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Grand Matriarch
You all think I’m just plain Robin McKinley, middle-aged, mild-mannered* blogster, hurtler of hellhounds, ringer of bells, plonker of piano and tormentor of songs**, wrestler of roses*** and slave of chocolate, black tea and champagne. Oh yes and I write stories for money.
But I’m not these mere and simple† things. I’m a Grand Matriarch of Fantasy.†† I know this because Putnams’ marketing plan says so. Snork.
I’m still being used as a football by the ME, sod its little cotton socks†††, so I don’t remember the chronology perfectly. But I think it was the end of last week when Mignon, my editor’s assistant, sent Merrilee and me jpgs of the jacket of the ARC ‡ just so we could see how nice it looked with the art all of you blog readers have already seen. And it does look very nice. Except there was a marketing plan plastered all over the back of it.
Wait, wait! Marketing plan? I thought we were still waiting to discuss the marketing plan! I don’t want to do my own skydiving, deploying winged banners at 12,000 feet! I don’t like heights! And I never promised to translate it into blank verse for the 2010 international bardic convention in Swindon!‡‡
If certain parties, like, perhaps—ahem!—the author, had got her frelling rear in gear and turned her frelling manuscript in on time, ample and relaxed discussion about a marketing plan might conceivably have occurred.‡‡‡ As it is, the marketing department is doing very well not to have said, huh?, when they were told that the ARC of PEGASUS was on its way down the conveyor belt.
But what’s on the back of the ARC is only a teaser. The real howler came later when they sent us the full shiny brushed-up marketing plan which leads off with the positioning of McKinley as Grand Matriarch of Fantasy. Hooooooo. After Grand Matriarch and Deputy Ringing Master§, what can be left in this world to attain?§§
* * *
* this translates as ‘wimp who shouts a lot’
** Including the odd^ new one, now and then. I think I’ve got the second and final part of the lullaby to take in to Oisin tomorrow.
^ Yes. Odd.
*** ow
† There is nothing mere and simple about ringing Cambridge
†† The queue for hem-of-garment kissing forms to the left.
††† Out staggering around after hellhounds today, I met Jenny on Connie. I didn’t quite burst into tears but it was a near thing. I asked after everyone—Roland’s been sold on and replaced by two young Irish mares—and inquired, pathetically, if I might drop round just for a cup of tea and some gossip some day and Jenny said absolutely that I must. I keep saying two things about horses: first, that of all the kicks to the head the ME has delivered, the one that apparently means giving up riding is the one that hurts the worst; and, second, that it’s not riding I miss so much as horses. Well, it’s not Jenny that’s keeping me away from her yard, it’s me. So maybe there is a semi-answer to this conundrum if I can develop a bit more flexibility of outlook.
‡ These are still bound galleys for all of me, but somewhere along the line when I wasn’t paying attention they started being called Advance Review Copies. They’re still bound galleys. When your manuscript is first typeset by a proper printer, the resulting pages are the page proofs or galleys. They look—or anyway they should look—like the pages of the finished book will look, but they’ll get proofed several times before the final pages start rolling off the press. Bound galleys or ARCs are when those early pages are bound and sent out to various people in the trade in the hopes of getting a buzz going before pub date. It’s nice when the bound galley pages have had at least one cursory proofing, but we’re running so late on PEGASUS thanks to the fecklessness of the author that these pages are going to be the rawest of the raw, so I hope there’s nothing too drastic wrong with them. I could tell you stories. . . .
‡‡ It may be Peoria this year. They’re a tough audience, those Illinoians, and they’ll heckle the iambs right out of you if your lines don’t scan.
‡‡‡ Of course it might not have too. People in publishing have no more available time than the international average, which is to say thirty-six hours are to be squeezed out of twenty four, and downtime^ is a philosophical construct, like quarks were originally invented to plug a hole in the visionary physics of itty bitty particles.
