#that's council estate jamie

[tartt9]

people: jamie owned roy's 2014 world cup kit before uncle's day me: okay liar & wrong how does it feel to be a liar, and wrong

[secretagentsagainstwhatever]

celebrities who pretend they came from working class backgrounds has to be my least favourite genre…

[its-time-to-write]

Hey!!! I hope you are doing well and with all life’s downs you have more ups!!! You’re a fantastic writer and love your voice! If you are willing/interested in could you write something involving the reader watching videos of little Jamie (like when things Georgie would have recorded of him at youth matches or school plays or just Jamie being a cheeky little bugger) and either it’s happening back at Manchester or a little career throwback video thing because he won something big or it’s like his 100th match at Richmond and the reader is helping put together this video to play for Jamie

Hey! Yeah I am doing well, just mega busy bc of holidays and everyone needing therapy and whatevs. Hope you’re well as well🩵🩵

play it back

“So he was always a little shit, huh?” you comment. You’re sitting on Georgie’s couch as you help her convert videos from old cameras to her computer.

“Oh yes,” she laughs. “But such a cute little bugger. Had the whole neighborhood wrapped around his finger.”

You click through videos, landing on one of him sitting on the grass. He’s not quite one, but he’s sitting up and clapping his pudgy hands.

“Oh my god, I can’t with that face,” you groan. “He’s too cute. I just want to squeeze him.”

“There’s a video of his first birthday party on here somewhere,” Georgie says, and you scramble to find it. You open a video of baby Jamie with his face covered in blue frosting. His hands are covered in chunks of cake, and he’s waving them around while laughing.

“The neighbors brought that cake over,” Georgie comments with a smile. “Jaim was being such a ham, making them laugh. He knew what he was doing, even then.”

You smile and continue forward. Baby Jamie in the tub, baby Jamie sleeping in his crib. Then toddler Jamie on Christmas.

“Show me what you’ve got,” comes Georgie’s voice from behind the camera.

Jamie’s tiny voice says, “It’s a fucking FOOTBALLLLL!” as he holds it over his head.

“Language, Jamie!” says Georgie, but you can tell she’s smiling. Jamie stands up and places the football on the ground.

Georgie says, “No, Jamie, don’t kick it in the-” and the camera tumbles to the ground. She swears, “Christ,” and it goes black.

“Classic,” you say.

Georgie chuckles a bit ruefully. “That was the beginning for him. Found it in a bargain bin and thought it’d get some of his fucking energy out. Think it just gave him more of a boost.”

The next is shaky footage of Jamie, aged six, as he runs on a pitch with other kids his age.

“Go, Jamieee!” Georgie screams. He barely looks at her as he kicks it into the goal, leagues ahead of the other team. He turns to his mum and gives her a thumbs up, followed by a swift two fingers up to the other team.

“Jamie, no!” Georgie shouts, and he switches back to a thumbs up and a shrug as if to say, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The video ends as the ref (someone’s father), pulls out a yellow card while trying to suppress laughter.

“Didn’t know you could get yellow cards at that age,” you grin.

“Well, you know Jamie; he played every part of that game,” Georgie replies.

“What are you on about?” Jamie asks, coming through the door. “Mum, you got the videos out?”

“She’s helping me put them on my new computer,” Georgie says. “Right helpful, she is. And tell me, what have you done today?”

Jamie blushes a bit. “Kicked the ball around the pitch. Soundly trounced some kids talking shit. Oh, and Simon and I went to get groceries.”

You raise an eyebrow. “And where are the groceries, Jamie?”

Jamie says, “Oh shit,” and rushes back outside to help Simon.

You roll your eyes affectionately and press play on the next video.

This one is another match, and Jamie’s older, maybe ten? It’s shot through the window of the council estate as he walks up, presumably from school. He’s dragging his feet but he’s got something in his hand.

“This was me birthday,” Georgie whispers.

“Whatcha got, Jaim?” Georgie asks as he swings the door open.

He smiles and launches himself into her arms, and for a moment, the camera is pointed at the ground. It gets righted and pointed at his smiling, dimpled face as he shoves a bundle of slightly wilted flowers into focus.

“Happy Birthday, Mummy!” he smiles. They’ve obviously been plucked on his walk back home from school.

“Thank you, baby,” she replies and again, you don’t need to see her to know she’s smiling. Georgie sweeps him into her arms as the video shuts off.

Georgie sniffs. “His dad had been round the day before. I had a fucking shiner to put the moon to shame that’s for sure, but my baby boy always knew how to get me smiling again.”

You lean your head against hers and she motions for you to keep on to the next video.

You click through a couple until you find one of him on the pitch again. It’s a couple years later and he’s a teenager, maybe thirteen, and he’s completely skipped the gangly phase you always thought was mandatory to growing up.

“He were twelve there,” Georgie says. “Got scouted in that very match.”

“Started me whole career,” Jamie interjects as he comes into the kitchen with an armful of bags. Simon’s right behind him, arms full as well.

You raise your eyebrows in surprise, but it’s not that shocking. You can tell he’s good, even at age twelve.

Jamie deposits the bags and wiggles into the non-existent space between you and Georgie.

“I was dead cute, weren’t I?” he asks.

“You were,” you agree. “Not sure what’s happened in recent years.”

Jamie protests with an, “Oi!” as you and Georgie dissolve into giggles. Simon (wisely) decides to stay out of it and busy himself with putting the food away.

“I’m putting these on the cloud so I can have that at home,” you tell Jamie, and he worms his way closer next to you.

“Mint. You gonna start a Jamie-table like mum, too?”

“Fuck no,” you reply. “You’re head’s fucking big enough as-is.”

“You like my big head,” he says, and you smack him.

