Robin McKinley's Blog, page 29
February 19, 2014
Wet photos and dry yarn
I was putting Pav’s harness and lead on for a hurtle late this afternoon while listening to the weather report on the radio. Dry for the rest of the evening and overnight, said the radio. Pav and I stepped out the door. It was raining.
I’ve spent way too much time looking for good Hampshire-flood photos for you. Is it because flooding, managing or trying to manage the floods and beginning in some cases to clean up after floods which may yet return is still very actively going on that the photo record of all the hoo-ha is such a mess? You google for ‘Hampshire’ and you get Gloucestershire, Dorset, Somerset and Wales, with a little Kent and Surrey thrown in. Not that Gloucestershire, Dorset, Somerset, Wales, Kent and Surrey haven’t been flooded too—poor old Somerset is in a bad way—but I wanted to show you Hampshire. Anyway you can troll through here—or not. These are all at least 2013-14—I think—although with the occasional disconcerting ‘historical’ flood photo, which may or may not be in Hampshire either. I found a really good Hampshire flood photo gallery but before I got too happy fortunately I noticed it was from two years ago. I don’t even remember flooding two years ago.*
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10551171/UK-weather-Britain-braced-for-more-flooding.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-26169796
Anyway. It’s already too late for Short Wednesday. Maybe we’ll have Short Thursday.
EMoon
. . . bad weather IS claustrophobic, and inside with three hellcritters, one in heat and a bit too interesting to the others is definitely a major trial.
It was a lot more histrionic than a BIT too interesting. But she’s now OUT of heat and . . . Chaos doesn’t believe it. Darkness, while still inspecting her carefully every time she reappears, is reverting to his previous attitude, which is, Bark! There’s an interloper! Bark! Remove her at once! Bark! —Siiiiiiiigh. I was HOPING that there might be some positive long-lasting effect on their relationship as a result of that hideous recent ninety-four year stretch when she was on high spectacular heat and Darkness was her slave . . . but I guess not. Siiiiiiiigh. Meanwhile there is an effect on her relationship with Chaos . . . he doesn’t believe she’s off heat and keeps trying to hump her. Mind you, he’s humping the wrong end and he’s never got his—ahem—tackle out, so it’s not exactly Sex As We Know It Jim but it still must frelling stop. Arrrrrrrgh. The slightly funny thing, if I were in a mood to be amused which I am NOT, is that Chaos was a lot less bothered by the whole situation than Darkness was. Darkness was out of his tiny furry mind. Chaos was la-la-la-la Chaos, although he was happy to stop eating to keep his brother company. ARRRRRRRGH.
We convinced our old cat to come in during severe weather and she’s now convinced that–if she’s indoors–someone should be . . . paying attention to her anytime she’s not dozing. . . . Yowwwwwwl. Yowwwwwwl. Yowwwwwl. One critter is driving me frantic several times a day . . . I cannot even imagine three critters sharing the house with me.
Three critters keep each other company. This is why I brought two puppies home seven years ago. This does not always work out perfectly to plan (see: happy to stop eating to keep his brother company) and introducing a new one to an established hierarchy is always tricky, even if you’re not bringing a girl into a household with two entire males. But for a human prone to guilt resisting the huge mournful puppy-dog eyes is easier when your single dog is not alooooooooone every time you go out for a cup of tea with a friend.
Diane in MN
There probably is a way to adapt a bigger gauge pattern to a smaller gauge—isn’t there?—but in the first place it would require MATHS and would be beyond me and in the second place . . . I’d run out of yarn.
I do this kind of a lot because I knit tight and I substitute yarn, so getting gauge is not guaranteed for me. The arithmetic doesn’t go beyond multiplication and division, but you can find knitting calculators online that will do it for you. Here‘s a pattern conversion form that should do what you want.
Oh, cool. Thank you. I think.** I like the part about how all you do is fill in the first bit and it does all the rest, but I haven’t finished my swatch yet so I don’t know what unexpected tentacles may lie in wait. I have found the needles that make the right fabric however: 8 mm, so a whole two (or four, depending on how you’re counting) down from the recommended 10 mm. Hmmph. Yarn manufacturers. They know nothing.***
Angelia
Deep v neck. Less yarn. Three quarter sleeves! Less yarn! Cropped!
Perhaps a dickey?
Yes, yes! A dickey! What a good idea! There will be enough left over for at least one mitten!
Equus_peduus
Deep v neck. Less yarn. Three quarter sleeves! Less yarn! Cropped!
At this point, I’m not sure there’d be much point left to knitting a bulky-weight pullover…
Snork. It must be hard, living a life of such strict rationality. Not one of my challenges.
Knitronomicon
There’s a very good Lion Brand pattern for a top-down raglan-sleeved cardigan, knitted in one piece (the sleeves are knitted downwards later), which is pretty much infinitely adjustable. Cast on enough stitches to go round your neck (high- or low-line), increase at the raglan points till big enough to fit round your chest at armhole level, put sleeve stitches onto holders and join up the gaps, knit downwards till long enough. Put sleeve stitches back on needle and knit till, er, long enough. Add a button band, either knitted separately and sewn on, or picked up along the front edges, if you want buttons.
So you leave yourself a ball, or two, for the sleeves (depending on how long you want them), allow another one for button bands, and you can knit the cardi till you run out of yarn!
Yes, I was thinking I’d look for a top-down for that reason—that, in fact, I need to overcome my circular phobia and learn to love some basic top-down thingy because I am a relatively small narrow person and short waisted with it and I’m pretty sure I could learn to squeeze a basic top-down thingy out of slightly too little yarn, which would be very nice. Do you have a link for the Lion Brand pattern? There are a million gazillion Lion Brand patterns and I tend to lose the will to live on their site pretty quickly. Also so many of their patterns are extra-large and up. When it’s some ordinary person on Ravelry who has created a pattern and she’s a 48” chest and her pattern is for 46-50” this seems perfectly reasonable. When it’s a frelling commercial yarn site, even though the patterns are free, it seems to me perverse that when you look at what they mean by ‘small’ it says 44”. Um. No. That’s not small.
Now you’re going to tell me there are pattern converters for this problem too.
. . . Meanwhile. It’s raining again/still. What a good thing wool stays warm when it’s wet.
