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It’s been an unexpectedly brilliant day.  Not the weather:  we all got back from our hurtle this morning half sodden and half fried as the fat black clouds alternate with the July sun, and in less than a perfectly balanced and open-to-what-the-universe-sends mood.  Or that was me anyway.  The hellhounds are more tolerant.*  I was sure I could see the steam rising off my All Stars. 

            We then rushed down to the mews so I could plunge into the piano for as long as possible before my lesson.  Silly Canon #1 is nearing completion—completion being something that doesn’t happen all that often with my music (yet).  But I’m still so clueless about what I’m doing that everything I write is this gigantico leap forward (well I hope it’s forward) and I’m nervously hopeful that when I go back to some of my earlier unfinished things I’ll be able to finish them better.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it:  but when I mentioned it to Oisin as the reason why I was bringing him yet another new piece this week** he acquiesced without any sign of sniggering, so maybe it’s a good fudge rather than just a, er, sticky one.

            But the Thrilling News about my composing is that while in hindsight it’s been creeping up on me for a little while, just this week and quite abruptly I discovered that I’m developing a sense of relative pitch.  I know, I know, you’re all sitting there going, huh?  Maybe I’ll watch some paint dry tonight instead of reading Days in the Life, I feel like something with a little more excitement.  Well, excitement is also relative.  I’m not sure what the median level of musical education is among blog readers:  relative pitch means that if you hear two notes you can say, oh, that’s a fifth, or oh, that’s an octave.  This is hugely useful.  It means when you’re out hurtling and getting sodden and fried and humming to yourself, if you find a hum that you like, you can come home and write it down first and try to find it on the piano second.  The problem with trying to find something when you don’t know what it is is that the sound the piano makes makes it harder to hear what you have in your head:  and singing it is still limited to your vocal range–and your ability to hit the right notes.  Trust me.  This is an Enormous Thing.  I told Oisin that I was telling him because he was approximately the only other person in the world who might conceivably find the news Thrilling, since any good teacher knows to be Thrilled for his/her students***, and he of course got it at once.  He says that conducting the choir as he’s been doing for the last year has done stuff for his ear that he didn’t know his ear had it in it to have done.  That’s very much how I feel about my sense of relative pitch:  What?  You can’t be serious.†

            So I came away†† again all happy and glowy††† and got back to the mews and turned frelling PEGASUS on, which has been a cow in a ravine‡ for about a week now, but I got her out today.‡‡

            And then it was time to hurtle hellhounds again, and go to ringing practise.  I was braced to ring like . . . Psycho Dog pees up trees:  it’s been a long day.  We looked like being short handed again, but then as we were ringing Bastow Little Court‡‡‡ for Cordelia, people started creeping in . . . and the people creeping in were good ringers. Niall, who was in charge tonight, said to me, want to ring some Grandsire triples?  And I said yes please—but let me look at the line first.  So I looked at the line and gibbered only slightly, and then Niall snatched the book out of my hands and gave me a rope instead.  We didn’t have enough ringers to let me have a minder so I was out there in the cold§ all by myself.  What is this, maybe the fourth time I’ve rung it?  It was not a beautiful thing, but I did it—I did it well enough to feel that I’m learning it—and the point is learning stuff really does get easier with time on a rope.  Bells and ropes and the idea of method ringing gets more familiar, till the next thing seems possible just because you’ve done quite a few previous things.  I’ve been complaining, chiefly to Niall and Colin§§, about the fact that I’m not getting anywhere lately, because none of the towers I ring at regularly has the band to let me learn anything new.  But just ringing methods enables you to ring more methods:  it took me months of week after week after week to learn plain courses of bob doubles, bob minor and Grandsire doubles:  and I’m fumblingly but more or less accurately ringing plain courses of Grandsire triples after three or four widely-spaced one-off opportunities. 

            At this point I assumed I was retiring from the field and was ready to relax in the warm§§§ fug of accomplishment when Niall took another pass by me and said, do you want to ring Stedman triples or Kent Minor?  Choose now.  I said, wha’?  Niall said:  Stedman triples or Kent minor.  You have to ring one or the other.  Choose.  Uh, blah, erg, flap, I said.  Stedman triples.  Okay, said Niall, you can look at the line while we ring call changes with Cordelia.

