SHAAAAAAAAA. . .
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAADOWS*.
AND IT’S THE 30TH OF JANUARY. NO. IT’S ALREADY THE 31ST. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH.
* * *
* I did go to my voice lesson. I told you yesterday, I’m getting even stranger, bent over my computer twenty hours a day^, and I thought it might even be good for me to go get strung out in a different direction, even if SHADOWS is frelling due frelling tomorrow.^^ Also I only just started singing again last week and—I wanted to go. It’s been a slightly dubious week in terms of practise—there’s still crud in my throat and all this emotional-aspect stuff makes me kind of jumpy—if you manage to miss with the carving knife you go to A&E, get some stitches and a lecture, come home, mop up the blood, keep the bandage out of the bath, be a little careful of yourself till the stitches come out, and hey voila, there you are. Another interesting scar. But when you’re trying to patch yourself together from some kind of immaterial wound, where and how you put the stitches in, and what constitutes the kind of bath you should keep your damaged limb out of—and what exactly the limb is—is not so straightforward. So I’ve been singing sort of cautiously, and of course I’m wildly out of practise and I have no time.^^^ Also, my voice still keeps disappearing on me—less than it was doing before, but every time it does I’m convinced that this is The End and I’m too old to be reaching for this nonsense anyway.^^^^ Nadia waggled her eyebrows at me in that disbelieving-teacher way and said, now as I remember it we found out last week that the chief reason your voice was dropping out was because you were letting it get cut off from its air supply. Oh, I said. Um.
So she made me frelling breathe for a while, and connect, and all that really annoying stuff you shouldn’t NEED to be told over and over and over and over and over and OVER. But you do, because you’re a moron. And then she ran me up and down some scales and some exercises and kept reminding me to breathe and to connect, and I could actually feel the air sinking down and lying with this lovely rounded, grounded weightiness at the bottom of my pelvis, and every now and then I also remembered to let it out again, and carry my voice with it. I had already admitted that occasionally this week when I wasn’t convinced I still couldn’t sing and was therefore producing a self-fulfilling prophesy of squawks and silences, I’d made a few noises that were fuller and freer than what I’m used to . . . and with the teacher-magic she teased them out of me today, and convinced them to bring friends. I was singing back up at the top of my range again—which I haven’t even tried at home since before I was ill, because I have been too busy feeling fragile, convalescent and overworked—and I was loud—me! Old no-voice me!— the kind of loud your average local amateur choir would be happy to have yelling from its benches—loud the way I don’t sing, especially at the top end where my brain is busy saying, no, no, wait, we don’t do that. Nadia stopped me where she did not because my voice was failing, she said, but because my brain was closing me down.
But. There’s life in the old cow yet. Mooo. Yaay. And I came home again all exhilarated and threw myself into SHADOWS.
^ That leaves two for hurtling hounds and two for sleeping. Other crucial activities like eating chocolate can be performed coincidently while typing.
^^ Later today. Shut up.
^^^ And the twenty-fifth hour is for singing practise.
^^^^ I actually raised this with Nadia today. How big an embarrassing moron am I being, taking voice lessons at nearly-sixty? For some reason I’ve heard like half a dozen times this last week that sopranos lose their voices really early and it seems sort of fated to be hearing this over and over again when I’m convalescent from the throat infection that had stopped me singing altogether—and ten months off my sixtieth birthday.+ And she said, two things: there’s no reason you shouldn’t last a good while yet as a choir singer—it’s professional sopranos that fold predictably early because of the colossal demands they put on their voices—and you’re lucky—you’ve got all the alto notes too. If you need to slip down to sing alto, you can.
::Beams:: Good. On with the voice lessons, then.
+ And before you answer that, I added, let me say that while this is all contingent on you being willing to teach me, I’ve already figured out that I’m in it for the journey. Never mind that thirty years ago I’d’ve had no voice to train either, all this trying to bind yourself together in a seamless whole to produce a sound is fascinating, even if the resultant sound is nothing much.
