#blokey kiss

[nicoscheer]

And now ladies and gents after the guy received a bunch of begging and pleading replies the answer

And because we’re already on the subject of Milex being all over each other:

We have this testimony after the Olympia show in Paris

[antikate]

Absolutey never going to write this but thinking of how Jamie and Roy fucked it up so badly with Keeley by treating her like a possession rather than a person

and because they’re mates now a few months later they get together to talk about it over a few beers (it’s the off-season Jamie can have beer now)

They’re both a couple of pints in and Jamie is a lightweight because he’s been training so hard and Roy is a lightweight because he’s getting old (sorry Roy, but it happens to the best of us)

And Roy is all “we absolutely fucked it Jamie”

And Jamie agrees morosely “we bollocksed it up and down and sideways”

And Roy says “we should have just-“ and cuts himself off

So Jamie is all “what?” And Roy is all “nothing” and and goes on for a while until Roy roars “I told you it was nothing you giant twat”

then after a few minutes of contemplative silence Jamie finally says “you know how Dani has two girlfriends?”

Roy snorts into his beer but he has a haunted look in his eyes. “Are you seriously going to suggest to Keeley she fucks us on alternate days? Oh it’s Tuesday that’s a Jamie day! Two dickhead boyfriends for the price of one!”

Jamie fiddles with his man bag and then says “I was thinking more … at the same time.”

Roy is staring at Jamie now and it’s only that he’s three pints in otherwise he’d be reacting in some other much more sensible way than just gaping at Jamie like a fish that’s suddenly been propositioned by his best fish mate

Finally his brain catches up and it says via his stupid mouth “is this… a swords crossing situation or what?”

“What the fuck is that sposed to mean?”

“You know. Is it - you and Keeley and me and Keeley or is it you and me and Keeley?” Roy’s throat has gone very tight and there’s a strange buzzing in his ears

Jamie’s face has gone pink and his ears are even pinker. “You. And me. And Keeley.”

“You and me.” Roy echoes

“Yeah you and me. And Keeley.”

“But you and me-“

“It’s really not a big deal mate-“ Jamie says, “anyway did you hear Zava might be going to Real Madrid-“

and they drop the whole thing

Only Roy can’t stop thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it, and wondering about things that he’d thought about before, and a few incidents from his wild younger days (it’s not that gay to jerk your mate off in the showers, is it?), and noticing how Jamie’s thighs look in his shorts, and it definitely becomes a very big deal indeed.

So he stews on it for a while, fucking marinates in it, and then one night he’s home alone and thinking about Jamie’s fucking smile of all fucking things, and how the tosser’s face is so fucking symmetrical and pretty but pretty in a blokey way

and before he can think better of it he texts Jamie “You and me.” and then throws his phone across the sofa (because you know Roy texts like an old person)

And his phone pings almost immediately and he digs it out from under the cushions and it just says

“Yeah”

And he stares at it and types thirteen different things and then he throws his phone away and then finds it again and then just gets up and puts on his shoes and fucking jogs to Jamie Tartt’s fucking house at 11pm on a Tuesday

Jamie opens the door at his insistent knock (he’s got his trousers on at least) and they stare at each other and then they kiss

And then six months later when they approach Keeley about this possible threesome she laughs them out of her house and goes back to her very beautiful new girlfriend

“Two dickhead boyfriends instead of one - thanks but I’m good,” she says, and kisses them both of the cheek and them firmly shuts the door

[steinwayandhissons]

would you call this…. a blokey kiss…. 🤔

[inchidentally]

please tell me your parasocial theory about the lando effect on his teammates i'll shrivel up like a raisin without it actually

god. I'm gonna try and keep this coherent and not TOO weird. obv this is completely without knowing any of these people personally and it's just me theorizing for fun without any actual private knowledge etc etc !

