Sunday night after Sunday afternoon
I’m bored with only chewing on one side of my mouth.* And Gemma was not at the abbey this afternoon which made me feel more put-upon. We had eight, however, which meant we could ring triples. Watch me frelling dive for the treble. . . . At least it wasn’t seven Brilliant Ringers and me: our eight included two of the middling band members—they’re better than I am, but that still doesn’t take much**—so at least I didn’t have to humiliate myself further by saying ‘no’ when they asked me if I could treble bob to major.*** It wasn’t even seven blokes and me†; Leandra and Moira were both there. Moira is consolingly middling level; Leandra is a major frelling hot shot, but has the gift for treating morons and gibbering twits like human beings. I aspire to being worth her time.††
Other than that, it’s been SHADOWS. And maybe a little New Thing.
KatydidNL
Am I the only one who really wishes she had a copy of these Flowerhair books?
Snork. Because I am a depraved human being I’ve been thinking about inserting the occasional excerpt. I’m just not sure how far this parody thing will stretch. Carooooooooooooom WHACK.
. . . And it’s not going to freeze tonight. I don’t think. I hope. I planted a lot more tender little green things today.††† I may just bring the potted-up dahlia cuttings in. Just because I can.
* * *
* Because I am a hysterical twit one of my first thoughts after the bloody crown^ chunked out last night, after the screams of horror etc, was, ohmigods can I SING? I have a voice lesson on Bank Holiday Monday! —Yes I can sing. Good grief. Chewing is, however, problematic.
^ An interesting image. Sort of Charles I.
** I’m getting better. I am. My mind still goes blank. But sometimes it comes back. Sometimes it even comes back bringing the blue line of the method we are (theoretically) ringing with it.
But just walking over from the car park the middle of a Sunday afternoon . . . the world is full of frelling tourists, and one of the things they’re gaping at is the abbey, which is gigantic and impressive and all that. And beautiful. I’ve loved it for years, and when I didn’t seem to be DOING quite so much, including before I started bell ringing, I used to creep in for evensong sometimes, to listen to the voices and the organ in that extraordinary space. I look at it and I think and I frelling RING there? You’re kidding, right?^ It takes you a couple of minutes’ hard walking to get round this vast building to the door to the tower, and by the time I climb the ninety thousand stairs, including the rope ladder over the oubliette at the end, I’m in no fit state to do anything but sit in a corner and gibber.^^ So when Og or Albert calls out the name of a method and expects people to step forward and grab ropes, I’m like, Nooooooo! I’m knitting! I climbed ninety million stairs (including the rope ladder over the oubliette) to sit in a corner and knit!
I really want to get over this stage. Really. Want. It’s boring. Speaking of boring.
^ I seem to be uttering this phrase kind of a lot lately. It turned up in New Thing recently which was probably a mistake because we all know life follows art.+ I ordered a bunch of stuff from one of these on line organic save-the-planet sites including six tins of Spicy Lentil Soup which I’m fond of and it’s faster than making it when you’re ringing that night and besides you’re only allowed nine calories a day which means cooking is mostly kind of demoralising. Five tins were in the box they sent me. So I emailed them saying, just reassure me you didn’t charge me for the sixth, okay? And they wrote back saying, we need more information about your order, and then we can respond to your concerns. One of their list of questions was What colour was the TAPE used on the packaging? What? Clearly an occasion when the only possible response is, You’re kidding, right?
+ Yes, I’d be worrying about those attack mushrooms if I were you.
^^ . . . And get out my knitting.+ Knitting is very good for the blood pressure++ as I have just been telling Hannah.
+ Can anyone out there recommend or point me at a pattern for a mug cosy—and before you send me six hundred and forty-nine links to patterns for those wrap-around mug cosies which seem to be a major fashion accessory these days (including some very cute ones on Ravelry), what I want is a mug cosy that looks like a tea cosy only smaller. This is one of those things that supposing I live long enough to get casual with knitting the way I’m casual with baking (‘okay, fine, that looks about right’) I assume I’ll be able to invent, or devent, from a tea cosy pattern, or a circular hat pattern, or something. Right at the moment I need to be told what to do, in words of one syllable, and not very many of them either.
