#most of the time out here drawing what amounts to muppets and then sometimes i get the urge for this and just need to cover everyone in blo | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ifourmindbeso · 7 years ago

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A very, very Merry Christmas

Anonymous asked: Dear Bering and Wellser, I am your secret Santa. What is your dearest wish for this lovely season? I can provide fic of a fluffy or angsty flavour, and will endeavour to write to any prompt you might like to give. Ho, ho, and additionally, ho. Santa ;)

Hey there, Santa — Every year I keep hoping I won’t need to say “please, no angst; the world’s angsty enough as it is”… but every year, here we are again, surrounded by upheaval and uncertainty. As for a prompt, then, what I’ll tell you is that the brilliant poet Mary Ruefle once titled an essay “Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World.” Interpret that idea, or whatever constellation of ideas it represents, as you prefer… or ignore it completely and go with mistletoe! Menorahs! Mangers! It doesn’t matter to me, as long as it’s Bering and Wells. And anyway, I’m already grateful to you, whichever nerdsbian you are, for being a part of this tenacious little fandom. This little fandom that is so big-hearted: it’s a gift in itself.

Merry Christmas, Bering and Wellsers, and to you, the lovely @apparitionism. This piece starts with the prompt above, but quickly goes off in a direction of hopelessly ridiculous. I don’t know where the inspiration for this came from, but part of it was definitely an illustration from the lovely @foxfire141 on tumblr. I asked if she would consider drawing something for this piece, and she provided the delightful illustration that, if I have done this right, should appear in the appropriate spot in the story. I have to thank her for her incredible work on this, and for her incredible talent. It has added to this piece in a way that I couldn't have imagined.

This is a sort-of sequel to my previous fic, ‘Aye, Zombie’. If you haven’t read it, you probably need to know that the Myka in this fic (and Claudia, Pete and Artie) grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Myka is somewhat foul-mouthed but has a good heart, despite her somewhat questionable past. Helena is the HG Wells, who came forward in time because Mrs Frederic told her that Christina would die if she didn’t. Christina consequently lived to old age. I think that’s all you need to know, but you could always go back and read Aye,Zombie, if you fancy some unintelligible Irish-isms and questionable humour.

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. HG Wells

“Now, you see, love. That’s what I don’t get. You wrote that thing about the bicycles, not Charlie, right?”

“Yes,” she said, patiently.

“So your great words to the world are that when you see someone on a bicycle, that gives you hope for the future of the human race? What about seeing someone with a book? Surely that is the thing that makes you think that, all right, maybe we aren’t going to explode in a nuclear apocalypse or die from extreme weather caused by global warming. Because people read, and they learn.”

“Well, I suppose I see what you mean,” she said, thoughtfully, looking far too fucking adorable in my opinion, “but a bicycle is a statement all of its own. It means that the person riding it prefers to travel under their own steam. Whether it’s for personal fitness, for the feel of the wind in their face, for the sake of the planet – it’s usually a good reason. A book – well, it can mean a multitude of things. If the book is the bible, well, I’m sorry to say it, but the person reading it could be wonderful, or they could be terrible. Christians come in all sorts of flavours. Evil being the one we’ve seen the most of throughout history. The book could be Mein Kampf. And again, the person reading it could be studying it, to learn about history so as not to repeat it, or they could be reading it to repeat history. Do you see what I mean?”

I looked at her, and I think my jaw fell open a little. After years of marriage – an idea I would have laughed about only a few years back – she still managed to surprise me.

“Do close your mouth dear, you look like a frog that someone’s trodden on,” she said, fondly.

I rolled my eyes. We might be in the 21st century, but my Helena was one of a kind. Victorian to the core. I expected her to say ‘spit spot’ and ‘chop chop’ at times, and then remembered that was just one of my fantasies. (I mean, Julie Andrews is hot, whether she’s in her twenties or her seventies.)

“Are you ready?” Helena asked, as we got onto the plane.

“I’m fine,” I said, scowling slightly. I hated travelling at the best of times, but flights like this – commercial flights – were the worst. You had no control, you were corralled like animals, you were shot if you moved an inch out of place… okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it certainly felt that way. I could feel the watchful eyes of the air marshal on me and the other passengers. Thank Christ we were in First Class. At least that gave me enough room to stretch out and the attendants tended to be a bit more polite. Mrs Frederic had agreed to ship me first class after the first flight when things had gone a bit… haywire because of PTSD. But sure I’m fine now. Honest.

I drained a glass of Bushmills before we even took off our coats.

The retrieval we were going on was a simple one. People in Flippin, Arkansas were turning into their favourite foods. Like walking, talking muppet puppets in the shape of fries or a bowl of their favourite soup or a walking burger. Pete and I had arm-wrestled for this retrieval. I won, but I promised I’d take lots of pictures.

Sometimes life in the Warehouse made sense. Sometimes it really didn’t, and you had to take advantage of those times, I thought, because otherwise you would take it all too seriously and go batshit crazy.

I drank a few more shots of Bushmills, studiously ignoring Helena dropping a sleeping pill into one of them. She seemed to think that the ‘B A Baracus’ approach was the best way to get me from A to B safely. She might have been right. I had dreams about dancing ice cream cones and that time we all burst into song because of an artefact. It was not pleasant, I can assure you. Helena Wells, despite her many fine qualities, is entirely tone deaf, and Pete sounds like a bullfrog when he tries to sing. Thankfully the rest of us managed to drown them out in the ensemble pieces, but their solo pieces were… ugh.

I woke to Helena gently shaking me awake, touching my left shoulder. We had come up with a code after a few too many attempted punches of her poor face. She had great reflexes, though, and I’d never actually landed a punch on her. Left shoulder meant everything’s fine. Right shoulder meant there was trouble and to grab weapons. Anywhere else on my body – that meant it wasn’t her, or anyone else I trusted.

I wiped my face with a wet wipe before retrieving my bag from the locker and I filed out dutifully with the rest of the cattle. Our Secret Service badges got us past the security on the other end quickly, a fact for which I was grateful. Who wants to be stuck in an airport a few days before Christmas with the entire human race crowded around you? Nobody, that’s who. The entire place smelled like feet.

“Shall we check in first before we go to find our walking foodstuffs, darling?” she asked, and I was once again struck by her other-ness. She was a part of this century now, but a walking anachronism at the same time. When I met her she did a great impersonation of a human from this century, but since we became a partnership, she didn’t seem to want to hide her true self as much. I liked that, a lot.

“We should check in,” I said, wearily. “I hate travelling love, why can’t you invent a transporter? You said you made a shrink ray, didn’t you?”

“I did, but making a teleportation device is somewhat of a challenge, even for someone with my intellect. If you do as they do in your Star Wars, you disperse someone’s molecules and send them somewhere else with the aid of some unknown force. But are those people still themselves when they come out the other end? One misplaced atom could turn you into a yeti, darling, and I really don’t think our wedding vows would cover that sort of mishap. I can handle a certain amount of body hair, but that’s just a little too much for my tastes.”

I made a harrumphing noise at her, and we made our way by cab to the hotel, which was the usual Warehouse style – small but clean, close to town but not in the centre. The check-in took approximately a week and a half, or so it seemed to my somewhat grumpy self, but as soon as we had keys, we dumped our bags off, showered quickly and changed, and went to find our victims. I brought my digital camera - for purely professional reasons.

“Agent Bering, Agent Wells. It’s a pleasure to have you here in our little corner of the world.” It was the Sheriff, the fella who’d called for help with this bizarre phenomenon. He got us, ‘Secret Service’ agents.

“I didn’t like that Flippin airport much,” I said, in my best vaguely-American accent. He laughed loudly.

“You got a great sense of humour, Agent,” he said, thumbs tucked into his belt-loops, his impressive belly jiggling as he laughed. He looked a bit like Santa Claus, but without the beard.

“So, this is the weirdest thing we’ve ever seen, even in a town with a name like Flippin,” he said, scratching his head under his Sheriff hat thingie. “The weirdest thing that’s happened here is when Jerry Dorsey married his future mother-in-law instead of his bride-to-be, and that was like, thirty years ago.

“When did it start, Sheriff?” Helena asked smoothly, not bothering to try to disguise her accent. Her American accent was terrible, so I was relieved.

“You aren’t from the States?” he asked, frowning. “I thought Secret Service had to be ‘Murican.”

“I’m a special liaison from Scotland Yard,” Helena said, lying through her teeth. “Emily Lake, at your service.”

He smiled at that, tipping his hat.

“A pleasure, Ma’am. We don’t get many of the President’s people down here, so I’ll admit to a little scepticism when I saw you were coming. As to when it started, well, Billy McIntyre turned into a doughnut about… 3 days ago. Every day since, we’ve had three or four people try to come into the station. As if we can help them. I mean, how am I supposed to turn a doughnut into a human?”

“They tried to get into the station?” I asked, intrigued.

“You ever seen a six-foot wide doughnut try to walk through an ordinary doorway? Funniest damn thing I ever saw,” he said, letting out a high-pitched giggle that startled me so much I almost shot him. As it was, I stared at him, trying to work out what the fuck the noise was.

