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Another Thrilling Thursday
I am indecently tired. It shouldn’t be allowed. Here, Mr* Policeperson, please arrest my red blood corpuscles, they are staging a lie-in and I have hellhounds to hurtle** and a novel to finish.
It is, however, remarkably tiring, sitting in your dentist’s glossy high tech office with the £100,000,000 river view that you are subsidizing, and listening to him list all the things all the things alllllllllllllll the things that need to be done. What does that cost, I say at intervals. His answers are the really tiring part.*** We go through this ‘treatment plan’ thing about once a year and it never gets shorter. How bad can teeth be? This bad.
I then galloped around town † pursuing errands, as one does, †† allowing (barely) enough time to get home and take a hellhound or two for a sprint before I had to . . . meet Niall and Colin††† . . .
. . . at the tea shop . . .
. . . to demonstrate handbell ringing to the proprietor. . . .
. . . whose daughter is the handbell wedding next month. Yes. It’s official. There was always the chance that once she’d heard us‡ doing our weirdness she’d say, no, no, bring on the ukuleles and the cimbaloms!‡‡ But she didn’t. We’re nailed. Frell. We’re also going to use Colin’s handbells, which are bigger than Niall’s and make more noise. They’re monsters. They’re the size of motorcycle helmets, and the harmonics per dong go on a remarkably long time, as if it’s several-times-six bells ringing. Because everything makes me nervous, including ringing sample excerpts for someone who is considering hiring us, ‡‡‡ and on strange bells, I insisted that we spend our practise time after the gig ringing plain bob minor on the motorcycle helmets so they’ll feel familiar on the day. They’re so heavy they make my hands shake. Which may be a good thing. Oh, it’s just the weight of the bells.
And, speaking of things that go dong:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204401/Clock-The-Big-Ben-replica-built-50-bales-straw.html
Keep scrolling. It gets better. I think I like the telescope best.
* * *
* Or possibly Ms, but I think one of our little bouncy young Ms Cops would want to call for back up to take on an obviously dangerous felon such as myself. Maybe they’re all black belts in hand-to-hand death, but they don’t look like it. They look like cupcakes.
They all wear the Kevlar waistcoats though. Even out here in the back of beyond, to the extent that the south of England ever gets to back of beyondness,^ where barring the Pub on the Corner^^ we’re all pretty painfully law-abiding.^^^ The burglars have to come down from London to give us some excitement.
^ As an ex Maine girl, I laugh drily.
^^ My corner. Of course.
^^^ Now that I’ve got my blog entry out of it+ Peter took his warrant++ to the framer.+++ The framer says he gets quite a few royal pieces of paper for framing. It’s that kind of area.
+ Peter does have the odd saintly quality here and there. In between leaving the refrigerator door open and putting the dirty dishes in the cupboard instead of the dishwasher.
++ Speaking of cops
+++ Peter asked me if I had any views about a frame. I said I didn’t want it to look like it had been done as a high-school wood-working project by a disaffected fourteen year old. Peter’s funny. I wouldn’t absolutely put it past him to look for a do-it-yourself particle board kit~ at the local handyman warehouse.
~ optional plastic curlicues
** Hellhounds finally decided to eat something last night at about . . . mmrmph. Late. I had already thrown most of it out—we’re talking about two days’ recycling here—and I looked down from the piano and saw Darkness thoughtfully trying to lick the design off the bowl. Aaaaugh. So late plus five minutes, hellgoddess on her knees by the bin, fishing out handfuls of only-just-thrown-out two-day-old squishy dog food.
We are presently Deciding Whether or Not to Eat Supper. Sigh. You’re destroying my quality of life, guys. . .
*** Especially when you’re living on fumes^ till you get a novel done.
^ You think money doesn’t have a smell?
† Feeling surprisingly small and bare without accompanying brace of red-eyed carriers of doom.
†† No, wait! Never mind the dentist! Never mind the dubiously semi-eating hellhounds! Never mind other assorted traumas I haven’t got to yet! They had jeans in my size! THEY HAD JEANS IN MY SIZE! This hasn’t happened in years! Last time my penknife and keys started coming through not merely pockets but the legs of my jeans and those permanent creases in intimate areas started letting the arctic blasts through I ordered jeans on line, which was not a happy experience. Who knew Levis would mess with the classic 501?^
So, JEANS! IN MY SIZE! It’s a good day! In fact it’s a good week!^^ Any of you out there who are a Nonstandard Shape will understand.
