Robin McKinley's Blog, page 22

Poor Nadia emailed yesterday that she had tonsillitis**,  so I phoned Atlas and asked him to bring his trailer today, Monday being his usual McKinley-Dickinson day, and I’m usually having a voice lesson.***  But now that I’m NOT letting Third House, the garden is again mine.#  So I thought I might send some of the botanical overflow from the cottage to Third House, whose borders are nothing like full since the awful truth is that living in three houses is Not Really Practical.  Ahem.  At least not unless you have staff which is not one of the options here.  And while Atlas to cut the grass is great## if you have a garden because you like gardening you don’t really want someone else doing all the fun stuff, which is basically everything but mowing lawns.###

The trailer is about eight foot by four, if you’re wondering.

Atlas, grinning hugely, said, So, Robin, what are you going to do with all the SPACE?  –SPACE?  WHAT SPACE?  You can still only get out the kitchen door at the cottage carefully.  You can barely tell anything’s changed.  Especially after I spent the remainder of the afternoon at the cottage, potting up and potting on.~  Things race out so, this time of year, with summer icumen and all.  I also found, not to say unearthed, a good Wolfgang’s boot-load of plants that should have gone up in the trailer.  Except there wasn’t room.  Tomorrow.  I can take them up tomorrow ~~.  Tomorrow I may teach Fiona the basics of gardening.~~~

* * *

* And I wish the cuckoo would sing, they’re getting rarer and rarer.  When I moved over here twenty-odd years ago they were dead common.  They’re now dead rare.  I hope they don’t finish this progression to dead dead.

** It’ll be good when everyone’s immune system adjusts to kids-in-school germs.  Stella still goes down with everything on offer and generously passes about half of it on to her mother.  And there’s Renfrew to add to the germ-factory joy in a couple of years.

*** It is really very annoying that the world does not revolve around me, so I could schedule everything to suit my convenience.

# All right, I’m going to have to share it with Peter.  Our garden.  Not some random rent-paying stranger’s garden.

## I used to the mow the little lawns–ie with a hand mower, not some snarling sit-on behemoth–in the walled garden at the old house AND IT’S ABOUT THE MOST BORING THING EVER.

### Almost everything.  Battling perennial weeds with roots to China is also a major ratbag since I won’t use chemical -icides.

~ I need more potting compost.  Sigh.