* * *
* I remember five-foot-of-water-in-the-cellar 2000-01 very clearly.
** But I also knit tight and . . . substitute yarn? You mean there’s some other way to do it? You mean some people actually USE THE RECOMMENDED YARN? ::stops to fan herself::^ This comes up with me perhaps more than with better knitters: for some reason easy patterns tend to assume you’re going to use cheap acrylic or acrylic-mix-but-mostly-acrylic yarn. Noooooo.^^ You do get fancy yarns that suggest a simple pattern that will leave the effect up to the yarn, but not so much the other way around. Or maybe I just read the wrong magazines.^^^
^ Although that may just be another frelling hot flush
^^ The hellhound blanket is acrylic but they’re allergic to wool AND I AM NOT GOING TO WASTE MERINO ON CREATURES WHO ROUTINELY CLAW UP THEIR BED TO MAKE IT FLUFFY.
^^^ And so far as I can tell it’s a publishing rule that a knitting book shall not be issued till all its recommended yarns have been discontinued.
*** Nothing in comparison to someone who has been knitting erratically for about three years and hasn’t FINISHED anything but a few leg warmers and some baby bibs.
February 18, 2014
Rain. How unusual.
Hellhounds and I took a turn by Soggy Bottom today to see how it’s, um, flowing . . . and the personhole covers over the storm drains have been shoved off by the pressure of the water driving up through the inadequate apertures. It’s almost as good as a play, or it would be if we didn’t live here: the little round-headed jets of water boiling up through the holes, and this great wave sluicing out through the gap where the personhole cover has lost its place. Three of these rush together with the naked overflow from the ditch and, well, hurtle down Soggy Bottom toward the raging torrent that used to be a ford over a quiet little Hampshire stream that the locals call a river. If I’d been in wellies rather than All Stars* I might have been tempted to leave hellhounds dry-footed in Wolfgang and slosh down in that direction and see how far I could get. The lake by the Gormless Pettifogger is deep enough that the person approaching as Wolfgang and I paddlewheeled through stopped, apparently aghast, at his shoreline . . . and turned around. Oh, come on, it’s not like you’re driving a Ferrari with zero-point-four inches clearance.**
It rained today. Of course. It’s Tuesday. It rained yesterday. Of course. It was Monday.*** It’s going to rain tomorrow. Of course. It’s Wednesday.
HAVE I MENTIONED RECENTLY HOW TIRED I AM OF RAIN?
* * *
* Well I wouldn’t be in wellies rather than All Stars but I used to have a spare pair of (ordinary black^) wellies that lived in the, ahem, boot. It occurs to me to wonder what I’ve done with them. Maybe I’ve just forgotten giving them to the itinerant mage in exchange for . . . for . . . well, I certainly didn’t trade them for a rain stopping charm.
^ From the days when you could only get black or child-of-the-earth green wellies
** I saw an SUV—the kind you need a stepladder to get into—turn around at the edge of a large puddle some time recently. I laughed so much I nearly ran off the road.^
^ She’d probably heard the rumours that giant squid from the centre of the earth were using southern England’s floods to lurk in wait for their favourite snack, SUVs. No, no! Relax! It’s a ridiculous rumour put about by people who don’t have anything better to do than retweet silly urban myt—SLURP.
*** Monday had even less to recommend it than the rain. I got to Nadia’s and discovered she wasn’t teaching this week either. ::Sobs:: I wrote it down wrong in my diary; I knew she wasn’t teaching last Monday, but this Monday I thought if I didn’t hear it meant she was, when it was if I didn’t hear she wasn’t.
Fortunately I had hellhounds with me so throwing myself off a cliff^ wasn’t a good plan because neither of them can drive Wolfgang to get themselves home.^^ So we went to the farm supply shop and bought compost and fertilizer^^^. I was wearing singing-lesson-day clothes, not going-to-the-farm-store-in-the-rain-day clothes#. I considered asking one of the stalwart young men to heave the nasty bags around for me but while, generally speaking, I’ve got over the extreme feminism of my youth when asking a bloke for help was SELF BETRAYAL##, I still occasionally get all tough/stupid virago with bare-able teeth and (metaphorically) bulging muscles. I slung the frelling bags myself. And while I managed to keep my cute little cropped cardi safe, my jeans were goners.
And then I destroyed another pair of jeans today, getting the blasted bags up the stairs### to the greenhouse ARRRRRRRGH. This shouldn’t happen at home. I have a lovely pair of gardener’s chaps, which snap over your belt and around your legs and heroically repel mud (and thorns). But in one of the monsoons of the last few months, when the rain was not only coming in sideways but from a funny direction, EVERYTHING IN THE GREENHOUSE GOT SOAKED. Which I didn’t realise till later. I’m still unearthing little quagmires in corners arrrrrrgh. The chaps are still drying out. I think they’re resuscitate-able. Please. I have no idea where I bought them and google is not forthcoming.
^ Which are in short supply in most of south-central England. At the old house when circumstances conspired I used to threaten to drown myself in the pond, of which we had two, and both Peter and Third House have ponds here. But somehow drama-queen drowning doesn’t hold the appeal it does when not drowning is a daily goal and preoccupation.+
+ Dentist from R’lyeh has been driven out of his large glamorous multi-storey office by floodwater. I’m not laughing ::mrmph:: really I’m not ::MRRRMMFFFF:: Being from R’lyeh and all you’d think he’d be fine with a spot of drowning, wouldn’t you?
^^ They like the central heating+ and the soft bed out of the rain. THE FOOD DOESN’T INTEREST THEM AT ALL.
+ Or the Aga
^^^ Which is to say cow crap. Organic cow crap. I prefer it to chicken—which is the other common commercially-available one+—because it smells less. I admit I don’t know how the plants feel about it. They’d probably say they were missing an essential element without the pong. Like dogs adore tripe. TOO BAD. I don’t know how long I can go on with Pav’s dried pigs’ ears either. She doesn’t eat them fast enough.
+ When I had a horse we made our own critter-crap fertilizer and it was lovely.
# I have enough trouble fighting with my wardrobe every morning. I get dressed once. I do not change for anything less than serious festivities that include Taittinger’s or the Widow, and not merely Prosecco.
