this day

For anyone who didn't see it in the comments, Bryan was arrested on a drugs charge today...and called L for help. Help was obviously not forthcoming. I don't even know what he thought Greg could do.

Anyhow. Sherlock's blisteringly angry about it and thinks Bryan should be boiled in oil at the very least. Getting him to settle down for bed was basically impossible, and he sat between us on the sofa until he drifted off around eleven.

L took him upstairs and then we talked for a while. I'm also angry. Obviously. Trying not to suggest he should be boiled in oil or anything similar. It wouldn't help, and Sherlock doesn't need the encouragement.

We went to bed. I'm reading Some Buried Caesar again and read some of it to L. Possibly not the book for him as it put him right to sleep. Although, really, it was midnight by then, and he hadn't had the easiest day, so.

And I'm still awake. Shoulder hurts, leg hurts, brain hurts. Oh, and I worked today. Got one call where a fourteen year old kid had been arrested for attacking his grandmother. So there's that as well.

I don't know if writing this down has helped or not. Going to read some more I think.

adopt a skull

I'm at an unpleasantly damp crime scene. Someone's just shown me this link where you can adopt a skull. They all have info about them written right on them and you can pick which one you want from a catalogue. My first thought was a Christmas present for Sherlock, but, well, it's a lot of money, and we've already got him...a few things. Possibly more than we should. But if you're shopping for anyone who would like a skull, this is your lucky day.

Contrary to L's advice, I have now been vomited on, punched (only a bit, I'm fine), and felt up, but I think I get to go home soon. At least unless I get another call before that happens. It's been an intense night so far. Very glad I got to go home and get the medal Sherlock made for me though. Several people asked me if I know I've got glitter on my shirt. Obviously the answer was yes (medal is at home for safe keeping).

here

Well, we're here! We've been here a little while, actually, but we were a bit busy for blog updates. This is where we're staying: 

It's a beautiful place. There was champagne in the room when we got there, and there's also this:

And it's really just...lovely and quiet and peaceful. It's so nice to spend time alone with my husband and not have to worry about homework or bedtimes or who ate all of whose chocolates without telling who or what the dogs might or might not have eaten (they can't possibly have eaten an entire scarf, can they? It was five feet long...). And just have time to talk and lie about and leave dinner until the last minute because there's only us to organise.

In other news, I've been asked to start doing two shifts a week at work after the new year. I'm not sure it's fair to Mrs Hudson, or to Sherlock. It's not so bad when they're at night, or on L's days off...but then I don't get to see him on his days off, and I know he hates it when I work nights. Just not sure it's worth it, but I'm still thinking about it. 

14 seconds

L came up with this fact for me today: in Britain, an ambulance is called to someone suffering the effects of alcohol every 14 seconds. Between my training and now the FME work, I think I've seen at least half of them. I realise that's not remotely possible, but trust me, it feels like it. 

Our allotment has tiny pumpkins. You could wear one as a very small hat, or perhaps carry one around in each hand if you wanted to look festive? I suppose you might, if you had very small hands, try to carve one, which is exactly what Sherlock wants to do, even though Reg has promised him one of his, which are a more reasonable size. (Obviously, he wants to carve that one, too. I think his end goal is to fill the flat with orange, staring faces so that one night, when one of us comes home late, there will be some sort of Pumpkin Incident.) 

Mycroft is on an overnight trip with his astronomy group and so will be a day late coming home for half term - but then we've got him all week, which we're all looking forward to. We might try some more museum roulette. Mycroft said his friend had improved the app and added a few more museums. Should be a good time. I have no idea how this year is going so fast though. Currently trying not to think about it. 

work

I was called out to a domestic violence incident last night. It was painful. All you can do is patch up wounds and hope justice will be done at some point, and know that even if it is, it won't undo the damage.

And the next one involved a pipe stem jammed somewhere you wouldn't want a pipe stem to go. I'm certainly getting a broader set of experiences in this job than I expected.

I got home very late/early. Lestrade had made tea for us and then fallen asleep balancing his on his chest. I had to wake him very carefully. It's just so nice... Well, beyond nice really. Amazing to have someone to come home to after a night like that. 

long gone

I can't believe how fast the week went, and I seem to mean that literally, the way I keep checking to make sure it's really Saturday. Apart from the bike place, we didn't do anything that exciting - mostly long wandering walks, cooking, talking, hottubbing (I'm sorry, Mycroft, I know how you feel about verbing nouns...), and keeping clear of the wild fowl watching us ominously from the pond.