(I've had to edit the hell out of this bc I don't want to like outright offend anyone since this isn't meant to be super serious at all but I'm mortified at how long it is anyway lol)

so we all know that Lando has always had the whole main character fairytale prince/princess quality that started from taking so incredibly long to finally grow up right up to his version of grown up vacillating between devastating fuckboy to coquette fetish sweetheart. and we all know that Lando is fully aware of how he looks and how he's perceived bc of visible social media presence and interactions and also just being around mirrors. he's stunning and charismatic because he makes no effort to be and there is an aura of destiny and magic around him with whatever he does. but he's always seemed like someone who needs to know what exactly he means to his close friends, mainly guys. in a way that's almost like 'yeah you have a girlfriend but does she accept that I'm ✧Me✧ and not just a Normal Blokey Friend?' or 'will your friends accept that I'm ✧Me✧ or will I have to put up a front?'

the reason Lando's so magnetic to people is because he's a ✧Me✧ but also because he's a ✧Me✧ while being a guy which guys aren't usually secure enough to be ✧Me✧. a lot of guys dress up or play up acting like one but Lando's authentically a ✧Me✧ and not to be classed with guys who are Normal Bloke or Normal Friend. they are very very rare.

to expand on this further and because I have insomnia let's take a walk through our perceptions and occasional facts of fandom observation over the years...

I feel like somewhere in the process of his first few years of F1 Lando went from awkward paddock baby who was probably a fall risk to realizing how incredibly adorable he still was even as a pro racing driver. he was literally everybody's baby (and honestly still kinda is). he was thrown into F1 so young it's not surprising.

I am a diehard carlando fan here so please understand that I'm switching to speaking in real life and not fandom terms (and I prefer fandom terms lol) real life Carlos is 100% hetero to me. my family and friend group are sort of UN levels of diverse and what seems like fruityness in non-American or sometimes non-British men is completely standard for straight dudes outside those countries. straight euro guys in particular flirt and get physical with their bros one way and then have an entirely different type of flirting and physicality with women they're attracted to. I don't think this is the case with Carlos at all but a LOT of these euro dudes can even compartmentalize so well that they're actually homophobic while fully kissing and cuddling with their friends. like I say Carlos doesn't seem at all homophobic but there have definitely been tiny, subtle moments with other drivers or during social media challenges where he's been like 'okay that's far enough for me'. which imo is him drawing boundaries and is totally fair.

AND YET WITH LANDO? Carlos has had a verrrrry hard time classifying Lando up until recently I think. for a while after signing to McLaren it was clear he viewed himself as protector and big brother/uncle to a very skittish and weird child/toddler/pet. then when Lando started to build his F1 personality around Carlos and was able to do some give and take with him, Carlos started to see Lando as a fun little satellite buddy and we got some of their silliest most adorable moments (the squawk laughing and the horseplay etc). but Carlos very much still viewed himself as the superior and Lando was just happy to have someone patient and considerate of him rather than a serious competitor.

to me Carlos and everyone else in F1 shifted how he saw Lando around the time of Daniel showing up on the scene (and Carlos' shock at how upset Lando was when he went to Ferrari). Lando got a LOT more confidence on and off the track from here on and he absolutely saw Daniel as a competitor and gave as good as he got off track too (in a fun way). he was never a satellite of Daniel's like he was with Carlos. he also physically started to grow and appreciate his own beauty and sexuality (not as in his identity but his effect on others sexually). he started dressing more consciously and mixing flirting with cuteness to win people over and play the media. youtuber/streamer Lando began to merge with F1 paddock darling Lando into something new between having Carlos and Daniel as teammates.

I can just tell you right now that a dude like Carlos would have ABsolutely no idea how to classify what Lando was becoming at that point in terms of their friendship. Lando was too pretty and still too small to be considered a Dude and apart from on the race track Lando doesn't have the natural douche-ness of Dudes. but Lando also had an active sex life and women were already crazy for him so he wasn't a child anymore either. since F1 drivers literally for bodily safety reasons can only identify as straight Carlos couldn't even class Lando as a rainbow guy.

personally I think that's when Carlos elevated Lando to Hot Bitch/Great Dude status. Lando can still take roughhousing and stupid jokes but he's also got this intense genderfluid glow that poor straight man brain have a tough time with. so Lando's this still confusing hybrid but one that Carlos accepts and loves.

