Tumgik
teashoesandhair · 6 hours
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 1 day
Text
A reminder (announcement? I forget what I've posted on here; I'm in my thirties and my memory is nought but a lipstick stain on a discarded napkin from 1830, or thereabouts) that my Sapphic Gothic WIP is based on Cragside, inspired by the Victorian ideas about electricity and its potential to act as a medium through which to communicate with the dead.
Sapphic Gothic WIP, which has the working title Underthorpe, follows a maid harbouring a dreadful secret, who finds herself employed in a huge, sprawling house, full of experimental electrical circuits, owned by an enigmatic, reclusive scientist. The longer she's there, the more convinced she becomes that the house knows her secrets, and that the only way to keep herself safe is to get to the heart of the house itself. But the heart of the house isn't what she thinks, and neither is her own.
It's specifically that second spark photograph above which really underpins the whole WIP. It reminded me of Victorian concepts of the relationship between electricity and life / death. A black spark; two pinpoints of darkness, an attempt at bridging the chasm between them with brilliant tendrils of light.
For all my glibness in the original post, 4 years ago, I was only visiting Cragside at all because I'd just watched my fourth close relative die in front of me in the space of 8 months, and I'd packed a suitcase and driven up to Northumberland with my sister the same afternoon. I don't think I'd have been thinking of hauntings if I hadn't been haunted myself. As it was, I stood in those rooms and I wondered what it would be like to be haunted in a house like that; grand, experimental, neither one thing nor the other, impossible for anyone to understand unless you lived there, and possibly not even then. A bit like grief, really.
So, Sapphic Gothic WIP is coming. Or, as I like to call it:
Tumblr media
Have you tried turning the house off and on again?
Today I went to the first house to be lit by hydroelectricity and then I perished from excitement, sorry
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Can you BELIEVE the Arts and Crafts influence?? Can you FATHOM these electrical discharge plate images??!
Tumblr media Tumblr media
I will not Rest until I am the new owner of Cragside House and I can spend all day playing with electricity and losing at billiards
2K notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 1 day
Note
Your grief tag really, really helped me cope with a sudden and horrible loss at the start of this year, and I saw that it's the anniversary today for you, and sorry if this is weird or intrusive, but, well, I wrote a poem for you, and him, and all of us, really. Hope you like it.
"There's been a loss in the family."
Such inadequate words, to try and describe the hole now left in the world by his absence
Even the word for how you were related to him seems too small,
Too simple to encompass all that he was and meant to you.
Uncle
It was your sister who coined the epithet
Her infant mouth still unable to shape the letters of his name,
She instead dubbed him a title he would never shake -
Not that he wanted to.
Uncle Man
He pretended the name annoyed him
Even as he wore it like a crown,
Proudly signing every card with it
And few things pleased him more than the arrival of the weekend, heralded by two small voices chanting -
Uncle Man, Uncle Man
There is much in life that is unfair
But a life without him in it is an injustice beyond bearing
The platitude that he's in a better place now is no comfort
Because you're still here, and have to learn what this place is like without
Uncle Man, Uncle Man, can we -
One day it will be easier.
Missing him will always hurt,
But carrying the hurt is a burden that time will lighten
Remember you also carry a childhood full of him
Adventures and days out, teasing and laughter, sweets and crisps and ice creams
And though it will never be the same
Though nothing will ever be the same
There is always a place where you can go with your sister for tea and chocolate
And part of him will be there too as you yell in remembrance
Uncle Man, Uncle Man, can we go to the bay?
OH DON'T MIND ME, I'm just sat here on my silly little pink sofa, crying, that's fine
Thank you so much for this! It's not intrusive at all! It's absolutely lovely, and honestly, it encapsulates so much of who he was and how we felt about him. I can't believe you wrote this without having met him. You have such a gift. I'm really glad that my writing has helped you with your own bereavement, and I'm so sorry for your own loss. May that person's memory be as much of a blessing as this poem has been to me!
