#Cambridge online courses

[excellenthomevlasses]

Cambridge Exam Tutoring: Achieve Success with Expert Help

Cambridge exams tutoring are a gateway to academic and career success, recognized worldwide for their rigor and prestige. Whether you’re preparing for the Cambridge IGCSE, A-Levels, or the Cambridge English Language exams like the CAE or IELTS, having the right guidance is essential. This is where Cambridge exam tutoring comes into play. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of tutoring,…

[excellenthomeclasses1]

Cambridge Exam Tutoring: Achieve Success with Expert Help

Cambridge exams tutoring are a gateway to academic and career success, recognized worldwide for their rigor and prestige. Whether you’re preparing for the Cambridge IGCSE, A-Levels, or the Cambridge English Language exams like the CAE or IELTS, having the right guidance is essential. This is where Cambridge exam tutoring comes into play. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of tutoring,…

[vidyaandassociates]

VIDYA AND ASSOCIATES

Whether it’s IB, IGCSE, Cambridge, or ICSE, Vidya provides expert guidance for all subjects. Along with academic support, we offer specialized coaching for vocational training programs, competitive exams, Olympiad preparation, and standardized tests like SAT, NEET, and IIT-JEE.

Students receive focused attention, personalized strategies, and the flexibility to learn at their own pace. At Vidya, we ensure every learner is equipped to excel in academics and achieve their career goals.

[chipies-all-academy]

Join Your Child on a Pioneering Learning Journey: Chipies All Academy!

Is Your Child's Education on the Right Track? Chipies All Academy Offers Innovative Solutions for Zimbabwean Parents

In today's rapidly evolving world, ensuring your child receives a high-quality education is more important than ever. However, navigating the complexities of traditional schooling can be challenging, leaving many parents feeling overwhelmed and unsure if their child is reaching their full potential.

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Chipies All Academy goes beyond traditional textbooks and lectures. Our platform boasts over 150 interactive eLearning tools, designed to engage young minds and make learning fun and effective. These dynamic resources cater to various learning styles, ensuring each child receives a personalized education tailored to their needs.

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We recognize the importance of quality instruction. That's why Chipies All Academy connects your child with a network of expert instructors from diverse fields. These qualified professionals provide invaluable guidance and support, fostering a positive learning environment where students can thrive.

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Unlike many online learning platforms, Chipies All Academy prioritizes active student participation. Our platform facilitates seamless student-teacher interaction, allowing your child to ask questions, receive personalized feedback, and benefit from a truly interactive learning experience.

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Join the Chipies All Academy Community: Empowering Your Child's Education

Chipies All Academy isn't just about academics. We offer a vibrant online community through our free Zim Connect program. This platform allows your child to connect with mentors, experts, and role models, fostering a love of learning and encouraging participation in meaningful discussions.

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Don't let the challenges of traditional education hold your child back. Chipies All Academy offers a dynamic and effective learning solution that empowers students, fosters a love of learning, and equips them with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed.

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Visit our website or contact us at 0781095919 0r 0716180392 to learn more about our programs and how we can help your child reach their full potential.

[tanvi0806]

Mastering Mathematics with Cambridge Course Online: MathMeUp Integration

Dive into the world of mathematics with our comprehensive Cambridge Course Online. Integrated with MathMeUp, this course offers interactive modules, practice problems, and expert guidance to strengthen your math skills from foundational concepts to advanced topics.

[svbhuman]

got distracted prepping class again please where do you find latin passages for intermediate students

[quickstepielts0]

Website: https://www.quickstepielts.com/

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[peterparkerr06]

This video covers the details of editing and proofreading with their differences within academic guidelines. This involves defining both revision techniques, their importance, and the guidelines for various grammatical corrections. This underrated section of the dissertation writing process holds the capacity to improve writing quality. Additionally, it helps the reader better understand the academic content. Further, if you want to know the fundamentals of contrast between the two styles, view this short online tutorial to the end to unlock your best work.

[dreamdolldeveloper]

back to basics

mostly free resources to help you learn the basics that i've gathered for myself so far that i think are cool

everyday

gcfglobal - about the internet, online safety and for kids, life skills like applying for jobs, career planning, resume writing, online learning, today's skills like 3d printing, photoshop, smartphone basics, microsoft office apps, and mac friendly. they have core skills like reading, math, science, language learning - some topics are sparse so hopefully they keep adding things on. great site to start off on learning.

handsonbanking - learn about finances. after highschool, credit, banking, investing, money management, debt, goal setting, loans, cars, small businesses, military, insurance, retirement, etc.

bbc - learning for all ages. primary to adult. arts, history, science, math, reading, english, french, all the way to functional and vocational skills for adults as well, great site!

education.ket - workplace essential skills

general education

mathsgenie - GCSE revision, grade 1-9, math stages 1-14, provides more resources! completely free.

khan academy - pre-k to college, life skills, test prep (sats, mcat, etc), get ready courses, AP, partner courses like NASA, etc. so much more!

aleks - k-12 + higher ed learning program. adapts to each student.

biology4kids - learn biology

cosmos4kids - learn astronomy basics

chem4kids - learn chemistry

physics4kids - learn physics

numbernut - math basics (arithmetic, fractions and decimals, roots and exponents, prealgebra)

education.ket - primary to adult. includes highschool equivalent test prep, the core skills. they have a free resource library and they sell workbooks. they have one on work-life essentials (high demand career sectors + soft skills)

youtube channels

the organic chemistry tutor

khanacademy

crashcourse

tabletclassmath

2minmaths

kevinmathscience

professor leonard

greenemath

mathantics

3blue1brown

literacy

readworks - reading comprehension, build background knowledge, grow your vocabulary, strengthen strategic reading

chompchomp - grammar knowledge

tutors

not the "free resource" part of this post but sometimes we forget we can be tutored especially as an adult. just because we don't have formal education does not mean we can't get 1:1 teaching! please do you research and don't be afraid to try out different tutors. and remember you're not dumb just because someone's teaching style doesn't match up with your learning style.

cambridge coaching - medical school, mba and business, law school, graduate, college academics, high school and college process, middle school and high school admissions

preply - language tutoring. affordable!