Unngh SHADOWS unngh
Okay, so I got to bed later than I meant to last night either.* And then at about 8 a.m. I was dragged out of sleep by a short, sharp, authoritative bark—very like Darkness either when he feels that insufficient attention has been paid to hellhounds lately or when he’s in trouble and needs to go out now. I realised after it was too late to block the adrenaline spike that it was not Darkness—it wasn’t loud enough to be from the kitchen, and it was coming from the wrong direction anyway. I began to drift uneasily back to sleep again—one is not rational about dogs that may need to go out now, even when one’s intellect is saying it’s not your dog—and the wretched animal did it again. There are dogs at the top of our hill which have been known to bark, but both of them, one lab going rarfrarfrarfrarfrarfrarf and one dachshund going yipyipyipyipyipyipyipyip, you, which is to say I, can turn into white noise and ignore, both because of the stupid stuck-on quality (I’m more likely to wake up again when they stop) and because these are CLEARLY not my dogs. This abominable creature, whatever it is, did the one short commanding bark once or twice a minute, and then silence for three or four or five minutes, for about an hour, by which time I was longing to let the air out of its tyres and call the cops. It was also beginning to get to the hellhounds, who ordinarily ignore exterior barking. So there’d be BARK and then rustling from the hellhound crate and I’d think, in my woozy state, oh, gods, it is Darkness after all. . . .
We did all eventually get back to sleep again, but it was not the most restful night/morning of my life. And I’ve been thumping away at SHADOWS** and when it was time for hellhounds’ second hurtle tonight it was like, you mean I have to get out of this chair? And do what?
So I thought, to spare the brain I don’t have available anyway, I’d respond to a few forum comments.***
gamma
Honestly, I would give Hugo a miss anyway.
You comfort me. It did get mixed reviews over here, but they were interestingly mixed, and Penelope really wanted to go. I’ll ask her what she thought.
EMoon
Oh gods…audience at a [voice] lesson???
At first my voice died to nothing if I heard footsteps in the hall outside the choir room where my lessons usually are. Which, considering that it’s the church complex and people move around it all day, was not helpful. Then it died only if they opened the door to the choir room (instantly. stopped.) . . . Now I still don’t want anyone there during a lesson, but Suzanne . . . sometimes needs to come into the room…and I can sort of keep going. . . . Sort of. After a couple of years.
Someone else? A friend? At the thought my throat tightens up. And yet I can sing in the choir…but there are others around me, covering up my voice (I think. Maybe not true but I can think that.)
Yes. This would be me too. Blondel kept threatening to take us to one of the practise rooms where he was a professional vicar choral, and I kept saying that if he did I wouldn’t be able to sing. I’ve got used perforce to Nadia’s mum† but I have to not think about it really hard, and one of the things that went wrong the day I had my lesson at Nadia’s house was the presence of other people. Aren’t we a little old for this nonsense? Feh. And totally, about the choir covering you up. Although in my case I haven’t got much doubt that it’s true. At best I make an on-pitch noise which helps to thicken up the more interesting noise that the singers are all making. My usefulness is as a kind of audible corn starch.
Besunami
Extra protein in your broccoli? Ewww! Yuck! When I was little I loved lettuce and munched happily with our bunnies. One night I bit down on a leaf and there was a big crunch where no crunch should have been. My father told me I’d probably gotten a spider egg sac. Great parenting, Dad! To this day I can’t eat any crunchy lettuce parts.
Ewwww. I’m amazed you haven’t needed years of intensive therapy to overcome this damaging trauma.†† I think I’ve told the story?, about an entire branch of the Dickinson clan swearing off broccoli forever after Peter served them some from his garden—this was before my time I wish to emphasise—that was perhaps somewhat overpopulated. He gave up trying to grow broccoli shortly thereafter because it tends to be rather liberally inhabited. Let the professionals deal.
Susan inMelbourne
Q: What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?
A: Finding half a worm in your apple!!
