Unnnngh, continued indefinitely
Diane in MN
Your condition reminds me of the last time I had real, honest-to-goodness influenza, a couple of decades ago. I made it worse by attempting to go to work on the days I felt marginally better–that was the first week; the second week I just stayed home. My husband had been out of town the first week, but since he caught it as soon as he got home, we were both knocked out the second week, barely able to stagger downstairs to heat up soup. I hope you do NOT have honest-to-goodness flu and see the end of your current affliction very soon.
Yes, along about the third day you have trouble getting out of bed you start thinking about the Spanish flu that killed 50 million (or so) people in 1918, right? A little learning is a dangerous thing, especially when you’re ill and less emotionally stable than your usual calm, sane self.*
I finally heard from Hannah today (we having missed connections mainly due to germ ramifications this last week) that she got home and went down with bronchitis. Joy. I can’t wait to find out that’s next on my agenda. At the moment it’s mostly a really alarming head cold with this bloody cough, and some fantastically exciting gastric complications. And I didn’t fever-spike last night which I want to believe is a good sign. I’m getting the hellhounds hurtled. Where is my medal. But I do miss breathing. And tasting my food. And my eyes not starting to go fuzzy after about two hours of reading or staring at a computer screen. Yet another mark for the excellence of knitting: you can knit when your eyes are too fluy to focus on print.
EMoon
I agree–don’t know how I survived waiting and boring events before knitting.
Boring events including having flu. Here I thought it was just about badly organised handbell evenings and very long stoplights on your way to your voice lesson.
jmeadows
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I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I am not merely working on the second leg warmer, but that I cast on and immediately started ribbing—not only without having to redo the first few rows about forty-seven times, but without even thinking about it. I cast on and started knitting. Yaaay. Progress. |
YAY!!! *so proud*
Well at least you’re continuing to accept responsibility for your part in my yarny downfall.
Isn’t that an awesome feeling? Just . . . casting on and knitting?
Um. . . . Okay. Yes.
I won’t lie and say you’ll never have to fiddle and retry ever again
If at the point where I can do the exact same ribbing I just did for 1,000,000,000 rows for the first world’s longest leg warmer without thinking about it for the second, there were no challenges left ahead of me . . . knitting would clearly be unworthy of us. So what a good thing I HAVE MANY HOURS OF BEING DRIVEN OUT OF MY TINY FREAKED-OUT MIND to look forward to.
– because it happens to EVERY knitter no matter how long she’s been knitting –
Especially if she keeps being drawn farther and farther into the dark side. A friend is sending me the pattern for a rose intarsia pullover—or I think it’s intarsia; I don’t actually need to know at this stage—that I have about as much chance of making successfully as I do making the world safe, happy, peaceful and environmentally sound by pointing out that the majority of our heads of state are morons. And blondviolinist tweeted me this today: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0307586715/ref=sib_dp_pt/181-5660244-9068349#reader-link which I instantly found over here and ordered, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure even the flowers the author has labelled ‘starting out’ will be beyond me—and besides, I want to knit the rose, which is probably in the ‘resolute’ category.
but that’s a great step.
Yes, actually, it is, isn’t it? Hee. Also, I really need to FINISH something.
Mockorange
But may I just say that it amuses me that yesterday’s blog, preoccupied as it was with not only handbells but the miseries of illness, roused comments about what on the forum? Knitting
Well, naturally. Some of us are knitting again for the first time in years entirely due to your proselytising on this blog. Let’s see if we can derail to knitting again. KNITTING! KNITTING! KNITTING! KNITTING!
All right, you woodwork-lurking knitters: go for it. And I’m delighted to be able to provide the evil role model of degradation and despair for a few of you that jmeadows and blondviolinist so generously offered to me.
Birdreader
I hope you feel better soon. Of course you had your knitting. It can be an ice breaker, with some curious person coming over to be interested in what you are making. (We shy people are absolutely not hiding behind handiwork – of course not!)