## I don’t entirely fault my young self for this attitude. Back in the early 1800s or whenever it was I was young, blokes offering, or responding to requests for help tended to do it with a gloss of patronage.+ Men have died for less. I would know.
+ Not that this doesn’t happen now. But either it happens less, or I hang out with a better class of bloke than I used to.
### The only young man who lives on my cul de sac is slenderer and more willowy than I am and so far as I can tell he doesn’t do the adrenaline-rage thing that enables slender willowy people to do things they can’t. I wouldn’t be so unkind as to ask him to help me with large muddy bags of compost and other even less salubrious substances.
February 17, 2014
Long range forecast: continued sucky
The expert bozos and the news-dispensing people are already saying that even if it stops raining we’re going to have excess-of-water troubles, including some increased flooding, for the next few weeks and possibly the next few months, because of saturation and groundwater levels and so on. And it hasn’t stopped raining. It rained yesterday. It rained today. It’s raining now.
According to the five-day it’s going to rain every day this week. It’s (maybe) going to rain less on Wednesday . . . but it’s still going to rain. ‘Sometimes heavy. Sometimes with thunder.’ Sometimes with three hellcritters linking arms/legs and bracing themselves against whatever is available* and thus preventing the hellgoddess from dragging any of them outdoors for a hurtle.**
It’s been sucky recently for other meteorologically inaugurated reasons. I didn’t make it to silent prayer Wednesday afternoon because the ME and the weather linked arms/legs and prevented me from dragging myself out the door and going anywhere.*** I cancelled going Street Pastoring on Friday, as I told you at the time. †
Saturday . . . I got to the monks’ a little early because I’d been worrying about water on the roads—one of the intersections not far from them is on the official list of closed roads, and I wouldn’t have said it was the lowest patch of country in the area—and then sailed (so to speak) through with minimal splashing. I noticed the monks were blacked out (also so to speak) more than usual—the abbey is often really dark when I turn up for Saturday night prayer†† but there’s usually a light shining somewhere. No light. As I walked down the path to the chapel the security light failed to come on. Power cut, I thought, but I kept going. They’re monks. Monks have been doing this for almost two thousand years. They’ve been doing it without electricity for most of that time. I assumed they’d break out the candles and get on with it. Maybe some of them would have blankets too, in the circumstances.
The door was locked. Nooooooo. Robin bursts into tears. It’s been a crummy week.
I’ve emailed Alfrick, but I have no idea when, or if, he’ll get it. I assume what’s happened is that they did have a power cut, but that they have no back-up for things like heat and cooking—they live on a frayed shoestring, so while I might have expected oil lamps, a camping stove and a substantial log pile for the fireplace(s), I’m not at all surprised at the lack of a generator—and most of them are, you know, old.††† The average temperature of their chapel is challenging enough. So I further assume they’ve evacuated themselves to somewhere that the central heating still works.‡ Or maybe I should say that has central heating. I just hope they don’t decide they like it and refuse to come back.
And then last night . . . I was going to go to church. I have three services I go to pretty faithfully every week, and I’d already missed two of them, due to circumstances beyond my control. I really had to get to church Sunday night because otherwise I’d’ve had no official public worship all week and would instantly become a heathen. And it shouldn’t be a problem; there was nothing too exciting going on with the weather. I mean, sure, it was raining, but the Pope is Catholic, isn’t he?
I need to leave at about 6:45 so at about 5:30 I stood up—from laptop on kitchen table at the mews—to perform evening hurtles.
And the lights went out.
We hung around, the way you do, waiting for them to come on again. I shut down and unplugged the laptop. Eventually Peter went off to have a nap and I took the first critter-shift out. It was only Peter’s end of town; I had power at the cottage. But the cottage is (still) full of stuff from Third House and my steep, narrow twisty stairs are not ideal for someone who had a stroke a few months ago and whose right leg still doesn’t work too well. Hellhounds and I hurtled back down to the mews, where the lights were still out. I took the second critter shift for her hurtle.
We returned. The lights were still out.
I didn’t go to church. We found a pub that (a) had power and (b) served dinner on a Sunday night. I dropped Peter off while I schlepped hellcritters, hellcritter dinner, laptop etc back to the cottage. I was very glad to see the glass of champagne Peter had ordered for me when I finally got back to the pub. And the food was really good: add that pub to our list for future reference. So I may be a heathen but I’m a well-fed heathen.
And Pav is definitely coming off heat. Yaaaaaaay.
* * *
* This is really easy at the cottage. Finding one’s way through is the hard one.
** I’m not cleaning any litterboxes.^ You’re going out. I admit that I’m a little disheartened that Pav the Thunderer, Pav the Riotous, dislikes rain as much as the hellhounds.
^ Cats are small. Maintaining litterboxes for a hundred and fifteen pounds of critter(s)? NO THANK YOU. Aside from where I would put this yacht+.
+ I seem to be preoccupied with watery things. I wonder why.
*** Also the village next door was under water and the way around is not only longer, it involves the kind of fast ‘A’ road I try to avoid when the ME is whacking me.
† The weather was plenty dire enough for me to be glad to be staying home, but not as dire as it might have been so I was enabled to feel horribly guilty for not going. But there was enough wind from an unfriendly direction that my eaves at the cottage started doing their banshee imitation, whereupon Darkness shot out of the hellhound crate and cowered trembling by the front door. Arrrrrrgh.
†† One of the minor pleasures of driving in in the dark is that while they’ve got a big official VISITORS WELCOME sign out by the road, there’s another small sign that just says WELCOME as you trundle down the little drive to the (unlit) car park—it’s like ‘just in case you thought we didn’t really mean it’—but if you’re coming in after dark your headlights pick it up and it’s like a smile from a friend.
††† Alfrick is nearly as old as I am.
‡ Have I mentioned that my central heating at the cottage crapped out about three weeks ago? Feh. But while my hateful bank is hanging onto my brought-over-from-America money for Bank Reasons that for some reason the government and judicial system let them get away with I can’t afford to hire someone to mend it. Fortunately I have an Aga, it’s a small house, and the weather is only really fierce in terms of precipifrellingtation, not temperature.^
^ Although being helped to dress by a hellterror, as I shiver by the Aga, is not ideal.
