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Another day, another drama
I’ve only barely reunited Bronwen with her vehicle* and set her back on the motorway to weave and o’erleap 1,000,000 roadworks on her way home**, and it seems to be nearly one in the morning and I have a blog entry to write. Oops.
It’s not all Bronwen’s fault. The day probably went irrecoverably off the rails early on, when I overslept by an hour***. Hellhounds and I then had to blast out on our hurtle† to get me home in time for my make-up appointment with the osteopath.†† Have I mentioned that it has finally deigned to rain? Yes. We had a useful bit overnight, which was lovely, and meant, on this epic day, I did not have to water the garden, but I would have been grateful if the black, black clouds seen rolling and thundering and chasing each other at speed to the north hadn’t taken a hard right and come streaking back to dump a lot of rampant wetness on an already-cranky woman and her two rain-allergic hellhounds. Hellhounds, among the sweetest††† of creatures under most circumstances, grow sullen when wet.‡ I think they actually absorb water, like sponges, which is why they get so ungleblarging heavy, dragging at the furthest ends of their leads and glowering. Feh. Bah.‡‡
With the result that we got back to the cottage late and I looked wildly at the clock and decided that I didn’t have time to change my sodden jeans because I was not going to risk Rajan thinking for even thirty seconds that I was going to miss another appointment. I sprinted down the street and through his door and . . . he emerged from his inner sanctum to say that he was running about a quarter-hour late. I should have gone back to the cottage and changed my jeans. I did actually turn back in that direction . . . but was instead drawn inexorably through the door of a new dress shop that said sale in its front windows, the way dress shops will, where I was much entertained by the other clientele and absent-mindedly fell in love with an adorable little denim jacket which I—gleep—bought.
It was a good twenty minutes before I got back to Rajan’s and . . . he wasn’t running fifteen minutes late. He was running nearly an hour late.‡‡‡
At which point the day had definitely gone off the rails. §
So I wasn’t surprised at all when I got off the phone with a very good friend having a very lousy time §§ and the phone rang again instantly and it was Bronwen saying that she was in her 674th roadworks queue and was going to be about half an hour late. I may have said something soothing like ‘of course you are’. I then rang Niall to warn him that our replacement third for handbells, Colin being disloyally on his way to Wales, was going to be half an hour late . . . to be informed by Penelope that Niall had told her that handbells had been cancelled tonight. GAH. ARRRGH.
Bronwen was not, in fact, half an hour late—she too was an hour late. Niall (having been mercilessly tracked down to where he was hiding§§§ and dragged relentlessly to the cottage with his handbells) and I had solved most of the problems of the world# by the time she arrived, and had a cup of tea and begun disposing of the cake. We still got a few touches of bob minor in before Bronwen and I had to hare off to tower practise at Crabbiton, Bronwen having declared when she first planned this repeat southern madness that she wanted the complete bell experience this time. Bronwen has never met Wild Robert, who teaches at Crabbiton on Thursdays, and this seemed like a good opportunity given that she was driving down from Orkney to ring bells at all—and as I’m missing Wild Robert pretty badly myself since Wednesday Ditherington practise is no more, I was somehow susceptible to being talked into this double bell whammy.
And therefore it is perfectly logical that Wild Robert was not at Crabbiton this evening. . . . Never mind, said Bronwen. I’ll come back again. Although probably not next week.##
Hey, it’s tomorrow. Yesterday is over. And maybe today will be better.
* * *
* She is White Van Woman. Be afraid.
** Wait a minute. Fiona was only here yesterday. I’m not becoming . . . social, am I?^
^ See next footnote, on the subject of the sure signs of reincarnation.
***. . . Oh I’ll just lie here a minute listening to the nice radio. Have you read about how leaping out of bed as if shot^ when the alarm goes off is bad for you? No, you’re supposed to lie there and gently regain consciousness over the course of several minutes. Which is, or would be, all very well, if that’s what happened. I’ve looked at those imitation-dawn lamp-clock things that brighten over the course of like fifteen minutes so you wake up naturally. In the first place they are Very Expensive. In the second place they are Very Ugly. In the third place, if I ever believed that I was waking up on account of the increasing light of dawn on my face I would know I had died and been reincarnated as someone else, and I’m sure that’s even worse for you than leaping out of bed as if shot when the (old-fashioned) alarm goes off.
