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Llama ou lama (Llama glama), from the Quechua word llama, is a ruminant mammal from South America, of the camelid family, genus Llama.
This animal has a long, woolly coat, and is domesticated for use in cargo transportation, wool, meat and leather production. The llama is related to guanaco, vicuna and alpaca.
It was domesticated by the Inca people and was the main means of transporting cargo from the Inca empire. The Llamas have an autonomy of about 20 km with a 30 kg load, so this was then the average distance of the Inca villages.
Nowadays they inhabit the ruins of Machu Picchu in a friendly way, helping to recreate the environment that existed.
Llamas are known for their calm style, often walking slowly, but they can easily get angry, so it was considered the eighth most irritable animal in the world (according to the channel Animal Planet).
The DADA Effect.
What are the side effects of DADA?
Common side effects (affect up to 1 in 10 people who use DADA recreationally):
Nausea (feeling sick
Facial flushing (face, or ear, turning red)
Hot flush (sudden feeling of heat in your upper body)
Indigestion
Your vision changing colour
Blurred vision
Visual disturbances
Stuffy nose
Dizziness
Dripping
Pinkear
Lapel shrinkage
Uncommon side effects (affect up to 1 in 100 people who use DADA):
Vomiting (throwing up)
Skin rash
Eye irritation
Bloodshot or red eyes (or ears)
Eye pain
Seeing flashes of light
Thing looking brighter than normal
Light sensitivity
Watery eyes
A pounding heartbeat
Rapid heartbeat
High blood pressure
Low blood pressure
Muscle pain
Feeling sleepy
A reduced sense of touch
Vertigo (feeling things are moving or spinning around)
A ringing in your ears
Dry mouth
Blocked or stuffy sinuses
Inflammation of the lining of the nose (symptoms include runny nose, sneezing and a stuffy nose)
Pain at the top of your stomach
Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (acid reflux, symptoms include heartburn)
Blood in urine (pee)
Pain in the arms or legs
Nosebleed
Feeling hot
Feeling tired
Rare side effects (affect up to 1 in 100 people who use DADA):
Fainting
Stroke
Heart attack
Irregular heartbeat
Temporary decreased blood flow to parts of the brain
Feeling of tightening of the throat
A numb mouth
Bleeding at the back of the eye
Double vision
Reduced sharpness of vision
Abnormal sensation (strange feeling) in the eye
Swelling of the eye or eyelid
Seeing small particles or spots in your vision
Seeing halos (rings of colour) around lights,
Dilation of the pupil of the eye (your pupil looking bigger)
Discolouration (colour change) of the white part of your eye
Penile bleeding
Blood in semen
A dry nose
Swelling of the inside of the nose
Feeling irritable
Having trouble hearing or losing hearing completely (possibly pinkear related).
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged.
It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages* and special knowledge will all disappear.
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL!!!
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however, we are south-east of Cavendish Mews, past the British Museum with its classically colonnaded entrance, and beyond Sir Christopher Wren’s architectural masterpiece of St Pauls Cathedral, past Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London started. Within sight of the towering monument to the Great Fire of London* with its golden orb atop its Doric column we find ourselves in the south-east corner of the City of London borough in Lower Thames Street near the Billingsgate Dock at the Old Billingsgate Fish Market**. Here we find Edith, Lettice’s maid, who has travelled here with her beau, shop grocer’s boy and sometimes window dresser for grocer Mr. Walter Willison in Binney Street, Mayfair on their Sunday afternoon off. Edith and Frank have been stepping out together for some time now, and hope to make their arrangement formal soon with an official engagement announcement, and they enjoy spending their Sundays off together. In this case, Edith is mixing business with pleasure. She and Frank have come to enjoy watching the hustle and bustle of the market and have some fresh seafood as a Sunday luncheon treat, but Edith also needs to buy some fresh oysters to serve as hors d'oeuvres for the dinner party Lettice is hosting this evening for a group of her Embassy Club coterie friends - fashion designer Gerald Bruton who lives in nearby Soho and married couple Dickie and Margot Channon who live just around the corner from Cavendish Mews in a flat on Hill Street.
Clutching her green leather purse and small wicker basket hooked over her left arm close to her, Edith tries to make herself as unobtrusive as possible to the constant barrage of foot traffic passing through the narrow aisle she stands on the edge of. Old Billingsgate Fish Market is a bustling centre of activity, even though the pre-dawn hours of the handling of fresh catches, and the presence of casual workers and porters has passed. The market is a hive of activity with workers unloading crates, merchants selling their goods, people seeking casual work and the hoteliers, restaurant owners, housewives and maids, like herself, of London buying fish for Sunday luncheon or dinner, or for a meal in the week ahead. Outside the old Victorian market with its ornate cast iron columns, the streets are choked with lorries and horse drawn carts loaded with full and empty crates stamped with different fishmonger names, whilst between them people move precariously in the squashed spaces, coming and going. The sound of blasting horns from impatient drivers, the whinny of horses, the chug of engines, the clop of horses’ hooves, the calls of workmen and the general chatter of people adds to the multi sonorous cacophony of merchants calling out their wares and customers talking, heavy booted footsteps, the slap of fish flesh being tossed about and the rustle of newsprint and butchers’ paper as parcels are wrapped up and handed over into eager hands. The smell of the fish is strong and permeates Edith’s nose, but she doesn’t mind, as fresh fish has always been a treat that she associates with Good Friday fish dinners*** at home with her parents in Harlesden in the north-west of London.
Edith moves and presses herself further back against the edge of a wooden counter belonging to a stallholder as a Billingsgate porter walks past wearing his wood and tarred leather bobbin**** atop his head, upon which he balances fourteen round wicker baskets. She looks agog at the towering pile of baskets, amazed at how casual and cheerful the porter seems as he stops in front of another porter who only has two boxes balanced on his head. The latter lights two cigarettes in his mouth, dropping the match onto the water slicked concrete floor where it is immediately extinguished, and then withdraws one cigarette and offers it to the other porter, who smiles gratefully and thanks him as he takes it, and they chat away casually beneath the cast iron girders of the fish market’s roof.
“You’re starting to look like the fish being sold here, Edith.” Frank’s familiar voice says light heartedly, slicing through the noisy clamour around Edith.
Frank appears before Edith from behind the bulk of rather pudgy fishmonger in a fish blood and gut stained white coverall dustcoat wearing rather incongruously, a rather smart sleek black felt trilby***** hat. In each hand Frank has a sturdy newspaper wrapped parcel.
“Don’t be rude, Frank Leadbetter!” Edith responds, releasing the pent-up breath she didn’t realise she had been holding as she waited for her beau to return to her side.
“Well I’m sorry, Edith,” Frank apologises. “But you do! A slack mouth and eyes agog makes you look very fish like.”
“Oh! Much obliged!” Edith says sarcastically, making a mock bob curtsey. Loosening her hands from where she has them tightly wrapped around her arms, she playfully slaps her sweetheart’s upper arm. “Thank you very much!”
“You know me, Edith. I speak plainly, and I speak as I find.” Frank says as he adjusts the parcel in his left hand.
“Well maybe you shouldn’t when it comes to how you perceive my look.” Edith remarks a little peevishly. “Especially if it is an unflattering one. My Mum always says that if you can’t say anything nice, then you are best to say nothing at all.” She nods seriously.
“Does that mean that when you ask me whether you look pretty in your latest homemade frock you plan to wear to the Hammersmith Palais******, I should say yes, you do?”
“Don’t be cheeky!” Edith slaps Frank playfully again before accepting one of the parcels from him, feeling the warmth of it against her palm through her ecru lace gloves. “And anyway,” she adds. “If I want an honest opinion about my looks, I’ll seek out Hilda, thank you very much.”
“For a favourable opinion, more like!” snorts Frank. “Hilda doesn’t know the first thing about fashion, or care, and you know it. She’s not the least bit interested in that stuff. The only reason why she even wears anything remotely fashionable is because you give it to her, or insist she buys it.”
“Hilda’s not that bad, Frank.”
Frank doesn’t answer, but gives her a doubtful look, followed by one of his endearing gormless grins as he starts to tear at the newspaper of his own parcel.
“You took your time,” Edith opines as she starts to tear at her own parcel. “That isn’t because you went and bought some jellied eels******* for us to eat, is it?”
“As if I’d put cold jellied eels in with hot chips!” Frank replies with incredulity, pulling back the last of the newspaper and holding out the pile of steaming hot golden chips in his palm for Edith to see. Before he can react, Edith reaches forward and like one of the many scavenging seagulls around the fish market and Billingsgate Dock, she snatches one of his chips between her right index finger and thumb. “Here!” Frank blasts. “Now who’s being cheeky?”
Edith sighs with satisfaction as she pops the chip into her mouth, lowering her lids with delight as she feels the hot mass of flavoursome potato and batter fill her senses as she chews it. Swallowing she says, ignoring her sweetheart’s remark, “That’s just as well then, because I keep telling you, the best jellied eels come out of the Whitechapel eel, pie and mash house******** in Petticoat Lane********.”
“Says you, Edith.” Frank retorts as he watches Edith with beady eyes as she opens her own parcel of hot chips wrapped in newspaper*********, looking for an opportunity to steal a steaming hot chip from her. “There I must disagree with you. The best jellied eels come from right here in the Old Billingsgate Fish Market.”
“Have you ever tried the eels at Mrs. Cooke’s**********, Frank?”
“No, but I don’t need to,” Frank says with a smirk, as he quickly snatches two chips from atop Edith’s pile. He hurriedly stuffs them into his mouth and gobbles them up greedily, smiling as Edith’s eyes grow wide in surprise before she gives him a forgiving smile that tells him that his sweetheart isn’t really cross with him for taking two of her chips. Swallowing hard with a loud gulp that makes his Adam’s apple bounce up his throat above the line of his stiffened shirt collar*********** and tie, he goes on, “Because the jellied eels here are the best.” He looks at her defiantly. “Have you ever had jellied eels from here, Edith?”
“Well no,” Edith answers. Her look becomes defiant as she parrots Frank. “But then again, I don’t need to, since Mrs. Cooke’s jellied eels are the best. We should go there some time.”
“I’d rather save my pennies and take you for a proper, slap-up, meal at my chum Giuseppe’s little Italian restaurant up the Islington in Little Italy************, Edith.”
“So you said, that first afternoon I introduced you to my Mum and Dad,” remarks Edith as she picks up another hot chip daintily between her thumb and forefinger. “And subsequently, but you’ve yet to take me.”
“Well, we’ll have to remedy that,” Frank replies as he takes up three of his own chips with the fingers of his right hand. “And soon.”
“I’d like that Frank.” Edith opines with a smile.
The pair chuckle good naturedly and much away on their hot chips for a moment in companionable silence whilst around them the hustle and bustle of the fish market continues. “Watch out lad!” a serious voice booms behind Frank, startling him and making him jump. Stepping aside he lets a burly looking porter in a grubby ochre coloured dustcoat with short sleeves over the top of a navy woollen cable knit jumper ease past. The porter pushes a trolley loaded up with long wooden crates stencilled ‘Fleetwood Fish Merchants Association’************* in black lettering stamped crudely against the roughly planed planks of wood making up each box. He is closely followed by a much thinner, more nervous and better dressed older gentleman with a wrinkled face, dressed in a suit and bowler hat, with a silver fob chain************** hanging heavily from his black waistcoat. “There’s a cart waiting outside on Lower Thames Street.” The older man directs with a waving finger that the porter cannot see behind his broad back. As he passes, Frank thinks that with his nose in the air and a superior look on his face, the better dressed man has the appearance and stance of a butler or manservant of some kind. “Be careful with those!” the older man mutters irritably. “They are going to be served at Her Ladyship’s dinner tonight.” Frank nods at Edith with a knowing wink, understanding that she has thought the same of the older man as she sums him up as he passes. “I’m sure ‘er laydeeship and ‘er guests won’t taste no diff’rence wiv these fish once they’ve been fried up good n’ proper, whevva they’s been jostled ‘bout a bit or not.” the porter replies in his Cockney accent with a mirth filled chuckle. “Insolent man!” the toffee nosed butler mutters indignantly in reply. Edith and Frank chuckle again.
“So,” Edith says, returning to their earlier topic of conversation. “Where were you then, if you weren’t fetching me the famously good, but not as good as Mrs. Cooke’s, Old Billingsgate Fish Market jellied eels, then Frank?”
“What?” Frank asks before looking down and stuffing another claw full of greasy chips into his mouth.
“Where were you, Frank?” Edith reiterates, indicating at Frank with the chip she has just picked up.
“Gosh! Look at that one then!” Frank mutters through a mouth of half chewed hot potato and batter as he points to another porter in the middle distance who is parting the milling crowd of customers as he walks with four crates atop his bobbin. “How they don’t get a headache carrying those boxes on their heads, I’ll never know! My head’s sore just looking at him. Don’t you agree, Edith?”
Edith gives her beau a peculiar look. “You’re being remarkably mysterious, Frank.” Her brow crumples. “Are you doing it on purpose?”
“I’m not being mysterious!” Frank says with a disbelieving laugh.
“Then stop changing the subject. Where were you?” Edith persists.
Frank sighs. “Haven’t you ever heard of a queue before, Edith?” he answers.
“Yes, but there is a fish and chippery just over there,” Edith points through the sea of moving people around them to a stallholder selling hot chips and battered fish packaged up in newspaper to the milling crowd. “And you were gone a lot longer than it took for people to get served over there, Frank. And people were queuing.” She takes the chip and slips it into her own mouth, chewing it as she looks expectantly at Frank, awaiting an explanation.
“Well, these aren’t just any old chips you know.”
Edith pulls a doubtful face, her pretty face screwing up dubiously. “Surely you aren’t going to tell me that these hot chips are better than any others served by any of the other fish and chippery stalls here?”
“Now you know that some hot chips are better than others, Edith,” Frank continues, shaking his head. “And he’s the best there is in the Old Billingsgate Fish Market. Says it’s his batter that makes all the difference.” He taps his nose knowingly. “Trust me.”
“Well, they are good,” Edith agrees. “But I still don’t believe you, Frank Leadbetter, and,” she adds. “I still think that you are being mysterious, and are up to something.”
“I’m not up to anything, Edith!”
“I hope you aren’t thinking of proposing to me here in the middle of the busy fish market!”
Frank coughs and splutters, spitting out a few pieces of partially masticated chip pulp, which flies through the air, before handing a short distance away on the ground where it is promptly squashed unknowingly onto the wet concrete floor by the old fashioned pre-war Edwardian boot of an older looking housewife in a black three quarter length coat and matching cloche hat with a steely look of determination on her face as she trudges forth with her wicker basket in the crook of her arm. He muffles his barrage of coughs with the back of his right hand, before delving into his trouser pocket and withdrawing a crumpled white handkerchief.
Whilst he recovers his breath, Edith remarks with a smile, “Well, I’ll take that as a no, then.”
“Are you so desperate… to marry me… Edith Watsford,” Frank huffs as he tries to answer his sweetheart whilst still catching his breath and swallowing gulps of fishy air. “That you’d have… have me propose to you in a busy fish market?” When Edith giggles, he goes on, “I wouldn’t call Old Billingsgate the most romantic of rendezvous to propose marriage in, even if there would be a gawking crowd of onlookers if I bent down on one knee and proposed to you here and now.”
Edith chuckles again. “I suppose you’re right, Frank. And, I wouldn’t want you to propose to me here.”
“Well, I’m glad we have that point settled then.” Frank sighs with a nod.
“Just imagine the stories we’d tell the children on our anniversary when they ask where you proposed, Frank!” Edith chuckles. “Oh, your dad proposed to me in the middle of the Old Billingsgate Fish Market. It was the most romantic moment of my life!”
Frank chuckles. “I imagine that!”
“But you still haven’t told me why you took so long to come back with the chips, Frank.”
“But I have, Edith!” Frank says with exasperation. “I told you, it was the queues. Sidney had the best fish and chips to be had in Old Billingsgate. You have to be patient.”
Edith eats another two chips as her greatly reduce pile disappears. “You’re a terrible liar, Frank.”
Frank sighs in vexation as he finishes the last of his chips and bunches the greasy paper together in a ball in his hands. “How do you know I’m not telling the truth?”
Edith chuckles. “That’s my secret, Frank.”
“That’s jolly unfair, Edith!” Frank bemoans, looking imploringly at Edith with large, doleful blue eyes.
“Oh alright! I’ll tell you, Frank.” Edith accedes.
“Jolly good Edith.”
“But I’m not giving away all my secrets.” she adds. “I need to have some advantages as your future wife.”
“How?” Frank persists. “How do you know that I’m lying? Tell me!”
“We’ve been stepping out together for quite some time now, dear Frank.” Edith says kindly. “So, I’ve had plenty of time to observe you. When you don’t want to tell the truth, you have a habit of pretending you haven’t heard what was said, and trying to change the subject too quickly.” She shakes her head and smiles. “Besides, you won’t look me in the eye when you are telling a lie.”
Frank huffs. “Oh alright! Alright! I just ran into a friend when I went to buy us hot chips.” He looks Edith squarely in the eyes with an earnest look as he speaks. “We were chatting.”
“That’s better!” Edith smiles. “Now I know you are telling me the truth. What friend?”
“Well, he’s one of the chaps who lodges at my boarding house, actually. John Simpkin. But he’s a friend too.”
“What, here?”
“Yes.”
“Well that just shows you, doesn’t it?”
“Shows me what, Edith?”
“How even in a large city like London, you can still bump into friends in the most unlikely of places.”
Frank holds out his hand as Edith finishes the last of her hot chips. He screws up her newspaper into a ball as she hands it to him. He walks to a nearby dustbin and drops both his and her used greasy papers into it before wandering back over to her.
“Well, shall we go and get your Miss Lettice her dozen oysters for tonight’s dinner, then?”
