Robin McKinley's Blog, page 24

Didn’t get a lot of sleep last night—so what else is new—last night was however aggravated by shooting awake every time a hellcritter sighed or got up to scratch its bed into a more salubrious shape.  Siiiiiigh.  There have been no further outbreaks today . . . although the night is young* the current digestive miscreant, having eaten his dinner, looks pretty crashed out. . . . That sound you hear is me crossing my fingers till they squeak.

More baby plants showed up in the post today and the Winter Table is full.  There hasn’t been a proper frost in town this month I think, but baby plants, having been intensively reared in massive great commercial greenhouses, are fragile little creatures and you can’t just whack them in potting-on pots and plonk them outdoors.  You have to ‘harden them off’ as they say which in practise, since my greenhouse is full of stuff and I have no earthly room for a cold frame, means that if we’re having a run of chilly nights I have to bring them indoors every evening and back outdoors again every morning.**   Arrrrgh.

So, where was I, in my not-very-good-mood way last night?  Aside from the prospect of a lot of moving of plant trays back frelling indoors while trying not to trip over the hellterror***, there had been a certain supernumerary  force to my rushing outdoors into the garden yesterday afternoon†, aside from the latest stack of baby-plant-containing cardboard boxes arriving in the post, which, yesterday, was pretty well an avalanche. ††

What is it with people.

I regularly receive requests via email for help with the frelling papers people are writing about me and/or my books.†††  The vast, catastrophic, overwhelming majority of them ask me the same blasted questions‡ . . . most of which would be answered far beyond the scope of any seventh or eleventh grader’s term paper requirement‡‡ with only the most cursory glance at my web site, let alone doing a little diving via the ‘search’ facility or the ‘topics’ list on this blog.  I’ve ranted this rant to you before—several times in fact—how can all these jokers even arrive at my public email address WITHOUT HAVING NOTICED THE SUGGESTIONS THAT THEY READ THE FAQ FIRST.  OR THE GENTLE REMINDER THAT I’M, YOU KNOW, BUSY AND THAT ANSWERING QUESTIONS TAKES TIME.  But they do.  In their relentless marching regiments they do.  Yesterday I received a follow up from someone who clearly thinks that saying please and thank you is enough.  Reading the FAQ is not necessary.  This person is capable of writing me a sheaf of long, complicated questions and putting a note in their diary to follow up . . . without ever looking at the FAQ.   First contact in this case included a plug from the kid’s teacher,‡‡‡ telling me how wonderful the kid is—and this kid may very well be wonderful, but they nonetheless need to learn to do their homework—and how (the teacher continued) my thoughtful informed answers were going to help this student chart their course through college and into their chosen career of professional writer.  PLEEEEEEEEEEZ.   This follow up, unannotated by the teacher, generously offers to answer any questions I may have. . . . §

Standard caveat begins here:  Of course I want people to read my books.  I need people to buy my books so the hellpack and I can keep eating.  And I love fan mail:  I looooove it when some reader takes the time, speaking of time, to tell me that they enjoy my books.  A really warm and/or clever and/or funny fan letter (or forum comment or Tweet or dreaded-Facebook post)  makes my day, and sometimes my week.  But I will never learn not to mind that a lot of people out there don’t recognise me as a human being essentially like themselves with a life—and, furthermore, inevitably limited expertise even in my professional domain—and behave accordingly.§§

Today I got a fresh request for help on a school project.  This one addresses me as ‘Mrs McKinley’ so I don’t have to read any farther to know that this person hasn’t made any attempt to do their homework. . . .

* * *

* as I count young.  But how can ‘one’ or ‘two’ or even ‘three’ not be young?^

^ Unless you’re a hamster.+

+ And you’re talking in years, not hours.  A three-hour-old hamster is young.  And one o’clock in the morning is MORNING and last night is dead.  So—wait—‘the night is young’ has to start at like two o’clock in the afternoon. . . .   Nights are never young . . . Hey, I’ve just invented a philosophy.#

# How did I get into this?  And where’s the door?

** Given when I am staggering out of bed lately, they’re going to get distressingly etiolated if the nights don’t warm up soon so that I can leave them outdoors to greet the dawn and all those distasteful hours immediately following.

*** Who is very interested in people rushing back and forth in a purposeful way.  Hellhounds know to crush themselves in the back of their crate and not stir till it’s all over.

† Well, I’d been outdoors kind of a lot already:  it was such a glorious day I took both critter shifts^ on country walks which was self-indulgent but . . . fun.^^

^ A little old lady said to me yesterday, every time I see you you’re walking a different dog.  There are only three, I said, but I mostly walk them in two shifts.  Oh, said the little old lady, and I could watch the thought process in her expression:  first she accepted the answer to this question that had been puzzling her and then, moving right along, this little old lady being a quick thinker, I could see the woman is mad dawning in her eyes.

^^ And since I won’t leave critters in a car because of the dog-theft problem, it’s also very time consuming.

†† Also aside from the fact that Outlook decided not to let me in yesterday afternoon.  No.  Won’t.  And I don’t like your password any more either.  Bite me.  —ARRRRRRRRGH.

††† We’re already in trouble:  the books are the books, they’re there, you don’t need me, and chances are very good that if you’re going in for literary criticism I’ll think your penetrating insights bear a strong family resemblance to mouldy root vegetables^, and you’ve got no business writing about me at all.^^

^ You know, really mouldy, when they’ve gone all squishy

^^ Yes, I read biographies.  Your point would be?

‡ When’s the last time I got a blog post out of an interesting question from someone writing a paper on me?  Exactly.^

^ Although the kid who wanted to know what it was like growing up with all those half-siblings made me blink a bit.  I wonder who they thought they were writing about?

‡‡ And with luck will so derail under- or post-grad thesis topics that the students will decide to write about something else

‡‡‡ ie an adult with adult responsibilities.  Plugs from teachers aren’t that uncommon, but they always depress me more.

§ The fact that this was the first email Outlook let through after Raphael told me how to make it behave was not destined to improve my attitude.

§§ You don’t walk up to a doctor at the supermarket and ask them to diagnose the rash on your leg.  You don’t write a letter to a lawyer asking them what their daily schedule is and how and why it makes them a better lawyer.  You don’t tell a blacksmith you want to borrow their tools because anyone can shoe a horse if they have the right hammer.

