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Therapeutic effects
I’m clearly better today.* I’m not exactly signing up for the London marathon, but I’m better. This suggests that there are hitherto unsuspected therapeutic effects in:
1. Writing a proper blog entry rather than futzing off with story excerpts.**
2. Listening to a private command performance organ recital.***
3. Getting Wolfgang back from the garage† Which means the hellhounds and I drove out to the middle of nowhere and had a lovely walk this morning and saw no other people†† whatsoever despite its being a gorgeous Saturday. We got back to the car just in time however, there was a horde teeming up over the crest of the hill and starting to spill down the other side toward us as we peeled out of there. I could see their proper hiking boots and their map cases from where we were, and their little glinty eyes.
4. And last but not least, getting the small green leafy things that arrive, gasping and confused, in the post, outdoors and potted up within twenty four hours. †††
4 b. This isn’t least either‡: We actually DID have a frost last night so I’m not just being hopeless lugging the jungle in and outdoors. And the next question is, do I do it again tonight.
* * *
* I hope I say that again tomorrow.
** Please keep your shirt on.^ At least one person on the forum and several by email in the last couple of days have told me pointedly that they like story excerpts best. Well, yes. I’m sure a lot of you do. I’m a writer. The reason you’re reading my blog is because you like my books.^^ But until someone with more money than sense comes along and offers me a stipend for the blog, I do have to earn my living by writing stories. Ergo I can’t afford to post many story excerpts or very often because the excerpts would start to match up and I need you to buy my stories so I can keep the hellhounds in cereal-free kibble.
I know there’s abundant discussion about whether posting a significant wodge of something actually encourages people to buy the cow. And I know Neil Gaiman posted the entire AMERICAN GODS–and that there was a lot of mooing about that, which I believe ended with Neil looking very clever and foresightful and ahead of the herd. But what works for Neil Gaiman may not work for the rest of us kittle-cattle, I have no idea where the fence lines run, and I’m a worrier.^^^ Someone else is going to have to be all bold and brave and test it out. When everybody is posting entire chapters of their new novels months before publication^^^^ and everybody including Merrilee and my publisher are shouting, For frell’s sake, McKinley, loosen up!, I’ll do it too. Well, maybe. I may not. I may go all different-drummer and march off singing loudly to myself with my fingers in my ears.
^ So to speak. If you’re feeling hot and you’re wearing a nice little camisole under it, then by all means take your shirt off.
^^ Note: I’m very glad you like my books. Although I hope you stick around on the blog because it has its own eccentric attractions.
^^^ Oh, really?
^^^^ Or for that matter their old novels years after
*** The ‘by an evil ratbag’ is perhaps optional. And the evil ratbag is right, I would enjoy writing something for the organ. Am enjoying. Feh. It began to be borne in on me this afternoon as I wrestled with the blasted third pedalboard staff and tried to imagine what this was all going to sound like^, since Finale’s organ audio is every bit as disturbing as predicted^^, that this was a really great way to make a LOT of noise. Yesssss. And a THIRD staff? Like, two more hands?^^^ And me with my Strange Unnatural Chord fixation? Okay, you’ve got ten fingers, why shouldn’t you have ten-note chords? Messiaen did it.^^^^ I also like the kind of chords that if you have G in one octave you’ll probably have G sharp or flat in the next octave. And a third staff means more octaves to play with.
^ Supposing Oisin doesn’t merely rupture himself laughing and thus be incapable of playing it. Supposing it’s playable. I mean, true, he’s never ruptured himself laughing yet–well, that I know of–but presumably even hardened career music teachers have a breaking point?
^^ Although, poor thing, it’s trying to squirt a pipe organ out of a laptop. Its conspicuous failure cannot be said to be entirely its own responsibility.
^^^ One anyway. You wear Special Organ Shoes. They should be as narrow as possible and soft-soled. Well, of course, you think. But who knew?
^^^^ Messiaen probably wrote some twelve and forty-seven note chords. Messaien was mad and brilliant. I also suspect his second wife the pianist Yvonne Loriod had enchanted hands.
