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dickens-daily · 6 days ago

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CHAPTER V—SEVEN DIALS

We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had not immortalised Seven Dials, Seven Dials would have immortalised itself. Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry—first effusions, and last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnach and of Pitts—names that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and capital punishment be unknown!

Look at the construction of the place. The Gordian knot was all very well in its way: so was the maze of Hampton Court: so is the maze at the Beulah Spa: so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the difficulty of getting one on, was only to be equalled by the apparent impossibility of ever getting it off again. But what involutions can compare with those of Seven Dials? Where is there such another maze of streets, courts, lanes, and alleys? Where such a pure mixture of Englishmen and Irishmen, as in this complicated part of London? We boldly aver that we doubt the veracity of the legend to which we have adverted. We can suppose a man rash enough to inquire at random—at a house with lodgers too—for a Mr. Thompson, with all but the certainty before his eyes, of finding at least two or three Thompsons in any house of moderate dimensions; but a Frenchman—a Frenchman in Seven Dials! Pooh! He was an Irishman. Tom King’s education had been neglected in his infancy, and as he couldn’t understand half the man said, he took it for granted he was talking French.

The stranger who finds himself in ‘The Dials’ for the first time, and stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages, uncertain which to take, will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets and courts dart in all directions, until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which hangs over the house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain and confined; and lounging at every corner, as if they came there to take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found its way so far, but is too much exhausted already, to be enabled to force itself into the narrow alleys around, are groups of people, whose appearance and dwellings would fill any mind but a regular Londoner’s with astonishment.

On one side, a little crowd has collected round a couple of ladies, who having imbibed the contents of various ‘three-outs’ of gin and bitters in the course of the morning, have at length differed on some point of domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling the quarrel satisfactorily, by an appeal to blows, greatly to the interest of other ladies who live in the same house, and tenements adjoining, and who are all partisans on one side or other.

‘Vy don’t you pitch into her, Sarah?’ exclaims one half-dressed matron, by way of encouragement. ‘Vy don’t you? if my ’usband had treated her with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I’d tear her precious eyes out—a wixen!’

‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ inquires another old woman, who has just bustled up to the spot.

‘Matter!’ replies the first speaker, talking at the obnoxious combatant, ‘matter! Here’s poor dear Mrs. Sulliwin, as has five blessed children of her own, can’t go out a charing for one arternoon, but what hussies must be a comin’, and ’ticing avay her oun’ ’usband, as she’s been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the certificate ven I vas a drinkin’ a cup o’ tea vith her, only the werry last blessed Ven’sday as ever was sent. I ’appen’d to say promiscuously, “Mrs. Sulliwin,” says I—’

‘What do you mean by hussies?’ interrupts a champion of the other party, who has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a branch fight on her own account (‘Hooroar,’ ejaculates a pot-boy in parenthesis, ‘put the kye-bosk on her, Mary!’), ‘What do you mean by hussies?’ reiterates the champion.

‘Niver mind,’ replies the opposition expressively, ‘niver mind; you go home, and, ven you’re quite sober, mend your stockings.’

This somewhat personal allusion, not only to the lady’s habits of intemperance, but also to the state of her wardrobe, rouses her utmost ire, and she accordingly complies with the urgent request of the bystanders to ‘pitch in,’ with considerable alacrity. The scuffle became general, and terminates, in minor play-bill phraseology, with ‘arrival of the policemen, interior of the station-house, and impressive dénouement.’

In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops and squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open space has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless perseverance. It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a regular bricklayer’s labourer take any other recreation, fighting excepted. Pass through St. Giles’s in the evening of a week-day, there they are in their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday morning: there they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, Blucher boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts. The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean against a post all day!

The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance each one bears to its neighbour, by no means tends to decrease the bewilderment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through ‘the Dials’ finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, straggling houses, with now and then an unexpected court composed of buildings as ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in the kennels. Here and there, a little dark chandler’s shop, with a cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance of a customer, or betray the presence of some young gentleman in whom a passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age: others, as if for support, against some handsome lofty building, which usurps the place of a low dingy public-house; long rows of broken and patched windows expose plants that may have flourished when ‘the Dials’ were built, in vessels as dirty as ‘the Dials’ themselves; and shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one might fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever come back again. Brokers’ shops, which would seem to have been established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with announcements of day-schools, penny theatres, petition-writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the ‘still life’ of the subject; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments.

If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with either is little calculated to alter one’s first impression. Every room has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious dispensation which causes a country curate to ‘increase and multiply’ most marvellously, generally the head of a numerous family.

The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked ‘jemmy’ line, or the fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a floating capital of eighteen-pence or thereabouts: and he and his family live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it. Then there is an Irish labourer and his family in the back kitchen, and a jobbing man—carpet-beater and so forth—with his family in the front one. In the front one-pair, there’s another man with another wife and family, and in the back one-pair, there’s ‘a young ’oman as takes in tambour-work, and dresses quite genteel,’ who talks a good deal about ‘my friend,’ and can’t ‘a-bear anything low.’ The second floor front, and the rest of the lodgers, are just a second edition of the people below, except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has his half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-shop next door but one, which boasts a little front den called a coffee-room, with a fireplace, over which is an inscription, politely requesting that, ‘to prevent mistakes,’ customers will ‘please to pay on delivery.’ The shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery, but as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to buy anything beyond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha’porths of ink, his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author; and rumours are current in the Dials, that he writes poems for Mr. Warren.

Now anybody who passed through the Dials on a hot summer’s evening, and saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be apt to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive set of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined. Alas! the man in the shop ill-treats his family; the carpet-beater extends his professional pursuits to his wife; the one-pair front has an undying feud with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-pair front persisting in dancing over his (the one-pair front’s) head, when he and his family have retired for the night; the two-pair back will interfere with the front kitchen’s children; the Irishman comes home drunk every other night, and attacks everybody; and the one-pair back screams at everything. Animosities spring up between floor and floor; the very cellar asserts his equality. Mrs. A. ‘smacks’ Mrs. B.’s child for ‘making faces.’ Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.’s child for ‘calling names.’ The husbands are embroiled—the quarrel becomes general—an assault is the consequence, and a police-officer the result.

#sketches by boz #sbb #charles dickens

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red-riding-wood · 2 years ago

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Okay, this may be a little disjointed, but bear with me. I have a lot to say about this piece! "Her words tore through him like a bayonet," and "numbing his face, not quite numbing his heart", and "her ribs ached with the force of sorrow" are just examples of the visceral writing and the angst in this that I adore.

I seriously love your descriptions so much. When you were describing the reader, how the light only dared touch her, that was another one of my favourites.

“You have no room in your life for anyone’s interests but your own, Thomas Shelby." This line was a standout because I can definitely see someone who Tommy cares about/vice versa saying that to him.

YOU WRITE TOMMY SO, SO WELL. The scene with the Irishmen was brilliantly played and was so in character for Tommy. In fact, everything in this is written flawlessly in character for him.

You have such an evocative way of writing, and in the last couple scenes, the angst was beautifully written. (If you couldn't tell, I love me some angst.) I particularly liked the metaphor of him killing her the day he didn't say he loved her and him describing the moment when he realised he did.

Beautiful piece. Hats off to you.

Hi there Rosie! Welcome again!! 😊😊 I apologize in advance for the fact that this request may not be the best…I’m not good at thinking them up — but I wanted to send one in, so here goes…

Would you be able to write a Tommy Shelby x Reader where Tommy and reader were previously in a relationship but separated for some reason (I can’t think of one atm so I’ll leave that up to you) but then he crosses paths with her some time down the road, when he least expects to, and is suddenly sidetracked by her again…like maybe he was about to do some business but sees her and is completely distracted. And then he does whatever he can to talk to her again. …. It’s up to you whether you want to go full angst or sprinkle in some fluff at the end.

I hope this made sense…thanks so much in advance if you choose to write the story!! ❤️

Home ~ Tommy Shelby x Reader

Warnings: Language, Mentions of violence, Angst with a happy ending

Word Count: 7,872

Request for: @runnning-outof-time

A/N: So this story ran away with me a bit... I absolutely loved writing this request and really wish I didn't have to work so I could've finsihed it sooner. I hope this story does justice to what you had in mind! If you read this fic, let me know what you think! I'm excited to upload more soon. Enjoy x

The shop was quiet today. Race day wasn’t for another week and most factories didn’t pay their worker’s wages until tomorrow, so most men were scrounging up their last few pennies to put food on the table before they could crowd the betting shop. It was all for the best, really; Tommy was in a frightfully awful mood, clattering about his office, ripping desk drawers and cabinet doors open as if the wood had personally offended him.

“Where the fuck is this fucking diary?” He muttered to himself, an unlit cigarette hanging forgotten between his lips. Stumbling over his desk chair, he cursed at whichever higher power was listening for testing him so harshly today. As he fumbled with his final drawer, the last iota of patience he had left drained out of him, and he forced the handle so hard that the entire drawer came out of the cabinet and crashed to the floor with a near deafening thud. Tommy flinched as the noise echoed around in his head, briefly taken to a place better forgotten, distant explosions, distant death. He pushed away the burning behind his eyes and bent to collect the various papers scattered around the floor.

They were mostly old contracts and accounting bills, permanently wrinkled, ink faded by the passage of the years, but one thing Tommy didn’t expect was peeking out from under a pile of old letters. A photograph, a reminder of someone he all too often tried to push away, just like every other painful memory. He staggered back a little, struck by this sudden resurgence of his past love, struck by this sadness curling around his lungs.

Tommy clasped the photograph in one hand, her eyes staring unwaveringly back at him. He remembered when she gave him the picture; she had tucked it into the pocket of his coat just before he left for France, her hands softly trembling, eyes glassy with tears. Tommy slept with it under his pillow every night during the war. Sometimes she was the only reason he fought for another day, the only thing that could bring him back to his feet from the abyss of crippling fear.

He was so angry all of a sudden, kicking the wooden drawer across the room just to feel the ache of his foot, just for the satisfaction when it hit the wall and splintered apart. Just so he could distract himself from the guilt rising through his body like a sickness.

“Fuck!” He roared into the silence.

Tommy’s fingers twitched for a moment, immediately craving to tear the photo into a thousand shreds, but he couldn’t do it to her - he almost felt like it would hurt her now if he did. He was too ashamed to look back at her beautiful face as he folded the picture away, just like he couldn’t look at her when she left.