Well—are you certain it is shyness? Shyness has the implication that you can’t talk, that your mind goes blank or you’re overwhelmed or something. Maybe you just don’t want to talk, maybe you don’t want to be in this situation, whatever it is, and knitting is a way of preventing you from doing something you might regret later, like throwing a chair through the window and running away.** Most social occasions make me uncomfortable and I’m mostly bad at them, but it’s more about being introverted and cranky with it.
Diane in MN
You were absolutely primed to be a knitter by ringing handbells. You HAVE TO COUNT if you’re a knitter, too. (You also have to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Knitters get plenty of arithmetical practice.)
I am not hyperventilating. I am not hyperventilating. I no longer fear and dread maths. I don’t. No.
. . . But I’ve told you, haven’t I, that the tower captain at my old tower—East Persnickety, a million years and a century ago—used to say that his wife picked up change ringing instantly because she was a lifelong committed*** knitter?
PamAdams
Then I went back to bed (which was popular with hellhounds†)
I find that cats are equally helpful in an emergency such as this. During my own bout with the Martian Death Bug earlier this year, I was constantly surrounded by and/or covered in cats.
Oh, the Martian Death Bug? Maybe that’s what I have? NOBODY SHOULD FEEL THIS CRUMMY. ESPECIALLY NOT DAY AFTER DAY. Oh, and let’s have a little sideswipe at ‘the wisdom of the body’, okay? I love homeopathy, and I do think it keeps me on the road—and, for example, is the reason why hellhounds are still being hurtled right now and I’m not in an oxygen tent at the local hospital—but there are times when the la-la-la aspects do get to me a little, and now is one of them. So, in the depths of my illness, what does the wisdom of my particular body declare? Chiefly that it craves strong black tea and champagne†, and it doesn’t want ANY FOOD AT ALL.†† And if I attempt to remonstrate with it, it turns nasty. Oh, and ‘if you feed a cold you will have to starve a fever’? Bulltiddly. Or maybe this depends on what stage of life and/or immune system you are. But I have to eat. Aside from being dragged out behind a brace of hellhounds twice a day.
† Oh reckless dog owner beware of precedent.
On the other hand, they do make adequate substitutes for the electric blanket……
It’s the self-motivating factor I find problematic. This includes the bizarre hierarchical struggles to do with Contact with the Hellgoddess. The last generation got this sorted pretty well immediately. These guys are still at it after (almost) six years.
. . . . Is it late enough? Can I go back to bed yet?
Ajlr
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I am an obsessive listener to Radio 3 |
I’m more of a Radio 4 addict – sleep comes peacefully after listening to the Shipping Forecast.
That’s it! I need an endless loop of the Shipping Forecast!
* * *
* Who? What?
** Not an option the other night. In the first place we were in the undercroft, and in the second place, Niall was my ride home. I wasn’t going to make seven leagues on foot, thank you very much, especially not this week.
*** No remarks please
† Cider, prosecco, whatever. Alcohol with bubbles. But it needs to be alcohol. Fizzy water is inadequate. And my wise body wants more than its two units.
†† Not even chocolate. I am truly not myself.
Placeholder
Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah SICK. Blah. SICK.
I’m actually better—sort of—but not all that much, and after hurtling hellhounds twice and doing some work, now by evening blog time I’m pretty much cole slaw again.* Not being able to breathe really takes it out of you. And I have a cough to frighten small children. Hell, it frightens me. I have to stop and lean against a wall, or a hellhound, if that’s what’s available. I’m also at the my-nose-has-been-running-for-so-long stage that smiling makes the entire centre of my face crack painfully. My ears and forehead throb. My stomach doesn’t want to know about food. Since I realised last night was going to be grim I left the radio on—Peter sleeps with the radio on pretty much every night which I am sure has a detrimental effect on the quality of his sleep but we won’t get into that here but I close the book and turn the light and the radio off in the same habitual gesture. Last night I left the radio on and it was comforting in the dark unpleasant hours.** And then—I can’t remember if it was at 6 or 7 o’clock—it suddenly got all chatty. I am an obsessive listener to Radio 3, which is classical, with a few unappreciated-by-me forays into jazz, and they don’t do the in your face DJ thing on classical stations. But they can get fatuous*** and they can certainly get garrulous. And apparently the given wisdom is that people staggering around getting ready for their office jobs want chat. Uggh. People late (even for them) in bed with demonic head/upper respiratory colds do not want chat. Blah. Sick.