~~ Okay, so I buy too many plants like I buy too much yarn and too many books and music and . . . but I have a serious dahlia problem this year. Which is that I think all of last year’s are still alive.  And of course I ordered more, because attrition can be expected to run anywhere from about 60% to 100%.  Little green dahlia leaves in one of last year’s pots are usually cause for excitement and celebration not a blank look of disbelief and a muttered, another one?

~~~ First you buy your Royal Horticultural Society/Victoria & Albert Museum kneeler, with the fabulous William Morris or Redoubte rose print, and then you need your pink gloves^. . . .

^ They’ve started making pink hand tools but so far the ones I’ve seen appear to be for people who don’t actually . . . plan to use them.  Hmmph.  Who wants tools that don’t do the job??  Decorative tools?  Spare me.  Although I’m just as happy not to spend top-end prices on another pair of secateurs.  If Felco comes out with pink secateurs I’m in trouble.

. . . wherein dropping your music all over the stage is like not getting killed because your enchanted sword, your equally enchanted bracelet-shield and your mighty war-horse have you covered, not to mention a regiment of Falcons coming to your aid.

Because St Margaret’s is short of musicians cough cough cough cough and are not fussy about the quality of their volunteers and because (almost) Any Fool Can Sing and I’m certainly somewhat less of a fool and more of a singer than I was two or three years ago, I’ve been signing myself up on the rota to sing every other week.  Tonight was one of my microphone nights.

Not till yesterday—there’s kind of a lot going on*—I suddenly thought OH MY NEON STROBING WHATSIT, I HAVEN’T HAD THE PLAYLIST FOR SUNDAY YET.  I scrambled on line to check who the music leader for the evening was—Samantha—and discovered . . . that my name wasn’t on the rota.  It’s there for a fortnight from now but not for tonight.  ARRRRRGH.  SOFTWARE HATES ME.  Not that this is news or anything.**  But they were still short of singers, so I emailed Buck. . . .

I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN MY ABSENCE FROM THE ROTA AS A SIGN.  I SHOULD FRELLING KNOW A FRELLING SIGN WHEN I SEE ONE.***

Buck emailed back that they’d be glad to have me, and forwarded Samantha’s music-leader email from earlier that day—yesterday—saying that SHE HADN’T DECIDED YET.  But that her final choice would PROBABLY be from AMONG THE FOLLOWING 1,000,000,000 possibles. . . .

Whimper.

I arrived tonight already beginning to hyperventilate and found Buck and Samantha arguing about key signatures.  Samantha is an alto and always wants stuff pitched extra low.  Okay, I can bellow, but there are two or three notes in the middle where I can’t get much noise either from chest or head voice . . . and of course those are the two or three notes most used in tonight’s selection . . . which Samantha was still swapping around.  Fortunately Janey was there too;  I might very well have been reduced to making fish mouths if I hadn’t been standing next to someone singing what I was supposed to sing—Samantha is up at the front of the stage as leader, she’s no use.  Practise started late and got bogged down in key signature changes and esoterica like bridges.  Hey, you sing one verse, and then you sing another verse, and then you go on to the next song, okay?  It’s not like it’s Mozart or something.†

But because we kept coming adrift over superfluities like what the guitar or the keyboard was supposed to be playing we didn’t get to sing everything and raced over two songs saying oh we don’t have to practise those, we know those and I’m saying NO WE DON’T.  I DON’T KNOW THEM and they’re saying OH YES YOU DO.  YOU’LL REMEMBER AS SOON AS WE START.  And I’m saying GLEEEEEEEEP.

So I’m in a weakened condition when I totter off the stage to fetch my standard cup of Crimson Glory tea†† and then sit down for a moment before the service begins, and on my way to the kitchen I am WAYLAID by the Greeter Steward Person who (among other tasks) usually has the perhaps less than happy duty of ensnaring readers:  there are two (Bible) readings per service and therefore two readers are necessary.  Wouldn’t you like to do a READING tonight? she said.  Erm.  Well, I don’t mind, and—as mentioned on these virtual pages several times previously—the thing about getting involved with a church community is that you want to be careful to pitch in on the stuff you don’t mind doing or sure as eggs is eggs [sic] you’ll get nailed for stuff you do mind.  So I said yes.

I managed to miss the band intro because I was still staring at the floor from my chair during opening prayers and I look up and everybody else is on stage and they’d already begun by the time I stumbled up the frelling stair and grabbed my microphone.  Since the first song is one of the ones I don’t know nobody was missing much.†††

Janey and I were sharing a music stand which would be okay except for the part about how it’s not quite wide enough.  Our sheet music is in plastic covers, and three-pagers fold out, and the music stand is only two pages wide, and the plastic covers are floppy.  So I cleverly borrowed a stiff notebook to widen the music stand a bit so we could see all three pages at the same time, since sometimes you go back to the beginning for the next verse, you know?  Arrrgh.‡  And for the last song, which was a three-pager, I was delicately arranging it and then twisting the stand slightly so Janey could see it too and I managed to drop all the rest of the music all over the stage in a snowstorm of pages AAAAAAAUUGH KILL ME NOW.   So we finish the final song of the set and I’m on my hands and knees frantically scrabbling up pages . . . have I mentioned that the Bible readings come immediately after the singing?  And that I was doing the first reading?

I flung the music back on the stand, fled for my chair—usually sitting in the back of the congregation is fine—and Bible, and shot for the front again where Buck, who did not know who was doing tonight’s readings, was fiddling with the microphone stand and said laconically, in typical Buckminster manner, Hey, I was getting worried.

I read.  I didn’t drop the Bible or get my tongue twisted and say ‘—-’ or ‘—-’ inadvertently.

Not a whole lot else happened.‡‡  I didn’t fall down or throw up or knock over anybody else’s music stand for the final song at the end of the service.  I even got up on stage more or less on time.  But I don’t think the Falcons would have bothered rescuing me.

* * *

* I’ve told you Fiona is coming back this Tuesday to help me further whack Third House into inhabitable condition.  The problem with this is that I need a clue what to ask her to do.  Aside from the standard Oxfam run with the several million more slightly used books in the boot, making her car hunker down like an American moonshine runner.

** And this programme in particular has decided that I am devilspawn and every time I open it it assigns me a Small Blue Flashing Escort Box with Special Powers that follows me around and messes with what I’m doing.  Because you can’t be too careful with devilspawn.  What I want to know is if as we approach Sunday fortnight my name will disappear from that rota too.

*** I write fantasy for a living, you know.  Lots of signs and portents in fantasy.  I like signs and portents.  In fantasy.

† Singing from the front does help my attitude toward Modern Christian Worship Flapdoodle I Mean Music but it hasn’t exactly revolutionised it.

†† http://www.hambledenherbs.com/teainfusions/blends.aspx?p=5706

When I started going there, St Margaret’s didn’t have any herb tea bags.  What is the MATTER with these people?!  So I brought them a box of Crimson Glory.  Nobody seems to drink it but me.  I brought them a second box a while back.  The tea ladies see me coming and bring out The Red Box.

††† I should perhaps elucidate that there are two kinds of songs I don’t know.  The ones we practised—not enough—and the ones we didn’t practise.  At all.  Tonight’s first song falls into the first category.

‡ Also one of the songs I half know is too much like another song and it’s one of those with no music at all, just a lyric page so I kept trying to sing the other melody and . . .

‡‡ Except one of the admin—one I don’t usually have much occasion to talk to—made a point of coming up to tell me how well I’d read.  Snork.  It’s Paul, hectoring the Corinthians for immorality.  I can do ranting.

ONE THIRTY ONE

The vision faded;  the clouds were just clouds again.  You wondered if you’d imagined the horses, the riders, the bare-legged woman;  but you and everyone around you were on their feet, all staring in the same direction, beginning to move from stiff, amazed attention, but as if still caught in a dream.  Several people frowned down at whatever was in their hands as if they couldn’t remember why they were holding it.

You looked around, wondering who had shouted Defender!  Old Lamos was still motionless, staring up at what were now only wind-restless clouds, but with an expression of such defenceless, heartsick longing that you had to look away.  There was a half-darned sock in your hands;  you shifted one hand tentatively and were promptly stabbed by the invisible needle.  You hissed through your teeth—just like Dumain—but it gave you an excuse for the fact that your hands were shaking.

The colonel was suddenly there, standing by the fire, weaving her hair into a thick plait and tucking it down her collar—you were sure her hands never trembled.  “We’re riding out,” she said.  “Get your kit together and do it fast.”  The firelight stained her face and hair an ominous, flickering red, struck red glints off her chainmail and laid dark stripes that might have been fresh blood across the leather undercoat.  She could have been some warrior goddess who would protect and save them all without their having to move from the fireside.

But she wasn’t.  She was their colonel, tough and loyal and quick-witted, but only human like the rest of the company.

Everyone began dragging—or, in some cases, fumbling—their things together, their mending, their dice and knucklebones, their whittling, while everyone’s heads filled involuntarily with all the stories they’d ever heard about the Black Tower.  The stories slowed them down, made them clumsy, even the old soldiers, maybe particularly the old soldiers, because they knew the most stories.  Lamos was finally moving, his expression fading to something resembling ordinary weariness, or the ordinary oppression of spirits everyone felt at the Black Tower.  Barolan, who had been with the colonel for nearly as long as you’ve been alive, looked worried and grim.  When the colonel turned her head you could see the scar of the wound that had almost killed her:  it was Barolan who’d carried her out of the battle that day and (so the story went) held the edges of the wound together till there was a surgeon free to stitch it up.  She’d’ve bled to death in a few minutes else.

Barolan’s hands never shook either.  But he wasn’t at ease tonight.

“No-ow?” quavered a voice.

“No, yesterday!” said the colonel briskly, but she could have snapped or given the owner of the voice marks for extra duty—you thought it might be Yoza’s voice, Yoza, who had very bad dreams at the Black Tower—but she didn’t.  Even the colonel, whose hands never shook, understood about the Black Tower, although she did tend to close down the story-telling sessions when they got morbid.

You were remembering some of the morbid ones as you rolled up your darning (having carefully secured the capricious needle) and stuffed it into the saddlebag at your feet.  The story that said the black giant as tall as the sky never spoke because he had no mouth—no throat, no voice—but that the whistling of his sword was as loud as a storm wind, and because he moved as silently as if he had no feet as he had no voice, sometimes you thought it was only the wind—and then you were dead.

There was wind tonight, although it wasn’t storm wind.  But it was probably enough to disguise the approach of a silent lethal giant.