I had started a post about how much I loved gardens in the spring.

And then Darkness came and stared at me meaningfully.

Darkness has had diarrhoea—again—every day for the last four days.*  It had been the sudden mid-afternoon eruption schedule:  this afternoon’s eruption didn’t happen so I was stupid enough to think that was hopeful—since the hellhounds’ digestion has never made any sense, it’s always just living from one crap to the next.  And then tonight we moved into the multiple-geysering-across-Hampshire-at-the-hurtle stage.

I’m not in a good mood.**

* * *

* After a nightmarish fortnight about a month ago with both the hellhounds streaming constantly . . . what the bleeding doodah happens in March:  it was last March when everything went horribly, horribly wrong . . . I thought we had settled down again.  No.  No.

** Also:  hysterical.  I do need to be able to leave home for more than an hour at a time occasionally.  Samaritans training begins next week, for example.

APOLOGIES.  I have a lovely guest blog series waiting in the wings . . . which I managed not to send to Blogmom to set up in hangable form.  ::Beats head against wall::  All right, it’s the day after KES:  let’s catch up on a few comments.  Whimper.

TheWoobDog

Okay, I would feel slightly abashed that my first question after this post has to do with Kes’s choice of sleepwear, but since it’s obviously an issue which intrudes quite frequently into her own thoughts I don’t feel too bad about asking:

Can we expect Kes* to make it a priority to adopt sleeping attire more appropriate for the occasional nocturnal interruption of sword-wielding, thing-hacking, horseback-riding adventure**?

No.  She’s going to get home (finally) and TRY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY* HARD TO PRETEND THAT EVERYTHING IS BACK TO NORMAL AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED.  Since you posted this question I’m pretty sure Kes has made some remarks about sleeping in black leather and Kevlar but she’s joking.  She’s trying, somewhat urgently, to keep her spirits up in a situation rather designed to smash those suckers flat.

*Assuming that she makes it out of this alive and sane^

^This is a McKinley story, after all, and the Hellgoddess, while a lover of cliffhangers, nonetheless would never hang her heroine out to dry

Well, not for very long anyway.  This is a McKinley story.  I have every intention of bringing Kes safe home**, although she’s going to have to get used to the lack of normal and the disturbing existence of change.  I don’t know if the bloodstain in the front room is permanent or not, but Kes is going to have a major problem with funny creaky-old-house noises, you know the kind that you and I say ‘mice’ or ‘hellcritters’ or ‘dream’ and put a pillow over our heads or turn the music up in response to?  Kes won’t be able to.  Or anyway she probably better not. . . .

**Kes might prefer the term “horror”

And she can start by learning to say ‘adventure’ rather than ‘horror’.  Poor woman.  I’m so with the hiding-under-the-bed impulse.

Katsheare

. . . the thing that I am MOST enjoying about Kes is that it’s episodic. I remember reading A Tale of Two Cities, my first Dickens, and wishing for that possibility to read something in installments. . . .  given that I can, if I want to, read whole new books all in (roughly) one go — the 800-900 word nature of Kes is exciting. . . .

Are you too young to remember the . . . uh oh, this is not an easy google search so we’re going to have to rely on my memory.  BAAAAAAAD.  Well, when I was a young lass, ANALOG used to run serials.  This would have been in the ‘60s, because I was introduced to both ANALOG and their serials by my First Boyfriend in junior high.  And they made me crazy.***  I don’t know if ANALOG still runs them—I was just looking at the table of contents of the current issue†—and I don’t see anything that overtly says serial but that’s not definitive.  And I can’t remember if F&SF did (or do) serials too?  I can’t begin to keep up with my book TBR piles, I stopped subscribing to fiction mags decades ago, the idea of a steady, relentless additional few hundred pages arriving every month makes me cry, although I’m perfectly capable of buying or ordering several hundred more specific-book pages every month, and usually do.  And if I’d been alive back when Dickens was publishing HOUSEHOLD WORDS I would totally have had a subscription.

. . .  [Kes] doesn’t want her life to go High Forsoothly. YES. In spite of my fondness for fantasy and fae and all that . . .  I don’t really believe any of it exists. And I do have a way deep-down fear that someday it will show up and prove me wrong.

I have a deep-down fear that it won’t show up and prove me . . . um . . . right?  Although if it involves wielding a sword—which I know as little about as Kes does††—and riding to battle in my nightgown I’ll pass.  So would Kes, of course, if she didn’t have a mean author jerking her around.  I’m sitting here wondering what I can safely wish for, in terms of some manifestation of magic in this our real world, you know?  Be careful what you wish for.  Is there anything that is both undeniable and harmless?

I can totally understand the act of closing eyes to force reality to come back. . . . .  But I’ve also dealt with GMs before, and I know full well that you never break in the middle of a mind-frelling (and/or battle) bit.

I’m really worrying about ‘GMs’.  Gastric Mucosa?  Grandiloquent Mayhems?  Giant Metatarsals?  Gorblimey Maelstroms?

Plus which, like TheWoobDog, I’m assuming this will not end with Kes a smear and Murac saying ‘Gah, wenches’

::falls down laughing::

or something of the sort.

I think ‘gah, wenches’ will do nicely.

Ivonava

I *am* worried about Sid. I’m getting close to pulling an entitled reader moment

Hee hee hee hee hee hee.  Try it.  Go on, try it.  Hee hee hee.

and demanding to know where she is! Too many episodes without Sid!!!

Mwa hahahahahaha.  Hint:  there may be barking soon.

And that twisted strap thing? If Kes doesn’t fix it, it’ll turn into a nasty. I’ve been there, and I know.

Mwa hahahahahahahaha.

Hunter Gatherer

While I am a partisan of Murac . . . I would like to point out that “A man who takes good care of his horse can’t be all bad.” is kind of a bad way to judge him. As a fantasy style mercenary his horse is his very close to his life, livelihood, and continued good health. Taking good care of his horse is an important business/survival practice and (possibly) has nothing to do with goodness or badness.