++ Which, after ninety thousand stairs, is banging in your ears anyway. I only have breath to gibber with because of all that hellhound hurtling.
*** Major is eight bells. And the fancy upper level methods have a frelling fancy upper level line even for the lowly treble. I can treble bob to minor—six bells—at some tower that isn’t the abbey. Eight . . . well. I’d like to have a try, some practise night, after I’ve stopped freaking out.
† This should not matter. A ringer is a ringer is a ringer and there have been women ringers for the last hundred years or so (although I’m very glad I didn’t have to be one of the first). But I start feeling all patriarchally oppressed when I’m surrounded by blokes who are all better at something than I am. This is my problem, not the blokes’.
†† Along with being a sweetheart to the dim and wussified, Leandra is tiny and fierce. She’s Albert’s wife and, like him, a major feature in the local guild. She’s also one of the comparatively few top-flight women ringers: there are plenty of girls down at my level, but it’s usually only the boys who are obsessive enough to go on to great things.^ There are still a few lingering sexist assumptions in bell ringing, among them that women don’t ring at the back on the big bells. Colin likes to joke about this, after he’s handed me the rope for the tenor.^^ The back bells at the abbey are seriously large. Entire fleets of aircraft carriers weigh less than the tenor. When we’re ringing on eighty-four, look around: Leandra will be at the back somewhere. She’s so little that if you’re on a bell on the opposite side of the aircraft-hangar ringing chamber you can barely frelling see her. The abbey band wouldn’t dream of messing with her, but I’m rather hoping to see her tangle some day with an old-fashioned visitor who doesn’t think women ring big bells.^^^
^ I’m obsessive enough. I’m just not good enough.
^^ The tenor at Glaciation is not particularly large but it is very deep set which means you need six friends to help you drag it off its perch. Thus a little innocent merriment may be had on a dull ringing evening.
^^^ Although watching Wild Robert casually handle a monster bell is as good as a play. He’s half a head taller than I am but probably weighs less.
††† While dad robin dealt with an extra serving of mealworms. I’m going to run out. I’m going to have to buy maggots till the next delivery.
Happy happy happy. Happy. Happy. Grrrrrr.
IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF A THREE-DAY BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND. AND THE CROWN ON ONE OF MY HORRIBLE STUPID TEETH HAS JUST FALLEN OUT. I’m so happy. Happy, happy, happy, happy.
It has not been a brilliant day and furthermore Peter is in Cardamomlinghamshire visiting relatives so I don’t even have him around to blame.*
Gemma told me last night, cheerfully, on her way out the door after handbells** that she probably won’t be there for afternoon ringing at the abbey on Sunday. She saw the stark panic flood my face and said hastily, you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine, eggs grow on trees, teabags make the best tea, and Charlemagne was a girl. AAAAAAUGH. Last Sunday it was five fabulous male ringers . . . and Gemma and me. AAAAAAAAUGH.
I’ll be fine. Yes. I’ll be fine. I’ll take my knitting. . . .
AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A FROST TOMORROW NIGHT. A FROST! A FRELLING, FRELLING, FRELLING, FRELLING FROST! IT’S MAY! IT’S MAY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND! WE’RE ALLOWED TO PLANT LITTLE TENDER GREEN THINGS OUTDOORS IN THE GROUND IN MAY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND!***
Usually.
I had quite a nice time in the garden a couple of days ago—when it finally stopped raining long enough to make this practical—playing eenie meanie with all the racks and rows of little green mail-order things that arrived during the floods and are still waiting to be put somewhere they can settle down and grow.† I planted the sweet peas, finally, some begonias, some (tender) fuchsias, most of the rest of the glads, some petunias. Today . . . today I (furiously) planted the dahlia cuttings in pots two or three sizes smaller than I meant to—I don’t have TIME for endless potting-on: stuff goes in an intermediate pot and then it goes into the ground or into its big permanent pot—so they’d all fit on a tray in case I’m bringing them indoors tomorrow night. The stuff that is already in the ground is going to have to take its chances†† . . . but the sitting-room is going to be frelling impassable if I have to bring in all the unfrost-proof things in trays and pots or still in their mail-order plastic cells. . . .
* * *
* You made my crown fall out! You did! You know you did!