“Yes!” Edith says, taking her beau’s proffered arm, with a smile. “I’d like that, Mr. Leadbetter. Do you know who sells the best oysters here by chance?”
“Right this way, Miss Watsford.” Frank replies, as slowly the pair of sweethearts meld into the slowly moving crowd, jostling for space beneath the cast iron girders of the Old Billingsgate Fish Market.
*The Monument to the Great Fire of London, more commonly known simply as the Monument, is a fluted Doric column, situated near the northern end of London Bridge. Commemorating the Great Fire of London, it stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, two hundred and two feet in height and two hundred and two feet west of the spot in Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started on the 2nd of September 1666. Constructed between 1671 and 1677, it was built on the site of St Margaret, New Fish Street, the first church to be destroyed by the Great Fire. Another monument, the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, marks the point near Smithfield where the fire was stopped. The Monument comprises a Doric column built of Portland stone topped with a gilded urn of fire. It was designed by Robert Hooke. Its height marks its distance from the site of the shop of Thomas Farriner (or Farynor), the king's baker, where the blaze began. The viewing platform near the top of the Monument is reached by a narrow winding staircase of three hundred and eleven steps. A mesh cage was added in the mid Nineteenth Century to prevent people jumping to the ground, after six people died by suicide there between 1788 and 1842.
**In the 1920s when this story is set, the Old Billingsgate Fish Market was located on Lower Thames Street in the City of London, near the River Thames. It was a bustling riverside market, famous for being the largest fish market in the United Kingdom. The market was housed in a Victorian building that had been constructed in 1876. The first Billingsgate Market building was constructed on Lower Thames Street in 1850 by the builder John Jay, and the fish market was moved off the streets into its new riverside building. This was demolished in around 1873 and replaced by an arcaded market hall designed by City architect Horace Jones and built by John Mowlem and Co., and even though it was a new building, it was still known as the “Old Billingsgate Fish Market”. The building still stands on the site today although it no longer houses a market. In 1982, the fish market itself was relocated to a new site on the Isle of Dogs in the East End. The 1875 building was then refurbished by architect Richard Rogers, originally to provide office accommodation. Now used as an events venue, it remains a major London landmark.
***Eating fish on Good Friday is a tradition rooted in religious customs, specifically within Christianity. Many Christians abstain from eating meat on Good Friday, which is the day they commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and fish is often consumed as an alternative. This practice stems from the idea that fish are cold-blooded and therefore distinct from the "flesh" of warm-blooded animals, making them acceptable to eat during periods of abstinence from meat.
****Billingsgate fish porters used specially designed hats, often referred to as "bobbins," to help them balance baskets and boxes on their heads. These hats, typically made from wood and tarred leather, featured a flat, hardened top that provided a stable platform for the cargo. This design allowed porters to carry large, rectangular boxes or stacks of round baskets of fish with relative ease and efficiency.
*****The trilby hat was invented in 1895, during the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's novel "Trilby". The hat gained popularity as a fashion item after the play's debut in London, and was named after the novel's main character.
******The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.
*******Jellied eels is a traditional English dish that originated in the Eighteenth Century, primarily in the East End of London. The dish consists of chopped eels boiled in a spiced stock that is allowed to cool and set, forming a jelly. It is usually served cold. Eels were historically a cheap, nutritious and readily available food source for the people of London; European eels were once so common in the Thames that nets were set as far upriver as London itself, and eels became a staple for London's poor.
********The earliest known eel, pie and mash houses opened in London in the Eighteenth Century, and the oldest surviving shop, M.Manze in Peckham, has been open since 1902. At the end of the Second World War, there were around one hundred eel, pie and mash houses in London. In 1995, there were 87. In the present day, there are relatively few eel, pie and mash shops left as Londoners’ tastes change, although jellied eels are sold in some of London’s delicatessens and supermarkets for those who fancy the experience of jellied eels at home.
********Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
*********Fish and chips were traditionally wrapped in newspaper as a way to keep them warm and absorb excess grease, while also being a readily available and inexpensive packaging material. However, this practice is now largely discontinued due to hygiene concerns, with the potential for ink from the newspaper to leach into the food.
**********F. Cooke is a well-known name in London's pie and mash scene, with a history rooted in East London. While there isn't a specific F. Cooke shop currently in Whitechapel, their history is closely tied to the area and they are one of the oldest pie and mash establishments, originally founded in East London. F. Cooke's has a strong reputation for traditional pie and mash, including eel pies, and is known for its family-run business and classic recipes.
***********Removable or detachable collars were shirt collars designed to be separate from the shirt itself and fastened with studs or other mechanisms. They were popular in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, primarily among men who wore white shirts as part of their business or formal attire.
************The Italian quarter of London, known commonly today as “Little Italy” is an Italian ethnic enclave in London. Little Italy’s core historical borders are usually placed at Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue - the Saffron Hill area of Clerkenwell. Clerkenwell spans Camden Borough and Islington Borough. Saffron Hill and St. Peter’s Italian Catholic Church fall within the Camden side. However, even though this was the traditional enclave for Italians, immigrants moved elsewhere in London, bleeding into areas like Islington and Soho where they established bars, cafes and restaurants which sold Italian cuisine and wines.
*************The Fleetwood Fish Merchants Association (FFMA) is a group in Fleetwood, the fishing town in Lancashire, focused on the fish and seafood processing industry. Established in the late Nineteenth Century, the Fleetwood Fish Merchants Association helps to represent the community of smaller fisheries and fishermen in and around Fleetwood, helping to supply fresh fish to Londoners.
**************A fob chain, also known as an Albert chain, is a decorative chain, originally designed for pocket watches, that typically features a T-bar or dog clip on one end to attach to the watch and often includes a fob (ornament or charm) on the other end.
This may look like a corner of the busy Old Billingsgate Market to you, with its wooden crates and pallets of fish, but the truth is that this scene is made up entirely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection.
Fun things to look for un this tableau include:
The pallet of fish on ice in the centre of the image comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The fish and all the ice is completely removable, and if you have noticed ice cubes inside some of the wine and champagne coolers in some of my past images from this series, I can tell you that the same ice cubes have been used.
Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. Edith’s small wicker basket is another miniature from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.
Made of polymer clay glazed to look oily and stuck to miniature newspaper print, the two servings of golden hot chips on the bench were made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.
The boxes you see around the fish stall came from a specialist stockist of 1:12 miniatures on E-Bay. They have been aged and weathered on purpose.
The leaves of lettuce sticking out of the top box on the left are artisan made of very thin sheets of clay and are beautifully detailed. I acquired them from an auction house some twenty years ago as part of a lot made up of miniature artisan food.
The brick wall at the back is a very special piece, and one of my more recent additions to my miniatures collection. Made painstakingly by hand, this was made by my very dear Flickr friend and artist Kim Hagar (www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/), she surprised me with this amazing piece entitled “Wall” as a Christmas gift, with the intention that I use it in my miniatures photos. Each brick has been individually cut and then worn to give texture before being stuck to the backing board and then painted. She has created several floors in the same way for some of her own miniature projects which you can see in her “In Miniature” album here: www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/albums/721777203007...
The advertising posters stuck on the brick wall are all 1:12 size replicas of real advertisements for Rinso, Gold Flake cigarettes, Hartley’s Table Jellies, Hovis Bread and Bisto Gravy from the 1920s. They have been printed with quality and high attention to detail on thick card. I acquired them all from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.
Rinso, was a brand of laundry soap and detergent, which was first introduced in the early Twentieth Century by the chemist Robert Spear Hudson (who also invented Hudson’s Soap). In 1908, Lever Brothers acquired R.S. Hudson, including the Rinso brand. Lever Brothers introduced Rinso to the United States in 1918, marking it as one of the first mass-marketed soap powders. Rinso gaining popularity as a replacement for bar soap. Rinso gained popularity for its effectiveness in cleaning clothes and was widely advertised, even sponsoring popular radio programs. While initially successful, Rinso eventually faced declining sales due to competition from newer detergents like Tide in the 1950s. In the mid-1960s, Rinso was rebranded as "Sunshine Rinso" but sales did not improve. By the mid-1970s, Rinso was removed from store shelves, though Rinso Blue, a liquid detergent, remained available in the US until the late 1980s.
W.D. and H.O. Wills, a prominent tobacco company, introduced Gold Flake cigarettes around 1901. The brand became known for its marketing tactics, including the use of cigarette cards to encourage collectability and brand loyalty. At this time, the dangers of smoking were not yet widely known, and cigarette companies were able to advertise and promote their products freely. Over time, Gold Flake adapted its marketing and messaging. While maintaining its association with high quality and a premium feel, the brand expanded its target audience to include youth and lower socioeconomic classes. The messaging also evolved from emphasizing a "gracious" lifestyle to celebrating life experiences. ITC Limited launched the Gold Flake brand in India in the 1970s. The brand was initially positioned as a premium cigarette, targeting the affluent adult male segment of the population. It was associated with a lifestyle of respectability and aspiration. Gold Flake remains a widely sold cigarette brand in India, available in various forms like plain, filtered, and lights. The brand's history reflects the changing landscape of the tobacco industry, including evolving marketing strategies and growing awareness of the health risks associated with smoking.
Hartley's is a British brand of marmalades, jams and jellies. Hartley's products are manufactured at Histon, Cambridgeshire. Hartley's was a grocers founded by the entrepreneur Sir William Pickles Hartley in Colne which is now in the borough of Pendle, Lancashire. In 1871, a supplier failed to deliver a consignment of jam, so William made his own and packaged it in his own design earthenware pots. It sold well, and in 1874, the business moved to Bootle, near Liverpool, and marmalade and jelly was also produced. In 1884, the business was incorporated as William Hartley & Sons Limited and in 1886, it moved to Aintree, Liverpool where a new factory was built. Two years after the new factory had been opened in Aintree, Hartley constructed a purpose built village for the key employees in his company. The village was designed by Leek based father and son architects William Sugden and William Larner Sugden after they had won an architectural competition. The village had a total of forty nine houses, which surrounded a central bowling green, and later expansion took the total number of houses to seventy one. Within the village, all of the streets were named after ingredients in jam, including Sugar Street, Red Currant Court and Cherry Row. A second factory in Bermondsey, South London opened in 1901, supplied with pots and jars in its early decades from a facility in Rutherglen, Scotland acquired in 1898. With production having moved to Cambridgeshire in the 1960s, the Bermondsey factory was later converted into luxury apartments in 2003. The Hartley Village in Aintree was made a conservation area in 2011. In 2020, Hartley's No Added Sugar Apple Jelly Pot won the Lausanne Index Prize - Bronze Award.
Hovis Ltd is a British company that produces flour, yeast and bread. Founded in Stoke-on-Trent, it began mass-production in Macclesfield in 1886. The Hovis process was patented on the 6th of October 1887 by Richard "Stoney" Smith, and S. Fitton and Sons Ltd developed the brand, milling the flour and selling it along with Hovis-branded baking tins to other bakers. The name was coined in 1890 by London student Herbert Grime in a national competition set by S. Fitton and Sons Ltd to find a trading name for their patent flour which was rich in wheat germ. Grime won twenty-five pounds when he coined the word from the Latin phrase hominis vis, "the strength of man". The company became the Hovis Bread Flour Company Limited in 1898. When the abundance of certain B vitamins in wheatgerm was reported in 1924, Hovis increased in popularity.
The first Bisto product, in 1908, was a meat-flavoured gravy powder, which rapidly became a bestseller in Britain. It was added to gravies to give a richer taste and aroma. Invented by Messrs Roberts and Patterson, it was named "Bisto" because it "Browns, Seasons and Thickens in One". Bisto Gravy is still a household name in Britain and Ireland today, and the brand is currently owned by Premier Foods.
"Most folk will get mad on occasion or at least get irritable - not Beach Head. He thinks anger is a waste of time and energy. Rage clouds the vision and pollutes logic. Fury impairs judgement and makes you careless. The results of anger are totally unacceptable to Beach Head. He doesn't get angry...he gets even."
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Cuando presentamos sindrome de colon irritable, se hace presente el dolor abdominal así como algunos cambios intermitentes en el intestino, hay muchos médicos que suelen confundir los síntomas de un sindrome de colon irritable con los de una enfermedad intestinal inflamatoria.
Las causas p...
curaparaelcolonirritable.com/como-sanar-el-sindrome-de-co...
Adjective: bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.
Example: “I know someone who gets hangry, if they miss a meal.”
40mm | f/8 | 1/100 | iso 200
B800 @1/2 power in large octabox boomed camera left slightly above subject about 3 feet away
B400 @ lowest setting pointed at background
Strobes fired with Phottix Atlas II
Scene composed in and triggered using the Camranger Mini + iPad
4/365 Todays image. Sorry it was taken yesterday. Not feeling brilliant today. What's left of my knee is playing up. And a flare up of my irritable bowl. Try harder tomorrow.
Sun Bright
Here is another shot of Mesa Arch, but from a different angle (west end of the arch) to capture the "star burst" of the Big Star called The Sun. I got to the parking lot around midnight, and crashed until 0400 hrs, got to the arch around 0430 hrs to beat the masses. I took an initial set of shots from my choice location, then moved to the one you see to capture the sun before it moved higher in the sky. There were a few irritable photographers, but towards each other due to one getting in the way of the other and not backing down. Anyways, the view from Mesa Arch a short period of time after sunrise. This image was a 2 shot composite taken at different focal points at F/16 & f/20...one exposed for the fore- and middleground and the second for proper exposure of the sky & sunburst...then blending in CS6. Nikon D700, Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8, CP filter, ISO100, f/20, 38mm. Mesa Arch - Canyonlands National Park, Utah. July 8, 2012. As always comments are welcomed! © Dejan Smaic | SportifImages.com 2012
Now the title of this isn't really about eastern spirituality or philosophy or an attempt to come up with a cool sounding name but more to do with making a bit of an a*** of yourself.
I have few days off work so I headed to a favourite spot of mine, one where I did some of my first rock balances and where I built this. Now it had collapsed I wanted to use the stones to make something else.
I've spent a few days out rock balancing recently since I did this this but I didn't manage to get anything to stay upright long enough to get any pictures. I don't think my heart was really in it and I couldn't be bothered to rebuild any of them more than a couple of times once they had toppled over. It is fun to do though and it isn't all about getting a picture so it wasn't wasted time.
I felt a bit more focussed today on getting it right. A lot of it is in the preparation and making sure you pick the right stones and arrange them carefully and the rest is in patience and persistence and an added dose of luck. So I began by trying to do an enhanced version of that stack done on Heysham beach.
After a while it started to rain but other than getting my camera wet it didn't matter too much as it is so warm and muggy.
I had the video camera running most of the time and the one time it was switched off I got my welly wedged under a rock and when I attempted to walk I fell straight over. £250 from You've Been Framed would have been handy but karma dictated that it wasn't to be. Karma hadn't finished with me just yet though.
The paddle out to the boulder the balance was on was just about the same height as my wellies, somehow I managed to stop them being breached but the trouble with constructing something on a rock in a few feet of water is if you don't balance a rock properly then "plop!" it is gone in microseconds and you have to wade back to the bank to search for another one. Just how many crossings was I going to get away with? Well Lady Karma allowed me enough to get it done, and she smiled on me enough to get it built first go.
The first sculpture had an insane wobble. The third from bottom layer had a pebble that rolled every time a new layer was added, several times I had to hold the whole thing upright and put it back into equilibrium. I am interested to see the video footage to see whether it's wobble is clear to see.
The second was more robust but surprisingly so. The lower round pebbles that increased the height of the left hand slab were held on with friction and should they move it would all go. It was quite tall so I worried that I would get flattened if it did fall. Either that or very wet as any evasive action would end up as a swim.
Anyway I got away with it and packed up and headed back to my car.
As I clambered up the hill to the parking area I saw someone else was parked there. Two old ladies were sat in fold-up chairs looking out over the river, each clutching a glass of red wine and smoking a cigarette. They weren't best pleased having their drunken picnic interrupted. But still I smiled and said hello.
This was met with a scowl. Obviously one that they had both spent a lifetime perfecting. I was sorry to interrupt their lunchtime drinkie-poos but you run the risk of being disturbed by a strange bloke in wellies if you insist on having your soiree in a car park.
Anyway, being too long away from food, irritable, tired and grumpy I muttered to myself "manners cost nothing" - grumble - grumble - "parking here and drinking cheap wine and smoking fags" - mutter - mutter - "I didn't want to say hello anyway!"
I packed up my tripods and and put my camera gear into the boot while the elderly grumpy twins laughed uproariously as their cheap plonk kicked in.
I slapped the gear stick into reverse and manoeuvred onto the road and drove away still grumbling under my breath.
I looked at them in the rear view mirror and suddenly there was a black flash in the mirror. "What the hell was that?!"
Doh! I'd left my reflector on the roof. I saw it land in the road so I parked up at the next layby and sprinted up the road. It was nowhere to be seen and each side of the road was thick with bracken.
*********!
I looked and looked and looked and couldn't see it anywhere. Oh no, I am not going to have to ask those two old dears do I? No, anything but that please.
And so, tail between my legs with my best - mum brought me up properly - polite voice I siddled up to them.
"'Scuse me?"
"Yes?"
"Did you see a black circular thing come flying off the back of my car?" The ground opening up beneath would be nice timing should it happen.
"No?!?" The quizzical look I got was far worse than that earlier scowl.
I walked back along the road and sure enough there it was under a bush. Seemed Lady Karma wanted me to talk to those ladies, they wouldn't know where I had lost it but it would appear once I had and I am sure that their side of the story would be quite different to mine.
All I can hope for when they recount what happened that someone will ask them "how much did you have to drink?"
Everything about today was a struggle. If you don't want to know the result of today's battle - then look away now...