There was another story that the grey almost-nothingness that surrounded the Black Tower (which you had to ride through to get to it, and on that ride there was always something behind you even if you were last in the column, and you and all your friends were trying not to be last in the column, and the horses were all twitchy and skittery and if there was a wind you were expecting to die without warning) was the black giant’s battlefield wasteland.  That he killed so savagely that the blows of his great sword weakened the walls of the world.  That here, where the empty broken land stood testament to his ferocity, there were open wounds in reality’s skin, and their world might bleed to death;  that it was this, in some manner, that their duty patrols were to prevent, although exactly how you had no idea.

Everyone was ready in a surprisingly short time, fetching the rest of their gear, tacking up their horses and leading them to the forming-up area in front of the Black Tower.  The horses should have been drowsing and unwilling to go to work at this hour, but they were awake and alert and eager to leave their stalls, although the stabling was better at the Black Tower than most of their other regular billets.

When you arrived on the meeting ground, the colonel and Barolin and Lamos were already there, staring again at the sky.  The clouds piled up higher and higher and then broke and spilled away from each other in a very un-cloud-like manner:  which way was the wind blowing?  Was it blowing from another world through a rent in the skin of this one?

The rest of the company gathered and stood in silence for a moment—silence except for the wind.  But the wind wasn’t so loud that you couldn’t hear Barolin clear his throat and say, “Where to?”

You thought Lamos muttered something, but you weren’t sure.  The clouds were roiling, twisting together once more, but this time, when they splintered and scattered you saw the bare-legged woman on her horse again, but they weren’t standing at the head of a company, but alone, terrifyingly alone, and surrounded by enemies.  You watched in astonishment and admiration—no, reverence:  you’d never seen anyone fight as this woman fought, her sword slicing through those who would stand against her like a scythe through standing corn, her left forearm moving so quickly that the wide shining bracelet she wore deflected any blow the might have reached her.  She and her horse clearly knew each other very well;  he was instantly responsive to her legs and seat, the reins loose on his neck as she cut and parried, and he reared and struck, swerved, kicked, and bounded into the air, lashing out with his hind legs.

But she was all alone.  Where were her companions?  Both she and her horse were wet with sweat and blood—not, you thought, all of it their enemies’—even a war-goddess and her war-horse would tire eventually.

“There,” said the colonel calmly.  “The Defender needs us.”

Third House has shrunk.  I should have realised that the shiver in the aether when Peter said ‘okay’ Saturday afternoon was reality contracting.  Oh, and the books on Third House’s shelves have all reproduced.  In fact I think most of them have had litters.  Arrrgh.  I didn’t notice immediately, I was too busy dancing the fandango* and telling Third House we’re finally going to live in it.**

The red-shifted or Dopplered or whatever mystery of physics describes what happens to a house you’re about to start living in*** became dreadfully clear, however, when Fiona† showed up Tuesday morning†† and we tackled the surprising amount of stuff left over from last autumn when I was clearing out toward handing it over to the letting agent.†††  ARRRGH.  Fiona‡ had already agreed to come for a day and make me by her presence GET THE FRELLING FRELL ON WITH IT, when I still thought I was going to be letting it.  But we’ve been haemorrhaging money on storage since last autumn:  get your butt in gear, McKinley.  So I told Fiona that she was to keep repeating:  NEVER MIND. NEVER MIND.   JUST PUT IT IN A BOX AND PICK UP THE NEXT THING.

The angle of approach to the eventual goal has altered, but the merciless bottom line is still that it’s Too Much Stuff and Too Little Space.  But at least it’s our too little space again.

And you know the most amazing thing?  Fiona the B is coming back next Tuesday.‡‡  To do it all over again.  Which includes the fact that doing it all over again is necessary, sigh.  Now if only I could figure out a way to sic her on BT. . .

* * *

* If houses can shrink, I can be two people and dance a fandango

** It’s a nice house.  It should be lived in.  Aside from housing shortages^ I have felt bad for however many years I’ve owned it that I’m/we’re not doing it justice.  At the same time I was pretty discouraged about the prospect of letting it—very sensible, should have done it years ago, but it’s my house.  I want my books on the shelves (and the floor) and my drawing table in the attic.

^ Which I don’t in fact feel very guilty about since one of the many governmental scandals that resurface when there’s nothing newer and hotter to develop migraines over is the number of council houses that stand empty because the local council can’t get its act together to have them set to rights.  This would be less of a scandal if a lot of those local councils didn’t prefer to build new ones . . . which will need repairs shortly.

*** Usually they wait till you start unpacking your 1,000,000,000 boxes, but the situation here is unusual.

† Hereinafter to be known as Fiona the Blessed or possibly Fiona the B.

†† Well . . . um . . . it was still nearly Tuesday morning.  Fiona the B had some silly story about a flat tyre.  I had my usual silly story about non-eating hellhounds and going to bed so wound up I was humming like a gyroscope.

††† Unfortunately the need to do stuff like find out why the toilet tank erratically leaks^ and finally placate the ratblasted TV licensing mob who have suspected me of malfeasance for nearly a decade now^^ and enter into *&^%$£”!”!!!!!!!! negotiations with *&^%$£”!”!!!!!!!! BT^^^ has not evolved in the slightest.

^ and all you DIYers out there, no, it’s not that you just have to difflegag the dorgummer, because if it were the obvious thing(s) Atlas would have done it.

^^ She owns TWO houses and she doesn’t have TV in EITHER of them??  A likely story.

^^^ Jaccairn

Yeah for Peter moving closer! Does this mean you’ll have to resume discussions with BT about the phone line?

Snork.  The things you people remember.  Yes.  BT claims there is no phone line to the house despite the fact that it’s an eighty-year-old cottage in the middle of a several-hundred-year-old village and there’s a phone jack in the kitchen.  And that if I want a phone line put in for the first time in eight hundred and fifteen years (approximately) it’s going to cost me a lot of money because they have to start with the Roman aqueduct.   But Peter has said diffidently that he really does feel he would be happier with a landline . . . and I need my internet.  And even Peter uses email .

Pam Adams

I’m sure the hellterror will be happy- another pair of hands to pet her all day long.

???  The hellpack and I are at Peter’s mews more than we’re at the cottage.  We sleep at the cottage# and the hellgoddess imbibes her morning caffeine at the cottage.  Then we schlep down to the mews—pausing to pick Peter up in front of the grocery store because post-stroke he can walk one way into town, not both ways.  I usually try to hurtle critters back to the cottage for a spell in the afternoon to garden, do the laundry, shovel the accumulation of whatever off the stairs, etc.  I AM SO LOOKING FORWARD TO NOT HAVING TO COMMUTE ANY MORE.  As real commutes go it’s piffle, but it’s just far enough that you can’t nip back for something you’ve forgotten, and whatever you want is probably at the other house.  Hence the whole gruesome business of two knapsacks, three hellcritters and Wolfgang, every frelling day, no weekends and no holidays.  And you’ve still brought the wrong coat.

Firebyrd

I love it when procrastinating on something big like renting out Third House turns out to be a huge blessing.

Ha.  Indeed.  Although I wish I’d merely procrastinated about turning the CLEAN SHINY EMPTY FULLY MOD-CONNED### HOUSE over to the nice rental agent rather than having stalled at the gee, wasn’t this supposed to have gone into storage/what about ALL OF THESE BLASTED BOOKS? phase.  Not to mention the overflowing toilet cistern.

Mrs Redboots

That sounds better! So does that mean you will sell your place, too, and move into Third House with Peter?

Good golly no.  Third House is LITTLE.  And littler than it was a week ago too, before Peter said ‘okay’, see above.  It only had two bedrooms to begin with and one of them is now mostly staircase on account of the No You Can’t Do What You Want to Do with Your Own House building-reg disaster of putting a weight-bearing floor in the attic for the 1,000,000,000,000,000 boxes of backlist.  Couldn’t one of us have been a chef or a horse trainer or something?  My idea was an attic like at the cottage, which is finished, with a Velux window and a fitted carpet and everything, but you get in and out by something more like a ladder than a stair, and removable.  That would No Longer Be Allowed### Because Building Regulations Have Decreed That a Weight-Bearing Floor Means Living Space and You Can’t Live in Something You Can Only Reach By Ladder.~  As I found out when I hired my architect.  So I now have Living Space I can’t stand up in (it’s still an attic) and a second bedroom that you could maybe get a single bed in.  Maybe.  If you don’t mind rappelling in from the doorway.

Or, if you and the hellhounds are staying put (although the hellhounds will have lots more garden to roam in, which means lots more lovely photos!!!), is it a lot nearer and more convenient?

Yes.  In the first place it’s a BUNGALOW so the only stairs are to the backlist and Peter has staff (that would be me) to fetch and carry.  In the second place it’s across the churchyard from my cottage instead of at the other end of town and in the third place it’s a short level walk to the shops instead of half a mile and a hill.

I am SO LOOKING FORWARD to having that garden again.  I stopped letting the hellpack play there when I decided to let the house so I’d be used to the loss by the time I gave it over to the agent.  But I was really dreading walking past it—and it’s slap on one of the basic hurtles from the cottage, there’s no way I could not go that way some of the time—and seeing other people and, probably, other people’s dogs in it.

We haven’t started using the garden again because I’m a bit preoccupied with getting on with the house.~~

Stardancer

Less stress for everyone, I hope, and YOU GET TO KEEP THIRD HOUSE!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

No bothering with renters! You could put the backlist back in the attic! …Well. If it doesn’t immediately fill up with Peter’s things.

The backlist has to go into the attic.  WE ARE GOING TO GET ALL OUR STUFF OUT OF STORAGE.  I was staring at the walls at the cottage this afternoon and thinking, okay, I can put another bookshelf up there.  There’s still a terrifying amount of stuff to deal with, one way or another.  The only reason I haven’t just run away from home and joined the space programme~~~ is because I keep reminding myself that the mews, while it has the most floor space of our three little houses it has the least storage.  It pretty much has no storage aside from some unsatisfactory crawl spaces.  What you see is what there is.  Which is bad enough.

Skating librarian

Great news … It would seem your life will be much less complicated and Peter’s much safer. 

That’s the plan, yes, thanks.

Granted that telephones were rare in 1200.

Start what with the Roman aqueduct?

And google at least twice a year.

# Theoretically we sleep at the cottage.  We at least assume a recumbent position at the cottage.  The hellpack, by the snoring, sleep pretty well.  Me, not so much.

## Including a frelling landline phone and broadband at a speed not less than that attained by a dead muskrat.

### The attic in the cottage was done up by my predecessor.  I’ve been there a decade (!) and it was a few years old when I bought the cottage.

~ Tell that to Lothlorien’s elves.

~~ But I did buy an extra tray of snapdragons today.

