Lambs

9. Lambs! (Apr '04)

It must be spring! There are (some) buds on the (few) trees. The dark clouds carry the promise of refreshing April snowshowers. And I got a few insect bites yesterday, so they must be waking up from hibernation. Plus the days are getting really long, really quickly. Here it is, after 10pm, and it's still light outside. And the truest sign of spring: little lambs frolicking and bounding in the meadow outside my window (well, during the day; now they're curled up in little white puffballs in the tall grass).

I was walking home this evening and my foot nudged a big, soft rock; but I knew I hadn't seen a rock that big in the road, so I looked down, and there was a little black-faced lamb doing a poor job of staying out from under my feet. I think it realized I wasn't short, fat, white and fluffy, so it scampered ahead of me a bit, but then it paused and bleated in a charmingly small voice. So I bleated back. And it reconsidered the importance of short-fat-white-fluffiness and took some mini steps towards me. I crouched down and held out my hand. It came close to see what I had, or what I was, but as I tried to touch it to see if the fur on its head and face was as silky as it looked, it realized that I wasn't its mother after all (or maybe it thought, "Moooommmmm! Don't wipe my face in front of the other lambs. You're so embarassing!") and it scampered off the road, into the field, where it found a short, fat, brownish, fluffyish sheep that may or may not have been its mother. But it seemed to prefer her; at least she didn't hold out a spit-soaked tissue and say, "let me just get that schmutz off."

With spring comes good news. I have a place to live! Just when it seemed like there was no way of getting stay in Tolstachaolais, save pitching a tent by the side of the road, fate (or unbelievable coincidence; or the scriptwriter in the sky) stepped in. One of the women in the village (who happens to be one of my infrequent harp students) and her husband have been renovating a small house to rent out as a holiday cottage, and also as a place for people to stay when they offer the weaving courses that they plan to offer (there are many women who do both harping and weaving. It must be a fetish for parallel lines). The cottage (and the weaving course idea) have been in the planning stages for so long that nobody whom I asked about housing thought to mention it. But although the weaving courses are still far in the future, the house will (probably) be ready in the next week and a half. I have to move out of the place I'm in on Saturday, so I'll spend a week in Justin and Laura's spare room, and then hopefully move into the new place the day before my guest from out of town shows up on the 9th. Cross your fingers.

Harp teaching still goes well. My very-beginner students are starting to actually be able to play tunes. It makes me so proud. And one of the intermediate students practiced two of her tunes enough at home that we could actually work on dynamics and interpretation, not just what the notes are and what fingers to use. That was rewarding as well.

Other good news: Ralf (the guy I met at the harp festival) and I have been emailing and phoning and it turns out that we have a lot in common. Too soon to say what sort of relationship it may turn into, but watch this space.

And that's the news from Tolstachaolais, otherwise known as "Total Sail Chaos" or "A Scottish Alloa," if the gales have been up and the letters on the sign have gotten scrambled.

Love,
Andrea

Andrea Blumberg