30 July 2014

One day to come together, To release the pressure

I've been right down in the dumps recently. I don't know how John manages to go from dealing with me to dealing with Sherlock without it sending him around the twist.

Canoeing was great, the kids got really stuck in, no one was too scared/didn't want to do it etc. and they all enjoyed every minute of it. Lots of them wanted to go again, soon. Even thought it was on the river, the current was very gentle, but you could tell we were coming back faster than we paddled out! Only a few people needed rescuing when they got caught up on river bank weeds or went the wrong way around and panicked.

In other news that ought to have me happier than it seems to have managed, the guy from the other week went down for fifteen years. So...well, it never seems enough, frankly. But there we go.

So... apparently the kids are planning a holiday for us - our kids and Nicky's. Emails have been sent back and forth, text messages have been buzzing. At some point I imagine we'll be told what to pay for... it will doubtless be the craziest holiday ever. We old folk will just be along for the ride.

I'm off for the next two days, which will ben nice, and very welcome. John and I need to get going on some running, if we're going to manage this half marathon.

24 July 2014

Thunder drowns out what the lightning sees

Tomorrow, Mrs N informs me, I will be getting wet. She told me to bring plenty of clothes...although hopefully none of the kids will take a dip! I imagine some of them will need pulling onto dry land, or hoiking out of their canoes etc. though. Anyway, I have plenty of shorts and t-shirts in a bag. And spare boxers, obviously!

I just wish John could come too.

Sherlock is very excited. Like, still awake, despite us needing to be at school early tomorrow! He is at least in his room now, supposedly having quiet time...

Mycroft and I cooked, and Sherlock and John ate, and everyone was happy, so that's good!

Jo and Lisa sent us a picture of little Tadhg, and he's very lovely and small and wrinkly.

Sherlock is taking this year's transition to the big class very well. I think he's quite looking forward to being one of the oldest in the school. Mycroft has taken to work in an exemplary fashion. He's already working shifts without the owner, and impressing everyone in the process. He joins us in sampling a bottle of wine now and again too, so that's another area where his knowledge is growing.

We went to the allotment today, did some more weeding (it never ends) and pondered why our french beans are all a bit...oddly shapen (Mary says it's because we water 'irregularly'). Sherlock is drawing us up a watering rota, as he does not appreciate misshapen beans. She also says our blueberry needs more acidic soil. Ericaceous compost is our best bet...so we'll have to get some, see if it does the trick.

after tomorrow, Sherlock is home for 6 long weeks...for the duration, I think John will also need watering regularly.

For absolutely no reason, except that it has given me a post title, have a picture of a tiny tortoise wearing a raspberry on its shell.


17 July 2014

The policemen they're acting so tough.

The missing criminal, I'm glad to say, has been apprehended. He tried to leave the country, but for once, happily, someone was actually watching at the port, and they nabbed him. It's not often our ports are really watched, but hey, worked this time.

Sherlock has discovered that there is some form of school trip in the offing, to celebrate the end of term. I think there are options, but he has firmly chosen some sort of water-based adventure. He wants to go sailing, but as far as John's investigative work has gone, it seems to be canoeing that he'll actually do. He'll still love it, because his lust for life is insatiable, which is something to be seen. And envied, on occasion.

He found this earlier, and eagerly showed me when I got home. I wonder what we'll do that lasts that long...not much. It does make me wish, sometimes, that I made things, instead of....whatever it is that I do.

It's bloody hot here at the moment. Hot and sticky and generally unpleasant. But they say storms are in the offing, maybe at the weekend. Let's hope so. John says as much as he's watering the allotment every day it's still looking a bit droopy.

I was going to take tomorrow off, but now I've got court for the scrote we picked up. So I might take a bit of next week off instead. And then, shockingly, it's the summer holidays and there will be hours and hours of Sherlock to entertain. And we haven't even thought about a holiday yet.

Jess is two tomorrow. We haven't seen her and Rach for ages.


12 July 2014

There will be another dream for me, someone will bring it

Well, Brazil are having another nightmare. Sadly I don't get anything for the Dutch coming third ;) I don't think it's very healthy for senior officers to win things like sweepstakes though - better if a lower rank does, really.

Sherlock loved his time on the boat, and, although he won't say it, I think he liked having John there. Sherlock knows he's not like other kids, and he needs people around who'll be sympathetic when he pushes boundaries (if they're new, untested boundaries - he knows exactly which ones he isn't to test any more!) So things like bedtime in an untested area, with all his schoolfriends - sometimes he needs a gentle hand to guide him.

Anyway, he loved it, took great joy in being the provider of horrible bedtime tales, had a great day the next day, when they did a bit of a walking tour of a few London sights before going to the Science museum for lunch, a look around, and finally home. Maf leapt on John and wiped herself all over him to stop him smelling like 30 schoolkids and re-mark him as her chief minion.

As you all know, being the worst person at 'taking it easy' in the world, I messed around in his room, as he's been saying he wants a den in there for ages. And I think it's right he has a nice private space he can go to, as he grows up. It's something I never had, and would have loved. He also knows nowhere is completely 'private' from John and I - there are no secrets when you're 8, sadly. It's a fine line, but one I think we get right more than wrong.