“It does sound very amusing,” Helena said, in her rich voice, touching his arm to distract him from my confused, startled face. “Now, Sheriff… Adams, was it? Could you take us to the victims, please? And then we’ll visit the local eateries to see what each person ate in the days before their… um, metamorphosis.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling at her. She was always a charmer, my Helena. I don’t know how she did it, but she charmed the knickers off anyone who looked at her for more than a few minutes. The only person I’d ever met who was even a little bit immune was Mrs Frederic, and even she had a soft spot for Helena, though she wouldn’t admit it.

I had to seriously get a hold of myself when we stepped into the sheriff’s station. We stepped into a back room, where I assumed they did their morning briefings. There were a variety of people there, all looking like they were wearing costumes of their favourite foods. Unfortunately, those people were the costumes. There was a man in the corner who was the 6ft-wide doughnut, and a woman in front of me (I assumed, because the muppet was wearing lipstick) who was a box of fries from a burger restaurant. And a dude who was a large bowl of phō, which I found even more hilarious than the others, because every time he moved, he spilled the contents of the ‘bowl’ everywhere.

We had chicken and waffles, an egg salad sandwich (and Jesus, that fucker must have been the dullest) and a tall man who looked like chunks of tofu with sesame seeds on it. It seemed even the vegans weren’t immune to the effects.

I kept what I thought was an admirably straight face as we questioned the food-people. No-one had been to the same place – that would have been too easy – but they had all eaten at various restaurants and fast-food haunts during the past week, so we made a list and split up, checking each one with artefact spray to see if anything reacted. I got strange looks from people at the diner and the Vietnamese place, and I’m sure Helena did at the burger restaurant and the large dining section at the mall. But when we met later that afternoon, we had nothing. Nada. Niente. Bubkiss. Or as we say in Belfast, fuck all.

“For the love of Christ,” I sighed. “How long are we going to be doing this? I’m fucking starving, and I don’t want to eat anything in case I turn into a giant Chicken parm sub.”

Believe me, I have no desire to become a walking kale salad,” Helena said, sighing in that long-suffering way of hers. “But we have to get to the bottom of this. It hasn’t had any negative effects as such, or at least not yet, but it could. What if one of them gets too hungry and tries to eat another? What if they really taste of the food they’re… sporting?”

“That could get a bit… unfortunate,” I said, my mind drifting back to when Helena and I met, against the background of a civil war and a zombie invasion. Sure it sounds romantic now, but when you watch your neighbours eating each other’s children, it’s… not so much.

“To say the very least,” Helena said.

We went back to the sheriff’s station and talked to the people some more, jotting down dozens of different locations, places they’d visited, people they’d seen. It was a small place, Flippin, with less than 2000 residents, so those places overlapped. A lot.

“We should go to each location and rule them out one by one,” Helena said, studiously arranging them in geographical order.

“Should we split up, or go together?” I asked.

“Together is safer, but apart means we cover more ground. My thought is that we do it apart, because things aren’t exactly dangerous. Or at least not yet.”

I nodded. We took each other’s hands for a moment, squeezing, just for comfort, and then we split up.

I went to visit the local DMV office, the postal office, a home depot-type store, and a general store. There was no dice. Nothing unusual, other than that the town was still called Flippin. Oh, and they reckoned they were a city. There were 17 thousand people in the tiny section of Belfast that I lived in when I was younger. That was a real city, and not even a big one. Flippin was not a city. Americans, am I right?

I got back to the sheriff’s station and was informed that two more people had shown up. One was a man who had turned into a roast chicken. His face was on the breast side, startled eyes with giant muppet eyelashes fluttering in confusion. He must have been balding in his human guise, because there was a ratty crown of hair that went slightly more than halfway around the body of the chicken. I took down the details of where he’d been, doing my best not to laugh, and then interviewed the other person, a woman who had become a hamburger. It was hard as fuck not to laugh at that poor girl, because her top lip was a slice of cheese, and her bottom lip was a burger. Both of which had lipstick on them, in case we should accidentally mistake the walking burger for a male walking burger. She was trying not to panic, and every little breath made her cheese lip flutter in the wind, and made me have to fake a coughing fit because I was dying.

I took some photographs, for want of something better to do, and married up each food-person with their human photographs, sending it all back to Claudia. For professional reasons only, I assure you. And then I started to worry, because Helena had less ground to cover than I did, and she was nowhere to be seen.

I called her phone, but there was no answer. I did start to get a bit worried, then, so I called Claudia on my Farnsworth.

“Hey, Sir Mykes-a-lot. How’s it going there in crazytown?” It was nice to hear another Irish accent, I will admit. The Warehouse has four of us, but it’s rare to meet the Irish while out and about in the field. I mean, I’ve met those who claim to be Irish, but 23 generations back doesn’t count. Especially not if you can’t pronounce your own name. (I’m talking to you, Ni-am.)

“I’m grand, darling,” I said, rubbing the spot between my eyebrows. “My fair lady has disappeared though, and you know it’s not like her to not answer when I call.”

Claudia’s eyes narrowed. She did indeed know that Helena wouldn’t make me worry unnecessarily.

“Let me track her,” she said, already typing away furiously.

There was a silence, and I got a little alarmed, I will admit. But then she spoke, her forehead all crinkled up.

“She’s in town. Heading your way, actually. But the signal… it’s like it’s there, but it’s not? It’s almost transparent. There’s no setting in my system for something to show up transparent. I call magical hijinks, Mykster. She’s heading up main street now; should be with you in a minute.”

I nodded.

“Thanks, kiddo. See you soon,” I said. I made a mental note to buy her something tasteless before I left town. I was pretty sure somewhere like Flippin would have some really tasteless tourist shite. My favourite thing Claudka had bought me was a Hillary Clinton lighter, where Hill’s head flipped back and flames came out of her neck. I had managed to get her a Pope Pez dispenser in a little Catholic shop in a town near the border, and was still trying to top it.

I went to the door of the station, peering out into the dark. There was a figure approaching, but it didn’t look like Helena. It didn’t look human. I took a deep breath, my heart thundering in my ears. It stepped closer, and then into the light of a streetlamp. It was… a hot dog. A walking, presumably talking, hot dog. Another unfortunate victim, I assumed, looking around behind it for Helena.

As it put its weird muppet feet on the first step up to the station, I noticed that it was a girl. Due to the ketchup in the shape of a mouth. And the long hair that covered about a third of the length of the dog. The poor girl had huge brown eyes, and dark eyebrows drawn into a scowl, and then she stepped closer.

“I swear to all that’s holy, if you laugh at me, we are getting a divorce,” my wife said, muppet eyelashes fluttering in annoyance.

I am not proud to say that I immediately laughed.

I had to be lifted from the floor by two burly sheriff’s deputies, who kindly carried me to the bathroom. I was laughing so hard that I was close to losing control of my bladder. Even as I was sitting on the loo, I was still laughing so hard that I pulled two muscles, one on my back and the other on my abdomen. Tears streamed down my face and I howled with pain, but still I laughed. It took me forty-five minutes to stop myself from laughing, and even then, I started again each time I saw my own face in the mirror. Eventually I was calm enough to send a message to Claudia.

“SOS. Helena is hot-dog. Helena pretended her favourite food was kale salad. I may need an artefact to be sent that takes away my ability to laugh. Divorce proceedings imminent.”

I made my way out of the bathroom a little while later, finding the muppet version of my wife talking to Sheriff Adams. She was trying to coax him into doing something, I thought, because her stubby little muppet hand was on his arm and her giant muppet eyelashes were all a-flutter.

I beat a hasty retreat into a nearby office until I calmed my hysterics.

The second attempt was no more successful. I thought of the saddest things I’d ever seen, tried to turn myself into a PTSD-haunted robot by thinking about things I’d done in my past, but still… muppet Helena took me down effortlessly.

Eventually I was able to speak to her without laughing (much) and we determined that there were two places where she might have been caught up in the artefact’s effects. I continued to say ‘artefact’s effects’ after that because each time I said the words ‘food muppets’ she glared, and she looked even funnier than she already did.

Hot-dog Helena had onions and mustard down one side of the sausage. I don’t know why that made me laugh harder, but it did.

I fled the station, delighted beyond measure to be able to leave my wife’s side. I could not control myself, and I knew that I was skating close to the edge of divorce and/or death by muppet smothering. I kept breaking out in hysterical little bouts of giggling, and I knew I must have looked a sight, the tall Secret Service agent who occasionally starting cry-laughing over her muppet wife.

I visited the seedy side of Flippin, finding a small illegal casino-type operation that Helena had visited, and used the artefact spray to douse everything that didn’t move. And some that did. Nothing sparked. The next stop was the town hall, where a number of people on the list seemed to have been. I visited the mayor, a young attractive redhead, who urged me to leave a Christmas wish in the jar on her desk. Something tugged at me, then, because one thing I have learned as a Warehouse agent is that wishes have power. I sprayed the jar with the goo-spray, and it sparked. It sparked a lot. I grabbed the thing, relieved, and thanked the Mayor, who looked at me in confusion when I told her I needed to take it away, for National Security reasons. I swear, you could poke someone in the eye in this country and say it was for National Security, and they’d ask you to do it again.

I brought the jar back to the station, walking along absently, giggling occasionally to myself, when I suddenly realised that I was… different. My arms seemed shorter, and… yes. There was something dripping from behind me.

Now before you get all gross, there was a trail of marinara sauce behind me, mixed with cheese. Mozzarella, a little cheddar, and parmesan. When I tried to look down, I couldn’t. My eyes were widely spaced, I’d realised, and my mouth was way further from my eyes than it used to be.

