Eight days till Christmas
I’ve just been ordering Christmas presents for me on Peter’s credit card. Mwa hahahahahahaha.
Well, he asked. He says, I don’t have enough Christmas presents for you. Gee that’s really too bad, I say, trying not to slaver too openly. I’m sure (I add hastily) what you have is fine. [Crosses fingers behind back.] * Do you have any suggestions? he says, politely averting his eyes from both the drool and the crossed fingers. Um . . . well, I say, trying to sound bashful, there’s that fabulous new book on ROSES that you found the review for, that I keep not quite committing to buying for myself**, and you know maybe an extreme book of scary origami?***
Do it, he says. My wallet is in my leather jacket.† And then he ambles gently over to the sofa and lies down for a nap.
The power. The power.††
Christmas. Great big feh.††† I’ve spent most of the day‡ hacking my way through excruciatingly slow web sites overburdened with other frantic people doing last-minute Christmas shopping. My memory, not one of my strong points at the best of times, managed to let me down disastrously in a couple of instances—most of the last-minute sites let you order up till Monday but I’d managed to forget that one or two in my mind’s eye aren’t last-minute sites. ‘Five to seven working days’ does not ravish me with joy, ‘five to ten working days’ makes me whimper and ‘out of stock, we will contact you when available’ makes me fling myself on the floor in a transport of I don’t know what, but it looks interesting to the hellhounds.
Meanwhile all these gorblimey physicists going on about the impossibility of everything. How about if they whiffle some of those infinitely complex non-boundaries of the Mandelbrot set into/out of time? I’m sure the answer to the thirty-six hour day is tucked away in there somewhere, if they’d settle down and apply themselves. There’s a Nobel Prize in it for sure. Come on, guys! Function!
* * *
* I’ve tried the ‘if you have an overwhelming desire to help me pay for the new laptop please don’t restrain yourself’^ but he says, no, no, you need something to open. Aw gee. He’s always been like this—for someone who has to overcome deep-rooted repugnance at the very idea of receiving a gift^^, he has a very romantic notion about giving them. And furthermore, he says, with a gleam in his eye, you need something that will look good on the blog.
Hmm. Okay, he has a point.
^ And he did help with the iPad. Although that was before I realised PEG II was an evil fiend from hell/second book in a tr*l*gy and that I wasn’t going to turn it in last August and was therefore about to run out of money instead.+
+ This means that the old laptop will lurch on almost failing for at least another year. If I hadn’t bought the new laptop it would have blown up in a toxic cloud of sticky purple smoke last week, melting the William Morris oilcloth, leaving a very nasty mark on the table, and causing me to run away to sea.~ Yes, this is still the old laptop. I don’t have time to learn a new frelling operating system.
~ I don’t think they take fifty-nine-year-old women as able-bodied sailors, do they? Well that’s out then.
^^ He was unusually well-mannered yesterday.+ I don’t think he ran out of the room even once. And he seems quite pleased with his phone.
+ The big problem with visitors is the absence of leftovers. Like, a glass of soothing champagne tonight.
** I’ve now spent easily its list price in maths and physics books. But then I didn’t already have umpty-gazillion books on maths and physics.
*** No, I have at least twelve thumbs. I also have a slight problem about empty flat surfaces to practise folding on.^ But maths and physics are not enough! Origami is also important in SHADOWS and I need to know something about it too, before I Schrodinger’s-cat^^ it all up for the story! Why couldn’t I write about something easy, like vampires or dragons?
^ Now even worse than usual. I spent most of an hour I didn’t have this evening bringing the jungle indoors. But we’re apparently supposed to have several degrees of frost tonight and . . . I, er, folded. I have lost remarkably little so far and I see all those gallant geraniums pressing themselves against the warm house-wall and shivering and I feel like a murderer. One of the curious aspects of going back to the cottage at, oh, 3 a.m. or so is that you probably know by then if you’re having a frost or not. Ahem. The mews courtyard freezes at least two degrees sooner than I do at the cottage so if I have to claw Wolfgang free of the clutches of the Ice Giants it doesn’t necessarily mean that those faint popping noises you hear are geraniums giving up the ghost back at the cottage. We’ve had two or three frosty nights thus far when I’ve gritted my teeth and gone to bed anyway^^^ but last night caught me out. I didn’t think it was going to freeze and then it did, and pretty smartly too. The geraniums are definitely looking a little crumbly around the edges. ARRRRRGH. So when I went back to the cottage on the second hurtle with crisp-weather-enlivened hellhounds and it was already only about two degrees off freezing I . . . brought everything I could find in the dark . . . indoors. And the best thing about this? The BEST? That my kitchen—and I hope it will only be my kitchen—will be full of revitalised slugs tomorrow morning which were hibernating and believe that spring has come early. . . .
