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Gardens
It stopped raining for a few hours yesterday, nicely timed for gardening, during which I went out and strove mightily with dahlias, which is to say earwigs, among other useful and semi-useful things,** and came indoors again as the Scary Mud Monster. Remember I told you that I’d actually staked all of my dahlias this year, and how this doesn’t happen in my garden(s)? It doesn’t work. Well, I suppose if you were out there with your bamboos and your twine every minute, or even every afternoon, you might stay ahead of the little sods, but I wouldn’t count on it. You may also remember that I’ve been complaining about my seven-foot dahlias—dahlias are supposed to be sort of four to six foot. Which is plenty. Even a six-foot dahlia has a slightly triffid air about it.*** But I’ve realised why my dahlias are all monsters this year: it’s so that they can hurl themselves over any foolish attempts to contain them. Several of my beautifully-staked dahlias have a fringe of flopped-over, head-down flowers tumbling gracefully, not to say vindictively, over the top loop of string. SIIIIIIIGH.†
This morning after service ring†† I was out in front of the cottage, deadheading.††† I’ve still got pansies in flower—I mean pansies that have been flowering since spring, and in a couple of cases since last winter. If you’re clever about it you pretty much can have pansies flowering all year long—although they may shut down in self-defense in a cold winter—but this usually requires waves of pansies. Some of this year’s have gone out back for a serious haircut, a feed, and a rest, but by no means all of them. Some of them are still frothing down my front steps, flowering determinedly. So I was determinedly deadheading them.‡ And my neighbour with the posh, national-collections garden at the top of the hill comes strolling down with a companion and says lugubriously to me, Oh, you’re losing that battle.
Thanks ever so. You’re a real friend.
Peter and I went to another posh garden this afternoon‡‡, one of those eye-wateringly so-English cottagey things that I have the almost overwhelming urge to speak loudly and frequently, saying things like Gee whillikers! and Gosh darn! This place is real gone! Peter and I used to have one of those gardens . . . but we never went in for the eye-watering aspect; ours was too clearly not under control, nor under anything resembling an all-over plan. And I get a little lip-curly about people with full time gardeners. (Or trust funds and no need to earn a living.) If I had a full-time gardener I could be opening Third House’s garden to the public in a couple of (somewhat frantic) years. The funny thing is that I don’t think I’d want to: the pleasure, if you want to call it pleasure,‡‡‡ of opening our garden was that we were the ones responsible. If you wanted to know about a plant, we were the ones to ask. We might not remember, but if we didn’t, there was no recourse.§ I’m just crabby because there was a lot to like about this garden . . . till you got to the two wide bays of really ugly orange roses. There must have been thirty of the horrible things. All orange. I like hot dazzling orange fine in neat little wool-and-silk cardigans such as the one I am wearing this minute. But neon orange is not a good colour in a rose. Especially not in ranks at the front of the sculpted topiary tunnel to the lily pond with the summerhouse and the tasteful statuary. Gah. No, Gee whillikers!
* * *
* Possibly my least favourite critter on the planet, barring things big enough to eat me and standing close enough to try
** Including potting on two camellias, which have been quietly getting on with things for two years in the pots they arrived from the mail-order nursery in. One of the best things about camellias is how patient they are. A kind word and a handful of well rotted chicken crap and they’re happy indefinitely. You think I’m anthropomorphising about the kind word, don’t you? HA. Show me a little old lady who talks to her plants and I’ll show you a little old lady who can barely get out her back door for being throttled by the botanical riot. No I am not talking about me. I am not little. And I haven’t fully arrived at the ‘old’. And while it’s perfectly true I talk to my plants^ I tend to say things like what are you doing that for, you frelling thing? and ARRRRRRGH. And, when dealing with rosebushes, OWWWWWW. But I’m mostly nice to my camellias. I’ve pretty much even stopped cursing Jingle Bells for being fabulously healthy, floriferous and UGLY.
^ I talk to almost everything except other people. Other people, feh. Way too complicated. Give me a rosebush or a hellhound any day.
*** It’s not so much the height, it’s the posture. Forty-foot roses dangling from trees can be very intimidating, but they’re not at all triffidy.
† Clearly I haven’t been saying the right things to them.