** Have I told you we seem to have morphed into Thursday and Friday handbells?? Wait, wait, I have a novel to finish and I do need to reserve some brain. I think I’ve told you Gemma is a doctor, and she’s just changed clinics/surgeries which means her schedule has changed, and Thursday afternoon handbells are no longer possible. So we had, I thought, moved handbells to Fridays right before New Arcadia bell practise^ . . . except that it turns out Colin can’t do Fridays but was too polite to say so.^^ I have this habit of not really paying attention to details and therefore found myself saying to Niall and Colin, well, okay, we’ll just have to keep on with Thursdays, and Niall and I can ring with Gemma on Fridays . . . WHAT AM I SAYING. This week was the first of the new schedule and . . . two days in a row of handbells is . . . intense.
^ Which means I will now stuff hellhounds into their harnesses and pelt out the door so as to be out of earshot by the time they start ringing up. I’m getting better at sleeping through Sunday mornings though.
^ The British. ARRRRRRRGH.
*** I’m having another of those ‘why do I DO this to myself??’ moments. I moaned this to Peter tonight over the phone and he said, because you’d think less well of yourself if you didn’t^, which is true as far as it goes, but it still begs the question why do I have to choose activities where terror will be my natural environment? Why couldn’t I collect stamps or go to more films?^^
^ And given my standard level of self-appreciation this could get dangerous.
^^ No horror, of course.+
+ Avengers Assemble is playing semi-around here this weekend and I am half-tempted to go except for two things: (a) it’s in frelling 3D, and my loathing for (frelling) 3D was renewed and reinforced by (multi-frelling) THOR and (b) I haven’t got time. If I’m going to ring bells and sing and rescue all the little green things drowning in my garden(s) and finish a novel before the hellhounds and I have to stop eating, although the hellhounds wouldn’t mind, I haven’t got time.# And, just by the way, Sunday morning ringing at New Arcadia is forty minutes plus a one-minute bolt from the cottage to the tower and a more leisurely several-minute stroll back. Sunday afternoon ringing at the abbey is an hour, plus a half hour commute. Also, terror is tiring.
# And the blog is a not insignificant eater of time.~
~ And there are a lot of doodles waiting to be doodled. Siiiigh. I should draw you a Venn diagram of Available Energy Usage by Robin McKinley some time. I don’t know if this is the frelling ME, or advancing age, or just that I’ve always been peculiar, but what I can and can’t do isn’t just about whether I feel (relatively) alert and intelligent or as if I have ham salad for brains and limbs made of half deflated inner tubes. It’s more of a Chinese-menu situation where you want stuff from as many columns as possible. And your fortune cookie is still going to tell you you’re frelled.
*** Meanwhile friends in the Midwestern prairie are having temperatures pushing ninety (°F).
† I’m still seeing disturbingly few little feathered things in the shrubbery.^ I wouldn’t have thought literal drowning was all that likely in my garden-on-a-hill, and there’s still the greenhouse to take shelter in. Nor would I have thought I have many predators out there, although what is that unpleasing line about there always being a rat within five feet of you? I’m sure my local rats would be more than happy to tuck into adolescent robin. But dad robin is still hanging around for mealworms. Robins are such fearless little critters^^ that you get a prime view of what’s going on with them. There were still two adults^^^ when I started putting mealworms out but they were very chary of me—which served to reinforce my guilt about how little gardening I’ve been doing recently and it’s not all down to the weather—but robins don’t really do chary and dad, at this point, pretty well gets in my face and says, Mealworms? Where are the mealworms?, if he’s dispatched the previous serving. I put them out twice a day, and he must be feeding them to someone because if he ate all of them himself he’d explode. The mealworm saucer normally lives on my potting table in the greenhouse but I put it out in the courtyard by the kitchen door when I want to use my table, on top of a tall pot that will have a dahlia in it eventually. He knows this. So first he sits in the apple tree next to the greenhouse and stares at me, and then he perches on that pot and looks at me meaningfully. I may have to start buying more mealworms.
