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mutants-and-soldiers · 3 years

Text

The Proposition (Ch. 1)

summary || You've been thinking about Steve's proposal a lot. Part of you wants to decline but a bigger part of you wants what he's offering.

pairing || alpha!Steve x omega!Reader (Past alpha!Bucky x omega!Reader)

word count || 3,706

warnings || A/B/O, eventual smut, therapy talks, kink negotiation, lots of dialogue — 18+ ONLY//MINORS DNI

notes || I can't get this story out of my head, really! First chapter is all about setting up the smut so I apologize but I believe in talking things out. Thank you to everyone who commented on the first part of the series! I'm going to try and be better about answering comments from here on out! Keep the comments coming, I love hearing from you guys so much!

You can also read it on Ao3. Do not copy, translate, rewrite or repost any of my work, even if you credit me. I always welcome comments and reblogs!

Sequel to Helping Hands: One Two Three Four Five

Divider courtesy of the talented @firefly-graphics

After so many years of going to see Dr. Beta, you were used to the routine when you stepped through the doors. It was late in their work day so you were the only person in the office other than Valarie, the receptionist, who gave you a kind smile. ��Good afternoon,” she said, typing something onto her computer. “Dr. Beta’s just about ready.”

“Thanks, Valarie,” you say, setting your bag down to take off your suit.

It had been weird the first time Dr. Beta had demanded you not wear the suit during your sessions. You protested but in the end, she won out. There were a lot of reasons for choosing a female-only office but this was the biggest one. They accommodate you so much just to make you feel welcome and safe in your own skin. It was one of the few places that you could take the suit off and feel comfortable.

The suit was just being zipped up into your bag when the door to the doctor’s office opened. Dr. Beta was a matronly middle aged woman with plenty of laugh lines and crow's feet from years of laughter and joy. She was a kind beta who had done wonders for your mental health and self esteem. Without her, you probably wouldn’t have gone through with the job proposal.

She called your name with a gentle smile, “You ready?”

“Yep,” you smiled, walking over to step into the room. The blinds were closed tight but there were several lamps around the space that allowed a soft light to keep it illuminated. The wooden diffuser was pumping out the soothing smell of lemon and sandalwood. Dr. Beta had always said the lemon helped cut the potency of your powers but you weren’t sure if that was true or if it was something she said to make you feel better.

The two of you settled into your usual spots before the doctor asks, “Anything new since we last saw each other?”

It had been a month since your last session. The milestone of going monthly instead of bi-monthly had been huge for you. There was a time that you saw her weekly, which was when you were at your lowest. You were glad to be where you were.

“Where do I even start?” you laugh, leaning casually back on the leather couch. The cold material felt nice on the bare skin that peeked out from your denim shorts and athletic tank top. “I’ve been meeting regularly with three guys to run with them every Tuesday and Thursday. We also go out for drinks and the game on Sunday.”

“Wow, that’s fantastic!” she gushed, genuinely excited for you. She even sat her clipboard and pen down to lean forward with her elbows on her knees. It was something she only did when you made some kind of...positive choice in your life. The way it made your chest swell with self pride was silly and kind of childish but the woman had always been extra motherly to you. “Clients?”

“One of them was,” you nod, trying to keep the flush of excitement from making you seem too eager. “They’re really nice guys and they invited me to start sparring with them next week after our runs.”

A gentle look crossed the doctor’s face that had you melting. It was a look that she gave when she was proud and the way your name came out of her mouth spoke volumes. “I’m so proud of you,” she said aloud even though you knew it by her body language. “It’s been a long time since you took time for yourself in your personal life. Are they on your level of martial arts?”

“Better!” you said, excited to have a good challenge.

“Better than you?” she laughed, sounding incredulous. “I’d have to see that to believe it!” You join her for the laugh. “Anything else?”

Your mind flutters to a certain blond and his proposition but decide to keep that to yourself for now. It wasn’t good for you to hide secrets from Dr. Beta and you usually didn’t, however, she would definitely encourage you to take him up on the offer. You didn’t think you were ready to come up with reasons (lies) for why you couldn’t do that yet.

“Not really.”

She nods, grabbing her clipboard to flip the paper. “Dr. Noland said you were going to get your heat early this time around. She said you mentioned you might know why?”

Damn it. You forgot how much the two doctors communicated between each other about your health. It was the program you were in and, while amazingly helpful, could be very annoying at times. Case in point, now you need to make a choice on whether to point blank lie to Dr. Beta or just tell the truth. Lying by omission was much more your style.

“Yeah,” you sigh, resigning yourself to the conversation. “The last client I helped had...intense pheromones. I think it may have kicked me into my heat cycle early.”

The doctor’s hazel eyes widened in shock, “Even with the suppressant you took?”

Nodding, you look away for a second. “The client was a super soldier,” you admit, running a hand through your hair in frustration.

Understanding blossomed on her face when she made a guess as to who you were talking about. “Well, that might do it, for sure,” she nodded, making a note. “Still, I’m going to have Dr. Noland change your suppressant just in case it’s not working.”

She stood up, going over to the cabinet behind her desk. She took out a large bottle, tossing it to you, that had heat vitamins in them. Another bottle was thrown your way full of pills specifically for healthy slick production. The last thing she came over with were a few vouchers for omega-centric energy drinks and heat-snacks.

“I know you hate this question but I am legally required to ask,” she chuckles. “Do you have someone you trust to help you through your heat?”

You hesitate. “No.”

Her head snaps up, hazel eyes pinning you to the spot. “You hesitated. You never hesitate,” she points out with far too much excitement. She sets the clipboard down, doing the lean again. “Do you have someone in mind?”

Well, the cat was out of the bag and now you couldn’t lie because she would never believe you now. “I was...propositioned,” you admit, feeling stupidly relieved that you had been honest with her. She had conditioned you so fucking well to feel better when you told the truth as opposed to lying. It had been a ‘bad coping mechanism’ you created during your childhood to gain some control of your otherwise uncontrollable life.

“By one of your new friends?” she asked, already getting the gist of the conversation. “Was it your client?”

“No, not my client but his...best friend,” you whisper, feeling a little embarrassed that you were having this conversation.

Dr. Beta is quiet for a moment, contemplating how to ask the question. “What’s the big deal then? Why not take him up on the offer?”

You cringe. “There are…a lot of reasons but I’m sure you’re going to make them seem like they’re not problems but things I’ve blown up in my mind.”

She laughs, shaking her head. “You know your feelings and worries are valid! I just help you see things in a more logical light. I think you should really talk this through with him but...would you like to practice with me?”

You bite your lower lip but give a heavy sigh when you realize there’s still nearly forty minutes left of your time with her. “Fine. It can’t hurt.”

You sat in the booth twitching with your napkin. You and the owner were good friends from back in your academy days so he allowed you to pay a certain amount for the whole rooftop terrace. It meant you could enjoy a meal with someone without having to wear your suit. You also got the same female server every time who knew your situation and didn’t care.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” you heard a familiar voice say to your left.

Not really sure why, you stood up when he approached. He was wearing a thin blue zip-up jacket over a blue and white plaid button up shirt that was unbuttoned enough for you to see the white t-shirt he had under it. His jeans were dark and fit far too well around his massive thighs. A plain blue ball cap sat on his head and some fake glasses to help hide his identity. The smile he gave you was enough to make your preheat brain purr.

It took you by surprise when his big arms wrapped you up in a hug that smothered you in his masculine scent. Your hands touched his back, hugging him hesitantly. The squeeze lasted a little longer than you expected, just enough for your head to be perfectly swimming in his pheromones.

You pulled away when he did, allowing him to sit at the far side of the table, facing towards the rest of the area. He had insisted that you come without your suit so it was the least you could do to keep the waitress from noticing his erection.

“It’s okay, I ordered some water for us,” you smile, genuinely happy to see him. It wasn’t often that you saw any of the three men individually. They usually hung out in a pack and you were happy to know that you fit into the group pretty well. “Get whatever you want, Steve. It’s my treat.”

He gave you a look. “I would prefer it if you let me pay.”

Your heart gave a hard thump in your chest. There was something about the way he said it that was just short of a command. You look into his blue eyes, trying to gauge his intent before setting down the menu. “Is this some old-fashioned pride I see leaking through?” you tease, giving him a mischievous grin.

“No, I just figure it was only right that I buy you lunch before helping you with your heat,” he said so casually it made your face heat.

“What makes you think I’m going to agree?!” you laugh loudly.

There is a knowing glint in his eyes that makes your stomach flip. “Isn’t that why we’re here? Alone?” he questioned easily, looking up just as Julia came to the table.

“Welcome back,” she greets you, setting two empty glasses and a pitcher of water down on the table. “My name’s Julia.”

“Nice to meet you Julia,” Steve responded with a neutral smile. It caught you a little off guard because it...definitely wasn’t the smile he gave you. Was it just part of his disguise?

You both ordered a beer and your entrees. It wasn’t until Julia walked away that you focused back on the alpha across from you. He was already looking at you with an intense expression. You feel like he’s basically prying into your soul.

“I...spoke with my therapist yesterday and…” you start, finding it very hard to talk about this kind of thing. It was so easy to soothe your clients but so hard to give yourself a break. “She...convinced me to talk with you about my...worries.”

His expression softens a bit. “I’m willing to work with you,” he soothes, reaching out to take your hand. His fingers curled around yours, warm and solid. “Tell me everything.”

You take a deep breath. “I’m not afraid of hurting you,” you blurt out. “You can take me even on your worst day. I’m...embarrassed to count myself among the small population of omegas that go...feral during their heat. I...fight my partner. Dr. Beta says it's because of the trauma I experienced. Trauma doesn't just disappear during heat...it gets worse. I’m just not the usual kind of docile omega that society seems to exemplify.”

He looks up to alert you that Julia was returning with your drinks. He didn’t speak until she was back inside the building. “Truthfully, I’m actually more intrigued than put off by the notion,” he finally said after taking a sip of his beer. “Do you fight the whole time or just in the beginning?”

It wasn’t a line of questioning that you expected so you gaped at him like a fish out of water for a few seconds before finding your words. “I don’t...know,” you admit sheepishly, sipping your hard cider. “I’ve only been with one alpha during my heat and he had to go to the hospital a few hours into it.”