I think I grew up with this one. I can’t remember when I didn’t know it—speaking of trauma—I’ve eaten a lot of apples in my life. I started cutting them up young, however, so I could check their insides. When I persuaded Peter to go organic at the old house and we stopped spraying our apples, this got a bit crucial, but since there were always far more apples than we could eat anyway, having to cut away the occupied bits was not too sad. (My little apple tree at the cottage seems relatively immune. I have no idea why.) I will say however, delicately, this being a family blog and all, that while I’m not happy about finding protein in my broccoli, still, it’s cooked. And I spent five years in Japan at an impressionable age where I ate all kinds of weird-to-the-western-mind stuff like deep-fried grasshoppers and chocolate-covered ants.^ I can deal with the occasional cooked half caterpillar in my broccoli. I have not yet however had to face the raw half worm in my apple and I don’t want to. (Raw! Spider sac! EWWWWWWW!!!!)
^ Hey. It’s chocolate.
PamAdams
|
~ I don’t think they take fifty-nine-year-old women as able-bodied sailors, do they? Well that’s out then. |
Perhaps you could settle for being the ‘pretty cabin boy.’
::falls down laughing::
http://folksongcollector.com/handsome.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDn_3VysILs
I’ve always liked the captain’s wife’s comment at the end: Yes, Mrs Captain? And what are you hiding?
* * *
* Hey, I’m just doing what I’m told. Singing Christmas carols is fun. And it does give me an opportunity to notice that I do have a bit more voice than I did this time last year. When I was whining to Nadia on Monday about thin and reedy—and about the continuing frustration of not know what to do about this when it happens—she said in her best brisk manner that I should concentrate on the fact that even when I’m singing less than my best (and she’s big on the fact that ‘best’ by definition is rare and you can’t beat yourself up for failing to attain it every time you open your mouth) I am singing better than I was ten months ago. Yes. True. It also amuses me a lot to be brisked at—I’m not quite sure what the correct verb is: she’s not patronising me, she’s brisking me—by someone about thirty years younger than I am.
** I am still doodling, of course, but I admit the factory conveyor belt has slowed. Nothing else is going to get there before Christmas; I might as well concentrate on SHADOWS for a few days. So I am.
*** I should resurrect Ask Robin. Good grief. The problem—it’s not a problem, it’s me being shiftless—is that most of the questions people want to ask authors are about . . . authory and publishing things. Which is reasonable. It’s just that I have about have .01 micrograms’ interest and/or knowledge of these things. About writing, it’s something I do, like walking or breathing. I can’t tell you how I do it and it seems to me a bit daft (and embarrassing) to try. Merrilee exists as a sort of Deep Space Nine/Babylon Five where my publishers and I can both dock and find someone who can talk/walk/breathe with both of us.^ Over here on the planet Gonzo Mongo we are mostly interested in hellhounds, bells, singing, yarn, roses, chocolate, etc.
I am ashamed that I almost never blog about other people’s books however, since I still read all the time and it’s not all maths and physics (and knitting. And roses). I’m enormously enjoying Lauren Beukes’ ZOO CITY right now for example.
^ I have never satisfactorily decided if my publisher is the Vorlon, or I am.
† As I got used—more or less—to Blondel’s neighbour, who, on a week day afternoon, had the revolting habit of sitting in his garden. Which Blondel’s studio overlooked. And Blondel would kind of stare at me if I suggested he close the window. I comforted myself with the thought that I wasn’t very loud, and Blondel’s piano was between me and the window. I’m louder now. And there’s an open hatch between Nadia’s mum’s kitchen and the dining room, where the piano is. I’m not thinking about it. I’m. Not. Thinking. About. It.
†† Also, lettuce is one of the cheap joys of life, and there aren’t that many cheap joys, aside from library cards.
Audience
Bronwen emailed me the end of last week that she was going to be in this area on Monday, and could she drop in? Sure, I emailed back. I have my voice lesson Monday afternoon, but we can go ringing with Colin in the evening, if you like. I can meet you at the cottage after my lesson, at 6:30 or so.
