#Railway ticket offices

[insidecroydon]

Ticket office decision was 'Halloween nightmare' for Tories

Hailing yesterday’s decision to reject Department for Transport plans to close railway station ticket offices, one local campaigner has described the outcome as a “Halloween nightmare for the Government”. Strong opposition: 600 passengers who use Sanderstead station signed a petition opposing ticket office closures In July, nine train companies announced plans to close 269 station ticket offices…

[gingertomcat]

If you live in the UK right now I seriously urge you to fill out this consultation.

The government and the rail operating companies intend to close nearly 1000 train station ticket offices because they deem them "a waste of money". This is not true. Ticket offices are important, not only to people that are unable to buy their tickets online but most importantly to disabled people. Ticket staff and station attendants are the ones responsible for providing accessible literature and information about travel and helping people board and leave trains safely and securely. Furthermore, they deal with station security, should an accident happen at the station, the ticket staff are first to attend. The government and the train operating companies want to shut these vital services down which will not only make thousands of people redundant but also make the railways a much less safe place to travel.

If you're not from the uk please boost this.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Today in Penzance (at the end of the line) there were protests against ticket office closures in support of RMT industrial action.

[streetsofdublin]

GOOGLE BARD INCORRECTLY CLAIMED THAT THERE IS A PUBLIC TOILET AND A TICKET OFFICE AT THE CABRA LUAS STOP

Today I had a most annoying session when I requested Google's Bard AI for information relating to the Cabra Tram Stop.

28 JULY 2023 Today I had a most annoying session when I requested Google’s Bard AI for information relating to the Cabra Tram Stop. I was advised that there was a toilet and a ticket office. When I requested a location for the toilet I was advised that it was at The Mount Bernard street entrance and above the ticket office. After about thirty minutes Bard admitted that there was no such street…

[colgreen31]

Todmorden Railway Station, former ticket office pictured in 2013.

Former Ticket office at Todmorden Railway Station, pictured in 2013.

http://www.clickasnap.com/.../01GREGQ0P4TC1WMKER12ZNXQ5T Check it out on ClickASnap

[fandom]

How 'bout that Riverdale finale, y'all?

After seven bizarre seasons, Riverdale finally ended in the most Riverdale-possible way. The cast of What We Do In The Shadows sat down with us before the SAG strike and answered a ton of your questions, which you can see here. It's August in the year 2023, so of course the Destiel confession made news again and trended, like, super hard. The first two episodes of Ahsoka have fans clamoring for more. We got our first look at the second season of Our Flag Means Death and if the photos and cast are any indication, it's gonna be incredible. Astarion is reigning supreme as the new Baldur's Gate 3 blorbo. Best of luck to all of the UK given the railway ticket offices closures. Oh also there was a debate in the US between the Republican presidential candidates and Donald Trump did not participate. This is Tumblr's Week in Review.

Riverdale

Donald Trump

Good Omens

What We Do In The Shadows

Destiel

Artists on Tumblr

Our Flag Means Death

Ahsoka

Genshin Impact

Crowley | Good Omens

Aziraphale | Good Omens

Ineffable Husbands | Crowley & Aziraphale, Good Omens

Baldur's Gate 3

The QSMP Minecraft server

Astarion | Baldur's Gate 3

UK Politics

2023 F1 Dutch Grand Prix

Star Wars

Hozier

Neuvillette | Genshin Impact

We'll be taking a break next week! Fandometrics will return on September 11, 2023.

[anonymousblueberry]

Oh my god the Internet is weird... this is my post!

Um, the consultation ends today (July 26th) so please, if you have a few minutes and you're in the UK, go fill it out.

(God why did I not engage fandom sooner?!)

From Blueb, but i shall request you please send it on to any UK folks you know. It's important!

> Hi, um, if you're in the UK it would be really cool if you could fill in the consultation about whether or not train operators should be keeping manned ticket offices and stations... the consultation **ends tomorrow **(July 26th), it was really badly advertised and only had 21 days.

> Large numbers of elderly, disabled, unemployed and people with English as a second language rely on ticket offices because the machines are not well designed, frequently break down, only take card payments for the most part, and require you to know where you're going and how to spell that! Which obviously isn't ideal for a lot of people.

> Ticket offices can do you much better deals, give you advice, and generally help you out!

> Also fuck the Tories for pushing for this to happen... further proof they don't give a shit about anyone!

> https://www.rmt.org.uk/campaigns/rail/save-ticket-offices/ This link has a pre-written letter ready filled out for each of the train operating companies

> https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/ticket-office-consultation/ - This gives you a blank form for stations not in London (and this has some information)

> https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/uk-rail-industry/customer-focused-reform/customer-focused-stations - this is the official page, but the Rail Delivery Group is a government thing, so it's not amazing

[scavengedluxury]

Budapest Keleti railway station ticket office, 1884. From the Budapest municipal photography company archive.

