Teeth, chocolate and bells
I’ve been to the dentist again. He has many children to put through college.* This time however I came home with TEETH. Well, more teeth. Oh, all right, one more tooth. But it’s one of the big fat chewing ones. Plus a recap (so to speak) of the one behind that.** The truly horrifying thing however is the Next Phase which involves a phoenix egg and a sliver of bark from Yggdrasil and a drop of water from Charon’s bow-wave and one or two other things that . . . well, I really could buy a new car for what the Next Phase is going to cost. But ordinary dentists won’t look at my teeth*** Would it be so bad living on porridge for the rest of my life? Porridge and cake. I tweeted when I got home, numbed to the eyeballs barring the distant precognitive throb, that I was looking at my nice healthy green salad in dismay because it required chewing and would it be so bad to have cake for lunch? —And was promptly encouraged by several responding tweeters. Twitter is dangerous. In a lot of ways that don’t make it onto the stats.
Cake may have been somewhat more prominently than sometimes on my mind today however because last night I made:
Leftover-Christmas-Chocolate Bars
I realise that the concept of leftover chocolate is foreign to many of us, and once upon a time it would have been foreign to me too and at least mildly implausible to Peter. But that was Then. This is Now. Peter has mouth trouble and I have Post Menopausal Zero Metabolism. Meanwhile, however, we are notorious for loving chocolate, so people tend to give it to us. I do not wish to discourage this excellent habit. And furthermore now that I’ve invented Leftover-Christmas-Chocolate Bars I may have to arrange for leftover chocolate henceforth.†
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Butter a 13 x 9” pan
¾ c butter
1 ¾ c sugar
2 large eggs, room temp
1 ½ tsp REAL vanilla††
1 ½ c all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder††
½ c unsweetened cocoa powder
1 c chopped-up Leftover Chocolate. The point here is that it should be lots of different kinds. I had four or five different sorts plus some ginger fudge. Don’t chop too small or it’ll disappear in the baking.
Cream butter and sugar. I scrape with the spoon in my right hand and knead with my left. Better results sooner. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Then the dry stuff. Be sure everything is THOROUGHLY mixed. Then finally stir in the chopped-up chocolate.
Bake about half an hour. I started checking after about twenty minutes because there’s kind of a lot of chocolate involved and I wanted to make sure nothing untoward happened. It’ll still be slightly squidgy when you take it out, and I assume it’ll fall a little—mine did, but I was expecting it to. This is a sign of excellent chewy-squidginess-with-crunch-around-the-edges to come. I also wasn’t sure what the ginger fudge would do if it was baked so I sprinkled it over the top and put the pan back in the oven for five minutes, just to melt it enough to stick.
From a health and safety standpoint I have to admit these are not a great deal better than pure chocolate, but they are fearfully good. And they give you something to pass around during your handbell tea break.†††
* * *
* Not to mention the horses. I was going to say that I didn’t think they went to college . . . but in fact one of them does. And horse college costs as much as human college. Maybe more.
** Was I just In Denial or, thirty years ago, did dentists lead you to believe that once crowned, your tooth or teeth will stay crowned? This is I think the third refit I’ve had. At vast, three-years-undergrad-at-Cambridge prices, of course. And that doesn’t count the disintegrated root canals, which were another thing that thirty years ago were supposed to be for life. Pardon me, but first-world life expectancy for women has been well over fifty for longer than the last thirty years. Teeth: design FAIL.
*** At least not any longer than it takes to scream and run away.
† I’m aware that this is not an original idea. I’ve done something like it before myself. But this is probably the first time I’ve thought ‘why don’t I sweep up all the bits and pieces from not-quite-as-indulgent-a-Christmas-as-in-years-past and do something egregious?’
†† Maybe. I was making them at the mews and Peter doesn’t seem to have a set of measuring spoons. I know he made me take the fourteen or twenty-six spare sets of measuring spoons^ away with me but I hadn’t realised he didn’t have any. This Will Be Rectified. Meanwhile after forty-odd years of baking I probably know what a measuring-tsp quantity looks like.