^ Although I personally wish the classic 501 had a zipper.
^^ Actually it is a good week. The Friday afternoon wedding bells have been cancelled. Not the wedding. Just the bells for the wedding. Rough on Vicky, who had performed heroics finding eight available ringers on a weekday afternoon but . . . Yaaaaay. Peter and I are going to a garden centre—any garden centre—any big garden centre—to celebrate.+
+ Now let me tell you about my rose orders. But not tonight.
††† Disastrous Monday bell practise was not in vain, by the way. We rang Kent last night at Chirpington. It was pretty funny. Only three of the six of us knew what we were doing, which would not include me, plus the treble had no clue and the two couldn’t keep her bell up so she was always in slightly the wrong place. Wild Robert was so busy keeping them sorted—plus half an eye on me—that he miscounted^ and we rang an extra lead. I wouldn’t have noticed—I got down to the front, discovered there was no treble to dodge with, decided I’d miscounted, and started toiling uphill again—but Niall and Marilyn noticed. They figured Wild Robert had enough to do, so they just kept ringing too.
^ It happens. Us hoi polloi are unduly . . . delighted.
‡ I only found out yesterday that we were doing this demo
‡‡ What is unclear to me is how this innocent woman generated the idea of handbells at her daughter’s wedding. I suspect the fell touch of Penelope^, who spells the proprietor in the tea shop kitchen.
^ Niall’s wife, some of you may recall, who would rather walk barefoot over hot piranhas than ring a handbell herself. It’s when Penelope stopped teaching night classes at the local university and was home in the evenings that we transferred handbell practise from Niall’s house to the cottage.
‡‡‡ Which is probably even worse than ringing with a lot of really good tower ringers sitting around watching you
Mostly of Imps and Hellhounds
The weather (with reference to immediately previous Note) is only one manifestation of a rather lumpy day. There’s been a lot of imp activity*: towels keep falling off towel rails, items that were right there in front of me mysteriously disappear, pairs of All Stars I know I’ve just put away keep reappearing in the middle of the floor, anything I want out of my knapsack is always on the bottom, and I’ve managed to leave a dark brown tea ring on my ancient porous plastic sink, which will be a big ugly freller to get off.
And furthermore there is no pupdate today. Whiiiiiiiiiine. B twin has been so disobliging as to go to a sheep show.** She has however promised us a proper full length final*** climactic pupdate as the small furry hooligans—er—I mean sweet adorable puppies pass the eight-week mark and are ready to go out adventuring into the world and begin to contemplate on the distant horizon the prospect of becoming . . . dogs.†
I’ve been running hard against the clock all day because I had both the dentist this afternoon and handbells this evening. The clock has been winning, of course.†† I had a bunch of stuff to get into the post today, which is to say last week, so I was cramming it into envelopes this morning—with one eye on the sky since we’ve had black clouds playing leap-frog all day and I have two hours of hurtle to get in—and of course the self-stick glue doesn’t work†††. Arrgh. Postage is now also so painfully ridiculous that it’s worth a little faffing around with your postage meter and a pair of scissors: I got my resubscription to the (American) Homeopathy Today magazine under the 10 g limit by cutting off the ads and imprecations to raise your level of membership. In spite of the obviously heavy swathe of tape to hold the nonworking-glue flap down. Small cheer.‡
There’s a strange dog staying at my semi-detached neighbour’s. He’s got a much bigger garden than I do ‡‡ but it opens on the road, and his gates are always open. This is not a dog that riots up and down our cul de sac, which is a good thing, since the road at the bottom is disastrously busy. But it is a dog that comes out through the gates and stands in the road whining piteously when she sees hellhounds emerge from our front door . . . but by the time we get to the top of the hill and Wolfgang, she’s retreated back to the lawn beyond the driveway and gives us a silent who, me? stare. This winds the hellhounds up. Granted most things wind the hellhounds up, but I have some sympathy in this instance. I hadn’t thought about Psycho Dog when we piled out the door today, the plan being that we would walk to the PO and post our taped-shut, carefully weighed letters before we hit the high trails. Psycho Dog came out and did her turn, so I suddenly had ramping leviathans‡‡‡ at the ends of the leads . . . I can’t yell No! with letters in my mouth, and I can’t hold onto rampant anything with letters in my hands. . . .