Something dark and tempting flashed through the blond’s eyes. “How do you feel about restraints?”

Your core throbbed at the simple question. It probably showed on your face because his smile started to widen in understanding. “Yes, that’s fine,” you breathe, trying not to think too hard about the implications.

“Would you prefer to do this at your house or in my suite?” he asked as if you had already agreed to the whole thing.

Your mind screamed at you to say decline. It was dangerous and there were so many things that could go wrong. Your omega brain though had already bought into the whole thing. You wanted this big, powerful alpha to hold you down and take you in the most forceful of ways. You wanted him to restrain you to your nest and have his way with you until the heat fog cleared.

“Wait, wait,” you say, trying to finish your thoughts before deciding anything. “I’m serious when I say I’m insatiable. I don’t have any refractory period between one wave and the next.”

Julia opens the door, alerting you both that she was coming out with food. You both wait until everything is set and she walks away before continuing. The food smells delicious so you grab the burger and bite into it. You always craved red meat before your heat so when the flavors burst across your taste buds, you hum in appreciation.

Steve took a few bites of his own meal before responding. “The super soldier serum makes it so I don’t have any refractory period,” he shrugs casually with a smile. “I’ve never met someone who could keep up with me so...I’m interested to see if you can. Any other worries?”

Heat blossoms across your cheek and in your chest. “I don’t want our friendship to be jeopardized,” you finally admit after finishing half of your burger. You grab some of the fries and eat them while thinking.

“Did helping Bucky keep you from being friends with him?”

“No, of course not,” you sigh, running out of excuses. Dr. Beta had been right, talking with him had definitely made you a little more comfortable with the idea. “Fine, okay, I accept your offer.”

“My place or yours?” he asks with a genuine smile.

You mull over the question for a bit before shrugging. “I have all of my nesting supplies at my house so we can do it at mine,” you chuckle, feeling a little nervous but excited too.

He nods. “Do I need to bring any supplies? Snacks or drinks?”

The two of you continue talking about the logistics of your heat while you finish the food. It makes you feel a lot better knowing you wouldn’t have to go through with it alone. You had already taken the initiative to send a message to all of your clients to let them know you would be out for your heat. You even went ahead and took an extra week just for yourself.

After you pay and you have your layers back on, the two of you stand outside the doors to the restaurant. You don’t want to leave him, truthfully. He smelt so good and you were so close to your heat that it was hard to separate from him. “Thanks for talking with me,” you smile despite the bonnet covering everything but your eyes. “I’ll give you a text when I’m ready.”

“Of course, thanks for lunch,” he chuckles, leaning down to kiss your forehead through the layers. “Here, take this for your nest.”

He shucked his jacket and offered it. Your hand reaches out to take it slowly. “Thanks but this might just push me into it faster,” you laugh brightly, holding the large jacket close to your chest. You could smell the scent of him even through all of your layers. It made your head foggy.

“That’s the idea,” he smirked, turning towards the tower with a wave. “Just let me know when you want me to come over.”

You watch him walk away, eyes lingering on the way his biceps stretched the fabric of his shirt and down until you stared at his toned ass in those jeans. It was obvious how close you were to your heat when sweat started to form along your temples and slick started to dampen your panties.

Once you got back home, you arranged your snacks and vitamins on the counter so they were easy for Steve to find. He might need to feed you for the first few waves because you weren’t sure if you’d be coherent or not. Then you went into your extra bedroom that you used for your heats and started getting it ready.

You pulled out all of your slick-resistant pillows, cushions and blankets from the closet to make a nest on your king sized bed. It was a nice four post bed that had your mind in dark places. All you could think about was being restrained with cuffs around one of those posts while Steve fucked into you.

It didn’t take long before you needed a pad for all of the fucking slick that was making everything so annoying. The nest took a lot longer that you would like to admit because it just didn’t seem...right. You’d never had this kind of issue before but your omega brain wanted Steve to be comfortable and happy too.

Looking back at the closet, you debated on whether or not you wanted to pull out the box of toys. You weren’t sure if Steve would want them or need them or…

“Fuck it,” you mutter, grabbing your phone to send the alpha a quick text. Toys or no toys?

You were adding his jacket to your nest when your phone vibrated in your pocket. Instead of the one or two word answer that you expected, it was...something else.

Definitely toys. I’ll enjoy teasing you until you’re begging for my knot.

Fuckin’ hell! Was this the same blond with the surprisingly boyish face that you had met during lunch today? The same guy that Sam teased about being an old virgin?

You didn’t think the pad was going to hold up to all of the slick that gush from you at the text. How does one respond to a text like that? You grabbed out the delicate pink box out of the closet, wincing at the color because it was the only color that the shop had to store your toys. Omegas were feminine right?! They liked pink, right?!

Laughing at yourself, you set the box on the little table in the room. You opened the lid and set it to the side so you could look at your assortment of toys. It was a collection you started when your first heat hit you at sixteen. You had been a late bloomer because of your constant martial arts training, which stilted your omega hormones.

It had all the necessities and even some extras. You had your typical knot dildo, a vibrator, a clit vibe, a few different types of condoms for when you weren’t in your heat, a bottle of lube that encouraged slick production, a bottle of regular lube, and a few different sized anal plugs. The last few were just because you enjoyed the feeling of being full when having sex.

Quickly you took a picture of the box and sent it to Steve as a reply. It was the best you could come up with. You had never really been good at those kinds of things. Well, you’d never had someone try and sext you.

Happy that everything was prepared, you cuddled under your fuzzy blanket in your nest. Comfort flooded through you as you nuzzled into the man’s jacket, deeply taking in his scent. It was nice and musky and made you feel warm and safe.

The phone buzzed. You’re okay with anal during your heat?

Your pheromone idled brain made you giggle, “Consent is important,” before you could text him back. Yes, I like being stuffed full.

It didn’t even register how inappropriate the text sounded before you hit send. You were obviously a lot further along than you had previously thought. The subtle throb of your core was starting to get worse but you weren’t too far gone to see his last text.

Good to know. Get some rest. Need me to come out and check on you before dark?

You groaned as a cramp hit your pelvis, slick becoming an issue. It simultaneously hurt and felt good. You were so distracted that you couldn’t answer the text message. Everything was suddenly too hot so you threw off your clothing, slipping your hand down to brush against your clit. It was already so sensitive it hurt but you needed relief.

It wasn’t enough and you knew that it would be futile to try and get yourself off with just your fingers but your brain wasn’t working. You groaned helplessly as the lackluster orgasm washed over you. It wasn’t enough, so frustratingly not enough. Sweat dripped down your cheek from your hairline making you kick off the blanket so you could turn over.

You didn’t care how it looked with your ass up because the scent of Steve on the jacket helped clear your head a little. It made your core throb but it also helped you become coherent. Enough so that you grabbed the phone and typed in a one word response that only said:

Now.

Credits for the pictures in Moodboard:

Unsplash photographers:

1. Kelly Sikkema

2. Vulkan Olmez

3. Toa Heftiba

Like, comment and reblogs are always welcome! Thanks for reading!

#a/b/o verse #alpha!steve x omega!reader #steve rogers x female reader #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x you #eventual smut #kink negotiation #therapy #mutants #fanfiction

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madamspeaker · 4 years

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It’s not a “gate” - The hair/salon thing

I’ve addressed the salon thing in a couple of asks, but I wanted to take a moment to just go through the whole thing separate of those because what this saga has highlighted is a complete failure of journalists to do their work, and the undercurrent of misogyny that perpetuates both journalistic discourse, and how women must present themselves, especially if a public figure.

(This is long, so to spare your dashboards it’s under a cut)

Let’s start with the facts. Nancy’s usual stylist wasn’t available for Monday, so she/he recommended someone else. Nancy’s office contacted him last weekend (Nancy only returned to SF some time on Friday), and asked if it was possible to do her hair. The thing to note at this moment is that the rules governing salons in California started to change from last Friday. The governor had announced limited indoor openings, but to confuse matters some localities were still imposing tighter restrictions. Nancy’s office checked with the stylist, who told them that the rules permitted one person in at a time. He then asked the salon owner who he rented a chair from if he could go into the premises and do the appointment on Monday. The owner agreed to his request on the Saturday. Fast forward to Monday afternoon - Nancy gets her hair done before doing a television interview on MSNBC, and then on Tuesday the owner cries “outrage!!!” to Fox News, bringing along with her a seconds long bit of footage that shows Nancy with her mask around her neck. Naturally the whole thing explodes on Twitter and then across other media (several versions of the story made the top ten shared links on Facebook).

What followed was a failure of journalism to ask follow up questions about the clearly odd parts of the salon owner’s account as relayed by Fox News (a red flag in of itself). In her interview with Fox she admitted she had known about the appointment in advance, but no one thought to ask why she let the appointment go ahead if it so offended and outraged her - she did own the place afterall, it’s not like Nancy had keys or barged in. Likewise, no one thought to ask where the rest of the salon footage was. Why only release seconds worth which rather conveniently showed Nancy with her mask down, and partially hidden under her chin? Could it be that she had worn the mask the rest of the time. No one in the media thought to ask this. It seemed fairly clear to most sensible people on Tuesday night that something with off with the salon owner’s tale of outrage, but the media pretty much took the Fox News version of events at verbatim. Only USA Today raised the points I just did, but alas, they buried them in their write up.

Wednesday saw Nancy fight back, acknowledging that she took responsibilty for trusting the salon (when perhaps she should have had someone else verify what they had been told), but ask yourselves this, would you have verified it elsewhere? She had been to this salon before with a stylist, they were local, she trusted them, and in a situation in which the law was changing, it makes perfect and reasonable sense to ask the professionals in that industry what their status is. On this point there have been plenty of indignant people and bots on Twitter up in arms that Nancy didn’t apparently know the regulations in SF, but a) she didn’t make those regulations (as some seem to think), b) she spends just as much if not more time in D.C., and c) she has about 100 other things on her plate in any given hour, that salon regulations in SF are probably somewhere near 120 on her list after deal with Covid-19, Trump, win the election, save the USPS, try to get a stimulus bill, deal with the federal budget which will need a CR to prevent a shutdown (minutes after I hit publish on this it was announced she had reached a deal with Mnuchin to avoid a shutdown), restore in-person inteligence briefings, file an appeal in the McGahn case (again), Bill sodding Barr,, Russian bounties on US soldiers and so on. She has an insanely stressful job at the moment, her staff too, and it seems more than reasonable for staff/her to ask a professional in the industry about the regulations on salons, when such regulations were pretty confusing to most people last weekend anyway. Nancy’s only apparent “crime” in this instance was to trust the word of the industry pro.

