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Jun. 13th, 2003 02:01 pmOn the whole I’m pretty bloody cheerful today! Lots of different reasons for this so I’m going to be sickeningly chirpy for a bit. I know angst is more interesting but being cheerful makes a nice change.
First of all the sun is shining. This may not seem much to those lucky people who have a climate rather than weather but it’s a big thing to me. I have a line full of washing and more brewing away, so I don’t have to dry it inside. From the kitchen table (where I am now) I can see a sundrenched hillside through the window to my left (I can almost hear the sheep panting from here), another ditto through the window to my right and the kitchen door is open in front of me and I can see my Crookshanks clone upside down on the garden path baking his nether regions in the sun and displaying wanton amounts of pale apricot coloured curls. Cats are such exhibitionists – I rather envy them.
Another reason to be cheerful (breaks into Ian Drury parody) is that my back has stopped hurting – completely – isn’t it brilliant when it stops!
Reason 3 is that I now own an amphora. Again, not a general need or desire but I’ve always wanted one and can take it with me next week to Dolau Cothi. I will have an enormous carfull of stuff, what with fleece to spin, clay to pot, furniture to sit on plus all the costumes and so forth. We aren’t allowed to cook this year – the National Trust have decided to make versions of milk-fed snails and honey-fattened dormice themselves so we have got to find some other entertainingly Roman things to do. Apparently someone suggested an orgy but Val vetoed it as too hard to organise plus there might be children present plus we’re all getting on a bit and wouldn’t have the energy.
Reason 4 is that I have had an astonishing week on FA for reviews. Writer’s Block and chapter 2 of the Mattress went up at the same time and appeared on the new fics list. This doesn’t normally happen, I don’t think. Anyway my inbox has been crazy for the past few days and I really need to write some ‘thank you’s to the kind people who have taken the trouble to review. It was especially nice to hear from Chimaera520 who always writes me a nice one but doesn’t accept email so I can never write back.
Reason 5 is that I have a new power cable (at a price!) and can now get back to writing! Oooh, I missed it this week. I wrote a letter (yippee for snail mail) to Cas with a new bit to Mattress 3 in it. Luckily I kept a draft, which I now append. So here we have at least a part of the answer to the question “What on earth have the girls been up to while the boys have been trying to overthrow the system?”….
“They’re up to something,” Hermione said with a frown as she settled more comfortably onto the couch.
“Have you only just realised that?” Marie- Suzanne cooed with a gentle smile, her perfect teeth catching the light with their customary soft ‘ting’, then she turned back to Ginny, whose hair she was sculpting into an elaborate chignon.
Hermione bit her tongue. Anybody else would have had the rough side of it but to subject Marie-Suzanne, with her slender yet full-breasted figure, her delicate yet chiselled features, her limpid eyes, flowing tangle free locks and brilliantly incisive mind, to such pettiness would have been in the worst of taste. Hermione knew when she was outclassed.
“How long have you known?” she asked meekly.
“Well,” Marie-Suzanne paused to add a note or two to the concerto she was currently writing – for full orchestra, flugel horn and Albanian nose flute, “I wasn’t absolutely sure until yesterday. After all, as I am sure Harriet will agree, it is unwise to jump to hasty conclusions based upon incomplete evidence.”
Harriet Vane glanced over the top of her book, met one of Marie-Suzanne’s singularly sweet smiles and nodded, her knuckles only paling slightly.
“Oh do go on, Marie-Suzanne,” Ginny begged, gritting her teeth but unable to help her gushing tone.
“Well, yesterday I was working on that Seventh Year fic…” Marie-Suzanne began.
“You mean the one where Harry and Draco are both wild with love for you?” Ginny asked.
“The one where Draco attempts to win you over by booking a box at Covent Garden and Harry crashes the party?” Lavender Brown added from her position on the tiger skin in front of the fire.
“Where the diva falls off the stage into the orchestra pit?” Parvati said smiling across from the balcony where she was doing her tai chi.
“And gets her head stuck in the euphonium halfway through the second act of La Boheme..” Ginny added.
“And the conductor asks if there’s anyone in the audience who knows the part because the understudy has gone down with cystitis….” Hermione continued.