[octuscle]

hey mate, just got back to Stansted from Majorca and fuck i don’t wanna go back to uni. i wish i didn’t have to leave this chav body and go back to studying i just enjoy this way too much. And being able to just not worry about work or being clean or anything has been amazing! would be a real shame if i couldn’t turn back 😏

Mate, I'm heartbroken. But your last persona has already been pre-booked. I can't return that one to you. But go to the baggage claim, I'll see what I can do.

After waiting for half an hour, you start laughing. Fuck, where are your thoughts! Apart from your hand luggage, you didn't have anything with you. You grab your bag, leave the security area and look for a place where you can smoke a cigarette. Holy crap, vacation is a cool thing. But why are you not allowed to smoke on planes anymore? Drinking is okay, too. Hehehehe! You briefly check the connections on your cell phone. There's a bus leaving from the Aiport Coach Station in 20 minutes. You can do that. You can even manage a second smoke. When you ask the bus driver for a ticket, he waves you off. Are you new? Employees don't need a ticket. You have no idea what he's talking about. But hey, you don't force him to take your money. Fortunately, the bus is pretty empty. Amazing, actually… "Next stop Marks Tey Railway Station". What the hell? Where the hell is that? You go up to the driver and ask him if this isn't the bus to Liverpool Street in London. The driver grins. And asks you what you want in London. If you don't want to go home, as usual. Of course, right. Or how? Why do you live in Marks Tey? And where the hell is that? "Bruv, must have been a tough day for ya," says the driver. "get some rest, i'll make sure ya don't miss yor stop." You say thank you, take your seat again, and soon fall asleep.

"Connor, we're here!" the driver calls. "Thank you, mate," you reply, grabbing the bag of sneakers you bought today in the duty free area and walking to the platform. The bus was late, you only have five minutes left. Okay. It's 20 minutes. The train is also late. There's even enough time to get a can of Dr. Pepper and a pack of cigarettes and smoke another fag.

It's only eight minutes to Colchester Station. Just enough time to take a quick look at a newspaper that has been left lying around. The job at the airport is tough, but well paid. And you have a lot of fun with your colleagues. You can't imagine having an office job. You need the smell of kerosene on the tarmac in front of the terminal. Only the way in the morning and in the evening sucks. But the apartment is cheap. And your boyfriend is still studying at the University of Essex. But if things go well, you can soon persuade him to finally give up his studies and take the job as a tanker driver at the airport. Then you would have three hours more a day to fuck! You've got a boner again. You can't wait until your college boy puts on your hiviz gear. If he's going to give you a blowjob, he should at least look and smell like a real man. Just like you do…

Nice pic found @legrand89

[insidecroydon]

Transport watchdogs reject plan to close railway ticket offices

Delayed service: the ticket office at East Croydon, which the rail operators claimed is barely used and was under threat of closure 99% of consultation responses opposed the proposals, with East Croydon and Sanderstead among the stations to attract the largest number of objections It is probably the first cancellation on the railways to be greeted with widespread public acclaim. Plans by the…

[rathologic]

Bachelor ARG is real, it seems

(link to the ARG discussion thread on Reddit)

A physical train ticket for Bachelor Dankovsky, received among Kickstarter rewards and machine translated by u/DerpForceAlpha (who is to credit for everything discussed in this post!).

The Morse code shown on the ticket leads to the Reddit account u/FyodorVitin, who currently has a single post titled "The Beginning" - it's a picture of a handwritten letter:

The letter's text, transcribed/machine translated by DerpForceAlpha and very slightly edited by me:

I received a letter from a certain Isidor Burakh, who, they say, is personally acquainted with an unnaturally long-lived man. This man is the ruler of an unknown provincial town that stands at the very end of the North-Eastern Railway. If what he says is at least half true, then this long-liver will become the missing proof. We will finally wipe the nose of the damned Telman, and when that bastard is silent - we will be able to convince the Authorities to spare the "Thanatica". If I don't find anything there, well…science from the corral will go straight to the slaughterhouse. P.S. It is not calm in the steppe regions now, so I am taking the prototype of the Plaguefinder with me. I leave the current work on you all the records in my office. I will contact you as soon as I can. I hope they at least have a telegraph there. Daniil

It looks possible that this letter might be addressed to someone whose name starts with A. I don't think there's transcription of the other text in the image yet, but the top document is attributed to one I. I. Mechnikov. The pocket watch in the lower left appears to show the time 1:30.

