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Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah SICK. Blah. SICK.
I’m actually better—sort of—but not all that much, and after hurtling hellhounds twice and doing some work, now by evening blog time I’m pretty much cole slaw again.* Not being able to breathe really takes it out of you. And I have a cough to frighten small children. Hell, it frightens me. I have to stop and lean against a wall, or a hellhound, if that’s what’s available. I’m also at the my-nose-has-been-running-for-so-long stage that smiling makes the entire centre of my face crack painfully. My ears and forehead throb. My stomach doesn’t want to know about food. Since I realised last night was going to be grim I left the radio on—Peter sleeps with the radio on pretty much every night which I am sure has a detrimental effect on the quality of his sleep but we won’t get into that here but I close the book and turn the light and the radio off in the same habitual gesture. Last night I left the radio on and it was comforting in the dark unpleasant hours.** And then—I can’t remember if it was at 6 or 7 o’clock—it suddenly got all chatty. I am an obsessive listener to Radio 3, which is classical, with a few unappreciated-by-me forays into jazz, and they don’t do the in your face DJ thing on classical stations. But they can get fatuous*** and they can certainly get garrulous. And apparently the given wisdom is that people staggering around getting ready for their office jobs want chat. Uggh. People late (even for them) in bed with demonic head/upper respiratory colds do not want chat. Blah. Sick.
It took me three tries to get out of bed at all and then I only remained upright long enough to shiver downstairs and let poor patient hellhounds out of their crate. Then I went back to bed (which was popular with hellhounds†). It was after noon by the time I managed to make and drink my first cup of perilously strong tea . . . gods. It’s PERFECT gardening weather†† and I’m too wasted to take advantage. My fritillaries are blooming away like anything, my robin is still sitting on her nest and my new roses came three days ago and I haven’t been up to anything but ripping the packages open and making sure the roots are damp. Today I at least got them heeled in and roses will last a surprisingly long while merely heeled in . . . ahem . . . although planting them would be preferable.
Blah. Sick. Blah.
I’m also reading another perfect book for low lurgified distraction—Patricia C Wrede’s A MATTER OF MAGIC, which many if not most of you know since many (if not most) of you have recommended it.††† And now, if you’ll forgive me, I think I’ll go lie down again and read some more of it.‡ Well, no, first I’m going to go back to the cottage and bring the frelling sweet peas indoors again.
Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah blah STILL FRELLING THRICE BLASTED SICK BLAH.
* * *
* And I’m sure my mayonnaise has gone off.
** I can’t believe the timing of my electric blanket going phut. I’d managed to buy a new one before the lurgy prostrated me . . . but I presently haven’t got the energy to spare to rip the bed apart^ and put the freller on.
^ It’s an under-your-bottom-sheet one, which seems to be standard over here, and what I’ve got used to.
*** As during the week of non-stop, all Schubert all the time, which is finally over. I love a lot of Schubert, and Schubert lieder make me want to get to German sooner with Nadia^, but not continuously, relentlessly, day after day after day after frelling day.
^ Although this is a classic case of, we have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, so why? Stick to Jingle Bells, honey.
† Oh reckless dog owner beware of precedent.
†† Except for the fact that we’re having ANOTHER FROST TONIGHT and since I didn’t know that earlier everything at the cottage is still outdoors . . . but in fact I probably will get home earlier than usual tonight. Like . . . maybe now.
††† For any of you who read the originals, it’s a one-volume of Mairelon the Magician and The Magician’s Ward.
‡ But may I just say that it amuses me that yesterday’s blog, preoccupied as it was with not only handbells but the miseries of illness, roused comments about what on the forum? Knitting. Most of you remembered to say off handedly ‘oh, hope you feel better soon!’ but clearly your focus was on the knitting.
Caveats and clarifications
Ravenel is leaving the Muddlehampton Choir (in the lurch)!*
He’s retired, for pity’s sake, but like a lot of other old people who are only old chronologically**, he’s a consultant, and they love him in Bandar Seri Begawan. He’s been out there several times and that was supposed to be the end of his contract—but they’ve just offered him a longer-term one and he’s TAKING it, the ratbag.