February 16, 2014
The Miracle of the White Stallion*, part 1 — guest post by Bratsche
Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I wanted a horse. I grew up on a small (10-acre) farm, so space was not an issue. However, my parents decided that we would not get a horse. Instead, as a compromise, we adopted a wild burro from the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) for me. Little Guy and I had lots of fun goofing off together over the years. I’m glad I had him (and a few subsequent burros) to play with; however, burros really aren’t horses, and my desire to have a horse never went away. I was able to ride horses occasionally as a kid, so I was not entirely horse deprived while growing up.
Many years later, as an adult, I decided it was finally time to see if I could scratch my horse itch. My plan/hope was to get a horse of my own eventually; but I figured that in the meantime I would start with riding lessons (after all, maybe I wouldn’t like riding as much I thought I would). So, in 2000 I found a local riding instructor whom I liked and started taking riding lessons once a week. It was so much fun! I rode at her barn for the next twelve years. She eventually allowed me to ride one of her horses as often as I wanted. I was still planning to get my own horse someday, but I counted myself very blessed to have a wonderful mare to ride without needing to pay the day-to-day costs associated with owning a horse.
My initial goals for riding lessons were just to learn “basic” riding in an English saddle and get to spend time with horses. For a long time, I was satisfied with getting to ride once or twice a week and fulfilled enough by simple riding in an arena. Eventually, though, I started to think about what other challenges I could add to my riding. The two new things I considered were jumping and dressage. My final choice was influenced by my job (professional musician), which depends on me taking good care of my shoulders, arms, and hands. Even though I would still like to try jumping some day (on a sane, experienced, forgiving horse), I discarded the idea of making jumping my new equestrian focus; since the odds of breaking or straining something while jumping are probably higher than some other activities with horses. Dressage was the other main type of riding that drew me. I describe dressage as learning to communicate so clearly with your horse that you can influence any part of its body at any time to do whatever you want and then using that to help the horse carry itself well while riding complicated geometry in an arena. There are LOTS of books out there with much more detailed descriptions of dressage.
Once I picked dressage, my next challenge turned out to be finding a dressage instructor who had a lesson horse; since I still didn’t have my own horse, and most dressage instructors in the area do not have lesson horses. I started really looking in spring 2011 and was delighted to finally find my current instructor (whom I’ll call Rachel) in May of that year. She is a fabulous instructor (and a warm, generous person, too), and I have been happily taking lessons with her ever since. I had always felt very blessed by having access to the mare at my first barn; and I was blessed at my new barn by being able to ride another client’s horse (Addy), since Rachel decided I was advanced enough to start on Addy rather than Rachel’s lesson horse. My goal continued to be to have a horse of my own some day. I prayed and trusted that it would be clear when it was time to start looking for my own horse.
From May 2011 to August 2012, I learned a lot on Addy. At that point, her owner moved her to a different barn. For the next three months I rode Rachel’s lesson horse. I definitely learned from him, but the “my own horse” itch started to become stronger. During November 2012 the lesson horse started to have some back and leg problems, and Rachel finally decided to retire him. I was in the thick of preparing for my next viola recital (in February 2013); so I figured my plan would be to focus on the recital until it was done, and then I would start the possibly very long process of looking for a horse of my own. I didn’t know if Rachel and I would be able to come up with a plan for me riding during the interim, but I was actually very peaceful about the idea that I might have to pause in riding until I could get my own horse.
to be continued….
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
* A title borrowed from the Disney movie about the Lipizzans of the Spanish Riding School.
February 15, 2014
KES, 118
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN
I wanted to say, In my nightgown? I also wanted to say, What do I do with the—with my sword? Chiefly I wanted to go home, but that didn’t seem to be an option. Aside from the burning question of what or where home was, and, supposing it had anything to do with Rose Manor, what was going on there in my absence. ‘Burning’ was perhaps not the most diplomatic adjective I could have thought of.
I felt sick.
Astur took care of the sword problem. He took Silverheart away from me. I flinched but didn’t resist. I wouldn’t be able to resist, so why demonstrate my helplessness any more than I had to? I didn’t want to press my ‘Defender’ status too hard. Astur, however, stood there examining my sword—my sword—and I found myself growing stupidly and uselessly angry. What was I going to do, kick him in the shins? He was wearing leather shin guards and I was barefoot. And while he was about my height he was about three times my width, and I doubted any of it was flab. Not to mention two or three decades of experience in some of the nastier forms of hand to hand, if what Flowerhair knew about him was anything to go by. I had bailed on self-defense classes because beating up some harmless guy in a padded suit creeped me out. Gelasio had laughed at me. But it wasn’t going to happen to us, you know?
Assuming that getting mugged isn’t going to happen to you and you therefore don’t have to prepare for the possibility is stupid. I grant you that. I don’t however feel I can be faulted for assuming that I was not going to meet any of the less salubrious characters in some of my own overheated novels, and that I could safely remain ignorant of generic-late-medievalish-fantasy mores beyond what I needed for fictional purposes.
Murac dropped his hands and stood upright. “What gija tha playing at?” he said to Astur. “Scabbard’s there. Put ’ee in.”
I looked at Monster’s saddle. I couldn’t see anything. You hung a scabbard on your body on the side away from your sword-arm so you could pull it out. Not that I had ever had cause personally to do this, but these are random factoids from a generic Olde-Worlde high-fantasy writer. If perhaps you were wearing a nightgown and your scabbard was attached to your horse’s saddle, and you were furthermore utterly clueless, presumably you would want to hang your sword on the same side as your sword arm so you didn’t get tangled up with the reins on the draw, or inadvertently try to cut your horse’s head off. Flowerhair had ridden in cavalry before, although never in a nightgown, but I often left out the details I couldn’t find easily on google. Besides, Doomblade had a mind of its own, so expecting it to behave like an ordinary sword was unwise. Flowerhair had the scars to prove it, but she was also still alive.
Astur said something, but I didn’t think any of it was in English. ‘Azogging’ featured in whatever it was. He swung Silverheart over his head as if he was planning to cut down a low-flying pigeon.
And Silverheart exploded.
I didn’t actually see what happened; the dazzle was blinding. But I heard Astur shout—it was more of a scream—and the rushing, scuttling, thudding sounds around us stilled. When I could see again, Monster was still there, as was Murac, although I thought (blinking my watering eyes) they perhaps looked a little tense. Silverheart, still shining rather hard and steadily, was lying on the ground. Astur had disappeared.
