SEVENTY NINE

I trudged up the steps and met Mike scampering down.  I wasn’t sure I approved of a man who might have already turned forty who still scampered.  He grinned at me, misreading my expression.  “Don’t worry.  We’ll have you back in New Iceland in plenty of time.”

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of, I didn’t say because I was out of breath—less from the climb than from borrowing trouble.  Borrowing trouble is very tiring, trouble being such a nimble and protean beast.  Through the pounding in my head I couldn’t remember how long my lease was for:  was it month to month, or had I agreed to three months—six—a year?  What would constitute a valid reason for breaking my lease?  A madwoman in the attic?  Swamp water on the floor and tentacle marks on the walls?  If I left where would I go?  With too many book boxes and a tall black dog?

I left the kibble on the top of a pile of those book boxes and walked through the parlour to dump my plastic bags at the foot of the stairs.  I was going to have to face the upstairs soon.  I groped for a light switch and (miraculously) found one.  The hall jumped into existence.  I hadn’t noticed, yesterday with Hayley, that the stair risers had leaves and little round flowers like Tudor roses carved on them.  Gelasio’s penthouse hadn’t had any Tudor roses.  It hadn’t had any stairs either, except the ones to the roof garden, which either were or were pretending to be white marble.  I had tried not to pay attention when some minor domestic arrangement cost more than I earned in a year.

I stared up.  I was going to have to go upstairs and face down those beds some time soon.  But not now.  I turned the light off again.  Coming back through I paused to look out through the big parlour windows.  I had always loved that long low golden afternoon light, when the weather and work deadlines cooperated.  The light was especially lush today—or maybe I was just acclimating to the jungle.  What was out there?  Could be anything.  Cold lakes.  Burgundy velvet and golden hounds.  Big black men riding big black horses.  My memory lingered on that one.  The man rode so beautifully I might have thought he was a centaur—it was as likely as anything else that had been happening right then—except I didn’t think centaurs usually had their human bodies growing out of the middle of their backs.  But it wouldn’t have to be cosmic horror and deinonychus in my gone-to-wild garden.  There might even be more rose-bushes, tangled up in their tougher neighbours for some protection against the elements.  A girl can dream.

I sighed, and turned again to face the parlour, and more boxes than I was sure had been in the van in the first place.  That was another good reason to stay here:  once I got the books out of their boxes I did not want to have to load them back in again.  Bookshelves.  Oh help.  My lease undoubtedly denied me permission to screw things into the walls, free-standing bookcases cost, and those kit things were sagging in the middle before you finished loading the last shelf.  And at almost-forty years old I refused to go the cement-blocks-and-planks, poverty-stricken student route.  Refused.  Refused. Well, maybe if I used attractive vintage bricks. . . .

I went through the kitchen on my way to the front door.  Anything to delay carrying any more boxes.  I wondered again about the weird jaggedy row of something at the very back of the van.  Maybe my trophy dragon’s jawbone had got left on the last row of boxes.  Ha ha.  One of the magicians Flowerhair had worked for had had a dragon’s jawbone as a staff.  It had not been a happy collaboration.

Sid was stretched out in front of Caedmon looking utterly comfortable and at ease.  After the winter she had just had I couldn’t begrudge her.  I even stifled uttering the threat to find panniers that would fit her.  (Although it was an interesting thought.  I might consult Susanna.  My mother usually had a Ghastly or two who would pull a tiny cart, which was a big hit at kids’ birthday parties in our neighborhood.)

The van was rocking slightly as I reluctantly descended the stairs, refusing to admit to myself that it wasn’t box avoidance that was troubling me, it was facing that the unloading stage was over with . . . and I would shortly be forced on to the next stage.   Mike emerged from the back of the van, carrying something.  What?  I didn’t have anything that looked like that.  My eyes were involuntarily drawn to my rose-bush in her pot, attempting all by herself to be a rose-hedge lining the driveway to Rose Manor.

Mike set what he was carrying down beside her, and climbed back into the van.  I got to the bottom of the stairs and was standing beside my rose-bush and her companion by the time Mike stepped gingerly down from the back of the van, carrying . . .

. . . a third rose-bush, which he set beside the first two.

I thought I’d ordered a swift and nostepinne.  But two days went by and there was no reply to my email.  Whimper.  Here you are trying to support local/indie talent and not order from frelling amazon and THEY DON’T ANSWER.

They answered.  Today.  There was a spam bin involved.  WELL OF COURSE THERE WAS A SPAM BIN INVOLVED.  THIS IS WHAT SPAM BINS DO, IS EAT GOOD MAIL AND LET THE TOXIC GARBAGE THROUGH.*

I now have a swift and nostepinne coming.  But the indie talent are still a business, drat them, and they’re not sending them out till MONDAY.  Monday is three days away.  And then it still has to get here.

Fie.**

I spent a good deal of the afternoon in the garden again, working off Lack of Swift.***  There’s a rather unfortunate Spending Time in the Garden Syndrome however.  You’re not a big bedding plant person—you’ve already let the labour-intensive thing get out of control by having too many roses, you don’t need bedding plants too—you’re a mental case of course, gardeners are, but you have no illusions about ‘tidy’ or ‘design’.  Stuff goes in where there’s room† and the weeds are really healthy because the one thing you are usually pretty good about is feeding.  So you look at the labyrinthine wilderness out there and you think, all I really need is a few good days.