. . . I was hoping I might come to your lesson, she answered.
WHAT? ARE YOU FRELLING JOKING?
I was, in fact, so blitherblathered, nonplussed and gobsmacked by this insane and unexpected request that I couldn’t immediately think of what to say, other than NO. AND NEVER DARKEN MY DOOR AGAIN WHILE YOU’RE AT IT.* Since I’m fond of Bronwen I restrained this natural impulse and . . . emailed Nadia. Do you have a policy about people sitting in? I said. Do you . . . by any chance . . . FORBID it?**
This was happening last night at about two a.m.*** when I am perhaps not at my best anyway.† For some reason†† Nadia hadn’t answered by the time I crawled out of bed again (later) this morning . . . and meanwhile the hours were ticking by and Bronwen was climbing in her car and turning the key in the little hole††† and . . . and . . .
And when I went to warm up today with my piano at the mews I couldn’t sing at all. Here I had been comforting myself that at least yesterday’s indisposition (which has much lessened, thank you) had had nothing to do with my throat . . . and I still couldn’t sing. I was producing these nasty horrible thready little noises.‡ Ugggh.
Beginning to panic now I texted Nadia saying, perhaps you didn’t see my email (which I sent at about 3 a.m. and you’re probably feeding your kid her oatmeal before facing your first student of the day and haven’t checked your inbox) and thank the gods this time she answered, and in Best Professional Manner, that she did not have a policy about sitters-in and she did not object to teaching with an audience, but that she felt that unless this was a run up to an exam or a performance it was not helpful to the student and advised against. YAAAAAAY. I pretty well burnt my fingers racing to email Bronwen: NOOOOOOOOO.‡‡
Then we’d managed to get the lesson time crossgartered somehow so I was waiting‡‡‡ for half an hour before Nadia was ready for me which did not help my tension level any. § So when it was finally my turn I went in and, setting my knapsack down and removing my music as if I were an insufficiently tested beta model, squeaked that I had been ill yesterday and today I can’t sing at all. When I admitted upon questioning that it had been a Digestive Issue Nadia said, well, of course. The bottom half of your body isn’t speaking to the top half, so you’re not getting any of the support you need not to sound thin and reedy. Lie down on the floor and breathe.
So I lay down on the floor and breathed.§§
And, after that, the lesson went pretty well.§§§
At the end she said, your homework for the next fortnight is to go home and ENJOY singing all these songs you’ve been working so hard on. ENJOY. You know about ENJOY, right?
Oh. Kind of.
And then I came home# and finally met up with poor Bronwen. And we went ringing at Glaciation.## We came back to the mews for supper and then she knitted while I got on with SHADOWS. It’s very . . . shadowy. In a good way. I hope.
* * *
* And you can post that knitting book you borrowed back to me.
** Please. Please forbid it. Please.
*** Having spent an unhealthy amount of time bringing the jungle indoors again. No frost tonight. Yaaaaaaay.
† I’d also just found out that I’d been a thundering and inexcusable scoundrel to a harmless and inoffensive member of the human race and was reeling from the karmic backlash. This does not serve to focus the mind in a positive way.
†† I realise this will come as a shock to all of you, but not everyone lives by their email, their texts, their DMs, and their tweets. Fancy. And a substantial number of these non-virtual people have children still too young for email, texts, DMs, and Twitter. Very real, small children.
††† I spent SIXTY ONE QUID filling Wolfgang’s petrol tank today. SIXTY. ONE. QUID. Strongest argument for internet shopping that I know. The next time I fall afoul of one of these barking and berserk sites that demand four passwords that add up to the square root of 19^ and then tell you that according to numerology your birthday declares you to be an axe murderer and/or a bad financial risk and therefore they are rejecting you and the credit card you rode in on . . . I will whisper to myself ‘sixty one quid’ and persevere.
^ 4.358898943540674 http://www.math.com/students/calculators/source/square-root.htm
‡ It’s all relative. Nastier, horribler, threadier. And definitely littler, which in the circumstances is just as well.