revolutionprep - math, science, english, history, computer science (ap, html/css, java, python c++), foreign languages (german, korean, french, italian, spanish, japanese, chinese, esl)

varsity tutors - k-5 subjects, ap, test prep, languages, math, science & engineering, coding, homeschool, college essays, essay editing, etc

chegg - biology, business, engineering/computer science, math, homework help, textbook support, rent and buying books

learn to be - k-12 subjects

for languages

lingq - app. created by steve kaufmann, a polygot (fluent in 20+ languages) an amazing language learning platform that compiles content in 20+ languages like podcasts, graded readers, story times, vlogs, radio, books, the feature to put in your own books! immersion, comprehensible input.

flexiclasses - option to study abroad, resources to learn, mandarin, cantonese, japanese, vietnamese, korean, italian, russian, taiwanese hokkien, shanghainese.

fluentin3months - bootcamp, consultation available, languages: spanish, french, korean, german, chinese, japanese, russian, italian.

fluenz - spanish immersion both online and in person - intensive.

pimsleur - not tutoring** online learning using apps and their method. up to 50 languages, free trial available.

incase time has passed since i last posted this, check on the original post (not the reblogs) to see if i updated link or added new resources. i think i want to add laguage resources at some point too but until then, happy learning!!

[transgenderer]

The origins of The Game are uncertain. The most common hypothesis as is that The Game derives from another mental game, Finchley Central. While the original version of Finchley Central involves taking turns to name stations, in 1976 some members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS) developed a variant where the first person to think of the titular station loses. The game in this form demonstrates ironic processing, in which attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts make those thoughts more common or persistent than they would be at random.

How this became simplified into The Game is unknown; one hypothesis is that once it spread outside the Greater London area, among people who are less familiar with London stations, it morphed into its self-referential form. The creators of "LoseTheGame.net", a website which aims to catalogue information relating to the phenomenon, have received messages from multiple former members of the CUSFS commenting on the similarity between the Finchley Central variant and the modern Game. The first known reference to The Game is a blog post from 2002 – the author states that they "found out about it online about 6 months ago".

Finchley Central is a mind game in which two players take turns naming stations in the London Underground. The first person to name Finchley Central is the winner. Of course, the first player could say "Finchley Central" straight away, but as mathematics professor Jonathan Partington notes,

An opening move of "Finchley Central" is too much of a cheat, and you might wish to start with, say, Liverpool Street, when, assuming that your opponent isn't rude enough to reply with Finchley Central, leaves you with a mate on your second move (though you probably would prefer to stall by playing, say, Bank, in the hopes of a more spectacular win later).

It is clear that the ‘best’ time to say Finchley Central is exactly before your opponent does. Failing that it is good that he should be considering it. You could, of course, say ‘Finchley Central’ on your second turn. In that case, your opponent puffs on his cigarette and says, ‘Well… Shame on you.’

I think the American mind cannot comprehend the nature of finchley central

[avatar-anna]

Pale Green Stripes

The Professor Masterlist

this takes place during The Professor Series!

"Did you know you're the only person who never tries to interrupt me?"

"What do you mean?"

Harry and Y/n lay on the carpeted floor of her townhouse. Their shoulders touched, but that was about it. Even so, Harry could feel that tiny bit of contact throughout his entire body. The professor probably had a word for that, a scientific term to explain why just the slightest graze—not even skin against skin—sent him into a tailspin that made him have to focus extra hard on what she said.

Y/n's hands knotted together on her lap, a thing she did when she held herself back. It was as if she had to physically restrain herself some way to keep her from speaking out of turn. Harry personally never thought she did, from their first meeting at the bookstore, he'd been fascinated by her, by the things she said.

"I don't mean to...impart information on people the way that I do. It just happens sometimes," she said, her eyes gazing up at the ceiling.

Harry knew he probably should've too, but he couldn't help but look at the professor instead. Her hair fanned out around her shoulders, she wore a string of pearls around her neck and earrings made to look like Salvador Dalí's melting clocks in her ears. Her jewelry was always a mix of something professional and a little quirky, Harry came to realize, as if even at work as a professor at Cambridge University she couldn't help but have a little fun.

Her wardrobe consisted of patterned socks and cherry red Adidas shoes and fun knitted sweaters and vests. Today she merely wore a cozy navy blue sweater and a flowy white skirt, her red shoes were on a rack by the door, but she still wore her ruffled socks with embroidered roses on them.

"I don't mind it at all," he replied honestly.

Y/n blinked a couple times, then said, "I know. I was surprised at first because everyone usually cuts me off. Or walks away."

Harry frowned. He couldn't help but notice how clinically the professor spoke about the hurtful things that had been done to her. By her family, so-called colleagues, the few friends she had at work. He couldn't fathom anyone finding Y/n anything less than wonderful. She was brilliant, yes, but funny, and charismatic, and had a knack for storytelling. Harry never wanted her to stop talking. Ever.

"I like listening to you," he told her, shrugging as best he could given his current prone position.

"That's probably because you never finished school and are trying to make up for lost time."

From anyone else, that would've been a joke, a jab, but Y/n took education seriously, had mentioned it numerous times since they met.

Still, Harry chuckled. "Maybe I just like the sound of your voice. Maybe I just like hearing what you have to say. Maybe I find your lectures highly arousing."

"Edward!"

Even as he laughed with her, Harry couldn't help but feel guilty. He knew he should tell her, he should've told her months ago. His middle name fired out of his mouth before he could think the first time Y/n asked him for his name. A desire for anonymity, that was all it was. He didn't think he'd see her again outside the one time, so he thought it would be harmless. Then they did keep meeting, and he didn't have the guts to tell her, and now he was too deep in the lie to find a way out.

"What?"

Harry had never been shy about his attraction to the professor, even if he'd only seen half of her face due to the mask she wore. There was so much to appreciate about her, so much to admire, and he let his own imagination do the rest. He could've, of course, looked her up online. Y/n had mentioned something about posting educational videos online, but he thought it was only fair that if she didn't know what his entire face looked like that he didn't either.

"Why do you say stuff like that?" she asked, and even without the mask, Harry could tell she was blushing.

"Like what?"

"About me. About—about your attraction to me and how you find me—or think I'm a—"

"Yes?" Harry encouraged. He could tell there was a word or phrase she had in mind but was too embarrassed to use.

