#hyde being short is quite possibly my favourite thing ever

[doctormori]

I love this book to death, so here's some things I noticed <3

[myukulelegentlyweeps]

Nowhere Man

Pairing : George Harrison x female reader

Plot : Geo is sick of the Let It Be sessions so he takes the day off and meets you and has a flippin epiphany :)

Author’s note : Okay so I got sort of carried away, I admit it. But today June 13th is apparently George Harrison appreciation day here on tumblr, so if there is a day to post a 2000 word george fic, it’s today.

Warnings : (very little) cussing, I guess? Also if you don’t believe in the universe and all that metaphysical stuff and it bothers you to read about it, I don’t recommend you read this.

The Beatles were not working anymore. They weren’t functioning, everyone could see it, Let It Be would be one of the band’s last gasps for air. It was a shame, but it was the truth and George wished they, well, particularly Paul, would stop trying to force an album where there was only friction and anger. And a film? Really? No, it wasn’t right.

Harrison had come into the studio early that morning. Comfortably seated in one of the lounge’s sofas, he was trying to unwind before his bandmates arrived, for in the previous few days he had noticed he tensed up the instant he walked through the door of his workplace, automatically, unwillingly. He didn’t like the version of himself he was becoming, grumpy, always snapping at people - so he was trying to change it.

He took a deep breath in and closed his eyes, trying to find the peace within him. He focused on his neck and shoulders, letting them relax like they did when he roamed his garden. In his garden there were no bossy McCartneys, no big-headed Lennons, no Ringos trying to diffuse the tension in vain ; there were only flowers, trees, prosperity and growth. I’m not growing as a musician here anymore, he thought as he opened his eyes again to two voices breaking the silence.

“Wha’re we doin’ today Paul?”

“Dunno. Think John wants to show me a couple of new songs.”

Of course he did. And he probably wants Yoko to sing on the record too, how about that. When they don’t give one damned song to Ringo. George rose from his seat to face Paul, who was already starting his obsessive tuning of every single instrument :

“Say Paul, if John only wants to show you the songs, ye won’t need me, will you?”, he spoke calmly but firmly. The bassist looked up from the guitar he had seized with slight anguish painted on his features. “Of course we need you, Geo-”, he began, but he appeared to give it thought and the end of his sentence took a different tone : “but if you really need the day off, yeah, I...I guess you can go.” A nod was the only answer he received, short and straightforward. Exit George.

As soon as he was outside, he felt better. The morning air was soothingly fresh, and the blue sky still had a few yellowish tinges reminiscing from sunrise. He looked to his car and thought about driving home, but ultimately decided against it : he wanted to walk around, to wander in the city, he had not done so in such a long time... Luckily he had a hat with him that day, which would allow him to partially cover his face and avoid getting recognised by “overly enthusiastic” fans. Normally he would not mind signing autographs, but in that particular instance he was not in the mood.

His stroll started at a fast and steady pace, his first priority being to leave Abbey Road studios far behind ; he later allowed himself to slow down, thinking his irritation finally gone as he reached a different looking area of London. He did not wish to know where he was exactly, in fact, he made it his goal to get lost on purpose as he savoured each step he took, trying his best to not control the decisions his intuition and feet made for him at every turn. Left or right, right or left, or continuing straight, none of it mattered. He was going nowhere and it felt brilliant.

It was as though he was being guided by a light beyond him. The energy flowed effortlessly through the streets, unlike in the studio where it always seemed to be clogged. Here I am, thinking of the studio again. He sighed and brought his focus back to his walk with no destination. Slowly but surely, a small smile made its way to his lips as he noticed a child’s toy forgotten on a bench, a chalk drawing on the sidewalk, a cloud with a specific shape. Small pieces of a grand puzzle coming together. Eventually he stumbled upon Hyde Park. A garden or a forest? He didn’t know, then again the question was unimportant and required no definitive answer.

“He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody…” Bloody hell, the Beatles follow ye everywhere, don’t they. George thought he would become angry again, but before he could, he realised how fitting the song was to the situation. Wasn’t he the nowhere man, walking wherever his legs led him? He let out a soft chuckle and tried to find where the music was coming from. There was a young woman strumming an acoustic guitar, her case in front of her collecting a miserable amount of coins. There you are.

She was wearing a red flowery dress and he thought she, not unlike her voice, was quite beautiful, with her smiling (Y/E/C) eyes and (Y/H/C) hair moving slightly with the wind. Through the vocals he could hear she truly experienced the song, and sang from the depths of her guts. He quite enjoyed how it sounded. “Nowhere man don't worry, take your time, don't hurry, leave it all 'til somebody else lends you a hand…” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and extracted a twenty pound note which he placed in the guitar case, the woman’s eyes visibly widening at the generous contribution. He asked himself wether or not he should leave, but decided to stay a little longer, at least until the end of the song. She was...magnetic. He felt drawn to her, as though the universe had nudged him in her direction for a reason.

Your P.O.V

“Thank you very much”, you said after the last strum, glancing at the small group of people who had stopped to listen. You were rather proud of your performance, too, and you had made more money than expected that morning - especially since there was a twenty pound note in your earnings, which was a first. Very few people are willing to give that amount of money to a street musician ; and the mystery man who had was still standing there, merely three steps away, looking at you and probably thinking he was well hidden behind his Panama hat and dark wavy hair. From what you could make out of his features you deduced he was about your age, maybe a bit older, though that impression could have just been due to the moustache which he wore, you had to admit it, quite well.

When you realised he was none other than George Harrison, you wondered why it had taken you so long to figure it out. His face had been on every newspaper since 1964, and you were not going to pretend you did not love the Beatles to the point of obsessively playing their records and eventually wearing them out. Nevertheless, he did not look like he wanted to be recognised, and you decided to respect that. The best way to fight the urge to go talk to my favourite Beatle, you concluded, is to continue playing. And so you did. You started strumming the first chords to I Need You, in an intended wink to his person.  

I Need You ended, you moved on to another song, and another...Until your watch marked eleven a.m. and you started packing up, thinking about the rest of your day and unsure what to do with it. It was a Monday, which meant you didn’t have to go into work (the restaurant was closed on Mondays), but you didn’t want to go home just yet. 

“Can I buy you a drink, miss?”, a very familiar voice asked, catching you off guard. You let out a giggle and took the twenty pound note to show it to him, “I think you’ve already bought me at least fifteen, sir.” “Can I buy you a sixteenth drink then?”, he insisted with a grin. You laughed again ; how could you possibly say no? He was rich after all, you couldn’t feel guilty for making him spend fifty cents on a cup of tea. The next thing you knew, the both of you were sitting at the table of a coffee shop, sipping a warm drink and chatting casually.

He told you his name was Arthur and, though you knew it to be a lie, you preferred to let him think you believed him. He wanted to know everything about you, which was ironic to you considering how you knew his life to be much more exciting and interesting than yours. You answered his every question with lightheartedness, intrigued by his curiosity toward you, and it slowly became obvious that you two shared some sort of special connection you could not rationally explain : you were comfortable with each other suprisingly fast, your sense of humor matched his, and every time your eyes met they would linger, as though you were poking into each other’s souls, making shivers run down your spine.

After the coffee shop, you strolled around Hyde Park side by side for two hours, completely losing track of time in the process. You told him about your family, your studies, even some childhood memories, and he talked about the Beatles, using code names, of course. John’s made up name was Eric, Paul was Fred, Ringo was Michael and of course, he was George, hum, Arthur. You were amazed at how straight he kept his story, though sometimes he would stumble on his bandmate’s brand new names ; by that point you figured he knew you knew he was George Harrison, but he preferred sticking with the parallel universe he had created. He told you about all the stress he had been undergoing during the Let It Be sessions, and you listened closely, overtaken by the feeling of deep empathy. He striked you as a very gentle person, but when he talked about the album you noticed his eyebrows furrow and his tone harden.

Around what you think was midday, you started getting hungry. You sat in the grass and ate store bought sandwiches together, the both of you agreeing they were not the best you had ever tasted. After that, you simply lay in silence, enjoying each other’s company.

“I don’t think they realise how talented and important you are.”

“Who?”

“Joh- I mean, Eric and Fred. They were there first, became the leaders and now they’re blind to the possibility of deflating their massive ego to make room for Ring- Michael and you.”

“...Yer probably right. But there’s not much I can do about it, is there?”

You shook your head.

“Start a project of your own. Didn’t you say Eric recorded something with his girlfriend?”

“Yeah. It’s not bad, what he does, it’s just...He didn’t ask us for permission or anythin’. He just, well, did it.”

“Then do the same! I’m sure you’ve got enough songs of your own to record at the very least a neat EP.”

“Maybe.”, he said as he stood up, seemingly reflecting upon your advice while he tried to straighten the fabric of his wrinkled shirt, to no avail. “(Y/N)...if it were up to me I would stay here and talk to you until we ran out of things to say, but I think I might have to get going now.” You laughed through an undeniable disappointment you attempted to hide : “Oh, of course, please do”. The perspective of having to part ways with him was anything but pleasant. He gathered his belongings, the Panama, his sunglasses ; next, he held his arms out, inviting you into a hug. You happily obliged. You engaged into a long and warm embrace, followed by  prolonged eye contact, and for the hundredth time that day, you experienced the magical tingling sensation through your entire body.

“Thank you for today, (Y/N). I am so grateful to have met you, you really are something special. I...I would like to see you again, if-” He stopped mid-sentence as you handed him a piece of paper with your telephone number hastily scribbled on it. He gave you the most immense smile and proceeded to slowly walk away, looking back a couple of times to make sure you were indeed real.

I met an angel today.