^ I found this article more interesting than I thought I was going to http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/03/a-week-without-books?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
although I found her easy equivalence of ‘genre’ with ‘junk’ just a trifle frelling irritating: ‘ . . . if what you’re reading is mostly . . . well . . . pulp, then sometimes you end up feeling as if books are eating you up instead of the other way round. Sure, there’s a smattering of literature and high art-type stuff in there, but mostly it is whatever I have fished off the shelf at my nearest Oxfam that morning – detective stories, romances, horror, sci fi . . . any kind of fiction that I can gulp down in large enough, quick enough bites. . . .’
Excuse me? THE MOONSTONE? THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS? PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? JANE EYRE? CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER? FRANKENSTEIN? DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE? RAPPACCINI’S DAUGHTER? GULLIVER’S TRAVELS? FAUST? THE TEMPEST? BRAVE NEW WORLD? 1984? . . . Almost anything by Dickens—many of whose are detective stories as well—and I think MOBY DICK is sf/f, but my prejudices may be showing.
Grrrrrrr.
But the question of when necessary downtime starts taking over what ought to be up time is interesting, and I think any compulsive reader will acknowledge that there’s a . . . well, a compulsive aspect. On the other hand I found this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/04/evolutionary-psychologists-romantic-fiction?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter totally irritating. Romance isn’t my chosen form of bathtub reading but everybody needs downtime. This scans to me like a thinly veiled attempt to equate women with their hormones again. This is the 21st century, isn’t it? We didn’t go backwards through the 20th and pop out in the 19th?
§ Handbells tonight. I am seriously brain challenged at the moment so we stuck to bob minor, but it could have been a lot worse. At the end as we were synchronising our diaries, which requires a lot of, no, I mean the 18th, no, that’s the 25th, what do you mean you’re gone on the 8th? Colin said, are either of you coming on Mandy’s outing for the May Bank Holiday? We both allowed that we had not heard of Mandy’s outing. Well, said Colin, we’re going to Herefordshire and Wales, and it was going to be Saturday-Sunday-Monday, but everybody is having outings and it’s too hard to get towers, so she’s moved it back to Thursday-Friday-Saturday. Oh, said Niall thoughtfully, that sounds interesting. I think I’d like to come. Not me, I said resignedly. I don’t go overnight anywhere.^ . . . And then what Colin had said finished sinking in. THURSDAY, FRIDAY, AND SATURDAY? I squeaked. Niall, you’re not allowed to be gone on a Friday evening between 7:30 and 9 o’clock!
Yes I am, replied Niall. I have a Deputy Ringing Master.
^ Yes. We’re having a little trouble with the ‘national author tour’ part of the marketing plan.
§§ Fabulous global best seller in eighty-seven languages including several unknown till they emerged from the shadows and negotiated for translation rights?
Unnnnh
Yesterday was a totally lost day. Uggh. From a sane, rational, grown up, mature standpoint that Cambridge at Friday tower practise which fried my eyeballs was a mistake. You push something like ME, it pushes back. Harder. But I’m not sane, rational or mature (just old), and I refuse to see it as a mistake. As I crawled around the house(s) yesterday in a grey fog of bleh I kept whispering to myself: I ring Cambridge.* The woman who didn’t go back to ringing a decade ago, after she got up off the sofa again after eighteen months horizontal with acute ME, because she was too stupid to learn to ring inside, is ringing Cambridge.** Life is funny. Leaving the old house nearly killed me, but the reason I started ringing again is because the cottage is two garden walls over from the church and its bell tower and I couldn’t frelling stand it. I swear they were ringing about three quarter peals a week that summer, and you can’t escape the sound of the bells at the cottage.*** I know I’ve told this story. Maybe someone else remembers how long I held out. Six weeks, maybe. And then I was on the phone to Vicky, asking if they would take on a recidivist beginner. A stupid recidivist beginner.
Well.
