#Fab fourteen

[ljblueteak]

Review of Give My Regards to Broad Street, Nov. 6, 1984

All idealism aside, it's obvious that today's youth view the Beatles as a nostalgic phenomenon from a past era which somehow seems even more intangible since the death of John Lennon in 1980.

Bearing this in mind, one wonders what criteria should be used in reviewing Paul McCartney's Give My Regards to Broad Street. Should it be viewed as a production intended or the general movie going audience, or as one which caters primarily to the McCartney/Beatles fan movement? In all honesty, the film falls flat in the former category, while it soars in the latter and for that reason alone one should go the obvious route: the film is designed for a theoretic pre-sold audience (much like Star Trek or James Bond films) and as such should be judged in that manner.

It's been fourteen years since McCartney's last celluloid appearance (1970's Let it Be) and twenty since the Beatles classic, A Hard Day's Night, yet he has managed to effortlessly step in front of the camera again and exude the same charm and vibrancy which made him and the other Fabs (as in Fab Four, for those of you who missed out on it during the '60s) such a sensation at press conferences and on television appearances.

He has the ability to take his role very seriously, yet at the same time making the audience feel as though he's saying, 'why don't we have a bit of fun and music with me guitar?' It's that quality of Broad Street which allows it to succeed at the level it does.

There is a plot (albeit an extremely contrived one, which focuses on missing tapes for McCartney's new album, and the fact that if they're not recovered by midnight the star's empire will be handed over to an unscrupulous businessman with big ears and sun glasses. Egad!), what's an ex-Beatle to do? Why break into song, of course, and that's precisely the direction the film takes.

While the clock ticks away, the unflappable McCartney takes every opportunity to grab wife Linda, old buddy Ringo Starr, such rock star favorite as Dave Edmunds and Eric Steward, and perform (whether in the recording studio, on the set of a motion picture or in fantasy sequences) new versions of Beatles classics ("For No One," "Yesterday," "Eleanor Rigby,") McCartney solo hits ("Silly Love Songs," "Ballroom Dancing," So Bad,") and new numbers ("No More Lonely Nights," "No Values," "Not Such a Bad Boy").

The musical direction is quite effective, especially considering that it goes against the fast cutting trends of of such films as Flashdance or Footloose. The proceedings are handled smoothly, from the simplicity of McCartney strumming his guitar and cooing a Beatles medley to the elaborate futuristic backdrop of "Silly Love Songs." In fact the only musical sequence that falls flat is an instrumental called "Eleanor's Dream," which is a tedious exercise taking place in the 18th Century that is totally incongruous with the rest of the film.

While the supporting cast, ranging from Ringo to Sir Ralph Richardson (in his lead role) does its job, it's McCartney who's really on center stage at all times, and director Peter Webb manages to make his star shine throughout.

Give My Regards to Broad Street is a pleasant enough diversion to the movies, and, depending on how you regard McCartney and the Beatles, it will either give you cause to sing along, or wish they'd just "Let it Be."

--Ed Gross Jr.

Emphasis mine!

[saintmeghanmarkle]

In the Room Where It Happened by u/lastlemming-pip

In the Room Where It Happened Someone threw it out there as a probability & the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m convinced it’s true. Because these guys are insane. Because these guys couldn’t read a room (where it happened) if their life depended on it. They actually thought they could bulldoze Charles into this because Charles was nice enough to call Harry & give him a personal heads up about his cancer diagnosis. That was all it took. That was the beginnings of a thaw, no? Détente, yes? Of course, Harry would have to fly out & make the ask in person. Couldn’t let Wet Blanket Willy or the Suits get in the way of Family Unity, Right? But in order for this to make sense, let’s go back a bit.On January 29, 2024, Charles left London Clinic after a 3 day stay for a prostate procedure. Following this, on February 5, it was announced that he was suffering from cancer, type & prognosis unspecified. His sons had already been advised of this personally by Charles & his partially estranged son, Harry, living in Santa Barbara, California, takes it upon himself to fly fourteen hours to London for what has variously been described as a 14 minute or a 30 minute visit before immediately returning home to Santa Barbara. What was that visit about? We don’t really know except, supposedly “cancer.” Rumor has it that he offered to put Megs on the phone to speak with his father & that his father advised him that that wouldn’t be necessary. Speak about what? “Cancer?” That’s all? I, for one, doubt it.I suspect that phone call from Charles caused Harry to believe that relations between Harry & his wife & Charles were back on the mend. Unlike Big Willie, Charles wasn’t holding a grudge. And what better time, thought Harry (& Megs) to push for rapprochement than when the Family was overworked, understaffed, stretched to the limit. So few players. Plenty of room.And this year especially Will & Kate couldn’t provide the usually glamor so Harry & Meghan would! Imagine the headlines! The Fab Four are back, well the Fab Two any way. The breach was healed! So Megs cooked up the plan to send Harry to his Dad for the big ask. He had to ask in person because if any sane person (ie William) heard about it, they would stop in it’s tracks. But it the King somehow got it in his head & decided his darling boy….So King Charles would decide Harry & Meghan would present at the BAFTA’s. William wouldn’t even have to go! He could stay home w/ Kate! “Think of the publicity! Think of how much stress it would remove from the family! Here, just call M! She’ll explain it all to you. She even has the dress. I don’t even have to go home. I can fly to Balmoral w/ you. She can meet us there.”But it didn’t work. Charles, after a shocked silence, “Darling boy. That won’t be necessary.”I really think it happened this way. He didn’t fly out just for “support.” He flew out to ask if they could preside at the BAFTAs. post link: https://ift.tt/KIXVzF7 author: lastlemming-pip submitted: April 07, 2024 at 03:34PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[newlumosserverpolls]