^ I did get a couple of photos of the babies, but they’re not very good. The nest is tucked back behind various jars and plastic boxes of plant food and it’s dark. I didn’t want to blow a flash in their tiny fluffy faces and I haven’t been very lucky with the right angles of sunlight . . . or any angles of sunlight, lately. They’re only in the nest about ten days, I think—maybe two weeks. Not long at all. And I didn’t notice they’d hatched immediately—they were already beginning to grow feathers by the time I saw them—since I’d been trying to leave mum alone so she’d go on sitting. But I’m reasonably sure there were five of them to begin with. Five’s a lot.
^^ Unlike their human namesake
^^^ If there’s only one parent left, it’s probably dad, because mum has sashayed off to start a new nest somewhere else.
†† I may raise the odds a bit by throwing a bit of bubble wrap around. After potting up the frelling sweet peas—usually I just slap them in the ground to begin with—and bringing them in and out for about a fortnight I am VERY RELUCTANT TO LOSE THEM NOW.
Chirpity chirpity chirp chirp chirp
I rang my first ordinary Sunday service at the abbey this afternoon. Chirpity chirpity, etc. And I did not humiliate myself.* Quadruple chirpity. Sextuple chirpity. Icosahedronic chirpity.
I didn’t tell you this last night because there’s a limit to how much gruesome suspense I’m willing to share. Gemma has kept on telling me that the abbey is always short at Sunday afternoon service, and that last week, for example, they almost didn’t ring at all because only four ringers turned up—apparently they have a status to maintain, and with eighty-seven bells refuse to countenance minimus**—and then Wild Robert, who I believe shows at the abbey most Sunday afternoons except when he’s in London practising for the national twenty-six-bell demolition derby, arrived in the nick of time***. Indeed Wild Robert told me a similar story about Sunday afternoon at the abbey a fortnight ago. And then after the reification of the overgoddess last week I was thinking, okay, McKinley, they didn’t need you but they let you ring, when are you going to start paying your way† by showing up for ordinary service ringing?
Dither dither dither dither dither. The other side of service ringing is that you don’t get to do it till you’re ready. Till you can, you know, ring. Which I’m not showing really rampant signs of being able to do at the abbey (yet). I’m clearly improving, if raggedly, but . . . but if they’re that short-handed we could ring frelling call changes.†† Dither. Dither.
So last night, Saturday night, at the last possible minute for Sunday, I wrote—emailed—Ulrich, saying that I felt I should wait till I was asked but Gemma keeps telling me the abbey needs ringers for Sunday afternoons and while I’m finding ringing at the abbey a steep learning curve if/when they think I might be more of an asset than a liability . . . I could maybe come along.
Then I spent the rest of the evening twitching wildly every time my email pinged.††† But by the time I went to bed last night at seriously mmph o’clock‡ Ulrich had not answered. He could have clutched his forehead and reeled away from his email with a cry of dismay . . . or he could have a life and been out doing pleasant things on Saturday night. But apparently my Sunday afternoon was to be free to keep on with SHADOWS.‡‡
I was staggering around, perhaps rather late, this morning, grappling with difficult issues like tea and underwear, and I had Astarte on the kitchen counter. And she pinged. I stared at her with a wild surmise. That email ping could have been any number of people. It could have been my homeopathic mailing list. It could have been someone wondering where I was and why I hadn’t answered their last (a lot of choice here). It could have been first contact with a sentient alien species.
It wasn’t. It was Ulrich. Please do come along, he said.
So I did.‡‡‡
And I wasn’t brilliant.§ But I was okay.§§
* * *
* This is me, right? I don’t say ‘I did well’ or even ‘I did pretty well’ or even ‘I didn’t do too badly’. I say ‘I did not humiliate myself.’ Siiiiigh. I wonder if I could ask for a positive attitude for my sixtieth birthday?^
^ I could ask.
** Four bells. Remember that method ringing is about jumbling up the order, but that a bell can only move one place each row. There’s not a lot you can do with only four bells. People have been known to ring full peals on four bells . . . but they’re madder even than the usual run of method ringers. At New Arcadia, however, if there are four ringers for Sunday service, they ring minimus.
*** Which is not to say that he hadn’t been to London. He had. In several locations. Wild Robert spends all day on a train on Sundays, punctuated by bursts of ringing. By the time he gets to the afternoon ring at the abbey the edge, I believe, is wearing off, and he’s almost ready for the new week, which contains things other than ringing.