^ Or gnawed in a friendly fashion by a hellhound.
† Wait—wait—clothing. Glasses. Shoes. Humans are so feeble. Hellhounds are ready for combat and excitement from the moment the crate door opens.
†† He needs a name. Let’s call him Rajan.
††† If a trifle intemperate
‡ And, speaking of cranky, I will also remark that I am tired of guaranteed waterproof Goretex shoes that leak. I might as well wear All Stars. Which are cheaper.
‡‡ Also it’s been so dry for so long that the water doesn’t soak into the ground. It bounces, and then waits at its leisure, swinging back and forth in the various grass- and leaf-pockets and the elbows of trees and hedgerows^, ready to dump itself generously down the backs of hellhounds and the jeans-legs and un-waterproof Goretex shoes of cranky women.
^ I think it also floats, in little wet bubbles like invisible water balloons, but I have thus far failed to accumulate sufficient evidence to support this theory.
‡‡‡ Not that the time was wasted. I read a very interesting article on pruning.
§ However having, as it proved, totally crippled myself watching my bat roost empty on Monday—this body does not stand still with its head raised at a sharp angle for half an hour at all graciously—there was no question that I was going to stomp off in a huff. For one thing stomping is beyond me at the moment. Although I can still do the huff.
§§ Is frelling Mercury in frelling retrograde or anything? There are too many people having unusually lousy times right now. The count stands at two sudden deaths and a terminal illness and the week’s not even over yet.
§§§ People who don’t want to be found really need to learn to turn their mobile phones off. However it would have been very embarrassing if Bronwen had got here and there had been no handbells—have I mentioned that she lives in, like, Orkney, so when she pops down here for a spot of handbells we’re talking hours on the road? Even barring roadworks—so I’m glad Niall’s phone was still on. And that he wasn’t on his way to Wales. With or without roadworks.
# At least those involving bells
## And it’s not like Crabbiton wasn’t glad to see us. They were thrilled. We made the fifth and sixth pairs of hands, so they could actually ring something. But it wasn’t quite the transcendent experience ringing for Wild Robert usually is.
Night off (nearly)
It’s been a long day and I have three guest blogs pending . . . all of which need something done to them before I can use them. SIIIIIIIGH. But it’s still Wednesday, and I need a night off. So let’s have a few arbitrary hellhound and Hampshire countryside photos, and then I think I might try the going to bed early* thing again.
Because Wordpress is an evil ratbag from Orthanc’s subbasement, I’m not going to be able to attach individual text to the photo where it belongs** so I’ll just mutter a bit here before I get started. Remember Peter’s poem Meme?*** This is the field. And at the end of June the crop should be nearly twice this height—that’s the lack of rain. The ground is friable rock, and I’m not finding complaining about the battering heat as funny as I did a fortnight ago.
And some day I’m going to get a photo of Darkness doing his dropping-down-a-gear and nailing Chaos trick—but today wasn’t the day either. One of the problems is that it happens so fast. Unless I’m already in the middle of taking a photo I’ll probably miss it—the damn camera takes a couple of seconds to recover. Running hellhounds circumnavigate the planet in seconds.
The last photo is just . . . one of my favourite views. You’ve had this shot before at different times of year and I guarantee you’ll get it again.
* * *
* Okay, earlier
** No, since you ask, I haven’t tried to figure out the caption widget. But I don’t want captions. I want text to stick where I put it.
*** http://www.peterdickinson.com/TheWeir.html It’s the last poem on the page, so keep scrolling.
GODS, DEVILS, IMPS AND MINIONS OF ENTROPY BUT I HATE WORDPRESS. NO, THERE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE ANYTHING I CAN DO ABOUT THE THREE ASTERISKS SEVENTEEN POINT TWO MILES ABOVE THE REST OF THE FOOTNOTE. WHAT THE SWEET BLEEDING SOMETHING OR OTHER ARE ALL THE FRELLING UPDATES ABOUT WHEN THE WORDPRESS ADMIN CAN’T FIX A FEW BASICS ABOUT THE DANGLEFRABBING PHOTO HANDLING?
