Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker always swore she would never, ever drive the I-5 by winter night. Nor did she; the summers were weird enough for her. She had a real dread of winter out there: the threats of tule fog, black ice, storms howling down from Sacramento and the rest of the frozen North … snow and wolves and cannibals on the heights of the Grapevine.

I sort of like it, though. It’s … interesting.

I left San Francisco around 3 PM this afternoon, in a torrential rain, heading back to Los Angeles from the 2nd weekend of Dickens. It was a wonderful weekend – more on that tomorrow.

Tonight, though … well, we didn’t actually meet cannibals or wolves, but I suspect they were hiding just off the highway. The rain was mythic. Legendary. Homeric.  The Bay Bridge leaks, by the way, producing a sensation like driving through a maze of waterfalls. There was lightning, truck-swaying winds, tumbleweed attacks; 8 hours of driving pretty much underwater, dodging roof-high bow waves from 18-wheelers and wondering where the hell the edge of the storm was. Washington State, apparently. Certainly nowhere near us.

It was 38 degrees at the top of Tejon Pass – the rain was both deafening and blinding, and I am pretty sure it was snowing about 500 feet above us. Pleisosaurs were sporting in Pyramid Lake, and polar bears were colonizing Smokey the Bear Road. We saw cars with purple headlights: not blue white but actual stagelight scrim purple, and other cars with royal blue turn signals. Major weirdness on the road, Dear Readers. Model A Fords raced by us, evolving into real cars as they thundered through reality.

All the phantom cities off the I-5 were displaying Christmas lights, beautiful white and gold and gem-coloured phantasms of light. Avenus of aureate light ran off into the western hills where no roof nor wall is visible by day, But we could see it all through the tower-high curtains of the rain. And it was wonderful.

Now I am safe at home, pecking away in exhaustion at this blog. I saw so many peculiar things tonight -so much to tell to Kage, if the world were running as it should be. I shall have to be content to recite the eccentric wonders in my prayers, and hope they come to her sleep somewhere in the long night … the coloured headlights of etdritch automobiles, the cars with headlights on their rears to try and make you think they are driving backwards, the rain so thick that the ancient sea is rising between the apricot trees ouside Lost Hills.

I’m going to bed now. I can hear the old waves breaking on the hills around Simi. Time to sleep while the hills dissolve …

Tomorrow: the ghosts beneath the trees, and the staring sky

Kage Baker had a favourite post-Dickens Saturday night dinner: Pillsbury biscuits. You know, the sort that comes in a mailing tube and you whack it on the edge of the kitchen counter and it explodes in raw biscuits. And then you bake them fresh and hot, and really: they are a wonderful late night snack.

I am sitting here now eating some, sharing them with Harry the Parrot, who likes to sit on my shoulder and get crumbs in my ear; and whom I prefer to have sit on his perch and eat in some slightly more civilized manner (that doesn’t involved biscuits in my hair).

We’ve dined like this on Saturdays for years now; the amazing Rettinhouses, who open their home with me for Extreme Christmas, are partaking of our special nursery supper as well. Kage and Neassa always liked chocolate milk with theirs …

Second Saturday has gone spectacularly well, with crowds so thick and heavy and happy that walking through the streets is like fighting a tide of salmon (with champagne and peppermints). I myself spent the day in civvies, directorially observing and checking sight-ines: which appear to be perfect through the windows of the Parlour. It was splendid to watch my folks in their glory while hiding in plain sight.

My sister Kimberly and I drove up this weekend, through the tule fog and haunted sunsets of a winter Friday night – more of those visions later. But tonight Kimberly went to the Hallelujah Chorus at Fezziwig’s with me – for the first time in, oh, 20-odd years. She last attended before her son Michael was born, and we were astounded and stunned by the spectacle; we still were tonight. We both wept, but we made it through: good memories.

Tomorrow I shall be back in purple satin, swanning about like the Plum Pudding Fairy.  I’ll leave the beautiful dream of Dickens in late afternoon, to make it back to LA by midnight – dreaming all the way of hot biscuits and post-art contentment.

Kage Baker anticipated journeys with great exuberance and extreme planning. She was Queen of Lists, as I have said. I am more … organic.I am missing her even more than usual at the moment, as I try to find everything that belongs in my suitcases.