† I’ve said all this before but I’ll say it again because it’s important. Bell ringing lives and dies on a huge amount of volunteer effort. A huge amount of volunteer effort. Being a paid-up member costs you about £7.50 a year and if you are a cheap s.o.b. your church will pay your sub for you. The rest is the hours that you and the other ringers put into it. All those millions of hours ringing teachers put into teaching people to ring—most of whom will drop out again before they become useful ringers—are all gratis. All those hours the bands around those learners put into ringing for the learners to bounce off of are all gratis.
But we need bells to ring. Bells are housed in churches^ and maintained by church admin.^^ And we pay for the enormous privilege of having bells to ring . . . by ringing services. Ordinary Sunday services, and anything else the priest or semi-sacred minion or congregation member asks for—reification of goddesses, weddings, funerals, births of grandchildren, first official contact with sentient alien species^^^, whatever. It’s what we’re for. And yes, there are lots of ringers who don’t honour this unwritten contract, but they are all slime moulds.
And personally, as someone who needs endless practise grinding to frelling LEARN anything, I get anxious about payback pretty quickly.
^ There are, I believe, a few Catholic churches with method bells, but the overwhelming majority of method ringing goes on in Anglican church towers. I think this is true world-wide as well as the UK, but then method ringing as it is done in the UK is a British invention and British art form, and it tends to show up only in (chiefly) English-speaking ex-colonies: USA, Australia, South Africa. The UK and particularly England however is the only place there are lots of bell ringing towers.
^^ With occasional help from ringer-driven Bell Funds, especially when major work needs to be done. Churches haven’t been wealthy since Henry VIII. Ha ha.
^^^ I’m looking forward to this one. Perhaps they’ll compose a new method, like they have for the Olympics+. Spock Royal. Aeryn Sun Surprise. Vorlon Vector Double Spliced.
+But don’t get me started.
†† I’m not looking forward to call changes at the abbey. The ringing chamber, as I keep moaning, is gigantic, and the sound-carrying is dire. As it is I’m just about guessing when there’s a sharp barking noise during a touch that it’s the conductor shouting ‘bob’ or ‘single’. Now all I have to do is figure out which. Call changes are dependent on the conductor calling EACH change. Which means you have to be able to hear them. But call changes mean that people who haven’t learnt any methods^ can still ring.
^ Or are too panic-stricken or intimidated to remember them
††† It does this kind of a lot. I belong to a distressingly lively homeopathic list.
‡ I have many wicked friends who want the worst for me, and introduce me to evil computer games. I’m also rereading CHARMED LIFE for the umpty-mumbleth time, but I’m trying to read it as slowly as possible, which leaves me easy prey to evil computer games. Aaaaaugh.
‡‡ Speaking of aaaaaaugh. AAAAAAAAAAUGH.
‡‡‡ Note that I wasn’t sacrificing a good gardening afternoon or anything. The gale didn’t merely knock all my rosebushes over, it drove water both under my front door and through the stable-door crack in the middle. I hope the baby robins are hugging the ground. The hellhounds and I, attempting to hurtle, remained earthbound chiefly because they hated the whole situation so much that they became little anvils at the ends of their leads.
§ Brilliance, with me and bells, is not an option.
§§ I was half grateful and half amused, watching Og figuring out how best to handle me. He called an easy touch of bob minor while I was ringing inside. I rang the tenor-behind for Stedman doubles—at a tower that isn’t the abbey I can ring Stedman. And we finished with rounds on the back six, which was kind of a hoot. The last four bells at the abbey are all seriously, INCREASINGLY huge. I’ve told you about ringing rounds on forty-six, where you pull off and then have to wait till it’s your turn again, because there are so many bells that have to go first. In a way the effect of waiting is more pronounced when you’re ringing only the back six because it is only six, but the pauses between the big bells are so marked. I was, of course, on the treble. Dong . . . dong . . . . . . . dong . . . . . . . . . DONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DOOOOOOOOONG.
But it was also useful, this afternoon’s ring. I’m finding my feet at the abbey. I hope.