So, I was a walking chicken parmigiana sub. Because unlike some alleged kale-lovers, I told the truth about my favourite food.

I sighed, trying to take my phone from my pocket, but my pocket was gone, under a pile of bread, I had to assume. I had an urge to try and pull some of the bread off and eat it, because I smelled really nice. But then I thought… there’s always a downside. And how do you explain that you’re missing a limb or a rib because you ate part of yourself when you were a sandwich?

I knocked on the door of the station, and a startled deputy let me in. He managed to keep his face straight, to his credit.

“Can you grab me my kit from the other room, son?” I asked him, vaguely aware that I had a bouncing crown of curls that had just drifted into my eyeline as I moved. I wondered exactly how ridiculous I looked, and stood there, waiting. The young man came back, his face purple, and I asked if he would take out the goo cannister.

Before I dunked the jar, I asked him to take a picture of me. I’d taken approximately 43 thousand of Helena, already, and turnabout was fair play. He did so, still managing not to laugh in my face, and then I dunked the thing. It hissed and it sparked, and still… marinara sauce dripped onto the floor.

“Shite.”

The fella ran off, howling, as the giant chicken sub swore. I didn’t blame him.

I went into the room where the rest of the food-afflicted were, finding Helena reading a book, holding the pages down with her muppet-fingers. I waved at her with my muppet fingers, and she laughed, and she laughed.

And she laughed.

It was possibly the stupidest thing that had ever happened in my life, and that included fighting with a group of inter-dimensional crime lords who started a zombie outbreak. It was hard to be professional about it, I had to be honest. I knew that, because there’s always a downside, it was potentially much more serious than it appeared – which was, of course, not remotely serious. I challenge you, however, to do any better, when faced with a roomful of muppet foodstuffs.

Having tried the obvious solution, to neutralise the artefact, I knew I had to contact the team. But my cellphone was somewhere in the in-between, I supposed, along with my Farnsworth. I grabbed Helena, and we made our way ponderously into the other part of the station, searching out the Sheriff. Sauce and cheese sloshed behind me as I walked.

Once Sheriff Adams stopped laughing, he set up a video conference with the Warehouse. I would have done it myself, but my arms were too short to go around my giant chicken sub body, and I couldn’t reach the keyboard.

Helena laughed about that until she wept ketchup.

We got no sense out of Claudia, none at all, and the poor girl’s mascara was everywhere, so I yelled for Arthur, and he, thankfully, just scowled at us.

“You both got whammied?”

I tried to shrug. It did not work, given that I appeared not to have shoulders.

“I found the artefact and neutralised it. I was wearing gloves, Arthur. But you know how these wishing artefacts are.”

He scowled harder, his eyebrows scrunching up like scary caterpillars, and he said nothing for a moment.

“Go sleep. Get some food. It can’t get much worse, I wouldn’t think. So eat something and sleep, and we’ll research tonight, and we’ll come back to it tomorrow.”

“All right then,” I said, rolling my eyes. Or trying to. I dread to think how it actually looked. Could my eyes even move? I wasn’t really sure; the perspective made everything look weird.

We went back to the room where the other foods were hiding out, and the Sheriff agreed that he’d get us some food, since we had neutralised the problem but were still stuck. It couldn’t hurt, right? We had pizza, all of us, and it was amusing to watch an eight-foot-wide pizza eating a pizza. The sheriff got us a load of yoga mats and big blankets, and we all settled down to sleep in our various food guises. When I lay down, my sauce stopped dripping everywhere, but the poor dude who turned into phō had to sit upright so he didn’t drown us all.

When I woke the next morning, I tried to jump up, and ended up just flailing like a turtle on its back. I had no idea where I was, I was trapped and I was ready for murder. Thankfully, I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was Helena’s muppet-self. That brought me from murderous to hysterical in seconds, and I lay there, helpless, legs and arms flapping as I tried to flip my sandwich-self up off the yoga mat.

“I’m normal again!” someone shouted, and I redoubled my efforts. One of the burgers helped me to my feet, and then I helped Helena, who was not exactly talking to me, to her feet. We turned and found that Steve, the giant pizza, was now just Steve again.

“We have to eat the food we’re craving!” Helena and I said in unison, and then we tried to high-five, missing spectacularly and ending up on the floor in a mess of mustard, onion and marinara sauce. It took the phō guy, Mr Egg Salad, and Doug the Cheeto to get us up off the floor, by which stage we were covered in various sauces, but triumphant.

The sheriff sent out a bunch of his deputies to fetch the requisite foodstuffs, and we took a sly picture of ourselves and the other victims to hang up at the Warehouse. One delicious sandwich (or hot dog, or potato snack, or burger) later, we all sat against the walls of the huge rooms, waiting for the magic to happen.

It took a few hours, and we were all terribly bored, but keeping ourselves going by chatting about Christmas and going home for the holidays, when there was a popping noise from Doug’s corner, and he turned from Cheeto to human. A few seconds later Phō turned to Phil, and I turned back into me. Helena, who’d eaten her hot dog slowly while pretending to hate it, was one of the last to turn back. Finally, there were a roomful of sheepish people staring at each other and wondering what to do next.

Helena, thankfully, got her human brain back quicker than I did. I was thinking about going to find another chicken parm sub, to be honest, because it had been delicious. But she stood, waved her badge around, told them all we’d been exposed to toxic gas that caused hallucinations, and one by one, our former foodstuffs made their way back to their families.

“All’s well that ends well, I suppose,” she said, sniffing, pointedly not looking at me.

“I suppose. It’s a terrible shame we have to get divorced, though. I was just getting used to being married to a Brit.”

“Hmmph,” was all she said, her arms folded, but I could see from the set of her shoulders that she was relaxing. I realised I might get out of this flippin’ town with my marriage intact, and I grinned.

We gave the Sheriff and his staff a non-disclosure agreement to sign, and gave them the usual rubbish about hallucinations and toxic gas, and they all nodded, shaking their heads. We went back to our hotel and tossed a coin for who got the shower first. Helena won, and I sat on the edge of the bed on top of a towel, so as to not get marinara sauce all over the bedding.

I sat there, glad to be human, flipping idly through channels on the television until she came out of the bathroom, naked in all her glory. I grinned at the sight, and she glared at me.

I wasn’t entirely forgiven, it appeared. I took myself into the bathroom, washed up, called the concierge to have our clothes cleaned, and then sat at the small desk to write my report on the incident. I studiously added all the pictures I’d taken, except the ones of Helena. I finished it up, scanning and sending it to the Warehouse, and then I packed up the wish jar - still inside the containment cannister – and the rest of my clothes. Then I gathered up my courage and asked my taciturn wife if she was hungry.

She glared at me as if I was taking the mickey, but I wasn’t, for a change, so she told me stiffly that she would like a salad. I am human, so I was tempted, but I ordered only a salad and did not at any point mention the words ‘hot dog’. I ordered myself a burger and fries and all the fixings, and when it arrived I scarfed it down. When dinner (which was technically lunch, given the time) was done I changed into my usual sleepwear, loose cotton tshirt and shorts, and got into bed. I pulled down the sheets on the other side in clear invitation, and Helena huffed at me, going to the bathroom again, where I heard her brush her teeth. She switched off the light and got into bed with me, and I could feel her begrudging it as she did so.

“There’s another bed, darling. If you’re really that mad,” I said, quietly.

“It’s fine,” she said, back stiff.

I ran my finger down her spine, just once. She made a huffing noise and then turned, putting her head under my chin, her arm around my waist. She was lying on my left arm, so I curled it a little, wrapping it around her body, and she sighed.

“You’re a complete arse, you know,” she said.

“I am,” I agreed. “But I’m your complete arse.”

“Hmm. What a catch.”

“Indeed I am. Catch of the century.”

“You’re a fucking pain, Myka Bering.”

“That’s Myka Bering-Wells, darling,” I said, lazily. “And I love you too.”

It was all right again after that, though she became somewhat frosty when she called the Warehouse the following morning and was greeted only by Claudia’s feet, Claudia herself having tipped her chair back so far that she’d fallen over. (I might have just sent our food-group selfie to her.)

On the flight back to South Dakota, she took my hand, both of us comforting each other as the plane took off.

“I love you, you complete arse,” she said, after a glass or two of red wine.

“I love you too, you gorgeous creature,” I said grandly, after three generous measures of Bushmills.

She sighed, took my hand, and fell asleep.

When we eventually got to the B&B after dropping off the artefact at the Warehouse, we were greeted at the door by Leena, dressed in her usual Mrs Santa costume. She looked spectacular, and Helena looked at me, amused, as I tried not to gawk. I mean, I’m married, not a nun.

Leena gestured at us both to leave our bags, handing us hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.

“You are a sight for sore eyes, sweet lady,” I said, with a sweeping bow.

“And you are a flirt, Mrs Bering-Wells,” Leena said, winking at Helena. We made our way to the living room, finding Claudia spread out on the sofa, her head in Steve’s lap, and Pete scarfing down a plate of Leena’s chocolate Christmas logs.

“Mykes!” Pete bellowed, jumping up and throwing himself at me. I hastily divested myself of my hot chocolate and accepted his sweaty embrace.

“Bout ye, Pete,” I said, grinning as he lifted me off my feet. He put me down, none too gently, and went to give Helena the same treatment. The look she gave him would have scoured the hide off a pig.