"In the 16th Century, the word bellibone was first used. It's derived from French etymology using the words belle and bonne to describe a woman who excels in both beauty and goodness. There's really only one known use in the late 1500s. A poet named Edmund Spenser, though he was from Ireland. It's fascinating how a word can be used once then ceases to exist, don't you think?"

Harry blinked, not totally prepared for the tangent, though perhaps he should've been. Grinning beneath his mask, he said, "I think it describes you perfectly."

"Edward," Y/n said, now her neck was flushed too.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?" he asked. "The compliments? The—" He might as well call it what it was—"flirting?"

"N—No."

"Because I'll stop if it does," he promised. "I just think you should know how devastating you are."

One of the professor's eyebrows quirked up in confusion. "That was an interesting choice in adjective."

But it was the perfect one. Harry knew he couldn't be with Y/n the way he wanted when she didn't know the truth about who he was, and he couldn't risk losing her if he finally told her. Perhaps it was unfair to play at something he knew he couldn't have, but part of him wanted Y/n to know that she was desirable, that she was more than what her intellect offered. Sure, Harry found her intelligence sexy as all get out, but she was also beautiful, and funny, and kind, and he didn't think anyone had ever complimented more than just her brain.

He would spend an entire day complimenting her if he had the time, or if she let him.

But while Y/n was confident in many things, romantic feelings weren't one of them. Despite the obstacles he put in his own way, Harry didn't think the professor was quite ready to hear how much he really liked her.

"Tell me something."

"Like what?" Y/n asked.

"Anything," Harry said, facing her and propping his head in his hand. "A book you read, something that fascinates you, your least favorite student, anything."

She narrowed her eyes at him as she positioned her body to face his. "I don't have a least favorite student."

"I don't believe you," he replied, narrowing his eyes back playfully.

Y/n scanned his face, then up and down his body. It was casual, though Harry noticed that her gaze lingered in places—his arms, his shoulders, his face. He wore a mask, but he tried to suppress his grin anyway. Then, before he could tease her more, her eyes lit up.

"Did you know the stripe pattern originated in the Middle Ages?"

He never knew, but she always prefaced her information the same way. "Did it?"

Nodding to the green striped shirt Harry wore, she said, "Stripes were used to identify social outcasts. Prostitutes, criminals, hangmen, clowns and jugglers; they all had to wear stripes so they were easily recognizable in regular society."

"Clowns?"

"Outcasts and people who were...not society's favorites, like court jesters and such. European governments even legalized the requirement of certain citizens to wear stripes. Though now, of course, stripes are popular due to Coco Chanel wearing a striped shirt similar to French sailor uniforms, which, you know, sailors were also usually the lowest rank of the French navy. Then stripes began appearing in women's activewear in the 1920s, Al Capone began wearing pinstriped suits, and the rest is history. A long, brutal history, obviously, seeing as prisoners were later forced to wear striped uniforms, and prisoners in concentration camps during World War Two, but—there you have it. A brief, slightly detailed history of the stripe."

Harry looked down at his long sleeved shirt, the thin pale green and white striped that lined his arms and torso. "Not sure if I'll be able to wear stripes again, but... that's really fascinating."

"Thought you might like that," Y/n said with a shrug.

Harry tilted his head questioningly. "Why do you say that?"

"You like clothes."

He didn't question how she knew that. With her background, Y/n seemed to know things about him that she just happened to observe. It was a little disconcerting at first, but he came to appreciate that he didn't have to pretend around her. No airs, no personas, none of the things he'd become so accustomed to in recent years. The professor might not have known about Harry's career, but she knew him in ways no one else did.

"Well," he said, playfully sighing at his shirt. "Guess I'm never wearing stripes again."

Y/n's eyes squinted and her mask scrunched a little, the way they always did when she smiled. With an unmistakable glint in her eye, the adorable one she always got when Harry indulged in her. "Wait until you hear about polka dots!"

Harry sighed, a mix of exasperation and amusement making him chuckle a little. "Tell me more, love."

[scribbles97]

The Nightmare Come True - Part 5 and The End

Thanks @loopstagirl for the original idea of this whole fic that spiralled far further than I think either of us expected. Scott's POV 1 | Part 1 | Scott's POV 2 | Part 2 | Scott's POV 3 | Part 3 | Scott's POV 4 | Part 4

Christmas had come and gone as loudly as it always did in their house. 

The best gift for Gordon was the day his oldest brother had turned up at a training session alongside Jeff, the kid hadn’t stopped talking about it for a week. Jeff had been confident Scott would soon be making his way into the pool himself, especially if his request for an olympic sized pool on their newly purchased island was anything to go by. 

John and Virgil had both returned home for the holidays full of stories and with open invites for their big brother to visit them at their respective colleges come the following semester. Scott had been keen, immediately opening his calendar and circling dates between appointments and other plans. 

Even Jen had paid a brief visit, greeting the younger brothers as old friends proving just how much Scott had spoken of them all to his squad at one point or another. 

By spring Jeff had noticed just how Scott had begun to fill out again, his time in the gym paying off and rebuilding the muscle that had been lost. He was starting to relax, to enjoy life as he once had and found the confidence he had always worn like a comfortable jacket. Gradually, he was becoming a version of the son Jeff recognised. 

March was spent in the air, racking up supervised flight hours after passing the required psych exams. It had taken time for him to be comfortable in the pilot's seat again, but Scott had said himself that being in the air was as natural to him as being in the water was for Gordon. All he had needed was a supportive shoulder, one that Jeff was willing to offer. 

By his birthday, Scott’s full pilot’s license had been reinstated, giving cause for a celebration alone without the news of John’s new Space Rated status. They had called Virgil on hologram, celebrating from their separate corners of the country louder than they had done over the festive period.

It had been late in the night when Jeff had found Scott out on the porch, a letter discarded but evidently not forgotten in his lap.

“I was going to tell you earlier, but the surprise party kind of distracted me.” Scott had smiled as Jeff had joined him on the step and poured them each a measure of whiskey.

“Cambridge offered me a spot to study English Lit, it’s all online so I’d only need to go over twice a semester so I’d still be able to--” He paused to glance over his shoulder, making sure no younger brothers were lingering in the kitchen.

Jeff had chuckled, glad that Scott was doing something for himself, something that didn’t immediately lead to any plans that had seemingly always been in place.  