Then of course we have the “she’s not wearing a mask” portion of this debacle. Not one journalist has asked where the rest of the footage is. We see Nancy walk from the bowl to another room, wet hair, phone in hand, and the mask around her neck (slightly hidden by her chin), but we never got the footage of her walking to the bowl, or any other footage from what was definitely more than a 4 second long appointment. Could it possibly be that she had indeed been wearing a mask the rest of the time - that she wasn’t just wearing it around her neck as some sort of foulard meets choker fashion statement. People have asked, “Why did she pull it down?”, and to that I will say, probably any one of three or four reasons. She uses a clip at the back of her neck to secure her masks rather than the ear loops. Maybe it was in the way and the stylist asked her to pull it down. Maybe she had trouble breathing with her face covered and head back. Maybe she didn’t want to get it wet. The point here is that it was around her neck, suggesting that she had been compliant until that fateful video captured moment. The media again though have run with the Fox News narrative that she had no mask. For one, it’s actually visible in the footage, and two, they are blatantly disregarding what they themselves know to be true - that Nancy has been wearing a mask for the last five months. We have the footage and photographs to prove it, not to mention the press also know that she takes down her mask to talk at her pressers etc. The press are playing stupid on this point to satisfy some both sides need in an election that so far has Joe Biden with a good lead. Their wilful obtusity is purely to inject some drama into things on the Dem side for clicks because nothing at present is sticking to Biden. All this leads to me to the misogyny.

I caught part of a radio interview yesterday in which two male hosts had to have it explained to them as to why a woman in the public eye might need a hair stylist more than once a week. One of the men had been perplexed as to why if Nancy needed her hair done she hadn’t just got it taken care of in D.C. were salons are open. It never entered his brain that no amount of hair spray is going to keep a hairstyle in place for at least 3 days (when Nancy was last in D.C.), or that she might need to lie down to sleep, or that hair does actually need washed. Likewise, it never occured to either of them that Nancy turning up to an television interview with anything other than styled hair would be a news story in itself, because here’s the rub, women are damned for makeup and hairstyling and thought vain and shallow, and they’re damned if they don’t put makeup on and get their hair done, especially for television (we all remember the “omg” reactions when Hillary turned up to an event days after the election in 2016 with a bare face). The last couple of days have been full of this crap, with men (looking at you Don Lemon and the SF Chronicle editorial board) especially saying Nancy should apologise for the salon episode. Why should she? She did what any reasonable person would do and asked about the rules. Her error was to take the salon at their word, but by today’s logic the salon’s lie is Nancy’s fault. I have seen more than one man on Twitter admit the facts of the case and still say “she should take the hit”. Would they say this of a man who had been lied to, framed, and the footage sold to a hostile media company? I think not.

And then of course there is the salon owner herself. The stylist released a statement last night backing Nancy’s side of events up. He also revealed that the owner, so “outraged” by Nancy’s appointment, had in fact been opening up illegally since April, had been forgoing masks, and been forcing stylists to work. What also emerged is that the owner had let her licence lapse on the premises back in May (so Nancy had not ended her business as she claimed), and was in the middle of relocating to Fresno -- something the press have gilbly ignored as they report how she has been hounded out of town because of Nancy, and forced to move. Let me say this, not even the IRA at the peak of The Troubles could get people to move that quick, and they had guns. And then there’s the gofundme - which popped up less than 24hrs after she handed the tape to Fox. Naturally the blurb is a sorry tale of woe, of a supposedly single mother forced to move because of the evil Speaker of the House. No mention that she owns three salons, that she’d let the licence lapse on one anyway, is opening one in Fresno, loves her guns (and those ain’t cheap) and took a PPP loan of $12,000 wihilst operating illegally. By the way, at the time of writing this, the gofundme has raised over $80k for her -- which shows you how Trumpers will buy into any bullshit, and how Nancy is a fundraising powerhouse regardless of your party affliation lol.

I appreciate this has been a rather long read, and if you made it this far, thanks! Nancy didn’t do anything wrong other than take the word of a salon in good faith. Should she have known the regulations herself? Maybe, but she has the kind of crazy and stressful life most of us can’t even begin to imagine, and unlike the Presidency, the Office of Speaker doesn’t come with personal maid services thrown in, or a whole West Wing of staff. End of the day, once out of that office, Nancy has to do all that normal life stuff that the rest of us do - shop, go to the post office, buy clothes etc., and now in the Covid era get ready for tv interviews herself rather than a studio stylist do it. Her mistake was to trust someone who has it turns out saw a chance to have a moment of fame, stick one to the woman she ignorantly blamed for the lockdown, and make some money from gullible Trumpers. I don’t know how this story will play out in the coming days. Ice cream lasted a week, spurred on by the far-left and then the far-right. This may have more staying power as Trump desperately seeks some kind of mud to stick to Dems, and with nothing sticking to Biden at present, his 2016 playbook (and the even older GOP one) of blame a woman (in this case Nancy) has been deployed. The problem of course is that Trump isn’t running against Nancy -- but as the press have so depressingly showed, that fact hasn’t stopped them from elevating one trip to a salon above 180k+ dead, Melania using a prvate email server (!!!, I mean come the fuck onnnnnnn, this after 2016!!!?!?!?), or Trump telling people to committ a felony and vote twice.

#nancy pelosi #madam speaker #long reads

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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The Death of the Reader

by Wardog

Tuesday, 14 August 2007

Wardog joins the Harry Potter free-for-all~

I shall begin, like every other Harry Potter article on Ferretbrain, by saying that Harry Potter 1-3 are above average children's books. They're well edited, tightly plotted, action-packed children's books with just enough depth and darkness to appeal to adults as well but their primary audience is definitely children. The world presented is a child's world in which school is the most important place in the universe and the Headmaster of a school is unquestioned in his role as one of its most politically powerful figures. Defeating evil is, essentially, equivalent or, in fact slightly less important, than winning the house cup. For the first three books, Draco Malfoy - socially powerful bully that he is - has a far greater impact on Harry's world than Voldemort.

From an adult's perspective, of course, this is all complete madness. Why does Voldemort, Dark Lord of the Sith...err..., why does he never go to war during the school holidays? And why does his plan for taking over the galaxy involve becoming Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Yes yes, I know, so he can recruit a juvenile army of dark wizards but seriously, aren't there grown up people he'd be better off corrupting? And if somebody told you that your son's Head of English had decided not to be Prime Minister and instead came to work at Scumville Comp, you'd laugh in their face. But the point is, these are children's books and they were marketed as children's books. They're even delightfully short. Books 4 onwards, however, are a very matter indeed.

It can be argued that this has been the point all along and that the power of the later books derives from the brutal overturning of the all sources of adult authority Harry previously thought he could trust - in essence, that the process of growing up must mirror a parallel process that amounts to the loss of innocence. Thus all the people Harry idolised are revealed to be flawed (Sirius, Dumbledore, James, Remus), the people in power turn out to be corrupt (Fudge, Umbridge etc.), places of sanctuary rapidly become places of restriction (Hogwarts, in Book V) and so on. Intelligent readers (aka my friend David) have occasionally tried to argue me out of my frustrations with the later books by claiming that much of my resentment springs from their failure to deliver what I was looking for i.e. a jolly romp with comically named characters and cool magical items.

But, ultimately, attempts to argue for darkness, depth and disillusionment in the Harry Potter universe always ring hollow to me because they never quite fit within the established terms of the books. If a text suddenly demands that you start questioning the assumptions of the world and the characters in it, then the text has to be strong enough to withstand such questioning. As Dan is fond of pointing out, this is one the weaknesses of Season Six Buffy; the show seems to forget, suddenly, that Buffy is a metaphor for growing up and instead asks the viewer to treat her like she's a real person with real concerns such as how she's going to pay the rent on her house. This is not only much less interesting than watching her kick vampire ass it just draws attention to trivia you might otherwise not have questioned, for example if the Watcher's Council has a fund for over the hill watchers, why doesn't it also have a fund so that the Chosen One can get on with saving the world instead of having to get a job in fast food.

In Harry Potter, by asking its readership to start questioning the world established in the first three books, JK again only draws attention to how actually stupid it is when you stop and think about it for a moment. If we're expected to cringe and shudder at Umbridge's methods, are we also meant to question what the hell Dumbledore was doing employing a complete incompetent to teach Divination and didn't the Board of Governors have anything to say about it? I know she made one prophecy once but the fact of the matter is that I can't imagine any of the Hogwarts teachers getting onto a PGCE course without difficulty. And if, in fact, we are meant to view Dumbledore's repeated failures as a headmaster as foreshadowing the fact that he was once a little bit tempted by the pleasures of world domination then it is only fair that we also question why the hell he got the job and wasn't there somebody on the interview panel who thought being a powerful wizard and being a decent headmaster were perhaps not similar skills. Again, Umbridge's "I will not tell lies detention" is genuinely terrifying but the fact she can get away with it leads one to wonder why previous detentions involved jolly romps in the hilarious named forbidden forest full of monsters with an irresponsible half-giant and was that, in fact, any more appropriate.

Perhaps it has as much to with the changing nature of the media, increasing communication between authors and fans, the immense power of the internet to foster fandoms and bring obsessive compulsives together, and Jk's forthcoming, teasing style of interacting with her (vast) public but I think she must be of the most talked to and talked about authors I have ever encountered. And, by encountered you understand, I mean read about on the internet. But it's not like people were chasing James Joyce down the street asking to know about the lanky galoot in the brown mackintosh at Paddy Dingam's funeral and was he, perhaps, Ron from the future. The endless alternate worlds of fandom aside, JK's communicativeness and her public's willingness to listen to her and ask her for her arbitration on matters of no consequence seems to have granted her an unheard of amount of authority in her position, not so much as author, but as creator and even as God.

