in her social relationships.
†† I’m not sleeping through the alarm. It’s just I keep putting it back as I thrash and flounce and periodically notice that another hour has gone by and I’m still not asleep. I don’t like missing half the day this way, but I like even less not being able to use ANY of the day because I’m too tired. Conventionally the phrase ‘her blood ran like fire through her veins’ sounds exciting. She’s just caught sight of her true love—or possibly he/she has his/her tongue down our heroine’s throat and his/her hand, um, but I don’t usually write those stories—or her enemy on the battlefield. Something is going to happen. Something other than our stupid heroine being unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in her sodding unenchanted bed in her sodding unenchanted cottage in her sodding unenchanted little town. ARRRRRRGH. I will never feel the same about that phrase. Also, I need to be able to breathe.
††† She also has a lurgy. SHE’S FIVE THOUSAND MILES AWAY. I DIDN’T GIVE IT TO HER.
‡ See: Lurch. Or a really really bad recording of Paul Robeson.
‡‡ This didn’t stop me hearing my ex-bells this morning. Sigh.
‡‡‡ I shouldn’t say things like this. Next time Pooka will eat them.
§ Yes. They both had chocolate cake crumbs on their faces.
§§ Note that today’s friend is THE ONLY PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE I EVER SKYPE WITH BECAUSE SKYPE IS ONE THE MANY SO CALLED WONDERS OF MODERN SO CALLED TECHNOLOGY I DO NOT GET ALONG WITH. Hannah and I tried it once. She hated it as much as I did.^
^ Us old people have to stick together. Silver surfers, for godssake. I nearly took myself off the grid permanently when I heard that term for the first time, and went to live in a cabin in the woods with oil lamps and a fireplace.
§§§ Which I also never look at or play back because the connection is so bad I can’t hear what whoever it is is saying and I probably don’t want to anyway, who uses a landline any more?^
^ I give no one Pooka’s number. Peter has it. The archangels have it. Okay, Merrilee, Hannah, and today’s friend have it. Fiona has it. That’s about it.
I don’t like phones, okay? I’ve never liked phones.
# After all, we have Blogmom for the blog. Nobody messes with Blogmom.