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gingerteaonthetardis · 10 months ago

Note

hello i have a (very basic) fic prompt: established relationship hurt/comfort malcolm/rose. :))

genuinely diabolical of me to answer a prompt you sent almost a year ago—at one in the morning, on a random wednesday. but... better late than never? if you see this, which i hope you do... i'm so sorry it took so long. hopefully the 5k wordcount makes up for the wait.

content warnings for: medical emergencies, hospitals, canon-typical swearing (honestly, i think i kept things rather mild), and daddy issues

[read on AO3] [send me a prompt]

He comes home white as a sheet.

There has always been something faintly spectral about him. Two days without enough sleep and his bones tend to press up at the underside of his skin, turning his face into a craggy mess of shadow and light. He credits his milky, changeable complexion to a combination of his heritage and London's dismal weather.

Though—she's done what she can for him, in the months since they started seeing each other. They take walks along the Thames, sometimes. She stays over as many nights as she can and tries to make sure he gets a bit of actual rest.

They went to the seaside exactly once, for a conference, and while he worked almost the entire time, she did get him outside where the chill wind could buffet some colour into his cheeks. Eventually.

(She persuaded him to kiss her on the boardwalk, to ignore the possibility of the press spying on them, because “who would even recognise Malcolm Tucker when he's smiling?”)

But no matter how she tries, he is always pale and drawn and tense in a way that is not remotely healthy.

She knows she nags him about it, probably too much. Pushes. “This job is gonna kill you one day,” she told him matter-of-factly, one very late night in bed. Her hand was splayed on his bare chest, over his heart, as she spoke.

His fingers crept up to tangle with hers, and he let out a long breath, like a laugh too tired to embody itself. He hadn’t been home in over seventy-two hours.

“Already has,” he said. “You're looking at a ghost, darling.”

So she dragged the bedsheet up over his head and refused to let him out until he said “boo,” and he laughed a little and called her a child, and her fear dissipated so she could very nearly forget the darkness under his eyes, the tremor in his hands.

But when he comes home in the middle of the workday, looking like that—well, for the first time, she actually believes him.

She's looking at a ghost. A wraith. A shadow.

At first, she thinks things might not be as bad as they look.

“Steve fucking Fleming,” she sneers at the television, determined to be angry since Malcolm cannot be. He is beyond anger, having travelled to some more remote psychological peak. But she is merely mortal, flat-footed, here on the ground. Radiantly, righteously pissed. “Who does he think he is?”

He doesn't respond. His eyes are glued to the screen, where the ticker scrolls past spewing bullshit about his resignation. As if anyone on earth would believe that.

His body is a harp string, pulled so tight that it might snap at the smallest pluck. She reads him loud and clear, like he's wearing a big sign that says Do Not Touch. He'd been hounded by the press on the way in, probably bumped and jostled and while it boils her blood, she knows him. Knows he needs a minute alone.

At a loss for anything useful to do, she falls back on what she knows. The solution to any crisis, at least in the Tyler household.

Tea.

Water splashes into the kettle with probably an unnecessary degree of violence and noise-making. Malcolm likes his weak, bag out with lots of milk, so it'll hardly take a minute, she tells herself. Then she can go to him. Hug him, hard. Tell him the truth, which is that she loves him and fucking hates his job.

She taps the fingers of one hand on the countertop, her thumb ring clicking impatiently against the side of his mug with the other.

“I give it a week,” she calls out, eyes tense on the hissing kettle. “Maybe less, before they’re begging you to come back. You’ll see.”

Then: “Who's the bald one you hate so much? Julius? Well, there'll be a shitstorm anyway, with his report, and—and you know he'll come crawling on his hands and knees, asking you to clean it up. Do you…?”

Her voice gets lost in her throat for a moment, making her wonder if she should even ask this. If he'll even bother answering.

“Will you, when he asks?” Her hesitation is painfully obvious. “Will you go back?”

Nothing.

The only sound is the kettle, her thumb ring, the tinny voice of a reporter coming through the television speakers. And out the window, she thinks she can hear paparazzi—camera shutters clicking, animated voices in the street.

“Vultures,” she spits, like the word is poison.

She's interacted with the press since she was barely more than a baby, off and on, the relationship as rocky as the one between her parents. Pete Tyler, the mogul. The wunderkind. The absent. But the papers were always there, reporting on every jet ride to far off places. Every time he left them behind. Until the one time he didn’t come back.

The water boils, and she fixes Malcolm's tea, then hers. She wants so badly to run back into the living room and gather him all up in her arms, even though it makes no sense. He's not a wounded bird. He would hate the very thought of her pity. So she picks both mugs up carefully, tells herself this will help.

Until there is a large thump.

“Malcolm?” she says, feet frozen to the floor for a whole three seconds. “Malcolm.” Did he throw something? Certainly not. Drop something?

Instinct draws her from the kitchen, where the first thing she sees is the TV screen: on it, the Prime Minister, standing outside 10 Downing Street surrounded by dozens of microphones. His voice carries through the living room.

“...terribly sorry to see him go, but Malcolm Tucker has our full support in whatever he chooses to do next. We respect his decision to step away from politics, and are eager to begin this new—”

“Bollocks,” Rose spits, a fraction of a second before she notices the space where Malcolm should be standing is empty.

And he’s just lying there, face down.

On the floor.

Two mugs hit, a second after.

They won't let her ride in the fucking ambulance.

So she has to take his car. Which means she first has to find the spare keys—his must be in his coat pocket still, which he was wearing when they carted him off on a fucking stretcher—and by the time she does find them, the paps, who had only just begun clearing off when the ambulance showed up, are back in force. She can barely edge the sleek, black BMW out of the driveway without taking out some camera guy’s kneecaps. Honestly, she almost slams the gas anyway.

By then, the flashing lights of the EMS are long gone, so she has nothing to clear her way. It takes ages—a lifetime, a trillion lifetimes—to make it to the hospital, and the whole time she keeps thinking, What if he's dead? You're looking at a ghost, darling. What if he's dead? On and on and on.

Her head is a traffic jam all on its own, leaving her unconscionably distracted while she finds a parking space. But she musters up a little dignity for the walk into A&E.

And yes, of course, she can already see the zombie horde waiting outside the doors, eager to get their teeth into the fearsome, famous Malcolm Tucker, so recently fallen from grace. It’s one hell of a story—a surprise resignation gone so awry that it put a former political colossus in hospital. And while it isn't likely they'll know what she is to him, she doesn't want to risk making a bad situation worse.

She pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt and plunges through the gathered mass, making straight for the door.

But she must have used up all her luck finding a place to park.

“Is that—?”

“That's her!”

“Rose?” one of the more aggressive paps shouts. “Rose Tyler?” Her hands ball into fists, and she shoves them in her pockets.

“Are you visiting a patient? Rose!”

Instead of shouting back—I don't know, you fucking pigs!—she just forces her way forward. The sight of an irritated-looking nurse jamming his head out the door is a lifeline above all the bobbing heads and enormous camera rigs.

“Rose,” cries another zombie-vulture-waste-of-space, “is it true that Malcolm Tucker left the government to work for your father's company?”

“Unless all of you are going to admit yourselves into this hospital, clear off!” The nurse is the one shouting now. “You are interfering with the care and safety of our patients!”

That, of course, sets off another round of shouted questions about Malcolm's condition, about Pete Tyler’s condition—what a laugh—and Rose despairs of ever getting through until the nurse notices her—perhaps her pink hood, or her horror-struck eyes—in the midst of them.

His own gaze sharpens, and he pushes the door open wider.

“Clear a path, or I'm calling security,” he says, voice heavy with threat. “Back off.”

It's not terribly intimidating, but it's enough for the frontmost row of hacks to back down, leaving just enough room for her to be spat out in the entryway. She stumbles a little, and the nurse catches her.

“You're not one of them, are you?” he asks, hesitating for just barely a second—but then she swipes off her hood, and his uncertainty vanishes.

He nods, eyebrows lifting, then slams the glass doors shut behind them. It quiets the paparazzi to merely a dull roar.

“So, the rumours are true.”

She knows what he’s seeing right now; it's the same thing everyone sees: Pete Tyler's apparently estranged daughter, the long lost Vitex heiress who came back out of nowhere—read: the Powell Estate—a year ago, after nearly a decade out of the limelight.

And, allegedly, Malcolm Tucker's scandalously young paramour.

That's always been the worst of it: the way people look at her as if she's a toddler, not twenty-seven years old. Pampered little rich girl. As if she hadn't been just as surprised as anybody when her parents reconnected, remarried. Reintroducing her to a small but overwhelming world, one where he happened to exist.

Everything had changed, and then it changed again the moment she descended that giant staircase outside the reception hall, still dressed in her ugly, frilly, Jackie-selected bridesmaid's gown—and there he was. Smirking at her behind his hand, the bastard.

He changed everything.

She sets her shoulders, trying to look like more than she is, and stares down the nurse—his badge says Rory, with a little smiley sticker next to it.

He isn't smiling at all, sensing her intentions. “I’m sorry, but only family are allowed to—”

“I'm his wife,” she interrupts with a lie, bald-faced and glaringly desperate. She doubles down. “Rose Tyler. We're married. It was a… secret thing. Family only. ‘Cause of the press, yeah?” The way she says press is positively vicious. “And my parents, you know, they had this huge wedding and it just seemed impractical to have two in a year. Such a waste of money…”

She's overcomplicating—babbling, in fact, making her story less believable with every word. Surely the paramedics will have left a record of her prior statements, panicked pleading between sobs. But in spite of Rory's dubious look, he seems inclined to take pity on her. Her heart hammers as he considers for an eternal moment, blinking several times in what looks like an effort to clear his head.

“Please,” she says. Her voice breaks. “I've got to see him.”

In a tone of utter resignation, he tells her the room number.

She doesn’t need the room number, in the end. She just follows the shouting.

“—unless you want me to fucking shove that syringe up your cockhole and wiggle it around like an X-rated re-enactment of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, you'd best remove this fucking IV—”

So, he's awake.

A gaggle of nurses are lingering either in or around the doorway, watching the shitshow like it’s a particularly engrossing episode of Hospital, and Rose has to clear her throat to get through them. Her pink hoodie stands out like a beacon among all the scrubs.

“How is he?” she pauses just long enough to ask, voice low under the roiling stream of vitriol pouring from the room. “What's happened?”

One of them, a woman with a badge that says Hame—adorned with yet another smiley face sticker—looks at her sheepishly.

“Are you—?”

“His wife.” The lie comes more fluidly this time. So fluidly the nurse doesn't even blink in surprise.

“He woke up in the ambulance,” Hame offers, “and he's been… like this… ever since he arrived.”

Rose's lids momentarily flutter with the effort not to roll her eyes. But the relief comes fast on the heels of irritation. All the blood which had been pounding through her legs, prompting her to run, dissipates; she can only give a dizzy nod in return and stumble through the doorway.

“—you fucking deaf? I’m fine, I feel fine, as I've been telling all of you for the last half an hour! Look, I was test-driving my new Victorian fainting couch and fell a little to the left, that’s all, no big fucking deal. I'm absolutely fine!”

“Malcolm,” she says.

And he looks at her.

His face—God, his face. It’s waxy, pale as the moon, and his hair is sticking up like he's been running his hands through it, or like he's been in a pub fight. This impression is further supported by the blooming discolouration on his right cheekbone. It must have been from the fall. The fall she missed, because she was making fucking tea.

He doesn't look small on the gurney, doesn't look weak or unnaturally still or withered or any of those things she's heard people say about visiting their loved ones in hospital. But he looks like he's gone ten rounds with something much, much stronger than he is. The whole world, maybe, has beaten him.

Her chin wobbles.

“Oh, not you fucking too!” His eyes, marginally sunken, get wide all of the sudden. “I'm just fine, Rose—lot of fuss over nothing, all right? Just—no, darling, don't you do that, don't—”

But it's too late.