The other thing about choosing to be unwise on Friday is that we don’t get a Cambridge band around here that often; there are crack bands at some little distance but I scare easily and I haven’t got the nerve or the time.† And Anthea was going to be my minder. Anthea is armour. The Light Brigade would have come right out of that valley again if they’d had Anthea with them. What noise is this? Give me my longsword, ho! †† We ring Cambridge!††† But I’ve been whingeing in these virtual pages, I believe, not long ago, that one of the inevitable dilemmas about gaining competence in something obscure like bell ringing is that it becomes harder and harder to find the necessary band of adepts more competent than you to haul you on that next step, that next method, that next incomprehensible dimension.‡
So I’m not sorry.‡‡ But that didn’t make yesterday any more fun. And I clung, blearily, to the treble this morning for service ring: No! Mine! That didn’t stop Niall‡‡‡ from fishing a small bit of paper out of his pocket and handing it to me however (as I held onto the treble rope with the other hand). Did you see this in Ringing World? he said. I didn’t want you to miss it.
Handbells for sale, said the little piece of paper, and a phone number.
HANDBELLS FOR SALE? I DON’T NEED A SET OF HANDBELLS. I ONLY RING HANDBELLS AT ALL BECAUSE NIALL IS THE IRRESISTABLE FORCE, AND HE HAS HANDBELLS. HE HAS LOTS OF HANDBELLS.§
I took the little piece of paper home§§ and stared at it for a while, thinking, if I wait long enough, and this week’s issue arrived a couple of days ago, the bells’ll be already gone by the time I ring up about them. Yes.
Late this afternoon I rang up. I’m third on the list.
Pray for me. I don’t need a set of handbells.
* * *
* Almost.
** Almost.
*** This is why I’m such a fabulously reliable Sunday service ringer. Well, I’m fabulously reliable about being there.
† This is not entirely my fecklessness. Of the three local crack bands that I know exist, I have had direct experience of two of them, and you could cut their total indifference to anyone who isn’t as good as they are into large bricks and build an impregnable fortress with it. I believe one of them is nice to its own beginners if they’re clever enough—so I would have failed there too—the other one isn’t even nice to its own beginners, how the hell do they think they’re going to keep their bells ringing? Immortality? A really good zombie spell? The third one is supposed to be the friendliest, but they’re also the farthest away.
†† Give me my bell of burning gold and something something something something, till we have rung out over England’s green and pleasant land. With apologies to Mr Blake. And Mr Shakespeare. And Mr Lord Tennyson.
††† Almost.
‡ Speaking of incomprehensible. 
This is the line for Cambridge—which you saw louring from under YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE the other day. I’ve had it out because I’m supposed to be learning the frelling trebles—the one and the two—for handbells. Handbells you ring by counting frantically and watching the treble like it’s your last hope, which it is; there’s not a lot of physical skill in ringing handbells, although there is a right way to do it, and quite a few wrong ways. Tower ringing is far more physical because of the size of the bells, and while again you ring by counting you also engage individually with the other bells: you’re feverishly looking around for the bell you’re passing in seconds place, then the new bell you’re passing in thirds place, then the bell or bells you dodge with, which is where the line goes jagged. Tower ringing is inevitably slower although it doesn’t feel like it—I’ve told you before you have about a third of a second to ring in the right place: or of course the wrong one, always a too-attractive option—but you haven’t got time to look around when you’re ringing handbells.
On the extremely unlikely chance you’re interested, what the one (the real treble) is doing is treble-bobbing: treble bobbing is always that pattern; in a treble-bobbing method, that’s what the treble is doing, whatever kind of mayhem the other bells are getting up to. The red line is the mayhem that is particularly Cambridge. I was ringing the two on Friday and the four last Wednesday: all the bells (except the treble) ring the same pattern, they just start at different places. So I was starting at the beginning on the two, but I started at the top of the fourth column when I was ringing the four . . . and then I rang the fifth column to the end (ignore the knitting to the right of the fifth column: that’s one of the many superfluous forms of method notation I don’t begin to understand), then dropped off the edge of the universe and climbed back on again at the beginning. And no, the bells don’t necessarily arrange themselves in order: that would be way too easy. The six starts at the top of column two. Go figure.