Bluebell Wood
To my considerable bemusement I’ve had two or three requests for bluebell photos.* Maybe the photos look better if you’re not surrounded by the real thing. Although it’s a funny thing about bluebells: even though they’re almost overwhelmingly magical in person, even I feel the Must. Go. There. of bluebell photos. Even these not-very-satisfactory photos, because bluebell photos are never satisfactory, do have that effect—well, on me anyway, and at least two or three of my blog readers, I guess. You know that that world is enchanted—the world with flowering bluebells in it—and in the photos it’s the whole world. When you’re walking through a bluebell wood you’re sadly aware that you’re going to have to come back out again into the world of internal combustion engines and aggressive off lead dogs and hung parliaments**. A photo of a bluebell wood is a little window to Middle earth.
Bluebells also smell, however, and it’s somehow a wild smell, much wilder than, say, wild hedgerow roses, and it stays wild even when you have bluebells trying to take over your garden, which is what bluebells do in a garden, they’re the flowering bulb version of blackbirds. But the fragrance is some recompense for the inevitable reentry of/to engines, nasty dogs and parliaments.
* * *
* Remember: askrobin@robinmckinleysblog.com It’ll go up permanently on the opening page soon, but until then I’ll keep reminding you.^
^ And while I’m hanging around at askrobin, let’s answer another question.
Was it your intent for the Queen from ‘Spindle’s End’ to seem like she came from Ossin’s country in ‘Deerskin’ in what seems to be direct lineage to Deerskin’s friend Lilac (if she isn’t Deerskin’s friend Lilac) or possibly even Deerskin herself.
Yes. No. Yes, Rosie’s mum in Spindle’s End is from Ossin’s country, but no she’s not directly related to Lissar or Lilac.
In your defense of Pollyanna, [ http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/05/03/in-defense-of-pollyanna/ ] you mentioned, that you strongly disliked a book, that it did not work for you. What are your personal criteria for dismissing a book as trash? Bad prose? Weak female characters? Can a book be written with one or the other and still be considered a success or at least worth reading?
First I want to differentiate between good trash and bad trash. Good trash is fun enjoyable stuff that doesn’t shake you out of your comfort zone, or maybe only a little, in a tingly, giddy sort of way. Am I being insulting? I hope not. I love good trash. Georgette Heyer wrote the epitome of superb trash. She’s not the only one, but she’s safely dead so I don’t have to worry about insulting her.
Bad trash . . . bad trash is junk food for the mind and the heart. You may think it tastes good on the way down—and if you’re on a steady diet of it you won’t notice the icky chemical aftertaste—but it’ll fur up your arteries and make you stupid.
In this particular case it was another of these frelling supernatural romances. I was reading it because it’s one of the ones that come up when people are discussing the post-TWILIGHT boom of YA supernatural romance. It features another wet, useless heroine, another hundreds-of-years-old supernatural boyfriend+ who Loves Only Her for No Discernable Reason, an almost total lack of plot, a short list of tics and mannerisms instead of a writing style and endless bulldiddly about whether to Go All the Way or not.
Bad prose is unfortunate, and generally speaking, there being so many books out there and I am such a slow reader, I won’t bother with a book that isn’t written with story-specific grace and aplomb—Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time are both written with great story-specific grace and aplomb, for example, even if it’s not what Jane Austen or Jorge Luis Borges would use. And if I threw out every book with weak female characters I’d have to throw out pretty well all of, for example, Charles Dickens and Raymond Chandler, both of whom I cherish. But both of them had other virtues—style to burn, for example, especially in Chandler’s case, and an imagination so vivid it pretty well boils off the page at you in Dickens’.
They were also humans, which is to say men, of their times.++ I’m really not going to put up with wet, useless heroines in books written today, and the post-TWILIGHT+++ frenzy for boyfriends who totally take care of you so you can go on being wet and useless MAKES ME CRAAAAAZY. And so does the coy crap about sex. Arrrgh.