Yesterday from picking up Sherlock to bedtime, I don't think he stopped talking once - clearly he had a much more exciting time than we did! No one burned down the city. L's back to work tomorrow, and I'm back to work tomorrow night and Tuesday daytime, so that'll be interesting.

Here's Sherlock's chocolate spider (which really looks like half an egg in a Halloween costume if you ask me...)

so far

L is working again tonight. Sherlock is overflowing with the desire to join him. I told him to wait in his room and I'd make him an obstacle course, which I have done and will probably regret. And if I don't, Mrs Hudson will when he comes charging through here like a herd of oversized squirrels. I might go down and apologise preemptively before I tell him it's ready. 

I have work tomorrow night, which will hopefully give L enough time to recover and nap after work before I have to leave him with our small ball of energy. I have some diseased lung pictures in reserve for them to look at together. (Sentences I never thought I'd write, No. 847.) Still, hopefully, everyone will be in bed by the time I get a call - it does usually seem to work that way. 

Here, have a poem. I just read this for the first time the other day and really liked it.

A Small Number

Olena Kalytiak Davis

So far, have managed, Not
Much. So far, a few fractures, a few factions, a Few
Friends. So far, a husband, a husbandry, Nothing
Too complex, so far, followed the Simple
Instructions. Read them twice. So far, memorized three Moments,
Buried a couple deaths, those turning faces. So far, two or Three
Sonnets. So far, some berrigan and Some
Keats. So far, a scanty list. So far, a dark wood. So far, Anti-
Thesis and then, maybe, a little thesis. So far, a small Number
Of emily’s letters. So far, tim not dead. So far, Matt
Not dead. So far, jim. So far, Love
And love, not so far. Not so love. So far, no-Hope.
So far, all face. So far, scrapped and scraped, but Not
With grace. So far, not Very.

dr feelgood

Dr Feelgood has been and gone. We went over my files, and he pointed out a few things I could be doing more efficiently, which was helpful. He also left a present for Sherlock, a book called Stiff, which is about all the things that can happen to dead bodies, from organ donation to decomposition to being freeze-dried and turned into compost. He said he thought it sounded like just the thing for him.

He's probably right, but I'll be reading it first to make sure that... You know, I'm not sure what I'm expecting this book to contain that Sherlock wouldn't gleefully read and then discuss at breakfast the next day. But just in case. It's obviously not a children's book.

He also said a police sergeant called him Dr Feelgood the other day. I tried not to laugh too much, if only because we hadn't finished my review yet.

And here is a video of a gelatine cube bouncing off a flat surface.

snakes etc

Wawrinka is two sets up on (Andy) Murray in the US Open. I'm not even sure what to think about that.

In non-tennis news, I'm back to work tomorrow night, 7pm to 7am. Going by previous Friday nights, I expect the forecast to be light drugs with occasional heavy drinking and stupid fights that, in the end, have no identifiable cause.

Dr Feelgood emailed to say congratulations, so apparently he's reading the blogs. Also that it's time for a meeting to discuss how the job's going and so he can look over my files - until the six months are up, it's his job to make sure I'm keeping proper records, with the kind of information needed for court cases, not just normal medical records. So we'll do that later in the week, hopefully when Sherlock's at school.

I keep my file cabinet locked, for obvious reasons, whose initials are SH. If he asks, it's also booby-trapped and magically warded. And full of snakes. 

heat, drugs, and flowers

We have ice in the shape of small flowers. Why? Well, remember when Sherlock and I went to Ikea and bought him a Sherlock-sized chair for his reading corner? They also had ice trays in the shape of various things. Sherlock would've preferred skulls or bones or bats, but was fascinated enough with the idea of ice in shapes that he settled for flowers (and another one, not pictured, that makes ice in long tubes). 

Work was mainly people who had taken too many drugs, had too much to drink, or been out in the heat for too long. Or all three at once. Took a blood sample as well, from a man who insisted it would clear him. I hope it will, and that he didn't do it - he seemed like a nice bloke, and what they were holding him for wasn't nice at all.