It took me three tries to get out of bed at all and then I only remained upright long enough to shiver downstairs and let poor patient hellhounds out of their crate. Then I went back to bed (which was popular with hellhounds†). It was after noon by the time I managed to make and drink my first cup of perilously strong tea . . . gods. It’s PERFECT gardening weather†† and I’m too wasted to take advantage. My fritillaries are blooming away like anything, my robin is still sitting on her nest and my new roses came three days ago and I haven’t been up to anything but ripping the packages open and making sure the roots are damp. Today I at least got them heeled in and roses will last a surprisingly long while merely heeled in . . . ahem . . . although planting them would be preferable.
Blah. Sick. Blah.
I’m also reading another perfect book for low lurgified distraction—Patricia C Wrede’s A MATTER OF MAGIC, which many if not most of you know since many (if not most) of you have recommended it.††† And now, if you’ll forgive me, I think I’ll go lie down again and read some more of it.‡ Well, no, first I’m going to go back to the cottage and bring the frelling sweet peas indoors again.
Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah blah STILL FRELLING THRICE BLASTED SICK BLAH.
* * *
* And I’m sure my mayonnaise has gone off.
** I can’t believe the timing of my electric blanket going phut. I’d managed to buy a new one before the lurgy prostrated me . . . but I presently haven’t got the energy to spare to rip the bed apart^ and put the freller on.
^ It’s an under-your-bottom-sheet one, which seems to be standard over here, and what I’ve got used to.
*** As during the week of non-stop, all Schubert all the time, which is finally over. I love a lot of Schubert, and Schubert lieder make me want to get to German sooner with Nadia^, but not continuously, relentlessly, day after day after day after frelling day.
^ Although this is a classic case of, we have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, so why? Stick to Jingle Bells, honey.
† Oh reckless dog owner beware of precedent.
†† Except for the fact that we’re having ANOTHER FROST TONIGHT and since I didn’t know that earlier everything at the cottage is still outdoors . . . but in fact I probably will get home earlier than usual tonight. Like . . . maybe now.
††† For any of you who read the originals, it’s a one-volume of Mairelon the Magician and The Magician’s Ward.
‡ But may I just say that it amuses me that yesterday’s blog, preoccupied as it was with not only handbells but the miseries of illness, roused comments about what on the forum? Knitting. Most of you remembered to say off handedly ‘oh, hope you feel better soon!’ but clearly your focus was on the knitting.
Death on Toast
. . . and hold the toast. I can’t immediately remember when I’ve been quite this ill* . . . and as I was whinging last night, I don’t actually get these aggravated head cold/flu/upper respiratory evil things very often, and I just had one recently. And I think I’d had one fairly recently before that. One of the curious, ahem, benefits of ME is that it tends to be a jealous god and doesn’t want you consorting with other, vulgar ailments. I wish I thought this meant I was going to be shut of the ME at last, but a case of Taittinger’s against a case of plastic dog crap bags says it doesn’t work like that.
There was minimal hellhound hurtling today. On some earlier occasion of haplessly abbreviated hurtling Diane in MN remarked that it was very nice when puppies grew up and became dogs. Yes. If I’d had to try to hurtle two hours today . . . I wouldn’t have come back.**
Unfortunately there was also abbreviated sofa lying. I didn’t get down to the mews till very late*** and then I tried to . . . ahem . . . do some work. Silly me. But I’ve said here before that it’s disconcerting† how little effect my physical and mental state have on my writing: if I’m in a bad way all that happens is that I become very slow. The story is the story. It’s like you have x miles to cover: you can choose to walk or to run††, but the journey from y to z doesn’t change.