80 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 3 days
Text
Thinking of my uncle a lot today and the fact that about 14 hours before he died, he ate a Calippo
He'd stopped breathing once already by that point; we'd had The Call, the one that somehow makes the phone ring shrill and grating, and we'd scrambled into our coats, lurched into our shoes, ran to the car with our laces untied, prayed under our breath a thousand times not now, not now, don't let it be now, we're not ready, let it be never if it has to be anything at all, but please, don't let it be this, don't let it be now, don't let it be don't let it be don't let it
And then we got to the hospital, breathless and ragged and heads racing and not ready, not ready, not ready, and they told us don't worry, whatever had him in the grip of it has somehow let him go, it's passed, he's rallied, it won't be today after all, he was at the precipice but he didn't fall, you can see him if you like, he's not all there but that's to be expected, isn't it, he gave us all a fright, he wasn't breathing right for half the night and then he stopped, and we don't know how he started again but he did, he did, he did
And so we went upstairs to see him, expecting whatever we were expecting, some fragments of a man, some breathless half-corpse, some sort of limbo entity, wakeless and only living in the way that fear threads itself through a horror story and brings it to something like life in your heartbeat, some thing who looked mostly like him but was not him, but was tinged with death, but was dead in all the ways that mattered, and then we saw him
And he was sat in his chair, quietly eating a fucking Calippo
And so we all sat in mostly silence for half an hour and we stared at the bruises that ringed his ankles and his wrists and his eyes, and we made awkward small talk with his friends who'd also had The Call and had gathered all their love and courage and goodbyes and been similarly confronted with the Calippo, and then we stayed for a little longer after they'd left, and we asked him if he'd had time to read the messages we'd sent him earlier that day, which we hadn't called our eulogies but which we all knew were exactly that, and he shrugged and ate his Calippo and said he'd read them later, he'd had a look but he was too tired to read, it had been a bit of a day, after all, and then visiting hours ended, and we stacked up our chairs neatly and lined them up in rows of four high against the far wall, and we watched him finish the Calippo, and we threw the empty sleeve all sticky into the medical waste bin because we couldn't find a bin that wasn't for piss and shit and blood, and we hugged him briefly, loosely, and we said we'd see him tomorrow, see you tomorrow, and he didn't smile, and he said see you tomorrow, if I'm still here, and he wasn't.
182 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 3 days
Text
The happening
Phonecall at 10.30am. Still wet from the shower, half dressed. They’ve called us in, she said, come on, we have to go. Didn’t say: it’s time, this is it, it’s happening and we cannot stop it. Didn’t need to say it. Ran to the car barefoot, jumper in hand. No time to waste. I have to reach you. I have to get there in time. I can’t miss you, not now.
Yesterday, they thought it was happening, but it was not. They called us in and told us to say goodbye; we went to see you and spoke to you about, of all things, ice cream. You were bruised from where your blood was faltering but you were there. The last thing you said to me was “see you tomorrow, if I’m still here.” It was not a joke.
You were not still there the next day. Your heart still beat but it was not you. I stood at your bedside and tried to hold your hand but my skin burnt yours and you pulled away. I did not take it personally but I wished I could touch you. I had never wanted to before. We weren’t that kind of family. I wished now that we had been.
You tried to look at me. Said that you wanted to go home. You couldn’t. Because it was happening, it was happening, and there was no time. Your foot was untucked from the blanket because it hurt your skin and it made me wonder if you were cold or burning up.
And there are things I cannot forget. Things I wish I could. Like the wrongness of your skin, the coldness of it, even before it happened. The way your eyes rolled back. The widening of your yellow-white eyes as you could not hold on. You did not blink after that. I remember that I gasped that it was happening, it was happening, he’s going. Your mother, pleading with you to stay. I hope you did not hear her. Thinking I am not ready, I am not ready, I am not ready.
I thought it would be a moment. That you would be here and then not here, like flicking a switch, like turning off some light or snuffing some candle, but it was minutes. I only knew you had gone when the doctor closed your eyes. The colour of your lips fading - I had never known that this was the first thing that would change, that lips are only skin without the blood to keep them coloured - and how different you looked. How youless.
We stayed, of course. Touched your arm again because you could no longer pull away. I wished you could. The centre of your curled palms held your warmth the longest; I touched and touched until I could not tell if it was your heat or mine. I tucked your foot back under the blanket because you were already so cold, folded your hands beneath it too because they were no longer warm.
I had never looked at you much, before. Always been a little embarrassed, truth be told. We had the same face and I used to hate it, because you were a boy and I was a girl, and of course we didn’t really look the same, but we did. Although now we didn’t. You had changed. Gone. You can’t look the same if you’re not here.
And when we had all left, gone to sit downstairs and pretend to drink cups of watery tea as we stared listlessly at a world without you in it, I found an excuse. Wound my way back up all those stairs to you. Touched your shoulder and it was cold, like some rockface. Told you I was sorry. The last thing I will ever say to you and you will never hear it.
You told me once that you would haunt us if you could, but nothing has happened. I say I’m sorry into thin air, all the time, and hope that some part of you has heard it, but my keys haven’t moved and no door has slammed shut. And I will always be sorry. And you will never know it.
1K notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 3 days
Note
Tumblr just recommended your blog to me and I was immediately drawn in by a beautiful bunch of butts.
Never change
I promise I shan't. Also, fun fact, every single one of those glorious butts is from the Victoria & Albert Museum, and I took all of the photos on my special birthday trip. If ever you want to bask in the glorious sight of a thousand splendid butts, then get your own tushy to the V&A, stat.