No idea how this connects to the mysterious letters that backers have been receiving yet :-)

[578memorylane]

watched the pmoon anniversary stream. ramblings are below if you care about that

DON QUIXOTE MANAGER OF LA MANCHA LAND YIPPEE YIPPEE YIPPEE....animations look super cool and i love how they change based on the other bloodfiends in the party. must pull on aesthetics alone though im sure she'll be super powerful. must complete the lamanchaland quartet

not sure how i feel about the dispenser change. i do think people are a little too quick to doompost about it - all in all, waiting one week to dispense new ids is not a huge deal and is still leagues more generous than most gachas. but i also understand people being frustrated about it. its one of those things i think we have to see an official announcement on before we come to conclusions. as a whole as long as this doesnt spiral into greedier decisions i think i can live with it

intervallo reruns are cool! its neat that they'll be adding additional ego and announcers too. obviously its nothing new story wise but its pretty standard for a live service game and gives them more time to work on new stuff. and if the rewards are the same it means more tickets heheheheheh

WALPURGISNACHT theme is...full stop office? did not expect this tbh but its a welcome surprise, i like giving the spotlight to less popular characters. i do wish we got a different ego instead of der freischutz though. i love der bro but we just got two ego for an aberration of him + outis magic bullet id...yesod gets all the luck. i want my magical girls ego

very interested in the new intervallos. i wonder if we'll get sweeper IDs? maybe new lcb IDs for the lcb regular checkup? man we havent gotten lcb IDs since season 1...that's crazy...

i am very afraid for next railway that's all i will say for now

ARKNIGHTS COLLAB IS MENTAL...i dont play arknights and dont plan to but the fact they scored a collab is pretty awesome, especially considering the games are friendly fandoms? true limited ego is a bummer but not surprising considering licensing is an issue with things like this. probably not a must pull for me but depends on the designs. also im curious how they will justify this in canon (if it even is canon).

pmoon. pmoon if you are reading this. PLEASE make an online merch store. pmoon i would spend an unreasonable amount of money on it. i need that lcb zip up hoodie. pmoon please. PLEASE. I NEED OFFICIAL PROJECT MOON MERCHANDISE. PLEA

reducing the amount of 00 ids is a bummer and a lot more of a negative to me, i hope they reconsider it. i understand they may be less fun to design from a gameplay perspective but i think they are important to keeping the game f2p/low spender friendly. like i am a low spender (usually just buying bp) and i almost never pull on banners with just 000s/ego unless it has something i really want on it. so i dont really know if it will really increase profits? it depends what the future banner schedule will look like

identity skins are interesting? not sure how to interpret it tbh. feels like it would be kind of hard to implement with things like multi coin attacks and aoes? but i guess thats why its more of a stretch goal.

overall pretty banger stream 8/10 i love the city i live in

[floydmtalbert]

le départ

Lou + Rosie, a succession of trains, and a Westland Lysander, for @mercurygray! A follow-up to this wonderful piece, an AU in which Merc’s Joan and my Louise are running an escape line.

It is a morning of ragged cloud and fitful sunshine, the southern outskirts of the city rinsed by the recent rain and buffed up to a shine by the wind. The cold, hard light throws everything into sharp relief: the acres of cheap housing, the wasteland of railway sidings and warehouses and factories, the handful of people waiting on the platform at Ivry. They carry bags and suitcases and have a dark, shuttered look about them. No one speaks. This is Paris in its fourth year of occupation: the silver city, tarnished and battered, silence and suspicion amongst strangers.

Louise and Robert stand apart from the other travellers, huddled against the wind, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist. Casual, patient, as though none of this really matters. They are just a young suburban couple, newlyweds, heading to the country for the weekend.

The Bordeaux train draws in from the Gare d’Austerlitz, wheezing steam, half an hour late and already packed, even in the first-class carriages. Louise appeals to an elderly woman sat by the window, asking if she would move so that she and her husband might sit together. The woman sighs and grumbles, glaring at them with rheumy eyes, but eventually they are settled, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. She can feel the warmth of him even through the layers of his clothing, the sweater Ferraby had offered up, its sleeves a little too short for Robert, the suit and thick wool coat in a nondescript grey that she and Joan had chosen with care. As the train heaves itself into motion and gathers speed, he turns his head to look out of the window, and she turns her head to look at him. If only… she thinks, but stops herself.

If only we really were going away for the weekend. If only this journey would never end. If only the war was simply something happening to other people.

At Étampes, an inspector walks down the corridor, stepping over people and luggage, calling for tickets. He stops at their compartment, a police officer behind him, and there is the dutiful pause while people rifle through handbags, search through pockets. Louise takes out her ticket, waits a second while Robert does the same, following her lead, and then hands both of them over. The man glances down at the tickets, and up again at their faces, and passes them back. Then the door slides closed and he and the policeman are gone.