^ When I was first over here, it was hard to find measuring cups and spoons in standard American sizes so I got . . . kind of paranoid. And would come back from a visit to the States with my suitcases not merely full of All Stars and black jeans but measuring cups and spoons. Glass jugs—which I prefer—have a built in population control mechanism, but metal measuring spoons live forever. I may have got a little carried away with the reserve measuring spoon sets.
††† I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a way to mention this on the blog that won’t just bore you all to death. I need to gloat here, okay? You might give me the benefit of remembering that I had a brain full of dental anaesthesia this afternoon, and in fact when I’d tried to practise on Pooka before real people showed up with real handbells it had been so awful I’d considered that perhaps it wasn’t the anaesthesia at all, I really had lost my mind. So I was feeling pretty cowed when Niall came in, started unwrapping handbells^, and said that we were going do an exercise that James had had the Saturday handbell group doing last weekend, which you might call Merry Go Round Plain Hunt. Plain Hunt is the pattern-before-the-pattern to all bell ringing: it’s the first thing you learn after you can more or less handle your bell, and it gives you a dreadful clue^^ of what is to come.^^^ Merry Go Round Handbell Plain Hunt is that after you have rung however many ordinary ‘courses’ as they’re called of plain hunt you pass one bell to the person on your left. And then you ring normal plain hunt again. On whatever weird pair of bells you’re now holding. This is not how you ring handbells: you ring the trebles, which are the one and the two, or the three and the four, the five and the six, or the tenors (if you’re ringing on eight), the seven and eight. This is what you learn; this is what you’re used to. This is what you can COPE WITH. But for merry-go-round, after the first pass you’re holding the one and the eight, or the two and the three, the four and the five, the six and the seven. Which means that diabolical SHAPE of what you’re ringing is blown to pieces. I can’t do this! I wailed—I can’t do anything unless I’ve thought about it and practised it first. I can’t think handbells on the spot like this.
But I did. It just about killed me, but I did it. I got it. I got all of the weird pairs: the 2-3, the 4-5, the 6-7, the 8-1. Yaay me. Gloat.
^ And yes, I agree, one of the reasons I need my own set of handbells is so I can knit little storage bags for them.
^^ Although not nearly dreadful enough
^^^ ARRRGH. Have just wasted half an hour trying to persuade either Google or any of my three bell-ringing simulators to produce a diagram of plain hunt major. It can’t be this hard. So, here. I’ve just written it out. Make that scrawled. The point is just to look at the shape of what you’re ringing if you’re ringing two bells. The method line is the same for everybody: you go straight out to the back, strike twice in last place, go straight down to the front, strike two blows in first place, and go out to the back again till someone says ‘that’s all’. The only trick when you’re ringing it in the tower is where you’re starting in this very straight in and out pattern. If you’re the two (or any even-numbered bell) you go down to the front first; if you’re the three (or any odd-numbered bell) you start by heading out to the back. Easy peasy. Now get your head around it if you’re ringing two bells. The front and back pairs are still pretty simple; they stay pretty parallel, one ‘blow’ as it’s called apart, and they only have to remember to cross at the front and the back. (The treble is in red, and the two is in blue. I should have done them both in the same colour, but bell ringers are trained to think of the treble by itself, because it usually is.)
But look at the shape of what the 3-4 rings (both in green). This is what I mean about the inside pairs. The 5-6 is like this only mirror-image. (I will spare you why the 5-6 is worse than the 3-4 in bob major.)
Yes, I should have used a straightedge to draw the lines.
Happy Thanksgiving, you calendar-minded people
And BE SURE to keep scrolling down to read Black Bear’s PEGASUS AND CAKE updates, and especially to applaud the Urbana, Illinois PRC’s poster.