Tears break free of her waterline as she lurches toward the hospital bed. She barely has the wherewithal to mind the IV—still attached, which he’s thrilled about, no doubt—as she wraps herself around the nearest piece of him she can reach. Which happens to be his arm, warding her off.

She pulls the pale limb to her chest, feeling its warmth. Letting it saturate her. She hides her face in his bent knuckles and lets out a watery, choked noise that's struggling not to be a sob.

“Can you just—Rose—fucking give us a minute, all right? You can get on with the anal probe or whatever the hell you plan to do to me later, just all of you get out of—yes, thank you, thanks a fucking bundle. All of you, scram.” Malcolm's voice sounds like it's coming down a very long corridor, echoing wrongly in her skull. She can't feel her knees, which is a strange thing to notice, because she's not normally aware of them at all. “Rose? Rose, come on, darling, you're making a scene.”

He reels her in by bending his arm, which moves stiffly. She holds it tighter, breathing deep. Trying to swim back to some kind of surface. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

“S’all right. Hell of a day, isn't it?” he says, sounding more normal. Or maybe her ears are working right again. “Couldn't have come at a better moment. Seems I'm about to have quite a lot of time off.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m not the one blubbering, now am I?” counters Malcolm. “That's enough, all right, save it for the funeral.” He seems to recognise that's the wrong thing to say just a beat too late, when her shocked gaze finds his.

“That's not funny,” she says. “That's not even remotely funny.”

Some of the force leaves him, rounding his shoulders. “I know.”

She goes on, refusing to let go of his hand. She's speaking directly into his fist, and she doesn't care. “Damn you, Malcolm, I told you! I said, ‘This job is gonna kill you,’ and look where we are!”

“I'm not dead yet,” he insists. “And, if I might point out—it was losing the job that nearly killed me.”

That's it—her knees can't take it any more. They just sort of go out from under her, and she's lucky she's close enough to collapse into a seat beside the hospital bed.

“You scared me,” she manages to say. “I don't—I'm not even sure what happened, I just heard this thud, and then you were there on the floor!” He makes a soft shushing noise, which she ignores. “You have to let them look after you, Malcolm, you can't just—”

“All right,” he interrupts, vocally reluctant. But the hand against her chin finally opens, fingers searching out her face. “Fine. Fine, Rose, but I'm sure it's nothing.”

She gives a watery laugh. “Yeah, just your life. You've only got the one, you know.”

“I know,” he nods. But she can't be sure if he really believes her—if it even matters to him.

(You're looking at a ghost, darling.)

It's not nothing. Of course it's not.

It's a myocardial infarction—a bloody heart attack. Mild, according to the doctor, but nothing to joke about. Rose doesn't want to budge from Malcolm's side, and she’s heard people are supposed to take notes with this sort of stuff, so she gets her phone out and starts typing out anything she can make sense of, anything that sounds even tenuously important, anything she can spell. She tries to ask questions.

Malcolm keeps shooting glances at her while the doctor coolly, calmly explains that this should be a wakeup call.

“Cardiac events of this nature are often a warning sign that other, more concerning events are incoming, such as another heart attack or a stroke,” he says, “unless serious changes are made in regards to health and stress levels. Your heart is functioning normally—for now.”

His emphasis makes Rose's own heart thump painfully.

“But we'd like to keep you overnight for observation, and in the morning, we will discuss a health management plan.”

Malcolm seems inclined to buck against authority, as he nearly always does, and Rose doesn’t mean to, but she squeezes his fingers so tight she can feel the bones shift. And he nods instead.

“All right,” he says, eyes sliding towards her. They look pale, bleached by the fluorescence. “One night.”

She doesn’t want to make a scene again, so she runs to the ladies room. But when she gets there, she can’t cry anymore. She can only face her reflection in the mirror.

She's the one who looks like a ghost.

When Malcolm finally falls asleep that night—a feat which seems nearly impossible with nurses coming and going—Rose slips out into the hallway and dials a number she's been avoiding for hours. Maybe longer, if she's honest.

“Hullo?”

It's—it's too much.

She sniffs, and realises her airways are so tight, swollen by all the tears still left to shed.

“Pete?” she creaks out.

The shift is instant. “Rose? What’s wrong, love?” She can imagine him sitting up straight in bed, probably patting around trying to get her mother up.

“Don't wake Mum.”

“All right, what's happened?”

“It's Malcolm. He…”

“Oh, God. Rose, I'm—I got the call, but I didn't—I’m sorry, love, it just seemed…”

“Like bullshit,” she flatly fills in the blanks for him. Impossible. Like something that would never, ever happen, not to him. “I know. But it's not. He had a heart attack.” Voice low, her eyes scan the hallway, dimmed for the night shift; even now, she fears the click of the camera shutter, of being seen. Of compounding the problem. “I’m here with him, and he's… He's not taken it well.”

Pete snorts, and she would laugh, too, except that she can't.

“I can imagine. Is there anything you need? We can come down, but—”

“The press, yeah,” she sighs. “No, there's no need. Visiting hours are over anyway. I just wanted to ask…” The excess energy, the nerves build up like static until she's tapping her foot to try and let some of it out. “Look, I know I said I didn't want any money or favours or…”

“Anything, Rose. You know we’ll do anything.”

There's not a trace of blame in his voice, that's the worst part. Not even an ounce of bitterness.

He's always understood, ever since he came back into her life, that it might be too little, too late. That this—their non-relationship relationship—is not something to be solved by his money or his access. In fact, she’s sort of suspected he admires her decision to have nothing to do with Vitex, nothing to do with his public profile, regardless of how much it could benefit her. But…

Tears trail down her cheeks. It’s not for her, so it’s different.

“Two weeks at the lake cottage. Would that be—?”

He doesn’t even let her finish. “Of course.” She hears shuffling, rustling like he's gotten out of bed and started rooting around his nightstand. “I'll call Graham tomorrow, get it set up for you.”

“He can't do anything strenuous,” she adds, “and I don't want to leave him alone, so we'd have to order in for most things.”

“I'll take care of it,” Pete replies smoothly. “There’ll be fresh wood for the stove, too, if the temperature drops.”

Her voice comes out barely a whisper. “Thank you.”

“When do you want to go?”

“As soon as he's released.” There's a clutch in her chest, twin sensations of guilt and horror digging their hands in. She’s never planned more than a birthday present behind his back. “I’ll clear it with his doctor first, but I don't want to give him time to argue with me, and if we stay home—I mean, the paps'll be all over us. He won’t get a minute’s rest.”

If her father notices her misuse of the word “home,” he doesn't mention it.

“I'll handle travel arrangements,” is all he says. “D'you need someone to go and pack for you?”

“No, I can do it.” She sniffs, trying to gather herself. “Seriously, this is—I just want you to know…” But her voice dissolves.

“I know, love. I do.”

“I've got to go,” Rose manages, seconds or minutes later. The tears have slowed, and she can breathe again, and all she can think of is crawling back into that awful hospital bed beside Malcolm and falling asleep with his heart beating safely under her ear. Now that she’s got some sort of plan, she thinks she might have a shot at rest.

There’s just an instant of hesitation, then her dad says, “Rose? You know, Malcolm… he's been on his own a long time, love.”

That almost makes her scoff. As if she doesn’t know.

“Been making a ruin of his life, if you ask me, but he's always been self-sufficient. And if I’m honest, I don't think…” He trails off. She can sense that he’s searching for words, and presses her impatient lips together. She owes Pete that much, at least. “I don't think he knows how to let someone love him. Understand?”

Weakly, she answers. “Yeah.”

“So he might try to act like he doesn't need it, but he does. ‘Cause the way you love him—love, he'd be a fool to leave all that on the table.” There's urgency in his voice, an undercurrent of something she can’t identify. And then he says, “He's lucky to have you, Rose,” and she feels the words pressing into her heart, touching some aching place she's been pretending doesn't hurt. But it does hurt. “So lucky.”

It’s never stopped hurting.

“Never forget that.” The words come to her thick with tears, and she wonders if he’s been hurting, too. All this time. “All right?”

She squeezes her hand into a fist and wishes like she used to when she was just a kid. Wishes her father was here, with his arms around her.

This isn't that, but it's as close as they've been, maybe ever. As honest.

So she says, quietly, “All right, Dad.”

“Everythin’ okay?” Malcolm mumbles blearily. He’s blinking at her before she can even climb back into the hospital bed. And here she’d been all worried about waking him. But in second, his washed-out gaze is wide and alert—a shadow of his normal self—his hand lifting to make room for her beside him. “Thought you might've gone home.”

Home.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she shakes her head. “Don't be stupid.”

She wishes she could stop the renewed flow of tears, but she's too tired to turn them off—to do anything but curl up against him and let them soak his hospital gown.

“Not going anywhere,” she sniffs out.

Malcolm hums, but says nothing. Just strokes his hand up and down her arm. He's cooler than he should be, veins filled with foreign hospital fluids, so she nestles in, sharing her body heat. Their combined weight sinks them into the mattress, closer to each other. It's like a small pocket of shared gravity, belonging only to them.

“I called my dad,” she says, she doesn’t know how long after.

His hand pauses. “Oh, yeah?”

“You know I love you, right?” Talk about a non-sequitur.

There’s shifting against her, and she looks up, easing her weight off him in case he's uncomfortable. God knows he's got no chance of escaping, so at least she can not crowd him.

But he’s not trying to move. Just settling. “Rose,” he says, holding her gaze, “where's this coming from?”

She blinks.

“My heart, you berk.”

“I know that,” and he rolls his eyes, lids fluttering. “I mean, where is this leading to?”

“Well, I'm gonna ask you to do something I know you won't want to do, and before I ask, I just—I dunno, thought it would be important for you to know.” She almost pouts at his unchanging stare. “That I love you.” Nothing. “And that I'm asking because I love you.”

He answers too quickly. “No, I don’t think we should open things up to a third.” Quippy, light. The effort of it hurts her head.

“Jesus, Malcolm.”

“I know it works for a lot of people,” he blithely continues, ignoring her narrowing gaze, “but I’ve already sowed pretty much all the wild oats I want to sow.”

“Malcolm.”

“And we’re not getting a dog either.”

“I want you to take a break.” She meant to finesse it a bit, but no, she’s just blurting it out now and he’s just staring at her. Chin tucked, like they’re just curled up on the couch and she’s telling him she wants chips for dinner, again. “A holiday,” she presses on. “Two weeks. My dad’s got this place near Windermere, it’s called Rose Cottage—I know,” she adds, before he can even open his mouth to comment, “Rose Cottage, horrendous. He’s still getting the hang of apologies. But he said it’s ours if we need it, everything’s set up. It’s quiet, peaceful, but not so boring you’ll go mad locked up there, I think. Plenty to see in close walking distance. There’s a lovely garden and a library, and we can just take the train, and—”

She is rambling.

And he just watches her do it. Watches her dig this hole right in front of him. Possibly he’s trying to think his way out of the situation.

“I mean, if you don’t want me there,” to see you like this, god, please don’t say that, “if it would be better, we could hire a nurse and you can go by yourself. The important thing is you need to rest, but I didn’t think—I mean, it’s not just about you recuperating either. I guess I thought… we could…”

She shakes her head, wishing it would clear. Wishing she could say things in a more helpful way. But all she’s got is this endless stream of, Don’t go back, don’t go back there. Don’t go back to them.

“Can you take pity on me for, like, five seconds and say something, maybe?”

“All right,” he says. “C’mere, shift.”

He waits for her to resettle, her head in the curve of his shoulder, her arm poised carefully around his waist. She’s never been surprised by his capacity for gentleness, or his overt affection, though she’s sure it would shock the shit out of practically anyone else. Maybe not Pete. But to her, it always made sense. There’s the side of the moon you see, and then there’s what’s hidden beyond. Smudgy and impossible unless you look from a different angle.