^^ http://www.cafepress.co.uk/+tote_bag,137590655 Hee hee hee hee.
^^^ I don’t have TIIIIIIIIME. Listen, all of you, at approximately 9:30 GMT tomorrow morning, I want any of you who happen to be awake to face in a Hampshire-ward direction and shout, YOU DON’T HAVE TIIIIIIIIME, because that’s when Niall, as we pull our coats on and prepare to descend the ladder after service ring, will tackle me (again) on the subject of handbells with Titus tomorrow evening.
† Last year’s Christmas present, you know.^
^ Last year? Two years ago? I’m too old to be bothered to make fine distinctions between mere years.
†† Sigh. Yes, he does read the blog.
††† I don’t have time for Christmas. And I have to get the frelling Christmas stuff down from my attic at Third House this year. It’s been at the mews before this, so I’ve been able to flounce and sulk at Peter for not hotfooting to accomplish this. Not only do I not get to flounce and sulk at someone else, I have to frelling do something.
‡ Barring bringing the jungle indoors
LAST AUCTION/SALE DAY
THIS IS YOUR LAST DAY. THIS IS YOUR LAST OPPORTUNITY TO BUY A BOOK OR BID ON SOMETHING IN THE BELL-FUND AUCTION/SALE.* The doodle option will stay up another week** but everything else shuts down tomorrow at 2 pm Chicago (Blogmom) time. Step right up, folks, step right up. The bearded lady and the sword-swallower right this way, just as soon as you give me all your money.
I’m uncommonly shattered for some reason. Maybe it was that invasion of berserker cauliflower last night . . . no, wait, I do know what it was: both hellhounds ate supper with almost no fuss whatsoever. What? Chaos has officially given up supper—he submitted the form a good fortnight ago but he’d filled it out wrong so I got to send it back—and Darkness only eats on the nights that having me pry his jaws open to get a remedy powder in is going to be just toooooo boring. You can almost see him considering it when I put the bowl of food in front of him. But I’d barely started my first game of Montezuma 2*** when . . . crunch crunch crunch. Crunch crunch. I had to put Pooka down in the middle of a game.† But the entire experience was such a shock to the system I had to lie down and read for a while.†† And then repelling the attack cauliflower took a while.††† And then there were the cats. And then it was dawn. And then the horrible man‡ across the road went to work.‡‡ The sound his frelling car makes on their gravel driveway is a lot like very large hellhounds eating supper. . . . Sorry, I’m raving.
So. I’ve been doodling. Some madwoman who wants to spread the joy‡‡‡ asked for a heap of sleeping puppies doodle for DEERSKIN. Glarg. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to simplify this into a standard doodle, but here’s a first trial run:
I was looking at Chaos and Darkness puppy photos and thinking Soooooo cute . . . . Soooooo glad it's over.
Someone else wants a spider in the corner of a window for SPINDLE’S END:
From a golden crown let your silk hang down. Er. Or a window frame.
I may have a go at the spider dangling from a sleeve—my doodle-orderer’s other suggestion—one of these days in my copious spare time, and find out if drawing Ikor’s shiny ribbony sleeve is rather satisfying in an OCD sort of way, as I suspect it may be.
. . . And the medium-large friendly squid wants not to be forgotten.
The 'Fido' is diamante, you understand. It's just a little small here.
Now go buy something. Please.
* * *
* And, guys . . . you’re seriously missing out not having a better run at TULKU, or CHUCK AND DANIELLE, or CLOCK MICE. I know this is my blog—and my bells—but I’m recommending them. Highly.
** I don’t know exactly when this will happen, but when Blogmom has recovered from doing all the making-it-work about the bell fund^ I’ve asked her if she can figure out a way to hang a more-or-less permanent^^ doodle-order window down the side of the blog somewhere. We’ll worry about what to do with the money if it turns out there is any.