P.S.: I was wondering something else: Where does the name ‚Pollyanna come from? It’s definitely a character in a book I should have read but which book and by whom?
Ahem. Google and Wikipedia are your friends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna
+ I adore Buffy, and with every other gloppy fanatic one of my favourite eps is the one where Angel shows up at the prom, but she is the Slayer, which a lot of the rippers-off who have come after seem to forget.
++ And Dickens had quite a scintillating line in tortured anti-heroines. He just couldn’t do good women without plunging hip-deep into sentimental tosh.
+++ And yes, TWILIGHT is pretty much the only current book I’ve been willing to say I don’t like—and I mean seriously don’t like—and that Bella and Edward’s relationship is psychotic. TWILIGHT is trying to chain feminism in the cellar again, with a gag in her mouth and a bag over her head. No. I won’t go.
** Gah. Get on with it, guys, we do need a government.
Attack of the Real World*
So Computer Man came** and it will be nice if I have a working printer again, I haven’t had time to find out.*** I AM ALSO CHANGING EMAIL SERVERS so maybe it will stop taking several minutes to download anything larger than three lines of plain text, and hanging and crashing every time a new email comes in, and eating my contacts. I proceeded therefrom to being dazed and confused by the options on offer by Orange, which is the company I pay money to to have a mobile phone.† The first thing that happened is that I went on line—see, I was trying to be modern and sensible—and you are supposed to look up available choices by the sort of phone you have. The RaspBerry is an HP and it’s not even listed. I’m screwed and I haven’t even done anything yet. So I rang them up and was dazed and confused over the phone instead. Blurg. So I have a new SIM card coming in the post that is going to let me do EVERYTHING and maybe I’ll learn to text.†† But it means I can have the phone on all the time so Peter can ring me at any moment day or night.††† And moving on from that vivid accomplishment I rang Lifeline, which is the panic-button company the hospital recommends‡, who is going to send a representative round for a Free No Obligation Demonstration next week. There was lunch‡‡ around here somewhere, and the second half of the hellhounds’ morning hurtle, and a failed attempt to pick up Peter’s prescription at the surgery, and loading up on olives from the Olive Man‡‡‡ at the Thursday farmers’ street market . . . and I even managed to scramble back up to the cottage for an hour and half’s somewhat frenzied gardening because we went to a garden centre yesterday because . . . er . . . Peter needed a new kitchen bin? Unfortunately there is a garden centre attached to the homewares.
And then limped back down to the mews for my first handbells in a fortnight. At the time I thought, golly, my stamina is waay down, but presently contemplating the day that had just passed I could just have been, you know, tired.
But it’s worse than that.
Niall is gone next Friday. He’s going on Colin’s ringing tour, the ratbag(s).
Niall, New Arcadia’s Ringing Master, will not be here for tower practise Friday week. And you may remember who the Assistant Ringing Master is???
* * *
* Attack of the Frelling Terrier. I haven’t been keeping you up to date on local canine transgressions but it’s not because there haven’t been any. I had a particularly trying one about a week ago. The footpath past Third House takes a sharp blind turn at the bottom of my garden. A Large Black Off Lead Dog came swaggering around the corner, you know, the way thugs and teenage boys walk, swaying their shoulders from side to side to take up as much space as possible. He stopped. His head and his tail came up, and so did all of his hair. We stopped. Jeezum. Didn’t we just stop. This was one of those occasions when even the hellhounds were subdued. He started growling. And advancing, one slow footstep at a time. Oh frelling swell. He hadn’t lowered his head yet or I’d be really panicking. Eventually this big stupid humanoid jerk came, also swaggering, around the corner. After a few seconds he deigned to call his dranglefabbing dog—who was now plenty close enough for us to see the whites of his eyes, and the hellhounds were showing a tendency to stand just the tiniest bit behind me—the dog ignored him, of course. Dog bullies always ignore their humanoids. So the jerk started talking to me. And the thing that made me want to kill him is that he was using that put-upon, faux-reasonable tone that passive-aggressive men are especially fond of using on women and it TOTALLY