Christmas
Yes, I worked on SHADOWS today.* Next question**.
The front door of the mews since last night after dark.
Wreath. Tactful, Peter-placating***, reusable wreath.†
Tree. You will note Large Box to the right.
I admit I didn’t manage to hang every ornament we own on it, but it’s definitely decorated. The important baubles are up. The robins. The horses. The roses. The bells. Some time between yesterday and New Year’s I’ll probably finish getting the tinsel over the lampshades, picture frames, candlesticks, and piano.
Another view of Large.
Yes. It’s Large. Peter said, You wouldn’t buy me a microwave. I said, No, I wouldn’t, and it doesn’t weigh enough, unless they’re now making plastic microwaves in which case I’m not going to buy you one twice.
::LOUD RUSTLING AND RIPPING NOISES::
Highlights:
Gasp!
Yes. It’s true. I bought Peter a Kindle. Now all we have to do is figure out how to use it. Georgiana and Saxon will be here tomorrow: I’m proposing they do it. Hey, I bought it. My job is over.†† But the point is that you can dial up the typeface size, and even with his reading specs Peter finds tiny mass market paperback type size trying.
Oooh! Roses!
Peter bought me a book on roses. How . . . surprising. Okay, so I’ve been eyeing it on line for months. But the gorgeous slipcover is a surprise—as is the fact it’s signed and numbered.
Yes, it's still a thrill when other people sign their books.
I had assumed it was just another drop-dead-glam coffee table book full of glossy pictures but it’s a lot more, well, beautiful than that, and a pleasure to handle as an object and never mind its subject matter.††† It’s smaller and fatter than a coffee table book—like a book you would, ahem, read—and the edges are gilt!—and the pages are matte not shiny, and it’s paintings not photos. You even have a sewn-in bookmark.
La France. Usual historical suspect for first Hybrid Tea. Blah blah blah.
I grew her at the old house. She was a frail heroine, prone to fits of the vapours, and a terrible head-hanger.
The GUARDIAN is always full of helpful suggestions this time of year, and look at what I found only a few days ago on offer at http://www.tattydevine.com/ :
Hee hee hee hee hee hee
I immediately turned to Peter and said, don’t you really want to buy me a Perspex bat necklace? What? he said.
Oh and the large parcel/small coffin/medium-sized old-fashioned maiden aunt?
It's a bin.
No, really, this is a great present. We have terrible bin luck at the mews. This kitchen is where most of the heavy cooking happens, and you want a serious bin with a lid, and you want something that it doesn’t take both hands to open. We’ve had a series of expensive foot-pedal-lid-opening bins which are the joy of our hearts for about six months and then they break. But they’re so expensive you don’t just rush out and replace them. Well, the last (broken) one is over a year old and . . . I saw this in a catalogue (yes, I have some strange tastes in catalogues) and it had all these rave customer reviews and . . . ask me in six months.
. . . And now I seem to be extremely full of turkey and champagne and Christmas pudding and brandy butter and . . . I forget . . . zzzzzzzz . . . .
Hope yours was merry.
* * *
* Not, perhaps, for very long. But on four and a half hours of sleep I’m doing very well. Bells were rung, hellhounds were hurtled, SHADOWS was gently drawn a little closer to being finished . . . oh yes, and it’s Christmas.
For the first time in my life I have a Christmas cactus blooming on Christmas. By garden centre error and mismanagement. On one of those raids last autumn, when I went for a £2.99 replacement spool of green gardening twine and came home with so many plants I could hardly wedge them all in Wolfgang, I bought another Christmas cactus. I need more Christmas cacti like I need . . . uh . . . more rosebushes. At least the roses live outdoors. But this one was a particularly pretty pink with white edges. It was just starting to come out. So I bought it and brought it home.
And all its flower buds immediately fell off. ARRRRRRGH.
Christmas cacti are generally extremely tough so I assumed that it would be fine next year but that this year was going to be a bust. Nope. About a month ago I noticed it was producing little pale tippy knobs . . . a fresh lot of flower buds. Yaaaay. I’m not even going to complain that it’s reverted to the standard pale pink of which I have lots. I have lots because fallen-off or pruned-back branches root really easily.
Stop press! A Christmas cactus blooming on CHRISTMAS!