JK has always encouraged fan speculation but speculation and interpretation are very different indeed. Speculation, like guessing the murderer in an Agatha Christi novel, is an intellectual exercise with a "right" and unquestionable answer. You can't turn round and say "no, Poiret got that wrong, it was actually this guy who did it." Similarly, you can't turn round and say RAB is Rupert Addlepate Bungstock, once the text has established RAB is Regalus A-whatever Black. Speculation can always be controlled and, like a particularly inflexible GM, JK has always carefully directed her audience towards the questions they should be asking of the text. Who is RAB? Why does Petunia flush? What's the deal with the Half-Blood Prince (and was a disappointing deal that was). But, ultimately, the succession of tantalising small mysteries are there to distract the reader's attention from other things they might be thinking about, specifically their own interpretations of the text.

To take an example at random, some time last August, JK and some other less rich, less famous people attended a charity event at Radio City Music Hall in New York. During the course of the evening, an audience member brought up a matter of trivial detail ("Aunt Petunia is said to be oddly flushed when Dumbledore announces that Harry will be returning only once more to Privet Drive") which JK praised as an excellent question. Later Salman Rushdie introduced himself and his family, explaining on behalf on his young son that they did not believe Dumbledore was truly dead, citing quite specific textual "evidence" from the 6th book: "Our theory is that Snape is in fact still a good guy from which it follows that Dumbledore can't really be dead, and that the death is a ruse..." Now, looking specifically at the events of the 6th book this seems at least plausible to me, especially if you decide that Snape's moral hokey-cokey will ultimately put him on the side of the good guys and we know, from book 4, that killing curses require a certain amount of conviction.

I don't actually subscribe to the theory but then I'm not a young child and I don't care if the irritating, sherbet-lemon sucking coot is dead. However, most of the "evidence" that Dumbledore is probably very definitely dead comes from knowledge and assumptions drawn from outside the text. I know, for example, that JK likes to think she's dark and, therefore, she's likely to make a point of death being final. I also know that, even though in these sorts of genres death isn't quite the handicap it used to be in the olden days, having an actual corpse is generally considered proof of lasting deaditude. And, finally, I know that JK is all about her seven book arc and that it is an important part of the hero's journey to lose the mentor figure. It's, like, the rules.

But, as it turns out, the clash of titans represented by Kyra Versus Random Kid, was irrelevant because JK's response was this: "But I see that I need to be a little more explicit... and say that Dumbledore is definitely dead." It's a slightly awkward example because whether Dumbledore is dead or not is very much something that can be true or false within JK's imagined world (it is, essentially, a fact) but until the its veracity has been thoroughly established by the text itself then it is certainly not JK's place to explain, justify and interpret her own books for her readership. I would even go so far as to say that, perhaps for a young child fond of Dumbledore, part of the experience of reading book seven is hoping for a miracle that will bring him back or hat his death was nothing but a clever ploy all along. That very personal experience of hope, resignation and, finally, a sense of loss akin to grief can teach someone far more about death than JK's constant over-written references to the cold, unfeeling stars looking down on the arbitrarily massacred secondary characters lying below them. In fact, one of my (many) frustrations with the final book is that being "definitely dead" didn't in any way prevent Dumbledore turning up an giving one of his interminable plot explanations. Talk about the worst of all possible worlds.

In the flurry of interviews (

this

is a good example) JK has given following the release of the seventh book she has repeatedly been called upon to explain, not only the events of the book but the actions of the characters within it. Does Neville end up with Luna, clamour the fans. Was Snape redeemed? No and yes, replies JK Rowling, saving everybody the trouble of actually having to think about it for a second. I'm not a rabid deconstructionist, I don't believe there is nothing outside the text but I certainly do believe that JK Rowling shouldn't be standing there on the text's doorstep, telling her readers precisely how to interpret and respond to it. In bald terms: it is the writer's job to write. It is the reader's task, and the reader's pleasure, to interpret what is written. If you can dig up enough textual evidence to support a Neville/Luna tendre then it has the potential to be there. Although why you'd want it to be eludes me.

Similarly, in the epilogue of the seventh book, Harry offers us Rowling's final evaluation of the characters of Snape and Dumbledore. Snape is the "bravest man" Harry ever knew and, despite having essentially raised him to be a sacrificial lamb, Dumbledore has been re-instated as a beloved mentor figure. This is not explicitly stated in the text but if Harry had really come to a mature understanding as Dumbledore as a flawed control freak capable of sending a seventeen year old boy to his death he wouldn't be naming his child after him. Readers usually think what protagonists think, it's the way it works, especially in books where there is relatively little deviation from the protagonist's point of view so Harry's attitude to both Snape and Dumbledore in the epilogue becomes a statement of authorial authority.

The rather-late-in-the-day revelation of Dumbledore's moral ambiguity is irritating in a book that should have been concentrating on the final climatic battle between good and evil and love and death. On the other hand if you take it to its logical conclusion, not, in fact, that Dumbledore raised a hero but that Dumbledore deliberately and callously created a martyr then it becomes rather interesting. Or it would be if the epilogue, and the book in general, allowed the reader any such space in which to manoeuvre. Dumbledore is not, actually, open to interpretation because Harry's love and admiration for him remain unchanged, as demonstrated by the fact he named his child Albus. And I don't think at that stage we're meant to be questioning Harry's psychological health.

Snape, also, suffers a fatal loss of complexity. Although the fact that Harry stiles him brave probably suggests he has not entirely forgotten how entirely horrid Snape was to him for seven books but, in JK's world view, being mean and petty and traitorous and selfish is less important than having been in love when you were sixteen. Changing sides because the bad guy suddenly threatens a girl you want to boink is significantly less morally sophisticated than changing sides because you suddenly realise you've joined the Nazis With Superpowers but, regardless, I could tolerate the Snape Loved Lily revelation because, as far as I was concerned, it didn't make Snape one jot more sympathetic. This isn't to say I don't like Snape (he and Gilderoy Lockhart are my two favourite characters) but I have always liked him because he is unattractive and unsympathetic and petty. The disaster at the end The Order of the Phoenix occurs not because Kreacher betrayed Sirius for treating him like shit but because Snape couldn't get over himself for five minutes to teach Harry occulemcy and because Snape always seemed so untrustworthy a spy that Harry dares not trust him to alert the Order when he blurts out his fears about Sirius. However, the idea that love can be selfish is not a possibility in JK Rowling's world and Snape's infatuation with Lily Potter redeems him so completely that even the boy he ruthlessly bullied for seven years is willing to immortalise him in the naming of his children.

JK herself admits that Snape is, basically, kind of horrible (not her words) but she insists that he is brave and, in her rather simplistic worldview, bravery - that irritating Gryffindor virtue - is an attribute so overwhelmingly laudable that it eclipses all others. It is depressing beyond belief that it essentially transforms Snape - the only remotely admirable Slytherin - into a Gryffindor-at-heart. Furthermore, although acting as a double agent for a half-mad, unpredictable mass murdering psychopath is quite brave, it strikes me as being rather less brave to do it because you've been manoeuvred into it for the price of saving someone you happen to fancy. On the other hand, acting as a double agent for a half-mad, unpredictable, mass murdering psychopath because you decide that your conscience can't countenance working for him any more is bloody brave. It's a very personal decision with only nebulous and general benefits, whereas doing it for an individualis directly related to your own desires.

The Harry Potter books are not written to be read in any sense that I would understand it. They're there to be passively received and carefully cross-checked against the author's (externally established) intent. It's like a hundred and fifty years of literary theory never happened. I'm unsurprised that JKR's next work is to be an encyclopaedia because it's obviously what she wanted to be writing all along. I'm not, by any means, saying she's deliberately being sinister and trying to oppress her readership but as the books have progressed there's been an increasing preoccupation in establishing a set of approved readings. An encyclopaedia, even of one relating to an imaginary world, is still a way of introducing sources of absolute truth into something that should be as fluid and incalculable as the differences between my imagination and yours. What astonishes and horrifies me is not that JK is trying to do it but that everyone keen for her to do so.

I think this is the major reason the epilogue of the seventh book offends me as much as it does. I mean, there are others, of course, most related to the fact it stinks. But by establishing her characters, precisely as she wants them, nineteen years on from the events of the book, JK pins them down in perpetuity. I would like to think that the characters went on to pursue lives not entirely and absolutely determined by what they did (and who they did) at school. Oh foolish me. Also it strikes me as particularly low thing to do for a writer who owes so much to her fandom. It's the equivalent of those girly posters on Sirius's wall (he was never even the slightest bit gay ever!); a rather petty attempt to establish enduring canon relationships exactly the way she wants them: Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione. And Scorpius and Albus-Severus. Obviously.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

Books

Young Adult / Children

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Wendy B

at 22:02 on 2007-08-15Excellent points. Bravo.

In my opinion, Jo wasted a tremendous opportunity. She should have written the 7th tale from both Harry and Snape's perspective. After six years of a Harry-filtered world, it would have been so illuminating if she had allowed Snape a real voice so we could understand what drove him, besides the fact that his boss offed his fantasy girlfriend. I believe Jo dislikes the character of Snape as she certainly begrudges fandom's interest in him. Instead she gives us a confusing answer to the question of whether Snape was good or evil. Answer: he was good, evil, AND in it for himself. If she hopped off her precious Harry filter and just let go of the narrative misdirection writing techinque (which had limited value in the final book) it could of been a great tale. Instead...blech.

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Arthur B

at 22:23 on 2007-08-15Rowling is never going to give up narrative misdirection. It's her one and only trick, and ever since she was able to steamroller her editors into publishing whatever she writes she's even got sloppy at that. The next two books she's got planned after the Potter encyclopedia - the new children's book and her project for grown-ups - are going to be terrible.

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Wardog

at 10:32 on 2007-08-16Many thanks, Wendy - I think there's my original review knocking around in the archives somewhere, but Dan's is much better because I was still in a weird state of denial that the book was as bad as I suspected it was.