All it took was one threat against her. One far too many. Tommy closed his eyes and thought of her, the soft smiles she gave only to him, her melodic laugh, the way she lit up every dark corner of his life. There would be no reason for him to keep living if he robbed the world of that brightness, could never live with himself if he didn’t keep her safe from his enemies. So Tommy convinced himself it was better to push her away than to ever see her dead because of him. He could make her hate him if he had to, anything to get her as far removed as possible. “You’re just not enough for me anymore, Y/n,” He said, aiming for nonchalance though his voice cracked on her name.She recoiled away from Tommy like he had slapped her, eyes stinging with tears as she turned her back to him, embarrassed.“I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve proven to me what everybody always told me was true,” She spoke in a watery voice, tearful yet calm, but Tommy almost wished you’d scream at him, anything was better than this broken girl in front of him. “You have no room in your life for anyone’s interests but your own, Thomas Shelby. You knew I’d loved you from the moment we met, and yet you strung me along anyway. I knew exactly what you were capable of, but I never saw such cruelty in you.” Y/n finished her sentence looking Tommy in the eyes, fierce in her grief, “If you say you don’t love me, I swear you’ll never see me again.” Her words tore through him like a bayonet, killing a part of his soul he didn’t know was still alive. He refused to meet her gaze, ashamed of what he might see reflected in her eyes. He didn’t speak for a beat too long, not trusting that the truth of his feelings for Y/n might come tumbling out of his mouth like a traitorous avalanche. “I understand, Tommy,” Were her final words to him, spoken so tenderly that it almost comforted Tommy, it reminded him of the softness of his mother’s voice when she’d hushed him to sleep as a child, he swallowed down the lump in his throat, fighting to keep his face vacant.Y/n left Tommy standing on his own, her perfume lingering just in front of his face, fogging up his brain with all the loving words he wished so desperately he could say to her. Tommy’s chest heaved with the effort it took to keep his legs from darting out after her and begging her to stay. He cursed his ambition, cursed himself for breaking her heart, cursed himself for driving her away. He cursed everything he could for hoping she’d stay away from him forever.

~~~

Two days after he’d rediscovered Y/n’s photograph, Tommy found himself in the Garrison meeting two Irishmen over some headache about a fight. The air was a little stale in the snug, old alcohol soaked into the fabric of the couches and cigarette smoke absorbed by the walls.

“Thomas Shelby,” The greeting hung stagnant in the room, Tommy not wanting to humour the men more than necessary.

Tommy seated himself at the table, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he did so, exuding class from every fibre of his clothing.

“So, what seems to be the issue?” Tommy ventured, knowing full well why they wanted an audience.

“One of your men attacked one of ours. All we’re asking for is fair recompense,” one man gurgled through his mouthful of whiskey.

Tommy bit his tongue, dying to praise the Irishman for knowing such a long word, but he kept his little joke to himself, lips turned up in a smirk, “And why would I take responsibility for a street brawl I had nothing to do with?” Tommy asked, bored with the conversation.

“There’s only one gang reckless enough to employ stupid little feckers who wave around their razor-tipped hats like they’re trophies. Am I wrong in assuming you take responsibility for those stupid fucks?” The other man drawled, clearly a few more glasses deep than Tommy.

Tommy leaned forward in his seat, taking the bottle of whiskey from in front of the men and pouring himself a glass, having had his fill of them before he’d even sat down.

“Now, listen, gentlemen, you and I both know that my men don’t fight unprovoked. We also know that the Peaky Blinders have previously forgiven you a little misstep when one of your men tried to take another man’s wife against her will. A man on my territory and on my payroll. It wouldn’t take much for me to find out exactly why one of my men attacked yours and dissolve this little peace treaty,” Tommy rasped, his voice dropped low to threaten the men sat across from him.

“We still demand you make this right. We hear you Shelbys are rolling in the money nowadays,” The glint in their eyes told Tommy they were more moronic than he’d first thought. They’d shown their hand far too soon and shown they couldn’t keep up with Tommy’s intellect.

“So money’s what you want, ey?” Tommy smirked. “Tell you what. Here’s the first fucking instalment,” Tommy reached into his breast pocket and pulled out five pounds, throwing it onto the table in front of the men, “That’s nothing to me, as I’m sure you’re aware. Then for the next instalment, you’ll get your fair recompense in the form of a bullet each, right through both your heads.” Tommy makes an exaggerated and obvious gesture of stretching, showing the Irishmen a glimpse of the revolver strapped to his body holster, enjoying the way it made them squirm.

“My men outnumber your men by four to one. If I catch sight of a single one of you in my territory again, your little gang will go extinct. You can keep the five pound, buy your man a nice new white shirt and hope it inspires him to fight better, keep it clean this time round. Go on, fuck off,” Tommy gestures to the door with the cigarette he was in the midst of lighting, following the scared bodies as they scurried away, their metaphorical tails between their legs.

Tommy took a long drag from his cigarette and sighed out the smoke, closing his eyes to bring himself out of the mood those Irish had put him in. He knocked back another shot of whiskey, the satisfying burn distracting him for a brief moment.

Then he heard it. A laugh, high and lilting like birdsong. A laugh he knew too well. He opened his eyes, his immediate thought that he’d drifted off briefly and was dreaming. He strained his ears, searching for the laughter again when it floated into the snug, tempting him out of his seat.

He was opening the door before he even had a chance to tell himself to run the other way. Then his eyes fell upon her. Y/n was like an apparition, the way the last dregs of the afternoon sun filtered through the cloudy windows and bathed her in an ethereal glow, the light daring to touch only her, just like how she appeared to him in dreams. Y/n was stood at the bar, sipping a clear drink and wincing slightly at the taste after every mouthful. Rum, if Tommy remembered her preference correctly. He smiled despite his shock; she still had to force herself to drink it. She was chatting happily to a girl he didn’t know, a girl who was probably good looking when on her own, but who’s appearance was overshadowed in every possible way when placed next to such a beauty.

Despite the three years that had passed between them, Tommy noted that Y/n hadn’t changed too much. Her hair was a little darker, her features had become sharper, the softness of her youth having departed. Tommy couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, so familiar yet so unknown to him. The Y/n that left him was a girl, all wide grins and excitement. The Y/n he saw now had become a woman in her own right, she held her head a little higher, she kept her smiles demure. Tommy’s chest ached a little, he wondered when she changed into the woman who stood at the bar, wondered whether she was forced to leave her youth behind, wondered whether he could’ve protected that innocence if he’d have stayed with her.

Somewhere next to him, some drunkard knocked a glass to the floor, the sound of shattering glass drawing everyone’s eyes. Y/n’s gaze immediately locked with his.

Tommy was rooted to the spot, feeling like the little boy who’d been caught eating sweets just before dinner time. He tried his best to regain control over himself and wandered over to the bar as nonchalantly as possible.

“Thomas,” Y/n greeted simply, Tommy silently thanking her for opening the conversation for him. The way she looked at him felt undressing, her eyes were not unkind but she obviously wasn’t as affected by the meeting as Tommy.

Tommy’s pride was a little wounded by her indifference, he hated that he was so nervous around her when she couldn’t seem more unbothered.

“Y/n,” Tommy replied, “You look good,” Such an understatement seemed like a crime, but he didn’t think he could find the right words to describe how she’d floored him with one look.

“Thank you,” She smiled softly at him, oozing class. Tommy’s legs felt a little unstable as she weakened him with that smile. He cleared his throat to attempt an even tone, “So where have you been?”

The friend she was chatting with whispered something in Y/n’s ear before wandering over to a table, leaving the two alone. She knocked back the rest of her drink and Tommy couldn’t help but follow the way she tipped her head back, eyes trailing her exposed throat as she swallowed. She placed the glass back on the bar silently, “London,” She answered finally.

Tommy supposed that London made the most sense, given Y/n’s drive for adventure, he could see why the big city would attract her. Tommy thought that maybe he should leave it at that, her noncommital answers should have been enough of a clue that she didn’t want to talk, but his entire being was desperate for the encounter not to end so soon.

“So what are you doing back?” Tommy continued when the silence stretched on, distantly remembering the promise she made last time they spoke.

“I’m staying here for a while. For a friend’s wedding,” She clarified.

“I see,” Tommy replied, unsure what to say on the matter.

The silence drew on once again, such an unfamiliar feeling between the two. Tommy remembered the way they used to laugh, how Y/n’s lips were always curled up slightly at the corners, but looking at her solemn face now, he wondered if she had anyone who made her happy like he had.

Tommy was abruptly hit by the emptiness in his chest, the space Y/n left when she was gone having never been filled. He wanted to take her hand and talk about everything like they used to, longed to see her grin like she did three years ago, wanted to mend the heart he’d broken.

“Will you join me in the snug for another drink?” Tommy ventured, watching her eyes intently, hoping he could see the cogs turning in her brain.

She smiled that soft smile again, with a warmth he didn’t deserve, wounding him. She reached out her delicate hand and cupped his cheek, Tommy couldn’t help the way his eyes fluttered closed. He had no idea that he’d missed her touch so greatly. Y/n brushed her thumb across his cheek gently.

“I think you and I both know that that’s a bad idea,” She replied, voice barely above a whisper.

Tommy fought hard to keep the disappointment out of his eyes when he finally brought himself to look at her again. Her hand lingered on his cheek for a moment, and Tommy wanted to run, push her away, fall into her arms all at once.

Y/n’s eyes pierced him, as if searching for something, then she let her hand drop back to her side, “Goodnight, Tommy,” was all she said as she went to rejoin her friend.

Tommy felt winded like she’d punched him. Seeing her again was such a sweet torture, knowing that she’d survived well enough without him should’ve been a welcome thought, but the overwhelming feeling was jealousy and sadness that others got to see her grow up, bitterness that it was his decision to drive her away and yet he wanted her back so badly.

Tommy spent the rest of the evening stewing and drinking, trying hard not to show any expression. All the while his eyes kept drawing to Y/n like a compass needle drawn to the North, eyes studying her face, trying to find his answers there. Not once did she look back at him. He deserved her ignorance.

Tommy suddenly felt like he’d over stayed his welcome in his own pub, so he drained his whiskey and left. The icy rain lashed the gravel streets on his way home. Numbing his face, not quite numbing his heart.

~~~

Y/n walked home alone from the Garrison that night, grateful that the rain had ceased, yet wishing there was something to distract her from thoughts of Tommy. Sadness weighed heavily on her chest as she thought of what could’ve been between them by now. Marriage? A family? Every time she blinked, she saw blue eyes staring back at her. Small Heath invaded every one of her senses, the familiar smell of coal fire burning her lungs, distant shouting and car engines settling in her ears; they were odd things to be comforted by.

She finally arrived at the lodging house she was staying at and let herself into her room, the sudden silence oppressive. With nothing else to occupy her mind, she let out the shuddering breath she’d been holding all night, and with it, her tears fell freely down to her feet, the dam holding them back ultimately giving up. Y/n had stuck the pieces of her heart back together as best she could over the years, but all it took was one meeting with him to shatter it once again. Her ribs ached with the force of her sorrow, as if the shards of her heart were piercing her skin from the inside. She fell to her knees on the creaky wooden floor and clutched her arms around herself, sobbing like a child.

When she had received the invitation to the wedding, her immediate reaction was the throw it away, knowing that returning to Small Heath was a poor decision, knowing she shouldn’t even entertain the notion. But Y/n was tempted already, she found herself daydreaming about the town that had once been her home, imagining what it would be like to return. She accepted the invitation, writing a letter to her friend informing her she would come. Y/n pretended to herself that she was only going because she wanted to support her friend, wanted to witness her marriage. But she knew her reasons were selfish in reality. She craved to see Tommy like he was an addiction, so she’d packed all of her things and was on the next available train home.

When Y/n saw him at the Garrison tonight she didn’t quite know what to do. There was a cruel part of her that reared its head, telling her to be cold, give him a taste of his own medicine. But she found it wasn’t hard to be distant from him, her heart closed its doors as soon as he started towards her, reminded of the pain he’d caused.

Her entire reason for even going to the Garrison tonight was the hope that she’d see him, but when she finally did, all she hoped was that he’d feel a fraction of the misery he’d created in her, hoped that he regretted everything he’d done. The anger was a new emotion for Y/n, she’d spent night after night crying over her lost love, yet facing him now, she only felt a quiet rage simmering in the pit of her stomach.

Y/n climbed to her feet, feeling a little unsteady, from the alcohol or the night’s revelations she did not know, and peered out of her window. The glass was grimy with dust and soot, the town slept below her. The sky was an inky blue, never really turning pitch black during the summer, a permanent blanket of mist completely covered the stars. Her home hadn’t changed at all, but she couldn’t help but feel as if she had changed too much. She itched to run away from it all, return to London and pretend this had never happened, forget everything that once tied her to Small Heath. However, those ties were knotted around her every limb so tightly that no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t get free, she couldn’t pretend that she had no feelings for Tommy anymore. He pulled her toward him like a string linked them and he was tugging, she feared that soon he’d pull her under if she let him.

Exhausted by the constant battle between her head and her heart, she fell into her tiny bed, head aching. Y/n fell asleep that night with tear-stained cheeks, she dreamt of blue eyes and rough hands.

~~~

The next morning, Y/n awoke fairly early as she’d forgotten to close the curtains last night and the morning sunlight was shining directly into her eyes. She groaned and checked the clock on her bedside table, it read 7:15am. Y/n decided against wallowing in her bed today and instead went to her cupboards to look for breakfast. She was wholly disappointed when she discovered the cupboards were empty save for some preserves, her stomach growled at the promise of food. So she pulled on a simple cream dress and black lace up boots and headed out into town to find something to eat.

There was something about walking the streets of Small Heath that felt so routine even after all these years, Y/n knew every pothole, every turn, near enough every face she passed. She didn’t realise how close she had strayed towards the betting shop until she saw the unmistakable heavy moustache upon Arther Shelby’s face. Panicked, she turned her head away from him, fully aware of his lack of tact, knowing he’d be asking all about her and Tommy if he saw her.

Safely away from being cornered by any Shelbys, the bakery just down the road from the BSA Factory caught her eye, if the display of various fresh breads and pastries hadn’t convinced her, she was thoroughly tempted in by the sweet smell emanating from the building.

Upon entering, she was hit by the noise of the shop, bakers slamming oven doors in the back, cashiers chatting to customers, so Y/n was confused when all the noise suddenly ceased. She looked around searchingly until her eyes found Tommy stood in the doorway, looking every bit the royalty of Small Heath.

He was dressed in his usual three piece suit, tailored to perfection, and it was only now Y/n realised how much he’d grown since she last saw him. His shoulders were broad and muscles thicker, he’d become every bit the man she always thought he would be. He seemed now to tower over her, even though they were still of a similar height. She tried to tamp down the heat rising to her cheeks as she took in his appearance, chiding herself for still being so attracted to him.

“Mr Shelby!” Cried the owner of the place, “So good to see you in here,” the owner nodded his head so low it looked like he was bowing. Y/n nearly laughed, a little twinge of pride swelled at just how much Tommy had made of himself while she was gone.

Tommy just nodded dismissively, his eyes never leaving Y/n. She watched as the rest of the customers shuffled out one by one, all either rightly scared of Tommy or simply having other places to be.

The way Tommy’s eyes raked over Y/n’s body made her feel self conscious, suddenly overly aware of her plain outfit and the fact that her hair was hanging down past her shoulders and not pinned back like usual. She felt irritated that she evidently still cared what he thought of her. Y/n suspected that he’d followed her in here just for the purpose of seeing her again, why? She couldn’t figure it out, but the casual way he stood, hands in his trouser pockets, not speaking, was starting to annoy her. Y/n could only think he was enjoying the effect this little game of his was having.

“What are you doing here?” She accused, like this wasn’t a place open to the general public.

Tommy smirked a little, seemingly amused, it just incensed Y/n that much more, “Just buying some breakfast, same as you,” He replied, warm voice heating her body more than the blaze from the ovens.

She couldn’t let herself be at his mercy, that one sentence sending a flush to her cheeks she could only pray he didn’t see, it wouldn’t do his ego any good. Despite his answer, he still hadn’t moved from his place, apparently content to just watch Y/n.

“Good morning, Thomas,” She bid him like it was a goodbye as she slipped past him at the door, doing her very best not to shudder as she brushed against him, the notion of breakfast flying to the back of her mind.

Y/n’s suspicion that he’d come to the bakery just for her was confirmed when Tommy followed her straight out of the shop without buying anything, despite his disclosure that he would.

Y/n turned to Tommy and met his eyes with all the courage she could muster, “Tommy, will you please just let me get through this stay in peace?” She pleaded, suddenly tired again even though she had only recently woken.

His eyes softened then, and they reminded Y/n so much of the way he used to look at her that she wanted to cry. Tommy reached out and took her hand before she could think to move away and it felt so right that it stole the air from her lungs. His hand was a little rougher than she remembered, a few more callouses rubbing like sand paper against her smaller hand, but it held the same warmth and the same delicate touch that seemed to juxtapose Tommy’s hard nature.

Her eyes widened as he started to speak to her again, she couldn’t focus on his voice over the sound of her blood rushing in her ears, “If you tell me to leave you alone, I will,” is all she heard him say.

She fought every one of her instincts as she pulled her hand out of his, heart aching a little at the loss, a tear she didn’t know had formed escaping her eye when she turned away. It would be so easy to tell him to leave, to save herself all this hurt, but Y/n knew she couldn’t honestly say that was what she wanted.

Even though it pained her to be near him after everything that happened, she was still in love with him, both sides of her feelings constantly warring with each other. She found that her head fell silent when he spoke to her.

Confused and perturbed by what she really wanted, Y/n walked away from him, fighting to keep her pace even. She expected Tommy to follow after her, didn’t know if she was disappointed when he didn’t.

~~~

Today was the day before the wedding and Y/n had only just got round to trying on the dress she’d brought for the occasion. It was a classy blush pink gown, hemmed just below the knees, cut low enough to expose her chest but still modest enough to leave something to the imagination. She slipped the fine fabric over her head, internally praying that it would fit, though she didn’t know what she would do even if it didn’t.

Blessedly, the dress fit. It was tight in all the right places, showing off her attractive curves, but it was just loose enough that the fabric fanned out behind her when she twirled. Y/n thumbed the delicate lace that covered her shoulders and allowed herself a small smile, she thought that maybe she could have fun tomorrow.

No sooner than the thought had settled into her mind, there was an insistent knock at her door. Y/n hurried over and peered through her peep hole, she cursed at the ceiling as she recognised Tommy Shelby tapping his foot impatiently, flicking his spent cigarette to the floor after his last long pull. She felt a little unsteady as she watched him stand there, eyes trained on his lips, the fluttering feeling she always used to get around him making an unwelcome appearance in her stomach.