⭐️NEW LUMOS POLL 1: CANON CASTED MIITOPIA CHARACTERS⭐️

First poll voted on in the New Lumos server!!

For the first round: Pick between fourteen of our contestants of notable heroics and events from Miitopia! Remember, this one isn’t about who was casted but their role!

First Round:

Prince of a Nearby Land v.s. Toby

Ex-Dark Lord v.s. Eldest Fab Fairy

Youngest Fab Fairy v.s. King of Greenhorne

Dark Lord v.s. Besmirched Noble’s Son

Princess of Greenhorne v.s. Genie of the Lamp

Darker Lord v.s. Guardian Spirit

Middle Fab Fairy v.s. Dark Curse / Reborn

Bonus Round will proceed before the Second Round. Stay tuned!

[knifesxedge]

1, 4, and 12 for jet and 19 & 22 for party

1. Why are they Like That™? What makes them tick ever so slightly off? — Jet Star

jet’s formative years were spent with loving parents in a big community of kids and a few other adults who helped take care of all the motorbabies in the caravan. it takes a village, you know? and that is why jet is…more emotionally balanced? than a lot of other desertborns. her parents gave her a lot of love growing up and made sure they knew they could always come back to them for help even after she found her own crew. that’s what makes jet so open, outgoing, friendly with other ‘joys, which is consequently what led to the fab four forming in the first place!

4. Thoughts on vampires? (not dracs. very different) — Jet Star

weeeell…i think jet is only like…VAGUELY aware of the concept of vampires outside of draculoids. as a concept she’s pretty indifferent to them, i think. jet’s not the type to really think they’re interesting, especially since dracs have sort of warped the idea of vampires and tainted them for ‘joys, particularly desertborns. jet doesn’t really think that blood-sucking creatures of the night are particularly appealing, when it comes to things that may or may not actually exist she’s much more interested in “positive” or benevolent kinds of entities (the Witch and Destroya included). that is, of course, unless we’re talking about very specifically my supernatural creatures AU, in which case “present company excluded” is her stance on things.

12. Who did they have the hardest time trusting from their crew/friends? — Jet Star

HM. that’s a really hard one, because jet is so open and trusting by nature. she’s really willing to extend an open hand and take a chance on folks, hoping that if she shows kindness to people she’ll be repaid in kind by their trust. that being said, i think out of her crew, the person she had the hardest time trusting was actually kobra. party, to jet, was easy to read — they were shy and awkward but weren’t threatening, despite their posturing, and they would just lurk around jet until eventually they got close enough that party started to open up. kobra, however…he was polite enough, but he’s pretty stoic and closed-off. hard to read. he can almost seem emotionless, and even for someone as willing to extend their trust as jet, it was just…really hard for her to get a read on him. obviously they eventually learned to trust each other, to the point where when ghoul started to come around jet had no qualms about trusting him, because kobra vouched for him. but for a while there, when jet had just met party and kobra and obviously didn’t know anything about either of them yet, kobra was definitely a hard nut to crack and that made it take longer for jet to warm up to him.

19. What’s something they’ve never quite got over? — Party Poison

tw for grooming of a minor: party’s supervising ‘crow in the city when they were a scarecrow trainee was korse. they were right at the top of their class, and got “special attention” allegedly because of that. at least, that’s the reason korse told them. they were pretty young — between the ages of eleven and fourteen — and didn’t really realize that what was happening was bad, even. they just thought they were special. it took them until they were already out in the Zones to realize that they had been groomed, and it made them feel…violated. scared. they can put on a brave face, fake a lot of confidence in a firefight, but…they’ll never be over it. and they’ll always be scared of korse, even if they refuse to show it.