** And yes, I’ve been singing. But I haven’t touched Dove Sei in three days. I’m singing Christmas carols.
*** ‘I don’t need a wreath.’
† With my eccentric bent for befriending inanimate objects, I find this is another advantage of things like fake, that is, reusable, wreaths and trees. So every year it’s like, hey, how are you, how’s it going?, good to see you again.
†† I told the archangels when they were last here that I’d bought Peter a Kindle for Christmas and it was so sleek and shiny that if he didn’t like it I’d take it over. Raphael and Gabriel exchanged a long look. Robin, said Raphael after a minute, do you really want another piece of technology in your life?
No. And besides, Astarte has Montezuma too.
††† Well, okay. Do mind the subject matter.
Christmas Eve Eve
I’m not READY. Hells, I’m not started. I REALLY must get the Christmas decorations out of the attic at Third House . . . tomorrow. Must. Really. Our nice little plastic tree has one rather serious disadvantage, which is that it’s a ratbag to put together* . . . and after Peter retires snarling** I will have to slam all the ornaments on at extreme speed.*** I ALSO HAVE TO WRAP ALL THE PRESENTS. Well, all of Peter’s presents. I withdraw further and further from the whole Christmas thing every year—the official clan and/or people I don’t know very well and/or owe favours to tend to get plants by post† and charity certificates of one sort or another.†† Peter still gets presents.††† Which means WRAPPING.‡
I have a novel to write. In five weeks.‡‡
. . . .I’m listening to Handel’s MESSIAH on Radio 3. A while back, and I can’t remember which singing thread, there was a certain amount of giggling on the forum about how doing it yourself makes you more critical of other singers, and I meant to say, but I think I never did, that it also makes you more in awe of other singers. How do they do that. Wow. Golly. Swoon. Adore. Despair. ††† What I do find absolutely true however is that doing it myself, however feebly, engages me in other people’s performances to a degree that is sometimes frelling inconvenient. It’s beginning to remind me of what a cow I can be about other people’s books—I don’t care if it won the Pulitzer, it’s not good enough—which is marginally more understandable in my professional field. It’s just shameless when I start getting snippy-pernickety about singers. But . . . this is a very nice MESSIAH, but where is the passion? ‘He Was Despised’ shouldn’t be beautiful, it should make you cry.§
* * *
* Peter does this. But I’m not giving him much running-in time.
** This is approximately the only time all year that I see Peter snarl.
*** Fortunately there are rarely speed traps in Peter’s sitting room.
† Which I’m extremely relieved to report seem mostly to have arrived with a loud simultaneous thump today. This includes mine.^ One of which is clearly frost damaged and since there hasn’t been any local frost in several days^^ has to have happened en route somewhere. SIIIIIGH. The fact that any recipient of a little frill of festively decorated twigs that looks more like a voodoo fetish than a live plant will know that it’s not my fault is very little comfort.
^ Since they have this system for the orderer to order something for herself by ticking ‘myself’ during check-out, you’d think they could follow this through so that ‘myself’ doesn’t receive a card that says, ‘look inside for a message from the person who gave you this gift!’ and in my case says ‘Happy Christmas, Mrs McKinley Dickinson!’ which begs the question slightly about ‘to’ and ‘from’. ^^^
^^ Except the imaginary kind that gives the indoor jungle something to complain about the nights I don’t bring it in. At the moment I can’t bring it in, the top of the hellhound crate is covered with not-yet-wrapped Christmas presents. One them is kind of . . . large. No frost tonight. NO FROST TONIGHT. ARE YOU LISTENING? —It was tipping it down earlier, creating a bottleneck of wet, cranky, last-minute-shopping people midtown even of little New Arcadia. Hellhounds and I sat in Wolfgang, listening to the rain drumming on the roof and feeling smug, having returned from our hurtle about forty-five seconds before the heavens opened.+ I am now paying for this complacency, as the frelling weather has cleared off and the temperature is dropping . . . and dropping . . . ++
+ I spent that forty-five seconds chatting to Phineas, who encouraged me to let the air out of the tyres of Mr Gormless, should I be so unfortunate as to have contact with his misdeeds again, and whom Phineas apostrophises as not the full shilling.