“Hello, Pete. If you put your sweaty hands on me, I will not be held responsible for my actions, do you understand?”

Pete backed away, mumbling about crazy Brits, and I hid my smile behind my hand.

“Hey, girls! We have some lovely pictures of you,” Claudia said, grinning up at us.

“Iks-nay on the ictures-pay,” I said, behind my hand.

“Don’t worry about it, darling. I did in fact grow a sense of humour about all this, eventually. As it turns out, this century has indeed influenced my Victorian sensibilities somewhat. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that, yes, hot dogs are my favourite food, much as I wish they weren’t. That does not mean I will be indulging in them, however. I will continue to eat a healthy balanced diet, unlike my unfairly slim wife, who seems to subsist on all manner of appalling foods,” Helena said, looking at me disapprovingly.

“They’re only appalling to you, darling. I enjoy them, and so does everyone else here. And you know that Leena makes sure we get a balanced diet. It’s just when we’re out in the field that I indulge.”

She shook her head, rolled her eyes – all the usual. I just ignored her and sat down with my hot chocolate. Leena appeared again a few minutes later with some churros which I happily dipped in my hot chocolate. I noticed that my lovely wife did the same, surreptitiously of course.

Claudia, Steve and Pete were talking quietly while a horrifically bad Christmas movie played on the television. I watched Helena quietly. She was beautiful, sitting there with the light of the fire flickering in her eyes. She took the occasional sip of hot chocolate but mostly she was sitting there, looking at the fire, her eyes far away. She was exceptionally beautiful, like a marble statue of a greek goddess.

I heard the piano start up from the other room. Arthur, despite his Jewish roots, has always loved Christmas music. Claudia jumped up. She has always had a passion for music, and this was part of Christmas for her. She wandered off to find him, Steve following close behind.

“Mykissimo,” Pete said, jumping to his feet. “You can’t miss out on the yearly sing-song.”

“I suppose not,” I said, polishing off my hot chocolate. “You coming, love?”

She looked up at me.

“Just a minute, darling. I’ll be right there.”

I smiled at her and left her to it. Christmas was a difficult time for her, I knew. Her little girl had always loved Christmas time. Sometimes she needed a minute, to think about her daughter and how she’d lived to be a grand old age. How she wouldn’t have done, if Helena had stayed in her own time.

Arthur was playing “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” and Steve was singing along in a pleasant baritone. He had a nice voice, and I loved listening to him. Claudia came to stand in front of me, pulling my arms around her neck, and I smiled down at her. She was like my wee sister.

When we were done with that song, Arthur started playing “O Holy Night.” It was my favourite Christmas song of all time, and I knew that he knew that. He turned and winked at me, and I smiled back. When I was at a Catholic school in Northern Ireland, there was a lot of emphasis on music, and the harmonies in this song and the way it all blended together had enthralled me then. It still does now.

Claudia started to sing, her sweet, light little voice singing the melody. When the chorus came along, we all started to sing our parts, Steve, Claudia, Artie and me – Pete can’t sing for toffee. The chorus swelled and then it pulled back before the next verse. Claudia’s sweet voice made me smile. We reached the second chorus and I realised that I had goosebumps. I turned, finding Helena leaning against the doorjamb, watching us all fondly. The thought of her in her Muppet body did cross my mind, and I smiled to myself. That image wouldn’t be leaving me anytime soon. But the way she looked standing there in her blue shirt and jeans and bare feet, her hair loose around her shoulders, it just made something in me still for a moment. The combination of the perfect music and the perfect woman in front of me made me feel calm and relaxed for once, and if I’d been the praying type, I might have said a thank you to the baby Jesus or whatever right then. As it was, I just thanked anyone who was listening for giving me these people and this place, and letting me live in endless wonder.

Merry Christmas, everyone !

#Helena HG Wells #Myka Bering #Bering and Wells #Christmas fic #Warehouse 13

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glitterisevil-blog · 7 years ago

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What Christmas Means to Me

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year” or so the song goes. But not if you’re someone who has mild Aspergers, OCD, or an awkward combination of the two. Even as I write this I’m acutely aware that I’m about to make myself sound like the biggest arsehole known to mankind, but I wanted to share this post to give people a bit of an insight into the way my brain works, and so that when I’m being particularly “un-festive” in the run up to Christmas, there’s a bit more understanding around why. I’m not just being a twat, I’m really not. There are elements of it that I genuinely struggle to cope with.

Anybody with an Autism Spectrum Disorder or anyone who has a family member on this spectrum will know how difficult certain life situations can be. I’ve read about families who can’t have a Christmas tree, or can’t unwrap presents because they have children with severe Autism who find the whole thing far too stressful.

Now, at no point here am I implying that this is my situation, nor am I looking to enter into any sort of woe-off contest with any readers of this post. This isn’t about me wanting sympathy; it’s about being able to express my feelings. Year after year I’ve been labelled a Grinch because I’m not skipping through Tesco whistling Jingle Bells whilst cheerfully stockpiling boxes of Quality Street, nor will you find me watching Muppet’s Christmas Carol the minute that Bonfire Night is done with. And I need to explain why…

As long as I can remember I’ve found the concept of ambiguity quite stressful, and I detest having a lack of control over things. Everyday stuff that most people do without a second thought can cause me untold degrees of angst.

For example, imagine I had to park in a car park in an unfamiliar town, in order to catch a train somewhere. It wouldn’t be enough to just turn up and park there, oh no. I’d need to look online to see how many spaces the car park had to evaluate my chances of getting a space. I’d then need to understand the payment system in advance. Do I take a ticket and pay upon exit? Or do I pay upon entering? If so, will they take my card or will I need coins? Does the car park have a one way system or not? If that car park is full, where is the nearest back-up car park and what’s the distance from the train station? Should I just assume the worst and leave the house twenty minutes earlier than planned in case I need to use that back up car park and then have to walk to the station to get my train on time? It’s unlikely that I’d sleep particularly well the night before the journey either, with much of this going around in my head.

And inevitably, I turn up with plenty of time to spare, grab a coffee on the platform, and catch my train, just like all the normal folk. Everyone just assumes I’m really organised. It takes a lot of cortisol for me to appear this organised.

So, onto Christmas…descending on us each year like a giant, expensive, tinsel-covered cold sore that we all felt erupting but had no power to stop. Here’s the bit where I make myself sound like a moaning, ungrateful bastard as I list the things I can’t cope with about Christmas. To all those “Buddy the Elf” types amongst you – pin back those pointy ears and brace yourselves….

Christmas cards

I can’t even express how delighted I was a few years back, when the trend to donate to charity rather than send Christmas cards became a thing. I seem to recall that there may have been some actual air punching involved! Perhaps I’d now be spared the ordeal of cards infiltrating my home over December, sneaking in slowly and nestling themselves Trojan horse style between the electricity bills and bank letters. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to see as many of them lying there on my doormat alluringly, expecting to be unsheathed, admired and displayed in my home for all to see. Well no, I’m not spared that ordeal. Because the majority of people will still send cards, because they think it’s nice for me to receive a card, assuring me that they really want me to have a merry Christmas.

Someone should pass an Act of Parliament that forces manufacturers to make Christmas cards a uniform size, shape and colour, and then perhaps I might have a chance at a merry Christmas. As it goes, I spend most of December putting them up and continually rearranging them in some semblance of size and shape order, until a new one appears in a random colour or format (a fucking purple star shaped card this year – seriously?!) and throws the entire display into chaos. Don’t even get me started on cards with glitter on FFS. If you want me to have a merry Christmas, just tell me via text, email or Facebook and then I’ll know that you really mean it.

Christmas trees and decorations

One day I will live in a mansion that could easily be the main feature article in Ideal Homes magazine. It will have a lounge the size of a church hall, with sleek polished wooden floors that would be the envy of any bowling alley. This lounge will contain nothing but a large sofa, a wall mounted television, a coffee table, and a textured rug. When this day comes, I might consider the concept of a massive, brightly coloured, flashing Christmas tree encroaching on my space. Whilst I live in a modest house, with a small lounge, that looks like an overflow warehouse for Toys R Us due to the amount of baby-related shit that already takes up an entire corner, I’m not entertaining one.

Based on my feelings towards a tree, I’m sure you don’t need me to explain why I won’t drape tinsel round my windows, or have a 2ft high, battery operated snowman in the house that talks to you each time you walk past it.

Presents

This is the bit that carries the most immense guilt for me because it’s the part I really wish that I could enjoy. Those amazing people that you love dearly and who love you back, have taken time out of their busy week to spend their hard earned cash on choosing a gift for you. They’ve taken the knowledge that they have about you - the colours you like, the interests you have, your shoe size or body shape – and have used it to select a gift that’s just for you. That’s just lovely.

Except its not lovely if you’re me. Because now, a collection of unfamiliar items that I didn’t need or ask for have invaded my “safe space.”

And as well as now having to find homes for all these items, I’m also expected to show delight and gratitude to the giver of each item, and make up nonsense along the lines of “wow I’ve wanted one of these for ages!” when presented with a fucking spiraliser. This, my husband tells me, is what polite and normal people say at Christmas when presented with a gift.

Spoiler alert: I’ve not wanted one for ages, I’m sorry to tell you that this is a barefaced lie. Had this been the case I would already own one, as by now I would’ve identified some deep, primal urge to carve courgettes into the shape of spaghetti, and then trotted along to John Lewis to buy whichever gadget best made this happen.

