the last one

Well...Lestrade's off to Italy tomorrow/today/in a few hours, to pick up a serial rapist and bring him back here (London, not our flat). Sherlock hid his passport and various other items in an attempt to stop him. He's not at all happy about it, despite the fact that I have been given instructions on how to make pancakes tomorrow morning, which should at the very least give him some entertainment. We got him into bed and then us in to bed eventually. Lestrade has to be in early tomorrow. He's asleep. I was asleep.

I haven't had a really bad dream about Afghanistan for months now. It's always tempting to think I've had the last one, even though, logically, it'll probably never be the last one. Until I'm dead, obviously. Assuming you don't dream after you're dead, which I suppose isn't really a foregone conclusion. I'm probably not making much sense at this point.

We're going to pick up Mycroft tomorrow, which will be great, and barring any major travel issues, L will be home for dinner. Maybe the three of us (or Mycroft with two sous chefs) can put something together for  him.

So I need to try sleeping again. Might just go for a walk first.

I was looking at this too:
http://www.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com/training-centre/training-advice/training-plans/intermediate-17-week-training-plan/

Doesn't sound too unreasonable. 

clarity

Here's someone who's embedded body monitoring technology under his skin. 

The article seems to say it only monitors body temperature, which makes one wonder...why he bothered? Proof of concept, I suppose. Still, interesting.

Sherlock's done very well at school and got a sticker in his book - not just academically, but he's done well in getting along with the other students and listening to Mrs N too, which is wonderful, and we're very proud of him. We're planning a trip to the bike place when Mycroft comes home, partly as a reward for him. I imagine he'll also get cake. Between L and Mrs H, cake is inevitable. ;)

The football has gone well...there maybe have been some dancing around the room. It's been a good day, despite the weather.

Sherlock was sitting on L's shoulders last night, watching the fireworks, and when I glanced at them, they were both looking up at the sky with the exact same expression. There's something about the tail end of summer that seems to drag on and on, until you've hit the middle of October and still feel it with you. Maybe it's just me, but the air seems clearer now. 

octopus slippers

Someone has made slippers out of bread. There was no information on the site about who it was. Just slippers. Made out of bread. I wonder if you could wear them for any length of time, or if they would just fall apart. I think you could definitely make hats out of bread. As long as it didn't rain. Bracelets. Possibly legwarmers made out of baguettes.

I'm slightly concerned that when Sherlock sees this post he will want to try it. Usually, 'why not' is the question I ask myself when he wants to do something. I think that's mostly because of my background. I don't want to end up limiting his life to make things more convenient for me. But walking on food might be where I draw the line, even though I suppose it's not any more wasteful than buying flowers.

Anyway. It's just the sort of thing I wonder about. I always wonder if I'm doing the best thing for him. For all of us. This untimely bout of self-examination brought to you by slippers made out of bread.

In lighter news, here are some octopus eggs. I can tell you right now that Sherlock will definitely want some octopuses in 'his' pond, meaning the one at his school. I can also tell you that the answer to that will be no. Some questions are easier than others.

For anyone who is wondering, Midnight Riot, the American version of Rivers of London that I bought used without knowing that Rivers of London existed, did change the spelling of the words to American, but not the vocabulary. (Rivers of London is a better title.)

that's why we don't hug kale

At the supermarket a few days ago, I saw a little girl and her mother. The girl, about four, was helping unload things. Her mother handed her some kale, and she hugged it, which was rather sweet, but caused it to slip out of its plastic bag and land on the floor. Her mum helped her get it back in the bag, and then said, And that's why we don't hug kale.

I have a feeling some of the conversations around their house may rival ours for oddness.

Caves full of massive crystals, near Chihuahua, Mexico

Sherlock brought his bloodstain pattern book to school today, which in retrospect was perhaps not the best idea. I didn't even think of it this morning when he asked, but Mrs N had words with me after school. Though apparently the problem was more that the kids found it fascinating than that anyone was upset by it. Some of their parents may not appreciate it.

His parents evening is tomorrow, and while it won't go quite as smoothly as Mycroft's, I don't think we have any unpleasant surprises in store. It does make me feel slightly sorry for my own parents though, thinking of them going to these things for Harry and I. Getting told Harry was smoking or leaving school after lunch and not coming back, or that I was starting fights again (which wasn't true, I never started them). It's like Judgement Day.

