#it also coincides with mr taste no longer listening to the radio and you know i feel that

[zapsoda]

watched/listened to brad taste in musics review of every billboard board hot 100 and i have come to the conclusion that no, it [my hatred of pop music at the time] was not nostalgia talking, nor was it the fact that i was severely mentally ill and unmedicated. late 2010s pop music genuinely just fucking sucked

[darksunrising]

Sola Gratia (10/?)

Masterlist

Rating / Warnings : Graphic descriptions of violence, Viewer discretion is advised (short paragraph)

Fandom : Bram Stoker’s Dracula, BBC’s Dracula, various Dracula and vampire lore.

Part 10/? (2730 words)

Author’s notes : Beware ! A Dracula-less chapter (-ish) ! I promise, he’ll be back soon, he really wants to go to that Renaissance fair... (Also yay, part 10 !)

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Mary Van Helsing.

I asked Leah if she hadn't made a mistake. She almost took offense. I sat back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. What ? How ? Van Helsing ? I mean, that could just be a freaky, freaky coincidence. I laughed nervously to myself.

“Hah, you gotta admit that's funny the Van Helsing kid wants to study the Balkanic middle ages”, Leah laughed. Ditto.

Seeing as I didn't reply, she asked if I felt alright. I took a deep breath.

“Leah, there's something I need to tell you.”

“Yeah, of course, what's- Oh, fuck.”

She turned back to her laptop, and started frantically typing, cursing under her breath as she did.

“Someone got my position. Jeez, whoever those guys are, they really don't want anyone finding out they exist !”

“What do you mean ?”

“I mean there's a very good chance we will have an unpleasant visit pretty soon.”

She sounded nervous, which was a strange color on her. She activated an emergency shutdown, and closed her computer, taking a moment sitting still, eyes staring into the void. She then stood up decidedly.

“We don't know who it was, could be nothing”, I tried to reassure her.

“Yeah well, not to boast or anything, but if they got through my defenses, I really don't wanna know. Listen, let's just crash at my place, there's a chance they pinged on the VPN and actually here.”

She was so determined, I didn't even think to contradict her. She left her laptop there, only taking her bike helmet. I grabbed my bag, and followed her out of my office. Even though she was tiny, I had trouble keeping up with her fast paces. As we sped through the corridors, I caught a glimpse of dirty hazelnut hair, and grabbed Leah's arm to take a hard right into another hallway. Felt like running into Helder right now wouldn't be the best turn of events. Plus, I was supposed to give a class he was attending, so, that.

“Thinking back exit ?”

“What else ?”

We kept half-jogging to the end of the corridor, turning a few curious heads on the way, pushed on a service door, and slipped outside. The sun blinded me a second, as we made our way to the parking lot. Leah dug her keys out of her pockets, and unlocked the pad on her motorcycle, cursing a few more times every time she ripped around the keyhole. She turned to give me her helmet, and stopped halfway, wincing. Ah.

“Eris Cetero and Leah Fox. I'm going to need you to come with us.”

A very sharply dressed woman was standing a few paces away, icy stare and tightly pulled dark hair. She looked composed, unyielding, and was flanked on both sides by two men built like wardrobes, poorly dissimulating a handgun under their suit jackets. Not the kind of person to try to run away from, then.

“Listen, we didn't mean any harm. We could all just forget it.”

Sometimes, her bluntness had some perks. She had moved over in front of me, her hand grasping mine.

“You are not in trouble. At least not with us”, the woman continued. “We thought we would wait more, but you forced our hand.”

“We have no idea what you're talking about”, Leah kept going, still on the defensive.

I said nothing, trying to keep a straight face.

“My name is Mary Van Helsing. I work in the Murray Institute for the Neutralization of Abnormalities. We have a lot to discuss, especially with you, Miss Cetero.”

Ah shit. Let's think about this rationally. There was no way I could escape that situation. I also didn't want Leah to get in trouble, and I started to see she was about to keep on going if I didn't do anything. I took a deep breath, which had her stop.

“Alright. We have crossed a line digging into things we shouldn't have. You are entitled to some explanations, and if you feel like this can't be done in a parking lot, so be it. Lead the way”, I declared, trying to be as calm and composed as I could.

I was met by a look of disbelief on Leah's face, and an emotionless nod from Mary, who turned on her heels without a word. Can't believe my incredible charm hadn't worked on her yet. Leah's hand softened, and I took a hold of it as we walked to the intimidating sedan waiting for us.

~ ~ ~

The ride took a bit longer than I thought. From the moment Leah started going deeper in her search, and the moment they arrived, it couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes, and yet, it took well over half an hour to get to our destination. Maybe they were already close, and we just got unlucky. Seemed about right.

We remained silent the whole car ride. You couldn't have hacked through the tension using a damn chainsaw, at this point. Leah and I held hands, so tight I saw her knuckles going white. She was shaking a little, and I hated myself for putting her through this. If only I weren't a nosy fucking idiot.

We arrived to a decrepit-looking building, most likely turn of the 19th century architecture. Above the entrance, the stone looked like it had been engraved, a while ago, but the script was almost completely worn out. Inside, the emptiness gave an echo to every step, the ground overrun with cables coming from other parts of the house. We kept on going straight forward, went down a slope, and arrived to a huge freight elevator. It made a shrieking noise as it went down for a while, so deep we might as well have gone straight down to hell. If you believe in that sort of thing.

The elevator shook as it stopped, opening on a surprisingly high-tech complex.

“Ladies, welcome to M.I.N.A.”, Mary told us as we stepped off.

The first room was a large hall, open on two more stories, visible through balconies, on which were plastered neon lights. In neatly aligned cubicles, employees worked on god knows what, piles of paper cluttering all desks, the intermittent sound of phones and the indistinct chatter of radio making the noise almost unbearable. Mary kept on walking, some people greeting her as she passed them, and giving Leah and I the strangest looks. Ooh, boy. That was about to be fun.

She opened large fire-breaking doors, and we went on a corridor, making a few turns. As I had learned by now, I memorized the turns. Right, left at the weird plant, another left at the water fountain. She opened a door for us, leaving us to enter before her. That looked awfully like an interrogation room, with one table at the center, and two uncomfortable chairs. The double sided-mirror occupying one of the walls was also a dead giveaway.

One of the guards stopped Leah as she went after me. As she protested, they told us they would explain the situation separately. If they actually knew anything, that might be the smarter option. I reassured her, smiling, and went into the interrogation room. One of the guards came with me, and closed the door, only to stand in a corner, silent. I dragged out a chair to sit, waiting for anything to happen.