‡‡ Under most ordinary conditions I have no problem saying No, and please fall in a large mud puddle on your way out.^ But I know that I am a neurotic wet^^ about singing and performing, and—I also understand being interested in the process. What happens in a voice lesson with a good teacher is just interesting, and never mind if the student sounds like a hamster someone just sat on.^^^ I ought to want to spread the voice-lesson joy around. Well, I do. Just not in a way that involves someone having to listen to me sing.
^ And may you be wearing drycleanable-only.
^^ Possibly a neurotic muddy. And my ego absolutely needs the delicate cycle.
^^^ Shrill and flat.
‡‡‡ Knitting. I’m producing a very nice series of hellhound squares in varying textures of knit and purl. This activity is interspersed with ripping out the first half-dozen rows of leg warmer again.
§ Possibly the small-child-amusing CD of small-child songs Stella was listening to in a rapt and pensive manner had something to do with this. When someone is trying to lisp breathlessly and, as you knit, wait for your voice lesson and try not to think about the half a page of SHADOWS you could have got through in this half hour, you are thinking (testily) that they are probably getting paid for the noise they’re making, and here you are paying for the privilege of trying to sound less like this.
Okay, I have never lisped. And I’m only breathless when I forget, uh, to breathe. Still.
§§ Her mother came in with a cup of tea for her while this was going on. Don’t worry, said Nadia, she’s used to my students lying on the floor.
§§§ I was probably just really grateful that it was only the two of us.^
^ And the cat.
# Muttering about sixty-one quid
## Where I was pretty much a disaster on all fronts SIIIIIIIGH. I haven’t really got enough brain for a voice lesson and a tower practise in the same day. Especially when there’s a little matter of a novel to finish in six weeks.
Forum round up, more of
Have been trailing around under a cloud all day, a cloud of Handbell Worry. I have enough worries.*
So let’s have a little more forum round-up.
roisindubh211
What anime were you watching?
The first feature was Aeon Flux. There’s a lot of stuff on the web—including YouTube clips—about it. I’ll just say that it’s a lot creepier in the dark of a theatre than it is in snips on your computer screen. Also, what we saw was silent, which was part of its anti-charm**, and monochrome—all beige and black. Much more unsettling.***
The main feature was Akira. Ugh. Sorry. But ugh.† But I loved Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, so I am not wholly lost to anime.
Maren quotes:
LRK wrote:
| . . . the tree was full of peacefully munching, perfectly relaxed, goats! . . . |
I don’t know the specific documentary, but I think it was probably these guys. It looks like there are lots of pictures and YouTube videos if you Google “goats in trees”.
I want to see a video of them running up the trees in the first place. I’m not nearly so impressed that they can run down.
HorsehairBraider
It is a misconception that goats will eat anything. They . . . are pretty much the pickiest animal on the farm. . . They would certainly never stoop to eating a rope. Now that is not to say they might not pick it up and mouth it a bit, but eat? Never.
Well, it depends on your goat, doesn’t it? I actually know the ‘fussiest eater’ version of goat keeping more than I know the ‘eats anything’ myth, but friends who’ve had goats say that it’s more that you never know what goats may take into their heads to decide is a delicacy, which may include things like the (human) kids’ winter coats and house shingles (which I would have assumed would be full of poisonous wood preservatives, but apparently not in this case). And rope. At least one goat couldn’t be staked out because she’d eat the rope and trundle off cross country. And she didn’t just gnaw it through. She ate it. (Again I’d’ve thought this would play havoc with her digestion . . . but I guess not.) But this sort of thing must be where the myth got started . . . ? And why goat keepers often have grey hair within their first year of goat-keeping, from worrying about what the goats have unexpectedly been eating. Speaking of worrying.
Annagail
Youtube is both awesome and really, really annoying for teachers. . . . watching blatantly wrong performances . . . is not an insignificant problem, particularly if students’ music-reading skills are sketchy. If you learn by ear, you may not catch a mistake in a recording. And if you learn it wrong, it’s a total pain to fix it, both for the teacher and the student.
