#weshallc

[thatginchygal]

This was lovely, Al!!!!! 🥰🥰 And happy belated birthday @miss-ute !!!! 🩷🩷

THE SUITCASE

Alternate Title for @miss-ute Birthday: SHE WAS A NUN!

Happy Birthday Utie 🍰🎁🎉🎈🥰 Thank you for allowing me to be your beta. We have such fun and best of all I get first peak!

This one is for you. I meant to write something funny, but it didn't turn out that way. It is, however, most definitely Auld Skool Turnadette!

Hope you like it, you lovely person, you 💗

She thought Nurse Peters was never going to leave. Ten minutes must have passed since the un-rewardingly cheerful nurse had placed the suitcase on the end of the bed. Her bed. Her suitcase. 

She hadn’t been expecting this. When she had asked Sister Julienne for some clothes, she trusted her friend to sort through the charity box and find something that would fit. Wrap it up in brown paper and string and post it to Woodford Green. 

If she was honest, she hoped that her colleague would hand deliver the package to St Agnes Sanatorium. She knew she was being selfish, but she was getting accustomed to that.

Staffing levels were already depleted because of her and her unwelcome guest, her invasive intruder, her wake-up call. Chummy had returned, but she would be otherwise engaged any day now.

‘Thank the Lord’ Sister Julienne had the presence of mind not to send it with Trixie. That was a conversation she wasn’t yet ready to have, if ever. 

The stand-off was finally over and Nurse Peters admitted defeat. Nurse and patient had learned a lot about each other over the last two months. The patient had discovered that her carer was kind, compassionate, and trustworthy under her brash exterior. The Caregiver had deduced her patient was brave and resilient under the reservation and introspection. There was no way the nun was going to open that case until she left the room, so she did.

Once the bedroom door had clicked shut behind the nurse, it was time to click open the locks on the suitcase. It was definitely her suitcase. She recognised it by the discolouration of the brown leather on the lid. It had got wet stored in her parent’s airing cupboard when the old boiler had sprung a leak. It had been her father’s case then. She hadn’t really cared about the watermarks on the brown leather, but had done her utmost to dry it off for him and prevent any of the paperwork and documents he had stored inside being ruined. 

She never imagined back then that one day it would be hers and it would travel with her down the East Coast Mainline on the Flying Scotsman to Kings Cross. Ten years ago, when she had handed it over to an impatient Sister Evangelina, she didn’t think she would ever lay eyes on it again or its contents. 

She picked up the luggage label and recognised Sister Julienne’s handwriting at once. The same script she’d been familiar with for over ten years. She knew the curve of her letters, the dips and troughs of her words almost as well as her own hand. She paused for a second as another’s handwriting flashed into her mind and wrote across her heart. It was addressed to ‘Sr Bernadette’. She had put her friend in a difficult position, she knew that. The shock and disappointment written across her visitor's face, when she had made her request for something other than the habit to wear, was now eternally etched on her soul.

Her request had been answered, whatever pain it may have caused the one who had honoured it. There was no going back now. It would have been so much easier if it had been a brown paper package tied up with string. There would be a sense of curiosity, maybe even a thrill at seeing what sort of mismatched outfit had been put together for her from the jumble. The fact that it was her suitcase, the suitcase she had parted with in 1948, had dampened her excitement. She had been looking to the future, now she was going to be faced with the past.

If her mind had any doubt that it was hers, her fingers didn’t share it. Her left thumb pressed harder against the button lock than the right thumb did. Her hands had remembered the left clasp was slightly misaligned and needed a more assertive push to persuade it to open.

The lid of the suitcase sprung away from her and so did her fears. The first thing she recognised was a small cosmetics bag her mother had bought her for her thirteenth birthday. She’d told her she was too young for make-up, but it had contained a comb and hair grips, a compact mirror and a small tin of Nivea. The hand cream was long gone, but the comb and grips were still inside and the mirror. The lipstick and powder she had placed in there many years later were still snuggled alongside a tin of face cream and a bottle of Coty L'aimant. 

The hair fixings would come in handy, but she wasn’t sure about the rest. Did make-up go off? She gently twisted the lid on the scent and pulled it off, bringing the attached applicator to her nose. The pink cream had lost none of its potency and for a moment she was no longer in a hospital suite in Essex, but in her parents' bedroom in Inverurie letting her mother place a dab of the sweet liquid on her wrist whispering, “Don’t tell your father.” As they both giggled at the shared act of secret rebellion.