We-ell.  Point taken, but I don’t think really effective partnerships between Person and Horse are made if the person solely looks at the horse as a means to an end.  I don’t think the horse is going to put itself out for the person without some kind of, you know, relationship bond, even if the feeding regime and stable management are sound—which as a mercenary’s horse they won’t always be.  So you have to be the kind of dude who can fulfill this charge.  Which means you have some spark of positive emotional connectedness behind that leathery exterior.   Whether or not this has any effect on your attitude toward other human beings is, however . . . unpredictable.

But I can understand how Kes is grasping at straws here after that “at least they’re not going to rape me” moment. (Although I think Flowerhair would not be undecided on the Good vs. Bad issue if Murac were a known rapist there still remains the unknown.)

If Flowerhair knew him to be a rapist she would (excuse me) have cut some salient bits off.  But, you know, The McKinley Story thing can be relied on here too.  If Murac were that kind of total scumbag, he wouldn’t be getting the air time.  Remember that KES is for fun.  I don’t say there won’t be some genuine thorough-going villains . . . but Murac isn’t one.  Although personally I don’t want to invite him over for a cup of tea and a chat about world politics either.

Somehow the comment about Kes’ younger self “She might even have thought Murac was romantic in a ramshackle sort of way.” made me think of her as an Agatha Christie heroine momentarily.

Snork.  Well, I read a lot of Agatha Christie in a very short space of time when I was young and impressionable.  Possibly these things Will Out.

So, on another topic, tangential to Katsheare’s comment… I’ve been wondering if there’s a new kinship with serialized authors such as Alexandre Dumas (and others) developing?

Elizabeth Gaskell maybe.  Or Mary Elizabeth Braddon.  Or Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Or George Eliot, if you will allow SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE to count as serialised.  Or as a novel.

TO BE CONTINUED. . . .

* * *

* Very to the ten to the whatsit power.  Very to the max.

** And if the Story Council should be so indiscreet as to attempt to get in my way I will WHACK THEM.

*** So did he, but that’s another story.

† The internet really is amazing.

†† I took some fencing lessons, but with a modern sabre—nothing like the practical hacking-and-hewing items that Murac and his lot carry, or that Silverheart, for all her superior breeding, is also built for.

ONE TWENTY SIX

My feeling exactly.  But I couldn’t open my mouth to say so and I had a small timorous thought that this guy might not go for modern throwaway humor and silence, involuntary or not, might be my best choice.

He turned on Murac like a firing squad and spat out some words like streaking bullets.  Or arrows, possibly, if I wanted to keep the contemporary feel.  I didn’t hear either azogging or giztimi but I didn’t think what I was hearing was the local version of ‘good job, well done’ either.

“She holds Silverheart,” said Murac—slowly.  As if making sure I’d understand him.

Thanks, friend, I thought, I know named swords are bad news—at least for anyone who doesn’t find the death-and-glory route appealing.  It was freaky enough when Mr WS addressed by name the large shining pointy thing that had suddenly appeared in Rose Manor’s hallway.  A lot had happened since then, very little of it desirable, and I was willing to bet a full suit of armor against a tattered pink nightgown that it was seriously worse than bad news that the name of my sword was known by a scruffy adventurer.  Possibly a scruffy azogging, giztimi-type adventurer.  Trying to find a bright side to look on I thought okay, wielding, or trying not to wield, something called Silverheart is a little less discouraging than finding oneself lumbered with something named Doomblade that has a curse on it and hates you. 

At least Flowerhair was still alive.  Yes.  I was keeping her alive.  What—or who—was keeping me alive?  Hello?

Mr Torpedo Shoulders turned back to me.  He brought his horse alongside and I did not flinch, although Monster had turned to stone—and a very handsome statue he would have made with some other rider—and I wasn’t sure he’d’ve moved even if I’d asked.  Mr TS pointed peremptorily at my scabbard and said, “See.”

Assuming this meant he wanted to see her, I fumbled for the hilt to draw her out.  My hand was shaking so badly it took me a couple of tries but once I had my fingers wrapped around the handle shaft they stopped trembling and I drew her almost smoothly.  The torch-bearer moved closer and . . . Silverheart blazed up like a torch herself.  Eeeek.  There was a collective sigh from the retinue.  I briefly closed my eyes.  No, my hand was not burning up.  I opened my eyes again.  I could see rows and rows of grim, grubby, worn-looking people staring at my presently flaming-gold sword, which was throwing some major lumens into the surrounding murk.  Most of the people I could see were on horseback, but not all of them.  I hoped a few of the beardless ones were women.

The scene could have been the subject of a Pre-Raphaelite painting:  the Revelation of the Whatsit.  Only the babe holding the sword should be more authoritatively attired.  Also I wasn’t sure how long my unaccustomed arm muscles were going to be able to hold the Whatsit up and at this romantic if impractical angle.  I hoped Millais or Burne-Jones or whoever was painting fast.

But as if in response to some stray beam of Silverheart’s light, the Gate now blazed up too, the side pillars falling away like curtains being yanked aside, the lintel exploding upward, the carving seeming to organise itself into tiers or sequences of what looked like runes. . . It’s a spell, I thought, and for one terrifying fragment of a moment I felt that I could read it, that I almost knew what it said. . . . But the lava-lamp bubbles, now as bright as tiny teardrop-shaped suns, streamed upwards as if the lintel had been a lid that they had shoved aside like floodwater bursting up through a broken storm-drain—and the runes crumbled and disappeared.

The confusion at the sill heaved wildly, throwing off splashes of streaky darkness like storm-seas on a moonless night crashing over a rocky shore.  I could almost hear it as a distant broken roar . . . although it was probably just the horses around me restlessly snorting and stamping and their riders murmuring to them and each other.  Did I hear someone say Silverheart?  The wildness at the Gate’s threshold steadied . . . settled . . . solidified.   My eyes tried to turn it into landscape:  were those trees?  A ridge of bumpy hills? . . . Fence posts?  Steles?  Monoliths?  It was impossible to guess size or perspective.  They could have been thumb sized, garbage-can sized, Empire-State-Building sized.  I was pretty sure they weren’t thumb sized.  It wasn’t that kind of story.

The Gate had now swallowed up most of the horizon;  you could still just about see—or imagine—the demarcation between there and here, a shadowy suggestion of upright jambs—which made me feel sick and dizzy if I let my eyes rest on one or the other—aggravated by the upright lurching things in the Gateway.