For the . . . student who will . . . check what the singer sings vs. what’s on the music, Youtube (and . . . recordings in general) present a different problem. Your interpretation of a piece is supposed to be yours. What frequently happens is a student falls in love with a particular recording . . . and then tries to imitate it. Sometimes the imitation is just in phrasing/interpretation . . . but frequently there can be subconscious attempts to make one’s voice do what the recording artist’s does, whether or not your voice is made to do that – which is what Nadia was worried about. This is a bigger problem, as voices that are trying to do things they can’t (yet) can end up . . . very messed up. . . .
My teacher’s opinion on recordings was always . . . : when you start learning the piece, leave the recordings alone. After you get the notes/rhythms/basic interpretation under your belt, listen to as many recordings as you can. This theoretically gives you oodles of exposure to lots of different interpretations, so you can grab her breathing spot, her phrasing of this particular passage, etc. . . .
Harrumph. Well, since Nadia is catching me up about listening to YouTube, I must have to take some of this seriously . . . but basically I’m going to say what I more or less said here on Monday: I haven’t got enough frelling voice (yet) to try and make it do anything except totter anxiously through the notes in more or less the right order, speed, and pitch. Try to sound like Marilyn Horne? Hahahahahahahahaha. And I’m going to say this to Nadia next week too††, and see what she says, since I have to assume I’m missing something. Meanwhile I am trying to learn Dove Sei cold turkey and . . .
blondviolinist
| And then she reminded me that if I’m serious about this better-choir thing I need to start thinking about learning to sight-sing. AAAAAAAAAAUGH. |
I admit it. I laughed my evil teacher laugh when I read this.
Sigh. And did I tell you on Monday that I took a deep breath and said, okay, when my hour lessons start? That was before I found out they were starting next week.
glanalaw
That Marilyn Horne recording is the one I remember from my art song literature class a couple years [ago]. Sooooo lovely. I’m absolutely in awe of her breath support and those long legato lines!
Yes. She’s a whole book in herself about breath support. I’d loved her for years before I was lucky enough to hear her in person and . . . I was completely dumfounded. It’s not that I thought there was any hocus-pocus about the recordings, just . . . the human mechanism can’t do that.
I usually start with Youtube when I’m learning an unfamiliar song, too.
Oh. Yaaay. Whew. I’m not just lazy and backward. . . .
I try not to listen to the same performance over and over, though, so that I don’t end up singing it exactly like whoever I’m listening to.
Well, see above. I can’t. But without thinking about it I automatically prefer to hear different versions because I’m looking for a rough guide not a perfect template. At my level a perfect template would just be depressing.
But, though I’m capable of sightreading, I do find it easier to have some idea of what the song is supposed to sound like before I start beating out notes and rhythms!
Well, this is my excuse—and what I’m going to try on Nadia when I see her again. My sense of rhythm is a little unpredictable and it’s quite a good idea that I check against someone who knows what they’re doing occasionally (speaking of having to relearn after mistakes). And as soon as I get away from the gorgeous professional recording or superlative student recital and back to my piano, my music and my . . . ahem . . . voice, the gorgeous-professional fades rapidly under the onslaught of the real.
Jeanne Marie
LOVE Marilyn Horne!
And, after listening to Dove Sei, I couldn’t resist listening to THIS
And what a good way to end a blog. With cookies.†††
* * *
* Tower Bell Worry, for example. We had enough of a turnout tonight that I got to ring Cambridge, which of course means I screwed it up: which is doubly^ annoying because I’m fairly close to being able to ring the wretched thing. I just never know from one month to the next when I’ll get the chance to try. But the current worry is that we’re about to spend fabulous amounts of money on getting our bells all fabuloused up . . . and then won’t have anyone to ring them.