[pubtheatres1]

ONE GIANT LEAP Brockley Jack Theatre 2 – 27 July 2019 “That’s one small step for man…” Neil Armstrong INTERVIEW WITH WRITER & DIRECTOR OF ARROWS AND TRAPS THEATRE, ROSS MCGREGOR LPT: Hello Ross, We’re rather pleased to have another chat with you about your company, the award nominated Arrows & Traps but also wanted to grill you a little bit on your new writing, ONE GIANT LEAP. How long did it take you to write it? Hi there, how lovely to be asked. I have a somewhat unusual process in that I pitch the idea to the Jack, book the slot, design the artwork / poster, get the show on sale, start selling tickets and only then start writing the script. This is partly due to the quick turnaround of shows and my lack of time between, and also that we have to book these things quite far in advance as the Jack is a popular and sought-after space, but also because I have an issue with self-discipline, and so if I didn’t have a concrete deadline, I think I’d still be tinkering with Frankenstein, a show I wrote and produced in 2017. One Giant Leap is the first completely original piece that I’ve written without a source material, and it took me about two weeks to get onto paper. ONE GIANT LEAP is celebrating the fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing but it seems you have got your own spin on it. Could you tell us the story in nutshell? Yes absolutely. It’s a comic take on the greatest conspiracy in history. It centres on Edward Price, a producer of a failing 60’s sci-fi show called Moonsaber – which is basically a poor man’s Star Trek. Edward’s life has fallen into a rut, his wife has left him, he’s lost his house to the IRS, and Moonsaber has just been cancelled in its first season. All looks grim, until a representative to President Nixon comes to his door with a suitcase of money and a proposition. The Apollo 11 Moon Landing is four days away, but due to the moon being about a hundred degrees too hot for photographic film; they can get there, they just can’t film it. And what is a massive propaganda exercise without proof that you actually did it? So they ask Edward to fake the footage by any means possible, if he can do it, he can bring Moonsaber back to life for another season, if he fails – he loses everything. Where does the comedy come from? Mainly from the people that Edward employs in Moonsaber. They’re a ragtag bunch of actors, stage managers and technicians, and due to the show being cancelled – they’re falling apart at the seams – it’s down to Edward to keep it all together, to pull off the greatest lie in history, whilst trying to save his marriage, salvage his career, and keep the lies he’s telling intact. It’s a study of the creative industry, a satirical and loving homage to theatre. We’re not trying to say anything serious about whether the moon landing was or wasn’t real, but more provide a raucous night out at the theatre, and keep you laughing about it on the Overground home. Why is it important to offer a lighter comedy in theatre right now? I think, at times, theatre can take itself too seriously, and become too myopic about tackling the dark and dreadful issues that are affecting society – I’ve lost count of how many shows there are about Brexit playing right now – and whilst that’s great, and admirable - speaking for myself, after the last year I’m sick of the darkness, I’m bored by the constant stream of depressive updates about the rise of the Right, I can’t engage with it, the European elections gave a victory to nationalists, we gave a state visit to a racist, homelessness is at an all-time high, and we’re literally cooking the planet to death. There are sometimes when I just want a great night out and forget how scary the world seems right now – laughter is the best medicine – not as a retreat, but a reminder of the good in us, of the joy, of the light. As the company is repertory, you’ll be working with some actors you know very well. Did you have any of them in mind when you were writing the script? I certainly wrote two of the eight roles with long time company members Will Pinchin and Lucy Loannou in mind. And whilst yes, the roles are tailored to suit both of them - I did write the roles of Howard and Alchamy to stretch and challenge Will and Lucy, because I’d never seen them play characters like that. Will is nothing like Howard, and Lucy isn’t at all like Alchamy, but in way, they’re made for those roles, and for me, they’re perfect choices. I do like working with the same actors repeatedly, it is true, because you build up a short hand of technique and approach, but also you build up a trust. The actors in the company come in on day one, sort of knowing what to bring me, and what kind of vision I’ll probably have, since my style is something of a constant, but also I’m able to, as their director, cast them in roles that perhaps play against type, or test their flexibility and skillsets. I’m not an actor, but if I were, I’d hate to play the same roles every time, to only get the “intense one” or the “dopey one” or the “awkward one” – I’d want to think I could play anything that was thrown at me, and I think our rep system allows for experimentation and exploration. What has been the hardest part of the whole process to date? We’re only in the first week of rehearsal, so nothing too taxing thus far. Hands down, the hardest part of a comedy is when you’ve rehearsed it so much you no longer find it funny, at which point we need an audience. One Giant Leap hasn’t hit that point yet, obviously, but I think most comic work benefits from the response and energy an audience gives. Theatre can be electric when you have that to play off, but in terms of where we are – One Giant Leap’s greatest challenge is the analysing of why something is funny, and making sure it’s that way every time. It’s all about timing. For many years I laboured under the misapprehension that stand up comedy was just a funny person being funny with a microphone, that was until I saw Dylan Moran do the same set twice in the space of three weeks. He has a very casual, off the cuff, almost improvised way of performing, and I assumed that it was just his natural charisma and quick wit, until I saw the set the second time, only to find it was identical to the first. All the pauses, the stresses, the tangents, the quips, all of which was honed, polished and a work of precision. It was funny because he’d worked out the best way to get the laugh, every time, and that’s beyond art, it’s science, it’s music. Traditionally Arrows and Traps have produced a selection of brilliantly adapted classics, including Dracula, Frankenstein, Crime & Punishment and Anna Karenina. Have you got a soft spot for one of them? I loved the breathlessness and breadth of Anna Karenina, the precision and murk of Crime & Punishment, the thrill and gothicism of Dracula, and the humanity and pang of loss in Frankenstein. I think my favourite adaptation, if I had to pick one, is probably Frankenstein – but that’s purely subjective, and there was something about the biography of Mary Shelley, which we incorporated into the show, that really spoke to me – in the sense of a creator and a creation, a parent and child, a sinner and the terrible revenge. You’ve also got THE STRANGE CASE OF JEKYLL & HYDE coming up at Jack Studio in September. Your adaptations of the classics have been Arrows and Traps main focus, so does ONE GIANT LEAP herald a shift away from this? No, in fact because I know the next season of shows, One Giant Leap is perhaps the anomaly. Our work normally has a dark bent, we favour drama with funny lines as opposed to an out-and-out comedy. We’ve only ever done one full comedy before, The Gospel According To Philip back in 2016, so this is something of a return to that. I knew that the company was changing, and wanted to make a swansong to the current phase of work, I had originally planned for it to be TARO but that story ended so sadly, I wanted the last one to be lighter, more celebratory – there’s something inherently amusing about the various tropes you usually get in the theatre world, and so I thought a comedy would be a fitting homage to where we’ve come from, and a clean break to where we want to go next. The company has been going from strength to strength, what are the things of which you are most proud? Mainly, that we’re still going. Most theatre companies on the fringe don’t make it to their third show, we’re on our seventeenth. Part of that is sheer stubbornness, there have been points where any rational person would have thrown in the towel, but there was always something in me that would never bend, never break, never give up. It’s part ambition, part not wanting to fail, part wanting to make my father proud of me, part bloody-mindedness, part theatre-addiction. I think production-wise I’m most proud of The White Rose, to what that achieved, all the five star reviews and the Best Production Offie-nom, but of course I’m also very proud of the other twelve times we’ve been nominated for Off West End Awards, the relationship we’ve built with the Jack, the bond I have with my creative team and my casts, and just the fact that people seem to like the work. It’s still always funny to me when a reviewer calls us “critically-acclaimed” or “renowned rep company” – to me it’s just me, telling the stories I want to tell, with people I want to work with, you don’t always think about how it looks from the outside. I’m just producing the theatre I’d like to go and see. It was rumoured that you would be leaving fringe theatre for other careers, partly because of problems with funding. Was there are truth in that? Absolutely! And in a sense, this is still completely true. I am indeed done with fringe. I think I got to The White Rose in 2018 – where we got the Offie-Nom for Production, we had eight 5-star reviews, four 4 star reviews, we’d completely sold out, and done it the cheapest way possible, and we still didn’t break even. Which was very hard to take, and forced me to face the truth – you cannot hope to attain best practice ITC rates for your casts / creatives / yourself if you only do 15 shows in a 50 seater and you don’t have subsidising support from an arts grant scheme. It just isn’t possible. So I made the decision to stop producing work. Now obviously, with the shows being booked so far in advance, there were still three productions upcoming in the diary that I had to honour. But knowing I was quitting, and that this was the end for me, was too hard to bear - ultimately I had to face the fact that theatre is my life, and I could never leave it – so I had to find a way to make it work financially, not just for myself but for everyone else in the company, particularly the actors who are so often completely screwed over in fringe, and often end up working for nothing. Which is where the idea to change the model came from. Shrink the casts and sets to a more tourable model – 14 people down to 4 – and engage a tour booker to take the productions out of London to larger spaces that could widen the potential revenue. The Jack is our home, and we will always premiere all our shows there, but then we will take them into the provinces. The vision is still the same, adaptations of literary work, and biopics of iconic figures of history, but the remit and scale of the endeavour has changed. I don’t see it as an ending, just a moving from one phase into another. But yes, absolutely, the 8-10 handers, movement-heavy, ensemble, big music, huge shows – this stage in our trajectory is ending with One Giant Leap, and whilst I see why it has to end, a part of me is sad to see it go, because there was something so wonderful about doing a massive 15-hander like Three Sisters. Are you one of those people who is meticulously planning the future? Yes indeed, because really we have to plan ahead in order to book the shows with the venues. We’re doing One Giant Leap next month, and then move to Jeykll & Hyde in September, both at the Jack – and then Hyde goes on tour for about six months, with an opening of our next biopic Chaplin coming about halfway through the run in February. Because I’m overseeing contracts, and touring plans, and writing the scripts as well as casting each show and most likely directing each one, I need to know where we’ll be and when we’re doing it – I’m trying to build a book of shows, a repertoire that is constantly touring, moving forward, and ever-evolving – reaching more audiences, and engaging with new communities. In the meantime, we can’t wait to see ONE GIANT LEAP. Could you give us a little flavour of what’s to come? In terms of shows after One Giant Leap, we have Jekyll & Hyde - a dark, political thriller set in a post-Trump America – a gritty examination of the corruption of power, then Chaplin – which tells the story of the 20th Century’s most famous clown, documenting his path to becoming the iconic Little Tramp – and his meteoric rise from Victorian poverty to Hollywood fame. After that, we’re bringing back one of our most successful productions of 2017, Frankenstein, revisited and rewritten for a more tourable model, and then a biopic of Marilyn Monroe, called Making Marilyn, which covers the Norma Jean origin portion of the star’s life. After that – who knows? I’ve always wanted to tackle Madame Bovary – and I’d like to bring back TARO as it was one that I was particularly proud of in terms of its style and poetry. Finally, your shows at Brockley Jack are becoming legendary, it’s a great partnership. What are the things you’ve learnt about theatre whilst working at Brockley Jack? So much. The Jack has been a great place to develop my approach to stagecraft, and how to tell stories as clearly and engagingly as possible. Since we joined the Jack, we’ve built a vision of the style we want to have, and how we approach each difficulty, or tricky moment to stage, how our work with movement and text interconnect, and what we look for in our ensemble for each show. And, I guess, ultimately, I’ve being able to return to my training as a writer, and I’ve been so lucky to have so many opportunities to experiment with my writing, and get to think about how to tell a story and how to build each character. Playwriting is not something I’ve tried before, and I’ve loved delving into each of the worlds that the Jack has opened the door to. But I think most of all, I’ve been honoured by the patronage and support of Kate and Karl – and they’ve shown me the power of hard work, diligence, and care – if I ended up with anything like the talent and acumen they have, I’d be very happy. @June 2019 London Pub Theatres Magazine Ltd All Rights Reserved THIS SHOW HAS ENDED ONE GIANT LEAP Brockley Jack Theatre 2 – 27 July 2019 directed by Ross McGregor produced by Arrows & Traps Theatre Productions Box Office > Below: Rehearsals at Brockley Jack Studio "We’re not trying to say anything serious about whether the moon landing was or wasn’t real, but more provide a raucous night out at the theatre, and keep you laughing about it on the Overground home." "... speaking for myself, after the last year I’m sick of the darkness, I’m bored by the constant stream of depressive updates about the rise of the Right, I can’t engage with it, the European elections gave a victory to nationalists, we gave a state visit to a racist, homelessness is at an all-time high, and we’re literally cooking the planet to death." "Most theatre companies on the fringe don’t make it to their third show, we’re on our seventeenth. Part of that is sheer stubbornness, there have been points where any rational person would have thrown in the towel, but there was always something in me that would never bend, never break, never give up. It’s part ambition, part not wanting to fail, part wanting to make my father proud of me, part bloody-mindedness, part theatre-addiction." "... knowing I was quitting, and that this was the end for me, was too hard to bear - ultimately I had to face the fact that theatre is my life, and I could never leave it – so I had to find a way to make it work financially, not just for myself but for everyone else in the company, particularly the actors who are so often completely screwed over in fringe, and often end up working for nothing. Which is where the idea to change the model came from." " ... most of all, I’ve been honoured by the patronage and support of Kate and Karl (Jack Studio Theatre) – and they’ve shown me the power of hard work, diligence, and care – if I ended up with anything like the talent and acumen they have, I’d be very happy." In celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, Arrows & Traps Theatre bring their critically-acclaimed approach to a brand-new comedy set in the back streets of a Hollywood lot. One Giant Leap is about the power of having an impossible dream, realising it’s impossible, and then trying your hardest to fake it and hope no one notices.