The sensation of the cold metal on her wrist brought her back into the present. She swiftly replaced the lid, returned the bottle to the bag, and rubbed her wrists together to distribute the scent. An action she hadn’t performed for over a decade. Would everything be as simple as this? Had her body and subconscious mind been storing all the small everyday tasks and movements of being a woman? While she had tried so hard to forget.

Opening the purse, she found it contained a few coins, hopefully enough for the bus fare to Poplar. Under her utility shoes, that smelt strongly of Cherry Blossom shoe polish, was hiding her handbag. The green two-piece and the short sleeve blouse also didn’t smell like they had been shut up in the dark for a decade, but freshly laundered. 

After dressing and checking herself in the mirror, the religious garments, which were too bulky to fit into the suitcase she had carried her nightwear in ten weeks ago, were folded carefully into her old brown suitcase. She placed the wooden crucifix on the top, stroking its comforting familiar texture for the final time. 

She then once again closed the lid on her past, remembering the tricky left fastening. In a few hours, she would deliver the suitcase back to Sister Julienne. 

Shelagh heard another click as she opened the door and walked into the sunlit corridor to find Nurse Peters and ask if she could make a telephone call.

[fic-al]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Original Work Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Additional Tags: Original Fiction, Christmas Fluff Summary:

With her parents away visiting her brother and her Journo boyfriend covering the UK Christmas strikes, Stacey Cook realizes she will be alone for the first time on Christmas Day. Stacey just wants to hide under her duvet, but a scheduled hair appointment early on Christmas Eve morning means Stacey has to open her eyes.

[ilovemushystuff]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO

@weshallc 🍰🥃🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎉

[miss-ute]

Tuberculosis

Thank you @weshallc 🥰

He didn't realise for two days my ass!

[snoopctm]

CtM Thursday Thoughts

Merch and Marketing

Hello Nonnatuns! 

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Thursday post, but since there’s been an issue raised recently and it’s Thursday, I thought I would post some of the things I’ve been thinking about. If you’re interested, more thoughts follow...

So, I’ve noticed there’s been a little bit of an issue about the new CtM Cookbook, and it’s been confusing me a little. I replied to @weshallc’s post about this already, but I noticed other comments on that post, as well, and likes, so I guess there are several people who have problems with this product. I’m wondering what it is about a cookbook that’s raising concern when there already has been a host of CtM merchandise, and not nearly as much as I’ve seen for other shows (like t-shirts, Funko Pops, even Lego sets, etc.) CtM itself has had calendars, puzzles, a board game, playing cards, etc. I’m not sure how a cookbook is much different than those things.

Also, I noticed a few comments to the effect that the CtM production team should be spending more time on the show itself than on making merchandise. I wanted to mention that I don’t think the CtM show producers or Heidi had much to do with the cookbook (or the board game, puzzles, calendars, etc.) The production company contracts with a licensing firm for merchandise, and I think the writer/publisher of the cookbook probably went through those channels to get approval. I’m sure CtM has someone to look over the products to approve them and make sure they’re well done and in the spirit of the show, but this cookbook was written by a food historian who also wrote other books, including a Downton Abbey cookbook. It’s been approved by CtM, and features pics and quotes, but as far as I know, Heidi  and the executive producers didn’t have a hand in writing it. Producing this or any other product tie-ins does not usually have any direct impact on the writing/producing of the show itself. If anyone has issues with series 12, they have every right to express that opinion, but series 12 was going to be what it was regardless of a cookbook or any other CtM merchandise that could have been produced. 

Also, as for the book itself, it really is a quality product. I like cookbooks, and I have a few, and this is a good one. It’s not just a collection of recipes with pics from the show. It has historical essays, and many of the recipes are described in context with moments from the show, or characters. It’s an interesting read, and I haven’t made any of the recipes yet, but they look really good. I’m looking forward to trying some of them. 

For anyone who doesn’t like cookbooks, you probably won’t like this one. I understand if it’s just not your thing. Some people in the comments on Facebook were asking about a book of crochet/knitting patterns, for instance, and if that ever gets made, although I’d have no problem with it in principle, I probably wouldn’t buy it because I don’t crochet or knit. I do cook, though, so the cookbook has been of interest to me since I first noticed it for pre-order on Amazon a few months ago. CtM is a medical show primarily, but it’s also about its era and location, and how people lived then, and it’s about the characters. Food has been a big part of the show since the beginning. Eating and drinking have been the centerpiece for a lot of memorable moments on the show, so this book with its focus on food, history and context makes a sense to me. It seems like an entirely appropriate tie-in with the show, at least to me. I guess not everyone is going to agree, and that’s OK, but I just wanted to put a few thoughts out. 