I've also got another interview coming up, speaking of judgement. Wish me luck. 

shipping forecast

This will be short because I should be asleep...but I startled myself awake by falling out of bed, hitting the floor...and then trying to hit the floor. It hit me first. So I'm up for a while. Cleaned up a bit more glitter.

And then I remembered a long ago blog conversation about the shipping forecast and wondered if it were on youtube. It is.

neither out far nor in deep

I saw Harry for lunch today while L was visiting his mum. She's still sober, and she got a promotion recently, so we were semi-celebrating. Which isn't to say we managed not to piss each other off at all, because we didn't, but even so, it was nice. 

She said she'd like Sherlock to stay with her overnight some time. If he wants to and his mum is all right with it, I think I would be too, at this point. It's funny, thinking about the two of them, Harry wasn't that different from him as a kid. Maybe more socially aware, less sure of herself, but I remember her being absolutely enraged when people (mostly our parents) told her the truth was inappropriate, just the way Sherlock is. I wonder if we might've got along better if she weren't my sister

-

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
Robert Frost

driftwood

Tonight is the World Tour Final...final. It's Federer and Djokovic, here in London, which means I've gone another year without managing to see him at this one or Wimbledon. With Wimbledon, I have some excuse, but it's fairly easy to get tickets to the WTF, at least for the earlier rounds. I suppose I don't need to worry since he's now saying he might play at the next Olympics as well... I assume he's not serious, but with Federer, who knows? He is, as Nadal once said, from another planet.

And apparently I wasn't the only one thinking of Red yesterday. I got a call from Spence this morning...as well as a series of drunken texts from Murray around 3am his time, asking me if I remembered the time Red decided he was going to save the bottle cap off of every water bottle he drank while he was over there, and did I know what had happened to them. (I do know - he was ordered to get rid of them, because within a week there were so many he was having to hide them in other people's packs without their knowledge, so that when they stopped to get something out, a waterfall of white plastic caps would flow out...)

Today's poem...Don Blanding isn't someone you'll find taught in any school, I'm pretty sure, but I like him. He lived in Hawaii, wrote mostly in the 1920s and 30s, and a lot of his poems are about that, or about his travels.


Driftwood
Don Blanding

fme and bed snails

Last night in the comments, I was being unintentionally morose about my lack of employment (I know, I do have a job, but with both the boys back in school, it really doesn't feel like it, and I'm not good at doing nothing all day), and L brought up the possibility of working as a forensic medical examiner.

Basic duties...I'll just quote Lestrade here: examining injured people in custody, examining people who claim to be sick/injured, people who claim to be the victims of police brutality, take blood samples, write out death certs. at scenes, and sometimes present your findings in court. And also, I think, from the reading I've been doing, examining assault victims. I'm going to talk to someone he knows about it and find out a bit more. There's not as much additional training as I would've expected, though there is some.

I talked to Sherlock about on the way home from school. He seems alternately excited and worried about how much I'd be gone, which I'm a little concerned about too. Obviously, he and Mycroft are my first responsibility, and I'm not quite sure it would be fair to them. But I don't know enough about it yet to make a decision either way, so that'll have to wait.

I think I'm also signing up for krav maga lessons at a place Anthea recommended, too. I'll let you know how it goes.

ETA: This was Lestrade when I went into the bedroom just now...

return of greg the florist

A few minutes later they each had a steaming mug of tea and fresh bread thickly slathered in butter and jam. They watched the sun dip behind the trees in a blaze of golden-red glory.

Behind them the castle loomed, windows dark. An owl screeched in the nearby woodlands.

Greg shivered.

"It's too bad we don't have a ghost," John. "It'd be good for business." 

Greg shot him a quick glance, but he appeared to be perfectly serious. "Quite glad we don't, I think," he said. 

"No old legends? Women in white? Women in black? Why's it always women in white or black? It's never little boys in red. Or grandfathers in blue."

"Drama," Greg suggested. 

"Suppose so." 

The sun left a lingering line of fire along the tree tops and then vanished entirely. The light went from warm to cool blue, and John edged closer as the temperature dropped. They stood there until the blue washed away and ink black spread out over the hills and sky. The stars bloomed, a handful at a time, until they covered everything. There was no moon. 