++ Speaking of plants, Katinseattle wanted to know about this one from Gemma’s gift: http://www.hardys-plants.co.uk/product.asp?plant=131
^^^ There’s a Schrodinger’s cat opportunity here, although in this instance the cat is permitted to be alive in both its states.
†† I give driblets and drablets all over the shop including the obvious big guns like Amnesty, Greenpeace, Medecins sans Frontieres, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children—insert your forty-six favourite charities here. But I do like to give slightly cheerful things at Christmas, although I realise this is the wrong attitude for celebrating the birthday of someone who was willing to be crucified in the hope it would do the rest of us some good.
Admirable intentions don’t always translate into reliable admin, and there are several Big Holy Green Guys I will no longer touch with a barge pole, but for anyone who’s interested, here are a few UK furry-critter organisations that I’ve been subscribing to successfully for years.
What they offer you varies from year to year, but I’ve put in an awful lot of hedgerows.
http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/sponsor/default.aspx?view=all
Lurchers and sighthoundy critters never seem to need sponsoring, or not for long. At present I sponsor Hamish. I admit I have just a flicker of doubt about these guys: your sponsoree never dies, they’re always placed with a private owner and so don’t need sponsoring any more. Really?
http://www.guidedogsgiving.org.uk/sponsorapuppy/?gclid=CJju7qCnma0CFUUPfAodYFhsmg
I’ve been doing this so long and they roll over so fast I can’t remember the name of the current half-grown critter. But the cuteness factor is extreme. Not only do you receive regular ‘pupdates’ of your own protégé but they send you stuff like the Guide Dog Puppy Calendar every year which is all little fat furry darlings and is a good thing to stare at while you’re waiting for your first cup of tea of the day to turn black.
And I’d belonged to the Bat Conservation Trust for years before I realised I had a problem. I hadn’t noticed you can now adopt bats. I, of course, don’t need to.^
http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/adopt_a_bat.html
^ Hee hee hee http://www.bats.org.uk/ecards.php?action=ecard&id=43
††† So do a variety of friends. But rarely at Christmas. Or at their birthdays. When I get around to it. Sometimes it takes years. There’s this box in the corner of my bedroom. . . .
‡ I suppose the next boundary to withdraw over is wrapping . . . but stuff looks so pretty after it’s been wrapped.^ I’m hyperventilating slightly about Peter’s Very Large Present however. It’s . . . Very Large.
^ Aside from questions of blog photos.
‡‡ Only four people showed up for tower practise tonight YAAAAY. We hardy few barely waited the obligatory quarter-hour before declaring a bust and all rushed downstairs and out into the night. The other three may have gone to the pub. I went home to SHADOWS. Which is still going well, except for the ‘five weeks’ part.
‡‡‡ Why don’t I take up knitting?^
^ I haven’t ripped out the leg warmers lately. Because I’m cravenly knitting hellhound squares.
§ Sung in this case by one of my new heroes, Iestyn Davies. How embarrassing. But . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH3E64G0oCI
Bells, with stomachache
Today has been a stomachache, punctuated by way too many bells. And—when I’m feeling this rough—there are also too many hellhounds. Importunate they all are. Bong! Bark!* I fell out of bed this morning aware that all was not well in the nether regions but assuming (vigorously**) it wasn’t serious. Absorbed my first megadram of caffeine. Registered that strange green fog hovering over hellhound crate was a jungle.*** Oh. Eeep. Further register that it’s cold out there.† Extra reasons for objecting to getting up this early.†† Six woolly jumpers and two pairs of long johns. These prove useful when the Black Knight at the Ford leaps out from behind a geranium and demands my sword or my life. Don’t be daft, I say. This is my kitchen. There aren’t any rivers, with or without fords, in a kitchen.
There aren’t jungles in kitchens either, says the Black Knight, pressing the unpleasantly sharp end of his long pointy sword against my breastbone, which is protected only by six woolly jumpers, which are nonetheless better than nothing. Now, are you going to fight me or am I going to run you through for a lily-livered coward?
I’m going to set my fierce, slavering hellhounds on you, I say.
Hellhounds? says the Black Knight, blanching. Oh, all right, have it your way. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice little set-to? It would wake you right up. Much better than caffeine.
Not today, thanks, I say. But feel free to stop round for a cup of tea some time.