I’ve been, as Niall likes to say (but he has better teeth than I do), dented. Two hours in the tortu—I mean the dentist’s chair this afternoon. I’m thinking, hey, McKinley, it’s only two hours—the day has twenty four of ’em. Yes, but not all hours are created equal. Hours spent in the dentist’s chair count for quadrillion.* I’m now officially shattered till 2251.** Then I had to, ahem, hurtle home and pelt out with hellhounds again*** because Thursday is handbell evening. Gaaaaaaah. A sane woman would CANCEL for pity’s sake† . . . but I left sanity behind long ago. ††
It was not one of our more glorious evenings. When it was just Colin, Niall and I, Niall was thirty three percent of us, bob minor on six bells is some really impressive algorithm easier than bob major on eight, and I’m actually not too bad at bob minor myself.††† Bob major . . . Niall is only twenty-five percent of us, Colin and Fernanda are still thinking like tower ringers‡ . . . and I can’t ring the damn thing to save my life.‡‡ The only thing that is saving us, to the extent that we are being saved, and we’re talking a broken spar in a gale halfway between South Africa and Tasmania and I’m sure there are sharks in the vicinity, is my peculiar small gift for ringing the lines of the method as I’m reading them off a piece of paper. If I were a magician, while everybody else was saving the world and creating Taj Mahals and Hanging Gardens of Babylon with a wand-wave and a few muttered words, I’d be cleaning shoes. Well, sometimes you really need clean shoes.‡‡‡ Sigh. But I think I may be reading the lines off a piece of paper for the rest of my semi-saved life. I’m not sure Niall was best advised to say brightly at the end of the evening, as we were all preparing to crawl away and drown our sorrows in our respective liquids of choice,§ John Paternoster told me that it took them a year to get bob major right! The Paternosters are handbell royalty. There are about eight of them—some brothers, some cousins, and at least one dad§§—I’ve even rung with John. Think Gary Cooper in HIGH NOON. I didn’t like ringing with John: he makes me feel like one of the townsfolk hiding behind a door and listening for the noon train. And it took them a year to get bob major right? Whimper.§§§
Meanwhile, for the majority of Days in the Life’s readers, it’s Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you’re having a better time than I am. The anaesthetic has worn off. It’s time to apply chocolate. . . .
* * *
* Which, assuming a conventional professional hourly rate, would explain the cost. AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE. You’re all planning on buying multiple copies of PEGASUS for Christmas presents, right? I really need the money. And I have to go back to R’lyeh in three weeks and do it all again. Including the writing-the-cheque-afterward part.
My dentist looked a little tired himself. The flush of chartreuse across his sharp cheekbones was muted, the slender writhing coils of his hair were looser than usual, even his long yellow talons seemed blunted. But his eyes still glittered when he started the drill, and the front eighty-four of his teeth that you can see when he smiles^ gleam in their own horripilant light.
^ AAAAAAAAAUGH
**Hey! Maybe I’ll meet Mr Spock!
*** I’ve realised that I love sports afternoons at the local comprehensive [school]. This means that there are kids everywhere on the big open grounds and morons walking their aggressive, mannerless dogs keep them on lead.
† Or possibly Shub-Niggurath’s.
†† Occasionally I send it a postcard.
††† At least some of the time, and particularly on the trebles.
‡ What is this second frelling clinky thing in my other hand. Make it go away.
‡‡ At least the other three of them have rung it in the tower (she says sullenly). I have not. I think I’ve fudged a plain course or two on the treble. I wouldn’t have a clue about inside.
‡‡‡ I’d be extremely glad for a wand-wave and a charm that would clean my All Stars without recourse to such low and inefficient options as laundry soap and washing machines.
§ No, actually. Cider—British brewed cider. I don’t drink champagne every night.^ And good cider is lovely.
^ See: writing cheques to dentists from R’lyeh. Even most of our champagne nights aren’t champagne, they’re just fizzy. Fortunately cheap fizz has got a lot better lately.
§§ Yep. All blokes. I’m not going there.