But the handbell seminar was tonight and I was going to go if I had to borrow a sack trolley so Niall could wheel me from the car park.††† When has there ever been a proper, organised education-day-by-the-local-guild handbell seminar? I was even going as a helper. I’m generally in the peon category at ringing events.
So I was all excited. Or as excited as I could presently manage.
Um.
Fortunately I had brought my knitting with me.‡
The seminar was perhaps not as beautifully and thoughtfully organised as it might have been—?‡‡ I may have expressed myself with some force on the drive home to Niall about this. The other thing is . . . if you’re going to learn handbells, you have to ring frequently and at length. This whole show will have been for nothing if there’s no follow up for any of the beginners who’d like to give it a proper shot to find a group that will drill their tiny brains out, which is what they need.
. . . I’m sure there’s something else I could talk about. But I can’t stay in this chair any longer. You’ll excuse me if tonight’s post is a trifle compact.
* * *
* Well, in my current state of unhealth I can’t remember anything much. Give me a minute, I can probably come up with my name . . . Chaos? Darkness?
** And hellhounds could perform the Lassie ploy and guide the ambulance crew to my motionless and raspy-breathing body.
*** Last night was epic. Not in a good way.
† Not to say downright humiliating
†† Or to crawl, moaning
††† Peter says he nearly tried to me forbid to go. This would not have gone over well. Even if he was right, which he probably was. I tried not to breathe on anyone. Niall is getting over his lurgy. Whimper.
‡ I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I am not merely working on the second leg warmer, but that I cast on and immediately started ribbing—not only without having to redo the first few rows about forty-seven times, but without even thinking about it. I cast on and started knitting. Yaaay. Progress.
‡‡ Urgle yurgle gleep arrrrgh. Colin and I were in a group with four helpers and two learners—and only three sets of bells. So three of us were always sitting out. Er. Why? Niall was in a group with three learners and two helpers . . . and he said he could have used more help. Colin, who is a forceful sort of fellow, after the tea break, went off and fossicked for an extra set of bells for the leftover three of us in our group. He found three pair of buckets . . . I’m not sure they even count as handbells: I think you could hang them in a tower with a sally. But they were better than nothing. I mean, I’m happy to knit, but if I was just going to knit I could have stayed home.
Also, handbell ringers—remember I’m talking about change ringing on handbells, not tunes—are not thick on the ground. To arrange something with twenty or thirty people attending, and enough helpers to give all the learners a chance, meant that some of these people were coming from a considerable distance. But the entire evening was scheduled for only an hour and a half—and we spent a good twenty minutes milling around having vague awkward conversations with people we thought we half knew^ at the beginning and another fifteen minutes for the tea break.
At least I had brought my knitting.^^
^ Okay, I’m projecting. I’m not good at milling, even when I’m healthy. And I was happy to chat with a few of the people I did know. But we only had an hour and a half.
^^ I am already—after only slightly more than a year with needles, and still not having finished anything yet—wondering how I managed before I had knitting to take with me. I’ve always had a book with me everywhere, but reading really is anti-social. I couldn’t have pulled my book out tonight. But I could perfectly well (well, I think I could perfectly well) pull out my knitting, and prove that I’m still paying attention by making the occasional comment. (You HAVE to count! You ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY HAVE to count your places when you ring handbells!!) I have the occasional backwards advantage as a beginner teacher, in that I’m not such great shakes that I don’t remember with painful clarity what it’s like learning your first appalling method on handbells. (YOU MUST COUNT. I don’t care what any of these hot guys are telling you. YOU. MUST. COUNT. YOUR. PLACES.)
Poor overwhelmed exhausted lurgified person
My dog minder didn’t show up today.