I was all ready to be devastated . . . and then he started us on a new song*** last thing tonight which is so unutterably loathsome I found myself unable to pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth and sing it. Arrgh. People have frelling quit choirs for less. (It’s supposed to be funny. It isn’t. And the music is BORING.) So maybe I’ll like having Ravenel in Bandar Seri Begawan better than I expected. Meanwhile . . . the post of director/conductor is open† and to some extent the structure of the choir with it. NOW IS THE TIME FOR OISIN TO START THE NEW ARCADIA SINGERS. AND WE WILL SING NO LOATHSOME SONGS.††
* * *
The problem with writing the blog on fumes is that you tend not to say what you mean to say, or you leave stuff out, or you fail to express yourself clearly enough, or you don’t make all the caveats you should make. Caveat number one: I know I’ve said much of what I said last night before. But the doodles remain undone, and I owe you an update occasionally. Blogmom also needs to be able to say something useful to understandably plaintive non-blog-readers about what’s going on.
Catlady
Well, I am the one who originally suggested 2017 as a possible mailing date for the doodles,
Yes, I remember you ’17ers. I like you a lot.
and I’m sticking to that, so by my count, you’ve got five and a half years (if we’re counting to the Christmas season in 2017, so that we can, if we desire, give doodles as gifts. To ourselves.).
I’m also a strong believer in self-selected gifts. Who needs surprise when you can have exactly what you want?†††
And I am quite looking forward to Shadows, and am glad that it’s taking the time that the doodles would take. The motto I’ve been trying to live by recently is: there are always important things I’m neglecting in favor of the important things I’m doing, but that doesn’t mean what I’m doing is wrong.
Yes. I’m with you all the way on this one. Prioritizing, and all those clever punchy annoying business-speak words, only work so far. We’re still waiting for our thirty-six hour day. With the brain stamina to go with it.‡
katinseattle
Robin, stop whacking yourself over the head.
Huh? Um. How am I whacking myself over the head? I’m fairly cranky at fate, but then I am often cranky at fate. And I might have handled last year better, but that would mean going back to about this time last year and realising expeditiously that PEG II had a serious and insoluble from the then-current approach problem,‡‡ and when one’s critical errors start fading into the mists of time . . . maybe it’s just my short attention span, but I’m much more interested in coping with now. And it’s more what catlady said: I may be screwing up, but that doesn’t mean what I am doing is wrong. I’ve prioritised: SHADOWS must come first. This isn’t getting the doodles done. And I’m sorry about that—as I should be. That’s not whacking myself over the head. That’s being fate’s hellhounds’ chew-toy.
We’re here because we like and admire you.
Thank you! But some of the people who ordered books and doodles last autumn just wanted their merchandise.
Personally, I’m sorry for your sake that Shadows is taking longer than you wanted, but I’d much rather have quality McKinley than earlier McKinley.
Well, so would I . . . but it’s also not really my choice. The Story is the Story, as I keep saying. I can only do what it lets me do. And if it doesn’t like the quality of the blood flow it’ll make me find another vein. Ow.
lorelibrarian
As for the doodles, well, I’ve forgotten I sent off the money now, so it will feel like I’m getting a free amazing gift from the universe whenever it does arrive.
I love this.‡‡‡
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* jmeadows
She doesn’t knit because nothing happens fast enough? Hee. Someone is clearly not a process knitter. I like the way knitting feels! I’m perfectly happy to wait for something to happen. (Though I don’t like waiting TOO long. I’m not made of patience, you know.)
This would be me too. Especially given that I’m still doing the knitting equivalent of moving my lips when I read, if I were into product I would be in big trouble. Certainly at my level—squares, and Very Basic Ribbing, knitting is meditative, and I can use all the calming options I can get. And wasting time winds me up something vicious, so it serves a dual purpose: the knitting itself is soothing, and the not wasting time is sort of soothing-plus. And I was casting off The World’s Longest Leg Warmer during break tonight. Because I’m not made of patience either^ and I would like to wear these things, that’s things, plural, as in TWO of them, next winter. . . .
^ Shock horror. Film at eleven.
** . . . Ahem.
*** Remember I said that nobody knows the playlist for the summer concert?
†Nice young Japheth is going to a new job inYorkshire or somewhere equally extreme at the end of the year, so he’s not a candidate. But we may have him through the summer concert if Ravenel slopes off early.
†† I will be sure to be on the board, and the first rule we will pass is that all items on the musical programme must be okayed by the board.^
^ The Muddles are looking for more board members . . . NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.+
+ Not unless we can pass this one little new rule. . . .