in such a short time Lando went from notice me senpai over Carlos as a teenager on twitter to showing off how they exclusively hang out outside race weekends and he can breeze into the Ferrari garage like he owns the place. one teammate down :)

obv this whole time Lando has had Max F in his life and I think they've known for a long time that they're the sort of best friends who are also common law married. their gfs have always seemed really good natured about it. (**this will be relevant when Oscar comes up later) before Carlos, Max was very clearly the stronger public personality Lando had latched onto as a kid and stayed that way until about 2020/2021. since then I feel like Max is watching Lando in a kind of proud wiping away a tear and claiming that it's raining way. he was down before he probably knew it :)

honestly I'm not a big fan of Daniel Ricciardo for specific reasons and I've chosen to just edit out what I'd written about him and Lando since I truly don't want to piss anyone off over this pointless post lol. it's enough to say that for all Daniel's cockiness making gay jokes etc I get a lot of joy from the fact that Lando has ended up combining Lewis Hamilton-gender norms are for losers attitude with his own genuine rising stature as a future WDC and basically blew Daniel out of the water in every way. they're absolutely still good buddies but damn, Hot Bitch Lando had Daniel stuttering and staring with how little effort it took for Lando to outshine him, on and off the track. Daniel is usually the one in charge of his F1 relationships but Lando got him fucked. up. and begging.

another teammate down :)

do I even need to go into detail about Oscar . we know so incredibly little about Oscar's real personality yet we fully know that he's been replying to Lando's tweets and watching Lando's content since boarding school in the UK. you can take a tour of just the McLaren youtube content from the 2023 unboxing onward and watch Oscar go from dazed and stumbling over himself to not look a tool in front of Lando to Prema-era humor Oscar being able to banter with Lando.

here's what's different with the Lando/Oscar friendship tho. Oscar came in weirdly grown up for his age bc he'd left home so young and went from boarding school to being set up in his own flat by Mahk Wibbah. he already had a long term girlfriend and after waiting a year for his driver's seat he'd made the extremely ballsy move to publicly decide his own fate in F1. Lando was probably expecting to have a typical rookie on his hands but instead he got someone who's already more emotionally mature and responsible than Lando's other two teammates combined. then Oscar is so incredibly talented that he's pushed Lando to such a massive new level that P3 and P2 and (currently) 4th in the WDC are already losing a bit of their shine. Lando wants the whole thing and in a way he never has up til now. Oscar is a not insignificant part of that.

Lando suddenly has an equal! their age difference is negligible and their competitive level is the same. the fact that Oscar's racing mentality is so vastly different to Lando's is perfect because there'll never be a Lewis/Nico situation. Lando needs to stay within his own head to a certain degree for race weekends and Oscar looks forward to his next opportunity as soon as he's done with one. Oscar even has a much more laid back Max F style sense of humor which means Lando doesn't have to play up and perform as much as he used to for social media shit.

then there was the awful start to the season followed by Lando definitely being shook up by how hot Oscar came in as a rookie. AND YET Oscar has always gone out of his way to celebrate Lando's successes literally no matter how his own performance went. he's never once opted to peace out until needed for media or pictures (or straight up left) after a DNF or finishing poorly. there's this moment from the Dutch GP that breaks my idiot fandom brain bc Lando had just qualified second and Oscar (Q8) is shaking his hand and congratulating him and. idk it feels like one of those 'oh!' moments where Lando realizes Oscar is rooting for him even when they're competing and it's not a one-off nice gesture or bare minimum effort

(which honestly that bare minimum is totally fair in racing and I don't judge drivers who need to lick their wounds, it can take a lot to come out of that adrenaline mindset and be happy for your teammate who is also your competitor).

and that's the thing, Oscar came in already won over by Lando. he simply expects them both to do their jobs well and whatever Lando has to offer outside that is cool with him because Lando is ✧Lando✧. if Lando wants to bring him more into his non-F1 life at some point that would probably be great but Oscar's also got his own stable non-F1 life so it's fine either way! if Lando has other commitments and Oscar needs to step up more with the team then that's fine! I know I've been superlative with this post but like, Lando never needed/needs to do anything at all for Oscar to like him and accept him and root for him. Oscar clearly doesn't feel the need to prove anything to Lando or force the relationship. everyone else is dazzled by Lando or watched him/helped him grow up but Oscar just really Finds Lando Neat and Wants to Be Around Him. he seems to like being bossed around by Lando but he also likes when Lando is being really cool and when Lando is quiet and moody he just waits until Lando wants to be around people again. he's like a cat that proves their devotion to you by remaining in proximity rather than meowing or shoving their face in yours.