“Pick ’ee up,” Murac said. His voice had gone all scratchy again and I thought, He’s afraid. Well . . . that made two of us. “Tis Defender’s sword,” he added.
I tried to mosey on over and stoop down to pick up a detonation-prone sword as if this was something I did every day (although preferably not in my nightgown) and not as if I were an inexperienced cobra handler trying to make a grab for the back of my irritated charge’s neck without getting bitten. When I straightened up with Silverheart’s hilt in my hand Murac was looking dismayed again. But he was also looking sardonic. In the circumstances I decided sardonic was an improvement. I had to stand still a moment or two while my bruises resettled after the stooping business.
“I’ll not handle ’ee,” said Murac as I approached (limping). “Try not to cut me, Defender,” he added as he bent down and cupped his hands again.
Oh. Help. I shifted Silverheart to my left hand and reached up to grab a handful of Monster’s mane. I wasn’t sure I could straddle something this size, even if I were appropriately clothed and hadn’t recently been pounded into the ground by a giant black thing. I hoped Murac wouldn’t recognize the slash on my leg as self-inflicted: this was not likely to build confidence. Although it was only a little slash. But I saw his eyes rest on the rose bracelet as I put my muddy, aching foot in his hand.
. . . And then I was flying through the air as if I’d been shot out of a cannon.
February 14, 2014
And with the storm winds howling, continued
Morale is not high. I won’t say it’s at an all time low but it is not high. I am not, as you will have surmised, Street Pastoring tonight; I’ve been obsessively following Hampshire weather reports all day—those of you who follow me on Twitter will have seen a few RTs on the subject*—and when the wind started up mid-afternoon right on gindlefarbing schedule** I sighed a heavy sigh and emailed Fearless Leader that I was staying home tonight. I’m being a good responsible citizen, ratblast it, the cops keep tweeting ‘if you don’t HAVE to go anywhere STAY HOME.’*** I don’t even know if there was enough of a team left to go out; I know we’d lost more than just me.
I’m not quite sure what I have done today besides get wet to the skin† in the company of various (wet) hellcritters and feverishly look for more weather reports.††
And listen to the wind. I am not looking forward to the last hurtles of the evening.††† The rain is coming in sideways, in this wind, like spears, and I swear the points have been sharpened. May we at least continue to have electricity. And hot water. And an Aga to dry and re-dry and re-re-re-dry wet critter towels.
I hope we don’t lose any more trees.
* * *
* And anyone who hasn’t seen the photo of the Winchester Cathedral crypt ISN’T PAYING ATTENTION since it’s a big favourite with the media at the moment for a symbol of South England Under Water: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-26186875 ^
^ Mind you, the cathedral was built on a marsh, so there’s a certain amount of hoisting by own petard going on, as it has gone on for the last thousand years. Very sturdy marsh, that one. And surprisingly forgiving of large piles of stone. Maybe it was less of a marsh in the eleventh century.+
But we in New Arcadia are NOT built on a marsh and we object to all this superfluous water cluttering up the place. There’s nowhere to put anything down. Like a dog, for example.
+ The cathedral was also a good deal smaller to begin with. They kept adding bits on.
** Why can’t the frelling meteorologists be wrong about something you’d LIKE them to be wrong about? How many times have you got caught in rain/sleet/hail/yeti invasion because the weather report was for clear and mild and since you wanted it to be clear and mild you were a little foolish? Arrrrrrgh.^
^ Of course over here it’s a major piece of cultural history that the meteorologists—and one TV presenter in particular—missed the Great Storm of 1987, worst in three centuries, and forecast a little wet weather and some wind. La la la la la. Hope everyone had their small dogs and children on short leads.
*** Alternating with a tweet saying PLEASE DON’T TAKE CLOSED ROAD SIGNS DOWN THEY’RE THERE FOR A REASON. Duh. Good grief. I will certainly go have a look down a closed footpath^ but in daylight at walking speed you can see before you get into any difficulties, and you also won’t stall out if water gets up your tailpipe. You may have to carry your short-legged companion through the swirly bits.^^ But take closed road signs down?! At very least, if you’re going to be a sovereign idiot, put the sign back after you’ve driven through it toward your fate.^^^
^ Although Pav and I had an epic hurtle this morning because we went down to the river and turned the other direction and it never occurred to me we’d be able to keep going. . . . I now have a pair of yellow All Stars that will take a week to dry out. At least I remembered the plastic bags over my socks today. Practise makes perfect.
^^ I do know that currents can be dangerous. Trust me, I’m timid.
^^^ Oh yes and when you have to ring up to be rescued be sure and mention that you drove through a closed road sign so they can put you at the bottom of their list.
† I have two raincoats and they’re both sheeting wet.
†† Well I’ve done some knitting. Got some lovely big fat gauge 100% merino wool on insanely cheap sale and then bought a set of 10 mm needles when I discovered that that is approximately the ONLY size I haven’t already got, 10 mm being the recommended needle size for this yarn, and I was already trying to decide whether I was going to make this pullover or that pullover out of it^ since I’d bought this book on sale a little while ago, as I settled down to make my swatch. I like making swatches. It doesn’t matter if something goes wrong, it’s just a swatch. Which is why my swatches never go wrong. I save going wrong for the pattern.
AND I DON’T LIKE THE FABRIC ON THESE NEEDLES. THEY’RE TOO BIG. THE FABRIC IS TOO OPEN AND LUMPY.
So now I get to start over with 9 mm and 8 mm and . . . just by the way . . . with finding a new pattern. There probably is a way to adapt a bigger gauge pattern to a smaller gauge—isn’t there?—but in the first place it would require MATHS and would be beyond me and in the second place . . . I’d run out of yarn. SIIIIIIIIIIGH.^^
^ I’m really good at starting projects.
^^ Furthermore I think I have to make a cardigan.+ I was just thinking this morning that my two woolly brown cardigans are the sand end of brown and I need a chestnut end of brown. This yarn happens to be chestnut.
+ Deep v neck. Less yarn. Three quarter sleeves! Less yarn! Cropped!