† You regulars will remember the drama the end of last week when I finally noticed that the windscreen sticker that says ‘yes you can take this thing out on the road’ had expired the end of February. Oops. I stopped driving Wolfgang Friday evening, Saturday morning the garage said bring him^ out Sunday morning and he’ll be first in the queue for cancellations on Monday. Except there were no cancellations, of course. Gabriel said he hoped Wednesday. Wednesday: they’d done the tests, but Wolfgang needed parts. Try Thursday. Thursday: try Friday. AAAAAAUGH. Well, Friday, they finally said yes, please come take him away, he’s using valuable space that some other broken-down wreck needs. So poor Peter had to mess up his afternoon and catch the bus out to our old village to bring Wolfgang home, because I was having a private organ recital. Usually the hellhounds and I would walk out and fetch him as we’d driven out to leave him and walked back. And then Peter had to go stand in the Friday-afternoon queue at the PO to get the new sticker because I was still having my recital. Peter is a Wonderful Human Being.
And then the last egg in the house wouldn’t thicken when Peter tried to make Celebratory Mayonnaise for supper Friday evening. Should I go next door and borrow one? he said. Yes, I said. He came back with an egg. He said, I told them that my mayonnaise was the glue that held our marriage together.
Hmmm. Well, probably not on the day that he’d fetched Wolfgang home and stood in the Friday-afternoon post-office queue, but it’s true I’m always very glad to see his mayonnaise. The new egg behaved, by the way. But I haven’t had the strength of will to look at the paperwork that came back with Wolfgang: the bit that says ‘you passed the test for now but yes you do need a new runtzelwhammer, please book in at your earliest convenience, that’ll be £2567.43 please.’ Peter has made one or two small gentle noises about a new car. I don’t want a new car.
^ Well, the garage bloke said bring it
†† or dogs
††† Yes, I still have some roses to plant. And a euphorbia, if you’re counting.
‡ Least is mostly a bogus concept anyway. Say I.
Holiday yeep
It seemed like a good idea at the time–as well as a way to say a perhaps somewhat bizarre ‘thank you’ to my Eight Heroines who paddle away like mad underwater while I get to pretend to be a swan.* And I have had a huge amount of fun writing the thing. But . . . even if Oisin has not taken leave of his senses** I am still in the very, very early phase of this composing schtick and everything I do, including torturing Christmas carols, is a long steep learning curve and is a lot more interesting to me (and possibly my teacher) than to the rest of the world as music. And I’m still nothing like up to speed with Finale either, including, in this case, little things like getting the hyphens between syllables of lyrics to appear, or to have two separate words appear under the same note. I also can’t figure out how to get the lyricist(s) to appear on the score–they should be on the vocal line page, which you do have to download, but it is thoughtfully included in case any of you have had too much eggnog and would like to sing along–Peter wrote 90% of the first verse and I wrote 90% of the second. One of the things that went slightly awry is that the words were done while I was still frelling around with the music, and by the time I’d finished espaliering the quavers, crotchets and minims*** there wasn’t time to try to refit the lyrics. If I’m thinking about doing anything like this again next year I need to start earlier. Like July. Or maybe February.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Excuses, excuses. Post and shut up, McKinley.
So a ROUND OF APPLAUSE to Oisin and to Blogmom for making it all possible and on Christmas Eve Eve as well: I didn’t get the thing into let’s-call-it-finished shape till Monday and Oisin had one or two other things to do with his time† than provide supernumerary recordings and so didn’t get the sound file to me till Tuesday and I sent it on instantly to Blogmom who was, I believe, outdoors in her steel suit nailing down the corners of the house against ice tornadoes at the time. I got an email from her at one point saying laconically that the power had been out for the last three hours and would probably be going out again at any moment but she’d get my bent carol†† up if she could.