With great sighs the train traipses on into the flat farmland of La Beauce, where the fields are brushed green with sprouting winter wheat and the sky is a cool blue.

In the outskirts of Orléans they slow. The marshalling yards of Fleury-les-Aubrais have recently been bombed and everywhere there is wreckage, wagons thrown about, rails twisted and knotted, the ruins of buildings still smoking. In silence people stare out of the window at these signs of what is to come, while the carriages rattle and jolt over the single track that has been repaired.

At the station itself, doors slam and people come and go. They hear heavy footsteps in the corridor, Germans this time, two sergeants of the Feldgendarmerie in their grey uniforms and silver breastplates, flanking another man in a belted raincoat and trilby, a uniform in itself. Louise and Robert hand over their tickets and the identity cards bearing the names Anaïs Hélène Gauthier and Maxence Charles Gauthier.

“You are travelling to Angoulême?” the Gestapo officer asks. He speaks French well, which she always finds unsettling: no hope of hiding behind incomprehension, of playing for time with confusion.

“Yes.”

“For what purpose?”

Louise glances at Robert with a small smile, reaches for his hand. “We’re having a few days away.”

The German looks between them and then back at their papers, turning them over in his hands, lingering. Time seems to slow. Louise holds Robert’s hand tightly in hers, feeling his pulse racing against her own skin, just as her thoughts are racing. How would she act if she were entirely innocent, if she really were a young Frenchwoman taking a trip with her husband? How would Anaïs Gauthier behave? She would hardly care at all, would sit there and deal with it, this little interruption to her day.

And so Louise puts her hand on Robert’s cheek, tilts his face down to hers, and kisses him. Nonchalance, Gallic insouciance, in the face of everyday inconvenience.

At last the Gestapo officer turns his attention away from them. Questions are asked of the other passengers in the compartment, and then he tells them all to wait and steps outside with their documents.

The elderly woman sighs, and the two men sat next to her, minor bureaucratic types, mutter in low tones, complaining about the delay, wondering if they will still make their meeting in Blois. Louise says nothing. Sweat prickles under her arms, in the small of her back. She can feel the dampness of Robert’s hand, as well, and still the thud of his pulse.

He puts his mouth close against her ear and says, so quietly only she can hear: “What are they doing?”

She forces herself to smile, coyly, as if he has just whispered an endearment. She turns her face into his neck and then tips her head up to murmur into his ear, her voice no louder than a breath. “Checking lists. Noting names. Don’t know.”

The door opens again with a crash and the officer reappears. “Alright,” he says, passing the documents back, before he and his military policemen head into the next compartment.

Don’t ever look relieved, she had been told at Beaulieu. The instructor’s voice echoes in her ear, even at the distance of two years and hundreds of miles. Don’t look relieved, because being relieved means you were scared, and being scared means you have something to hide. Louise keeps her expression calm, indifferent, but as she returns her identity card to her handbag Robert smiles at her, and she can’t help but smile back, a hint of triumph in her eyes.

The train jolts forward, and they are moving again at last, on through the city of Orléans itself, the city of la Pucelle, Sainte Jeanne d’Arc. Louise thinks briefly of Joan, her Joan, who had seen her off the night before last with deux bisous and a handful of francs Louise was sure had come from Joan’s own purse and not from London. Hardly a maiden, dressed not in breeches and armour but in immaculate skirt suits, and still the kind of woman to be spoken of with something approaching reverence.

Louise smiles a little to herself, looking out of the train window at France, for which she had come in the first place, and thinking of Joan, and Ferraby, and all of her comrades, and every airman she had guided back into the fight, for whom she had stayed.

Soon they are out of the city and into the bare fields of the floodplain with the line of the river visible as a distant fringe of willows. Robert dozes, his cheek resting against the top of her head, while Louise pretends to sleep and instead keeps track of the other passengers in the compartment. The pair of government officials leave for their meeting in Blois, and two young women take their place, gossiping in low and urgent voices about a man they know, a real salaud, who is going with two girls at once. Should they tell the girls? The debate goes on without ever reaching a conclusion. At Amboise, the man sat next to Louise disembarks, and a mother with a small child replaces him. The train rumbles across the river on a stone bridge and edges its way through the drab suburbs of Tours. Only the elderly woman remains, but when Louise makes a show of waking, just before Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, she sees that the woman is fast asleep, her head nodding on her chest. No one who heard Louise mention Angoulême sees them stand up and retrieve their suitcase and shuffle down the corridor to the end of the carriage.

Robert jumps down onto the platform and takes the suitcase from her, and then holds her around the waist and lifts her down beside him. The guard blows his whistle and the train draws away, leaving a scattering of passengers behind. They file towards the exit while Louise and Robert walk towards the concourse and the ticket office.