But. Yeah. You have to have the entire line memorised to ring the freller. You learn it in bits, of course, and some of the bits, by the time you get this far in your method book, look familiar.
Even so.
‡‡ Although I’m going to be in a seriously bad mood tomorrow evening if I haven’t improved enough to go ring at Colin and Anthea’s home tower. Did I tell you that Ditherington on Wednesday is about to go onto a fortnightly schedule? So I have an excuse to go out an occasional extra evening a week. Peter just needs to find a Monday bridge club.
‡‡‡ I’ve finally figured it out. Nothing stops Niall.
§ He has about twenty. Most people who change ring (as opposed to ring tunes) on handbells have six or eight or maybe ten. Even twelve. Not twenty. Niall has twenty.
§§ Peter has been laughing like a drain. Even my own husband doesn’t take my agonies seriously.
Redux, various
I WANT MY WOLFGANG. WAAAAAAH.
The good news is that Peter got out of Scotland about thirty seconds before they closed the border.* He came home this afternoon and instantly began reorganising my life.** This included ringing up the garage which, to my amazement, seems to think we can have Wolfgang back tomorrow morning. Fourteen year old cars and MOT tests are not usually a happy merger and I’ve been bracing myself for the conversation about the new car again.*** Even if we manage to limbo under the government bar however and get our sticker I imagine there will be a little list.†
Meanwhile today would be the day that I started to get out of bed and the ME sighed and stretched luxuriously and said, are you sure that’s what you want to do? Oh. Frell. You again. Well, yes, I do want to get up. I have hellhounds to hurtle and a piano lesson this afternoon and bell tower practise this evening.†† And no car.
I know we did this trooping up and down main street thing during the snow, but I’m not in the mood when I’m trying to hold it together with the ME riding me like a bulldogger with spurs. I am also reminded of how forcefully I object to walking anywhere without the hellhounds in attendance—two hours a day of hurtling is enough of the shanks’ mare option. Hey! It’s ten minutes to walk to Oisin’s from the cottage and back . . . having been back and forth to the mews to pick up my music and have a bit of a go at the piano.
Anyone who is paying the wrong kind of attention will have ascertained by now that I’m not posting the lullaby to PEGASUS this Friday either. I finally managed to get the freller printed off so that Oisin could actually see what he was playing . . . and he made several Small But Excellent suggestions††† that I now want to incorporate and I still have to relearn how to make dynamic markings on dranglefabbing Finale and then I will finally post it here. No, really. It exists.‡ It even sounds reasonably lullaby-ish. In fact I like it well enough that I’m going to ask Peter if he wants to write another verse so I can compose some variations.
I felt fairly dire while I was with Oisin although as I said to him I was expecting to feel suddenly a great deal better as soon as I left and any danger of my having to sing was past till next week. Sigh. I sometimes think I got into composing as a way not to have to perform.‡‡
I had already had an email exchange with Niall about tomorrow‡‡‡ and had warned him that I was feeling like something that ought to be pickled in formaldehyde in a jar on a mad scientist’s shelf but that I’d probably just about make it to tower practise, since we’re usually short handed these days and I ought to be able to manage rounds and call changes for our beginners. And then we had a funny band—three beginners and six hot bananas.§ And me. I was helping hold up one of the walls in a semi-comatose state while one of the beginners wrestled with ringing rounds on four, five and six §§ bells and then Niall made one of his passes round the room as a good ringing master will do and when he got to me he said, Are you ready to ring Cambridge?
Am I frelling what? No I am frelling not frelling ready to frelling ring frelling Cambridge. Am I clear?
Okay, said Niall. You can have a few minutes to look at the line.