“Not in front of your mum!” you shriek as he tickles your sides. Georgie gets up off the couch to go kiss Simon while Jamie continues to terrorize you, kissing all over your face as you make half-hearted attempts to push him off. He was cute back then, but your favorite version of Jamie is definitely the one you get to hold in your arms right now.

[rudeflower]

jamie tartt's surprisingly soft house

Hello my Apple+ trial ends in 14 minutes and I used my last screencaping seconds to make this post

SO when I watched through every time we went to Jamie's house (which I think was only 4 times, but see above I don't have time to check rn)

I was blown away by how much it clashed with Jamie's personal aesthetic. He actually describes it as "zippers, hoods or graffiti...where is the graffiti?"

Not in your house babe

Aside from some touches like lamps shaped like firearms, the house is all light colors, clean lines, candles, flowers and soft unique white lights. Bb keeps his mirror in front of the well maintained modest garden so he can look at two forms of beauty at once

It was weird and felt like a product of lack of thought going into the house aside from some weird lamps untillllllll

We go to his mom and stepdad's house back on the council estate and it's soft and gentle. The house feels like a secret world, white unique white lights, and floral paintings. It's so safe, this young man who has been on guard and masking for three seasons melts into safety.

His unusually soft gentle house is bringing the safety of home down to London with him. I have a theory that he bought this house thinking his mom and even Simon could come visit or even move in. He probably has tried to buy her a house more than once--huge ones, beautiful ones with big windows, but Georgie just wanted him to buy the council house for her, she's made a good home there. Still, Jamie chooses where and how to live just in case she decides to come move in. Maybe can't admit that the maintained garden, the floral paintings are for him too.

[lunar-years]

jamie purposely wearing lynx around roy just to annoy him is so funny but i also think about that post where jamie’s probably attached to the brand because of his upbringing in the council estate, and that being the most affordable brand for him growing up. and how scents can be specifically tied to memories etc. can’t wait for the tinsel fic!

Oh yeah absolutely that’s a holdover from his teenage years. I just knowww those academy dressing rooms are dank with the smell of many a 16 yr old’s Lynx 😭

After the season aired we had a really good discussion in the Discord about Roy & Jamie’s different perceptions of money and being rich and how much that’s effected/warped by their shared combination of growing up poor and then coming into a LOT of money pretty suddenly as a young adult. You can really see it in that one scene is s2(?) where Keeley tells Roy she’s getting a bottle of wine at Waitrose and Roy’s like woah are you the fucking queen? meanwhile the man is driving around his expensive car living in his posh neighborhood losing designer watches left and right like they’re nothing.

Like, I think they both can spend an outrageous amount of money on certain things (a rich person’s ~little treat~ lol) but scoff at the prices of the most random things because who on earth would pay that for that. And the things that fit into each category are different for each of them!

And honestly Jamie seems the more “frugal” of the two of them. I swear someone told me his sports car is an older model where they were pretty sure he would’ve bought it used? I might be making that up it was a while ago but I’m PRETTY SURE. Also he occasionally wears brands/clothes that are very close to regular-people-affordable as opposed to say, Keeley almost exclusively in her Versace, lmao. So I can definitely see him looking at perfumes/colognes and being like. Why would I buy this when Lynx (😭).

Meanwhile for whatever reason I think Roy is the sort of person to buy Keeley louboutins one day and then snap at her the next for leaving the light on in the bedroom as she’s applying makeup in the en-suite because it’s driving up their electricity bill 😅

[belmottetower]

3.11 - Council Estates and the Right To Buy

In 3.11, we saw Jamie go home to his mum’s, and we learned that she still lives in the council house that Jamie grew up in. This has interesting implications and possibly negative ones if construed the wrong way. In the Subjectify articles, we've already discussed those implications, because it's something I've been concerned about since we first saw the trailer shot of Jamie's childhood bedroom. I knew even then that the story beat would have to be about throwing back to the Roy poster - that's why they had to keep Georgie in the house Jamie grew up in, rather than have her in a new house elsewhere. It was a choice made specifically so Roy could see the poster. 

But in making sure that could happen, it leaves us with the unfortunate framing that Jamie didn't buy his mum a house when he got rich, and "buying your mum a house" is basically the first thing a working class footballer like him would do with his money. It's a really standard baseline. I have been nervously obsessing about Ted Lasso accidentally implying that Jamie wouldn’t have done that, for months now. I had already decided, before the episode aired, that if they did not clarify either way, I would have to assume that she did not want to leave the place she lived, and that rather than a new house, Jamie had bought her their old house on the Right To Buy, a government scheme introduced in the 1980s that allows most council tenants to buy their council home at a discount. (I do have issues with this policy generally, and the impact it had on the amount of council housing available, but that’s not for now.)

There is sort of a level of visual evidence for this - the inside of his mum’s house is really well maintained and clearly full of pretty expensive furniture and items. They definitely own it, and having now met her, gotten her vibe and seen the kind of house it is, it makes a huge amount of sense to me that she stayed there. It might have felt different if we saw a different KIND of council home, but in this specific situation, it tracks. 

There’s a bit in my primer about this, but in the UK, council housing comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Some of them will be flats in tower blocks (like the one Roy points to from the Westway sports pitch in 2.05 - in real life that is a council housing block in Ladbroke Grove and private apartment buildings like that simply don’t exist, Roy is a council estate kid too) or the flat fronted buildings with outdoor walkways (think Kingsman, or Rose’s place in Doctor Who) but a lot of them are houses like the one you see Jamie’s mum living in - solidly built terraced houses on car-free streets, inside the boundaries of an estate. Sometimes the estate in general contains both apartment blocks and rows of houses, with some green spaces built in too. That No Ball Games sign is a staple in any and all council estates across the UK and is ignored in council estates up and down the country by children just like the ones seen in this episode and it is lovely to think about Jamie once doing the same thing. I really liked getting to see the kind of estate he grew up on.