[secret-rendezvous1d]

D E C E M B E R  4 T H

REQUEST What if the missus gives Harry a gift on December 1st and it’s like an advent calendar but each day is a new position/place to have sex up until Christmas.

This is quite a short little something; I apologise. 

I didn’t have too much time to write this one properly and I’ve got a few busy days coming up so I need to write a lot of other stories  for Blogmas so that I can post them on a queue without needing to be here - there may a chance that a few more of the stories will be short and sweet but straight to the point in what was requested. 

My mobile masterlist also unlinked all my links so I’ve got that to work on, too, so I’m all a bit rushed around. There will be a new masterlist coming that you will be able to access as soon as possible; you just need to bear with me on that.

Feedback is welcomed, as always - please let me know what you think of my pieces, send me any constructive criticism you think would help out, any ways to make my writing better, anything. It really helps me and keeps me motivated to write and we get to work as a team to make things better, for me to write and for you to read.

Enjoy! x

D e c e m b e r  1 s t  2 0 1 8.

The sweet smell of cinnamon filled the air.

And there was a distinct smell of fragrant dates and fruity currants and a thick scent of rum that had been mixed together in a bowl, baked in the oven and laid to rest underneath a thick and white-fondant marzipan, packing in a tin and ready to be devoured on Christmas Day with cream or custard. Every moment he took a deep inhale, his belly seemed to rumble from just how gorgeous their home smelt.

This time of the year was his favourite time of the year; it always had been, ever since he was a little boy and old enough to understand what the spirit of Christmas was and just who Santa Claus was to the world. He loved when the weather got colder and he could bundle up in warm jumpers and wear woollen socks around the house to keep his toes warm, without someone commenting on why the hell he was dressed so warmly; when the nights got longer and the sun set in the afternoon and gave the atmosphere a certain darkness that was dark enough for people see the Christmas lights decorating the high streets; it made him feel feel so warm and cosy and brought out the best in him; the weather made him feel happy and excited to be able to spoil his loved ones with gifts that showed his affection. And when it came to his wife, he loved that he could spoil her with all of his love and all of his affection and he could give her any length and any type of cuddle during the day and could have all the intimacy, in the world, that always seemed to spike when this time of year came around - the cold always did something to their hormones... but they weren’t complaining. Christmas meant he was surrounded by his friends and his family, Jeffrey gave him weeks off of work to be there in the cold heart of London, and he loved that he could take advantage of that.

Time off meant he could do the things he had always dreamed of doing with a partner, for his own home, to celebrate the holiday that they were planning to spend together. Christmas-tree shopping in garden centres and taking the tube to see the lights of Oxford Street whilst doing some window-shopping along the way, jumping in the car and singing Christmas songs on the drive to a 24-hour drive-thru that they had been craving and hopping on a train to head down to Surrey so they could spend time with the ones they didn’t see so much and could devour a roast with his aunt and uncle, gathering with their friends and hitting Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland for the night... with a busy schedule all year around, it felt nice to have the end of year to recuperate.

Evie purred on his lap as he nudged the tips of his fingers into the top of her head, rough but gentle enough, as the feline idly smiled with delight. Her tiny, black and white paws pawing at the polyester of his plaid pyjama bottoms and her claws catching the threads as she pushed against his thighs to find a comfier position; her ears twitching every so often when the tinkle of bells filled the silent living room, after having echoed around the kitchen, from a radio station that YN had switched on to use as background noise whilst baking a variety festive goods. Her whiskers tickling the underside of his wrist before she curled up in the dip where his thighs met. Socked feet kicked up on the arm, slippers kicked off and paired together underneath the coffee table, and the blanket, that was previously tucked up around his body to keep him warm, was thrown over the back of the sofa.

“Surprised you’re not out in the kitchen with your mum whilst she’s got all the food out. Forever trying to nick the currants from my porridge in the mornings, little lady,” he hummed, catching Evie’s drowsy face, giving her head a blurring shake before resting her chin on the pudge of his stomach, “did you just fancy a cuddle with daddy, huh? Fancied watching the telly? Or are you here because I give you too much fuss? You’re a spoilt little darling. Spent far too long with your Nana Anne, haven’t you? Whilst mummy and daddy were off travelling the world on tour. Demanding lots of love.”

“Will you stop talking to the cat? She won’t ever respond,” he heard from the room adjacent to him, a hint of a smile in her voice, and he dragged a curled finger down the cheek of Evie’s furry face, “and, now that you’re awake and no longer milking how tired you are, will you come and help me with this? It’s difficult to take photos along the way and I can’t keep switching between mixing and kneading and taking photos. My camera is getting all mucky. You’ll have to buy me a new one for Christmas.”

“Would you be so upset if I said that Elf has just started and that I want to watch it so badly because I’ve been looking forward to December for this exact moment?” His attention drifted to the television screen that brought up a scene of Will Ferrell dressed in a bright green elf-costume, with yellow accents, and looking to be the tallest in a situation that he just he didn’t belong in amongst the other of Santa’s helpers; it had been his favourite film for as long as he could remember. One that he liked to curl up and watch when his school day had finished, eating a fresh batch of muffins that his mother had made during the morning. One that he liked to watch with his sister on Christmas Eve whilst drinking hot chocolates and chucking marshmallows at one another as the quoted the most iconic lines. One that he could recite off by heart and would drive his father insane because he just couldn’t help himself. And it was the one film that he wanted to show off to his children in the future - to sit down with his wife and his own children and eat treats that they made and drink hot chocolates, together and as a whole family, as they snuggled beneath a blanket and sat before the fire... and to know that YN, who was once the girlfriend that he had willingly shared the tiny glimpse of their possible future, loved the film almost as much as he did. “You know how much I love this film.”

“You know how much I love Elf, too,” he heard her huff, “why can’t we record it and then watch it later on? When we’re not doing anything and get to be lazy? We can order in a takeaway pizza and then drink hot chocolates with the tiny marshmallows that I have left over.”

“Can we eat whatever you’re making?”

The house had fallen silent and he only realised once he heard her slippers scuff along the floor, brushing her hands on the front of her, already dusted with flour and the odd flecks of dough, apron. A picture of an elderly lady, with thin-rimmed glasses and grey hair, who identified herself as Mrs Claus, was printed on the front with the words ‘Have Your ‘Elf A Merry Christmas’ - which had made him chuckle when he saw it in the store and had thought of how she would enjoy the pun just as much as he did - in beautiful, candy-cane coloured script that arched above her head. Her upper body leaning over the back of the sofa.

“Not all of what I’ve been,” she grinned, “there is a lot that I’ve made since you’ve been asleep and we don’t need your dicky tummy playing havoc over the next week or two-” she have the side of his belly a pat and got a side-eye from Evie who looked displeased at being woken from her sleep. “-I’ve got one box for us to share and then the rest I’m going to give to my parents when we see them this weekend, your sister and Michal when they come round tomorrow for lunch, your aunt and uncle when we go to their Christmas party next week, and your mum to take home when she comes up in a few days.” She ran a sticky hand over his forehead and brushed his fringe away from his forehead, little amounts of flour catching between the strands. “You look very cosy.”

“I would feel a lot cosier if you took a break from whatever you were doing and came and cuddled with me. It’s cold, I’m tired and me and Evie want you to come and take some time out,” he looked down at the cat, who was now purring and sending tiny vibrations through his belly, “she would agree if she was awake.”