Tea and No Sympathy
IT’S RAINING. Of course it’s raining. It has always rained. It will always rain.* Tomorrow we’re supposed to have gales. I’m so happy. Meanwhile the robins have dispersed. Silly little beggars. They should stay in the greenhouse where there’s a roof. I’ve thought of this a lot in the last ten days or so—at least the baby robins in the greenhouse aren’t melting. There is a good EIGHT INCHES of rain in my buckets. I’ve emptied my two-inch-measure rain gauge several times. Robins were still in the nest yesterday but gone without a trace today. Usually the little-things-in-the-shrubbery start making themselves known immediately—and there’s no way in or out of the cottage garden except by flying** unless I open the greenhouse door, which I haven’t in over a week.*** They’re probably in shock: they hop out of the nest, stumble along the shelf, nose-dive to the ground, yell, YAAY! FREEDOM!, and are instantly smacked to the floor by a large handful of rain.
The double daily serving of mealworms disappeared as normal today however, so something is eating them. The mealworm saucer—also inside the greenhouse, where dinner won’t drown—is on the flight path to the nest and I haven’t seen anything else hanging around, so I prefer to think it’s dad robin. I’ve seen him a few times, looking harassed. If perhaps there’s a break in the gales tomorrow I would quite like to get outdoors and pot up a few little green things (this will involve moving the dish of mealworms, which is on my potting table) and will try to catch dad poking mealworms into little things in the shrubbery.
I rang for a wedding today, in South Desuetude, poor things. I hope the bride’s gown had mud flaps.† But Colin is bonkers.†† We rang some rather good call changes, nice and brisk and crisp. I’ve said this before, that you’re usually so fixated on trying to learn methods that you forget that (mostly) well-struck call changes are pretty cool. Then Colin cast his eye over his band and declared that we would ring bob triples. For pity’s sake. Four of us out of eight knew what we were doing—I can’t remember the last time I was offered the opportunity to have a go at a practise course of bob triples. And we’re ringing it for a wedding??††† Two of us clueless ones were on the treble and the tenor—but I was ringing inside as was Cora, who promptly went wrong on her first dodge. Colin dragged us jovially out of the resulting morass and we continued . . . and then Boadicea went wrong. No fair. You’re one of the ones who knows what she’s doing. I never did figure out who I was making long sevenths over. I know the line on the page, as opposed to in the hurly-burly of ringing, so I just kept counting my line—and Colin kept yanking us on. We came round. I have no idea how. It cleared the churchyard however. . . .
And I went home for a bracing cup of tea.
libby.gorman
I do not know about this “warming the cup” part of making tea. Doesn’t the hot water make the cup warm?
b_twin_1
Depends how long you want the cup of tea to stay hot. If you want the tea to cool quickly so you can gulp it down before you dash out the door then a cold cup will assist. If you want a leisurely cuppa then warming the cup is “proper”.
::Clutches forehead:: Where were you people RAISED? Is NOTHING SACRED? Have the younger generations been DENIED THE WISDOM OF THE AGES? You warm your vessel for brewing tea—cup or pot—so the tea steeps correctly. ‡ And then there’s the whole commotion about whether you add the milk first or second: but since I don’t use milk I am allowed to give a miss to this embattled controversy.‡‡
Now I am going to SING. Oisin gave me a, you should forgive the term, new thing yesterday, which casts an interesting light on his view of my singing, but I’ll tell you all about it if I manage to learn it. Mwa ha ha ha ha.
* * *
* Except when there’s a drought, of course.
** All right. I admit it. Phineas’ previous cat once made it over his garden-room roof into my garden. I was not amused. He^ received a bucket of water for his pains and I didn’t see him again. Grrrrrr.^^
^ The cat, that is. Not Phineas.
^^Q&A page today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/apr/27/joss-whedon-screenwriter-director
Cat or dog?
Cat! Dog: need need, poop, chew, need, lick, need. Cat: whatev. Meow, yo. Here’s a mouse.
Feh.
Cat: misses litterbox, plays head games, leaves dismembered corpses on your pillow. Dog: craps outdoors, doesn’t mind admitting is glad to see you, finds sleeping in heaps with chosen goddess sufficient glory and does not keep presenting asshole for admiration when you’re trying to watch a film.