§§§ And speaking of whimper . . . have I told you that Beltower arrived? The ringing ap that Tilda recommended, because it has little cartoon people ringing the bells on your screen so in theory it looks more like the real situation in the tower, when you’re looking around at big real people ringing the bells? I loaded it yesterday. AAAAAAAAAAUGH.^ All right, maybe I’ll get accustomed to it. Maybe I’ll learn to use it and it will teach me Cambridge minor and Grandsire triples and Spliced Doolally Surprise Maximus. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and PEG II will be finished, and I can read the ending and find out what happens.
^ There sure is a lot of screaming tonight. Okay, I have no reason to give you this link except that it was in today’s GUARDIAN and I like Stephen Sondheim. The article is excerpted from his FINISHING THE HAT which regular blog readers will remember Peter gave me for my birthday last week. Sondheim does not suffer from any nonsense about Pollyanna or not speaking ill of the dead, which is only what you’d expect from the man responsible for SWEENEY TODD. It’s a thought-provoking article for anyone at least remotely interested in classic music theatre: which would include me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/nov/24/stephen-sondheim-on-lyrics
But this is the bit I want to draw your attention to, even if you’re not interested in music theatre, classic, Sondheim, or otherwise:
The pencils I write with are Blackwings, a brand formerly made by Eberhard Faber but alas no longer. Their motto, printed proudly on the shaft, is “Half the pressure, twice the speed” and they live up to that promise. They utilise very soft lead, which makes them not only easy to write with (although extremely smudgy) but also encourages the user to waste time repeatedly sharpening them, since they wear out in minutes. They also have removable erasers which, when they have dried out, can be reversed to resume their softness.
I write on a yellow legal pad with 32 lines, allowing alternate words to be written above one another without either crowding or wasting the space. These pads are hard to find, as most come with fewer or more lined spaces. Having been warned that stationery supplies are frequently discontinued, I had the good sense to stock up on them, as well as the Blackwings, before they disappeared, and now have a life-time supply.
Emphasis mine. I love this. I am so there. You find a system that you like and you want to keep it, and progress and innovation be damned. The problem is that you couldn’t do it with typewriter ribbons, because eventually they dry out, and then the moving parts of your typewriter wear out and suddenly you find yourself with a computer. Screaming. . . . I wonder if Sondheim had to put in a weight-bearing attic floor anywhere—?
Ow, comprehensively revisited
Got an email from a friend a little while ago: Dentist bad, worse, or unspeakably horrible?
Um . . .
The ‘unspeakable’ part might only be functional, ie can’t/don’t want to open my mouth, except that I managed to oversleep this morning* and it was an early appointment**. From this a long cascade of unfortunateness descends. When I finally woke up I looked at the clock, gave a someone-is-standing-on-my-tail hellhound yelp, banged into the first seven articles of clothing*** I could find, tore downstairs, scooped hellhounds out of their crate†, added All Stars†† to the array and hit the road running. The hellhounds are better at this last part than I am.†††
But by the time we got back from our truncated hurtle I was well into Panic Mode, so I had the cup of very, very, very strong tea but couldn’t really face lunch. And I hadn’t had time for my breakfast apple(s).‡ So I leaped into the Wolfmobile and shot off to Mauncester on zero food and a megakick of caffeine and sugar. I am a sane, responsible grown up. I am.
They scraped me off the ceiling at the dentist’s and pumped me full of anaesthesia. The kind with adrenaline, so I wouldn’t bleed so much. Have I mentioned that this was the first stage of my first implant? They’re going to slash open my gum and drill a hole in my jawbone. I was really looking forward to this experience. So the adrenaline-laced junk is a perfectly reasonable choice, and the ‘not bleeding so much’ part appealed to me. Except for the fact that after they filled me up like a swimming pool I started shaking so badly it was hard to read the magazine‡‡ I was holding, or perhaps that was my eyeballs vibrating in my skull. I was, you see, sent out to read in the hall while they turned the office into an operating theatre. Jeezum Crow. I’d have been terrified when I was finally waved back in if it hadn’t looked so much like a TV set.