51 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 3 days
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I mean, I'm not being dumb, right? This is absolutely all AI. The cover at the top is the one that first piqued my suspicion, and the cover at the bottom is the one that solidified it. The one in the middle is just... a mess, honestly.
Tumblr media
Further alienating myself in the world of publishing by sending this email to a small press who loudly profess to be 'the first climate positive publisher'... I'm sorry to be Self Righteous On Main, but writers can't let this shit slide. We need to stand in solidarity with the authors and illustrators who are currently being royally fucked in the jacksie by the use of generative AI, not only because writers are next in line to be royally fucked, but also because this persistent devaluing of the arts is absolutely going to be deleterious to us all.
159 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 3 days
Text
Tumblr media
Further alienating myself in the world of publishing by sending this email to a small press who loudly profess to be 'the first climate positive publisher'... I'm sorry to be Self Righteous On Main, but writers can't let this shit slide. We need to stand in solidarity with the authors and illustrators who are currently being royally fucked in the jacksie by the use of generative AI, not only because writers are next in line to be royally fucked, but also because this persistent devaluing of the arts is absolutely going to be deleterious to us all.
159 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 8 days
Note
I have been following your updates of Q-as-Bond and want to read the fic too, however I was convinced until right now when I told my partner out loud about it and he asked to make sure which Q was this, that it was Star Trek's Q. I will still read what you've written but I was really excited to see what mess would Star Trek Q start if he were to become James Bond. For further context, it wasn't even some holodeck adventure or Q shenanigans, it was for real, Q working as James Bond for the MI6.
Haha, I'm so sorry! I've never seen Q in Star Trek, alas.
32 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 8 days
Note
Please write the Q-as-Bond fic I'm so invested
Unfortunately for the world at large, I'm definitely going to.
Tumblr media
3K notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 8 days
Note
HI I FOUND THAT ONE POST FROM I THINK 2019 AND I WANTED TO KNOW IF THAT STORY WITHOUT THE I'S YOU WERE WRITING IS FOR SALE OR SOMETHING?? YOU ARE AWE INSPIRING AND A DIVINE SPIRIT HAVE A NICE DAY
HELLO, THANK YOU FOR THE CONFIDENCE BOOST, I sorely needed it as today I put my shoes on the wrong feet.
It isn't published yet, sorry! It's actually with a publisher at the mo, so we'll see what they say. I should hear back by May!
58 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 13 days
Text
Tumblr media
Is this anything: a Regency adaptation of Fast & Furious
1K notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 14 days
Text
Got a rejection through for a writers' development programme which said that my writing was 'close to the top' of the applicants, but my personal goals for the programme were too broad... once more I am hoist on the petard of my terrible form-filling abilities
99 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 15 days
Text
Come on, it makes total sense. Pride & Prejudice. Sense & Sensibility. Fast & Furious. Fund me, Hollywood.
Is this anything: a Regency adaptation of Fast & Furious
1K notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 16 days
Text
Tumblr media
Hello everyone, I am just sharing this here on behalf of an excellent pal who is putting together an edited volume of papers on Neurodiverse Narratives in the 21st Century, with funding from Neurodiverse Humanities. I know I have some followers here who would be interested in either reading the collection or submitting an abstract to this, so I'm sharing it here!
Alt text:
Call for Papers: Neurodiverse Narratives in the 21st Century
We are now accepting paper proposals for the edited collection Neurodiverse Narratives in the 21st Century. Contemporary academic and activist efforts have sought to reframe public perceptions of neurodivergence, with Critical Neurodiversity Studies at the forefront. The term neurodiversity recognises that all human minds are different, and moulded by factors such as genetics, environment, and culture. The term neurodivergent, on the other hand, is used to describe someone "whose neurocognitive functioning diverges from the dominant social norms" (Walker 2021, 38).
A movement from the pathological paradigm to a neurodiversity paradigm necessitates an understanding of 'normal' as socioculturally constructed, and neurodivergence as neurological differences (as opposed to deviance). As such, literature and media have an important role to play. Latent depictions of neurodivergence have existed for a long time, while explicit representations of neurocognitive diversity in literature and media are becoming increasingly prevalent. Neurodiverse Narratives in the 21st Century aims to explore both, showcasing the vibrancy of the contemporary neurodiversity discourse within and outside of academia.
For the purposes of this collection, the terms 'Neurodiversity' and 'Narratives' will be understood in their broadest possible terms. We welcome papers on any topic within thie field.