So we can all safely assume that the fact that I didn’t already own a spiraliser means that I didn’t really want a spiraliser. But that’s a moot point because now I have one. And I have to store it somewhere in my house logical enough to convince the giver that I will use it (like the cutlery draw) and not somewhere unconvincing (like the wheelie bin) but each time I go to get a fork from the draw, seeing that bastard spiraliser sat there taking up space will remind me that I’m a horrible, ungrateful person who doesn’t deserve nice people in my life.

Now, gift cards are great, because they mean that I am in full control of all the purchases that will come into my house, and such purchases will cross the threshold following a great deal of prior consideration like whether they are needed, where they will live, and how they will be used. The beauty of the gift card is that if it happens to be for somewhere that I won’t ever shop, then I can simply choose not to use it, or re-gift it to someone who will. Yes, gift cards are good.

Food

Franz Kafka once said that so long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being. So based on this logic, during the month of December I must have solved more questions than The Beast, The Governess, and The Dark Destroyer from The Chase put together, because I literally DID NOT STOP EATING.

Food and drink are my Achilles heel, cheese especially so. Wine definitely. So having copious quantities of them around the house within easy spreading and pouring distance makes for a very difficult and uncontrolled time of year for me.

If I could merely enjoy them for what they were, and worry about the weight gain in January like everyone else does then it wouldn’t be as stressful. But that’s not how someone like me works, with my daily (sometimes twice daily) weigh ins, or my need to exercise excessively at the gym to erase the calories from a “bad” food day. Food should be enjoyed and respected. It should be shared with friends and family. It should be fuel for exercise. Food should not take the form of a tin of Roses, shovelled with wild abandon into your mouth, one after another, until you feel so violently ill that you have to put yourself to bed to resist the urge to throw them all up and start again like some sort of Roman emperor.

My unhealthy relationship with food can pretty much be kept in check from January to November because at no other point in the year do people find it acceptable to bring home a 24 pack of mince pies every time they nip to the garage for diesel. At no other point do we give ourselves carte blanche to get as fat as we want because we’re supposed to “eat drink and be merry” at this time of year. The entire concept of excessive Christmas eating, for me, dredges up far too many demons that I’d rather not face. Except not only am I expected to face them, I’m expected to welcome them in, pour them a Baileys and offer them a Ferrero Rocher because these demons have Christmas fucking jumpers on. It’s bollocks.

So there you have it, a little glimpse of what it’s like to live inside my head over the festive period. And nobody needs to remind me of how unbelievably lucky I am to have these “problems” at Christmas because I already know this to be true, which only serves to compound the feelings of guilt that I feel when I read some of this back.

Next Christmas my son will be 18mths old and will want the WORKS! A huge tree adorned with glittery ornaments, Santa’s “snowy” footprints stomped out in the lounge, gaudy stockings hung up on the fireplace. So it’s possibly time I addressed all of these issues. Or at least some of them. I draw the line at tinsel.

#christmas #ocd #aspergers #disordered eating #grinch #spectrum

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ginnyzero · 5 years ago

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The Anatomy of An Action Star

Action movies have turned into big business in Hollywood. Your summer movie “tent poles” nine times out of ten will have some sort of action element in them. They are spending upwards of 250 million a piece on production of these movies alone, not counting the 100 million that they are spending on marketing the same movies. Of course, if you want these movies to do well, that means you have to draw a lot of people to the box office. There are two ways to do this, have a concept everyone already knows and loves and fill that concept with super talented people and/or have a big name action star that people already know and love and hope the star will draw the people. Now, with so many big movies coming out at the same time, there is often only so much money to go around. So, that, at least now, if there is a critical financial ‘flop’ at the box office, there isn’t so much of a cushion to an actor or actresses career. A few financial ‘flops’ in a row turns what could be a rising star packing back where they came from.

It didn’t used to be this way. The action film genre was considered a solid “B” genre and got the low budgets to match its less then patrician origins. If a film ‘flopped’ in the “good old days” it was more than likely the actor (because female action stars were even rarer back then, hey Sigourney Weaver) would just shrug and move on to make another “B” movie. Some of the most ridiculous premises got two or three or more sequels. Whether it was the time or just pure luck, there was a pack, much like the Rat Pack, of action stars that people wanted to see more of over and over and over again, no matter what the premise was and others just, as they say, couldn’t “cut the mustard.”

No matter what era of Hollywood you’re in, there are just some actors and actresses that are put into an action movie that can carry it, while others just can’t.

There is more to an action role than the ability to throw a punch or shoot a gun (or in some cases drive really, really fast). And while some actors who may not be able to throw a punch or shoot a gun can still pull off the swashbuckling end of things and swing a sword. Say what you like about Nicholas Cage, he tends to not be very believable in an action role. It says something that the most believable he gets is when he’s CGIed into a skeleton with a flaming skull. Because at that point we’re not watching Nicholas Cage, we’re watching a skeleton with a flaming skull! And as much as people liked Chris Pine as the young and the restless alternative universe James T. Kirk, they weren’t quite so ready to watch him Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Kit Harrington has a good following for his role on Game of Thrones, but that didn’t bring any better numbers for Pompeii. Whereas Jason Statham four years after his acting debut managed to carry The Transporter. After a short role in 1998 in Saving Private Ryan, in 2000 Boiler Room and Pitch Black proved he could act and in 2001, Vin Diesel had The Fast and The Furious on his resume.

So what makes some actors successful in the genre and others not. What makes audiences believe in some actors over others? Because there has to be a certain amount of authenticity for the actor to be able to carry the role. Sometimes, this takes more than one movie for the actor to reach that stage. For instance, Karl Urban wasn’t at all believable as an action hero in DOOM. By the time he hit Dredd, he was more authentic and the audience was willing to believe. Something had changed between DOOM and Dredd within Karl Urban and his abilities in acting.

Well, first off, if one wants to be an action star, one needs to look the part. Male or female, they need to have some sort of muscle to make the audience believe that that guy/girl can throw a punch or shoot a gun or swing a sword or whatever is needed and it’s actually going to hurt. Whether they’re body builders (Arnold Schwarzenegger), wrestlers (Dwayne Johnson) or martial artists (Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan et al) or even bouncers (Vin Diesel), they need to have the bulk or we just don’t believe it (Nicholas Cage.) Women have it harder. Most women when they are chosen for an action role, start training for that role on set. Most of them don’t know anything about fighting before they start (Michelle Rodriguez, believe it or not). Gal Gadot is a rare case of a woman who actually served in the military (Israeli). She gets a lot of flak for it. There are a few actresses who are trying to make names for themselves coming out of the MMA circuit (Gina Carano, Ronda Rousey). These are exceptions and not the rule. Because there are fewer females in action roles, it feels that they have to work harder to be taken seriously in those roles.

Which leads to the next bit, training. Whether they’re street brawling or shooting a gun or swinging a sword, it needs to look to the average audience like they know what they’re doing. Even if the average audience is absolutely ignorant about what it is supposed to look like. (Fencing fanatics can be some of the most snobbish about this. Watching a modern fencing match is boring, I’ll stick to the movie version.) Different films go with different directions for this. Keanu Reeves had it easy in the Matrix. In the beginning, of course we didn’t believe that Neo was to be the one. But he got plugged into a computer and they downloaded kung fu into his brain, and there, on screen we saw the Neo character become a ‘trained’ fighter. Now, of course, we believe that he can kick ass and take names because he’s all out of bubblegum. Other movies start with ‘dump them into a training ground/fight’ approach, putting the character directly into the action within five minutes of the movie so that the audience can see for themselves that this actor has mad skills. In the Matrix, Trinity gets this treatment. Angelina Jolie does this in Tomb Raider. Daniel Craig gets to use this approach in Casino Royale. Other movies take the reputation approach, the fact that the actor has been in so many other movies and they had some sort of action sequence in them so of course they know how to fight or the actor has come from a background with martial arts in it, so this movie will have them displaying those skills. The reputation factor can be the biggest gamble, even with established action stars. Sometimes it’s just not enough to say “oh, he’s got so many belts, trophies or studies ju jitsu.” Because you can have these things and still not be believable in the role. This is where DOOM failed Karl Urban. He’d been in a few action movies before this, but they hadn’t been in fighting roles. He just wasn’t prepared to be alongside/up against the Rock. He didn’t have the training and that insecurity showed in the film.

A big part of it is ‘the stare.’ When an actor or actress looks their foe in the eye and says something witty or ominous and the audience gets the belief that this person actually means what they’re saying and that the foe better watch out because they’re about to get their buttocks beaten. When Liam Neeson looks you in the eye and says he’s coming for you, well, I for one am going to believe him. My favorite example of this is Nathan Fillion in Firefly, where he’s sitting in a wagon in a dress with a bonnet on and he looks the other guy in the eye and goes “I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you.” This is mighty impressive, not only given he’s in a dress and bonnet, but at the time he’s sitting next to Adam Baldwin, the only guy on set who had enough action movie experience he never flinched when firing the guns. (Watch that sequence where they invade Niska’s base to rescue Mal. Adam Baldwin doesn’t flinch, ever. It’s uncanny.) There is a certain hardness to characters who are willing to mete out violence in the name of a just cause (and sometimes unjust cause.) Not every actor, like not every person, has the ability to look another person in the eyes without flinching or turning away. Not every person can convey that force with a look alone.