I didn't realise JKR begrudged fandom their interest in Snape; I thought she certainly hated the popularity of Lupin because books 5 onwards are basically a character-assassination piece on the poor guy, which is a shame because I always rather liked Lupin and I thought his flaws (his desperation to be liked, his inability to stand up to his more confident friends, his general sense of divided-identity) were rather cool. I sometimes wonder if interest perhaps peaked when it became impossible in everyone's minds for him to look like anybody other than Alan Rickman :)

But the books have *always* been about Harry so I suspect offering a new perspective and point of view in the final book would be massively jarring, not that I wouldn't have welcomed anything that stage! I think one of the reasons that Snape worked so well was because he was elusive and, therefore, seemed infinitely more complex than JKR actually thought he was. I quite liked the fact he was in love with Lily Potter but I wish he'd been allowed at least one other character trait.

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Wardog

at 10:34 on 2007-08-16Hmmm...Arthur...your reference to narrative misdirection now has me imagining some kind of bastard-monster consisting of bits of JK and bits of Joss Whedon. The pain!

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Arthur B

at 12:32 on 2007-08-16As far as Lupin goes, it's pretty clear to me that he was meant to show up in

Prisoner of Azkaban

, be a red herring ("It's always the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher!"), and go away again. Then the collective howling of fandom when he didn't have a bigger role in book 4 prompted Rowling to drag him out in book 5, only to commence running him down and emphasising his essential irrelevance.

It's strange how the Harry Potter books seem to have been shaped in some places by JK's response to her fans - even when she doesn't give the fans what they want, she ends up doing things precisely

because

it's not what the fans want (witness Sirius's girly posters). It'd be interesting to see how the series would have turned out if Rowling had been completely isolated from the fandom.

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Wardog

at 14:19 on 2007-08-16Dan pointed out a while back that since JKR wrote the prologue eighty years ago (or whatever) and Teddy Lupin is in it, Lupin's arc was probably always pretty much the same. Although I think in interviews she talks about how important it was to her to kill parents so ... who knows the hell is going on? Also, is it me, but do you think he dies at the battle of Hogwarts just so he can show up with the Suicide Club?

But then I suppose books have always been shaped to *some* extent by fans and fan demands - look at Sherlock Holmes.

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Arthur B

at 14:33 on 2007-08-16I'm not convinced that the epilogue we got is, in fact, the epilogue she wrote way back when and put in a safe in case she died before writing book 7 or something, simply because there's a nigh-total lack of exposition: I suspect she scrapped or heavily rewrote the old one since it was no longer necessary.

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lessofthat

at 01:14 on 2007-08-28"What astonishes and horrifies me is not that JK is trying to do it but that everyone keen for her to do so."

You're right to be horrified, but not to be astonished. Look at the screechy, barely sane arguments in the various fandoms about what is and is not canon. Or the existence of Star Trek and Star Wars technical manuals. Fans (I mean the word in the geeky, semi-stalkery sense, not the generic one) don't want literature, they want an alternative universe they can buy maps of.

"bravery[..]is an attribute so overwhelmingly laudable that it eclipses all others"

Susan Sontag said, correctly, that courage was a morally neutral virtue. She was talking about the 9/11 hijackers at the time.

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Wardog

at 15:03 on 2007-08-28I know I shouldn't be astonished but it's necessary for me not degenerating in a pile of embittered, contemptuous goo that I am.

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Whenmarshmallowssnap

at 20:47 on 2007-08-28I didn't appreciate all the 'fluff' Rowling put in that should have been good narrative. I thought most of the Dumbledore backplot was kind useless and didn't really add to the story. Also, it was so unlike for Team Potter (as Dan likes to call them) to sit in a tent twiddling their thumbs, that I wondered vaguely if JK Rowling didn't have anything remotely interesting to write and settled for the trio wasting their time pointlessly. Plus, I fell through so many plot holes, I broke both my ankles.

"...a rather petty attempt to establish enduring canon relationships exactly the way she wants them..." Thank you for that. I did not like the fact that she controlled every single aspect of the characters' lives so that nothing is left to the readers' imagination. I wish Harry ended up with Cho Chang, and became an ex-convict. It would have added spontaneity to an otherwise boring and disappointing finish of the epic (read:really long and ingratiating) Harry Potter series.

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Arthur B

at 14:29 on 2007-10-20Have you seen

this

? Not content to pull the rug out of the "Sirius is gay" crowd, Rowling has now declared that Dumbledore was gay all along, and was dating Grindlewald until that whole "Wizard-Hitler" thing caused them to split up.

Now, let's see what's objectionable about this...

- Author assigning attributes to a character which they never even hinted at during the actual books? Check.

- The one canonical gay relationship in the entire series being a terrible mistake on Dumbledore's part? Check.

- A homosexual, who was previously evil (or at best a collaborator) and in a relationship, is now unquestionably good and rigorously asexual. Implications that gays are better off living a celibate life? Check.

- Rowling jerking the fans around like puppets, and them applauding her for it anyhow like Winston Smith at the end of

1984

knuckling under and loving Big Brother like all the rest of the beaten-down herds?

Check.

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M Harris

at 06:09 on 2007-10-21Also this:

The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think ti's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

[Loud applause.]

This entire interview is quite... freaky/weird.

The website it is on is this (I don't know how to make it into a link like Arthur B did):

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more

[Linkified by webmaster]

You might want to read the answer to the question about Nazi parallels.

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M Harris

at 10:30 on 2007-10-21Oh no, I'm reading comments about this on Mugglenet and I want to kill people.

"anyway i think you choose to be gay or straight. i don't think ur born gay. and since ppl. are judged by their actions/choices, i don't think gay ppl. are all that great. don't jump on me now, just sayin wat i think."

"It has to be a joke. The Harry Potter fandom would have been much smaller otherwise. Personally, I would not have read and loved the series if one of the main characters had been gay. What kind of "children's book" would that be? That type of "lifestyle" may be acceptable in Britain, but its not viewed so favorably everywhere (like the entire Southern United States). While there are exceptions here, they are the extreme minority."

And then these idiots:

"JKR is genius! A gay Harry Potter character....wow. That takes true guts. This proves JKR is God. :D"

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Arthur B

at 13:35 on 2007-10-21So, Rowling says

...I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

which I agree with, and I think it's a shame that that message doesn't actually come through in Harry Potter. The most frequently-appearing authority figure in the books is Dumbledore, who is basically 100% right all the time. True, he isn't actually massively important in the grand scheme of things, but he's the supreme authority in Harry's world, and it turns out that all of his plans are for the best even when they involve convincing Harry to go get himself killed. The bad guys in the establishment and the press, meanwhile, are always quite obviously bad guys, and Harry usually finds what they have to say objectionable from the get-go.

The lesson seems to be "Trust your instincts: if the person in authority seems nice and trustworthy and is saying things you want to hear, they're probably good. If they seem harsh and unfair and are saying things you don't want to hear, they're bad." That's not exactly a helpful anti-authoritarian message.

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Wardog

at 09:47 on 2007-10-22God, I genuinely tried to rise above this and not think about it. But, no, I'm pissed off. I'm fucking pissed off.

"If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

If it was in any way relevant or important you should have included in the goddamn books!

I was re-reading my Roland Barthes for school the other day and I found myself asking myself whether he was really still relevant or his conception of the Author-God actually exsisted - and JKR has proven the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. I genuinely can't quite believe this. It's not the way books work. It's not like Dickens turned up at his famous lecturers and started giving extra information about the life of Tiny Tim after the end of A Christmas Carol.

Also Dumbledore's sexuality is completely irrelevant, just like his brief flirtation with nazi-ism is completely irrelevant. He's presented as a 2D mentor figure and all the backplot in th world can't change that.

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Dan H

at 18:54 on 2007-10-23

"JKR is genius! A gay Harry Potter character....wow. That takes true guts. This proves JKR is God. :D"

If the internet hadn't destroyed my faith in humanity many years ago, I'd actually assume that one was a joke.

I find it utterly hilarious the way that JKR's "prolonged argument for tolerance" is so hidebound by her middle-class value-system that she genuinely can't see how - well - completely intolerant it is for, for example, the one canonical homosexual relationship in the entire series to have been a colossal mistake that wound up causing the wizarding equivalent of the second world war.

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Melissa G.

at 18:51 on 2009-12-08This is a really late comment, but I've been HP-obsessed the past few weeks. And I just want to say that what bothered me most about the "plea for tolerance" aspect was actually that she had a slave race that actually enjoyed being slaves and if we took that away from them, they'd turn into sobbing drunks. The idea that slaves like being slaves and they'd have nothing without slavery is so archaic and horrific an idea that it pains me to see it played for laughs with Winky.

#Ferretbrain #J.K. Rowling #Harry Potter #Wardog #Death of the Author

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silencedlittlebirdy · 7 years

Text

Conquering a World

So, I had this idea after reading a humans are weird post, it’s going to take a couple parts to finish, but here goes nothing. Ava is actually one of my best friends and we keep talking about being roommates someday. Gigi is based on my dog. Sara is based on hers. Let’s see how poorly I can portray myself and her.