†† During which I was Much Put Upon. Not only did I keep finding myself in the long-thirds position when a single was called for Grandsire, but I fell afoul of the Dreaded Three-Four Down Dodge Single in bob minor several times, about which mediocre ringers lie awake on Saturday nights worrying about being traumatised by if bob minor is attempted on Sunday morning. I did, by the way—get through all these trials—but I had to be carried home and fed chocolate to recover.^
^ And speaking of feeding . . . Peter has just spilt chicken broth—you know, the stuff that accumulates under a roast chicken—rather lavishly on the floor. Hellhounds did not stir. I called them. They stared at me. I called them again. Chaos, always the one more anxious about pleasing,+ crept out at last and crushed himself to me, as I knelt on the floor next to a pool of fresh chicken juice. Here, look at that, I said, extricating an arm and pointing. Chaos looked at the finger, the way dogs do++. I eventually persuaded him to have a sniff at the lovely chickeny puddle. To please me he did, with his feet braced, still leaning against me, and with his neck stretched to its furthest extent. He sniffed. He then looked at me with a ‘Can I go now?’ expression.
After he had fled back to the dog bed in huge relief, Darkness came nonchalantly out to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. He had a half-hearted lick and then turned around to fix me with a ‘You got us up for this? look.
Peter mopped up the spill.
+ Except, of course, when it comes to food
++ There was an article in a recent TIME magazine about the intelligence of critters, and how there’s more of it around than generally thought. Depends on who you ask, of course. I know a lot of critter people who have been sniggering at the scientists about this sort of thing for years. But one of the things the article cites is that dogs ‘innately’ understand about pointing fingers being about pointing, and not about the finger. Well, sort of. It depends on the dog and the context. Pointers certainly point, and they know they’re pointing. But your own pet dog is very likely to be interested in the finger, because it’s your finger. Chaos has a very bad case of this.
††† I should try to get someone to take a photo of me deadheading the Non Trailing Petunias in the hanging basket. I can feel how ridiculous—how increasingly ridiculous—I look, especially as the petunias themselves grow more ridiculous, ramrod straight and soaring out into the ozone.
‡ Kneeling on tarmac at least keeps the Scary Mud Monster somewhat at bay.
‡‡ In the rain. It came back.
‡‡‡ I didn’t, much. I’ve told you, I think, that Peter was always out there talking to people. I used to try to find an especially impenetrable thicket and spent the afternoon weeding. Peter would occasionally send people in after me who wanted particularly to talk about roses.
§ We did have a once a week body I used to refer to as our gardeneroid. His purpose was to move slowly around the garden looking like he was doing something, and adding rusticity to the view. He also mowed the lawn.
Deadness and weather
I’m a beyond-dead knackered person. A beyond knackered dead person? Whatever. The weather is not conducive to coherent thought, or even retention of much vocabulary: it’s that kind of swampy fug that makes you feel like one of those several-thousand-year-old bodies buried in a peat bog. You may be well preserved for your age but . . . Could I convince you that my birth language is Gveltch*, and I tend to revert when I’m really tired? Gehgrug. Ardangle brak. Slomag. Dah. Fribkizam daldol rakpek, flob in jestru, dangwhammy. I’ve just told you that anyone who rings bells in this weather deserves to be winkledubbed by the gazortfuls till bragolindon. So there. Colin’s crew meets on Mondays, and they have a second tower to keep rung, like we at New Arcadia are responsible for Old Eden, ** so we were ringing at Little Warbling tonight. Little Warbling is known to be the coldest, dankest, clammiest tower in three counties—and the bells are furthermore rather lightweight, so ringing them doesn’t even warm you up much. Except tonight. By the time we’d rung them up, ready to do something with, I was already glad I’d forgotten to change out of my shorts into jeans. There was no air in that air in that bell tower tonight, and I rang like it.*** I had some company being witless and collision-prone, but the end result was nonetheless not inspiriting. Sigh.
I have a better reason for an absence of brain tonight than merely the weather however. I have, I think, referred to the fact that several crucial planets are apparently laying down the aetherial inter-spheroidal version of rubber in retrograde lately, and I have a whole slew of friends having a variety of really bad times. As most of you will know, there isn’t usually a lot you can do in these situations, except pester them with emails/phone calls and, if you’re close enough, cups of tea†.