“Not really talkative around here, huh ?”, I asked, knowing I wouldn't get an answer.

Moments later, Mary came back into the room, holding a few files, one distinctly bearing my name. It does something to your ego, to have your name on a secret society's secret case file, in their secret underground bunker. The woman sat on the other side of the table, leaning forward on her elbows.

“Miss Cetero, do you really have no idea why you're here ?”, she asked.

Of course I know why I'm here. You know I know. You saw me try to fly into the wind with my partner in crime as soon as we knew you found us. I just had to put my best performance on. Tremble, Hollywood.

“Well, we did hack into some pretty secure servers to get information that we weren't supposed to get”, I told her, and shrugged. “That seems pretty clear to me.”

“There's that, but I want to talk about something else.”

Her face was completely unfeeling, yet her voice was soft, a bit too maternal for my tastes. I had a little smile, encouraging her to talk. There was no risk if I wasn't talking.

“Do you believe at all in the, quote-unquote, supernatural ?”

If she kept talking to me like I was a particularly simple child, I'd show her something supernatural pretty damn soon. I worked to keep down the wave of righteous anger crashing against the insides of my chest.

“Do you mean... ghosts ?”, I ventured.

“Among others. I'm talking more specifically about vampires.”

Her eyes were gleaming behind the rectangles of her glasses. I didn't react, other than a little laugh. Alright, keep it up, play dumb.

“Vampires ? Come on, is this a joke ? Did Leah put you up to this ?”, I giggled.

Not that dumb, fuck's sake. Nobody was this stupid. I actually wanted to kill myself. I was so in character my voice went up an octave all on its own. Repressing a shiver, I kept on smiling like a brainless fish.

“I'm afraid I'm dead serious. As... Phantasmagorical as it may seem, such creatures exist, and we believe you, and your friend, may be in grave danger.”

Well, that seemed to actually work pretty well. Not really trying to think of the reasons why I had so little trouble passing as brain-dead, I had a nervous laughter, and kept going.

“Do I have to look around for a man in a black cape next time I leave my building, Mrs. Van Helsing ?”

“Doctor Van Helsing, actually. And rather, you should look around for the man you know as professor Vlad Balaur.”

Ah, direct, I see.

“I'm not sure I get your meaning.”

“We have good reasons to think Vlad Balaur is a vampire, trying to pass himself up as Vlad Dracula Tepes, a character you of all people know well.”

I didn't say anything, but my heart sank to my stomach.

“In what I will tell you, I want you to assume everything I say is true”, she started, leaning back. “In 1896, a team made up from Jonathan Harker, Quincey Morris, Mina Murray-Harker, and Abraham Van Helsing, put an end to the reign of terror of the vampire known as Dracula. It seemed he was no other than Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, who supposedly had, quote-unquote, “died” during the 15th century. At his return to London, he decided to create this institution, to be certain that should such a horrific event happen again, people would have the knowledge and resources to deal with it.”

She took a pause, gauging my reaction. I tried to keep my innocent façade, but has strictly no idea wether she could tell I was faking. The feeling of dread creeping its way into my mind didn't help either.

“Bram Stoker was an accomplice to the whole ordeal, and published his book, which was explicitly branded as fiction. You know the rest, concerning the sometimes questionable turn of the theme into popular culture. However, vampires, among other numerous creatures, are still a threat on humanity today. And a lot of them take inspiration from ancient figures, like Count Dracula. This would not be the first time one of them fashioned himself the Dark Prince Returned.”

“I'm sorry”, I interrupted, “But how can you expect me to believe any of that ? Do you even have any proof ?”

I tried to keep my panic out of my tone. I didn't want to believe it, but what if she was right ? She couldn't be, right ? He knew so much about everything, and... I tried to calm myself down. Just need to get through this, I'll talk this out with the man himself. All would be well.

“Even if you were right, even if professor Balaur was a vampire”, I began as she only kept staring at me. “He never tried to hurt me, or had any reprehensible behavior toward me or Leah. Why would I need to be worried ?”

She looked at me for what seemed like hours, and finally pulled a file from her pile, and slid it towards me. She then sat back, and lit a cigarette. She offered one, and I declined politely, asking what was in the file.

“All around the city, for the last month, we had a count of twenty-four murders”, she declared. “Look at the pictures, and you tell me what kind of person could have done this.”

Shaking a bit, I opened the file, and instantly had to put a hand over my mouth. You can watch hours and hours of horror movies, and never get used to anything like that. Everything was red. Seeping into the fabrics, clothing, mattresses, drapes. Splattered on the walls, dripping from the ceilings. Body parts, bent in impossible angles, flesh frayed, shredded in long clawing marks, leaving the internal organs and their contents spilling out of the deformed corpses. Throats. Open. So torn apart it just looked like a bundle of rubber tubes. On one of the victim's descriptive notes, I glimpsed the word “pregnant”. I closed my eyes, looking away. There were hundreds. Mary offered again, and I took the cigarette. I closed the case file, taking a long drag.

“What happened in Romania, Miss Cetero ?”, she asked, a bit more softly.

I raised my head to meet her gaze. “I... Nothing happened. I- I visited some museums, hiked a little, why do you ask ?”

My eyes welled up with tears, and keeping on a neutral smile was a physical effort at this point. I kept seeing flashes of teeth, the horse, inside out, bled dry.

“We believe he might come from there, which is why he would identify with Dracula. He could have taken a liking to you there, and followed you here.”

“I think I would remember an encounter with something that does... that does this on a daily basis”, I snapped, fighting through tears. That couldn't be right. It couldn't.

“Your memory could have been wiped. It's not uncommon, once again.”

I started to feel dizzy. Maybe it was the cigarette. I didn't smoke very often, so that was probably that, right ? I must have remained silent a while, because Mary leaned forward, putting back the file on the pile.

“Listen, I will make this as clear as possible”, she snapped. “If we are to stop this creature, we need your full support. For some reason, he trusts you more than most. You cannot tell him about your knowledge of this place.”

She slid a card across the table.

“If you are ever in danger, or need any information, call us. We will call you if necessary.”

She put out her cigarette on a portable ashtray, and I did the same, mechanically.

“What did you tell Leah ?”, I asked.

“Nothing more than she needs to know, which does not include anything about Vlad Balaur. We think the less people know, the safer it is.”