So, TL:DR - they would own that house now, even though it’s on an estate, otherwise they would not be eligible to still be living in it. And it’s not universally horrible to live on a council estate, or in a street of ex-estate houses.

But that “Jamie didn’t buy her a house” discourse is definitely brewing - I have seen people discussing this already as “wrong,” and I agree that it is wrong in the sense of they should have taken a line or two to clarify the way that situation might have worked, specifically to not accidentally paint Jamie in a bad light. What I don’t agree with is that it’s “wrong” for her to have stayed put - that living in that area, in that type of house, on that estate is somehow inherently bad and a situation she should have been rescued from by Jamie. And at this point, insisting that she should leave or have something better is swiftly bordering on classist.

There are a lot of stereotypes that exist about working class families and council estates. That they’re all shitty places to live, that everyone who lives in them is a benefits scrounger, or a druggie, or an alcoholic, or are involved in crime or gangs. Frankly it’s an awful stereotype that just furthers the classism and class divide in the UK. There are issues in some places, but it is not ubiquitous. Georgie clearly had Jamie pretty young and would have been granted a “family home” house by the council. Living in a little cul de sac like that, it’s very likely she had a strong community of neighbors, other families with kids who all would have supported one another. She would have been looked after, as a young single mum, and Jamie would have been safe to run about and be cared for by everyone in the street if Georgie was working. It would not have been perfect, but it may have felt safe and warm in its own way.

So once Jamie got rich - given that Georgie doesn’t seem to have any other kids who might benefit from a bigger house or anything - I can honestly see Jamie trying to buy her a fancy house somewhere else and her being like “What the fuck would I do in some fancy suburb in Chesire? This is my home, I’ll stay here thanks,” and so Jamie just bought her the council house they’d grown up in and paid to get it renovated and done up nicely so Simon could have his laboratory, and Georgie a nice place to live, with her friends still close by. Except for his childhood bedroom, which she clearly refused to let him touch and him being the biggest mummy’s boy ever he didn’t argue. 

Britain used to be incredibly proud of its strides in social welfare, and council housing was once very good quality building work. (If you ever want to watch a show that depicts the origins of, and pride in, social welfare for the working class communities in the UK in a beautiful, nuanced way that will make you sob every other episode please go and watch Call the Midwife from the beginning and come scream at me about it.) These are desirable homes - in fact, Right to Buy aside, a lot of older council housing, both houses and flats, are “de-counciled” and sold off privately to new home buyers who were never in the welfare system. I actually rent an ex-council flat in London, from a landlord who bought it privately. And I have a friend of a friend who privately bought and renovated an ex-council terrace almost exactly like Georgie’s. It’s not the greatest thing when council housing gets privatized, especially when the new replacements are of such terrible quality. But the original places are built to last, so Georgie’s house definitely could be done up to a high standard once they had the right to do improvements that were not the bare minimum of the overstretched housing organization. And between Right To Buy, private sales, and people who are still in the council housing system, an estate like Georgie’s these days may have any number of privately owned homes mixed in, and different incomes and circumstances within the same street or block of flats. Some are quite gentrified and even trendy.

I’m explaining this so people know the context when they talk about a council estate like the one we saw. I think there is a tendency to want to make Jamie’s background and childhood the most traumatic it could have possibly been, even more so than is on screen, and so it’s possible people who are less familiar with the UK and how council housing works or what council estates are like, could think that Jamie’s home growing up and the estate he lived on was awful and shitty and very very rough. And that could have been the case if he had lived on one of the rougher estates or in a flat in tower block that was falling apart and hard to do up not worth salvaging (a lot of them are being torn down) but that is not the kind of place the episode chose to show us. So now, having seen it, saying “How dare Ted Lasso not show him buying his mum a big house in order to help escape his traumatic upbringing and dirty poverty life” is honestly not a great take and is a pretty classist way to look at the millions of families in the UK that live in council housing. The episode absolutely should have stated that he bought that house rather than risk letting anyone think she’s still living within the welfare system because Jamie didn’t take care of her, but there’s a difference between that and removing her from the environment entirely if she was happy and at home there.

But speaking of adding extraneous trauma, there’s another element of Jamie having been brought up on an estate that I also want to talk about. 

As someone who has been, in my fic, flying the flag for Jamie’s mum being alive and lovely and for them to have been super close for what feels like an eternity, this episode was so so so good for me. I’ll be honest, I always found the fact that some people were certain Jamie’s mum was dead quite baffling, because in the show, the way he talks about his mum right as far back as Two Aces, using present tense means it always seemed clear she was alive and I really just took the “Don’t think she would be lately” part about not being proud to mean that she didn’t know how he had been acting at Richmond, in training, with Ted and Sam, because he didn’t tell her. Not that she’d died, or had become estranged or something.

And then even aside from like, grammar, I just never thought the show depicted Jamie as someone who had suffered the loss of a parent. Especially when you compare him with Ted - who we all know did. Jamie was just not written as a character who is carrying around grief, especially recent grief, and his apology to Roy in season 2 proves it - "I aint used to being around dead people. It just, it did something to me, emotionally." This is very different to Roy’s explanation of why he acted so weirdly towards Keeley at the funeral itself - namely that memories of his grandad’s death were messing with him. It would be a very weird choice by the writers to have Jamie lie and say he hadn’t been around death if he had lost his mum.

So yeah, I always thought she was alive, and I always assumed - based on the ages kids tend to get scouted and acknowledged as good by the academies - that James hadn’t been around much until Jamie’s mid to late teens, and as such that Jamie didn’t ever live with James, just saw him occasionally. He certainly would not have ever had custody rights, if he walked out when Jamie was a baby and showed back up when he was 14.