“You don’t have to, you know?” He had pointed out, “If you want to take some time for yourself before joining the Project…”

Scott had shook his head, grinning as he sipped his drink, “I want to get in the air again, Dad, and that rocket? I’m not letting you have all the fun.”

Both had laughed at the implication, wordlessly reaching their glasses towards one another in a silent salute to everything they had overcome in that year alone. 

Things still weren’t perfect, Alan and Gordon were far from happy about moving to a boarding school away from their family. Scott still had a way to go before he was back at his full strength and fitness, but with the encouragement from Val and Lee, he was well on his way to outperforming them all. 

“This is what I need.” Scott had nodded, “Despite everything, I’m glad we’ve ended up here Dad.” 

Jeff had slung an arm over his shoulders and pulled him close, “Me too kid, me too.” 

Of course, it hadn’t lasted. 

A short eighteen months later, Jeff had been shot into the farthest reaches of their solar system. He had been sure that he would never see his family, his boys, again. It hadn’t mattered what he had tried with the engines, there had been no way for him to get home. He had tried, time and again to find a way to get through to them but it had eventually become apparent that all he could do was try to stay alive.

He had taken to sketching and writing when he wasn’t trying to keep himself alive, focussing on thoughts of each of his boys. How Scott was at least back doing something he loved, that John had made it to space as he had always wanted to, that Virgil was close to graduating with Honors on his engineering degree, that Gordon would have made it to the Olympics, and Alan at least had four older brothers to look out for him. It had been the thought and memory of them that had kept him going, the irony not lost on him that it had been the same things that had kept Scott going through his imprisonment. 

There had been little else to occupy him over those long years. 

He had never given up hope, not even as the planetoid had begun to separate beneath his feet, he had known they would come. 

Right at the last possible second, he had spotted Scott. 

Just like that, their roles were reversed. 

Scott had stepped up in the time Jeff had been gone, and the more he had seen of the man his eldest had become, the more his heart had hurt. 

He had dropped out of his Literature degree almost immediately after Jeff had gone, had taken up the role of commander in International rescue, and the role of Father to younger brothers that weren’t ready to be orphans. Once again, thanks to Jeff, Scott had lost sight of the man he wanted to be for himself.

Once again, Jeff had vowed to set that right.

There had been months of recovery, hospital appointments and physiotherapy, most of it familiar from the year before he had taken the unexpected trip. Scott had resolutely been at his side through all of it. 

“Alan asked how you did it…” Scott had started one night, sat out by the pool waiting for Virgil and Gordon to return home from a rescue.

Jeff hadn’t needed further clarification as he had trailed off. He’d had therapy that morning, had spent the day pulling his boys closer after talking about what the isolation had done to him. Of course, they had all picked up on it.

“I imagine much the same way as you did during the war,” Jeff admitted softly, “Thinking of your family, remembering all the good times.”

Before he had left, talking about the war had been coming easier for Scott. It hadn’t taken long for Jeff to realize that Scott had clammed up once he had no longer had his father to talk to about such times.

Scott snorted, looking out to the horizon, “Admittedly, it’s a good method.”

Jeff smiled sadly across to him, “It got us both a long way.” 

It had gotten them both back home, back to their family, to somewhere where they could find their feet again and work towards the version of themselves they wanted to be.

The man sat next to him was physically recovered from his time as a prisoner, but had never found a solid enough footing to find himself amongst all the chaos life had thrown at them.

“You didn’t end up where you were aiming, I’m sorry for that.” Jeff sighed after a moment, reaching out to Scott’s shoulder, “Because of all of this, I think you lost yourself again Scott.”

“I--” For a moment it seemed like he was ready to argue, before his shoulders had fallen and he had nodded in admission, “I became who I needed to be.”

They had shared a look, one that spoke of burdens that had fallen back on tired shoulders that had barely gotten free before being weighed back down again.

“You deserved to live life for yourself Scott.” 

Scott ran a hand through his hair, “I know that now.”

“I know it wasn’t my fault,” Jeff continued, “but I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you see that, Son, I’m sorry that life has been so cruel and unfair.”

Scott’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, “I’m glad you don’t blame yourself.” 

Jeff would never admit to him that it was a concept he still sometimes struggled with, but something he was working on regardless. His son didn’t need any more burdens. 

“So,” He started, looking across with raised eyebrows, “Alan’s headed to college in the Fall, how about you take another look at that Literature degree?”

Scott’s laugh was full bodied against Jeff, “Yeah, I suppose that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”

Laughing with his son, Jeff nodded to himself. 

They were going to be just fine.

[sealochs]

a year in review

my therapist recommended that i sit down, go through my diary & calendar & blog, & compile a list of everything i have done this year so that i have incontrovertible evidence of the immense amount of things i have achieved, survived & overcome in the past twelve months. & it has been so affirming & empowering to do; at the end of a year which has felt so overwhelming, i can hardly believe that i actually achieved all of these things. & w. was there for very, very few of them. i deserved & deserve so much better, so much stronger, so much kinder.

anyway, i'm putting the list under the cut, & warmly recommending this to everyone as an activity in self-respect, self-love, self-reflection, etc., etc., & co.

i maintained, cleared and sold my late Mum's house this involved constant emails & phone calls all year, exhausting journeys of over 300 miles by train & then by car once i had my licence, endless tip runs & charity shop runs, selling furniture on eBay & arranging for collections, liaison with estate agents, speed learning a lot about property & finance, exhausting garden maintenance & cleaning, fights with the council who kept fucking up the tax liabilities; and none of this is to mention the emotional difficulty of sorting through my mum's things, deciding what to keep & what to give away & what to sell, & the grief of leaving her house for the final time in july; the house where i had cared for her, the home she had lived & died in. & i did almost all of it entirely on my own.

i bought my own flat in Edinburgh a joyful counterpoint to the above; a safe place finally to land, which i can make entirely my own; i think it's about the best thing i could have done for myself post-breakup, but it is also a very real way of closing the door on my relationship, & i've felt very bittersweet about that. i have also had to make removals plans over the festive period & balance a lot of very time-sensitive admin with similarly time-sensitive end of semester marking. the move in january will be exhausting, but so so wonderful when it is done & i am settled.