I think I got home a little before midnight. L had tea waiting for me. :) He had also removed the tie from his new shorts and was modeling them with a pink ribbon tied into a large bow in its place. Mycroft was looking tolerant and amused. I had one of those moments where I'm almost shocked by how lucky I am to live the life I do. 

massive dragonfly

This dragonfly hitched a ride on my bike halfway across the city today. I thought he'd landed there and died, until I got where I was headed and tried to take a photo, when he of course immediately took off. I caught him (or identical twin) an hour later on this sign post, once I was done. 

Work was interesting, massive dragonflies aside. I saw an asthmatic who's being detained for murder and also got to take his dental impressions - which Sherlock is wild to see, just in case he can see some difference between normal teeth and murderers' teeth. He says he'll need a much larger sample size, so will I please bring home all dental impressions I make (no).

Also a drugs case where I was called in with the hope I'd get permission from a man to do what's rather delicately called an 'intimate search'. He eventually said he'd given it to his six year old son to hold, which is...I don't know what that is. I suppose it could've been worse. In several ways.

Anyway, I was happy to get home - to a lovely dinner cooked by all three of my boys. And now we're watching blood drip off of things at this link L found. 

indeterminate berries

Black raspberries? Blackberries? Someone's else's patch at the allotment. Sherlock is mad with jealousy because our pink blueberry bush has not yet formed one visible berry. We thought they were starting, but they haven't got anywhere and it's been weeks. 

I've been watching a lot of tennis. I was shocked when Rafa went out, of course, and...less shocked today when Federer went out. I wasn't expecting him to lose the match, but I suppose I was expecting something like this, at some point before the quarters. It's too bad. I hope it improves Murray's chances. 

I've been thinking a lot about work on Saturday night. The last man I saw was detained under the Mental Health Act, and shouldn't really have been there at all. But he was a bit drunk and...not violent exactly, but shouting, making gestures that could've been interpreted as threatening, which is why he was brought in. And why it was so hard to find anywhere for him to go. 

The hospitals didn't want him because he wasn't an emergency and was 'potentially violent' (I really don't think he was). No crisis team available. It was about two solid hours on the phone before I found someone who'd take him, and he would've spent the night in a cell otherwise, not getting the help he needed, and he hadn't done anything wrong. He was more scared than anything else. There ought to be a better way.  

whales and bodies

I'm stuck in a police station, so I thought I'd put a post together. I haven't been arrested (this isn't Egypt after all); they want me to look at someone else, but he hasn't been brought in yet. So I'm waiting. Have been for quite a while.

As L mentioned, we went to see the beached whale sculpture... I believe it's a sperm whale.

And we got a boat back... 

Sherlock kept a careful watch for corpses in the water the entire time. And was sure to mention it to everyone who asked what he was looking for so diligently. 

Pride and Mycroft's homecoming are both next week. Sherlock's started talking about giant sparkly bat wings to replace his old wings, along with face paint, capes, roller skates, hot air balloons... Basically all the things he also wants our wedding to include. The most reasonable is the chocolate fountain, and he's not going to win on that - L has strong feelings about low quality chocolate. 

The coffee here is really, truly horrible. Like a punishment from on high. Thou shalt drink swill until thine solve rates are up? Maybe they're hiding the good stuff and this is what they keep for visitors? 

Something's happening, got to go. 

sherlock wishes his skull could do this

It's made out of paper. Doesn't look like it though, does it? Sort of mind bending to watch.

Sherlock took the fox skull that L gave him into school today. I gather it was a big hit, although Mrs N did ask me afterwards if it was all right that he had it. Apparently Sherlock said it was from a crime scene, and she wanted to make sure that he hadn't been making off with evidence. One of the girls liked it a lot and promised to bring her mouse skull to show Sherlock. He seemed pleased and even said later that she might like to see his model human skull with the removable teeth (he miraculously still has all of them).

It's my second shift tonight, starting at seven. I don't know whether to hope for a quiet night or not, but, being Friday, I expect I'll get at least one call if not more. Following some of the advice in the comments (sort of), L and I have a logbook now that we're supposed to write in if we have to go out after Sherlock's asleep. Hopefully it'll make him feel more secure and only make us feel very slightly as if we're out after curfew and likely to get told off by our housemaster. 

lettuce yesterday and lettuce tomorrow

Someone asked if anything was ready to eat in the allotment and I think I said no, but there is lettuce, sort of. Lettuce thinnings anyway. And cress and various other things.