I nodded, and slipped the card into my pocket. Nothing about this felt safe, or right, or anything but confusing, and nauseating. They escorted me out, and I still felt engulfed in cotton, everything muted, even when Leah nearly jumped into my arms as I got out. I barely realized I walked, or the time spent in the car, until they dropped me off at home.

I dragged myself to my apartment, and went straight to bed, half expecting to see him there, on the balcony. Instead, I found a note. I opened the window, and took the folded sheet of paper. The same he used back in Romania, and the same fine, elegant handwriting. It was weighed down with a polished rock, which I noticed, upon further inspection, contained a multitude of little fossils.

I have heard historians like old things, here is one.

For another, I will be back soon.

All my love,

Vlad.

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Taglist : @carydorse​ @angelicdestieldemon​ @bloodhon3yx​ @thewondernanazombie​ @battocar​ @moony691​ @mjlock​ @thebeautyofdisorder​ @festering-queen​ @paracosmfantasy​ @my-fanfic-library

[frunatic-fanfic]

Chapter 15 - Eye opener

And here is another chapter my friends. I'm sorry it all took such a long time and now we are heading towards some major plot twist :D but John will be back. Let's just see what happens next huh? If you still like this, please let me know. Love all of u ♥ 6 months have passed since you left California, since you last have spoken, seen, touched John but not a single day had passed without you thinking about him. It get better. The pain got a lot better for sure. You had come to accept that meeting and being with John for this short amount of time as a precious coincidence but a relationship with the two of you probably would never have worked out. You had your struggles with your borderline disorder and John was an ex - Heroin addict and now a rising Rockstar. The song 'scar tissue' was on the radio all the time, up and down and up and down. Just like your mood had intense swings these days, but at least you felt better now. Living with Rony was an absolute blessing. She helped you find a good therapist you could talk to once a week and you got a job at a local pet shop and spending your time with all those animals, dogs, cats, birds, yes even snakes made you feel better and kept you distracted from bad thoughts or missing John - though you didn't think of him all the time anymore. But it was hard forgetting him completely since the bandlogo was seen on every shirt, magazine, bag, whatever recently. The album Californication has been an extremely huge success and as much as you wish you could listen to it... You couldn't. But yes, here you were, ready to start anew. With your best friend and a good job you slowly felt like turning into a more quiet and less insecure person from the inside. You also decided to cut your shoulder long blonde hair really short just to kind of see a 'new, Jolene in the mirror. Recovery was more than just avoiding bad habits. It also meant letting go off the past completely, never even thinking about going back to that old self and all the weird and twisted thoughts inside that old selfs mind. It was getting cold here in NYC. It was the first st of December and the City was glowing in beautiful Christmas lights and the shop windows were full of beautiful decoration. Just before quitting time the door of the pet store got rushed opened. You hear the clinging notice from the little bells you had put over the entrance so you could hear each time someone would enter the store. You turn around to see a skinny figure, hectically moving around with a..... Little cat.. In his arms. Before you can concentrate on the person you see that the cat obviously has a hurt leg." hello uhhmm.. That doesn't look good. Is that yo-" " yeah I know can you help her please help her!" he cuts you off. "well I hope so. What exactly happened?" "I really don't know. I just came back from guitar lessons heading home wards when I saw this cat laying by the side of the street." "OK wait. I think her leg may be broken. She must have gotten a slight hit by a car or something. I'll take her over to my boss. We're lucky she's still here. I'm sure she'll be able to fix this. Please wait a second okay?" the guy hands the hurt little being over to you and you walk into the back office to bring that fury patient to your boss, Catharine " don't worry, she has been a vet for 12 years'" As you come back the guy still stands there. Now you're able to actually take a closer look at him. He was young, younger than you but not too much. You were 24 now so maybe he was about 20? He was very slim, had semi long messy hair, a little longer in the front and he was wearing some weird baggy pants and carried a guitar on his back. You instantly get reminded of John because of that and look to the floor for a second. "umm... Well thanks. I guess.. I'll go now.." something with him and the way he was talking was extremely awkward but for some reason also really cute. You had to laugh "um... Why are you laughing?" "oh no..its nothing. I think it's just really nice of you rescuing that little cat. Not everyone would have done that." He looks away, and for a second you think you see him blush a bit. "ahhh.. Well no problem.. You know I kind of like cats" "so.. You kind of like cats. That's nice" you swallow another laugh-out-loud. Isntead of just leaving the store the guy just stays there for another second and doesn't say a word. Somehow now you feel uncomfortable and the situation gets more awkward. Wat the hell was going on with that dude? " oh hey... Nice shirt. Radiohead? Amazing. Great taste" the guy points at your shirt and the fact that he seems to like radiohead instantly makes you somehow like him. "they're one of my favourite bands!" Before he can say anything more you both end your conversation because you're cut off by your phone ringing "hello?" "yeh it's Rony here. Any plans for later?" while you're on the phone you just see that by waving you goodbye and leaving the store, smiling through the window - an incredibly cute smile, undeniable - and you wave back. "no, I'm free tonight. What's the plan?" " well me and some friends from work were thinking about some ice skating in the park. You should totally come. It's so much fun. We'll have a little drink at ours before so it's even more fun... And less cold. Are you in? " " uhmmm.. Yeah I mean I'm a California babe. I'm an expert at ice skating haha" "fine see you in a bit" You hang up the phone and say bye to Catherine who put the little cat into a basket and made sure, she'd make it through the night. Just as you want close the door behind you, you find a little note hanging there. Huh? Where exactly did that come from? A messy writing on it said : For a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself Phew, for a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself That's the lyrics to radioheads Karma Police. One of your favourite songs on "Ok computer." You shake your head. That must have been the hero of the day, Mr. CAT SAVIOR. As you turned the note around some very messy small letters said :, ' just one of my fav. Songs :)' You kind of smile into yourself and feel some warm, happy emotion inside of you, something you haven't felt in a long time. You put the note into one of your pockets and head towards your flat. What a weird dude, you think to yourself...and smile a little more.

[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’S  ‘SHAME’ “There isn’t much that gets through…”

© 2019 by James Clark

     With many Bergman films now having thrilled us by their confrontation of distemper and ecstasy, we could conclude that a standoff has reached its outer limits. But we would be far off the mark. Our film today, Shame (1968), has something very new to impart. But it doesn’t come in a straightforward way.