A ship from the Pqncallaxis Dominion arrived on a Tuesday, at four in the morning, in the field behind my house, waking myself, my roommate, and our two dogs, three cats, twelve chickens, plus one angry rooster. I scrambled out of bed, going for the rifle. My roommate, Ava, had a handgun that she was licensed to use, but sometimes a rifle was a little more convincing for aliens than the small size of the gun she carried. You never really knew with aliens. “The residents of this domain will exit the domain and consult with us.” I loaded the rifle, “Consult with them. Tch.” “Fay?” “Just getting the rifle. What do you think? Should we release the hounds?” I asked Ava, listening for a moment as the dogs kept barking. “Right, because Gigi’s such a terror.” “I know. She’ll be in hiding the moment we come down with our guns. Sara though…” “She’d probably lick them to death.” “I’m pretty sure dog saliva is deadly to some aliens. I swear, if they crushed my apple trees…” “Really? You’re worried about trees?” “I like apples! You do too. They might have destroyed your pear trees, you know.” She wrinkled her nose, “Or the chickens.” We went down side by side and peered around the corner so we could see out the back doors through the curtains the dogs had managed to push aside. “What kind of aliens are those?” I asked in a whisper. She shrugged, “I’m a secretary, not an alien expert. You’re the one who follows the updates more.” “Because my brother is excited about it. But I don’t study them like I study plants.” I shook my head, “Maybe we should call someone.” “Like who?” “The police?” “And tell them what? Aliens have landed in our backyard and want to consult with us? We don’t even know what that means.” The realization that we were both too chicken to go out just yet is what made me decide to do that. Someone had to do something. “Alright, I’m going to go out. You have to get to the kitchen and grab the sprayer with the mint oil in it. Mint is corrosive to ninety percent of the alien species that have come into contact with earth.” At least…I was mostly sure. Pretty certain. There was a good chance. “Are you sure?” “No, but…it’s that or they do something bad. Confidence. I’ll put on an air of confidence.” I hugged her quickly, just in case, “If they kill me, call the police and get into the basement. Then tell my family…well…you know.” She was looking at me like I was insane, “You’re insane.” See, thought so. “Finally, someone uses the right word.” I muttered, then put the butt of the rifle into the crook of my shoulder like my dad had taught me and ordered the dogs, “Get.” Ava got to the door, “Wait, I’ll go out with you.” “And if they aren’t here peacefully?” “Then we’ll die together?” Neither of us wanted the other to die, but we also didn’t want to die ourselves. “Why couldn’t they have gone somewhere else?” I muttered, “Open the door.” She hesitated, then did as I told her. I stepped out, making sure the dogs couldn’t get past me, “What do you want?” “To consult with the residents of this domain.” “Again I ask, what do you want?” I squinted, even though I was wearing my glasses, “And could you kill the lights? They’re a little much for four in the morning.” “Apologies.” All of their lights turned off, so the only light was my porch light. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, then reopened them, trying to help my eyes adjust more quickly, “Right? What is this about consulting the residents?” Ava came out with her hand gun out and the spray bottle in her robe pocket. The alien, a weird thing that looked like a mix between a praying mantis and a Jaaarskil, stepped just barely into the light, limping as he kept the rooster away with one leg. “We wish to hire the expertise of a select few humans to help us with settling our latest acquisition.” “No thanks.” Ava said, “Try someone else.” A green light came from the device the alien was holding, “You are the perfect specimens for us. Return to your residence.” It made a disgusting clicking and chomping sound, like someone chewing with their mouth full and some rocks, then hurried back toward the ship, trying to get away from our rooster. I arched an eyebrow, “What the frak just happened?” Ava shook her head, “No clue. Do we go back inside?” “Well, we definitely have to report it to the alien incidence association. No way are they using me as part of their settlement projects.” I glared at the ship. The same green light came out of it, bathing out house, our property, and some of the fields around us in it. “Um…” Ava pulled me inside, “The basement.” I nodded and rushed down there, calling the dogs and cats. It was like an earthquake as we huddled in the spot we normally did for tornadoes. Then it stopped. I slowly uncurled, hoping my hands would stop shaking, and pushed myself to my feet. “I’m afraid of what we’ll find up there.” Ava handed me the rifle again, “Let’s check everything over, then we can go back to bed.” I nodded and we crept up the stairs. I didn’t want to spend too much time in our basement anyway. I swear it was haunted. Ava froze when she got to the top of the stairs. “The embassy better throw a fit.” “What? Why? What did they do?” I climbed up behind her and peeked in the direction she was looking. Through the glass in the front door we could see the inside of an alien ship. I turned around and went back downstairs, “I’m going to sleep with the ghosts.” Even being more superstitious than me, Ava followed and we crashed on the pullout bed couch. Both staring at the ceiling. “I thought we were past abductions.” I murmured, petting Sara’s head. She was stressed. So was Gigi. And the cats. Which was evidenced by the fact that they were getting along with the dogs. “We’ve been abducted.” Ava said, shaking her head. “This feels like a weird dream.” The house shook again, and we grabbed onto the bed. “Now what?!” I yelled, suddenly fed up. I got up the moment the shaking stopped and marched up the stairs, out the front door… Our front yard of green grass blended into purple grass, then back to green a ways away as it met someone else’s house. I could see where that person’s yard stopped and the flora of this planet started, because the grass ended and the tree trunks of this planet were in various shades of blue, with leaves of various shades of purple as well. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” I whispered to myself, looking up to where the sun shone. “Yellow sun. Okay. Initial assessment is—if they transported our yard and everything that was in our yard—that the plants and animals should be able to survive. I think. Maybe. The air is breathable, always a plus, so that should be fine. Plants make food from light and they have light. We have chicken feed to last us a while, at least while we let one of the chickens experiment with the bugs.” “Fay? Why are you whispering?” Ava came out behind me. “This.” I waved a hand to everything in front of me. She stared, speechless. “RESIDENTS OF THE CHOSEN DOMAINS! YOU WILL ASSIST IN SETTLING THIS WORLD! MAIL WILL BE COLLECTED AND DROPPED OFF ON TUESDAYS! GOOD DAY AND MAY THE GODS OF THE PQNXALLAXIS DOMAIN SMILE UPON YOU!” I groaned, “Can I use that swear word now?” Ava slowly shook her head. “Why the heck did they choose us?” I let out a yell of frustration. “You know what? Fine. Just, fine! I’m going to see if anybody is home.” Ava kept up but didn’t say anything. I rang the doorbell of the other house, then looked back at my house. Ava nudged me and pointed to the one side. There was another house just barely visible through the trees. I pounded on the door, “Hello?!” Finally it was being unlocked. “Is it over?” was the guy’s first question. “The transport to another planet? You could say that.” Ava found her voice again. Knew it wouldn’t stay gone for long. He looked past us, then shook his head, “These aliens are getting crazier by the month. Don’t they realize the hell that they’re bringing to themselves?” “Honestly, I don’t think they do. Considering they put us here, I’d say they’re worried about poisonous food or weather or creatures.” I chewed the inside of my cheek, “I’ll have to start studying the plants right away. See if I can figure out some sort of lab to do tests in. Find my gardening gloves and start collecting samples.” Ava glanced back to our house, “Start with the gazebo.” I nodded, “In the meantime, we should see how the other people are faring.” “Other people?” The guy asked. Ava pointed to the left. He looked over, then shook his head, “Let me get dressed and grab my gun. Let my family know I’m going with you.” I glanced down at my elephant pajama pants, “Good idea. Meet in the purple grass between our houses.” He nodded and closed the door. Ava and I headed back to our house, going and getting dressed. I grabbed the Gigi’s leash and hooked her to it, “Come on, hon.” Sara got excited as well, but she wasn’t as good as Gigi on the leash. Ava came down, “At least grab the baseball bat your brother insisted we have.” I nodded and got it from my closet. Going to see the other humans that were in the same predicament wasn’t necessarily dangerous, but we didn’t know what we would stumble upon or how freaked out the other humans were. It was best if we came prepared. Ava led the way back out, looking a little grumpy. She got that way when she didn’t get enough sleep. We stopped in the purple grass, and I examined it while Gigi sniffed it. I frowned, “It’s softer than our grass.” I broke off a piece, and smelled it. “Not bad. Smells like lemon pine-sol.” “We don’t know if things on this planet are toxic in any way and you’re breaking the grass and smelling it?” “I’m going to lick it too. Don’t give me that look. Last time you gave me that look was when I ate wintergreen berries on our hike. I knew what they were. I knew what they were then. This is like our grass close as I can tell. Would it have killed the…whatever race of aliens this is to give us some sort of information about this planet?” “Kidnapping us might get them killed. Wonder if they know that.” Ava was looking at the sky. “On the bright side, we won’t have to avoid Weird Guy on Sunday.” I touched the blade of purple grass to my tongue. I’d have to wait to see if my tongue started to tingle. Tasted lemony. “That’s what you’re thinking about?” She looked at me, then cringed, “Did you really just taste the grass?” “We’re going to have to test everything, eventually we’ll run out of food for the dogs, the chickens, the cats…and our fruit trees and gardens will only do so much.” “Glad we were planning on expanding the garden,” Ava said, looking back at our house and yard. “Hopefully what corn came with us continues to grow as well.” “It’ll also depend on what the other people have going in their yards. And how many other people there are. Those stupid aliens have put us in a real mess.” “You don’t say,” She replied dryly. “Here’s that guy.” I looked up, “Should probably find out his name.” “You ask.” “Me?” “Hey, you guys look ready for some sort of fight.” He gave a sheepish smile, “That’s what my family is doing. I just grabbed the closest thing that resembled a weapon.” “Golf club works, my cousin got a nasty concussion and five stitches from a golf club once. By the way, I’m Fay Walker and she’s Ava Ryling.” “Chad Findlay, I’ll introduce you to my parents and brother later. We should head over to the other houses.” He rested the club on his shoulder, “Let’s go see how deep this river of trouble runs.”

#humans are space australians #humans are weird #Humans in Space #Humans in space story #my writing #regular fiction #outer space #conquering worlds is just a hobby

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furinjuru · 7 years

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Waiting - Chapter 1 - Tuesday

Look who’s back with another side-story? This one’s a sequel to the previous one, when Mari finally comes home! Enjoy!

“Miss?”

The girl jolts awake at the words; over a year in America had turned into a light sleeper.

“Miss?” The man in front of her asks again.

“I’m awake. Have we reached our destination?” She asks, looking out of the window on her right, and positively grinning when she sees the view. The setting sun casting its reflection in the water, the beach with its pure, white sand, and the seagulls flying in the distance. It’s like a scene from a movie, but right in front of her.

“We’re almost there.” He answers. “Your father asked me to warn you that you may experience jet lag for the first few nights. Your schedule is somewhat free, and all of your responsibilities can be done within the hotel. Your room is ready for use.”

“Thank you.” She smiles, turning away from the window. “Once we arrive, you’re free to rest in any room. If you need anything else, just ask one of the maids.”

“You’re far too kind.”

It’s the least I can do, she thinks to herself. Even if the man was only following orders, he was the one who brought her back home. Offering food and rest is simply common courtesy.

Looking out of the window again, her eyes lock onto a single building. Above one of the few high grounds in the seashore town, a single school that sends a whirlwind of memories rushing to her mind.

From her personal helicopter high above the ground, Ohara Mari smiles.

“Mari!”