I have had in my mind a symbol, ever since I first visited the Himalaya. That symbol is the
endless knot, one of the eight auspicious symbols of Buddhism. The others are Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Dozey, Dave, Mick and Titch.
You will find this symbol all around the Sherpa areas of Nepal, hanging in doorways and over them too, I have always admired its simplicity of design, yet rich symbolism.
I've been pondering its sybomlism even more, recently, how it describes the interconnectedness of all things and the continuous cycle of life, death and rebirth. How this fits in with land art and how in the coming spring I hope to begin a new cycle of inspiration and discovery.
I went out early this morning, desperate for time away from the computer; hypersensitive, especially to people, clumsy, out of sorts and irritable. I longed to be away from everything including myself. In the past ideas have come easily but today was to be a long drawn out battle with myself and my will to do anything constructive at all.
The warming sunshine and blue skies didn't lift my mood and I sat on a rock for a long while looking for inspiration.
I wanted to try and find ways of depicting the endless knot with natural materials so I thought if I achieved nothing else today that I would try to make something that may lead me down the path of finding a way to depict that symbol properly.
That path was littered with clumsiness and irritation and a desperate urge to give up, go home and hide. The leaves would rip over and over again, thorns would fall out and I had to remake it many times. All the time thinking there was no point.
As I neared completion I dropped and broke it and had to reconstruct large parts. As I hung it from the branch and adjusted its position I dropped it again and was close to shouting out 'why!'
Finally it was finished but the bright sunshine of earlier had gone and large menacing clouds blocked the sun. I paced and waited with numb fingers and soggy feet until the sun returned. But now the low arc of the winter sun meant that the sun only struck the ground behind it.
I moved it to a new position but then the sun disappeared again. And so I waited some more.
As I did so I began to think about the symbology again. There is more to the endless knot symbol than the interconnectedness of all things. It also depicts the duality of existence - the light and dark, the passive and active and the struggle between the two. Buddhism seeks to join the two sides and seeks peace through doing so. This seemed to me to be exactly what I was feeling, that struggle between the light and dark with no reconcilliation between the two. Through my fight to resist the urge to give up I passed through it to the other side. It isn't the problems you have in life that are important it is how you tackle them.
When I've been thinking about the endless knot I've been thinking about the representation of cycles, of life and of land art, and ignoring its other key message. Today brought that meaning home to me.
Whether or not you agree with the tenets of Taoism and Buddhism, or steer clear from matters spiritual you would still be best advised to take a listen to what is inside yourself once in a while and try and follow the line of least resistance. It is easy to be one's own worst enemy and fight against what should come naturally. Giving yourself space to hear what is really there can eventually lead to some peace. But you need to be prepared to stop and invest that time.
So my day has come a full circle just as winter turns to spring and the first signs of new growth appear, with all this depicted in the endless knot as everything continues to flow around the never-ending cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
Taming Light #56
The recent addition of extra suns in the vicinity of Metropolis, the Light City especially constructed in deep space for the super-rich of the neighbouring galaxies, means now that the inhabitants are much happier taking their children (and pets) out in the luxurious sunshine rich in UV. Children especially, had been suffering the symptoms of "chromatic deficiency", tending to be less 'blue' and more restless and irritable. It looks like it could take some time for a complete recovery.
For new viewers: These are light refraction patterns or 'caustics' formed by a white light beam passing through a specially made complex plastic form. The pattern is captured directly on to 35mm film by removing the camera lens and putting the coloured and transparent refractive object in its place.
The processed film is digitally scanned for uploading. Please note these are not computer generated images but a true analogue of the way light is refracted by the objects I create.
There is no movement of lights - a single static white light source is used. There is also no camera movement - the image is captured in-camera with a single exposure
The look Jeremiah gave me when I told him that we had to change his food to Green Pea's and Rabbit!!
We have tried a few kind's of food without any luck of changing the vomiting and diarrhea. We are now trying Royal Canin Selected Protein Pea's and Rabbit (we tried the Pea's and Duck but he picked up a piece and spit it back out!! Thankfully, he is eating the Pea's and Rabbit!). I believe it is supposed to be a limited ingredient food....which is probably why he isn't thrilled about eating it!!
He is still having good and bad day's but recently he started laying on his back again and playing in his new "Jackson Galaxy" tunnel.
He was just put on another round of Metronidazole and something called Tylan Powder (this I've never used before). The Tylan Powder is supposed to help with Colitis/severe diarrhea. I get the Metronidazole compounded into a gel that I put on the inside tip of his ear's since it's hard to get the liquid down him.
We are praying that he will feel like himself soon and start gaining weight. He has lost quite a bit over the past few months. Hopefully the new food and medication will get the Irritable Bowel Disease under control!
This past Friday, March 3rd (2017), we had to make the decision to put Jeremiah to sleep.
That morning he vomited blood several times. We rushed him to the Vet. They ran a few more test (different from the ones in January when he was hospitalized). We were told that he had Invasive Gastrointestinal Cancer and that he would only get worse. They said that they could try giving him pain medication but that they couldn't guarantee how well it would work. There was nothing that they could do for the cancer. They said that this type of cancer was very aggressive which is why he had been so sick the past few months and losing weight.
We had been in the process of changing his dry food which we thought would help the Irritable Bowel Disease (he and his brother Joshua were diagnosed with IBD when they were kittens). Apparently it was not just the IBD that was causing all of the problems.
We wrongly thought that since there were a few days that he played for a few minutes at a time and was again laying upside down on his back that he was doing better. Of course over the past few month's we could see that most of the time he was not feeling good.
It's definitely been a rough few day's. We certainly didn't think that we would be taking him to the Vet for the last time.
The house is very quite now. No meowing. No purring. Jeremiah used to lick my cheek each morning to wake me up to feed him. He would meow from the bathroom when he wanted the water faucet turned on. When I washed my hair under the bathtub faucet he would jump in the tub to play in the water. If I was on the computer and he wanted attention he would sit right in front of it. He also seemed to like to watch many of our furry Flickr friends on video.
Since I am unable to work we were together 24 hours a day. When his brother Joshua passed away 16 months ago he took over Joshua's role as being my "guardian". I feel pretty lost right now without him. It's really unbearable to look around and not see him.... or to see that big fluffy tail of his enter the room like it had an entity of it's own. He is missed more than we can say.
Thank you all so much for praying for him in the past when I asked for prayers. I do appreciate it more than you know. And thank you for taking the time to look at, fav and comment on his pictures. All of "our" kitties are very special and I know that we all enjoy sharing little pieces of their lives. Thank you for letting me do that with you.
Horror's Of Insanity.
Hémisphères sifflés danse ombres ravissantes tempéraments sanguins vertige nauséabond frappant le cerveau,
الأفكار الكامنة بيليوس الناشئة عدم اليقين الفكاهة تهيج الأعباء الأناشيد تراتيل صرخة فضولي,
συλλαβές τρέλα ψιθυρίζοντας ερεθίσματα κολοσσιαία γλώσσες εξυψωθεί δόξες φοβερή φτερά έντονη αστραπή,
transformarea avertismente luptându-cadru disperări tragice directori batjocoritoare secrete de sub implorare,
geðhvarfasjúkdómi skap niðurdrepandi sálfræðimeðferð erfiðum skapandi mynstrin tíð tilfelli vaxandi andlega list,
fluidità diagnostica farmaci cognitivi sistematici malattia ciclotimico energia emotiva entusiasmi eccitati,
irritability byrbwyll pryder amheus meddwl synhwyraidd ewfforia gyflym gam aflonydd etiology seiciatrig,
ディスポジション躁病高校生の言語障害ディストラクション障害精神的な創造性笑い声.
Steve.D.Hammond.
January 18, 2016
Peckish:
[pek-ish]
adjective
1. somewhat hungry
2. rather irritable
3. feeling slightly hungry; having an appetite
-----
The cold did not keep the birds away today; I actually saw quite a few while I was out over lunch hour. I came across three downy woodpeckers playing high in the trees and got a few decent shots, but I'd never seen this finch before so it has to be the photo of the day.
Google tells me that this is a "House Finch" and unless corrected, I'm going to have to believe my random terms turned up the correct results!
Hope everyone managed to stay warm on such a chilly day!
Click "L" for a larger view.
Half of my Beatles look very irritable, need more happy mustached faces. (For something I'm working on - I'm going to clothe them a little less psychedelic for the final model.)
Taken at precisely 01:30 on a mild May morning, this is one of my very, very few shots that display the blue carriage lighting used on what at the time was termed "Nightrider" stock. Something I only troubled myself with a couple of times, the idea was that the soothing lighting and comfortable seats would aid in transporting one's self many miles overnight in peace and serenity. What the brochure didn't say was that it was usually full of tired and irritable children, plus a fairly healthy complement of 'happy' (alcohol induced) travellers making their way home/away. Not really the "ambience" the marketing people had in mind!
Pennhurst Asylum
Springs City, PA
May 2014
"A hypomanic episode is characterized by a distinct period of persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting throughout at least 4 days and present for most of the day nearly every day. This hypomanic mood is clearly different from the person’s usual mood."
SOURCE: psychcentral.com/disorde…/hypomanic-episode-symptoms/
(not THAT Jason)
camera: white slim angel
film: fujicolor 200
J is for Jason, my husband, who stands by me, keeps me sane, and weathers the brunt of my irritability, the good man. He and I have been enjoying short hikes up to this spot.
My daughter and I each shot a roll in this camera. I struggled. Her photos rock.
for FILM26 (the alphabet in film)
Blue tits in flight..Blue tits: Beautiful birds, wonderful singers… and absolutely no morals..With a cobalt cap, white cheeks and tiny wings, the blue tit might be a picture of songbird sweetness,As are many other resident birds, blue tits are very sedentary: they rarely travel more than 10km (a little more than six miles) from where they were born.. they will start to pair up early in the spring, with the male courting the female by bringing her morsels of food. He will then defend his territory by singing his rather tuneless, slightly irritable song, which repels rival males, as well as cementing the bond with the female.
Lower Manhattan, 9:28 PM. The air is muggy, ensured by a constant drizzle that pelts the brick and mortar labyrinth. On a particular branch of this urban stretch sits a defunct sauna which, in outward appearance, is of no more import than its neighbors.
Through the natural drum of the downpour, a series of unorganized whirs and clanks can be identified, and then, a disproportionate shape lurches out of the grey veil and stalks along the parking lot on tall, winding stabilizers. It is a man riding atop them, his torpid state in opposition with the arms’ erratic lunging. They allow him to descend gradually as he reaches the awning outside the dead establishment, and the ensemble of flesh and machinery bobs to a standstill.
With an efficiency gained through repetition, Doctor Otto Octavius commands a tentacle to pluck the damp trilby from his head, resulting in a few droplets tagging his neck. He huffs, and sways a little like he wishes a bed would catch him. Then his lower-left pincer punches the lock out of the door and he lumbers inside.
Rain patters against the panes and roof. The sauna’s interior is even heavier than it is out in the streets; clearly, the back rooms are not out of service, nor locked. The light implements, on the other hand, are characteristically dark.
“Sauron!” barks the arrival. “It’s a dungeon in here! … Even Warren’s lairs aren’t this repellent…”
Over the din of the weather, a response slithers to Octavius’ ears:
“I hear now that thou wouldst barter with me. What is thy price?”
“Quoting the Silmarillion, hmph. So you do take your name from Tolkien,” a blasé Octavius verifies. “I happen to be aware of the swift betrayal met by the character offered the same. Come to think of it, it was the undoing of his companions as well. Showing our hand a tad early, are we?”
“As if.”
Sounding like a heavy tarp being splayed, something unfolds from the rafters above the waiting room, to Octavius’ left. It swoops down, and across to the reception area. Octavius sizes up the wide figure; its only prominent features in the gloom are three points, devilishly crowning its shoulders and head.
“Plead your case, Doctor, and I, Sauron, will be the godsend to your campaign.”
One of Octavius’ claws snips at the air. “It’s you who needs to impress me, Doctor.”
“Bah!” Sauron screeches. “You were not already satisfied by my resume?!”
“As for my ‘price’,” Octavius reprimands, “I submit to you a part to play in removing the thorn in our sides: Spider-Man. My end of the bargain was final; your contribution is what we will be reviewing.”
This ruffles Sauron. “I just wanted to say the quote, damn you!”
Octavius, frowning, flips open the dossier provided by a tentacle rooting through his trench coat. “Firstly, you claim a kill on one of the X-Men operatives. ‘Cannonball’.”
“Yes. Full disclosure: He came around.”
“From dying.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it just the way?” Octavius muses, continuing. “Flight capabilities. Energy-draining touch. Expertise in genetic modification. Professional hypnotherapist, and by extension, able to turn desired targets against one an-“
“FFFFIRE-breathing!” reminds Sauron, as he belches out a cone of flame over the duo’s heads. His form—that of an anthropomorphic pteranodon—is brilliantly exposed for an instant.
Octavius rubs the indentations on his nose, made by his shades. “I have a man that flies. I expect to be bringing in more that specialize in illusions and biological weapons. Should I become truly desperate, I do, regrettably, know a particularly intolerable vampire. With ALL of these candidates, in fact, I have greater familiarity, than I do you. Bearing this in mind… tell me why I might have need of you.”
“Did I not breathe fire before your mammalian eyes?!”
“I’m enthralled,” Octavius snarls. “You have thoroughly wasted my time. Good night!”
“I have the Spider-Man’s true name!” Sauron squawks after his departure.
“YOU-“ Octavius’ arms rattle, and he slams the door shut, jerking back around. “LEAD WITH THAT! BLAZES, MAN!”
Sauron hops over to a specific drawer in the front desk, crestfallen. “Just once I would like fire-breath to seal the deal.”
“How on Earth could you know the man behind the wall-crawler’s mask?”
“As it were: By saving his life. My other half did, that is.”
Octavius looks at his claws. They look back. “Your marital partner..?”
“What?” Sauron blinks softly, then shakes his beak. “… No, my former identity, Karl Lykos; that veritable pheasant! He banished himself to the Savage Land, allowing himself no interaction with superpowered persons, that which must be consumed to bring forth my glorious form!”
He produces a videotape from the drawer, and motions for Octavius to follow him to the flatscreen intended for patrons. There, Sauron had seemingly brought his own cassette player. Octavius’ lower-right tentacle sighs.
Sauron pops in the tape. “But much to Lykos’ dismay, the Savage Land beckoned adventurers. Spider-Man arrived and, unprepared for the trials that awaited him, was transformed, by the mutant Brainchild, into a feral arachnoid beast-“
“Why couldn’t he have contacted me?..” laments Octavius.
“-and was set loose upon the nobler natives of the Savage Land. Lykos prevented a massacre by sapping the false mutation from the Spider-Man, but at the cost of unleashing me! Lykos witnessed the vigilante’s face as he reverted… and I was freed.”
“And you managed to put the face to a name, how? Lykos knew his alter-ego?”
Sauron tuts. “Now now, if I told you everything, it would take no time at all for a man of your acuity to piece things together… and—my usefulness expired—you would cast me off.”
“Like a broken. Crayon,” says Octavius darkly.
“In that event, I shall keep my leverage! Ah, it wasn’t rewound.” Sauron pecks at his remote, and the VCR begins complaining.
“Armed with this secret,” Sauron resumes, “I made my way to New York. The brief ’taste’ I got of the Spider-Man’s power told me that he was… an individual kind of delicacy; the likes of which, I have found in only the most astonishing of X-Men. A full meal of one such person… I imagine it could facilitate my control over Lykos for years. A decade, even.”
“The X-Men, again,” Octavius notes the recurring topic, unsure. “Are you yourself, categorically, a ‘mutant’?”
“A titan among mortals, created by a metamorphic virus carried by apex organisms that were thought to be long-extinct!” boasts Sauron. “Oh yes, but ‘mutant’ will do. Blasphemy! Lumping me in with the same barbarians that…”
Sauron irascibly tosses around more cables.
“‘That’, what?” Octavius presses.
“Never mind, you! See here, my near-triumph over our common enemy!”
On cue, the display’s fuzzy picture and static subsides into the rustling of foliage. The camera was being pushed in short bursts through dense grass. Narrating the footage was an extraordinarily phony English accent; it was Sauron’s.
“It is here, in the undergrowth, where we will have a chance-“
Sauron grunted from behind the camera, likely performing a leopard crawl.
“-to spot Ka-Zar’s courtship ritual with the She-Devil.”
Sauron—not in the video—starts mashing buttons feverishly. Octavius grimaces.
“Never before has this unique mating behavior been documented to be released to the general… oh. Oh balls.”
The choppy audio picks up the far-off bellows of a woman, then those of a man. The camera view is shown shuffling for a moment, when a wooden spear embeds itself in the muck, inches from the lens. The visuals blur, and flapping can be heard. Then a very deep, feline snarl. Then a girlish yawp from Sauron. The last image is of two rows of pure-white incisors, when present-day Sauron finally locates the fast-forward feature.
The rain still beats down while the tape zips along.
“I was feeling silly.”
“You are detestable.”
“Yes, well… never let it be said that Sauron, Master of Malice, was too much the Boy Scout!” the villain recovers. “NOW, see here…”
The video plays at regular speed, and one of Sauron’s hands is seen clutching a mason jar, turning it over to agitate the sizable arachnid it houses. The creature has an atypically vibrant exoskeleton, and repeatedly attacks the glass at the slightest upset of its prison. The chuckling of both Saurons harmonizes.
“Before stowing aboard a ship braving the Drake Passage, I stowed with me a deadly specimen: One of many ready-made weapons housed by the Savage Land,” Sauron explains proudly. “Aggressive on her best days, and positively bloodthirsty when she’s carrying her young.”
A zoom-in showcases scores of fibrous pouches speckle the animal’s abdomen.