. . . AT WHICH POINT The Cat Anti-Defamation League, or possibly the Joss Whedon for Galactic Supremo Party, nailed me and WORD CRASHED . . . taking, among other things, New Thing with it. Granted I have New Thing backed up liberally but I hadn’t copied today’s ep yet. GAAAAAAAH. Microsoft Recovery seems, in fact, to have recovered . . . this post, anyway, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll start a new file with today’s ep of New Thing, just in case of retrospective accidents. And the four hundred and six empty documents also recovered are making me nervous. What I had been trying to do was copy and paste one other quote from this article which maybe I’ll just type in . . .
How do you relax?
I do not understand your earthworld questionings.
Maybe Whedon should take up bell ringing.
*** I have MILLIONS of little green (mostly) mail-order things waiting to be potted on and/or planted out. MILLIONS. I swear every day Cathy was here there was another frelling delivery of little green things wanting to be potted on. I’M SURE I DIDN’T ORDER ALL OF THIS STUFF. And the day of our expedition, the one that was foiled, we stopped at a garden centre on the way home^ so that I could assuage my lacerated feelings and . . . MILLIONS. I’M TELLING YOU. MILLIONS.
^ I was driving. Cathy couldn’t stop me. She tried.
† Although my sympathy dwindled to negligible when she was half an hour late. I am near as near to finishing my second leg-warmer however. I wonder what horrors I will produce/reveal when I try to seam the frellers up.
†† We knew this, of course. Meanwhile Niall is disloyally going back to Curlyewe on Monday—which is their tower practise night, so it’s easier to organise them to come along early for a slug of handbells first. He promises this will not become a regular event. I’ve never rung at Curlyewe (tower) so I’m jealous . . . and then it turns out Colin’s tower practise this Monday is on his grisly little garage ring—with the flowerpots in the ceiling, and the tenor, the biggest bell, weighs eleven frelling pounds. It’s like trying to cook with a doll’s tea set. ARRRRRGH.
††† Maybe if she hadn’t been half an hour late. . . .
‡ You need half-decent tea for the effect to be noticeable however. Do not speak to me of tea BAGS if you wish to live. And the latest fashion nonsense about triangular-solid-shaped bags that bloom in hot water, frelling spare me. As if anyone who drinks PG Tips cares. Mind you, if all you want/need is a slug of caffeine as rapidly as possible, it’s all good. But a really excellent cup of tea worth lingering over requires finesse. Which includes superior-quality LOOSE tea . . . and warming whatever you’re making it in first.
‡‡ When I did use milk, I added it second. But this was not because of philosophical deliberations or considerations of the physics of creaminess. It was because I wanted to be sure the sixty-four spoons of sugar I put in first dissolved properly.
Meteorological Mayhem
Hellhounds and I put Cathy on the train in Mauncester this morning.* Hellhounds and I then headed farther out, to Warm Upford, to check on the bluebell situation. And the heavens opened. Sweet bleeding demiurges, I thought it had been raining before. This was the solid wall of water variety, coming down so hard you not only can’t see out of your windscreen, but you wonder uneasily if it’s going to dent your roof and rip your windscreen wipers off. You’re going at 20 mph because you can’t see . . . and then you fall into the Mississippi River, SPLASH, and here you thought you were in southern England and what the frell happened to the frelling levees?** Fortunately Wolfgang is equipped with an amphibian button from his secret life as a stunt car for James Bond, and so we swam to shore and continued on our way, which had become brown and given to whirlpools. We were the second car behind a monster lorry, and when it hit a road-flood I swear the bow-wave was taller than Wolfgang. This kind of downpour doesn’t last, I told myself, clinging valiantly to the steering wheel, and indeed it didn’t, it slacked off to mere sheeting between onslaughts of cannonball rain. We got out to Warm Upford and turned around despondently to come back by another route and . . . there was suddenly and unexpectedly this astonishing manifestation called ‘blue sky’.*** I pulled Wolfgang over at the first opportunity and hellhounds and I got out for a sprint. A wet sprint. A very wet sprint. A very, very wet sprint. A very, very, very wet sprint. A . . . .†
I had a concert to go to tonight. In Frellingham. Arrrgh. Frellingham is about forty-five minutes from here. Nina lives there now, and she emailed me a while ago about the schedule at the little concert venue a few blocks from her and her bloke’s new house. We had agreed that tonight’s visitation looked amusing: a ragtag collection of old folk-hippie musicians who have (apparently) banded together against the encroachment of electro-techno alternative art prog dance-punk-metal experimental grungehorror cyberthrash, and gone on tour. Nina had bought tickets. Hellhounds and I got back from our wet sprint, and having used up sixteen towels getting half dry, I emailed poor Nina in a bit of a panic saying I’m not driving to Frellingham in this.