Ordinarily I don’t absolutely need a dog walker to give hellhounds their second long sprint of the day Monday or any other day. But I found out the hard way that if you don’t get your dog minder on retainer, so to speak, she’s less likely to find time for you when you really need her for the exciting one-offs of life*. So I have her every Monday, and then I can come home and have a nice cup of tea after my voice lesson and before I have to go ringing.**
We had a traumatic morning*** when I bundled hellhounds into Wolfgang and went out to Warm Upford for fuel. It is insane that there are no petrol stations within about five miles of New Arcadia† but that’s the way it is. New Arcadia has several thousand residents and Warm Upford has several hundred, but it’s Warm Upford with the petrol station. It took sixty one quid to fill Wolfgang’s tank. I nearly had heart failure.†† Granted the tank was unusually empty, thanks to the petrol-strike panic-buying nonsense which I wanted to give a miss if at all possible (and there was no sign of it today), but for sixty-one quid in the current economic climate I could buy a perfectly serviceable, low-maintenance pony.†††
We did still have an excellent hurtle—it’s the beginning of April, the progress of the bluebells must be closely monitored from here on.‡ And this is the beginning of my favourite time of year: from the daffs and forsythia and the first little bluebell florets and the swelling lilac buds through to the great midsummer hurrah of my roses: everything is rushing out at increasing speed and your mission, Ms Briggs, should you decide to accept it, is to try and frelling keep up. I squeezed nearly an hour in the garden out of a schedule that had time for no such foolishness in it‡‡ and I did think, as I pelted off to Wolfgang‡‡‡ and Nadia, that it was odd my dog minder hadn’t come yet.
Nadia was teaching in a new place—and fortunately I met her previous student leaving or I might never have found it, hidden away as it is behind some trompe d’oeil hedges. It’s a nice if fairly ordinary looking bungalow and then you get inside and . . . golly. Serious music room. Yeep. Intimidating. But it was still Nadia. And it was Nadia who had told me during my last lurgy§ that often enough to be hopeful about it, you can sing through a lot of head, throat and upper respiratory malfeasances, and this is (so far) one of those. It’s positively bizarre, to sing as well as you ever do§§ and then as soon as you stop, to be sneezing and talking in a hoarse, scratchy voice. And I have not one but two new songs to learn over the Easter break§§§.
I then came back to the cottage, feeling a trifle worn, wanting only to pick up well-hurtled hellhounds and sweep down to the mews to have a nice cup of tea and perhaps some extravagance like an apple before ringing . . . and my dog minder hadn’t come. Weep. Weep.
I hurtled hounds—perhaps a little slower than usual, and with more pauses for nose-blowing. I rang Niall to ask if he was going ringing tonight. He answered the phone sounding like me. I will if you will, he croaked. So we went, trying to breathe shallowly, although a bunch of ringers is not so unlike a classroom of virusy children, and you all know how that works out.# It was a particular ratbag to be tottery and brainless too because my old ringing master, from the veriest deeps of time before ME and the turn of the century, was there, and he can ring anything. He does, however, need the band to ring any/everything, and . . .
I am so going to bed early.##
* * *
* Or possibly the opera-season-offs.
** I like that have to go ringing. Well, I do. Ringing is necessary to my life. Which is a good reason for living in England, which still has the highest density of change-ringing bell towers anywhere on the planet.^
^ Not to mention the beginner handbell education seminar tomorrow. Did I tell you about this? Niall got me into it. Of course.
*** Aside from the ‘getting up’ part. Lurgies share with ME the delightful business of making you need more sleep and allowing you to get less. La la la la la la la. Well, my TBR pile has lowered noticeably, although I may be throwing the rejects against the wall sooner than usual.
† I suppose one positive side effect of all the new-build we’re going to get whether we like it or not, or whether we sign petitions till we’re blue and purple in the face or not, or whether we attend town meetings twice a day for the next sixty years or not, is that we may finally get our own petrol station. I guess that’s positive. . . .
†† I nearly bit the attendant, who was way too jolly and perky. I could probably have claimed it was an uncontrollable spasm.