^ I believe I heard something about ‘Caribbean cruise’.
^^ Or let’s call it indefinite, which is what my visa to stay in England says. Very unsettling, ‘indefinite’ rather than ‘permanent’. I’ll be good, officer! Really I will! —Er. I do get to complain, don’t I?
*** Sigh. You were right. Montezuma 2 is available for iPhone. Why it didn’t appear instantly and say Buy me! when I asked iTunes for it is one of those little mysteries, like why my audible downloads are so easily led astray by bad companions and are found days later in the wrong part of town with nothing left but a headache and a vague memory of something about Long Island Iced Tea^ and spandex.
^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Iced_Tea
† There doesn’t seem to be a ‘cancel this game, hellhounds are eating’ option. Oh well, my player rating is always pathetic.
†† I don’t suppose any of you out there want to recommend an origami book? I dug out my ancient Dover reprint of beginner origami and ordered the FOR DUMMIES origami but neither of them is the least bit inspiring. I want something that makes me go ‘ooh’. I’m, you know, shallow.
††† It was a vengeance raid. I ate the emperor a few nights ago. Very tasty he was too.
‡ Actually he’s a very nice man. Except at 7 o’clock in the morning.
‡‡ Wait a minute. It’s Saturday. What was he doing going to work?^
^ Yes, I work seven days a week. I’m free lance. It’s the down side to being able to work in your dressing gown and not comb your hair. And stay up till dawn.
‡‡‡ Too late. I’ve been mad for years.
Autumn
Oh tra la etc, ’tis the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness* . . . . AAAAAAUGH.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/31/spider-season-home-arachnid-invasion
A good year for spiders? A good year???** Whimper. But that remark about eating clothes moths got my attention. The article is from yesterday; neither Peter nor I noticed it, but today there’s a whole page devoted to charming photos sent in by readers, which I’m failing to make google bring up for me so I can ruin your evening too by providing the link. My extra-large friend, the so-called house spider***, from . . . was it only last year? . . . that Black Bear kept trying to convince me was a lovelorn male and I insisted was a girl because girls are BIGGER . . . features in today’s photo gallery, as do a number of other creatures I do not want to share house space with†. And that garden spider has no business in the photographer’s bathroom, it’s a garden spider.
* * *
Oisin is back. He’s been . . . I don’t know, Antares or somewhere†† . . . and is still suffering space-lag. My Friday afternoons have been a desert in his absence these last few weeks. Gods! It’s like I have to work or something! I was so glad to see him I put up with a forty-seven hour††† concerto for six organs, eight feet‡, and a gazania.‡‡ I am out of practise, listening attentively, and my brain starts to deliquesce after the first twelve hours or so. He needs to break me back in slowly. ‡‡‡ He was glad to see me too: I immediately asked him about the New Arcadia Singers and I believe he said something rude.§ Ah, friendship. . . .
* * *
* Speaking of Keats, poor old beggar. http://www.artofeurope.com/keats/kea1.htm
Elizabeth wrote:
What I find most amusing is that some poor WHSmith employee (or a whole department of them) probably read “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” on a product mock-up and (horrified by the poor grammar) “fixed” it.
Yep.
Not just a momentary oversight either – the carefully written (I suppose that’s debatable) product description on whsmith.co.uk proclaims “This bright pink A5 notebook is decorated with raised felt declaiming the famous line from Keats’ poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ – ‘Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.’”
I am so impressed that you went and looked it up on WH Smith’s site.^ It all begs the question however of how they succeeded as far as getting the title and author right and creating a little advertising blurb for the web site^^ and not checking the frelling LINE THEY’RE QUOTING—? In response to several remarks about knowing instantly that there’s something wrong even if you don’t know what it is—one person cites ‘proofreader’s eye’—I don’t think so. Or anyway it’s proofreader’s ear. Beauty is truth and truth is beauty is a plonking dull patronising whap you up longside the head aphorism. Beauty is truth and truth beauty is poetry. And I think your ear knows that. Clearly there are no poets at WH Smith.
And just by the way, why PINK? Now we all know that I am a strong believer in pink, but I cannot see the connection either with Keats or with Grecian urns. Let alone with monumental misquotation.
^ Does it ever cross your mind that perhaps you should get out more?
^ The web site famous to me+ for failing to sell their own store brand itty-bitty doodle sized sketch pads. What is your web site for, for pity’s sake, you bloated corporate monster?