††† And some people want vampire muffins.
‡ Last night as I lay sleepless in my icy cold bed^ I was thinking about kinds of energy: creative, which overlaps with but is not the same as intellectual; emotional, which also overlaps with and adds resonance to creative, but is definitely not the same as, and which is in a constant running fire-fight with intellectual which is inconvenient, wasteful and stupid; and physical energy, which is a crucial support for all the rest, as well as necessary for hurtling, gardening, and singing exercises at your computer.^^ I no longer remember what it’s like to be juggling all this as a normal, un-ME’d^^^ person, but with ME you also have the spoons issue.^^^^ Different kinds of energy also demand different numbers of spoons. And I’m terrible at maths.
^ My electric blanket went phut the moment the temperature dropped back to gelid again. Thanks so much. Maybe there will be a nice sale on electric blankets in April.
^^ There’s at least one more but I’m not sure what to call it. Moral energy, possibly, which is a kind of immaterial resilience or fortitude.
^^^ And possibly younger. Something else I’ve said here before, I’d rather blame the ME for being stupid and feeble, than just that I’m getting old.
This link is also in the ‘about’ section of this blog. I have a very mild case, as ME—and lupus, and fibro, and a lot of other auto-immune things that lead with tiredness and pain and general offness—goes.
‡‡ And, you know, there’s a first time for everything. I could do expeditious one of these years. I could.
‡‡ This is also the argument for, for example, pre-ordering books. You can forget they’re coming. And then . . . what’s nicer than a desirable new book to read??
Team Bell (Ringing)
I WENT BELL RINGING TONIGHT.* YES. I DID.** At Colin’s home tower, East Persnickety. And there were even eight roughly speaking ringer ringers there*** for the eight ropes, which meant we could ring triples. Although the ‘roughly speaking’ meant it took us two tries to get launched on the touch of Grandsire Triples which was eventually derailed anyway by overenthusiastic calling on the part of the conductor†. But I was on the four, not the three, the three being my usual bell for Grandsire Triples, and I Did. It. †† The roughly-speaking also meant that it took us three tries to get through a plain course of Stedman Triples, but we did that too—barely—and I was again on a strange bell, and therefore starting in the wrong place, in the wrong direction, and over the wrong bells. This is very challenging when the lurgy has eaten your brain.†††
But it was good for morale. Hells, even ringing rounds for the beginner was good for morale. Ringing is a fatal disease, I’ve told you that, right? And it takes the rest of your life to kill you.‡
Mrs Redboots
I know you feel you are committed to writing a blog every night, but honestly, sometimes a sentence . . . will be enough to reassure us that you are alive and functional, if only just barely. Sleep – and SHADOWS – is more important than the blog (and you can always give us More Mongo, which can only be a Good Thing!).
katinseattle
Me, too. I second this. As much as I enjoy your blog, don’t wear yourself out over it.
Thank you. It’s a tricky balance, and one that after four and a half years I still haven’t found. I’ve told you that I write here every night because that’s how I make sure it gets done—if I dropped down to every other night I would soon be doing it every three nights, and then every four, and so on. There’s something about the initial getting going obstacle that only diminishes to relative insignificance if it’s a daily charge. It’s not wholly unlike hurtling hellhounds. If I ever stopped to think, You mean I have to stomp through the elements twice a day for two hours EVERY DAY for the rest of their LIVES?, I would probably freak out and starting researching very large hamster wheels on line.‡‡ As it is, it’s just something I do. Every day. Cough. More or less. But mostly more.
There’s also a certain quality of YAAAAAAH SCHOOL’S OUT to plunging into the blog after a long day of book-in-progress, like a hod-carrier coming home, ripping his steel-toed boots and hard hat off, putting on his trainers and going for a run. It’s still all sweaty and muscular, but it’s a significantly different kind of sweaty and muscular. I imagine many happy short-order chefs come home and make bread, and one of our local farmers has the most affectionate hand-reared orphan lambs I’ve ever met. ‡‡‡
At the same time . . . I admit the stress level at the moment is a little extreme. I may yet have to take you up on your kind offer to let me skive off the odd night or two. At the moment, sleep would be a fine thing if it were a little more available . . . and unfortunately most of Mongo involves spoilers. The scene he’s busy *&^%$£”!!!!! taking over at the moment, for example, is all about grmmphflgrrrglklmmph!