“My plan was direct. Elegant. No extraneous moving parts… so to speak.”
The perspective cuts to Sauron’s feet lighting on the uppermost ledge of an apartment building.
Octavius shoves past Sauron to absorb every pixel on the monitor. “This is where he lives? Where is this??”
Sauron ignores him. “The first snag came up before I even began. Spider-Man somehow saw me coming.”
Doctor Octopus’ concentration on identifying any landmarks on the skyline is broken. He squints at Sauron, almost disgusted. “That’s half of his act: Sensing things. I’m sorry, how many times did you say you actually fought-“
“Watcha doin’ up here, bud? Migration been rough this year?”
Sauron rack-focused to Spider-Man, on the adjacent ledge.
“Orchestrating your demise, morsel. You and I have a dinner engagement.”
Sauron smiles approvingly at his own delivery in the video. “I had that one written beforehand.”
Spider-Man tilted his head. “Oh hey, you’re recording this? Hi future-me, who’s going to be looking at this and finding all of bird-man’s embarrassing shower karaoke.”
“Lord above, he doesn’t shut up for anyone,” Octavius mutters.
The screen rocks from Sauron hobbling to a ventilation duct. “Mock your doom. Mock Sauron the Unspeakable! But YOU will be the one caught in a web this time.”
Sauron brandished the jar containing his spider.
“Awww…” Spider-Man cooed at it, wiggling a finger playfully. “Here’s the thing: I don’t have your Ring of Power or whatever you’re here for, but I’m going to have to insist you round up any and all Shelobs you have on your person and hit the road. I’m telling you, they’ve got a serious policy about pets, the guy two doors down from me had to have a friend look after his chinchilla for-“
“Quit your drivel! I am antagonizing you!”
“-of course Ms. Rasmussen has an emotional-support dog, that’s really the only exception! Hey! If your spiders help you detect low blood-sugar, you may be able to convince the landlord-“
“Enough!” Sauron crowed. His wicked smile could practically be heard through the recording. “They’re waking up.”
“That’s ominous,” Spider-Man decided. “‘kay I’ll take that now.”
The vigilante’s web-shooters both fired; the left, snaring the spider’s glass, and the right tangling around Sauron’s wing, and part of the camera’s lens. Before Spider-Man could reel in his catch, Sauron coughed up a fiery jet that snapped the sticky band leading to the jar, then dashed the vessel straight through the grating of the duct beside him.
The eyes on Spider-Man’s mask enlarged. “Oh god!”
He sprang after the lost jar, but the camera swirls and Sauron’s great wingspan blindsided the hero back onto the gravel at the far end of the roof. Sauron jabbed through the remaining webbing as his adversary rolled upright. Spider-Man didn’t try for the vent again; he flipped over the ledge, calling,
“Storks are really supposed to deliver babies wrapped in blankets! Just sayin’!”
Sauron pursued, capturing the image of Spider-Man swinging himself through a window two stories below.
“This,” Octavius commentates, “is not… entirely uninspired. Having him chase thousands of tiny tasks with minds of their own…”
“… so that he’s too distracted and tired to stop my killing stroke,” Sauron finishes.
The escapade carried on with Sauron peaking into the apartment. Spider-Man had interrupted a family of four’s board game.
“I’m real sorry but I need you to call the hospital,” he appealed to the parents, “tell them there might be a whole bunch of people with venomous spider bites at this location! You need to help me get everyone… where’s all the vents in-“
A clump of infant spiders dropped out of the hallway air conditioning system and spread like water across the wood flooring. The family screamed, and Spider-Man yanked a bookcase off the wall to spin one-hundred-and-eighty degrees on its corner and flatten the horde. He then webbed over the vent.
“REALLY sorry,” he apologized again. “Please go, bang on doors, and don’t let these things get on you!”
Spider-Man perked up as if he heard something, and immediately launched through the front door. Sauron clambered inside, trailing the family as they too exited. From the apartment entryway, the mic picked up Spider-Man’s cries for the building to be evacuated. Bouncing from one room to the next, he would pound on and occasionally break open the door in order to block off the endless invasion of hatchlings. Soon after multiple tenants had become wise to the situation, the fire alarm was activated.
Sauron kept his distance all the while, observing Spider-Man’s fatigue from his unabating alertness. The hero traversed the walls; back and forth he sped, several minutes into fighting the disaster and only just now moving on to clear the next floor of danger. Back and forth, for all the good he could do. His shouts had grown hoarse. Back and forth.
“EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET OUT! … -J’s going to burn me at the stake when this story makes the ne… ‘-ider-Man unleashes minions on unsuspecting families!’… -lding that dumb coffee mug, and using that voice, too!”
Doctor Octopus appears bored with the uncut footage. “Let’s cut to the chase, yes?”
“This… is the chase… Oh, very well,” Sauron begrudgingly conforms, realizing Octavius’ limbs are poising threateningly.
The tape skips, and Spider-Man—defending a male resident—is facing a kitchen teeming with the newborn killers. Sauron had been gradually encroaching on his prey as the exertion took its toll on the web-slinger’s faculties, and had now barged through the home’s entrance, meters away.
To make an example, the monstrous hybrid roasted some of the furnishing to his left, then pointed the camera back to Spider-Man.
“Are you quite through?”
“Running late, dear,” Spider-Man shot back unenthusiastically.
He bumped the civilian out the window to their backs, hastily calculating and fastening to the poor man a web that would rappel him to the street. The hero salvaged his own fall with three fingertips on the sill, shifting his momentum with a kick that would send him into the next apartment over. Sauron, anticipating the maneuver, crossed his room with a combative glide and ripped down the dividing wall, right onto the arriving Spider-Man, who was pummeled by insulation, a metal stud and a full china cabinet.
Sauron put the heat on his opponent by slicing his shin. Spider-Man retaliated with more webbing, but his larger rival shielding himself with the backs of his wings, then subsequently pulled the young man—and his left-hand web-shooter—into his waiting beak, which wedged into the gadget, rendering it inoperative. This was followed up by a stab to the do-gooder’s abdomen, pinning him to the carpet for agonizing seconds. The villain then gripped Spider-Man by the throat, a portion of which was no longer even negligibly protected by red and blue spandex, due to a tear. The captive choked and flailed. As his very life-force was being stripped, Sauron relished his prize off-camera.
“Ah. As good as I remembered.”
Spider-Man built up some vitality, and cracked him over the jaw. Sauron’s taloned foot put the second web-shooter out of the fight.
“Rest now,” Sauron chided. “Rest. It’s possible you saved them all; isn’t that a lovely thought? And you can always hope the first-responders are prepared. The spider’s toxicity is of a most exotic variety, however…”
Spider-Man’s words were strangled. “You endangered all these people… AAUGH… to get to me. Big…”
One hand tore free from Sauron’s trap,
“BIG”
and then the other.
“Mistake,” he said ferociously, as though possessed by an unrevealed, primal side of himself.
He took Sauron’s webbed wings in each fist, shredding palm-sized sheets out of them. Now it was Sauron who screamed. The image quakes violently from a wild blast of fire. The screen then goes blue.
The sauna is again silent; even the rain has moved on. Sauron hangs his head.
Octavius starts at the blank display, feeling cheated. “Well?”
“I fled! Time had run out, and there was no leeway in my plan for trading blows. It was only for his incomplete commitment to rescuing the building that the Spider-Man gave me up.”
Sauron hits “Eject”.
“I failed to factor in that his concern for bystanders might be as emboldening, as much as detrimental, to him.”
“There is much to repurpose with this course of action. Your efforts are commendable,” Octavius praises, but seems perturbed. “… In all my years, trying to best him, I’ve never seen him use his adhesion so… ruthlessly.
“It wasn’t that alone,” Sauron corrects. “It burned. Enough to undermine my own hold. These mutants, they’re full of such surprises. Tricky little devils.”
Octavius’ demeanor is made irritable in an instant. “No… now this has been avoided far too long: Your obsession with the mutants. You mean to tell me you’ve thought Spider-Man is one of their kind??”
“Naturally. They worked side-by-side in the Savage Land-“
Octavius’ upper-right tentacle squeaks as a pained rodent would. The doctor’s face nearly glows red. “Know-nothing! … inept layman! You almost killed the Spider-Man, robbing the rest of us... when you have no quarrel with him?!”
“Do not try to disillusion me, Octopus!” Sauron rebukes. “You wish to get rid of me, but recycle my genius! Spider-Man is one of the Brotherhood, and I-“
“He is neither an X-Man nor part of that supremacist cabal… THOSE are separate entities too, you might be interested to learn!” growls Octavius, pacing as he does so. “They wear uniforms and start wars! Spider-Man helps old ladies with their grocery bags and throws the same three puns at you when you happen to be given the name ‘Octopus’ by the news!”
The gears turn in Sauron’s brain. “… I would… still very much like to feast on his energies…”
Octavius roars, hurling a magazine rack. “You’ve been cutting in on our vendetta… the TRUE foes of Spider-Man! How could you be so blinded to the obvious? What did the Brotherhood do to you warrant this utter lapse in reasoning??”
Sauron squirms, like a child caught fibbing. “Nothing. Nothing of-“
“WHAT, you boob?!” Octavius demands.
“They killed my wife!”
…
“They wanted my power, and they used me to kill my… my Tanya. Oh…”
Sauron burrows into the waiting room’s sofa, weeping.
Knee-deep in the exceedingly awkward interlude, Otto Octavius finds himself whisked into the past: An unprecedented, reflective condition for him, since having chosen this sinister path. A fateful day pierces the villain’s psyche. A particular laugh embraces a small, brackish heart, confronting him with a name he had hoped yet hated to drown.
“Mary.”
Sauron slurps up some snot. “Who?”
Octavius’ resentment of Sauron transitions to momentary pity. Pity, to envy. Envy, right back to resentment.
Octavius stares down at him. “Maybe there’s less distinction between you and Lykos than you’d care to admit, or maybe there never was a distinction. Whatever the case, whichever of you is in there, I’m speaking to a lovesick idiot! And your wife lies dead, waiting for you, still!”
“I-I don’t…”
“YOU SHOULD FEEL BLESSED! Having faces to put to the injustice! That she wasn’t taken from you by an accident, and all you have left is an abyss to yell into! You have the opportunity to exact your pound of flesh! Find the ones that wronged you… Get it RIGHT this time, and end them! Let your wife rest!”
“You…” Sauron sits up. “You should really see someone about these types of things.”
Octavius gnashes his teeth, and stomps toward the VCR player.
“What are you doing?”
“Collecting my compensation!” Octavius jiggles the device, unsure of how to dislodge the halfway-expelled cassette. “If you insist on being a useless dolt, I will use this tape to extract any and all clues to Spider-Man’s identity!”
Sauron dives for the tape, snatching it away and defensively backing into a potted fern. “No! My home movies are on there too!”
“Out of my way!”
Sauron’s mouth glows like a forge. “Never!”
Octavius curses in frustration. Weighing the odds, he gives it up and storms off once more through the parking lot.
Sauron peeks out from the business’ entrance. “W-where are you going?”
“To rethink EVERYTHING to do with how I will find competent applicants! Never, I repeat, NEVER contact me. And I do mean ‘ever’!”
The doctor’s lower-right tentacle waves a goodbye to Sauron. Octavius keeps grumbling, well out of earshot of his bane.
“Four hours walking through sewers… for this. Never again. They’ll come to me. I’m in charge. A nice office to work from… yes…”
***
“Aaaaalllright, so you’ve got your account’s password, bio, all of that how you want it?”
“I believe so,” Sauron acknowledges, nibbling on a claw.
“Great! You can click the ‘Complete’ button; it’ll be green,” Screwball instructs over the video chat.
Sauron complies. “… There are little hearts raining down.”
“That should mean you’re all set, let me refresh. Ooh, sweet PFP my guy!”
The icon shows Sauron lounging in a wingback chair, with a derby hat precariously positioned on his crest.
“Oh, yes, well-“ Sauron blushes.
“On. Fleek.”
“I really should repay you in some way,” maintains Sauron.
“Listen, you hold onto Spider-Boy’s real name for me if I’m ever hurting for views, and that’s payment enough.”
Sauron glances over his desk to at a folded Daily Bugle newspaper, preserved from years past: The last piece he had needed, to the puzzle of the person behind Spider-Man’s mask. In an undeservedly small article, abruptly detailed is an expedition, taken by the socialite Warren Washington III, into the mystifying, Antarctic region dubbed “the Savage Land”. As photographed, accompanying Washington had been the column’s own author: An unassuming journalist named Peter Parker. His was the face Lykos had seen appear on the monster that he stopped all that time ago, just before Lykos himself had become another monster needing to be cured.
“Certainly, but,” Sauron taps his mousepad, evaluating. “you’re sure you wouldn’t like me to put in a word for you with this alliance Octopus is convening?”
Screwball sticks her tongue out. “They’re way too mainstream, my audience would think I’m getting desperate. But hey, if you ever get back into a crime kick, I could always use a camera with wings!”
“My leave from supervillainy will be… quite extended. Recent events have caused me to, well, reconsider where I may find fulfillment.”
“C’est la vie. Caaatch you later, dino-dude!”
Screwball’s feed closes out.
“They’re not dinosaurs…” Sauron protests, but returns to his new media platform.
“A match, already? … ’madamedracheXO : 33, mutant : Self-made entrepreneur : Flexible with long-distance relationships, fire-breathing is big plus.’ Hmm.”
***
~ DOCTOR OCTOPUS’ nefarious exploits will return in INTERVIEW WITH AN OCTOPUS: BLACK CAT! ~
When life gets a little hectic, and I get tired and irritable, I can look over at my windowsill and see this beautiful sight, and I can't help but feel happier...
If ever you feel like you need a lift, get a little sunshine in your life by just picking up some flowers. I can't tell you how much better you will feel!
====GCPD====
"Jim, we came as soon as we could. What's the situation?"
"We've got a body in the Coventry district- vic's mistress found the body. Detective Driver from Major Crimes figured you might be interested..." Gordon says, handing him a set of photos.
"Judge Aickerman... He was one of the names on Grange's tapes."
"Yeah, that makes the fifth victim so far, all headshots, all-"
"Two shots to the head... Dent? You said there were others?"
"Here. All members of the Court, all names on Grange's list. And that doesn't even go into the mess in Arkham. 40 bodies recovered, all burnt beyond recognition, only thing identifiable-"
"Are the owl masks fused to their faces. Chemical analysis?"
"Make-up seems to match Lynns' portfolio, and the napalm there's a staple of Joey Rigger. And though I can't condone them, I can't blame them either. After Walker-"
Gordon trails off, and takes his cigarette out of his mouth- after Arkham, he'd relapsed, and looks at Batman's partner. Catwoman
"Well, I'm just glad to see you're on speaking terms again."
Bruce looks at him inquisitively
"Give me some credit, I am a detective too, you know."
...
"Don't worry, Jim, I'll find Dent, before they do."
====The Slab====
"Gar put you up to this, didn't he?"
No response... Drury sighed. He couldn't go anywhere these days without someone else tagging along, acting like his self important babysitters. He didn't much like Flannegan, not these days, not since he started to question things, question people. The man was cruel and irritable, and the only things he cared for were his rats, who he insisted be brought along with them on their flight. "Can't trust those Antarctic rats," he'd declared loudly at the airport, waving his government badge at the security guard trying to pry the rodent-filled suitcase away from him. Even now he was dodging questions, cigarette in mouth, his right hand stuffed in his pocket.
Drury had been to a lot of prisons; Blackgate, Arkham, Stryker's, even spent a night in Iron Heights. Slabside was a different breed entirely. Located in the middle of Antarctica, it's home to some of the world's worst criminals. Following the City of Fear incident, many of the Society's most dangerous member's were relocated here. Many still are. Doomsday. Mongul. Amazo. Just one of them free would be catastrophic, all of them, and even the Justice League might not stand a chance.
In one cell, a masked man punches the wall, blood spurting from his knuckles. With each punch his voice grows louder. "Pow. Pow. Pow." Drury takes one look at him, then hurries after Flannegan.
"Do I know you?" a timid voice asks. A frail man sits housed in the adjacent cell, fumbling with a broken clock.
Drury stared. His name is David Clinton. In this reality, he was never trapped in the void, in this reality he never had an epiphany of any kind, or really any original thought. But, in his cell, he knew there was something missing. A purpose. Memories that he shouldn't have flashed in his head regularly.
In one world, Drury knew him as Chronos, a sociopathic monster. But here, Clinton was just another C-Lister locked in a cage.
"Sir, we've got her down here," the guard said.
"Good," Drury muttered. "Good, I'll be there soon," passing by Chronos.
"Tick tock," the other man murmurs. "Tick tock."
Drury sat down in the visitor centre, a small, dark, smelly room. Opposite sat Marion Grange.
"What do you want?"
Grange shifted in her seat. "I heard about your wife, I want you to know that-"
"No. No, what do you want?"
She sighed. "I don't... I don't want to die. I want that on the record. Any record. I don't want to die."
"I travelled halfway across the world-!"
"Then you know I'm serious. They're coming. They're coming, and when they get here, they'll do whatever they can to make it look like an accident, a suicide."
"I don't-"
"They're going to kill me!" Grange yelled suddenly.
Drury shifted his eyes around the room, and in a harsh whisper asked "The Owls?"
Grange nodded.
"I needed you here, because I know you'll believe me. Because you know how- You know how dangerous they are."
"This is the most secure prison on the planet, they aren't getting in here."
"And what if they're already here? What if they've already bribed, extorted and blackmailed their way in?"
Drury paused. "You didn't bring me here to talk. Or to apologise. You wanted me here, so you'd have a human shield to hide behind. Didn't you?" Grange looks down at the desk, ashamed. "I'm sorry."
"I said, didn't you! My wife is dead. My brother was abducted, and one of my best friend's went missing two days ago."