LOUD NOISES. BLOOD. FISH ON THE CEILING.‡‡‡
Looks really good, said the dentist from R’lyeh jovially.
I am instructed in rolled-handkerchief biting, the correct application of packets of frozen peas, and how much ibuprofen I can take before I become the Incredible Hulk. And sent on my way. There’s a funny little peg sticking up in the middle of what used to be a gap in my teeth, and four extremely neat little stitches around the edges.
I got back to the mews, looked queasily at my rejected salad, and made another cup of tea. I put a cosy on my cup and took hounds out for a hurtle. And did I mention handbells? Thursday is handbells. I got back from hurtling, drank the extremely well steeped tea, and bolted back to the cottage to repel boarders, I mean, welcome my fellow ringers. Fernanda is still struggling with the basics of bob minor, and Niall, who is like this, kept me on the 3-4 which forced me to concentrate. Unfortunately Colin was there today too so then we had to ring major. Eight bells! I don’t ring major! And I have no brain! It’s all burnt up with adrenaline and caffeine and PAIN!§ And a certain lack of calories. I still haven’t had anything to eat. Food. Ewww. There’s got to be a better way.
Handbell ringers left. I hurtled hounds again. They’re still time-short, but they’ll just have to be time short today. I staggered down to the mews.
I am eating.§§ I may live. You can check in again tomorrow.
* * *
*How . . . not unusual
**Okay, as I count early.
*** Bra, knickers, two socks, jeans, tshirt, little hot pink cardigan with white polka dots
† Oooooh! An adventure! We like adventures! Will there be things to chase?
†† hot pink
††† I haaaaaaaaaate other dog owners! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! The rec ground beyond Warlock Gate has been discovered by way too many of the Exacerbated Fathead subheading of this generally unlovable^ clan. There’s one dog we’ve now met several times, always off-lead, always borderline aggressive—if my guys ever grow up and stop presenting as puppies, I’m going to be in the middle of canine gang warfare several times a frelling week. And yesterday we got jumped by an Alsatian about the size of Peter. Turned out he was wearing a muzzle, but I’d already had my heart attack at that point, you know? The owner’s girlfriend thought this was hysterical. If my hands hadn’t been full of leads I might have hit her, so what a good thing my hands were full of leads.
And today . . . those of a sensitive disposition might want to look away now . . . My Best Beloved Hot Pink All Stars are very old. Here’s a photo: 
Old. They were the driving force behind my desire to find waterproof shoe liners, okay? There are HOLES in the bottom of both soles. Waterproof shoe liners are so I can go on wearing them a little longer, especially on days of high trauma, like this one.
Now—do I have to remind you delicate flowers to look away?—contemplate stepping in dog crap with a hole in the bottom of your shoe (even when covered by a waterproof liner).
^ A few of our forum members excepted. And the owner of an adorable Pomeranian+ we meet occasionally around here.
+ No, really! She is my Pomeranian Conversion experience like my very-ex-British editor’s stud Pekinese was my Pekinese Conversion experience. Unfortunately I don’t dare tell you about my very-ex-British editor because he just might concievably know about this blog. He and his wife bred and raised wolfhounds . . . and Pekinese. And he introduced me to Eva Ibbotson’s books, so he is a Force for Good. Nobody’s perfect.
‡ Hot off the tree. This is really appalling timing for having to eat soft food for a few days.
‡‡ Kew, as in the Royal Botanical Gardens. Usually one of my favourite journals, but I may have just imprinted it with today’s events.
‡‡‡ He needs a new DVD. I’ve seen this one kind of a lot.