The garden at the cottage is tiny.  All I need is a few not-freezing, not-raining afternoons—!

Wrong.  The more you do the more you see.  And the more you see the more you DESPAIR.  Having got most of the urgent stuff potted up or potted on††, the most hostile of the roses tied ferociously back††† and (semi) pruned as necessary, I was reduced to WEEDING today.  I actually like weeding‡ but when the forest of ground elder closes over your head and the enchanters’ nightshade twines up your ankles and pulls you down—and enchanters’ nightshade grows fast enough to do this, if you stay somewhere too long, levering up wild poppies or creeping buttercup or those black-leaved pansies that look so cute and innocent and have long almost-invisible roots reaching to China or possibly Mars—AAAAAAAUGH.  I’d rather be winding hanks of yarn.

What’s the weather this weekend?  I should probably hoover the floor indoors before my friend arrives on Monday.  Just don’t let me notice how much else I should be doing. . . .

* * *

* Griselda is in Pago Pago and all her money has been stolen and would I please transfer the entire contents of my bank account to the Evil Scam Holding Syndicate so she can get a glass of water?^  But . . . but . . . I had a cup of tea with her yesterday afternoon and she didn’t say anything about Pago Pago.  There must be some mistake. . . .

^ Which is about what the entire contents of my bank account would be worth.  Tourist traps are expensive.

** NOW.  NOW.  I WANT THEM NOW.  —You know I’m expecting a mere eight-months’-old puppy to calm down and stop being a manic git.   Clearly we were made for each other.^

^ Hellhounds open one eye.  Possibly one eye each.  Does whatever this thing is run?  Can we chase it?  —I think a swift on end given a push downhill might canter a bit.

*** Stop laughing.  Hmmph.

† And sometimes when there isn’t.  That’s where the tiered effect comes in handy.

†† Although it’s been a bad season for mail-order errors.  The usual response of big on-line gardening sites is ‘keep it and we’ll send you the right one.’  Or ones.  I didn’t actually want four hundred and twelve osteospermums or nine hundred and sixty apple blossom geraniums, some of which actually are apple blossom geraniums, and which are all going like thunder and will need somewhere to put their roots down soon.  I was poised to send the sellers photos of their errors as evidence but they must have a certain percentage of goofs built into the system.  Do they keep track of who protests?  Do they put tick marks against your name?   Or merely fry in oil the staff responsible for the blip that caused Hampshire to be carpeted in non-apple-blossom geraniums?

And of course, like every other year, I am waiting breathlessly to see how many of my dahlia cuttings grow up to be what I ordered.  I go on ordering them because they’re so much cheaper than tubers—and the awful truth is that I rarely have a cutting failure, while my tubers rather too often decide that the accommodations don’t suit them, they were looking for something a little more up market, with designer chocolate on the pillow and free wifi.  But cuttings are wildly unreliable in their own fabulous way.  Up to about a quarter of the frellers are anything but what you ordered.  It does make you wonder, speaking of staff, what the staff are, you know, smoking.

††† That faint unfriendly humming noise you hear, like a nest of wasps in a bad mood, is the sound of various whippy-stemmed roses with known violent tendencies gnawing through their restraints.^

^ I am still sad I didn’t get around to buying the ‘some days it’s not worth gnawing through the restraints’ t shirt before they inexplicably cut it.  There are still cheap knock offs available—and one of these days when it’s not worth gnawing through the restraints I will probably buy one—but this one was a QUALITY t shirt.

‡ There’s a quote out there somewhere that I am failing to google into confirmation, that says something like ‘No one is a gardener who doesn’t like weeding’ which is just a specific-object version of one of the quotes on the blog’s quote thingy:  ‘The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.’  Yep.  You don’t like rewriting, don’t be a writer.  Anthony Trollope may have got away with turning in his beautiful copperplate handwritten first drafts to his publisher, but you and I won’t.  Aside from the beautiful copperplate part.

The very last thing I do every night is put Pav out for a final pee*.  When this happens EVEN LATER THAN USUAL because, say, I’ve been reading something and HAD TO KNOW HOW IT ENDED**, it may no longer be awfully dark outdoors by the time we get out there for this ritual moment.   Hey, it’s barely a month to the longest day, it gets light really really REALLY early, okay?  So it was like twilight out there this morning, and I was standing there in my nightgown ready to fend the little varmint*** off the rose bushes and my peripheral vision was caught by movement where no movement should be. . . .

There was a big fat mouse lowering the bird-seed level in the feeder by a rate of knots.  ARRRRRRRGH.†

This is my fabulous squirrel proof bird feeder, you know?  The one with the integral cage that only little birds can get through.  Little birds and the occasional frelling mouse—who was soon going to be too frelling bulgy to get out again.  I picked up a stake that didn’t happen to be propping anything important and gave the feeder a move-or-die whack.  Mouse leaped out into the shadows—Geronimoooooooooo!—and disappeared.††

The real ratbag about this is that I’ve pretty much decided that the birds don’t like this feeder.  I have lots of birds in the garden, and the suet block in the other feeder is eaten down pretty reliably.  Er.  By birds:  I see them doing it.  This one—nope.  I assume they don’t like the cage.