They stand on the platform on the other side of the station, waiting for the slow train to Vierzon. It is deserted: there is no one around, no one else taking the train with them, no one to notice them on this February afternoon with the sun casting long shadows and the wind cold on their faces. When the train arrives it is empty, too, and they climb into a compartment and lean back against the faded and threadbare plush.

She touches his arm. “Not long, now,” she says, and he nods, looking at her steadily.

Outside on the platform a whistle blows, and the train lurches forward, on into the countryside. Through their pale reflections in the window are the flat fields of the floodplain between the Loire and the Cher, stretching away to the horizon, brushed with the glow from a setting sun. The sky is a luminous blue like the blue of a stained-glass window. Poplars stand like plumes in the drift of sunlight.

At Azay-sur-Cher a young man is waiting for them. He flicks away the stub of his cigarette and comes forward to greet Louise, kissing her on both cheeks while the two of them go through the little rigmarole of the double password.

She turns to Robert, puts a hand on his elbow. “This is Guy, our air movements officer,” she explains. To the Frenchman she says: “Voici Bob!”

Guy grins, a handsome, boyish grin. “Salut, Bob, ça va?”

“Uh…” Robert takes his outstretched hand and shakes it. “Ça va?” he replies, glancing at Louise with a small smile, and she nods, beaming back at him, both of them remembering sitting in the attic of the atelier, stifling laughter as he stumbled through the phrases she was trying to teach him.

Guy leads them to a shed behind the station house where four bicycles are stored. He wheels the spare one beside him as they cycle off into the gathering dusk, over the level crossing and onto a single-track road meandering through the fields. The land is flat and bare and unending, broken only by lines of poplars planted as windbreaks, willows along the rim of a drainage ditch. Through the trees to the east the moon is rising, replacing the dying sun with its own silvery light.

After a few miles they turn off onto a farm track and bump over ruts and potholes out into the fields. Guy brings them to a halt by a small copse, and dismounts to survey the pasture stretching out before them, looking left and right, squinting into the gloom, taking a few experimental strides over the rough earth and patchy grass.

He returns to them and starts speaking to Louise, and she translates for Robert. “He says things look fine. All okay. There are no obstructions and the ground is firm enough for the aircraft to land. The only worry tonight is fog.”

Behind the copse is a dilapidated barn, empty but for some rusted farm equipment half-covered by canvas tarpaulins. A scant covering of straw is strewn across the floor, and cobwebs hang thickly in every corner and across the walls. Guy and Louise move with well-practised ease, slipping wordlessly into the routine. The Frenchman crosses over to a bundle of fence posts propped against the wall, and selects three stakes about four feet long, each with an end sharpened to a point, while Louise lifts the corner of a sheet of tarpaulin and retrieves some lengths of string and four torches, and tests each one in turn.

“Wait here,” she tells Robert, and she and Guy head outside to set things up.

There is just enough light to see by as they walk out into the field. A hundred yards out Guy plants one stake in the ground and waits while Louise fastens a torch to it. Then he sets off into the distance, marching with wide steps as if performing some ancient and arcane ritual, while she follows behind him, their footsteps leaving a trail in the dewy grass like the wake of a ship in still water. They position the second stake and the second torch, and pace to the right to repeat the process for a third time. Guy glances back at their work, the stakes only visible as vague shadows, and nods at her, satisfied.

Back in the barn they make themselves as comfortable as possible, unwrapping the food Louise and Robert have brought in their suitcase, and sipping ersatz coffee from a flask Guy produces from his satchel. They leave the door open despite the chill night air, using the light of the moon to see rather than risking switching on the torch Louise has kept in her coat pocket.

Guy turns to Robert and says something in French, a question which makes Louise laugh, a bright, young sound out of place in the shadowy and derelict barn. Robert looks at her, curious, and she translates for him: “He asks if you’ve flown before.”

Robert starts to smile. “Just a couple times,” he says wryly.

She looks back at the Frenchman. “Bob is an American airman. A pilot.”

Guy nods, realisation dawning, and makes an apologetic shrug. He says something else, and again Louise laughs and explains for Robert. “He says, she never tells me anything. Whether our guests are British or American, soldiers or airmen. Sometimes I ask foolish questions, but it is good security.”

Another flutter of French passes between them and they share soft laughter at some private joke. Then Guy straightens up and begins speaking to Robert, breaking off every now and then for Louise to translate.

“He says as you have flown many times before you know there is nothing to fear. But we must still explain to you our way of doing things. As it will be quite different to what you are used to.”

She waits while Guy brushes some straw aside and lays out three coins on the floor, forming an inverted ‘L’. “We have positioned three markers out in the field,” she explains, her soft English following Guy’s rapid French, “like this. The pilot will touch down at the first marker, here. He brakes, and stops at the second marker. Then he turns around the third marker and comes back to the first, where we’ll be waiting.”

