You know your stripper from your paint

Well, lunch seemed successful. Which is nice :)

We're all now lazing about looking stuffed and wondering if we can ever move again.

As you all appreciated the last picture I got from the 'sky cops' (India99/98/97) I thought you might like another one. Not fireworks this time - but hopefully just as interesting?

Hold on tight, cause I like the sense, of speed, and I like the sense of you.

Had a lovely day today. Bit of a lazy morning, then off to the off-road bike place.

It was pretty muddy, so there wasn't much chance for doing jumps and stuff - our bikes weighed about three times as much by the end of the ride with all the mud stuck to them!

But it was brilliant - we were filthy, from the spray, puddles, falling off, landing in puddles, pushing each other in puddles, riding along a stream...yeah, just fantastic.

Sherlock and Mycroft had fun too, and at the end Mycroft had a go on the bikes again and Sherlock rode pillion with me, just on the practice track. He is nearly big enough...

But he's also very excited about getting the next size up of violin - we should try and do that in the week, I need to go to the music shop anyway, so we should go and see if he's ready for a 1/2 size yet.

He declared my book 'boring' once I'd read a bit of it to him. I think he thought it would tell him how to solve murders, not just how to deal with the press, paperwork, court papers and all that... obviously there are a few things that would help you...but it's mainly how to comply with the rules and build a strong case, not how to track down the murderer and grab them.

Today was just one of those days were...I can't believe that I'm this lucky. I can't believe the person I was 5 years ago was really me. Things have changed so much, so dramatically. Things I could never have hoped for have happened to me. It's just amazing. My life is amazing.

Step beside the piece of the circumstance

Right, now peace has (sort of) descended, after Sherlock stealing one of my books for his own intellectual gain.... I shall attempt to write this entry and think about my presentation.

So...sorry, I can't even remember who asked about first responders (by which I don't mean medical first responders - I mean the first officers on the scene of a homicide/attempted.)

John is now laughing because he's reading chapter titles form my book.

Bet he wishes I'd brought home the snappily titled: "Template Protocol for the management of detainees who are suspected of swallowing or having packed drugs or foreign objects into body orifices or cavities"

Anyway...

yes, whoever it was, the very first priority is to establish if the 'body' is really dead. It becomes incredibly embarrassing for all concerned if they are discovered to be alive after an officer's been reeling out crime scene tape for half an hour and drinking tea given to them by locals and not rendering first aid.

So you always get a contaminated scene, basically. What the officers need to know is how to preserve it as best as possible. So, for instance, establishing a single entry/exit and walkway. Sketching/photographing the scene before moving things. Noting where the things were moved to. Starting the Crime Scene Log. ensuring no one enters the scene without protective clothing.

If the victim is still alive, then someone travelling to hospital with them, in case they can identify their attacker, or note a dying declaration (which can be used in court.) Preserving their clothes, getting a pre-transfusion blood sample preserved for evidence. If they die on the way to hospital/in hospital, making sure all the medical equipment used is left in place and not removed.

Obviously, there's lots to talk about, hence them wanting me to run a presentation!

But ask away, if you have specific questions.

I'm going to put Sherlock to bed...

Oh, and just to add - please sign this petition. The law they are trying to pass is completely horrific. If John and I were to live in Nigeria when this bill was passed we could be sentenced to death, just for being us. Jailed for ten years, just for living together, or holding hands, or wishing to be married. Please help people not as lucky as we are.  www.allout.org/nigeria-veto 

For the next three weeks I went huntin' them nights

After non-stop pestering from people at work today to play the guitar, I finally did tonight - but not for them. Just for the regulars in the pub and John.

It went pretty well. Not perfectly - I'm a good deal short of perfect right now, but well enough that people seemed to like it.

I'd instructed John to do nothing whilst listening. Which he failed to do. He was performing all sorts of breathing and blinking type things, and talked to people, and jiggled his foot in time, and ...well, the list could go on and on. Plus his usual glares were absent and he looked all soppy. Terrible behaviour.

Anyway, with a few months more practice I think I might be ready for the wedding.

Knowing you're there every day, Makes me high in my own special way

Right, recipe time! Sorry, it's all in UK measures, so anyone in a part of the world where you don't use proper weights and measures, you'll have to convert :) It's a Dan Lepard recipe.

It should be a really rich, reddish brown, moist cake.

1 tsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp dark cocoa powder
100ml boiling water
50g dark chocolate, broken into little pieces
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g unsalted butter, softened
175g soft muscovado sugar
125g condensed milk

1 large egg
150g superfine self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder

Rub the oil inside a deep oblong cake tin (about 22cm x 11cm, or a 2lb loaf tin), and line the base and sides with baking parchment.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Stir three tablespoons of cold water into the cocoa until you have a smooth paste, then whisk in the boiling water. Straight away stir in the chocolate and the bicarb, and leave to melt and fizz.