so like, part of me feels like Lando saw his new teammate having this whole life(**girlfriend?? but does she accept me as ✧Me✧?) already before even meeting Lando and had no idea how they'd develop a relationship. both Carlos and Daniel had (and still have) very bachelor style lives where a relationship with the current teammate is top priority and everyone else in their life has to deal. work comes first, then work friends, then everything else until the babies are made.

but then Oscar just shows up all content with his grown up life and smiles at Lando all the time and doesn't take anything for granted and respects Lando's space within F1 and McLaren and never complains even about doing things he doesn't like and Lando's like oh! I've already got this one down for the count and I didn't even do anything! nice :)

anyway thank you for asking and I hope this was remotely worth reading aakfgsjgfjgafagla

[robotgraffiti]

does. does anyone want to put a blokey kiss on top of my head

[whinlatter]

3, 4, 14, and 37 for dean and seamus

my darling boys! 🥹 dean and seamus, off we gooooo. thank you @valfromcall!

3. Obscure headcanon

obscure headcanon 1 - dean thomas was born may 10th 1980, the day west ham won the FA cup. that west ham have never won the cup since remains a source of great regret for east london's golden boy. unfortunately may 10th also happened to be the day in 1997 when gryffindor won the house cup and harry potter scooped his ex from right from under his nose - a bad birthday for the ages. seamus tried to cheer him up by reminding him that may 10th is also the birthday of a proud son of ireland (bono from U2), which dean said was 'not helping'

obscure headcanon 2 - this is dean and seamus' son:

also this isn't obscure but their first kiss was 100% in the finnigan tent at the quidditch world cup after ireland's stonking victory over bulgaria

4. Favorite line

for seamus, it's probably when they're all in the dormitory in GoF and dobby rocks up and seamus nonchalantly goes 'someone attacking you, Harry?' aka mr finnigan giving precisely zero shits about whatever main character moment harry is having and thereby failing his audition for inclusion in the golden trio. bonus special mention to the world's worst pep talk in PS/SS:

“Harry, you need your strength,” said Seamus Finnigan. “Seekers are always the ones who get clobbered by the other team.” “Thanks, Seamus,” said Harry, watching Seamus pile ketchup on his sausages.

can't a man enjoy a condiment anymore smh

for dean, it's either "send him off, ref! red card!' from PS/SS or this from OotP:

"Well, [Moody] turned out to be a maniac, didn’t he?" said Dean Thomas hotly. "Mind you, we still learned loads."

14. Most heroic moment

seamus 'harry's a liar' finnigan getting beaten to a pulp and unrecognisably disfigured by the carrows. king shit

dean is being the biggest bravest boy in the world all on his own on the run leaving his mum and sisters behind and not being able to have a cuddle when he's lost and alone and scared and hungry all through DH :(

37. What they really think about themselves

i think, as teenagers, seamus was the one with a lot of insecurities and self-loathing: struggling with the knowledge that he was gay and a bit in love with his best mate and not really knowing what to do with it, in conflict with his mum and wrestling with who he was going to be in this big war that seemed to be looming, not the cleverest or the sportiest or the anything-est and generally a bit aggy and restless. dean was the much more relaxed one of the two. he had a strong sense of right and wrong, was sure the goodies would prevail before anything got too out of hand, was content with his kind of chill blokey vibe and got a fit girlfriend that meant he could park any of the slightly confusing feelings he was feeling for shay.

after the war, though, they swap roles. seamus has quite a settled sense of self after his school years - like, he got his fuck up out of the way (not believing voldemort was back, having his big sulk), but then redeemed himself, was on some real hero shit and really became close with the other DA lot, getting a lot out of the prestige of being an auror for a bit, no longer felt like he had much to prove, and felt loved and confident enough to come out. dean, however, really struggled with the impact of the war, feeling an intense sense of isolation and distance from the other's wartime experiences, and both envying seamus' confidence to come out but struggling to accept that he might also not be straight, like it was just another thing that would mark him out as Other. i basically think seamus and dean were hooking up a lot immediately after school and in their early twenties, but always in secret, while dean kept dating muggle girls and playing out this big tension he feels in his own identity, between the muggle and wizarding worlds, as well as over his own sexuality and internalised homophobia. i reckon seamus was the one to (eventually) recognise this was self-destructive and breaking his heart, and ended it. cue the wilderness years!

they obviously get back together eventually, though, hence west ham son (yes i'm obsessed with this child), although seamus threatened to break up with him when dean argued he should be allowed to put the imperius curse on declan rice to stop him moving to arsenal and betraying his beloved hammers in summer 2023

[depressedraisin]

so the 'blokey kisses' gig was also actually oasis' last gig in the uk (ever) (yet)..... okay. proleptic irony or whatever but okay.

