impulsereader | (no subject)

“Now that we’ve untangled that, do you shoot, John? I’ll be gathering a party to go out tomorrow morning.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t usually do it for sport.”

“Come out with us anyway. We’ll be a jolly group and it’s sure to be better than whatever else is on this early. There hasn’t been enough time for resentment to build up yet.”

John glanced at Sherlock who shrugged at him. “I will apparently be rehearsing each morning in the solarium. Unless you’re planning on auditing that activity, suit yourself.”

“Just make sure to give me proper notice for the bit where you tutor the children in something.”

Sherlock laughed. “Yes, all right. You’ll be joining my science tutorial this year; duly noted. Will you also be participating in the lively debate which Mycroft will moderate wherein the gestational voting public of the extended Holmes family discuss transport, energy sources and digital communication as they relate to the future infrastructure of Britain?”

John blinked. “No, probably not,” he allowed.

-------

As I'm writing this I'm really struck by the fact that John doesn't have family to rely on.

So, per the above, I'm still on the hunt for an (in)appropriate experiment for Sherlock to do with the kiddies. I'm wondering if building rockets and setting them off might be good. I was thinking I wanted it to be like a normal science fair project - but twisted slightly because Sherlock would pick an experiment that he thinks would be useful to the kids. I mean, no one actually needs a baking soda volcano - except the kids don't have much occasion to determine if a substance is blood or not - whoops! I don't know. I was looking at some of the experiments Zack and Hodgins did on Bones, and that's an interesting take too. Sherlock would find it plausible that the kids might one day need to know if a woodchipper could chop up a body. I don't know where this should go.

Right - so it's been pointed out that snobby relatives would turn up their nose at John - at least before he bags all the birds at the shoot - so I need to know a little more about what sort of schooling he would have experienced. Looking into meta and found some really interesting things.

ETA - I think I've determined that the relatives can be disapproving based solely on the fact that John didn't attend a public school - Eton et al? Does that sound right to anyone who's wandered round?

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Sherlock would find it plausible that the kids might one day need to know if a woodchipper could chop up a body.

You know, it's funny that you used that particular reference. Bodies in woodchippers is in fact part of a story that I've told many of my students. Don't worry -- it's part of a larger story that I use essentially as a parable to teach them how to write an argumentative paper. It's the story of how the state of Connecticut once convicted Richard Crafts of the murder of his wife Helle Crafts without a body. Richard Crafts had indeed put Helle's body through a woodchipper, and it was left to Dr. Henry Lee (famous from the OJ trial), who was at the time the State Forensics Dude (official title!) to put together a case that proved a) that a person had died, b) that the person who died was Helle Crafts, and that c) Richard Crafts was the one who killed her. I explain in semi-graphic detail how Dr. Lee proved all of this in court, and then I challenge the students to prove their points with that kind of thoroughness.

My favorite part of giving this lesson is watching their eyes get all big. They just hang on every word, fascinated -- it's not too often that your mild-mannered music teacher starts talking about chainsaws being fished out of the Housatonic River -- and I know that's one lesson they will never never never forget!

(Before I became an ethnomusicologist, I had a job that required me to learn all about True Crime. I've recycled some of it for Sherlock casefics.)

It strikes me that Sherlock might choose to do experiments that wind up being really dramatically interesting. Screaming Gummy Bear, Elephant Toothpaste, Grape Plasma (which is good because it releases poisonous gas). Pretty much anything from this site could conceivably annoy a sufficiently Sloane Ranger-ish family while entrancing the kids.

Your life sounds absolutely *fascinating*.

You are obviously a very good teacher. State Forensics Dude - hee!

I can see how being conversant with True Crime would be helpful in inspiration for Sherlock fic! I shall make sure to continue working my way through yours.

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you! My favorite is the burning salts, I'll have to fit in more than one now. I may also try to work in a Rube Goldberg machine.