PRESSES MY BUTTONS. If you’d just walk by him, he said, as if this was all my problem. He’d be fine if you’d just walk by him. HE IS NOT FINE! I said, in a low, controlled voice, keeping an indirect (don’t look an aggressive dog in the face) eye on the buffalo-sized thing marching toward us. HE CAME AROUND THAT CORNER, PUT ALL HIS HAIR UP AND STARTED GROWLING! THIS IS NOT FINE! At least the jerk speeded up a little and the dog let him grab his collar. He’s fine, you know, said Mr Faux-Frelling-If-I-Had-A-Gun-I-Would-Shoot-You-Thank-the-Frelling-British-Government-for-Gun-Control-Reasonable. HE IS NOT FINE, I spat over my shoulder as hellhounds and I crowded past, since it is a NARROW footpath. The dog went berserk as we actually went by them, and I could see Mr Faux-Frelling having to work at keeping hold of the brute. And this thing was OFF LEAD.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
Today we had to hurtle early, because the Attack of the Real World was beginning early with the arrival of Computer Men. Once again we were walking in town. As we came around the corner to the very, very, very long stretch of straight path by the river, waaaaaaay down at the far end I could see a woman and her terrier wandering toward us. It became apparent as it got closer that it was off lead. I looked at it thoughtfully, since off lead terriers are among my least favourite denizens of the animal kingdom, and cranked the hellhounds in. It had clearly seen us some time before—and the bloody woman could hardly have avoided seeing us, unless she had a bag over her head, which she did not—and it eventually reached its Acceptable Distance, lowered its head, and started stalking us. GIVE ME A FRELLING BREAK. The woman calls, Wait! —But what did I just say about dog bullies and their humanoids? She wasn’t even hurrying. We backed up. The terrier kept coming. Wait! Wait! shouted the woman. Eventually she began to hurry a little. We were whites-of-its-eyes range again too, but this thing is at least only about mid-calf high—Mr Faux-Frelling’s big broad-jawed oik could have done some damage—and it suddenly launched itself toward us, barking and snarling, and started biting everything in reach, ie Darkness and Chaos. I started yelling and—I had that infuriating run-in with a terrier who did the stalking and running who turned out to be FRIENDLY and I think it’s ruined my instincts. The one time I’ve ever managed to kick one of these bloody attack dogs was before that occasion and the damn thing had simply chomped onto Chaos’ neck and was hanging on and therefore an easy target since Chaos was too nonplussed to do much, which is just as well really. Anyway I kicked this one twice but pulled back for godssake both times I connected because my INSTINCTS are I don’t want to HURT IT. VERY BAD LANGUAGE HERE. The stupid woman finally shambled up and caught the sodding little bugger. I swore at her—and I did not use ‘frelling’—and said WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU GRAB THAT THING??? And she said, attempting, not very successfully, for wounded dignity, I was trying. YOU WEREN’T TRYING VERY HARD, I said. YOU COULD SEE US COMING FROM A LONG WAY AWAY.
As we stormed off—well, I stormed: hellhounds are always sad and amazed when other dogs don’t love them, which is part of why I get so furious—I heard her saying in a headmistressy voice to her vicious little piece of four-legged crap, Well, that wasn’t very friendly.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
** Man! Not Men! Whoa! I thought you were attached at the hip! —It’s okay, he said. We’ve been separated. The doctors say the operation was a success.
*** We have an early draft of JOHN’S^ NEW BOOK to read. If we could print it off.
^ You know, Dickinson. Peter’s son.
† Orange because it’s the only one that even sometimes gets a signal around here. New Arcadia, Hampshire, the Bermuda Triangle of the United Kingdom. I’ve had it—well, I’ve been through three phones—seven or eight years, I think, and have put in an extra £20 top up like twice. Not one of your heavy users. But back in the days when I used to go places occasionally it was good for the ‘No, I caught the 4:56 out of Smurgeon Gakworthy, I’ll be there in half an hour’ and the ‘the train has been sitting a hundred feet outside Waterloo for the last forty minutes, I’m going to be late for lunch’ calls. And I’ve told you that the RaspBerry exists both to indulge my penchant for techie note-taking and to comfort Peter that if I break a leg five miles from the car after tripping over a hellhound I can ring for help. Assuming the Bermuda Triangle is in a good mood that day.