22. Do they ever want to return/go to Battery City? If not, is there something that could make them change their mind? — Party Poison

no. party hates the city the most out of everyone in their crew. they hate who they were in the city, they hate the things they were complicit in (and they hate the things that happened to them), and they would never want to return to Batt City, especially once they realized they were nonbinary, and once they’d fallen in love, they were entirely aware of the fact that they would never have been allowed those things if they’d stayed. i honestly don’t think there’s anything that could make them change their mind…i don’t count the underground as “going back to batt city” so i think if worst came to worst they could maybe be convinced to go back to the city in that sense. and of course, they’ve gone back to Batt City to rescue the girl, and to get ghoul back from reconditioning. however, they would never, willingly, return to Battery City as a citizen.

ty for the ask, marz :]

send me killjoys asks HERE

[bluesilver]

Barbie: Skipper Roberts —Aesthetic

Skipper Roberts’ Character & Personality

Skipper is a fourteen year-old (sometimes sixteen) with a pug named Scrunchie. Although she has natural dark brown hair, some Barbie My Fab Sisters artwork feature her as a blonde. Her hair often has purple, pink or blue streaks. Skipper is a shy, quiet, introverted teen with a sarcastic and funny side. She enjoys photography, singing, art, blogging, vlogging, DJing, gaming, electronic music and all technology. This is because Skipper is a techie at heart. Additionally, she would like to be a director when she’s older, as she often directs home movies starring her family and pets. Skipper also has a photo blog and likes to stay inside working on it. Beyond often complaining about “getting the hardest job”, she feels pressure to fit in with her friends. Most importantly, Skipper faces the pressure of having a famous older sister and doesn’t want what she does to be a “Barbie thing”.

[thetalentedmrkashyap]

B-8 : Sixty Years of The Beatles - The Memories of A Fan

As I write this article, I've started watching the Disney+ Series called The Beatles: Get Back. It was about the recording of Let It Be, their final album. It talked about the tension and differences among the Fab Four (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr) and the end of an era of music. 

What you're going to read is not a theoretical research paper about the history of the four Liverpool lads. It's not about their early stint as The Quarrymen, their original lineup with bassist Stuart Sutcliffe & drummer Pete Best, or their early gigs in Hamburg (Germany). It's not even about how manager Brian Epstein discovered the young talent, or for that matter - how Ringo replaced Pete Best as the drummer. It's about how a fan feels about it and its place in the fan's heart - as the band celebrated sixty years of its first album, Please Please Me (1963) - in March this year.

Talking a bit about myself, I first heard about the Beatles in a childhood story of John Lennon (1940-1980) that got published in Scharda Dubey's book The Best Days of Our Lives. I read it in September 2012. More than three years later (December 9, 2015), I came across a news story about the Beatles Ashram reopening at Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. I know the exact date because the previous day was the 35th death anniversary of Lennon. After reading it, I searched for them on YouTube - and that's when I heard the first ever song of The Beatles - We Can Work It Out. I kept to it for days before exploring the other musical gems. I was fourteen - and in ninth grade back then.

Every teenager faces adolescence-related problems (physical & emotional changes, insecurities, mental health, peer pressure, etcetera). For rescue comes a solution that proves to be life-changing. In my case, it was the music of the four lads from the unknown coastal city of Liverpool (not to mention that it became famous because of the band). Many of their contemporaries came along the way.

My personal Beatles souvenir Collection (Which I have maintained since 2016)

Coming back to The Beatles, my favorite Beatle was Lennon. Seeing them in live performances and music videos, I began practicing their songs on my keyboard - and eventually bought a guitar to match them. Like an ordinary obsessed fan, I bought souvenirs - guitar pics, music CDs, T-shirts, books, phone covers, etcetera online. I don't think any Indian fan could get such stuff in here that easily - even during the band's popularity years. They would get in the USA and UK - where such things would sell like hotcakes. I even made a poster at 15 about the band - which I pasted in my room.

Thanks to the band, I had quite a reputation as a music performer in school, college, and my locality. I would perform their covers at parties and musical events. Although, I couldn't play their songs in school. But thanks to them, I could look beneath myself to find the skills I possess. Hence, I decided to pursue entertainment journalism/writing. I often write similar songs - and try looking for a music producer to record them. When people suggest music software for completing the songs, I politely respond, "They won't have the same fun as the Beatles - and I want to keep that element in my songs."

As their first single, Love Me Do (1962), celebrated its diamond jubilee on October 5 last year - and their debut album on March 22, I can only say that the boys with the mop-tops are immortal and irreplaceable. Even today, I listen to the entire album the way I did seven years ago. I'm sure there are similar fans like me in different parts of the world - who admire the boys and express their admiration and obsession through various methods. With this, I put my pen down.

[leftfield-fm]

That night, we played at New Brighton's Tower Ballroom. The compère and promoter was Bob Wooler of the Cavern Club and on the bill with us were twelve finalists in a beat contest. Elaborate plans had been made to get us into the venue by means of a chair-lift, but it was finally decided that it would be too dangerous if fans got out of hand. The crowd of 5,000 got out of hand anyway. We waited five hours to go on stage and, despite some laughs backstage with Jimmy Savile, one of the contest judges, we were already tired. Fighting began when we struck up the music; it was Mods versus Rockers, with the Tower Ballroom's spotlights picking out the fights! The battle lasted forty-five minutes and fifty youths had been ejected from the hall, two with knives. We had orders to carry on as normal, and so we played a set of fourteen songs and there was no arrests.