Y/n considered pretending like she wasn’t there for a moment, staying silent as she mulled over her options. But she knew that Tommy wouldn’t have come if he didn’t know for certain that she was there, and he would absolutely do something stupid like break the door down just to get his way if she didn’t answer.

“How did you know I was here?” Y/n demanded as soon as she opened the door, immediately cutting Tommy off from whatever he wanted to say first.

“Not important,” Tommy replied coolly, and his voice was so smooth and warm like honey, the look in his eyes just as impossibly sweet that Y/n kind of wanted to punch him in the face so she wouldn’t have to see it.

“What do you want?” Y/n asked, turning away and fighting to keep in control as she found herself inexplicably hypnotised by Tommy’s being.

“You look beautiful,” Tommy avoided the question.

Y/n’s head spun a little as she watched Tommy watching her, she felt he had no permission to be looking at her the way he was, hungrily. She felt that the girl reflected in his eyes looked nothing like her. The history between the two simmered in the heat of his gaze as she tried to recall a time he’d wanted her so obviously as he did now.

She was dizzied by the sudden change in her relationship with Tommy. Just mere days ago they were no better than perfect strangers, and now the past she shared with Tommy had come back and hit her with the full force of a steam engine, now he was standing in her room, staring at her as if he hadn’t broken her heart. She felt like she’d been pushed and pulled every way Tommy wanted her to go, like he was a child and she was his rag doll. The worst thing was that she kept letting him.

“What do you want?” Y/n repeated, an unmistakable waver in her voice.

“I want to know if you’re ok,” He replied simply.

Tommy’s eyes softened almost imperceptibly, revealing the fine wrinkles at the corners. Y/n noted that there were a few more lines there than when she last saw him three years ago. She assumed he’d laughed a lot since she left. She didn’t know why her mouth tasted so sour at the thought.

“Are you joking?” She asked incredulously, laughing without humour.

She wondered then something that everyone wondered about Tommy; did he really have no conscience?

Did he really care about her so little that he didn’t notice how broken she was when she left? Did he really think they could just continue as if nothing had passed between them?

Y/n was silent for a long time, her hands shaking with silent anger, her face seething with heat when Tommy spoke up again.

“Seeing you around here has shown me just how dark my life is without you to brighten it up. I know I’ve no right to ask you to stay here but… I just really want to know if you’re truly ok living away from home. Away from me,”

Y/n had kept all the despair about hers and Tommy’s relationship trapped inside for the past three years. She pushed it further and further inward until it started filling her bones, weighing her down with every step further away from him she took. Now, as she watched his eyes softly gaze back at her, all of it rose to the very pinnacle, boiling over like an unwatched pot.

Barbed words were spilling from Y/n’s lips before she could stop herself, “No! I’m not fucking ok, Tommy. Is that what you want to hear? You want to hear that you shattered my heart, Thomas Shelby? You told me I wasn’t good enough. I - I wasn’t good enough for you.” Y/n finished her tirade with a broken whisper, she had started to cry somewhere in the middle of her sentence, not daring to look Tommy in the eyes, afraid of his pity. “You ruined me for everyone. I haven’t been with anyone else since I left because I gave every last shred of the love I had in my heart to you! Everything I did was for you. And you wasted all of it. So, no, I’m not ok.” Y/n breathed heavily, surprised a little fire wasn’t coming out of her nose by how her words had burned even her.

She heard the old floorboards creak and looked up to see Tommy crossing the room in two long strides, standing face to face with Y/n. His fingers twitched like he wanted to reach out, Y/n knew that if he did, she would crumble.

“So come back. For good. I know I hurt you and I- I’m sorry,” Tommy whispered, looking at her like she was the one who kept the world spinning. Y/n was sure Tommy had never apologised to anyone, so no one could blame her if she didn’t quite believe it.

They stood there for a moment, locked in each others eyes, each one searching for an answer, searching for a way back to their forgotten love. Y/n is so helplessly pulled in by the man in front of her, so inexplicably attracted to everything he did; she thought if they stayed like this any longer that she would just cave in, the part of her heart she gave to him still beating strongly in her chest. Her mouth quivered with unspoken words as she remembered the pain of Tommy’s betrayal seared into her skin, begging her not to let him back in.

“You’re sorry,” she bit back more tears, “Well, you don’t get to ask me to stay. You don’t get to toy with me like this. Are you enjoying this? You push me as far away from you as possible just to pull me back when you decide you want me again! And now you want me, what, because your ego is hurt by the idea that I could’ve possibly moved on? God knows, I’ve tried but you lurk around every corner of my life, waiting in the silence to remind me of what I thought I had. It hurts me every fucking day that I really thought you loved me too,” An ugly part of Y/n hoped every word was painful for Tommy, hoped they were like a poison, rooted in his brain, that they would stay there and remind him every day of what he’d done.

“I forgave you so long ago, so why are you trying to bring it all up again?” All the words that had been imprisoned inside her chest had escaped, she felt a little bereft without them. A new emptiness spread inside Y/n, making her feel faint with the weightlessness as she clung onto her night stand.

“Because I love you,” the world stopped.

Those words, spoken so gently, struck her with such force that for a minute, Y/n thought she’d been shot. Agony bloomed beneath her ribs and her fingers flew up to her chest to touch, she was confused when her fingers came away with no blood.

“No, you don’t, you’re only saying it because you think it will absolve you,” She replied, refusing to let the door to her heart swing open, no matter how hard Tommy was kicking it, “If you loved me, you would’ve fought for us back then. You let me go like it was so easy,”

“I do, I love you,” Tommy said, words coming out shaky, breath uneven, “I just couldn’t bear to see you hurt because of me,”

Even after everything he’d done, Tommy failed to see the irony in those words , “Hurt?” Y/n asked disbelievingly, “You killed me the day you wouldn’t say you loved me. Don’t think your confession will revive me now.” The words hung like lead in the air, neither one wanting to take their weight.

“Y/n-” Tommy began, a glint of something unfamiliar in his bright blue eyes.

“I want you to leave,” Y/n cut him off, Tommy’s every word reopened her countless scars, but now the pain was unbearable. He tried to touch her, but she recoiled so harshly that Tommy backed away, “Please.”