“No, that was last week. This week it’s Tosca,” Marie-Suzanne corrected them gently. “Well all through the first act of the opera when the boys should have been gazing in rapt adoration of my exquisite profile while I lost myself in the beauty of the music they – well, I am ashamed to say that they were so unprofessional as to play noughts and crosses all around the edges of the programme. Then,” she heaved a deep sigh at the frailty of men, Once I was on stage I dread to think what they were up to but during the pianissimo moments I’m sure I heard giggling. Then,” she heaved a deep sigh at the frailty of men, “at the climax of the opera…”
“You mean where you take a swan dive off the battlements!” Hermione’s smile was almost as sweet as Marie-Suzanne’s.
“Er…yes. I thought everything was going as planned. They had moved to the front of the box, had got out their opera glasses and were watching attentively. Then I jumped and…oh dear,” she blushed deliciously, the faintest peach bloom of pink staining her cheekbones, “somehow, somebody had doubled up on the crash mats and – and – I – I bounced! On the second time I cleared the top of the battlements I quite clearly heard Harry and Draco singing “hey ho and up she rises.” She paused for a moment to regain her composure and Hermione saw Harriet Vane’s book crumple n her hands as the lady sleuth closed her eyes to savour the mental image.
“Then,” Marie-Suzanne continued sadly, “they didn’t even come round to my dressing-room with flowers or wait for me to get my slap off or anything. I found them in the theatre bar nine sheets to the wind on crème de menthe frappes with Guinness chasers and, on the way back to my Mayfair apartment…sorry, flat…they insisted we stop for a kebab.”
“So not quite what you had expected then?” Hermione said sympathetically.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t the plotline the author intended,” Marie-Suzanne was far too well-bred to sound indignant, “and neither did I expect them to put me in a cab to go home while they swanned off to the Ministry of Sound to meet up with…you can probably guess who. I think Harry’s godfather is a bad influence and will come to a bad end,” Marie-Suzanne said portentously and was not surprised at the silence that met her words. When Marie-Suzanne spoke portentously, with her astonishing abilities at divination, dowsing and well-sinking, people tended to listen. However, since every woman in the room was thinking very hard about Harry’s godfather – even Harriet Vane bit her lip and was misty-eyed – she had no real cause for self-congratulation. Luckily she was oblivious to this.
“There,” she said patting Ginny’s shoulder. “Now I can just do someone else’s hair before I have to go for my harpsichord practice. Hermione?”
Oh, that’s enough of that - Marie-Suzanne makes my teeth ache.
First of all the sun is shining. This may not seem much to those lucky people who have a climate rather than weather but it’s a big thing to me. I have a line full of washing and more brewing away, so I don’t have to dry it inside. From the kitchen table (where I am now) I can see a sundrenched hillside through the window to my left (I can almost hear the sheep panting from here), another ditto through the window to my right and the kitchen door is open in front of me and I can see my Crookshanks clone upside down on the garden path baking his nether regions in the sun and displaying wanton amounts of pale apricot coloured curls. Cats are such exhibitionists – I rather envy them.
Another reason to be cheerful (breaks into Ian Drury parody) is that my back has stopped hurting – completely – isn’t it brilliant when it stops!
Reason 3 is that I now own an amphora. Again, not a general need or desire but I’ve always wanted one and can take it with me next week to Dolau Cothi. I will have an enormous carfull of stuff, what with fleece to spin, clay to pot, furniture to sit on plus all the costumes and so forth. We aren’t allowed to cook this year – the National Trust have decided to make versions of milk-fed snails and honey-fattened dormice themselves so we have got to find some other entertainingly Roman things to do. Apparently someone suggested an orgy but Val vetoed it as too hard to organise plus there might be children present plus we’re all getting on a bit and wouldn’t have the energy.
Reason 4 is that I have had an astonishing week on FA for reviews. Writer’s Block and chapter 2 of the Mattress went up at the same time and appeared on the new fics list. This doesn’t normally happen, I don’t think. Anyway my inbox has been crazy for the past few days and I really need to write some ‘thank you’s to the kind people who have taken the trouble to review. It was especially nice to hear from Chimaera520 who always writes me a nice one but doesn’t accept email so I can never write back.
Reason 5 is that I have a new power cable (at a price!) and can now get back to writing! Oooh, I missed it this week. I wrote a letter (yippee for snail mail) to Cas with a new bit to Mattress 3 in it. Luckily I kept a draft, which I now append. So here we have at least a part of the answer to the question “What on earth have the girls been up to while the boys have been trying to overthrow the system?”….