††† I have a cranky hellterror underfoot as I (try to) write this blog. She’s forgotten our epic hurtle early today and WANTS MORE ACTION. She couldn’t get back indoors fast enough however when I took her out for eliminatory functions and indoor action is limited.^
^ Especially since she’s still a little too interesting to hellhounds+ so I am forced to stimulate her brain by long down which tends to need fairly regular upkeep.++
+ Who still are not eating enough to keep one-third of a slow elderly hamster alive.
++ No, lie down. No. Lie down. No. Lie DOWN.#
# She actually is at the moment. Don’t anyone breathe loudly or make any sudden gestures.
And with the storm winds howling
I seem to be variably on/off the air. This Page Can’t Be Displayed Because. Well Maybe It Can. Briefly. Nope. Try Again. Later. Hi. Fooled You. Didn’t I . . . Nope. Gone. Hahahahahaha.
So there may be a blog post later. Or Not.
February 13, 2014
Valentine’s Day prospects
In theory I’m supposed to be Street Pastoring tomorrow but . . . I doubt it. Increasing amounts of Hampshire are under water and we’re due to have not only more torrential rain tomorrow but possibly the worst gales yet. Even uni students, one hopes, will have the sense to stay home. They may not have a choice: most of the campus is a lake. I’ve already told Fearless Leader that if the driving looks iffy I’m not coming, and there have been various emails among the team about who can and can’t get out through the current floods; not everyone can; and it’ll be worse by tomorrow night.
Another of the big old trees—that used to be part of the fancy drive to the Big Pink Blot and are now a strip of parkland running beside the main road through New Arcadia—went over in the latest windstorm. That’s three this winter. It’s a longish strip but it’s not that long; the gaps show. There have been big branches down too, making more gaps, including in the old wall where they struck. But the ground the trees are standing in has become marsh. One of the short leg-stretch-and-a-pee hurtles from the mews is down one side of the trees, next to the old park wall, and back on the pedestrian pavement next to the road. We stay on the pavement lately; even Pav, the smallest and lightest of us, squelches; and some great hulking human like me, and with only two feet to spread the weight, forget it, I need a diving bell. Hellcritters are willing to venture onto the quaking bog in pursuit of smells; but they tend to prance back to me and the pavement shaking their feet and looking disgusted. I wouldn’t have expected a hellterror to care about mud and while the hellhounds with their longer legs have a more impressive prance, Pav’s message is the same: ugggh.
If it doesn’t dry out soonish—which it shows no sign of doing—the trees are going to rot where they stand, and then they’ll all come down. The civic daffodils are trying to come up—it rather amazes me they’ve got this far—but a lot of them are blind.
Hellhounds and I went down to look at the river today. The river path has been impassable for a while and we’d already stopped going there as often as we used to because I’d got very very tired of being mugged by off lead idiots. I mean their dogs. But your average off lead idiot doesn’t want to get his/her designer wellies dirty so I thought it was probably worth the risk, seeing how far we could go.
Well the ducks are sure happy. The bit of river we were splashing along beside isn’t running amok so we forded the feeder streams* and kept on. There are some houses on the river bottom, poor things**, and I don’t think the sandbags are going to save their fitted*** carpets.
And then hellhounds and I rounded a corner and came to the shores of The Sea. When Peter and I first moved to New Arcadia there was a stretch of the river path that was outrageously badly kept—for a town two of whose important constituents are wealthy retired Tories and businesses dependent on visitors—and EVENTUALLY the town council stopped whining and ordered enough hard core and blokes to shovel it that the path became quite serviceable, thank you very much.
Well. It’ll all be to do again when—when, I’m assuming, not if—The Sea retreats. I don’t know how deep it is but from my memory of what it used to look like . . . Pav, at least, would have to swim, and I think you’d need waders, not wellies.
We took the footbridge past one of the sandbagged houses† and looped around by the road. When we got back to the river we had a really exciting ford to cross, with the water crashing over the path, and Chaos wanted me to believe that it would carry him away†† but I heartlessly pointed out the stout fence preventing this happenstance and we gained the far side without incident††† and toiled back up the hill toward town. That roaring sound you hear . . . is the new New Arcadia Victoria Falls, another smoke that thunders. Golly. And standing on the far side of the river the spray still fogs up your glasses. It used to be a picturesque little local millrace.
I’d better get back to the cottage. We’re going to try to make a sprint for the farmer’s market tomorrow morning before Armageddon returns. Which means I should go to bed, you know, cough cough, early.
* * *
* To Chaos’ horror. I’M NOT CARRYING YOU. COME ON.
** We actually looked at one when it was up for sale some few years ago, before I bought Third House. Brrrr.
*** Wall to wall
† And were divebombed by a black cocker spaniel . . . a friendly black cocker spaniel, fortunately, and while it looked full-grown it was presenting as a puppy and couldn’t get enough of the hellhounds who were happy to return the compliment. Modified arrrgh. I thought it was going to follow us back onto the main road ARRRRRRGH whereupon in good conscience I’d’ve had to go back, knock on the door, and say something between clenched teeth to whatever off lead idiot answered, but it got timid at the end of its stretch of path. I looked back worriedly a lot though.
†† If you’d eat you’d weigh more and be harder to wash away.
††† When they dry out, my pink All Stars will probably be a lot cleaner. Choosing footgear for this kind of expedition is problematic. I can’t walk any distance in wellies—they’re perfect for clomping around gardening or mucking out stalls but not hurtling—and hiking boots have their uses in wet grass and ordinary mud but fording foaming rivers is not their thing and once they get soaked they stay soaked. All Stars are actually my footgear of choice for this, although I put plastic bags over my socks first when I remember. When I remember. I didn’t remember today.
February 12, 2014
Don’t I keep trying to reinstate short Wednesdays?
I NEED A NIGHT OFF.*
So let’s have a LINKS NIGHT.
First: Peter’s EMMA TUPPER’S DIARY, one of my and many other people’s favourites of Peter’s, HAS BEEN REISSUED.
And here he talks a little about writing it:
http://peterdickinson.com/writing-emma-tuppers-diary/
Second: Lightspeed (e)magazine has reprinted HELLHOUND in their February issue:
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/issues/feb-2014-issue-45/
You have to scroll down the left-hand column—it is there, I promise—and while of course all of you have already read it in FIRE—there’s a lot of other good stuff in Lightspeed’s virtual pages, and you might find the McKinley author spotlight amusing. You’ll recognise the voice from this blog. . . .