Now part of this is hugely charisma. Actors who end up in action roles that are successful often have a huge sense of presence about them. They have to in order to stand out from the rest of the cast. That’s just part of being a lead actor or actress. Charisma is what attracts people to others. Charm, glamour, whatever you want to call it, it is the stuff that makes certain people leaders and certain people followers. (And people like me who are ‘stay out of the wayers, thank you.’ Meaning, I’m not a leader. I’m not a follower. I’m over here doing my own thing. If you like it, good. If you don’t, oh well.) Part of the ability to be a leading actor or actress, beyond picking the right roles and luck, is this ability to attract an audience. It’s the ability to be likeable or at least pretend to be likeable. There are some actors and actresses that people will follow their movies no matter what type of drek they’re in, just because there is something about that actor that attracts them physically, mentally or emotionally.

Because connecting emotionally with the audience is a huge deal. If an actor or actress doesn’t have the ability to emote before the camera, they just aren’t doing their job. If I want to see a puppet on strings in a movie, I’ll just go see a puppet on strings. In fact, there are muppets who emote more than some actors and actresses. Even and actor or actress in the most stoic of roles, needs at some point make the audience laugh or “cry.” They need to elicit an emotional response of some sort so that the audience can connect to the character and sympathize with them. It doesn’t matter if they’re the good guy or the bad guy. They need to make us amused or angry or feel angst. When they stand there like an artist mannequin and say their lines by rote, they missed that part of the acting memo. Sylvester Stallone doesn’t always come off as all that smart, but he can make an audience feel something. John Travolta may be all over the map but he connects with the audience somewhere among the crazy shit. Nicholas Cage over emotes, but hey, at least he emotes.

Of course, there is a huge bunch of things that any actor or actress has absolutely no control over. There’s luck and timing. There are scripts that don’t suck and executives not screwing you over. Actors and Actresses don’t control release dates (authors got one up on them there) or marketing campaigns. And things out of their control can affect their careers as much as things in their control.

Physicality, fight training, and acting are all abilities that can be honed and perfected. ‘The stare’ and charisma are sometimes things that people are born with. In my opinion, being successful at all these things and the ability to bring them together at the right time and with the right project, are keys to the success of those who want to be an action movie star (or just a movie star.)

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songofmysnark · 7 years ago

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“Don’t” by Ed Sheeran, Part 1

For those who are unacquainted with the most catchy-yet-annoying Top 40 monstrosity that my car radio subjected me to last week, “Don’t” is a song by Ed Sheeran. The basic storyline is “Ed the ginger hobbit meets a woman but he calls her a girl, they kind of see each other a bunch of times but the logistics are difficult for anyone to really figure out, she hooks up with another dude, and Ed is a sad, sad ginger hobbit.”

We need to discuss how utterly awful this song is. Let’s break down this particular snippet of WTF: “But me and her we make money the same way Four cities, two planes the same day” Darling Ed. You are British, and I understand that you blokes across the pond have an elaborate and intricate class system, and I am the first to advocate for slack being given for the sake of artistic license, regional dialect, and the evolution of the language. You hail from the heritage of Shakespeare, and if the stark difference between the bard’s couplets and the general acceptance of your absurd lyrics by the general public isn’t ample evidence of the evolution of language over time, I don’t know what is. That’s no excuse for the way you’ve just brutalized the English language. My sweet redheaded nugget of manchild, I think you meant to say “She and I.” As in “But she and I make money the same way.”

See, “I make money” sounds fine, right? And “She makes money” sounds okay, correct? But “Me make money” and “Her make money” sound awful, right? Right. And that’s what you just wrote.

“Her make money” makes you sound like a confused Russian bot trolling a presidential candidate on twitter circa October 2016, and “Me make money” makes you sound like fucking cookie monster. So let’s get our objects and subjects straightened out and move on to the next line so we don’t sound like muppets who live in the Kremlin.

I’ve been confused by this line for a while. Four cities and two planes the same day. First of all, this is definitely possible, it just sounds like poor logistical planning. I live in the San Francisco bay area and I regularly drive through 4 different cities while commuting and I only live 12 miles from my office. (For the record: Oakland, Emeryville, San Francisco, and Berkeley if I want to pick up something from Berkeley Bowl for dinner.) So yeah, I do four cities in a day, too. Not sure why this is somehow a major feat? Cities can be close together. I guess it’s the two planes, Ed. What in the world are you DOING if you have to take two separate planes in a day? Are we talking about having a layover? Lord knows I’ve spend a decent amount of time in the Detroit airport having never spent any other time in the great state of Michigan. I wouldn’t count that as being in a city, that’s sitting in a Chilis-To-Go and hoping my gate doesn’t change, but I doubt your travel plans involve a chain restaurant’s shitty off post in Terminal C. I’m just confused, man. You’re a singer/songwriter/performer/hobbit and you definitely have a staff, so I’m not sure what the hell you are doing taking two separate plane trips in a day. Who is doing your booking? Why are you just dropping into a city via plane and then getting back into the plane and leaving? I surely hope you’re using a private plane because your poor, tiny, little ginger body is going to certainly glow an even more unnatural shade if you’re exposed to that much TSA screening radiation that often.

But let’s say you wake up in one city, fly to another, do something there (?), fly somewhere else, and then... IDK, hit two cities by car? It seems like the problem is whoever’s scheduling you, SURELY it could be more efficient. But it sort of sounds like you want to whine and make it sound like “I travel a lot for work” is some deeply rare thing, my dude. Which it is not. Many adults do it.

But really, who the hell is doing your booking? How is this person so inefficient that you can be “between the sheets” until the “late AM,” and yet have other days where you make money by traveling on two planes and visiting four cities. Ed, something is wrong with whoever is doing your booking and scheduling. Maybe that’s a bigger problem than this issue with the lady banging someone who isn’t you in a hotel. Putting aside the logistics of the mismanagement of your current tour, I’d like to talk about your most egregious offense -- and one that is almost your hallmark, Ed. It’s “I’m going to use particular words and phrases to make a completely boring and typical situation sound incredibly deep and meaningful.” You do it all the time, and so does that dude from the band Fun, who will be addressed in a separate post. (I’m coming for you, Fun.) Here’s the offending line:

“I'd rather put on a film with you and sit on a couch.” A film, Ed? Really? Are you going to wear a black turtleneck and discuss the evolution of Francis Ford Coppola’s use of lighting as a sort of informal career retrospective of the filmmaker as an artist? Are you going to watch deep, brooding documentaries about genocide? No. You’re going to watch “Ocean’s 11″ under a soft blankie, and that is totally fine. Just don’t make it sound like you’re doing a deep analysis of thematic patterns in the cinematography of Jean-Luc Godard. You sound like an ass. Let’s break down this particularly terrible snippet:

I'd rather put on a film with you and sit on a couch But we should get on a plane Or we'll be missing it now Wish I'd have written it down The way that things played out When she was kissing him How I was confused about Now she should figure it out while I'm sat here singing Ah lahmlahlah

Good God, my ginger muppet. What the fuck is this and who let you sing this in public? This is nonsensical bullshit, friend-o, and it is not cute. You know when you catch someone in a lie and their story gets really complicated and incoherent? And they’re like “yes and she was there but also the lamp is blue and I didn’t kill the Professor in the drawing room with the candlestick!” That’s what you sound like. You wish you’d written it down? Why? So you’d remember? You’re writing a song about this, how the fuck are you not remembering the basic plot points of how you were wronged by a woman (who technically did nothing wrong by your own admission) and now feel entitled and butt-hurt? Kinda seems like at this point in the song, you know that neither of you really did anything wrong, but you’re having a lot of feelings about rejection, monogamy, and asking for what you need and want out of a relationship. That’s fine! And that’s what therapy is for, babycakes. That is not what I want to hear on Top 40 radio while I drive to my office for a day of soul-sucking litigation. If I have to read hundreds of pages of people lying in deposition, I certainly don’t want any part of that day to also involve trying to decipher exactly what happened to make you feel like this probably lovely biddy owed you unilateral monogamy. Maybe if you weren’t flitting around with a shitty travel itinerary, you’d be able to figure out WTF happened with your not-boo.

Ah lahmlahlah.

You are a songwriter, man. Why are you and this lady singing “Ah lahmlahlah” all the time? What is that? It’s not nearly as catchy as other nonsense words in music (I’m looking at you, Earth Wind and Fire, “ba-de-ya” is a fucking excellent addition to “September,” and I love it and will sing along with it every time I play it in the car). It’s just... lalalala? Cool, man. Way to be.

I don’t know, Ed. Perhaps get your story straight and come back and explain it to us when you can form words. It would be a much more compelling case for you, and would make for a better song. Who on your staff is a massive enabler? Who is letting your first-draft scribbles get into your discography. I’m worried, Ed. You need to think about your hiring decisions. I don’t know, though. I’m not the songwriter. Lahmlahmlahlah.

Why is this lady coming on the plane with you? No, seriously. She makes money the same way (see terrible lyric above), so why is she going with you? Is she on your staff? Again, Ed, I’m having a LOT of feelings about you as an employer. Work on this.