i wrote the 2nd chapter of my PhD all 20,000+ words of it! & i have done, of course, all the reading, thinking, editing & rewriting which this involved. but it is now a very solid, very good chapter, & only needs minor edits to be polished. that i managed to pull this off around everything to do with mum's house is truly incredible to me. i don't know how it happened but it did, & it's work that i am so proud of.

i taught on 3 summer schools one in st andrews, one online & one in cambridge. i wrote & gave two lectures, one on mrs dalloway & one on a sketch of the past, & delivered large- & small-group teaching on five different woolf texts. they were such rewarding experiences, & i cannot wait for next year's.

i taught my 1st undergraduate course an introduction to english literature course, 1800 to present day! like the summer schools, this was so wonderfully rewarding. i got to plan & deliver a semester's worth of seminars, & mark coursework essays & exams. i learnt so much about what works & doesn't work for this kind of course, & can't wait to apply those lessons to next semester's teaching. the fact that i even managed to deliver my classes on mrs dalloway the day after w. broke up with me, & find joy in doing so, is probably a highlight, actually. it shows me how good i am at what i do; i can do it with a broken heart.

i went on 2 archive trips one to king's college, cambridge, & one to the british library in london. i made really significant discoveries on both trips & i'm so looking forward to writing them all up into my 3rd chapter next year. both of these archive trips were also done around trips to mum's house to do clearance & maintenance & meet estate agents, & again the fact that i managed still to make them so productive is incredible to me.

i presented at my university's graduate conference & submitted an abstract for next year's international woolf conference! a light conferencing load for me this year, because i simply didn't have time for them, but i already have so many on my cv that i'm feeling very at peace with that.

i passed my theory & practical driving test got my licence finally in may, which made the final stages of dealing with mum's house easier; actually passed in the pissing rain while suffering from a horrendous cold, then did the long drive to the midlands only a few weeks later.

i went to therapy consistently even when it was hard; even when i didn't know what to talk about; even when i felt like i was constantly repeating myself; i trusted the process & i'm so glad i did.

i broke up with my phone this was a gamechanger in september. some of it has slipped since my actual breakup, but some of it has stuck, & i'm hopeful that i'll get back to a more phoneless existence in the new year. at the end of september i felt so much more present, so much more alive, so much more observant & focused & active. i'd like to feel that way again.

i travelled i was so lucky to travel to dublin, iceland, new york, india & france this year; i'm hoping for more european city breaks next year. vienna is already booked for january, & prague, stockholm & copenhagen are on my wish list. solo travel is a big goal.

i reinvested in my hobbies & interests i went pretty regularly to a weekly writing group! i did two blocks of pottery classes! i got a swim membership & took up regular swimming again! i walked & hiked & went wild swimming when i could! i also read 14 books, which maybe isn't a lot, but in the context of everything else i did this year it's something i'm proud of, & i enjoyed every single one. i also cooked a lot of new things, & fed myself well for the most part.

& in addition to all these things; all of this hard work, all of these decisions, all of the admin, & all of my grief, i still held so much time & space for my friends this year. i think this may be what i'm most proud of. going through my diary & calendar, there are so many entries for dinners & visits & trips & drinks with friends, new & old. i have for the most part managed to be present for the people i love & who love me, despite everything. if there's anything i definitely want to take into the new year, it's that.

[catherinetheprincessofwales]

Kate is not your drama queen Her self-possession drives people wild - Jenny McCartney UnHerd.

Just over a decade ago, the late novelist Hilary Mantel delivered a lecture to an event at the London Review of Books and triggered national outrage. In the course of a talk on “Royal Bodies”, which ranged widely across royal women from Anne Boleyn to Marie Antoinette and Princess Diana, she had made what many perceived as disparaging remarks about Kate Middleton, then the Duchess of Cambridge. The Duchess, she said, appeared to have been “designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished”. Indeed, Mantel said, Kate “seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character”.

At this, the newspapers were soon in uproar. The prime minister David Cameron called the comments “completely misguided and completely wrong” and the Labour leader Ed Miliband agreed they were “pretty offensive”. Mantel doggedly refused to back down, saying that her remarks had been twisted out of context, and that she was in fact writing with sympathy about the perceptions that are forcefully projected on to royal women, the cage in which they are held to be goggled at. That was true, but also perhaps not the entire truth, for there was still a perceptible trace of authorial vinegar in the portrait: which of us would be happy to learn, even in sympathy, that we were held at low risk for “the emergence of character”?

Royals are public as well as private figures, of course, and authors are free to hang intellectual ideas on them to try out, as designers do with clothes. Yet while much of the lecture was sharply perceptive, I didn’t agree with the portrait of Kate. That word “selected” had rendered her passive, when in fact her behaviour thus far had suggested both an active intelligence and an unusual degree of self-discipline. The context of her entry into “The Firm” was different from that of other royal brides. Unlike Diana, who had barely emerged from the fractured chrysalis of her troubled aristocratic family when she first met the much older, more worldly Prince Charles, Kate was a contemporary of Prince William’s at the University of St Andrews. Her family background, which appeared warm and supportive, was comfortably middle-class. She seemed generally cheerful and unruffled, even when the press was at the barbed peak of its “Waity Katie” hysteria, trying to goad Prince William into a proposal or abandonment.

After the wedding, in her approach to royal duties, she clearly took the role she had inherited with marriage seriously. The royal whose attitude her own most resembled was the late Queen Elizabeth II, who had long understood the essential nature of the job: to turn up to public events looking the part, intuit precisely what was needed — gravitas, fun, consolation or reassurance — and deliver it while keeping one’s personal emotions on the back burner. This is what a monarchy demands, and the ability to act as an impeccable interpreter of the public mood, year after year, is a particular and testing art. A few have a natural aptitude for it, but most of us do not, and would quickly find its scrutiny and restrictions intolerable.