Tommy looked so conflicted, a million ideas spinning through his head, so quickly they seemed to flash across his eyes. Ultimately, he heeded Y/n’s words and slipped out silently, leaving her alone once again.

~~~

Today was Y/n’s final day in her hometown. She thought back to the wedding as she folded away her dress, placing it on top of all her other packing so as not to spoil it. She sat through the entire ceremony with her mind entirely elsewhere, she felt a little guilty about it now but she hadn’t listened to a word of the vows. She would like to pretend that she wasn’t jealous, but as she watched the newlyweds kiss tenderly to rapturous applause, she felt a bitter pang in her stomach. As a teenager, she dreamed of that fate for herself, a pure white dress, fresh flowers in her hands, Tommy waiting for her at the end of the aisle. Y/n had felt tears pricking behind her eyes as she watched the couple exit the church, hand in hand, she tried so hard to feel happy for them.

Y/n closed her small trunk with a click and sat down on the edge of her bed, exhausted. She fumbled for the train ticket in her purse, a return ticket to London. She folded it safely away in her pocket and stood, wandering over to her window. She looked out onto the street below her, the summer sun cracking the cover of mist today, casting polka dot shadows on the cobbles.

Here in Small Heath, the houses were little and charming, warmth seeping out of every window you passed. The streets were never quiet during the day, always bustling with the community of a working class town.

Y/n sighed then as she thought about what waited for her in London. Row upon row of oppressively looming buildings, making her feel even smaller in a city so big. She was surrounded by thousands of people on the streets, yet she’d never felt so alone. Every day was the same, get up, go to work, come home. Y/n tried to be happy with it, she really did, but returning to Small Heath had ruined the pretence. It was like she’d left her heart here, and now that she was back, the beat was even stronger, refusing to let itself be buried again.

Y/n knew though that her love of her hometown wasn’t the only reason she was hesitating to leave for the train station. Her heart rate quickened as Tommy appeared in her mind, if she breathed in deep enough she swore she could still smell him in the room - his cologne, the Irish whiskey, the specific brand of cigarettes he always smoked. Her legs felt weak as she took it all in. Y/n struggled then to remember how she’d found the strength to walk away from this place those three years ago, to walk away from Tommy. Her resolve now was so weak that she prayed she could find that strength again today.

Y/n shut the curtains, blocking the view of the street below, wishing so desperately it was just as easy to shut out her memories of this place. As her hand touched the door handle, she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she left now, she’d regret it forever.

Her departure time drew nearer and nearer, so she closed her eyes and pulled the door open, holding her breath.

“Please don’t go,” the sound of his raspy voice made her eyes fly open, she pinched herself subtly to make sure he wasn’t a hallucination.

There he was, Tommy stood tall in front of her doorway, hair flopping over the sides of his head and chest heaving like he’d run all the way here. Tommy reached out one large hand and gripped Y/n’s arm, his fingers almost circling all the way around it. He clutched her as if he was afraid she was going to disappear.

Y/n dropped her case then, forgetting everything else as she searched his gentle eyes, only barely remembering to continue breathing. She could push past him, she could run away again into the arms of a city that didn’t care about her, or she could fall into Tommy and pray this time he’d catch her. But she knew her decision was made as soon as he spoke.

Y/n stepped backwards slightly, allowing Tommy entrance into the room. He pushed a hand through his mussed hair, peaked cap nowhere to be seen. Neither of them spoke for a minute, and Y/n wondered if it was a mistake to let him in, the possibility of her escape becoming slimmer and slimmer as time ticked on.

Tommy sat down on the bed and inhaled a steadying breath, “I meant what I said the other day,” he said, quietly as if admitting a secret.

“I know,” Y/n replied, and the confusion that overtook Tommy’s face almost made her laugh, his eyebrows quirked, lips slightly parted, “I said all those things yesterday because I’m terrified of letting you in again. I’m scared that I’ll let you hold my heart and you’ll crush it again. I’ve waited so incredibly long to hear you say those words that when you said them so easily yesterday, all the pain came straight back.”

Guilt was written all over Tommy’s face, pooled in the ocean of his eyes, colouring his slightly flushed cheeks, “I was just so terrified I’d put you in danger, couldn’t live with myself if you were hurt, so I hurt you myself, told myself I wasn’t worth your love anyway, you’d get over me. I thought it was for the best,” He admitted, palm rubbing into the socket of his eye when it began to glisten with tears.

Y/n went over to the bed, sitting slowly and gently the way one would approach a skittish horse, she put a tentative hand on his thigh, tension buzzing beneath her skin where she touched him. “When did you know you loved me?” she asked quietly.

Tommy looked up at her then and shifted so that they were closer, legs pressed together. Y/n fought not to blush like a teenager, the touch so intimate after all this time.

“About a month before I left for France,” Tommy began, and Y/n didn’t miss the flicker in his eyes when he spoke, “You were out in the garden with Finn. He’d just learned to toddle about and got a bit too confident, fell and skinned his knee,” Tommy didn’t fight the smile that rose to his lips, “And when he cried, you went running and you held him like he was your own brother, you got him to calm down better than anyone else could have. You held him and fussed him until he laughed again. You didn’t know there was anyone watching you, you just did it because you loved him,”

Y/n felt breathless as Tommy told his story, she didn’t know whether to be furious or thrilled that he’d loved her such a long time, “That’s when I knew your name was forever branded on my heart, Y/n. I knew that I could never see you hurt because I couldn’t protect you from my world.”

At some point while Tommy spoke, their faces inched closer together until their noses were almost bumping. He finished his confession in a whisper, his unmissable blue eyes flickering between Y/n’s own gaze and her lips, exposing his desires blatantly.

“You’re an idiot, Thomas Shelby,” Y/n breathed before Tommy leaned in and pressed his lips against hers.

The kiss was exciting yet comfortable, like a knew book from her favourite author; the writing familiar but the content all new. One of Tommy’s hands came up to rest on the back of Y/n’s neck, fingers weaving into the strands of hair there, sending a delightful shiver down her body. His other hand cupped her cheek, pulling at her bottom lip so he could take it into his mouth. Tommy broke away briefly, only to breathe, before he leaned in again, kissing Y/n torturously slow, learning ever crevice of her lips once more.

They finally broke apart, Y/n didn’t know how long later, she couldn’t control the whine from the back of her throat when they did. Tommy looked amused, maybe a little proud of himself and Y/n rolled her eyes at him. Tommy’s hands still cradled her head like something precious, their lips still tantalisingly close.

“I really don’t want to go back to London,” Y/n confessed against Tommy’s mouth, tiny sparks zapping every time their lips touched.

“Please don’t go back,” Tommy all but begged, stroking Y/n’s cheek with a calloused thumb.

She closed her eyes at the feeling, every fibre of her being giving up to him in that moment, “Tell me you love me and I’ll stay,” She said finally, her words so similar to those she’d broken her own heart with three years ago.

“I love you,” Tommy avowed as he kissed Y/n with a dizzying passion, his lips devouring hers as they told each other all the things words couldn’t say. Y/n’s hands found purchase on Tommy’s chest, feeling the rapid flutter of his heart behind his ribs, telling her he really did feel the same.

“Stay with me,” Tommy whispered, each word punctuated by a kiss, the two lovers unable to stop touching as if a magnet permanently held them together.

Y/n nodded, unable to speak as she felt Tommy’s fingers brush against her neck, against the exposed skin on her chest, goosebumps raising on her skin as she fought not to tremble.

All of her nerves were alight, the pieces of her heart coming back together as she kissed the man she’d loved for years; no big city could replace their small town love. London faded into nothing as she felt his tongue lick at her lower lip, her train long since missed as Tommy pressed his kisses deeper.

Y/n broke away just to look at Tommy again, his lips were plump, reddened by his ministrations, his eyes were fogged over with adoration, his hands still clung to Y/n anywhere they could hang on. She smiled one of those blinding grins she only ever saved for Tommy.

“I’ll stay,” Y/n promised.

#fic recs

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mask131 · 2 years ago

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Deadly fall: The “other” Halloweens

THE “OTHER” HALLOWEENS

Category: Anglo-Saxon and American cultures (plus Christianity)

I talked about Halloween. I talked about its ancestor, Samhain. I talked about All Hallows Day and its “cousin” El Dia de los Muertos.

But there are much more other variations of Halloween and All Saints Day that I haven’t talked about, and that yet are needed to understand the evolution and existence of those holiday: a whole constellation of “other Halloweens” and even “other Samhains”. I’ll try to briefly list them all through this post.

1) All Saints Eve

Everybody knows that “Halloween” stands for “All Hallows’ Eve”. But originally this title went to the Christian celebration of the Eve of All Saints Day. And Halloween, despite its name, has barely anything Christian in it, mostly being a survival of Samhain. So, what is the “actual” All Saints Eve, from a Christian point of view?

All Hallows Eve, or All Saints Eve, is mostly a preparation for the upcoming All Saints Day (All Hallows Day), and thus doesn’t have many “traditions” in itself. The church service is called the Vigil of All Hallows, and is usually coupled with visits to the graveyard (to place candles and flowers, in preparation for All Saints Day). It is a time of praying for the dead, and also a time of fasting to prepare yourself for All Hallows: All Saints Eve is a non-meat day. This custom actually influenced a lot modern Halloween – it was because of the ban on meat imposed by All Hallows Eve that people consumed mostly fruits and vegetables, which led to the prominence of these same fruits and vegetables in Halloween. Most All Saints Eve traditions tend to be local. In Spain, priests have to toll the bell of their churches to remind people of thinking and praying for the dead. In Finland, people speak of the “valomeri” or the “sea of light” because everybody goes lighting up candles in cemeteries. And in Poland the tradition had the living Christians walk through the forest while loudly praying, in order to comfort the unrested or tormented dead.

If we leave Europe and go to America, the land of Halloween, All Saints Eve is… a bit different. Mostly because Christianity in America is mostly Protestant – and for Protestants, All Saints Eve is before all “Reformation Day”, the celebration of the start of the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther – for a long time it was the habit for Protestant families to dress their kids as biblical characters or important figures of the Reform. Now, Christianity does not often meddle well with Halloween celebrations – especially in America where people are prone to be a more… “extremism” (plus there’s the fact Halloween became such a part of American culture). Some defend the idea that Halloween is just harmless fun for children and that it does not hurt in any way Christian belief ; while others are much more disdainful of this “occultism” and “mysticism” and are usually prone to handing out tracts on Halloween night about the wonders of Christianity. But a VERY American creation born of an attempt at uniting Christianity and Halloween – a “tradition” created by none other than the fundamentalist and evangelical churches (because who else would do such a thing?), is the “Hell Houses”. Imagine a “haunted house attraction”, but done by religious people using, instead of ghosts and monsters, the “horrors” of sin and vice, with the ultimate goal of “scaring into redemption”… It is a really weird and bizarre and VERY American thing, and while some of those houses can be quite ridiculous, others are known to be VERY disturbing, leading to yet again another Halloween scandal (they all come from America) about those Hell Houses that go “too far”. But I’ll let you search these lovely things by yourself.

2) Calan Gaeaf

I talked about Samhain in a previous post, and I tried to insist that while it was a Celtic holiday, indeed, it was mostly focused, localized and practiced by Scotsmen and Irishmen (plus the Isle of Man), not all of the British Isles. And yet there is this idea today that Samhain was practiced in the entirety of the Isles… This is because there is a slight confusion between Samhain and its “siblings”, the “other Samhains”. If Samhain proper was only for the Scots and the Irish, the other part of the Isles had their own festivals equivalent to Samhain. And Calan Gaeaf was “Samhain” for Wales.

Calan Gaeaf was the celebration of the first day of winter, on the 1st of November (in the bi-seasonal system of the Celtic year, autumn was just the first part of winter). It was a harvest festival, that allowed for grand feasts (as both the harvest was gathered, and the livestock was slaughtered for the winter) cooked by the women of the village, and for all sorts of games – usually also tied to the harvest. For example there was the “harvest mare” game: some of the last stalks of corn reaped would be twisted together in the shape of a mare, and the “player” would hide the mare under his clothes, before trying to sneak it back to his home in the village. If he could get the harvest mare to his home without being noticed by any of the women (preparing the feast in the village), he would be rewarded with beer and a place of honor at the feast’s table, while the mare was hung other the hearth. If he failed, he would become the laughingstock of the community.

And just like with “Hallowe’en”, the eve of Calan Gaeaf was known as “Nos Galan Gaeaf” – and was considered a “spirit night” (a Ysbrydnos in Welsh), one of the times of the year when spirits roam the country (and given the Welsh shared the Celtic concept of the Otherworld, we are talking about both the spirits of the dead and supernatural inhuman spirits). On this night, people avoided the places where spirits liked to hang out: crossroads, churchyards, stiles… A bonfire was lit around which children and women danced, and when the flames started to die out they all ran home: for it was said that when the bonfire of Nos Galan Gaeaf was extinguished, a supernatural creature would appear – sometimes simply a bad omen announcing disaster and death, other times an actual threat seeking the devour the souls of the wanderers, or the flesh of the last child to go home. For some this creature was “Hwch Ddu Gwta”, a black sow without tail but with the head of a woman, while for others it was “Y Ladi Wen”, “the white lady”, a female headless ghost. Before leaving, children and women had to place a ring of stones around the fire, with their names written on each stone: in the morning, the stones were checked. If a name-stone was burned by the fire, it meant good luck for the person “owning” the stone, but if a stone was missing it meant the person associated would die within the year.

Similarly to Samhain and Halloween, all sorts of divination games were practiced on Nos Galan Gaeaf. The apple-peel game I described previously was a common practice of the holiday, and so was the “mirror-gazing”: unmarried women had to look into a mirror in a darkened room to see the face of their future husband ; but if a skull appeared, it meant the woman would die within the year. A more traditional Welsh “divination game” was gender-divided: girls had to grow throughout the year a rose in the shape of a hoop, and go through the circle three times before cutting the rose – on Galan Gaeaf’s Eve, they had to place the rose under their pillow to dream of the future. Boys, meanwhile, had to cut ten leaves of ivy during the night, before leaving one behind them and placing the nine remaining under their pillow: not only would they dream of the future, if they touched the ivy they could also have visions of the witches living in the area.

3) Allantide

The “other Samhain” of Cornwall was known as “Kalan Gwav”, which literally meant “the first day of winter”, coupled with “Nos Kalan Gwav”, the Eve of the First Day of Winter, the 31st of October. It later evolved, under Christian influence, into “Allantide”, more well-known as Saint Allan’s Day. Due to overlapping with Allhallowtide, Saint Allan’s Day was also a day of remembering and praying for the dead, with churches of Cornwall ringing their bells to comfort Christian souls that had not yet entered Heaven (purgatory, hauntings, and other “intermediary states”). And just like with the other “Samhains”, divination games were common on this night: throwing walnuts in the fire to predict the fidelity of your partner (see the hazelnut roasting of Samhain), or pouring molten lead into cold water, to see form a shape that would indicate you the profession of your future husband.

Unique to Allantide however, is the tradition of the “Allan apples”. Allan apples are very large and glossy red apples, specially polished for the occasion. Before the day of the saint’s feast, entire markets selling only Allan apples were organized, because the tradition was to offer them to your friends and family, as they were symbols of good luck. Young girls would place these apples under their pillows to dream of their future husbands, while the children who went to bed without obtaining even one Allan apple would only know misfortune. There was even a local game of “catch-the-apple” that went as such: two pieces of wood are nailed together in a cross, the cross is suspended to the ceiling and candles placed at its four ends, and an Allan apple is tied up under the cross. The goal of the game was to catch the apple with your bare teeth – and if you were too slow or not agile enough, the hot wax of the candles would be poured on you.

4) Punkie Night

A last “British” variation of the Samhain/Halloween tradition – this time coming from the “West Country” (a name for a region of South-West England). Punkie Night was held on the last Thursday of October, and during this night children marched around the region with jack-o-lanterns in their hands (Punkie was an Old English word for “lantern”), while singing a song that went! “It’s Punkie Night tonight (X2) / Adam and Eve would not believe / It’s Punkie Night tonight!”. Other times, the children would rather go door to door asking and begging for candles, threatening those who did not gave them anything (a variation of the trick-or-treating). This begging had its own rhymes: “Give me a candle, give me a light / If you don’t, you’ll get a fright!” ; or “Give me a candle, give me a light / If you haven’t a candle, a penny’s all right!”. We also know that people usually placed “punkies” (jack-o-lanterns) in front of their farms, to ward off evil spirits, and that the processions of children would be led by two characters known as the “Punkie King” and “Punkie Queen”.