Don't fuck with my love That heart is so cold All over my home I don't wanna know that babe Ah lahmlahlah Don't fuck with my love I told her she knows Take aim and reload I don't wanna know that babe Ah lahmlahlah

This is angstier than Linkin Park nugget wrapped up in Good Charlotte blanket wrapped in a Joni Mitchell “Blue” burrito for good measure. It’s the turducken of angst.

But digging further, why is your heart cold and all over your home? Did your heart explode, Ed? ED. PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS. This sounds like a major cardiac event, I don’t even know. This is some Jack the Ripper stuff and I am deeply concerned. Also, you’re telling her to take aim and reload but that you don’t want to know? You’re sending mixed messages, and I’m very concerned about the way you’re invoking the imagery of a firing squad. We’re talking about a hookup gone wrong.

I know that sometimes it hurts to see Hermione go out with that hot Quiddich player and yes, she did look really lovely at the Yule Ball... but you need to get it together, man. Would it raise your spirits if we gave 10 points to Gryffindor?

#snark #ed sheeran #dont #song lyrics #ron weasley #good charlotte #linkin park #not deep #angst

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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Hyperallergic: Cloud Blossoms

Paul D’Agostino, “Cloud Blossoms 1” (2017), watercolor, ink, felt marker, graphite, and charcoal wash on paper, 12 x 9 inches

Disclaimer #1:

In a very real way, these “Cloud Blossoms” drawings are about as vapid as they look. Frivolous eye candy for some, perhaps, and maybe relatively pleasant as such. For others, idiotic visual treacle, more or less, and likely several drops too much. I’m fine with either take on them, really. I’m also fine with a regard of complete indifference. At the same time, some of the drawings do just happen to engage in joyously silly dances when looked at through 3D glasses. So, there’s that to consider. Oops!

Those are a few possible takes on my “Cloud Blossoms,” takes that might well have been made more resolute following the note about 3D glasses — the likely effect that note had on the treacle-seers. Speaking of treacle, and while I’m still here disclaiming, I might as well also acknowledge that it’s abundantly possible that looking at my “Cloud Blossoms” brings to mind the Care Bears, because that’s what happened to me at one point as I was photographing them — which did seem an almost exaggerated act to perform on works like these.

But it is true that I thought, with mixed chagrin and delight, ‘Care Bears!’ And then, an instant later, ‘Care Bears.’ You know, because sometimes one thinks with punctuation. The more I thought about that, and the more my thoughts went back and forth in punctuation, the more resolved I became that there must be something about a certain mix of blues and pinks that causes the brain to conjure an entire spectrum of colorful little teddy bears who live in the sky and shower love, happiness, peace, well-being, and other 80s myths all over the place. Right?

Well, I suppose this would require being of a certain age, which I am, and having a certain slightly-less-than-passive awareness of Care Bears, which I do. All the same, I did think the Care Bears were a mushy drop of treacle too much even way back when I was a kiddo — long before I would’ve used the word treacle, obviously, which was also a time when no amount of exaggerated sweetness was ever ‘too much,’ particularly with regard to breakfast cereals — in part because I was much more a fan of Transformers, WWF wrestling, Garbage Pail Kids and, very soon thereafter, Thrasher Magazine, among other things that weren’t very Care-Bear-like. This is back when Thrasher’s inner pages were still printed on newsprint, by the way. It had a smell; it sullied your hands; it advertised mostly skateboard decks, wheels and other parts, and hardly ever shoes; and it would even feature round-ups of contest results, which were interesting and important to the sport back then. You bought Thrasher and sometimes TransWorld at local surf and skate shops, where you’d also leaf through the concurrent mix of surfing magazines, in no small part because of the significant presence of girls in very slight bikinis in those periodicals, a tendency which didn’t filter into skate mags with real consistency until the early 90s, most notably with one called Big Brother.

Paul D’Agostino, “Cloud Blossoms 3” (2017), watercolor, ink, felt marker, graphite, and charcoal wash on paper, 12 x 9 inches

Big Brother, oh my, what a magazine! Visionary! Transitional! Transcendent! Excellent skate photography, a somewhat oversize format overall, lots of raunchy humor and, yes, copious soft porn. Come to think of it, some of it was actual porn. On a magazine shelf, at your local skate shop! What a coup! It was also a definitively problematic skate mag to look at in school. I’m pretty sure a skater or two was beaten up for snagging someone else’s Big Brother.

Back to the Care Bears, though. They were out there too, or perhaps up there, in the Zeitgeist, right there alongside so many other broadly propagated falsehoods about the better angels of government, commerce and society at large, or about alleged improvements in equality and opportunity and so on. This is not to say that the Care Bears were part of some massive 80s conspiracy to dupe the distracted masses into waving American flags and pledging allegiance every day (remember that?) while overlooking the incipient dismantling of all manner of generally supportive sociopolitical structures and democratic mores. The Cold War hadn’t quite yet come to its supposed ‘end,’ after all, so such superstructural shifts, probably so subtle at the time as to be nearly imperceptible, were often obscured if not subsumed by the greater narrative of The United States of America versus The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And so on.

No, the Care Bears were (probably) not part of some conspiracy like that. Although if they were, then the Cabbage Patch Kids were in cahoots with them, along with professional sports and soap operas, sitcoms, and talk shows, Saturday morning cartoons, minivans, and home improvements, and enough soda pop to fuel many a journey to space.

Those Care Bears, though, were very much a part of the popular consciousness — relevant to the ‘kindness and might’ of the USA and the evangelical movement alike. At least, they must’ve been, because they were everywhere — all over the place in toy stores and department stores, not to mention at the homes of most all of your friends who had younger sisters, and just generally visible on everything from TV to t-shirts to some kid’s Trapper Keeper. And you know, visuals sink in. So those visuals sunk in. This is also because, you have to admit, the quality of those graphics was more than passable. A few simple lines. Entire personalities conjured out of belly-bound emblems and colors. The Care Bears were also quite fun to draw—because sometimes you drew them getting ripped in half by Transformers, Voltron, or the Powell & Peralta ‘Ripper’ guy.

There were good cartoons back then. There were great cartoons back then. There might also be great cartoons now, but I don’t really know. What I do know is that gems like Ducktales are obscure to college students these days, as I recently learned from some of my students. Do they also not know Muppet Babies? What about Ren & Stimpy, who really carved the way for so much newfangled cartoonery thereafter, along with The Simpsons? I do believe they’re aware of The Simpsons.

Paul D’Agostino, “Cloud Blossoms 5” (2017), watercolor, ink, felt marker, graphite, and charcoal wash on paper, 12 x 9 inches

Well, before this first disclaimer gets any more out of hand, I’ll move on — because if I don’t, I’ll soon get on a ‘useful’ tangent about the joys of certain breakfast cereals, especially those high-octane sugar-fests that had the best graphics and most lovable ‘mascots,’ and that your parents would almost never let you get.

And so, in sum, the thrust of Disclaimer #1: My “Cloud Blossoms” are insipid drawings, and easy to like, hate or ignore (with or without 3D glasses). They might also be reminiscent of the Care Bears, icons, and associative memory-conjurers of an entire era.

Disclaimer #2: There’s not much of anything interesting or justificatory to say about these drawings, and they’re not in any fundamental way ‘about’ our times, these times, strange times.

Disclaimer #3: You’re still here? There’s not even a third disclaimer.

Well, no matter the content of my disclaimers, my “Cloud Blossoms” drawings, however devoid of concept or active sociopolitical commentary, do exist for a reason. They’re the result of wanting to make — starting one weekend afternoon, on a whim and while listening to a basketball game on the radio — some corny drawings in a variety of media.

That desire to make some corny, mindless drawings had its partial impetus in a need to get away from the cerebrally crushing news cycle that day, because it was a day in 2017, and nearly every day of the news cycle has been like that this year.

That’s also why these drawings don’t have any words on them at all, which is somewhat atypical for me. I tend to relish merging texts of various sorts with drawings of various sorts, especially when working a bit insouciantly with simple materials on paper.

This was also around the time I had written quite a long treatise on ‘the difficulty of words’ this year, thanks to the caustic nature of debate and the generally shocking or harrowing nature of the news. I wrote that as a cover letter for a job, actually, knowing quite well it wouldn’t really ‘do the trick,’ as it were, of getting me the job. It certainly didn’t.

However, I did think it might ‘do the trick’ of somewhat counterintuitively making ‘words’ thereafter ‘less difficult’ — to receive, to read, to write, to process — which it did. A catharsis of sorts.

Paul D’Agostino, “Cloud Blossoms 6” (2017), watercolor, ink, felt marker, graphite, and charcoal wash on paper, 12 x 9 inches

But I still didn’t feel like putting words on these drawings. I just felt like toying with the image of thick ‘happy’ clouds having flowers blooming out of them. ‘Better than silver linings,’ I thought.

I also thought, ‘What if ‘cloud seeding’ could do this!’

And now I’m wondering if perhaps 2017 has been a particularly great year for questions beginning with ‘What if…’.

These times do feel very hypothetical, conditional, conjectural, if in fact ‘times’ can ‘feel’ that way. They’re also not awfully different — although it’s possible they’re relatively more awful — than the ‘times’ a few decades ago, as described in Disclaimer #1.

It’s all very weary-making, even for the most fearless and thickest-skinned among us. The fellow below is a testament to that. He loitered on my block for a few days a couple weeks ago, then simply disappeared.

Ah, to disappear!