Sigh.

So today, which was a lovely day†††, I spent a good bit of in the garden. ‡ And one of the things I did was tie the clematis and the rose-bush that are the likeliest mouse-access-providing culprits away from the seed feeder.

And my little apple tree is blossoming like CRAZY! YAAAAAAAAAAY! I won’t actually stop worrying about what wall-building may have done to its roots till it’s had this year’s crop of apples and blossomed again next year . . . but so far so good.

* * *

* Hellhounds scorn such wimpery.  Pav is extremely continent^ but she’s also always delighted to be allowed to burst out of her crate and attack something.  If the price for this indulgence is that she stop attacking things^^ long enough to have a pee, she will do that with reasonable grace.

^ Barring the standard canine disasters.  My latest trial is that she’s decided that sheep crap is a delicacy.  ARRRRRRRRGH.  Even if I hold her upside down and shake, the stuff is kind of friable, you know?  It doesn’t all hold together neatly and pop out in a nice cohesive lump.

^^ Dirty laundry, nightgown hems+, feet, towels hanging on the Aga rail, etc.  If she’s desperate, dog toys.

+ She has, relatively recently, discovered the joys of rocket-launching her solid little furry self upward inside the circle of hem of the nightgown you’re wearing YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

** I’ll tell you all about it.  Some day.

*** With the little glistening varminty eyes

† Speaking of ARRRRRRRRGH.  ARRRRRRRRRGH.

†† Pav was sure she’d missed something.  I’m glad to say the mouse leaped into the shadows on the far side of the little courtyard fence.  I don’t like mice, but I didn’t in the least want my hellterror catching one.^  Or diving through a rose-bush to try.

^ Either she’d eat it—and its unknown but guaranteed undesirable parasites—or she’d just mangle it a little.  They scream, you know.  Like bunnies.  Bunnies scream.  Dog owners need to know how to kill things.  Whimper.

††† After we got down to a NEAR FROST last night.  One of my pathetic and ridiculous excuses for staying up reading was so that I could keep an eye on the frelling thermometer.  The temperature had turned around and was going up again by the time I turned the light off.  I get to do this again tonight.  Or not, of course.

‡ Have I told you I have two lots of American visitors coming next week?  I have maybe half a dozen overnight-staying, pond-crossing visitors in an average year . . . and I have THREE of them NEXT WEEK?  WHAT?  One of them is an old friend, and if the house(s) is a tip and the garden(s) is a jungle, eh, she’s seen it all before.  The other one—and her husband—I’m a little afraid of.  Sigh.  But nothing is going to turn me into a magnificent housekeeper, a sublime gardener and a superlative hostess in the next ten days, so we’ll just have to muddle along somehow.

You know how ‘the news’ isn’t ‘the news’ but ‘the BAD news’?

Every now and then something slips by the radar—it’s newsworthy and it’s not bad.  It may even be good.

I love this.  Virginia tobacco farmers, floundering in the dropping demand for tobacco, are planting chickpeas instead.  Because hummus is booming.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323798104578453174022015956.html

YAAAAAAAAAY.  GO HEALTHY EATING THAT IS HEALTHY WITHOUT MAKING A BIG SCOWLY FACE DEAL OUT OF IT.*

I of course have been eating hummus for decades.  I’d’ve said all us old original-Moosewood-Cookbook** hippies and freaks and navy-blue-suit wearing secret counterculturists ate hummus.***

But I do want to draw your attention to hummus chocolate cake.  I’ve got a recipe for it myself somewhere but I couldn’t find it and I had to go bell ringing†.  There are several of them out there in internetland†† but they seem nearly identical and epicurious is usually pretty reliable:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/FLOURLESS-CHOCOLATE-HUMMUS-CAKE-50146823

This looks like mine—the four eggs and two teaspoons of vanilla are right.  I may use more cocoa.  It’s a safe bet that I usually use more cocoa.  But the cake is lovely.  Really.  It’s chiefly the tahini that gives what you think of as the hummus flavour to, um, hummus.  Hummus chocolate cake is just very, very dense and moist and filling and scrummy and excellent.  It’s also dairy and gluten free and doesn’t taste like a lot of the contents of those grim ‘without’ shelves at the supermarket.†††  You can even fool yourself that it’s good for you.

* * *

* I am also going to risk being heinously politically incorrect and say that given America’s^ relations with the Middle East I can’t help but feel that enthusiastically adopting even a mere humble foodstuff can’t hurt.  They’re people like us, you know?  They eat.  And eating together is usually bonding too.

^ And most of the western first world’s

** Which is out of print.  The new one is all low fat.  Feh.  http://www.amazon.com/Moosewood-Cookbook-Katzens-Classic-Cooking/dp/1580081304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368656400&sr=8-1&keywords=moosewood+cookbook

I’ve got so many physical issues it’s not frelling funny.  My intolerances are intolerant of my other intolerances.  But one thing this body has always got right is its cholesterol levels—even back in my heavy dairy, if-it-stands-still-long-enough-put-butter-on-it days, I had low Bad Cholesterol and high Good Cholesterol.^  So everyone moaning about Katzen’s high-fat recipes I was like, What?^^  I remember reading an interview with Katzen I think around the time that the new revised not-so-much-fat edition came out, saying (as my flaky memory recalls it) that she was a little embarrassed at the way she’d trowelled on the dairy and the oil and so on but that she’d been publishing a vegetarian cookbook at a time when vegetarian food was perceived as feeble and weedy and listless and she wanted to present it as able to duke it out with steak and chops.  And it does, unless you have the kind of politically incorrect metabolism that DEMANDS MEAT, which mine does.  Oops.  But I don’t have to have it every day.  And my original MOOSEWOOD and ENCHANTED BROCCOLI FOREST cookbooks have a lot of pages stuck together and a lot of notes in the margins.