“I’m sure she would,” his wife giggled and brought her hand from Harry’s flushed forehead to Evie’s soft fur. Stroking the patch between her two ears and digging her fingertips into her skull; her purrs sounding so loud and vibrating through her body, toe-beans flexing as her way of showing how pleased she was, “give me a few minutes. I’ll get my last batch in and cool the one that is in the oven and then I’ll be in.”

“Could you make some tea and bring that in, too?” He asked and she scoffed at his cheekiness, pinching his nose as it scrunched up and brought his eyes to a squint, “please? Mine went cold when I fell asleep.”

“Fine,” she sighed, “make some room for me.” She spun around and walked back towards the kitchen, halting abruptly in her path and turning her upper body to look over her shoulder, shooting him one last statement before she went back to her baking. “Oh, I have an important present to give you later, by the way. Don’t let me forget.”

And god, he didn’t forget.

‘An important present’ was all she needed to say to him to make sure that her instruction, on not letting it go forgotten when she didn’t remember, was handled correctly.

Okay, he may have forgotten until later in the evening... but, hey, he still remembered!

Stretched out upon the sofa, his ankles rested on YN’s thighs, crossed and with feet clad in the warmest of socks (that had been a tradition to wear, on the first of December, every year), his attention diverting between the television and the book held in his hands. Glasses on the bridge of his nose. She was busy scrolling through her phone, casually sipping on a glass of wine, his own glass sitting on the coffee table and a distinct difference from the tea he’d been sipping on throughout the afternoon. On the telly, someone had exchanged a gift to another and that was what had prompted him to remind her.

“S’this important present you need to give me?”

She gasped and almost spat her gulp of wine, holding her glass under her chin as she looked him, eyes wide and her hand in a rush to push his feet away from her. The soles hitting the floor as he swung his body around and sat up, closing his book and dog-earing the page, placing it on the shelf beneath the glass top, upon a pile of magazines and newspapers.

“Christ, yes. I forgot,” she muttered, setting her wine glass on the table and standing to her feet, leaving her phone behind on the sofa cushion as she darted in the direction of the stairs, “thanks for reminding me!”

“Couldn’t forget,” he snorted.

Through the floorboards, and the ceiling above him, he could hear her enter their bedroom and have a quick rummage around something - that he presumed to be the vanity drawers... - to find what she had hidden away from him. Skilfully, of course, because he used those vanity drawers and had yet to stumble upon anything that looked out of place. A wrapped present definitely being on that list.

She was quick back down the flight of steps, with something rattling in her hand, and he slipped his glasses back up his nose. A grin, that he tried to diminish but couldn’t because he rather excited to see what she had, sitting on his red-painted lips, teeth having turned purple around the gums from drinking the wine they’d cracked open, as his green eyes watched her every move.

“Someone spoke about this in a problem-page in a magazine I read at the hairdressers the other week. It was a suggestion on how to have better sex, and I know that we have great sex and it’s always adventurous and we get up to a lot, but I liked the idea and I thought it would be something you’d want to try out,” she smiled. A big in length, thin in width box was held in her hands, her eyes holding nerves as he took it from her, “it’s an advent calendar. Just, not the usual kind of advent calendar you would expect. No chocolate in it or anything.”

“An advent calendar that isn’t chocolate?” He gawked in disbelief, the wiggling of his fingers apprehensive as they picked at the flap and pulled it from within the cardboard, “what kind of awful advent calendar did you buy me?”

“It’s not awful!” She cried out.

“It has no chocolate. It’s awful,” he teased. Her body collapsing to the space beside him, with a heavy huff being pushed out powerfully from her lungs, with a frown on her face and her arms folded over her chest. She tried not to watch him as he opened it; it definitely wasn’t an awful present, let alone an awful advent calendar, but he was teasing her and she had to show how ‘frustrated’ that made her. But she couldn’t help but let her vision hide in the corner of her eyes, watching him discreetly as he pushed the cardboard to the floor and set the calendar on his lap. “It’s just... plain?”

“Open number one.”

His finger dragged along each closed door as he read each bold number that his tip passed over, stumbling upon number one and wasting no time in breaking the seal and opening the flap. The word ‘cowgirl’ in black cursive sitting heavy on his tongue; what on earth was this advent calendar and why did YN buy it for him, knowing he would ‘like it’? His green eyes homed a look of confusion as he looked between the white cardboard and her intrigued face, looking curiously as him, watching the cogs turn in his head as he tried to figure out what the hell she had gifted to him.

“Wha-”

“It’s a sex advent calendar,” she clarified, sitting up and leaning forward, elbows resting upon her knees. A cheeky grin on her mouth as he let out a scoff and laughed, cheeks flushing pink and looking back at the word printed on the small, square-shaped door. “You open this up, every day, and it tells us what position we should have sex in. Sometimes we can never decide and,” she reached over and squeezed his knee, “this way, it decides for us.”

“Like some strange magic-8 ball that decides people’s choices?” He snorted.

“Exactly like that, yeah,” she nodded, giggling sweetly as he shook his head from side to side with absolute disbelief, “not such an awful present now, is it, hm?”

He placed it on the coffee table and slung his arm around her shoulder, pulling her to his chest and pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her temple, groaning happily into her ear before falling to the sofa cushion and squeezing her to his body. Her legs curled up and her knees collided with his chest as she hugged him back with a tight grip.

“I take back all that I said. The best early-Christmas present, ever.”

[agenderhyde]

JH asks! 1-8, 10, 14

j/h ask meme

1. have you read the original novella? If so, how many times?uh. 4 or 5 times, maybe more? Including at least once in german.

2. what’s your favourite jekyll and hyde adaption? Or some you likei actually really enjoy wildhorn’s musical, though the narrative is vastly different than the original novella. i liked the itv show. bbc jekyll has some good parts. the glass scientists is a neat comic.

3. what’s a Jekyll and hyde adaption you don’t like?the 1990 film w/ michael caine as j/h

4. Hyde or Jekyll?…..hyde

5. do you have your own designs for Jekyll and Hyde?….sort of.

except now i generally see hyde as having red hair, not brown. but i made these dolls three years ago. also, that coat. and his legs are too long b/c i made the coat too long, but it’s fine. 

6. when/how did you get into jekyll and hyde?i want to say it happened rather gradually. in 8th grade i decided i wanted to read some classics, so (i think, i don’t quite remember) to read j&h and sweeney todd. i remember how disturbed i was during the part w/ carew’s murder b/c it seemed so sudden and so, so violent. and then i didn’t read the novella again until a few years later, both right before my apush class went to boston and then during the trip itself. and i fell in love w/ the musical on the bus to & from boston (the wi-fi wouldn’t work for me unless it was late at night and everyone else was asleep, and even then i could only (barely) get youtube videos to play, so i listened to the obc soundtrack– esp. facade, dangerous game, & confrontation). i made a j/h rp blog when i got home from boston and from there it’s just been. trying to find as many adaptations as possible.

7. Utterson or Lanyon?the lawyer!!! lanyon’s okay, though.

8. have you ever written any jekyll and hyde fanfiction?hah. yes. the dinner party thing. and maybe a couple other short things.

10. what do you think of the musical?it’s not terrible, but it’s certainly not w/o it’s problems; see also #2 & #6.

14. what do you think of jekyll? do you think he’s a bad person?i don’t think he’s a bad person! at least, he tries actively not to be, but he’s selfish and becomes addicted to drugs and sort of loses his credibility as being ‘good’ after a while.

[tgr489]

A dancer, a developer, a socialist and a claustrophobe

How do you prepare for a lockdown? How long was it gonna it be? The government were saying 3 weeks, developments in other countries were telling a different story. How bad could it get? I’ve seen that movie Contagion, an eerily prophetic flick when viewed again post curfew one night.

As February ticked along we scrutinised our work plans, built our team and laid the foundations for a 3-month run. We had a couple of weeks downtime while we waited for details of our test group and preferred creative direction(s) we would be pursuing. Those weeks at the beginning of March were spent sliding forwards and back along the anxiety scale. The lockdown posed the possibility of being locked up in my apartment for an extended period and was troubling, actually deeply concerning. Squirrel and Lexi had been coming and going to mine as they pleased, sometimes together, often separately. We have a strange functional/recreational arrangement going on. It works for all of us, no one is under any pressure and we have fun. My fear was when told to isolate would they fuck off back to their respective nests, leaving me to fly solo in my own personal hells. The other area of consideration was that of work; it would likely be frozen for the duration! No work, no friends and nothing to do was/is one of my nightmares. I talked this out one night with Nic on FaceTime, who advised me to just pack up come home to New York, or leave for somewhere remote. We discussed possible remote locations over virtual whisky and bangers, planed our vast island retreats and who would be there rah-rah. Was fun talking bullshit with her, I miss her. I thought on it after the call, staring out of the window to Old Street and witching hour traffic, watching the last few stragglers stumbling their way home. I gazed around my place; it’s pretty big, so feeling confined isn’t much of an issue, no outside space to speak of, just a small balcony overlooking the courtyard, but there are a few small parks close by for any extended alfresco demands. It wouldn’t be so bad to stay here. If work got canned and the girls weren’t here what would I do? I can occupy my time well, but if I have months of it I’m really not sure how bad I would get. With hardly any of my effects here, I would be limited. Maybe Nic was right. After a restless night, I’d formulated the scenarios I was dealing with and went to my favourite local greasy spoon, the Shepherdess, for some artery-clogging sustenance. I sent out messages and put my fate in the hands of my friends. With a full builders breakfast in my belly, I went and lazed in the park with a cloud of smoke and waited for replies. it was a happy way to kill the time.

My invitation for the girls and Zac to move into mine were accepted, with thanks, and a caveat from Zac, his girlfriend had to come too. There were numerous reasons why, which I won’t bore you with, but fear and jealousy played the leads. We planned for the impending lockdown which was, by that time, inevitable. The mood was positive as we talked food, navigating each others’ preferences, likes, dislikes and allergies. The drink was a huge consideration point. How much do you drink? Be honest. Do you drink every day? Will circumstances in your life make you drink every day? Our drinks bill outdid food by 50%. Everyone thought I’d over-ordered, I wasn’t so sure. What remains now is like the back row of my parent's liquor cabinet and the random shit they bought for one person at a party which no-one else drinks. It won’t last long. I can’t see it go to waste and even though it may taste like shit, it’ll do the required job.