7 July 2014

It's only forever, Not long at all, Lost and lonely

Nine years ago today, 52 people were killed on public transport in London. 700 were injured. Doesn't seem real it's nine years ago, feels like...months, maybe. Sometimes far far less.

And, as with all such happenings, as people ran, shocked, injured, horrified, other people went to help. Tube staff, police, bystanders. Some people who were down in those tunnels, injured themselves, didn't run, didn't leave, even though they could. They stayed and they saved lives.

I was at work, not one of the first responders, but once it became clear the scale of what had happened, teams were dispatched.

I worked on the Piccadilly, where the most people died. It was a long, painstaking investigation, with pressure to both explain who had been responsible, how they had done it, why they had done it, and also - and it is important, no matter how mundane it sounds - to get the transport system back working. And to allow the friends and families of the dead to mourn and move on. And that's hard, when the damage to the bodies is so vast. You don't get to see a body, have a final moment, say a proper goodbye.


Anyway, been thinking about that a lot today, as I've spent the day with John, and waved Mycroft off to work, and thought about a lot of things.

And now I've been writing this for bloody ages and still not written anything. I don't think I'm 100% back to normal. Or maybe I'm just examining everything I do too closely now. I feel like I keep sort of...zoning out. Or forgetting what I was doing/saying.

On Saturday, we were...well, I still can't say too much, but I'd been in communication with this man. On a Gay Sex Chatline. Because that had been the one link in a series of cases.

We expected him to try and talk me into going back to his. We didn't expect him to slip a drug in my drink. Or...well, I still don't know how he did it.

Luckily I had a wire on, and there were other officers in the club. So when I stopped talking, Sal could call up someone to get a bit closer, check up on me, and they knew something was up.

Ketamine, when you take enough, paralyses you. Your mind still works fine, or mine did, to begin with, except...yeah, well, before I even knew what was happening I was in trouble. The music was immense, I could feel it, it was as if it was slow motion, washing over me, and the lights were all...instead of strobes, they were wrapping around me, like something sci-fi.

I don't really know how to describe it. And it felt like it took a long time, hours, days maybe. Even when John arrived, it took me hours to reach him, because the noises and the lights still had me. I thought I was reaching out to him, but I wasn't. And anyway, he wasn't real.

The most lasting thing, I guess, the thing I still feel, in an odd way, was that I was incredibly lonely.


Upshot is, I think it's for the best that I don't go to the boat. Mycroft and I will have a nice night in, John can cope with what will seem like hundreds of tiny banshees all refusing to sleep, in a confined space, and we'll think of him as we relax with some gourmet food and maybe a bottle of wine ;)

2 July 2014

Is it worth the aggravation, To find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for?

It's Mycroft's first day at work tomorrow. They're going to see how he gets on, and if he's happy to, he's going to work the weekend too, to help with the rush.

If he doesn't feel ready, he'll just work weekdays for now, starting before the lunch rush until they close. But I've a feeling he'll do fine.

He's got a little apron to wear, and a black waistcoat, white shirt, black trousers - looks very smart! He actually seems sad not to be wearing a tie though, odd boy :)

Obviously we're all thinking about the freebies...I mean, wishing him well.

Sherlock already wants to visit. Which has led to low-level bickering of the sort only siblings can manage to keep going for so long.


In the allotment, our beans are growing up, our tomatoes are shooting away now, and even our spring onions, which everyone doubted, seem to be doing okay.

Lettuce is just an ongoing battle.


Work is really eating at me at the moment. I can't tell you all anything about the op, but...it's not much fun. And although I'm happy that I'm the right person to run the op, and when we catch the guy, it will be very much for the good, I'm not enjoying it.


When I was younger, people used to call me a 'pretty boy'. And I can't pretend I didn't use that, sometimes, to my advantage. But I definitely grew to hate it, too. What it was used as shorthand for. And when I joined the force, it changed, but people still thought I was younger, less experienced, than I was. People didn't take me seriously, I guess it boiled down to. Everyone always says coppers are getting younger, so I suppose having a young face didn't help. Didn't help with my confidence either, at first, especially with my background. Like I said to DW the other day, I felt like a fraud, for many reasons - my background, my sexuality, some of my ... thoughts on the people we locked up, the people we dealt with. Of course, when everyone's on refs talking about the scum down the local estate, the slag who's been sexually assaulted by the drunk boyfriend, you don't get to fight back, to say it could have been any one of us, because that's not how it works.

Of course now, now I'm more comfortable in my own skin, now I have the rank, I can speak up, and I do. And maybe sometimes that's the only way you can win the battles, by doing what you can, when you can, and accepting there are some fights it's not worth picking.

There were definitely times I thought I was in the wrong place. But I suppose whenever I really thought about anything else I could be doing, I just knew this was where I should be. And I knew I would never forgive myself if I gave it up. But it could easily have been the other way - knowing it wasn't right, and setting out on a new path.

Anyway, didn't quite mean to get sidetracked by all that. And now Sherlock is hanging off me wanting fruit with ice cream and John is trying to untie a knot in Maf's favourite fishy toy whilst she valiantly tries to kill it.

And here's a page John showed me earlier, to cheer me up. Can't believe the cheek of the florist though!! They must read this blog ;)