~~~ Aside from there being no space programme to join, and that they don’t take clueless retirement-age-approaching women whose only degrees are BAs in English lit.

‡ the B

‡‡ I’ve told her the cattle prod is optional

PETER HAS AGREED TO MOVE TO THIRD HOUSE*

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

* * *

* He said, When I sell the mews we can buy a new car!  I said, I don’t want a new car!  I’ll just run it into things!  I’m dangerous at less than 5 mph!^

^ Hate those frelling pillars at the Mauncester multilevel car park–the ones with the bulges below the driver’s line of vision!  HATE!

I think I haven’t been to any of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s live-streaming cinema broadcasts this season, for a variety of reasons, including being fired by my dog minder, but also . . . and I realise how pathetic and lame this sounds . . . because Saturday night is my favourite frelling church service, sitting silently in the dark with monks.  Saturday night is the only service all week that has the silent-sitting thing.  I’ll try to catch an extra service at the abbey, I hope tomorrow night**, but if I want to sit silently in the dark I’ll have to do it by myself.  Whiiiiiiine.

But this run at the Met is probably Joyce DiDonato’s last performance of La Cenerentola, and last night was the broadcast.  And Radio 3, which would be airing it only without the eye-candy part, has been advertising it pretty hard.  And there are, in fact, limits to my dedication to God (and monks).***  Joyce DiDonato, you know?†  Not to mention Juan Diego Florez, who is adorable aside from the high Cs††.

Because I bought my ticket at the last minute I had a choice between being at the extreme end of one of the back rows and thus seeing the screen as if reflected in an unfunhouse mirror . . . or the aisle of the second row and thus needing a neck like a giraffe to tip my head far enough back to see the screen at all.  I went for the second row.  And brought a large tote bag with two big fat pillows in it—much to the hilarity of the guy behind me in row three†††—and lay down for the show.‡  Worked a treat, thanks.

AND THE OPERA WAS FABULOUS.  STAGGERINGLY, GORGEOUSLY, JAW-DROPPINGLY FABULOUS.  If they rerun it—which they sometimes do, and I would expect DiDonato’s final go at one of her signature roles would be a good candidate—and you have the FAINTEST interest in opera or classical singing or music—GO.  GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO.  GO.

And . . . just by the way . . . not that this has anything to do with anything . . . but there are three cute guys in it.  This doesn’t happen in opera.  You’re lucky if you have one who, compared with a dead fish, comes out slightly ahead.  Florez, as previously observed, is darling.‡‡  Dandini is also pretty frelling cute.‡‡‡  And Alidoro . . . ::fans self::§  I mean, gleep.§§

. . . . Anyway.  I have now spent over an hour sifting through YouTube clips§§§ because I am so devoted to the welfare of my blog readers, and I HAVE TO GO TO BED.  Maybe I’ll get back to CENERENTOLA in a footnote sometime. . . .