As we’ve often found in these treasures of semi-theatrical drama, the very endings turn out to divulge the marvel, and here again it brings to light our foothold in a slippery terrain. A former musician, Eva, finds herself, with civil war rampant, in a small fishing boat crowded with escapees (including her husband, Jan), where the seas are strewn with corpses. She tells Jan of a dream she’s just had. “I was walking down a very beautiful street. On one side were white houses with flowering arches and pillars. On the other side was a leafy park. Dark green water flowed beneath the trees lining the street. I came to a high wall overgrown with roses. Then an airplane came and set the roses on fire. But it wasn’t all terrible, because it was so beautiful. I looked down into the water and watched the roses burn. I held a baby in my arms. It was our daughter. She snuggled up to me… and I could feel her mouth against my cheek. And the whole time I knew there was something I should remember. Something someone had said. But I’d forgotten what it was…”

Neither ecstasy nor distemper has enveloped her. What that was is the heart of this very strange film—a vision ripping the constraints of not only cinema (the first seconds entail a reel of film shredding), but also theatre and every kind of art. In many ways, this conundrum looks to Bergman’s early film, Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), where physical triumph is a drug and machination and advantage have saturated the landscape. (However, the death march there would be a Rose Bowl Parade beside what’s in store here.) A second ingredient to consider is the aura of goofiness and malignancy being a specialty of the suspense films produced by Alfred Hitchcock. (Hitch, however, would be Violence Lite in light of Shame.) To cast some light upon this virtually incomprehensible phenomenon, we should remember that the term, “shame,” covers many degrees. Mainstream morality is never at a loss to hammer a roster of the “shameful.” Mainstream morality and the reflections of Ingmar Bergman have nothing in common. Maybe someone had suggested to Eva (that name being about the primal) that the crowning shame of world history, a factor reducing social and scientific action to childishness, is the fakery of immortality and its compensatory  assaults in lieu of fully creative power.

Along a trajectory of the pair, in single beds, being woken by an alarm clock—Eva, Hollywood-style (with a Swedish supplement of her nudity), quick to get into action, while Jan remains inert, has trouble finding his slippers and fusses with a wisdom tooth—Jan gives us the other bookend of a dream. He gets going, at last, with, “You know, I had the strangest dream last night.   Know what I dreamed? We were back with the Philharmonic, sitting side-by-side [she being the Concert Master, he being a second fiddle], rehearsing  the 4th Brandenburg Concerto, the largo tempo [slow and dignified style], and everything happening now [the orchestra having been shut down, due to the sporadic deadliness] was behind us. I woke up crying…” Eva’s only response is to wonder if he’s going to shave this morning, in meeting a delivery of two flats of loganberries for the mayor of the town across from the island where now they own and work a small farm. Before they hit the road, Jan has a panic attack. As he huddles by a window, she reasons, “You mustn’t be so sensitive. Try to control yourself. I do.” Tearful Jan replies, “Can’t you ever shut up?” Soon he apologizes, and nothing is right going forward, toward excitements you’ve seen many times before; only, you’ve never seen what this excitement brings your way. On the ferry to the client, they encounter him and his wife, and bourgeois patter clicks in like a nice brunch. “We just went out to check on the summer cottage… We won’t be home today, but Mrs. Almberg should be there… Why don’t we get together for dinner sometime and make some music? I’ve missed our soirees…” Thrilled by the generous transaction by the leading lights’ servant, they visit an antiquarian friend, Fredrick, who also sells wine they can now afford. He’s been drafted and is very unhappy about it; but he counters his anxiety by showing them, “the finest piece I own,” a rococo ceramic music box which his mother left for him. “I’ll never sell it!” Eva and Jan furtively smile at the indulgence, never noticing that the practice of their musical energies have dwindled to music-box proportions. Or, was this regime never more than about correctly following others’ initiatives to secure cozy elegance? While they clamor for wine and chat about civilized overtures, they feel no need (or no hope) to counter the plague of domination on the move. (And yet the essence of music–a carnal action illuminating problematic dynamics and against facile conclusions–invokes a significant rejoinder against the mayhem having its way.) The mayor’s wife had remarked, “My sister was evacuated to a transit camp, and they’re bombed almost daily.” A cut away from the precious music machine reveals a clock face with Hercules struggling to support it. Herculean effort, seemingly not for mortals. Also in view, an old photo of a royal family, prominent by way of mass murder.

The little stopover does allow something else, from out of the forgotten wisdom Eva presumably brushed past, lost forever within her shabby recollection. Fredrick’s homage to his mother’s taste (perhaps deeply felt) does involve, for the wide-awake, the modesty of reaching out to others who may not derive the real deal, but a facsimile from which to be brushed and to constitute a player, of sorts, in the motion of primordial creativity–involving a transaction with the cosmos itself, a transaction of disinterestedness, the antithesis of the savagery having its way and bragging about it. During the early moments of the protagonists’ resembling forgettable movies, Eva nags Jan for failing to repair their radio. Fredrick, asking them, “Do you listen to the radio?” poses an exigency to be fully alert about what the rest of the world is doing. The conscript spoons out, “Yesterday, our side threatened to take the most atrocious measures. And the other side congratulated us on our imminent destruction…” Slipping, it seems, Fredrick calms himself with, “I suspect we needn’t take it too seriously… Taste this [wine]. It’s quite good… Cheers!… When I sit here all alone among my things, I start feeling so miserable. I’m not sure why. [A tug in the dark, like Eva’s forgetfulness.] Maybe because no one would miss me if I were gone.” Jan would have to say, “You’ll be back before you know it.”

Of course, that miasma would presage some kind of downfall. The descent to their disaster here is not at all confined to the register of bemusing coincidence. Back home, there’s an al fresco dinner with that lovely, head-turning wine, comprising new (but dubious) frontiers, ranging from her supposed resolve to take up Italian again (“You have to tell me every night to study”)/ He promising, “I’ll be very strict”); to, “practice our instruments a half hour a day” (Did anyone say, “music?”); to, have a baby (her idea)–in fact three, before she’s 40: “It’s not something one can explain” [another wisp of errant essence, with the addition of his seeing a doctor to discern if during their separation Jan’s promiscuousness may have compromised the plan]. She ramps up   the pressure, by questioning his knowing what love is–“Self-love, you know a lot about that!” He tries, “I’ll be a better man next year, next week! I believe one can change completely if one wants to… I’m not a determinist, you know…” (As she runs amok with the term, she manages to look about 13.) He ends the discussion with, “Let’s not do the dishes, now.” She sails him to bed with the knowing smile, “What should we do instead?” During the chores with the chickens and such, next morning, several deafening air force jets dive close to the yard of invention, and one of the heroes of a parachute drop lends up in a tree close to their property. (Bourgeois plans on hold.)