§ The anaesthesia has worn off. And I’m going through the arnica pretty much with both hands. Arnica works surprisingly well for most things for most people^, but you do kind of have to keep your nerve to begin with. I started off taking it about every five minutes and am now down to . . . um. Over an hour. I’ll take the ibuprofen if I have to to get through the night—fumbling for tiny white pills gets old when you’re trying to sleep—but at this rate of improvement I won’t have to.
^ And for incised wounds, like this one, you might throw in a staphysagria.
§§ Broccoli (somewhat overdone in the circs) and fish salad. I like broccoli. Get used to it.^ And the fish salad features Peter’s mayonnaise.
^ Actually . . . broccoli is a comfort food for me. Okay, I admit it. That’s sick.
Draggy Monday
Had to go to the dentist (again).* My face was numb for hours. Smiling at people during hellhounds’ afternoon hurtle I was wondering what kind of awful grimace I was actually producing.** For variety however we were attacked by a pair of on lead dogs. So charming. Beagles, and the woman holding them . . . couldn’t. They dragged her across the pavement, barking and snarling . . . and hellhounds and I were out in the middle of the busy main road before I had time to come up with a better plan . . . there was no better plan: trotting along on short lead (short lead, right? Because we don’t want to bother anyone who might be sharing pedestrian space with us?) which is to say with me slowing us down, we didn’t have time to turn and run.***
And then there was Old Eden’s monthly practise tonight. All bell ringing practises are a crap shoot because you never know who’s going to show up, but Old Eden’s monthly is a bigger, sillier crap shoot than most because there’s no local band, so it’s whatever haphazard hodgepodge Vicky and I have managed to scrape together. I’m the one who does the phoning round the Sunday afternoon before; Vicky attacks people in the street . . . well maybe not exactly attacks. But she’s the one knows every ringer in a hundred mile radius and what they’re doing on a given night. We get some quite ridiculous excuses for not coming. Mandy, one of Colin’s regulars†, with whom I rang the wedding at Gallowglass last Saturday week, and who promised to come to Old Eden tonight, phoned with some absurd story about having to look after her six-year-old grandson because his mum’s in hospital having another one. Feeble. Very feeble.
There were finally only seven of us, and only four of those method ringers, so it ended up being a Bash the Beginners night—although in effect this means Bash the Back Up as well, because while the beginners mostly get to swap off, so you’ve got only one rogue bell at a time to worry about, us ballast ringers have to stand to our ropes and keep going course after course. There are various ways of preventing yourself from going mad with boredom.†† Mine tonight was to ring the five. I’ve told you about Old Eden’s bells: they are possessed by demons. Five of the six of them are only possessed by one or two demons each. The number-five bell is possessed by at least a dozen.††† But this is another of those how to be a useful ringer things: a useful ringer can ring what she rings from any position‡ and on any bell, however many demons are involved. So I clung grimly to the five, and yanked it down toward the front and shoved it up to the back again while it yelled and squirmed and tried to bite my hands and fall crash at my feet and generally failed to cooperate, and . . .
. . . I’m very tired. The frelling anaesthesia has something to do with it.‡‡ At least wrestling with the five made my blood circulate fast enough that it finally wore off.‡‡‡ And the fluey thing, which was this morning resentfully slinking away has come skulking back again like a burglar, testing to see if the anaesthesia left any doors open. I might try doing that weird thing again—what’s it called?—going to bed early.§
* * *
* Yes, he’s sending all seven^ of his children to uni on my teeth.
^ Well, he has four. That’s enough college fees to lay up for to explain his prices.+
+ Because ordinary dentists scream and fall back when they see my teeth. I have to go to a staggeringly overpriced specialist. Don’t talk to me about NHS dentists. They’re a myth, like blue roses~ and fountains of youth~~ and cat-proof gardens.~~~
~ And a rose with a delphinium gene in it to make it blue will not be a rose.
~~ The illustration for this in my mind’s eye is by Edward Gorey.
~~~ I put a note through Phineas’ door this afternoon. It said: Hope all’s well. Hope you had a good weekend. Hope you go away again soon.