* * *

* The etc is chiefly that we went to a National Garden Scheme garden today . . . and took Pav.  I’ve been wanting to take her to an open garden but there aren’t that many that allow dogs—fewer than there used to be, I would have said, but maybe it’s just around here, or we want to go to the wrong gardens.^

This one was gorgeous, mellow old stone house on the bank^^ of one of England’s pencil-thick so-called rivers, but winding romantically, with waterfowl and reeds.^^^  The garden then extended back across fields with vistas and benches and the occasional outburst of perennial border.  And the weather, which was forecast to be grouchy and streaming by turns, was glorious, bright blue sky and big fat scudding clouds.#  I barely saw any of it, since Pav was trying to see, respond, engage, EAT all of it simultaneously and you couldn’t see those little short legs, they were churning so fast.  ADVENTURE!  WE’RE HAVING AN ADVENTURE!  Pantpantpantpantpantpantpant.  She did not seem to be sorry to sit in my lap for tea, however, where she was more easily suppressed than if I tried to make her lie down under my chair##, although I did have to keep a sharp eye on the cakes.  NO.  NOT FOR DOGS.  NOT EVEN FOR HELLTERRORS.  Cute is not enough.  —She was much admired by several aficionados of the breed, however, as well as cringed away from by several people who think they know that all bull terriers are evil biting machines.  Sigh.  We saw Labs (of frelling course), Goldens, poodles, gazillions of ordinary boring hairy terrier terriers . . . but we were the Supreme Only Bull Terrier present.

^ We used to allow dogs when we opened our garden at the old house.  Just by the way.  We also offered free plastic bags.  Ahem.  Today this aspect of the presence of dogs was pretty funny.  Pav in the heat of excitement had an unscheduled defecatory moment which—since I always have plastic bags secreted about my person in several places in case I forget and run out in the standard coat pocket location—I recovered.  But there wasn’t anything like a bin to deposit the securely wrapped morsel in.  I can’t now remember what we did when we had our garden open;  did we expect people to carry canine excreta home with them?  Surely not.  Anyway.  No bin.  So Pav and I went back to the gate while Peter bought tea+, and inquired there if there was a public bin nearby?  The car park this private garden was using for their open day was attached to some public wildlife preserve, you’d frelling expect there’d be a bin.

You’d’ve thought I’d made an improper suggestion++.  Both ladies looked alarmed and revolted and the nearer one edged her chair away from Pav doing her I-am-a-lunatic-and-I-have-no-manners shtick but clearly secured by a thick+++, heavy, short lead.  No-no-no-no-no, quavered one of them, clutching her twinset to her bosom.

I was tempted to make little dashes at them—like the bully in the playground waving a poor confused harmless snake at the wusses, although I would not describe Pav as poor or confused, or harmless if you’re wearing clean jeans—but I didn’t want to be told to go away before I’d had my tea.  So I restrained myself (and Pav).

And took our parcel back to the car.  Which was kind of a frelling walk.  Next year the owner, whom I heard saying jollily that they’d had a lot of dogs today, should consider both the suitability of the volunteers on the gate and the provision of a small bin with a lid.

+ Including the all-important Cake Selection process

++ Live in a yurt!  Buy an armadillo!  Get legless on a night you’re wearing stacked stilettos and make the Street Pastors give you a pair of flipflops!

+++ and spectacularly gaudy.  So gaudy I had a pair of meek little English men creep up to me and ask softly where I’d bought it.  Oh, the States somewhere, I said loudly in my rich American accent.  I forget.

So maybe it was the (pink) harness and rainbow-dazzle lead that the ladies on the gate were disturbed by, and the drooling hellterror exhibiting them was incidental.

^^ High enough, I guess, that they did not have water in their cellar this winter.

^^^ Rushes?  Tall strappy-leaved edge-of-river plants.

# The best thing of all was how easy it was to find.  It looked in the directions like it should be easy.  But that doesn’t mean anything.

## HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  But she lies down very well if there’s cheese or chicken involved.  And I did have chicken jerky in my pocket in case of emergencies.

** As I wrote to Alfrick, emailing to warn him I wasn’t coming last night, I start jonesing for monks if I go much over a week without a hit.

*** I’m a Street Pastor!  I’m about to become a frelling (nonreligious, but God still told me to) Samaritan!  Cut me some slack here!

†  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3damaS03KgY wowzah

†† https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD1Cq2T5veI gonzo

††† And I wager my neck was in better shape than his at the end of the four hours

‡ Leg stowage I admit can be a problem in these situations, but as it happens there was no one in the front row, so I could rest my raised knees against the seat without anyone objecting.

‡‡ In the interviews I’ve heard with him he sounds like a decent human being too.  I refuse to find darling people who are clearly major creepazoids.^

^ I’m old.  My hormones are under control.+

+ Except for the ones involved in hot flushes.  I thought you STOPPED HAVING hot flushes/flashes after a few years.  I’m waiting. . . .

‡‡‡ https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pietro+spagnoli

§ Hot flush.  No, really.

§§ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr2LBjN7K10 Gah.  I have wasted a lot of time trying to find a clip where you can not merely hear but see him.  There’s also quite a good one of him singing poor Cherubino off to battle but you don’t get a close up.  This one is fairly explicit.  He’s the one doing most of the singing, making up to the girl in the grey dress.  ::fans self more::  Oh, Dmitri [Hvoroskovsky], you may have a rival.^

^ I’M OLD.  MY HORMONES ARE UNDER CONTROL.

§§§ Okay.  Some knitting also occurred.

ONE THIRTY

Thud-squish.

Sssssssssssslsh.

I was probably crying (again).  I was certainly screaming (again).  Or maybe it was the other way around.  My eyes burned, not only from tears, but from trying to make sense out of the cataclysmic scene around me—and then wishing I hadn’t when I did.  Ssssssssslsh.  I had thought those last few minutes at Rose Manor were beyond anything I could imagine coping with—or surviving—when at least something resembling the world I knew was still there somewhere outside the windows.  Probably.  When I still had Sid beside me.  Well, I was beyond what I could imagine.  My brain was melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.  Words failed.  Tumult?  Pandemonium?  Bloody anarchy?  Nothing came close.  Nothing came anywhere near.

I couldn’t even wipe the sweaty hair out of my eyes;  both my hands were too busy elsewhere.  I felt like a particularly badly-made puppet being trailed and dangled and dragged around by two very skilled but relentless puppeteers.  Sssssssssslsh.  Occasionally there was a kind of clunk or crunch as my laser blade sliced through something that wasn’t flesh.  But mostly . . .   Oh. Ah. Oh.  Please make it go away.  All of it.  Away.  Go.  Oh.  The sound that Glosinda made as she repelled blows—we were now all too close together for any more archery—varied with the weapon in use;  there were long narrow shiny blades more like what the average science fiction and fantasy con goer thinks of as a sword and wider duller blades shaped like long thin leaves, narrow at the hilt end, swelling slightly through the length of the thing and tapering sharply at the tip.  Some of these latter had something that might have been words or runes written or etched on them.  The things the fantasy-writer’s mind notices even when all of her is in meltdown.