Again she pauses. “The passengers jump down and unload their luggage, and then you climb up the ladder. There will be a parachute in the aircraft for you, and a flying helmet and oxygen mask.”

Robert frowns. “Will we need oxygen?”

“No, no, but that’s where the microphone is. For the intercom.” Louise smiles at him as he nods. “Every airman I’ve met wishes we had throat microphones like you Americans, but…” She shrugs. “Everything will be plugged in, but you’ll have to flick the on-off switch on the front of the mask when you want to speak.”

They take him through the procedure a second time: where they will stand, where the Lysander will land and turn, what they all must do. Robert listens intently, his eyes fixed on Guy and then on Louise in turn, a small furrow between his brows. It will be fine, they tell him. The whole thing will take no more than five minutes.

“—comme sur des roulettes,” Guy says.

Louise searches for the best translation, and settles on: “Easy-peasy.” She smiles again. “Is that all alright?”

Robert nods. “Yeah. Easy-peasy,” he repeats, and smiles back at her. “Will you, uh—will you tell him that I understand? And will you thank him for me, please?”

She turns to Guy and passes the message along, and the young Frenchman grins, and reaches out to shake Robert’s hand once more.

Presently Guy goes outside to check the landing zone, worried about the police, German troops, worried, above all, about fog. Alone again, Louise and Robert sit close together, leaning into each other.

“You’ll be in England by daybreak,” she tells him. “Before, even.”

“Yeah.” He is quiet for a moment. “Where are you headed? Back to Paris?”

“Mmm. Yes.”

Neither of them says anything more, aware that time is running out, wanting to hold on to the illusion that the night will spin on forever. They wait in silence, even when Guy returns, watching the rectangle of sky through the open door. Overhead, Orion the hunter tilts like a windmill, dragging a whole panoply of constellations behind him, and the moon climbs higher and higher, flooding silver across the fields.

At midnight, Guy gets to his feet and stretches. “Let’s get ready,” he says to Louise. She and Robert follow him out into the moonlight, ghostly shadows moving across the pale countryside. Underfoot the ground is hard with frost. Ribbons of mist are wrapped around the trees along the edge of the field and a bank of fog lies over the river.

“Look,” Guy mutters, pointing. “Fog. It could ruin everything.”

“I know,” Louise whispers back. “But there’s nothing we can do. We just have to wait.”

They wait. Dark figures in a monochrome landscape, staring at the stars, painted by the moon. Cold seeps into them. There are the sounds of night, the distant barking of a dog, the susurration of the icy breeze, and underneath everything the sound of the nearby river. And then something else.

“Can you hear that?”

“What?”

It dies away. Did she imagine it? But the sound returns, a murmur becoming a rumble.

“That’s it!”

Now there is no doubt: an aero engine, the sound coming and going on the breeze and then settling to a steady drumbeat. Louise hands the torch to Guy and he points it up into the night sky, flashing the letter ‘P’ in Morse code. The letter ‘Q’ comes back to them, a small star blinking in the blackness.

Robert points. “I see it!”

Louise turns on the first torch and sets off to the other stakes, running, stumbling on the hard, uneven ground. She reaches the second marker and snaps the torch on, then crosses to the third. As she sprints back to where the men are waiting she sees the Lysander above her, a black shape against the spray of stars.

The aircraft turns towards them, shedding height, growing larger and larger, tilting in the flow of air. The noise of the engine rises and falls as the pilot jazzes the throttle. Suddenly, shockingly, its landing lights are switched on, as brilliant as spotlights so that on the ground they seem exposed to view like figures on a stage. Then, slowly, deliberately, it touches down, bounces, hits again, and rumbles down the flarepath. They watch it turn at the second lamp, and the third, and come back towards them where they wait, deafened by the din, beside the first.

The slipstream hits them as the aircraft turns once more and points into the wind. Guy waves at the pilot in the cockpit and runs up to talk to him. In the rear of the cockpit two passengers are moving. The hatch slides back and a figure emerges and climbs down the ladder to the ground.

Louise turns to Robert, glancing at his eyes, the slope of his nose in the moonlight. She clutches the sleeve of his coat, almost desperately. He faces her, puts his mouth close to her ear.

“Thank you,” he says, half-shouting to be heard over the engine. “Thank you for everything. I wish I could say more.”

She shakes her head, and leans back so that he can see her smile. Then she leans up on her tiptoes. “In this line of work we consider it bad luck to say ‘good luck’,” she tells him, her own voice raised. “So I’ll just say bon voyage. And I hope never to see you in France again.”