+ Yes, I should get out more too. For reasons that do not involve bells. I was almost pressganged into ringing a wedding tomorrow. I want to spend tomorrow afternoon in the garden. I think I have got out of the wedding. But I may not answer the phone for the next twenty-six hours—just in case. If Merrilee is reading this—she usually reads the blog—she is laughing sardonically. You never do answer the phone! she (among others) says. You can always make an appointment, I reply with dignity.
** There are quite astonishing numbers of bats around here this year too. Or maybe I’m just sensitized.
*** So called not because it likes to live in them but because it’s as big as one
† Bats, sure, I can do bats.^ Not spiders! Noooooo! Not spiders! I am also aware of the putting them outdoors so they can tell all their friends and come back in force next time game aspect, but the truth is I’m not going to kill them, even when they’re slightly larger than a hellhound^^, and YES I hang the bathmat at an angle so they can climb out. I have been resigned to my madness^^^ but if they eat clothes moths. . . .
^ As I might say . . . ahem.
^^ All those beady little eyes
^^^ A belief in reincarnation is very useful when you’re looking for an excuse for wimping out of killing things
†† Very spectacular, he says, but you get tired of being on a ship all those weeks, and never making landfall.
††† It’s actually next Wednesday as I write this.
‡ As I said to him afterward, as he was mopping his fevered brow, who needs to belong to a gym if you can play the pedalboard to an organ?
‡‡ The funny thing is, with reference to a few comments on the forum . . . I probably could post both geranium and Christmas cactus cuttings successfully. One of the ways you’re supposed to overwinter geraniums is by cutting them down to nubs, digging them up, and putting them in a box of sand under your bed or equivalent—and b_twin said that local myth has it that you should leave geranium cuttings lying around dry and abandoned before planting. And the Christmas cactus, like most of the common succulents and cacti, knows it lives in a hostile universe, and is permanently ready to hunker down and endure. Any one of those odd daisy-chain leaves will root, if you break it off and put it in water—although in my (limited) experience if you want the thing to flower before you forget why you’re giving it house space you want a branch of half a dozen links or so. Dunno if a week in a mailing envelope has any effect.
And unless the laws have changed (again) you’re allowed to send plants over the border(s) so long as said plants already exist in both countries and they’re clean. This is a trifle obnoxious when you’re scrubbing off bluebell bulbs, but cuttings would be a . . . um . . . snip.
I had a brief hilarious moment contemplating auctioning Christmas cactus and geranium cuttings. Don’t worry, I got over it.^
^ I told you that my new earphones arrived yesterday? No, wait, I think I tweeted it, including that they came with a Free Strawberry Flavoured Lollipop. Huh? The lollipop is still lying on the kitchen table, waiting for me to do something with it, like throw it away. What’s this? Peter said. I told him. Auction it, he said.
Funny man. Ha ha ha.
‡‡‡ I having confessed to failing to follow what was going on he has helpfully sent me a link to someone else’s performance. Okay. I’ll get a lot of knitting done. That’s a lot.
§ I realise with alarm that next week I’ll have to begin thinking of creative ways not to sing three times a week with Other People Present again, now that Oisin is back and the Muddlehamptons are restarting.
Rain
It’s raining. Really. Genuine tipping-it-down, puddles-to-the-ankles, hellhound-outraging rain. In the last week or so we’ve had nearly half an inch, mostly in a couple of fairly spectacular meteorological displays of bad temper*, but while I’m sure everybody’s gardens appreciated anything they could get, it’s barely laid the dust, and anywhere that isn’t a pampered private garden and heavily mulched I suspect it ran straight off again. I was still watering my pots yesterday (and complaining). Today . . . today it’s raining.
I’ve forgotten how to cope with rain. I got rain on my glasses on the way to the tower this morning.** I was wearing my leather jacket, and I hadn’t zipped it up. I was also wearing ancient All Stars with holes in the bottoms***. What Is This Wet Stuff Falling From the Sky? What do I do?