Right now I am in the midst of packing various necessities for the weekend: sugar cubes, underwear for two centuries, pearls and lace (loose, and mixed in my bag), lemonade, all my passes, Harry. I keep finding old CDs, stowaway little black cats, weird knitting projects instead. But soon I must be on the road. I may have a kitty fichu this week.

This will resume when I have made it safe to Vallejo. In the meantime, please observe that I have cleverly made it snow on the blog pages. Man, I love techno-toys!

***

Kage Baker was a picky eater. God, was she! I have had better luck with intransigent toddlers than with my sister in her 50’s.

However, she loved most Fair food, and the goodies at Dickens were probably her favourite. For one thing, most of it was decently served in bowls and on plates, with spoons and forks and napkins – and as fond as we all were of beef ribs with fire repellent, or warm ale with straw in it, a clean bowl of raspberry trifle with custard sauce goes down awfully nicely …

One can get a proper High tea at Dickens, at Cuthbert’s Tea House; make a reservation, since it is the probably the most popular place to sit down and eat, and enjoy really good tea and scones baked right on the premises.

Elsewhere at Dickens, there are plates of bangers and mash (sausage and potatoes, for you culturally-deprived Americans), which are an ultimate comfort food. There are steak pasties (those are meat pies). There are fish and chips, calamari and chips (I shudder to imagine how they have worked this out with the captive squid down the lane), fried oysters … I know no better Sunday restorative than an order of fried oysters with a Black Moon: which is Guiness and champagne. Kage and I got through the cold wet winters at the Fox Theatre on those.

There are several kinds of traditional meat pies – steak, chicken, and sausage pies; Shepherd and Cottage pies, and Cornish pasties. All are divine, even if you eat them – as one of my young men insists on doing – smothered in tomato catsup … there are several varieties of sausages inna bun. There is Greek food hot and cold. There is hot soup (or cold, if you hang about the breezeway). There are roasted chestnuts, fresh popcorn, Maclaran’s divine cookies and cold milk. There is the best coffee and chai in the world at Mr. Brown’s.

There is chocolate, and more chocolate, and still more chocolate. There are candied nuts, candied fruits, candy canes. There is probably even someone with a few fresh oranges and apples somewhere …

In the Green Man, we have nothing for sale (being, despite the amazing amount of eating and drinking going on in my Parlour, a stage). But do we eat? Oh my yes. I feed my staff, through the angelic grace and talents of The Cooking Ladies, who are probably the most important part of the Parlour. Every day they feed us all: roast beef, devilled eggs, Scotch eggs (and if you don’t know what those are, God save you for an ignorant  saisen), ham, turkey; sarnies of chicken salad, cucumbers and prawn spread; 3 kinds of mustard, 2 kinds of pickles, olives and carrots; fresh rolls; 3 kinds of cheese, Italian sausage and whatever else occurs to someone over the week.

And then we serve sweets: gingerbread cake, rum cake, fancy biscuits. Home-made lemon curd and rum sauce. Fudge, Turkish delight and peppermints. Marzipan. Truffles. Jelly beans …

Watching us eat is probably in violation of the Geneva Convention for the poor customers. But if it gets too much to bear, there is all the other stuff I have outlined above – which is very nearly as good. Go forth and you can find a lunch almost as fine as ours.

Except for Kelly’s Scotch eggs. And Liz’s lemon curd. And Mike’s rum cake. And DJ’s truffles … nothing on this living earth compares with any of those.

Tomorrow: Back to London! Your correspondent on the road!

Kage Baker liked to get out and wander the streets of London during Dickens. This was a harder proposition than it sounds – simply getting the time to leave our Parlour was difficult, as the Green Man is a hoppin’ joint all day.

As housekeeper Mrs. Drumm, Kage took it as a personal responsibility to bus tables, change out lunch settings and hover over Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Dickens during their gigs. She and her inestimable parlourmaids were a storm of petticoats and aprons, stripping the table bare and completely re-dressing it in a matter of minutes. When Mr. Dickens strode in (as he does 4 times a day) she was always waiting by his chair, his book for the reading in her hand, a fresh cup of tea steaming at his place.