Niall had told Penelope Colin’s shocking news and she got me in a corner tonight and started telling me forcefully—as only someone who has taught classrooms full of junior high boys can be forceful—that I would certainly fit into one of Niall’s other handbell groups and that it would be fine and that furthermore the energy spike^^ of learning to ring with a new group would have me ringing Doohickey Surprise in no time. Uh huh. And I will have SHADOWS finished by the end of January.^^^
^ Or, possibly, spliced. Splicedly?
^^ What she means is ‘adrenaline panic’ but she’s too nice to say so
^^^ IF IT WERE DUE IN AUGUST SHADOWS WOULD BE GOING BRILLIANTLY. Well, it is going pretty well. It’s just not going end-of-January well. Speaking of worries.
** And was pretty much the reason for its inclusion, since one of the board of three who are trying to get this show on the road as a regular few-times-a-year feature of Weird Alternative Cinema, is a composer of off the wall electronic music. He wrote a sound track, and it worked extremely well.
*** And it was unsettling, although I’m easily unsettled. I spend too much time officially out of my mind and planet and I don’t really need anyone trying to yank my chain. On the other hand, I’d been warned it was going to be sexually kinky. Either they’d had to cut the extreme bits to get permission to show it, or I had a more comprehensively experimental youth than I realised.
† And about the loathly lady story: there is pretty much a loathly-lady story for all occasions. It’s really only the reverse of Beauty and the Beast, and every human culture we know enough about to know the stories it tells has some version of Beauty and the Beast. It will not amaze you that I have the McKinley version of the unsatisfactory King Henry in hen-scratches in a paper file folder somewhere, waiting for time to write it up.
†† Eeeep. Speaking of worrying. I am going to be in a complete falling-down-and-biting-the-carpet frenzy of terror by next Wednesday. The combination of going to her home for the first time, and having the first of my hour-long lessons is rendering me incapable of believing that I am capable of learning anything at all, let alone filling up an hour.
I am so frelling hopeless. Gaaah.
††† What I missed, having been born too early for Sesame Street.
UnThanksgiving
In the first place, I had scrambled eggs, Nina had soy sausage* and Peter had leftover lamb stew.**
But the real mood of thanklessness and festive unjollity was established earlier in the evening. Colin is threatening to give up handbells.
He’s been ringing handbells about two and a half years. He’d had minor surgery that was going to keep him out of bell towers for a while and the idea of no method ringing at all was making him twitchy. And I think he’d had it in the back of his mind that he was going to give handbells a go some time.
He picked it up instantly, of course. That’s the result of forty years and four hundred million peals and keeping everybody else straight in the tower. We—Niall, Colin and I—were ringing touches of bob minor by the end of his first evening on handbells. They were a little ragged, but they were nonetheless genuine touches of bob minor. It took me years to get to the ragged touches of bob minor stage.
The thing is, he’s never gotten a lot better. He’s got some better, and he can bodge through anything on handbells because he can ring anything in the tower***—but he has never morphed into the fabulous handbell ringer that I had confidently† predicted he would be at the end of his first six months. He still trips and hesitates—even on bob minor.
But Colin with a pair of handbells in his hands does mean that Niall and I can ring handbells on Thursday evenings in New Arcadia. Gemma? Gemma—who was not there again tonight—is not going to make a handbell ringer. She’s a doctor, she has a life and a family, she has too much else going on. She doesn’t have the time—or, I imagine, the brain energy—to learn handbells. Handbells are a difficult skill. If Colin goes, that’ll be the end of Thursday evening handbells at Rose Cottage.
And tonight—okay, after derailing an attempt at a Thanksgiving quarter peal—out of the blue Colin said that he’d decided he was going to give handbells a final, make or break, shot—he’s going to try to ring a full peal on handbells with a couple or three tower-bell friends of his who are also demon handbell ringers. I am a sort of bottom-level soggy-porridge handbell ringer, and even Niall is only demon third class, although he’s getting there. Colin seems to think that his stratospheric friends will either shock him into precision, or confirm his decision that he is not a handbell ringer.††
If we fold, it won’t be a disaster for Niall: he already rings handbells three other nights a week, and is perfectly happy to drive to Vientiane for a full peal of quadruply spliced Doohickey Splendour Royal, and then drive home again. I don’t have time either to drive to Vientiane, even if I’m hitching a ride with Niall, and I sure as frell don’t have the time to learn Doohickey Splendour. Niall will doubtless—because he can’t bear the idea of even a soggy-porridge††† handbell ringer going to waste—try to find other opportunities to foist me on . . . I mean, to find another band for me to ring with. But it’s going to take alchemy and transmogrification.