He grins back at her. By now the second agent is on the ground and Guy is shouting from beside the nose of the aircraft, his words picked up by the propellor blast and thrown back at them in disorder. “Need—go! Get—quick!”

Louise ushers Robert over to the Lysander. Time hurtles at her—the engine roaring, the propellor a blurred disc against the moonlight, the stars rampaging across the sky—and she just stares at him, wanting to tell him so many things and unable to say them. He nods, as if he has read her mind, and puts one hand on the side of her face and leans down to kiss her.

Then he is gone, up the ladder and into the cockpit, and the pilot gives the thumbs-up, and Louise and Guy run back from the aircraft.

“Go!” Guy yells, gesturing downwind with his hand. “Go, go!”

The engine gains noise, roaring and raging at the night, straining for a moment against the brakes before lurching forward, bumping along, gathering speed, with Robert looking back at her, his face no more than a smudge of whiteness and shadow. Then abruptly the Lysander is in the air, a matte black shape against the luminous black of the sky, climbing, turning, swinging through the stars, and leaving Louise standing in the backwash, her hair blowing in the wind, her coat flapping around her, in tears.

The sound of the Lysander fades into the minutiae of the night. Suddenly she is cold.

Beside her, Guy is shaking hands with the two men, welcoming them to France. She stands for a moment longer, running through what she must do: clear up in the field and the barn, share out the men’s clothing in her suitcase amongst the new agents, put the identity card for Anaïs Gauthier into a slip in the lining and retrieve the papers for Irène Françoise Brochard. Cycle to the safehouse Guy has found for them, and, in the morning, catch the first train to Vierzon and escort the agents to Paris. Move on, get back to work. Keep going.

Guy is looking at her expectantly. She wipes the tears from her cheeks and puts on a smile and walks over to the men waiting for her.

[harpieisthecarpie]

One of the best things humanity does is when we collectively decide to treat an animal like a Very Serious Human with Things To Say and A Job To Do

Mayor Max II of Idyllwild and his successor Max III.

Nala the ticket officer.

Browser, the Texas cat evicted by the city council then after a 10k+ signature petition got un-evicted and declared Library Cat for Life by a unanimous city council vote.

Honorary Mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, Stubbs.

Tama the railway station master of Kishi Station and her successor Nitama.

Co-author of several scientific papers, F.D.C Willard.

Station Jim, Canine Collector for the Great Western Railway Widows and Orphans fund from 1894-1896. Algernon, goldfish and registered waste disposer. The Chief Mousers to the British Cabinet Office.

Anytime we call an animal sir or ma'am. Everytime an animal is interviewed on the news. All those animals with high school & university degrees.

Humanity is good actually.

[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2023: Day 22 - Top Hat

The Railway is Prospering:

The railway was prospering. That was perhaps the first thing that the figure noticed. The books had been kind to the railway, in that they had drummed up hundreds, thousands of tourists who flocked to the island to ride behind the famous engines who worked there. The harbour extension at the end of Thomas’ branchline had made loading the stone from the quarry ever smoother, as they didn’t need to drag it all the way to Tidmouth.

And best of all, the engines were all still running.

Sir Topham Hatt wandered up to the ticket office at Wellsworth, spotting Edward collecting passengers for his afternoon train up to the Big Station. Even without a ticket, it was a little too easy to sneak aboard, finding an empty compartment and flopping down on the seats – only, they seemed to pass right through him.

Ah… right.

Instead, the figure of Sir Topham Hatt floated with his head out of the window, taking in the world around him in awe. There was Henry, speeding along with a fast freight train. His rebuild had truly done him wonders – thank goodness Sir William agreed to it, or Henry would… maybe not even be here. And over there was Gordon! He thundered by with the Express, whistling happily at Edward as the big blue engine drew alongside the old engine. They exchanged a fond greeting, and then Gordon was gone again, rocketing along.

James passed by next, grumbling dreadfully with a long train of tankers behind him. So… he’d not done so well with James – but he was still not only really useful, but reliable as well! And in spite of his grumbling, he was still pulling the trucks. As much as Sir Topham Hatt wanted to shout at the red engine to stop whining and get a move on, he recognised just how well the engine was doing.

Then, they passed through the Junction to Thomas’ branchline, and Sir Topham Hatt managed to spy all three of his former tank engines – Thomas, Duck and Percy – all shunting trucks together. It seemed like Duck needed a large order of stone, and the two other tank engines had brought it down for him. Furthermore, Toby stood nearby with Henrietta. All four looked healthy, happy and well-rested, a far cry from those dark days when the big engines refused to work. Then, Thomas, Percy and Edward had been forced to work day and night – nonstop – just to keep the railway open.

But now, they had time to slow down and chat, as well as spend time bantering. Sir Topham wondered just why Percy was talking about ghosts. He’d move closer to listen – but he didn’t want to lose Edward and his train.