But one must at least visit the necessary from time to time, and she’d take advantage of that to don her Spanish shawl and her coal-scuttle bonnet and go sight-seeing. It was one of my only chances to get out, too, so we’d sneak out together. (As much as one can sneak when one wears purple skirts 3 feet wide, and is swathed in black velvet, as I am.)

But off we’d go, giggling together, to look at the shinies and the sparklies and the glitteries; to smell the wonderful food smells, to see the shop fronts  lit up like the Mall of the Gods. You know how fascinating Diagon Alley looks, in the Harry Potter films? Imagine that, and then make REAL: add holly, snow, evergreen garlands and shopfronts full of gorgeous things you can really, actually buy! There is a chocolate cart in front of of you – you can pick up a truffle and bite into it! You can sit at a wooden table and dig into something real and hot and savoury, like a plate of bangers and mash or a Greek salad! And it is all real, in total sensory 3-D wraparound sensation.

As we rustled and swayed through the streets, we would admire the glass and gems shining in the windows – from a cart full of exquisite glass ornaments, to one filled with beads and polished stones, to yet another where the jewels are carved and polished bone and jet. Pottery in every shade and texture; glass vessels made so one can see the designs imbedded in their walls as thin as flower petals. And clothes …. oh, the clothes! The gowns you wanted when you were 16 and made all of moonlight and dreams; the frock coat you hoped your prince would wear, and shed on the foot of your bed …

There is even a wand shop. And they are pretty good wands, too.

There are drinks available from lemonade to imported champagne, and just about everything in between – wine, whiskey, beer, ale, mead, cider; hot, cold and garnished with whipped cream. There is wonderful tea, and excellent coffee. There is even an Absinthe Bar, dispensing that notorious intoxicant in tiny sips of fatal-looking green. You may indeed see faeries, but don’t worry: that’s not due to the absinthe, they live around the corner.

There are rides and games. There is adventurous sport to be had in the Fencing Academy. There is sportive adventure to be risked down at Mad Sal’s, where the rougher denizens of London lean and leer from shadowed doorways. We, respectable women, never went there- but we would linger near Passiflora Perfumes and listen to the grand music flowing up from Sal’s.

The Docks of London are full of singing sailors and mercantile pirates, and the Legion Fantastique, where there is a live squid on display! Or so they say. I’ve only ever glimpsed the tentacle. At the Adventurer’s Club intrepid explorers will tell you stories of far-away lands, and some of them have actually been to them! And there is the gorgeous Victoria and Albert Theatre, where you may take in the Pantomime for your children – a splendid production of The Mikado for the whole family – or, for, ahem, adults only, the French Postcards: once you have sent the kiddies off to the Painting Garden or the Carousel.

Eventually we would return, happily laden with new gloves or a silk scarf or a sextant (Kage had nautical leanings), munching roasted chestnuts. Sometimes someone had fallen down or burst into flames in our absence, but usually the family was sitting happily round the fire eating gingerbread. I remember walking up the lane through the perfumes and laughing crowds, arm in arm with Kage, seeing the warm Parlour full of our loved ones slowly materialize behind the windows of the Green Man: a miracle never to be taken for granted.

And we would stroll in between the potted palms at the door, and help one another off with our shawls and bonnets. And we would be home.

Tomorrow: where to eat, maybe

Kage Baker adored the Fezziwig’s area. It is where, all day, the devotees of Terpsichore enact the dance party from A Christmas Carol. There is a groaning board (with very fine faux cakes on it, some of them produced by our Prop Department more than 25 years ago …) and swags of holly. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig preside in perpetual jollity, their innumerable daughters flit about breaking hearts, the staff of Fezziwig’s Warehouse dance their brains out, and the redoubtable and splendid band Bangers and Mash plays music.

All day. And half the night. It’s what they do in Fezziwig’s. To take breaks at Fezziwig’s, they either dance more slowly or play vigorous parlour games. You need the stamina of a cyborg to be a Fezziwigger. And the most enchanting part of all is that their greatest desire is to lure other people into the dance. They will invite and teach anyone, and a whirl around the floor with one of their people is better than any amusement park ride in the world.