Grace under consistent pressure is an admirable quality. Were a ballet dancer to execute a string of flawless performances, or a pilot to conduct numerous flights without incident, it would not be deemed evidence of an absence of character: quite the opposite. Yet in Kate — especially for those who increasingly conduct their lives online — serene self-possession seems to drive a proportion of onlookers insane: what lurks behind it, what dark secret is waiting to destroy it, how best might it be disrupted? The uncomfortable truth is that what many people deeply crave in a young and beautiful royal wife and mother is not competence, but crack-up

The increasingly bizarre treatment of Kate, or the idea of Kate, is connected to the most dominant phenomenon of our age: a cultural prioritising of drama over duty. The supply of drama has spilled beyond the confines of the novel, theatre, cinema or television to become a commodity on which our public figures are judged. When Mantel spoke of Kate’s apparent absence of emerging “character” she was assessing her primarily through the hungry eyes of a novelist. In books, central female characters often generate dramatic tension by chafing against their circumstances, by the intensifying dazzle of their discontents, something that Kate refused to transmit. In contrast, Mantel described Diana as a “carrier of myth”: Diana, publicly trapped in the disappointments of her marriage, certainly carried more plot twists than any author had a right to expect. Unfortunately for her, the final one was her shockingly premature death.

Set against this artistic conception of “character” — distinctive qualities or flaws that, one way or another, deliver drama — is the societal judgement “of good character”, meaning someone who is broadly reliable and respected in relation to their behaviour to others. In recent years the electorate, in line with Neil Postman’s warning in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, has proved increasingly ready to select the former over the latter, even to the marked detriment of our civic health. The former prime minister Boris Johnson instinctively understood it as his job not to deliver the detail of workable policy, but to satisfy the public’s appetite for story: “People live by narrative,” he once told UnHerd’sTom McTague. In the US, Donald Trump — that relentless generator of low mockery and high fury — is now running for a second term as president, after his first one ended in his supporters storming the Capitol building.

Men are often permitted to survive the frantic generation of drama: it is everyone around them who suffers. Yet women — in art and life — have a greater tendency to be destroyed by it. There is no strutting female equivalent of the male “hellraiser”, but rather a woman who, soaked in the crocodile tears of the tabloids, is tragically “causing concern” among friends. Art and its audiences have always relished the restless struggle and disintegration of female characters who are, or become, unmoored from the harbour of marriage and children. Flaubert’s Emma Bovary — her imagination inflamed by reading novels — is bored with her marriage and disenchanted with motherhood; she seeks solace in affairs and excessive spending, the consequences of which hasten her suicide. Zola’s Nana, a courtesan who ruthlessly captivates Parisian society, has her beguiling face eaten away by smallpox. Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse, immolated on their blazing talent, are hung posthumously high in the musical hall of fame, next to Sylvia Plath in the poetry section and Marilyn Monroe in cinema.

In Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight,a middle-aged English woman called Sasha Jansen, mourning an unhappy marriage and a dead child, finds herself in Paris, a vulnerable drifter seeking solace from stray men. Rhys herself, who died at 88 after a precarious but surprisingly long life, had much in common with her literary creations. As the writer and editor Diana Athill crisply put it: “Jean was absolutely incapable of living, life was just hopelessly beyond her. When she was young, she floated from man to man in a hopeless way… by the time she was old, she floated from kind woman to kind woman.”

In Rhys’s latter years — hard-drinking, irascible and impoverished — Athill and a small group of female friends formed what they called “The Jean Rhys Committee” which met regularly to ask “what should we do next?”. Rhys’s claim to such loyalty, I suppose, was the weight of her literary talent, her ability to exert an odd kind of fascination, and the fortunate soft-heartedness of her friends. The dramatic collided with the dutiful, and was kept alive by it.

From what I can see, the Princess of Wales exists at the opposite end of the feminine spectrum from Jean Rhys. Pinned firmly in place by her royal obligations, her wealth, her marriage and three children, she belongs to the realm of the respectable and dutiful rather than the erratic and dramatic. She is not a “character” in the artistic sense, nor does she desire to be, but both a survivor and upholder of an institution: hers is the territory of the prompt thank-you note, the kept promise, the commitment to public service, the uncomplicated pleasure in children, the stoic endurance of difficult times in the hope that better ones will come along soon. The public senses an emotional solidity in her, and it is partly why she is held in broad esteem. In this age of insistent self-definition, duty to others might be an unfashionable concept, but it is nonetheless one that keeps families and institutions from chaos and collapse.

With the advent of the internet, however, anyone with a keyboard can become a form of author, with the freedom to insert a toxic form of drama into real-life situations. What was extraordinary, during the Princess of Wales’s recent health problems, is how speedily and carelessly such speculations overrode the bounds of decency. It was already known that she had undergone major abdominal surgery, and was taking time to recover. And yet — egged on by the participation of silly celebrities and malicious US comedians — conspiracy theories about cosmetic surgery and affairs and nervous breakdowns spread like knotweed. According to social-media researchers, these were also vigorously introduced and amplified by fake accounts set up on Twitter and TikTok, some associated with Russia-linked disinformation eager to spread the termites of mistrust and doubt in Western institutions. Only the Princess of Wales’s revelation of cancer, which carries a testing drama all its own, served to shut up the majority of them.

Unlike these callous gossips, Mantel recognised her own complicity in dehumanising royalty. Upon encountering the late Queen, the novelist said: “I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner, my gaze sharp enough to pick the meat off her bones.” The Queen looked back at her, she said, briefly hurt. Mantel warned of the way in which “cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty” precisely as it has done in recent weeks. Her talk concluded with a prescient instruction for those who comprehend monarchy mainly as a source of entertainment: “I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.”

In the midst of treatment and recovery, the most hitherto stable of royal women could be forgiven a keen sense of injustice: her job description, it seems, must now include the ability to weather the online public’s fits of brutish mania for drama. With its contempt for duty, and its savage appetite for story, it is hungry to chew up far more than just the Princess of Wales.

[aziraphales-library]

Hi! I was wondering if you had recs for something longer that has a lot of exploration of queer themes? Love your blog!

Hello. We have #long fic and #queer themes tags you can check out. Here are some that have both...

The End is Where We Start From by tiresius (E)

“Aziraphale, hello. It’s er, been a long time.” “Yes, dreadfully long. You look different.” He immediately coloured in evident embarrassment. “I mean, of course you look different, as do I of course, I didn’t mean bad different, that is to say…” Something inside of Crowley, something that had been in a deep freeze for several eons, was starting to thaw. It was letting little bits and pieces of familiarity break loose to float back into their rightful places in his soul. One of those pieces, those round, blue eyes, suddenly snapped into place, and he felt a corresponding wave of long-forgotten feeling wash through him. Aziraphale is anxious. Make Aziraphale happy. “Yeah,” he interrupted. “D’you wanna… get a coffee or something?” *** Crowley and Aziraphale meet by chance on the street. They've met before, in their youth, in a different life. Some difficult things have happened since then. Will they be able to find their way back to each other and to themselves? A Good Omens human AU.