Which became . . . rank upon rank of . . . figures, growing taller and taller as if they were walking up a slope toward the Gate . . . and then walking through it. . . .

So, all this time I’ve clawed back by no longer writing a blog every night?  Has disappeared without trace.  Of course.

Today, for example, it has disappeared without trace by my having spent NEARLY TWO HOURS IN DENTIST FROM R’LYEH’S CHAIR OF DREADFUL TORMENT.  Owwwwwww.*

Yesterday it disappeared because . . . MAJOR TRUMPET FLOURISH . . .

MY NEW WASHING MACHINE FINALLY ARRIVED.

This wasn’t easy.  Even leaving out the amount of time I spent researching** frelling washing machines*** I was so freaked out by the PRICE of the one that was going best to cope with all the hair in this household† that I put off ordering it for most of another fortnight.  Peter had grown a bit testy about my usurping his washing machine so I decided in that non-decision way that I hope most people who read this blog have experienced for themselves, that I would merely accumulate dirty laundry because, after all, I was going to buy a washing machine.  Fortunately I have a lot of clothes†† although the hellpack is down to pretty much its final lot of bedding.†††

I had a four-hour delivery slot booked for Wednesday morning during which I paced the floor and wondered what I was going to do when the delivery persons Viewed the Situation and said they couldn’t do it.  The Winter Table is still up because I’m still fetching recently-arrived-and-potted-up little green things indoors when the temperature starts re-enacting the Pit and the Pendulum.  Plus there’s a hellterror crate since the last time any major kitchen appliances were brought in or out.  Also, washing machines weigh.  My last appliant purchase was the refrigerator—refrigerators weigh nothing.  I can lift a refrigerator‡.  A washing machine I can barely shove back into its corner when it starts walking across the floor.  And they were going to have to wrestle the new marvel up the narrow flight of stairs with the black iron railing from street level to the front door, around the sharp 180 degree bend into the kitchen—and, while they were making that turn, lift it over the puppy gate, which is bolted to the wall.‡‡

They came.  They viewed the situation.  Their eyes got rather large.  They withdrew to the street and muttered between themselves while I wrung my hands and thought dire thoughts about washboards and rocks in rivers.

BUT THEY DID IT.

I tipped them lavishly.  They were, to their credit, startled, and I said:  what was I going to do when you looked at this kitchen and said that getting large heavy camels through eyes of needles one storey up, over Becher’s Brook and at a 180° angle wasn’t in your job description?

I hope they got together and bought their wives a nice bottle of champagne.‡‡‡

* * *

* I won’t tell you what this thrilling^ experience did to my bank balance.  OWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

^ I have told you, haven’t I, that the wonders of scuba diving are Forever Closed to Me on account of the number of hours I have spent in Dentist from R’lyeh’s chair staring at the video loop of tropical fish on the TV screen on the ceiling?  I totally support+ the presence of distracting video on a TV screen on the ceiling.  And I can forfeit scuba diving.  Even though the fish are pretty fabulous.  I’m grateful it’s not opera or BUFFY reruns.

+ And I do.  See main footnote *

**  You have to figure it’s going to be an important member of the family for at least a decade so, especially when it lives in the kitchen of your very small house, which happens also to be the room that (a) you spend the most time in (b) the main beds of your three fur factories^ indwell, which helps to explain (a)^^, you and it had better be good friends. ^^^

^ Note also:  fur factories

^^ Remind me to tell you the Pav’s Bed in My Office story.  Sigh.

^^^ Peter had Radio 4 on recently when it was a programme on psychological problems and the discussion was about hoarding disorder, which is apparently defined as an inability to throw things away to the point where the accumulation gets in the way of normal function.  Hmmmm.  One of the things they mention is when you can’t get into your bed because of all the stuff on it?  Feh.  I can still get in my bed . . . I may have to roll some of the books, knitting magazines and homeopathic journals over a little . . . and it’s true I’m an uncharacteristically quiet sleeper.  But I was really thinking about this after I’d cleared off+ the old washing machine and the refrigerator, which was going to have to move to get it out, and had nowhere to put anything.

+ Mostly the stuff on top, which was in layers.  But I also stripped off all the kitchen magnets . . . which fill a mixing bowl.  A small mixing bowl . . . but still a mixing bowl.  Not a cereal bowl or a soup bowl.  You could definitely get a batch of muffin batter out of this bowl.  I often have.

*** I think I told you I joined WHICH? http://www.which.co.uk/ just so I could read their washing machine reviews?  They’ve got this clever hook-the-sucker system where you only have to pay £1 for a month of membership, including a copy of the magazine and free access to their gigantic site—and individual phone support for ‘consumer and finance issues’ which bait really attracted me after my recent scary, infuriating and demoralising banking experiences—and at the end of the month if you forget to cancel they quietly make you a full-price member because, after all, you gave them your credit card number for the £1.  Fine.  They got me.  The magazine is full of interesting stuff.  And now I’m researching juicers. ^

^ Everyone see this report?   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10735633/Healthy-diet-means-10-portions-of-fruit-and-vegetables-per-day-not-five.html   Good luck getting this one over to Person in the Street.  But it is one of those Why [mild] ME Is A Good Thing Really moments.  I have evolved, over the past sixty-one years, from a few frozen peas and a leaf of iceberg lettuce style reluctant veg eater to a major rabbit+.  And in the last fourteen years—since the ME felled me—I am eating ten a day++.  It’s a life style, okay?  You get used to it.  And I like broccoli.+++ I’m more inclined to take this report seriously—ten a day does seem like kind of a lot for someone who doesn’t already have chronic health issues—because they make the point that vegetables are more important.  Yes.  A large glass of orange juice with your chocolate croissant is not the same as a large bowl of broccoli . . . er, probably not with your chocolate croissant.  I’d like to hear a little more about ‘juice is worthless’ however.  Out of a carton, maybe.  But I’d’ve said there’s pretty good substantiation for the belief that the Juicer Phenomenon is worthwhile.  Although it’s another life style.  At some point you have to wonder what you’re preserving your life for if you’re spending all your time preserving it.

