There were no howls from the hellhound crate last night.  I woke out of a few dreams that there were, but . . .

However the car is still dead.  If I am going to choose between an ailing car and an ailing hellhound, I will take the ailing car, yes.  But I would prefer to decline responsibility for either one.  And the weather is still filthy.  ( Read more... )

. . . the car is dead.
           I am so not having a good day.

 
A few days ago, when I was going to be feeding the hellhounds dinner at the cottage because Peter was playing bridge, Peter said, Do you have enough stock?  Since Peter’s the one makes the stock, the stock flows in a mews-to-cottage direction.  And stock is crucial to dog dinner.  I said, I think so, but it may be getting a bit old.  He said, you’ ( Read more... )

 
It’s much later than it should be.  And it’s all Richard Wagner’s fault.  Tonight’s Live from the Met was Tristan and Isolde.  I find Wagner a little trance-inducing:  all those big voices going at one another hammer and tongs.*  And going and going and going, hammering and tonging.  And you know that, of course, what is the single thing everyone ( Read more... )

 
. . . which makes a change.  I got my hair cut today and was talking about dogs and dog walking with the nice man with the scissors, who has two of his own.  The nice man with the scissors told me about a recent confrontation he’d had with his little dog and some great galumphing thug and the ticking-off he’d given the thug’s owner.  He was ( Read more... )

 
I have recently twice made bread and taken notes so now all I have to do is get myself organised to write it all out in a way that someone else could read and, preferably, also make sense of.  But there’s so much about bread making that is in the eye and the hand, and all of you who don’t have the right kind of grandmother are in trouble.  I didn’ ( Read more... )

 
I’ve been thinking about how often Niall pops up in these posts.  True that I see him a lot:  assistant ringing master at my home tower, loyalest of the loyal Sunday morning service ringers-I should know, since I’m another, um, well, probably the other-handbell mentor/fiend and general all-purposes bell junkie, which is to say he turns up at my ( Read more... )

I had meant to do this for the six-month anniversary of the blog, but ajl r has pointed out that that happened last Friday.  Oops.  So this is the Slightly Belated Six Month Anniversary Post for Robin McKinley’s Blog.  It is also the flap copy for CHALICE, due out in September from Putnam.

. . . And now I am going back to PEGASUS, which is still in ( Read more... )

 
 In the first place . . . I can’t keep up with cutting, pasting and posting your book suggestions-I’m sorry to say.  This is partly +&^%$£”!!!! lj again, and all the deadly and repeated paaaaaauses which accompany all activities in the vicinity of lj.  I swear you can feel a pause happening even while you’re sitting staring blankly at the screen:  ( Read more... )

 
It’s been a long day and I’m going to be sliding relentlessly and ingloriously under the table here shortly:

Nevil Shute. I like his stuff enough to have chased down every one of his books. One of my favorites is "Trustee from the Toolroom" -- about a so-called ordinary man who has the most extraordinary adventures saving his niece's inheritance ( Read more... )