. . . I was a minute or two late to the tower, but the other three of us were still standing shivering in front of the electric fire so that was all right. We did eventually have six pairs of hands, but . . . it’s the week before Christmas, we have three service rings today, it would be nice to have a bit more than the skeleton crew.
After Ring #1 I went home and viewed the jungle.††† Now beginneth the Great Windowsill Wedge. How many leafy green pots of the cold-allergic can I winter over with the least amount of extra nonsense?‡ After about the six hundred and forty-third, however, which I hung in a sling dependent from a curtain rail, ‡‡ I had to lie down for a bit, and when I got up again to attend to hellhound obligations, somehow or other . . . the jungle sitting on top of the hellhound crate was just as thick and impenetrable as before.
Sigh.
So we hurtled, and then hellhounds had lunch and I did not, and then I stared at SHADOWS for a while and thought about late-mid-life career changes‡‡‡. Then I went to ring the carol service at Old Eden. Can’t you beg off? said Peter (and various friends by email). No, I said. We’ll be lucky if we have six ringers for the six bells. In the event we had five to begin with, and I pleaded to be let off ringing up, and allowed to stick to the treble.§ I left afterward without finding out if the mince pies were going to be offered to the bell ringers.§§
Then it was to do all over again at New Arcadia. Five ringers for eight bells—eventually a sixth. But no seventh and no eighth. Can I ring a touch of Plain Bob Doubles while fading rapidly into the Shadowwraiths’ realm?§§§ Afterward I tottered back to the cottage and brought back in again everything I hadn’t managed to fit on windowsills earlier. Plus several things I’d remembered too late last night and fossicked around for today . . . which do seem mysteriously still alive. And got rid of a few more indoor slugs.
Finally re-hurtled (relatively) patient hellhounds at about 7:30 . . . and it’s already ice underfoot. Crunch crunch crunch iiiieeeeeeeee.
Have risked supper.# I should go home early, before the roads get too exciting. But . . . maybe . . . I’ll . . . just . . . lie . . . on . . . the . . . sofa . . . for . . . a . . . bit . . . first.
* * *
* I’m not sure I’ve ever recognised how similar bells and hellhounds really are. Indecipherable minds of their own. Mostly silent and quiescent but alarming when roused. Needs yanking. Needs regular yanking or grows cranky and morose. Weighs more than you think when hits the end of the lead. Unpredictably unbiddable—except you can more or less prophesy that they’ll be at their worst if anyone you want to make a good impression on is present. Hates cold weather. Medical bills expensive. Not interested in food.^
I rarely take bells to lie on the sofa with me however.
^ Although in fact I have a hellhound beleaguering me at this moment. Darkness is having a little holiday from not eating.
We haven’t eaten since yesterday, he says.
You’ve eaten twice since yesterday, I reply. Once at about 2 a.m. and lunch.
Yesterday, he says. You’re always moaning about how bad your memory is. Lunch was yesterday.+ And furthermore, you’re eating chicken. You can’t expect me to not eat since yesterday gracefully when you’re eating chicken.
+ Hellhound time. Okay, I wonder if we can cross it with Mandelbrot sets to get that thirty-six hour day?
** This would be the last time all day I have been vigorous.
*** Full of wildlife. We won’t get into the slugs-in-the-kitchen situation, my stomachache is enough reality for one day . . . AAAAAAAUGH. EXTRA PROTEIN JUST DISCOVERED IN MY BROCCOLI.^ Sodding flangdangling organic. If this stuff were sprayed with Toxic Planet Death I wouldn’t have these problems.
^ This is actually when it happened. I am not juggling to make a better story.
† So at least the indoor aspect of the jungle was worthwhile.
†† Although when hellhounds finally got their first hurtle at about noon the footpaths were still frozen. Crunch crunch crunch crunch.
††† And the slugs. And the Biggest Caterpillar in the Universe which is busy eating the geraniums in the sitting room ARRRRGH. I found one Nearly the Biggest Caterpillar about a week ago and was hoping that was the end. But no. And the crap it’s leaving is about the size of ball-bearings at this point. Why can’t I SEE it?? I’ve started having uneasy thoughts about those trompe d’oeil pictures where (for example) the hero is looking around for the dragon and is standing in the dragon’s mouth.
‡ How much of it is still alive? How much of it is planning on staying alive? How many Caterpillars that Ate Brooklyn and Are Eyeing Up Birmingham are lurking among the foliage? After all, there was a Black Knight. And his sword. And his horse. Oh, didn’t I mention the horse?