Malcolm loves like that.

He lets her breathing regulate before he speaks again. “I don’t want to do that.”

Even laying down, her shoulders sag a little.

“I don’t want to turn off my phone, stay in some quaint little middle-of-nowhere called Rose fucking Cottage, doing nothing for two weeks while the world moves on. While my party makes a fucking laughingstock of itself—which,” he adds, “—I know they all will, more than likely already have. Fucking disaster waiting to happen.”

For a moment, there’s a flicker of heat in his voice. The energy that is essentially Malcolm, his constant belief that the world should be better than this, that it’s always letting him down with its many varied incompetencies. But it fades back into something slower.

Sadder, she thinks.

“I don’t want to end my career notorious, with a heart attack that nobody’s happy I survived. Almost nobody,” he corrects when she moves to argue. “I don’t want a holiday, Rose. How you can even call it that when we both know you’ll be playing nursemaid—shuffling my sorry arse around, ordering takeaway and doling out probably a whole rainbow of little colour-coded pills… Jesus. It’s miserable, and humiliating, and frankly, it’s hardly a holiday at all. But it’s one I particularly don’t want to take without the woman I love.”

She blinks again, her eyelids feeling so heavy, mind so slow. But her heart lurches in her chest like it’s lighter than air. “Really?”

“Yes, darling. So I guess you’d better come along, if you think you can stand it.” He must feel how relieved she is. How every bit of her begins to unspool.

“I can.”

His lips land soft against her head, breath gusting out over her rumpled hair, and his hand resumes its steady path up and down her arm. She thinks that’s the end of it. Until: “You know, the doctor said something funny earlier, when you were out of the room. Called you my wife. ‘I’m glad your wife is so serious about your care,’ he told me.”

Oh, god. Honestly, she’d forgotten, in the midst of everything else. The lie she’d come up with in the heat of the moment, in her desperation to see him. She should’ve known it would get back to him somehow. It’s either very good or very bad that she’s too tired to react with appropriate embarrassment.

“He seemed to think quite highly of you. All your notes and questions. And I thought, ‘Now that’s interesting.’ ‘Cause I didn’t want to correct him.”

She can’t help it. Her arm tightens, her whole body burrowing closer. Ribbons of warmth trail through her, centralising around her heart. “They weren’t going to let me see you,” she says. It’s all the explanation she feels she needs.

“I didn’t want you to see me either.”

“That’s just stupid. I always want to see you.”

His chest judders with a silent laugh, and then he sucks in a short, pained breath. But he doesn’t let her squirm away, just holds her tighter. “I know,” he says quietly. “I have come to discover that I’m a very stupid man.”

“Well, I’m bloody brilliant, and I have a plan to get you better and keep you around for a long time, so don’t—you shouldn’t even bother arguing with me,” she says, going for some measure of authority. She can’t take her eyes off the machines at his bedside. Numbers blurring in and out, back and forth. Thinking, You’re not a ghost. There, look—your heart’s beating. “And even if you do, I won’t listen.”

It’s mine to keep.

“I’ll try not to.” She hears the smile in his voice. Smiles herself. It feels like a good stretch, muscles that need to be tended to after an endless tense day.

“You fight everyone,” she says. “You don’t have to fight me.”

He answers in a whisper, close. “I know.” Nobody else would believe it.

But it’s close enough to a promise. The words wash over her head, more air than sound, and she holds them tight while the world goes fuzzy and soft at the edges. And eventually, Rose sleeps, exactly as she wanted to. With his heart beating steadily, safely beneath her head.

#hiiiiii i'm back <3 #i'm so sleepy so i'm gonna try to tag things really quick wahhh #malcolm tucker #rose tyler #tuckerrose #malcolm tucker x rose tyler #dw x ttoi #dw fic #my fic #prompt fic #hurt/comfort #twelveinch #< that tag is not a Thing i just think it's funny #if anyone reads this and finds a typo please don't tell me until the morning when i'm gonna do probably another round of editing ok byee #abbey.txt

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learningtogirl · 6 months ago

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The brain always seems to pick the low moments to pile on. Like I've been mildly sick all week so have been working from home and not focusing the best. And spending 8 hours a day staring at a screen but not accomplishing anything does not help the brain feel better about things. This is obviously not ideal, but fine.

But then my brain seems to have taken this to mean that I need to examine every thing I have ever done wrong in my life and all the ways in which the things that are not ideal about me right now must be inherent and unchangeable, or maybe changeable if I were better, but not for me.

And also despair about how I either have ruined or an on track to ruin every social connection I have.

And the thing is - none of that is true! There are seeds of truth, there are things I could do better, there are people I could treat better. But it's not the end of the world. And I'm sick. I need to give myself and my body and brain room to rest and recover even while things aren't perfect. Then we can start resume working on fixing this life at a sustainable rate.

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safedistancefrombeingsmart · 2 years ago

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On the Breeders family home set that is 4 storeys high, the rear projectors were suspended on motorised cables outside the windows with sky views, and moved floors depending on what level we are filming on. The screens had different images for the background for weather conditions and times of day, although for daylight scenes I usually ended up shooting with the overcast plates, because it gave us more screen detail as the sets were quite low light level and we had to light to expose for the rear projection and didn’t lock me into a specific weather look as we shot our locations after shooting in the studio - not that it makes a big difference as our weather is so changeable anyway! The house set had relatively low ceilings and when you wanted to show the split level in one shot you couldn’t hide any lights in the ceiling as they would be in vision, and the set was long and thin due to the house being a London townhouse terrace, so the middle of the set was quite dark. We would creep light panels in left and right of frame and Asteras too, but the general ambient was low, and not possible to push a huge amount of light from outside inside as you would quickly see the light source. So bouncing onto the floor in the outer edge of the set was the best method of adding directional accents of light and lifting the ambience. Awesome gaffer, Kit Wood and I liked to sometimes bounce light onto the ceiling with Aperture 300d as its nice way to add a bounce in focused areas with a good drop off. I think the set being more like a very controlled location due to its restrictive lighting access compared to other sets, does gives the show a more realistic feel, and made you lean into the low key look which again gives Breeders its dramatic edge. Last photo is Bradley outside the real location! S3 Crew Dir Ollie Parsons Camera Op David Pulgarin & Jake McLean 1st AC’s George Telling & Bradley Stern 2nd AC’s Lali Coombes & Ashton Born Cam Trainees Annabel Lee & Joseph Slocombe DIT Alican Halaceli Gaffer Kit Wood Best Boy Huw Garratt Grip Alex Kelleher Grip Assistant Jordan Heath Production Company Avalon

I'll miss seeing this house!

#breeders fx #breedersfx #martin freeman #daisy haggard

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rhupdates · 2 years ago

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Elements in the Third Campus

All information within here is taken directly from the game. I have many gaps - if you can, please provide me with information by sending me an Ask with the magic name or screenshots! THIS IS A LONG POST.

🔥 Fire Element Considered the playful elemental. Described as confident and competitive, their fiery inspiration leads Fire elementals to make great changes to the world. Afterschool Activities: Sports, adventures, hiking and camping, debate, drama club and entertainment Missing information on spell name

🌊 Water Element Cleansing and euphoric, Water is described as an element that is easily changeable emotion-wise. Water elementals are known for caring for their loved ones and things they treasure with deep care. Afterschool Activities: Swim team, choir, bathing in rivers, hot springs and the spa, treasure hunting and preserving the ocean Missing information on spell name

🌷 Nature Element Polite, sweet and wonderful best friends. They have a deep connection with the earth and the world around them. Nature elementals are known for nurturing all living creatures in their area. Afterschool Activities: Gardening club, home economics, botany, potionology, helping with school dance decorations The spell name is Flowerix Shimmerdust.

✨ Light Element Considered the sunshine to other people's rainy days. Light Elementals are very cheerful and have an energizing aura around them, which makes them quite skilled leaders. Afterschool Activities: Cheerleading, tennis and track team, ethics study, humanitarian efforts, many extracurriculars Missing information on spell name

🔮 Dark Element Missing information on EVERYTHING. Please send me screenshots of the Dark Element choice screen and spell

⛄ Ice Element Missing information on EVERYTHING. Please send me screenshots of the Ice Element choice screen and spell

#royale high #rh updates

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exterminatepestcontrol · 8 days ago

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How To Stop Bats

How to Stop Bats from Getting Into Your Attic: Complete Prevention Guide

Discovering bats in your attic can be alarming for any homeowner. These nocturnal mammals often seek shelter in warm, dark spaces like attics, where they can roost undisturbed. While bats play an important ecological role by controlling insect populations, having them in your home poses health risks and structural concerns. This comprehensive guide explains how to prevent bats from entering your attic and when to call professional pest control services.

Why Bats Choose Attics

Bats are attracted to attics because they provide ideal roosting conditions. Attics offer warmth, darkness, minimal human disturbance, and protection from predators and weather. Common bat species in Ireland, including the common pipistrelle and brown long-eared bat, actively seek these environments, especially during breeding season from May to August.

The most common entry points include gaps under roof tiles, damaged soffits, loose fascia boards, broken ventilation screens, and cracks around chimneys. Bats can squeeze through openings as small as 1.5 centimeters, making even minor structural gaps potential access routes.

Signs of Bats in Your Attic

Early detection is crucial for effective bat prevention. Key warning signs include scratching or squeaking sounds at dusk or dawn, dark stains around potential entry points from bat fur oils, small dark droppings that crumble easily when touched, strong ammonia-like odors from bat urine, and visible bats flying around your roofline during evening hours.

If you notice these signs, it's important to act quickly before a small problem becomes a major infestation.

Essential Bat Prevention Methods

Seal Entry Points

The most effective prevention strategy involves thoroughly sealing all potential entry points. Inspect your roof, soffits, and fascia boards for gaps, cracks, or damaged areas. Use appropriate materials for different locations - expanding foam for small cracks, steel wool for medium gaps, and metal mesh or hardware cloth for larger openings.

Pay special attention to areas where different building materials meet, as these joints often develop gaps over time. Ensure all roof vents have intact screens and that chimney caps are properly installed and maintained.

Install Exclusion Devices

One-way exclusion tubes allow bats already inside to exit while preventing re-entry. These devices should only be installed outside of breeding season (September to April in Ireland) to avoid trapping flightless young bats. Professional installation ensures these devices work effectively without harming the bats.

Ultrasonic Exclusion Devices

Ultrasonic exclusion devices that have changeable frequencies couples with flashing diverse light sequences can make the attic an undersireable location for bats.

Maintain Your Property

Regular maintenance prevents the structural issues that create bat entry points. Keep gutters clean and in good repair, trim tree branches that hang over your roof, repair damaged roof tiles promptly, and ensure proper attic ventilation to reduce moisture that can weaken structural materials.

Environmental Modifications

While not always practical, certain environmental changes can make your property less attractive to bats. Installing bright security lights near potential roosting areas can deter some species, though this method has limited effectiveness and may disturb neighbors.

Legal Considerations in Ireland

All bat species in Ireland are protected under the Wildlife Act 1976 and EU Habitats Directive. It's illegal to disturb, harm, or kill bats or destroy their roosts without proper licenses. This legal protection means that prevention is far more practical and cost-effective than dealing with an established colony.

If bats are already present, you must wait until they naturally leave (typically September to April) before sealing entry points. During breeding season, any exclusion work requires consultation with the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

When to Call Professional Pest Control

While some prevention measures can be DIY projects, professional intervention is recommended for comprehensive attic inspections, existing bat infestations, complex structural repairs, situations requiring specialized equipment, and when legal compliance is uncertain.

Professional pest control technicians have the expertise to identify all potential entry points, understand local bat behavior patterns, and ensure all work complies with wildlife protection laws. They can also provide warranties on their exclusion work and ongoing monitoring services.