The fantasy converts have, in the midst of that crude show of shock and awe, commenced to deal with each other and the world on a basis of obliterating every irritant. The sighting of the man in the tree, subsequently dead, elicits sharp opposition. Jan, seeing Eva racing toward the casualty, asks, “Where are you going?” Her response is, “He’ll die hanging there.” He argues, “It could be the enemy…” “You coward!” she cries out, after his holding her back, and her slapping him. “Then go!” he screams; and despite qualms he does want her gone, as she wants him gone. Precious gestures notwithstanding, their patience with each other–requiring sharing of mature objectives–has ended, replaced with sporadic and desperate damage control. Soon he’s fetched his rifle and she, now again an ally (for a bit longer), tells him she’ll phone for an ambulance. Seeing that the invader has died, Jan returns to the house where the skies scream with more planes, more pronounced troubled kinetics. A partisan unit arrives, and the officer asks him if he was the one who shot the sitting duck. (Not then, but soon, Jan becomes a mass murderer.) “I suggest you clear out,” was how the leader of the supposed security force left them. That figure wears a contraption on his head, resembling a helmet of mail, a medieval throwback, bringing the era of jets back to burning witches and invoking Death to give good news, as in Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal (1957). Also prominent in that film are the crusades and the plague.

Car trouble, on the part of the semi-gentle and inept farmers, lands them in the midst of the forces who wield machinery to deadly  effect. The other parachutists of that day are particularly galvanized by the cheap shot; but they also get down to making the best political (machinational) outcome for the world at large. (The preamble had Jan proposing, “I’ll put it in gear, and you push. It’s downhill, anyway.”) One bright aspect of their capture is the flashing of their headlights about to hit what they think is the open road, after they actually repair the vehicle, but only as the enemy arrives to stop their escape. The play of lights, all-round, affords a topspin from out of an execution. But the process to particularly watch is the instance of ugly mobs appointing themselves to crush their like and the unaffiliated. The commander of the aerial unit uses Jan, and especially photogenic Eva, to dish out special insult to those they, the invaders,  love to hate, and contribute to the sense of impossibility of anyone choosing integrity. Jan and Eva, bereft of creative traction, cannot, unlike protagonists and secondary figures in many other Bergman films, carry us to viable, though outnumbered, illumination. Smallish touches–like that flare of light, and the medieval helmet–dimly guide us. But the heavy lifting must entail an incisive renunciation of the mantra of advantage, by which disinterestedness may come to bear.

The clever jumper has brought along a movie camera to bring about a propaganda coup, whereby irresistible Eva is encouraged to put out inane personal facts to be dubbed over by a seeming cri de coeur against the homeland. The klieg light bathing her in the night catches her blonde presence in such a way that she emits an instance of uncanniness which has force, while being entangled in a cheap fraud. After the soldier/ director has enough fodder to swing the trick, he asks Eva about her “political affiliation,” and learns that she doesn’t have one. “Don’t you care what political regime governs you?” the pushy one asks. Though her discernments are shabby, her vague skepticism from out of the world of music gives her some room to move, if she has initiative beyond wine. As the politician turns to Jan, the latter cries out, “I have a weak heart,” and then faints. This prompts the ugly documenter to order, “Keep rolling! Get him passing out.” (This moment being a couplet with the clever and malevolent actor/ prize fighter slaughtering the ringmaster in Sawdust and Tinsel.) The locals then rebound and run the strangers away. And the patriots catch up with the pacifists regarding the bogus hatred to the home team. (In the interim, that same night on the silver screen, they are wakened by a blazing bombardment all around their supposed sanctuary; and their abortive escape finds them operating on empty. Before the shattering of their sleep, Eva agonizes, “It’s good we don’t have kids…”[vapid Jan smoothing over, “We’ll have kids when peace comes”]. “We’ll never have kids,” she ripostes. The bombs scare them, but (Hollywood-style–Hitchcock’s Tippy always immune to those damn birds) they’re spared to provoke us to imagine what real trouble looks like. Eva initiates an evacuation, while Jan holds his head. (This being a stage before that self-sparing protagonist turns out to be a Psycho, for our edification.) Her move is to head for the seaboard–Jan insisting, “as long as you drive;” but before that Jan proposes killing the chickens during the paucity of food. But neither of them has the nerve to slaughter the hens. On their junket, they see many corpses. Eva stops to regard a dead toddler in a farmyard. At this, she realizes there is no leeway to avoid a steady assault of Byzantine madness. (Its impossibility comprises a clue to a never-ventured range of logic.) Once again, her demand, “Pull yourself together,” hasn’t a hope. The surface of their vehicle has become encrusted with the industrial-level detritus, as if an ancient wreck, an ancient poison. Back in their dining room, Jan remarks, skittishly, “It sounds that they’re at the crossroads…” The complainer complains, “I can’t stand it!” And Eva goes to the window that does not constitute a window of opportunity. He suggests hiding in the basement, and she tells him, “I won’t be trapped like a rat!” (Easier said than done.) After a bomb blows open their door, their barnyard becomes fiery but not fiery enough for their plight. (Jan crazily commences to babble about the provenance of his violin, which he might touch one day, for half an hour. And yet, such a seeming cop-out, regarding a soldier/ artisan–serving in the Russian army against Napoleon and his stunted vision of power–and that soldier’s loss of a leg and return to musical machinery to the point of majesty, may have been the coward’s brush with lucidity. From there, he lobbies for a declaration of love from Eva. Do you care for me a little? She, now fully cynical, replies, with no warmth, “Yes, I care for you a little…” He proceeds to have a cramp in his leg. The busy, but fragmentary, day ends with her command from her bed, “Get over here…”