"Inside," John said, finally. "Come on. It's too...big out here." 

Greg thought he knew what he meant. Both sky and possibilities seemed infinite, more than his mind could comfortably contain, and the future was as penetrable as the dark bulk of the night forest. 

He took John's hand and led him inside for more tea, and toast, and bed. 

*

In the morning, he lay in bed for all of five minutes when he woke, and then he picked up the phone and called an electrician. That was where the trouble really began.

---

On a non-florist-related note, I've bought racquet-shaped pasta again for Wimbledon. 

four turn-offs

Day Seven: Four turn-offs.

1. Dishonesty. Game playing. Manipulation. All that sort of thing.

2. Cruelty. 

3. Really small hands on men. Sometimes on women too. I don't know why. 

4. Excessive back hair.

Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.


On another note, related to 1 and 2, I hope everyone's read L's post by now.

When I started this blog, I was easily the most unhappy and alone I've ever been in my life. Watching this change from just me talking into the ether, into a place where all of you can come and talk and share your lives hasn't just made me happy; it's changed my view of humanity, maybe given me back some small amount of faith in people. Thank you for that.

Edited to add the clues from Ryo's game, which I haven't even started on because my brain still hurts from the last one:

Live but not die

Devil but not angel
Era but not period
eve not adam
draw not color
pan and pot but not stove
Ron but not Mike
Wed but not marry
Rat but not mouse
Reward but not present
ten but not eleven
bad but not good
loot not treasure
lever not pulley

deified not god-like
Ewe not us.
Saw not hammer
was but not will

seven things

Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.

I think this is going to end up being seven things that have crossed my mind a lot in the past week, whether I intend it to be or not. 

1. How I could be doing a better job with the boys. 

2. Murray, who's due home fairly soon. I don't know if he plans to go back. 

3. How I could've been a better son.

4.  Or just...how to be better generally, I suppose. Feel like I keep screwing up recently. 

5. Red, his mum, how kind she's been to me in the past. 

6. That BMW. 

7. How lucky and grateful I am to have Lestrade in my life. 

Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

nine things

Right...only took me about three hours to do this...

Day Two: Nine things about yourself.

1. Europe, Asia, and Africa. What? I'm sure that's all you wanted to know about it.

2. Somewhere there is BBC documentary footage of me showering at Bastion. I assume they thought the showers would be empty, but I think they could've turned off the camera a little faster. I'm quite grateful it was never used.

3. In medical school, a friend and I once covered every single cadaver with shaving foam.

4. When I see the poppies for Remembrance Day now, all I can think of is the poppy fields in Afghanistan.

5. I thought I'd die over there. I wasn't hoping to, or especially afraid of it. It just seemed likely, if I kept going back, and I knew I'd keep going back.

6. When I was young, four or five, Harry used to lock me in the basement because I was scared of the dark. She went off and forgot about me once, and Mum thought I was in my room. I was down there for about six hours.

7. I climbed about three quarters of Mt Kilimanjaro and then had to go back with another climber who was suffering from altitude sickness - high altitude pulmonary oedema, pretty bad. He was all right in the end though. He gave me the cigar he was going to smoke at the summit. I think I still have it somewhere.

8. There are so many things I don't feel I can tell anyone, because it's not fair to put those images in their heads. Bad enough they're in mine.

9. I saw a UFO once. I mean, literally a flying object that I couldn't identify. Not saying it was aliens. Just that it was odd.

Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

yellow car

DW posted this in the comments ages ago and I didn't see it until just now. I think I must've been on my phone, which isn't happy about playing videos, and then forgot to look when I got home. Anyway, it's the ideal thing to watch at almost five in the morning. Going to try sleeping again now. 

a dual post

Sherlock wrote this part earlier and I said I'd post it when I finished my bit:

Thank you DW for the spiders, the red one is the best, I've never seen any like it here. Also I'm going to tell everyone about my dream last night where Lestrade was washing tiny elephants in a bowl on the table, there were about six in the bowl and it was a blue bowl but then he cut himself and John made him go and fix it and I had to finish washing the elephants and then one of them wore the juicer thing like a hat. I wish I could have tiny elephants for pets. 


I think we all wish that, Sherlock.