^ I must have told you this story:  when I first had ME, and my NHS doctor had grandly declared that she didn’t believe in ME—thanks ever so, lady—I went briefly to a private doc recommended by another ME sufferer.  He had, he said, found himself making a speciality of it simply because he saw so much of it.  I couldn’t afford him for long but he got me started taking care of myself and was very encouraging even when I told him I had to pack as much in as possible in as few appointments as possible.  One of the things he did was have my blood tested for seven single-spaced pages of stuff.   The ‘normal’ ranges for most things are wide enough you have to be a doctor to find any of the readings suggestive, but anything that counted officially as abnormal was marked by a big band of colour, like a giant highlighter.  My cholesterol levels were highlighted.  NOOOOOOOO.  CHOLESTEROL IS THE THING I DO RIGHT.  No, no, said the doctor.  The lab doesn’t differentiate between good abnormal and bad abnormal.  Your bad cholesterol is abnormally low, and your good cholesterol is abnormally high.

Oh.  ::Beams::  Pity about the ME though . . .

^^ I also have another of my crunchy-granola, geeky health-nutter fringe rants about the fact that fat is good for you.  The super-low-fat thing is BAD.  And margarine is not fat, okay?  Margarine is evil.  Greasy evil.  What they do to it to make it solid is far worse than butter ever was or could be unless you injected it with curare or something first.+

+ I think one of the fashions for eggs as good for you is current too.  Yawn.  Yes.  They’re good for you even when they’re out of fashion, unless you’re allergic to them.  I eat a lot of eggs.

*** My hummus is actually not Katzen’s.  I was indeed faintly superior and ho-hum^ when Moosewood came out.  It wasn’t going to have anything to teach me and what’s with the twee hand lettering?  I think one of my long-ironed-hair, tie-dyed-skirt-wearing friends gave me a copy^^ and when I still had more than twelve calories a day available I was a sucker for a good cookbook.

^ I have never claimed to be a nice person, and I was worse when I was younger

^^ Tie-dye took a long time to go away.  AND IT CAME BACK.  AAAAAAAAUGH.  Barring a pink tie-dye t shirt that a friend and her kids made me a few years ago+ that I am very fond of, I have the same feeling about tie-dye that I do about bell bottoms.  AAAAAAAAAAAUGH.  AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.  And don’t come near me with shag carpeting or Austin Powers either.

+ It’s colour proof and everything.  You can put it through the washing machine.  They make home-hand-dyeing colour a lot better than they used to.

† I RANG THREE TIMES TONIGHT.  YAAAAAAAY.  It was almost like being a real person.

†† Along with a lot of suggestions for straight hummus-chocolate mousse-like-substance or frosting or cookies which I will leave you to discover for yourselves although if you’re asking me all those involving things like Nutella are impure.

††† Personally I think chocolate-covered rice cakes are a sin against nature.

I HAVE JUST FRELLING ORDERED A FRELLING [YARN] SWIFT AND A FRELLING FRELLING NOSTEPINNE.  Two days ago I didn’t know what a nostepinne was.  I think I’ve seen the word somewhere and assumed I was too young/old and that ignorance might not be bliss but was probably better for the blood pressure and the too easily over-stimulated fantasy-writer’s imagination.*  And then I brought up the yarn bowl question on Twitter the other night and someone else started talking about her nostepinne and I’m like whoa, are you sure you want to discuss this in public? **

Diane in MN

Does anyone out there have any useful guidelines for when you cut your losses and frog again and when you soldier on

A glance around my house would reveal that I can tolerate a lot of imperfection in some areas, but I HATE visible mistakes in my knitting and will rip (or tink, if I catch any soon enough) back to get rid of them. More than once, if necessary and if the yarn will take it, if I like the project.

I don’t think I’m a perfectionist about anything any more***.  Spending a lot of time and effort at something you’re essentially pretty awful at—let’s say bell ringing—will do that to a person.†  But I agree about actual errors.  Part One of this particular project has only one really gruesome error which I think would disappear when I got to the seaming-up stage, supposing I got that far—and I left it in because I had NO idea what I had done and therefore no idea how to undo it.  But especially on something that is, for me, relatively small-gauge, which is to say 4 mm needles [US size 6], and a non-stretchy yarn, which is this cotton-bamboo stuff I’ve made several baby bibs in and I like it but it’s not very forgiving, the—ahem!—slight variability of my stitch-making starts to show up over time and distance.  I ripped out my first couple of bibs once each, but they ended up not too embarrassing.††  This New Secret Project is bigger and . . . well.  So I’ve got to the end of Part One and put the wretched thing on a stitch holder—it’s getting so that every time I order yarn††† I automatically order another pair or packet of stitch holders‡—rolled it up and put it aside.  I’ll think about it later.