            I looked at the line.  The line blurred into tiny imp-like snickering faces.  I’m trying to remember when’s the last time I had the chance to try Stedman triples.  I think I’ve had a stab at it three times, and succeeded once.

            Okay, you’re on, said Niall, swooping past again—he knows me too well to linger, I might try to argue.¤

            Now, granted, at this point, we had a very good band.  Even so.  And it went really well—I was even (mostly) seeing the bells I should be ringing over rather than just hanging on frantically to my memory [sic] of the line on the page of the method book.  And as I say, they were a very good band, which means as you look around you will see the bell you should be following, because that bell will be in dead the right place.

            But we got to the end of the plain course and Felix, who was conducting, did not call ‘stand’.  Indeed he was having a muttered conversation with Niall, who was on the neighbouring bell.  We kept on ringing rounds as Felix and Niall had their chat, and I was standing there and thinking, let me go!  Let me go!  I want to sit down!  And then Felix said loudly to me, Don’t worry, you’ll be unaffected, you just ring your line.  –He was going to call a TOUCH.  He was going to MIX UP THE OTHER BELLS.  This is only the second time I’ve ever successfully rung Stedman triples and . . . they’re making me ring a TOUCH.¤¤  

            And we did it.  I rang a(n unaffected) touch of Stedman Triples tonight.   Thrilling.  

* * *

 * After we had our one-sided non-conversation with Psycho Dog this morning I shoved the hellhounds in the car and as I closed the door, hastily, in case one of mine decided to have another go at convincing her that they’re her friends^, I saw her walk deliberately over to a tree and raise her leg and pee.   The pee, of course, came straight down from her non-penile-appendaged urethra and landed on the ground by the back leg that was not raised.  None of it got anywhere near the tree.  Psycho Dog.  My Holly used to pee up trees—but she did a forepaw-stand on her front legs and raised her butt in the air to do it.  When Holly peed on a tree, the tree got peed on. 

^ Chaos, who cannot learn that the world is not necessarily his friend, walks past a particular Border collie moaning heart-brokenly . . . not because I was slow off the mark the first time we went past her gate and she got her head through the wire and bit him, but because since then I haven’t let him anywhere near her.  He’s finally stopped struggling, and he now trots past her on a loose lead . . . wailing. 

** Entitled Something Bright and Flashy.  I’m back to the organ.  

*** You musicians out there will understand what I’m talking about, but don’t worry, I let you off being Thrilled.  

† Yes, I’m still rather ridiculously invested in believing that I’m Not Musical.  But I think it’s fair to be interested in where things intersect, for example as I’ve told you, I guess that part of the why/how of my composing is just that I’m used to making stuff up, and it’s not an unbridgeable chasm between words and music.  But the human animal has ‘music’ like it has ‘story’ as part of the specs for the basic model, and I wonder if something like relative pitch is within reach (or hearing) of pretty much anyone who simply keeps stubbornly exercising the music muscle. 

†† He had fresh cannon fodder . . . I mean potential new students coming in after me:  a mum and three kids.  They all looked really anxious.  I wanted to say, no, no, music is FUN!  Ask him to get you started composing! 

††† And maybe I’ll even finish something this week.  

‡ See CHALICE, p 19.  Bellowing optional. 

‡‡  See CHALICE, p 25.  It’s a very muddy process, getting a cow out of a ravine. 

‡‡‡ You’re dying to know, right?  It’s not a really real method:  it exists to give a beginner on the treble practise ringing places:  the treble does nothing but lead twice, ring in second place twice, and lead twice again.  But us in the back are playing merry havoc, so the treble is over different bells when she’s in second place, which therefore also provides some practise in looking round for the bell you should be following—which is ropesight. 

§ It was sultry in the extreme in the tower tonight, especially when you’re sweating with terror. 

§§ Colin was there tonight, and his wife came up to me and said, so, let’s see the famous bookmark. 

§§§ Not to say sweaty 

¤ Isn’t another frelling handbell wedding enough? 