+ Unfortunately my teeth don’t keep growing.  That would solve a lot of problems, if the cavities just grew out and you could gnaw them off.  Carrots are a lot cheaper than Dentist from R’lyeh.

++ Except occasionally when I’ve been in the Chair of Dreadful Torment and can’t chew.

† There isn’t nearly as much of mine but mine is LONG.  You’d have to line up like fifty-three of Pav’s for an equivalent pilose factor.  Pav, however, has plenty to spare.

†† Which is what happens when you like clothes, have been more or less the same size for nearly forty years, and have hoarding disorder.

††† There is less of this than there might be because the hellterror—like the hellhounds before her—used to eat hers When She Was a Puppy, which, of course, now being almost tw‡‡o years old she is not.  Cough.  Cough.  But she did give up eating her bedding somewhere around her first birthday—which is better than can be said for Chaos.

‡ Well.  I can lift a dwarf under-the-stairs size refrigerator.

‡‡ Because I was tired of it falling over every time Chaos stood up and put his forepaws on it.  Which, being a rather dim sweetheart, he never took advantage of, and Darkness is above that kind of thing.  Pav, however . . . it’s a good thing it was bolted in by the time Pav arrived.

‡‡‡ Or, possibly, husbands.

::POLITICAL RANT ALERT::

I know.  I don’t do politics.  Well. . . .

I am, I admit, frequently appallingly clueless about the realities of . . . reality.  I know I’m a wet bleeding-heart knee-jerk la-di-dah liberal but I forget how far from the mainstream that sometimes takes me.  Take gay marriage.

I do know there are still rabid homophobic enclaves out there but that’s what I expect them to be . . . enclaves.*  In the modern First World at least I expect anyone my age and younger to behave in a polite and tolerant way;  if they have private caveats about certain intrinsically harmless and productive subgroups of society they keep this to themselves.  That government tends to be butt-heavy with old fogies is one of those sad facts of reality, but I’m rapidly approaching old-fogey status myself so the obvious stuff should be getting dealt with as there are more old fogies like me in Parliament—or Congress, or the Orwellian farmyard, or what-have-you.  So we finally got civil partnerships here in the UK for gays a few years ago—so they can have insurance and inheritance and hospital-visiting rights and so on just like hets, well duh—can gay marriage be far behind?

I don’t keep track of this kind of controversy—I know, bad me—because it makes me too crazy.  I don’t keep track of all the anti-women stuff still relentlessly going on out there** either, for the same reason.  It makes me feel too small and too helpless and too ANGRY:  human rights are human rights are human rights.  There’s nothing to discuss.***  So I’ll just go on writing my stories about Girls Who Do Things—and keep my head (mostly) down out here in rough and ratbagging reality.

While I was as appalled as everyone else—everyone on the wet-liberal side anyway—about the C of E blocking women bishops again, there was enough general outrage that the church synod what-you-call-it managed to cram a fresh vote through before time, and there’s at least been progress, although there’s a bit too much havering about what they’re doing to keep the paralytic-tradition fogies from mutinying again.  But I remember—as a separation-of-church-and-state American—being fascinated by the suggestion that if the C of E didn’t get its act together promptly about women bishops Parliament would make them.

So.  Gay marriage.  It’s legal in the UK.  Finally.  But the C of E is saying no, no, a thousand times no, I’d rather diiiiiie than say yes.  WHAT?  You can’t just look for a sympathetic priest—even wet liberals like me will acknowledge that tolerance tends to be a continuum—it’s illegal for a C of E vicar to perform a gay marriage?  This is the Church.  Of.  England.  That’s how it works over here.  And Parliament isn’t going to say, ‘Do it and shut up’?  WHAT?

And—and this was my personal snapping point—the frelling Archbishop of Canterbury is saying gay marriage would be ‘catastrophic’ for Christians in other parts of the world because it would leave them vulnerable to violence by anti-gay mob rule?  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26894133  WHAT?  Where are you drawing the line, mate?  Or what line or you drawing?  Being a Christian at all in certain parts of the world is still dangerous.  The tradition of violence and martyrdom goes back to the beginning—um, the crucifixion, um?—and ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ has always been a crummy policy.  If the early Christians hadn’t been such arrogant little twerps, insisting on going around shooting their mouths off about Jesus being the Offspring of God, they might have believed what they liked in the privacy of their own homes, as long as they didn’t do it on the street and frighten the horses or piss off the local tyrant.  Not to mention that appeasement of bullies and murderers doesn’t have a great track record for success.†  I hope our Most Reverend Justin is being quoted badly out of context.

It was Aloysius who pointed out to me, in a calm, holy way, that gay marriage is very, very controversial in the C of E—and at the moment the traditionalists are winning.††  And I’m a card-carrying, fee-paying member of this organisation?  Aloysius—who admits to being frustrated by the ban himself—says that we’re supposed to pray for change and love those who disagree with us.

ARRRRRRRRRGH.  Personally I’d rather have a flaming sword.

* * *

^ The Samaritans question you-as-applicant pretty closely about your attitude toward homosexuality but I half-thought they were joking.  In my wet-liberal way I can’t imagine wanting to do something like take shifts on a people-in-emotional-extremis phone line and not sympathise with gays who do have more of a struggle with society and expectations and okay and not-okay than hets do.  Not wholly unlike, to my eye, women have more of a struggle with society etc than men do, or non-white people than white people do.  Etc.  Humanity = ratbag.  Sigh.

** http://everydaysexism.com/  Everyone know this one?  Read it and weep.  I don’t read it very often, because of the weeping thing, and the blood-pressure headaches, and the wondering whether anything ever does get better, or whether it just goes round in endless circles.  The early Christian church had women in positions of power, for example, but it didn’t last.  Here’s a bit more about Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism’s founder:  http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/laura-bates

She’s on Twitter too:  @EverydaySexism

Go for it.  I’m glad someone has the grit.

*** Anyone thinking of writing a counter-diatribe on the forum, please take note.  Also, it’s my blog.

† I want to know why these people think that the presence of Christians is going to turn them homosexual?^  Is it something we put in the water?  There’s a word that’s struggling to surface in my aging and forgetful mind—wait for it—EDUCATION.  You know you can educate people about lots of things.  Like that the existence and maintenance of heterosexuality in the Christian church is actually rather common.