Health and Safety Concerns

Bats can carry diseases including rabies (though rare in Ireland) and histoplasmosis from accumulated droppings. Their droppings can also attract other pests and create respiratory issues. Additionally, bat colonies can cause structural damage through accumulated waste and urine staining.

Professional handling ensures both human safety and bat welfare, as trained technicians use appropriate protective equipment and follow established protocols.

Prevention Timeline and Maintenance

Effective bat prevention requires ongoing attention. Conduct thorough property inspections twice yearly, ideally in spring and autumn. Monitor previously sealed areas for new damage, maintain exclusion devices, and keep detailed records of any bat activity.

The best time for prevention work is late autumn through early spring when bats are less active and not breeding. This timing ensures you won't inadvertently trap bats inside your home.

Cost-Effective Prevention Strategies

Investing in prevention is significantly more cost-effective than dealing with an established bat colony. Simple measures like regular maintenance and prompt repairs can prevent costly exclusion work later. Professional inspections may seem expensive initially but can identify potential problems before they become major issues.

Consider bundling bat prevention with other pest control services or home maintenance tasks to maximize value and efficiency.

Professional Bat Control Services

When choosing a pest control company, look for proper licensing and insurance, experience with bat exclusion specifically, knowledge of local wildlife laws, use of humane exclusion methods, and comprehensive service warranties.

Reputable companies will provide detailed inspection reports, explain all work being performed, offer ongoing monitoring services, and guarantee their exclusion work for specified periods.

Conclusion

Preventing bats from entering your attic requires a combination of structural maintenance, proper exclusion techniques, and understanding of bat behavior and legal requirements. While some prevention measures can be handled by homeowners, professional pest control services ensure comprehensive protection and legal compliance.

Early prevention is always more effective and affordable than dealing with an established bat colony. Regular property maintenance, prompt repairs, and professional inspections create the best defense against bat intrusions.

For expert bat prevention and exclusion services in Ireland, contact experienced pest control professionals who understand local bat species, legal requirements, and effective exclusion techniques. Professional services provide peace of mind and long-term protection for your home.

For professional bat exclusion services in Ireland, contact Exterminate.ie. Our experienced technicians provide humane, effective, and legally compliant bat prevention solutions tailored to your specific property needs.

#exterminatepestcontrol #pestcontrol #exterminate.ie #ireland #exterminator #bats #how to stop bats #bats in my house #bats in the attic

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suck-baby-suck · 3 months ago

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Faris’ Flat – London, Evening

Faris opens the door like he’s mid-monologue, barefoot, dramatic. Hair: impossible. Wild. Cheekbones: weaponized. He looks like he hasn’t eaten since 2pm yesterday and is still offended by the concept of breakfast.

The flat is small, but alive, half home, half creative wreckage. Stacks of notebooks on every surface. Some are his. Most are his. The rest delicate drawings belong to Rhys. One corner of the room is dedicated to synth gear and guitar pedals that only Faris knows how to use. And yet it’s cozy. Lived-in. A little sacred.

Rhys arrives like a breath of static between tracks.

He doesn’t knock. He never has to. He just opens the door like a regular ghost and steps in. He’s still wearing the same button-up from earlier, soft blue, slightly wrinkled, collar loose. There’s a kind of calm in him tonight, but it’s the quiet kind that comes after being overwhelmed. He drops his bag by the door, glances at the mess, and says:

Rhys: You’ve added more notebooks. Is this a new collection or just the emotional debris of last week?

Faris (without looking up): Both. I’m archiving my chaos in chronological order.

Rhys is comforted down cross-legged on the floor with his laptop, sipping tea like it’s the only thing tethering him to Earth. Faris is sprawled across the couch like a Renaissance painting of someone being inconvenienced.

Faris: We are not staying in a tent. I refuse to wake up in a field full of hungover nihilists and wet socks.

Rhys (scrolling): You say that like it's not literally the festival crowd you're dying to impress.

Faris: Not while I'm horizontal and emotionally sensitive. I need four walls and a window that lets me feel poetic.

Rhys: Found one. He tilts the screen toward Faris.

Faris (squinting): That looks... shockingly decent. Wait, does it have a café downstairs?

Rhys: It does. Actual coffee, not powdered tragedy.

Faris: God is real.

Rhys (reading): “Small flat in a quiet village just outside the festival zone. Scenic view. Shared garden. Café on the ground floor. Ideal for writers, artists, or anyone needing stillness.” (pause) ‘Stillness.’ I don’t trust that word.

Faris: You don’t trust anything. That’s why you’re so charming

Rhys (softly): It feels... accepted. Not pretending to be anything fancy. Just enough.

They book it.

Bezrzecze, Richey, Evening.

The oven has won. Again. He stood in front of it for twenty minutes like it was a metaphor for everything wrong with this timeline. He pressed all the buttons. Nothing made sense.

Richey [quietly to no one]: I didn’t survive four mental institutions to lose to digital heat.

He glares at the sleek, soulless thing in front of him. Hates it on principle. Hates his landlord more, a man who doesn’t believe in honouring the old and tired.

Richey: The previous oven was my friend. It threatened to kill me once, but at least it had the decency to cooperate with me.

He presses another button. A beep. Then silence. Still no heat. He sighs. Stands there a little longer. Letting the stupid modern appliance reflect back all the reasons he left the rest of the world behind.

He ate something eventually. Not out of hunger, just because he knew he had to. Pasta that tasted like submission. Now he’s back at his desk. Old laptop wheezing. The table looks like it failed several generations of students. And maybe it did.

His fingers hover over the keys, ready to start an article titled: We All Died Quietly, and They Called It Progress.

I can’t wear slogans anymore. Too many people wear causes like T-shirts - changeable, seasonal, sold out next week. I used to scream in headlines. Now I whisper through cracked ink and half-slept dreams.

Still hate capitalism. Still can’t stand how worth is measured in price tags. Billionaires play God while poets can’t pay rent. They call it ‘progress.’ I call it polished cruelty.

I side with the voiceless. The ones bombed, displaced, forgotten — but I don’t trust anyone with a microphone. I trust eyes. Hands. Silence before the truth lands.

I stand with the outcasts — trans kids, misfits, those who feel too much and speak too little. I don’t need to ‘understand’ them to know they deserve space.

Mental health? They paint serotonin on billboards now, but still lock the doors on pain they don’t want to hear. No one listens — just prescribes.

I’m not an activist. I’m a witness. That’s what I’ve always been. But now, I witness softer. Not with blood, but with breath.

Let others shout. I’ll write.

Even if no one reads.

But before he can finish, a noise. Construction. Loud. It cuts through the silence like it has no respect for anyone trying to stay sane. Richey lights a cigarette, steps out onto the balcony. The view is still beautiful. Too beautiful for what it’s becoming. His valley - the place he came to vanish — is now being prepped for a festival.

He watches the workers hammer a temporary stage into the soft earth.

Richey (muttering): They’re building a monument to distraction. I forgot it was happening again. Another round of bass drops, cultural rot, overpriced beer, and boys in ironic sunglasses talking about ‘vibes’ while the world quietly burns behind them.

He exhales slowly.

I came here because it was quiet. Because this village Bezrzecze promised nothing. ‘Place without things.’ I liked that. It felt honest. But now, even nothing is being colonized.

The cigarette trembles slightly between his fingers.

You try to get better. Try to stay quiet. And still the noise finds you. Still, they hammer the distraction into the dirt while people starve under a government that funds circuses instead of bread.

His face is still, but his eyes are burning.

One more. One more year. One more festival. Then I’m gone. There has to be somewhere left in the world that doesn’t punish you for feeling too much.

He stubs the cigarette out on the metal railing. Watches the smoke twist into the night like something escaping. Then he turns back inside. Back to the desk. Back to the fight.

Bezrzecze, Early Morning.

The air smells like wet grass and second chances. A strange calm, the kind that makes you nervous, like the sky forgot to finish a sentence.

Richey gets dressed without thinking: Black jeans that fit like memory. Soft grey jumper with a stretched-out collar. Hair unbrushed, but purposeful. Cigarette is already between his fingers.

He leaves the flat. Walks three streets down. The café is close - one cigarette away, if you’re slow. This morning feels different. The air presses against his skin like it knows him. He breathes it in. Cold. Grass. Smoke. And. Something else. Something warm. Something impossible.

He stops for a second. Right in the middle of the pavement. Eyes half-closed. That thing - That feeling from the bridge. That not-death. It’s not memory. It’s here. Now. Close. Real.

But before he can even begin to make sense of it—

Mr. Krzysiek Wandachowicz is already outside the café. Grinning like someone who’s about to commit a crime involving whipped cream.

Mr. Wandachowicz (shouting): RICHARD, DOBRZE ŻE JESTEŚ! I MADE A NEW FRAPPUCCINO RECIPE. YOU’RE GONNA LEARN IT. IT’S... HOW DO YOU SAY... A VIBE.

Richey closes his eyes for one second longer. Then opens his coat pocket, pulls out a tiny worn notebook. Flips it open. Writes in tiny, slanted letters.

Notebook: That warm quietness again. Not metaphor. Not illusion. Like a ghost with hands.

He tucks the notebook away. Finishes the cigarette. Nods at Mr. Wandachowicz like someone preparing for spiritual war. Walks into the café.

Bezrzecze, Midweek.

The village is getting louder. Not loud by normal standards - no riots, no neon - just more than two strangers per hour, which is enough to ruin the equilibrium.

Richey is behind the counter, expression unreadable.

Customer (cheerfully): You speak English, yes?

Richey: Only when I feel like being punished.

Another customer. Two of them this time. Guitar cases on their backs. Loud voices. Flecks of eyeliner and enthusiasm.

Musician #1: Hey man, do you do… like… Orange Matcha Lattes?

Richey (internal): I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding their accent or if language itself is failing me.

Musician #2 (helpfully): It’s Matcha. With orange juice. It’s a thing. You probably don’t have it.

Richey just stares. Wipes his hands on a towel that already smells like compromise. Starts pouring a regular matcha.

Richey: You don’t need orange. You need silence.

They don’t hear him. Or they pretend not to. One of them tries to tip him in a currency that no longer exists. He pockets it anyway. Why not.

He’s on his third shift this week and second existential crisis of the day.

Bezrzecze Train Station If you can call it a station. More like a concrete sign, tucked between two hills. One bench. One sleepy stray dog. And air that smells like wet metal and the edge of rain.

Faris hops off the train like it’s a stage. Bag slung dramatically over one shoulder. Eyes wide, hungry for mystery. He’s dressed like he’s ready to meet his destiny or fight God - either works.

Faris: Well, this is charmingly apocalyptic.

Rhys steps down slower. His boots touch the platform like they’re not sure they want to be here. His skin starts buzzing like static behind the eyes. Then, his chest tightens. Vision tunnels. Everything goes wrong in his own body before he has a word for it.

Hands: shaking. Breath: shallow. Neck: stiff. Face: pale. He blinks too much. Swallows nothing. Stares at the bench like it might swallow him.

Rhys: I… I need a Voice: gone.

Faris turns mid-sentence. Sees it immediately. The tremble in Rhys’s fingers. The clenched jaw. The silence louder than anything else around them.

Faris (soft, no joke this time): Hey. Sit down.

He guides Rhys to the bench. No pressure. No questions. Just the kind of presence that doesn’t demand anything from you.

Faris (quietly): You’re okay. Just air. Just nerves before our first gig. You’re allowed to feel weird in weird places.

Rhys presses his forehead to his knees. Breathes in. Breathes out. One-two-three. Counts the slow seconds until his pulse stops beating him.

Faris sits next to him without asking. Holding space like a lighthouse, not a lifeguard.

Rhys’s voice is small when it comes out. Threaded with exhaustion. Almost laughing.

Rhys: I spent four hours coping with a panic attack on the plane. One after. And now this. Is my brain even aware that we’re on the same side? Or are we still fighting like strangers trapped in the same body?