Which leaves me with only ::urglemmph:: other unfinished projects and therefore of course I need to start something NEW!!!!

Which is going to be Manos del Doohickey—I’ve left the tag back at the cottage‡‡—and it’s mostly silk with some wool so it’s NOT VERY STRETCHY again, uh-oh‡‡‡, but I want to make myself a LARGE SQUARE (SOMEWHAT) WOOLLY SCARF.  Because I’m tired of how difficult it is to find Large Square Wool Scarves.  And the reason this is the particular New Project that leaped to mind—despite the small-gauge-unstretchy thing—is because it will be ACRES AND ACRES OF MINDLESS GARTER STITCH YAAAAAAAAAY.  I’m always amused at these high-falutin’ knitters on Ravelry going on about how this or that pattern is too boring because there’s too much garter/stockinette/ribbing.  I LOVE GARTER/STOCKINETTE/RIBBING.  I tend to knit to calm down.  I don’t want to have to think!  I don’t want to have to memorize a frelling pattern!  I don’t want to figure out why my sleeve-shaping decreases look like tiny stairs rather than a nice smooth line like in the frelling photos!  I just want to keep looping the yarn around the needles!!!

But first I need to wind these wretched hanks into something I can use. . . .

* * *

* I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I nostepinne in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Not all of Monty Python is totally deathless and mesmerising, in my cranky^ opinion, but I would have trampled a few grandmothers to have written that particular piece of dialogue.  Although some of my attitude problem may be due to having a few issues with Monty Python.  For some reason.  I mean, it could have been Sir Rupert.  For example.

Minstrel: [singing] Brave Sir Robin ran away…

Sir Robin: *No!*

Minstrel: [singing] bravely ran away away…

Sir Robin: *I didn’t!*

Minstrel: [singing] When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.

Sir Robin: *I never did!*

Minstrel: [singing] Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about, and valiantly, he chickened out.

Sir Robin: *Oh, you liars!*

Minstrel: [singing] Bravely taking to his feet, he beat a very brave retreat. A brave retreat by brave Sir Robin.

^ And easily grossed out.  Just by the way.

** http://blog.designedlykristi.com/?p=335

Oh.  Okay.

*** Although I still want my socks to match what I’m wearing, even if nobody but me is going to see them.  Or nobody but me, Peter and the hellcritters none of whom care.  I care.

† Circumstances are not helpful.  Last Wednesday due to the very mixed assortment of ringers who turned up for practise I rang ONCE.  ONCE.  I got a lot of knitting done.  Speaking of knitting.  On Sunday afternoon there were eight of us.  Which meant we all had to ring all of the time.  Which since most of us were the weak end was a trifle challenging for the ringing master and I was somewhat drily amused to note that I was being relied on to hold it together in a way that I would not have been if he’d had any choice.  You know I would get to holding-it-together better sooner if I got more practise time in.  Sigh.

††  And I finally asked one of the recipients if the thing, you know, WORKED?  Because babies keep getting born, in the alarmingly incessant way of babies, and bibs are something I can, apparently, do.  Yes, he said.  It’s very chewable, and it goes through the washing machine fine.

††† Not that this would be often or anything

‡ And another frelling tape measure.  What do I DO with tape measures?!?  Is there a Tape Measure Planet like there is an Odd Sock Planet?

‡‡ Oh please.  What is Google, chopped liver?

http://www.artesanoyarns.co.uk/Manos%20Del%20Uruguay/manos%20del%20uruguay.html

‡‡‡ McKinley, not that we expect you to be relentlessly intelligent or anything, but the two most outstanding unfinished projects^—which is to say well enough started to count as ‘unfinished’, which are First Cardi and First Pullover, are NICE REASONABLY LARGE GAUGE STRETCHY FORGIVING WOOL, you meatloaf, why don’t you go FINISH ONE OF THEM?^^

^ Plus legwarmers.  I think I’m on my fifth pair.  You know this weather may be my fault.  It’s the middle of May, WE MAY HAVE AN OVERNIGHT FROST LATER THIS WEEK+, and I’m knitting legwarmers.

+ And I am not going to dig up my petunias/begonias/gladiolas/dahlias/osteospermums, so I hope they FRELLING COPE.  Maybe I could lay some legwarmers over them.

^^ And the current not-given-up-on-yet Secret Project is also mostly wool.

Somebody tell me why a bull terrier counts as a mastiff type?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mastiff_Type_Breeds *

Is this the Funny Face category or something?  Although I was interested that part of the description is that while these dogs have been put to a variety of purposes, they are most often used for guarding because they generally have a strong guarding instinct.  Pav is a surprisingly good guard dog, not something I was expecting.**  The hellhounds are hopeless guard dogs.***  And on the one hand you think, if it came to that, how seriously is anyone going to take something about fourteen inches high at the shoulder and weighing not quite thirty pounds?  And on the other hand you look at that bull terrier head, even the small, streamlined version, so clearly built for biting, and, having bitten, holding on, and possibly you think . . . uh.  I quite like my shins in their current configuration, and having feet on the ends of my ankles.  Maybe I’ll go burgle someone else.