* * *
* Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough . . . Colin says that his experience of the lurgy is that he has a good day and then a bad day and then a good day and then a bad day . . . I’d be very grateful for even fifty percent good days. Cough.
** Cough.
*** Plus one wide-eyed beginner still grappling with the terror of call changes.
† Hey, it’s practise night. This is what practise night is like: the Peter Principle in action. Any working bell band—barring the really annoying fabulous ones—on any given practise night will rise to the level where the majority present can no longer quite cope, and stick there, flailing wildly. CRASH. CLANK.
†† Although a veil of kindness will be drawn over the quality of my striking. Penelope, who is not usually a Monday ringer, was there tonight, and, tying up her rope after our first effort, said to me, that was like getting a bucking bronco through a dressage test. Yes. And it’s occasionally reassuring to hear from someone who isn’t used to them that those bells are baleful toads and it’s not just that I have the grace, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness of a bottle-opener. I suppose it may depend on the bottle-opener.
††† I always enjoy the furrowed brows of ringers as they say this or that method is, of course, unusually volatile, or difficult to learn, or whatever. Colin doesn’t go in for this kind of deconstruction: he throws a method at you and you ring it. Or not. But I was thinking about this tonight, because both Grandsire and Stedman are on the usual-suspects list for ringer-flustering methods. There are two things about Grandsire, first, that it’s not a member of a family of methods, it’s just out there, stark, on its own; there are no clues or hooks or familiar landmarks. It’s just you and Grandsire and the wild itch on the end of your nose that begins the moment you pull off. The second thing is that most of the methods you learn at least early on in your career (I don’t yet know about the later ones) have calls that come slightly before you have to do anything. So you have about a blow to remember what you’re doing. In Grandsire for most calls you stop dead in your tracks and double dodge. This is fine in one way: while you’re double dodging you have your chance to remember what you do next. But if your over-enthusiastic plain bob doubles practise-night conductor calls two blows too soon you have time to think, no, wait a minute, this is too soon, and you’ll probably get it right. If you’re ringing Grandsire, chances are you’ll have automatically started double dodging before your brain has a chance to say, no, wait a minute . . . which means you’re now in a big mess. Well, Penelope and I were in a big mess, because we’d dutifully stopped where we were and double dodged with each other.
Stedman’s threat to humanity is different. The reason there are people in padded rooms murmuring brokenly, No, no! Not Stedman!, is because there is no anchoring treble line. Most of the standard methods, the treble has a simpler line through the method, and it remains unaffected by calls. This means that your first and in many cases most reliable means of finding out where the hell you are if you’ve just come adrift is to see where you are in relation to the treble,^ because the treble’s line does not change however many calls there have been. Not so in Stedman. The treble is following the same infernally screwed-up line that all the other bells are following. If you come adrift in Stedman, unless you have a scarily overachieving conductor, you’re just frelled. We got through just our plain course tonight (finally) because Colin is a scarily overachieving conductor. Although I’m sure that much shouting is not good for a man still half under the spell of this unusually vile and degenerate lurgy. And I still wasn’t quite where I thought I was when he called ‘that’s all.’
^ Supposing you haven’t come so far adrift that you’ve forgotten what method you’re ringing, which also happens. Not only to me.
‡ Niall’s usual Tuesday handbell group is short-handed tomorrow, so he asked if I’d fill in. Yes! Yes! I said. I’m not drooling! That’s the lurgy!
‡‡ Degus are cute. http://www.petsathome.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Info_10601_caring-for-your-degu_-1_10551
‡‡‡ All right, I don’t mean to be disingenuous here. But you could say that writing about writing is my equivalent of coming home and finding out that I’m supposed to go on carrying hods at home too. No, no! I want to ring bells!
I want to sing, some day. Sigh. Cough.
Flu, hellhounds, SHADOWS and Jodi Meadows
Okay, that’s not your average mixture. Let’s have the good news first:
http://www.jodimeadows.com/?p=525
YAAAAAAAAAAAY. It’s alive!