There are also chairs from which to sit and watch, if you are past dancing. Or to sit poised on, looking hopeful, if you are just dying to be asked to dance. Kage liked to just sit and watch the younger dancers play, but – like any good old lady – she was always willing to hold other people’s hat, bonnets, gloves, cloaks, jackets, swords and reticules so they could dance. So was I. Mrs. Bombay and Mrs. Drumm: we would sit there, swathed in yards of wool and silk and velvet, juggling small bags and plumes and toys back and forth, alternately quarreling like a pair of old ravens and pointing out to one another how perfectly lovely the children looked out on the floor.

This is one of the privileges and duties of old ladies at dance parties. You can sit down, hold the coats, and talk about the dancers. You can snark back and forth amusingly with your housekeeper, who remembers when you were both young and got into trouble at dance parties. You can peer through the rows of Sir Roger de Coverly sets or the racing rings of waltzers, commenting to one another about the gowns and grace and stamina of various dancers.

And since between the two of you, your skirts cover 6 chairs, you can save seats, too!

Occasionally some dutiful young man would come up and invite me to dance. I would decline politely, saying “I no longer dance, you see.” To which my housekeeper, Mrs. Drumm, would add cheerfully, “Too fat now, the both of us! Go ask that pretty girl in the blue sash, she’s just about bouncin’ out of her chair”, in a broad Lancastershire accent. And in a moment another blushing couple would be out on the dance floor.

“Drumm, you go too far,” I would say reprovingly.

“Not so far as you with that rum cake, Missus,” Drumm would reply (accurately, too).

And we’d both cackle like loons, and then exclaim that my daughter Caroline was being swung about so vigourously by her partner that she was about to go head over heels. Her husband Mike (who plays her suitor as a different dubious character every year) would go by stomping his great boots and somehow not trampling her skirts. We would gasp and hold our breath, waiting for the inevitable disaster, but somehow Caroline was a reed in his arms and always emerged unscathed.

However, Miss Neassa, who plays my sister, regularly lost her cap in Sir Roger de Coverly; I remember it sailing off like a gaudy butterfly and being snatched up by one of Caroline’s boys: Patrick then continued to jig his way through the set, waving Neassa’s cap like a Morris Man’s handkerchief.

Or Meagan, who plays my youngest daughter Kitty, would come dashing back briefly to deposit her doll with us before rushing back in. This year, a ladylike 14, she danced the Last Waltz of the Evening for the first time. Kage would have been so pleased …

All around the floor the dancers move – some comic, some heartbreakingly beautiful, some customers, some performers: out there under the lights and the surging music, it doesn’t matter. They are, as Mr. Dickens says in A Christmas Carol: ” … people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.”

It is the most glorious sight at the Fair. And Kage loved it with all her heart.

When the Last Waltz is over, every night, we all rush out on to the dance floor and sing The Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. In four parts. It is  – transcendent. It is like being a piece in a stained glass window. Kage sang alto and I sing soprano, and we always stood side by side so we could hear one another do the harmonies: that was the best of all.

I haven’t made it through this yet, this year. I break down midway through, and just stand there weeping and smiling. No one has minded; they all know what is wrong with me, and I’m not the only one who cries, anyway. But I will be there every night, and I will hold cloaks and bonnets, and watch the dancers, and try to sing Hallelujah! with the rest.

Some night I’ll manage it, too.

Tomorrow: more scenes from Dickens Fair.

Kage Baker was always in favour of waiting until Monday to drive home from a Faire. We didn’t get to do it too often – those being many of our years in the office trade – but now that I am old and unemployed, it’s more feasible. This weekend, with the rigours of a 3-day behind me, it was imperative. I wouldn’t have been able to get her to agree to a 6-hour night drive anyway … and traveling with a sleepy, whiny, nervous navigator is not recommended.

So I left lovely Vallejo at half past 8 this morning. The lawns were all white and crisp with frost, and it was a bracing 38 degrees. I had to chip the ice off my windshield. I actually rather enjoy this decisive weather, and once I was armed with a giant coffee, the road was mine!

It was cold and clear and sparkling all down I-5. The holiday traffic was gone, except for one horrific accident near Harris Ranch: three cars all crushed, one of them upside down and one of the upright ones still in flames. No telling what had happened; it looked like a mortar attack. Traffice on the north-bound side was backed up for miles.