Burning salts could be kind of cool as a fireplace prank.

oh. hm. perhaps Sherlock should be pranking the entire houseful of holmeses throughout the Duration. I could scatter the experiments through the story...

What an interesting link!

I love the Mad Scientist site for whenever I need to have Sherlock doing some dramatic yet ultimately mostly harmless experiment. Once I had Mrs. Hudson agree to Sherlock-sit so John and Sarah could go do something* and the activity that Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock had planned was to set of Diet-Coke-and-Mentos fountains all over her kitchen.

*They failed. Life intervened.

Ha! Poor John. Sherlock always ends up having more fun - unless there's a chase involved.

I'm voting for rocketry because things that go boom and Sherlock sound like a recipe for disaster.

Yes, I think I have to manage at least one explosion. :-)

This is looking so good! I wonder if Sherlock has gone and procured a dead pig (and maybe other dead animals, like a cat or something) to do a range of forensic exercises with lividity, rates of decay at varying temperatures and things like that. Maybe he's got multiple dead animals for comparative studies on time of death.

And the kids are all "OMG KITTY!" and are turned off pork for life because he tells them that pig flesh and human flesh have some similar characteristics, and then he can't work out why the nine year old is *crying* because Sherlock did an autopsy on his own pet rabbit when he was nine and he was only upset straight after Kublai Khan died, but the autopsy was *fascinating* and he learned so much. There's no understanding children.

And maybe when he's told it' unsuitable for kids, he concedes that dead things may not be good, so he decides to replicate his studies on cigar and cigarette ash. So there are these kids in a room full of smoke from these contraptions he's set up to 'smoke' the items and produce ash (Well, of *course* i'm not going to get the children to *smoke* them) and when they're all coughing and crying from the poisonous levels of passive smoking, Sherlock is banished to the stables.

May not be what you're looking for, but i'm fairly certain he shouldn't be left alone with children. What he thinks is fascinating and educational is probably terrifying.

LOLing to death!

Yes, one aspect of Sherlock does the smoking experiment. Not in this fic, but of course he does somewhere!

I really like the decomposing animals though, and that is doable. There was an exhibit at our Nature Museum a few years ago that focused on CSI techniques and they had pigs in various states of decay on the grounds; part of the exhibit was a scientist taking groups out and giving a bit of a lecture.

(Of course, then I started wondering what John would be like with kids, and realised he may be only marginally better than Sherlock. Adrenalin junkie, soldier, bachelor at 40, Harry doesn't appear to have kids: what experience does he have with children? He's knows better than to teach them to strip down and reassemble a firearm, but what on earth would *he* try to teach them? Emergency first aid maybe, and ends up accidentally telling them about emergencies he's treated, and keeps finding himself talking about trauma wounds and having to stop and realising he doesn't have any normal stories either...)

John with children. This may germinate something - not sure yet. Interesting meta here...

My new purpose in life is to fling plot bunnies at you, vigorously, from a distance.

One small point. You may want to check *dates* for the shoot as different birds come in season at different times. And you can't just shoot things whenever you feel like it. There are laws.

(Also a shotgun or rifle is a very different thing to shoot from a handgun. But in the army I'm sure John trained with a rifle at some point.)

The famous one is the "glorious twelfth" (of August) but that's grouse... And I doubt you'd find grouse, either red or black, on Rocky's estate.

Pheasant (1st October) and Partridge (1 September) are the most likely birds to be farmed (or indeed found) for shooting in the South/South East. My parents live in Suffolk (well, so do I, but I live in a town) and their garden is full of partridges and pheasants. Pheasants especially.

See, you don't want to shoot things while they have young they are caring for or are sitting on eggs. Otherwise you don't have any birds NEXT year. ;)

Here - have a link - http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/goshooting/starting/126765/Game_shooting_seasons.html

ETA Maybe they go after pigeons or rabbits instead since they count as vermin on farmland (at least I think so)?

Edited 2012-06-16 03:50 (UTC)