Orbit by altsernative (M)

"It was like they were in orbit with each other. Locked into their paths. Circling each other. Coming so close for golden snatches of time, then dragged away again. Again, and again, and again." Literature instructor Aziraphale and Astronomy instructor Crowley have been best friends for eight years whilst teaching at Agnes Nutter College, a subsidiary of Cambridge. If they ever wanted something more than that, well, they certainly hadn’t said anything. Just as they start to come to terms with their feelings for one another, Aziraphale is promoted to department head and out of Crowley’s life as part of the college's strict non-fraternisation policy. Neither is willing to give the other up, and with the help of a few familiar faces, a pub called Taddy’s that only plays four specific types of songs, Tracy, an enthusiastic B&B owner/community queer icon, and a hidden garden everyone seems to have forgotten about, they risk everything to try and find their way back into each other's lives once more.

An Absence of Stars by mllekurtz (E)

A.Z. Fell is a famous (well, in his circle) Soho bookseller whose selection of volumes is the epitome of respectable (and boring) literature. One of his favourite authors is the renowned science writer A.J. Crowley, whose books on astronomy have popularized the subject — and also sell very well. Mr Fell is overjoyed when Dr Crowley accepts his invitation to do a signing of his new book in the bookshop, but their first conversation is a disaster: for some reason, Crowley does not share Fell’s distaste for romantic literature and acts very cold when the bookseller berates the author of one of the most popular romance series of the moment, Madame Ashtoreth. Little does Fell know that his favourite writer and the one he hates with a passion are the same person…

I Knew I Loved You by AppleSeeds (E)

In September 1999, when his family gets connected to the internet, prospective Marine Biology student Crowley discovers an online forum where he can actually talk to people who share his passion for saving the whales. He begins corresponding with a kind stranger he knows only as Ocean_Angel, and is incredibly excited when the opportunity arises to meet this mysterious person in real life. As their friendship develops, Crowley shares things with Angel that he can't talk about with anyone else, and Angel's insights help him to explore and embrace his own identity. As Crowley works towards finding a place in this world where he feels like he really belongs, he realises that a big part of the answer to that question might actually be right in front of him. What if where he belongs is with Angel?

secondhand smoke by PaintedVanilla (T)

you're second hand smoke, second hand smoke i breathe you in, but, honey, i don't know what you're doing to me mon chéri the year is 1990, and anthony crowley is looking for a church in london that might be tolerable. the one he winds up attending isn't exactly such, but he decides to stick around for one reason. said reason happens to own a bookshop that crowley begins to frequent, much to the surprise and delight of anathema device and newton pulsifer, who seem quite convinced that crowley could use something else to focus on besides gardening, their campaigns, and visits to tadfield.

Sit Tight, Take Hold by nieded (E)

The summer of 2022, Ezira Phale is a rookie Formula 1 driver out to prove he's one of the best racecar drivers in the world, but everything gets turned upside down when he falls in love with his real-life idol, AJ Crowley. Or: The one where Crowley does not go too fast for Aziraphale. _____ This story uses a multi-media format with CSS and HTML. It's best read using the workskin so please make sure that you are enabling user workskins. If you do not want to use the workskin, I will also be posting a .pdf of each chapter and a final .pdf once everything is posted! I’m not so cool as to know how to do podcasts, manips, and videos, but this will feature scripts, news articles, text messages, tumblr, and race programming! So strap in and put your seatbelt on! This is going to be one fast ride of romance, competition, and over-indulgence.

- Mod D

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Just over a decade ago, the late novelist Hilary Mantel (6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) delivered a lecture to an event at the London Review of Books and triggered national outrage.

In the course of a talk on “Royal Bodies,” which ranged widely across royal women from Anne Boleyn to Marie Antoinette and Princess Diana, she had made what many perceived as disparaging remarks about Kate Middleton, then the Duchess of Cambridge.

The Duchess, she said, appeared to have been “designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished."

Indeed, Mantel said, Kate “seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character.”

At this, the newspapers were soon in uproar.

The prime minister David Cameron called the comments “completely misguided and completely wrong” and the Labour leader Ed Miliband agreed they were “pretty offensive.”

Mantel doggedly refused to back down, saying that her remarks had been twisted out of context, and that she was in fact writing with sympathy about the perceptions that are forcefully projected on to royal women, the cage in which they are held to be goggled at.

That was true but also perhaps not the entire truth, for there was still a perceptible trace of authorial vinegar in the portrait:

Which of us would be happy to learn, even in sympathy, that we were held at low risk for “the emergence of character”?

Royals are public as well as private figures, of course, and authors are free to hang intellectual ideas on them to try out, as designers do with clothes.

Yet while much of the lecture was sharply perceptive, I didn’t agree with the portrait of Kate.

That word “selected” had rendered her passive, when in fact her behaviour thus far had suggested both an active intelligence and an unusual degree of self-discipline.

The context of her entry into “The Firm” was different from that of other royal brides.

Unlike Diana, who had barely emerged from the fractured chrysalis of her troubled aristocratic family when she first met the much older, more worldly Prince Charles, Kate was a contemporary of Prince William’s at the University of St Andrews.

Her family background, which appeared warm and supportive, was comfortably middle-class.

She seemed generally cheerful and unruffled, even when the press was at the barbed peak of its “Waity Katie” hysteria, trying to goad Prince William into a proposal or abandonment.

After the wedding, in her approach to royal duties, she clearly took the role she had inherited with marriage seriously.

The royal whose attitude her own most resembled was the late Queen Elizabeth II, who had long understood the essential nature of the job:

To turn up to public events looking the part, intuit precisely what was needed — gravitas, fun, consolation or reassurance — and deliver it while keeping one’s personal emotions on the back burner.

This is what a monarchy demands, and the ability to act as an impeccable interpreter of the public mood, year after year, is a particular and testing art.