And now I have to go decorate the frelling tree. Peter’s already gone to bed and I have to get up early tomorrow morning to ring bells. †††
* * *
* to distort ever so slightly something ajlr said about the matter some time ago
**which I do not in the least guarantee. All teachers who actually give a rolling doughnut about their students learning something, who do things like let their students veer violently off the official tarmac of the educational road and plunge into the undergrowth shouting, This way! I’m sure it went this way!, must eventually become a trifle . . . eccentric. Although I’m acicularly^ aware that my main function is that I’m fun to watch. I am very grateful that Oisin is easily amused. I couldn’t afford him if he charged what he’s worth.
^ Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls+
+ So, how many of you are as old as I am?
*** British terminology is so much more charming than American quarter notes etc
† He has, I believe, a Holiday Clone, so this time of year he can play for simultaneous carol services
†† I like that she’s called it ‘Christmas song’. Very tactful.
††† Rang somebody else’s carol service this afternoon–rang somebody else with an open ground floor ring’s carol service this afternoon, so the congregation is all sitting there looking at you.
Timing Is Everything
No, no, no, no, no, no! The ME is back. My best friend and her family are arriving tomorrow morning to stay for a week*–and furthermore they’ve never been here all together before–and the ME chooses this moment for a swell foop? A really swell foop. A really great, swell, fantastic sort of foop. . . .
It actually came back yesterday, but I was still trying to pretend it hadn’t. And if I hadn’t been violently not paying attention I would have known something was wrong at bell practice on Wednesday, when there seemed remarkably little of me and even raising my hands over my head to grab the rope threatened to ruin my flimsy balance and set me floating across the ringing chamber like dandelion fluff.** No, I was saying, no, you can’t you just can’t so you aren’t. So much for mind over matter. Whimper.
And then, because the universe hates me . . . Chaos got me up in the night last night to have the Yellow Squirts. Twice. So much for digestive enzymes.** Mentally I’ve been a case of the Yellow Squirts all day as a result: where does lack of sleep end and ME begin?*** I rang Oisin to cancel my lesson and he said Awwwww, but I have a new torture device for you! Oh, well, in that case, I said.
So I did go to my piano lesson. I didn’t quite crawl up the path on my hands and knees carrying my music in my teeth† but I thought about it. †† And my new torment is a Bach Invention: two little pages of bamboozlingly simple-looking music. I even get to play it: I’ve been whining increasingly ever since this composing wheeze began that it cuts into my playing time: and the way I play I need all the time I can get.††† But while the whole creation of my brand new world wouldn’t be visible on the wide horizon of someone who is legitimately musical, first the memorizing and now, spectacularly more so, the composing, has freaking revolutionized the way I listen to–no, experience–music. And it’s like I’m ready for a little Bach.
I have an automatic rebellion against anyone set up as the greatest or the best or the ultimate whatever–some of my dislike of Shakespeare is genuine, some of it is rebellion–and I have trouble with Bach on similar grounds. Four or five months later I’m still ticked off‡ at some airy fairy arteeeestic type writing in to Radio Three when they were doing their everything-JS-ever-wrote-and-only-JS ten days or fortnight or whatever it was saying that if the choice was either JS or every other composer it would have to be JS, and he/she waffled and wibbled on along this line for a while–as read out be an extremely smug and self-congratulatory announcer, which wasn’t helping my attitude any–and I’m here to say nonsense. No Mozart? No Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Handel, Haydn, Dvorak, Dowland, Monteverdi, Mendelssohn, Vaughan Williams, Vivaldi, Verdi? Don’t be imbecilic. But it’s true that Bach has grown on me over the decades, especially the way he does these jaw-droppingly subversive things in this mild throwaway manner like, who, me? I’m just writing a little tune. And a lot of his keyboard stuff is like that. Oisin said, just look at it, see what you can see of what he’s doing. So now I have two tiny subversive pages assigned to be my very own to mess my head over with.
And I did get the beds made at Third House. I didn’t do anything else, but the beds are made.