Dentist from R’yleh has cats. As well as the dogs, the horses and the (rescued battery)= chickens. He has lots and lots of outgoings to pay.
= I like the idea that someone who tortures people for a living rescues battery chickens in his spare time. Although I think the chickens are his wife’s idea.
** Smiling? What am I smiling for? I’m a hellgoddess! People ought to cringe when I grimace at them!
*** I then came home to this, tweeted by EMoon: For all dog owners: Dorrana Durgin’s comments on loose dogs…get a clue and use that leash. http://tinyurl.com/2vhmx42 I retweeted so fast I may have melted a few keyboard keys.
† Although she also runs her own tower. . . . She is, in fact, ringing master in the town where dentist from R’yleh lives. The world is not just small, it’s too small.
†† I don’t begrudge the time spent ringing endless plain courses of whatever for beginners to bounce off of: bell ringing is an incredibly labour-intensive sport/art/science, and you need an entire band to drag one learner on. I still need entire bands to drag me on even though I’m learning Grandsire Triples inside rather than treble to plain hunt.^ Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that ringing plain courses of whatever over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER again is any less boring. You’re just bored while exuding a faint holy glow.
^ Which is the next step after call changes. You all remember what call changes are, right?
††† While you’re waiting to pull off you can hear them gibbering.
‡ One of those really excellent moments in your progress as a ringer is the first time someone asks you if they can have the bell you were about to ring for the method just called, because it’s the bell they’re most comfortable on . . . and you say sure, because you can ring that method from any bell.
‡‡ I wonder how much my post-dentist exhaustion is the anaesthesia and how much is sheer terror . . . but not enough to volunteer for an experiment in which I get a faceful of anaesthesia and then measure how crummy I feel after it wears off.
‡‡‡ And—within limits—yes, I would rather have a face going bang bang bang. At least I know where it is this way. Painkillers are excellent but they are also an out-of-body experience. Generally speaking I’d rather be in my body.
§ I could read a book. I finished one last night. It’s by an author I like enormously . . . and it wasn’t very good. If it wasn’t by someone I like I wouldn’t have bothered finishing it. This is so depressing. I may need to do something drastic to restore my faith in literature, like reread something by Peter Dickinson.
Major bleeaurgh
I am suffering post-dental-anaesthesia brain failure*, compounded with No Sleep to Speak of generalised constitutional dysfunction plus malevolinternetitis in one of its infinite (and infinitely malevolent) manifestations, so if I suddenly stop making any kind of fringrabbleponk zurlich arumblux naffare sense, that’ll probably be dinzle dwab duggee dorg why. Also it’s raining. Hard.** And my jaw hurts. And Finale, software music programme from Abaddon, isn’t working. I think, in this case, however, it’s the laptop—still more joy. Raphael, Computer Man A, was already booked for tomorrow—the laptop has been whining and hiccupping and falling over a lot lately, and today Peter’s computer decided to get in on the act: computer performance art. Not recommended. So Gabriel, Computer Man B, is going to come along tomorrow and tilt at demons too.*** Maybe we have gremlins, the kind with zapper fingers and UDP-slot eyes and way too many brain pixels. Or maybe a new hellmouth has opened under New Arcadia.
I favour the hellmouth explanation. Or Borgmouth anyway. Which would also explain this area’s reputation as the Bermuda Triangle of Hampshire†, which worries me, as I have previously expressed on these virtual pages. That’s not just rain thumping down out there, it’s grey goo, which, as we know, is neither grey nor gooey.†† Other indications that the world as we know it is coming to an end include that we were chased by a cat this afternoon: Honeybun, listen to me. You’re a fine specimen and all but we still outweigh you by about ten to one and these guys run faster than you do. Trust me on this. —Possibly it didn’t like the weather either. Chaos was dancing up and down at the end of his lead saying pleeeeease, he wants to play, I can tell he wants to play†††—and making, as I think about it, rather cat-like noises. The answer was still no. I am no fun at all. Especially when there seems to me blood in prospect.