Eventually, Rhys' hands steadied. Still shaken, but present again.

They head toward the flat. When they pass the café modest, wooden, smells like tired espresso and something sweet that almost works, Faris slows down.

Faris: Maybe you need some coffee. Maybe sugar’ll help - emotional emergency cake or whatever. Let’s unpack and come back here?

Rhys opens his mouth to answer, but the words never get out. Every nerve in Rhys’s hands goes still. Fingers frozen mid-motion. The way you go numb when something inside you recognizes something before your brain can catch up. Curiosity sparks. That quiet, aching kind. The what is this and why do I feel it here kind. But right behind it, a darker instinct.

Run. Run before you look too closely. Run until you’re safe in your flat in London, pretending this place doesn’t exist. Something in this village is calling to him. But it sounds too much like his own voice.

He blinks. Swallows nothing. And keeps walking.

Rhys (internally): That feels… weird. The way this village attracts me and frightens me in the same breath. I’m not scared to perform. I don’t think so. This isn’t stage fright. It feels more like… like I’m about to meet something I didn’t know existed. Something I’ve been circling around without even knowing it had a name. It’s like opening the fridge, not knowing what you want, but knowing you want something. Only, instead of hunger, it sits in my chest. That strange tickling pressure behind the solar plexus. Sometimes it’s light. Curious. Sometimes it gets heavier, like grief with no story. I want to say it’s excitement, but excitement doesn’t usually ache. What the hell is this? I lived with it since my childhood. I used to think it’s my delusional overthinking..

That evening, Richey finishes his shift without incident. Too many lattes. Too many incomprehensible orders. Too many people asking if he speaks English. He walks home the long way. Lights a cigarette before the door even closes behind him. Later, he sits on the balcony. Not writing. Just there. Smoke curling into the sky. The valley below is no longer his. The noise is peaceful in an irritating way. He doesn't hate it. But he doesn't belong to it, either.

Same night. Somewhere on the other side of the village.

Rhys and Faris walk until the streetlights give up. They discover a valley—wide, soft, breathing. The kind of place that makes you forget time is man-made. Rhys walks slower than usual. Breath easier. Heart softer.

Rhys (half-laughing): This would be an iconic yoga retreat spot. You know. If I wanted to be insufferable on Instagram.

Faris repeats lyrics under his breath. Occasionally hums something he hasn't written down. Rhys draws a little, lines he’ll forget the meaning of tomorrow.

Rhys (internally): The way I draw - no one taught me. I’m not even sure it counts as art. Faris says it does. And I think I’m starting to believe him. Maybe I create something, not just… reflect the damage. But the will to make anything comes from pain that’s seated so deep inside, it’s basically my oldest friend. Every time I feel lightness — real happiness — it flickers. And then the dark comes back. Nights where it’s just me, and my thoughts, pacing inside my head like ghosts with keys. Every line I draw with a simple black pen is just one more step on the path back to something I think I forgot while I was growing up. Or maybe something that never had a name to begin with.

The village is shifting. It’s not chaos yet. But the atmosphere is here. The festival officially starts in a few days - but time’s already changed shape.

The next morning.

Richey oversleeps. Wakes up with the panic of someone already behind. No dream to blame. No alarm either. Just the kind of night he used to have during recovery when silence got too loud and the brain recycled everything it should’ve thrown away. He throws on clothes without thinking. Black jeans. A long-sleeved shirt, sleeves down - always. He never forgets to hide the scars. The 4REAL one. The fading outlines of tattoos that no longer belong to him.

The street feels colder than usual. He lights a cigarette. Walks fast. By the time he gets to the café, Mr. Wandachowicz is already there. Pouring shots for someone who clearly hasn't slept. Morning for some. Late night for others. Festival time is elastic.

Richey nods. Heads behind the counter. Opens his notebook. Makes a note:

Body: slow. Thoughts: fog. Hands: steady. Sleep a suggestion. People are arriving.

Upstairs.

Rhys wakes up at sunrise. Calm and nervous. At the same time. Which is his usual. He sits up slowly, the blanket a crooked half-hug around his legs. The room is golden, soft morning light spilling across the floor like it belongs there. He stares out the window. The valley looks so still it almost feels staged.

Rhys: I feel so peaceful... and then the second I go into the deep end, I start drowning in it. And anxiety drags me back up like some shitty lifeguard. I can’t even enjoy stillness without overthinking it!

He rubs his eyes. Searches blindly for his lighter on the bedside table.

Rhys: Where’s my Marlboro Light? Am I the Brian Molko of this forgotten indie stage? Whatever. Where’s Faris? I can’t start my day with full-body anxiety and overfeeling everything without a coffee and a cigarette. In full silence. Preferably with the sky judging me gently.

Faris is already dressed like a poetic vampire. They both refuse to speak before caffeine. That makes them compatible. A perfect band built on mutual silence and filtered darkness.

They go down the stairs and push open the café door.

Rhys steps in, and something pulls in his chest. Tingling limbs. Like recognition without memory. He doesn’t say anything. He never does.

Faris sees it. Doesn’t push.

Faris (soft): Go sit. Draw something. I’ll bring you your coffee, double long. Darker than night. So unfittable for someone with such a warm personality.

Rhys nods, quiet smile. Heads to the table near the window. Sits. Doesn’t draw yet. Just watches.

Rhys: That’s the motherfucking point. There’s something here. Like when I breathe in, the air scratches back, thin glass, pressure behind it. Even the cigarette tastes different here.

This place... it reminds me of a feeling I used to have as a kid. That aching, confusing missing — missing something I’ve never seen. Something that never even happened. And it was unbearable back then. Too heavy for a small person to carry. But here... it’s like this place knows. Knows that shape. Do I sound mad? Probably. Hopefully Faris will have the good sense to commit me if it gets worse. But no — it’s probably just my imagination. Every therapist I’ve had said the same thing: big inner world, tiny grounding wire. That’s why I started meditating. That’s why I do yoga. Which �� for the record — is really hard to do when your mind won’t shut up and keeps trying to tell you something every second.

Faris approaches the counter.

Faris: Hey, sorry, uh… do you maybe speak a little English? We just arrived, and we’ve got no time to learn anything that isn't soundcheck. I was hoping to order two of the darkest, moodiest coffees possible. And maybe… an ashtray?

Richey doesn’t look up for a second. Then does. Nods.

Richey (softly): Two long blacks. Ashtray in a moment.

His voice is low. Calm. Polished. Still has a faint echo of a Welsh rhythm but now it’s tangled with seven years of Polish vowels.

Faris blinks, impressed.

Faris: Thank god someone here understands caffeine and sorrow.

Richey doesn’t respond. He’s already making the coffees. Movements precise. Almost meditative. Until. He forgets the ashtray. Swears under his breath. Grabs it. Heads toward the table.

As he approaches, he notices it fully for the first time: The accents - unmistakably London. But not the loud, drunk kind. Not the faux-intellectuals in vintage band shirts pretending to be The Cure. These two look… real. Polite. Nervous. Creative, maybe. Calm, but not dead inside.

And for a flicker of a second, Richey thinks: Maybe the world’s collapsing slower than usual today.

He sets the ashtray down.

Rhys turns his head to say thank you, but the moment he forgets how to breathe. Like his body betrayed him. Like the signal got lost between lungs and throat. Mouth slightly open. No words. He just stares. Not like a fan. Not like someone impressed. And he hates that he doesn’t understand it. He wants to say something, anything, but all that leaves him is stillness.

Faris, ever the diplomat of their duo, catches the pause. Slides in smoothly.

Faris: Thank you. Really. And hey, if you’re free, we’re performing in a few days. Nothing fancy. Stage for no-names. But I think we’ve got potential.

Richey doesn’t usually respond to things like this. He’s allergic to small talk. To invites. To stages. But before he can stop himself:

Richey (quietly): Alright.

Faris looks pleasantly surprised. Rhys still hasn’t moved. Richey glances at him one more time, just long enough to catch whatever’s shaking behind his calm. Then he turns, walks back to the counter, and wonders what the hell just happened.

One more shift is almost over. Sits down behind the counter like gravity’s gotten louder this week. He exhales. Lights the last cigarette he didn’t swear to quit.

Richey: That was strange. But not awful. Pleasant, even, if you strip it of the human parts. That one, the quiet one. Stared at me like I’d just dropped out some half-finished documentary they only watched at 2am, while pretending not to care. There was no recognition in the obvious sense. No whispering behind a menu. Just… stuck. Would be deeply unpleasant if someone came all the way here just to get a flat white from the guy who disappeared in 2003.

"Hi, I’m mentally unwell and used to be a symbol. Here’s your change." No thanks.

Last few years I performed mostly as a writer anyway, after Nicky tried to keep the press off me, tried to protect what was left of me after the 4REAL thing turned my skin into headlines. They all knew I never wanted the stage. I wanted the words. That was always the point.

He stubs out the cigarette halfway. Doesn’t watch it die. Just stares past it.

Richey: He was tiny. That’s the other thing. Not in the literal sense. Just… the kind of person who looks like they’re carrying too many thoughts in a frame that wasn’t designed to hold them all. The kind of face that gets overlooked in loud rooms. I know that look. He didn’t look okay. Maybe just tired. Maybe something else.

Meanwhile.

Rhys is getting used to the strangeness. It took a few days, but the tension in his chest has loosened into something like presence. He’s done yoga in the grass. Met a sheep. Felt no spiritual connection. The day before their performance, he decides to be brave. Walks alone. No destination. No playlist. Just air and limbs.

Rhys: If Faris has some spiritual healing mission in my life, then he’s definitely done it well. I met myself. The real me. The one I forgot. The one from childhood. And turns out… we’re not that different. Just louder thoughts now. But I feel more solid. Grounded, maybe. Or at least less liquid.

He watches a beetle cross the path. Doesn’t step on it. Lets it win.

Rhys: Still this feeling. What the hell? Three panic attacks in two days. In London, I hadn’t had one in months. People here look peaceful. Gardening. Hanging clothes. Living. What a life, probably. I like nature. In a hotel-way. Can’t imagine sleeping in a tent. In a dark forest. In a wet hoodie. Listening to Faris talk about shadow integration while raccoons plot murder.

He laughs quietly to himself. Then the light shifts. The sun begins to drop. The same way it always does. Too quickly. Too beautifully.

Rhys: That sunset. This sunset. The ones I struggled with when I was a kid. They always reminded me of something I missed. Something I couldn’t name. Not a place. Not a person either. Just… a state of being. And tonight, I feel it again. Like Little Rhys finally caught up with that light he used to cry about for no reason. Cool. Beautiful. Still too fast.

The sun vanishes behind the valley. That ache returns.

Rhys: I don’t like when beauty leaves too quickly. I hate it. It leaves me standing in the cold again. With all the hardest questions. Who am I? Why do I feel everything like it’s too much? I tried not to think today. Tried to reconnect with nature. Nature rejected me. Okay then. Me too.

He walked the same four streets of Bezrzecze seven times like a soft little ghost trying to get lost. Eventually, feet take him back to that café. Like they’ve known the route longer than he has.

He steps inside. Quiet.

Richey’s behind the counter, wiping something nonexistent off the espresso machine.

Rhys (shy, stumbling): Oh no, no if you’re closing, I can totally survive without more coffee. I was just walking. Got a bit… tired. I’m sorry. I’ll go.

Richey (without flinching): I was just trying to sneak out early. That’s all. You’re welcome to our despair coffee house

Rhys smiles. Like someone just pulled a seat out in a room he thought was empty. He walks to the counter. Breathes easier than he expected to.

#manic street preachers #richey edwards #manics #fanfic #fanfiction #fan fiction

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govindhtech · 8 months ago

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MSI EyesErgo AIO Offers Eye Protection With Smooth Visuals

The MSI EyesErgo AIO offers ergonomic flexibility, smooth visuals, and eye care. Now a days, it use screens a lot, which may cause eye strain and terrible posture. Long workdays, gaming sessions, and binge-watching your favorite shows might harm your physical and emotional health.