Ah, adrenaline. What would I do without it. You know that’s one of the working definitions of ME? Exhausted adrenals? Yes. Well. At this point—Niall having passed on to fresh victims—I could feel my eyeballs throbbing to my suddenly heightened blood pressure. So I got out my diagram book and began staring at Cambridge while it went all glmxxxxxx on the page. Anthea came over to be supportive—two of our hot bananas tonight were Colin and his wife Anthea, who is one of my favourite people. You look at her face and you know It’s Going to Be All Right. Possibly Even When It Includes Ringing Cambridge. She is also a completely brilliant minder, which is a significant gift. Just because you can ring something doesn’t mean you can boost somebody else through it—especially boost them in a way that they learn something rather than merely collapsing into blindly doing what they’re told, which is probably more demoralising than breaking down. Anthea got me through my first couple of goes at Kent and it’s a lot of thanks to her that it began making sense to me as soon as it did.
I really did think that Cambridge was a bridge too far however. You don’t ring your first surprise method after a couple of sudden unexpected ten-minute cramming sessions because your ringing master(s) is/are wholly effing mad and your adrenals aren’t quite exhausted. Roger on the five was complaining that he didn’t feel like ringing Cambridge tonight and I said, don’t worry, this won’t last long, and Colin on the three, next to me on the two said, oh, yes it will.
And it did. We got through an entire plain course of Cambridge. I do wish to emphasize that this is absolutely due to Anthea’s crack minding . . . but I’ve been here before, learning something with Anthea at my elbow. We got through it. And I knew what I was trying to do even when I wasn’t seeing the bells to do it with.
I can do this. I am going to learn Cambridge.
Maybe I’ll even sing for Oisin next Friday.§§
* * *
*Joke. But apparently it’s pretty vicious up there. Our lot still have electricity and can feel their way through the snowdrifts, but a lot of people don’t and can’t. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/7325843/Wintry-weather-sweeps-Scotland.html
And then of course there’s New York. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=119564§ionid=3510203
And I was complaining earlier about being pummelled by a little hail. I’m such a wuss. But look what came in the post for me today from Hannah (in NYC):
I’m trying. Clearly my solar capacity isn’t quite up to 3500 miles.
(Yes. That’s what you think it is, underneath, on the table. I’ll give you a better view one of these days. I know, you can hardly wait.)
The thing that amuses me even more about this item however is the tag: 
Post consumer material???
** It’s shocking how much disorganization can creep up on you in a mere day and a half.
*** No. But I admit if we have two winters in a row like this one, this time next year I will be thinking hard about a new four-wheel drive car. With waterproof locks.
† Frushipergug rods and bistamudze belt need replacing. Gradundabble connections should be tightened. The whimmerwhammer needs realigning. And while you’re at it you need a new engine, four new tyres, and a CD player.
†† And a novel to write.
††† I asked him if he wanted credit and he said no, no, no, just keep writing the stuff.
‡ So do the little flute piece I promised Jodi and the truly tiny violin piece I promised violinknitter. I’m just . . . a horrible coward. And I keep thinking I want to twiddle them a little more. . . .
‡‡ I wonder if it would work with Blondel. . . . I am such a hopeless case. I’m afraid to sing for Oisin, and I’m afraid to take one of my songs to Blondel. What do I think is going to happen? The end of the world?
‡‡‡ The other reason the ME was kind enough to come back today, aside from not singing for Oisin, is being able to say no I am not going handbell ringing Saturday morning. Although . . . sigh. I would like to ring with Titus and Rupert.
§ So to speak.
§§ One of the reasons ringing seems, when you’re first learning, to be coming at you from all directions is that the eenie weenie difference in timing and rhythm between, say, four and six bells, which when you’re learning to handle you have no sense of, makes a drastic practical difference in keeping your place.
§§§ Or take one of my songs in to Blondel. Maybe I could get him to sing the lullaby.
Not One of My Better Sundays
In the first place, despite the parlous state of my internal economy* the world is (surprisingly) not utterly cold, barren and friendless.** While I was clearing off the kitchen table *** I re-unearthed the latest catalogue from the company that had sold me the infamous Melting Vacuum Cleaner. In large brazen print the catalogue declares, Our phone lines are open 24 hours every day! So I rang them up at 3 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and said, I bought a vacuum cleaner from you several months ago, and it melted.