It’s illegal to go to bed before midnight, isn’t it? It’s been so long since I tried. . . . ‡
* * *
* Highlighted, accentuated and fulsomely embellished by anticipatory dread. I’m booked in for my first implant in a fortnight. You’re so much better now, said dentist from R’lyeh brightly, I don’t think we even need to sedate you!
Thanks, I said, digging the fingernails of the hand I fell down and broke the last time they sedated me into my palm.
** Grumbling noises from dog bed. We wanted a hurtle this afternoon, not a swim! We don’t like swimming! —At least I have the consolation of not watering the garden. Pity I can only hang hellhound harness over the Aga rail, however, and not the hellhounds themselves. They tend to crush themselves up against the bottom of it in a very inefficient manner: you want air circulation for your best drying.
*** And Colin’s away, so I didn’t even get to ring bells tonight. Although in these particular circumstances this is probably just as well. Aside from the fact that if I managed to hit myself in the face with a bell rope tonight—a not unheard of event—I would probably burst into tears.
† Why is it that Pooka’s server, to whom I pay vast quantities of money every month^ to keep her in electrons, always seems to manage to get their messages through^^, even when nobody else can?
^ Why does this already seem to have been going on for a very long time? It can’t have been going on very long, I’m only barely into level two of Angry Birds.+ Granted I am as talent-free about Angry Birds as I am about so much of our modern world, but clueless obstinacy will drag you along here as it does in, say, bell ringing. Gods. As talent-free as I am about our modern and our traditional worlds. A hellgoddess could get depressed.
+ Most evenings I’m more into roaring and mindless city-stomping than I am in the carefully calculated exploding of green pigs. But the birds and I had a rather long truculent hiatus while the archons kept failing me even though I’d wiped out their dranglefabbing pigs. But Raphael did his flaming PCMCIA~ trick and the pigs grinned one last time and began behaving themselves. And I’ve started signing my emails to Raphael ‘Angry Bird’. Ha ha ha ha ha.
~ Even archangels have to move with the times
^^ ‘Hi! Can we interest you in another incredibly shiny service package full of acronyms you don’t recognise but we can assure you are very very cool and really it doesn’t matter if you never understand how to use them, it’s enough that they are cool and that you pay us for them?’
†† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo But isn’t it interesting that the book that first coined ‘grey goo’ is roughly contemporaneous with our first discovery of the Borg, thinly disguised as it was as fiction in ST:TNG. I mean, did you ever really believe [deleted by Pollyanna^]? But the Borg were clearly real.
^ Hey! I thought it was only books!
††† Like you could tell that border collie in Old Eden and that cocker spaniel in Ditherington wanted to play till I started keeping you cranked in at heel when we went past because I got tired of watching you get your nose bitten.^
^ And this week’s Idiot Dog Owner Story is: we were gambolling across the fireworks field+ when a Shadow That Shouldn’t Be There caught my peripheral vision, and I saw a gigantic black Labrador standing at attention, head and tail up, staring at us. The fireworks field is below the cricket field and there’s a bank and a few bits of shrubbery where things like owners may be concealed. I had just seen what was clearly a large yellow Labrador and what might possibly have been an accompanying human when the Black Rocket launched itself toward us, its ruff standing out like a lion’s. *&^%$£”!!!!! —CALL YOUR DOG! I yelled. I could see the whites of its eyes and the foam on its lips when . . . it suddenly dropped its head, ears and tail, shrank to about two thirds of its previous size and started making little whimpering noises. GAAAAH. Okay, not complaining, we’re all still alive. And at this point, the two-legged moron on the other side of the field shouts in this nasty, condescending and yet aggressive way, Is there a problem?
YES THERE’S A PROBLEM. I WANT TO KILL YOU.
+ Where Guy Fawkes is burnt in effigy again every year
‡ And the moral to this story is, don’t take nights off. Because it’ll be the next night you really need to take off.