But while I found the “Jamie’s mum is dead '' takes surprising, I almost preferred them to the theories and fics (sorry, people have the right to write what they want in fic, but I just hate it) that his mum was probably an alcoholic or a drug addict, or absent, or complicit to the James abuse, or just generally a bit shit and anything less than fantastic. Because Jamie talks about her in nothing but the nicest, softest terms, and Jamie himself - when not in his prime prick era, which legitimately only lasts for about three episodes - is the nicest, softest boy with the strongest sense of self. Even if he’d never mentioned his mum, his whole personality felt like it was the product of an upbringing with a whole lot of love and kindness and nurturing and being made to feel special. 

The swiftness with which he reverted to sweetness and openness even in season 1, as well as his natural ego, the funny version of it, felt like his natural state of being, not a new development, and I always attributed this to his mum, which we now obviously know to be true. I’ve seen lots of people this week saying “As soon as we saw Jamie with his mum, EVERYTHING about him suddenly made sense,” and I am thrilled that people see this now, because this is what I always thought. I reverse engineered what his mum must be like based on his character so far, and it turned out just as I thought but even more so. I’ve also seen ideas that even if nothing was “wrong” with her, Jamie was somewhat estranged from her due to James and also sounding wistful when talking about her, or something, but I very much disagree. The two times he’s spoken about her, he has ALSO been talking about James, which was the thing he was sad about - they weren’t moments where he was being peppy and enthusiastic about how much he loved his mum. But also, now that we’ve met her and seen them together, I can kind of imagine him talking wistfully about her after not seeing her for like, a month, just because he is always missing her, LOL.

Anyway, how people interpreted their closeness or estrangement before this week is obviously something we did not know for a fact. The thing is, what we did know is that she was a single mum and that Jamie lived on a council estate in North Manchester, and that knowledge is what made me really side-eye some of the interpretations that framed her as either an addict or a kind of deadbeat figure that meant they had a bad relationship in some way. Because in the UK, there are a lot of stereotypes and stigmas around single mums in general, but in particular working class single mums who live on council estates. It’s really really awful and often revolves around them being unemployed, benefits scroungers, being neglectful or abusive, being drug addicts or sex workers, and it’s a really pervasive part of UK society and classism, and it felt like the details we knew about Jamie’s childhood on an estate is why people leant that way about his mum in a way they wouldn’t have if the council estate thing hadn’t been specified.

Where I work, we represent people across the UK and help get their stories shared to impact politicians. In one instance we got someone we represent onto the national news to talk about the cost of living crisis. She’s a single mum. When the clip got shared on social media she faced so much abuse and harassment and stigma because of these pervasive ideas people have about single mums and ended up having to delete her social media to get away from it. It was deeply upsetting to her, myself and my coworkers.

So I honestly always found fic or meta in which a character who, based on canon, is only ever mentioned as being attentive, loving and someone Jamie has a good relationship with, was portrayed along the above lines really hard to read. It just always felt rooted in the worst kind of stereotypes and classism, even if not intentionally. Anyway, point is…I am so fucking thrilled that we finally got to meet Jamie’s mum, that Georgie is lovely and kind and cuddly and supportive, that Jamie is an even bigger mummy’s boy than I ever could have dreamed, and that he even had a bonus soft baker stepdad father figure who had been around long enough to know that Roy Kent’s poster never left Jamie’s room. And the fact that his parents live in a house they now own, on a council estate where Georgie had a long-established community, is a perfectly fine choice. It isn’t something you need to retcon, you just need to know about the Right to Buy scheme.

[abubblingcandle]

Personal Beliefs and Headcanons about Jamie Tartt's upbringing

This is a continuation of a discussion with @fanficfanattic that was kinda derailing talk about Phil Dunster's approach to Jamie Tartt's accent but is something that I am super passionate about so did want to put somewhere and foster discussion with other people about it.

Disclaimer - Again I am not someone who grew up in this exact situation that we see Jamie in but it permeates through my life and my family. I can only talk about things like this from personal experience and how much I relate to Jamie being from a working class Northern family and currently being in my mid 20s with parents who were in poverty and one who lived in council housing. Those of you who have read my fanfics know that I put a lot of my specific experiences into talks about Jamie's backstory (I have literally today been writing more of a chapter where Jamie talks about cheap ways that his mum tried to keep him out of trouble during the summer holidays lol) and so I am always happy to talk about hyperspecific headcanons or my experiences if anyone wants to

So yeah, the discussion was about Jamie being a battler partially because of where he was raised not just because of his father

Jamie as a battler is something that is so so important to me. He even says it in S1 “do you think I could have got from a council estate in North Manchester to the Premier League just by doing what everyone else did” and it gets sort of brushed off as a teachable moment with Keeley saying people are just trying to help him and he needs to let them. It doesn’t get talked about much more than as a part of his smugness and selfishness in S1 but it is more than likely that given Jamie’s history there would have been so few if any people in his past that did just want to help him for the sake of helping him. It also ties into his obsession with Ted’s actions being mind games. Because having people genuinely wanting him to succeed just because he’s Jamie ... foreign idea. 

I can just see Baby Jamie at a criminally underfunded primary school in North Manchester telling everyone that he was going to be a premier league footballer and getting fond laughs and being told that maybe if he worked hard he might be able to get into a good trade, like an electrician. (For me I wanted to be an journalist and was told that maybe a simple good paying job like an air hostess or a hairdresser would be a much better target, not like that’s stayed with me or anything). 

Even if you take James Tartt Sr out of the picture, Jamie would have had to fight for everything and stand up for himself to achieve his goals. It is likely as a young single mum that Georgie would have been out a lot working leaving Jamie to look after himself from a young age and do things like making sure he got to football training (showing that drive and that fact he mentioned, he had to be different to other people to succeed) and little things like making sure he looked after his kit himself so it was ready and lasted as long as possible.