¤¤ Granted unaffected is a lot easier—you don’t have to worry about what Strange Different Thing you’re doing, or where you’ll be when you come out the other end, of an affected call.  Even so.

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The weather (with reference to immediately previous Note)  is only one manifestation of a rather lumpy day.   There’s been a lot of imp activity*:  towels keep falling off towel rails, items that were right there in front of me mysteriously disappear, pairs of All Stars I know I’ve just put away keep reappearing in the middle of the floor, anything I want out of my knapsack is always on the bottom, and I’ve managed to leave a dark brown tea ring on my ancient porous plastic sink, which will be a big ugly freller to get off.

            And furthermore there is no pupdate today.  Whiiiiiiiiiine.  B twin has been so disobliging as to go to a sheep show.**   She has however promised us a proper full length final*** climactic pupdate as the small furry hooligans—er—I mean sweet adorable puppies pass the eight-week mark and are ready to go out adventuring into the world and begin to contemplate on the distant horizon the prospect of becoming . . . dogs.†

            I’ve been running hard against the clock all day because I had both the dentist this afternoon and handbells this evening.  The clock has been winning, of course.††  I had a bunch of stuff to get into the post today, which is to say last week, so I was cramming it into envelopes this morning—with one eye on the sky since we’ve had black clouds playing leap-frog all day and I have two hours of hurtle to get in—and of course the self-stick glue doesn’t work†††.  Arrgh.  Postage is now also so painfully ridiculous that it’s worth a little faffing around with your postage meter and a pair of scissors:  I got my resubscription to the (American) Homeopathy Today magazine under the 10 g limit by cutting off the ads and imprecations to raise your level of membership.  In spite of the obviously heavy swathe of tape to hold the nonworking-glue flap down.  Small cheer.‡

            There’s a strange dog staying at my semi-detached neighbour’s.  He’s got a much bigger garden than I do ‡‡ but it opens on the road, and his gates are always open.  This is not a dog that riots up and down our cul de sac, which is a good thing, since the road at the bottom is disastrously busy.  But it is a dog that comes out through the gates and stands in the road whining piteously when she sees hellhounds emerge from our front door . . . but by the time we get to the top of the hill and Wolfgang, she’s retreated back to the lawn beyond the driveway and gives us a silent who, me? stare.  This winds the hellhounds up.  Granted most things wind the hellhounds up, but I have some sympathy in this instance.  I hadn’t thought about Psycho Dog when we piled out the door today, the plan being that we would walk to the PO and post our taped-shut, carefully weighed letters before we hit the high trails.  Psycho Dog came out and did her turn, so I suddenly had ramping leviathans‡‡‡ at the ends of the leads . . . I can’t yell No! with letters in my mouth, and I can’t hold onto rampant anything with letters in my hands. . . .

            The dentist . . . well, the dentist was the dentist.  Was the dentist.  And will continue to be the dentist for some time.  I get to go back in a few more weeks.  Joy.  But if this entry is a little less incisive than usual, put it down the effect of my usual extra-quadruple dose of aenesthetic:  and it was one of those little insignificant, positively negligible cavities that in fact turned into one of those ‘just a little more . . . just a little more’ details with the drill.  But then, I would hardly know I’d been to the dentist if I didn’t come out on my hands and knees. §

            But that is not the end of the day’s trials.  Handbells.  There were handbells.  And at the end of the evening, Niall said, Remember that wedding we rang handbells for last month?  You had a good time, didn’t you?

            What do you mean, I had a good—No!  No!  No!

            Yes.  We have another handbell wedding in September. §§ 

* * *

 * Imps get underfoot, like hellhounds.  Sometimes you can only tell the imps from the hellhounds because the imps giggle:  their effect on towels and All Stars is similar.  Hellhounds produce an astonishing range of noises, but giggling, thus far, is not one of them.  I think I’ve told you before that—fortunately—common-or-garden variety barking is not much indulged in either, and I try to suppress this when it appears:  Darkness is a bit of a barker.  I do permit one or two sharp Commands for Attention:  he likes to lie in the middle of the floor and then adjure me to rub his tummy.  This of course quickly turns into a free for all, since Chaos has no intention of being left out. ^

            I get so used to the mostly-minor racket they make that I forget the effect it may have on other people.  I’m as pathological as possible about preventing them from flinging themselves on passers-by unless the passers-by have positively asked for such tribulation, but we do tend to swoop down on people and I don’t reel in till the last moment.  Tearing over the countryside not long ago they were doing their harmonic double growl over ownership of a plastic bottle as we barrelled down on a pair of Serious Walkers, booted, gaited, and walking-sticked, and shortly before I would start cranking my guys in, the bloke whirled around, stared at us, and said, I thought that was a motorbike. 