In another bowl, beat the butter, sugar, condensed milk and the egg until very smooth (use an electric mixer). Sift together the flour and baking powder, beat half of this into the egg mix, fold in the chocolate mixture, then beat in the remaining flour until smooth.

Scrape evenly into the tin and bake for 40-45 minutes. Stick in a skewer: if it comes out with a few crumbs sticking, the cake is ready. Remove from the oven, leave to cool in the tin, then turn out once cold. You can have it as it is, but it's nicer with icing on top - this recipe for icing makes a LOT. You possibly could manage to fit it all on the cake, but it's more fun to find a willing partner and spread it on them. (I jest. John would kill me with his laser eyes if I got chocolate on the bedsheets.)


2 tbsp treacle
150g light soft brown sugar
3 egg yolks
4 level tbsp cocoa
4 level tbsp cornflour
300ml milk
250g dark chocolate (or half milk and half dark), finely chopped
75-100ml boiling water
50g unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp vanilla extract

In a saucepan, beat together the treacle, sugar, yolks, cocoa, cornflour and milk until the mixture is smooth. Then bring it to the boil, whisking often so it doesn't scald on the base. Remove from the heat, beat in the chocolate and enough boiling water to make it smooth and creamy. When just warm, beat in the vanilla and softened butter, a knob at a time. Use immediately, as it will firm quickly.

And there you go. In our flat, it didn't last a day. But then we do have Mrs H, security, John and a Sherlock.


I'll let John tell you about our day today. It was lovely. :) Bikes, boyfriend, baking. Doesn't get much better!

And the sugar that dripped from the violin's bow made the children go crazy

Ahh, lovely day.

Was woken at an ungodly hour by Shortstuff, who was far too lively for someone who'd been up in the night after a nightmare.

Removed him from our bed because John was still valiantly trying to sleep. Made porridge. Didn't have a hangover.

John and I had a gloriously lazy morning after dropping Sherlock at school, coffee, picked up my bike, more coffee, until John went off to see Dr E. So, to fill the time while he was gone, I decided to bake a brown sugar choccy cake with chocolate treacle icing. Which turned out very well - but the icing was way too much to fit on the cake! John helped me dispose of some of it though ;)

Sherlock thoroughly enjoyed having a slice after school - we ran to the school, because a. I need more exercise and b. it meant we could cool down by walking home. Neat.

So, the other day, Anon asked: "Do you have any advice on how to mentally physically and emotionally prepare for a new relationship having left one that was far from good?"

There's an awful lot of words, But there's no communication

Well, Wow, you lot. Half a million pageviews. Half a million!

That's...not something I ever imagined could happen.

Thank you, to all of you, whether you read or comment or...well, just thank you.

This is just a quick post, really, to say...drinks are on me ;) Party!

The Met have celebrated by putting up the Christmas tree outside NSY... don't tell Sherlock!

I'm dragging John off to a secret location...to do something...secret. I hope he enjoys it.

Soothe my mind and set me free

Well... I thought today would be calm, we didn't have a lot planned.

I had a word with Sherlock this morning, before John was up, about today being Armistice Day. He's already done a bit at school, and they'd got poppies - and drawn pictures of them - and even looked at a little bit of war poetry. So he was already ahead of the game, really. So then I said about the eleventh hour, and he agreed he'd be quiet.

He took that very seriously, as it turned out, and turned on the radio so we could 'hear the silence', and shushed us all in plenty of time so we wouldn't miss it. And he stayed still and quiet the whole time, which I was very impressed about, because two minutes is a long time.

I didn't know if John would want to do anything...be alone, or go to the cenotaph, but we just stayed in. So I gave him a hug for the two minutes.

It took us a while to realise he'd also unplugged the phone - and the internet - to ensure we had silence. Security came up to ask if everything was all right and check we weren't all hostages!

Anyway, then Sherlock disgraced himself a bit later by having made himself a sheet of ice to form a dagger with and try and stab me - me being the available test subject. Nothing personal...

I thought he'd hurt himself at first, but he'd just got a really cold hand, creeping up on me, and then when his ice dagger didn't actually stab me, but slid through his hand, I think it hurt. Anyway, he's banned from the internet now, and got a good telling off. He's a bit sulky.


So, anyway, as Sherlock is temporarily off the blogs I thought we might try another

Lestrade's Upstanding Column Of Love...

So, ask away. Anon posting is welcome, as usual. Have at it, commenters of the world....

*Please note, all replies may be utter bollocks.

The tune that is yours and mine to play upon this earth

Right, as Sherlock noticed tonight, I'm always a bit late home on a Thursday.

This is because, all those weeks ago when I went for a drink on my own, I found a little pub that has an open mic night on a Thursday. And it seemed...nice. Quiet, friendly, a mix of talent. And Jo and Lisa recently asked if I would play a few songs at their wedding reception.