The second part to this is the fact that mindset is so so so hard to lose. My mum worked her arse off and got herself out of that cycle of extreme poverty through smarts and luck and even though we now have enough to live on, there are little things about being raised in an environment where you were an afterthought and didn’t have enough that don’t leave you - either through over compensating the other way (when you have money spending it frivolously because suddenly buying that nice thing you want wouldn't mean that you don't eat) or refusing to spend money on something because you don't need to and it's a waste to spend it (even if the amount of money doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things anymore). I see Jamie mostly in the first category (the designer clothes, fancy cars, sculptures in his house, willing to buy everyone PS5s to get them to like him without batting an eye at the cost) but likely with little money saving things that he just can't shake.

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

I've got a headcanon of jamie having problems with food, not an eating disorder, but some kind of issues. Between his autistic coding (flappy hands et al) and the food behaviours which can come with that, and his growing up poor (council estate) and the strict nutrition plan he's on for football, I just see him as having a limited diet and some issues around trying new foods.

I can definitely see that! Like when he's little, Georgie finds a handful of foods that a) Jamie can eat b) she can afford and c) he can prepare on his own if necessary, and then just never really has the time or money to try expanding beyond that since she likely wouldn't be able to afford to replace anything Jamie hadn't tried before if it turned out he couldn't eat it.

So his first consistent encounter with new foods would probably be from school lunches — I don't really know how the football academy system works, but I assume the meals they eat on campus/at training are based around some kind of meal plan guidelines — and staying over or living with his dad. James seems like he would both have very strong opinions about what Jamie should and shouldn't be eating for football (likely without any scientific basis) and be a "suck it up and eat it anyway" type of parent when it comes to sensory issues, which is obviously a pretty terrible combination.

I could see pre-teen/teenage Jamie developing a relationship with food where stuff on his meal plan falls into the narrow category of both providing the necessary nutrients for football and not triggering his sensory issues, while anything outside of that is automatically unappealing because he's never really had the experience of being able to try a bit of something, find that he hates it, and not have to finish eating it anyway. Which could also contribute to his difficulty eating during his 3x11 depression spiral, as the prospect of seeing his dad again might bring up some of those negative associations with food and (at least for me) stress tends to worsen sensory issues.

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

For the Word Game: Gentle or Smile?

Thank you, my lovely friend!

Gentle from thought i wanted love ('til you showed me what it was):

Dad arrived shortly with a cheese toastie, medication, water and an ice pack for his ankle, as promised. Jamie watched wearily as his father gripped his ankle again; fright shot through him at his father’s hands on his vulnerable limb. But James' touch was gentle as he wrapped the ice pack around Jamie’s injury and it should have relaxed Jamie but only made him more leery. His Dad was always suspiciously caring after an outburst after all. As he sat there being the dutiful patient under his father’s watchful gaze, every one of Jamie’s synapses was firing at him, telling him one thing: run.

Sprinted and added 355 words, here's a snippet:

Jamie began to feel nauseous, not used to eating much in the last few days and he tried to leave the sandwich on the table.  “You’re not gonna finish it?” “I’m getting kind of full. Can I save it for later?” “Bread’s gonna get all fucking soggy,” James said, grabbing the plate. “Waste of a fucking sandwich. You got all this money now you don’t care about wasting food. Guess it’s nothing to you though. Growing up if I didn’t finish a sandwich me mum would backhand me for it. Make me finish it and then backhand me again for the trouble I caused her. You’re lucky.” Jamie swallowed hard to keep from saying what he wanted to say, to remind his dad that he grew up in a council estate too and that he barely paid his mum anything. Remind him that the backhands came anyway, even with clean plates at his dad’s flat. But even with a concussion, Jamie knew better than that.

Smile from to you dying (tentative title of the season 1 version of jamie get's hit by a car saving Roy):

A woman barely older than Roy rushed into the room soon after they settled in the room upstairs. Jamie didn’t have many pictures in his house, but there was one that Keeley always loved. Jamie, all knees and elbows, about six years old with a gap-tooth smile, with a woman younger than Keeley was now. They had the same happy grin, and Keeley could never help her own when she looked at the photo, at her boyfriend with a mop of unruly hair smiling next to his mum.  His mum wasn’t smiling now. No, she had clearly spent the last few hours in tears, much like Keeley had. 

Added 257 words in a sprint :)

“Your niece is a cute kid. Hell of a kick if I remember correctly, too,” Ted rubbed absentmindedly at his nose. “She must take after her dad, though; you and your sister look so much alike. She home with him with your sister working? You two close? Brother-in-laws can be tough. Michelle’s brother–” “No. He’s a piece of shit, and I don’t want to talk about him and don’t want to talk with you about my fucking niece either.” “I’m sorry–” Roy stood up, paced across the room and back, paced back to the door, and stopped abruptly at the foot of Jamie’s bed, his hands gripping the footboard. He stared at Jamie’s still form, trying to recall all the stupid shit the prick had said or done in the past 6 months, trying to feel anything but crushing guilt when looking at the injured man.

[jon-astronaut]

okay but Jamie Tartt growing up in a council estate with a young, single mother and abusive dad that only wanted something back from him and that hurt him, working his way up to becoming a good footballer, despite the environment he grew up in and the culture of football surrounding him, despite all the odds and bets against him, bettering himself, acknowledging his worst parts and working on himself, becoming an even better footballer on the way and a better man, teammate and friend, making his way to the national team to represent his country...amazing arc. 