‡‡ Note to self: prop curtain rails. There are now four hundred and twelve plant pots dangling from them, variously attached.
‡‡‡ I fancy something simple and straightforward this time. Experimental physicist.^ Formula-one driver. Nursery-school teacher.
^ I’d be rubbish at the theoretical.
§ This didn’t work, of course. I was bumped off the treble—oh, you’ll be fine on the two, said Niall—as soon as our only-rings-treble sixth ringer appeared for a quick pull between passing around the mince pies downstairs. This is one of those testing-your-auto-pilot moments. Can you ring a touch of Grandsire doubles when your stomach feels like the Black Knight did run you through with his sword?^
It was worse when we—even more briefly—had a seventh ringer. Wonderful, I said, I can sit out. Oh, Robin, said Niall. Would you please stand with Monty? —GODS. I’d rather frelling ring than mind someone.^^
Speaking of Niall . . . three service rings did rein him in a little, but he still said to me as we were leaving Old Eden, with forty-five minutes till ringing for the carol service at New Arcadia: We’ve only got forty-five minutes. We could teach Monty to ring handbells. . . .
Does Monty want to learn to ring handbells? I said, grasping at straws.
I haven’t the least idea, said Niall.
Whereupon I ran for Wolfgang.
^ Today? Yes. Tomorrow? I hope to be recovered tomorrow. I would rather go wrong and have no excuse than stay right and have this excuse.
^^ Nobody died.
§§ But see previous footnote.
§§§ Yes. But I wouldn’t want to count on it.
# Have fed hellhounds. They ate.
Eight days till Christmas
I’ve just been ordering Christmas presents for me on Peter’s credit card. Mwa hahahahahahaha.
Well, he asked. He says, I don’t have enough Christmas presents for you. Gee that’s really too bad, I say, trying not to slaver too openly. I’m sure (I add hastily) what you have is fine. [Crosses fingers behind back.] * Do you have any suggestions? he says, politely averting his eyes from both the drool and the crossed fingers. Um . . . well, I say, trying to sound bashful, there’s that fabulous new book on ROSES that you found the review for, that I keep not quite committing to buying for myself**, and you know maybe an extreme book of scary origami?***
Do it, he says. My wallet is in my leather jacket.† And then he ambles gently over to the sofa and lies down for a nap.
The power. The power.††
Christmas. Great big feh.††† I’ve spent most of the day‡ hacking my way through excruciatingly slow web sites overburdened with other frantic people doing last-minute Christmas shopping. My memory, not one of my strong points at the best of times, managed to let me down disastrously in a couple of instances—most of the last-minute sites let you order up till Monday but I’d managed to forget that one or two in my mind’s eye aren’t last-minute sites. ‘Five to seven working days’ does not ravish me with joy, ‘five to ten working days’ makes me whimper and ‘out of stock, we will contact you when available’ makes me fling myself on the floor in a transport of I don’t know what, but it looks interesting to the hellhounds.
Meanwhile all these gorblimey physicists going on about the impossibility of everything. How about if they whiffle some of those infinitely complex non-boundaries of the Mandelbrot set into/out of time? I’m sure the answer to the thirty-six hour day is tucked away in there somewhere, if they’d settle down and apply themselves. There’s a Nobel Prize in it for sure. Come on, guys! Function!
* * *
* I’ve tried the ‘if you have an overwhelming desire to help me pay for the new laptop please don’t restrain yourself’^ but he says, no, no, you need something to open. Aw gee. He’s always been like this—for someone who has to overcome deep-rooted repugnance at the very idea of receiving a gift^^, he has a very romantic notion about giving them. And furthermore, he says, with a gleam in his eye, you need something that will look good on the blog.
Hmm. Okay, he has a point.
^ And he did help with the iPad. Although that was before I realised PEG II was an evil fiend from hell/second book in a tr*l*gy and that I wasn’t going to turn it in last August and was therefore about to run out of money instead.+
+ This means that the old laptop will lurch on almost failing for at least another year. If I hadn’t bought the new laptop it would have blown up in a toxic cloud of sticky purple smoke last week, melting the William Morris oilcloth, leaving a very nasty mark on the table, and causing me to run away to sea.~ Yes, this is still the old laptop. I don’t have time to learn a new frelling operating system.