* * *
* Pav is definitely starting to come back out of pheromone hell and to revert to nice normal manic hellterror status—she brought me a toy this morning for the first time in about ten days—but the hellhounds don’t seem to notice. They still aren’t eating, there’s still way too much moaning and they still dash back from hurtles or into the mews to check that she’s still there. And having pranced through the door like Hackney ponies on the way to the carriage driving finals, once they’ve established that in fact she is still there they go all floppy and pathetic-swain-like and IT MAKES ME CRAZY.^
^ The superfluously bizarre thing is that they are all over me for their sofa time. I thought it at least possible that they would be so committed to guarding the hellterror’s crate against alien invasion+ that they wouldn’t want their sofa time with a mere [menopausal++] hellgoddess. But nooooo. They’re all over me like a cheap suit or Miss Havisham’s wedding veil.+++
+ See previous blog post. You cannot be too careful about these things.
++ EMoon
I once bought a 16 yo gelding, not knowing he’d been gelded only 6 months before. After a lifetime as a breeding stallion. (These little secrets sellers keep…) He was quite aware of everything’s ovulation and/or heat. . . .
. . . .”Hi, glorious wonderful female person! Am I not beautiful? Am I not gloriously male? Would you not like a hug?” He was gentlemanly about it . . . But there were no mistaking the source of the interest. Fluttering nostrils, upraised lip, and all. That’s how I found out that he recognized (with a slight difference in the behavior) ovulation separately from menstruation.
If I’d paid attention one of mine# might have told me when I was ovulating since I never knew. One of the things this body had trouble with was the whole female-cycle thing, and I was on the Pill## for way too many years### but I love the idea of Rhythm Method by Stallion.
Do any other male domestic critters do this? Given that there aren’t that many stallions around to begin with a lot of women who’ve worked with them will mention this interesting aspect of the experience. But you don’t hear about it with dogs, for example, and there are LOTS and LOTS of entire male dogs cluttering up the landscape. I had already started menopause when I brought the hellhounds home as puppies and most of my dog life till then had been with girls.
I knew an entire male cat once—who was also a prodigiously, gloriously male creature—who was extra-snuggly when you were menstruating, but I didn’t see him often enough to be sure that this wasn’t him reacting to you being curled up in a little ball of misery, and I was on the Pill when I knew him, so he wouldn’t have had a chance to check me for ovulation.
# I never owned one of these glorious creatures; I just did things like muck out their stalls, hang out with them and—when I was lucky—ride them.
## which back in my fertile days kept you unpregnable by suppressing ovulation. Dunno if they may have figured out other tricky methods since.
### My experience of female-cycle specialists—most of them men—became the strong foundation of my profound loathing for the medical profession.
++ NOT MY FACE. GET OFFA MY FACE.
February 11, 2014
Hope springs infernal
There may be hope. The whining is now broken rather than incessant and HELLHOUNDS ATE SOME OF THEIR DINNER. Chaos ate about two thirds of his and Darkness half, but I think that’s the FIRST eating Darkness has done voluntarily in about FIVE DAYS. Aaaaaaaaaaugh. ::Gibbergibbergibbergibber::
Diane in MN
It’s really really NOT EASY to have intact dogs and bitches in the same house,
APPARENTLY. Gaaaaaaah. The thing is, I have known people who do/have done it.* Unfortunately I don’t know any of them now, so I can’t ask.
even a big house*, so I truly sympathize with your situation. I hope young Pav is an early ovulator and stops broadcasting super pheromones sooner rather than later.
If I’m right that IT’S BEGINNING TO WEAR OFF—and there have only been sporadic outbreaks of moaning this evening—then she’s about dead on average, because this has been her second week. All century. All eon. I mean all this week.
I’ve never tested the theory that giving a bitch chlorophyll tablets masks or reduces her scent, but I do know that a drop of vanilla on the dog’s nose does not prevent him from knowing what’s up (it was a forlorn hope but worth trying). . . .
I have so many allergies myself I’m twitchy about experimenting on my hellcritters. Once this is OOOOOOOVER and I can maybe think about something again I’ll do some research and consult my vet(s). This last week has been bad for additional reasons** and ordinarily I’m pathologically anti-drug and anti-squashing-Mother-Nature-just-because-she’s-pissing-you-off—although I’d’ve tried the vanilla if you’d said it had worked—but the stress level was such that I was afraid if someone said here, try arsenic/strychnine/amatoxin/cyanide, I’d’ve said fine, great, what’s the dosage?
* I have a big house, and it didn’t help. They just called to each other LOUDER.
I’m still not convinced that Pav has known what’s going on. It has seemed to me that she wants to get at the hellhounds the way she always wants to get at the hellhounds—and she has been fabulously dog-resistant on hurtles.*** Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But all those morons out there with their off-lead male dogs? Yes. So I’ve had a few interesting occasions of clutching thirty pounds of snarling fury to my (muddy) chest while some four-legged Lothario tries to climb my leg.† Pav hasn’t been miserable this week the way she was the first, but rampaging hormones haven’t been doing her temper any good. Anyone would think she was having her period.
You will be able to guess why my boys were pretty regular visitors to the boarding kennel.
Sigh. I can’t board the hellhounds. In the first place I wouldn’t because of all their digestive issues, but in the second place I can’t because I don’t vaccinate them every year and the vast majority of boarding kennels require yearly vaccinations. A lot of traditional, middle-of-the-road vets are saying that yearly isn’t necessary, that three-yearly is plenty . . . but boarding kennels just roll over and Big Business wins again. There is a homeopathy-using kennels about an hour from here that doesn’t require yearly vaccinations that might be a possibility for Pav some day if neither Southdowner nor Olivia could have her and I needed to stow her somewhere for a bit . . . but that’s not going to solve the hellhounds’ guts and you can’t foist a hormonal bitch on a boarding kennels.
Catherine
Mum and I once minded my aunt’s girl when she was in heat because our dog was neutered and the boys at my aunt’s weren’t. It was a special kind of hell.
I assume your dog was neutered in fact but not in, um, attitude? I know this happens with a lot of critters who are neutered late—people who geld a dog or a horse because it’s acting too male often find not much has changed except that they don’t have to worry about the possibility of offspring.