[the-casbah-way]

i've read quite a few fics about jamie and malcolm that focus on jamie growing up in motherwell or glasgow and the way it's depicted bothers me so much as someone who grew up in the working class council estates in lanarkshire and edinburgh. some of the fics i've read genuinely treat jamie's home like it's a slum. they make it seem grimy and ugly and unsafe and horrible. as if that's why jamie wants to leave his home, and not because of more realistic issues like his home life or family or a desire to go somewhere bigger / different. 'deprived' areas aren't horrible scary shiteholes where everyone is just waiting for the chance to escape. i'm tired of middle class people looking at places that look like my childhood home and thinking up images of crime and destitution and hopelessness. places that look like jamie's home are the same as the places that hold some of the best memories i have of my entire life. i see a scottish council estate and see some of the most precious people and experiences i've ever known because guess what. it's just a place. it's someone's home. not because they're trapped there and they don't have a choice so they're forced to 'make the most of it'. it's just home. you don't have to understand it or like it or want to live there yourself, but at least try and be normal about areas that don't look like your middle class view of the world

[tartt9]

that movie has got me Thinking Hard about the british class system and how it affected jamie growing up

[thirteenemeraldcats]

i don't know if you're still taking roses but 🌹🌹🌹🌹

So about two weeks ago I said I would finish the untitled-jamie-blue-screen-day fic within the week if it killed me. Well consider this me ghost-posting because it's STILL NOT DONE, and apparently I spent too long staring at it because my brain decided it had had enough angst and spat a non-angsty new-wip at me instead. Whoops.

“The fuck are you apologising for?” “I dunno.” Jamie does the stupid head tilt thing that makes him look like a walnut-mist coloured fucking Labrador. "I’m just sorry, I guess.” Roy watches as Jamie straightens his head back up; his brows crunch together, his eyes slide away and his mouth drops lax. All sure signs that he’s trying to string more than two consecutive thoughts together. “I grew up in a council estate.” God help them both if that’s all the little idiot’s come up with. 

[its-time-to-write]

I AM RUSHING TO GET THIS IN!!!

Friends to lovers maybe with a disabled reader?? Maybe she's someone he knew from back home who he runs into at a diner she's working at now. Maybe she feels like he abandoned her and her life fell apart when he moved away?

ANyway love you lots!!!

warning: there’s a lot of parentheses (it’s a choice) and a lot of swearing (I do what I want)

reader’s dialogue/feelings are based off my own experiences so if u read this and are like ??? don’t worry about it. i’m just projecting. the chronic illness is unspecified.

LOVE U BABE

you’ll probably date her

It’s hard enough growing up in a council estate in a shit part of Manchester (although you’d staunchly defend there’s no such thing as a shit part of Manchester) but it’s harder with fucking chronic illness. It manifests is clumsiness (joint pain), fidgeting (widespread pain), and bruising (skin problems).

Not to mention the fucking tiredness.

School is complete shit all the time, and life is complete shit all the time too. 

Okay fine, not all the time, but a lot of the time.

There are bright spots in between flare ups, bright spots that consist of learning how to bake with Simon (Jamie’s stepdad) and petting Roy (Jamie’s cat) and watching horribly cheesy movies with Georgie (Jamie’s mum).

Oh, and Jamie. 

You’ve known Jamie since birth, probably, when your mum brought you home and Jamie sat down on the saggy couch, aged two, and asked, “When does it open its eyes?”

He took it upon himself to look after you, magnanimous in a way he would not have been if you were actually related to him (thank god). When he starts to get tired of you, he can go back home to his own room and his own mum and hug her tight without having to share her with anyone else.

When you’re three and he’s five, you get a diagnosis. Jamie says, “That’s shit,” when your mum tells him you can’t play, and you’re told that you echo him with your first swear. 

“That’s shit,” comes your tiny voice from the sofa, face down and covered in bags of frozen peas.

Your mum is too surprised by the first words you’ve said all day, that she a) doesn’t scold you and b) doesn’t catch Jamie as he slips by her into the house. He sits on the floor and starts to tell you about primary school and helps your mum when it’s time to put the peas back in the slightly-broken freezer.

It goes like that for years. 

When you’re feeling well, you kick a football around with Jamie. When you’re feeling poorly, he climbs the steps to your room and tells you things, anything at all to distract you from the pain ripping through your body.

It’s nice. It makes you feel, like, someone cares, almost? Or someone understands? Or maybe the world isn’t carrying on without you, that a piece of it does stop when you do, and maybe you aren’t entirely alone.

You first realize you like Jamie (like-like) when you’re twelve and it feels like ice-cold water has been poured on your head, but not exactly in an unwelcoming way.

A shock, sure, but a soothing one.

You don’t tell him, but you think he probably knows. He’s not an idiot, he’s had girls swooning all over him since he was eight. 

(And your mum knows, and she and Georgie talk, and Georgie tells Jamie to be extra nice to you and maybe a little bit careful not to be mean about it.)

He carefully slips on your small bed when you’re fifteen and he’s sixteen (almost seventeen, but it’s the one time of the year when you’re only a year apart) and balances on his side so he can look at you.

“You’ll be alright?” he asks, and you don’t have to ask what he’s talking about.

He’s going to play for Manchester (City, not United, and not the Premier League Team), and it’s all you’ve been able to think about.

You don’t say anything, so he gingerly pats your head. It messes up your hair, but it also feels like tiny electric sparks are shooting through your body (not the pain kind).

He lays there for a long time, whispering about secondary school and football and making enough money to buy houses for everyone he’s ever loved, you included.

(He promises he’ll call all the time.)

—

He does call, until he doesn’t.

Some days are good, some days are bad, and now the bad days feel like they’re your fault.

“You’re overdoing it,” your boss says, “You need to slow down or you’ll be out sick tomorrow.”