A rat crawls into the room, and is scooped up by Flannegan. He whispers to it, then addresses Drury. "Shut it."
"Oh, he speaks!" Drury snapped at Flannegan.
"Let's talk about your screwed up little world some other time. Rodriguez just sent word. Someone's infiltrated the security systems."
"Who the hell's Rodriguez?!"
"The rat. Do keep up. Up you get, ma'am."
"Not now, Otis..." Drury murmured. "Did your... rat tell you who it is?"
"It's a rat, you idiot. Not the criminal database," he scowled, as he pulled a knife out of his sock and stormed out. "Oh, you again."
====Keystone City====
"Your turn, Rory. You were saying?"
"Right, right. Wit was ah aboot to say? Oh, aye. The auld guard! Scudder, Scudder wis a daft wee bampot who dragged Lisa doon wi' 'im. And dinnae get me started on that Top bastard. What a pretentious auld cunt he wis. Aw brains an no fookin' human decency..."
"-Don't forget about that Chillblaine loser," Mick muttered, as he put his lighter down.
"Och aye, Chillblaine tae. Ach, the poor lassie sure kent how ta choose 'em. As fer Piper-"
Mardon paused. "Piper? He's gay, McCulloch."
"Wit? The wee rat boy? He didnae ever come across as one a' them."
"One of them"? 'Hell does that mean?" Mick started.
"Ach, I dinnae mean nothing by it, Rory, I'm jus' saying. I mean, I cannae believe it. Hartley bloody Rathaway, and wit, Flannegan? They're a bloody couple?"
"When Flannegan feels like it, that is," Mardon added, checking his watch. "Snart was supposed to be here by now."
Rory growled.
"Oh, don't start," Mardon began.
"He comes and goes as he pleases," he snarls.
"Well, he's the big man, ain't he? He's allowed tae do that."
Mick slouches into his seat. "That's all well and good, I just wish we didn't have to work with *him* to do it."
McCulloch groans. "Aye, I hear ya, he makes Dillon sound like Girder."
As if on cue, a signature smug, booming voice calls out to the assembled trio. "Gentlemen, when is a door not a door?"
"Ach, that's fooking ancient that is..."
"When it's ajar..." Mardon sighed.
Riddler smiled, but he was clearly annoyed. "Quite. So tell me, which one of you three dimwitted numbskulls left the door open *this* time? Need I remind you the importance of what we're trying to accomplish here. If Bane were to discover-"
"Bane's all drugs and bravado. I could summon a hurricane in his gut, and suck his flunkies into a tornado."
"Ah, yes, because Kryptonians are well known for being easily sucked into tornados..."
McCulloch leaps out his chair. "Ach, fook this, ya think that because yer in good wit' Luthor yer better than us?"
"Hardly. I think I'm better than you, because I am."
====ACE Chemicals====
"Hello Charles. I apologise for the hostile greeting, but, you weren't coming quietly."
"That ring, those things, how did you-"
"All in good time, I assure you. Are you angry with me, Charles? You've every reason to be. Day betrayed you, Penguin betrayed you, Sionis too. And now, Mr Dent. All that hurt in so short a time... Any other man may have succumbed to violence, but not you. You're afraid. Afraid that if you were to retaliate, the consequences for your friends would be dire. Why those, those are powerful men. And Calendar Man, heh.
But what, what if something wasn't holding you back, what if you didn't have to be afraid? Fear, fear is what tells us no. Fear holds us back. It controls us, manipulates us. Fear is a weapon, harnessed by me, and harnessed by The Batman. It's funny, when I began this newest experiment of mine, Penguin commissioned me to deliver a weapon, a drug that could help his armies conquer fear, and thus, their enemies. The Court of Owls, The Batman, Joker if the need ever arose, without fear, they'd be easy marks, so he said. I hear he's in hiding now.
But, I never let a good toxin go to waste, and now, one year later, I have the answer! I can cure fear! It took various chemicals, some herbs in Blackfire's garden and the blood of a few murdered Talons, but I have my chemicals, and you will be my guinea pig."
"You could've had the pick of the city, why me?"
"Yes. Why you? Not even remotely special. Because, Charles, the fact is, you're a good man. You've got a moral compass, a strong one, you help people at every turn, even those who don't deserve it. You've never killed without remorse, not even that creature, Salinger, was it? I bet you grieved for days... For many men, the easiest path to breaking them, is fear. And it's gotten so... boring. Cliché. This time, I'll break you, and men of your ilk by destroying you, from the inside out." A yellow claw fills a nearby syringe with red liquid and hands it to a grinning Crane. "Shall we begin?"
1/60
listen: Cold Skin by To Kill a King
"me and you, just two damaged fools…"
so i guess i'll call this picture the beginning of my 60-day project, even though my IB teacher still needs to give me the information about my mentor for this project. i'm really excited to start this because i always want to learn and improve. i'll try my very best to take a picture and post everyday because i really want to challenge myself to dedicate my time to this project and not miss a day.
but yeah this photo, to me, displays how i want spring and warm weather to come so badly. the cold weather makes me tired and irritable so the butterfly represents spring and how i'm slowly but surely getting through the winter. and i hate complaining about the cold weather because in a few months i'll be complaining about how hot it is, but i'm really sick of the cold.
view this large!
"Authorities released reports today that a new epidemic is quickly spreading across the world. Scientists have not yet determined how this disease began or how it is spreading, but disease control centres are recommending that people begin wearing face masks to avoid air exposure, and to only consume food and water from pure sources. It appears that those afflicted with the disease suffer from headaches, fevers and mild dementia, as well as irritability. Avoid unnecessary contact with sick people."
The Mercenary was always a bit of a loner. After he left the military with an honourable discharge, he has been working in the private military industry - protecting the interests of the rich and famous for cash. He is a simple man: he loves his shotgun, his home and his family. Too bad he only has his shotgun - his job means that he lives in a state of impermanence, constantly uprooting his life to move for the next assignment. He didn't like the way this new epidemic sounded: the way the media skirted around the details indicated that there was something more, something that made it more sinister than malaria or AIDs. No, this is to be much, much worse. Or maybe it is his paranoia or PTSD. Who knows, maybe he is crazy after all.
So, this is the first episode in my new series. I know the picture ain't too great - it was admittedly rather rushed. The name of the series is inspired by Project Zomboid, which begins by saying 'This is how you died', or something along those lines.
This series is obviously more about the story, and is a writing experiment, than it is about the actual LEGO build or figures etc. Those are merely a visual aid to direct your thinking ;) Please enjoy, and keep your eyes out for the next episode!
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Tonight however, we are following Lettice’s childhood chum Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy who has gained some independence from his impecunious family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street, a business which, after promotion from Lettice and several commissions from high profile and influential society ladies, is beginning to turn a profit. We trail Gerald’s little Morris Cowley four-seat tourer* as he heads south-west through the London streets away from his small Soho flat. Taking the Brompton Road, he drives through Belgravia and then Chelsea as Brompton Road becomes Fulham Road. He drives past the Brompton Cemetery and through the historic centre of Walham Green before going on through Fulham, finally turning south along the Fulham High Street. Passing the Hurlingham Club along the banks of the Thames he continues to go south over the river along Putney Bridge. He turns off the Putney High Street and into the tree lined avenue of Hazlewell Road. He drives along past double storey Edwardian villa after double storey Edwardian villa made of red brick with bay windows, set in neat gardens behind privet hedges or low brick fences, their windows aglow with the warmth of electric lights. Gerald’s Morris finally pulls up in front of one such Edwardian villa. It looks exactly the same as all the others on that side of the street: red brick with crenelled bay windows upstairs and down to either side of a porticoed door. In fact, the portico is one of the few differences that distinguish it from its neighbours either side. It has an arched portico which matches the arch in the lunette above the white painted front door, whereas its neighbours have square porticos with crenelling that matches that along the tops of the bay windows. Two banks of chimneypots at either side of the villa rise from the steeply hipped roof of shingles and a central attic balconette with French doors is flanked by oriel windows.
The villa belongs to Gerald’s friend, Harriet Milford, the orphaned daughter with little formal education of a middle-class family solicitor. Gerald met Harriet by chance at a haberdashery one day and they have formed a strong bond of friendship, of which Lettice was initially rather jealous. Since being orphaned, Harriet has taken in theatrical lodgers to earn a living, and millinery semi-professionally to give her some pin money**, but like Gerald’s fashion house, Harriet’s business has taken off substantially thanks to Lettice introducing her to a couple of her friends, who have spread the word about Harriet’s skill. Amongst Harriet’s lodgers she has a handsome young West End oboist named Cyril, who like all of Harriet’s tenants, is a homosexual. Since befriending Harriet and being invited to the Hazelwell Road villa and meeting him, Cyril and Gerald have become lovers, and both of them are pleased to have the protective closed doors of Harriet’s Putney villa as a place where they do not have to keep their illegal homosexual relationship*** secret and can be free and open like any couple. Tonight, Gerald is joining Cyril, Harriet and several of her other lodgers for a special dinner in honour of his and Cyril’s third anniversary, and will stay the night, sharing the bed in the small room with the oriel window up under the eaves of Harriet’s house with his lover.
Gerald smiles as he alights from his tourer, snatching up a bunch of pretty pink roses from the front passenger seat that he bought earlier in the day to grace the dinner table as a thank you to his gracious hostess. He pats his breast pocket and feels the small box concealed within it. He steps up to the black painted wrought iron gate flanked by two capped red brick pillars and opens the gate before walking up the garden path snaking across Harriet’s well clipped lawn. Standing beneath the arched portico, Gerald slips his latchkey****, given to him happily by Harriet so that he might come and go and visit Cyril and her as he pleases, into the shiny brass lock and turns it. Letting himself into the villa he steps across the threshold into the electric illuminated black and white tiled hallway stuffed full of Edwardian vestibule furniture.
“Hullo Hattie! Cyril?” he calls out cheerfully. “It’s only me!”
He can smell the delicious aroma of roast meat cooking in the kitchen towards the back of the house, yet he immediately ascertains that something is wrong as he hears the muffled sound of anxious voices and a strangulated moan from behind the closed dining room directly to his right. Opening the door slightly, Gerald pops his head around the jamb and observes a chaotic scene.
Harriet’s villa’s dining room with its heavy and dark Victorian era furniture, busy wallpaper, potted palms and aspidistras*****, and framed stern Milford family photographs is usually a neat and tidy space, as it is used by all of Harriet’s paying lodgers for their meals taken in. However tonight, rather than being laid with a freshly laundered snowy white linen tablecloth, Harriet’s mother’s gilt edged Edwardian patterned Royal Doulton dinner set and her parents’ wedding cutlery, the long mahogany stained dining table is covered in mess of books, scrap books, postcard albums and loose carte de visites****** all of famous London actresses from the late Victorian and pre-war Edwardian years. In one of the upright Queen Anne style dining chairs with red velvet upholstered seats sits Harriet, still dressed in her outdoor cream coloured Burberry macintosh*******, one of her fashionable cloche hats in a matching shade of cream with a tan grosgrain band upon her head, her imitation crocodile skin handbag on the table in front of her, consoling the other occupant seated at the table – Mr. Charles Dunnage. In his fifties, Charles is more mature than most of Harriet’s other borders who are in their twenties and thirties. He has white hair and an impressive, expertly waxed handlebar moustache, and is a regular Shakespearean actor at the Old Vic******** in Lambeth with a grand and dramatic personality to match. Usually a snappy dresser, tonight he looks dishevelled and his suit is visibly crumpled with dirt and grime marks marring the worsted wool. Glancing at one of Harriet’s teacups sitting before Charles with a soda syphon of tonic water nearly full and a bottle of Gordon’s Dry Gin********* sitting half empty next to it, Gerald quicky ascertains that Charles has probably been drinking heavily since about three in the afternoon. At the foot of the table, Cyril stands in his trousers and a white shirt undone at the collar, his suspenders showing since he lacks his usual vest, and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up past his elbows, exposing his delicately haired arms. He stands with his weight spread more heavily on his left side, his arms akimbo, a look of irritation on his handsome young, clean-shaven face.
“Come on Aunt Sally!” Cyril says peevishly, referring to Charles using his female nickname**********. “You can’t just sit there all night looking maudlin into your G and T, duckie!”
“Why not, silly Cilla?” Charles slurs back using Cyril’s female alias in return, looking up at Cyril with rheumy red eyes as tears spill down his chubby, florid cheeks. “My life,” He raises a hand dramatically to his forehead. “Is over!”
“Oh it’s not over, Charles darling!” Harriet insists. “It’s just a little setback.”
He hunches forward again as if the effort of lifting his head and hand was too much, and he takes a swig from his teacup. “Over I tell you!”
“You can’t just sit there feeling sorry for yourself, Aunt Sally, because Gerry’s coming to dinner!” Cyril replies thinly. “And I can’t be setting a nice table with you, and Edith Evans*********** and god knows who else spread across it like… like…” He gesticulates dramatically with his right hand, unable to articulate the word to describe the mess before him. “Can I?”
“Cyril!” Harriet chides mildly, giving him a hurt look with her soft brown doe eyes************.
“Who cares who is coming to dinner when my life is over?” Charles splutters.
“I do!” Cyril spits back. “I’ve been making the perfect Beef Wellington************* all afternoon, just so we can all celebrate Gerry’s and my three year anniversary, you ungrateful old queen!” He throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “Just because you are having your latest existential crisis, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to stop our lives for you!”
“Cyril!” Harriet says more firmly, giving him a more serious look, shaking her head slightly as she does.
“There, there, Charles darling!” Harriet coos, rubbing the older man’s back and right shoulder consolingly. “Cyril didn’t mean to be so thoughtless to your feelings. Did you Cyril?” When Cyril doesn’t reply, even though Charles is too self-absorbed in his own woes to notice, Harriet goes on. “He has been slaving over our oven all afternoon, and he’s spent a pretty penny buying beef fillets from the butchers. We don’t often get a treat like that, do we?” She gently continues to rub his back. “And since Gerry is rather a special guest… and this is rather a special occasion… if you would consent to clearing the table,” she cajoles. “We can help you.”
“In a hurry if you don’t mind, Aunt Sally!” Cyril quips. “Gerry will be here any minute!”
“Gerry is already here.” Gerald says, announcing his presence as he steps through the door and across the threshold of the dining room.
“Gerry darling!” Harriet says, glancing over and smiling across the room at him.
“Gerry my darling!” Cyril jumps with surprise, and then quickly recovering himself, flings his arms around Gerald’s neck with joy and kisses him on the lips passionately, a kiss which is returned with equal love and passion. “You’re here already!” Breaking their kiss, he spies the roses in Gerald’s hands, pink and fat. “Roses? For me, Gerry darling?” He releases his hands from about his lover’s neck. “You shouldn’t have… but I’m glad you did.” He goes to reach for them.
“Well…” Gerald says with an awkward clearing of his throat. “They’re really for Hattie for allowing us to have this little soirée for our anniversary this evening.”
“Oh Gerry!” Harriet gasps as Gerald steps forward and presents them to her with a flourish. “You’re so sweet! Thank you!” Accepting them, she buries her head into the bouquet, savouring the blooms’ sweet and light fragrance.
“What?” Cyril exclaims irascibly, dramatically, folding his arms again and giving Gerald a black look. “You buy flowers for Hattie, yet you don’t buy your own beloved Cyril a gift for our anniversary?”
“I’ll have you know, Cyril, I have something else for you in a small velvet jeweller’s box, for later,” Gerald replies in a cautionary way, patting his breast pocket. “But only if you are good, and not irascible and snappish!”
“Oh Gerry, darling!” Cyril exclaims again, flinging his arms around Gerald again and planting a barrage of kisses on his right cheek. “I’m sorry! It’s just been such a trying afternoon.” He stops kissing his lover and looks accusingly over at the older man sitting at the dining table.
“The flowers can be for you and me, Cyril darling.” Harriet ventures. “After all, I’m just the provider of the venue. You’re really the one whose been working so hard today as cook for this evening.”
“Yes, and our Beef Wellington will be spoiled if we can’t set the table, Aunt Sally!” Cyril puts emphasis on Charle’s nickname to try and get his attention. “I’m not having us eat such a fine repast at the table in the kitchen.”
“Oh, I don’t mind eating at the kitchen table, Cyril darling.” Gerald remarks lightly, thinking about his own small and piteously impoverished Soho flat with the curtain that he uses to conceal the tiny gas ring and trough sink that serves as a kitchenette – a flat too small to even have a dining table and chairs in – but all he can afford to rent at the moment with most profits from his couturier going back into the business to manage it. “After all, we’ve eaten off our laps on the sofa at my flat plenty of times, so any table, kitchen or otherwise, is a luxury for me.”
“No!” Cyril replies adamantly. “This is our anniversary dinner and I’m not having us eat it in the kitchen! I want it to be nice. I want it to be special!”
“What’s wrong with Charles?” Gerald nods in the older actor’s general direction.
“Oh, he’s just channelling his inner Ellen Terry************** again,” Cyril says in an offhand fashion, flailing a hand in Charles’ direction flippantly. “With his usual gravitas and melodrama, whilst our lovely dinner slowly overcooks, dries out and shrivels in the oven whilst he does.”
“What happened?” Gerald asks with concern, looking to Harriet, from whom he knows he will get a kinder and more straight forward answer from than his evidently frustrated lover.
“He didn’t get the part he was hoping for at the Old Vic.” Harriet hisses back quietly.
“Yes, Lady Macbeth!” Cyril adds spitefully.
When Charles releases an anguished moan, Harriet glares at Cyril. “Not helpful, Cilla!”
“Cyril,” Gerald gasps in offended tones. “Don’t be beastly. It’s most unbecoming.” he chides. “I’m sure you wanted this dinner to be perfect, but it isn’t Charles’ fault that today was the day he was denied a part that he really wanted.”