The dentist . . . well, the dentist was the dentist. Was the dentist. And will continue to be the dentist for some time. I get to go back in a few more weeks. Joy. But if this entry is a little less incisive than usual, put it down the effect of my usual extra-quadruple dose of aenesthetic: and it was one of those little insignificant, positively negligible cavities that in fact turned into one of those ‘just a little more . . . just a little more’ details with the drill. But then, I would hardly know I’d been to the dentist if I didn’t come out on my hands and knees. §
But that is not the end of the day’s trials. Handbells. There were handbells. And at the end of the evening, Niall said, Remember that wedding we rang handbells for last month? You had a good time, didn’t you?
What do you mean, I had a good—No! No! No!
Yes. We have another handbell wedding in September. §§
* * *
* Imps get underfoot, like hellhounds. Sometimes you can only tell the imps from the hellhounds because the imps giggle: their effect on towels and All Stars is similar. Hellhounds produce an astonishing range of noises, but giggling, thus far, is not one of them. I think I’ve told you before that—fortunately—common-or-garden variety barking is not much indulged in either, and I try to suppress this when it appears: Darkness is a bit of a barker. I do permit one or two sharp Commands for Attention: he likes to lie in the middle of the floor and then adjure me to rub his tummy. This of course quickly turns into a free for all, since Chaos has no intention of being left out. ^
I get so used to the mostly-minor racket they make that I forget the effect it may have on other people. I’m as pathological as possible about preventing them from flinging themselves on passers-by unless the passers-by have positively asked for such tribulation, but we do tend to swoop down on people and I don’t reel in till the last moment. Tearing over the countryside not long ago they were doing their harmonic double growl over ownership of a plastic bottle as we barrelled down on a pair of Serious Walkers, booted, gaited, and walking-sticked, and shortly before I would start cranking my guys in, the bloke whirled around, stared at us, and said, I thought that was a motorbike.
^ Yes, I keep demonstrating that I am a Bad Dog Owner: when Darkness orders me to rub his tummy, I usually do. But hellhounds are not big advantage-takers: they can’t be bothered. A little roast chicken+, a little rioting, it’s all good. But ruling the universe is not their idea of fun.++
+ The drawback to eating roast chicken in this household is that hellhounds come and stare at you. You’re eating our food! they say. I find this pretty funny in creatures who regularly take the attitude that eating is optional and they’re not in the mood. Darkness does at least more or less eat it as it comes, when he eats. Chaos tends to eat the chicken out and then, left with a bowl of slightly-soggy-with-chicken-stock kibble, hunch up and look ill-used.
Some cat-oriented forum person asked why, if hellhounds will actually eat chicken, I don’t just feed them chicken? The first answer—which someone gave before I got there—is nutritional. Dogs aren’t pure carnivores like cats. The second answer is cost. We spend a frelling fortune on chicken as it is. And plain brown rice was a lot cheaper than fancy niche-market no-cereal kibble is. Sigh.
++ Much. I am presently trying to eat my supper~, write this entry . . . and fend off hellhounds who, having failed to eat as much of their supper as they should after having failed to eat most of their lunch, have decided that it is the perfect moment for sticky-falling-apart toy throwing and general mayhem. Yes, I could tell them to Go Lie Down, but they’d look so sad.
~ which happens to be roast chicken
** www.sheepshow.com A big sheep show. Yeep.
*** Well maybe not absolutely final final
† And may they all be good eaters.
†† I have a basket of decreasingly wet laundry that’s been waiting to get hung up for two days. Fortunately I mostly wear cotton jersey and denim. Besides, wrinkles are nearly de rigueur with All Stars.
††† More imp work.
‡ Another item for the post today was the bill for the Hot Water Heater Man which was what, ten days ago? It arrived yesterday. And down at the bottom it says, payment by return of post please. By return of post? What? What happened to thirty days?
‡‡ If you’ve got a garden, it’s bigger than mine at the cottage. People restricted to balconies and windowsills are allowed to say their gardens are smaller than mine. And it had better be a small balcony.
‡‡‡ More the crocodile end than the dolphin end of Leviathan.