^ Which is of course the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.  Worse than gangrene!  Worse than Sarah Palin for president!

†† Scripture!  Yes, I know!  But we don’t cut people’s hands off for stealing any more, or stone people to death for adultery!  And if you’re asking me, which you probably aren’t, as well as welcoming gay marriage, there are a lot of abused kids out there who are let off honouring their fathers and mothers!

Being at a fiber festival like Wisconsin Sheep & Wool can be tiring. There’s a lot of standing around on hard concrete floors, and walking from building to barn to the next barn. So it was a relief to be able to sit down and watch the sheep shearing demonstration.

The man giving the demonstration was full of information about everything from the importance of good shears to wearing the right kind of footwear to how to keep the sheep as calm & comfortable as possible during the shearing process.

He got the first sheep out of the pen ready to be shorn, and immediately said, “Oh! I shouldn’t have picked this one! It’s slower, and less impressive for demonstrations.”� The sheep he’d chosen had fleece all the way down its legs. Some breeds of sheep don’t grow wool on their legs (or heads, either), and they are easier for the shearers to work with.

(It’s very hard to be dignified if you are a sheep being shorn.)

“Does this position make my neck look fat?”�

The second sheep he pulled out of the pen was a different breed, and easier to shear. If you look closely, you can see that the wool is coming off in one blanket, almost, instead of lots of little fluffy pieces. That’s good, especially for handspinning, because it means the shearer knows his business, and the wool will be of even lengths that will be easy to work with. (The wool from a single sheep is called a “fleece,”� until you process it & mix it with wool from other sheep.)

By this time, the fleece judging had started in another part of the fairgrounds. This was the part my friend Carol was especially looking forward to. You could practically see her drool as she sat on the very front row to listen to everything the fleece judge said. After judging, the fleeces were going to be auctioned off, and Carol was plotting which ones she wanted to take home. (I had almost no fleece lust. I know what it takes to clean one of those suckers, and I’d just as soon let someone else do the dirty work. Literally.)

I’d seen a fleece judging once before, but this judge was fascinating. Different breeds of sheep produce wool with different qualities, so there were a number of different categories in which shepherds could enter their fleeces. As the judge looked over each fleece, he would talk about its strengths and weaknesses, and whether or not it ran true to breed. Often he’d pick up a lock of the fleece and look it over carefully. Most wool, if you look closely, looks like a tiny crimping iron was used on it, and he’d look to see if the crimp was uniform over the whole fleece.

If a sheep has been sick or stressed during the past year, there will be a weak spot in the lock, and the fibers may break as you try to spin them. To test the strength of each lock, he would hold it up by his ear and snap it tight, listening to the sound. It looks kind of funny, but it’s the best way to see if the lock is strong.

A lot of the fleeces looked like beautiful clouds, and I just wanted to go up to the table and stick my arms down in all that lovely wool!

After the judging came the auction. Carol made out like a bandit, coming home with five fleeces! (I never did get to see the spinning wheel she bought. She’d already buried it in sheep fleeces by the time I got to the car.)

By the time Carol picked up her fleeces, the festival was closed for the day and we needed to leave. We made a detour by the lambing barn, though.

Lambs are usually born in the spring, and September is definitely fall in the northern hemisphere. But the nice people at the University of Wisconsin breed specifically to lamb during the Sheep & Wool festival, so people can see new lambs!

“What are you looking at? Don’t you know it’s time to go home and leave us in peace with our babies?”�

I generously offered to drive most of the way home, since it was too dark to knit while someone else drove.

And yes, I did pick up some goodies in the sale barn before we left the festival. Apparently I was having a purple-y kind of day. Sometime soon I will have newly-spun sock yarn!

ONE TWENTY FIVE

It was making my head hurt.

A faint, wavering sort-of rectangle, taller than it was wide, paler than the surrounding stormy, turbulent darkness.  A sudden streak of light like lightning lashed across my blurry, uncertain Gate and . . . made it . . . real.  White, slightly spirally pillars on either side swept up to a lintel gleaming with intricate patterns of what looked like carving;  there was also a glittering, fuming confusion at threshold level that wasn’t encouraging to anyone thinking of walking across it, and this whatever-it-was bleeped upwards in big fat slow bubbles like a lava lamp.

Define real.  My mind would keep producing that awkward demand;  in the circumstances I couldn’t blame it.  But I wasn’t the only one who saw this vision, this Gate:  there was another moment of stillness—the kind of heavy, breathless stillness that tells you that there are really a lot of people around you—and then mutters and murmurs . . . and a few shouts.  Gaduld!  Forshaz donol yar!   Or something like that.  There were other murmurs that sounded more like rhubarb rhubarb or possibly blither blither blither.  I clamped my jaws together to avoid joining in on that last. 

“Defender,” said Murac, beside me, and his voice was hoarse and scratchy again.

The lava-lamp bubbles seemed to be straining to come through the Gate—toward us.  Maybe this was a good thing.  Maybe they were the other-worldly version of friendly puppies.  Somehow I doubted it.  “What—what are —” I doubted Murac had ever seen a lava lamp.  Although Borcaithna had brought off some pretty spectacular stunts—especially when he was trying to do something else.  Pulling a troop of leather-and-swords mercenaries into a mid-twentieth-century American house with shag carpeting, Harvest Gold appliances and lava lamps wouldn’t be beyond him.  If he had done it, I bet that was the last time whoever it was hired him.  Magicians tended to live a long time.  Borcaithna might run out of people to be hired by before he died of old age.

“So what’s the funny blobby stuff in the Gate?” I said in my best crisp, professional manner.

“Eh,” said Murac.  I looked at him, and in the uncertain light I thought there was a sheen of sweat on his face.   “Don’t know, Defender.  Never been this close to Gate before.”

Mercenaries can do the blithe-in-the-face-of-death thing if they have to, it’s part of the contract, at least in the genre corner of high fantasy I occupied, but they aren’t big on death and glory if there are other options, preferably alive, relatively hale and whole, and paid in good currency of the realm.   I decided not to ask how Borcaithna had bypassed the Gate recently . . . or why this Gate was apparently my particular doom.  Defender.  What a joke.  What an awful joke.