It was all smiles and laughter at the beginning. We cooked, ate meals together, played cards, danced, cried, talked and talked about anything and everything. An initial abundance of work saw us through the first week or so, which was nicely topped off by one of my neighbours getting carted off by paramedics because of Covid. That was a wakeup call to the seriousness of the circumstances. I was suddenly a leper among friends. I’d been close and spoken to the guy quite a bit the weekend everyone moved in, so my flatmates were understandably nervous. Fearing the worst we waited to see if any of us would develop symptoms. The claustrophobia of the situation started to gnaw away at each of us, culminating in Mel losing the plot one night over dinner, screaming in a panic her worst fears which we all resonated with, but hadn’t voiced. She fled to her bedroom with Zac in pursuit, leaving the three of us to eat in deathly silence. We cuddled up on the couch and watched the fading light through the windows, trying to keep the conversation light-hearted as we aired those fears. With some wine and bangers to relax us, we got to that happy place, and when our couple returned sheepishly to the proceedings we were all cool, glad that worries had been aired and shared.

None of us got the bug so we relaxed, resuming our daily hour of outdoor activity. TBH I didn’t really care at that time whether I got it or not. My reasoning was if I did get it I would develop antibodies so I’d be OK going forward. I was also busy enough the time passed quickly. We’d agreed we would front-load the work and capitalise on our forced enclosure. I think in the first week I’d worked 80 hours, the second even more. With nothing else to do (as in go nowhere), it seemed like the best thing. Zac took the same approach, although Mel was in two minds… while she didn’t want him working so much, she was enjoying the praise she was receiving for her project running ahead of schedule. At the end of our self-imposed isolation, and as a celebration of not being infected, we hit the town for a night out. With everything closed no decisions had to be made for a venue, so we stuffed our backpacks with goodies and walked into Soho. The streets were void of everything, save a few people enticed by the emptiness, even those sad bikes left behind because of lost keys or stolen wheels appeared to have been removed. We dropped Fairy’s and/or Special K, smoked up and drank leisurely as we roamed the streets reminiscing over the venues we passed. Retelling past escapades at certain locations as we slowly ascended the summit of alternative reality. As the evening progressed I felt more like we were in some lab experiment and were mice trying to find the piece of cheese. I had a moment of terror when I started imagining too much, about a huge hand coming across the sky to pick us up. It was short-lived and the only truly wobbly moment of the night. Soho became China Town, then Mayfair, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Mayfair, Regent’s Park, Primrose Hill, Hampstead, Finsbury Park, Highbury and home. We were separated for a while, I have no idea how long, or if that actually happened but I remember it being just me and Lexi. Could’ve been 10 mins or an hour, I was oblivious, I just remember the others not being around and trying to locate them. I don’t even remember finding them, but realised they were back with us as we were climbing the fence to the Heath. We took the last of our gear on top of Parliament Hill (apparent highest point in London) admiring our contagion town as the sun came up. The last bottle of red was cracked and we swigged and toasted the morning. Once the sun cleared the horizon we were off again, this time with the purpose for home and recharged with the last of the goodies. It was by far the longest leg of the journey, on weary legs, our reserves depleting rapidly. By the time we hit Finsbury Park the drugs had worn. Conversation was reduced to simple questions, nods and grunts. There were people around, mainly runners and dog walkers, but a dedicated bunch was loitering around the Lidl (supermarket) as we exited the park. From there to home there was no talk whatsoever, it was just survival mode and everyone dealt with it solitarily. At home I made the best cup of tea I think I’ve ever had, strong and loaded with sugar, not something I usually take, but it helped. I showered for an age, cleansing the grime off my body, the sins of the night draining down the plug. No one was around so I took myself off to the park in the baking heat, passed out, the sun’s rays purging the remaining toxins from my body. I slept nearly the whole day. A night like that, wandering the empty streets of London may never happen again and I’m so happy we did it.

Weeks turned into a month. The project came to a natural break. market research, evaluation and QA blah-di-blah blah. The monotony still hadn’t set in, yet, and with the new freedom of no work we set about having some fun and enjoying the time on our hands.

Eating and drinking can take up a substantial part of the day, especially when you’re making elaborate feasts for every sitting. No sooner is breakfast finished and it’s time to start making lunch, always a 2-course affair of either entree-main, main-dessert, entree-dessert or if you were feeling really piggy, go fo all three. We all took turns to make our favourite meals, our signature dishes and ingenious ways to not waste any food. A month of this and I started seeing the signs of the reduced activity (when you can see it in the mirror, it’s already gone too far), so engaged myself in some cardio fitness routines and yoga with squirrel to keep the extra weight in check, I also began a running regime on the empty city streets. My neighbour recovered and returned, his gaunt grey face told a story of horror and had me reconsider my previous hope of contracting the virus. We sent them up a care package of some squash risotto and chablis. They were thankful, we made friends, they allowed us access to their roof terrace. Nice! This provided valuable additional space to hang out in because despite it’s cavernous open plan lounge/diner/kitchen/study, the walls in my place appeared just a tad closer each day. Our neighbours above, Shirley and Raymond, were/are a lovely couple, who fawned over us a little whenever we were on the terrace together. Inquisitive of our lives they asked lots of questions, posed some interesting ones for us and generally provided a good sounding board on the navigation of life. I would say they’re 50/60-ish, he’s in ‘finance’, she’s in the charitable sector (i.e. works for free to offset her fella’s evil deeds). Regardless of their ethical/non-ethical careers they are great neighbours and we are forever thankful for the use of their roof for the fresh air and sunbaking, the latter in full swing as the heat dialled up.

When the first wave of food ran out we ran sortie’s to the local Waitrose and Tesco for a re-stock, no alcohol at this pit-stop. Queuing for shop entry was a novel thing at first, it then became a ball-ache, now it’s non-existent, but I prefer this over the crowded aisles and stress-fueled shoppers. With the paranoid in society stockpiling essentials, we had to think on our feet a little more and buy basically anything which may constitute collaborative ingredients for a meal. The killer missing item for me was bread. I need a loaf in my kitchen at all times, it's my go-to snack with PB, and I generally try to keep a freezer-loaf as a back-up. But all that was left on the shelves of my local supermarkets were nasty paste-y white bread. Don’t get me wrong I will eat white bread, usually wrapped around a fried egg, some sausages and dripping with ketchup and Tabasco, but I can’t eat it every day, and we shouldn’t either. I found a local baker in Hoxton and bought a 20kg bag of flour and a tub of yeast with a plan to bake bread every day. This was a therapeutic, enjoyable start to the day, I felt so fucking righteous and wholesome. A week later I bought a bread maker off eBay, it made way more sense. I woke up to the smell of freshly baked bread every morning! The drawback here, it was small, so we had to make 2, sometimes 3 loaves, but one was generally enough to see out breakfast.

Work came back for a week-long sprint, I thrashed my side of this out in three 15 hour stints. Zac paced it out for the week, keeping in sync with his missus. We were all starting to disappear into ourselves a little each day. FaceTime, Zoom and Hang-outs became my good friends, bringing mates to me through the ether. I spent hours buried in my laptop, with a compulsion to connect with those in my life from afar. Nic and Luce were not doing so well, from an emotional perspective, and Kashie had fucked off back to Slavwegia as events were unfolding, and left them to it. Neither could get home or out of town and things were getting scary in New York. The landlord has frozen the rent ‘until a time which is convenient for regular payments to resume’, which was a very nice gesture indeed. That has taken the sting out of the situation for them. Harv had gone upstate, as had Jase and co. and remained living in a sense of normality. Friends in Asia were seeing a clearing through the trees, coming out the other side, there was hope. I even messaged my ex, just to make sure she was OK, which she's not, and she started to blame me for it. I took a few of her cutting remarks without reply because there's a bit of guilt with me so I felt I deserved it, but her continued little digs at me through our chat just pissed me off so I ended the call politely abrupt, wishing I'd never bothered. I spent the rest of the night stewing about her in moody silence, pretending to read while my flatmates played Monotony. My thoughts took me to the mystery girl of my past. Where was she, who was she, was she OK? why do I think and dream about her so much? it's doing my fucking head in. I find myself scanning for her whenever I'm out, which is harder now that face masks are in use, and plausibly a good thing to dissuade me from the madness of it.

Katje busied herself by running dance/yoga/cardio classes from our dining room via zoom, which seemed to take up a large chunk of her day. Sometimes Lexi would join in but mostly she was reading or binge-watching something. The fitness instalments provided a pleasant distraction from work, watching the girls in their ever-smaller clothing getting sweaty and flushed. I upped my running game as the effort reduced, pushing myself to pace a little more each day, capitalising on the time and solitude it afforded me. I also used the runs to meet up somewhere central with friends across town, have a distanced chat before continuing home. It was on one of these runs, as I finished at the river and stretched out in front of that Tate, I had a spark of an idea for a great campaign. I ran home through the deserted city streets, thinking, and the further I got the more I knew my idea was a winner, runners runners everywhere. I pitched it to a friend who‘s in marketing at Adidas and he liked the idea but needed something more visual to float it around their team. There would be legwork to do, excuse the pun, but with a fresh idea, I was game for it. I tapped up some of my new links on Strava then looked at the flybys on my longer runs into town to see who I’d been passing, looking for people who liked to run long and came from outta town into the contagion zone. Once I’d identified an array of potentials I roughed out a storyboard, sent it off and sat back to wait. The reply wasn’t long in coming, it was a yes!! At least it was something to take my mind off the real work.

I connected with all of my candidates then sent them each a message asking if they were interested in my proposal and if they were could we speak. I had 19 candidates, including me, and after my calls, it went down to 16. It was simple, run into central London and plan to run every street from the middle out, over however many runs we did through lockdown, tag the runs and post them on social. The first weeks running would give me the basics for a teaser video that would attract more runners and build a following, then a challenge posted on Strava for anyone to partake in. Each km run would attract a donation from Adidas to a charity. Running gear would be fronted to the challenge team so the brand would be visible in all shots, and their generosity extended to 2 pairs of runners, 3 pairs each of leggings, shorts, long and short-sleeve tops, masks and a phone pouch arm-band thingy. The first run was planned so we all met in Golden Square late morning, not too early to start and close enough to lunch so we could give everyone a drink and snack. It was without a doubt one of the weirdest lunches I’ve had when straight, all strangers, apart from me and the 2 girls, swapping our stories over energy drinks and bars for about an hour or so. We bid farewell and made our journey’s back to our respective pods. The girls provided some assistance throughout the project duration, which was about 5 weeks; choosing photos, involving themselves in some of the video editing and compiling all the routes from the trackers so we knew what roads had and hadn’t been covered.