* * *
. . . We are now, I fear, about to plunge down a steep slope. I was feeling a little odd last night but in my current state of whatever it’s always easy to put oddness down to a surfeit of quantum physics.* Unfortunately not so in this case. I nearly didn’t get out of bed this morning, except that there are hellhounds. And SHADOWS. Which is still due the end of the month. I can’t frelling believe I’m ILL again. I was ill in October, for pity’s sake**. I’m not sure yet whether this is merely (!!!!) a sick cold or whether it’s going to insist on the full panoply of flu. At the moment the jury is still out. But I feel like stale death on toast. AND CRANKY.
So I got out of bed at about . . . noon. I barely fell down at all. There are hardly any bruises from caroming off the four-poster on the way to the bathroom, which had mysteriously moved to a new location overnight.
I got dressed. I don’t guarantee that my tee shirt is on the right way around (who cares? It’s covered up by six woolly jumpers) but I got the shoes on the right feet.*** I hurtled hounds. Yes. I did.† Twice.††
And I worked on SHADOWS. I did.
. . . And this is as much blog entry as I can hold myself together for.††† Good night. May you sleep better than I’m likely to.
* * *
* Brief, according to my present state of non-brain, update on ABSOLUTELY SMALL: It’s all maths. I don’t know how even a crazed mathematician/physicist can have had the effrontery to look Average Reader in the face in the introduction and claim that understanding quantum mechanics does not require mathematics. You are so lying, Professor Award-Winning Scientist Bloke. It’s all maths.^
What is true is something else he said in the introduction however: that in most physics books the author says something like, blah blah blah blah, and here are the equations to prove it. And you’re supposed to read the equations. What’s different about ABSOLUTELY SMALL is that he then tells you the equations over in words. The equations are still there. You still have to deal with equations. They may not look like a lot of equations to Mr/Ms Science Brain but they are totally equations. But once he gets away from those poor cats waiting trembling in boxes for the Killing Look, he explains stuff pretty well.^^
If you’re up for it . . . it’s pretty fascinating. It’s so insane. It’s so not Newtonian.^^^ I also just love that most of it you can’t know exactly. HA HA HA HA ALL YOU CREEPY OVERBEARING SCIENCE BRAINS WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL. HA HA HA HA HA. Granted I still don’t get it, but I’m a lot happier with the concept of a world that cannot be known/measured exactly—can’t be nailed down. This sounds a lot more plausible to me—more like my experience of the daily life this book is supposed to let me fit quantum theory into. ^^^^ And as he says, approximate doesn’t mean wrong: it means . . . approximate.
Anyway. It’s fascinating. But it’s probably not a book you want to strain to your bosom when you stagger off to lie on the sofa with hellhounds and minister to your brain-destroying illness.
^ Now that I’m committed, which is to say I’ve bought the thing, twice, audio and hard copy,+ I notice with a jaundiced eye that the three encomiums on the back cover about how This Is The Book We’ve Been Waiting for to Explain Quantum Mechanics in Daily Life are all by hard liners. There are two scientists and a lawyer. I’m sure he’s a very hard-line lawyer. And probably the author’s best friend since childhood. I want a hat check girl/boy or a brewer or ballroom dancing coach to tell me it changed their concept of life.
+ I cannot believe that anyone would survive the experience by audio only. If audio helps you focus, as it does help me, then the audio is worthwhile, and audible’s reader gets a medal. But you’re still going to have to have the hard copy. For the equations. If it takes the reader too long to say one of the frellers, you’ll have forgotten the beginning by the time he gets to the end. Lambda squared of the hypotenuse of the lobotomy . . . um. . . .
^^ I do wish he’d stay away from real-world examples. Even I know that a baseball is not a free particle, even when it’s left the field and is busy arcing over the stands. Speaking of the physics of gliding, however, is anyone playing Tiny Wings? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pT_2E5xI0 I don’t know what I think of the game, but I love the graphics.
^^^ I have a new theory about why Newton was such an ugly piece of work as a human being. It’s because in his secret heart he knew he was wrong.
^^^^ Look at human nature. Look at hellhound nature.
** I think it was October. Autumn anyway. A few months ago. And my stupid throat hasn’t recovered from the last assault which is why the Muddlehamptons are forgetting my name. ARRRRRRRGH. And here I am again with an inflamed throat, a throbbing head, and that interesting kind of fever that makes you feel like you’re made of boiling aluminium. I RARELY GET THESE MALADIES. RARELY. Except lately ARRRRRRRRRGH.