It cleared off. Sort of. Comparatively.††† Hellhounds and I only got semi-wet on the afternoon hurtle, and the wind wasn’t blowing more than 80 mph except for the occasional gust, so I slid a few extra lead weights into the special James Bond slots under Wolfgang’s chassis†† and we went.
The concert was . . . amusing.‡ Sometimes it is a good thing to be reminded that your youth is something you get to grow out of. And I only got slightly lost on my way to Nina and Ignatius’ new house—I’ve only been there once before and which way you go on the unmarked roundabout(s) may take a little while to lodge in the memory.
Tomorrow . . . reality bites. And SHADOWS reign.‡‡
* * *
* Waaaaaah. But . . . pretty much everything about the timing of this visit sucked dead (you should forgive the term) bears. She was supposed to be coming after I had finished and handed in SHADOWS.^ She was supposed to be coming after I was caught up to Hamaker New Thing Monkeywrench #s 1 and 2.^^ She was also supposed to be coming here to have long walks through the countryside and, it being bluebell season, she would not only see bluebells, but we might possibly get a hellgoddess and hellhounds surrounded by bluebells photo.^^^
No. None of the above. But she did see baby robins. And we lay on the folded-out sofa at the cottage with a plethora of hellhounds# and watched WONDERFALLS## on the Shiny Two-Ton No Longer New Entirely Rebuilt Ex-Lemon### Laptop, thus proving it can do something right.~ Also, that bartender is hot.~~ And the rain drummed on.
^ And was far enough along on the doodle backlog that you could actually get into my office again. Not, I suppose, that she needed to get into my office, but it’s easier to browse my F&SF shelves, which are what live (mostly+) in my office, from within arm’s length than . . . not within arm’s length.
+ There’s a wall of homeopathy too. Which is why SF&F spills into the bedroom.
^^ When in fact I’m writing ep 12 and it’ll be another one or two before we get to HNTM one. We started #3 while she was here anyway.
^^^ Instead she drank a lot of tea out of my bluebell mug+, since that was as close as she was going to get. Well, there are a few bluebells in my garden, but given the, ahem, lushness of the planting out there, you’d get just as soaked going to look at them as if you went and found some wild ones.
+ http://www.emmabridgewater.co.uk/flowers/bluebell-12-pint-mug/invt/ngbb002/
Hmph. It’s got more expensive since I bought mine.
# They expand to fill available space. I’ve noticed this before.
## http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderfalls
### She says with dramatic emphasis.
~Including, evidently, playing a region 1 DVD. I am so clueless about all of this.
~~ So is Beth.
** Ask George W. Bush.
*** It was still raining, of course. This is southern England^. It rains out of blue sky all the time. But it doesn’t usually rain the pummelling you all over your body kind of rain out of blue sky. Usually.
^ Unless it’s the Mississippi delta.
† And I’m afraid the rumours that it’s a bad year for bluebells appear to be true. There aren’t as many flower stalks at all, it seems to me, and the ones there are have four or six little bells per, and usually you get twelve or fifteen. Aside from the tricky questions about taking photos in the rain, if I can’t find a better forest floor of them, there won’t be bluebell photos this year. I have a couple more places to try, but I’m not too hopeful. That was my best bluebell sea today.
†† Very bad for mileage, but they do keep you on the road.
††† I’ve just had a frelling email from frelling Cathy saying it was beautiful and clear all day where she was on the south coast. WELL ISN’T THAT SPECIAL.
‡ There wasn’t a single person there under forty. There was also way too much khaki hemp^ and Birkenstocks, but I lowered the level as much as I could in a salmon-coloured turtleneck and All Stars and a watermelon-coloured pullover. My frameless glasses are against me though.
^ No, no, not that kind of hemp.
‡‡ And New Thing gets a nice padded footstool.