§ I can write a cheque sitting on the floor. It’s not a big deal. Although interaction at the dentist’s front desk has got more challenging because both the regular receptionists have taken an interest in how PEGASUS is coming along. Maybe they’re just worrying about their salaries for next year.
§§ This is really high ranking, ambitious imp behaviour.
Fire and champagne
I went to the dentist today. If I were speaking instead of writing I would be saying: I wenh to thh dennis unhnay.
I am a lopsided chipmunk.
This was supposed to be a little, minor trip to the dentist! A weeny little filling! A mere bagatelle of the dark dental arts!
I got there and sidled suspiciously into the fancy chair.* The dentist took a quick look at the specs on the computer screen–you know those dental diagrams that look like the blueprints of the top secret installation below the Pentagon–and said off-handedly, I will have to chop . . . I mean hack . . . uh . . . slash . . . sever . . . uh . . . REMOVE a piece of your gum to complete this filling.
Why have I never noticed how shiny this dentist’s eyes are? And how very long his canine teeth are?
So then he spent three hours pumping anaesthetic into my face, which, in my case, is probably a good idea, but today my face has decided that it’s part helium balloon. Or chipmunk.
Then he drilled for a while. That’s always fun. Look at the pretty fishies on the video screen (only partly blocked by the spotlight)! Ooooh! Pretty fishies! Owwwww!
Then he handed me something about the size and shape of a jump-rope handle made out of silver metal. If you’d just hold onto that, he said. Unh? I said. It’s to ground you, he said. UNH? I said. When I start peeling off vast swathes of your gum, he said, I mean ripping off a slender unnoticeable sliver of your gum, I will be doing it with a small electric blowtorch . . . I mean device. The jump-rope handle merely completes the circuit.
Aaaugh! He’s going to ELECTROCUTE me!
Absolutely nothing to worry about, he said. You’ll barely notice it after the anaesthetic wears off. It’s just . . . there’s a rather nasty smell while it’s going on.
There certainly is a nasty smell. That’s your flesh frying. They do it this way, you know, so you won’t bleed all over the filling. Cauterisation. The Spanish Inquisition was rather fond of the process I believe.
So I reeled out of the dentist’s and raced for the car and put my foot down on the way home, so I’d get there before the adrenaline caused by the fish video wore off. And slumped in my chair here and–just for something to do–tried to get my eyes to focus on PEGASUS. We’re having fish** for dinner because it’s easy to chew, said Peter. I’ve put a bottle of Chardonnay*** in the refrigerator. Or do you think you need champagne?
Dunno yet, I mumbled. Put a bottle of champagne in to get cold just in case. Will do, said Peter.
The hellhounds’† invocations having become somewhat pressing, I took them out for their afternoon hurtle.†† When I got back and was fumblingly removing hellhound harnesses††† in a throbbing, still-half-a-chipmunk manner Peter said, I didn’t put a bottle of champagne in after all.
The hellgoddess stiffens, a hellhound harness dangling from one hand.
Since we’re both out tomorrow, it would be wasteful.
Hellgoddess remains bent over, her dangerous, can-cauterise-with-an-overhasty-glance eyes cast firmly downward.‡
–But I put in a half bottle, continues Peter. They’re ridiculously expensive, but I thought you might, after all, need champagne.
Yes, replies the hellgoddess, straightening up at last. I was about to protest violently if you were going to tell me you’ve just opened the bottle of Chardonnay.
Don’t worry, says Peter. I know the limits of this relationship.
* * *
* Have I told you that this gang of drill fiends runs fish-loops on all their video screens? In the waiting room it’s just a kind of large-screen aquarium, but the current loop runs on all the screens on all the ceilings over all the fancy chairs too. Some of scenes from the fish-loop from the autumn of ‘07, when I had two indescribably unpleasant root canals in two months, are, I believe, permanently etched on my memory. They’ve got a new loop since I was a regular, last autumn, when I cancelled my last appointment when the ME came back . . . but the ME shows no sign of going away again, so about a fortnight ago I went in for the first time in six months, and met their new fish video. And I was thinking, okay, they chose fish because of all those studies that say that staring at swimming fish is hypnotically soothing. It may be. But it’s so welded in my mind to pain and trauma that when I lie back in the chair and get my first good look at the fish my heart rate and blood pressure automatically go up.