And the hellhounds . . . the hellhounds are not the least impressed by the interruption of the drought. They want a nice hurtle, like the nice hurtles they’ve been getting pretty well uninterrupted for the last three or four months. I had to drag† them out on our shortest round—and these guys are a lot chattier than the whippets were. Rowan could do a fair peevish grumble, but when Darkness doesn’t approve of current events by golly you hear about it. At least neither of them belongs to the ‘I’m not gonna crap till the weather improves’ school of dog perversity. We’re really all still in shock. Wet! Stuff! Falling! From! The! Sky! But if it’s still doing this tomorrow we’ll have to go out for a proper hurtle regardless or we’ll all be dangling from the chandelier with restless cooped-up-ness.††
But, you know . . . rain. Rain is good. It’s been raining hard and steadily enough today that it should be getting into the ground.
* * *
* Not at all popular with someone who has windows permanently open for the easy egress of bats. And the bat update is . . . I went so far as to risk closing the bathroom window a couple of nights ago when the rain was coming in sideways. And . . . there have been no repercussions that I’m aware of.^ Atlas managed to come in a third day again last week and finished sealing up (I hope) both the kitchen and the linen cupboard^^ . . . but he’s coming back this week to do the sitting room as well. Despite the apparent lack of bats at the moment, the sitting room beams are in the exact same state as the kitchen beams were, and I predict that Hermione and Eadgyth will become cranky one day soon and start looking for alternate exits as their old ones have disappeared. Once you introduce a bat to a chandelier she’s not going to give it up again easily. I did wonder, if Ajlr’s resident eco warrior is correct about Bat Cottage having more summer tenants this year than usual because of the dry weather, if perhaps they’d disperse again if it rains hard enough. But I suspect it’s too late this year—by mid-June the first babies are already born, and I don’t think anyone’s going to move once there are babies involved. Also you may remember—or you bat people already knew this—that the point about nurseries is there need to be enough babies to huddle together to stay warm while the mums are out hunting. We’re also having an unusually cold season so some of the smaller nurseries maybe have been abandoned this year for that reason as well as the drought. I really should not have allowed myself to be pleased at the Largest Bat Nursery in Hampshire cognomen last year.^^^ This is the kind of thing fate latches onto, laughing maniacally.
Anyway. I haven’t seen a bat in nearly a week, although I heard wings once or twice early on. But the attic window is still open. And it will stay open till at least one night after Atlas finishes stoppering up the sitting room. Bats are, you know, mammals. They have brains. You’re not going to teach a wasp or a bee where the open window is. But I would expect Hermione or Eadgyth, if they manage to find a new way through in the sitting room#, to be able to find the emergency exit. I can stand wet carpet for a few more days if I have to.
^ Insert nervous ritual gestures here.
^^ And while the attractiveness rating of the inside of my linen cupboard does not greatly concern me the kitchen is going to require some cosmetic rehabilitation. Which probably means the sitting room will too.
^^^ As a result of a series of frivolous emails with a friend and the promiscuous following of links I found this site: http://www.habitataid.co.uk/ I’m a little tempted to contact them and ask what they might recommend for a very small garden that supports an awful lot of bats. For all I know the Chiropteran population explosion started when Bat Cottage’s new owner started stuffing rose-bushes in every available gap. Pssst—all the aphids you can eat—pass it on.
# aaaaaaaaugh
** This is the second time Niall has managed to be away for a long weekend over an Old Eden practise night. I’m having to run three bell-meets in four days. This is absolutely not allowed in the Care and Handling of Fragile Deputy Ringing Masters Who Don’t Know What the Frell They’re Doing.^ We pretty much got through Friday practise by the skin of our teeth. Or the sleight of our hands. We only just got through service ring this morning—we were piteously ringing minimus (four bells) when Edward, bless him, showed up^^—but it’s looking bad for Old Eden tomorrow. I’ve been having top-level consultations with Colin. We are hoping that a battlefield alliance of our two sadly depleted forces^^^ may result in one bell practise somewhere.
Meanwhile those of you who follow me on Twitter already know that I fell downstairs yesterday morning (ow) and this morning managed to impale my forehead on the sharp steely# corner of Wolfgang’s driver’s side door (double ow).## Both my left shoulder and most of my left ribs were testy this morning### and service ring was while both eyelids still opened fully. Colin’s nasty little garage flower-pot ring never looked so good as it does to me tonight in prospect of wrestling those possessed-by-demons clankers tomorrow night at Old Eden.
^ I could have a word with Penelope, who is responsible for forcing Niall to go on holidays in the first place. Unfortunately she’d laugh.