[barmans-fault]

hi!! im newish to the tumblr side of the fandom and was just curious what the "blokey kiss" joke/reference is from? love your blog :)

Hi my darling! Thank you 💖

Ok, so here's the story:

In 2009, Connor McNicholas, who was at the time the editor for NME, put a picture of Alex and Miles hugging at an Oasis concert on his twitter with a caption, and I quote, "Alex and Miles in front of me all over each other". This phrase has been discussed many times , and it was all fun, and then a few days ago someone dug it up again and Conor decided to elaborate. You just need to read the whole thing since it's hilarious in itself, super sweet and super funny in terms of how he's trying to make these two boys insanely in love with each other sound like they are 'straight no homo heterosexual mates' and failing miserably. At one point, in another futile attempt to turn down the gayness, he describes kisses they put on top of each other's heads as 'blokey'. The rest is history :)

And here's the link to experience it all first hand. Enjoy!

[jetskisonyourmoat]

This one is dedicated to their 'blokey kisses' at the Oasis concert in 2009.

[franklyimissparis]

thinking about blokey kisses

[challenge-ant]

thinking about the fact that they may or may not have kissed in the back of a cab once for the rest of my life

[thealphabro]

🤔man I never knew kissing could be so...blokey!haha WOOF😈

💯♂️💪🥊🤼‍♂️

[ghostofbambifanfiction]

My dear little man (cat) is back home and healing after a stroke so now that my heart is back inside of my body I am here to list off just some of my (many) favorite things you have written. I’m keeping it to 5 because that seems reasonable.

I’m sorry to hear you’re having such a rough go of writing at the moment. Hopefully some effusive praise will, at the very least, distract from that. Here we go, in no particular order:

1. The Audition from WATJP

This whole fic is so excellent. Truly delicious writing. (Could I do five favorites just from WATJP? yes, yes I could) I love the relationships between James/Sirius/Remus/Peter - you’re always so good at setting up a clear and interesting dynamic between everyone with just your dialogue. I’m especially delighted by this after James has raised his hand - the interaction between James, Remus, and Sirius there is so funny and lived-in and real.

Of course, your banter between Lily and James is top notch, but I love how you can show so much of their relationship dynamic and their chemistry when they’re speaking someone else’s words.

2 - 3. James’ tells and general misinterpretations in (The Mostly Unwilling Participants on) The Bachelor

It’s so fun in this fic to watch James figure out that he’s into Lily - it’s not a dynamic we get to see often and you roll it out so beautifully - where there are tells long before James knows how to articulate it. One of my favorite examples is in Chapter 5, when you do this, first with James’ enthusiasm growing every time Lily plays along, and then with:

“"You’re not even his type!"

James’s sharp "Ha!" likely made it across the room, through the open (and stupidly) French doors onto the patio, and halfway across the garden.”

and finally with him getting so caught up that he hugs Lily.

You capture so much about the behavior of two people utterly smitten with one another and it makes my heart all fluttery!

Something else I love about your fics where you write from either James or Lily’s perspective is how you write their misinterpretations of each other’s behavior or words - it’s such a fun unreliability that, obviously creates some of the best dramatic irony. In this same chapter (because you are, despite how you may be feeling, rather prolific) is one of my favorite examples of this, with Lily’s pov:

“Clearly, the best she was going to get from James was confirmation that she'd been foisted upon him by Rita Skeeter, and a blokey comparison to a bloody dinosaur.

A velociraptor, of all things.

Dinosaurs were wicked cool, it was true, and she understood the compliment it implied, but he might as well have punched her in the shoulder and referred to her as dude for all the good it had done her. The resulting effect would have been exactly the same.”