It was the same pattern we'd experienced so often: girls being pushed by those at the back, and the result a terrible crush at the stage. How could such hysteria be contained? Bob Wooler said: "The answer is to give the kids plenty of space to let off steam, but see you have complete control from start to finish. The bouncers did a fine job. They may have seemed ruthless, but you could see they had to be, for the kids' own sakes, and the kids knew it."

This might have been true. I saw a girl with a ripped pink dress being dragged away by her hair. Later, I asked her what sort of time she had. "Fab," she replied.

excerpt from Bill Wyman's memoir, Stone Alone

[incoherentbabblings]

Niche posting time because I finished reading Alison Weir's book on the Queens of the Age of Chivalry (Edward I's second wife Margaret of France; Edward II's wife, Isabella of France; Edward III's wife Philippa of Hainault; Richard II's wives Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois) which aside from making me go 'oh no did I seriously ready book three before one and two' is making me froth at the mouth at the refusal of period drama makers to engage with English material that isn't Tudor (or Victorian) adjacent.

Like. Okay.

I want more period dramas about Edward III and Philippa dammit. I want that boy watch his dysfunctional parents and a legacy of Plantagenets having absolutely shit relationships with their parents and children and going 'couldn't be me' and proceeding to be so head over heels for his wife and have so many babies - all of which loved him right back! Heck, they adopted even more babies as the twelve Philippa popped out clearly wasn't enough, she needs those nieces near her too. More babies. That woman - that girl - saw what a mess she was marrying into a knew what these people needed was nothing less than love and she spent the rest of her life giving nothing but love, and in a society where Queens had to fulfil very specific roles she managed to go through life as the most adored woman in the entire country. And she did it as a foreigner which the notoriously xenophobic English were never kind to.

I want their wedding in York Minster when they're just fourteen/sixteen and there's a snowstorm falling through the unfinished roof ("Phil do you want milk with your hot water"). I want that silly romantic story that Philippa used to tell people that when Edward was in Hainault he chose her above her sisters (never-mind one was a toddler). I want Edward's letters calling her dear heart I want him fighting with his mum to ensure Philippa gets what's she's owed I want that dry comment that the two spent so much on fabric and jewels that one chronicler wrote "King Edward and Queen Philippa, who first invented clothes".

I want that moment where at a joust her stand collapses whilst Edward is riding and even though she was totally fine just a bit winded (never mind the people underneath her gulp) Edward is completely willing to go head chopping because hoo boy what if she actually was hurt right? I want Philippa again and again going 'please don't kill these people', and Edward playing along with the theatre of it all and going 'okay', knowing it makes Philippa look like a compassionate wonderful queen and he as a strong king without having to actually go murdering (though he still did plenty of that)

I want Philippa kicking David II of Scotland so hard in the balls whilst Edward is in France that David just kind of ends up living in England for the next decade, coincidently freeing Edward's sister (who Edward had never wanted to sell to Scotland and David in the first place as that was something his mother had arranged) and letting her come home and see her mother again.

I want that moment when Philippa falls from her horse and smashes her shoulder, never to recover, and to spend the next ten years slowly dying. I want Edward's sharp decline when she does go, broken and taken advantage of, remembering his promise that Philippa said when his time came he had to be buried with her.

Like, there's this fab European miniseries about Mary of Burgundy (or rather its about her husband Maximilian) and yes she too fell off her horse and was crushed and the way the series shot it and shows her death is harrowing and I want that for myself.

[beatrice-reden-official]

Did you ask the extraterrestrial if they consent to being the pet of two fourteen year old rich girls? -Ace

SAY YES SAY YES SAY YES -Whittany

I already know SOOO many outfits you’d look so fab in -Brittany

TG: Hi. As Mrs. Maryam's lawyer we need to think about this

Do Not Listen To Him, He Is Not My Lawyer

[grantgoddard]

Give them a foot and they’ll take a metre : 1972 : Bill Beaver, Camberley & Alicante

It was the summer of rock’n’roll. Bill Haley. Buddy Holly. Chuck Berry. Fats Domino. The Big Bopper. Now, every time I hear one of their songs, I am reminded of a summer vacation never to be forgotten … for all the wrong reasons! Certainly, much of it had been spent lazing on a lounger beside a swimming pool, immersed in an interesting book I had brought along. However, my ears had been battered for days by continuous rock’n’roll, blasted at maximum volume from a tinny cassette machine leant against the wall of a Spanish villa’s veranda. This was not the preferred soundtrack of my teenage years.