“King Lear***************!” Charles bemoans loudly, lifting himself up again, half stumbling up out of his seat before collapsing back into it again. “It should have been me, not that damnable Eric Adeney****************!”
“He started drinking this afternoon in here after he came back from the Old Vic, whilst I was preparing the Beef Wellington in the kitchen.” Cyril explains. “Hattie was out shopping. Then after a while, I’m not sure what time exactly, he slipped off and went to the Albany***************** in search of his beloved Edith Evans, but the porters wouldn’t let him in.”
“Damnable cheek, those porters!” Charles opines slurringly, raising his teacup before draining its remnants. “They dirtied up my nice Saville Row****************** suit I picked up second-hand from the Portobello Road*******************! I was wearing it especially for her.”
“He must have been a bit tight******************** by that stage, but not enough for the porters to call the constabulary thankfully.” Cyril whispers to Gerald, before turning his attention to Charles. “You’re lucky they just roughed you and your suit up a bit and didn’t break your nose or give you a split lip, Aunt Sally. That would be more damaging for your career as an actor. No amount of greasepaint can cover a broken nose.”
“How many times must you be told, silly Cilla,” Charles huffs irritably. “I’m a th… th… thespian, not a mere actor.” His usually deep and sonorous voice and clearly enunciated words are dulled by the gin he has consumed.
“Thespian or otherwise, Cyril is right, Charles,” Harriet says with concern. “They could have broken your nose,” She shudders as she thinks. “Or far worse.”
“After the Albany,” Cyril goes on quietly to Gerald. “He somehow managed to buy a box of Bassett’s Liquorice All-Sorts********************* from somewhere down Piccadilly and hailed an unwitting taxi driver to bring him home. I accepted him on the doorstep like a heavy parcel from the driver, Liquorice All-Sorts and all, and paid him out of Charles’ billfold, caught unexpectedly as I was, wearing Hattie’s apron the whole time.”
“We’re already known as the house of ill repute in Hazelwell Road,” Harriet giggles girlishly. “Without you wearing my apron on the doorstep, Cyril.”
“Now don’t you start, Hattie!” Cyril waves a finger admonishingly at his pretty landlady.
“Fear not, dear lady!” Charles sits up and stares determinedly at Harriet, his whole upper body swaying as he does. “I survived to tell the tale.”
“I ended up getting him in here,” Cyril concludes. “Which I now realise was a mistake.”
“How much has he drunk?” Gerald asks Cyril in a whisper.
“I’d say that’s the second bottle,” Cyril replies, shaking his head slowly. “I haven’t checked the cocktail cabinet, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“And the Liquorice All-Sorts?” Gerald goes on.
“About half the box I’d reckon.” Cyril raises his slender eyebrows.
“Oh dear!” Gerald exclaims. “Well, we know what that can do to even the most recalcitrant of a chap’s bowels**********************. I think we’d best get them off Charles, Hattie, and get him up to bed with a bucket and a chamber pot.”
“Yes,” Harriet sighs resignedly. “I think you’re right, Gerry darling.” Turning her attentions back to Charles she goes on. “Best give me those Liquorice All-Sorts, Charles darling.”
“But they’re mine!” Charles retorts sluggishly, his tired eyes widening and his hands reaching protectively for the box of colourful liquorice pieces.
“That’s rather ungentlemanly, Aunt Sally.” Gerald pipes up. “You usually share your treats with Hattie and the rest of us. Isn’t she deserving of a Liquorice All-Sort or two?”
“Or me?” adds Cyril. “After all, I’m the one who’s been slaving over the oven, whilst you’ve been galivanting up the West End without me!”
“Alright,” Charles agrees begrudgingly. “You can have some Hattie.” He pushes the box clumsily back across the photograph covered tabletop towards Harriet’s waiting hands. “Because you’ve been nice… and you Gerry… but… but not her.” He points at Cyril. “Silly Cilla! She’s been a mean and beastly old queen, and therefore doesn’t deserve any.”
Cyril rolls his eyes but does not reply.
“Come on then Hattie.” Gerald says. “Let’s get Charles upstairs to his bed.”
“Yes, come on Charles,” Harriet says, sliding the box as far away from the older man as she can manage across the cluttered table. “I think it’s high time you were in bed.”
“But I haven’t had my Beef Wellington yet.” Charles mumbles.
“Never mind, Aunt Sally.” Gerald says cheerfully. “Cilla will make sure that she saves you a big serving for tomorrow.”
“Will she now?” Cyril mutters under his breath.
“Yes, she will,” Gerald replies with purpose, turning his attention to his lover. “Or you won’t get your pretty jeweller’s box.”
“Bribery will get you everywhere, Gerry darling.” Cyril replies, leaning forward and kissing Gerald’s puckered lips lovingly.
“And since we may be a little while getting him to his bed, could you tidy up all of Charles’ theatrical memorabilia nicely and lay the table?”
“I’ve a right mind to sweep all that rubbish into the dustbin.” Cyril eyes all the photographs, books and memorabilia critically.
“Ahh, but you won’t, will you Cyril my darling?”
Cyril sighs. “No Gerry darling,” He sighs a second time, more deeply, and then, leaning forward to try and get Charles’ straying attention he adds, “Because in spite of him being a melodramatic old thespian, and a lousy old soak***********************, I cannot help but love him as my dear old friend.”
“Thank you.” Gerald says gratefully. Then he adds, “Oh, and if you do a really good job of tidying up and setting the table, I’ll permit you to accompany me on the invitation you’ve been dying for.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Gerry darling!” Cyril teases. “Your Soho flat isn’t that salubrious.”
Gerald laughs. “I’ve just come from Lettice’s, where I just happened to run into Sylvia Fordyce.”
“You didn’t!” Cyril squeals.
“The Sylvia Fordyce?” Harriet gasps, catching her breath. “As in the famous concert pianist?”
“The very one, Hattie.” Gerald smiles like the cat who ate the cream. “Remember that Lettice decorated a wall for her at her country cottage a few weeks ago, and I accompanied her.”
“Oh yes!” Harriet replies. “Of course you did, Gerry darling.”
“She’s a lovely pian… pian… o player.” Charles manages to stammer before slumping back down again over his now empty teacup.
“I say!” Cyril pouts. “That’s jolly unfair! First you get to see Miss Fordyce’s secret country house and then you get to meet her in person, and yet I’m a bigger fan of her than you are!”
“Well, as I was chatting and having afternoon tea with Miss Fordyce this afternoon, charming her with my wit and sparkling personality.” Gerald goes on, making Cyril roll his eyes again. “She came up with had the most marvellous idea! She is planning to throw a small soirée at ‘The Nest’ with a few like-minded friends to celebrate the completion of Lettice’s wall and show it off. She’s asking some fellow musicians, artists and the like, and she thought that you and I might like to go along.”
The room falls into stunned silence, except for a few drunken snorts from Charles, as Harriet and Cyril gawp wide eyed and open mouthed at Gerald.
“You… and me?” Cyril manages to ask, the syllables catching on his breath as he speaks, barely daring to hope.
“Yes,” Gerald says with a broad smile. “After I mentioned that you are not only a great admirer or hers, and that you were insanely jealous of my going to ‘The Nest’ with Lettice...”
“I was not insanely jealous!” Cyril retorts in outrage, blushing crimson as he speaks.
“Yes you were.” Harriet corrects with another giggle.
“Damn right she was.” Charles mumbles into his own cup, his remark unheard by any of the other three.
“I may have been a little put out that you were able to go and stay there with Miss Chetwynd at Miss Fordyce’s pleasure,” Cyril pouts, holding his head aloft and giving Gerald as haughty a look as he can muster down his nose. “But I wouldn’t say I was ‘insanely jealous’. It wasn’t like she was actually there when you were.”
“Well, I would, Cyril.” Harriet chuckles. “You could barely talk about anything that weekend when you were my earshot, wondering what Gerry was doing and seeing at her house, even if she wasn’t there. You were seething!”
“Well, Cyril darling,” Gerald goes on. “When I told Miss Fordyce that you were also an oboist, it was the icing on the cake for her. She was thrilled and said you must come, as you will be in good company.”
“She didn’t?” Cyril gasps, his fingers rushing to his mouth where a broad smile quickly lightens his handsome young features.
“She did.” Gerald affirms. “In fact, she was insistent that you come. So not only will you get to see and stay at ‘The Nest’, you will get to have a whole weekend with Miss Fordyce.”
“Oh Gerry!” Cyril cries, throwing his arms around Gerald again and lavishing his face in kisses. “Oh, you really are a darling! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!”
Charles snorts again as he starts to nod off over this teacup.
“Come on Aunt Sally.” Gerlad says resignedly. “If you’re going to sleep, I think it’s better that you do it in your own bed, don’t you? It will be more comfortable than an upright dining chair.”
He moves around the dining table and bends down. He carefully drapes Charles’ left arm around his neck and grasps it with his left hand whilst slipping his right arm around Charles’ waist. Harriet does the same on the opposite side of Charles to Gerald.
“Right Hattie.” Gerald says. “On the count of three. One… two… three!”
With a combined groan from all three of them, Gerald and Harriet manage to get the bulky Charles shakily to his feet with some coaxing and slowly they start to manoeuvre him around the dining room furniture and towards the open dining room door.
“Not quite how I think either of us imagined starting off our anniversary dinner, Cyril darling.” Gerald says between laboured breaths as they go. “But I daresay Miss Fordyce’s invitation will make up for any difficulties this incident has created.” He winks and smiles lovingly at his younger lover before turning away and helping Harriet get the drunken older actor through the doorway and into the hallway of the villa outside.
*Morris Motors Limited was a privately owned British motor vehicle manufacturing company established in 1919. With a reputation for producing high-quality cars and a policy of cutting prices, Morris's business continued to grow and increase its share of the British market. By 1926 its production represented forty-two per cent of British car manufacturing. Amongst their more popular range was the Morris Cowley which included a four-seat tourer which was first released in 1920.
**Originating in Seventeenth Century England, the term pin money first meant “an allowance of money given by a husband to his wife for her personal expenditures. Married women, who typically lacked other sources of spending money, tended to view an allowance as something quite desirable. By the Twentieth Century, the term had come to mean a small sum of money, whether an allowance or earned, for spending on inessentials, separate and in addition to the housekeeping money a wife might have to spend.
***Prior to 1967 with the introduction of the Sexual Offences Act which decriminalised private homosexual acts between men aged over twenty-one, homosexuality in England was illegal, and in the 1920s when this story is set, carried heavy penalties including prison sentences with hard labour. The law was not changed for Scotland until 1980, or for Northern Ireland until 1982.
****A latchkey is the key of an outer door of a house.
*****Aspidistras are a flowering plant native to eastern and southeastern Asia, particularly China and Vietnam. They grow well in shade and prefer protected places, which made them the ideal indoor house plant for dark Victorian and Edwardian houses which often only had diffused light seeing in through window treatments of venetian blinds, curtains, lace scrim or a combination of all three.
******The carte de visite (which translates from the French as 'visiting card') was a format of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero in 1851.
*******Thomas Burberry established Burberry in Basingstoke in 1856 at just twenty-one years old, founded on the principle that clothing should be designed to protect people from the British weather. A few years later in 1879 he invented gaberdine, a breathable wearable and hardwearing fabric that revolutionised rainwear. The Burberry trench coat was invented during the First World War with epaulettes used to suspend military equipment, but in the inter-war years, with the Burberry check registered as a trademark and introduced as lining to their rainwear, it became a luxury brand for the wealthy.
********The Old Vic theatre in the London borough of Lambeth was formerly the home of a theatre company that became the nucleus of the National Theatre. The company’s theatre building opened in 1818 as the Royal Coburg and produced mostly popular melodramas. In 1833 it was redecorated and renamed the Royal Victoria and became popularly known as the Old Vic. Between 1880 and 1912, under the management of Emma Cons, a social reformer, the Old Vic was transformed into a temperance amusement hall known as the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern, where musical concerts and scenes from Shakespeare and opera were performed. Lilian Baylis, Emma Cons’s niece, assumed management of the theatre in 1912 and two years later presented the initial regular Shakespeare season. By 1918 the Old Vic was established as the only permanent Shakespearean theatre in London, and by 1923 all of Shakespeare’s plays had been performed there. The Old Vic grew in stature during the 1920s and ’30s under directors such as Andrew Leigh, Harcourt Williams, and Tyrone Guthrie.
*********Gordon's London Dry Gin was developed by Alexander Gordon, a Londoner of Scots descent. He opened a distillery in the Southwark area in 1769, later moving in 1786 to Clerkenwell. The Special London Dry Gin he developed proved successful, and its recipe remains unchanged to this day. The top markets for Gordon's are (in descending order) the United Kingdom, the United States and Greece. Gordon's has been the United Kingdom’s number one gin since the late Nineteenth Century. It is the world's best-selling London dry gin.
**********Historically, queer slang emerged as a way for queer people to communicate discreetly, forming a sense of community and shared identity. Using female names or terms could be a way to signal belonging within this coded language. It was also used for protection, allowing homosexual men to talk about one another discreetly in public without the implication of homosexuality and the repercussions that came with it as a criminal act.
***********Dame Edith Mary Evans was an English actress. She was best known for her work on the West End stage, but also appeared in films at the beginning and towards the end of her career. Between 1964 and 1968, she was nominated for three Academy Awards. Born in 1888, Evans' stage career spanned sixty years, during which she played more than one hundred roles, in classics by Shakespeare, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan and Wilde, and plays by contemporary writers including Bernard Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Noël Coward. She created roles in two of Shaw's plays: Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929), and Epifania in The Millionairess (1940) and was in the British premières of two others: Heartbreak House (1921) and Back to Methuselah (1923). Evans became widely known for portraying haughty aristocratic women, as in two of her most famous roles as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Miss Western in the 1963 film of Tom Jones. During her performance as Lady Bracknell, her elongated delivery of the line “A handbag” has become synonymous with the Oscar Wilde play. By contrast, she played a downtrodden maid in The Late Christopher Bean (1933), an eccentric, impoverished old woman in The Whisperers (1967) and – one of her most celebrated roles – Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, which she played in four productions between 1926 and 1961. When she was eighty-seven, she played the Dowager Queen in The Slipper and the Rose (1976), in which she sang and danced. Evans died at her home in Cranbrook, Kent, in October 1976, aged 88.
************Doe eyes typically refers to eyes that are large, round, and soft, often perceived as innocent and alluring, similar to the eyes of a female deer (a doe). The term is used to describe eyes that convey a sense of naivety, gentleness, and sometimes even vulnerability.
*************Beef Wellington, a dish of beef fillet coated with pâté and duxelles (a finely chopped mushroom mixture), then wrapped in pastry, is believed to be named after Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, likely in commemoration of his victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. While the exact origin story is debated, it's generally accepted that the dish is of English or French origin, possibly evolving from the French dish "filet de boeuf en croute".
**************Dame Alice Ellen Terry was a leading English actress of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Born in 1847, into a family of actors, Ellen Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens. After a failed marriage to the 46-year-old artist George Frederic Watts when she was sixteen and a six year retirement during which she had a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin, she returned to the stage in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics. In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She and Irving also toured with great success in America and Britain. In 1903 Terry took over management of London's Imperial Theatre, focusing on the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen. The venture was a financial failure, and Terry turned to touring and lecturing. She continued to find success on stage until 1920, while also appearing in films from 1916 to 1922. Her career lasted nearly seven decades. She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at Smallhythe Place, near Tenterden, Kent, aged eighty-one in 1928.
***************The Shakespearean play The Tragedy of King Lear, often shortened to King Lear, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between his daughters Goneril and Regan, who pay homage to gain favour, feigning love. It was regularly performed at the Old Vic theatre in London throughout the 1920s, with seasons in 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1925 to 1928.
****************Eric Adeney was an English actor born in 1888 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He was an actor, known for playing significant parts in Hamlet, The Merry Men of Sherwood and Heroes of the Mine. He died in 1953 in Trethevy, Cornwall, England, UK. Although I do not know what part he played in the 1925 production of King Lear, as a well regarded Shakespearian actor at the age of thirty-six in that year, I could imagine him playing the part of King Lear, having stamina enough to perform the demanding part.
*****************Albany, sometimes referred to as the Albany, is an English apartment complex in Piccadilly, near Piccadilly Circus. The three-storey mansion was built in the 1770s and divided into apartments in 1802. Resembling Oxford/Cambridge college living quarters, it has stone stairs, long stone corridors, a massive front door, but elegantly proportioned large rooms. Uniformed porters used to guard the front doors back before the Second World War. Amongst its many famous tenants, English poet and major figure of the Romantic Movement Lord Byron, former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom William Gladstone and Edward Heath, English novelist Graham Greene and actress Edith Evans, lived there. During the Second World War, one of the buildings received significant damage from a German bomb, but was reconstructed after the war to appear as an exact replica. Still an exclusive apartment building today, it has the rather quirky rule that no child under the age of fourteen is permitted to live there.
******************Savile Row in London is a world-renowned street famous for its bespoke tailoring, particularly for men's suits. It's a destination for those seeking high-quality, hand-made clothing with a focus on craftsmanship and tradition. While the area is known for expensive bespoke suits, there are also ready-to-wear and made-to-measure options available.
*******************Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill, London, is a world-famous street market known for its antiques, vintage clothing, and diverse food stalls. It's one of London's oldest markets, dating back to the 19th century. The market stretches along Portobello Road, from Westbourne Grove to Golborne Road, and is particularly vibrant on Saturdays.