*chef’s kiss*

4. James’ humor in Salmon Fishing in the Olympics

Ahhh, another that I love so much. James’ humor is especially delightful here. I feel like other people have brought up specific excellent quotes from this fic, but again:

She comes to a standstill in front of him. "As if you're allowed to eat at McDonald's."

"I'm not, but I sometimes press myself up against their windows."

"What a treat for the diners."

"Puts them right off their nuggets."

..

"What kind of car do you drive?"

"I—er—" Vernon is taken aback by the change in subject, but can never resist an opportunity to discuss his car. Lily has taught James well. "An Audi A4. What car do you drive?"

"None," says James. "I sprint everywhere."

Vernon blinks stupidly. "Everywhere?"

"Yeah, but I can only do it in 200 metre bursts. It took months to get to Rio."

..

"They always let me skip the queue at Starbucks because I'm a national hero."

"I hate you."

are all a sheer delight.

5. All the pining in Shelf Awareness

I’ve read this approximately 128 times because obviously your writing + bookshop setting is perfection for me. And my goodness, the chemistry of it all!

He's so fit that she can't look him directly in the eye without a tell-tale, inconvenient, irrepressible smile that screams, 'I want to wear you like pyjamas,' which makes her feel guilty for looking in the first place—she has a boyfriend, after all, and she's never been the kind of girl to flirt about when she's with someone—so she shrugs and buries her nose in her phone while he scans in the rest of the books.

Or: “smiling at her in a way that makes her feel like her secrets aren't her own” - I mean, come on! The economy of that. A whole culinary school’s worth of chef’s kisses.

All of this is to say that you are a terrific writer and I’m always happy to revisit your writing because it’s so full of humor and pining and banter. Every one of your characters are full, amusing and entertaining and so specific.

Also apologies for the wonky formatting - I am frustrated with my thumbs at the moment.

I don't really have words. I'm just sobbing reading this. I can't believe you took the time to write it all and send it to me, especially when you've just been through the ringer yourself. You have no idea how much this this means to me, no idea. I'm in tears. I'm so glad that your cat is recovering. Actual tears. Thank you so much.

Also I forgot to tag @fetchalgernon because she's responsible for James in Bachelor fic and she 100% deserves credit for that <3

[memoirsofadancefloor-blog]

Chapter 1 - In The Beginning

From the earliest moments even as a child the one thing that always brought me joy was music. My mother and father always had such diverse tastes from the likes of David Bowie , The Eagles , Michael Jackson , Kiss there was always something for everyone in my home. Even as a young tadpole on my stroll home from school all I wanted to do was dive head first into that record cabinet and fuck around with the Cd or record player and dance around like no one was looking. Dad the blokey bloke loved his sport mum her music and creativity. They had always supported me in my choices when it came it expressing myself. Mum always encouraged me to learn an instrument so when I was 8 she stuck a set of drumsticks in my hands and sent me off for drum lessons. Which me being me lasted all of a few months due to my short attention span and wanting to be a rockstar in a split second although short it was a start. As we begin to traverse the awkward space of primary school I joined the school band in the brass section as the fucking gnarliest trombone player the world was yet to see. To be honest the guy I always sat next to was really good and I would play quietly and tell him to play louder because he was good and made us look good... I was a lord of riding coat tails at the time haha. Things were looking up by age 13 I was a highly established recorder player , drummer and brass ensemble member. No one could touch me with my top deck chocolate coloured hair blonde and brown I strutted into Victoria Point State High School with more swag then Dr Dre rolling through his own hood in LA. The first few years of high school as per for most kids were shit little chubby bloke in the band with weird hair I didnt give a fuck I was cool in my own little world. I made some pals by year 10 and somehow we thought we would make a band... all of us with pretty much -47 experience with any instruments decided we could do this so what did I do even with my 3 months of drumming experience made my dad buy me a cherry red axe so I could take my spot on the podium as Eddie Van Halen. I was never and still to this day the best with music theory sheet music was like learning Chinese to me yet I could pick up an instrument find my way around it and learn in my own way tablature to a degree was easier for me to write around and understand I had the ear and the tools just not the Pentium 4 processer to “ correctly do it “ As the angsty teenager I was electronic music didn't even cross my radar until around age 15 I was the Blink 182 , Taking Back Sunday , The Stokes , Queens Of The Stone age all that jazz which don't get me wrong still a fucking vibe and a half the hair went from top deck to black the lip piercing was in full affect my girlfriend at the time bought me tickets to soundwave which I actually enjoyed but also kinda freaked me the fuck out because I swear I was the most vanilla kid there haha. None the less those years were fun but one day a friend threw me a cd out of his car it was The Ministry of sound Annual 2007 and from that moment I pressed play on that cd I imagined it was what heroine would feel like actually quite similar to the feeling of scissors gliding through the piece of paper instead of snipping... Something clicked and I knew that this was something I needed to become more infatuated with..