And I’m already (justifiably) pessimistic about the tower bell situation in this area.
Maybe Colin’s handbell peal will be a dazzling, exhilarating success, and he’ll come back to his next Thursday night with us on fire to ring . . . uh, Doohickey Splendour. In which case as an offering to the Gods of Handbells I will learn it. And maybe he was having a gloomy night tonight and he’s not quite as near the end of his tether as he says.‡
But I do know what he’s talking about, about his handbell ringing. I’d MUCH rather he rang than stopped—there’s also the little matter of him being a nice guy and easy to have around—and he only winds me up when he’s trying.‡‡ An awful lot of the good handbell ringers are very intense and just being in the same room with them makes me green and queasy—or they’re like the Mean Man the other week who wants perfection or he’s going to drop-kick you into the next county. I’d rather ring with Colin. And knowing he’s a bit erratic helps keep me in line.
But I understand how a hot shot tower ringer might not want to hang around indefinitely doing ringing that he’s not really good at. It would be like me writing Sudoku or travel guides to Papua New Guinea or economics textbooks—I’m not built for it and I would not be good at it. And it wouldn’t take me two and a half years to bail.
But . . .
Whimper.‡‡‡
* * *
* She’s a vegetarian. But they smelled really good and I’ll have the rest of them on Saturday when she and Peter are playing bridge.
** Peter and I talked about Thanksgiving. But . . . neither of us really eats all that much any more, it happens right after my birthday^, Peter’s birthday is in three weeks and then it’s Christmas. And yes, there’s a turkey for Christmas.^^ So we talked about Thanksgiving and . . .
^ Which when I was younger and on better terms with more calories just made it value-added: coming to the end of the birthday cake was made much less tragic by the immediate prospect of pumpkin, mince and apple pies.
^^ I have retained a few of my American standards, and a turkey at some late-year holiday is necessary.
*** This is, you can believe, a source of deepest and wildest frustration to me. I can only ring on handbells what I have spent hours and hours and HOURS learning^—since the advent of the bell-ringing programme on Pooka, I can at least put in my hours and hours and HOURS privately, without ruining anybody else’s day(s). It’s still hours and hours and HOURS.
^ Methods on handbells are harder than on tower bells. Don’t let anyone+ tell you different.
+ Niall, for example.
† And despairingly
†† The point about a full peal, for those who ring them, which would not include me, is that there is, or should be, in a peal that goes well, a long stretch after everyone has settled down when the band fuses into a single many-roped monster and the ringing really flows along. You do get this effect to a much lesser degree in a good quarter peal—which I have rung on occasion—but it is (I’m told) more dramatic in a full peal because a full peal goes on so much longer. It’s this stage that Colin wants to find out if he can reach on handbells. If he does, then our Thursday nights probably have a future. If he doesn’t . . .
††† I am at least a soggy-porridge first class handbell ringer. But the sort of thing Niall rings the other three nights of his handbell week are the equivalent of the Grand National when Pony Club gymkhanas still scare you to death.
‡ Although he didn’t give the impression of being gloomy. There are . . . perhaps more than the usual number of All Stars just inside the front door at the cottage at present, and I was doing my coming-back-ten-seconds-before-the-others-arrive^ trick tonight and didn’t have a chance to shovel them out of the way. I was pulling harnesses off hellhounds when I heard Colin’s voice behind me saying, Robin, how many feet do you have?
^ Which is still much better than the five minutes after they arrive trick.
‡‡ See previous footnote.
‡‡‡ Colin doesn’t have a date yet for Peal of Destiny. I’ll let you know.