********************To get tight is an old fashioned term used to describe getting drunk.
*********************George Bassett & Co., known simply as Bassett's, was an English confectionery company and brand. The company was founded in Sheffield by George Bassett in 1842. The Sheffield Directory of 1842 records George Bassett as being "wholesale confectioner, lozenge maker and British wine trader". In 1851, Bassett took on an apprentice called Samuel Meggitt Johnson, who later became Bassett's son-in-law. His descendants ran the company until Gordon Johnson retired as chairman in the 1970s. Bassett's was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1929. They opened up a factory in Broad Street, Sheffield in 1852. The site moved in 1933 to Owlerton in another district of the city and remains there today. Unclaimed Babies were being produced during the Nineteenth Century, especially in the North West of England. In 1918, Bassetts launched their own range of the soft sweets which they called Peace Babies. They were re-launched as Jelly Babies in the 1950s and were allegedly thrown at the Beatles during concerts as they were a favourite of George Harrison. The Liquorice All-Sorts variety was created by accident when Bassett salesman Charlie Thompson dropped the samples of several different products in front of a prospective client. The client was taken by the idea of selling the sweets all mixed up and in return for the success, the company allowed the client to name the new brand. Barratt & Co. Ltd. was acquired in a friendly takeover by Bassett's in 1966. In 1989, the combined firms were acquired by the then-united Cadbury-Schweppes company in a deal brokered for ninety-one million pounds. In 2016, all the products were re-marketed under the Maynards Bassett dual branding.
**********************Liquorice is very soothing on the gut and it has, apparently, fairly significant anti-inflammatory powers. Also, liquorice is a very effective laxative.
***********************In slang, “soak” refers to drinking excessively, particularly alcohol.
This rather cluttered and chaotic scene of a dining room may look real to you, but believe it or not, it is made up entirely with pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The open book on the table as well as the closed one to the far right of the photograph are both books about the London actress Elen Terry, whilst the open postcard album featuring photographic postcards of famous Edwardian actors and actresses, including Ellen Terry, are all 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make them all miniature artisan pieces. Not only did Ken Blythe create books, he also created other 1:12 miniatures with paper and that includes the wonderfully detailed floral lidded box which is full of letters, cards and postcards which have each been produced with extreme authentic attention to detail. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.
Also on the table, are scattered some small photographs of famous Edwardian actresses, including both Edith Evans and Ellen Terry. They are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The box of hand made chocolates and Bassett’s liquorice all sorts (all of which are removable) were also made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures with close attention paid to their packaging to make them as authentic as possible.
The larger carte de visites of famous Edwardian actresses including the likes of Sarah Bernhardt I acquired from a seller on E-Bay.
Harriet’s snakeskin handbag lying on the chaise, with its gold clasp and chain comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniature Shop in the United Kingdom.
The soda syphon on the table to the right of the photo was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The bottle of Gordon’s Dry Gin is a 1:12 artisan miniature made of real glass. It came from a specialist stockist in Sydney.
Harriet’s beautiful Edwardian dinner and tea sets come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Shop in the United Kingdom, as do the Milford family photographs on the wall, the plant stand in the background and the aspidistra in the jardiniere. The red and gilded jardiniere itself is a hand painted example of miniature artisan, Rachel Munday, whose work is highly sought after.
The Queen Anne dining table, chairs were given to me as birthday and Christmas presents when I was a child.
The Welsh dresser in the background holding Harriet’s crockery comes from Babette’s Miniatures, who have been making miniature dolls’ furnishings since the late Eighteenth Century. The dresser has plate grooves in it, just like a real dresser would.
Guns? Absence of religion? Poor parenting? The entertainment industry? Who's to blame for Mr. Brown Pelican's irritable pleas? Numerous professionals (and not-so-professionals) have speculated and mulled, publicly and privately, over what has caused Mr. Pelican to destroy the sovereignty of all nations and every feeling or expression of patriotism.
The point is that Mr. Pelican's grand plan is to give people a new and largely artificial basis for evaluating things and making decisions. I'm sure Mao Tse Tung would approve. Even though Mr. Pelican presents a public face that avoids overt charlatanism, I have one itsy-bitsy problem with his monographs. Videlicet, they inaugurate an era of unrealistic authoritarianism. And that's saying nothing about how his primary goal is to flout all of society's rules. All of his other objectives are secondary to this one supreme purpose. That's why you must always remember that if five years ago I had described Mr. Pelican to you and told you that in five years he'd let piteous sybarites serve as our overlords, you'd have thought me Pecksniffian.
I've been in that space again. You know, that space. My thoughts are too loud and all knowing telling me stories that are hard to repudiate. I'm irritable and upset at my life unable to fill myself with contentedness and take a step back. I've been sitting in the feeling knowing it'll pass. It always has. It doesn't help I stopped taking my lexipro because it was making my stomach upset so that's probably why I'm in this weird head space. I'm trying my best to mediate it and use it to create and express myself among the chaos of just living and existing in a world with no control. I'll be alright.
I was still quite tense from adjusting to driving on the LHS and on the snow-covered road. But others in my car were reluctant to swap but prefer to enjoy the sight instead!
After my irritable complains, my 30yr old firstborn finally relented, we swapped drivers and I managed to take this snap from the moving car.
There is hardly any safe place or road shoulder to pull over, and the lighting was quite dim. It was a bit grainy though.
Natural Flora - Natural Medicine
Today, marijuana is being reevaluated on a cultural and legal level after being considered an illegal substance for decades.
Recent research reports a majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use. As such, many states have legalized marijuana for either medical and recreational purposes, or both.
Still, some researchers and lawmakers want to see more scientific evidence supporting specific benefits of marijuana. Aside from more research, there are concerns that marijuana’s potential risks could outweigh its benefits in some cases.
Curious about whether the benefits behind this substance are all they’re talked up to be? We break down some of the most researched benefits as well as a few considerations.
What are the benefits vs. risks of marijuana?
Just as synthetic drugs can help some conditions and not others, marijuana isn’t a one-size-fits-all line of treatment. It’s thought that marijuana’s benefits come from some of its compounds called cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol (CBD).
CBD is one of the most widely studied cannabinoids in marijuana. CBD is also found in another related plant called hemp.
One major difference between CBD and marijuana is that the former only contains a trace amount of the cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). This compound is best known for its hallucinogenic effects on the brain.
Cannabis plants may contain up to 40 percent CBD. CBD is thought to have anti-inflammatory effects on the central nervous system. This can translate to multiple benefits in the body.
Still, there remains concern over the effects of THC in traditional marijuana. This is due to the fact that it can have stimulating or depressant effects in some people, which may lead to other side effects.
Thus, when considering marijuana for any medical condition, your doctor will likely assess whether the anti-inflammatory benefits outweigh any psychological risks.
What are the benefits of marijuana?
Currently, there are two synthetic versions of marijuanaTrusted Source. Doctors prescribe them for the treatment of severe epilepsy and chemotherapy side effects.
The following list of marijuana benefits are some of the most commonly discussed in scientific research, as well as anecdotally.
Pain management
The cannabinoids in marijuana may reduce pain by altering pain perception pathways in the brain. This may be helpful to treat conditions that cause chronic pain, such as:
arthritis
fibromyalgia
endometriosis
migraine
It may also minimize cancer treatment side effects, like loss of appetite.
In some instances, medical marijuana is reported to help replace the long-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen, which can have negative side effects.
Reduced inflammation
CBD in marijuana is thought to help reduce inflammation. In theory, this may benefit inflammatory conditions, such as:
Crohn’s disease
irritable bowel syndrome
rheumatoid arthritis
Decreasing inflammation in the body can also improve overall health.
Neurological and mental disorders
Due to its effects on the limbic system, doctors sometimes prescribe marijuana to treat the following neurological and mental health conditions:
anxiety
epilepsy
multiple sclerosis
Parkinson’s disease
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Tourette syndrome
Sleep management
The relaxing effects of marijuana may help improve sleep disorders, such as insomnia. And improved sleep may also occur when pain is reduced from marijuana usage.
What are the risks of marijuana?
Marijuana is said to have opioid-like effects on the central nervous system. However, it poses much fewer risks than synthetic opioids. It’s also not considered as addictive as other substances.
Those are two reasons why many advocates are pushing for marijuana legalization, so patients can have safer options for pain management. In fact, some people use marijuana as a way to treat opioid addiction.
Still, the potential risks of marijuana need to be considered in equal measure. Below are some of the side effects you should discuss with your doctor:
Hallucinogenic effects. Marijuana may cause mild hallucinations, poor motor skills, or altered perceptions of reality. For these reasons, certain activities may be unsafe after using marijuana, such as operating heavy machinery. Do not drive after using marijuana. Not only is it unsafe, but it is illegal in every state to drive after using marijuana – even in states in which marijuana use is legal.
Depressant-like effects. Marijuana may cause depressant effects, similar to those seen with alcohol use. You may feel calm and relaxed but also have issues with coordination and concentration. Some people may also feel depressive symptoms as a side effect.
Stimulating effects. Marijuana may boost mood, but it may also cause hyperactivity, rapid breathing, and increases in both blood pressure and heart rate. These effects aren’t as common in marijuana compared to depressant effects.
Other side effects. These may include bloodshot eyes, dry mouth, and increased appetite.
It’s important to know that the side effects of marijuana can vary between people. You may not know your exact experiences until after you’ve used it.
The legal issues
As of January 2020, 11 states as well as Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana, and 33 states have legalized it for medical use. However, marijuana itself is still considered illegal under federal law.
So, what does this mean if you’re interested in using marijuana for medical purposes?
First, talk to your doctor about the pros and cons of marijuana for your condition.
Next, look up the laws in your state. Even if marijuana is legal in your state, you could be prosecuted for using it if you travel to a different state where it’s not legal. Plan accordingly to avoid any legal issues.
It’s also important to distinguish the difference between marijuana and CBD.
Hemp-derived CBD products (with less than 0.3 percent THC) are legal on the federal level but are still illegal under some state laws.
Marijuana-derived CBD products are illegal on the federal level but are legal under some state laws.
Check your state’s laws and those of anywhere you travel. Keep in mind that nonprescription CBD products aren’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration and may be inaccurately labeled.
The takeaway
Marijuana is perhaps one of the most contentious topics today, both from a legal and health perspective.
More research on the benefits of marijuana for your health is needed for both sides of the debate to come to an agreement on its use in medical and recreational settings.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in the potential benefits of marijuana for your own health, it’s important to reach out to a doctor first. They can help guide you through the benefits versus any potential risks, as well as the legalities behind obtaining a medical marijuana card, depending on where you live.
Never try any drug or substance to treat a medical condition on your own. This includes plant-based sources like marijuana.
www.healthline.com/health/medical-marijuana/benefits-of-m...
Corinthians 13:4-8 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
I am so sorry that I haven’t been updating you about Sweet Pea over the last week; I am sure you have all been worried as to how she is getting on. I haven’t been feeling too good so I have pretty much just been sleeping, eating, seeing to Sweet Pea and then sleeping again. Getting up every few hours to check on her has just been so draining; it really has been hard work to nurse her.
So on June 22nd Sweet Pea was much brighter than she previously had been. She pottered about her cage a little and she took much more of an interest in food, it’s like she finally realised that she was hungry. She pouched a lot of food to take back to her nest which I was glad about, it was the first time we had seen her pouch food in a while. She also had a really big drink which I was pleased about; at least I knew that she wasn’t dehydrated anymore.
Her wound site looked perfect, it was clean, the stitches were intact and she hadn’t bled anymore which I was really relieved about, it seems that the steri-strips did the trick!
Sweet Pea continued to gain more interest in food over June 23rd. She started to take treats from our hands again; she would pretty much take and eat anything that was offered to her.
She just generally seemed a lot more alert, she was grooming herself more thoroughly, she was taking good care of her wound site and she was quite active. She kept standing at her door which is what she does when she wants to come out and play.
On Friday the 24th we took her to the vets for a check up. The vet was delighted with her progress and she was really happy to see her looking so well. The vet said her wound site looked brilliant and she was pleased with how well it had healed. She said that the stitches could only stay in for a maximum of 10 days so if they hadn’t dissolved by June 30th she would have to take them out otherwise they would inhibit healing. She also said that I needed to start slowly weaning Sweet Pea off the Metacam and Baytril because over time the meds can do damage to her liver and kidneys. She said that Sweet Pea didn’t need to go back for a check up unless the stitches didn’t come out, which was good news. Sweet Pea was a little star at the vets. She was such a good girl and she just sat on the table minding her own business, she wasn’t at all distressed like she was the previous two times we took her.
Over the weekend Sweet Pea carried on doing well. She was lively, she was eating plenty, drinking, grooming and urinating! On two separate occasions she decided that I was the toilet and peed on me! I didn’t mind though because at least we knew that she could pee and that she wasn’t dehydrated. It was also pretty funny too; everyone had a giggle at my expense!!
Her wound site still looked good as well, although you could see that the stitches were beginning to get tight as she healed.
On Monday when we woke up her for breakfast we noticed that Sweet Pea had taken it upon herself to nibble the stitches out. I guess they were getting pretty uncomfortable for her as they had tightened. The wound looked a little open and I didn’t want to risk it opening up completely so I put some steri-strips on her to keep it closed. Monday was also a really warm day here and everyone was irritable, including all three of the hams. Sweet Pea seemed especially irritable so she resorted to sleeping onto of her house instead of in it! The temperature got up to 29.5C which is much higher than we would expect for this time of year; we had to have two fans going in my bedroom with me and the hams! Fortunately it started to cool down in the evening so it was more comfortable overnight.
Yesterday was not so unbearably warm and everyone was less irritable. However we still needed both fans going to keep my bedroom cool.
Sweet Pea was much better with the cooler weather. Her appetite was excellent and she was a lot more active compared to the day before. Her wound had mostly knitted together which I was glad about. We put some clean steri-strips on it just till it heals a little bit more just to be on the safe side.
Today Sweet Pea has been up for her breakfast already which she ate in no time at all! Her wound still looks good but I will be leaving the steri-strips on for another few days to be certain that it has completely closed up. Overall she is looking a lot healthier, her coat has started to look much shinier and it’s also less patchy; she is acting more like a young ham should.
The pace of her recovery has slowed down over the weekend and the last few days. She isn’t progressing in big leaps anymore but she is still taking small steps in the right direction. I think it will be a while before she is fully over it all as the operation was so major, but everyday she does improve a little so she will get there in the end. I just hope that we don’t have any setbacks along the way.
The only way to get within 100 or even 150m of these graceful but incredibly irritable and perceptive herons, is simply to stay completely out of their sight.
What better place to do that than in a birdwatching cabin, patiently waiting until she inches closer and closer.
Dutch: Grote Zilverreiger
We're past the half-way point now and I wanted to say thank you. Any funds you've donated (or hopefully will still donate!) will change men’s lives, while drawing much-needed attention to important men’s health issues.
But what about the things that can slip our attention?
A friend who’s not sleeping, a colleague who’s lost interest, a family member who’s increasingly irritable?
Chances are, a man close to you is struggling with their mental health right now.
The signs can be subtle. They could be right under your nose.
Spotting these signs can make all the difference – in fact, it could be lifesaving.
Learn more: www.movember.com/signs
Acrylic on canvas (two canvases, 24" x 24") Painting size total; 24" high X 48" wide
‘ANTAGONY’ is a painting which illustrates a vision for the future. It’s a painting of antagonism, disaffection and hostility. It illustrates the possible effects of world population, in conjunction with technical evolution. For the future, I can imagine death on an unparalleled scale. The painting does not show death or killing, but I’ve tried to paint harbingers of this possibility. Enslavement is a by-product of the devaluation of life. I paint that into the painting, along with addiction, sickness, symbols of war, insanity and people watching too much TV.
I see a possibility that the world is headed for a “have and have not” hierarchy. The middle class may disappear. This leaves only the ones on top, and at the bottom. At some point, people will either have abundance, or they will be lacking.
In this painting, the men on top merging with the machines, depict how the “haves” enjoy the remaining fruits of the Earth. The ‘haves’ cheat death by utilizing technology. They (the haves) self evolve into a new human form. They reinvent themselves. Pretty much like the predictions of Ray Kurzweil, only not quite as scrupulously.
Privacy will become obsolete. There are eyes everywhere in my painting. These are the remote eyes of the controllers who track all that we do.The great herds of people that will come can be controlled only with constant vigilance. I can conceive that soon, every movement we make will be digitally recorded. This is already happening. Our DNA will be recorded. Anyone can be easily located using GPS. We will have no escape from the government, no privacy as we now take for granted.
The population of Earth will be near a critical mass by the time we reach the so called “Singularity”. At some point in technological evolution, humanity will be able to achieve rapid self evolution. However, I don’t think everyone will be able to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, the grim outcome for the billions of “have-nots” will be out of any control. I see an interesting future on the horizon, (like the old Chinese curse) The one thing that’s most difficult to imagine is how humanity can survive much longer as we are.
~ R.S. Connett, 10/2010
" in this piece, you represent what I believe is happening to mankind. We see a society that compromises with integrity, that shuns its weakest and most vulnerable. The sturdy, but tiny third Reich bug, scurrying amidst the screaming voices, needing, pleading to be heard, wanting JUST ONE MORE CHANCE, alongside the cries for justice, alongside the face of restless and irritable, all crushing us as we walk off the cliff. Built high on the backs of our weakest and most vulnerable..." ~ P. Collins, 7/2010
"As long as survival is in question on an individual level, the luxury of saving our species as a whole is probably impossible."