A few have a natural aptitude for it, but most of us do not, and would quickly find its scrutiny and restrictions intolerable.

Grace under consistent pressure is an admirable quality.

Were a ballet dancer to execute a string of flawless performances, or a pilot to conduct numerous flights without incident, it would not be deemed evidence of an absence of character: quite the opposite.

Yet in Kate — especially for those who increasingly conduct their lives online — serene self-possession seems to drive a proportion of onlookers insane: what lurks behind it, what dark secret is waiting to destroy it, how best might it be disrupted?

The uncomfortable truth is that what many people deeply crave in a young and beautiful royal wife and mother is not competence, but crack-up.

The increasingly bizarre treatment of Kate, or the idea of Kate, is connected to the most dominant phenomenon of our age: a cultural prioritising of drama over duty.

The supply of drama has spilled beyond the confines of the novel, theatre, cinema, or television to become a commodity on which our public figures are judged.

When Mantel spoke of Kate’s apparent absence of emerging “character,” she was assessing her primarily through the hungry eyes of a novelist.

In books, central female characters often generate dramatic tension by chafing against their circumstances, by the intensifying dazzle of their discontents, something that Kate refused to transmit.

In contrast, Mantel described Diana as a “carrier of myth”: Diana, publicly trapped in the disappointments of her marriage, certainly carried more plot twists than any author had a right to expect.

Unfortunately for her, the final one was her shockingly premature death.

Set against this artistic conception of “character” — distinctive qualities or flaws that, one way or another, deliver drama — is the societal judgement “of good character,” meaning someone who is broadly reliable and respected in relation to their behaviour to others.

In recent years, the electorate, in line with Neil Postman’s warning in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, has proved increasingly ready to select the former over the latter, even to the marked detriment of our civic health.

The former prime minister Boris Johnson instinctively understood it as his job not to deliver the detail of workable policy but to satisfy the public’s appetite for story:

“People live by narrative,” he once told UnHerd’s Tom McTague.

In the US, Donald Trump — that relentless generator of low mockery and high fury — is now running for a second term as president, after his first one ended in his supporters storming the Capitol building.

Men are often permitted to survive the frantic generation of drama: it is everyone around them who suffers.

Yet women — in art and life — have a greater tendency to be destroyed by it.

There is no strutting female equivalent of the male “hellraiser,” but rather a woman who, soaked in the crocodile tears of the tabloids, is tragically “causing concern” among friends.

Art and its audiences have always relished the restless struggle and disintegration of female characters who are, or become, unmoored from the harbour of marriage and children.

Flaubert’s Emma Bovary — her imagination inflamed by reading novels — is bored with her marriage and disenchanted with motherhood.

She seeks solace in affairs and excessive spending, the consequences of which hasten her suicide.

Zola’s Nana, a courtesan who ruthlessly captivates Parisian society, has her beguiling face eaten away by smallpox.

Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse, immolated on their blazing talent, are hung posthumously high in the musical hall of fame, next to Sylvia Plath in the poetry section and Marilyn Monroe in cinema.

In Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight, a middle-aged English woman called Sasha Jansen, mourning an unhappy marriage and a dead child, finds herself in Paris, a vulnerable drifter seeking solace from stray men.

Rhys herself, who died at 88 after a precarious but surprisingly long life, had much in common with her literary creations.

As the writer and editor Diana Athill crisply put it:

“Jean was absolutely incapable of living, life was just hopelessly beyond her.

When she was young, she floated from man to man in a hopeless way… by the time she was old, she floated from kind woman to kind woman.”

In Rhys’s latter years — hard-drinking, irascible and impoverished — Athill and a small group of female friends formed what they called “The Jean Rhys Committee,” which met regularly to ask “what should we do next?”

Rhys’s claim to such loyalty, I suppose, was the weight of her literary talent, her ability to exert an odd kind of fascination, and the fortunate soft-heartedness of her friends.

The dramatic collided with the dutiful and was kept alive by it.

From what I can see, the Princess of Wales exists at the opposite end of the feminine spectrum from Jean Rhys.

Pinned firmly in place by her royal obligations, her wealth, her marriage, and three children, she belongs to the realm of the respectable and dutiful rather than the erratic and dramatic.

She is not a “character” in the artistic sense, nor does she desire to be, but both a survivor and upholder of an institution:

Hers is the territory of the prompt thank-you note, the kept promise, the commitment to public service, the uncomplicated pleasure in children, the stoic endurance of difficult times in the hope that better ones will come along soon.

The public senses an emotional solidity in her, and it is partly why she is held in broad esteem.

In this age of insistent self-definition, duty to others might be an unfashionable concept, but it is nonetheless one that keeps families and institutions from chaos and collapse.

With the advent of the internet, however, anyone with a keyboard can become a form of author, with the freedom to insert a toxic form of drama into real-life situations.

What was extraordinary, during the Princess of Wales’s recent health problems, is how speedily and carelessly such speculations overrode the bounds of decency.

It was already known that she had undergone major abdominal surgery and was taking time to recover.

And yet — egged on by the participation of silly celebrities and malicious US comedians — conspiracy theories about cosmetic surgery and affairs and nervous breakdowns spread like knotweed.

According to social-media researchers, these were also vigorously introduced and amplified by fake accounts set up on Twitter and TikTok, some associated with Russia-linked disinformation eager to spread the termites of mistrust and doubt in Western institutions.

Only the Princess of Wales’s revelation of cancer, which carries a testing drama all its own, served to shut up the majority of them.

Unlike these callous gossips, Mantel recognised her own complicity in dehumanising royalty.

Upon encountering the late Queen, the novelist said: “I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner, my gaze sharp enough to pick the meat off her bones.”

The Queen looked back at her, she said, briefly hurt. Mantel warned of the way in which “cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty” precisely as it has done in recent weeks.

Her talk concluded with a prescient instruction for those who comprehend monarchy mainly as a source of entertainment: “I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.”

In the midst of treatment and recovery, the most hitherto stable of royal women could be forgiven a keen sense of injustice:

Her job description, it seems, must now include the ability to weather the online public’s fits of brutish mania for drama.

With its contempt for duty, and its savage appetite for story, it is hungry to chew up far more than just the Princess of Wales.

NOTE: Additional photos have been included in this article.