MSI created the EyesErgo technology to allay these worries. Higher refresh rates, an ergonomic stand that can be adjusted, and eye care technologies are all included in an all-inclusive package. By reducing eye strain and encouraging improved posture, EyesErgo technology makes sure prolonged screen time is both pleasant and effective.

Eyecare Technology

Blue light, screen glare, and flashing may induce dry eyes, headaches, and reduced vision in digital eye strain. By incorporating its own Eyecare Technology into the AIO Series screens, MSI resolves these problems. This includes cutting-edge technologies created especially to lessen eye strain, which will make using screens less tiring on your eyes and more pleasant all around.

Less Blue Light PRO and Regular Less Blue Light

Blue light may cause digital eye strain and disrupt sleep cycles by suppressing melatonin. Less Blue Light technology is a feature of the MSI AIO that improves visual comfort by filtering blue light exposure. Less Blue Light PRO technology, a hardware-based filter that shields the eyes while maintaining vibrant colors and fine details, is another feature of certain models.

Anti-Flicker

Certain refresh rates may cause traditional AIO displays to flicker, and some people may be sensitive to this flicker, which may result in computer vision syndrome (CVS), which includes symptoms including eye strain. By removing flickering, MSI Anti-Flicker technology efficiently reduces eye strain from extended screen time and boosts productivity at home or at work.Image Credit To MSI

Anti-Glare

The contrast, color accuracy, and sharpness of the display may be diminished by reflected light or glare, which can also lead to eye strain. The anti-glare panel reduces eyestrain and improves viewing comfort.

Smooth Performance at a 100Hz Refresh Rate

For a long time, gamers, artists, and even everyday office workers have needed refresh rates. Most workplace monitors have a common refresh rate of around 60 Hz. But in fast-paced settings like video editing or gaming, this may lead to motion blur and less fluid visual performance. The high refresh rate of 100Hz seen in certain MSI AIO models offers a discernible increase, improving viewing quality and reducing eye strain.

Ergonomic Stand with Adjustment: A Custom Configuration for Each User

Another important element causing pain and injury in contemporary workplaces is poor ergonomics. Back and neck discomfort may result from spending too much time in front of a computer without adopting good posture. Because of this, the majority of the MSI AIO Series machines include tilt adjustment, enabling customers to choose the ideal viewing angle. Additionally, some versions include height adjustment, which helps users avoid physical strain by allowing them to raise or lower the display to eye level. According to research, ergonomic office upgrades may increase productivity by lowering weariness and pain. The MSI AIO guarantees that customers may keep a healthy posture all day long by offering changeable stand options.

The MSI EyesErgo AIO line prioritizes user comfort and health while providing excellent performance by combining cutting-edge eyecare technologies, seamless visual performance, and ergonomic flexibility. The EyesErgo AIO series guarantees consumers a pleasant and effective experience whether they are using it for work, gaming, or pleasure.

An outstanding option for users who spend a lot of time in front of a computer is the EyesErgo AIO Series, an All-in-One(AIO) PC series that was created with ergonomics and eye health as top concerns. It has advanced computational power and eye-stress-relieving functions.

MSI EyesErgo AIO Series Warranty

A standard limited warranty covering hardware problems and manufacturing defects is usually included with the MSI EyesErgo AIO Series. This warranty typically covers:

Guarantee Period: Depending on the area and model, the MSI offers either a one-year or two-year guarantee. For the precise time frame that applies in your nation, check with MSI or your merchant.

Coverage: Usually, the warranty covers workmanship and material flaws. This covers problems with the internal hardware, display, and parts that are directly relevant to the operation of the all-in-one system.

Exclusions: Normal wear and use, misuse, unapproved repairs, and accidental damage may not be covered under the guarantee. MSI often provides extended warranty options for purchase to provide extra protection.

Service and Repairs: You may ask for a repair or troubleshoot your EyesErgo AIO by contacting MSI’s customer service. Repairs or replacements for covered faults are often offered free of charge throughout the warranty term.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

#EyesErgo #EyesErgoAIO #MSIEyesErgoAIO #AIO #EyesErgotechnology #AIOSeries #MSIAIO #News #Technews #Technology #Technologytrends #govindhtech #technologynews

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scots-gallivanter · 8 months ago

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FOURTEEN

The Stinchar, descending from its interior heights, winds through a vale of which the scenery is, in my mind, unequalled, in wild beauty, by anything else in Scotland; and falls at last into the sea at Ballantrae.

ROBERT HERON, A Topographical Description of Scotland (1797)

AS OUR BUS rattles up the road that hugs the western sea, a large vehicle with four laughing men in it whistles past us towards Kennedy’s Pass, fishing rods sticking out of a side window like aerials. They may well just be off the Irish boat.

Fanning its tail behind it like a hand of cards, a kestrel floats on the breeze above the raised beach of Ballantrae and rides the sky beyond one of the oldest industrial buildings in Scotland, a windmill built in 1696. The weather here on the south Ayrshire coast has downgraded itself from unsettled to changeable and six stolid cows gather at a gate, clearly expecting rain more than the Met Office does.

A madcap aristocrat used to fly a biplane on the breezes here. In March 1928 Time magazine wrote of the daughter of Viscount Inchcape, head of P & O Ferries:

‘Dark, not unattractive, graceful, habitually well-gowned and bejeweled, Miss Mackay was the envy of most women. Her silver Rolls-Royce flashed by at breakneck speed. Her horses invariably galloped.’

Elsie Mackay was born in colonial India and was bred on the family estate at Glenapp castle, a mile and a half south of Ballantrae (the castle is reportedly where Churchill and Eisenhower planned D Day). In 1917 she eloped with Denis Wyndham, a South African actor, and after the war she became the silent screen actress Poppy Wyndham. The marriage lasted five years, whereupon she was welcomed back into the family fold. Her father prayed she would buckle down to the cushy life of an aristocrat, but she gained her pilot’s licence in 1923 and, five years later, she made off with a one-eyed war hero, Capt. Walter G. R. Hinchcliffe, to fly across the Atlantic against the prevailing winds. They took off from snowbound Cranwell aerodrome in England, but they were never seen again beyond the Irish coast. A crowd of 5,000 stood all night at Long Island, New York, waiting for them, but they never landed. Only a slither of debris was ever found. While they were missing, the New York Times stated: ‘Every luxury money commands has not satisfied Lord Inchcape’s daughter in her thirst for adventure.’

Time reported three months later: ‘Since the death of Elsie Mackay is now presumed, her father, mother, brother and sisters presented her residual estate of £500,000 to the British Exchequer, last week, announcing that they ‘have no desire to profit from her death’.’

Shrubs were planted in Glenapp, so that the name Elsie could be read from the sky. Nature has erased her name, but she is commemorated in a stained-glass window in the chancel of the church at Ballantrae. There is the inevitable ghost story. There are some who claim the steel-nerved socialite haunts the corridors of Glenapp Castle. The industrialist James Hunter built the castle as his home on ground he had purchased from the Earl of Orkney. It passed to the wealthy Mackays in 1917. In 2015 the castle was acquired by Paul and Poppy Szkiler. Paul is the Chairman of the Truestone Group. They have upgraded it into a luxury hotel.

As if to pay homage to the late aviatrix, the Monte Carlo rally passed through Ballantrae in 1961. It was the one and only time: the fact that an over-zealous policeman charged 10 drivers with speeding may have had something to do with that.

Nowadays visitors to the hotel can sail up and down the rugged coast accompanied by the resident falconers and Ripley, the resident sea eagle.

Fishing and farming fed the villagers of Ballantrae for generations, as did wholesale smuggling, and Robert Burns met many local smugglers when he was a boy in Ayrshire; he wrote to Dr John Moore, of Mauchline, of the smugglers’ ‘swaggering riot and roaring dissipation’. In his History of the Counties of Ayr and Wigtown (1863) James Paterson tells us boats with 30 guns had once landed their cargoes in Ballantrae, while a hundred ‘lintowers’, some of them armed with cutlass and pistol, conveyed the goods ‘by unfrequented paths through the country and even to Glasgow and Edinburgh’. Cellars were dug in kitchen floors along the coast and there were holes and caves stuffed with contraband. There is an apocryphal story that a farmer’s wife made porridge with brandy one morning and only realised her mistake when there was a noisy demand for seconds.

Ballantrae, whose original name was Kirkcudbright-inner-Tig, is a now a one-horse town along the A77, albeit with a sand and shingle beach and hulking dark rocks haunted by terns, sandpipers, cormorants and kittiwakes. The laybys here attract twitchers in quest of rare birds. Porpoises, grey seals and basking sharks pop up too now and then, but they are hiding today.

I’d a nap in a layby along this bracing shoreline after watching shags shimmying across sea-sculpted stones; I woke to a seabird symphony, and the daybreak splendour of the islet of Ailsa Craig surfacing from the water. Alas, I hadn’t dandered ten yards along the foreshore before I stood on a blackened heap of empty pop cans, wet wipes, polystyrene receptacles, half-consumed packets of a snack called Ringos, and what looked suspiciously like a condom. Who would defile this splendid coastline? What bampottery drives you to set fire to lemonade tins? And what would Elizabeth Anderson Gray have made of it all? It was along these picturesque shores that this local heroine spent her whole life collecting and classifying fossils. By the time of her death in 1925 she had extensive collections in several British museums.

Think The Wrong Turn meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets The Silence of the Lambs and you’re getting close to the tale of Sawney Bean, who, tourism marketeers have long informed us, lived in a cave north of Ballantrae; that he was the head of a family of mutant monsters who waylaid travellers, robbed and murdered them, and then ate the evidence. There are tales of caves full of pickled and salted arms, legs, and other human body parts. Reportedly the male fiends were finally dismembered in front of the women, then the women and girls were burnt in a bonfire, but there is no historical record. There is a theory that the arch-Unionist and English spy, Daniel Defoe, put the story out to disparage Scotland.

An anonymous contributor to the online history group Ayrshire Notes observed in 2002: ‘The story cannot be traced beyond the 18th-Century equivalent of the Sunday Sport, so is it worth pursuing at all? I can think of no sound reason for doing so other than gratuitous and morbid titillation. What is most reprehensible about all this is that the myth is popularized as part of a despicable conspiracy of the heritage industry, tourist agencies and local authorities to turn parts of Scotland into little more than gruesome theme parks. If peddling the Sawney Bean story attracts tourists to Carrick, surely, they are the wrong kind of tourists.’

Ouch!

There is a long history of tramps, misfits, and disillusioned loners giving two fingers to the rat race to reinvent themselves, to become hermits; and several have found their havens in caves along Scottish shores. For 30 years, for example, Henry Ewing Torbet lived the quiet, simple life of a troglodyte in Bennane Cave, which is a stone’s throw from the one associated with the Beans. He was tall, straight-backed, with a long black beard and shaggy eyebrows – a colourful character, so well-liked that the locals put up a small cairn above his beloved shore as a memorial to him when he died of pneumonia after freak weather in 1983. He’d been a refugee from banking (and marriage), who had drifted around Scotland, and been in and out of jail for begging, at one time throwing a bag of flour and two bars of soap at a shopkeeper who had refused to serve him when he did not have ration coupons. At Ballantrae he was treated kindly, although he never spoke much. He lived on rabbits and potatoes, built fires from driftwood, and did odd jobs, although, in his Travels in Galloway, Memoirs of South-west Scotland, Donald McIntosh tells us: ‘He was as cunning as a hill fox and the very mention of the word work was enough to make him physically ill.’

McIntosh had heard that Torbet, who called himself Snib Scott, was offered soup and scones for chopping firewood. He had told the housewife: ‘Missus, when a man’s belly is empty, he doesnae have the strength to work.’ Two plates of broth and 10 cheese scones later, he got up and made off, remarking with a belch: ‘Missus, when a man’s belly is fu, he doesnae need to work.’