Suggested paper topics include, but are not limited to:
Neurodiverse representation in contemporary literature
Neurodivergence in modern television or film
Neurodivergence in programmes created for streaming services, such as Netflix or Amaon Prime
Representations of PTSD in contemporary literature, television, film, or comics
Representations of ASD, AD(H)D, and/or AuDHD in contemporary literature, television, film, or comics
Representations of anxiety, depression, or other mental health conditions in contemporary literature, television, film, or comics
Representations of dyslexia, dyspraxia, and/or dyscalculia in contemporary literature, television, film, or comics
How specific neurodivergences are (mis)represented on social media, such as Instagram Reels and TikTok
Neurodivergence in genre fiction, including fantasy, and/or crime fiction
Neurodivergence in young adult fiction
Neurodiversity and intersectionality (e.g., with gender, race, age, socioeconomic status, dis/ability...)
Neuroqueer readings or identities in literature, television, film, or comics
Paper proposals should be no longer than 500 words. Please send proposals and a short biographical note (up to 100 words) to [email protected] by Friday, 31st May 2024.
158 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 16 days
Text
95% of my job as a TV Accountant is exceptionally boring, but then there was that time I almost got fired because I gave the son of an internationally beloved musician a small envelope, and that was, at the very least, not boring
125 notes · View notes
teashoesandhair · 16 days
Note
hello sorry to be naive but why is it not a good idea to accept the cash and pay from your bank? Was it because the price might change or some other (probably obvious) reason I can’t figure out?
(From someone suddenly worried she has mismanaged payments with housemates for yeeeeaars :| )
Hello hello! Exceptionally boring answer incoming, which at last reveals my deepest, darkest truth: my day job is really boring and actively makes me tedious.
From an accounting perspective, it's just because cash is harder to keep track of than bank transfers. Whenever you make a bank transfer to someone, there's a tangible record of that transaction occurring; you can see it leave your bank account, and the details of the account it reached. When you pay in cash, you don't have that. All you have is the assumption that the transaction was made, but it's not recorded anywhere. You can't look back at any records and confirm the amount either paid or received. This is a problem for multiple reasons:
the vendor (i.e. the person providing the services for which the cash is used - here, that would be the housemate who takes the cash from their housemates to pay the bills from their own bank account) might accidentally accept the wrong amount of money, and end up short changing themselves, with no way of proving that this happened. This might be a complete accident - e.g. the person paying the bill in cash might owe £29.50 but miscount their change and only hand over £25.50, or they might misread the amount due as £25.90 and pay that instead - or it might be deliberate - e.g. my next door neighbour owed me £750, but he could pretty easily have only given me £500 and then pretended that he'd given me the full £750, and there'd be no way for me to prove otherwise, as there'd be no record of the transaction, just his word and mine.
the person taking the cash could easily lie about it and pretend that they never received it. I'm not a scammer, but if I was, it wouldn't be hard for my neighbour to hand me the full £750 and for me to pocket it, then pretend that he'd never given it to me. There'd be no record of him giving me the cash. Even if he showed a bank statement showing that he'd withdrawn £750 from his account, I could easily say 'yeah, but he didn't give it to me. Guess it's behind his sofa.' If I then made a bank transfer to my roofer for my half of the amount, but not for the additional £750 that I was pretending I'd never received from my neighbour, the roofer would be entirely within his rights to go after my neighbour for an extra £750. After all, I'd already have demonstrably paid my half, and I could prove this with a remittance (proof of payment) showing the £750 leaving my bank account and going to the roofer's account.
The only way to really get around this is to have the person receiving the cash count out the cash in front of you, then sign for it and write down the amount that you gave them / they received. That's the only way to have a tangible record of what was paid in cash. When you're paying household bills and you can generally trust your housemates, it's not such a problem, but when you're dealing in larger sums of money and you don't have any real reason to assume good faith in the other party (which sounds mean, but let's be real, it's 2024) it's always best to conduct financial transactions in ways that leave a tangible record, just to avoid either party having to cover an inaccurate shortfall or getting scammed entirely.
My top tips when paying for services like this: never pay cash, always get an invoice (or at minimum get written confirmation of the services provided, the name of the supplier, the amount due, and the bank details) and then email them a proof of payment when the transfer is made. You can get that via online banking as a pdf most of the time.
tl;dr you're probably completely fine to keep paying your bills this way, but in general, my accountancy brain always prefers bank transfers; I have way too many war flashbacks from my first few years in TV Accounts of handing someone an envelope with £500 in cash, then going through the subsequent receipts which only add up to about £420, and having to tell them that the missing £80 has to be paid back somehow. Oh, also there was that job I did where the director of the company kept withdrawing £500 in cash from the main account, then handing back a fistful of undated receipts that only covered about half of it, because he'd spent it on cocaine. That was super.
102 notes · View notes