In the few seconds I had spent thinking these thoughts my throat had closed up and I wouldn’t have been able to ask any more questions even if I’d wanted to.  I still felt ill, but staring at the lava-lamp blobs was making me feel dizzy as well and it occurred to me to wonder how long it had been in the-life-of-this-body time since I’d eaten.

I curled my cold fingers farther into the long lock of Monster’s mane that fell over the pommel of the saddle and gently squeezed his gigantic barrel with my legs.  A little light-headed thought floated by, suggesting that I should find out if any of the signals from humans Monster had been trained to obey were importantly different from the signals-to-horse that I knew. . . .  He took a step forward.  Two steps.

And some kind of clamor broke out on our right.  How many of us are there? I had said, and Murac had replied:  Too few.  But to me, who was used to working alone in a small room with a computer, and whose idea of hell was a confrontational-fan-heavy SF&F con, it sounded like a medium-sized army in a bad mood.

Someone—someone with a retinue—was making his way through the gloom—the gloom already full of horses and riders.  Toward us.  There didn’t seem to be any blood or screaming involved so I assumed they were some of ours.  One of the retinue was holding a torch, and in its hazy light I could see horses shying out the way, and the occasional glint of what I guessed was chain mail.  And yes, I was sure that the figure at the front was a man.  Even allowing for what the dim light and personal terror was doing to his silhouette as his horse walked toward me, he seemed about two storeys tall.  With shoulders that would give even Mr WS serious competition.

His horse was possibly even bigger than Monster.  But Monster drew himself together and raised his head, and I decided the honors were about even.  I still had to look up—a long way—into the rider’s face.  Who was scowling down at me.

“Tha?” he said disbelievingly.  “Tha’s Defender?”

I was supposed to be going to a concert tonight.  Well, I was supposed to be going to a concert tomorrow night, only I kept forgetting, because Saturday night is Monk Night* and that there might be something else going on doesn’t register unless you nag me relentlessly**.  So by the time I remembered—chiefly because I was going to be seeing the friend who was singing in it and wanted me to come—it had sold out.  Never mind, she said, come to the dress rehearsal.  Which I would probably have enjoyed more anyway because it’s more of the nuts and bolts of putting on a performance***.

It has not been a brilliant day.  I went with Peter when he saw his GP this morning, and the frelling doctor was forty five minutes late without explanation or apology.†  Sound of Robin scraping herself off the walls since Peter likes his doctor and I don’t want to disturb this desirable situation by, for example, putting said doctor through the clinic paper shredder.††   Then Peter and I had our usual Friday foray to the farmers’ market, to which I bring the hellhounds so they were okay, but I got back to the cottage finally and very late to an EXTREMELY CRANKY HELLTERROR who had to be soothed by . . . well, give her a dog biscuit and she’s your slave for life, or at least till the next dog biscuit, but I figured I owed her a good walk.†††

Meanwhile I’d had a text from Niall reminding me that the much-neglected-by-me Friday handbells were occurring tonight at 5:30 as usual . . . I’d already texted him back that I was coming, after which I was going to have to rip off to the concert.   Good thing I don’t write the blog every night any more, I thought, harnessing up hellhounds for their pre-handbell sprint.

. . . And Darkness has the geysers again.  WAAAAAAAAAAAH. ‡

So I stayed home.

And I thought, oh well, I might as well write a blog post.  Sigh.

* * *

* Which is a ratbag on your social life, if any.  But the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament—which I think I’ve told you before?, is that you stare at the wafers they’re going to use at Mass on Sunday morning, which are suspended in some manner within this golden starburst thing I’m told is called a monstrance^ —is kind of booked to happen Saturday night.  Clearly weeks need an eighth day, so you can get your serious acting-out post-work-week over with, or possibly just go to a concert, on that day^^ between Friday and Saturday and be sufficiently clean, upright and awake^^^ for wafer-contemplation on Saturday night.

^ Which I feel is an unfortunate derivation.  Like calling angels vampires because one of the origins+ of ‘vampire’ may refer to spirits of the air.  And why is a rosary either a rose garden or a loop of prayer beads?  I know—garland.  But confusing.

+ disputed, but I think they’re all disputed

^^ Which I feel should be called Loki-day or Misrule-day except the world would probably end.  So maybe we could call it Dead Sheep day or Dwarf Conifer day.

^^^ I will not say no one has ever fallen asleep during the Exposition.  Unless you fall off your chair+ it’s not a big deal in the congregation—all one or two or three of us—because we’re sitting in the dark till the service begins.  The black-garbed chappies up on the dais . . . yeah.  They’re kinda visible if they start to nod.++  But the Benedictine order is heavily into physical, three-dimensional this-world work, and my monks have probably been rescuing kittens from the tops of two-hundred-foot leylandii cypresses and doing the steel-driving man thing alongside soulless steam drills+++ all day and are tired.

+ NO.  I HAVEN’T.  THANKS FOR ASKING.

++ Alfrick never falls asleep.  He’s my hero.

+++ And winning, of course.  Our railroads need a few miracles.

** And even then nothing is guaranteed except that I’ll probably bite your head off.

*** I’m singing again at St Margaret’s on Sunday—AAAAAAAUGH—the nice young man who is leading this week dutifully sent the playlist last night with the video links—AAAAAAAAUGH.  I’d far rather be learning The sun whose rays are all ablaze^ or I Want to Be a Prima Donna^^

^ The Mikado.  You’d’ve remembered in a minute.

^^ On the spectacular perversity of bodies:  my singing practise at home is pretty . . . erratic, both because I’m an erratic kind of person (!) but also because I have an erratic kind of voice, which I gather is pretty standard, it’s just if you’re good and/or professional you learn workarounds.  I will warm up a bit, sing a folk song, warm up a bit more, sing another folk song, lie on the floor and do a few breathing exercises, sing another folk song or an old gospel thumper, sing something I’m actually working on to bring to Nadia . . . do a few more warm ups.  What I sing and how I sing it is entirely based on the noise I’m making:  on a good-noise day I’ll do a lot more than on a bad-and-I-can’t-seem-to-make-it-better-noise day.  Most days are in between:  if I keep doing warm-ups and vowelly exercises and approaching the intractable from different angles I will at least improve.  Probably.  I also try not to get too hung up on what specific notes I’m singing—this is on Nadia’s advice—find a range my voice is happy in and sing there.