*** One right foot. One left foot.
† I also deserve a medal. But so do they. At the ripe old age of five and a half, although generally speaking the advent of maturity is a little thin on the ground, they are very good about waiting till I get my crap together, even when I seem to be having unreasonably more trouble than usual with said crap, and of hurtling slowly, with pauses, once we get outside. I know the location of every public dustbin in this town . . . I also know the location of every bench, not that kerbs won’t do in a pinch. They probably just think I’m having a bad ME day. Multi-application hellhound training.
†† And the dog minder is going to take them out tomorrow. Another medal.
††† I told an American friend that what I really needed, Peter having made some excellent turkey stock for the bodily nutrition side, was someone to tell me Really Bad American Jokes. So she’s taken it upon herself to send me Really Bad American Jokes all day at intervals—for the support of my suffering soul. Here’s my favourite:
It’s the old west, and a newcomer to town sees there’s a big crowd gathered in the town square. So he spots the local newspaperman, and asks him what’s going on.
”It’s a hanging,” says the newsman. “They’re hanging Brown Paper Pete today.”
“Brown Paper Pete? Why do they call him that?” asks the visitor.
“Because he always wears brown paper pants, a brown paper shirt, a brown paper hat, and carries a brown paper satchel,” says the newsman.
“Wow,” says the visitor, “What are they hanging him for?”
“Rustling.”
She’s just sent me this one, but she says that I’m sick enough to worry her if I think these are funny.
Guy walks into a bar, sits down and orders a beer. While he’s drinking, he hears a tiny voice say, “Hey mister! I like your tie!” He looks around, but doesn’t see anybody. A few minutes later, the same tiny voice says, “Hey mister! Nice shirt!” Again, he looks around, but there’s no one around except him and the bartender. A little while later, the voice says, “Hey mister! You look like you’ve lost some weight!” So the guy calls the bartender over and asks him what’s going on. The bartender says, “Oh, that’s the peanuts. They’re complimentary.”
Skiving off*
They sang COLD HAILY WINDY NIGHT. Steeleye Span, that is. Tonight. At the concert Fiona got me by the hair, forced** me into her car as I moaned feebly: I have to work! I have to work!***, and made me come to with her.† I could be happy just looking at Maddy Prior’s clothing. ††
I had brought my leg warmers. That is, I brought a remarkably-crinkly-at-one-end skein of bitchy, tantrum-prone††† yarn, a pair of needles‡, and an increasingly battered-looking pattern, including the crib sheet Fiona wrote out for me MONTHS ago. We had allowed lots of time to get lost in which we then didn’t need‡‡ so I had a good half hour to get started again.‡‡‡ Aaaaugh. Counting. Aaaaaugh. And Fiona would keep trying to talk to me. What do you think this is, a social occasion? Just because she can knit an incredibly frelling complicated frelling sock pattern on forty-seven double-ended needles and look around at the crowd and chat to her neighbour, who is laboriously going, one, two, three, purl, one, two, three, knit, DOESN’T MEAN EVERYONE CAN.
And just by the way, some of what Peter Knight does on that fiddle isn’t possible.§
At the end Fiona said, so, are you glad you came? There must be more Steeleye sheet music out there, I said, having had trouble not joining Rick Kemp for COLD HAILY.§§ I even asked Maddy herself about sheet music on the way out and she looked puzzled and suggested I write to Park Records. §§§
And then we went back out to the car park, got in Fiona’s car and drove merrily away in the wrong direction because she had decided we didn’t need the satnav. . . .
* * *
* It was a near thing. Blogmom had sent along a last sale/auction order file which I had assumed was a few final sweepings-up, no big deal, and hadn’t even bothered to open it—Fiona could do it when she came. AND THEN IT TURNED OUT TO BE GINORMOUS. Gaaaaaah. WAAAAAAAAH. I knew I was not, in fact, going to get everything out before Christmas^ but I did think we were totally heading downhill for the final assault. No. Wrong. So the first thing Fiona had to do, having been obliged to reveal the awful truth, was prevent me from murdering myself messily in an assortment of creative and unpleasant ways.
^ Once again, grovelling apologies. There Is Too Much Going On. And I really do have to finish SHADOWS before I can no longer afford to keep the hellhounds in a manner to which they have become accustomed.
** I would make three of Fiona. Well, two and a half anyway. But she’s very persuasive. Especially when she shakes out a length of yarn in this sort of garrotte and clamps sharpened knitting needles between her teeth.