[seasurfacefullofclouds1]

I kind of want to see what would happen if H DID kiss a blokey, (that wasn't Louis), on his jolly hols. He would never be that direct about it though because H surfs on a huge wave of vagueness and it clearly works well for him.

For that reason, Harry would only do it jokingly, like he did with James Corden.

[seven-dragons]

Doctor Blake Mysteries: last season comes too soon

Thanks to @occasionallyclever for posting about this article.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/doctor-blake-mysteries-last-season-comes-too-soon/news-story/54723bb593699a5e19f5147b34d3ab4e

The much-loved period crime show The Doctor Blake Mysteries, starring Craig McLachlan as maverick country town doctor Lucien Blake, returns this week. Produced for the ABC by December Media, with production credits shared by creators George Adams and Tony Wright, with the redoubtable Stuart Menzies as executive producer, it was the ABC’s most popular Australian-made program last year, averaging 1.659 million viewers. The only regular ABC program to get a fractionally bigger audience was its rebroadcast of British show Doc Martin, which averaged 1.67 million nationally.

Somewhat inexplicably, this is the last season for Blake and his Ballarat police and medical colleagues, though a feature-length finale is promised later this year. Fans were outraged at the news of its demise, amid rumours earlier this year that the series might be picked up by Seven or Foxtel, which has had such success with the reimagined A Place to Call Home, uprooted from Seven. And the frustrated response of the outraged consumer was more than justified in Doctor Blake’s case, given the show’s success, its charm, its confident sense of self and all-round appeal. It’s easy to undervalue the craft and industrial intelligence behind the show’s concept and its cinematic execution.

Blakeis an appealing amalgam of the figure of the classical adventurer turned amateur detective, an investigator who knows about war and combat, an enigmatic figure with a healthy dash of charity.

At the beginning of the series, set in the late 1950s, Blake had recently returned, after decades abroad, to his family home in Ballarat, a Victorian town rich in colonial history, to take over his late father’s medical practice and to act as the local forensic examiner on cases investigated by the police, a team of four covering an area the size of an English county. He had left Australia in his 20s to study medicine in Scotland and, after graduating in 1931, joined the British Army as a medical officer.

He served in the Far East during World War II and married a Chinese woman with whom he had a child, but lost touch with both at the fall of Singapore. There’s an interesting moral ambiguity that colours his image; you always have the sense that, whatever his justifications, he is a killer of men, something constantly reinforced in McLachlan’s performance, the actor fond of the battle-weary soldier’s 1000-yard stare.

Like his Ballarat countrymen, he appreciates that his world is increasingly characterised by disorder and uncertainty at time when almost everything is being transformed as the 50s slides into the next turbulent decade, from comfortable torpor into the cultural unrest of the 60s. But Blake, unlike so many of the town’s more conservative citizens, knows the changes can be faced honourably and confidently.

“There is a feeling of the old moulds cracking, the stale and insular moulds which have kept the nation a backwater of late Victorian culture for so long,” Craig McGregor wrote of this period in his Profile of Australia, just a few years after Blake was pursuing his murderers around Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree, the Colonists Club or the Mechanics Institute. Blake represents the emerging Australia: more tolerant, less blokey, less heroic and more human. And his show is really about contrasts in society and the conflicts that arise as changes occur.

What Wright and Adams give us are shapely, atmospheric stories of psychological suspense mixed with the baroque ingenuity of the drawing-room mystery with some resonant dark ­underpinning in the way the stories reflect the cultural and political attitudes of a rapidly changing country. But they are not just logic problems, cryptograms to be assiduously worked out like an exercise in calculus, but stor­ies of character and emotion and romance. As The New York Times’ Margaret Lyons puts it, “This is not the most original show I have ever seen, but it is a very good version of what it is.”