^^ There are four-bell towers and ringers who love kinky four-bell methods. But most of us feel that real method ringing begins with five working bells: doubles. Doubles, however, is supposed to include a sixth, tenor-behind, bell. The drawback to this morning is that the other four were all good ringers which meant we rang Stedman without a tenor behind. I know I tell you that this happens now and again. It’s still terrifying. +
+ I’m ringing master in name only, you realise. All these people outrank me. If I hadn’t called for Stedman, they’d merely have mutinied.
^^^ Yes. I’ve been writing PEG II for quite a lot of the afternoon and it’s not looking good for our gang.
# Modern cars are made of plastic. Until you impale yourself on a corner of one of them.
## The parking-space-side flowerbed is perhaps a trifle richly planted. This includes . . . uh . . . several roses. One of them is Ayrshire Splendens, which Peter Beales http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/ayrshire-splendens/
describes as a 15-footer but she was 20-plus at the old house and still in world-conquering mode when we left. She’s supposed to be climbing the fence and launching herself into my (*&^%$£”!!!! neighbour’s frelling forest here in New Arcadia. But roses don’t always do what you want them to.+ She’s got a couple of thorny tendrils out investigating that empty area on the side opposite the forest. Because I am too stupid to live I was ducking out of her way at the same moment that I was opening the car door. . . .
+ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
### I would fall left-side-down. Left is Chaos’ side in the hellhound hierarchy.
*** I wear them till I can no longer tie them on, okay? And I’ve been known to use duct tape to delay the day.
† Ow. Oh, well, Chaos may be more chaotic but he weighs noticeably less in all-four-feet-braced posture.
†† With the bats.
Another Critter Problem
Atlas has been at the cottage all day. He’s not even close to being finished with the latest level of bat-resistance—not even with the kitchen, and there’s still the sitting room (which has a similar monster-maw beam problem) and the linen cupboard ahead.* He’ll be back tomorrow—but then he has to go save other people’s sanity with nails and ply and wood stain. Which means at least one more week of cohabiting with Chiroptera.**
Meanwhile, Peter and I are/were supposed to go to London tomorrow to have an adventure. Peter is still going. I have a streaming hellhound. I have no idea why. I haven’t caught him mid-sandwich or mid-whoopie-pie*** or anything † lately. But this morning . . . streaming. This afternoon . . . streaming. I took them to my voice lesson†† so I could keep an eye on them in the car out Nadia’s window.††† On the way home we had a nice stroll through the back streets of Mauncester.
Streaming.
So tonight I have an assortment of reasons why I won’t sleep very well.
Whimper.
* * *
* And then we sit around for a minute or two and wait for them to find the next chink in the barricade. There’s been a little conversation on the forum about the unlikelihood that a single one-way door will prevent them returning next year^ . . . or even several one-way doors. If pipistrelles can turn themselves into sheets of paper and pinpricks to slide under skirting-boards and through keyholes they will certainly find other means of entrance (and exit) to an over-200-year-old cottage they’ve grown fond of. Because I am a really hopeless wet, my first thought, as recorded last night, to the suggestion of an exclusion license, was oh, no! I don’t want to make Hermione homeless! When it occurred to me a little bit later—as, for example, I was pulling the sheet over my head in bed last night^^—that chances are a one-way door (or twelve) wouldn’t work, my first thought was relief. My second thought was . . . THEN WHAT?
Now Ajlr has written: . . . the unusual weather conditions this Spring (long dry = fewer pools of water around = less drinking water and fewer insects) may have made other bat nurseries in the locality less desirable. So it’s possible, apparently, that extra pregnant females from other roosts may have moved to the obviously ideal location of your roof space and there’s just not enough room for them all. . . .
This makes the most sense to me of anything I’ve heard. When they were still only coming into the attic, that they smelt the water in the water tank theory made some sense. But even then not that much sense—there’s always been water in my garden, because I have an old-fashioned, heavily planted and organic cottage-type garden that needs a lot of water. And which grows big fat juicy organic bugs. But pots stand in trays with water in them. Watering cans stand around with water in them. There are pools in the gravel where I’ve sloshed.^^^ And while the plastic half-barrel I use as a water butt does have a lid on it, its lid is even sillier as bat-proofing than the lid on the water tank in the attic is.+ And since the first version of the dry-spring theory was promulgated I’ve had several bird-bath equivalents++ full of water out in the garden for thirsty bats+++. Or birds, of course. The bats may have been smelling the water in the attic tank as an extra source of water, but Atlas has sealed it up, (apparently) blocked the attic outlets . . . and they’re still pouring in. Downstairs.