So...the bikes, yesterday. We rode all sorts, as you saw on L's post. I still like the one I posted. In red. A lot. In case anyone had doubts. L asked if I was sure I didn't want it in grey, but I think that's because he wants it in grey.

Sherlock and one or more his classmates had to be removed from the pond had to be removed from the pond six times today, Mrs T told me after school, with a warning look. It is a bit warm indoors. I said I'd talk to him about it.

I took him to the park after school with a boy from his class named Colin and Colin's mum. She told me about wanting to raise chickens, which I think might be a bit problematic in London, and that was about it because the boys had managed to have an enormous row in the first ten minutes.

It was of the he's-stupid-no-he's-stupid variety, something to do with Sherlock getting all the best sticks. They'd stopped glaring, mostly, by the time we parted company so I hope they'll both forget about it by school on Monday. I do wish Sherlock had kids his own age he wanted to play with. He doesn't seem at all lonely, but still. Sometimes I worry. I've asked his mum about it, but she just shrugs and says he'll be fine. I get the feeling she didn't have that many friends as a child either.

Anyway, we stayed at the park until almost seven, poking things with sticks and, in his case, wading in every available body of water and asking why he couldn't take all his clothes off and swim and why did it get so hot and couldn't I make it stop? No, Sherlock, I cannot control the weather. He said he knew that, DUH, but it should just be cooler or we should go to the sea or skiing. And he'd like that with a side of tiny elephants. 

shadows on a lake

First, a PSA: if anyone's still having trouble commenting, and you're using Firefox, apparently you have to enable third party cookies. Don't ask me why.

Dinner...was it really Wednesday? This week has gone so fast. We had focaccia and this nice salad with tomatoes and mozzarella and some nice salmon and baked Alaska. Which he did set on fire, much to Sherlock's delight. Jo and Lisa were lovely and have probably won Sherlock's heart forever. Not only did their presence get him a fiery dessert and the promise of painted-on tattoos and the chance to stay up past his bedtime, but Jo rather rashly said she'd come and get him next time Lestrade and I were being boring and they could do something together. I think she may come to regret that...

I suppose part of the reason, apart from the week going by at breakneck pace, that I've put off posting is that now I've got to sort out everything in my head. It was...a surprise when L told me what they'd asked him to do. Not just a surprise, a shock really.

song about nothing, song about sheep

I had things to post about, but I can't remember any of them right now. Irritating.

L's been asleep most of the night, thankfully, though I think I hear him moving about now. Sherlock was up briefly, but I put him back to bed and stayed with him for a while. Nightmares all round tonight, apparently. Part of it was Mycroft going back to school with things so unsettled here I think. Neither of them were happy about it.

His nightmare was about a vampire in the living room. Coffin on the floor by the sofa. He said it was just lying in there with its eyes closed looking dead. And he made sure I knew he wasn't even frightened of vampires because they're not real.

Mine, predictably, was about Afghanistan. At what point exactly do I get to go back to having nightmares about...oh, giant potatoes crushing me, or clams, or boots with teeth? You know, normal things. 

spare parts

Photos of soldiers, taken before, during, and after Afghanistan. I don't really know what to say. I didn't know you could see the difference.

Let's see...still cold. Still no snow. We have Mycroft and Anthea and two large, excited dogs home. Sherlock is besieging his brother with Quite Interesting facts, such as that the Earth apparently has two moons and that there's a jellyfish with 200 foot long tentacles. On the haircut front, he alternately wants a mohawk, a shaved head, or no haircut at all, so no real progress there, although I think he's getting a bit frustrated struggling to keep his hat on.

Mycroft says school is going fairly well 'for school', which I suppose is the best you can ask from school. He also says that it sometimes seems calculated to let you learn as little as possible and that people would be better off just reading. Glad it wasn't just me, then. I remember times when I had so much homework to do there was no time left to try to understand any of it.

They're both interested in L's latest case. Less so now that all the bits have been found, although Sherlock would very much like to help Molly put them all together. Never in my life did I think I'd write a sentence even remotely similar to that.

A short story from the day Sherlock lost his tooth: we were walking back from school and he was showing it to...basically everyone. One of them was an older woman, about of an age to be his grandmother and clearly accustomed to children showing her odd things, because when he did...