Why that’s terrible, she said. We’ll send you a new one.
Blah. You what?
And you can use the new box to send us the old one back, she continued, so we can pass it along to the factory. That’s a very good vacuum cleaner, we sell a lot of them, and the factory should know about a defective one. Er, she added (I could hear her typing busily), would you mind describing what you mean by melted?
Maybe the Easter Bunny is real too.†
Although speaking of friendless, Niall hung around after service ring this morning to snigger. My unwholesome new position is all your fault, I said, looking at him without favour.
It’s not! he said, aggrieved. Vicky said your name first!
And I suppose you’re going to expect me to learn to conduct, I said, unmollified.†† I do not want to learn to conduct, I said. I have never wanted to learn to conduct. Conducting as an aspiration passed me by, slick as an unyaktraxed person on ice. I would like to sing like Marilyn Horne†††. I would like to compose like Benjamin Britten.‡ I would like to write novels like me which outsell Edward Sparklyface and Harry Potter together. But I have no desire to learn to conduct touches of method ringing. I said.
Steve Coleman is really good on learning to conduct, said Niall.
Steve Coleman. Yes. Steve ratbagging Coleman would be good on frelling learning to frelling conduct. Steve Coleman is a Ringing God. To those of us over-identified and over-involved with words on a page he’s probably the ringing god. http://www.ringingbooks.co.uk/ I have had his other three books almost from my first lesson in rope-handling because of course I was going to need them all eventually.‡‡ I did not order the fourth. The one which is about conducting. I did not order it because I did not want to learn to conduct.
I ordered it this afternoon. This may explain why I then had to spend several hours lying down.
* * *
* This Living (some of) Your Life on the Internet is a complex business. Okay, for you guys who don’t follow me on Twitter, I’ve spent a lot of today horizontal on the sofa under a thick blanket of delighted hellhounds, I feeling somewhat urpish. Hellhounds, meanwhile, are improving, but they have taken the long route to this destination. Friday night after I signed off the blog, Darkness followed Chaos into . . . well, into darkness and chaos. They will cry to go out if their bowels are troubling them, but they throw up in silence. This is perhaps partly because vomiting is not covered adequately in the standard housetraining module, but also, I assume, because it happens too fast. Granted it’s also nowhere near as nasty as the more comprehensively processed effluvia . . . but it’s still not a joyous way to start your morning. They did not in fact howl in the night—although they went out smartish when I stumbled downstairs very late in the morning at last—but that didn’t stop me waking up every quarter hour thinking they had. Sigh. That made three nights in a row I hadn’t had enough sleep—and I never get enough sleep Saturday night because of frelling^ service ring.^^
Peter is in Elsewhereshire visiting throngs and clusters of family^^^ this weekend.~ I had had this notion, before events caught up with me, that I was going to burn through the hip-high pile(s) of Ancient Magazines~~ at the mews while he was gone and thereby delight his eyes upon his return.~~~ I didn’t get too far, but I did quest down through a few geologic strata and took an armful of the result to the sofa with me. There were a couple from 2005. There was one from 2003. That magazine has been through two house moves. I’d better frame it.
^ As Deputy Ringing Master calling it ‘frelling’ is probably illegal.
^^ Possibly today’s stomach-ache therefore has nothing to do with cross-contamination+ but is my body saying lie down or we’ll make you. So what was that unscheduled two-hour nap yesterday then? Oh, don’t talk to me about sleep debt.
+ And I’ve been so CAREFUL. I’m always washing my hands. Because I’m always absent-mindedly petting hellhounds.
^^^I’ve told you about the Dickinson clan. As the grains of sand upon the shore.
~ Not a one of whom has thrown up on the carpet. Fancy.
~~ My ancient magazines. Peter has his own (smaller) piles of ancient magazines.
~~~ Feh. He won’t notice. At least not until he’s caught up on the blog.
** I told you that Peter has deserted me.
*** Ahem
† I’ll take the Easter Bunny over Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny is categorically welded to manifestation of chocolate. Santa Claus might get it wrong and give you Lego or something.