The girls also got a crash course in digital marketing and how some of it works, which they were astounded by. Lexi understood but Katje was in disbelief, even with Zac and Mel chipping in, so I made her watch the Unexplained Truth on Netflix, that Cambridge Analytica doco thing. Explained what I know of facebook and how I’ve used it, Adwords, insta, blah blah blah, pointed her to a myriad of resources and explained how everything you see is targeted. Everything. She’s now a little paranoid, maybe too much, but it’ll subside. She’s all over facebook and insta for work reasons so kinda knows what goes on, but not to the depths the 3 of us were telling her. She said we were evil. On that note, I will pull on my cloak of darkness and bid you farewell.

Later Gators

[wearecounterfeit]

CelebMix caught up with Counterfeit. at Leeds Festival.

CelebMix: How was yesterday for you?

Jamie Campbell Bower: It was awesome! It was a blur, but it was a wild 35 minute rock show. We had a wicked time.

Roland Johnson: When I was a kid all my friends would come to Reading Festival but I was always on a family holiday so I always missed it. I said to myself you know the first time I go is when I play it, and this is the first time we’re playing so it is nice to tick that off from when I was young.

CelebMix: Do you have any festivals left on your bucket list to play?

Tristan Marmont: Download Festival and Rock am Ring.

RJ: And then Coachella.

JCB: I’d like to do a big Counterfeit free festival, so a Rolling Stones-esque show with all of our favourite bands, and just screw up Hyde Park.

CelebMix: So you’ve been on the European festival circuit this summer—what’s been your favourite so far?

Sam Bower: We played a festival called Woodstock Festival Poland, which is a free festival just like Woodstock. It’s like it all just carried on in Poland, they kept the spirit alive. I think that’s the idea of it, and that was mental. It was ridiculous.

RJ: It’s Europe’s biggest festival—Europe’s biggest overnight festival—and we got an 11 o’clock slot on the second day.

JCB: That’s PM not AM, so PM’s good you know. We like PM.

SB: Yeah, so that stood out for me. But we’ve been to some amazing places and played some amazing shows.

RJ: We went to Romania for a festival, you know, none of us had ever been to Romania, so it’s cool to tick new places off the list. There were some great festivals in Germany too, Hurricane Southside was great, so many amazing bands. I mean I look at the line up and I’m like “holy shit, we’re playing alongside these guys?”—some bands that are infamous basically.

CelebMix: Do you get much time to explore the cities that you’re in?

SB: Yeah, we try to. I think we always try and seize the day, as it were, if we’re not doing anything and we’ve got a bit of time going. We try and explore a bit—I think you have to always have a look around.

RJ: Some of the festivals though it’s like we get in, play the set, then we’ve got to leave straight away to make it to the next one. We did a festival recently that Blink-182 were headlining, and we were kind of pulling our hair out that we had to miss it, but hopefully we’ll see them soon.

CelebMix: You’ve been on the road quite a while now, do you guys get much time to write when you’re away from home?

JCB: It doesn’t really happen for us. I mean, I think the shows that we play and the way that we play is that we have to give everything. This means when we’re not on stage and when we have travel days or whatever, the time is rest and recuperation. Not only are we physically fucked but we’re mentally on the brink as well, and it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to what I would describe as the most beneficial creative process.

RJ: I also think that we’re a relatively new band, and we’ve been touring now for a year and a half, so we haven’t been on the road for such a long period that we need to be writing new material. We tour, we come back, things happen in between, maybe in the future if we’re on tour for ten months of the year, you then have to force yourself to write on the road—we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

CelebMix: You guys played a headline tour earlier this year, how was that?

JCB: It was amazing! We started in Europe and then we came home and it was wild, you know.

We’d just released a record and we went out to Germany and played these big shows, and it’s all of a sudden—I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, and then now I look back and I think—it wasn’t a festival, it was an hour show, and people were coming to watch our band. That’s a difficult thing to wrap my head around really, but it was sick.

I think we had a wicked time. It was long, it was hard, it was everything that we wanted it to be and more. Difficult, which is good.

CelebMix: Do you have to approach things differently at festivals than you do at your own headline shows?

SB: I don’t have any switch, I don’t have a decision to make really.

RJ: I’ve just got to play every show better than the last.

SB: Yeah, I never really decide what it’s going to be like before I go on, it just happens.

JCB: You’re only as good as your last gig.

CelebMix: Do you have a favourite city to play in the UK?

JCB: I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a massive soft spot for Birmingham. Every time we play Birmingham it’s just wild.

TM: That’s like Glasgow as well.

JCB: Glasgow’s always a riot, it always goes off in Glasgow.

RJ: London as well, obviously.

JCB: Manchester too! Jimmy lives in Manchester, so it’s always an important gig.

Jimmy Craig: Manchester’s got an amazing music scene, and there are so many great venues as well. It’s quite a big city, so it’s always good.

CelebMix: Is it ever weird to play venues you grew up going to?

JC: It’s not so much strange it’s just a good feeling to have been able to achieve what you wanted to, to be able to play stages that you’ve seen shows on your whole life. It’s amazing, and you always feel lucky that people come and see you.

TM: We played The Underworld in London really recently, on our last tour actually, and that was pretty special for me because I’ve been there about 30 or 50 times to see other bands that I love. It was very weird being on stage for me there, but it was amazing, an amazing feeling.

JCB: Yeah it is an amazing feeling. I mean, if you want brutal honesty, when I was a kid and I was going to shows, I would try to imagine myself up there. So to be up there all of a sudden is a realisation that actually if you are that kid, it is 100% possible and 100% doable.

I remember standing at those shows being like “I cant wait to do this”—it was never a question of if, it was more of a question of when, you know, and I know that might sound odd but that’s the truth.

CelebMix: So music’s always been the goal for you all?

TM: It’s not really a goal, music has just always been a part of my life, so playing music is just an absolute bonus.

JCB: For me it’s where I feel most comfortable, it’s where I feel most like me. In that sense, it’s the most organic thing that I could possibly be doing. When I was a kid I wasn’t going to be a scientist, it just wasn’t something that I was good at, so this is 100%, it’s like music or jail.

CelebMix: Do you have anything in the works at the moment?

SB: There are a few things, yeah. We’re plotting also at the moment. Plotting world domination.

TM: There’s a short moving picture that should be arriving shortly, and also a new territory that we might be visiting.

JCB: That we’ve never played. I don’t think, apart from Jimmy, I don’t think any of us have even been to it before. And we’re playing the Don Broco show at Alexandra Palace.

RJ: That should be exciting, and then it’s just pre-production for the new album, which involves all of us getting in a creative space.

JCB: Getting weird—weirder than we already are.

CelebMix: Is there anyone that you’re excited to see play today?

JCB: I just watched Deap Valley, who I love, and I was just blown away never having had the opportunity to see them before, I’m just so stoked by that band. I clocked on to those guys maybe two and a half or three years ago, I think it was through an online magazine actually, and then I just loved the sound, so I was really happy to see them.

We’re all actually going back to Reading tomorrow, on Sunday, so we’re going to try and catch Architects, and Muse are on tomorrow.

CelebMix: So you’re playing The Pit stage later on today, what should we expect from your show?

JCB: Mayhem.

TM: A lot of sweat, a lot of sweat. There was a lot of sweat yesterday.

SB: If you want to see sweat, come to a Counterfeit show. See five guys sweating on the stage.

JCB: Uncoiling cables… Yeah, just carnage I guess, we sort of just go in there and we always do our thing. People tend to ask us “what is it that you do” and I don’t tend to know. I just tend to walk out there and sort of black out.

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.73 / singer - musician - songwriter Sarah Nixey (Black Box Recorder) with Mark Watkins.  

MW : You've received a very good write-up by music-journalist Paul Morley, who also co-founded ZTT records, one of the labels most famous songs being 'Snobbery And Decay' by Act. In your own body of work, how have you expressed "snobbery" and "decay"?

SN : Snobbery and decay run through the entire Black Box Recorder catalogue. Sex and death also feature heavily. Decay is something I explore a great deal in my solo work too. 'Merry England' is about both snobbery and decay – slum clearances in London, and also the repercussions of the EU referendum.

MW : Do you like to muse, or perhaps wish to be someone's muse?

SN : I spent years being “the muse” when I was in Black Box Recorder, and it was fun for a while. It's fine when you are expressing yourself in other ways, like singing live and recording. 

The turning point came when I was pregnant with my first child at the age of 26. Being “the muse” was no longer enough, and I wanted to be much more creative. That's when I started taking my songwriting more seriously. Before that, I had it in my head that professional songwriters had God-given talents and I wasn't necessarily one of the chosen few. 

What I learnt was, with some self-discipline, you can teach yourself to write. I don't mind being someone's muse – I'm not against the idea, but it's a passive role, and unless you are bringing something else to the process, it's not particularly fulfilling.

I much prefer to muse these days - I like to spend time daydreaming about song ideas and working on them in my home studio.

MW : If you could have one painting above your fireplace, what would you choose & why?

SN : I've just moved house, and I still need to hang pictures and mirrors. We have a lot of original art from friends and family who are artists, and I would like to commission my husband's cousin to make something for us. His name is Sam MacDonald, and he creates beautiful fish sculptures from metal. Have a look at his work here : - 

http://www.sam-macdonald.co.uk

MW : Do you bend the corners of books?! If so, do you feel good or bad about it? How about if the book is borrowed?

SN : Now this is a question that will surely divide your readers! If it's my book, sometimes I bend the corners. This generally only happens if it's non-fiction and I've read something of particular importance, or revelation. I don't ask to borrow books unless I'm staying at someone's house and have forgotten mine. 

I would never turn the corners of a book I had borrowed and intended to return to someone. That would be extremely disrespectful. My brother despises it when I do this to my books, and I know it's a pet hate for many people. I used to lend people books if they asked to borrow them, until someone decided that the book I had lent them deserved to be passed on to someone else, so now I only give books away when I feel that I don't need them anymore.