Oh, Edward.

The blue engine looked so much happier now. He was running well; nary a clank in his motion. He smiled more too, happier than ever and so much brighter even though the day was cloudy. Sir Topham smiled wryly.

As much as he wanted to say his legacy was the greatness his engines felt now, he couldn’t honestly say it and be right. He’d done some admirable things for his engines, and he’d always been willing to stand up for Edward, or Thomas, or Percy – but at the same time… at the same time, it was clear he’d been far stricter than his son.

Maybe that was a good thing – the railway wouldn’t have survived the Great Depression without a firm hand to guide it. The entire railway had teetered on the edge of bankruptcy for so long, and he’d become so afraid of losing it all. He’d held on tight, almost strangling everyone as he nitpicked his way through every issue. He’d been harsh – harsher than he should have been.

Henry looked so much happier without him around.

But he’d done it for the railway! Being firm, strict and a little controlling was what the railway needed to see in each new year. He’d never scrapped one of his engines (the board, however…), even when they were unable to be really useful. Again, Henry was a testament to how much he hated to see potential wasted.

He’d fought against the LMS for years over the right to keep the railway open… but the LMS fell, and still the NWR remained. It… felt good to know he’d been so successful… even if most of the engines didn’t remember him so favourably.

With one last breath, he slipped away from Edward’s train, taking a moment to wander into his son’s office. He spotted a very familiar top hat resting on the coatrack. “That’s… my hat…” murmured Sir Topham, feeling just a little better.

Everything was going to be just fine.

With that, the almost ethereal figure standing in the Fat Controller’s office faded away.

Back to Master Post

[bluesturngold]

Misinformation's Role in Sensationalizing the Arrest of a Florida Furry

People on Twitter are posting memes about a member of the furry community who was arrested in Florida for murder.

This isn't typically something I would write about, but the furry in question commissioned a profile photo from the same artist who created my profile photo, and people have essentially harassed the artist off of twitter by sharing the art he commissioned from her.

The memes are predicated on a screenshot taken from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office inmate booking blotter, as pictured below:

I'm not humorless and can see how the average terminally online person could find the thought of a furry blowing someone away with a missile funny, but the unfortunate combination of an inadequate booking system and a misunderstanding of what "missile" refers to legally are why this meme exists in the first place.

Here is the full text of Florida Statute 790.19:

"Whoever, wantonly or maliciously, shoots at, within, or into, OR throws any missile OR hurls or projects a stone or other hard substance which would produce death or great bodily harm, at, within, or in any public or private building, occupied or unoccupied, or public or private bus or any train, locomotive, railway car, caboose, cable railway car, street railway car, monorail car, or vehicle of any kind which is being used or occupied by any person, or any boat, vessel, ship, or barge lying in or plying the waters of this state, or aircraft flying through the airspace of this state shall be guilty of a felony of the second degree."

I've bolded the important bits there: this statute covers both shooting within/into an occupied space as well as throwing or otherwise launching something that could cause physical harm within/into an occupied space, i.e. a brick through a window into a business that has customers inside. As someone who's reported on court cases like this before, I would expect to see charges relating to incendiary devices or explosives if someone truly had fired a missile into a dwelling.

This is why I say the booking system is inadequate: the person who typed up the summary of this statute did so with no regard for how easy it is for a layperson to misinterpret, and then the person who selected statute 790.19 whilst filling out this guy's booking information was stuck with the statute description it had already been given... unless they wanted to find someone in their IT department or the vendor who built the booking system and file a ticket for them to change it, which could take weeks.

Misleading statute descriptions are a huge issue when your inmate bookings can be viewed online by members of the public, and it's just another sign of how little law enforcement cares about inmates and the public that they didn't put more consideration into making their statue descriptions easier to understand.

The premeditated first degree murder charge also just isn't accurate; presumably the sheriff's office had little to no idea whether the murder was or wasn't premeditated when they arrested the guy, so the person doing the booking picked the more severe one. (Pretend I repeated the line about how little law enforcement cares again.)

If you didn't know this, here's a public service announcement: it's basically never a good idea to read a law enforcement agency's inmate listings and take what they say as fact. Cross referencing the inmate listing with the county court clerk's online case search made it really clear that the inmate listing was misleading:

'Second degree murder with a firearm' and 'shooting into building' paint such a simple and effective picture of what the defendant is being charged with.

I know a fair number of terminally online people who aren't furries just think it's inherently funny or meme-worthy when a furry gets arrested for anything, but I think if the sheriff's office or the vendor who created their booking system wasn't inept and careless more people would've realized this was just a tragic but otherwise mundane murder allegedly committed by someone with an unconventional, unrelated hobby.