^ Yes, I keep demonstrating that I am a Bad Dog Owner:  when Darkness orders me to rub his tummy, I usually do.  But hellhounds are not big advantage-takers:  they can’t be bothered.  A little roast chicken+, a little rioting, it’s all good.  But ruling the universe is not their idea of fun.++ 

+ The drawback to eating roast chicken in this household is that hellhounds come and stare at you.  You’re eating our food! they say.  I find this pretty funny in creatures who regularly take the attitude that eating is optional and they’re not in the mood.   Darkness does at least more or less eat it as it comes, when he eats.  Chaos tends to eat the chicken out and then, left with a bowl of slightly-soggy-with-chicken-stock kibble, hunch up and look ill-used.

            Some cat-oriented forum person asked why, if hellhounds will actually eat chicken, I don’t just feed them chicken?  The first answer—which someone gave before I got there—is nutritional.  Dogs aren’t pure carnivores like cats.  The second answer is cost.  We spend a frelling fortune on chicken as it is.  And plain brown rice was a lot cheaper than fancy niche-market no-cereal kibble is.  Sigh. 

++ Much.  I am presently trying to eat my supper~, write this entry . . . and fend off hellhounds who, having failed to eat as much of their supper as they should after having failed to eat most of their lunch, have decided that it is the perfect moment for sticky-falling-apart toy throwing and general mayhem.  Yes, I could tell them to Go Lie Down, but they’d look so sad. 

~ which happens to be roast chicken 

** www.sheepshow.com  A big sheep show.  Yeep. 

*** Well maybe not absolutely final final

† And may they all be good eaters. 

†† I have a basket of decreasingly wet laundry that’s been waiting to get hung up for two days.  Fortunately I mostly wear cotton jersey and denim.  Besides, wrinkles are nearly de rigueur with All Stars. 

††† More imp work. 

‡ Another item for the post today was the bill for the Hot Water Heater Man which was what, ten days ago?   It arrived yesterday.  And down at the bottom it says, payment by return of post please.  By return of post?  What?  What happened to thirty days? 

‡‡ If you’ve got a garden, it’s bigger than mine at the cottage.  People restricted to balconies and windowsills are allowed to say their gardens are smaller than mine.  And it had better be a small balcony. 

‡‡‡ More the crocodile end than the dolphin end of Leviathan. 

§ I can write a cheque sitting on the floor.  It’s not a big deal.  Although interaction at the dentist’s front desk has got more challenging because both the regular receptionists have taken an interest in how PEGASUS is coming along.  Maybe they’re just worrying about their salaries for next year. 

§§ This is really high ranking, ambitious imp behaviour.

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Most of England is having gods-and-devils weather:  it’s worse north of here but we’re still getting the lashing winds and the core-dumps of rain . . . and the thunder and lighting.  My internet connection is flickering like a candle in a draught.  Just to warn you that if I don’t manage to post tonight, that’ll be why.

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I spent yesterday evening dispatching more autumn plant orders.*  Here I thought that doing them early for once—every [xxxmumblemph] years I do get my plant orders in early and then for the [xxxmumblemph] following years as I scramble to get them in somewhat after the last minute** I think, getting them out early is so much better, you’re not in a hurry, you can think about things and make good choices, I really must make an effort to be early every year. . . . but here in the middle of an early year, I dunno.  I think time to be thoughtful just makes my lists longer.***   And I think I thought this the last time I shot my orders off early too.  And furthermore the catalogues just keep coming.†