5) Mischief Night

Originally, Halloween was just the eve of All Hallows Day. But as Halloween became a proper holiday, not just the eve of a feast, it got its own eve. And Halloween Eve is known by different names across America: one of which is Mischief Night. It was called as such because on the 30th of October, people took the habit of doing all sorts of jokes and pranks, even going up to vandalism – not just children, but adults too! It is quite interesting to see that the tradition actually started in old England, but was not immediately associated with Halloween: originally “Mischief Night” was linked to the May Day and to the Green Man. However, as the celebration left the rural areas and reached the cities, Mischief Night was moved to the opposite end of the year: 4th of November, the eve of the Gunpowder Plot celebrations (5th of November). It then slightly shifted to the night before Halloween – and it is at this last date that it reached the USA and Canada.

In England, Mischief Night went by many different names: Micky Night, Trick Night, Corn Night, Tick-Tack Night, Chievous Night, Mischievous Night, Miggy Night, Mizzy Night… And in some areas of Yorkshire, it was even seen as a coming-of-age ceremony for thirteen years old boys. In Northern America, the celebration got several other names, such as “Goosey Night” or “Mat Night”. In Maryland, it became known as “Moving Night” due to the common prank being to steal or switch various furniture and items found on house porches ; it was tied to another common name of the Night in rural areas, “Door Night”, due to rural pranksters often stealing the “doors” of the fences surrounding fields, or the small wooden doors of courtyards. In Northern and Western states of the USA, as well as in Ontario (Canada), the name “Cabbage Night” (or in French “Nuit de Chou”) is also common, due to the vandals usually raiding gardens and farms for cabbages (preferably leftover cabbages or rotting ones), before using them for all sort of mischiefs.

Today, the pranks of Mischief Night mostly include “toilet pappering” yards and buildings (wrapping them in toilet papers), throwing powders or eggs at cars and houses, writing on windows with soap, smashing pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns, spray-painting buildings, or setting up small fireworks – even though the tradition of throwing rotting cabbages or rotting fruits at people still survives in some area. Mischief Night also has a nasty history of arsons, that started in the 80s when people started setting garbage ablaze or creating big fires in cemeteries ; while in the 2010 New-Orleans saw a new form of Mischief Night appear as carnival/Mardi-Gras like parades ending up in vandalism-filled riots.

6) Devil’s Night

Devil’s Night is another American name for “Mischief Night” – one coming originally from Detroit, in Michigan. Mischief Night arrived to Detroit between the 1930s and the 1940s, and began with simple pranks and “mild vandalism”. Egging and soaping, waxing windows and doors, toilet-papering trees and shrubs, throwing rotten vegetables at people, leaving flaming bags of dog poop on doorsteps)… “Mischievous crimes” and “petty crimes”, so to speak. But throughout the 60s and up to the 70s, the violence and danger of these pranks escalated. We were talking about serious vandalism and arsons. And as the decades went by, the destruction and frenzy of the night worsened: 800 fires in the city in 1984, and just as much if not more in the following years. “Mischief Night” became “Devil Night”. By the 1990s, it got so big that the authority and people of the city decided it had to be put to a stop: this was the creation of “Angel Night” in 1995. Angel Night was the gathering of several thousands of volunteers (up to 50 000 in the first Angel Nights) to patrol the neighborhoods at night to keep order, communicating with the authorities via radios or cellular phones, and attaching amber beacons to their vehicles to make the vandals known what their purpose was. Angel Night was such a big mobilization that by the 2000s a significant drop was noticed in arsons and vandalisms. At the beginning of the 2010s, there were 169 fires (which already was a drop compared to previous years). By the mid-2010s, only fifty or so fires were counted. By the end of the 2010s, only four or five fires. It is widely believed that soon, “Devil’s Night” will be truly dead, and just a cultural memory.

#deadly fall #halloween #holiday #samhain #all hallows eve #all saints day #all saints eve

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acommonloon · 2 years ago

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Well lookie there, it's Saturday. What to do? It's already 11:30 and I'm just having my first cuppa. So for the moment, I'll sit here looking out...and ramble on.

Have you seen the FB group, View from My Window? Members post pictures of the view from their window. I love it! The rules allow some leeway, any window or even a porch or patio view is allowed butttt you can only ever post one pic! Lol, that's pressure right?

Many pics present views anyone would love to have and yet some look like maybe a do over could be allowed. Nah, learning to enjoy what you have is a key to happiness. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

D has been gone two hours (mom's birthday) but she popped her head in the door, grinned and said they were eating at Olive Garden! She thinks I don't like Olive Garden or most chains for that matter but it's where her mom wants to eat so. I don't hate America's pasta pig trough specifically but the "endless" allyacaneat food format is a prime symptom of our ruinous malaise. Too much of anything...

I'm tempted to laise around all day but too much of that is bad in many ways. So I'll likely head out later. I've got my eye on a new bier de garde, a new quad, and a fav saison that's been missing from taps in too long. Pot meet kettle?

Yeah but it's a whole other kettle of fish, a spicy fry I'm thinking of.

D's got the truck so if I go out, I'll be in her Mini. Might be a good day if it gets as warm as it's supposed to for a top down ride through streets dressed in Fall fashion. Still

I think we're going to see a movie tomorrow about two Irishmen who drink in a pub. If so, I'm sure I could drag the o'l ball and chain to a couple of pubs before and/or after. She's a good egg.

Anyway, it's Saturday and that's the best day. Have a good one!

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luimnigh · 4 years ago

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Are you white or a POC? You don't need to answer if you don't feel comfortable doing so. I'm just asking because I came across your posts talking about race in RWBY and I would feel more comfortable knowing before interacting.

I’m Irish.

Which means I’m currently considered “white”, would not have been considered “white” for large chunks of history, and could theoretically have my “whiteness” revoked depending on how Western Culture develops.

“White” is a social construct, one that moves and changes over time and location. Hispanic people were considered “white” in America in the early half of the twentieth century. That’s why they could show Lucille Ball, a white woman, and Desi Arnaz, a Hispanic man, as a married couple in the 1950s without any real controversy, but might have drawn controversy in the 1970s or 1980s.

But to bring it back to me, I’m Irish. Born and raised on the island of Ireland, not that it matters: anyone who choses to live here and love here has as much a claim to Irishness as I do.

My forefathers suffered under centuries of colonialism. I was raised on stories of my father passing as British while living in London, and hearing racist abuse leveled at his own people. Stories about how my grandmother worried for my grandfather as he walked home from work at night, because there’d been a bombing earlier that day and British police were arresting any Irishmen they met. My great-grandfather on my mother’s side never saw the birth of his first child, because he was arrested without cause and held for two years during the War for Independence.

I could tell you about the jokes that have been leveled at me, personally. How my culture is routinely portrayed as being made of rural drunkards or ex-IRA bomb experts. About how many people in the UK don’t realize that we’ve been an independent country for nearly a century.

Or how, earlier this year, during BLM protests in London, far-right counter-protestors were tossing in anti-Irish sentiments alongside their racial slurs.

So am I “white”? Technically. If I went to America, would I benefit from white privilege? Yes, I likely would.

Does this mean I’m coming at any conversation about discrimination and bigotry from a “white” perspective? I personally don’t think so.

Trying to apply the American view of racism to the rest of the world ultimately just doesn’t hold up, because the way racism has developed across the world is different everywhere. Sure, a metric ton of it originates from the racism of the European Powers as they spread it across the world as they were colonising great big swathes of it, but even that’s not the same as the racism that developed in America.

While you can compare the bigotry that Black people and Indigineous people and Jewish people and Asian people and all the other people of the world have suffered over human history, it is never going to be a one-to-one comparison. It’s never going to be the exact same bigotry.

The conversation around bigotry is a nuanced one, with hundreds and thousands of different perspectives from different cultures around the world. I can only state my perspective, and help spread the perspectives of others.

#racism #Anonymous #asks

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moviegroovies · 2 years ago

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urgh. well? it’s been a while since i’ve posted anything fully coherent on this blog (not that you can tell, ha, ha) despite my employment at a movie store and the fact that i’ve watched at least 87 movies in the past few months that i could easily have debriefed into the void. in the spirit of updating more regularly, here’s what i think i’ll try: mini-reviews of all the movies i’ve seen in the last week! in order:

the tao of steve: donal logue felt a little bit like discount jack black in this one, but i know him from gotham, so who am i to judge?

breakfast on pluto: wait, wasn’t the LAST thing i posted on here about cillian murphy being my boy girlfriend? well, kitten was my girl girlfriend. could have done without the glam rock group of white irishmen who dressed up as indigenous americans (this character in the book was apparently a lawyer, too, so that was just invented wholecloth for the film? for some reason), but everything besides that made me cry. i loved kitten. liam neeson was almost tolerable for once. ruth negga was there!!

this is elvis: okay my brother saw elvis (2022) a couple weeks ago and is on a kick, i was only half-present for this one. this sure was. elvis. (i will say this version of the story paid far less heed to the influence he took from Black musicians than baz luhrmann’s take--which is an unnecessarily nice way of saying they had literally ONE scene of young elvis watching a Black man playing a guitar and conveniently ignored the rest; conversely, they did at least state out loud that priscilla was 14 (!!) when they met, which was something elvis ‘22 glossed over. all-in-all, i’m essentially elvis’d out.... at least until we convince my brother to sit down for bubba ho-tep.)

thor: love and thunder: disappointing. no loki. valkyrie was shafted. other people have disected it better than i’m currently equipped to so let’s say 3/10 and skip right ahead

meet joe black: this one i watched last night so it’s freshest in my mind; i have some thoughts. basically... it was okay. conceptually i was intruiged by the death-as-a-character thing; that was far and away the standout element. (idk if you’ve noticed--perhaps if you’re very, very new around here, but i love a good bit of the supernatural interacting with the mundane.) hopkins was good, but his role struck me as a bit... inconsistent? honestly, i just wasn’t sure what they were trying to SAY with him; he’s introduced as a wealthy, workaholic businessman (honestly my first thought--which continued well into the film, especially when it was revealed he made his fortune in the news, was succession), but death--THE death!--chooses him as a guide for his exemplary life. now, pre-character journey, death struck me as kind of childlike, insofar as he was ignorant to how things work, and carelessly selfish, so maybe something could have been explored with the idea that a rich man really leads such an upstanding life that he could possibly deserve his delirious wealth being a similarly naive fantasy, but that way of thinking really went unchallenged right to the end of the movie; bill was a complicated, but ultimately good man. he earned his wealth, unlike his conniving weasel of a former assistant, drew. (who was, incidentally, my favorite character after brad pitt’s death. he served, he gave cunt, he died was exposed for tax fraud. etc.) there was never a scrooge moment.

i’m too communist for this movie, but i digress.

so, whatever, i guess that was what it was--one of the foregone conclusions on which the film’s premise is built. the bigger problem, then, was that exact aforementioned premise: it never comes through! the whole story is supposed to be bill, chosen to guide death/joe black in human affairs, but if you watch the movie, very little actual guiding gets done! joe follows bill around into a couple of humerous situations, but bill never deliberately TEACHES him anything worthwhile; in fact, the only thing that the “choice” of bill as the guide really serves is the romantic plot between joe and susan, and that. well, i don’t use the words “romantic plot tumor” very often, but... romantic plot tumor. their scenes put the whole movie on hold for me--or, really, they felt like a very DIFFERENT movie than the subplot with drew and bill’s business. there was some other weirdness; allison knowing she was her father’s unfavorite and never getting any resolution there (i don’t think they went in with the message “parents should have a favorite child/it’s okay for a parent to love one kid more,” but...?), brad pitt’s jamacian accent and the euthanasia subplot...

all said, though, it was kind of worth it to see brad pitt be a weird little freak.

death and taxes. peace on earth.

#text post #the tao of steve #breakfast on pluto #this is elvis #thor: love and thunder #meet joe black

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xhxhxhx · 4 years ago

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Alan Allport’s Britain at Bay (Knopf, 2020) is great on all the ways the United Kingdom was an only imperfectly free country at the beginning of the Second World War.

On the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act:

Police power in Northern Ireland was very different in character from elsewhere in the UK, owing to the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act, or SPA. The SPA was originally passed in the emergency conditions of 1922 at the end of the Irish War of Independence. Its powers had only been supposed to last one year, but it was found to be so useful that it was annually renewed by Stormont up to 1933, and made permanent thereafter.

Using the authority granted to it by the SPA, Northern Ireland’s government could impose curfews, prohibit public gatherings and protest marches, ban newspapers, arrest members of the public wearing uniforms or bearing items associated with proscribed organisations, search for and seize contraband goods, indefinitely detain those suspected of ‘subversive activity’ or exclude them from entering Northern Ireland, punish anyone making a report ‘intended or likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty’ and, in broad terms, ‘take all such steps and issue all such orders as may be necessary for preserving the peace and maintaining order’. In December 1938 the SPA was used to introduce internment without trial for suspected IRA men. Some of these detainees were taken to a prison hulk called the Al Rawdah, moored off Killyleagh, into which they were packed in bronchitic squalor for five months. The SPA granted Craigavon’s executive virtually unlimited domestic powers of control and surveillance, which were directed specifically at an ethno-religious minority regarded as a parasitical and disloyal enemy within. The SPA formed, in the words of a National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) report in 1936, ‘the basis for a legal dictatorship’. W. J. Stewart, a progressive Unionist critical of the UUP, described Northern Ireland’s government in the 1930s as ‘more completely in control of the six counties than either Hitler or Mussolini in their own countries’.

[...]

The police responded to the [IRA’s 1939] bombing campaign in different ways, some constabularies taking great pains to distinguish IRA terrorists from the Irish community at large, some less so. Newspaper stories from the Spanish Civil War had been full of reports about seditious ‘Fifth Columnists’, and the possibility that Irish migrants might be providing sanctuaries for IRA men did not seem completely fantastical. In London the Metropolitan Police asked hotel and boarding-house staff to provide details about any new visitors with Irish addresses or accents. The public was encouraged to report sightings of Irishmen ‘idling’ during daylight hours on the streets of the capital. S-Plan attacks provoked panicky and legally dubious police work. After the Piccadilly bombing constables ‘dashed through the crowd haphazardly’, as one witness later put it, rounding up dozens of men with Irish brogues. The whole operation was conducted with such a lack of basic procedure that all of the detained men had to be released later in the day for want of evidence – including a couple of suspects who, it turned out later, really had been involved in planting the bomb.

On the Prevention of Violence (Temporary Provisions) Act:

Earlier in 1939, the S-Plan terrorist campaign had provoked a similar kind of test, on a smaller scale, of how far the British were willing to compromise their traditional civil liberties in the name of public safety. In July 1939 the home secretary had introduced the Prevention of Violence (Temporary Provisions) Act to the Commons, a remarkable piece of legislation rushed through Parliament at breakneck speed, largely forgotten in the subsequent hubbub of war but something that ought to be better remembered than it is. The Prevention of Violence Act granted the home secretary the authority to prohibit anyone who had been resident in Great Britain for less than twenty years from entering or re-entering the country if it was believed that they were ‘concerned in the preparation or instigation […] of acts of violence designed to influence public opinion or Government policy with respect to Irish affairs’. He could expel such persons from the United Kingdom and detain them for up to five days prior to that expulsion. The Act allowed, for the first time in history, a political appointee to imprison, deport and exile British subjects without reference to the courts. It also empowered the police, under certain circumstances, to conduct searches and seizures of suspects’ property without obtaining a judicial warrant first. British subjects – as all Irishmen and -women still legally were in 1939, even those living in the Free State – had never been subject to such peacetime restrictions before.