“They’re up to something,” Hermione said with a frown as she settled more comfortably onto the couch.
“Have you only just realised that?” Marie- Suzanne cooed with a gentle smile, her perfect teeth catching the light with their customary soft ‘ting’, then she turned back to Ginny, whose hair she was sculpting into an elaborate chignon.
Hermione bit her tongue. Anybody else would have had the rough side of it but to subject Marie-Suzanne, with her slender yet full-breasted figure, her delicate yet chiselled features, her limpid eyes, flowing tangle free locks and brilliantly incisive mind, to such pettiness would have been in the worst of taste. Hermione knew when she was outclassed.
“How long have you known?” she asked meekly.
“Well,” Marie-Suzanne paused to add a note or two to the concerto she was currently writing – for full orchestra, flugel horn and Albanian nose flute, “I wasn’t absolutely sure until yesterday. After all, as I am sure Harriet will agree, it is unwise to jump to hasty conclusions based upon incomplete evidence.”
Harriet Vane glanced over the top of her book, met one of Marie-Suzanne’s singularly sweet smiles and nodded, her knuckles only paling slightly.
“Oh do go on, Marie-Suzanne,” Ginny begged, gritting her teeth but unable to help her gushing tone.
“Well, yesterday I was working on that Seventh Year fic…” Marie-Suzanne began.
“You mean the one where Harry and Draco are both wild with love for you?” Ginny asked.
“The one where Draco attempts to win you over by booking a box at Covent Garden and Harry crashes the party?” Lavender Brown added from her position on the tiger skin in front of the fire.
“Where the diva falls off the stage into the orchestra pit?” Parvati said smiling across from the balcony where she was doing her tai chi.
“And gets her head stuck in the euphonium halfway through the second act of La Boheme..” Ginny added.
“And the conductor asks if there’s anyone in the audience who knows the part because the understudy has gone down with cystitis….” Hermione continued.
“No, that was last week. This week it’s Tosca,” Marie-Suzanne corrected them gently. “Well all through the first act of the opera when the boys should have been gazing in rapt adoration of my exquisite profile while I lost myself in the beauty of the music they – well, I am ashamed to say that they were so unprofessional as to play noughts and crosses all around the edges of the programme. Then,” she heaved a deep sigh at the frailty of men, Once I was on stage I dread to think what they were up to but during the pianissimo moments I’m sure I heard giggling. Then,” she heaved a deep sigh at the frailty of men, “at the climax of the opera…”
“You mean where you take a swan dive off the battlements!” Hermione’s smile was almost as sweet as Marie-Suzanne’s.
“Er…yes. I thought everything was going as planned. They had moved to the front of the box, had got out their opera glasses and were watching attentively. Then I jumped and…oh dear,” she blushed deliciously, the faintest peach bloom of pink staining her cheekbones, “somehow, somebody had doubled up on the crash mats and – and – I – I bounced! On the second time I cleared the top of the battlements I quite clearly heard Harry and Draco singing “hey ho and up she rises.” She paused for a moment to regain her composure and Hermione saw Harriet Vane’s book crumple n her hands as the lady sleuth closed her eyes to savour the mental image.
“Then,” Marie-Suzanne continued sadly, “they didn’t even come round to my dressing-room with flowers or wait for me to get my slap off or anything. I found them in the theatre bar nine sheets to the wind on crème de menthe frappes with Guinness chasers and, on the way back to my Mayfair apartment…sorry, flat…they insisted we stop for a kebab.”
“So not quite what you had expected then?” Hermione said sympathetically.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t the plotline the author intended,” Marie-Suzanne was far too well-bred to sound indignant, “and neither did I expect them to put me in a cab to go home while they swanned off to the Ministry of Sound to meet up with…you can probably guess who. I think Harry’s godfather is a bad influence and will come to a bad end,” Marie-Suzanne said portentously and was not surprised at the silence that met her words. When Marie-Suzanne spoke portentously, with her astonishing abilities at divination, dowsing and well-sinking, people tended to listen. However, since every woman in the room was thinking very hard about Harry’s godfather – even Harriet Vane bit her lip and was misty-eyed – she had no real cause for self-congratulation. Luckily she was oblivious to this.
“There,” she said patting Ginny’s shoulder. “Now I can just do someone else’s hair before I have to go for my harpsichord practice. Hermione?”
Oh, that’s enough of that - Marie-Suzanne makes my teeth ache.