Thanks to everyone who reads this!

[levinson-mannion]

I posted 2,889 times in 2022

253 posts created (9%)

2,636 posts reblogged (91%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@downton-bridgerton

@miss-ute

@cobertaddict

@weshallc

@corasorangejuice

I tagged 1,497 of my posts in 2022

Only 48% of my posts had no tags

#ask game - 68 posts

#downton abbey - 54 posts

#robert crawley - 53 posts

#cora crawley - 52 posts

#incorrect downton abbey - 47 posts

#incorrect robert crawley - 47 posts

#cobert - 46 posts

#incorrect cora crawley - 45 posts

#love ya!! <;33 - 44 posts

#and thank you for the ask! - 44 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#agsibdhajebdhosbwbdizbabdjdjabejddjwnebdihebrdksibwbdixjwbrjfienwbeosnqbaaajbwrijdhefibebejdnebejdjwbrjsowonwsosjbeeihfbrekksbeidksbejrieber

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Robert: Can you carry me bridal style to the kitchen?

Cora: Why? Are you injured?

Robert: I feel the need to be dramatic, like right now

Cora: …

Cora: Yeah sure, come here

64 notes - Posted August 3, 2022

#4

Cora: I need to get something off my chest

Robert: is it your shirt? Please say it's your shirt

73 notes - Posted July 18, 2022

#3

Reblog this to appreciate Cora Crawley. If you don't like it I will assume you don't appreciate Cora Crawley

82 notes - Posted April 24, 2022

#2

Violet: [Pointing at the broken coffee machine.] So. Who broke it? I'm not mad, I just wanna know.

Cora: ...I did. I broke it.

Violet: No. No you didn't. Rosamund?

Rosamund: Don't look at me. Look at Robert.

Robert: What?! I didn't break it.

Rosamund: Huh, that's weird. How'd you even know it was broken?

Rosamund: Because it's sitting right in front of us and it's broken.

Rosamund: Suspicious.

Robert: No it's not!

Mary: If it matters, probably not, but Edith was the last one to use it.

Edith: Liar! I don't even drink that crap!

Mary: Oh really? Then what were you doing by the coffee cart earlier?

Edith: I use the wooden stirrers to push back my cuticles. Everyone knows that, Mary!

Cora: Okay let's not fight. I broke it. Let me pay for it, Mama

Violet: No! Who broke it!?

Rosamund: Mama...Tom's been awfully quiet.

Tom: REALLY?!

[Everyone starts arguing.]

Violet: I broke it. I burned my hand so I punched it. I predict 10 minutes from now they'll be at each other's throats with warpaint on their faces and a pig head on a stick.

83 notes - Posted September 2, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Robert: I thought marriage was about love and trust. But you have betrayed me.

Cora: I had an early hospital meeting.

Robert: You abandoned me!

Cora: You didn't get enough sleep, I didn't want to wake you.

Robert: But I did wake up! By myself! No wife! No kisses!

95 notes - Posted May 27, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[fourteen-teacups]

@weshallc

A shepherd in Yorkshire tends his flock upon a modern conveyance

[ilovemushystuff]

Happy Birthday @weshallc !

From mushy with love.

[muffins-lime-dragon]

[nunonabun]

Concussion ;)

Ooo interesting ask, but no cigar. Nobody’s taken that kind of a knock in my WIPs ;)

[send me a word and I will post a line from WIP if that word appears in the fic]

[fourteen-teacups]

@weshallc

...Nicola had plenty to say when it came to singing Sarah's praises. "She has broken my heart and made me laugh in equal measure on camera, on stage, in song, she can do it all..."

[billgavemeextrachips]

OH MY GOSH WESHALLC.

WESHY!!! (Can I call you Weshy? I saw one of the other Tumblr Nonnatans say it once.)

So I saw you reblogged my Tumblr link to the final chapter of Just Beneath Her Heart, with an amazing recommendation, and I was like:

Then I log into fanfic.net and have SO MANY NEW REVIEWS.

Not to mention all our messaging back and forth about the little details, thought-out characterization work, allusions to and inclusions of canon, that make reading and writing fanfic so very rewarding...

YOU’RE THE BEST OK!?

[candlesoul]

[ilovemushystuff]

for @weshallc 😘

[fourteen-teacups]

@weshallc

Mum 2.05 “September”

- It’s a country beef stew – whatever that means – with mushrooms and shallots. - Shallots? - Yeah. - And suddenly she’s too good for an onion.

[muffins-lime-dragon]

Talk about a blue Monday