Meanwhile:  there is a small earnest explosion in response to All Suspicious Noises,† which, if it happens in her crate, is all very well, but if she’s in your lap at the time it can be a trifle disconcerting.  She means it too:  most of the time there’s a twinkle in that sweet, evil little eye††, especially when she’s having a go at the slippers you foolishly left in the middle of the floor or the shopping bag you’re trying to carry in your non-lead-holding hand††† but she is all business when she’s Responding to a Threat, and if I tell her to shut up too soon she will remain on alert, giving me a brief pitying look because I am not taking her professional assessment seriously enough.‡  I write fantasy so I may be imagining some of this‡‡, but it sure seems to me that the best way to get her to shut up is to appear to be listening intently to whatever it is she’s hearing, and then relax.  Oh, she says.  Well, if you say so.  And she stands down.‡‡‡  Of course if it’s some legitimate disruption, like, say, the delivery man bringing my latest consignment of on-sale yarn,§ or Raphael the archangel come to sort out the latest 4,715 little peculiarities across my range of demon-possessed technology§§, there is an interesting metamorphosis from Red alert!  Red Alert!  Woop woop woop woop woof! to, Hey!  There’s something going on!  The hellhounds are having FUN and I’m NOT!  Let me OUT OF HERE!§§§

* * *

* But when I tried to click on an outside link I got this:

Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access /m/articles/view/Molosser-and-Rare-Breeds-List-Part-1 on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Cheez.  What is this, the secret Homeland Security site about the creation of a new breed of anti-terrorist dogs which can leap tall buildings with a single bound and when stressed put out a pheromone that neutralises all explosive material in a 30-foot radius?  The FBI has had worse ideas.

** I will now receive a cross email from Olivia saying that she told me.  Well, she may well have done, but she hasn’t hit menopause yet and doesn’t know about Menopause Brain.

*** Is it a friend?  Is it fun?  Can we chase it?  . . . Never mind, we’re asleep.

† Some of them inaudible to the third-rate human ear.    I will not demean my noble, responsible watchcritter by suspecting that some of them may be imaginary.

†† Southdowner sent me a quote from someone on her bullie list:  ‘Flipping through the BTCA Record for 2012. How can you resist a breed praised by judges for “a wonderfully evil expression” and “stunning varminty eyes”?! Somehow I don’t think Labradors or beagles are prized for rottenness…’

††† It has fascinated me for over five decades the way dogs figure out some of what pisses you off but not all.  Pav knows perfectly well I’ll come down on her if she bites her lead, for example, or if she runs off with one of those slippers—indeed she runs off with a slipper looking over her shoulder with a wonderfully evil expression in her stunning varminty eyes and she doesn’t just run, she bounds, which is ‘nanny nanny boo boo’ in dog language.  But she will not get it about the dirty laundry.  When I take a slipper away from her she’s all heh heh heh heh heh.  When I take my knickers or my socks away from her she’s all sad and disappointed and it takes her a good two seconds to recover her spirits and find something else to destroy.

‡ The hellhounds may half-open an eye at this point and murmur, You sort her out, Pav, we’re holding the floor down.  We need to conserve our strength toward resisting our next meal.^

^ Snarl.  —hellgoddess

‡‡ Also I am critter soppy.

‡‡‡ I am not imagining it that she lets me take stuff away from her however.  I can put up with a lot of torn knickers and scalloped slippers for the fact that she doesn’t gulp down whatever it is in the two-thirds of a very long second it takes me to reach her end of the long extending lead.  In fact chances are she’s just standing there looking resigned.  She let me take what proved to be most of half a sandwich away from her today.  How amazing is that?^

^ She’s not a bull terrier.  She just looks like one.  As I keep saying.

§ This is my favourite delivery man.  Not only does he actually LEAVE STUFF BEHIND THE GATE THE WAY I ASK DELIVERYPERSONS TO DO^ but he has a dog that rides around in the van with him.

^ Has anyone ever seen a female deliveryperson?  Female postpersons are totally common, but I’ve never seen a woman deliveryperson.  It can’t just be brute strength;  some of the blokes look like they have trouble lifting a medium-sized yarn shipment.

§§ It’s been a long day.

§§§  ‘Here’ may include my long wiry tower-bell-ringing-toned spider-monkey arms clamping her to my chest.

Note that I’d be happy to post fabulous holiday photo guest blogs every Sunday night for the rest of my life –Ed*

* Note also that this NOTE would be at the bottom, only for some reason the admin window won’t let me in, and I’m terrified of erasing a photo by accident.

Day three of the photography holiday – and the rain was pouring down! Exploration of the Jewish/Ghetto quarter was postponed in favour of a morning’s look at a selection of each other’s photos, and critique from Philip, our instructor and group leader. Not to be deterred, however, I stood outside the hotel, under an awning, for 20 minutes after breakfast, to see what I could capture of the Venice waterfront in the rain.

Wouldn’t you be SO upset if this was your only day in Venice!

When not selling umbrellas to tourists on rainy days, these very same guys are touring the restaurants in the evenings selling roses!

They bought his guide books, eventually!

I imagine people probably have wellies designed for every occasion.

The boat is a Vaporetto.

Battling the wind.