** FISH?!??!??
*** We like Chardonnay. We are old fogies.
† Since I didn’t go bell ringing last night, Chaos, of course, slept straight through and was fine this morning.
†† Have I mentioned recently how much I love this landscape?^
^ Shub-Niggurath’s Dark Young! They’re HERE!
††† Sit! SIIIIIIIIIIIT!
‡ Hellhounds, as previously noted, are flameproof. For better and worse.
Dog stories
This is just way too good a story to remain buried on the forum.
Maren writes:
Has anyone sent Robin the Daily Puppy yet? For one thing, I think Killer there is a prime candidate to be featured, and for another…well, cripes, how could we not have sent her the Daily Puppy?!
Indeed. How COULD you all not have sent me the Daily Puppy? Click on that link, all the rest of you who went ‘ooooooh’ over the pupdate.
And on a related note (/threadjack
THREADJACK?
as they say on some blogs)…right now I have illegally stashed in my apartment
Oh, yaay, the blog branches out! We’re into guerilla peacefare!
one stray lab mix of the black pearl variety.
Someone–it might have been you, or someone else posting to the blog–has been telling me recently that black dogs are always adopted last, that black is the least favourite colour, that therefore more black dogs are put down than any other colour. I can’t deny all this animal-rescue experience out there but it is so not what I seem to see–I would have said black labs are the most common dog on the bits of the planet I have lived on longest–in Maine twenty years ago I would have said they were ahead by a hair or two, in Hampshire I would say they aren’t just the commonest breed but the majority of the entire canine population. There’s obviously some strange negative alchemy that goes on between all those people buying all those black lab puppies and all those other people going to shelters looking to adopt a dog. Black whippets, for example, are rare and desirable–maybe there’s some hidden psychology to the fact they’re called ‘blue’–and the people who get the most excited about Darkness get excited because of his colour (although he’s a shiny dark grey with white speckles, not true black).
One thing that the black pearl site mentions that I couldn’t agree with more is the complete horrible unacceptableness of the slang phrase ‘black dog’ for depression. I want to rescue all those black dogs so cruelly stigmatised and, I don’t know, tie pink ribbons around their necks and teach them a Busby Berkley routine so people will stop being so stupid. Dogs are mortal like us so they have faults–and they can be opportunistic and manipulative or bullying or generically spoilt or positively dangerous–but ultimately they are entirely dependent on us. And what we do with that responsibility can be pretty goddam awful.
Yes, I agree. But I don’t know how the people who pull the plug live with themselves. I mean that literally, not judgementally.
but they have a wonderful large facility, a high adoption rate, and they appear to be rolling in dough compared to my local shelters. Hopefully all this will give her at least a little more time than she would have had here. Anyway, if anyone here needs a new (or another!) dog and is within driving distance of Jackson, please consider giving this sweet and friendly adolescent female another chance at a good life. PM me for pictures, more info, whatever. She should be up on the shelter’s Petfinder list within a few days.
We’ll have chapter two in a minute. First I’m going to spin out the suspense a little. . . .
LRK writes:
Oh, he is just adorable! And what a lovely colour
He’s beginning to pale out. His mum is pale gold, so we’ll see what happens to him.
- also I think he’s starting to develop a personality; he’s not just a – any – puppy anymore…
I entirely agree. That was in fact exactly my reaction to seeing him this week. He’s become himself, not just Puppy, or even Cocker Spaniel Puppy.
Diane in MN writes:
“you never saw a puppy so invested in the awareness that he rules:”
Yes, you can see that this little guy has definite expectations about how the world should treat him, and cute as he is, he doesn’t look like he’ll be a pushover.
His pedigree is a dazzling read due to all the red-letter champions and I was again looking at him this week and wondering if he might in fact be a little bit extraordinary himself. Whether he has a suitable opportunity to express his extraordinariness is another question: he exists to make Daisy happy and to, um, enliven the rest of her family, and he’s already a complete success in that role. It’s a bit like my hellhounds: I suspect, guiltily, that they’d've made good working lurchers, and what they are is pets. But they’re much loved pets, and especially given the sheer number of domestic dogs there are in the world, that counts. Himself is also much loved, and will have a good life.