When Jo and I first met I was still playing a lot - to audiences. I suppose she thought I still was. Anyway, I sort of agreed, but then I wanted a bit of practice, where no one I knew would be watching.

So I decided to give it a go for a while. Didn't bank on Sherlock, PI, rumbling me quite so soon.

Getting Right Down To The XYZ Of It

RR asked:

How about what kind of learner are you? (Like....hands on, books, one-on-one teaching, listening to someone talk, figuring it out by yourself....what way of learning new things works best for you?)


I think that really depends what it is. As a young copper, doing my exams, it was books, then talking it over with my peers, to check we all understood things the same way. I need people to challenge me, quiz me, make me argue my points. Which is good, because that's what I get, in court.


But anything that is practical, it's got to be hands-on, with a bit of guidance, but I can't stand watching people demonstrate and not letting you get stuck in.


Computers that goes double for - can't cope with anyone who does things for you, to 'show you'. Need them to tell me what to do, but let me do it.


I'm not very good at listening to people talking in a teaching way - I zone out a bit.


But I'm also happy to just get stuck in and make my own mistakes. I know it's sometimes handy to learn from other people's, but sometimes the lesson sticks better when it's your own. Guitar playing, cooking, I just give it a go. Mistakes don't matter.


So, all that is what I try to keep in mind with Sherlock. Not doing things for him, letting him make mistakes, no matter how annoyed he gets at making them, letting him figure things out and only stopping him when it would be dangerous not to. But he has a fairly good capacity to listen, too, when he's interested. Although zero capacity for it when he's not...which we're working on.


I'm very proud of him today, for talking to the girl whose boat he thought was good.


And just to prove mistakes don't matter - I have no clue why this bloody thing has decided to highlight this entry. Sorry about that. Edited - Mycroft fixed it!

Something lewd in a low down accent

RSF was rather taken with the word 'tosspot' when I used it to describe someone today.

So I thought we could have a post on slang/favourite words.

Some of mine are unprintable...but a few of my favourites:

wanker, tosspot, bollocks, Oik, pillock, numpty, tosser, sod (as in 'off' or 'it all'). Kholly just reminded me of another - toe-rag. Brilliant.

I feel Brit slang is seriously misunderstood by a lot of Americans. (I have, for instance, been told that 'bloody' is a terrible, terrible word we will be mortally offended by!) so feel free to ask any questions, if you're not a local ;)

In other news - which of these should I get John for Christmas? Or do I just throw caution to the wind and buy both??

KHolly asked what I wish someone had told me when I was 7 and 14, that I'm making sure the boys know now...

That's a hard one. I've sort of answered a part of that before, slightly, in regard to relationships.

But otherwise... I think, when I was 14, I probably needed someone to tell me I wasn't an adult. No matter how much I thought I was, or had to be. I wasn't. I was still a child. Albeit with maybe more responsibility than many. I wish someone had told me that. I wish someone had been there so I didn't feel like I had to be responsible. And I hope that Mycroft, now, is only as responsible as he wants to be, and lets John and I help out with all the times he doesn't want to be.

As for being 7...I don't remember that much about being 7. Probably needed telling that I was, actually, a mortal being. And that negotiation was more effective than arguing. But I hope a lot of the advice I'd give myself was completely irrelevant to Sherlock, because his life, is, I hope, very different to mine.


I don't know. I still barely feel qualified to be raising another human being, let alone offering sage advice.

I Am Staying Right Beside You

I was going to post a picture of some mice on the tube. One was down in the pit, eating a bone - chicken, I imagine, and then a little, young mouse, was peering down from the track, but couldn't get down there. You could see the longing in every line of its tiny body. But they were both brown, and it was a little hard to see them on the picture.

But then I showed Sherlock these pictures and he said I HAD to post them.

Fireworks over London last night, from India98:

I Just Wanna Try To Do Things On My Own

Today, Zeph asked about something I'd like to learn that I haven't yet.

It's a hard question! (My gut instinct is to say 'learn the guitar'. But there would be protests, I know)

I'm always so busy I don't feel like I've even got time to think about learning things, let alone do it.

I suppose...I'd like to be able to make things. Like, carve stone, or...paint. Wouldn't it be great to be able to paint lovely pictures. Or even draw well! But I don't know...do you really learn painting and drawing, or do you...I don't know, learn a bit, but need a lot of natural talent too?

And carving things...where would I put them? Can't imagine the National Gallery would be clamouring to take them in...

This will probably sound silly, but it would be pretty nice to learn how to do that sort of really artistic bondage, too :) although I actually have no desire to tie anyone up! Quite the opposite, actually... But whenever I've seen pictures it always looks so lovely. The name completely escapes me. Kin...something and I want to say Subaru...Shubaru? You can all Google. Just maybe not at work or in the library ;)

And That Is When My Spark Got Hot

RR asked what my favourite saying was.