It is said that, after trudging across the hills of Glenapp into Galloway, he tried to cadge from a young farmer at Newton Stewart. The farmer and his friends washed, scrubbed, shaved, suited and booted Snib, and plied him with food and whisky. They took this clean-shaven, well-dressed gentleman to the young farmers’ ball and introduced him as a wealthy visiting farmer; and many ladies swarmed about him. The day after the night before, the joke was on the farmer; Snib was off on his wanderings again with four bottles of Johnnie Walker whisky crammed into his haversack.

In a layby down from Snib’s cave stands a monument to the former Russian Imperial Navy cruiser Varyag, which ran aground while being towed near Lendalfoot for scrap in 1920. The first memorial to the crew, who had years previously defied a Japanese siege, was unveiled in 2006 in a ceremony attended by Russian top brass. A year later a bronze monument was added. I’m told the then harbour master fell foul of Westminster for unilaterally inviting the Russian visitors.

Over the centuries travellers have reported screams around Lendalfoot, none of which was ever caused by birds. The ruins of Carleton Castle are reportedly haunted by John Cathcart, a Scottish Bluebeard, and by the eight heiresses he flung from the cliffs in order to augment his estate. His ninth chosen bride and victim, Mary Kennedy of Culzean, escaped by preemptively propelling him down to the rocks below.

#ayrshire #carrick #elsie mackay #glenapp castle #ballantrae #smuggler #ailsa Craig #sawney bean #cave dweller #varyag

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firstflooradditionsinsydney · 8 months ago

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Creating the Perfect Kids' Playroom in Your First Floor Additions Sydney Project

When planning first floor additions Sydney homeowners often grapple with how to best utilise their newfound space. One increasingly popular option is designing a dedicated playroom for children, transforming your first floor additions Sydney project into a haven of creativity and fun. This comprehensive guide will help you create the ultimate playroom that grows with your children whilst maximising the potential of your home extension.

Understanding the Importance of a Dedicated Play Space

First floor additions Sydney projects provide the perfect opportunity to create specialised spaces that enhance family living. A well-designed playroom offers numerous benefits, including containing mess to one area, providing a safe environment for children to explore and play, and giving parents peace of mind knowing their little ones are in a secure space within easy reach.

Essential Design Considerations for Your First Floor Additions Sydney Playroom

Safety First

When incorporating a playroom into your first floor additions Sydney plans, safety should be your primary concern. Consider installing:

Shock-absorbent flooring materials

Rounded corners on built-in furniture

Secure window locks and safety screens

Non-toxic, child-safe paint

Childproof electrical outlets

Sturdy railings on any balconies or elevated areas

Natural Light and Ventilation

First floor additions Sydney designs should prioritise natural light and proper ventilation. Large windows not only create a bright, inviting space but also help reduce energy costs. Consider installing:

Skylights for additional natural illumination

Opening windows with security screens

Ceiling fans for air circulation

Light-filtering blinds to control glare and heat

Storage Solutions

Every successful first floor additions Sydney playroom needs ample storage. Incorporate:

Built-in cabinets and shelving

Toy boxes and storage benches

Wall-mounted organisers

Under-window storage seats

Labelled containers for easy clean-up

Flexible Zones

When planning first floor additions Sydney families should consider creating distinct activity zones within the playroom:

Reading nook with comfortable seating and bookshelves

Arts and crafts area with washable surfaces

Building and construction zone

Dress-up and imaginative play corner

Gaming and entertainment section

Study area for older children

Maximising Space in Your First Floor Additions Sydney Project

Vertical Space Utilisation

Make the most of your first floor additions Sydney investment by thinking vertically:

Floor-to-ceiling storage solutions

Wall-mounted activity centres

Hanging organisers and nets for stuffed animals

Elevated reading nooks or play platforms

Climbing walls with safety matting

Multi-functional Furniture

When designing first floor additions Sydney homeowners should select versatile furniture pieces:

Fold-down craft tables

Storage ottomans

Convertible study desks

Modular seating arrangements

Mobile storage units

Future-Proofing Your First Floor Additions Sydney Playroom

Adaptable Design Elements

Ensure your first floor additions Sydney playroom can evolve with your children by incorporating:

Adjustable shelving systems

Neutral base colours with changeable accent pieces

Modular furniture that can be reconfigured

Technology-ready spaces for older children

Convertible play areas that can become study zones

Sustainable Features

Modern first floor additions Sydney projects should consider environmental impact:

Energy-efficient lighting systems

Sustainable building materials

Natural insulation solutions

Water-saving fixtures if including a craft sink

Recycled or upcycled furniture options

Practical Tips for Implementation

Budgeting Wisely

When planning first floor additions Sydney homeowners should allocate their budget carefully:

Invest in quality flooring and safety features

Choose durable, easy-to-clean materials

Plan for storage solutions during initial construction

Consider future maintenance costs

Allow for some customisation as children grow

Professional Consultation

Ensure your first floor additions Sydney project meets all requirements by:

Engaging qualified architects familiar with local regulations

Consulting with child safety experts

Working with experienced builders

Seeking interior design advice for optimal space utilisation

Obtaining necessary council approvals

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much space do I need for a playroom in my first floor additions Sydney project?

A: While the ideal size varies, we recommend a minimum of 15-20 square metres for a functional playroom. However, clever design can maximise even smaller spaces within your first floor additions Sydney plan.

Q: What flooring is best for a playroom in first floor additions Sydney?

A: Consider low-maintenance, durable options like cork flooring, luxury vinyl planks, or carpeting with stain-resistant treatment. Ensure the flooring meets acoustic requirements for your first floor additions Sydney project.

Q: How can I ensure my first floor additions Sydney playroom remains organised?

A: Implement a combination of built-in storage, labelled containers, and regular decluttering routines. Consider incorporating storage solutions during the initial first floor additions Sydney construction phase.

Q: What lighting options are recommended for first floor additions Sydney playrooms?

A: Combine natural light with layered artificial lighting, including ambient ceiling lights, task lighting for activity areas, and adjustable options for different times of day.

Conclusion

Creating a playroom within your first floor additions Sydney project requires careful planning and consideration of various factors. By focusing on safety, flexibility, and future adaptability, you can design a space that not only serves your children's current needs but also grows with them. Remember that successful first floor additions Sydney projects balance functionality with creativity, creating spaces that enhance both your property value and family lifestyle.

When executed thoughtfully, a playroom in your first floor additions Sydney home can become the heart of family activities, providing a dedicated space for learning, creativity, and play. By incorporating the elements discussed in this guide and working with experienced professionals, you can create a playroom that brings joy to your children while adding significant value to your home extension investment.

Home Renovation Sydney Ground Floor Extensions Sydney

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evolutionfires · 1 year ago

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Beyond Entertainment: Elevate Your Space with Trendy Media Wall Units

Media wall units are some of the most functional and stylish additions to a living space or family room. But make no mistake—they’re not just centralised entertainment hubs. They can serve as aesthetic features, too, especially when integrated with modern electric fireplaces!

Check out this pre-built media wall with an electric fire package from Evolution Fires to see how this is done. A pre-packaged media wall with an electric fire brings functionality and aesthetics to transform your home entertainment experience!

Customise it for your space.

If you want your living space to reflect your unique character and taste, look for media wall units that can be tailored to match your preferences and style. Do you prefer a minimalist, traditional, or modern aesthetic? Your media wall can be customised in various colours, finishes, and materials that seamlessly integrate with your existing interior design and décor.

For example, this pre-built media wall with electric fire Package 2 can be finished in timeless cream, white, grey, and blue—colours that go well with any interior design or theme. Do you want to paint it something bolder? No problem. You can ask the manufacturer for a ready-to-paint finish that makes it easy to customise it yourself.

Organise your entertainment tech.

Media wall units are not just attractive additions that elevate your interior design. They help improve the functionality of the room and maximise the space around your screen. With this pre-built media wall package, for example, you can easily integrate floating shelves or contemporary cabinets around the installation to organise your media, tech, accessories, and cables to create a clutter-free space. You can even request a gap to accommodate a soundbar. Media wall units with electric fires can be customised around your TV size for a cohesive look.

Unbeatable warmth and aesthetics

Do you want to enjoy a flickering fire while streaming your favourite TV shows? A pre-built media wall package like this comes with a high-tech electric fire featuring the Panoramic HD flame effect, changeable flame colours, and LED side lights. The heat settings are adjustable from 1400W to 1600W to create a warm and comfortable ambience in your space.

Discover more media wall units at Evolution Fires to see how they can elevate your space. You can also schedule a visit to their West Lancashire factory showroom to get a feel of their quality media walls in person.

#pre-built media wall package #media wall units

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bell-mountain-gym-q8l3to · 2 years ago

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Aliso Viejo Garage Door Pros

Choosing the Proper Garage gate for Your Aliso Viejo Garage

Garage doors aren't merely functional

; they're the gateway to your sanctuary for vehicles and tools. Finding the right one ensures security, aesthetics, and functionality. Let's dive into the crucial elements for choosing the perfect garage door. Assessing Your Needs Understanding Garage Requirements Considering Garage Usage When pondering garage gate options, think practically the garage's primary purpose. Is it solely for parking your car, or does it double as a workspace or storage area? Types of Garage Doors Sectional Garage Doors Among the most popular choices, sectional doors are known for their practicality and space-saving design. Roll-Up Garage Doors Ideal for limited ceiling space, roll-up doors offer convenience and durability. Factors to Consider Aesthetics and Style Balancing aesthetics with functionality is crucial. find the architectural style of your house and how the garage gate complements it. Durability and Longevity Investing in a durable gate pays off in the long run. see for materials and construction built to withstand weather and wear. Garage gate Materials Wood, Steel, and Aluminum Each material has its perks. Wood offers a unchanging charm, even if steel and aluminum union durability and low maintenance.

Aliso Viejo: Finding the Right Garage gate Fit

Local Factors and Climate Considerations In Aliso Viejo's climate, durability next to coastal influences is vital. Opt for materials resistant to corrosion due to salt air. Installation and Maintenance Professional Installation A correctly installed gate ensures optimal functionality and longevity. Hiring professionals is a smart move.

Customization Options

Personalization for Style and Functionality Explore options for customizing your garage gate to say yes your home's aesthetic even if meeting your enthusiastic needs.