            Meanwhile, it’s July.  I raise my eyes from photos of tulips and hyacinths to the reality of roses and clematis and pansies and pinks and geraniums and dahlias and daylilies and . . . and I haven’t given you any garden photos in weeks.  I was glowering in a frustrated way at the little strip of garden beside the cottage garage this afternoon.  This is the first year I’ve actually got it, you know, finished:   First year after Atlas had replaced the falling-down plastic wood [sic] retaining wall with a tidy, handsome little low brick wall, the bed just sat there.††  Second year I got the perennials in:  roses†††, delphiniums, clematis (clematises?), geraniums, pansies, a hellebore, a few heucheras.  This year I’ve finally got the annuals in as well . . . so, okay, it’s taken till mid-July to finish the job, but they’re in:  nicotianas and fuschias‡ in the shade, which is what most of it is, and a few cosmos at the one narrow end that gets some sunlight.‡‡  And I actually gave some thought to serial flowering . . . and I’ve been unexpectedly successful about this:  Ayrshire Splendens comes in flower first, followed by Alain Blanchard, and Grouse‡‡‡ is just coming out now, supported and diversified by everything else.  Which means that as you walk past your eye is drawn to whatever is out . . . but if you photograph it you get a big muddle of green with a few spots of colour.  Sigh.  In one of my alternate lives I was going to be a professional garden photographer:  there’s ways around some of this kind of thing if you have time to fuss and primp and wait poised to spring on early morning or late afternoon light.  As it is . . .

            As it is I’m going to scratch together photos of Ayrshire and Alain and Grouse . . . and a few more . . . and possibly some messy greenery too.  But tonight I must leave you with: 

This is the first peach off my tree.§  There are two more. 

* * * 

* Hey.  I’m slow.  All that drooling and list-making and crossing-out and sobbing takes time.  

 ** It’s November!  I should have planted my spring bulbs last month and I haven’t ordered them yet! 

*** Which in the case of roses is manifestly life-threatening.  Not to mention bank-breaking, although just now banks break easier than they used to. 

†  With the web site address in loud purple^ letters at the bottom of every page.  Which is the runic portal to the ever-interesting experience of other people’s web sites.  I had a particularly redolent one last night.  This is a nursery I’ve used for years and they grow good plants for (almost) reasonable prices and I’m not going to humiliate them by naming them here.  But they are having a somewhat difficult transition to the virtual world.  When I got to the end of the check-out I discovered that of the fifteen^^ or so items in my reckoning, one inoffensive little packet of crocuses had been hived off from the rest and a £15 carrier charge slapped on it.  Uh, what?  I cancelled and tried again.  Back at the beginning of the check-out process all my crocuses were together, and the complete tally all came under the basic £4.95 postage charge.  Okay.  We walk through the system again.  DON’T YOU TRY AND FOOL ME THAT WAY.  THAT £2.50 PACKET OF CROCUSES IS GOING TO COST YOU FIFTEEN POUNDS FOR SOME JOKER IN A UNIFORM^^^ TO DELIVER ON A SILVER SALVER.  PARSLEY OPTIONAL.  Because this is a nursery I know and have used twice yearly for a decade I blinked, shrugged, and let it go through.  And sent them an email.  And got a very embarrassed phone call this morning. . . . 

^ Okay, not always purple.  But loud.   You know those key rings and similar that beep when you clap your hands, so you can find them?  If you shout I FEEL LIKE SPENDING MONEY ON PLANTS all the catalogues start beeping at you frantically. 

^^ Okay, okay, sic.  But most of them are little things like grape hyacinths (muscari) and mini daffs.  No, really. 

^^^ With epaulettes.  Epaulettes cost more. 

†† And drove my posh national-plant-collections neighbour crazy.  I’ve told you that story.  Heh heh heh.  His donated snowdrops are spreading nicely. 

††† Surprise! 

‡ I may try and winter these over.  Now that I’m broken in to the concept of the indoor jungle. 

‡‡ And after a little judicious seeding I have hopes of a foxglove jungle by next year.  Foxgloves are annoyingly biennial however so I may have to do this twice.  

‡‡‡ You will have guessed I’m talking about the roses, yes?

§  . . . which has just taken ten minutes to load.  What a good thing I decided not to give you more photos tonight.