†† And then again, maybe I won’t.
††† Since he has an absolute gift for
***WARNING: TOO MUCH INFORMATION FOLLOWS***
ringing when I’m sitting on the loo reading Calvin and Hobbes it will actually be very nice to have the phone in my pocket.
‡ Which is a good idea anyway, since they have a 24/7 central switchboard, but also see: Bermuda Triangle, and breaking a leg five miles from the car.
‡‡ Mushy. I miss my huge salads with raw chewy lettuce and crunchy sprouted seeds and things. The really bad news is that the bloody infection, having subsided somewhat, is now gaining against the damned antibiotics. Tomorrow morning I can ring the dentist again. Like I don’t already have to meet the Pond Man up at Third House and go with Peter to see his GP for the discussion about what went so appallingly wrong a week ago and why it’s not going to go wrong like that again.
‡‡‡ Olives used to be things that happened to other people till I met the Olive Man. The Olive Man’s olives are now absolutely necessary to my existence, and if we run out I grow sweaty and feverish. They are additionally attractive right now in that they are something I can still eat.
Beautiful Easter Day
It was hard to get into the bell tower this morning; the early service ran late, and the vestibule was still full of people who wanted to hang around for a word with the priest when we needed to get in to ring the second, main service. The ladder to the bell tower rises into darkness and mystery from the vestibule. As I was lurking by the outside door and wondering if it was worth making a rush for it, so what if I trampled a few little old ladies, this town has lots of little old ladies, we can spare a few,* a rather good-sized middle-aged lady who would take a lot of trampling stepped forward to block my entrance. I swear I’ve never seen her before in my life, but she took one look at me and said, Oooh! a bell ringer!, and nipped hastily out of the way. Ah, the oddness of fame. Ah, the oddness of living in the same place year after year. ** I keep seeing people I recognise when I’m being hurtled around town . . . Or who recognise me. ‘Oh, there’s the woman with the funny accent and the forty-legged dogs.’ And more of them know that I ring bells than what I do for a living.
It occurred to me as the alarm wrenched me out of profound sleep*** this morning at an intolerable hour that I am still completely on winter time. I haven’t sprung forward at all. Which means that Sunday morning is an hour more intolerable than it was a fortnight ago. I do need to address this situation. At the present, however, it means that this blog entry is being extracted from my flesh like porcupine quills from a dog.†
I have in fact spent most of the day in the garden at the cottage; it’s been such a gorgeous day†† that moving slowly around a tiny garden††† saying at intervals, Oh! You’re alive! has been quite a good way to spend it, and somewhat disguises that I’m not up to much more. Well, I did pot up 1,000,000 tiny plug geraniums, fuchsias, cosmos and some damn things that have lost their labels‡, and potted on 1,000,000 medium-sized little things that are bursting out of their first pots, including a few that are still in their first pots from last year, and stuffed 1,000,000 gladiolus and begonia tubers into planters where they can frelling stay for the season. Other than that it was a quiet afternoon. . . .‡‡
* * *
* Nah. Don’t want to get blood on the All Stars. Sometimes I think I belong to Amnesty because I like their colour scheme. It fascinates me that a big serious international justice and human rights organisation—possibly the big serious international justice and human rights organisation—has chosen hot pink as their signature colour. Their web site is covered with it too. 
** A military brat’s concept of home tends to depend on how many books she can wedge in her suitcase—since, back in the Palaeolithic Era when I was young, it often took months for your gear to catch up with you after you moved. And weren’t you tired of the three pairs of socks and miscellaneous underwear, three shirts, two sweaters, two pairs of shoes, coat, skirt, and pair of jeans. Your books were still your friends, however. And besides, you’d found the local library by then.
*** Profound sleep is rare enough I should be grateful for any I can get, but this morning I was having a repeating dream about losing my wallet^ so I was less sorry to be dragged out of it than I might have been.
^ Which would be returned to me only missing something—not the money but the crucial little bits of paper—and with that dream-creepy sensation of All Changed, Changed Utterly.+ Ugggggh.