~ I don’t think they take fifty-nine-year-old women as able-bodied sailors, do they? Well that’s out then.
^^ He was unusually well-mannered yesterday.+ I don’t think he ran out of the room even once. And he seems quite pleased with his phone.
+ The big problem with visitors is the absence of leftovers. Like, a glass of soothing champagne tonight.
** I’ve now spent easily its list price in maths and physics books. But then I didn’t already have umpty-gazillion books on maths and physics.
*** No, I have at least twelve thumbs. I also have a slight problem about empty flat surfaces to practise folding on.^ But maths and physics are not enough! Origami is also important in SHADOWS and I need to know something about it too, before I Schrodinger’s-cat^^ it all up for the story! Why couldn’t I write about something easy, like vampires or dragons?
^ Now even worse than usual. I spent most of an hour I didn’t have this evening bringing the jungle indoors. But we’re apparently supposed to have several degrees of frost tonight and . . . I, er, folded. I have lost remarkably little so far and I see all those gallant geraniums pressing themselves against the warm house-wall and shivering and I feel like a murderer. One of the curious aspects of going back to the cottage at, oh, 3 a.m. or so is that you probably know by then if you’re having a frost or not. Ahem. The mews courtyard freezes at least two degrees sooner than I do at the cottage so if I have to claw Wolfgang free of the clutches of the Ice Giants it doesn’t necessarily mean that those faint popping noises you hear are geraniums giving up the ghost back at the cottage. We’ve had two or three frosty nights thus far when I’ve gritted my teeth and gone to bed anyway^^^ but last night caught me out. I didn’t think it was going to freeze and then it did, and pretty smartly too. The geraniums are definitely looking a little crumbly around the edges. ARRRRRGH. So when I went back to the cottage on the second hurtle with crisp-weather-enlivened hellhounds and it was already only about two degrees off freezing I . . . brought everything I could find in the dark . . . indoors. And the best thing about this? The BEST? That my kitchen—and I hope it will only be my kitchen—will be full of revitalised slugs tomorrow morning which were hibernating and believe that spring has come early. . . .
^^ http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+tote_bag,137590655 Hee hee hee hee.
^^^ I don’t have TIIIIIIIIME. Listen, all of you, at approximately 9:30 GMT tomorrow morning, I want any of you who happen to be awake to face in a Hampshire-ward direction and shout, YOU DON’T HAVE TIIIIIIIIME, because that’s when Niall, as we pull our coats on and prepare to descend the ladder after service ring, will tackle me (again) on the subject of handbells with Titus tomorrow evening.
† Last year’s Christmas present, you know.^
^ Last year? Two years ago? I’m too old to be bothered to make fine distinctions between mere years.
†† Sigh. Yes, he does read the blog.
††† I don’t have time for Christmas. And I have to get the frelling Christmas stuff down from my attic at Third House this year. It’s been at the mews before this, so I’ve been able to flounce and sulk at Peter for not hotfooting to accomplish this. Not only do I not get to flounce and sulk at someone else, I have to frelling do something.
‡ Barring bringing the jungle indoors
Cacti and doodles
This time next week I will be sitting at the kitchen table here at the mews writing a blog post and . . . paralysed with fear by the music for the Muddlehamptons’ Christmas concert.*
Yes, choir practise starts up again next Thursday, and right at the moment I’m chiefly remembering that Ravenel scares me. I’m also remembering that I was sufficiently a damn fool to agree to sing for the bishop at Constantinople** in . . . gleep . . . three weeks. And didn’t I start this doodling*** scam since the Muddlehamptons broke for the summer? So I’m doing my adding more stuff thing again??†
Sigh.
Meanwhile, Thursday afternoon handbells having soaked up a couple of perfectly good gardening hours, I have a courtyard at the cottage still full of plants and the hellhounds, while very restrained and tactful most of the time††, do need a place to pee before bed, as do most of us.††† I cut back another rampant geranium today. And therefore have about eight more incipient geraniums sitting in a pitcher of water. Anyone want a geranium?
Ajlr wrote:
I still think most of the standard cottage-garden herbaceous cranesbills are a dead bore.
It’s a big world, there’s room for both our views.