One of my musical friends has a much-beloved little dog—who died last week. It’s not that she wasn’t due to go some time soon; she was. She’s been elderly for several years and stopped Going Everywhere with Him about a year ago. But? So? Who is ever expecting it when it happens? And who, having given his heart to a dog to tear††, is frelling ready for the final good-bye? †††
So I was possessed by the insane notion of writing a lament for a little dog. I’m not at all sure this was one of my better ideas, but it’s too late now.‡ I can always lose my nerve and retitle it Hellgoddess Railing at the Universe: why don’t our standard companion critters last longer, for pity’s sake? Unless you have a parrot or a boa constrictor you can figure on their checking out every decade and a half or so‡‡, destroying you utterly, and putting you through deciding whether to do it again or not.‡‡‡ So PEG II had a holiday today§ because after a few days of dorking around looking nervously at the ragged beginnings of my mournful little lament and failing to commit, I really wanted to get on with it, one way or another§§. I’d like to put it through his door§§§ by the end of the week.# Gulp.
* * *
* As spoken by the Gflytch. Long time blog readers may remember the Gflytch. They used to appear, scary and scowling, in the shadows of lj.
** And are occasionally dragged into service at Madhatterington on the grounds that it’s the same benefice or some such.^ I haven’t had an update on Madhatterington in a while, and I’m afraid to ask, because anyone who knows the answer is too likely to reply, Oh, that reminds me, what are you doing Sunday afternoon . . . ?
^ The Church of England hierarchy is seriously beyond me. But I like our priest. He wears that t-shirt that I spent years trying to think of someone to give one to: Jesus Loves You. But I’m His Favourite. –I haven’t quite had the face to ask our priest who gave it to him.
*** I am trying to remind myself that a year ago getting through Cambridge at all would have been a miracle beyond my grasp, never mind without being shouted at. One of the frustrating things about being a Not Very Good Ringer is the way everything makes a difference. If you can ring Cambridge, you can ring Cambridge (or Grandsire, or Stedman, or anything else), right? Wrong. Because each bell perforce must start at a different point of the pattern (like a kind of relay race), you will start learning a new method by ringing it always on the same bell, most often the two. That’s the same number bell, the second bell in the row/circle of six. Except that when you’re learning, you want literally the same bell. The exact same bell. The number two bell is a whole different experience at Little Warbling than it is at New Arcadia or South Desuetude. I have been hacking at Cambridge long enough now that I have rung it at Little Warbling before . . . but, as I now recall, the last time I tried was kind of a disaster. Maybe this is reassuring. I’m improving. Siiiiiiiiigh. I just want to be disgustingly brilliant, you know? Why can’t I be disgustingly brilliant? I must not have filled the form out right. I’m sure I ticked the ‘disgustingly brilliant’ box.
† With or without chocolate bickies. I realise this comes as a shock, but not everybody turns to chocolate in times of stress.
†† There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Rudyard Kipling gets it right (again). Don’t let the sentimental twaddle that has grown up around this poem fool you: he’s not in a good mood^.
http://homepage.mac.com/rmansfield/thislamp/files/72e33ce48fa33d32d561c2c2018483e7-165.html
^ And no, you’re right, it’s not Shakespeare. Be grateful.
††† Note that any reference to the rainbow bridge will be deleted. Does. Not. Work. For. Me.
‡ Most of my stuff sounds pretty lugubrious anyway, or at least weird. I wouldn’t tackle an epithalamium.
‡‡ You may get twice that out of a horse, of course, but that may almost be worse, because it’s still only about one-third of what you’re hoping for yourself.
‡‡‡ Probably. Critter people are like that. Which means that one of the saddest, most demoralising curses of our modern era is the no-pets-allowed at old people’s homes.
§ Yes, I know, horrors etc, I am an irresponsible cow, etc etc. Bite me.
§§ I have bottomless, ardent sympathy for people who find words intimidating when I’m trying to write music. Sticking notes together is so . . . is so . . . is . . . uh. . . .
§§§ No, he doesn’t read the blog.
# If Finale hasn’t driven me to running mad with an axe before then.
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?