Photo critique over, we all went our separate ways as some of the group weren’t keen on going out in the rain. I’m actually really pleased we had a day in the rain – after all, flooding in St Mark’s Square is another iconic image of Venice, and the city remains photogenic, if a little more challenging!

Confined to the raised boardwalks, colourful processions of tourists in St Mark’s Square.

Those umbrellas are a nightmare at close quarters.

Mind you, some of them don’t last for long in the wind!

Why have tables set out in the rain, we wondered? Well, it’s how the restaurant advertises that it is actually open for business, despite the weather.

Wonderful architecture; the repeating arches and columns echoed by the repeating rows of tables and chairs.

This little girl stood out from the crowds.

Colour against a monochrome background.

Wellies required!

They don’t really go with the posh bags in the shop window display!

I wouldn’t fancy a gondola ride in this weather. Not many gondoliers did either, judging by the numbers of watertight boats moored by the Square.

Rough water.

But even in the rain, Venice and the Grand Canal are beautiful.

SEVENTY EIGHT

He shook his head.  “It’s dead easy,” he said.  “We can figure out the details later.  Tonight all you need to know is this lever,” creak-creak, “this way if you want the fire to burn up more, this way if you want it to die back a little.  You put the wood in here,” clunk, “and you keep an eye on it.  You don’t want it burning hard—that just wastes wood”—the lever made a faint scraping noise as he moved it—“you probably want it about there, but we’ll check in a few minutes.”

He looked past me into the vast cavern of the parlour.  “I suppose you do have central heating . . .”

“I can’t afford it,” I said, and hesitated, looking at my dog and reminding myself how it was I was renting a house about twelve times bigger than I needed.  If I was going to stick a pin in a map, why couldn’t I have been on the Florida page?  Although there were alligators in Florida.  I would end up in a town with alligators.   “And I don’t need an attic and six offices anyway.  Hayley said they’d lean on the landlord to put in a wood stove.  Another wood stove.”  If wood was cheap I really did have to learn how to use the thing.  Things.

“Your Guardian should keep the downstairs warm—you may need a fan, and you want to start keeping a big kettle of water on top—it depends on how good the insulation is and how bad the drafts are.  And how you feel about being cold.”

I wrapped my arms around myself and tried not to shiver.

“Okay,” said Mike.  “Then you’ll want the second stove.  Maybe upstairs, if the floor’ll stand it.”

“And an electric blanket,” I said, concentrating on not shivering, although I was beginning to feel a little heat radiating off Caedmon.  I needed to carry some book boxes and get my blood circulating again.

“An electric blanket?” said Mike.  “Why?  You have a perfectly good dog.”

Sid, as if on cue, walked delicately past us and lay down in front of Caedmon.

She looked up at Mike as he looked down at her.  “Although she may need you to keep her warm at the moment.” He bent down to pat her.  “She’s got more ribs than a Fourth of July barbeque.”  She flopped over on her side and raised a leg to encourage him to rub her ski-slope tummy.  “If Bridget—and Jim—hadn’t told me you’d caught the Phantom I wouldn’t believe it,” he said, rubbing.  “This is not your average one-day-reclaimed wary, nervous stray dog.”  Sid’s eyes were half-closed and her relaxed top lip had fallen away from her teeth, giving her a kind of mad half-smile.  “They’ve been trying to get anywhere near her for months.  Dad and me too, of course, and half the town,” he added.  “This isn’t a successful stray-dog area:  stray dogs don’t survive the winter.  But your Phantom did.  We figured she—now we know she’s a she—must have found shelter somewhere.  But wherever it was didn’t include food.”

He stood up and Sid’s eyes instantly snapped open and she turned her head up to stare at him.  “Sorry, honey,” he said.  “I have boxes to carry, and it’s going to start getting dark soon.”

“And never mind tripping over the steps,” I said, “or getting the van back in time for JoJo, we have a neighbour to frighten the socks off.  The hand-knitted silk socks with the tasteful lace edging.”

“You’re catching on,” said Mike.

I followed him back to the van and did another sweep for squishy lightweight plastic bags.  There were also a couple of five-pound sacks of dog kibble I thought I could just about manage.  Thanks to Mike we were almost done.  I bore another of those disorienting and rather sick-making waves of excitement and dread:  major life change, ahoy.  Last week I’d still been in Manhattan, where I’d lived thirty-nine years.  Last year I’d still had a husband. . . .  I gritted my teeth and clutched my underwear and my dog food.  What was that against the front wall of the van?  It didn’t look like boxes.  I’d been pretty out of my mind, that last night, packing to leave, but I had still been relatively sane when I started loading.  It got worse later.  I squinted, but it was too dark in the windowless van to see anything.  Whatever was back there, it would be out soon enough, and then I’d take the van back for JoJo and pick up Merry and . . .

I looked up at Rose Manor.  From the bottom of the driveway it looked as tall as the Chrysler Building.  The sun was going down behind it at an angle so while the shadow wasn’t falling on me, the front of the house was still in darkness almost as profound as the back of the van.  Anything could be hiding in the shadows on the porch.  Cosmic horror was only the beginning.

Stop it, Macfarquhar.  You live here now.  Yes, I replied silently, I know.