††† I tweeted the £61 and had a few tweets and emails in reply that I should stick to walking, biking, buses and trains. In a perfect world. Nadia is twelve or twenty-plus miles away. When she’s twelve miles away the bus service between here and there exists, but it would take me all day, and I could probably knit cardigans for all of you in the time I spent waiting around for my next connection. When she’s twenty-plus miles away . . . I don’t think you can get there from here.
I will not bike on Hampshire roads. People certainly do and they shouldn’t. They’re a danger to themselves and to fossil-fuel-powered traffic. The little country roads are mostly barely two lanes wide—at least when they’re one lane wide you jolly well ought to be driving carefully—and usually close-bordered by hedgerows, but most of those tiny roads nonetheless have a 60 mph speed limit, which most cars are eager to take advantage of. And then you hove around a blind corner and find a bicyclist pedalling slowly down the middle of the road, either because he is a careless moron, or because he’s read or been told that it’s safer to occupy your lane and make cars slow down than to hug the edge and encourage them to blast past whether they’ve got room or not. I don’t know why we don’t have gruesome bicycle fatalities a lot more often. I personally slow down on blind corners, but then I’m a wuss.
And local trains are a species of fiction out of P G Wodehouse or Dornford Yates.
The pony-trap could at least carry my music. But it would still be a long jog to Nadia on Monday afternoons.
‡ Yes, gods willin’ and the crick don’t rise, there will be the Ritual Sea of Bluebells Photos in a few weeks.
‡‡ The robin is still sitting on the nest. Yaaaay. The first time I saw her she was sitting high and proud but as the days pass she seems to be sinking lower and lower. I wonder if the fault in three-dimensional space on that shelf is likely to spread. I could use some hidden space for empty plant pots, which breed like mosquitoes in a marsh, but only if I can get them back out again at need.
‡‡‡ I half-expect his fuel tank to Glow with an Unearthly Light
§ Generally speaking I rarely get this kind of dumb short-term bug. I resent being ill AGAIN.
§§ Poised under the ceiling dormer with the glass sun roof, where the acoustics are a bit friendlier
§§§ And a third if I’m feeling silly. I do need to be kept away from Una Voce Poco Fa for another . . . decade.
# The seminar tomorrow may sound like the ear, nose, throat and pulmonary ward.
## EARLY! EARLY! EARLY!
Lurgy Reading
I am tired. I am tired. I am tired of this lurgy.* I am also garblattingly tired of schlepping plants indoors and then back outdoors. We may or may not have had a frost last night—I think we didn’t quite, but it was near enough to be putting towels on the windscreen** and I certainly brought an awful frelling lot of frelling plants indoors last night. And slapped them down on a plastic sheet on the sitting room carpet. My dahlia cuttings haven’t even arrived yet and I can already pretty much fill up the sitting room carpet. This may say more about the size of my sitting room*** than the number of my tender young plantlings . . . but it’s still way too much haulage of leaking pots ARRRRGH.† And then you get to do it all over again in reverse the next morning. BORING. BORING BORING BORING. Especially the part about tripping over hellhounds, who want to go out themselves. I haven’t yet dropped a pot and sprayed the kitchen with wet compost and terra cotta shards . . . but it could happen. Especially when I’m already kind of seeing double from the lurgy. And I had to bring the little green frellers all in again tonight. . . . with Chaos standing in the middle of the floor looking outraged because we wasted good hurtling time last night doing the same stupid thing. I couldn’t agree more.††
Meanwhile I’ve spent a lot of time on the sofa, reading. I’ve thrown several books at the wall in the patented hellgoddessy way, and there are at least a couple that I will probably tell you about later, but the one I finished today which is perfect for someone with a lurgy, is TO BE A CAT by Matt Haig. It’s a kids’ book, the hero is having his twelfth birthday on this the worst day of his life, and it’s written in rather deceptively simple language. But it’s full of good stuff for any age with a sense of humour.
Barney Willow’s parents divorced a couple of years ago, which was bad enough, but what was really awful is that ‘ . . . two hundred and eleven days ago (Barney was counting) his dad disappeared altogether. He’d never seen him since, except in dreams. . . . This was the first birthday he’d had without his dad being there.
