I find myself, for the first Monday in weeks (fifteen of them, in fact) with nothing to post. In any event, certain other areas in my life are beginning to heat up, which means that I shall be out of communication for a time.  However, I believe that tomorrow, my literary agent, Laurie King, will be posting what she calls "Mary Russell's MyStory" on her web site, in a format that is bound to bring amusement to many.

For a bit, I shall limit myself to posting on the whimsically named Twitter.  However, I understand that, towards the end of summer, Ms King intends to embark for the United Kingdom.  Perhaps then I shall find myself at leisure to post here in MySpace.

I bid you a good summer (or winter, if you dwell in the Antipodes) and a pleasurable exploration of The Language of Bees, the ninth volume of my memoirs.

The Language of Bees (April 28): http://www.laurierking.com/?p=1866

web site:  http://laurierking.com

As a brief interlude to the ongoing saga of my story (which will draw to a close in the coming weeks), I would like to mention that my literary agent, Ms. Laurie R. King, has embarked on what she calls a "book tour" to discuss the latest edition of my memoirs, The Language of Bees. As I have in the past, I may even try to stop in at one of her lectures myself (in disguise, of course) to ensure that she does not take too many liberties with the details of my life. Although travel becomes more and more arduous with every year, I imagine that the aeroplane flight to the United States will be a far cry from that which I endured in the episode recounted in The Language of Bees. For details of her book tour, please refer to her web page at http://www.laurierking.com/?page_id=1263.

I would ask that you please refrain from accosting any elderly lady...or gentleman, who might be standing at the back of the room while Ms. King speaks.  They will most certainly be entirely innocent, and not appreciate the attention.  If I appear it will be in a disguise that would do Holmes proud, and not be something anyone would expect. My husband would be horrified if I stooped to merely using my age to remain anonymous.  

Follow Mary Russell's account of the story behind how and why Laurie R. King came to have the Russell/Holmes memoirs, as described in Laurie's prefaces to the first four Russell books http://www.laurierking.com/?page_id=2032. Further chapters to come each week during the Fifteen Weeks of Bees http://www.laurierking.com/?page_id=912 every Monday on Myspace, or Tuesdays in Laurie R. King's blog, Mutterings (http://laurierking.com/wp.php/).

If you're buying The Language of Bees from an Independent bookseller, send Ms. King your receipt for a chance to win a work of art with an original Mary Russell story. Details at: http://www.laurierking.com/?p=2614

Now, in celebration of the honeybee and in support of Heifer International’s efforts to provide poor communities with assistance in their agricultural (if not philosophical) endeavors, this exclusive facsimile booklet of Holmes’ Practical Handbook excerpts is available.  http://www.laurierking.com/?p=2834

 Mary Russell: My Story

 13.

May-Day in Oxford is an ancient ritual, which has been suspended from time to time over the centuries due to excessive unruliness.  It begins well before dawn, when from all directions people trickle into the high street, making their way in the direction of the Magdalene College tower.

At dawn, choir-boys raise their voices to the day, their sweet, high chorus trailing down over the packed street of families and homeless men, passing tradesmen and beer-sodden undergraduates, antiquarians and tourists.  Participants of the previous night’s college balls, held upright by the press of the throng, pass around half-empty bottles of cheap champagne, most of them bedraggled, tieless, sometimes shoeless, and often sodden from the puzzling ritual of leaping out of punts or off of bridges in their evening dress.  When the snatches of song finish drifting down from on high, the crowd shakes off its attentive silence, gives a noisy pulse, and reverses its progress, out from Magdalene College.  Morris dancers bounce and rattle on the paving stones surrounding the Radcliffe Camera, Hobby horses give the kiss of fertility to doomed young women, odd foodstuffs are sold, the manifold clergy of the town looks on fondly at the pagan frenzy, and the rites of spring are officially ushered in.

When the sky was still dark overhead, Holmes and I let ourselves out of the gate and joined the trickle, soon stream, of May Day celebrants.

 However, before the Magdalene choir had finished, we had been spotted.

A brief episode out of my life with Holmes, in which one of our neighbours dies of bee stings, has been made into a lovely illustrated broadside.  My literary agent, Laurie R. King, is giving one away in a drawing to support Independent bookstores, an excellent cause.  One may read about it at http://www.laurierking.com/?p=2614.

Mary Russell: My Story

12.

You need to remember, this was 1992, and the number of people who knew that Sherlock Holmes had a wife was relatively small.  No doubt our pursuing Sherlockians thought I was a housekeeper, or a nurse—they were standing watch outside of the gate, and began to bay wildly when first I set foot out of the house.  I feigned great age—admittedly not a difficult act, at ninety two years—and hobbled to the car, back bent with apparent arthritis and a large straw hat pulled down, not so much to hide my features as to explain why I hadn’t noticed ten jumping figures thirty feet away.  I got the door open with my ancient hands, bent slowly—slowly, to retrieve some small object from the door pocket, then inadequately closed the door and, crouching low, crept back into the house.

Thus, before dawn the next morning, the three who had been set to watch overnight from their hire car recognised the hatted old lady behind the wheel of the motor that pulled out of the gate, and hastened to follow—it being too dark to see that the person at the wheel was a foot shorter and seventy years younger. Nor did they notice that the brisk young man closing the gate was in fact the old woman they thought they were following.

Whistling, I went to finish my coffee and leave the house, on what promised to be a perfectly lovely May-Day morn.