A fortnight or so ago a New Friend sidled up to me at St Margaret’s and said that she’d bought a ticket for a charity concert—so she wouldn’t chicken out of going at the last minute, I know that one, on the day you’re too comfortable on the sofa with hellhounds or similar—but she wondered if she could bamboozle me into buying a ticket and coming too?  It was a worthy cause and we could hang out.  We’ve made half-hearted attempts to hang out previously but they’ve never come off because we never nail one down by saying THIS place and THIS time and putting it in the diary, you know?  Modern life.  Who has time for spontaneity?*

So despite a qualm or two about the concert itself I said yes.  You can put up with a lot in congenial company.  And she and I were finally getting somewhere, you know?

And then last week at St Margaret’s when I told her I’d got one of the few remaining tickets** she looked all doleful and woebegone and said she hadn’t rung me because it hadn’t been confirmed yet but for Inarguable Personal Reasons it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to go after all. . . .

Oh.  Feh.  So I’m now stuck with a ticket to a concert I was only looking forward to because I was going to see her.

But I had the frelling reservation and, at this point, a close personal relationship with the venue’s box office, who had hired a uniformed guard with two Alsatians and a Darth Vader clone to protect my investment till I arrived IN PERSON and offered my palm print as proof I was the correct individual to cede the ticket to, so I’d better go.  I went.

Fortunately I took my knitting.

IT WAS UNBELIEVABLY DIRE.  UNBELIEVABLY.  DIRE.  The concert.  It was.  AAAAAAAAUGH.  Words fail.  Words need to fail or I will be banned from WordPress for the rest of my life.***  The one minor stroke of good fortune was that I’d arrived early enough it was worth getting my knitting out immediately so it was already on my lap when these jokers got up on stage and started prancing about doing whatever the frell they thought they were doing ARRRRRRRRRRRGH.  After the first . . . incident . . . I firmly picked my knitting up again and got QUITE A FEW ROWS done by the time it was over.  I swear I would have run away screaming† if I hadn’t had my knitting. . . .

Which leads me to the next thing.  I’ve been torturing myself, and some harmless hanks of yarn, trying to make another gift.  Me and my frelling Secret Projects.  GIVE IT UP, MCKINLEY.  I’ve already frogged this one once.  This second time it looks a lot better than it did the first time but it’s still what you might call . . . clearly hand made.  Does anyone out there have any useful guidelines for when you cut your losses and frog again and when you soldier on on the grounds that your friend will appreciate the effort you’ve gone to even if SHE BURIES THE FINAL OBJECT IN THE BACK GARDEN IN CASE IT’S CONTAGIOUS?

Siiiiiiiigh. . . .

I also got distracted on Etsy the Evil†† from my (relatively) honest quest for a needle roll††† into yarn bowls.  And I made the perilous decision to ask Twitter if any of the twitterverse’s knitters use yarn bowls.  Am I just being flimflammed by a pretty face?  Hand-thrown pottery bowls are very pretty.  Or do they help with what I have dubbed the invisible-kitten problem with your wodge of working yarn?  In the rush of helpful answers—including plastic bags, yarn cozies [sic], and teapots—I suddenly had a FABULOUS IDEA.

Was this totally sitting on a shelf waiting to be a yarn bowl through the long years of no longer being required for blanc-mange or what?  Stay tuned.

It’s exactly the long thin oval of a certain style of skein. Those Victorian/Edwardian china mould-makers were PRESCIENT.

* * *

* Hey, I finished the day’s stint early/it’s raining and I don’t feel like gardening/if I hear my neighbour’s extra-loud telephone bell go one more time^ I shall run mad with an axe, want to grab a cup of tea somewhere?  No, sorry, I can’t, I’m working a double shift today/it’s raining so I’m sorting out the garage^^/I have to sort out the garage because I need to hide a body fast.^^^

^ They need fewer friends

^^ No friend of mine would ever use that excuse

^^^ Ah.  Okay.  Need help?+

+ I found a drowned mouse in a bucket today.  Ewwwwwwww.  I have no truck with the ‘mice are cute’ brigade and am perfectly happy to trap the suckers, using the fastest, lethalest traps available, but drowning in a bucket is a slow, crummy way to die and made me sad.

** And my email, possessed by demons as it is, failed to accept the confirmatory email from the venue so I’m all AM I GOING OR NOT.  WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO HERE, CONSULT AN ASTROLOGER?

*** Banned—?  From WordPress?  Um . . . actually . . .

† Most of the people who preach at St Margaret’s I like and find not merely worth listening to but interesting.  But there is one . . . I have been trying to decide if it is worth establishing a habit of knitting during the sermons so that the next time this joker stands up I won’t have to gnaw my knuckles till they bleed so as not to run away screaming.^

^ I realise that a Supreme Being needs a sense of humour, but I feel perhaps we might review some of said humour’s minor manifestations?  People who have been at this Christian thing a long time keep telling me that God likes engaging with his mortal children on their level.  Okay.  So let’s discuss the practical jokes.

†† You know I have been complaining about the mess and confusion of Etsy’s so-called search function and have finally realised . . . it’s all a careful plan to entice you in deeper and deeper.

††† The design I like best is only in a bunch of dumb fabrics.  ARRRRRGH.  Also I object to spending more than £11,872.33 (most of this is the overseas shipping cost from America) for a needle roll.  So this is still an open question.