‘If that wasn’t bad enough it was also the first birthday he’d had at his rubbish new school. And school meant Miss Whipmire, the head teacher from hell. He didn’t know if that was her exact address, but it definitely shared the same postcode.’ And then there is the bully, Gavin Needle, who thoroughly has it in for Barney, and Miss Whipmire, who seems to hate Barney even more than all her other students, blames Barney. Even a best friend named Rissa Fairweather who lives on a barge (with no TV although her mum does make fabulous carrot cake) and loves astronomy can’t entirely make up for these defects.
And the title? Things get so bad for Barney that he wishes—really really hard—that he was a cat so he didn’t have to be Barney Willow any more.
You can guess this does not go well.
It’s a cracking good story anyway and all the stuff that I, as a cranky elderly person who has read many, many, many evil-teacher stories before, and even a certain number of magical-cat stories, was sitting there thinking, well, what about—? are all answered satisfactorily. But the best part (to this cranky elderly person who has perhaps spent too much time reading) is some of the throwaway stuff:
‘He saw books with spines as tall and wide as doors, large names on them: William Shakespeare. Leo Tolstoy. Mark Twain. Voltaire. Barney had no idea that all four of these very famous dead writers had, at one time or another been cats. Or that one of them had even admitted to having been a cat. (That one was Mark Twain, who had written very brilliant books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, who were both boys but acted more like wild and adventurous cats and were based on Mark Twain’s own early years as a tomcat . . . ) . . . most of the really brilliant people who have ever lived have been cats . . . because many of the great cat geniuses, in cat form, get very fed up of not having the kind of wiggly thumbs and fingers that let you write a book.’
Also, Rissa is totally cool. ‘This isn’t just weird, she told herself. This is over the hill from weird.’
And I love the illustrations.††† There’s also a little repeated series of a leaping cat in the lower-right-hand corners of the pages so if you run your thumb over the edges really fast so they fan down, it looks like a cat really is leaping.
Also . . . you know there’s the whole business of how much blood and gore are suitable for kid readers. I can’t deal with horror in most of its graphic modern incarnations, but on the other hand the whitewashing of fairy tales because they’ll be too distressing for children makes me crazy because it is utterly wrong-headed. There’s enough real blood and real death and real cruelty in TO BE A CAT to give it an edge that—particularly as it’s also so funny—it would be less engaging and effective without.
I liked it a lot. I recommend it.‡ And I know Matt Haig is a big deal for some of his other books, but this is the first one I’ve read. I’ll have to go look him up now. I need more books on The TBR Pile.
* * *
* It’s all Hannah’s fault! She left it here! And her grovelling from three thousand miles away does not appease me in the slightest! . . . Moan.
** You would not believe the racket an ice-scraper makes at mmph o’clock in the morning
*** Made a good deal smaller, of course, by three walls of bookshelves
† It’s like how many ways can you confound yourself? We haven’t had rain in months so of course you’re watering everything by hand. And the best way to be sure you’ve watered thoroughly enough is if it oozes a little out the bottom end. This is not a problem outdoors.
†† I have no idea how I’m getting hellhounds hurtled, but the odd and surprising truth is that I am. This is one of those absolute confirmations about coping with ME—whatever your level of capacity is, you have to use it frelling DAILY or you will, by the gods, lose it. And if you do use it to the absolute last whisker there will (probably) be some left even when you’re going through a bad patch, or a lurgy. I wonder if they’ve done any studies of people with ME or similar having holidays? I’d say the ten days or a fortnight doing nothing kind of holiday is positively harmful to someone like me, but this is probably one of the many, many things that varies with the individual. I think the trick is recognising where the last whisker is. You go over your limit and you will pay. But if you don’t tap yourself out, tomorrow you will have less to tap.
††† By Pete Williamson http://www.petewilliamson.co.uk/books.php
‡ This is not an April Fool.