And the noise.  Bedlam.  Bedlam-plus.  The noise alone could drive you mad.

And the smell.

I used to put Flowerhair through this several times a novel.

Ssssssssssssslsh.

I was a writer, not a warrior.  And if I got out of this alive, which hadn’t looked at all likely since I’d found a sword leaning against the wall in my front hall, I was going to have a midlife career change and start writing stories about teddy bears and fluffy bunnies for three year olds.  I hoped there was a livelihood to be earned out of the toddler market.  Or maybe I’d go to secretarial school.  Swords were right out of my range but I could cross flashing keyboard speeds with the doughtiest word processor musketeer.  Supposing Silverheart and Glosinda didn’t permanently dislocate both shoulders and tear all the ligaments in both arms.

CLA-ANG.

Thud-squish.

Scream . . . .

But I was beginning to learn my horse:  he bent around my leg like a dressage champion, first in one direction, then the other.  Thud-squish.  Thump-crunch.  Distantly I remembered reading, when I was a horse-crazy kid, about the airs above the ground the Spanish Riding School Lipizzaners learn to wow their audiences, how these are based on what war horses were trained to do when hand-to-hand on horseback was a combat reality, and that these were in turn based on what horses, playing, do loose in the field.  It was like remembering what a cup of tea tasted like when you are lost in the desert.  Thud-squish.  As a sanity aid I tried to imagine Monster as a knobbly-legged foal capering around a paddock and practising his future battle moves on his mom.  It wasn’t just that Monster was as crucial to keeping me alive as Silverheart and Glosinda were:  having a living, breathing, beating-heart companion in the maelstrom was what was keeping me trying.  Let me go out trying.

I felt some enemy blade or other bite into my leg, but I was already screaming;  the cut hurt, it hurt like several hells, but all of me already hurt like at least one or two hells;  my head and my burning eyes from everything, my back and my shoulders from Silverheart and Glosinda’s grisly antics;  my stomach, butt and legs from the unfamiliar demands of riding not merely a horse but an enormous bounding and careening horse while wearing nothing but a nightgown—and I definitely had a blister from that twisted strap.

But my wounded leg was not only still there, it was still working.  That would have to do.

There was blood on Monster’s shoulder from a slash at the base of his neck;  fortunately it was shallow—but I hadn’t even seen it happen.

I discovered by the frantic expedient of yanking a handful of mane when I lost the reins in some manoeuvre or other but briefly having relatively free use of that hand, and digging my calves into his sides as I did so, that Monster also reared and struck with his forelegs on command.  How do people who even know what they’re doing, fighting a battle on horseback, manage the reins, the sword, and the shield?  Granted Glosinda was a lot smaller than your standard shield which meant she had to whip my arm around more, but even so—

I was hoarse with screaming.  My throat was as raw as a wound.

Ssssssssssslsh.

Thud-squish.

CLAA-AANG.

IT’S BEEN AN EXTREMELY ARRRGH MAKING DAY.  Starting, as so often, last night.  The Samaritans training is brilliant* but EXHAUSTING and, furthermore, I come home so wound up I can’t sleep.**  So I got to bed very late,*** got up very late, and was still staggering around wondering why the teapot was in the washing machine and where the on switch for the kettle was, when Pooka started barking.  Nooooooo I’m not articulate yet, I tried to say, and failed on ‘articulate’.  URK, I said.  GLORP.  Raphael, who is used to me, said, I have the new frabzle orbling for your printer and I’m in the area, I could drop it round if it’s convenient.  Bromgle? I said.  Glid?  Okay.

. . . While you’re here, I said, letting him in twenty minutes and a major upload of caffeine later, would you mind looking at—?

AN HOUR AND A HALF AFTER THAT†, I am now really far behind, and I was planning on a lightning raid to the garden centre to buy snapdragons before they run out of PINK, and Peter had been swept off to visit distant family for the day by Georgiana who has the stamina of a marathon runner for driving†† so I have to wash my own lettuce for lunch, and the first thing that happens is that I open the refrigerator door at the mews and Peter’s box of eggs, he having been in a hurry that morning and perhaps not putting it back quite scrupulously enough, LEAPS OFF THE SHELF IN THE DOOR AND SPLATTERS ALL OVER THE FLOOR AT MY FEET.†††

Also the hellhounds aren’t eating again.

I didn’t make it to the garden centre.

And I remembered at the last minute that I’d promised to ring bells at Crabbiton again tonight.  I’ve slightly inadvertently made myself a regular.  I’m pretty demoralised about life in general‡, Forza is intimidating, I’m not up for intimidating, the Sams’ usual training evening is also tower practise night and I’m not going to risk ringing Sunday service when I’m not coming to practise.  But I don’t want to lose all that grimly acquired mediocre semi-skill either. . . . I think I’ve told you that Wild Robert has started teaching at Crabbiton again.  So I’ve been going along.

So tonight on the one hand it was AAAAAAAAUGH because I was looking forward to a nice quiet evening at home with my husband and on the other hand it was, oh!  Wild Robert!  A man who can create a stimulating practise out of nothing, as he did last week when there were only four of us and one of us couldn’t ring much, is worth some loyalty, or some getting out of your chair when you don’t want to.  As I should remember from my still-nostalgically-recalled regular practise nights at Ditherington, till the tower captain and the only local who ever came, pulled the plug.  Also, about tonight, I’d promised.

Wild Robert, who is an evil, eyebrow-wiggling ratbag as well as an inspired teacher, made me call a touch of Grandsire, not the relatively easy one where all you have to do is remember the little bit of the overall pattern that you’re comfortingly limited to, but a proper touch where calls dislocate you distressingly too—and I haven’t even called one of the simple ones in years.  My first attempt tonight was a total disaster.  T. O. T. A. L.   Made worse by the fact that only Wild Robert, the tower captain and I can actually ring Grandsire touches, so some of the other people were questing off in interesting directions and had to be hauled back to order by Wild Robert who was also having to unstick me from the brambles and briars about every half lead.

Over the course of the evening I improved.  Somewhat.  But it was such fun.  I used to love bell ringing. . . .

* * *

* And, something I thought I would never say, in part because I’m not in the habit of putting myself in the way of such experiences, I have learnt to love role playing.  I HATE ROLE PLAYING.^  I’m so distracted by how unutterably stupid and phony and useless it is that I absolutely don’t learn anything and I feel unutterably stupid and phony and useless and CRANKY with it, that kind of cranky that makes you feel you don’t fit in your own skin any more, which furthermore has probably broken out into spots of angst and frustration.  Arrrrgh.