Hoare insisted to Parliament that the new Act was a ‘temporary measure to meet a passing emergency’ which would remain on the statute books for no longer than two years. Some MPs were not convinced. They saw it as an attack on Britain’s culture of democracy. ‘We are proud that this is a free country,’ argued William Wedgwood Benn (father of Tony and grandfather of Hilary). ‘Our people hold their heads a little higher because they believe they enjoy a measure of freedom […] I do not think public opinion will be assisted by giving the Home Secretary power to turn us all into ticket-of-leave men, if he so wishes.’ In return, supporters of the Act regarded these objections as a sop to terrorists. ‘What about King’s Cross?’ demanded Sir Joseph Nall, Tory MP for Manchester Hulme. ‘What about the people who are being maimed and killed?’ It was much better, he argued, ‘to deport a dozen innocent persons than to allow one innocent person to be killed’. The Prevention of Violence Act passed into law.

Even before the Second World War broke out, then, fears of terrorism had already caused the government drastically to revise traditional assumptions about the freedoms of the individual British citizen. The Prevention of Violence Act was a first step in the creeping Hibernicisation of British law during the twentieth century, a process in which restrictions on civil liberty originally applied in ‘troubled’ Ireland were progressively transferred to the rest of the United Kingdom as well. In time, an indefinite state of emergency would become the new normal.

On the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act and Treachery Act:

All of this [invasion scare] seemed to suggest that the democracy itself could not be trusted in a crisis. Only by abandoning the ‘present rather easy-going methods’ of national life and adopting a set of restrictions ‘which would approach the totalitarian’ could Britain survive a Nazi onslaught, the Cabinet was warned by Chamberlain on 18 May. The legal apparatus for such a siege dictatorship was established four days later, when a new Emergency Powers (Defence) Act was passed by the Commons in its entirety in just two hours. This was an extension of the existing emergency legislation passed at the outbreak of war which now gave the government almost unlimited authority to regulate people, property and capital without the need for parliamentary scrutiny. As the new minister for labour later observed, it made him ‘a kind of Führer with powers to order anybody anywhere’. A Treachery Act passed the same day made it a capital offence to assist the enemy’s military operations or to hamper Britain’s own.

As the Times put it, the Emergency Powers Act ‘comes near to suspending the very essence of the Constitution as it has been built up in a thousand years. Our ancient liberties are placed in pawn for victory.’ A slew of regulations soon circumscribed even the most quotidian features of the British citizen’s life. It was unlawful to ‘endeavour to influence […] public opinion in a manner likely to be prejudicial’ to the war effort, to take part in a strike, to withhold information about an invention or patent if the state demanded it, to hold an unauthorised procession, to put out flags, to operate a car radio or to put icing on a cake (wickedly wasteful of sugar). Chamberlain hoped that public opinion would back these restrictions; but if not, recalcitrant non-cooperators could be drafted into a compulsory labour corps under prison discipline.

The creation in mid-May 1940 of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), later renamed the Home Guard, ought to be seen in this context of government nervousness. Private citizens had responded to news of the German parachute landings in the Netherlands and Belgium by announcing the formation of ad hoc militia companies to defend their homeland. Whitehall felt it had to act quickly to control the process. One quarter of a million men aged between seventeen and sixty-five registered to join the new auxiliary force within the first week of its announcement, and by July 1940 its nominal strength stood at 1.5 million.

On Regulations 39BA and 18B:

Sir John Simon’s 1938 prophecy that rearmament and war would turn Britain into ‘a different kind of nation’ seemed to have come true. Moreover, it had happened with a remarkable lack of discussion or opposition. ‘A united nation feels no hesitation or misgiving’ about the abandonment of its personal freedoms, insisted the Times when the Emergency Powers Act was rushed through Parliament: ‘the temporary surrender [of liberties] is made with a glad heart and a confident spirit.’ That was not altogether true. There would be resistance to some of the more controversial powers the government had acquired for itself. That said, the assault on other values, particularly the presumption of innocence in law and the protection of minorities, inspired rather less sympathy.

The very British right to grumble out loud produced an early skirmish in this conflict over liberties. Regulation 39BA, introduced in June 1940, made it a criminal offence, punishable by up to a month in prison, to circulate ‘any report or statement relating to matters connected with the war which is likely to cause alarm and despondency’. It was announced at the same moment the Ministry of Information launched a ‘Silent Column’ campaign that condemned spreading rumours and gossiping about the war effort. The government was not shy about using its new power. By late July there had been over seventy prosecutions. A tradesman in Yeovil was jailed for thirty days for saying ‘Hitler will be here in a month’. A Bristol septuagenarian earned himself a week in prison for claiming that the Swastika would soon fly over Parliament.

As the summer wore on, however, a press backlash caused the government to retreat. Churchill admitted to the Commons on 23 July that, however ‘well-meant’ it had been, Regulation 39BA had had the unfortunate effect of criminalising ‘silly vapourings which are best dealt with on the spur of the moment by verbal responses’. The Silent Column was put into what he called ‘innocuous desuetude’, and the Home Secretary was asked to review all ‘alarm and despondency’ convictions. To what extent the Order’s continued existence had a chilling effect on free expression is unknowable. (‘Best to pass no opinion these days,’ as one Briton was reported saying by Home Intelligence. ‘You might get hung.’) Could anyone be certain that that innocuous pollster or Mass Observer asking them questions about the war was not a government provocateur?

A more ominous issue came up in August, when the government sought to create special regulations to deal with a crisis in which heavy bombing or invasion had halted normal legal procedures in some parts of the country. It proposed the creation of regional ‘War Zone courts’, presided over by experienced judges and appointed by the lord chancellor. Although these would not be military tribunals or courts-martial, they would nonetheless have the power to impose death sentences without appeal. ‘If we are not shot by the Germans we are evidently going to be shot by our own people,’ one Briton commented on hearing the news. The proposal was attacked in the Commons as far too vague, considering its life-and-death stakes. The Home Secretary’s reassurance that such courts would only operate with the greatest restraint was condemned as feeble by the barrister and Liberal MP Frank Kingsley Griffith: ‘it is all very well for anybody to come before this House and say, “I have a Bill which entitles me to cut off your head, but I can assure you that I am only going to cut your toe nails.” ’ In the end, the government retreated and promised that all War Court sentences would be subject to appeal. They were, in the end, never used anyway.

The Home Office received enough popular pushback against both Regulation 39BA and the War Zone courts for it to moderate its plans on the grounds of civil liberty. There was much less public concern provoked by the mass incarceration without trial of British citizens, which began on the morning of 23 May with the arrest of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Under Defence Regulation 18B, the Home Secretary could detain indefinitely anyone of ‘hostile origin or associations’ or who had recently committed ‘acts prejudicial to the public safety’. Anyone so interned had a right of appeal to an advisory committee, but they were not allowed to know who had recommended their arrest, or why.

Regulation 18B had existed since the outbreak of war but was only now applied with any seriousness. By July 1940 over 700 BUF members and fellow-travellers of the far right had been swept up, most to Brixton Prison (only a single Communist Party member, a Yorkshire shop steward accused of sabotaging workplace production, joined them).

Not great!

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the--blackdahlia · 4 years ago

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Campfire Tales Chapter 1

@malibubarbievince @slashscowboyboots @hauntedapricoteggsclam @bitter-13-suite @arianareirg @lucyboytom @julessworld @Solopadawan @stradlin-cold-heartbeaker @catsandacoffee @Kaitieskidmore1 @heavy-metal-fucking-rules @aratbaby @Dufflesmckagan @appetiteforstradlin @acdcmutual

Title: Campfire Tales Chapter 1

Summary: Guns n' Roses are forced to go camping, so what better way to pass the time than to tell campfire stories?

Warnings: Language, some violence

AN: So, this just kinda happened. Let me know if I should do more.

The fire crackled in front of them as Guns n’ Roses got their blankets from the tents and arranged their sleeping bags. Duff laid down a blanket for him and Stevie to sit on, Izzy grumbling and settling by them. Axl and Slash completed the circle around the fire.

“Who’s got the food?” Slash asked. “I’m starving.”

“Here,” Stevie tossed the bag of goodies to him. It was 90% junk, with some trail mix and granola bars thrown in.

“How’m I supposed to roast these?” Slash looked around as he held up the marshmallows.

“We’re in the woods. Grab a stick.” Axl told him, rolling his eyes. Slash huffed and looked around for a moment, finding the perfect stick so he could make his s’mores. Stevie snuggled up against Duff as he wrapped an arm around her.

“So, what now?” Duff asked.

“Alan just said that we had to go camping so we weren’t a “menace to society”,” Izzy explained, air quotes included. “So I don’t care what we fucking do.”

“Oh! I know!” Stevie said excitedly. “We should tell scary stories!”

“What are we? Teenage girls at a sleepover?” Axl huffed. Stevie glared at him.

“With that hair you might be,” She told him. Axl growled a little.

“Mmpf,” Slash said from his spot.

“Excuse me?” Izzy asked. Slash swallowed the food in his mouth.

“I bet I have the scariest story.”

“Bullshit,” Duff told him. “I’m calling bullshit on that one.”

“Shut up,” Slash argued. “You think yours is so good, you tell us your story.”

“Okay, I will!” Duff sat up straight. “It was a dark and stormy night…”

“Lame!” Axl called out.

“I haven’t even started…”

“It’s still lame,” Axl smirked. “Why don’t I tell you a story that scared the shit out of me when I was a kid?”

“Oh, this should be good,” Izzy chuckled.

“It will be,” Axl stated proudly. “Because I’m going to tell you the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

****

Fog settled around the small town as the train from Indianapolis stopped in Lafayette. Not many people got off the train there. Just a couple soldiers finally being freed from the Army and heading home from battle, and a lone school teacher who had just missed out on being pulled into war and had dedicated his time to his studies. Jeffrey Isbell, lovingly called Izzy by his few friends, greeted his new home as he stood on the platform of the train station.

“Oh, come on, why the fuck am I Ichabod Crane?”

“Shut up and let me tell the fucking story bitch!”

Quiet by comparison to Indianapolis, Izzy wasn’t sure how to handle his new life. He didn’t have the money to turn around and head back the way he came, and he had been promised a nice job at the new school that was opening up. Grabbing the few bags that he had, he headed into Lafayette. The home that he had been promised by the mayor wasn’t far from the station. The address was hastily written in the letter that finalized the details for his new job.

“This can’t be it…” Izzy mumbled to himself as he looked down the broken path that led to the small, brick home. It looked worse for wear, to say the least, but it was a home. And it was all his. No living in a boarding house for who knew how long. Everything just seemed too good to be true.

“Ah, you must be Mr. Isbell,” A voice said, making Izzy jump. He turned to see a boy, not much younger than him.

“My friends call me Izzy,” Izzy told him. The boy looked around.

“I don’t see many friends around you, but I’ll be your friend!” He beamed at Izzy. “My name’s Slash!”

“Slash?” Izzy asked.

“Well, my real name is Saul, but I got the name Slash because I run around and cut through conversations like a machete slashing through weeds!”

“I see…” Izzy nodded. “And what are you doing here?”

“I tried to take care of the place until Mr. Adler got a new tenant. You must be the schoolteacher he was telling us about.” He walked with Izzy towards the front of the house. “But you don’t look like a schoolteacher.”

“What does a schoolteacher look like?”

“Well, old…” Slash shrugged. “At least the one that Stevie and I had was an old hag.”

“Stevie?” Izzy asked, searching around for a key.

“Stevie’s my best friend!” Slash informed him. “Oh! You need this!” He produced a key from his pocket and handed it to Izzy. Izzy gave him a bit of a look and unlocked the door. Slash stood in the doorway.

“Do you want to come in?” Izzy asked as he looked around. For the most part, the house was pretty clean. And the old furniture that sat in there would do until he could find his own. “Well, uh, thanks for keeping the house clean.”

“You’re welcome,” Slash smiled. “Can I show you around town?”

“Well, sure,” He shrugged. “Where’s a good place to get some beer?”

“Oh, now you’re speaking my language!” Slash smiled. Izzy sat his couple of bags down and followed his new friend into Lafayette. It was a bit busier than he thought it would be, but still quite sleepy compared to Indianapolis.

“There’s not much around here, is there?” Izzy asked, noticing a few shops and churches.

“Not really,” Slash shrugged. “But hey, it’s home.” Izzy nodded but stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of a beautiful, blonde woman.

“Who is that?” Izzy asked. Slash looked in the same direction and smiled.

“Oh! That’s Stevie!” His face lit up. “Hey Stevie!” He waved to the girl, who returned the smile and crossed the street in front of some horses.

“Slash!” Stevie hugged him. “It’s so good to see you! Who’s your friend?”

“This is Izzy. We go way back,” Slash told her. “He’s the new school teacher.” Stevie looked him up and down.

“You don’t look anything like a school teacher,” She pointed out.

“That’s what I said!” Slash shook his head. Izzy took Stevie’s hand and kissed it.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Izzy told her. Stevie blushed a little before looking towards Slash.

“What are you doing out by the horses anyway?” Slash asked.

“Waiting on my father and Duff to return,” Stevie told him. Izzy raised an eyebrow. “My father is the mayor. And Duff is my fiance.”

“His real name is Michael. He’s one of those weird Irishmen,” Slash explained.

“Wait, your father is Mayor Adler?” Izzy question. Stevie nodded and smiled.

“I’m his only daughter,”

“Spoiled only child you mean,” Slash mumbled under his breath, earning a glare from his friend.

“And if you need someone to show you around, I would be more than happy to do it,” Stevie smiled at him. “But I do have to meet my father and Duff for dinner. Gentlemen.” She nodded and headed back across the street, turning to walk backward. “And Mr. Izzy, I must say you have beautiful handwriting.” She smiled before turning back around and meeting two men from a hunting party.

“What does she mean by that?” Izzy asked.

“It’s well known that Mayor Adler doesn’t write any of his own letters,” Slash shrugged. Izzy watched as a tall blond man offered her his arm and led her into the restaurant. “Come on, the beer isn’t getting any colder and the tavern has better food than that place.” The two headed to the tavern, where the atmosphere was a little more lively than outside had been, which wasn’t saying much. But a few drinks later and some of Slash’s friends had joined them.

“I’m surprised that you even came here with the stories,” Thomas told Izzy as he drained his drink.

“Stories? What stories?” Izzy asked. Thomas, Frank, and Slash all exchanged looks.

“You didn’t tell him?” Frank asked Slash.

“Tell me what?” Izzy was confused. Thomas sighed.

“They say his name was William Bailey…”

“I heard him called William Rose,” Frank interrupted.

“I thought his name was Axl. You know, because of the ax!” Another man named Vincent joined the table.

“Anyway, William was just a young farmhand outside of Lafayette,” Thomas explained as Vincent looked Izzy up and down. “Legend has it that his stepfather went crazy, killed all of them with an ax.”

“I heard that he had it cut off by some Brits during the war,” Frank added.

“I thought he owed money, and because he couldn’t pay, they cut off his head,” Vincent pondered. Thomas glared at the two of them before looking back at Izzy.

“Anyway, he haunts the woods around the town, on his horse as black as night. You better before careful or he’ll,” Thomas made a cutting motion with his thumb across his neck. “Off with your head.”

“You’re kidding me,” Izzy laughed a little. But when no one else returned the laughter, Izzy stopped. “What?”

“He killed my friend a couple of years ago,” Frank told him.

“Everyone knows someone who was killed by Axl Rose,” Vincent added. Izzy shook his head and finished his beer. Slash and Izzy headed back to Izzy’s new home, Izzy offering Slash to stay the night.

“It’s just a legend,” Slash told him. “There’s no proof anyone was killed by the Headless Horseman.”

“Headless Horseman?” Izzy asked. “I thought you said his name was Axl Rose.”

“William Bailey but still, it’s all just a legend. A rumor,” Slash told him. “Anyway, goodnight.” Slash headed to a spare room he would sleep in when working on the house, and Izzy headed towards his room.

Sleep did not come easy for the young school teacher.

The next morning, Izzy headed out to examine his new school, as well as finding himself a horse to use for his travels. As he exited the school, which was going to need some work, he spied the beautiful Stevie.

“Izzy!” She smiled and waved at him. The blond man from the day before stared at Izzy. “How are you adjusting?”

“Just fine,” Izzy told her. “Checking out the new school.” He looked at Stevie’s companion.