They’re rounded up at a grocery store. Then, along with other suspected traitors, they’re trucked to an elementary school being used as a detention centre. Along with other “intellectuals” en route, the protagonists nearly disappear in the public hubbub of the event. (Their being loaded into the truck is filmed from an abstract distance.) In their case, we eventually come to realize that the mayor, doubling as the last word for military order in this pocket of stress, would have realized from the first that Eva’s declaration of ���longing for liberation” was a crock. But within the sadistic talent pool of amateur or semi-amateur soldiers, intent upon crushing some supposed evil ideology, the opportunity to rough up rather recent and rather odd arrivals gets legs. Those, including the vicar, who were misinformed that the other side (very rich in aircrafts) had won the war, and went on to welcome the neighbors, receive savage beatings. Eva (and Jan), along this current of paranoia, are made to hear her heresies–“We’ve been suppressed for too long, etc.”–and the projectionist relishes spewing “Lights out!” and fondles her breasts in dumping her into a holding room, where a corpse and someone dying from torture are seen. The officer of the division has argued, “How do you explain the fact that paratroopers liquidated every civilian within almost two square miles of you, and spared the two of you?” Her response was, “I don’t understand any of this.” Soon Jan is tossed into the room where she is trying to make some sense of her homeland. (A jailer makes light  of the vicar’s dislocated shoulder. “No tennis for a few weeks.”) Jan’s typical complaints do ring an important bell, namely, Jof, in The Seventh Seal, being beaten up by an ugly mob in the 12th century; and reporting, “They hit me on the head…” Eva notes, “I don’t see anything.” Jof and his wife, Marie, go on to hold the powers of acrobatics and juggling–as hopelessly far from the goons as you can get. And hopelessly far from Jan and Eva. Later, after Jan misbehaves abominably (as we’ll soon set out its timbre), they find themselves in single file on a ridge at twilight, the echo of the Dance of Death, in The Seventh Seal. (The holding room displays multiples of two patterns which the kids had colored-in: a three-leaf clover; and a bull’s-eye.)

Their music associate, the mayor, shows up, in the courtyard, where all the suspects have been herded. He addresses the disappointing by pointing out a figure having been dragged to a stake and covered by a cloth bag. “This man collaborated with the enemies and caused us heavy losses. But the government has pardoned him and commuted his death sentence to life at hard labor. The rest of you will also receive more clemency than you deserve.” The chief, not completely on the same page as the “government,” points his cane, as if effecting a benediction, to indicate those who can go home immediately. He announces, “Some of you will be freed immediately and transported home.” “Transported?” (Just as the execution was to go off unofficially, Eva, now in his office, was to be made a bogus example to dilute the tyrant’s massacre. “I gave orders not to touch you.” Eva replies, “They behaved… almost correctly.”

The mayor, one Jacobi, now  has Eva as his mistress (another event shimmering under the radar). Also down there, Jan has figured that out. Digging potatoes and looking like medieval serfs, they quarrel in such a way you’d think they’d never been exposed to the chance to love music in its dynamics in the form of mortality being also a vital correspondent of the cosmos itself. Jan, fed up with the work, announces he’s going into the house to listen to the radio Jacobi has given them. “You do that,” she sneers. “It’ll be a relief not to see you.” He recalls, “Just the other day you said that it was good we had Jacobi as a friend…” She declares, “I’m going to ask Jacobi to stop coming here. Filip [a friend and source of fresh fish and another loose cannon having put together a gang] says it could make things worse for us.” For the nonce, Jan, implicitly often drunk, goes out of character: “It’s none of Filip’s damn business who comes here!” She, finding transparent his insipid bravado, accuses him of being “such a suck-up” in dealing with both of the men. (Her also being a lover of Filip.) She threatens, “I don’t suck-up!” “Suck-up, suck-up, suck-up,” he disagrees. Eva says, “When peace comes, we’re going our separate ways. It will be heaven to get away from you and your childishness!” He sits down beside her and apologizes. “You say that, but you don’t mean it. The words just fall out of your mouth,” she pursues her hopeful attack. Root-systems shot, if ever they seriously functioned. Hence, Jan’s, “Can we be friends?” And her rush to embrace him. Jacobi knocks (now a daily drug). She opens the door and, to his, “Am I causing trouble?” she assures him, “Not at all.” “Jan!” he yells, “Where the hell are you?” [he had been hiding]. The Big Daddy of the North brings to him the score of Dvorak’s Trio in E flat Major. “An uncle left it to me” [a bid for a placid musicale?] To Eva he gives a ring, “an old family heirloom.” “Eva, talk to me… Don’t be sad,” he pleads. She eventually tolerates his embrace (as with Jan, not long ago), as the trio proceeds to get drunk on something strong. Before Jan collapses on the table, Eva suggests he not come anymore. He tells them, “I happen to like you two… I could have sent you to a labor camp… Jan Rosenberg, are you afraid? Are you an artist or a mouse?” “Oh, I’m a mouse,” he replies, in a non-mouse register. At that, Jacobi smashes his cane on the table. He goes on, unpleasantly, “The sacred freedom of art. The sacred gutlessness of art…” After a long and stressful pause, he goes out to take a piss. Eva reasons, “God, I wish I could sober up!” “We have to get rid of him,” the unimpressive farmer declares. (Soon we’ll see that the mild-mannered hanger-on has a reservoir hitherto hidden. As with his adversaries, Jan proceeds to short-circuit the phenomenon of force.) Before we see Jacobi, we hear him announcing, “The woods are full of people”–people following Filip’s lead. “I’d often wondered what they’d do to me. They have no reason to torture me. I have no secret information… But perhaps they just feel like making me suffer… Don’t worry, I’m just kidding. This part of the island has been pacified” [wiped out by the enemy]. (Fredrick had used a similar pacifier.) With Jan dead to the world, the militant mayor turns, sadly late, to introduce a new incisiveness with Eva. “Can you feel that I’m here? Touch my eyes. Can you feel who I am?” “No,” is her answer; and pragmatic Marie comes by, from the 12th century, by way of, The Seventh Seal. Jacobi keeps trucking, “It’s odd, you see. I’ve only felt close to others a few times… It’s not something you can talk about. There’s nothing to say. Nowhere to hide. No excuses. No evasions…” (An oracle, in the oddest way, within an extended work springing with rare direction.) He concludes with, “Just great guilt, great pain and great fear… Damn, it’s cold!” Prosaic Eva wants to shoo him out. He, though, takes her to the bedroom and gives her his life’s savings. (More instinctive discernment appears in his feeling the change in the weather hurting his lame leg. Power of a different species.) In face of Eva’s adamant hostility he perseveres with stories of his grandson and the death of his mother–each vignette endeavoring to open a new world. “There isn’t much that gets through…”