Budgeting Tips

Balancing quality and Cost While budget is a consideration, compromising quality for a cheaper unconventional might lead to later expenses in the long term. Security Features Prioritizing Safety Look for advocate security features that offer peace of mind, such as smart locks and interest sensors. Future Trends Advancements in Garage gate Technology In recent years, the realm of garage gate technology has witnessed remarkable advancements, reshaping the landscape of these essential fixtures in our homes. Innovations are not merely confined to aesthetic enhancements but extend to functionality, security, and eco-friendliness. Smart Integration The rise of smart house technology has significantly influenced garage gate systems. Integrating smart features allows homeowners to sham their garage doors remotely via smartphone apps. Imagine controlling your garage gate from anywhere in the world, receiving real-time alerts practically its status, and granting entry to visitors with a tap on your phone screen. Smart technology goes higher than convenience; it enhances security too. Many advocate systems offer encrypted connections and two-factor authentication, ensuring that your garage remains a safe gate dwindling to your home. Energy-Efficient Solutions With an increased focus on sustainability, garage gate manufacturers are developing eco-friendly options. Insulated doors, for instance, contribute to computer graphics efficiency by changeable the temperature within your garage, reducing the dependence for excessive heating or cooling. This not and no-one else conserves computer graphics but plus helps in prickly alongside give support to bills. In adjunct to insulation, the materials used in advocate garage doors are inborn expected to be more environmentally conscious. Manufacturers are exploring recycled materials and eco-friendly production processes to minimize their environmental footprint. Enhanced Safety Features Safety remains a paramount thing for garage doors, and ongoing technological advancements continue to dwelling this aspect. Sensors equipped with cutting-edge technology can detect obstructions in the door's path, preventing accidents or damages. Furthermore, developments in interest detection and camera systems integrated into garage doors offer enhanced security. These features offer homeowners with stimulate monitoring capabilities, allowing them to keep a vigilant eye on their garage surroundings. Selecting the perfect garage gate for your house in Aliso Viejo involves with multiple factors. union your needs, evaluating local environmental conditions, exploring various materials and styles, and accounting for later trends are essential steps in making an informed decision. The right garage gate not and no-one else adds value and functionality to your property but plus enhances the overall aesthetic appeal. keep in mind the climate-specific considerations for the coastal region, ensuring that your agreed garage gate can withstand the coastal influences. When contemplating your options, don't overlook the later trends shaping the garage gate industry. embrace the advancements in technology, prioritize safety, and find eco-friendly solutions to make a unconventional that aligns with both your rapid requirements and long-term sustainability goals. https://alisoviejogaragedoorpros342.blogspot.com/2023/12/aliso-viejo-garage-door-pros.html New Garage Doors Aliso Viejo https://alisoviejogaragedoorpros271.blogspot.com/ https://alisoviejogaragedoorpros271.blogspot.com/2023/12/aliso-viejo-garage-door-pros.html https://smallbusinesspayrollgreenvill70.blogspot.com/ https://smallbusinesspayrollgreenvill70.blogspot.com/2023/12/small-business-payroll-greenville-sc.html https://massagetherapyclassespanoramacity.blogspot.com/

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astrowithkaro · 4 years ago

Note

June 25 for the language of birthdays?

Language Of Birthdays: June 25 - Cancer

[You can find the rest of the series here; or check out my masterlist]

The Day Of The Sensitive Receptor

June 25 people have a rare capacity for realizing their dreams. Reasons for their success include a knowledge of the environment surrounding them and the times in which they live, as well as a sensitivity to what works and what doesn't. Thus they are not only tuned in to people and events but also may be able to capitalize on the opportunities presented by them. Financial success can be theirs if they can put their empathic powers to work, but they may suffer financial reversals or even poverty before they realize this potential.

Either consciously or unconsciously June 25 people are asking others to have faith in them, because what they produce or say is often highly visionary. This acceptance on the part of their audience is essential to the self-confidence of those born on this day as well as their ability to work and create. This includes the basic support of family, which anchors and stabilizes their career. Without this trust and faith, the energies of June 25 people often burn out or run down, ending in collapse. In certain cases they may also find themselves exhausted by sensuous and hedonistic drives.

June 25 people must take care to screen the emotional input of others, as those born on this day draw powerfully positive and negative influences. Such influences can so deeply take hold in a June 25 person that they mistakenly believe them to be originating inside themselves, rather than coming from external sources. Cultivating objectivity and discernment is thus essential to their psychological well-being.

Generally, the nurturing side of June 25 people is highly developed and applies not only to their family, friends and colleagues, but also to their homes, possessions and money, which they like to keep in a process of growth and development. Thus most June 25 people are adept at both earning money and investing it wisely. They understand that in many areas of life, the small acts of caring and concern one invests in the present can bring great future returns.

June 25 people can be very emotional in relationships, though their love and sex feelings are generally kept private and under strict control. What they do show a propensity to release in public are sharp criticisms and occasional outbursts of anger and negativity, perhaps even rough language. Already known for their highly changeable moods, June 25 people must beware of turning dictatorial, imposing their views or alienating others; such behavior will drive away those whose trust they truly need.

Strengths:

Empathetic

Perceptive

Original

Weaknesses:

Unsure

Oversensitive

Moody

Advice

As indicated, June 25 people must be able to screen out negative energies that come their way. Because of their extreme receptivity, they may be particularly vulnerable to contagious disease. They must therefore take necessary precautions to protect themselves. Negative influences may of course include psychological disturbances as well. Maintaining an objective space between themselves and others is thus crucial to the health of June 25 people. As time passes, many born on this day become more skillfull at allowing healthy influences through while closing harmful ones out. Thus they may choose to share in a more selective way. Enjoying food with others is an integral factor in good health, and those June 25 people unversed in the culinary arts should take up cooking, if possible. In general, they should craft a diet that lends them a sense of well-being, experimenting by trial and error rather than adopting one ready-made. Swimming is particularly recommended as exercise.

Strive to maintain some degree of objectivity in regard to your feelings

Protect yourself when necessary, but remain open to positive influences

Cultivate mental discrimination

Beware of mistaking someone else's feelings tor your own

#cancer sign #cancer sun #cancer #psychology studyblr #psychology #birth date #birth chart #birthday #water signs #cute notes #personality quiz #personality post #personality #cancer women

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book-dragon-etcetera · 4 years ago

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Why Mantis and Loki should be a thing; fight me (please don’t I swear I’m nice).

What makes a good relationship subplot? Actually, scratch that – this is the MCU, we don’t go for mediocrity – what makes the best relationship subplots? It can vary, but my favourites, the ones that keep me digging and digging, coming back every time I think of a new angle (you’re in the fandom tags, you know what I’m talking about) always tie into the wider story. They feed character growth; allow new concepts to be explored; fit in with and in some cases represent the greater themes of a story.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m going to be arguing that Loki and Mantis could be something along those lines. Something great. One of the best, most interesting relationships of modern screenwriting. I know, okay!! I know, it feels weird as anything – it’s taken me a while, too. But bear with me, and worst-case scenario, you’ll have a new take on a fascinating pair of characters.

Before I put the two together though, I feel like I need to do a little character study for Mantis. So far, she has had little to no clear development and without serious thought of your own, she seems entirely one-dimensional; two at best. In case you have not plugged hours and hours of thought into a character with barely ten minutes of screen-time, here are some of my thoughts, free of charge 😊. Incidentally, the interpretation I take to enhance my viewing experience (and add suitably crippling levels of angst :D ) ties her in perfectly with Loki’s story and character.

More Than Just a Bug: A Minor Study

What we know: Mantis has spent her whole life in servitude to Ego a massively powerful being, intent on taking over the universe, who sees all other life as inferior, insect-like (hence the name ‘Mantis’ – happenstance in the comics, derogatory in the films). Whether she has ever met anyone else is unclear, and until we actually see her talk about it, we’ll never know. Going by her comfort in talking to the Guardians, and also the fact that she anticipates the result of Ego’s meeting with Peter, I’m going to assume she has, but more specifically, that they were Ego’s other children.

Imagine this, if you will. Mantis, since her childhood, has been intermittently exposed to Ego’s offspring. They appear, are doted on for a few days, and then vanish as suddenly as they came. Not having been delayed by the Ravagers that collected them (as Peter was), they are all young children, with strong but changeable emotions. As such, they fit Ego’s narrative of universe full of mindless beasts, unthinking and impermanent. If Mantis were not an empath, able to feel their distress and confusion at the kidnapping, they would have no impact on her at all. As it is, they give her no epiphany, but rather a slow sense of unease that grows over time, as child after child is reduced to a pile of bones in a cave.

Her uncertainty must of course be hidden from Ego, who may be too narcissistic to imagine she could ever turn against him, but would certainly kill her if he saw her doubts, so she separates herself from the feeling. Her outer self remains uncomplicated and pliant, still attempting to please her adoptive father-figure, while her inner self languishes in steadily deepening turmoil. She dissociates to survive, until she almost believes it herself.

Now let’s try looking at her scene with Drax, where she touches his arm by the flower-filled lakes, through this new lens.

BEWARE. THIS SCENE WILL BECOME SIGNIFICANTLY MORE PAINFUL IF YOU ASSIMILATE THIS INTERPRETATION.

To recap: Mantis has spent her life in a state of slowly growing unease over the pain, suffering and subsequent deaths of Ego’s many children. Her only comfort has been his assurances that all other life is meaningless, and as such their suffering weightless. By Mantis’s own design, this inner struggle has been buried deep, totally inaccessible. Therefore, she goes into this scene entirely intending to allow Ego to kill the Guardians, and if Peter is successful, the universe.

Alright, here goes:

So, Mantis seems normal (normal??) for the first section. She reacts suitably when Drax calls her ugly, and then when he argues that it’s a good thing. When he mentions his lost daughter, she makes a joke (incidentally the sort of play-a-crooked-thing-straight joke that Loki might enjoy), but then Drax compares his daughter to Mantis, calling them both ‘innocent’, and she makes this face when he isn’t looking at her.

This is not a naïve look, and I don’t think it’s meant to be. The tiniest edge of that inner guilt, her natural empathy for the terrible fates of Ego’s children, is bleeding through against her will, brought to the surface by a father mourning the loss of his daughter. Wanting to understand, and partly in fear of what she might find there, she reaches for his arm.

When she feels his grief, she is physically affected, taking large gasps of air with glittering eyes. It’s easy to forget, but in some ways, Drax is the most emotionally developed of the Guardians. He had a wife, and daughter, and a home. He’s lived through what most of us would determine a normal life, and reached middle age. Quill, Gamora, Groot – they’re all younger than him, and therefore less emotionally developed. (I have no idea what age Rocket is, but at least by maturity he can certainly be added to the list.) This level of experience is where Drax’s moments of unexpected wisdom come from. He is a fully realised person with all the complexities and regrets that come with age, something Mantis has never felt in anyone except Ego. And he is mourning his daughter.

When she touches his arm, Mantis is feeling one of the worst losses, the deepest hurts that a person can ever experience, even dulled by years: the loss of a child. But for her, it’s even more than that. It’s personal. She realises in that moment that on the other end of every one of Ego’s children was someone like Drax, feeling what he felt. That they were still out there in the universe, mourning the sons and daughters that Mantis had met. It tilts her world on its axis, and we get a close-up to watch it:

This is her guilt, her worst fears validated. She can no longer use the ‘we’re just insects anyway’ justification to excuse the cavern of bones. Every tiny doubt she has ever had now has an explanation, and it means she has grown up complicit to atrocities she couldn’t even recognise. Upset, and guilty that he still believes her innocent, she turns immediately to Drax, knowing she can no longer stand by do nothing. They are interrupted by Gamora before Mantis can explain, so later that night, knowing she cannot bear being complicit yet again to murder, Mantis wakes Drax and betrays Ego, despite her fear and love for someone who has been (literally) her whole world.

Go watch the scene thinking about Mantis's guilt, I dare you. I did, and it hurt me.

By the end of GotG2, we have a Mantis still conditioned to serve the father she has now killed. His teachings have left her with crippling self-doubt, and a sense of personal inferiority that as of yet we have not seen her question, despite a truly incredible level of power (subduing first Ego – an actual planet – and then Thanos; I’ll go into her frightening Gamora later), and her own heroism. She is incapable of being righteously angry at Ego, because righteously implies right, something it does not occur to her that she might have. And she hides it all, because over the years she has built an unconscious self-defence mechanism which allows her to control people’s actions towards her by seeming harmless and sweet. The ultimate deflector of aggression.

What her motives and feelings might be now she has found her freedom, I also have some thoughts on, but that is a topic for another day (possibly a Loki including day, hmm?). I feel like it’s important to mention that, although this is a dark interpretation, that doesn’t mean I think Mantis is a dark character. There is inherent darkness in the horror of her past, but some of the best and brightest people in the world are people who have been to hell and back, and come back kinder for it. One day, when she has learnt some self-worth, and ditched the clothes that she wore as a slave to a monster, I think she could be one of the best, most impressive, and nuanced heroes we have ever seen.

#marvel #marvel mcu #character study #mantis #loki laufeyson #gotg vol 2 #gotg 2 #fanfic #ao3 author #expand your horizons #short essay #pom klementieff #drax the destroyer #angst #empaths #headcannons

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