S: Look, it just came out today!
Her: That's lovely, dear. Now put it back where you found it.

john watson, p.i.?

After I dropped Sherlock at school this morning, I went to talk to the young woman Mrs H told me about.

Obviously, there's a lot about it that I can't say, and I've been trying to think how to talk about it. This is going to be about 80% true in substance and about 80% made up in the details. It'll sound a bit like a Victorian novel, but I think it'll work.

Mary's in her early twenties, just out of university, with some sort of computer science degree. She told me about it. I won't pretend I understood. She'd probably get on well with Mycroft.

Three months ago, her mum disappeared. She'd been on a business trip to Paris. She left her hotel one morning and never came back. Mary didn't realise anything was wrong until the police called her. All her mother's things were still in the room. The police found the cafe where she'd had breakfast that morning. After that, nothing.

A week later, Mary got a pearl in the post. Small box, brown paper wrapping. She showed it to me, not that I could make anything of it. I imagine it's been checked for fingerprints and so on. Mrs H certainly doesn't need me for that. Two weeks after that, there was another pearl, and another two weeks after that, and so on.

The most recent one came with directions - turn right, go a quarter mile, take the third left - not those actual directions, but things like that. Which might've been helpful if you knew where to start from. Mary and I started from her flat, but the directions had us turning right and walking 20 paces through a brick wall...not that helpful.

That's about as far as we got today. She thinks her mum is alive and responsible somehow for the pearls and the directions, suspects the directions may be code of some sort, and resents the French police and Mrs H for not taking it all more seriously. I can't blame her, but Mrs H doesn't do anything by accident, so there must be some reason she sent me. Just need to figure out what it is. 

hello

This is Mycroft. A lot of you said welcome home, so thank you for that, and also for your support when I had that bit of trouble at school. We had to write essays as punishment, and I don't remember all of mine, but this is the beginning.

I've been told that hitting Mark was the wrong thing to do. In this case, most people seem to mean 'against the rules' rather than morally wrong. It was against the rules, which is convenient. There's no need to sort out morality, or decide who to punish, or whose penalty should be heavier. We both broke the rules. We both sit in detention and write essays. 


The other thing I've heard often in the past twenty-four hours is that 'violence is wrong'. In this case, I think people do mean morally wrong, rather than just against the rules. People repeat this without appearing to give it much thought; they treat it as a universal truth, as if no one could possibly disagree. 


People do disagree. Our government disagrees, or we wouldn't currently have soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. We wouldn't have armed forces at all, because if violence is really wrong, always, in every case, then it's wrong to use it to defend yourself, too. 


I don't know if it's wrong or not. I think the issue is more complicated than that, and I wish people would stop pretending it's simple. 


I think that what I did was wrong, not because it was violent, but because I did it without thinking of the consequences. I don't mean the consequences to me, the detention and the essay I'm writing. I mean that what I wanted was for Mark to stop being horrible about people I love, and I don't think hitting him accomplished that, so it wasn't a very good idea. 

There was a lot more, because we were there for hours, but that was the main point. But I don't know what I could've done instead that would've been more effective. I've been thinking about it, and I still don't.

In a way, it did help. I've met a few other boys because of it who think what I did was right and brave and also 'really cool'. I didn't expect that. And a lot of people here said that it was good to stand up for your family, too, and that some things are worth fighting for.

I don't know if that's true or not. A lot of things are confusing right now. But even though it wasn't very effective, I don't think I'm sorry I hit him. 

history

I imagine you've read or inferred most of this, but I'm hoping it'll get clearer in my head if I write it out.

I got a call from Mycroft's school a little before two. When I got there, Mycroft's housemaster talked to me for a while before they'd let me see him. I wasn't really listening at that point. They'd already said he 'wasn't badly hurt' which meant he was hurt, and... I might've been a little rude.

He and the other boy involved were in the headmaster's office, sitting as far apart from each other as they could get. Mycroft: black eye, bruised knuckles, cut on his cheek, not deep, probably from something on the ground. The other boy: bloody nose, split lip, likewise bruised knuckles. They were outside, between classes, when it happened. The other boy said something unpleasant about L and I. It escalated. Mycroft hit him.

Mycroft wouldn't tell me what he said. When I pushed it, he told me I didn't need to know. I think he was trying to protect me.