At age fourteen, ‘oldies’ from a decade earlier already belonged to a bygone generation. I was obsessed with contemporary pop music and, since the occasion Jim Morrison had dropped his leather pants onstage, every Thursday a slice of my pocket money crossed the counter of a Frimley High Street newsagent for ‘Disc & Music Echo’, ‘Record Mirror’, ‘Sounds’, ‘NME’, ‘Melody Maker’ and ‘Blues & Soul’. I devoured their every word cover-to-cover, as well as teen magazine ‘Fab 208’ that my grandparents bought for older cousin Lynn but offered me a sneaked read. These publications’ preoccupation with the newest music (aligning perfectly with their most lucrative advertisers, the major record companies) reinforced my youthful music snobbery, as dismissive of rock’n’roll as I was of The Andrews Sisters.

Our family’s summer sojourn read like a rejected script for ‘Benidorm’. Following his impulsive visit to a Camberley travel agent to book a package holiday to Spain for the five of us, my father had handed me a pocket guide to Spanish, anticipating my fluency by the time we arrived. Although I shouldered the mantle of family administrator, this expectation proved unrealistic considering my recent struggle at school to learn French, where I had come bottom of the class during my first two years. As the teacher insisted on seating us in his classroom in rank order of our most recent termly exam result, I was placed in the front row due to my consistently dismal performances. By the time our charter flight touched down in Alicante, I had just about mastered Spanish numbers, greetings, shopping etiquette and the ordering of ‘steak and chips’.

Arrived at our hotel in the Albufereta district, the receptionist confessed that the promised restaurant and swimming pool were still ‘under construction’. Our two adjacent bedrooms on an upper floor lacked air conditioning and offered a view of only the hotel’s ongoing noisy building works. Daily pills my father took for high blood pressure had insufficient efficacy to stop him raising hell with the hotel’s management, to no avail, tipping his mood into a very un-holiday rage. To escape the confines of our half-finished accommodation, one hot afternoon we all trooped down to the beach, only for my months-old sister to put a handful of sand in her mouth. She cried, my mother panicked, my father shouted, screaming that he would never take his family to a beach again … a threat he kept.

After that incident, my father decided to hire a small Seat car so that we could explore Spain beyond the coast. One day he drove us inland to a random small village where we disembarked and wandered around in the heat of the blazing sun. It resembled a sand-blown ghost town from a television Western where everything was closed up, my parents having no knowledge of Spain’s daily siesta. The odd elderly person we encountered stopped what they were doing to stare pointedly at us, as if we resembled aliens arrived from another galaxy. They understood that only mad Brits and package holiday families came out in the midday sun. Feeling somewhat intimidated and having found nothing to do there, we retreated to the hire car to return to the ‘civilisation’ of our hotel.

My father tried to rescue our totally unedifying village visit by driving back along the picturesque Alicante seafront. Confronted by a small roundabout, he drove around it at his usual excessive speed in the wrong direction and collided with a car headed towards us. Nobody was hurt but the encounter caused visible damage to the front of both cars. The Spanish driver jumped out and understandably raged at my father, whose short fuse had been smouldering since the hour of our arrival. My translation skills were demanded, unrealistically as the pocket guide lacked a chapter on Spanish expletives. While the two drivers locked in verbal combat, the four of us sat on the low wall along the edge of the brightly tiled Alicante promenade. Passers-by stared. My baby sister was screaming. My mother was crying. The sun was baking us.

After a while, a police car arrived. My father was offered two choices. Either he could be arrested and taken to the police station to face a charge of dangerous driving, or he could pay the other driver to repair his car. While we remained sat on the promenade, my father accompanied a policeman to the nearest money exchange bureau to swap our remaining British ‘Travellers’ Cheques’ for Spanish pesetas. In the heat, it seemed like an eternity until he returned, paid the driver and we could all depart the scene of the crime. Our hire car was damaged but fortunately driveable, though there remained the problem of what to explain to the hire company at the end of our holiday from hell.

Our more immediate problem was how to survive the remainder of our fortnight now that almost all our money had been used to pay the angry driver. British credit cards might have launched in 1966 but had not been offered to families like ours. Debit cards would not exist until 1987. The limited amount of cash or Travellers’ Cheques you were permitted to take abroad had to be inscribed on the last page of your passport. Transferring funds from a British bank account to Spain, while you were in Spain, was an impossibility. During the following days, I escaped the worsening parental arguments at our hotel by finding a nearby newsagent where I would sit cross-legged on the floor for hours, looking through piles of imported DC comic titles never seen at home. I also found a record shop where I used pocket-money I had secreted to buy a Spanish 1971 James Brown picture-sleeve single (‘I Cried’) unreleased in the UK.

That summer’s rock’n’roll soundtrack was a consequence of my father’s solution to our predicament. While we would continue to sleep in our package holiday’s half-finished hotel, he had hustled an invitation to spend our remaining vacation daytimes at the nearby villa of one of his business associates. We lounged beside an Olympic-size outdoor swimming pool whose shallow end was bizarrely three times my height. The towering villa’s doorways were big enough to drive through a truck. Its rooms were the height of a church and the living room resembled a ballroom. We had traded our building-site hotel for a newly built mansion that could have easily served as a set for ‘Land of The Giants’ or the inspiration for a new ‘The Borrowers Abroad’ sequel.