Hot Culture
So I put friend #2 on the train yesterday afternoon and was looking forward to a nice slow day today* of . . . frelling laundry, and picking up some/any of the stuff that seems to have accumulated on all flat surfaces,** preferably before the next visitor onslaught*** arrives and (conceivably) wants to put its suitcase down.†
. . . Having forgotten we were supposed to go to Tosca†† tonight at Grange Park. Tickets were of course bought long before I found out that 23.2% of everybody I have ever met in my life was going to be pounding through Hampshire this fortnight. ††† Nor did I know till I got up this morning—to some sadist on the radio telling me with relish— that it was going to be the hottest day of the year. Just the sort of weather you want to get seriously dressed up in and go sit in a small oppressive auditorium with a lot of other people in their best clothes.
I think I’m in love with Claire Rutter.‡ I saw her in Norma‡‡ last year and became her slave. If she decides to widen her fan base and take the lead role in Alvin and the Chipmunks: Carnegie Hall to Coney Island, I’ll probably go see it. But after her Norma, Tosca was a no-brainer.‡‡‡ And she was fabulous. It’s interesting, I don’t find her that persuasive an actress per se—she’s kind of an earnestly-going-through-the-motions performer—but golly can she put it over as soon as she opens her mouth. And it’s not just that she has a great voice—she has enough great voice for two or three sopranos, it seems to me—she has huge emotional commitment to what she’s singing to you about, plus what I don’t know what else to call but authority. She just totally makes you believe.
[Man saluting barefoot wife. It was too hot for shoes. I don't know how Peter is bearing his velvet jacket.]
I didn’t myself feel that either the Cavaradossi or the Scarpia was quite up to her, although Scarpia in particular got a lot of applause at the end. Cavaradossi is to some extent your basic disposable tenor§ role—he lives to suffer anguish, love the soprano, and die—but Scarpia has to dazzle and command.§§ He can’t just be wicked, he has to have charisma: he has to be the kind of sick puppy you can’t look away from. I felt that this Scarpia was pretty much your garden-variety thug. He kills people, sure, but he doesn’t do it with any class.
But Rutter . . . mmm. Worthwhile. Definitely worthwhile.
And now maybe tomorrow can be a nice slow day of laundry, and sweeping the floor, and watering the garden, and deadheading a few million roses and pansies, and writing a novel, and—arrgh, blah, gah, frell—I’m supposed to have Fear No More and Come Away, Come Sweet Love, no no not memorized just prepared off copy by Tuesday. . . .
[Man descending stairs. Yes, wife has put her shoes back on.]
* * *
* Having survived MY FOURTH AND LAST ENGAGEMENT AS RINGING MASTER this morning at service ring. Niall got HOME today, or anyway he better had, or the hunting-down-and-killing clause will be invoked. I was thinking about the Horrors of Command again this morning, and more intensely, it being service 
ring and all. Now the first rule of service ringing is that you only ring what you can sound good at, because this is service ring, this is what we’re supposed to be for.^ And the first rule of handling your band is keep ’em coming back—by giving them something to do that makes them feel both clever and wanted. This can lead to a certain amount of ringing-master dolour and desolation, as today. So having thought of something to do, announced it, and grabbed your rope—the reality of Sunday morning being that you’re not likely going to have a chance to sit out—rather than standing there cheerfully/stoically ringing with everyone else, you’re busy worrying about what you’re going to do next. And what if, furthermore, you’re conducting the freller? I can’t think about this many things at once.
[Man reading placard . . . ]
Why didn’t I take up knitting or the French horn or rocket science or something simple and straightforward?
^ I have done my rant at you about people who learn to ring for their own amusement but can’t be bothered to pay their dues by showing up Sunday mornings. Arrrrrgh.
[ . . . about this]
** I may or may not do an x-rated blog post about my Drain Clearer. Cathy and I were both weeping with laughter after I got it out of its mailing box. It looked so ordinary in the catalogue.
*** People have this disgraceful habit of travelling in the summer. Stay home! Stay home!
† Can’t you just stand there and hold it? What do you think this is, a hotel?
†† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosca The plot summary is kind of a long way down.
††† Note that two more very familiar to this forum people will be appearing on these pages toward the end of the week.
‡ http://www.ruttergadd.co.uk/cr/
‡‡ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_(opera)
‡‡‡ Tosca has the further advantage that it is one of the few operas Peter can be wheedled into going to without major arbitration and sulking.
§ E lucevan le stelle, yes, yes, I know, very pretty aria, makes a great concert piece.
§§ Speaking of commanding. I wonder if he was ever a ringing master?