“Dad!” The moment Mari gets out of the helicopter, she runs towards her father, hugging him tightly. “I’ve missed you!”

“I’ve missed you too, Mari.” He laughs, before finally pulling away. Mari only gets a brief amount of time before she’s engulfed in another hug from her mother.

“Oh Mari! You’ve grown so much.” She says excitedly, causing Mari to giggle.

“Well, I’ve been there for a few semesters, of course I’d grow.”

“Well, you’re right about that.” As she pulls away, Mari sees her briefcases being taken by the maids, each offering her a polite greeting before taking the bags into the hotel.

“Your room is still the same after all this time.” Her mother explains, the reunited family walking together into their home. “It was a bit dusty, but we’ve tidied everything up and now it’s good as new. It should be nice to be able to sleep in your own bed again.”

“But what’s the rush?” Mari’s father grins. “It’s been over a year since we had a family dinner. We have an incredible meal waiting for us. We have lemon meringue pie for dessert, your favorite.”

“Alright!” Following her parents into the family dining room, she’s ecstatic to find another addition that hadn’t been there before. A coffee machine. It was simple, but her experience in instant coffee helps her recognize that it’s made by a renowned brand. It might not be as good as homemade, but this will definitely fuel her coffee habit. But today, she hesitates to step towards it. She should get to sleep early tonight.

After all, she’ll go hunting for Kanan and Dia tomorrow.

Satisfied, she looks towards the dining table. The large table and many seats are usually far too large for the three of them, so usually they would sit as close as possible.

But when she sits down in her usual seat, and her parents sit away from her, closer to the edge of the table, she can smell something fishy.

(Not the actual fish on the table, of course. That smells amazing.)

She doesn’t move to take any of the many spoons, forks, and knives set on the table. She just stares at her parents, wondering what they have planned. Just when she finally lowers her guards and moves to grab a spoon, the doors burst open once more.

“Surprise!” Turning around from her seat, Mari’s greeted by the sight of her many relatives. All of them, from her grandparents to her baby cousins are all there, holding a banner that says ‘Welcome Home!’

“What do you think?” Her father asks as the rest of her extended family joins in, taking a seat at the massive table. The maids come in with more food for the extra people, and Mari can’t help but laugh cheerfully.

“I miss this.” She says, letting the soothing atmosphere of home and family overtake her for the first time in a year. Once everyone begins putting food on their respective plates, Mari takes a piece of salmon sushi. Dipping it in soy sauce before putting it in her mouth, she can’t help but let out a small moan.

As expected, it’s better than American sushi! Mari continues like that for the rest of the night. Choosing a cup of tea over expensive wine, a skewer of yakitori, and a few cuts of katsu, she was eager to taste the food she had missed during her time in America. But that was just a bonus compared to catching up with her family. Mari hasn’t smiled so wide in so long, that by the time dinner ends and some people decide to leave, her cheek muscles kinda hurt.

She walks down the familiar walls of the hotel, which is basically muscle memory at this point. A turn here, go up the elevator there, and walk straight down the hallway until she reaches the room she remembers as her own. Rather than a number, the plate at the door is engraved with the words “Ohara Mari”. She fishes out her keycard, the one she kept in her wallet all this time, and swipes. Hearing a beep, she pushes the door forward.

“…I’m home.” She says, more to herself than for anyone else who might be eavesdropping. Her luggage has been put into a neat pile near the entrance, but she can bother with unpacking tomorrow. For now, she wants to bask in the feeling of her room. Not some impersonal apartment in a country she doesn’t know, but her personal room.

Nothing has changed, but everything has changed. The sofa, the placement of the pillows, even the flowers in the vase, which means that one of the maids must’ve gotten her new ones that look exactly the same as the last one. The mats, the tiny lamp, the coffee table. Everything is the same as when she left it last year, but now she has a much larger appreciation for the room.

She doesn’t want to think right now, of course. There’s time to be emotional soon, when she invites Dia and Kanan for a sleepover and cry because everything is just like when she left. Just the thought is making her knees a bit weak.

She walks into the bathroom, fills the bathtub with hot water, and just manages to stop herself before she gets in. Even though she’s not going to be sharing the bath, she remembers the customs here. She rinses herself in the shower, letting the sweat run down her body. It’s a bit warmer, now that the seasons have changed, she thinks to herself. She takes some generic soap and shampoo the hotel provides and washes properly. Mari reminds herself to get something better later.

Once she feels clean, she turns off the shower and goes towards the bathtub, letting out a groan as she submerges herself. She closes her eyes, wanting nothing more but to doze off. Unfortunately, that would be bad for her skin, and she’ll catch a cold on top of that.

So she won’t fall asleep, she spends her time thinking. And boy, does she have a *lot* to think about. Important questions, such as ‘how are Kanan and Dia doing?’, ‘have Kanan or Dia changed while she was gone’, or ‘are either of them dating?’ fill her mind. And as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she has spent way too much time on that last question. She remembers days in class where she’d just stop and wonder about their love lives. That is embarrassing.

She forces herself to focus on different questions. Such as ‘do they have any new hobbies?’, ‘how many new friends do they have?’, ‘is Dia single?’, ‘is Kanan still single?’, ‘what’s Kanan’s type?’, and ‘would Kanan date a blonde girl named Mari Oh-’

Woah. Mari stops that train of thought before it continues. She doesn’t want to acknowledge those feelings just yet. Maybe when she’s in college she can think about actually falling in love. Then she’ll see if her feelings for Kanan are still there.

Then she stops when she realizes she just acknowledged those feelings again. Maybe thinking in the bath wasn’t the best idea. After getting out and drying off, she puts on a fresh set of clothes from her dresser (that still fits her, she notes with a small amount of amusement) before jumping into her massive, comfy bed. She can already feel that tonight is going to be the best sleep she’s had in a long time. And it’ll help her keep her mind off her feelings.

Unfortunately, even in her dreams, those feelings continue to bother her.

#love live #love live sunshine #kanamari #kanan matsuura #mari ohara #dia kurosawa #our sea of today

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mettlefork-blog · 5 years

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Living in England gives me a pretty fair advantage when it comes to this list of things to try that are British and Irish before you die. I have currently tried 10 out of the 63 recommended food items. Listed below is my current list of foodcomplishments:

Afternoon Tea

A long standing tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century. Afternoon tea isn’t your sweet tea or iced tea. The best kind is a loose leaf tea similar to what you would have purchased at Teavana in the U.S. In the U.K. my favorite tea company is Whittard’s and their tea combinations are wicked. A more formal tea where you go out will also typically provide various tea options to include the famous Earl Grey and breakfast tea. Most afternoon teas include a serving of biscuits with clotted cream and jam. If you go to the right place, you might get lucky and check three things off your list. To see my afternoon tea recommendations click here.

Macaroon

Afternoon Tea desserts

Bangers and Mash

Bangers and Mash sounds pretty gnarly and if you get the right one it tastes pretty gnarly too. Simply put it’s sausage and mashed potatoes but the former sounds much better. The most common meat used for sausage is pork but don’t be dismayed, there are other types available for those who don’t eat swine. The most common sausage used is the Cumberland banger (sausage) but you could really get fancy and use any sausage. One of my favorites is a chicken and sage banger it definitely speaks to the savory side of me. One of the best places to get a bangin’ Bangers and Mash is at The George located at 2 High Street Spaldwich, Huntingdon UK PE28 0TD.

Black Pudding Hash

It looks just as appetizing as it sounds. So crazy little tidbit here, my daughter has a computer game called crazy café. One of the levels had a British breakfast and it included making a plate of black pudding hash, beans, eggs and mushrooms. I know some of you are wondering who thought up that combination. During the war food became scarce and well we know how that goes. I don’t know how it works but it works. So fast forward to us living in England and guess what is included in the traditional English Breakfast…you guessed it Black Pudding Hash. I was reluctant at first but you know what sometimes you have to eat in the moment. So to date the best Black pudding hash I’ve had has been at Johnson’s Farm in Huntingdon, UK.

Biscuits

These are your Pillsbury biscuits although a good southern biscuit is great. English biscuits are more of a biscotti texture. To Americans the closest thing to a biscuit would be shortbread biscotti I suppose. Many biscuits are served with cheese as they are sturdy enough to support a good brie with a nice chutney. That’s they way I eat them at least.

Borough Market

If you ever have the pleasure of making it to London or if you live in the UK and have not made it to London. Let me be the first to go on record and say visit the Borough Market. There is almost something for everyone there. I’ve had some amazing Paella, Ethiopian Food and Mushroom Risotto. It is set up food market style so you are free to roam from vendor to vendor and chose whatever is speaking to your soul. My only recommendation is get there early and if you have a fear of crowd’s this isn’t the venue for you. It is literally shoulder to shoulder on Saturdays. The typical hours are 10am to 5pm Monday to Saturday, although Monday and Tuesday there are limited vendors.

Clotted Cream

The book describes clotted cream as the cream of raw milk that is left for 12 hours and then scalded. It’s so hard to describe but it reminded me of whipped butter the very first time I tried it. It is usually accompanied with strawberry jam and scones. The clotted cream at St. Ermin’s Hotel Tea Lounge is pretty darn good.

Fish and Chips

The signature dish of England is pretty much fish and chips. Any pub you go into will most likely have fish and chips as a staple on the menu. Chips for the record are what American refer to as fries except they are chunky so we would probably consider them almost wedges. The fish is commonly Haddock, Whiting or Cod and is usually covered in a light batter. If you are fortunate the fish will be fried well enough that it isn’t drenched in grease. Drip a little lemon juice over that bad baby and Bam you are on the money. If you are in the area the fish and chips at the Duke of Cambridge is definitely worth a stop.

Mushy Peas

If you like peas you may be turning your head ever so slightly at the thought of mushy peas. If you don’t like peas hopefully I can convince you to give them a try. They are made using fresh early peas and usually mushed with some butter. Most of the peas lack salt so be sure to add salt and pepper to give them a good flavor. My favorite mushy peas to date have been mint mushy peas served at one of my favorite places the Brampton Mill.

Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding

Sunday Roast is a thing in England and perhaps throughout Europe. Roasts can be roast beef, pork or chicken and they are usually accompanied with Yorkshire Pudding. I’m sure almost everyone growing up has had at least one Sunday Roast fresh out of Grandma’s kitchen. There really is not much different in American Roasts and English Roasts. What is different is Yorkshire Pudding. The name is deceiving as it is not pudding at all. It’s actually a puffy egg bread that baked and sometimes braised with roast drippings then covered in gravy. Currently, my favorite place to have Sunday Roast and Yorkshire Pudding is at the Brampton Mill in Huntingdon.

Sunday Roast

Yorkshire Pudding

Scones

I added scones to my list because well they are quintessential of afternoon tea. If they are homemade the texture is a bit wonky but man oh man a warm English scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam will make your taste buds do the happy dance. Scones are often accompanied with clotted cream and served with Afternoon Tea as mentioned above. Best scone to date I ate at Betty Bumbles Vintage Tea Room.

Scotch Eggs

Scotch eggs are essentially a boiled egg incased in a meat such as ham or pork sausage. It is then breaded and deep fried. If I know what thing, I know deep fried foods are good. Due to the small nature of an egg, it makes a great appetizer. I’ve only tried them once and that was at the café at Sandringham palace and they were good. I know there are some amazing scotch eggs out there and I’ll keep searching until I find the best ones.

If you’ve tried any of these dishes already let me know what you think. Is there anything on the list that isn’t already there? Also, be sure to check back for more additions to the list as I continue to explore more food.

Forks Up!

British and Irish: 1,000 foods to eat before you die. Living in England gives me a pretty fair advantage when it comes to this list of things to try that are British and Irish before you die.

#British #bucket list #Food #Irish

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rachelisnotatwork · 6 years

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A very belated post about our mini break in Wales

My sister had been planning on spending the month of July in the UK, so we had booked time off in the middle of the month for a trip away with her. However her circumstances changed, leaving us with a week with no work booked and for once, brilliant sunshine in the UK.

After our autumn road trip, we had a few places we enjoyed so much we were happy to go back to and after looking at the last minute airbnb options, we decided we’d head back to South Wales. However to make the most of the nice weather, we needed to leave Friday morning. And not only was I working a night shift on Thursday night, but due to a number of circumstances I had to work until 8.30am rather than 6am.

So I crawled into the car when I would normally have headed to bed. Nevermind thought I, I will just sleep in the car. Now my mother’s 2004 Skoda Octavia, which we were borrowing, has many great features (pretty much always runs, seamlessly fits in with late-night mini cabs, has working air-con) but it turns out comfortable seats for sleeping isn’t one of them. 6 painfully achy, tired hours later, we ended up in the Pontardawe Tesco. Which is a fairly disorientating experience if you have been awake 24 hours and everything is in Welsh. I wandered the aisles, hollow-eyed, bumping into stacks of biscuits until we’d got the basics for dinner and then spent an unfunnily long time trying to find our airbnb (which in addition to being gorgeous was actually really well-signed).

The next morning I woke up feeling mildly more human. After breakfast on our patio in the sun, we headed out to Llathony priory in the Brecon Beacons. Weirdly we seemed to arrive shortly after about 50 middle aged men in very classic cars, so when we arrived they were all having tea with what we assumed was the vicar of the priory. Except for then he left in a classic car too- so he just turned out to be a man of the cloth who likes 1930s cars as well as Jesus.

After pottering around the priory grounds, we headed out of a walk on a footpath above the hills.

It was pretty boiling in the midday sun though so we soon headed back down into the valley and on for our next destination- Hay-on-Wye for some lunch.

Our original plan was lunch, ice cream (I went for gooseberry crumble and then regretted my impulsiveness- it wasn’t gross but it everyone else’s ice cream looked better), a river walk and then a browse of the many bookshops there.

Only when we walked onto the bridge above the river, we saw a big billboard with the question on “want to canoe?” and then we could see a canoeist getting dispatched into the beautifully sunny river. And the answer was yes, definitely yes.

Especially because after we pottered down there, they turned out to offer a three hour trip down the river where they would pick you up at the end from a pub where you moored your canoe and drive you back. Well there are bookshops everywhere you can visit, but it isn’t often that on a gloriously sunny day someone offers you a three hour canoe trip for a mere £25.

15 minutes later we were on the water- the last canoers they were planning on renting to that day. Which was fantastic because it meant we were the only people on the river for the majority of the trip. We were going with the river, so minimum paddling was required as we pottered gently downstream. The first mile or so had swimmers and sunbathers on the banks before it was just us and a lot of irate herons, who didn’t like us coming past. We alas didn’t have our swimming stuff since it was a spontaneous trip, but we dangled our feet in the water and because the water level was quite low at one point Marcel got out to push us (I helpfully stayed in the boat to keep it safe) . It was a gorgeous afternoon and the end destination (a pub) came way too soon.

We drove back via a lake, where we tried to have a walk (weirdly to the sounds of Indian music blasting from a local caravan park) but were thwarted by reedy banks. There was however the opportunity to pose with the sword in the stone. But after that we headed home through the Brecon Beacons, enjoying the last of the evening sun.

The next day was beach day. First we headed back to Three Cliffs Bay, which we last saw fairly empty on a windswept September day. We were a bit apprehensive about what it would be like on a sunny Sunday in July and remembering that parking was a bit of a nightmare, we decided to approach it from the other side.

Thankfully since it is still quite a long walk down, it was boiling hot and there were other beaches nearby you could just drive down to, it was- whilst considerably fuller than September, still pleasant enough. We paddled in the river that runs along the beach (warm until you sunk a few inches down through the soft sand and then freezing cold) and sat in the sun.

The walk back up was less enjoyable- the sand was incredibly steep and soft meaning each step forward slid you at least half a step back and also was boiling hot. Soles got a little grilled… we did see a lizard though (my first in the UK). At the top on the heathland there were some trees but the whole village where we parked was besieged by cows and they had crammed into every available piece of shade.

After that we headed to a place called Cwm Ivy. We’d picked a cafe called, creatively enough, the Cwm Ivy Cafe. It had amazing views of the salt marsh- which was a pretty good start to the afternoon.

We then headed down to the beach. The tide was pretty far out, which is a bit dispiriting if you’ve just climbed through several hundred metres of hot dunes to crest the last one and find you are still a good 500m from the cooling sea. However the beach was pretty much empty (how I like my beaches) and the sea although shallow was bathtub warm.

We wandered through the shallows before realising we weren’t the only people who like it bath tub warm. There were several of the largest jellyfish I’ve seen in my life (think 50cm plus) floating in the shallows and washed up on the shore. That got us out of the water pretty speedily.

We made it a big loop and came back through the dunes at the other side and then through a forest- halfway back we found a field of friendly welsh ponies, which was an extra plus on our walk. We finally staggered back to the car slightly sunburnt and exhausted in the way you can only be after a day in the hot, hot sun.

The following day was not forecast to be so nice. We debated visiting some local caves (I was tempted by the promised attached shire horse centre and dinosaur adventure) but decided to risk it and see some castles.

Our first stop was Carreg Cennen. The downside of Welsh castles is they were very keen on putting them at the top of big hills. Luckily there was a cute foal in the field on the way up to pet whilst I tried to catch my breath. Until it started enthusiastically eating my kagoul…

At the top the ruin was pretty empty. The views were vertiginous and when we headed down from that, there was an attached cave. I got part of the way down there before remembering I really don’t like claustrophobic dark slimy places and this was all of the above. So I left Marcel to get besieged by bats etc.

He survived and we headed over to our next stop, Dinefwr. This is a national trust property (win, since we’ve still got our membership) and it has a stately home, deer park and ruined castle on the grounds.

We started with a cream tea, which was fortuitous as that coincided with the rain. We then went on to have a pleasant wander through the deer park (deer not that keen on us so only visible from a good distance) and through the forest before climbing up to the castle. This ruin had fabulous views over the valley and it was pleasantly blustery up there, meaning we cooled down quickly after our second big hill climb of the day. Unfortunately I’d forgotten to bring a hair band so spent a good chunk of the afternoon imitating Cousin It.

We had planned to head home on Tuesday but instead we decided to extend our trip for another day. So instead of heading back to London, we headed into Tenby. Tenby looks exactly like St Ives, but instead of being all expensive restaurants and £300 a night hotels, it is cheap holiday tat and sausage baps. Strange because it is really very beautiful and has big white sandy beaches.

We decided to go full Famous Five and get a boat out to Caldey Island. The island houses a community of monks, they make chocolate and apparently have seals basking on the shore. Since we are both prematurely middle-aged that was right up our street!

We took a very empty boat out (us and one other couple) and were thrilled when we arrived to see a very busy queue waiting to board to go back including a school trip (nothing worse than visiting something at the same time as a school trip). After a brief stop for lunch (vegetarian food scarce, ate something called a Lemon Squidge cake, which appeared to be related to the lemon drizzle but more unhealthy) we headed out for a walk.

First step was the wonky Old Priory, oldest Catholic church still in use and home of something called the Ogham Stone. It was underwhelming. The angle of the steeple though was something to be admired since it looked ready to topple and crush a tourist at any moment.

We then stopped in at the chocolate factory (disappointingly small) and after that headed out onto the headlands to walk around the cliffs. Great views but alas no seals seen. Also no Famous Five mysteries to be solved except for a 500m long stripe of black paint wavering through the grass in one of the fields. Which was exactly as exciting as it sounds.

We had a brief walk through the woods to try and see some red squirrels but were harassed throughout by horse flies and we decided we didn’t care that much about red squirrels. So instead we headed back to the beach to get the boat back home.

Excitingly the tide was so low we had to get onto this weird ex-military amphibious vehicle which then drove out into the water and offloaded us onto a boat out there. All the small children (and me) were agog with excitement when we drove off into the waves.

Back in town we got ice creams and pottered slowly back to the car- another great day in Wales.

Finally it was time to head home. On the way back we decided to stop off on Merthyr Mawr for a walk along the beach. It was as most Welsh beaches are, beautifully empty, although at one point from the dunes popped a small group of teenagers with a clipboard, pretty much running towards us as the only tourists, to ask us to fill in a survey for their geography GCSE. Also there was a big group of riders going along the beach and in and out of the sea, which was a lovely way to end our holiday. Definitely coming back again next summer!

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