The owner had purchased the plot of land, ordered a custom plan for a villa from an architect in Britain, brought the designs on paper to Spain and given them to local builders to construct during his absence. Returning only once it had been finished, he was astonished to realise that his plan’s dimensions in ‘feet’ had been misinterpreted as ‘metres’, resulting in the building and pool being three times their intended size. It was too late to remedy the error and too expensive to demolish it and rebuild. Planning regulations? What were they? The accidentally gigantic villa was there to stay … and we were now its guests.

It was the owner’s two sons, around a decade older than me, who had wired up a cassette machine outdoors to play their favoured rock’n’roll music. Though our three hosts hung around the villa and pool all day, they mostly ignored me quietly reading my book in the shade. Even the pool’s shallow end was too scary for a non-swimmer like me, however much they tried to persuade me to dive in. They were plainly enjoying their lazy, hazy days of summer on the ‘Costa del Dodgy’. I must have appeared quite a joyless nerd to them.

Our ebullient host Bill Beaver owned a successful car and truck dealership in Camberley, located on an expansive near-derelict triangle of land at the town’s western extreme. He lived in an old-style mansion named ‘Badgers’ Sett’ opposite ‘The Cricketers’ pub on Bracknell Road in nearby Bagshot. His accent was ‘Eastenders’ and his patter was pure Del Boy. My father had lately begun to forge local property redevelopment deals for which Beaver provided the cash, while he ensured local council planning approval for architectural schemes he drafted. My parents had uncharacteristically started hosting dinner parties for Beaver and his wife, despite my mother not warming to the couple’s brash ostentatiousness. My father probably hoped Beaver’s wealth would rub off on him … and, for a while, some of it did.

I had been pressganged into their joint enterprise to calculate the potential ‘return on investment’ of their projects, using my O-level maths studies to amortise the costs over varying numbers of years. One such development site was an anachronistic one-pump petrol station and car repair workshop that occupied a valuable rectangular plot on the busy London Road at Maultway North between Camberley and Bagshot. Owner John Sparks had inherited the business in 1966 upon the death of his father Arthur, though neither had updated its blue corrugated iron shack since 1926 when Arthur’s mother had purchased this large corner plot from the adjacent secondary school sportsground for her son to launch his one-man business.

Once I had calculated the viability of replacing the ramshackle building with flats, including the cost of removing the underground petrol tank and cleansing the polluted soil, the project was determined a ‘go’. However, we had not reckoned on Sparks’ stubborn refusal to sell. Beaver visited him. My father visited him. The Beaver sons visited him. Sparks remained intransigent. Their ‘persuasion’ techniques were evidently not working. Beaver purchased the Jolly Farmer pub on the roundabout opposite the Sparks site. One night it suffered a large unexplained fire. Sparks still refused to sell. In the end, the project had to be abandoned.

Like my mother, I was less in thrall of Beaver’s ‘entrepreneurship’ style than was my wide-eyed father, so the end of our disastrous two-week holiday in Spain and our farewells to his oversized villa came as a welcomed relief. On the flight home, I was seated next to larger-than-life Trinidadian bandleader Edmundo Ross. Despite already loving reggae and Brazilian music, my youthful snobbery regarded Ross as old-school due to his regularity on ‘BBC Radio 2’. Unaware of his fascinating life, I now regret not having chatted with him more.

A short time after our return to Britain, my father left us permanently to set up a new home with a teenage girl only a few years older than me. Our Spanish holiday seemed to have proven his last straw playing ‘happy families’. Children just got in his way. I had no further contact with the Beaver family … and I disowned my father.

In 1986, Tesco and Marks & Spencer jointly purchased a huge 76-acre site on the western fringe of Camberley to build two massive superstores (‘The Meadows’). The adjacent four-acre site, bounded by the London Road, Laundry Lane and Tank Road housed Bill Beaver’s open-air vehicle sales operation and was necessary to developers for a revised traffic flow system that included a new Sainsbury’s Homebase superstore. This plot on the far edge of town had suddenly become Camberley’s most valuable piece of land … to the benefit of its wily owner.

In 1990, John Sparks applied to Surrey Heath council for permission to build a bungalow (for his retirement?) on empty land at the back of his one-man garage. It was granted but never built. In 2014, seventy-eight-year-old Sparks retired, closed his business and sold the land to developer North Maultway Limited which demolished the workshop to build ten flats, for which planning permission was approved the following year. By 2017, the land had been sold to Seville Developments Limited which reapplied for planning permission to build nine flats. Two years later, this permission expired … leaving the former ‘Sparks Garage’ site derelict to this day.

[katiedido2]

I come from the world of Jane Austen Fan Fiction (JAFF). I was only vaguely familiar with TOS (the basic premise & FAB 1), having missed it the first time it aired (not yet born) and in the re-airing in the 90's (school and work), but had seen some of the rebooted series with my son during lockdown. I enjoyed watching with my son, and the humor appealed to me. And once he stopped watching, so did I.