The white cattle are proliferating in the road side feed lots: more today. They look like blocks of granite, or the totem animals of glaciers. Are there quiet groups of Mithra-worshippers getting ready for the Winter Solstice out there? These look utterly appropriate for Mithraic rites.

More fans – I saw a fallen wind generator’s blades, imbedded in the grass like enormous swords. Wonder what that was like when it fell? There was another standing lamp by the side of the road in Livermore, just looking casual. However, in Vallejo itself there was a sad sight: a little table fan, face down in the leaf-filled gutter, an empty 40-ounce Colt .45 standing on the curb above it …

A hawk almost hit me near Apricot Tree, taking off from the side of the road and just barely clearing my car. I could see its contemptuous glance as it skimmed over me, apparently deciding at the last moment that my little black Cruiser was not actually an award-winning rabbit.

And it is the season for road kill, which Kage always said were Midwinter sacrifices from the land to the road. I saw a fox (red one), several unfortunate moggies, a badger, and what looked like the Giant Rat of Sumatra but was probably a possum. Also, about a half dozen coyotes – but Kage, again, always said that those are never really dead. They are just Coyote himself, playing dead for a prank and waiting for someone foolish to come check him out …

There were also several unidentifiable masses with odd horns or wings projecting from the wrecks, like the battle standards of the losing side. If it’s big enough to be a cow but there’s a wing sticking up – what are you seeing? A really careless vulture? An unfortunate critter collision? We used to play “ID The Roadkill” on these journeys, as many animals seem to die in species-characteristic poses (skunks are always pasted to the road but with their tails waving like plumes), but what is one to make of an anomaly like that? Aside from Brunswick stew …

There was snow thick on the upper peaks of the Tehachapis, but it thinned out in the canyons where the sun comes late and weak this time of year. Only at the top of the Grapevine, close to a mile up, did it come down to the side of the road – but there, even at 2 PM in the afternoon, it was lying thick and solemn and immovable-looking. In 6 months those hills will burn like embers with the blues and golds of wild flowers; but for now they are a frozen grey sea with whitecaps breeding on its bosom.

And on a hill above Castaic there was a boat. One assumes there was a house somewhere out of sight, but all that showed from the road was the boat – a big one – perched on the crest of the hill. Maybe the owners expect God to regret the Simi Valley and wipe it out with the Castaic Dam.

After that, though, there was only the ordinary strangeness of Los Angeles to get through: and I was born here, so the local weirdness is comforting and familiar. Harry the parrot sang “Rule Brittania” in his patented monster voice (that always cracked Kage up) in welcome., and the little black cat and the Corgi danced a four in hand around the living room in joy.

Now it’s laundry and costume repair and cooking and packing and writing for 4 days, before I brave the trek north again.

It’s nice to be home.

Tomorrow: scenes from Dickens

Kage Baker loved three day weekends at Fairs-until they ended.

During a three day, you have time to relax, and really get into character and thoroughly overdo things. When the weekend hits Day 2 and does not end a wonderful and completely spurious feeling of immortality comes over you: you have always been doing this,and you always will be. Full speed ahead and don’t spare the rowers!

Friday is all fire and newness and insanity: you sleep the sleep of the just and rise up like a hero. Your strength is boundless. On Saturday you are in the groove, in the moment, in the scene – you realize you can go on like this forever! You can put a girdle round the earth in 60 minutes, or at least make it to the Night Show on an evening meal of pretzels and coffee.

Then Sunday comes. Or, as Kage often referred toit, The Dawn of the Dead. We are all dramatic zombies, wandering through the streets of London looking for our own brains. With adequate experience, though, you will remember who you are supposed to be, not merely who you are: it;s not a bad thing, to go through the day as Sir Mulberry Hawke or a chimney sweep.

Whatever sleep you got on Saturday has proven to be astonishingly inadequate, and you are running on sugar and beer fumes. But you feel great! You may be dancing on the aft deck of your personal stamina while the band plays waltz tunes, but who cares! One last dance, one last glass of champagne, and oh, yeah – better eat up those last chocolates before they spoil …

Eventually, though, the last customer finds the exit and goes home. You hope they are still as ensorcelled and transcendent as you are. You clean up, you change clothes, you regret not bringing a thicker coat; you head home recalling every lovely detail of the day with your carpool mates. Someone falls asleep in the car; hopefully, not the driver – but they’ve been chosen  for a clear head and inhuman strength anyway, so you will all make it to bed alive.

