Thirty nine days and thirty nine nights and counting
GODS, DEMIGODS, AND SMALL THINGS THAT LIVE UNDER TOADSTOOLS, I AM SO SICK OF THIS FRICKING WEATHER. Last night walking, or rather sloshing, home from tower practice-which takes all of about a minute and a half-I was thinking, if I had any food in the house I’d ring Peter and say I wasn’t coming. Levering somnolent hellhounds out of their warm cozy crate and out into the fury of the elements wasn’t a lot of fun either. Or having battled our way down to the mews, coming back again.* Today what breaks in the weather there were going to be were in the morning, so as early (not very early)** as I could manage I dragged hellhounds out for their major walk of the day, which we did more or less accomplish, with a little suspension of disbelief when I would say loudly, this isn’t really wet rain** and furthermore there’s a clear patch coming this way. There was no suspension possible, of disbelief or anything else, from the conditions underfoot, about which it is probably not wise to speak in polite company, or a blog which my husband/agent/editor reads.
By the time I was bolting to the church to ring a wedding early this afternoon it was teeming down again. When you ring a wedding you usually ring till everybody leaves, and ringers get cranky about slow photographers who want to hang around at the church doors all day. Today the doors remained closed, and they were bringing canapés into the church and everyone was settling down.***. Eventually we just stopped ringing and went away.†
British weather. Yes. Notorious on six continents. I guess we’re getting a head start on April:
April brings the sweet spring showers,
On and on for hours and hours.
Radio 3 is doing a Spring Thing, the ad for which quotes Flanders and Swann on April, and it has stuck in my mind for some reason. Although it’s also still March, we know. The hellhounds approach lift-off at full sprint anyway, but with a gale behind them it’s only frantic waving of cashews that persuades them to abjure flight and gambol back toward me again.
Welcome March with wintry wind
Would thou wert not so unkind!
I assume there are other passionate Flanders and Swann aficionados out there?
http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/index.html
What with them, Beyond the Fringe and Monty Python, for a long time I believed that the only comedy worth having was British.††† On At the Drop of a Hat at the end of the above Song of the Weather Flanders says:
Oh dear, what a weather this is. Still, it was very nice yesterday, wasn't it? Spring, I enjoyed that. Missed it last year, I was in the bathroom.
Yes. I missed it by having to go into town on Thursday. And now I’m sitting here eating broccoli ‡, towelling my hair, and listening to the end of Ernani live from the Met. Tell the nasty old beggar where to stick his honour! And since when was Silva her uncle? In which case what’s with him wanting to marry his niece? Big drooly yuck. Just arrest him, which would solve the whole problem. My opera books only ever call him her guardian, and there’s a long, let’s not call it honourable, tradition of opera guardians wanting to marry their wards, because it makes such a tasty plot device without having to get pervy about it.‡‡
Right. This is me, going to bed early. Clocks change tonight, ow, ow, ow, ow. Sunday service ring is really early tomorrow.
* Yes of course we were in the car. If the car were still dead I really wouldn’t have left the cottage, and dinner be damned. But the wind was still trying to rip the windscreen wipers off.
** I had a lecture from Peter today at the appalling hours I am getting to bed. Tra la la la la. The answer is to post earlier so he has no way of checking.
*** A famous British phrase. First time Peter used it on me, as icy water poured down my collar and into my eyes,^ I thought, I Have Married a Madman.
^ And those were in the happy fortunate days when I was still wearing contact lenses instead of spectacles.
† Pretty well unique in my experience, our little old church has a central heating system that works. If you go to a concert there in the winter-ie no circulation-encouraging changes of position like kneeling or standing for hymns-you want to keep your coat on, but you aren’t likely to miss the second half from a preoccupation with the painful condition of your frozen limbs.
†† Niall and I press ganged a couple of the others and dragged them kicking and screaming back to the cottage to ring handbells. Well, it’s not gardening weather, and what else does anyone want to do on a Saturday afternoon? Watch television? They were allowed to escape eventually because I had to walk hellhounds again. Hellhounds are beginning to feel that I might try a little harder to find that door that opens on the blue sky and balmy breezes etc.
††† Okay, Stan Freeburg. And later I discovered Firesign Theatre.
‡ This is way too lowbrow to count as a recipe. But there’s also a coping aspect to food and cooking for anyone with any kind of dietary restriction of whatever variety. I’ve always liked vegetables and eat a lot of them, which is some comforting continuity in the new All Calories Are Evil tyranny of menopause. But I used to drown large platters of vegetables in butter or gravy which is no longer such a good idea. Mostly now I use soup. I’m not too proud to use shop soup if the ingredients are, you know, real, and preferably organic: but try to find shop soup that doesn’t have either milk or tomatoes in it. There are a couple of instant cup-a-soups that are organic and actually taste of something which I use, but I tend to feel as if I’m being punished for bad behaviour faced with a large tureen of broccoli with some broth poured over it. A little while ago I hit on making a roux first, and thickening the soup with that. True, that’s butter and flour and evil calories but I find that it’s a good investment in morale and good behaviour. After a little roux in my soup I’m a whole lot less likely to go whacko later on and start chewing on furniture legs and hellhounds^, culminating in making an entire Green & Black’s bar disappear.
^ Not a good idea. They’re delighted, and chew back. I was trying to get a photo of Chaos this afternoon, gnawing on my arm and growling. Maybe he needs some roux in his soup. Didn’t get the photo either.
‡‡ Of course Sondheim makes Judge Turpin pervy too, but Sondheim is sending up as many traditions as he can lay hands/notes on. Yaay Sondheim.