The preamble of his familiar lovemaking with her in the greenhouse posits a maelstrom of nonsense in both of them. He divulges that he accepted his leadership because he was afraid of going to the front. She jangles drunkenly, “I’ll never be unfaithful to Jan. Sometimes it frightens me to think about it. So I don’t.” Jan wakes up and drinks more firewater. He rushes to the bedroom, sees the wad of money and puts it in his back pocket. (A Hitchcock touch, for a shredding purchase upon the cosmos per se. Implying a whole different [mundane, advantage-drunkenness] direction of cogency.) He holds his head. He calls out, “Eva!” Church bells ring. He sees them emerging from the tryst. He experiences a silvery atmosphere, recalling Alma’s intensities, in Sawdust and Tinsel. He cringes in the dark stairwell. Eva fetches Jacobi’s cane, and then he leaves. She sees Jan crying, and tells him, “Cry if you think it will help.” As she prepares a pot of tea, that throng noted in the woods materializes as Filip’s rebels apprehending Jacobi and demanding all of his money to finance a stand against the expensive armament of a superior (and yet pathetic) force. Filip and Jacobi enter the house (at which Jan retreats to a nook). Jacobi explains, “Filip says I can buy my freedom because their organization needs cash. So, I’m asking you, dear Eva. Lend me the money I gave you.” “Jan has it,” she tells him, from out of a precinct of careless contempt. Jan, now with a coward’s advantage, declares, “I don’t know anything about money…” Eva, in shock, sees a hard setback, in the making for many years. Thus ensues a futile search, the removal of her recent present, and Filip’s commanding Jan (all now in the yard) to shoot Jacobi. The troopers proceed to trash the house in the mode of a tornado (depths going nowhere), the end of the farmers’ supposed haven in the wake of a feeble grasp of music. Jan cradles his violin of a noble craftsman, while soldiers slaughter the chickens. The house is firebombed. On the first wave of his molten assignment he aims the handgun, and then throws the weapon to the ground. But the juggernaut of humiliation clicks in and he discharges several volleys into a Jacobi who screams and crawls under a wagon where the execution continues. Eva leans upon what’s left of a wall.

The soldiers leave and the soldiering of Jan and Eva crashes into the realm of metaphor. Eva asks where he hid it. Jan tells her it was in his back pocket. (Amateurs? Hollywood? Too much, to continue in that vein?) Next morning they leave their retreat and stage a retreat to death. Still unconvinced that Jan wasn’t a pushover, she demands, “Why didn’t you hand over the money?” His shot is, “They’d have shot him anyway.” Her feeble, “That’s not true,” is followed by a roar of crying. “Stop it! he commands. Then he smashes her face, sending her to the ground. (An itinerant not wise enough to beware of a killer, as in Sawdust and Tinsel.) Now it is she who covers her face with her hands. Along a war-blasted road, he pushing their effects in a wagon, Jan marches jauntily and menacingly. She is slouched over and far behind him. She falls down, being heavily disoriented. He doesn’t miss a beat. (Killing becomes him.) She catches up. At a charred farm, someone shoots in their direction, in fact an adolescent in uniform who has deserted in seeing his war not ending happily–that latter term seeming hard to place for a youngster with a mind of his own. Jan claims to be peaceful. Eva asks, “Are you hungry? We’ll give you food…” He’s in another greenhouse–another point of transport, another coincidence stemming from a Mad Hatter. She asks, “Did you hurt your hand?”/ “A dog bit me” [He’s lucky]. “Shall I have a look? I’ll bandage it up… I’ll get you something to eat…” He’s not hungry–the atmosphere sucking up all taste. Jan, quickly getting past the boy’s name (Johan; music), wants the location of “Hammass” (where a boat, for hire, plies). Over tea, they learn that the boy hasn’t slept for days. His alert having flagged in the vicinity of Eva, Jan strikes like a rattler. Now holding the gun, he hunts the stranger along the coastal path, as if the kid were a rabbit. And, with Eva onscreen, the fatal shots come very easily to the killer. Her eyes are beyond horror.  They trudge to the port and they coincide with the Dance of Death on a ridge not without powerful beauty they can’t read. Jan’s shapeless (Death) cap goes medieval. The prime of the neighborhood has convened. On embarkation, fine hors d’oeuvres are distributed. Jan seems to be seasick. and thereby he doesn’t share the rowing. But he hops to it in using an oar to push away the hundreds of corpses in the still water, comprising another link of lostness. In the same vein of this vision of absolute dead-end, the skipper quietly steps overboard, joining the drowned. Trouble in Paradise. Jan covers his face. There is beauty in the texture of the harsh sea. And then Eva musters her feel-good poem, with its forgotten theme.

That tincture of another direction holds for us a new twist, in lieu of very poor sports: one is obliged to generously shore up and celebrate little, and maybe big, overtures.

[lothiriel84]

Of love, bears, and icicles

Or that one time I went to London to see The Mighty Fin January Christmas show. 

Hello there, my hypothetical reader. I’m taking a short break from writing Sherlock (and Time Spanner) fanfic in order to give you the account of my latest (but hopefully not last ever) trip to the UK. You know the account no one asked for? Yeah, that one. 

First things first, I’m ever so grateful that this year’s - well, last year’s, theoretically - Mighty Fin show was in January rather than December. There was no way I would have been able to attend in December, but the one upside of being currently unemployed is that I don’t have to stress about my supervisors forbidding me from taking time off when I most need it (read: when there’s a show I desperately want to attend in the UK).

Anyways. January is probably not the best time of the year when it comes to travelling. I was aware of that, of course, but I still wanted to try - both because of the Mighty Fin show, and the fact that I’m not so sure how free to travel I’m going to be once I actually go ahead and ask for unemployment benefits. (Also, Brexit. But whatevers.)

As it turned out, England was for once a tiny bit warmer than Italy. (And by warmer, I mean slightly-less-freezing, obviously.) The rain definitely didn’t help, but as the less unastute of you might have divined (yeah, this is in fact a Cabin Pressure reference, no need to get offended) it was after all January, and seriously, I think I’ve been exceedingly lucky on all my previous trips to the UK as far as the weather is concerned. (Well, to be fair I’ve been lucky about too many things too count when it comes to each and every one of my trips, but I do believe I have already dwelt on many of those aspects in my previous posts.)

I’ve been to London so many times I’m kind of running out of ideas about what to do on a rainy day. My first day in town was spent between wandering a bit around the Gherkin, then seeking refuge into the Museum of London (which I had already visited, in point of fact). In the end I was only too glad when I could finally check in to my hotel room and happily pay for the wifi in order to watch episode 2 of Sherlock. (Which I believe I watched two more times in the following days. Yeah, I know.)