+ Beauty optional. Terribleness almost certainly.~
~ I have tried, in the last two days, on Twitter, to make a joke about Singin’ in the Rain and another about the definition of ‘to frell’. In both cases I was promptly taken up by people who clearly have my best interests at heart. So, in case there are more of you out there reading this blog, yes, I am QUOTING Easter 1916 by WB Yeats.
† The hellhounds don’t realise how lucky they are. Hedgehogs are tame, kindly little things in comparison. Although Darkness almost had a faceful of cat’s claws this evening. Cat was doing one of those cat-drama things where it’s sauntering along a footpath in front of two fiery eyed hellhounds^ glancing laconically over its shoulder occasionally as we’re gaining on it and I’m yelling, Will you climb the goltarnation^^ fence for godssake and then it suddenly goes all George Booth^^^ and does go straight up the fence . . . whereupon Darkness nearly goes straight up after it, hellhounds having hind legs like kangaroos’. I can knock him sideways by yanking on the lead but he’s six feet overhead by then. The cat, who is having a really fine time and is looking forward to telling its mates all about it down t’ pub later, is still balancing on the top of the fence . . . and leans down to take a swipe at me as I walk past. Thanks a lot, cutie. I’ll bring a sack for you next time.
^ What if I didn’t have shoulders like a stevedore’s from ringing bells? Frelling cats.
^^ Which reminds me. Warning. Bad language. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/apr/02/kick-ass-bad-language?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Well, no. I don’t agree. I like the idea that the only widely-known and –used vulgar slang term for female genitalia+ is about to lose its status as the very, very, very worst word there is. It what? Why? Why are there a dozen common half-friendly or half-silly terms for penis and testicles, even if you wouldn’t necessarily use them to Great-Aunt Gladys, and no equivalents for vagina and clitoris++? And not only are there no friendly ones but the only important one is The Worst Word There Is? Cheeeez. This has been bothering me since I got old enough to swear, and yeah, I say it’s sexism, and yeah, I say it blows. Speaking of male-oriented slang.
Meanwhile, are we all going to die of creeping blandness and furry stagnant arteries if we can no longer evoke The Worst Word There Is? Well, suit yourself, but I’m not. I personally feel that when you really need to call someone a dog turd, you can get your meaning over. I saw the c-word article yesterday, shortly after hellhounds and I had come in from a hurtle around town, pausing occasionally to receive adulation from fans. We were bearing down on a mum and two little girls, when the little girls noticed us and went into a flurry of oooh! Pretty doggies! This was in town, mind you, on a street with houses on it. We were on the pavement, which had a tiny edge of grass on either side. In her enthusiasm for the hellhounds the bigger of the two girls took an unwary step backward off the pavement—but why should she have to be wary, for pity’s sake? THIS IS IN TOWN—and stepped into an enormous pile of dog crap. ENORMOUS. Like this dog had a bowel the size of the Worm Ouroboros. Not like the person in charge could have missed it. The mother, poor woman, used the hellhounds as distraction for her now deeply distressed daughter, and as I went on by I said, creeps like this give the rest of us a bad name. But what I was thinking was, if I had any way of knowing who this medina worm in human shape was, I would explain to them in an unmistakable manner that they are lower than dog crap. As I say, I think when you need to, you can get your point across with reference to Worst Words.
+ Well, yes, there’s tw_t, but I’ve never been able to take it seriously.
++ And this is possibly my age and generation showing, but I’ve always had a faint sense that clitoris is a dirty word anyway. It’s not about reproduction. Except maybe in terms of persuading her to stick around long enough to have a go at getting her pregnant.
^^^ http://www.pbase.com/csw62/image/38287157
I love George Booth. He’s probably where my soppy affection for bull terriers comes from. http://www.pbase.com/csw62/image/119575553
†† Yes! We do have them! Make a note!
††† I have got to get up to Third House and PLANT ROSES. Actually, I also have to get up to Third House and choose a few heeled-in-and-waiting-for-action roses to plant back at the cottage.
‡ Story of my life. I know that leaf looks familiar. . . .
‡‡ I’m going to try to leave early for my voice lesson on Tuesday so I can stop at the farm store and buy more compost.