I have had several bookcases built in my new house recently due to the vast number I have collected over the years. I enjoy spending time in a bookshop - my favourite being West End Lane Books in North West London : -

http://welbooks.co.uk/

MW : What was the last good book you read?

SN : I have just finished reading ‘The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson. I read 'This Is Going To Hurt' by Adam Kay at the same time, but the theme of doctors was unintentional. Stevenson's short, Gothic novel, set in fog-bound, Victorian London, is an exploration of the human capacity for evil and the supernatural. No doubt most people know the story but if you haven't read the book, the language is extraordinary, and the plot gripping.

'This Is Going To Hurt' is the diary of an NHS junior doctor. It's both hilarious and heartbreaking. I hardly ever cry when I'm reading books, but this had me in tears - laughter and sorrow. I quite often read two books and go between them – one fiction, and the other non-fiction. It's a reflection of my need to get lots of things done, preferably at the same time.

MW : What can you recommend culturally?

SN : This month, I'm going to see 'Magic Medicine' – a film about the first medical trial using magic mushrooms to treat people suffering from clinical depression. It looks really interesting and my friend Monty, who has directed it, is very passionate about his film.

https://magicmedicine.net/

I'm also going to see 'London Nights' at the Museum of London - a large collection of photographs taken at night in the capital.

My Dad just sent me a message reminding me to go to Proud Galleries this month to see 'The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society' exhibition. It's the 50th anniversary release of The Kinks’ sixth studio album. I don't know anyone who loves The Kinks more than my Dad. I grew up listening to their records.

The best exhibition I've been to in recent years is The Infinite Mix at The Store, on The Strand. It features lots of audio-visual artwork that covers so many different themes. I loved it!

MW : Do you cycle, and if so, your thoughts on the impact of the activity?

SN : I arrived in London when I was 18 years old, and the first thing I bought was a second-hand bicycle. I went everywhere on that bike, loved the feeling of independence it gave me and have ridden a bike in London ever since then, regardless of whether I've had a car or not. Before I was signed to a record label, I worked as a temp in all sorts of locations around London, and because the pay wasn't particularly good, I saved cash by riding to work, rather than paying for costly public transport. I would cycle several miles a day to work and then home again, possibly to a rehearsal afterwards, or a gig. My favourite route was through the centre of London and then out to Kensington, via Hyde Park.

Since then, I've had lots of bikes, and now I ride a Specialized Sirrus Comp. I bought a cargo bike several years ago (a tricycle with a big box at the front where you strap your kids into) and do the school run on this, using my other bike for solo trips about town.

I don't know many people who cycle a lot in London. Generally, I think most people regard it as a dangerous pastime. I've been told many times by other parents that the cargo bike looks like great fun, but they wouldn't risk cycling their children to school. They turn up in their 4x4 instead! At some point, we are all going to suffer the consequences of our inaction. I'm far from perfect and reevaluate how I am contributing to this big mess regularly. There is a song on my new album called 'Dancing At The Edge Of The World' all about human denial of the dire consequences ahead. It's upbeat in tempo, and the subject matter may well pass most people by, which would be quite fitting.

MW : Which elements of making music do you get a kick out of?

SN : There is nothing like sealing a song. I mean, when everything comes together melodically, lyrically and sonically, it's a beautiful feeling. 

Sometimes it happens when you least expect it and when you feel like you haven't worked very hard. I was recording a demo for 'Brave Tin Soldiers', from my second solo album, and an idea came for 'The Homecoming'. I already had some lyrics written down but all of a sudden, the song started writing itself. It's a bizarre feeling when that happens because you feel like you should be slaving over it, and then before you know what’s happening, the song has arrived. There's a feeling of disbelief and bewilderment when a song comes out of what seems like no-where. 

What usually follows is a strange detachment from that song, like it doesn't belong to you.

MW : How does your solo work differ from your band days with Black Box Recorder?

SN : I played a gig in Barcelona a few years ago, and an audience member came up to me after the show to say Thank You. He said that my songs were more dramatic and romantic than Black Box Recorder songs. Someone else described them as Gothic Cabaret. Both of those descriptions are correct, I think. In many ways, I have tried to steer away from what I believe is Black Box Recorder’s style and offer something a little more emotive.

I think Black Box Recorder songs can (deliberately) leave you feeling cold, but I want my listeners to be emotionally involved. I want them to be in the song, and be moved by it, in some way. That's why I want to get better as a songwriter and a singer. Music can change things for people, at it's very best - change the way they feel about themselves and their lives, even if it's momentarily. I'm always working towards being able to do that better.

MW : How did you find your Top Of The Pops (TOTP) appearances? Would you like to see the show brought back (not just for Christmas!)...

SN : I loved being on TOTP. I always watched the programme when it was on, and when I was a little girl I used to say that I would be so happy to be on TOTP, just once, to dress up really elegantly and to sing live, not mime. When that moment finally arrived, I went back to my dressing room afterwards thinking I don't really care what happens now, my dream has been realised. It's funny to think how TOTP made such an impression on me when I was young.

https://youtu.be/1loWFuZveyQ

I don't know whether they should bring it back. It won't be the same because the music scene is so different now. I don't think it's something my children would be interested in as they are so used to watching whatever they like, whenever they like on the internet. We didn't have that option when we were young so we got to watch The Jesus and Mary Chain play on the same show as Five Star and Chris de Burgh. We couldn't be selective and it was this that made TOTP so good. We booed at the TV when we didn't like a band or singer, and danced and cheered to our favourite songs. It was magical.

MW : Tell me about your latest single, 'The Zeppelin', and the new album it's from, 'Night Walks'...

SN : I was reading Nina Hamnett's memoirs and there is an episode where she is watching a Zeppelin fall from the sky. Previously, she had described the end of a love affair and I put the two incidents together for this song. I'd also been reading about the airship crash at Cuffley, and the image of the Zeppelin burning really stuck in my head. When a story gets to the core of me, I nearly always end up writing a song about it. I think it's probably my way of processing, and sometimes resolving, emotional information.

'Night Walks' is a collection of songs I wrote when I was going through a long period of insomnia. After I had my third child, I suffered very badly from sleep deprivation, got ill and started writing songs during the night, because I couldn't get back to sleep. If it feels like a slightly hallucinatory album, I'm not surprised. Most of the songs came to me when I was in a half-asleep, dreamlike state.

MW : Finally, let’s turn to 2019...

SN : I'm thinking about doing some gigs next year sometime. Nothing is confirmed yet. I enjoy the writing and recording process very much, and I'm moving away from performing more and more. There will definitely be another album in the not too distant future though. 

http://www.sarahnixey.com/

© Mark Watkins /  November 2018

[bakechochin]