“Oh, Izzy, this is my fiance Duff. Duff, this is the new school teacher, Izzy.” Stevie introduced them. Izzy stuck out his hand and Duff looked at it for a moment before shaking it.

“Pleasure.” Duff nodded. “Stevie couldn’t stop talking about that “man from Indianapolis” last night.”

“I did not!” Stevie blushed. Izzy felt his own cheeks heating some, but shook his head to try to make it go away.

“Where could one see about finding a horse?” Izzy asked.

“A farm,” Duff mumbled under his breath. Izzy glared a little, but Stevie’s voice cut through the tension.

“Doc McGhee has some horses he might be able to sell you,” Stevie explained. “Come on. We’ll show you.”

“We will?” Duff asked. Stevie looked up at him. “I mean, of course, we will.” Stevie and Duff led Izzy to Doc McGhee’s place, where there were horses waiting outside for someone to take them home.

“There you are,” Stevie smiled at him. “If you need anything else, don’t hesitate.” She laid a hand on Izzy's shoulder for a brief moment before leaving with Duff.

“I’d watch out,” A gruff voice drew in Izzy’s attention. “That McKagan boy is known to be a little jealous at times.”

“There’s nothing to be jealous over,” Izzy shrugged and handed him money for a horse. “Have you ever heard of a Headless Horseman?”

“William Bruce?” Doc McGhee asked. “That’s a legend started to scare children. Every time something bad happens in the woods, it’s always “the headless horseman did it”. Nine times out of ten, it’s probably a bear.”

“And the tenth time?” Izzy questions.

“Well, it’s probably the jealous fiancee of a beautiful girl,” Doc told him.

“Uh, right,” Izzy nodded. “Thanks for the horse.”

“Her name is Gunsmoke,” Doc told him. Izzy just gave him a smile before departing with his new horse.

“I like her.” Slash told him when he saw the horse later. “It’ll be easy for you to get to the Adler house for the party.”

“Party?” Izzy asked. “What party?”

“They have a big festival every year. Everyone in town is invited.” Slash explained. “There will be apples and dancing and, of course, beer.” Slash could tell that Izzy was going to bail. “And Stevie will be there.”

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” Izzy sighed.

That’s how he found himself at the party later that evening, with people he didn’t know. He saw Duff and Stevie sitting at the table with Mayor Adler and his wife, and Slash with Thomas, Frank, Vincent, and a fourth having the time of their lives. Izzy was about to leave when Stevie snagged his hand.

“Izzy, the party is just starting,” Stevie told him. “Please tell me you’re not leaving now.”

“I think I’m just going to go work on my lessons,” Izzy told her, resulting in a pout.

“Dance with me at least once,” Stevie didn’t really ask, but told him. Izzy looked over at Duff, who was watching.

“Are you sure that he won’t mind?” Izzy asked. Stevie looked over at Duff before turning her attention back to Izzy.

“He’s harmless,” Stevie smiled. “Come now.” She led him to where others were dancing as music played. “Where did you learn to dance?”

“Just from practicing,” Izzy told her, spinning her around. It was all too soon before the song was over and Stevie bid farewell to Izzy, heading back to her table. Izzy decided to call it a night and headed towards Gunsmoke, leaving Slash with his friends.

Stevie approached the table where Duff had been sitting with her parents, frowning when she didn’t see him.

“Where’s Duff?” She asked.

“Oh, he said he and his friends needed to grab something. He’ll be back,” Mrs. Adler told her. Stevie frowned and headed towards her horse, going to look for Duff.

Izzy headed through the woods from the Adler home to his own when he heard the sound of a horse neighing. He looked around, fully expecting to see Slash right behind him, but he saw nothing. Gunsmoke seemed to sense a change in the air because she picked up her pace.

“Woah girl. Easy,” Izzy tried to calm her, but she stopped suddenly. Izzy thought he had succeeded until he saw a figure on a horse. Izzy’s eyes widened when he realized the figure had no head, and in his hands, he held a light jack-o-lantern. Izzy turned to head the other way, but the rider was close on him, much faster on the horse. As Izzy approached the bridge that led over the small river, he felt the back of his neck get hot as the jack-o-lantern hit him in the back, knocking him off his horse.

Groaning, Izzy rolled himself over onto his back to see the headless figure looming down at him. That’s when he heard laughing. From behind the trees were some of the McKagan brothers. Confused, Izzy looked back at the other rider as he removed his jacket, showing Duff.

“Oh we got you!” Duff laughed. “Your face!” Izz got off the dusty ground and brushed himself off.

“I have half a mind to…” Izzy was cut off by a scream. Duff and his brothers froze as Izzy looked towards the graveyard. There, by a few of the unmarked and unkept graves, was Stevie, trapped by a figure on a black horse.

“Who’s that?” Duff asked. The figure turned to look at him.

“Another one of your brothers?” Izzy asked. Duff shook his head. Before they could move to go help Stevie, the headless figure plucked her off her horse and threw her on his.

“Hey!” Duff called out. At that time, Slash, Vincent, Thomas, Frank, and their friend Robert all joined up with them.

“It’s William Bailey!” Thomas called out. Stevie pushed away from him, trying to get away, but he held on tighter to her, using her for leverage.

“Burn him!” Stevie called out to them. “Burn his bones!” The figure placed a gloved hand over her mouth to keep her from talking.

“Where’s his grave?” Izzy asked Slash.

“Uh, I think it’s an unmarked one…” Slash told him. “I think it’s that one.” He pointed to a grave under a scary-looking willow that Stevie had been standing under.

“Duff, I need your help,” Izzy told him. Duff nodded and headed towards the graveyard with him. The headless figure charged at them, swinging an ax with Stevie still stuck with him. Duff dove and made his way towards the tree, and with the help of the others, worked on digging to find William’s bones. Stevie bit down on William’s hand, forcing him to let go of her. She fell into Izzy’s arms.

“I’ve got you,” He told her, holding her as the headless figure raced back towards him. “Close your eyes.” He told her as he squeezed his own shut, waiting for the pain of beheading that never came.

Instead, he opened an eye to see the figure on fire before disappearing, Duff and the others standing there, confused.

“I...is it over?” Stevie asked.

“I think so,” Izzy told her. She placed a quick kiss on his lips.

“Thank you,” She told him before heading back over to Duff, who quickly wrapped his arms around her. Izzy looked at them before looking back at the grave.

Only to realize that there was no head to the body.

****

“The end.” Axl finished up.

“Why did you make yourself the Headless Horseman?” Duff asked. “Why aren’t you Ichabod?”

“Because I don’t like Stevie.” Axl pointed out.

“And Izzy does?” Duff questioned, looking at the guitarist.

“Shut up.” Izzy hissed.

“Okay, someone else think up a better story before Izzy and Duff kill each other, or Axl. Or both.” Slash said and everyone got quiet, trying to think of a way to outdo Axl’s story.

Forever Tags: @dekahg @marvel-af-imagines @feelmyroarrrr @nanie5 @gemini0410 @aiaranradnay @babypink224221 @mogarukes @xxwarhawk @sandlee44 @shatteredabby @caswinchester2000 @lauravic @mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk @teller258316 @horrorpxnk @tommyleeownsme @marvelismylifffe @jaxl-road

Guns n Roses Tags: @malibubarbievince @slashscowboyboots @hauntedapricoteggsclam @bitter-13-suite @arianareirg @lucyboytom @julessworldd @solopadawan @stradlin-cold-heartbreaker@catsandacoffee @kaitieskidmore1 @heavy-metal-fucking-rules @aratbaby @dufflesmckagan @appetiteforstradlin @acdcmutual

#campfire tales #guns n roses #fanfiction #duff mckagan #izzy stradlin #axl rose #steven adler #slash

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years ago

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The Celtic Tiger - A Kaiserreich Ireland AAR Chapter 5: The Red Hand and the White Dove

A good general never let his successes linger too long. The key to winning a war was never stopping until the final objective was secured, which meant that no soldier could afford to celebrate his success.

2 October 1939 - Home of Michael Collins, County Cork, Ireland

The Irish had successfully repulsed multiple combined invasions from two great powers, and had successfully maintained the territorial integrity of their island. Britain had shifted their attention to the Low Countries and France had placed most of their forces along the German border or along the south of France in Marseilles. It had been days since a single Union plane or ship had come anywhere close to Irish territory. The unity that such a feat had engendered had been nothing short of exceptional. Some foreign workers had evacuated, but plenty had stayed behind to continue to help provide much needed manpower for Ireland in the face of invasion. Wealthy Irishmen bought war bonds by the armful, older men volunteered to help man civil defense spotting towers to supplement the radar stations, and workers had seamlessly integrated a full three-shift rotation to speed production along. Yet this unity had not been total, and one faction began to cause more problems.

It had been no secret that the Orangeists in Ulster had been agitating for a return to the British in Canada. To hear the rhetoric, Ulsterites needed to do everything they could to allow the exiled Windsors to return to their throne. Ireland was an ideal staging ground for the Entente, an unsinkable aircraft carrier capable of sending the entirety of the Entente’s aerial forces against the Union and the Communards. G2 had done wonders in infiltrating the Union, and the Irish Republican Army was one of the most experienced forces in the world, certainly when it came to fighting Mosley. All of that value, they argued, must have been put to use in the service King Edward. Once the United Kingdom had been restored, Ulster could be returned to the Crown, and all would be well, if you asked the Orangeists. The Unionists were seeing attendance at their rallies steadily grow and grow, before long the entirety of the Six Counties would be UUP.

The notion of joining both the Entente and the Reichspakt had been floated in the Dail. It made practical sense to join one of them, and gain the support of large and powerful armies and economies at the Irish back. Collins had exhausted plenty of political capital to shoot down those proposals, reading the refusals of the Kaiserreich and the exiled British government when the Mosley first declared war. Collins didn’t like it, it gave too much red meat to the na hAiséirghe crowd and could embolden their efforts against his immigration reforms, but it gained him a reprieve from those demanding that Ireland join one of the two European factions. Joining one would invite the Union to continue bombing and invading to prevent exactly the scenario that the Ulsterites hoped to come to pass.

With the war on, it was the perfect time to move. If it wasn’t such a threat, Collins would appreciate the irony, since the Weltkrieg was what had enabled Irish independence in the first place. He now sat in the same position as the British Empire did twenty years ago. The moment had made his mouth taste like metal, almost an involuntary moment of revulsion. The promises of 1921 seemed to be coming true at the worst possible time. The confirmation of Ulster would have to take place, one way or the other.

Now that the bombings were over, and life was attempting to return to normal, agitation against the Irish government had returned. James Craig had viciously denounced the Collins government, declaring that Collins had hoped to hobble Belfast, and that the Northern Irish would be kept out of the riches of Collins’s economic policies. The Saorstat Brewery, the Open for Business Initiative, the agricultural reforms in Connacht, the zinc mines in the center of the country, it was economic prosperity for Catholics only, Craig had made a grand show to a roaring crowd of Unionists and Ulster Volunteers. Collins’s ultimate goal, so Craig spelled out, was the economic subservience of the Northern Irish, to let them wither until they surrender who they are.

“Everything I’ve done for Belfast and it’s still not enough. The steelworks, the Short Brothers, none of it will ever be enough for James Craig.” Collins grumbled to an empty room.

---

16 November 1939 - Belfast, Ireland

The latest news wasn’t good. The Unionists, citing unequal treatment by Catholic employers, had planned to stage a large-scale sympathetic strike, which threatened everything from small restaurants all the way to Harland and Wolff. The Ulster Shipwright and Marine Workers Association, by far the largest labor union in Belfast and de facto head of any large-scale labor activity, had misgivings about striking in the middle of a war, and had strongly pushed a compromise plan. Smaller businesses unrelated to the war effort like restaurants and other service industries would institute a general strike, while shipyards, airfields, and other critical war industries would stress work-to-rule behavior and malicious compliance. As a token of good faith in their statement of grievances, the workers promised that they would maintain all repair facilities for the An tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh and the An tAerchór at full functionality; they would do nothing that would critically endanger Ireland’s defense in the wake of Union aggression. Despite this, the plan ultimately was for naught. A fight broke out between the Unionists and a large group of unknown men shouting that they were betraying the war effort. No one had been seriously injured, merely cuts, broken bones, and a bunch of filled beds at Belfast Medical.

Rumors had abounded at what exactly happened and who was involved. Collins received his share of the blame, plenty believed that he had ordered the strikebreaking action to intimidate the Ulster Volunteers under the veneer of plausible deniability. Even more outlandish conspiracy theorists suggested that Collins had organized the labor action itself, to give his strikebreakers the reason they needed to kick a couple of teeth in without actually causing significant damage to the war effort and delegitimize the Ulster Volunteers and the labor unions in one fell swoop to prevent reaching out to the Dominion or the Union. The Catholics loudly protested that it must have been the Ulster Unionists who struck the first blow, hypocritically demanding the right to protest but denying it to the Irish nationalists in a rehash of the old Irish Penal Law system. Most however, thought it was just strikebreaking, squads hired by business owners to break up the labor action. Either way, it wasn’t good for the Collins government.

This had come not long after the bank of Ireland had been robbed in Belfast, gaining plenty of money to continue to fund dissident activity within the Six Counties. The Gardai had been unable to find where the money had gone, it had almost certainly been laundered through businesses in the North. No one could prove that it was the Unionists who had robbed it, but everyone was convinced that it was the case. With the Irish budgets already stretched thin, the loss of the cash reserves in Belfast had stung deeply. Angry Irish citizens had demanded that the government guarantee their account holdings and punish those responsible. Collins sympathized, but inflation was a dangerous beast to wrestle with already, he couldn’t imagine the headache he would have to deal with if he started securing private holdings during the war.

No matter the truth of everything that had happened in Ulster, it was bad for Collins. This sort of thing could only hurt the war effort. The last thing he needed was James Craig hoping to secure himself by latching on to the Union, or declaring war on Ireland and inviting in the British crown. “Tighten restrictions, offer the usual sympathies, promise an investigation. Let’s make nice before this gets any worse.” Collins ordered, hoping to stave off catastrophe.

---

20 December 1939 - County Antrim, Ireland

It was starting to look as if it would be an armed conflict after all.

Derry had seen the first problems. A prominent Unionist activist had been stabbed in the night and left to bleed in a gutter, dying in the pre-dawn hours of a cold December morning and undiscovered until a morning street-cleaning crew found him during their shift. The Gardai had no leads, which had only mobilized the Unionists further. There had been no leads because there had been no investigation. The Gardai fully supported the murder of prominent Unionists; it allowed them to subjugate the population without fear of uprising or uproar. No doubt, had a Irish Republican loyalist been murdered, the perpetrator would have been found, arrested, and sentenced to death under wartime emergency measures.

Orangeists had been seeing a steady increase in support from Protestants in the North. Intelligence reports from police units had noted steady increases in recruiting and donations. Hardliners were urging the police to crack down on the movement, but absent evidence of a specific crime, Northern Irish advocacy groups had been a right guaranteed in the 1925 Constitution. The Gardai had to contend themselves with attempting to trace the money from the Bank of Ireland robbery and seeing if they could identify the specific groups that were causing trouble. If the perpetrators could be discovered, the Ulster Volunteers would have to disavow them and perhaps cause distress within their own movement.

The Irish nationalists despised Collins’s plans. It was war and the Ulster Volunteers were committing treason against the state. If the Ulster unions took the strikebreaking as a means to invite Mosley in, he’d have a secure beachhead, or James Craig might reach out to King Edward and slowly invite a peacekeeping force in. Neither idea seemed particularly feasible to Collins, but the fear of such possibilities was creating a lot of doomsaying, and that was enough. His success against Mosley had taught a valuable lesson: impression could mean far more than reality.

A concert hall in County Antrim saw the next bloody episode. Masked men shouting pro-Ulster slogans opened fire, killing members of a Dublin band and concert-goers alike who had been playing a Christmas benefit. No one from that crime was caught, as sympathetic Ulsterites had been able to smuggle the men underground. Investigators hadn’t yet been able to discover who the gunmen actually were. The pictures reminded Collins uncomfortably of what he saw in Galway and Sligo, how long would be before Irish would be doing the same to Irish? Rounding up and executing them in a field like they were sheep or cattle, it sickened Collins to his core. Craig had remained silent on the matter, but the Irish Catholics in the North were incredibly frightened. Even the foreigners were frightened of being caught in the crossfire, and that led Collins to one inescapable conclusion: he was losing control.

“Institute a stronger curfew, devote more money to investigations. Also let’s see if we can’t do something to undercut the Volunteer’s support among the Northerners, make them focus their efforts on fighting the Union. Take out loans if you have to; this needs to end now.”

---

17 January 1940 - Belfast Ireland

It was a grim day, and the dark clouds had seemed to be a herald for bad omens.