Then one day a plot bunny dropped off a story and insisted that I needed to write it. LoL.

After 3 weeks of fighting it (what do I know about this? why did this story pick me?), a friend suggested that I indulge the bunny and write 2k words. I listened to her and began writing. Fourteen thousand words later, I realized I needed to do research, which, in a delightfully round about way, led to the community here.

It's like being wrapped in a warm crocheted blanket, with a cup of cocoa, on a cold day.

Hi Thunderfam!

Hey, so I know this will have been done MANY times before but for us newbies it would be fun to know how everyone got here!

So… I was a super fan of TOS in the 90s, tried and failed to build a Blue Peter Tracy island, pored through every annual and comic I could get my hands on. Saw small section of 2004 film and could not, so when heard there was another reboot I avoided it because I didn’t trust them not to ruin my childhood love.

Got into Nevermoor late last year, discovered tumblr, overlapped with @womble1 on Nevermoor things and followed a rabbit hole into a womble TAG fanfic which made me think… oh, maybe I should give that newfangled series a little look.

Sat down with 8 year old and said “there’s this thing that’s a remake of something I used to like, let’s see if it’s any good”. We were both hooked the moment Thunderbird 2 appeared out of the clouds - we’ve just finished our second run through all 3 seasons - and I realised there is a LOT of Thunderfam content to catch up on on here too which has kept me pretty busy :) at some point I’m planning to revisit TOS.

How did other people end up here?

[phoneybeatlemania]

How did Mary McCartney have cancer? And when did Paul find out?

Hiya anon—apologies about the late response here, hope you still see it though!

I was *very* confused when I first read this, because I thought you meant Pauls daughter Mary and I was like “what?? I haven’t heard about this!”. Eventually realised though that you were talking about the famous Mother Mary. 

According to Beatles bible, Mary McCartney had breast cancer, and on October 31st 1956, just over a month from her 47th birthday, she died of an embolism following an operation to stop the cancer spreading. (x)

However, @delightfullyatomicfest points out in a post that there are some inconsistencies when it comes to the timeline of Marys illness and how Paul and Mike found out. Essentially though, in some biographies you’ll find that Marys cancer went undiagnosed until 1956, while in others you’ll find she was diagnosed in 1948/1950. OP makes some interesting points, and Id highly recommend giving their post a read for further information on this!

In Chris Salewicz’s biography, he writes of Mary being in agonising pain over the summer of 1956, after dropping Paul and Mike off at a scout summer camp: 

It was on this return journey that the nagging ache that Mary had felt in her chest for some weeks suddenly erupted into shrill agony. So far, she and Jim had dismissed the small lump that had appeared on one of her breasts as just one more irritating symptom of the "change of life" that Mary, at forty-six, was beginning to undergo. But on that drive back to Allerton the pain she suddenly experienced was so intense that she had to lie down on the back seat of Olive's small car. With this physical hurt almost matched by an excoriating mental anguish caused by the fact that her worst secret fear was perhaps being realised, Mary went straight to bed as soon as the car pulled up outside their trim, terraced house at 20 Forthlin Road, Liverpool 18. After a few hours, however, the pain subsided, and, with a nurse's distaste for symptoms of hypochondria, Mary stubbornly refused to mention it to any of the doctors she worked alongside. 

But Mary's symptoms would not be ignored, and a few weeks after the boys' return from scout camp, twelve-year-old Michael surprised his mother one afternoon in his parents’ bedroom. Clutching a crucifix and a photograph of a relative who was a Catholic priest, Mary McCartney was quietly sobbing to herself: the pain was returning sporadically, each time with an increased anger.

Within a month, even Mary had run out of excuses for not seeking medical assistance. After an emergency consultation with a specialist, she was promptly admitted to Liverpool's Northern Hospital. Cancer of the breast was diagnosed: a mastectomy was immediately prescribed. Exploratory surgery, however, revealed that the cancer had spread far beyond the area where the symptoms had manifested themselves; it was decided that removal of her breast would accomplish little, if anything. The probings of the surgeon's scalpel, moreover, seemed to have unleashed the worst, final fury of the disease. Mary received the last rites and had rosary beads tied around her wrists. “I would have liked to have seen the boys growing up,” she whispered to Dill, her brother Bill's wife. Within a matter of hours of being admitted to Northern, Mary Patricia McCartney's life had ended. — McCartney: The Biography by Chris Salewicz (pg. 8-9)

By all accounts neither Paul or Mike knew about her cancer, with Paul stating in the anthology: 

My mum dying when I was fourteen was the big shock in my teenage years. She died of cancer, I learnt later. I didn’t know then why she had died. […] When she died, I remember thinking, ‘You asshole, why did you do that? Why did you have to put your mum down?’ I think I’ve just about got over it now, doctor. (x)

Mike also said in a 2014 interview:

“We were the original Fab Four—Mum, Dad, Paul and me,” says Mike. “When she died, I blamed everyone, including God, until I slowly worked out why she died. I think the reason was for us to learn from her death and treasure every second of life.” — Interview with Mike McCartney, 2014 via @maclen100

Furthermore in Lewisohn's Tune In, he writes: 

Mary McCartney had her 47th birthday on 29 September, receiving all the usual felicitations for ‘many happy returns’. She now knew otherwise. Around this time, amid discretion so great her two children knew nothing of it for a long time to come, she went into hospital for a mastectomy. Breast cancer had been diagnosed. Jim knew the score but adhered to Mary’s wish that Paul and Mike not be told: mum was the word. The closest either came to finding anything amiss was when Mike investigated a curious sound coming from his mother’s bedroom. ‘I could just hear this strange noise, it sounded like crying, so I went into her room and there she was doing her rosary beads. I said, “What’s wrong, Mum?” and she said [swiftly], “Nothing, son.” She knew what was happening.’ (pg. 152)

Paul and Mike may have been kept in the dark about her cancer diagnosis, but it does seem they were made aware of her illness given that they visited her in hospital shortly before she passed: 

Despite instructions to rest, the day before she went into hospital she cleaned the house and washed and pressed her sons’ clothes. She wanted, she told her sister, to leave everything ready, “in case I don’t come back”.

The following day Paul and Michael went to see their mother after the operation. There was blood on the white sheets. “It was terrible,” Paul would remember. — Ray Connolly, 2013

"So when she got ill, she just got ill. And when she went to hospital, she was just in hospital for a short while. And it was all not spoken about it. And it wasn't until much later that I learned that she had, in fact, died of breast cancer. — Paul McCartney, NPR interview, 2001

Following their mothers death, they were sent to live with their aunt and uncle. In Salewicz biography, one of Pauls school teachers recalls see’s seeing him on the day of her passing:

It was Durband, who was Paul's form master for the three years leading up to his taking his O level GCEs, who in 1956 sent a letter around to the other teachers, suggesting tolerance of any sense of strangeness emanating from Paul McCartney. “He'd had a bad break, his mother had died. He did go through a bit of a rough patch then. I think it shattered him a lot; maybe it made him turn to other things, like practicing his guitar and getting away from the school environment, which was very academic. But his mother's death certainly didn't have the effect of making him become noticeably difficult. I vividly remember on the day it happened him coming into the class, in room thirty-two, and going to his desk, which always used to be under a window. He was still very nice, very polite, and always softly spoken…” (pg. 33-34)

Unfortunately, I haven’t come across any sources stating how either Paul or Mike found out about their mothers cancer—so I haven’t got an answer for that.

It does however seem that Paul learnt of her cancer diagnosis sometime in the years 1956 or 1957, given that Julia Lennon, Johns mother, knew of it: 

Our kitchen was increasingly a practise arena for the small clubs and the talent contests that they were entering. When Mummy learned that Paul’s mother had died of breast cancer the previous year, she exhorted John to bring Paul home to eat. ‘That poor boy. He’s lost his mother.’ — Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon (p. 162)

Perhaps Paul ended up just sort of hearing it through the grapevine? Im not sure—but I hope this post was of some help anyway! And if anyone wants to add to it, please feel free to. 

[world-of-wales]

CATHERINE'S STYLE FILES - 2022

10 July 2022 || The Duchess of Cambridge attended day fourteen of the Wimbledon Championships at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club along with the Duke of Cambridge and Prince George in London.

Catherine was in -

Chelsea-collar Blue polka-dot dress by Alessandra Rich

Sapphire and Diamond drop Earrings

Sapphire and Diamond Pendant Necklace

'8170' style Cat-Eye sunglasses with grey gradient lenses from Bvlgari

Silver Stainless Steel Ballon Bleu 33 mm watch from Cartier

'Fab' Slingback Pumps in White leather with black Toecap from Alessandra Rich

[basiltonpitch]

Unfortunately people (specifically two obvious stans I've seen here) often forget these are all teenagers that make mistakes, like it or not. They also just like to ignore their favorite's mistakes (which are just as atrocious, you cannot reason calling someone an unf*ckable nerd is tolerable in any sense). Being a fan of a character does not mean justifying everything they do, including their mistakes, while looking down towards all of the other characters in the series.

exactly!!! like for me, i love devi. i love her so much. she reminds me of myself at her age, messy and dramatic and refusing to process her own trauma and thinking that somehow, some way, getting into a relationship is going to "fix her." that was me at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. so obviously i love her, because i relate to her so much. but i also recognize she has made many, many mistakes. she's hurt people she cares about: her mom, el, fab, ben, paxton, aneesa. she's gotten herself hurt (both physically and emotionally) because she doesn't always think before she acts. but she is trying. she is trying to get better every single day, she is learning and growing because she is still a kid. and i love her for that. i love how chaotic she is. because it means she isn't perfect.