Lettuces

That's the entire harvest though - not really enough for a salad even for one person, let along three. I'm sure L will find something delicious to do with it though. Just not tonight. I gather it was worse than usually busy at work, and Mrs Hudson made us chicken and potatoes, which was very nice (and nice of her). 

Tomorrow...my first shift. 7pm - 7am. I'm looking forward to it. 

forever and a day

It's been ages since my last post...by which I mean about five days, I think? Italy got the better of me. I don't think I did a single productive thing while we were there, unless you count eating. Which I do. It would've been incredibly remiss of us not to eat...just about everything on offer.

It was really lovely, if slightly confusing on both sides, meeting L's family. They were confused by us, our relationships (mine and L's, the boys and ours - the only one that really made sense to them was Sherlock and Mycroft, but that's not all that different from home). And Sherlock and I (mostly me, Sherlock to some extent) were confused by basically everything everyone said, because half the time L thought he was translating, he was actually just repeating what they'd said in Italian...

He's still speaking in Italian occasionally, and now that Mycroft's back at school, I've got no one to translate. I did learn a few new words though, most of which I would prefer to keep Sherlock ignorant of.

And...I didn't check my email at all for the last two days we were there. Came back to the news that I have my first shift this Friday. I'm looking forward to it.

And here, have some pictures.

i got the job

I was expecting to be told thank you and we'll let you know in a week or two. Instead it was thank you and when can you start. Bit of a shock. I told her after 2 June, and she looked harried, but I don't see how I can start sooner. We leave for Italy at the end of this week. Which is very, very soon I suddenly realise.

She said she'd email me some information, and I have things to sign, and I should know my first shift date before we get back, assuming we have wifi there, not sure about that.

Meanwhile, I have laundry. And packing. And cleaning. And...something to confirm for tomorrow. But for now, I get to meet L and tell him the good news in person. :)

PS: telepathic rats

catfish

I had another interview yesterday, the last one. I can't remember which letter doctor I'm on... I think it might be E, and I've already got a Dr E, so this one will have to be Dr F. He's probably a bit older than Lestrade, used to be a medical officer aboard a submarine (not the Army, but you can't have everything...). He's been doing this about ten years. 

He talked a bit about the differences between this and treating people in the military - a lot more drugs, for one thing, which I'd expected, although possibly not to the extent he implied. More of people attempting to hide weapons in various orifices, which I don't think I ever saw anyone in the Army try to do unless you count one young man and the barrel of his rifle, but he wasn't trying to hide it. 

Anyway, I think we'll do pretty well together. I asked him if he'd take me on, and he said yes, so there we are. Of course, I still need an actual job, but one thing at a time...

Here are some glasses that make 3D movies 2D again.

And here's a poem I just read for the first time and really like.

Your Catfish Friend
Richard Brautigan

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond?It seems like
a perfect place for them."

car punching

I had another interview yesterday, with Dr B, who thankfully did not google me. He was a bit older and called my phone an infernal device, so I have a feeling google is not top of his list for information sources. He's been doing this a long time though and had some interesting stories. Not sure we're going to suit though. I suspect if he had read the blogs, he wouldn't have approved.

Today, lunch in the park with Lestrade, who could speak and was not wheezing, so that was lovely. Beautiful day.

On the way to pick up Sherlock, I saw someone get cut up in traffic. He started shouting at the man who'd done it and got out of his car at the next light. I thought there might be trouble, which...I suppose there was. Of a sort. He walked up, punched the other man's car, got back in his own, and drove away when the light turned green. He made no impact on the car. I hope he didn't break anything in his hand.

I also looked at more wedding bands.

It's white gold, and the centre bit rotates. Does that make sense? The raised part is not attached to the inner part, so they sort of spin around each other, but they're still connected. There's an animation showing it on the site, but you can only really see it with the one with the diamond in. Anyway, I thought it was nice. Unusual. 

permanent

In her continuing efforts to brighten my life and/or make her brother cringe, Nicky sent me this:

the perm...

I imagine the very serious face is due to him imagining Nicky using it against him in the future. Smart boy.

In other news, I've been looking into the FME training course. The next one in London isn't for quite a while yet. The ones coming up are all far enough away that I'd have to stay there for the week. Not sure how Mrs H would feel about me being away from the boys for that long...or for that matter how L and Mrs Hudson would feel about it, since they'd be the ones making up for my absence. The course summary looks interesting though.