You bite back the words I’m doing my fucking best, and just nod. Fuck him, and fuck this. You can work just the same as everyone else, pain be damned. There are fucking bills to pay and yeah, this shit hurts, but what the fuck are you supposed to do. Benefits aren’t enough at the moment, and it’s been a solid two years since you’ve given up on waiting for a knight in shining armor (even if that knight is in the Premier League now, just like he always swore he’d be).

Your boss is fucking right the fucker, but you push through on Friday (it’s fucking shit) and crash on Saturday (it’s even more fucking shit).

Your mum places bags of frozen fruit on your joints, rearranging the pillows on the floor. You’ve long since outgrown the couch, instead needing more space. Your dad moved the coffee table, saying, “It’s on its last legs anyway,” and the space you called a living room now became a treatment room of sorts.

Georgie and Simon come over all the time for family dinner (potluck-style) and they are comfortable enough step over you or sit down on the floor to talk.

It sounds worse than it is, but when they’re in the flat it feels better, all warm and glowy, like things are right.

Nights are the worst, with the moving around trying to get comfortable, so you’re awake bright and early on Sunday morning. Early enough to sit on a bench in front of the estates, bundled up in your duvet and puffing cold air out into the sky.

You hear footsteps splashing down the tunnel, someone on their way home after a long night. Or maybe it’s one of the many kids who like to sneak out to play footie in hopes that they’ll be the next Jamie Tartt.

He’s not that great, you want to tell them, except you don’t even believe it yourself. He is that great, he’ll always be that great, and you should have fucking known that he was going to fuck off and fuck a gorgeous, carefree model and not you. 

(Not that you want to fuck him. Well, you do, but you also want to, like, hold his hand.)

It was always going to end up this way, you should have known not to actually have real feelings for him, you should have left it at a childhood crush and not let yourself believe something could actually happen.

The footsteps pass you by, and it’s a man in a baseball hat and an awful silk-print tracksuit carrying a Gucci travel bag.

He’s out of place here, and you wonder if he’s lost. But no, he strides up to Georgie and Simon’s door like he owns the place, pulls out a key, and walks right in. It’s only after the door swings shut behind him that you realize it’s Jamie.

“Oh shit,” you whisper, clouds accompanying the words.

(You won’t admit it, but the surprise has rebooted your system a little bit, aching limbs forgotten for a moment.)

—

“This is shit,” you say as you lean on your fucking cane of all things. “It’s one thing if it’s Simon and Georgie, it’s another fucking thing if it’s Jamie fucking Tartt.”

“That’s a lot of fucking fucks,” your father says sagely, ignoring the glare you send his way and saying ow as your mum swats the back of his head.

“It’s only two fucks and one shit,” you tell him. “And I’m not going.”

“Then I’ll tell them to come over here,” your mum says placidly. 

Absolutely not. Also-fucking-lutely not.

“I am going to my room,” you say with dignity, turning to go back up the stairs.

Your dad waves, the prick. “Have fun,” he says helpfully. You flip him off without looking, and you know for a fact he’s doing it back. You know he’ll be up in an hour with a plate of dinner and sneak you early desert.

There is no fucking way you’re seeing Jamie after two years like this.

The cane is a relatively new development and sure, it’s helpful with walking sometimes, but a cane? The fuck were the doctors thinking when they suggested this? You’re barely twenty, not a damn convalescent. 

By the time you make it to your room, the doorbell’s ringing and voices are filling the flat. You reach for your bottle of pills and carefully tap the right amount into your hand (even though you know there is no drug on earth to calm down your traitor heart).

You lay down flat on your back with no immediate plans to move. You find your playlist and slip an earbud in, letting the music take you somewhere else. Somewhere where you don’t hurt for no reason, where you can focus like you’re supposed to, where you aren’t so damn tired all the time.

There’s a tap on your door.

“Come in,” you call to your dad, except the door opens and it’s Jamie, no longer in his stupid outfit from earlier, but in a nice jumper that you think might be Simon’s.

He smiles like he didn’t abandon you and sits down on the floor. You hand him the other earbud (it’s better than talking) and let Stevie Nicks croon in your ear.

“How’ve you been?” he asks (the prick) and you have half a mind to ignore him. 

“It’s been two years,” you remind him. “Try again.”

Jamie looks stricken. “Right, yeah, I know, it’s just- I’ve been busy.”

“Yup,” you reply. “Me too.”

(The cane is leaning on the wall by the door, and you need Jamie to not notice it.)

Jamie points to the cane. “That’s new.”

“Yep,” you say because it’s not the same as yup. It has a different vowel. It’s a different word, you’re having a civil conversation, your brain is making sentences just fine.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He sounds like he means it, which is worse. “I went through some shit, you know? It don’t excuse it, but… got a new gaffer, Keeley dumped me, then I got sent back to City right when I were getting better. It’s been shit. I’ve been shit,” he corrects.

Your arm’s falling asleep so you shift, trying to stifle a groan.

Jamie’s up in a moment, all concern. “You alright?”

“Clearly,” you gasp out as savagely as possible. “Fuck off, alright? I don’t need your pity, not now, so go find some other charity case.”

Fucking flare-ups. Fucking Jamie. Fucking chronic illness and its fucking lack of a cure.

Jamie looks like he’s been slapped. To be fair, you would if you could get in the right position.

“You’re not charity,” he says, and unfortunately (and again) he sounds like he fucking means it.

“Okay,” you say. “That’s fucking mint. Thanks for staying such a good friend all these years, it’s been real fucking fun. I’ve got to lie here in discomfort, so I imagine you’ll be leaving now. Goodbye.”

Jamie stares at you a moment, then leaves.

—

It’s a good day. It’s a good day and it’s raining and you don’t even care because it’s a good day. Nothing can ruin it (this isn’t a premonition) not even stupid Jamie showing up out of nowhere.

(It’s a little bit of a premonition.)