As I said here recently, once an English major, always an English major. Remember Dorothea in MIDDLEMARCH: she might have been great, but at least she was happy.
But how boring it would be if they didn’t have real personalities.
Indeed. Might as well have one of those battery operated twinkies that ‘dies’ if you don’t take care of it. I never could see the attraction of the tamagotchis: all the nuisance and none of the fun. I want something that wags its tail/whinnies/purrs. Although I guess tamagotchis are cheaper to feed. And the cleaning up after digestive distress is, I assume, virtual.
Have you come up with a nom de blog for the ankle-biter yet?
I started calling him Michelangelo because he’s such a . . . piece of work. And ‘Mike’ will suit him very well, because he’s such a little thug.
My little guy had a growth spurt last week when he got rid of the last of his puppy teeth. He’s now 65 pounds and about 27 inches at the shoulder. If he were a biter, he’d be a thigh-biter by now. Gosh, they grow fast.
Wait a minute, how old is he?? I feel as if you only brought him home a month or two before Mike’s arrival. I thought a big dog like a Great Dane grows up slowly. And, news note: there’s a Vast Hound of the Baskervilles Type Beast that we see the shadow of (and hear the thunderous bellow of) as we pass by on our walks–he’s on a route that we use a lot, but up a stair and behind an evergreen hedge, and from the size of the shadow I hope he does not get loose.* I had a better glimpse of him today, and I think he’s a Dane. Stay tuned.
“But the hellhounds also know they rule, in their slightly-less-likely-to-cause-blood-loss*** way. They are very interested in the smell of the ankle-biter on me, but this obviously causes them no distress of mind or loss of confidence whatsoever.”
The Alpha Bitch is seriously interested in Where We’ve Been when we come home with other dogs on our clothes, with a clear message that we went somewhere that might have been fun and made her stay home. This puts her nose out of joint. Distress of mind and loss of confidence don’t occupy large areas of her mental map.
The hellhounds are much better at my going off and leaving them than I am. (Granted they aren’t preoccupied with the state of their digestion. At least I don’t think they are. It’s one of dogkind’s attractions, that they so live in the minute.) They usually come out of the kitchen crate and watch me putting my shoes on by the door and those little eager, interested faces . . . aaaaaugh . . . I am such a wet. But when I come home smelling of Other Dog they merely get engrossed in whatever my hands and trouser-legs are telling them and then it’s on to the next thing: okay, you’re home, great, what are we going to do now?
Susan in Athens writes:
He looks like great fun on a “return to mummy” basis.
YES. EXACTLY. I am reeeeally enjoying someone else going through puppyhood. He’s adorable . . . and I don’t want one!!!!!! Not to mention that I have two two-and-a-quarter-year-old puppies of my own. They were out doing four-dimensional somersaults in midair this afternoon–the cold weather winds them up–and I was shouting, when are you going to grow up! You can see Chaos, who is always the wind-ier, the madder, the more frenetically perpetually in motion of the two, occasionally trying to remember that if he does x (again) the hellgoddess will yell at him (again) . . . but mostly the hellgoddess yells at him again. Sigh.
Dentist from R’lyeh**’s assistant, by the way, is busy holding out against a springer puppy. Her partner wants one. She does not. She does not want any puppies. I enjoyed tormenting her with tales of Michelangelo *** a fortnight ago . . . and again last week . . . and again tomorrow, since Dentist from R’lyeh is insisting I keep to schedule despite the toothache. † I like watching her face close down and screw up. Rather like a person with toothache. Us dental victims have to get our fun anywhere we can find it.
So. Chapter two:
Maren continues:
“Yeah, I’ll take her. She seems real sweet and she rode nice in the truck. I got a dog at home, and my wife likes ‘em too. Do you want my email so you can check on her?”
So it was a choice between an uncertain future at the shelter and a firm offer of a home. Needless to say she rode off in the tow truck (with my car, which I’ll have to go pick up when it’s fixed), and I got in the rental car and came home to Lola. My mom called the shelter again and they said it was obviously meant to be, as they just got several more lab mixes in today and this one would have been just another face in the crowd.
Southdowner wrote in response to this last:
After all the experiences like that over here I’d guess she probably had a male cream shih tzu
. . . And in defense of confused older women everywhere I want to point out that someone who has lost her dog is very likely crazy with misery and any FOUND poster is going to be worth a call just because she so desperately wants it to be her dog, whatever the description states. I’m glad she got her Dalmatian back.