And, forgive me, but now I’m going to bed. In theory my friend and her daughters‡‡ are going to Guest Blog while they’re here, but whether I can force them to start tomorrow, with Strange Foreign Countryness‡‡‡ hanging around their necks like an anvil, remains to be seen. Some of you will have read the Picking Out Oranges in a Strange Foreign Country story on my web site. And computers are much weirder than oranges.
*Although they’re going to do things like slope off to London and Bath. I’ll probably go to bed.
** Pretty good going for a woman in the grip of No Cal Menopause, who keeps forgetting and eating, you know, food. Occasionally. Eating is such a habit, you know? It’s surprisingly hard to break. If my balance had really gone kerplooey Wednesday night I wouldn’t have floated, I’d've fallen. And made a little dent in the floor.
*** The vet and I are playing phone tag. But at least he’s left a message telling me what to do. It does not involve a box by the side of the road and a sign saying FREE HELLHOUNDS.
† Of course I didn’t go to sleep again! I lay there thinking, the ME is back! And my friends are arriving tomorrow! And I’ve barely looked at Third House, let alone made the beds! I have to get some sleep! What is that noise? Is it coming from the dog crate?
† Why was I bothering? It’s not like I was going to play anything. Well, I did want to bring my composition homework, so I could ask some dumb ‘how do I write this’ questions. You never notice how confusing rests are, for example, until you’re trying to put some in. Above or below the line? High line or low line?^ And I told you last week that Oisin had suggested that I could rearrange the rhythm of Peter’s Song so the music fitted better with the natural speech rhythm of the words. I’ve been dubiously poking at this with very limited results, and I wanted to ask him about this too. Oh, you just change the time signature when you need to, he said, scratching bar lines and numbers onto my small crabbed opus. Benjamin Britten did it a lot, he went on, and his songs are brilliant. It looks horrible on the page, of course: I’ll find some, and show you. –Oh! Just like Benjamin Britten! Okay! Fine! I’m sorry but I have to scream now!^^ AAAAAAAUGH!
^ And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.
^^ As another kitchen magnet says
†† Although I’m glad I didn’t, because Oisin was late, and I would have put on this heart-wrenching performance for nothing. Not to mention getting mud on the knees of my jeans. Although there is usually mud on the knees of my jeans.
††† I want more hours in the day. Pass it on.
‡ It’s true, I need to get out more. Tell the hellhounds. No, tell the hellhounds’ digestion.
‡‡ So far as I know they have not chosen their aliases yet. And I’m being very good and not choosing them for them. I think Swanhilde is a magnificent name, myself, but Peter seems to think there might be an alternative view.
‡‡‡ If not jet lag. Not if they’ve taken their arnica.
It’s already midnight
. . . and I don’t even know what I’m going to write, let alone have it written. The problem with, you know, visitors, is that it seems like kind of a waste not to hang around chatting with them a bit. I also had the Computer Man here for another couple of hours this afternoon . . . and took our visitors to bell ringing practise tonight: Peter’s son and his two children, including the 11-year-old responsible for last night’s joke.*
Peter’s granddaughter–let’s call her Swanhilde–rings at home. I’d like to take some credit/blame for this but her mum rings. I think I get to claim meddling however. I think I dragged Swanhilde off to ringing before her mum had started again, and I think it was Swanhilde who got them both going. Her dad and bro came along tonight too, but didn’t last long**, and then there were only six of us for six bells, including Swanhilde. At which point our ringing master, whom we will call Wild Robert***, got the well-known mad gleam in his eye, and spent the rest of the evening teaching poor Swanhilde to ring treble to Grandsire.† This is a bit like teaching me Stedman when I was still wobbly on plain bob doubles: insane: the poor girl only rings call changes, she hasn’t even learnt plain hunt. Well, I ring Stedman, even though I shouldn’t, and Swanhilde was starting to ring Grandsire under her own recognisance by the end of practise, and we left smiling. I hope she is going to go home–as she announced she was planning to–and tell everyone that she rang Grandsire in Hampshire. And is not going to burst into tears later (Peter’s grandchildren are all rather diabolically polite and she certainly wouldn’t do this in public) and beg her dad not to leave her alone with me again. If I’m allowed to brag about my step granddaughter, by the way, she did brilliantly.