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says when he turns up in his mum’s kitchen, an hour before he’s supposed to be home. You’re supposed to be long gone by now, but you and Simon have cheese pinwheels in the oven that aren’t done for another twenty minutes, so now you’re stuck here until then.

“Fucking mint,” you say, just like the night before. Simon freezes but Georgie just rolls her eyes. 

“We’ll be in the other room, loves,” she says. “Jamie, don’t be a fucking idiot.”

You tell him, “I’m having a good day, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fucking ruin it.”

“You’re not a charity case,” he says, and you think maybe he is broken, but like a record is broken, not like a teacup.

Jamie says, “I weren’t lying about going through shit,” and you snap (like a rubber band, not a bone).

“Big fucking deal, Jamie, you’ve been going through shit since you were six years old. I’ve been going through shit too, in case you didn’t fucking notice. It’s not an excuse to be a shitty person or a shitty friend,” you burst out.

“I didn’t say it as an excuse, it’s just a fucking reason,” Jamie shouts back. “Jesus Christ, you’re not the only person with fucking problems! You’re allowed to be mad shitty sometimes, I didn’t ever complain, so why’s it fucking different for me?”

You open your mouth to tell him why it’s fucking different, except you don’t actually have a reason. How many times did you sit with him as he iced his knee, or his face, or his arm while you iced your back, or your chest, or your legs?

Pain is pain, your fucking government-issued therapist had said. And shit if she isn’t right.

“You abandoned me,” you reply, voice small. “You left me for Keeley and I wouldn’t have minded, I really wouldn’t have. I just wanted to talk to you.”

Jamie rubs his face with a sigh. “Didn’t know how to talk to you, after. I knew you liked me since we were kids and I liked you too, so it felt fucking… weird. Dunno. But, I was with her because it was what I was supposed to do and she was mad fit and fucking funny. I’ve had a crush on her for fucking… ages.”

“Right,” you say, feeling one millimeter tall, “I get that.”

Jamie shakes his head and says, “Nah, you don’t.” (The fuck does he mean? He can’t read your mind).

“You don’t get it,” he continues. “Had a crush on her, didn’t I? Not the same as you. You were proper in love with me, and I…” he trails off.

“He was proper in love with you too,” comes Georgie’s voice.

Jamie turns bright red and you do too, and it’s like you’re kids again and he’s in your bed and you’re trying not to think about how close his lips are to yours.

“That’s… well, that’s…” You try and fail to come up with the right words.

“Yeah,” Jamie says, still blushing. “Yeah, suppose I was. Couldn’t do anything about it, then. Could do something about it now. If you’ve forgiven me.” He says it casually, like he won’t mind if you tell him to go away out of his own mum’s house and never return, when in reality he’ll burn up and die if you do.

“I will. I do,” you say. “I’m sorry too, I am. I can be a prick sometimes.”

Jamie shrugs, but he’s smiling a little. “I’m a prick all the time, love. Fucking… fucked childhood or some shit.”

“Some shit,” you echo. “So, proper in love with me, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Proper. Wrote my first name with your last on every bit of paper I could get me hands on, didn’t I?”

“Fuck off,” you say with a grin.

“It’s true,” Simon shouts from the sofa. “Found some bits when I was cleaning one day.”

Wait. Simon didn’t move in until Jamie was a teenager. That means… 

“Oh my god, were you fifteen when you were writing that? You weren’t even a kid anymore! What the fuck Jamie, you had it bad!” you tease.

“Fuck off, it was just a stupid joke,” he says defensively.

“Uh huh, sounds like,” you say as you go to wrap your arms around him. “You liked me.”

“Fuck’s sake,” he grumbles, leaning down to kiss your head. He’s never going to fucking live this down.

[cuppachar]

I feel that people often idealise Jamie's childhood in any way that doesn't involve his dad. I see all these takes that make it seem like oh yeah he had an abusive dad but beside that he lived happily with Georgie and they didn't have much money but they were happy and content and things were good.

But it's Canon that he grew up on a council estate in North manchester in the late 90s early 2000s. Council estates in north manchester at that time weren't quaint and wholesome, the violent crime rates were crazy. He definitely saw a fair bit of violence (Plus, while Georgie obviously loves jamie loads, the fact she let his abusive alcoholic dad around him up to at least 14 years old indicates that maybe she wasn't always the best at keeping jamie safe from bad people growing up.)

Hi Anon

I've always had a view that Jamie's childhood was a struggle - I've got this head-canon that Jamie was torn between Jame's and Georgie, this conflict of a father's expectations and Jamie being influenced to dominate, not because of being conditioned - although Jame's likely had a massive impact on Jamie's personality and attitude, but because he feared the consequences of not 'dominating'.

Realistically, we really don't know much about Jamie's relationship with his mother (or Simon) and only saw the briefest of insights in S3, that indicated he had a good and happy relationship with them. I think the ritual scene on S1 hinted it wasn't always like that - when Jamie acknowledged he didn't think his mum would be proud of him (although that could also have been Jamie's own unaddressed fears).

I think a lot of fans/viewers hope that Jamie had some happy and safe place with his mum and while I agree with you that Georgie might have known about Jame's abusiveness, part of me wonders how much Jamie tried to hide from her?

I hate to think that Jamie had to choose between his parents - and I don't think Georgie would have made him - but there's a possibility the situation made Jamie think he had to, due to fear of consequences to himself or his mum?

Also, I'd love to know more about Jamie and Simon and how Jamie reacted to this completely different man to his own father. Did Jamie have difficulty accepting him as his stepfather? Did he have trouble trusting another male figure in his life?

I don't think anything was easy for Jamie and I just want to learn so much more.

[snarling-through-our-smiles]

I called Jamie’s mom being exactly like Keeley 15 years in the future if she stayed on a council estate and I was RIGHT