In somebody or other’s defense, possibly mine, Samaritans role playing is a lot closer to reality than most of the situations where this mutant device is employed.  You’re pretending to be a Samaritan phone volunteer and one of the real Samaritans^^ pretends to be a caller.  All the trainers have been Samaritan listening volunteers for yonks . . . and I’m also rather intrigued by the apparent strong streak of dramatic flair thus revealed in the Samaritans community.  Granted that when you’re in the hot seat you’re a trifle preoccupied with GLEEP WHAT DO I SAY NOW but we split up in teams so we get to listen as well as (fail to) perform and I’m telling you the trainers are convincing.  They’re working from a script, but since they have to adapt to what the sweating trainees say, they have to be good at thinking on their feet.^^^

But adapting to what someone on the other end of a phone line is saying is, of course, what Samaritans are good at.#  In our introductory evening the presenter said that the listening skills you learn by being a Samaritan do bleed into the rest of your life and if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself being a very popular person for unloading on.  Ha.  I plan to leave my nice, warm, empathetic## self in the cupboard under the stairs at the Samaritans and pick up my cranky cudgel on my way out the door.

^ I don’t remember what I said about the role playing in the Street Pastors training, but it won’t have been friendly.

^^ I should perhaps say real Samaritan organization volunteers to avoid confusion.

^^^ Although we’re sitting down.  Ahem.

# Supposed to be good at.  I’m not amazingly fabulous but I think I’ll make the grade.

## One of the Samaritans’ big deals is empathy.  Sympathy suggests emotional involvement, which is devoutly to be avoided;  empathy is getting alongside someone, seeing their situation from their point of view—which is what we’re trying to do, so we can offer emotional support.

** The worst thing is that WE’RE HALFWAY THROUGH THE FIRST MODULE.  By the end of this month we’ll have our mentors—each new listening^ volunteer has a mentor for the first few duty shifts—and by the end of June we’ll be, you know, live.  EEEEEEEEEEEEP.  Remind me why I thought this was a good idea?

^ Which is what it’s called, although it includes email and texting and the occasional streetmail letter.

*** I like the long evenings, this time of year, but I could really do without the early dawns.

† So there’s this app that won’t load.  He ended up downloading the latest update of the frelling OS to persuade it that Astarte is a happy home for apps, which instantly made every other app say ME ME I HAVE AN UPDATE TOO I WANT MY UPDATE.  A lot of them don’t bother to ask politely first either, they just instantly go into catch-up mode.  I hate opening an app that I can more or less use and discovering they’ve made it new and shiny and thrilling and utterly unfamiliar.  Life is short.  I don’t want to waste a lot of it learning New and Shiny.  The now-successfully-downloaded app had better be WORTH IT.

†† What with to and from her home as well as the trip itself she must have been behind the wheel seven hours.  I couldn’t drive that far before I had ME.

††† I should have let the hellterror deal with it.  She wanted to.  I thought the eggshells might disagree with her.

‡ We have the head of the local branch of a five-star national home help company, as recommended by Peter’s doctor, coming for a chat and an assessment tomorrow.  Siiiiiiiiiigh.

I’ve been planting sweet peas and singing.  My poor neighbours.  Theodora is very usefully deaf* and Phineas seems to think I’m fun to watch and possibly even listen to.**  I do keep it down a little when I’m out front;  I don’t want the military chappie over the road to decide to test the army’s new long-range assault weapon at home.***  This is the time of year when my garden suddenly gets away from me.  There’s usually a misleadingly serene several weeks in early-mid spring when I think I’m finally going to get it together this summer . . . and I have managed to keep throwing out the ever-better this-season’s plant sales BUY BUY BUY BARGAINS TOO GOOD TO MISS catalogues which is where I usually lose it drastically†, especially during those disorienting few weeks in spring when there are gaps where I can see actual bare dirt,†† and the careful, all-at-once-so-I-can-remember-what-I’m-doing orders of the previous winter have faded perilously in my memory.  Despite this unnatural restraint I still seem to have an awful lot of thriving baby and adolescent plants out there.

So it’s been a beautiful day and there are all these trays of no-longer-so-little plants gasping to go into something a little more permanent.  The sweet peas have indeed rioted on to a degree I wasn’t expecting and have all plunged through their crumbly pressed-paper plant-as-is pots and reached little white roots into the surrounding compost . . . oops.  Sweet peas hate root disturbance and these will now sulk for weeks††† . . . and if any of them does send out a questing tendril, you can be sure it will snake along the ground and then twist up the wrong frelling thing.  Bamboo stakes?  Boring.  Garden wire run through eye-bolts in the house wall?  Vulgar.  Iron railing uprights?  Feh.  Other plants?  . . . Possibly.  But only things like snapdragons and petunias, not sensible things like roses and my little corkscrew hazel.

Gardening.  It’s still critters, just more green and less fur.

* * *

* Her daughter isn’t, but she gets home latish . . . although not late enough this time of year when the sunlight goes on and on and you can be in the garden till nine.  I admit that by 8:30 if you’re not noticing it’s getting dark you’re really determined not to pay attention^, but this can be arranged.

^ You probably don’t want to be weeding at this stage:  all little green things look alike in twilight.  You can certainly be potting on however.  Some day I will get electricity put into my greenhouse . . . and then I can stay out there all night.+

+ With the bug zapper on high.  ZZZZZZZSST. #

# Why are bugs so STUPID?  And this includes nice bugs~ like bees.  I know that house flies exist to be annoying and mosquitoes are after you, but bees, say, they fly into your dark house and make a pass through your kitchen and rather than saying, oh, wow, bad choice, and turning around and flying back out through the door again, they fly straight past the open door, duck around the frame, and bash themselves against a window.  I had one of those small-dog-sized bumblebees~~ fly into the cottage kitchen this afternoon and mosey around like a medium-sized zeppelin.  And she would not leave.  I finally put a glass over her and took her outdoors like a bouncer dealing with the last partygoers.~~~  From the names she called me through the glass she was not amused.

~ A generic term for chitinous critters.  Because I say so.=

= Back, taxonomists!  You’re not wanted!  Back, back!