So I've been thinking about that. I'm sure that John, Mycroft and Sherlock can share things I say a lot...but my favourite saying, I think, is something my Nonna used to say.

She was a very straightforward lady. No nonsense. Said what she thought, told you if she disapproved. Didn't let you feel too sorry for yourself.

 Which was lucky for me, because it meant when my Dad did a runner she wasn't worried about what to do, about whether it wouldn't be welcomed by Mum if she still had a part of our lives. She just said that just because he'd gone, didn't mean she was. And her and my Nonno were a big part of my life.

So, here's her favourite saying, really:

'Siccome la casa bruci, riscaldiamoci'.

Which means, 'Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.'

All I needed for another day

All this talk of musical instruments. And then Calliope said "These days my voice is my only instrument." And it reminded me of how much I loved this song. I've just had it on repeat for about ten minutes, writing this. And yes, singing along.

I still remember watching this video, and thinking...look at these blokes, all so normal looking, and in a pub, doing what blokes do...and they sound like this! I don't know, it was a bit of a musical revelation for me, having grown up liking guitars and rock and yelling and swearing and amps turned up to 11. I hope you enjoy it.

The Flying Pickets - Only You.

Cause when I've learned enough to really live I'll be old enough to die

Sherlock's dancing around the flat because it's Friday and he's all excited about amphibians.


I've caught John pretending to ride a motorbike at least once. He isn't doing sound effects though. Yet.

I'm okay. Was a bit down earlier. Think it's a combination of yesterday, and being on my own, and finishing all the painting, and Nicky calling. Feel better now I've been out with John and Sherlock's talking non-stop whilst letting the degus have a bath. 

I get a bit...stuck. I expect everyone does. Get emotional, get angry. Hate that I'm angry, try and stop it. Get emotional again. A very well established 'thing' in my life is that doing something 'wrong' equals physical punishment. So then I go for a stupidly long run or something to make myself hurt. Which works very well, until someone questions it...rinse and repeat.


I've tried to weed out and save the questions from the other day - thought I'd try and answer some more here. I will try and get around to them. And there's one I know of that I still haven't answered from last time, too.


I hope you'll forgive me if I sort of mash a few I think go together up.

Dreaming the lonely night through...

No more news on...everything. Which I suppose is good news.

Haven't been doing much dreaming, though. Mainly thinking.

Arsenal winning - and coming from behind to do so, more good news.

Mycroft going back to school this evening - not such good news, but he wants to go on the bike, so that's nice. We're just packing up now. Or he is.

Was going to write an entry about the appalling injustice of you lot voting John innocent and me guilty on my polls...but it sort of feels less funny being voted guilty now than it did at the time. So maybe leave that for another entry, when all this is over with.

So, given I've got time on my hands (well, inbetween coats of paint, anyway), I'll go with DW's suggestion (okay, to be honest, I can't remember who suggested it. But it was probably DW.)

Questions please, for Lestallion's Upstanding Column Of Love. (obviously, even if you don't usually, you can feel free to go Anon.)

And as a disclaimer...every answer could be complete bollocks. Okay?

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

DW asked about the chain I'm wearing in my profile picture. The answer was a bit long for just a comment.

I don't wear it often - never for work, and I don't put it on just for the periods inbetween one shift and the next. But I do wear it on special occasions, when I'm dressing up smartly, that sort of thing. - As you'll all have noticed, I do have quite a fondness for jewellery :)

So, it is just a chain - plain, silver - and then on it there are a few different things. The first thing that ever went on it was an earring. It belonged to my Nonna - I don't remember ever seeing her without those earrings in my life. So, when she died, and we were asked if we wanted anything, I asked for those. Nicky's got the other one. It's just a silver drop-shape. Then there's a little pendant I found on a beach. I was walking along, miles and miles of beach, I looked down, and it was just there. It would have been so easy to miss. I just sort of thought I should pick it up. A chance in a million to find it - so it seemed wrong to leave it there. When I got back home I added it to the necklace. There's a tiny stainless steel ring, from one of my first bike jackets, that got wrecked when they cut it off me, and there's a little ball-ended linkage from one of my old bikes.

So, yeah, there you go. Lots of little memories, that's what's on it, DW.

and i'm not too old to rock and roll, and i'm not really scared of turning thirty...

Piplover asked a very good question: If, when they're older, and they asked, you could give one piece of advise to the boys on sex, what would it be? Not necessarily based on your own experience, but something you wish you had known, or someone had told you when you were younger.

So...I shall try to answer. It's a bit...difficult. And I talk a bit about sexual assault, so I don't want to upset anyone - dont read it if you don't want.