Population pressure covers the observable data nicely. Now I have to hope we don’t have any more dry springs . . . and that the interlopers don’t decide they like Bat Cottage better anyway.~
^ Diane in MN wrote: It strikes me that the bat people might be just a wee bit optimistic about being able to locate the one and only entrance to the bat nursery from outside.
^^ Yes. Mosquito netting. Totally. Must investigate. At this point even if it turns out that Atlas’ efforts are successful I’ll sleep better if I don’t have wonder every time there’s a funny noise in my little old creaky house, if it’s anything to do with wings. Mosquito netting, after all, also keeps out . . . mosquitoes.
^^^ Actually I don’t waste much. I do grow things that need water—roses, dahlias, delphiniums, and everything and its uncle and its uncle’s best friend in pots—but I water by hand, I don’t use a sprinkler or even a hose, and I mulch like mad. In fact I’m impressed at how well things are doing despite the drought.
+ I also have a gigantic open# well taking up way too much space in the corner between me and my semi-detached (and bat-free) neighbour, although since it takes several loooooong seconds for the sound of anything you drop in to hit the water, it may be too far down for even pips to fly. But I’m sure they can smell it.
# Relatively open. The brick wall around it is over knee high and there’s a gigantic steel webbing inside. All of the above covered in plant pots of course.
++Very large plant-pot trays.
+++ As well as the possibly counter-productive saucers of water indoors.
~ And yes, sadly, it’s way too appropriate for a hellgoddess to live in a bat cottage.
** I used to have to look up ‘Chiroptera’. It just runs—or perhaps I should say flies—off the fingers lately.
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopie_pie
Pumpkin? Are you frelling joking? Whoopie pies are chocolate.^
Although they are perhaps not in England. All right, mid Spotted Dick then.^^
^ And of course whoopie pies originated in Maine.
^^ Oops, of course I meant Plum Bolster. http://historicalfoods.com/spotted-dick-recipe
† My hellhounds. They won’t eat their food but they will beg from strangers. Darkness—the streaming one—this afternoon went up to someone eating a great greasy carton of chips^ and came all over charming and dying of hunger. I dragged him away. Although potatoes won’t hurt him I think, by the smell, that the cooking grease would be better lubricating jet aircraft undercarriages.
^ French fries.
†† GAAAAH. I am tired of being able to sing^ for Nadia and sounding like an angry pipistrelle the rest of the week. It keeps happening, that at home, it’s just me. Nadia’s the one with the magic. Not me. Nadia’s the one who has me sing this exercise rather than that one, drop my jaw and straighten my spine and think about my vowels and suddenly I’m singing (more or less). I CAN GO THROUGH THE EXACT SAME SET OF SELF-INSTRUCTIONS AT HOME AND I STILL SOUND LIKE A TAIL-TRODDEN HELLHOUND. And now I’m inflicting myself on a choir?^^ Nadia says that I am to start a pre-practise ritual that will enable me to focus on singing when I’m at home—instead of on all the reasons I won’t be able to do it properly because it’s only useless me. Gaaaah. One of the more pathetic reasons I look forward to my voice lessons is that FOR ONE HOUR A WEEK I get to take my singing, you know, as if seriously, as if I’m really doing something and I have a, like, goal that isn’t strictly fantasy. Nadia is delighted that I’ve joined the Muddlehamptons—who are a perfectly good amateur choir: I’ve told you that Oisin says Ravenel gets surprisingly musical results out of his motley collection of people going along for a laugh and something to do on Thursday evening—but she also knows that I am at heart a snob, and keeps saying encouraging/alarming things like, Now when you join a really good choir. . . . Eeep, you know?^^^
^ well—it’s more like singing, when I’m doing it for Nadia.
^^ Ravenel will at least have moved me from singing directly into his left ear by next rehearsal.
^^^ As I’m writing this I’m listening to William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices on Radio Three. Music to die for.
††† Walked them before and after down the gutter of Nadia’s mum’s little village street. No streaming. Whew. I can go back next week.