~~ Pav and I met the Yorkshire terrier lady this afternoon while we were out for some hurtling.  I made the mistake of telling a friend a few days ago what a nice dog Pav has turned into and she’s been possessed by forty demons ever since.  It was by email!  It’s not like Pav heard me!  The Yorkie lady is a big Pav fan although on days like today that takes some concentration.  Anyway I swear my bumblebee was larger than either of the Yorkie lady’s little bundles of fluff.

~~~ I suppose I should make exceptions for bees that I find climbing into my indoor flowers.  I wouldn’t have thought there was anything to have off your average windowsill geraniums, but I’ve seen bees trying.   Also popular are cut garden flowers—as opposed to florists’ flowers—bees appear to believe that nectar and pollen go on being viable even in a vase.=

= These are deadheading accidents, you realise.  CUT flowers for the house??  Cut them OFF THE PLANT?  Are you KIDDING?

** Also I feed his cat for him—the orange ex-hellkitten^—when he’s away.  He wants to stay on my good side.

^ He’s so little.  He’s not huge even as ordinary domestic cats go—he’s probably the small side of average—but if you’re used to dogs, if you have dogs twining up your ankles most of your life+, cats are such delicate little things.  I realise this is an illusion but in terms of sheer weight even Pav is about three cats’ worth.

+ Nat on the forum asked if the hellhounds are whippets.  I thought this was in ‘about’# but apparently it isn’t.  Surely I’ve told you that they’re seven-eighths whippet and one eighth deerhound##?  Well, it ought to be in ‘about.’  Furthermore I’ve forgotten all about putting poor Pav in.  Not to mention Christianity, Street Pastoring and the Samaritans—or even voice lessons.  So one of these nights I’m not writing a blog post I’d better update ‘about’.

Oh, and hellhounds are also ‘entire’ as they call it over here—they still have their testicles—which entirety also makes them a little bigger and sturdier than most whippets.  The whippets and whippety dogs that look like they’re made out of pipe cleaners were often neutered too young.

# Top bar of the opening page of the blog

## Sighthounds are notoriously bad eaters.  Of sighthounds, deerhounds and Salukis are notoriously notoriously bad eaters.  SID EATS.  Wish fulfilment?  Sure.  That and cliff hangers are why I enjoy KES.

*** And the evil vargleglunger over the back wall, the one with the shed with the tarpaper^ roof that sticks up over the wall and ruins my view, I should spend more time on that back border and learn the Queen of the Night to accompany my efforts.  Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen!  Hört, Rachegötter!!

^ Well it looks like tarpaper, which is to say ugly

† Speaking of windowsill geraniums, I have spent YEARS telling myself I will get all the geraniums^ off the windowsills and outdoors^^ this summer to be pruned and repotted and given some real sunlight, which geraniums usually like, before that irritating fellow Winter shows up again and spoils it.   THIS YEAR I’m going to get . . . at least some of them outdoors.  I am.

^ And begonias, poinsettias, spiky cacti, and various random houseplants

^^ the Christmas cacti and the hibiscus can stay indoors since they’ll have palpitations if I try and persuade them that photosynthesis is good and the sun is their friend

†† Or in my garden, I-just-frelling-cleared-there weeds, self-propelling courtyard gravel, and glimpses of all the plumbing in Hampshire.^

^ But you know I could use a few more petunias.  And maybe begonias.  I seem to have underordered.+ And I need to get back to the garden centre, I’m still waiting for my snapdragons.  Snapdragons are necessary.

+ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

††† IN MY DEFENSE I’ve gone on bringing them in at night off and on till this week, and I’m still bringing the basil^ and the recently-arrived chocolate cosmos indoors overnight.

^ Basil always says, England?  England?  Are you kidding me?  You’re expecting me to burgeon and produce fragrant Mediterranean leaves here?  YES.  I DO.  AND HERE’S A NICE HOT SUNNY KITCHEN WINDOW LEDGE.  SHUT UP AND GROW.

You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?  Anyone who lives in bluebell country, however, can tell you that it’s pretty difficult to miss bluebell season—if your bluebells are happy they spread enthusiastically.  The wood I took most of this year’s photos in was drastically cleared out at one end some few years ago—they were dorking around with pylons and super-cables and things.  The bluebells had only started colonising that area and that stopped them flat.  But except for a narrow chop-through most of the trees were left standing and the bluebells regrouped and made another sortie . . . and they are now dazzlingly winning. That bluebell wood is a good, I don’t know, my sense of size is about as reliable as my sense of direction, sixty or eighty foot longer than it was twenty years ago.

I know bluebells are generally endangered or at least under pressure by deer, hikers, global warming and the Spanish invader, but as I’ve said before (at least once a year), not around here.*  Around here they are ebullient and thriving—and may they remain that way—even if they are total thugs in your garden.  One of my rose-beds at the old house was taken over by bluebells.  It was a tending-to-be-dry border in strong sunlight, for pity’s sake, a few bluebells couldn’t possibly hurt, they’ll be too busy struggling to survive.  You’ll be sorry, said Peter.  He was right.  I went through and dug out buckets of the wretches** one year and I had bluebells in that bed the next year anyway.

I have bluebells in my garden(s) now.  But I guess I’d better be nice to them.  Just in case.

Mmmm. Bluebells.

Random hellhounds.

More bluebells. Fancy that.

There must be bluebells in the Shire, right? For some reason they just slipped Tolkien’s mind, midlander that he was.

Breeeeeeeeathe. I don’t think they’ve ever made a bluebell perfume, have they?

Hi guys.

Those paler, appley-green, also bowing-over stems in the foreground are Solomon’s Seal. If you enlarge you can probably see the little white bells. When not overwhelmed by bluebells they’re a very nice plant.

Paths through bluebell woods are magical by definition.

. . . Till next year.

* With the possible exception of the Spanish bluebell.  But I’m not sure I can decisively tell the one from the other:  proper English bluebells bow over farther and farther as their flowers open.  A very rounded-over bluebell is definitively English, but a more sticky-up one may still be English if it’s early in its flowering.  The Spanish bluebell photos I’ve seen look more like Scilla than like bluebells:  proper bluebell flowers are graphically and unmistakably tubular.^  The bluebell woods around here are (a) fairly out in the sticks, to the extent that Hampshire is ever out in the sticks^^ and (b) old, so they have a good chance of being pure;  also Spanish bluebells apparently don’t have much smell, and our bluebell woods are nearly eye-wateringly fragrant.  Particularly strong this year too, I think, possibly because of all the winter rain.

^ http://www.plantlife.org.uk/about_us/faq/bluebells

^^  which to a Maine girl isn’t very

** I couldn’t face hauling the lot up to the ridge, but I couldn’t face putting them all on the compost heap^ or the bonfire either, so I took some away and threw them around in the wild where they had a chance to engulf more woodland.  I’ve told you this story, haven’t I?  This blog is too old.  I’ve told most of my stories at least once.^^  Since it’s illegal to pick wildflowers or dig up bluebells bulbs I was terrified I’d be discovered and someone would leap to the wrong conclusion.

^ Yep.  We had bluebells growing in the compost too.

^^ Except KES, of course.