The next day I very cleverly accidentally decided to go to Dorset. (I blame this entirely on John Finnemore posting a picture of somewhere in Dorset on Twitter, and I’m most glad that he did because that was an excellent idea even for a day trip.) So I took a train to Wool, and then spent quite some time trying to figure out how to reach Durdle Door; I had googled pictures of the beautiful limestone arch on the coast there, and I was really looking forward to see it. 

Bless the bus driver, he sounded a bit concerned when he repeatedly asked me if I was aware that there wasn’t going to be a bus for the return journey; but I had kind of figured out I would somehow find a way to get back to Wool, so I happily walked the distance from the bus stop to the coast, then scrambled my way down not one, but two distinct flights of muddy, slippery steps in order to get a better view of both sides of the arch. (And quite miraculously I didn’t fall or slip, not even once, though I definitely got mud on my shoes and trousers.)

You know, there is quite something about standing on a pebble beach listening to the waves gently lapping at the shore. And that particular corner of the Jurassic Coast is quite stunning, as you can see for yourself.

In the end I had to walk for over an hour along a narrow country road at nightfall in order to reach the nearest village where I dearly hoped I could get a bus back to Wool. Luckily I somehow managed to do that in spite of the fact that my phone ran out of battery when I was nearly there, and I had neither a map nor a torch with me. 

(I actually had my old phone with me as well, but as it turns out it’s not good for much except maybe listening to the radio - though it took me approximately three quarters of an hour to finally tune in to Radio 4 on the train back to London, so once more thank goodness for the BBC iPlayer.)

On Wednesday I had a bit of a wander in Hampstead Heath, though it was quite muddy and windy, especially on Parliament Hill. In the evening I went to the dress rehearsal for A Midwinter Night’s Dream, which I immediately loved - I had never been to a Mighty Fin show before, though I’ve listened to the songs from a few of them, and I’m now the proud owner of three (soon to be - whatever the total number is, hopefully). Greg and Maddi were there too, and I kind of followed them when they went to say hi to John after the show; but I was quite tired and completely out of ideas as to what I could actually say to John, so I’m not even sure I managed to greet him back when he finally spotted me as I was hiding behind someone else. I’m really sorry Mr Finnemore - I’m not rude, just very awkward, I promise.

I had half a mind to go to Hastings the following day, but I had to put that off given how the weather forecast promised a snowstorm for the day (though in the end it mainly just rained in London). I would have liked to visit the London Aquarium for Sherlock-related reasons, but tickets were far too expensive for my tastes; so I took a bit of a walk along the Thames in the rain, stood for a while on the Vauxhall Bridge for reasons (though if I have to be honest I was far more impressed with the MI6 building that stands nearby), and then sought refuge in the Museum of London Docklands mainly because I deemed I had got enough rain on my coat and shoes for the day. (That, and the DLR. Don’t tell the Train Driver though.)

On Friday I decided that the weather was good enough for a trip to Hastings, and so it was in spite of a little snow we encountered on the train journey. (And by ‘we’ I mean us people on the train, which I somehow find funny now that I’ve listened to the St Ives sketch from JFSP - which I had actually had the privilege to see at one of the tryouts last Autumn, but there you go.)

It was a bit windy in Hastings, and most definitely cold - someone might have spotted me wandering along the shore in my winter coat, hat, scarf, and gloves - but otherwise a lovely day, and apparently I have a soft spot for pebble beaches anyway. Sadly the gate to the castle was locked; but there was quite a lovely view from up there, and the old part of the town is nice too. 

On Saturday I took a bit of a wander around Notting Hill (mainly Portobello Market) and then Little Venice, which I had quite liked on a previous visit. In the evening I had tickets for my second viewing of A Midwinter Night’s Dream, which was brilliant for more than one reason, and I will now explain if you bear with me. (You see, John played a bear in the musical, so I simply had to make a joke about that. Arthur Shappey would definitely - and very much enthusiastically - approve of this, so you definitely have to bear with me even if you don’t want to.)

What was I saying? Ah, The Mighty Fin, yes. I loved the show just as much as I had done the first time around; it’s a beautiful retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, centred on the theme of the different kinds of love and how you most definitely shouldn’t try and force someone to love you, Fairy King or not. 

(’Trapped by a man / That’s my tragedy / Or was my tragedy / It ends today’, that’s how a line from one of the many brilliant songs went - bless Robbie Hudson and Susannah Pearse who created such a thing of beauty.)

All the actors were really good, and this time around John’s part was a bit longer than it had been in the dress rehearsal, and had an even more distinct Since You Ask Me feel to it. (When I went to ask him after the show John confirmed he had in fact written his own part, and the reason why it was shorter at the dress rehearsal was that he hadn’t finished writing it back then. Bless him.)

Oh, and one more brilliant thing, though strictly speaking it’s not entirely about the show. Simon was among the audience this time around, and I think I have already mentioned how much better that makes anything you might be watching. (I swear the man has the best laugh ever. You can’t possibly hear it and not feel like laughing yourself.)

I had actually spotted him before the show, and I was most definitely hoping I would maybe get to talk to him at the end of the play. Well, as it turned out he kind of recognised me as someone who had probably bothered him before, for he was the one who said hi to me as he walked past where I was standing during the interval, offered me a hug, and then had to listen as I rambled on about how much I loved the pilot for Time Spanner. He said they will probably try crowdfunding if the sitcom doesn’t get commissioned (seriously though, I hope the BBC knows better than that), so I now know what I should save my money for. 

(And, um, I should have probably refrained from walking back in when I was already halfway through the door after the show, and awkwardly waving Simon goodbye. But I’m not even sure if and when I’ll be able to go back to the UK, and - oh well, never mind. I’m not going to dwell on Ms Mayhem in this post, thank you very much.)

Sunday was my last day in London, and given that the weather was not very much on my side, I spent some time in Greenwich Market, had some amazing fish and chips for lunch, and a bit of a stroll through Greenwich Park at dusk. As it turned out, by complete coincidence (I know, I know, Mycroft, no need to expand on that) my trip actually included the day when the Sherlock series 4 finale aired, so in the end I made up my mind and booked a ticket so that I could go and watch it on the big screen. 

(To be honest I was really confused - and more than a little worse for the wear from an emotional point of view - when the final credits rolled on to the screen. I watched it all over again on my phone once I was back to my hotel room, but I think I only decided I actually quite liked it after watching it a third time back at home.)

And, yes, I guess we’ve come to the end of the road. I don’t know how or when, but I promise I will try and go back there at some point, no matter what. Dear UK, you might not return the feeling, but it’s my choice whether or not to keep doing what I love. Or trying to, at the very least.