And that’s Opening. I am as wrung out as a bar rag now, so I am going to bed. In the morning I will drive home to Los Angeles with 15 pounds of dangerous laundry.

And get ready to do it again.

Kage Baker often observed, as do all who do a Fair for more than one day at a time,  that once one is over the jitters and hysteria of Opening Day, one settles into any given Fair as though one had been there forever. The days are no longer entirely separate, and one takes up the pattern of the season as if all years were one.

This is true, too. Despite all the excitement yesterday – possessed costumes, new water pipes that developed leaks over night, missing passes, missing socks, missing actors – today we had suddenly been doing this forever, and it all fitted together. Even the entire booth that was delivered to the street in front of the Green Man before opening fit in perfectly as soon as it was deposited: as delicately as ice forming on still water, by a fork lift driver with the expertise of a surgeon. It turned out to sell glass ornaments, coloured like gems and butterflies.

Suddenly all the parades are on time and the plays hit every mark. The Pantomime has children laughing uproariously, whether on the stage or wandering loose in the street (I myself had a charming conversation with a White Rabbit this afternoon). The French Postcards Posing Show has a similar effect on their parents later in the day … though those performers are seldom allowed out in the public thoroughfares.

At Fezziwig’s, the dancers whirl constantly, tirelessly, through waltzes, polkas, gallopes, and that quintessential  Dickens dance, Sir Roger de Coverly. Every one of them draws a customer into the dance with them, too; it’s why they are there. Some people never get further into the Fair than Fezziwig’s, captivated by the unending Christmas party there.

Today, no food booth was out of food or drink. No merchant had missing goods; nothing was sold out or missing or not yet unpacked. The glories of Christmas and London were on display in endless variety and plenty. A lace-trimmed day cap in woven wheat? A glass of champagne, of port, of whiskey, or of good amber ale? A meat pie, a bowl of onion soup, bangers and mash, fish and chips? Dolmas or Turkish coffee or roasted chestnuts? All to be had, just as they were the last time you were there – which couldn’t really have been a year ago, could it?

There is no time here. It is perpetually 5 PM on Christmas Eve in London, with Queen Victoria still happy and married to her Prince and all of Mr. Dickens’ characters alive at once and in one place. They walk the streets and share the theatre seats with you and stand beside you in line for a truffle or a hot buttered rum. You may be excoriated by Ebeneezer Scrooge, and regaled with good cheer by the Pickwick Club; you might meet a Cratchit or a Nickelby or a Crummel. You may sit in the Parlour of my own Green Man Inn and listen to Charles Dickens himself read A Christmas Carol out loud.

And if you catch a glimpse of a red-haired lady in a respectable black housekeeper’s gown sitting by the fireplace there, just give her a nod. There is no time in this London, and nothing changes or goes away or dies.

Kage Baker always came home happy from the Opening Day of Dickens Christmas Fair – and collapsed. It is exhausting; one is not yet hardened to a day of unrelenting Victoriana and Extreme Christmas. It is wondrous fun, exhilirating and amazing: but one also has to survive two more days of this …

In honour of Kage, and because I am walking into the walls with tiredness, I am now going to collapse. But it’s a matter of personal discipline to post at least a little.

So: it was a grand Opening. The crowds were good, and eager to be enchanted. The Greeen Man Parlour is as beautiful as a dream this year – my staff and family were superhuman, perfect, constantly on stage, on their marks and in character.

 True, my costume was possessed and kept falling off or open at odd moments, but that is one of the things all the layers are for. If a small girl steps on the back of your skirt and it starts to fall off, for instance, the hoop and lacy bloomers keep things suspended until you can grab the waitband. The audience will never figure out that the glimpse of black and silver brocade is your actual (blush!) corset, but simply assume it’s something else peculiar you are wearing …

More details later, Dear Readers. For now – oh, my, I am fading away …

Tomorrow: more !