*** And I have an opera tomorrow. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE ALERT.^
^ I would like to say I’m going to a Metallica concert the night after that, but . . . no. And the truth is I don’t think I have the—er—mettle to go to a heavy metal concert any more. I don’t know what the audience at a Metallica concert is like these days, but back in my misspent youth+ I went to several fairly scary concerts where I was glad that my companion was a six and a half foot bloke, who, while soft-spoken and mild-mannered, looked like Mess With Me and Die.
+ Remember that I misspent most of my youth in my thirties, so we’re talking about the eighties.
† You realise it’s Friday. Sacred Home Tower Bell Practise. Only Steeleye Span could drag me away from my responsibilities.^
^ . . . But make me an offer. A stroll across the Kalahari? Sunbathing in Antarctica? A new diving bell attempt to reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench? Sure. After all, Niall left me to cope last Friday.
†† I am forcibly reminded, pretty much every time I go to a concert—or, for that matter, watch a clip on YouTube—that the one great thing about performing is the costumes. It’s pretty much the only thing I miss about being a travelling, live-appearance author: the opportunity to dress up. ^ And Maddy’s clothes are prime. I was thinking about this tonight—while I sang along to All Around My Hat^^—that this is the one flaw in my choir-joining plan^^^: choir members don’t get to dress up. I like a long black velvet skirt as well as the next woman but Maddy’s flounced blue satin is waaaay to be preferred. Unfortunately being a soloist involves . . . soloing. I don’t see a way around this. Unless that’s in a chapter in CHAOS I haven’t got to/figured out yet.
^ As demonstrated at Forbidden Planet a few months ago.
^^ Maddy came to the front of the stage, thrust her microphone in our direction+ and dared us to be louder than Margate.
+ Literally. Fiona and I were in the front row.~
~ Fiona orders the tickets. I just go where I’m told. Chiefly into the passenger seat of her car.
^^^ Supposing my incredibly tiresome throat stops being a frail heroine and lets me return to two-and-a-half-hour practises with the Muddlehamptons.
††† Yes I am thinking about simply buying a couple more skeins of hellhound-blanket yarn^ and using that. Wait . . . did I just say BUY MORE YARN?^^
^ The pink option, of course.
^^ I was reading Yarn Harlot the other night+ about stash, one of her favourite topics, and how the fact that you have more yarn than an infinity of monkeys could knit into bobble hats while waiting for that other batch of monkeys to produce King Lear++ doesn’t necessarily mean you have anything to knit with. Yes. Her ratiocinations on this subject will not be mine, but in my case all my nice yarn is Waiting for Me to Learn What I’m Doing. I can’t just carelessly pluck a couple of skeins out of some tote bag and start on leg warmers. Horrors.
+ In the bath, of course. Paperback editions of Yarn Harlot are ideal for the task.
++ Macbeth would do. And it’s shorter.
‡ Yes in the right size. Please.
‡‡ We will come to the topic of the drive home again in a minute.
‡‡‡ The lights went down mid-row, of course. Oh, now I’m in trouble, I said, and the woman on my other side . . . laughed. So during the interval I said to her, do you knit? I used to, she said. I keep thinking I should start again. Don’t let me put you off, I said. I’m a beginner, and this yarn is possessed by demons. We parted amicably at the end: next time bring your knitting, I said.
Postscript: I knitted five rows. And then I ripped them all out again. Sigh. However, it more nearly resembled ribbing than my previous efforts. It just wasn’t ribbing.
§ This is clearly stated in chapter mrrmngph of CHAOS.^
^ I’m reading/listening to it AGAIN, okay? This is challenging stuff for someone whose idea of higher maths is a touch of St Clements minor on handbells.
§§ He may be a great bassist. He is not a great singer. I admit that my crossover tendencies may not always stand me in good stead when judging folk singers, but I mostly feel that to be a lead singer of anything you either have to sound great, like Maddy^, or at least have a characterful voice, like Dick Gaughan—or Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen.
^ Although she’s still singing when a classical singer would have had to give up.
§§§ http://www.parkrecords.com/ In case you’re interested. I mean, yes, I could figure out the tunes, and most of the lyrics are on line somewhere, but what am I going to give Oisin? . . . Had I but world enough and time, I might write my own accompaniments, of course, but they would be a little non-standard.