Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Time is once more standard.

Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007
10:06 a.m.
There is something wrong with our rat zapper. Within a day after installing it behind the knee wall, it had already claimed a victim, a brown and white mouseling which I dumped in the yard for some neighbourhood scavenger to dispose of, then rebaited it and reset it, only to find the light flashing and no corpse therein. When I tried resetting it, the light wouldn’t flash, which makes me think there is a short circuit somewhere. So I have replaced it with a bag of poisoned pellets, a much less humane way to dispose of vermin, but so far they do not seem to have been accessed.

We had our marathon Messiah rehearsal yesterday morning as forecast, and I was able to bring to the attention of the conductor (not our intrepid Herr Doktor Professor who instead is augmenting the bass section with his stentorian tones) a few things he should know. For instance, he is insistent that we never say a hard “arr” sound, so words like “glory” and “purify” and “redeemed” are to have rolled R’s, and words like “Lord” and “wonderful” are to have the R missed out entirely, as with an upperclass British accent. This is his idea of “international” English. But, because he is francophone, his ear is not as attuned to the nuances as other people’s, and he seemed to be unaware of the fact that some people can roll their R’s and others can’t. It seems to be a hereditary thing.

So I told him that some people are doing it correctly, and others are instead putting the R in the back of the throat, making a gutteral out of it, as we tend to when we speak French (at least around here, anyway) and that it doesn’t sound very good. After demonstrating the difference for him, he had to agree and asked what could be done about it, since he definitely doesn’t want a hard English “arr” sound. I suggested putting in a subtle D for the R, so that the word glory would instead become “glody”. He tried it with the choir when we got back from break and was not displeased with the result. As long as those who can are rolling the R’s with their tongues, the subtle D seems to fit in very well. He then publicly thanked me, for which I was a little abashed at being thus singled out.

There were also a couple other places I felt he should be alerted to, things like quarter notes not held long enough on the word “burthen”, and he actually asked me if the R in “for ever” should be rolled and I said no, because it wasn’t one word but two and the R at the end of the word should never be rolled unless you wanted to sound like a Glaswegian. Only I didn’t say that last bit.

The clocks of the western hemisphere went back an hour last night, or so my computer informs me, but I totally forgot to wind the grandfather clock, so it is now sitting at 3:00, poised and waiting for me to start the pendulum again. Since I had it repaired it is keeping exceptionally good time, so I am anxious to get it spot on and see how it goes from there. Otherwise I have reset all the other clocks in the house, at least those for which I am responsible, and will get to the ones in the cars in due time. But even with an extra hour to sleep last night, I still woke up at my usual time. It seems somehow unfair.

And last and definitely least, I roasted up the salvaged pumpkin seeds from Wednesday’s jack o’lantern, giving the house a nice toasty odour. I always feel so self-righteous utilizing resources that way. There was a time I would carve the pumpkin in the afternoon and then cook it up as squash that night after the ghosts and ghouls had departed. Now I just let it rot on the porch. Tsk, tsk!

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