The Book Ramblings of March

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

The Princess Bride - William Goldman When I purchased this book immediately after having finished watching the film (which is amazing, as everyone other than me already knew), I was certain I’d be giving it a book review instead of a book rambling. But this book honestly surprised me with its interesting approach to storytelling, so I’m going to ramble about it. That being said, it would be remiss of me to not quickly summarise my opinions on the book by, before getting into the more academic thoughts, saying that this book is really fucking good; amazing characters, amazing story, quality humour, all the rest of it. The book employs a frame narrative of sorts; the book that you hold in your hands is presented as an abridged edition of a pre-existing text by some bloke called Morgenstern, altered to include only the ‘best bits’ by Goldman. The original text was said to be a satirical piece on royalty, and the few comments from the author reveal that this omitted text was often made up of hilarious hyperbole. This story, on account of these omissions, is transformed into a fairy tale, where simplistic plots are expected and accepted; I do find it awe-inspiring that Goldman has managed to essentially get away with only writing what he wanted to write about, and yet his methods of doing so are equally as interesting as the story’s content. I am somewhat torn on what I think on Goldman’s additions to the text, describing his own experiences and memories of his first read-through of the book. On the one hand, it does a great job at centralising the book in Goldman’s fabricated backstory, and it emphasises the way that the book ought to be read, as a delightful childhood memory that you get attached to and enthralled in. (As a quick side note, this book emphasises this perspective a hell of a lot better than the film did). On the other hand, Goldman is essentially interrupting the reading experience every now and then to give away plot points and tell you how you ought to be feeling. This book is oddly more meta (as much as I hate the term) than I was expecting; when I went into the book I assumed that it would be a standalone fantasy fairy tale with a few real world bits thrown in just to give the book’s existence context (an assumption which perhaps stemmed from my observing that, unlike The Neverending Story, the 'real world' and the fiction world in this book didn’t appear to be intrinsically linked, and could probably function well enough on their own). But this book is pretty much defined by Goldman’s ‘own’ experiences with the book, and constantly refers to the real world goings-on regarding the making/editing of this book. This is employed to justify certain edits in the text; for example, there is a scene in which Westley and Buttercup reunite, but the actual scene is not included in the book because Morgenstern supposedly didn’t write it. And so instead of that scene, we are given an address of a publishing company to send a letter to requesting Goldman’s supposed newly-written version of that scene. I find it all good fun, if a tad baffling regarding why it is here (other than centralising the story in Goldman’s version of reality, as said above). It seems like it could be construed as attempting to streamline the story, because obviously in a story about true loves getting repeatedly separated, there will no doubt be a veritable fuck tonne of reunion scenes filled with tears and heartfelt confessions of love, of which it may be wise to skip; however, this explanation for not writing this scene is somewhat juxtaposed by the fact that you spend just as long reading Goldman’s explanation for the absence of the scene as you would have done reading the scene. This ties in to another aspect of this book’s storytelling that I quite like; Goldman’s opposition with Morgenstern. The obvious example of this is the whole existence of this ‘abridged’ book, edited down as a response to the preponderance of dense satire in Morgenstern’s original work, but it continues in other aspects; the book is full of daft parentheses, seemingly to elucidate where and when the book is set but in reality muddying the waters even further, and Goldman frankly admits that he doesn’t know why they are there and that if you don’t like them, you don’t have to read them. Whatever Goldman’s reasoning for putting in these bizarre and constant parentheses, be it an actual literary device or as a whimsical fancy as befitting the genre, I do have respect for him for not only not explaining why he includes them, but flat out denying having any knowledge of said information. The ending toys with two different versions; Morgenstern’s version, in which things start going wrong and everything is left uncertain, and Goldman’s version, where everything is left happily ever after. I can appreciate both endings, and find them very interesting for the purpose of analysis, but I’m going with Goldman’s ending. Call me a reductionist if you must, but I want the happy fairy tale ending, because that’s how I want to think of this book when I’m talking about it casually. There’s even entire extracts from a supposed sequel to this book, but to tell the truth I didn’t even bother to read them, because said snippets are deliberately written to seem like fragments of a lost manuscript, and I want to read this book as a fairy tale, not as a text for literary analysis or criticism. Maybe I should have just given this book a normal book review after all.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Stories - Edgar Allan Poe I was biased going into this, as I’ve read Poe before and was already a firm believer that he is the master of the short story, but after having read pretty much all of his well-known short fiction collected in this anthology, I can’t say my opinion’s changed all that much. I think it was Huxley who described Poe’s writings as being shitty because it was ‘too poetical - the equivalent of wearing a diamond ring on every finger’, and though this is delightfully eloquent, I consider myself better than Huxley so here’s my take; Poe’s stories are some of my absolute favourite writings, eloquent without being too pretentious and grandiloquent without being too dense (for the most part). Poe is the indisputable master of writing stories that deal with the contrasting themes of the fantastic and the real (I’ve gone on enough about Todorov’s definition of the fantastic for you to know what I’m on about here), and his fantastic stories are absolutely fucking brilliant. There isn’t much to be said about the storytelling other than that it balances its inclusion of the fantastic and the real excellently (so as to allow the reader to make up their own minds as to if the events of the stories are actually supernatural or just the result of madness), it is excellent at building up tension, and the twists are always amazing (if occasionally a tad variable in how predictable they are). My favourite stories, by the way, are ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘William Wilson', both of which epitomise my aforementioned praise excellently. I also absolutely love Poe’s versatility to apply the fantastic to other settings and to interesting subject materials (even some subjects contemporary to the times Poe was writing); I was expecting an abundance of settings similar to ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, with gothic mansions and the like, but we get Italian carnivals and the Inquisition and incorporation of themes such as mesmerism, which keep the stories continually fresh and interesting if you were to read them one after the other, as I did. I do believe that Poe’s writing style is best suited to his fantastic stories. This collection sheds light on the fact that Poe has written a fair amount of diverse stuff, despite the fact that he is best known for ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ or ‘William Wilson’, the generic ‘Poe’ stories. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, for example, is a detective story (admittedly a very fun one), but Poe’s grandiloquent verbosity does not lend itself well to quick snappy deductions and conversations; instead, we get long streams of dialogue from our detective character, followed  by a very fast and somewhat anticlimactic resolution of events that really ought to have been staggered throughout the story a tad. (I am willing to cut the story some slack, since it is among the earliest detective stories and, as mentioned above, it is great fun). There are some of Poe’s stories that tackle the theme of love, like ‘Ligeia’ or ‘Eleanora’, but then the language seems at odds with the tone of the story, as its incessant formality makes the love seem rather disingenuous. Of course I wouldn’t want to devalue how Poe’s work has inspired some other excellent genre pieces - for that they deserve some praise - but, whilst not saying that they are terrible, said stories, with the possible exception of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, are not very memorable when placed alongside Poe’s short stories that are more obviously recognisable as Poe. No one’s favourite Poe story is 'The Golden Bug’. And that’s not just because it’s quite racist.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Bottle Imp - Robert Louis Stevenson I probably ought to have read this story aeons ago, considering how prevalent it is in modern media due to its creation of one of the archetypal British literary ‘icons’; because of this aforementioned prevalence, I went into this book with an abundance of preconceptions as to what to expect from this book, and I was surprised by how few of said ideas were actually involved in the book. Most of the things I have to say about this book revolve around how it went against what I would have expected. Everyone knows the character(s) of Jekyll and Hyde, and so I was surprised as to how, for the most part, the narrative was told from the perspective of someone else entirely; it honestly really helps the building of mystery, and if it wasn’t for the fact that a) everyone knows the twist of this story, and b) even if you didn’t know the twist, the fucking blurb spoils it, I would have absolutely been taken by this story’s enigmatic plot - convinced by its posited rationality to justify the weird goings-on, and surprised by the ending twist. This does, however, raise concerns of mine regarding how this novella is structured; obviously the grand reveal that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person needed to wait until the end of the book, but consequently this results in one incredibly lengthy explanatory chapter from Jekyll right at the end to elucidate matters. Considering that a lot of this book’s themes revolve around this final chapter, I wonder if the novella would have been better suited as a narrative entirely told by Jekyll. Arguably the main theme of this novel, the duality of man, is of course told excellently, and unlike other stories which revolve around the theme of ’the double’, the explicit explanation of where this double comes from and how it ties in with Jekyll’s own character makes for, in my opinion, a more compelling read (especially since this explanation revolves around pseudoscience, and I love the whole ‘man playing God’ malarkey that comes with said subject). For a story that is essentially gothic, featuring a character like Hyde who has been depicted as a vile little villain in many different adaptations, I was expecting a tad more penny dreadful-esque gore and violence; instead, the violence that Hyde carries out is often described matter-of-factly and succinctly, which seems at odds with the hysterical eyewitness accounts from which these events are reported from, but certainly makes sense when considering the professional detached perspectives of the narrative voices Utterson and Jekyll, law and medical professionals respectively. However, I am less inclined to believe that this was a deliberate decision in the writing style than I would be with something like A Clockwork Orange, wherein that’s the whole point; I reckon it’s just Stevenson’s own writing style, which is, don’t get me wrong, bloody great. The Penguin English Library edition of this story (i.e. the one that I read) also comes with Stevenson’s short story ‘The Bottle Imp’, which I very much enjoyed for its amazing titular concept and for its somewhat anticlimactic and yet still satisfying ending, but, despite what others have said to me, it’s not as good as Jekyll and Hyde.

Autobiography of a Corpse - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky The blurb of this book described Krzhizhanovsky’s stories as ‘mind-bending’, and I cynically assumed that this was nothing more than a hyperbolic marketing ploy, like when people call 1984 a ‘masterpiece’ when in reality it’s a bit shit. But by fuck is this book legitimately mind-bending. I bought this thinking it sounded reminiscent of Gogol, who I love, but I also had it recommended to me by a pretentious friend who reads all the Booker Prize nominations just so he can have contentious opinions about them, which should have probably notified me of the Mieville-esque air of self-satisfied pretentiousness that this book has with its very clever and very wanky themes. Though used for roughly the same ends, there is a difference between cryptic writing and abstract  writing, and this book is certainly more of an abstract read. The stories take seemingly mundane or simple concepts from fields of study like philosophy or geography or what have you, and adapts these simple principles into complex ideas to reflect the story’s fantastic elements. In some cases this makes for some absolutely genius writing, with such simple ideas being utilised with such versatility to create some truly fascinating and amazing stuff, but in other cases it comes across really quite annoying, jumping sporadically from subject to subject and taking away from the mystery of the story’s fantastic elements with its constant need to explain said elements (often poorly and with a heavy reliance on tenuous links). This is especially evident in the stories that aren’t so much stories as they are a compilation of unrelated ideas, the main example being the story ‘Seams’. The few stories in the anthology that do not rely on long-winded verbose ramblings about abstract philosophical content (musings on the ‘I’ being an especially prolific example in the collection) were in most cases my favourite, indeed putting to mind Gogol to some extent as I had first hoped when I bought the book. All of the stories from ‘The Runaway Fingers’ to ‘Thirty Pieces of Silver’ are absolutely amazing, because they had a base concept that Krzhizhanovsky excellently built upon; it’s a great sign when an already great concept that I wouldn’t have thought of is then elaborated on in interesting directions that I wouldn’t have thought of. These stories are amazing not just because they aren’t entirely reliant on abstract wankiness, but that certainly helps their case. The eponymous story ‘Autobiography of a Corpse’ has its base concept, and doesn’t really elaborate on said base concept as much as it does add on additional abstract ideas, but arguably this works well enough because said abstract ideas link, in a weird and abstract way, to the original concept. Honestly I can’t keep on attempting to explain this; I’ve written the word ‘abstract’ too many times and it’s starting to lose meaning.

The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde Yet again have I been tricked into reading a novel that I thought would be gothic but instead just has one central vaguely gothic plot device. Indeed, a brief Google search describes this book as a ‘philosophical’ novel, which is certainly not my usual fare, but because I’m a fan of Wilde and needed an actual novel to read instead of another short story collection and am vulnerable to chicanery regarding what constitutes a gothic piece, I picked it up. I didn’t really read this novel as being especially reflective of Wilde’s own sexuality, because whilst there is something of paiderastia to be seen in some of the relationships between the male characters, such relationships hardly persist through the entirety of the book and end up being somewhat forgotten as relationships move past first meetings or characters change their standpoints on certain matters. What I did see in the book was some excellent commentary on the fin de siecle, aestheticism, and of course the theme of appearance versus reality; I’ve realised that I’ll happily read a philosophical novel so long as the philosophies it is spouting are interesting enough to read (although an interesting premise and plot also really helps, which is all well and good because this book possesses that too). I am for the most part a fan of Wilde’s wit. I’ve heard it criticised because a lot of it is just Wilde reversing statements of common wisdom or perverting cliches, and when you realise this, you see it absolutely fucking everywhere. Lord Henry is basically a mouthpiece for every melodramatic stereotypically ‘Wilde' quote you can think of, and I do think that the fact that we even have a preconception of what a stereotypical ‘Wilde’ quote ought to be is part of the problem. Despite Wilde's statement (in this book, even) that ’there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about’, exactly how prolific and prevalent Wilde’s witticisms are in modern culture, with bags and mugs and little tiny books full of his most well-known wit and all that shit, is part of the reason why it seems so saturated and perhaps even a little bit stale. We know all of his wit, we can see the common trends behind it, and that somewhat diminishes it’s worth. Despite that big fuck-off rant, I still really enjoy Wilde’s wit, and even if you are aware of how he comes up with this shit, it’s still a great joy to read. Hell, even if you’re tired of that, there’s still some great banter from Wilde about aristocratic haughtiness to enjoy, so take your fill of that. There’s a lot to enjoy about this book. I like it a lot.

Stuff I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Fantastic Tales (edited by Italo Calvino) and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In it’s fucking entirety. Fuck you Milton.