(The following year they tried to keep her at home… and that’s how I got my first chihuahua. Although they made the basic mistake of trying to throw a barbecue party instead of watching the dogs)
They had a FERTILE bitch LOOSE with DOGS AROUND?! That was . . . very unwise.
The flooding situation out this way isn’t much better. . . . The river paths in Windsor, and it’s been touch and go all week, were well under on Friday and the current river forecast is that the Thames will continue to rise until the middle of next week. . . .
Pretty much every town and village around here has a flood watch or a flood incident or is simply closed due to flooding. I’ve retweeted a few repressed-hysteria bulletins from the Hampshire County Council. They’ve got the ditch-dredgers and the sandbag-layers working twelve-hour shifts round the clock, poor, um, sods. Peter’s mews is low-lying enough that it will eventually be at risk at this rate; I’m on a hill and it’s half a flight of stairs to my front door. If I’m at risk then we’ve already lost London and Manhattan.
Katsheare
I would have thought excited mammalian hormones might have a generalised effect.
I wonder if there’s any sort of correlation with what you may (or may not) be picking up from Pav et al and what happens in new parents. Because when Schmoo was newborn, I knew somewhere in my brain that certain things smelled horrid (some of those being my fault: milk is lovely)
GRATUITOUSLY GRAPHIC REMARK WARNING: In my extremely limited experience of babies and babysitting one of the things I noticed is that 100% breast-fed babies’ crap was startlingly inoffensive. It wasn’t till they started eating something besides breast milk that diaper-changing became a trial.
but they never smelled horrid to me. So maybe there is a sort of… anxious scent that you’re living with these days. It could also just be the silted up stress of the past while, compounded and focused by the WEATHER we’ve been having.
Certainly my stress level is in the high gazillions AND THE WEATHER IS NOT HELPING.†† But the thing that suddenly occurred to me a day or two ago is that I’ve had more hot flushes/flashes in the last ten days or so than I’ve had in years. Which are totally hormonal. I don’t understand the mechanism because it doesn’t make any sense but the hot flush style I specialise in is putting out so much heat that when my super-heated clothing then touches my skin it feels like I’m being burned. I was glad to think this stage was over.
And the other thing . . . and I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this on the blog before . . . stallions know when you’re menstruating. I’ve talked to enough other women about this that (a) I know I’m not making it up and (b) it’s not that I hung out with peculiar stallions. But they get very bright-eyed and interested. And the thoroughbred stallion I adored was the most colossal flirt. He’d make little humming noises and hug you with his long beautiful stallion’s neck during your time of the month.
Blondviolinist
Critters go to heaven too. I say so.
I’ve never quite understood the people who feel like they need to spend a lot of theological time proving that critters don’t go to heaven. Why??? If God is a good God who loves his children, why on earth (or heaven!) wouldn’t he make sure the animal friends they love could be with them?
Well, and if God created the lot then dogs/horses/cats/blowflies are his/her/its/their children too. But my childhood churches’ insistence that animals didn’t go to heaven because they didn’t have souls is one of the things that put me off Christianity early. I’d be glad to miss out on eternal tapeworms, cockroaches, blowflies and so on but I assume they get all shiny and appealing in heaven somehow too.
Equus_peduus
In vet school, one of my patients was a deerhound who presented for castration . . . he was a bad eater (at the time I wasn’t reading this blog so didn’t know it was a sighthound “thing”);
Deerhounds and Salukis are supposed to be the worst. BUT SID IS A GOOD EATER. Maybe it’s the winter she spent starving on the street. BUT SHE IS A GOOD EATER.
the owner was hoping that losing his testosterone would do what happens to normal dogs – castrated males tend to eat a bit more and tend to put on weight rather more easily than entire ones. . . . However, that owner makes you, Robin, look positively laid back on the subject of dog-not-eating.
::hollow laughter::
The dog had the world’s most varied and unbalanced diet, involving various mostly raw meats, raw and cooked eggs, yoghurt, lard and salmon oil. You should have seen the bags of groceries she gave me for his two-night stay at the university hospital (which, btw, included the night-before-surgery-therefore-no-food night… she gave me enough food to feed a family of four for a week). She also forcefed him something like 8 times a day, and oddly enough, he never ate the free-fed kibble always available to him… I also wondered if part of the reason he didn’t eat on his own was because he was never hungry because he always had something in his stomach and who wants dry kibble when you could have raw hamburger shoved down your throat?
Was she expecting you to force-feed him? That’s over the line. And . . . she’s force-feeding him eight times a day with enough food for a family of four? And he was STILL THIN? There’s more wrong there than a bad attitude toward food. And yes, I’d begun to worry, this last week, that since the hellhounds are such bad eaters, they’d decide to stop eating entirely and leave it up to me. NOOOOOOOOOO. So since they ate dinner at all tonight I haven’t force-fed the rest even though this means that Darkness has had even less than the starvation rations he’s been getting poked into him. Although I keep thinking, as I prod the fabulously expensive kibble and the lovely roast chicken scraps and the raw liver that under normal circumstances is Darkness’ favourite thing far enough back in their mouths that when I clamp their jaws shut they have to swallow†††, that they can’t possibly taste any of it, I might as well be using cheap (cereal-free) unadulterated kibble. Yaaargh.
Knitronomicon
Have the bitch pants arrived?
YES. AND THEY MADE EVERYTHING WORSE. They are awful cute though. . . .
* * *
* Including Kes’ mum. Kes probably has some stories about this. Maybe they’ll come up.
** MY BANK IS DICKING ME OVER AGAIN. FOR THE SECOND TIME IN LESS THAN A YEAR. Speaking of things I have to do some research on BECAUSE I’M NOT DOING THIS AGAIN.
*** Although she let a (female) puppy take liberties. It fascinates me to see my puppy acting like a grown-up to eager clueless babies.
† The morons, of course, think that it’s MY fault for bringing A BITCH IN SEASON TO PUBLIC GROUND. Oh right, I’m going to keep her in a closet for three weeks because you can’t be bothered controlling your dog.
†† I know people have lost their homes, farms, livelihoods and there’s a lot of scary stuff for all of us thinking about the future. But I’m just FRELLING SICK OF HURTLING ON PAVEMENT because all the countryside is under water.
††† . . . probably
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