†† He agreed, didn’t he?
††† Or Maddy Prior
‡ . . . Or Maddy Prior.
‡‡ And when the ME closed me down and I stopped ringing, and when, a few years after that, I was doing major weeding and culling and clearing out for the move into town, I did not get rid of them, even though it had been five years since I’d touched a bell rope.
A Shameless Attempt at a Free Book
http://wondermark.com/thanksgiving-project/
Life has been a little complex lately* or I’d have had a hack at it sooner. Do we all know and revere David Malki? We do? Then please note, all you bloggers and librarians, that you still have one more day to get your entries in.**
I think this is the strip that 4,236,002 people sent me the link to to get me started, I having confessed I did not know David Malki and the wonder that is wondermark:
http://wondermark.com/442/ ***
And this one is a great comfort when I have been receiving more than the usual number of emails telling me that I write wickedness and lies/puerile bilge and piffle/that SUNSHINE has to have a sequel because that is clearly not an ending when the pages run out of the first one: †
And last but not least, on the dangers of treating books carelessly which, of course, no one here would do:
http://wondermark.com/056/ †††
* * *
* Peter is brilliant^ . . . except that I’ve got stomach flu^^ and Peter has instantly gone into Caretaker Mode. I’m fine! I mean, I’m not fine, but I’m fine! I can make my own cups of tea!^^^ I can complain! I can also lie on the sofa with hellhounds without prompting! Watch me! No, don’t watch me, go have a nice lie down yourself, like you’re supposed to!!
^ Actually he’s not brilliant. He and his face have utterly failed in the task of turning refulgent blue and scintillating purple and coruscating yellow in response to nasal surgery. I mean, come on, what’s the point+ of having your sinuses reconfigured if you can’t even scare small children for a week or so afterward? Not to mention appear to give your wife some excuse for having a complete nervous breakdown as a result of supporting you through your terrifying ordeal.++
+ Or, if you prefer, the edge
++ Trying to remember Reese Witherspoon’s name for the Guardian crossword Wednesday night at the hospital nearly killed me. Reese Witherspoon. Give me a break. I could do June Carter Cash.
^^ Or something with symptoms congruent with a case of stomach flu. There is more reason just now than the sheer incredible beastliness of the weather+ for going on brief sprints with hellhounds. Gah. Weariness of body, mind and spirit. I didn’t make it to service ring this morning. So it’s serious.++
+ The Aral Sea has dried up? All the water has fallen on Hampshire. If we made a very long bucket brigade we could return it.
++ The only bright spot is that approximately the only things that don’t upset my stomach at the moment are strong black tea~, champagne and chocolate.~~
~ http://wondermark.com/557/ This is nearly as big a favourite as the bibliophibian. I visit it regularly. I drink a lot of tea. Do not drink your tea as you hit that link. I’m warning you.
^^^ http://wondermark.com/389/
** No, wait. Rats. More entries. Less chance of my winning. Never mind, guys. Forget I said anything. Go study quantum physics or something. You don’t really want to enter the drawing.
*** Yes. I have the t shirt. If I’d been thinking ahead I’d be wearing it so I could make my annoyingly alert and healthy husband take a photo. If it weren’t for the sleet and the howling gale and so on and the fact that even crouched over the electric fire chafing hellhounds all over my body I’m still cold. Maybe next year Malki can come out with wondermark Shetland pullovers.
† It’s going to be in neon letters of fire or letters of neon fire or something big and flashy at the end of PEGASUS that no! Yes! This one really ISN’T finished! I know! I’m working on it! It’s not a sequel, it’s just the rest of the story! Give me a minute/month/year! And I’ll bet you Taittingers to cold, stewed Lipton’s that I still get accusatory mail about it.
†† Although I don’t have a cool chair that goes up and down. Mine only goes sideways when I kick it in a rage of creative insurrection.
††† Okay, just one more: http://wondermark.com/510/
Hey, I totally understand.