* * *
* Unless Sherlock Holmes wants to start coming on our walks.
** Who, as well as an Olympic-prospect event horse, has two dogs: a black lab bitch. And a Great Dane.
*** In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo. –Sorry.
† He seems to think what he’s going to do will make it better not worse. Why don’t I feel calm and reassured?
On balance
It’s raining, which is a good thing, as I wasn’t going to be able to put off a comprehensive plant-pot-watering much longer even in cool October . . . and I suppose it’s also a good thing for bringing on the arrival of my big tulip order.* This is the line ‘em out and poke ‘em in order, long queues of pots and disappearing bags of compost . . . I’m going to need more netting. And I caught a mouse, poor stupid little beggar. Don’t eat tulip bulbs in my garden, you’ll live longer.
Walking hellhounds in the rain is always a bad thing however. Including the way they tear around the house afterward, up the walls, over you and the piano, between the sofa and piles of boooooooooooks: CRASH.
Much worse news is that Computer Man Central got broken into, and thousands of pounds of kit were ripped off.** The knock on effect is that they’re up to their eyeballs in coppers*** and our chat about simplifying my life and recovering my forum from the dustheap therefore has been put off. Sob. Meanwhile . . . I’m just about managing to read the blog-entry threads, between random crashes, but even copying and pasting raises the crash level to avalanche†. At the moment I’m assuming that I’ll have the mother and father of all catch-ups when I’m finally fit to boogie again, but it had better happen soon.
And then . . . the dentist. I feel that I didn’t really set you up sufficiently last week, when I told you that Dentist from R’lyeh†† has horses and that we had bonded††† at last. This is the dentist who kept me waiting forty minutes without explanation and got shirty when I objected. This is the dentist that when, pretty well out of my tree with the pain of a second emergency root canal tooth, the first one having only happened a few weeks before, I said that I didn’t know how much more I could stand, he said, I can only do what I can do, and if that’s not good enough then maybe you had better go elsewhere. This is the dentist responsible for drugging me to the eyeballs with a sedative‡, the result of which being I fell down the next day and broke my hand. This is not, I acknowledge, strictly his fault, but it still clusters round him as part of his entourage. This is also the dentist it costs £1000 to walk across the threshold of.‡‡
Etc.
I’d rather bond with Cthulhu.‡‡‡
Maybe I have.
Anyway. He’d said he’d bring photos of his fancy eventing mare and he forgot. What! I said. Okay, I’m leaving now. But he just happened to have one photo about his person . . . This is a very, very, very nice mare. I mean, she’s being seriously evented by a British Olympic team rider, she is a very, very, very nice mare. But I wouldn’t necessarily care that she was worth £1,000,000,000 if she wasn’t my type. Only she is my type. She’s just my type. She’s a (mostly) TB/ID (thoroughbred/Irish Draught) cross, which is pretty much my dream-horse cross§, and she’s got the beautiful TB head. She’s even a bay. And the Dentist from R’lyeh has her.
At least I get to ride Connie tomorrow. Connemara/TB is a dream-horse cross too.
* * *
* You too will have noticed that mail order plants tend to arrive on days or in weeks when you can’t possibly deal with them due to brain surgery, pirates, etc. Rain. Dentists.
** And no, I wasn’t even tempted to say ‘this is karma for having left me with an avalanching forum.’ All my computer men have kids to raise and they all have photos of their children on their mobile phones.
*** the fuzz, the boys and girls in blue, bobbies, bluecoats, finest, the law
† Yes, whatever it is, is getting worse
†† [T]he nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh … was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults . . . until the end.
-H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu“
R’lyeh has its own Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R’lyeh
††† AAAAEEEEEEE, approximately, which I believe is the appropriate expression for someone about to be engulfed by a vast loathsome shape from a dark star
‡ Which I still don’t understand. I don’t want to be sedated I want pain killers that work.
‡‡ Which is of course why he can afford horses.
‡‡‡ Does Cthulhu keep horses?
§ Okay, one of my dream-horse crosses. My dressage champion dream horse has a lot of Andalusian blood. I will point out in a small voice that IDs are supposed to have some Spanish genes.