At times the series, represented internationally by ITV Studios, is reminiscent of Foyle’s War and Inspector George Gently with its regional settings and the way its writers pit old-fashioned prejudice and bigotry against emerging social change.

The resonance is quite deliberate and calcul­ated, according to its producers, who believed that if they created “something indistinguishable from the best of these kinds of UK shows” they would find an international market. “Our instructions to the writers were to make our show indistinguishable from Inspector George Gently, Foyle’s War and the best shows that the ABC imports from the UK,” Wright told The Screen Blog recently. “We loved the idea of shipping coals to Newcastle.”

There were a couple of pitch meetings with the ABC, according to Wright, and the show develop­ed quickly from there, although there was some resistance, as another period murder mystery was in the pipeline. “I wasn’t aware that Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries was in development,” Adams says. “I thought the resistance was like saying, ‘We have Prime Suspect so we don’t want Cracker’. We had a very clear vision of what the show was and stuck to that. If I’ve learnt anything it’s this: once you’ve got a good idea, stick to it — because there is a danger the idea gets diluted and the show becomes a smorgasbord of what different parties want. You’ve got to know what the show is in one sentence.”

The show has been sold to more than 130 broadcasters, including in the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, and France. It was the first show commissioned by the ABC to go out on BBC One (although there have been some co-prod­uctions) each season going out on afternoons every weekday over two weeks, and attracting more 1.5 million viewers. Doctor Blake also has a growing reputation in the US where it appears on some of the PBS stations.

As Ballarat surged into a new decade, with post-war change seeping through the cracks in old values amid fears about rock ’n’ roll, nuclear testing, “reds under the bed”, immigration and social breakdown, Blake accepted the additional­ role of police surgeon. He’s assisted by his friend Jean Beazley (Nadine Garner), with whom he became increasingly close, the unresolved sexual tension between them one of the shows enduring pleasures. Viewers avidly hung on for four seasons to see their first kiss.

Now, as season five gets under way in A Lethal­ Combination, Blake has finally popped the question to Jean and she has agreed, on the proviso that for now this happy secret stays between them. But, as Jean admits, “We might as well take an ad out in The Courier”, given their romance is now common knowledge. “About bloody time too,” says the dourly Protestant superintendent Matthew Lawson (Joel Tobeck), who has returned to run the local cops. “I thought you’d never get around to asking her.”

Things sour around them, though, when an exhibition boxing match — dubbed “Battle in Ballarat” — between Senior Sergeant Charlie Davis’s (Charlie Cousins) brother, Raging Ray Davis (Ethan Panizza), and “Mad Dog” Mickey Ellis (Troy Coward) results in the latter, the infamous­ local champion, seemingly beaten savagely to death by Davis. But when Blake becomes­ involved a medical inspection reveals a cardiac arrest, possibly brought on by poisoning. Lawson puts Charlie in charge of the invest­igation, complicated by the fact that their mother is in town with her new fiance, who ­happens to be Ray’s coach, the rather louche Bernie Thompson (John Waters).

It’s a strong episode to start this final season, its cultural subtext this time the continuing discrimination against people of colour (a superb performance in a smallish part by Greg Fryer as the Aboriginal cornerman and former boxing manager Lou Dixon) and the continuing problems of assimilation faced by post-war European migrants to Australia, many of whom dispersed themselves into rural areas.

Astutely directed by veteran Ian Barry (Police Rescue, A Place to Call Home), the brutal fight scenes, never easy to pull off successfully, are particularly well-realised by cinematog­rapher Craig Barden, and Barry has a nice touch with performance. There’s also a delightfully sleazy performance from Waters as the charismatic but morally dodgy Thompson; one of the merits of this show is the way it has provided such a showcase for the work of our best character actors.

And once again there should be applause for showrunner Adams and his writing team, who shift the cards that bear the names of the scenes and sequences, further annotating them, until, as Clive James wrote about the work of TV writers­’ teams, “the episode reveals the nervous system from which it will expand into a living fiction: that is, into a manageable reality”.

Why on earth would the ABC not want more of Dr Blake’s shenanigans?