*goes off to admire own collection of cranesbills*
I can’t get rid of mine. My predecessor, who had Excellent Taste‡, had quite a few of them. They’re frelling impossible to eradicate. You hoick up several green-gardening-bags-full and next year . . . there they are again, creeping round the corners and trying to look placatory. But I make a really poor ruthless tyrant because I start admiring them for their tenacity. So, I have a few cranesbills. Feh. I’ve even got a new little fleck of alchemilla mollis at the cottage—gods know where it came from: some daring raid over the wall some night when I had a pillow over my head—which I got all soppy over and allowed to live. I had sworn undying vengeance on alchemilla mollis at the old house.
I like the willingness to flower/grow of pelargoniums but it’s the very distinctive smell of their leaves that puts me off. If someone came up with a smell-free variety I’d be very happy to give them houseroom. Until then, I shall have to stick with my couple of scented-leaves varieties.
I’d say it varies kind of a lot. The standard bedding geraniums are the ones with the real geranium reek. The fancy schmancy ones, not so much. Appleblossom does have the smell, but it’s pretty restrained. Depends on how much you loathe it, I suppose. Many, many, many, many years ago I used to house-sit at a house with a conservatory that was nothing but racks of geraniums and I could barely stand to stay in there long enough to water them all. PONG. Maybe the experience inoculated me.
Mrs Redboots wrote: I love cacti, and I especially love Christmas cactuses, and I really, really want a new one this year.
I realized, reading yesterday’s post this morning, that any not-a-plant-person will have been confused by my use of the word ‘cactus’. I didn’t think Christmas cacti actually were cacti—I thought they were succulents—but apparently they are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_Cactus The, er, point is that the spiny prickly barbed ones are flesh-eating monsters.‡‡ Succulents, and cacti like Christmas cacti, are soft little things, they just have a funny approach to leaves and stems. And flowers. I think my original pink Christmas cactus is one I took over back at the old house, which had been hanging on by a neglected thread for some time—which would make it over twenty years old. You can keep them under some control by sheer abuse, but eventually your conscience will get the better of you and you will pot them on . . . and then they grow to the size of small rooms and all the cuttings root too. Quite like geraniums. ‡‡‡
Mrs Redboots also wrote: Amazon—and its minions, including, lately, audible—has no trouble keeping me permanently logged in.
I wish this forum did! Does anybody else find they need to log in afresh at least once a week, or have I done something peculiar?
A lot of people have answered this already. I will just add . . . me too. Being admin is no help at all. This is why I ALWAYS write posts in Word before cautiously copying and pasting in WordPress.
* * *
* Unfortunately they just did Handel’s Messiah. I want to sing the Messiah. I know it’s a low taste. I DON’T CARE. There are some old war horses that, for some people, just go on being transcendent however often you play/hear them. Messiah—and La Traviata, and several of Beethoven’s symphonies—are that for me.^
And speaking of Beethoven’s symphonies, I want to sing in the Ninth too.
^ Ravel’s Bolero, however, should have been drowned at birth. I probably wouldn’t have gone to see ‘10’ in the first place—the plot irritates me profoundly—but anything featuring Bolero is a Must to Avoid.
How pleasing not to have to dither about it. Not to have gone around wringing my hands and murmuring, Oh, gods! It’s the greatest film ever made! Only it has Bolero in it! What shall I doooo?
** Constantinople Hampshire you understand. I assume the Orient Express has wifi but I doubt it takes hellhounds.
*** Pam Adams wrote: But it would be nice to differentiate a Fast doodle from a Tsornin doodle, wouldn’t it?
Clearly, Fast is the one without a hellcat (Narknon) lolling at his feet.
Well . . . probably not. People who don’t themselves sketch or doodle^ mostly don’t realise how surprisingly complicated a few scrawly lines on a page is. The reason the bats in the belfry doodle is going to have its own higher-price category is because it’s complicated. The $10 doodle is basically One Thing. The $15 doodle is either a repeat of the One Thing or a sort of . . . one and a half things. A horse and a folstza is inescapably two things. Bats plus bells in a belfry is at least two things.