After the concert hall massacre, the Ulster Unionist Party had quieted down, but only for a short time. No progress had been made, and rumors had circulated that the UUP weren’t going to send any sacrificial lamb even if they disagreed with the action. The Unionists had sought to organize a large-scale march in Belfast. Plenty within Collins’s government urged him to quash it entirely under emergency war powers, a large assembly could be considered too great a risk from aerial bombardment. Yet with the threat of British bombardment being reduced, Collins had opted not to give the Ulsterites more reason to call him an unconstitutional tyrant.

When the news of it reached the Catholic minority in Belfast, they predictably demanded an extra defensive precaution. The sporadic outbreaks of violence meant that the Catholics feared that the march would become a riot, and the Ulster Unionists, while not proven to be connected to the murders in Antrim, were almost certainly guilty of abetting it. The Gardai hadn’t been able to stop the violence, and with the march they would be woefully outnumbered and unable to protect anyone if anything got out of hand. Collins had ordered the 3rd Limerick Rifles to strategic points, with Eoin O’Duffy at the command center. The 3rd Limerick was a mix of O’Duffy’s old guard, men that had served him since 1917 which now comfortably resided in senior leadership and NCO positions, and young recruits that had signed on near the beginning of the Internationale War, out of training and dispersed to different combat units so that they might benefit from the veterans that had been fighting in the war from the outset and absorbed the new techniques and methods of waging war.

The latter category was populated by Dean MacCabe, a fresh recruit among many. He was greener than his uniform, and had been nervous about fighting the war. Rather than wait to be drafted, Dean had signed up for the infantry to serve his homeland. In truth, he’d rather have been in a coastal fort on Clew Bay, but his country needed him here, making sure that nothing happened during the protest march. Fortunately so far, the worst that seemed to happen was a bit of name-calling. Dean himself would have been happy to have given as good as he got, but he needed to keep his cool. Level heads were needed, and he needed to prove himself worthy of the uniform.

The rain had already hampered visibility greatly, and with everyone wearing long coats it was almost maddening to tell who, if anyone, was concealing a weapon under their raincoat. With so many people on the street, it was next-to-impossible to pick out faces of known Ulster Volunteers or militant UUP’ers in the crowd. Sometimes people spoke to each other and pointed at the 3rd Limerick. Were they pointing them out in signal for an attack, or just commenting on the fact that they were there? A woman walking by with a baby carriage stopped to play with the infant inside. Was that genuine, or was it a signal pointing out the best angle of attack? Dean started to sweat out of fear, mixing with the rainwater that was snaking its way inside his own raincoat. Everything could be a signal for a waiting attack, everyone could be an enemy. He had orders to fire if fired upon, but felt so exposed that he wouldn’t get a chance to fire second.

Periodic glances to his pocketwatch gave him grounding but seconds ticked on agonizingly slowly as he kept watch. His fellows were just as worried as he was, he could see in their faces. The old NCO’s seemed to be surer, but that could just be the experience in their eyes. This was not so much war as it was psychological torture, young men signing up to placed in the rain to fear when the next sudden outbreak of death could come, and it could come from anywhere. It had only been six minutes since he last looked at his watch.

Bottles and rocks started to be thrown at the 3rd Limerick’s position now, but was it testing their readiness, or merely rowdy Unionists too deep in their cups? And how quickly could the latter turn into a full-blown attack. All it took was one man to draw, and Dean MacCabe could be dead on the ground. Every time he saw something suspicious, he debated looking to his comrades for guidance, but if he had, would that mean that he would leave himself exposed, and he, or one of his brothers in the unit, could be killed? Even a moment’s lapse of concentration could be lethal, and so Dean MacCabe needed to maintain focus. Finally, the drunks had either run out of bottles or found something else interesting to do, the bottles gradually tapered off from two in the air, to one, to none. MacCabe looked at his watch. Nine minutes.

“Eyes front, we’ve got something,” came the gruff voice of the sergeant, and Dean snapped out of his reverie. There was movement in the crowd, a group of toughs approaching square to the Limerick Rifles position. Dean’s nerves were fraying, and Dean did not plead for what was before him to be something genuine or a false alarm. All he wanted was this wretched duty to be over, to go back to the barracks, drink himself into a stupor, and forget that this day had ever happened. The toughs began to chant, and MacCabe stole a second to look at his watch.

Two minutes.

---

18 January 1940 - Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin, Ireland

Bloody Wednesday. That’s what the papers were calling what had happened at Belfast. Only a handful dead, more wounded, but it didn’t matter if no one was hurt: the Irish Republican Army had fired on Ulstermen. Weapons were found on the bodies, but eyewitnesses swore they saw mutually contradicting versions of events as they unfolded.

Collins made a public speech expressing sorrow for the loss of life, and vowed to discover what had happened. Only one man, above all else, could be trusted to treat the matter with the integrity that such a matter required. Richard Mulcahy, Ceann Foirne na bhFórsaí Cosanta, temporarily ceded his command position as Marshal of the Defense of Ireland to Liam Lynch, to take up a commission to investigate the matter. James Craig had wanted nothing to do with it and refused to offer any official support. Luckily for Collins, the Lord Mayor of Belfast had offered his full support for the commission provided Belfast police could participate, almost certainly committing political suicide in the process. One mayor seemed to stand between the country and civil war, and that mayor was a damn welcome sight to Collins eyes. The UUP depended on local support in Belfast, a mayor supporting the Commission would mean that until he was inevitably ousted in a no-confidence vote, Collins could act to head off any potential war.

It wouldn’t be long coming if he didn’t act quickly. G2 had intercepted comminiques to the Dominion of Canada that were almost certainly conducted on Craig’s behalf. Nothing sinister on its own, mere expressions of concern for Irish Unionists in the wake of the events of Bloody Wednesday. More concerning were the trade unions reaching out to the Union across the Irish Sea. Only the fringe socialists campaigned for syndicalism after Mosley’s invasion, but that crowd started to gain more support among the trade unions after the strikebreaking action, and it would only get worse if the common man in the North figured that Mosley was the lesser evil.

“Go on, and come back with what you can. Spend whatever money you need, do whatever you can to make peace. We aren’t going to survive any more invasions if we’re fighting in the Six Counties.”

---

1 Feburary, 1940 - Special Session of the Dail, Dublin, Ireland

The Mulcahy Commission had returned surprising, and utterly damning results.

O’Duffy had asserted in his after-action reports that the Unionists had initiated violence, taking advantage of a minor street altercation to ambush a stationed unit. After receiving fire, O’Duffy had reinforced his men. Once the Ulsterites had started to take fire, they fled into the crowds, which quickly had become chaotic. The entire mess had taken less than 30 seconds, but they were 30 seconds of absolute madness.

Mulcahy’s findings concluded the opposite. He had stated that it had appeared that one of O’Duffy’s men fired the first shots, the Ulsterites had responded, and had placed weapons among the dead to minimize the risk that any could have been identified as an unarmed civilian. No one in the IRA detachment that had been fired upon would come forward to support Mulcahy’s findings, and most credible witnesses were unable to determine whether one or the other was true; most were paying attention to the parade and saw the firefight only after the first shots were fired.

The implications for the Irish Republican Army was huge. If O’Duffy was guilty, it would mean that a high-ranking member of the IRA had conspired to attack Protestant Irishmen. Before now, the government had not been involved in violence against citizens in the North in ten years, since the Northern Campaign. Now, it could have confirmed that there would be no regularization of their status, that they would always be second-class citizens in the Republic, and their only choices were rebellion or slow destruction.

“We respect the Commission and its findings. The Republic of Ireland owes a debt of gratitude to Richard Mulcahy, the Right Honorable Lord Mayor of Belfast Crawford McCullagh, and the investigators who have worked many hours to discover the truth.” Collins announced on the steps of the Dail. “There is nothing that can bring back those poor men and women who died that fateful day. All we can do is labor on in their stead. The Republic of Ireland will compensate the families of those lost, hold trials of the perpetrators, and hold them in our prayers. We cannot undo this, but we can endeavor to build something from this.”

The Bloody Wednesday trials, as they came to be known, were largely simple affairs. Testimony was mercifully brief; there was no need to be lurid or voyeuristic in The young men in the division, who had followed the orders of their superiors, were convicted of manslaughter. The officers and NCO’s on scene, who were of higher rank and ordered the shooting, had higher sentences. That only left Eoin O’Duffy himself, who adamantly maintained his innocence and dismissed the evidence against him arranging any sort of conspiracy as spurious. The prosecution had attempted to cite him for command responsibility, but the Hague Conventions had been rather vague on the notion, and the Peace With Honor had looked to avoid punishing soldiers for their actions near the end of the Weltkrieg. No one could argue that opening fire on civilians and placing weapons on them to cover up the crime wasn’t beyond the scope of normal command duties. If there wasn’t ironclad proof, the IRA would see it as Collins betraying his own for the sake of making nice with Ulster, the corruption of Collins the soldier to Collins the politician who threw his soldiers under the bus.

“They were your soldiers too, Eoin! You trained them! You’re the one betraying them. The Ulsterites are Irish too.”

Ultimately, O’Duffy was sentenced to life imprisonment, after being cashiered from the Irish Republican Army. Collins didn’t see it as a victory. If he had sent Mulcahy instead of O’Duffy, how many more lives would have been saved? What could he do, to build a united Ireland in the wake of such bloodshed.

“Call Mr. McCullagh. This is my last shot to avoid losing Ireland.”

---

14 September 1940 - Belfast, Ireland

“With the establishment of the Parliament of Ulster and the transformation of the Republic into the Federal Republic of Ireland, all Irish people can truly be thought of as being weavers of the grand Irish tapestry. We thank the government of Michael Collins for establishing this institution to ensure that the Northern Irish and Protestant peoples of this great country can show and share their ways of life, and the distinct traditions that have become part of our life can become part of Ireland’s. The Cultural Unity Commission represents a tangible step on the path to the vision of our great flag. One nation, Catholic and Protestant, with the eternal flag of peace between them.” -Gerald McCullagh, First Minister of the Ulster Parliament

It was a pretty speech, but McCullagh had quieted down the UUP protests. There had almost been a complete schism between McCullagh and Craig, and Craig’s advanced age had not helped him maintain control of the party. A younger generation had been able to portray McCullagh as out of touch, wanting to reunite with a land that had fled to Canada to escape the syndicalists. Worse, they hadn’t come to support Ireland when she called for support, but Michael Collins had fought, and fought well.

Collins had established the Ulster-Scots as its own language along with English and Irish Gaelic. It had been a nightmare to organize during wartime, at one point he had joked that he spent more time trying to figure out how to translate official government manuals than he had in pursuing the fight against the Union of Britain in the past month. The gesture had surprised the moderates in the UUP, and got them to the negotiating table when the timetable for phasing in the new language was given to them. Economic gestures hadn’t worked, but Collins saw more success with political measures meant to promote Ulsterites in Ireland, first with the establishment of their own language and then with the establishment of the Cultural Unity Commission. The resolution of their status, the question that had been on the table since 1925, was being sorted. Ireland would not simply tolerate her Protestant citizens, but celebrate them. This had enraged the Irish Catholic League and other populist Catholic movements, but Collins hadn’t been worried; they had been fringe groups to begin with and banned from the Irish Republican Army.

The last step had been to federalize Ireland into four regional areas with four Parliaments, Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. Dublin would still be the centralized seat of the national government, responsible for matters of national interest such as the military, foreign policy, and inter-province commerce, but more domestic matters would be ceded to the local Parliaments. The full resumption of federal duties would be brought into effect when the war was over, but as a gesture of support, Collins had reshuffled the War Cabinet to include ministers from each of the four provinces. Oddly, this development had been celebrated with greater fanfare within Connacht and Munster than in Ulster itself, the two provinces had seen themselves receive less in terms of investment than Dublin or Belfast, and they welcomed the added jobs and local autonomy. The success of the IEAA and the war industries had made the country bloom, and if a little autonomy was lost for maximum unity, so much the better. For the first time since this war had begun, Collins began to feel optimism.

The same couldn’t be said for the world situation. The Russian Vozhd had begun to push deep into White Ruthenia and the Kingdom of the Ukraine. Japan and Germany had turned the Southeastern Asian peninsula into a massive stretch of small battles and the Pacific into a warzone, and Japan had offered its support to the Princely Federation to attack the British Dominion of India, putting the Co-Prosperity Sphere at war with the Entente. The Zhii Clique and the Fengtian government had also gone to war in support of their respective Great Power patrons to turn northern China into a proxy war between Germany and Japan, and Cheng Jiongming had taken the opportunity to take over Hunan and Siuchan mostly peacefully, espousing Chinese democratic federalism. The war in China had prevented Japanese land reinforcements, forcing them to rely heavily on their Siamese allies. Savinkov, sensing weakness, had declared war to seize Transamur, and had invaded Japanese Siberia to take back the tiny province. Entente naval invasions hadn’t made much progress in mainland France, and the Low Countries were struggling with a British seaborne invasion and French attacks along the border.

“This is the final struggle.” Collins addressed the nation in a radio speech. “Ireland cannot know peace until the menace that has been the Union of Britain is defeated. We have maintained our borders, but it is not enough to simply seek détente with those who sought to enslave us. The Union of Britain is a threat to the entire world, and there will not be peace until we have taken it in our hands and shown it to the world. The Irish Republican Army will go across the sea, and we will rid ourselves of those who seek to deny us our own country.”

It was a pretty speech, and it brought the country together, but that’s all that it was. Collins needed to find a way to provide a unified front against the Internationale. For all that Deat and Mosley loathed each other, they had coordinated exceptionally well and presented a unified front against the Reichspakt. The Entente and the Reichspakt had offered non-aggression pacts between each other, but coordination had gone no further. If Collins wanted to win the war, he would have to solve that problem. If he couldn’t, then he would face annihilation.

An impossible problem? The risk of death? Every problem seemed to have such unimaginable stakes, and each time one was solved another rose in it’s place. But that was necessary. These were the times that they were in.

---

Images

Unionists Hold Massive Rally

Unionists Mobilize

Unionists Planning an Uprising?

Clash at Unionist Worker Strike

Bank of Ireland Robbery

Murder in Derry

Antrim Concert Hall Attacked

Ulster March Begins

The Mulcahy Commission

Eoin O’Duffy’s Trial

Ulster at Peace

The New Ireland

The Final Struggle

Alright everyone, this is the latest chapter. I’m not in love with this one as much as I am with some of the others, but I was happy to be able to present some of the deployed grunt experience with Dean MacCabe; there’s a little bit of my friends who went to Iraq in it, and I wanted to relay the intensity and paranoia that they felt, even if it was just for a few paragraphs.

Did what I could to ensure that these antagonists (in terms of a character that provides an obstacle to our protagonist, not a ‘villain’) came across as reasonable; one of my many faults when I write is that I have a tendency to focus more upon protagonists, so I wanted to ensure that the Ulster Unionists came across as mostly reasonable with extreme elements. I think I pulled it off well enough, but let me know what you think of it.

I’m not a fan that peace was so easy to achieve, because I think that cheapens the very real long-term efforts that these sorts of efforts entail. That’s a function of the game mechanics in HOI4, the same thing is present in the base game in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Even the ideas in those foci would take a long time to implement, but it’s an AAR, so I have to reflect the mechanics of the game in the writing and make some vague allusions that it’s going to be a long process. Such as it is, I’m afraid.

The Second Weltkrieg continues on, the next chapter will be much different, as rather than taking place in one year over a series of events, it will take place over a few days at the Halifax Conference, and it will be a dialogue-driven chapter. We will have several bigwigs making their appearance, like Kaiser Wilhelm II and King Albert I (our King George VI), and some callbacks to earlier chapters. Hope you’ll enjoy it.

-SLAL

#kaiserreich #creative #celtic tiger

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