~ R.S.C. 7/2010
" in this piece, you represent what I believe is happening to mankind. We see a society that compromises with integrity, that shuns its weakest and most vulnerable. The sturdy, but tiny third Reich bug, scurrying amidst the screaming voices, needing, pleading to be heard, wanting JUST ONE MORE CHANCE, alongside the cries for justice, alongside the face of restless and irritable, all crushing us as we walk off the cliff. Built high on the backs of our weakest and most vulnerable..." ~ P. Collins, 7/2010
"As long as survival is in question on an individual level, the luxury of saving our species as a whole is probably impossible." ~ R.S.C. 7/2010
A couple of days ago I met this young man walking his baby dog..They seemed to have a great friendship,which I'm sure will be lifelong :) After reading the moving story Jacii posted below his awesome shot,I thought it could symbolize that friendship... Unfortunately ,if there's nobody at home to help me ,I cannot do even the simplest things such as posting the link of my contacts ..I expect Jacii will help me with that ..or by showing his presence with that beautiful yet sad story he'll make his address known..
Sevgili arkadaşlar,
Bir iki gün önce bu ikilinin arasında ,belli ki hayat boyu sürecek bir dostluğa şahit oldum
Jacii'nin resmi altındaki etkileyici öyküyü okuduktan sonra o dostluğu sembolize edeceğini düşünerek bu kareyi yüklemeye karar verdim...ne yazık ki link yüklemeyi beceremiyorum...jacii'nin bana bu konuda yardımcı olmasını bekliyorum...Ancak öyküyü buraya eklerse de Türkçe'sini bulmam mümkün değil..Çok özür dilerim !
The Old Man and the Dog
by
Catherine Moore
"Watch out! You nearly broad sided that car!" My father yelled at me.
"Can't you do anything right?"
Those words hurt worse than blows. I turned my head toward the elderly man in the seat beside me, daring me to challenge him. A lump rose in my throat as I averted my eyes. I wasn't prepared for another battle.
"I saw the car, Dad. Please don't yell at me when I'm driving." My voice was measured and steady, sounding far calmer than I really felt.
Dad glared at me, then turned away and settled back. At home I left Dad in front of the television and went outside to collect my thoughts. Dark, heavy clouds hung in the air with a promise of rain. The rumble of distant thunder seemed to echo my inner turmoil.
What could I do about him?
Dad had been a lumberjack in Washington and Oregon. He had enjoyed being outdoors and had reveled in pitting his strength against the forces of nature. He had entered grueling lumberjack
competitions, and had placed often. The shelves in his house were filled with trophies that attested to his prowess.
The years marched on relentlessly. The first time he couldn't lift a heavy log, he joked about it;
but later that same day I saw him outside alone, straining to lift it. He became irritable whenever anyone teased him about his advancing age, or when he couldn't do something he had done as a younger man.
Four days after his sixty-seventh birthday, he had a heart attack. An ambulance sped him to
the hospital while a paramedic administered CPR to keep blood and oxygen flowing. At the hospital, Dad was rushed into an operating room. He was lucky; he survived.
But something inside Dad died. His zest for life was gone. He obstinately refused to follow doctor's orders. Suggestions and offers of help were turned aside with sarcasm and insults. The number of visitors thinned, then finally stopped altogether. Dad was left alone.
My husband, Dick, and I asked Dad to come live with us on our small farm. We
hoped the fresh air and rustic atmosphere would help him adjust. Within a week
after he moved in, I regretted the invitation. It seemed nothing was
satisfactory. He criticized everything I did. I became frustrated and moody.
Soon I was taking my pent-up anger out on Dick. We began to bicker and argue.
Alarmed, Dick sought out our pastor and explained the situation. The clergyman
set up weekly counseling appointments for us. At the close of each session he
prayed, asking God to soothe Dad's troubled mind. But the months wore on and
God was silent. Something had to be done and it was up to me to do it
The next day I sat down with the phone book and methodically called
each of the mental health clinics listed in the Yellow Pages. I explained my
problem to each of the sympathetic voices that answered. In vain. Just when I
was giving up hope, one of the voices suddenly exclaimed, "I just read
something that might help you! Let me go get the article." I listened as she
read. The article described a remarkable study done at a nursing home All of
the patients were under treatment for chronic depression. Yet their attitudes
had improved dramatically when they were given responsibility for a dog.
I drove to the animal shelter that afternoon. After I filled out a
questionnaire, a uniformed officer led me to the kennels. The odor of
disinfectant stung my nostrils as I moved down the row of pens. Each contained
five to seven dogs. Long-haired dogs, curly-haired dogs, black dogs, spotted
dogs all jumped up, trying to reach me. I studied each one but rejected one
after the other for various reasons too big, too small, too much hair. As I
neared the last pen a dog in the shadows of the far corner struggled to his
feet, walked to the front of the run and sat down. It was a pointer, one of
the dog world's aristocrats. But this was a caricature of the breed. Years had
etched his face and muzzle with shades of gray. His hipbones jutted out in
lopsided triangles. But it was his eyes that caught and held my attention.
Calm and clear, they beheld me unwaveringly. I pointed to the dog. "Can
you tell me about him?" The officer looked, then shook his head in puzzlement.
"He's a funny one. Appeared out of nowhere and sat in front of the gate. We brought him in, figuring someone would be right down to claim him. That was two weeks ago and we've heard nothing. His time is up tomorrow." He gestured helplessly.
As the words sank in I turned to the man in horror. "You mean you're going to kill him?"
"Ma'am," he said gently, "that's our policy. We don't have room for every unclaimed dog."
I looked at the pointer again. The calm brown eyes awaited my decision. "I'll take him," I said.
I drove home with the dog on the front seat beside me. When I reached the house I honked the horn twice. I was helping my prize out of the car when Dad shuffled onto the front porch.
"Ta-da! Look what I got for you, Dad!" I said excitedly.
Dad looked, then wrinkled his face in disgust. "If I had wanted a dog I would have gotten one. And I would have picked out a better specimen than that bag of bones. Keep it! I
don't want it" Dad waved his arm scornfully and turned back toward the house.
Anger rose inside me. It squeezed together my throat muscles and pounded into my temples.
"You'd better get used to him, Dad. He's staying!" Dad ignored me. "Did you hear me, Dad?" I screamed. At those words Dad whirled angrily, his hands clenched at his sides, his eyes narrowed and blazing with hate.
We stood glaring at each other like duelists, when suddenly the pointer pulled free from my grasp. He wobbled toward my dad and sat down in front of him. Then slowly, carefully, he raised his paw.
Dad's lower jaw trembled as he stared at the uplifted paw. Confusion replaced the anger in his eyes. The pointer waited patiently. Then Dad was on his knees hugging the animal.
It was the beginning of a warm and intimate friendship. Dad named the pointer Cheyenne. Together he and Cheyenne explored the community. They spent long hours walking down dusty
lanes. They spent reflective moments on the banks of streams, angling for
tasty trout. They even started to attend Sunday services together, Dad sitting
in a pew and Cheyenne lying quietly at his feet.
Dad and Cheyenne were inseparable throughout the next three years. Dad's bitterness faded, and he and Cheyenne made many friends. Then late one night I was startled to feel Cheyenne's cold nose burrowing through our bed covers. He had never before come into our bedroom at night. I woke Dick, put on my robe and ran into my father's room. Dad lay in his bed, his face serene. But his spirit had left quietly sometime during the night.
Two days later my shock and grief deepened when I discovered Cheyenne lying dead beside Dad's bed. I wrapped his still form in the rag rug he had slept on. As Dick and I buried him near a
favorite fishing hole, I silently thanked the dog for the help he had given me in restoring Dad's peace of mind.
The morning of Dad's funeral dawned overcast and dreary. This day looks like the way I feel, I thought, as I walked down the aisle to the pews reserved for family. I was surprised to see
the many friends Dad and Cheyenne had made filling the church. The pastor began his eulogy. It was a tribute to both Dad and the dog who had changed his life. And then the pastor turned to Hebrews 13:2. "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers."
"I've often thanked God for sending that angel," he said.
For me, the past dropped into place, completing a puzzle that I had not seen before: the sympathetic voice that had just read the right article...
Cheyenne's unexpected appearance at the animal shelter... his calm acceptance and complete devotion to my father...and the proximity of their deaths. And suddenly I understood.
I knew that God had answered my prayers after all.
Life is too short for drama & petty things, so laugh hard, love truly and forgive quickly.
Live While You Are Alive.
Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.
Forgive now those who made you cry. You might not get a second time.
And if you don't send this to at least 4 people - who cares? But do share this with someone.
Lost time can never be found .
#278 July 22,2008 Thank you all :)
Lanceheads are a genus of venomous pit vipers native to Central and South America, and some islands of the Caribbean. The name “Lancehead” refers to the snakes’ distinctively large triangular head, which resembles an old-style lance or arrow. With over 40 different species recorded, they have adapted to different environments, ranging from rainforests to deserts. They are the most common venomous snake species in the Neotropics, and may often be found close to or living among human habitation. Species are generally irritable and quick to strike. Caution is advised, as their venom is highly potent, which can lead to amputation of a bitten limb or death, unless antivenin is administered. Many species, such as the Common Lancehead (Bothrops atrox) pictured, are masters of camouflage. Their bodies are patterned to mimic their habitat, making them virtually invisible to unsuspecting prey. Heat-sensing pits, located between their eyes and nose, allow them to detect and track warm-blooded prey, even at night or in low light. The combination of their ability to remain undetected while tracking prey using heat and their lightning-fast strikes makes them highly efficient ambush predators.
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Caption: A Common Lancehead (Bothrops atrox) watches intently from its hiding place along the forest floor in the Northern Range of the island of Trinidad. Individuals may reach a length of 3-5 feet. It is one of only four venomous snakes found on the island. It is locally called "mapipire balsain," which is thought to be derived from the indigenous Arawak word "mapipire," meaning "biting snake." The word "balsain" is likely a reference to the snake's pale chin color.
Mercedes now weighs 4.25kg. She is looking well. But she still gets quite irritable and aggressive at times, but her energy is back. Today her medication changes from half to a quarter of a tablet of cortisone every second day. I hope she continues to eat well.
Mercedes was poisoned by the back and side neighbours, along with my other cats, but Mercedes suffered the most effect from it.
==Gotham Morgue==
November 5th. 14:50
"After four hours, firefighters have finally quelled the blaze at Wayne Manor. The fire, which is suspected to have began at 2:00am this morning, tore up through the west study and burned down the west wing. The cause of the blaze is still unknown, with Bruce Wayne unavailable for comment. His legal team was seen combating the police department outside the estate earlier today-" the television rang out.
"Sorry, we weren't sure how to reach you," the mortician said, as he walked Bridget, Ted and a third-wheeling Krill over to a covered body, and removed the sheet from off its' face.
"Yeah," Bridget sighed, as she placed her hand on his cheek. "That's him, that's Jacob."
The Mortician nodded, and left the room.
One hand clasped around a pink cupcake, Krill moved the blanket aside and whistled. "Boy, no wonder they called him Ant Man," he remarked, as he examined the naked body.
"They called him Ant Man, because he was five foot four, you unfeeling bastard," Pike replied.
Carson shook his head, looking down, glassy eyed at Jumbo's still figure. In his hand, he held a metal scalpel. "Where's Walker now?" he whispered, blood dripping from his hand as his grip tightened.
Krill took a bite out of his cupcake. "No idea," he chewed loudly. "A black truck left city limits six hours ago. Could be him, could be a Bat Metal tribute band."
Ted slammed the metal table. "Just find him."
"OoOoOoh," Krill replied mockingly, as he leapt into an orange portal, leaving the family alone. Ted gripped the scalpel even tighter.
"Dad, if you want to be alone, I understand-" Bridget began.
Ted shook his head, smiling faintly. "How'd they get to that car, kitten? How, did they get past you?" he asked her; and, without warning, he thrust the scalpel deep into Jumbo's chest- snarling as he did it. Bridget recoiled in fright, a hand placed on her holster.
"Stupid. Lazy. Fucking. Idiot," Carson bellowed at him, digging deeper into his flesh with each word, his breath rough and ragged.
He tilted his head towards his daughter, his face caked in Jumbo's blood, and hissed. "If you'd just done your fucking job, maybe you'd still have an uncle."
==The Iceberg Lounge==
November 11th. 20:58
Sionis looked up at the ceiling. Hanging from the rafters were a series of pale blue, glitter covered banners, all plastered with the same two words:
"Mayor Cobblepot," he read. "Surprised they even let you run again after that last term..."
"Well, City Hall is hardly a stranger to controversy," Penguin said smugly, leaning onto his umbrella. "Their golden boy was framed for murder and impeached before his time. And his replacements were a couple of Owl puppets who met rather unfortunate ends... Now a "former" mob boss on the other hand, that is much more palatable, wouldn't you say? There's a reason why they call it "organised" crime. It's manageable."
Sionis shrugged irritably, and sat back down beside Oswald. He glanced at Ferris, now poking a straw through the slit in his mask, and White, picking his teeth with a wooden splint, and swiftly downed his glass of scotch. Cobblepot flashed him an amused smile.
A guard rapped on the door. "White Mask just pulled up outside, sir," he called out. Li threw an anxious look at his boss.
Sionis pulled on his collar, adjusting his tie. "Send him in."
The doors flung open: dressed in a pristine white suit and a matching mask was David Franco. To his right, dressed in a blue suit, and a red ascot, was a scarred man Li recognised as Franco's own right hand, the Physician, who grumbled obnoxiously as he pulled a chair in-between White and Ferris, the latter's nose twitching as a faint fishy smell drifted into his mask.
Franco waved at the assembly, and took a seat opposite Roman; Great White struggled to stifle a laugh as the party turned to look at him, confused. "I always wondered what a Spy vs Spy remake would look like," he explained. "Deep cut, I know."
"Neutral location, smart!" Franco declared, turning his head back to Sionis, and removing his mask; exposing a mountain of swept back dirty blonde hair, and a pair of thick eyebrows. Ferris shot him an approving look.
White muttered under his breath. "Oh, Roman, his mask comes off. Does yours?"
"I know it's smart, it was my idea," Sionis replied stiffly, ignoring White's teasing.
Franco chuckled, as he pulled his seat closer to Roman's, and presented his fist. "It's great we can be civil like this, eh bro?"
Sionis looked at the expectant fist, and shook his head irritably. "Uh-Un."
Li cleared his throat, as he lay a printed document onto the table. "Mr Sionis would like you to refrain from using the following terms whilst in his presence: brother, bro, buddy, pal, friend, chum, dude and man."
"I can't say man? Man..." Franco sighed.
Sionis winced.
"He has also requested that all business be conducted through me," Li added.
"Is... Is "Mr Sionis" mute or something?" Franco paused.
"Mr Sionis was very close to his father. He found his infidelity highly upsetting," Bookworm explained.
Franco looked at Sionis then back at Li, eyebrow raised. "Really, because I thought he killed him?"
Intent on changing the subject, Penguin ran his fork along his plate loudly. "The Chilean Sea Bass is wonderful, you know," he said.
Ferris poked his own fish grumpily. "You got any hamburgers?" he grumbled.
"There's a Big Belly Burger down the street," Li replied, in the hope Ferris would simply get up and leave. Instead, Iron-Hat reached into his pocket, and ordered a takeaway on his phone.
"I'll take a blubber shake," the Physician said to Cobblepot expectantly.
Li noted the peculiar request, and looked at him curiously.
"Ah, my staff made some choice changes to our menu following the reconstruction. The blubber shakes were unsustainable. And violated several health codes..." Penguin murmured.
"Then, I'll just have water," he growled disappointingly. Cobblepot snapped his fingers, and the waiter disappointed into the kitchen, returning moments later with a small glass.
Sionis pushed his chair out, and walked out the room. "I can't do this."
"Excuse me," Li said, as he followed him into the cloakroom.
Left alone, the remaining mobsters sat idly, listening to them argue through the walls. Their attention diverted, the Physician grabbed the salt shaker, and poured it into his glass of water, stirring it with the end of Ferris' fork.
"Sir, please-" Li's voice called out.
"David Franco, Li. Dave Franco!" Sionis' voice hissed back angrily.
"It's a little confusing, but-"
"A little? A little! How can I run a drug empire without a hundred people hounding me on Twitter about a 23rd Jump Street film?"
"He's not Dave Franco."
"Don't care. Tell him to change his name."
"I'm not doing that."
"Yes. Do that. Call him... William, or Alex, or Usurper, you're good with names."
"Sir, you know what's at stake here."
...
"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine."
The door creaked open, as Sionis walked back in briskly, and slid into his chair. "I'm... supposed to invite you to a party. Every year, Janus hosts a holiday party, and this year-" Sionis looked at Li for support. "This year, I'd like you to attend."
White Mask put a thoughtful hand to his chin. "A party? In this climate? Government guidelines say-"
"Just. Say. Yes," Roman said through gritted teeth.
"Then yes," Franco replied uneasily. "Don't suppose I could bring a date?" he inquired.
"Sure," Sionis laughed suddenly. "And hell, if you can find someone who can stand to look at you- let alone bone you, all power to you."
"Finally," Ferris exclaimed, as he grabbed his food from the delivery boy, and poured the greasy mixture over the table. "Oh, I'm sorry, did you lot want anything?"
==Jenna Duffy's Apartment==
November 12th. 19:38
Jenna sat on her sofa, her phone sat beside her on a plump cushion. Every two minutes she'd glance at it longingly, as though she were waiting on something or someone, but she'd always resist. She paused the television- still playing a news report on the Wayne Manor fire, and wondered. 'Was that him?' she thought anxiously.
She let out a deep sigh, and finally, she relented, reaching out to her phone, only to find nothing- No text messages, no missed calls. Disappointed, she tossed it aside, and tucked her legs under again.
The doorbell chimed. 'Was it him?' she wondered again. 'Could it be?'
As she put her slippers on, she thought about what she'd say- most of it involved calling him a reckless idiot. She took a deep breath, and tugged on the door handle.
"Gar-" she began, then took a surprised step back. Dressed in a black overcoat, drenched in rain, and with an enormous box of chocolates tucked under his arm, was the White Mask.
"Davey?" she asked.
"Hiya, Jelly Bean, you have a moment?"