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eewilliamsthings · 8 years ago

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Part Three

Life goes on

About six month later, mum has settled into the home, there was a blip with more illness and an undiagnosed disease, a companion to another disease. More hospitalisations, serious stuff we were dealing with.

Then there was a big blip culminating in a diagnosis of Uterine Cancer, which came out of the blue, about three weeks before I was to leave my job, my career for a sabbatical, as some said, or unemployment as others did.

So now, on a very wet and wintery July day in Sydney, I am sitting in the hospital coffee shop at 12.28pm, I wait and type whilst mum undergoes a bilateral hysterectomy under the stewardship of a very sweet and learned Gyno-Oncologist. With all her sweetness and grace, mum was up and waiting at 6am for my brother to drive her to the hospital where I waited, anxious and wishing and hoping that this would be the last. When we found out she was cancerous, she looked at me and said, why do things always happen to me? Responding, I said, because you can handle it. She smiled and said yes, yes I can. And that is how we proceeded. Yes, we can handle.

But before all this, and after the little blip, she was settling and mellowed into the routine of the nursing home albeit reluctantly on those days when she refused to shower, telling who ever was on duty, I will shower when I feel like it. She takes her pills, which on last count tallied around 15 a day, ate her food, drank copious cups of black tea and befriended a man called Peter who would sit next to her on the sofa and on occasion they held hands. He has a wife, who lives on the outside and he knows that he has a wife, but has found a kindred sprit in mum, as they share a similar humour and still have enough sense to chat and laugh about the day.

Her home, with all the visitors, as my sister in law describes it, is lovely. Finding the right one was not lovely. Of all the decisions that had to be made this was the hardest. Basically, the 12 year old social worker at the hospital gave me a book that listed all the nursing homes in NSW. It was rather weighty. She did not help, or made recommendations. She could not, as she had no life experience to draw upon to help me. So I took charge, decided it needed to be half way between my brothers work (he works shifts so it would be easier) and me, and I had to choose the right place.

I visited a couple that I wouldn't put a dog in. Then I found it. It was small, clean, the buildings were about 5 years old, but had been established for over 30 years. The Director of Nursing was interested in mum and that was it, their first thought was for the people. Paperwork completed, mum moved with the least amount of tears.

The staff are genuine and caring and represent of the colours of the world, along with the colours of the rainbow. There is the transgender who arrived late for work one afternoon dressed in a flowing long dress, silver high heels with a sequinned cardigan draped over her shoulders, running through the front door towards the bundy clock, hoping not to be late for work and nobody batting an eyelid, is the place for mum. Colourful, real and accepting.

Mum shares a room with another woman who is wheelchair bound. Bicycles or prams as mum calls them. Her words continue to jumble. Look at all the bicycles in this room. Aunty Liz or mum, as my mum sometimes calls her, (again the jumbling of worlds and people) makes no sense but she loves mum, and mum loves her. They hold hands and sit with each other watching movies, not remembering the plot but appreciating the colour and movement on the screen. Aunty Liz is Eastern European and most of the time speaks her own language, and even though she can speak fluent English and mum can't understand a word of what she says, mum bats her eyelids and says yes, that is right.

On the evening before mum's surgery Aunty Liz looked up from her bed and said to mum, "don't worry I will look after you." I stopped in my tracks, and thought it can't get any more fucking profound than that.

Movies are a big part of the entertainment circuit. The massive Kogan TV seems to be on 24/7, with DVD's of Andre Rieu on high rotation. They love him and having sat through most of them, I must say he is pretty bloody good. They sing along and dance and conduct their way through the concerts, and mum who had learnt classical violin sits fingering notes, whether they are actual notes, I have no clue. I was caught off guard one day when I arrived to see mum with another lady bent over her four wheel drive (walker) dancing to the blue danube. Spectacular.

Some months later this same woman slapped me in the face so hard that it stung for hours. I had transgressed, no one knows why, only dancing queen knew, and this is the reality of dementia. I think of them living never ending lives, locked in their own thoughts and memories, recalling the minutest of detail from 50, 60 years ago, but yet not remembering if they had eaten lunch.

These grandmothers and grandfathers having lived full and eventful lives now living and sharing quite and peaceful lives. These little Benjamin Buttons live their little lives with great love, humanity and civility, these 63 souls could teach the world how diversity works.

Amongst in this little community is Meow Meow, who meows like a cat so purely and clearly, that one day Peter and I looked at one another and said in unison to each other, "did you hear a cat?" No one know whys she does it, but she does. In a different environment she would be considered a performance artist. She scolded me once for laughing too much, seconds later as I moved so not to annoy her, she thanked me for visiting.

Hello Hello, is a favourite. He was a clinical staff specialist at a major teaching hospital and sits in his easy chair for most of the day. Between Hello, Hello is a piano and on the other side of the piano is John who sits in another easy chair, reading the paper. Towards the end of each day Hello Hello, will repeats out loud, "hello, hello. hello", "shut up, shut up, shut up" says John. It is hilarious the old guys from the muppets living here, in Strathfield.

Another resident, Major Silver hair. An elegant woman in her mid 90s who was code breaker for the Army during the second world war. Her intellect is still evident and although obviously suffering from memory loss, she still has her wits about her. She also loves conducting Andre in his concerts, and is convinced that the raised garden bed where camellias grow is going to be turned into a swimming pool. Not a big one, but one just the same. She told me this one afternoon, she came up and greeted me with her usual hello darling and asked if I had children. Replying in the negative she continued explaining that you know there are little kiddies that visit here, interjecting I said well we could throw them in. She laughed and wandered off with her four wheel drive.

There is much humour in this little community of people who have been thrown together for no other reason or circumstance than age or illness. The majority of the staff are brilliant. They are funny, caring and determined to make the facility friendly, warm and welcoming.

There are some who I would like to throw against the wall with my forearm against their throat and shout, do your job you lazy arse. But like all workplaces there are slackers and time wasters and those who really should look for a different calling. They know I have sized them up, there exists an unwritten detente between us. They don't fuck with mum and I will not fuck with them.

There is also death. At least half a dozen residents have died since mum has been there. The most sad was Peter, who very suddenly one Tuesday night passed away. We had talked a little after dinner. I always asked how are you, and he would respond oh not too bad for a little old man. He said his goodnights and tottered off to his room. A little later as I was leaving, he walked out of his room at the end of long corridor and walked into the bathroom, he stopped turned and waved to me, I waved back and left. On my next visit I learned that he had died. Very suddenly of heart failure. It was heartbreaking, all us visitors talked about it, saying how lovely and sweet he was. All I could think of was god bless you Peter, you gentle gentleman who had never flown in a plane.

Part Four

Oh, and how are you doing?

So how are you doing? Is what I get asked the most. I smile and say OK. And, continue with my day. Bullshit I'm OK. But, to those who are not familiar, OK is the standard response.

It has been three months since the surgery and three months since I walked away from work. Having been with the organisation for 20 years, with the last ten years doing the job that I could not have dreamed of it was so beautifully challenging, rewarding and perfect. But, it had changed, the restructuring had taken its toll on my sensibilities, I had no mental stamina left, I was devoid of self motivation and the personal politics of some of my peers and colleagues left me tainted. My job, my delicious job, had withered into something that was unrecognisable, outsourced and over engineered by the consultants. It was becoming a standard that I was not willing to walk by anymore.

I hated it, even the physical office, I hated it with its views of Sydney Harbour, meetings rooms named after Sydney suburbs and the gigantic corporate Nespresso machine, I hated it all, but kept coming in each day. I didn't hate my colleagues they were possibly the smartest and kindest group of people I had ever worked with. But, I am smart and had my exit plan, a few of us did. And, after what seemed like a year in purgatory a very nice redundancy package appeared, I pounced.

There is much that I have not written, how closing up mums house and sorting through her life. How the plastic leprechaun that I gave her after a trip to Ireland 20 years ago, made me weep more when I put in the the box for Vinnies, than giving my grandmothers bed away. A bed which I had inherited and slept in from the age of 18 to 43, until I returned it to mums spare room and slept on a few months ago. Nor have I written about how the cancer was identified. These events filled me with more fear than this whole past year. And, you know, some things can go unsaid. Put the baggage down and walk away. You know it is there but you don't have to stand by it, you can walk on.

The first two months were filled with surgery, medical appointments and all the in-betweens that come with cancer, old age and redundancy. I am still not working and my days are organised into segments, but there are days when I do nothing except watch daytime television and lay around. I breakfast, read the papers online, drink coffee, visit museums and see plays, take walks, go to the movies, (37 to be exact in a 12 month period) coffee with friends, visit mum three times a week, Piliates twice a week and some times comedy gigs, consume Facebook, and live, I live and still cry and declare numerous times a week that I must get a job. I obsess and I feel friends worry I take note when they advise that you can't stop your life because of your mum.

I am decompressing, adjusting, being mindful or mindless depending on the day, and think, oh how I think and what I think. I do all this whist feeling I have a hand wrapped around my solar plexus. the clench is slight, but it is there all the time. Sometimes, I don't feel it but I always recognise it. It is there 24/7. get anxious about the slightest of things, I dither and wander from room to room, cry doing the washing up, when I see film of baby koalas in wicker baskets on Facebook.

So, that is it, the weight of loss is a dire thing, and yes, I work very hard not let it consume or rule me, as no one likes being told what to do…

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