But here’s my news. After everybody else had gone to bed, Peter’s son and I were left discussing the fate of the world and in a lull in the conversation he basically dared me to play the piano. You remember I’m the one who can’t even play for Oisin, because I’m too paralysed with stage fright? Well, it was late at night, and I’d had a glass of wine and I was still exhilarated from watching Swanhilde take†† a giant leap forward in her understanding of ringing†††, and there’s also a kind of resentful sense that this is my piano and I get to play her whether there are other people‡ around or not. So I did. I didn’t do it very well, gods know, nor for very long–but it was late at night, etc–and I did play. Golly, after that, what’s left in the personal challenge box?
Well, current photos on this blog, for example.‡‡ Which prompts me to say, first, that Blogmom has reproved me for howling about New Blog Woes; of course there are going to be a few woes, so? Indeed. I apologise. It’s the One More Thing aspect as much as the woes themselves–I’ve been putting off making the switch to the New Blog knowing there would be a steep learning curve waiting as well as a few glitches, and it’s not like I’m surprised. Also . . . bell ringing and piano playing apart . . . I don’t generally like being forced to spend time learning to do stuff I’m really bad at and anything to do with computers comes in this category. Also I’m still finding my way around my new desktop and have I mentioned that I also have a new laptop because the ancient crumbling one at the mews has been threatening to finish the metamorphosis to garden compost overnight some day soon? This has not been without its alarums and excursions either since the first one they tried to sell me scared me to death and fortunately they let me exchange it for something a little more modest. But it’s like I’ve been set up recently to notice how hopeless I am AND FURTHERMORE I CAN’T RUN MY NEW BLOG. But even before Blogmom’s suggestion that I put a sock in it I wanted to say that one important functional corner has been turned in that last night I went galloping through the comments in just the way that is the chief reason for leaving lj, so hurrah.
. . . And now it’s nearly one o’clock and I have to go to bed. I’m taking myself to a homeopath tomorrow morning because my stress level is off the planet and I don’t like the way the ME keeps coming back . . . which means I have to get up early enough to walk hellhounds before I go.
And because there aren’t enough laughs in this entry, let me offer you two links to supply this deficiency:
Generally I don’t like putting stuff on your mutt, but this makes me hysterical with laughter:
http://faildogs.com/post/31480692
And this is maybe the most amazing action photo I’ve ever seen, although I’d kind of like to know they both survived:
http://ihasahotdog.com/2008/04/11/funny-dog-pictures-fail-you-did-it-right/
*Peter’s daughter in law has an office job that doesn’t necessarily run parallel with school breaks so she’s at home missing the fun [sic].
** Boys are such wimps. Heh heh heh.
*** All you Diana Wynne Jones fans out there: yes
† Note that Wild Robert doesn’t really believe in breaks. If there’s six of you for six bells, you simply ring for an hour and a half. You can sit down after you go home. One of us tonight has begun to feel her age a bit and so she did sit down . . . whereupon Wild Robert merely rang two bells. Swanhilde said she would also go home and tell everyone that in Hampshire one person rings two bells at a time. Remind me if I ever go to her home tower with her not to mention I’m from Hampshire.
†† Being yanked still counts. As I say, I ring Stedman. Wild Robert may be a trifle unorthodox, but he’s definitely a Force for Good in the ringing community.
††† Swanhilde also takes piano lessons. And writes poetry. But she’s also good at maths. Okay, I’m sorry, but this is too much. Death by being nibbled by tribbles or exile to Betelgeuse. Choose.
‡ Ie with ears
‡‡ And permit me to remind all of you–perhaps a trifle dolefully–who have posted complimentarily about Peter’s and my wedding photo, that’s seventeen years ago. Peter’s hair is white and I’m a hag. I’m just warning you.