If I could get my ass in gear to tidy up a bats in the belfry doodle^^ enough for Blogmom to post it we could finally get this show on the road. But . . . I’m hoping to leave the doodle option up for a while longer after the straight auction and the, er, not quite so straight book sale, finish. If it turns out that doodles continue being popular with a small mad^^^ segment of the blog-reading population, after the bell fund is wound up, we’ll just choose a permanent charity^^^^ for doodle profits and keep on.
At which point, although I’ll have to check with Blogmom about all of this, I assume we could widen the intake a bit. I don’t imagine the small blessed-with-sardonic-humour faction will keep me all that busy, you know? So you could ask for a horse and a hunting cat (Two Things) for $20. And the sad truth is I like being asked to draw stuff. This self-motivation thing is a ratbag, it’s not one of my long suits, and it gets used pretty frelling hard elsewhere.
Also, every new doodle is blog material. And you know how I feel about blog material.^^^^^
^ Apologies if I’m doing anyone in injustice here. Please remember, as you read on, I’m a very low grade doodler, and be merciful.
^^ It has not been a good few weeks for much of anything but keeping my head down. Sorry about that.
^^^ No, wait, I don’t mean mad, exactly. Um. Er. Yes. Possessing a rich and sardonic sense of humour is what I mean.
^^^^ Something to do with either critters or books, I think. They haven’t started teaching Seeing Eye dogs to read aloud, have they?
^^^^^ So don’t ask for anything embarrassing.
† Not to mention Treasures of Montezuma.
ajlr wrote: I don’t think that Montezuma 2 and 3 are available for the iPad yet. Probably just as well.
I looked it up and you’re right. I have just sufficient self-control not to poke around any farther and see if there’s a prospective release date yet. Stop looking at me like that. 2 is available on the iPhone, and it’s clearly going to be better on the iPad. Ergo. And speaking of better on the iPad, I’ve just downloaded Osmos for iPad. I have it on Pooka, and it will clearly be better on the bigger screen. . . . Clearly.
Anybody know anything about Master of Alchemy? Spirit? Fruit Ninja?
. . . I’ll get over this craze in a minute, really I will. I got over Angry Birds. I did eventually have to install an adult-proof lock on Fingerzilla till the addiction waned, but it did wane. It only took [gnzzzngt mumble] supplementary Green & Black’s.
†† Usually. I tweeted earlier about Darkness throwing up on the carpet. Usually I get him onto the kitchen lino in time. ARRRRGH.
††† They’re BOYS. It never ceases to amaze me how bad male aim is with those things^. I am not going to attempt to teach hellhounds to use the toilet.
^ Ever since I was introduced to Freud at an unnecessarily young age I have said that it is not penis envy it is directional pee envy.
‡ Ewww
‡‡ shalea wrote:
I gave up cacti, because they bite. First thing this one did was bite me. Second thing it did was bite the clerk. Sigh.
Sounds like my cactus. I don’t do cacti anymore, but this one is, at lowest possible calculation, 30 years old and I grew it from a seed (so I have a responsibility to it, of course).
Yes. Things do have a way of weaselling themselves into one’s life, if not precisely affections.
I am more than a little afraid of it because not only does it bite, the spines have seem to have nasty, tiny little barbed tips that embed themselves and then break off.
Some of them are mildly poisonous as well, or maybe I’m just allergic. Cacti. Charming. The problem is that I do find them charming, I just got tired of the pain. I had an entire little forest of the things in a sink at the old house which I eventually managed to kill off by not getting them indoors fast enough one winter. Whew. The one I have left from that era is now this deranged clump of tiny but dangerous bristly nodules all rising off one flimsy stem . . . which I have to keep propped up on the pot edge. It appears to be thriving in its peculiar way: it even flowers occasionally just to unnerve me.
I have neither excuse nor explanation for buying the New Vicious Beast yesterday. Except that secretly I like cacti. I just wish I had iron skin. I swear the NVB hisses when I walk by.
I had come to a conclusion about a year ago that it probably needed repotting and spent a lot of time contemplating how I might do that with a minimum of blood and pain, but was much relieved when a reliable plant nursery employee told me that I probably shouldn’t try unless I really wanted to (cacti not only have very minimal root systems so it’s not root-bound, and apparently expect very, very poor soil).
YAAAAY. Thank you. Meanwhile, however, I did finally buy some orchid compost yesterday. I have two orchids that keep refusing to die.
‡‡‡ Anybody want a Christmas cactus?