But by the end of a good practise I’m singing a high B as part of an exercise pattern without any particular effort—my much-desired-for-silly-reasons high C is clearly there I just haven’t quite had the courage to have a stab at it—somebody tell me why, as soon as I’m trying to sing a song, I can’t even hit a frelling G reliably.  Because my blasted throat closes up and goes no no no no no!  Eeep eeep eeep eeep eeeep!+  I tried to be clever about this the other day, and snaked out a few bars of Prima Donna where you’ve got a G-to-G octave leap, because octave leaps are a gift they’re so nice and obvious, and I use them in exercises all the time.  But my voice wasn’t having any of it.  I know what you’re trying to do, it said, and went squeaky.  ARRRRRRRGH.

Tonight’s concert included a professional soloist singing something that I—theoretically—sing, and I might have found this educational.  I might also have come home and burnt my music books, so maybe it’s just as well I didn’t go.

+ What’s even more irritating is when I’m sharp rather than flat.  Usually it’s flat—which is losing your nerve at a big fence so your horse raps it with his knees and brings a pole down.  Sharp is jumping eight feet over a three-foot fence.  But if I give up and sing along with the piano . . . okay, the note’s true enough but it’s got a frelling edge on it you could slice bread with.  ARRRRRRRRGH.

† I GOT A LOT OF KNITTING DONE.  It’s been a good week for knitting.  I got a lot of knitting done at St Margaret’s AGM equivalent earlier in the week too.  Gah.  Groups of PEOPLE.  DISCUSSING things.  Nooooooooo.  I’m a Street Pastor!  I’m going to be a Samaritan!  My social conscience is FULLY BOOKED UP!  I don’t have to do church-AGM-related things too!

†† No jury would convict me.  My barrister or whoever would be sure to load the jury with people who have WASTED HOURS OF THEIR LIVES IN DOCTORS’ WAITING ROOMS.

†††  She’s crated if she’s left alone, so if she’s been locked up longer than she thinks she should be she tends to emerge like the Blue Angels/Red Arrows at an air show.  WHEEEEEEEEEEEE.

‡ What frelling happens in March?  We’ve had a really bad March, that is, the hellhounds have, and I have because I’m responsible.  The hellterror, I am delighted to say, seems to be maintaining intestinal integrity this year.  I thought we were coming through it. . . . But it all went horribly wrong in March last year . . . what happens in March? 

This is such a good book.

I don’t remember how I managed to notice it;  unless I am being even more clueless than usual, which I admit is entirely possible, I don’t think it’s been waved around and shouted about much over here, which is a pity—do the British really think a YA fantasy novel about the American antebellum south isn’t of interest?  But it isn’t a YA fantasy novel about the American antebellum south, although it’s certainly that too—it’s a novel about what it is to be human.  Which is what all the best novels are about, including—and I know I’ve said this before but it bears repeating—the ones featuring fuzzy blue eight-legged methane-breathers.  Or a Louisiana sugar-cane plantation a hundred and fifty years ago, run by slave labour.

Thirteen-year-old Sophie’s parents have split up (very shocking in 1960 middle-class America) and her mother is taking her back to her family’s old home for the summer to get her out of the way.  Sophie’s mother’s family were very grand a hundred years ago, and the house where Sophie’s grandmother and aunt still live is on a remnant of the old plantation.  Sophie is miserable;  she’d already been outcast by her friends because of the divorce, and the back of beyond in the bayou is nearly the worst fate she can think of.  She explores the overgrown—and reputedly haunted—maze that had been part of the Big House’s garden in the plantation’s day.  And there she meets . . . a Creature.  “There’s no question that there’s strange things around Oak River,” says Sophie’s Aunt Enid, “and if they’re not ghosts, then they’re something mighty like.”

“I warn you,” says the Creature to Sophie, “I mighty powerful juju.  I sits at the doorway betwixt might be and is, betwixt was and will be, betwixt here and there. . . . ”

But Sophie, reckless in her unhappiness, and having perhaps reread E Nesbit and Edward Eager a little too often, wishes for an adventure.  “Adventures just come along natural with going back in time,” says the Creature.

And Sophie discovers that she’s back a hundred years.  When her ancestors, the Fairchilds, were plantation owners.  And what had been her bedroom in 1960 is the bedroom of the daughter of the family in 1860.  Who is understandably dismayed by the strange girl in it.  But Sophie, with her frizzy hair and her dark summer tan, is mistaken for a runaway slave.  And the only reason she isn’t flogged and dragged away in chains is because she is obviously a member of the family—she has the famous Fairchild nose.  She is, it is decided by Miss Liza’s parents, the daughter of Miss Liza’s rackety uncle—and one of his slaves.

Which makes Sophie a slave.  Which is not the sort of adventure she had in mind.

The plantation world is brought superbly to life, as are the people in it.  One of the things I found particularly effective is sheltered, white-girl 1960 Sophie having no idea what it means to be a slave:  that just meeting someone’s eyes because they’re speaking to you is uppity, that any answer at all may be the wrong answer, that it is perfectly acceptable to be expected to wait on table when you are half-sick with hunger yourself, that it is perfectly acceptable to be sent on another errand, and another errand after that when you’re exhausted—because you aren’t really human.  And that the white overseer is always right even when he’s wrong, and that a black slave doesn’t know more even when he does—because he’s a slave.

And what this grotesque imbalance of power does to both sides of this criminally bad bargain.

There are so many neat, tucked-away little details in this book, of plot, character and serendipity, none of which I can tell you—but I can tell you to look out for them.  I’ve discovered one or two more just glancing through it now to get the names and quotations right—and many of these apparently casual bits and pieces come together beautifully for the climax and denouement.

Give yourself a treat:  read it.

* * *

* I read a book over supper last night.^  It was thrilling.  I always used to read over meals unless Story in Progress was giving me an unusually ferocious time;  but in the last six and a half years if I’m not wrestling with a recalcitrant Story I’m mostly writing the blog at night.  Hey.  More book recs on the new blog system.  Yessssssss.

^ I was also up way too late as a result.  Sigh.  Well, no system is perfect.