Into the Attic
May. 30th, 2012 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Sherlock, the bastard, giggled the entire walk back to the house. “Oh, don’t worry, John, that panto you did in uni will stand you in excellent stead. I’m not at all worried about your keeping up your end.”
“Neither am I, as I’m planning to find some unemployed West End swot and pay him to take my place.”
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New challenge – Sherlock is feeling a bit down; talking to John – in my head they’re outside, sitting under a tree – he remembers something from childhood and they set off into the attic to see if they can find it. What object are they hunting for? Also – things which John and Sherlock will find in dotty Uncle Rocky’s attic during the search. Go!
“Neither am I, as I’m planning to find some unemployed West End swot and pay him to take my place.”
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New challenge – Sherlock is feeling a bit down; talking to John – in my head they’re outside, sitting under a tree – he remembers something from childhood and they set off into the attic to see if they can find it. What object are they hunting for? Also – things which John and Sherlock will find in dotty Uncle Rocky’s attic during the search. Go!
no subject
Date: 2012-05-30 09:52 pm (UTC)Things in the attic: Stuff. Old furniture, old paintings. Maybe family portraits (can go back a couple of centuries). A Victrola -- maybe it still has some shellac records that can be played. Mementoes collected from whichever Holmes was an officer stationed in India during the height of the Victorian Empire -- daggers, maybe a (discreetly looted) Hindu religious object). Ancient pistols. A Golliwog, maybe, put away once the family reluctantly realized that Golliwogs are seen as racist? Relics of a long-dead family pet. Taxidermy -- maybe it's not just Labby's old food bowl that's stored up in the attic. Typescript pages of either a family history or some really awfully embarrassing fictional exercise or semi-autobiographical work. Weird objects picked up during travel through former colonies. Photographs from the Holmes family's London pied-a-terre that were thought lost during the Blitz but which ended up in Rocky's attic.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-30 10:43 pm (UTC)If Sherlock is sad, is it for a person, a pet or an experience? Photographs, pet collars or cages might cover it, but other things could be more personal still. (The remnants of the violin that Plutarch destroyed for instance).
My family moved so often, and I used to, that my main mementoes of my childhood are photos and books. My eldest brother still has his bear. What sorts of things do other people have?
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Date: 2012-05-30 11:05 pm (UTC)John is very aware that Sherlock is a bit more emotional than normal. He's been watching him struggle with this music that has unexpectedly become a project - and sees too that the music has taken on more meaning than is perhaps mentally healthy for his friend. So he follows, or finds him after a discreet amount of time.
He tries to cheer him up, and there have to be some good memories - perhaps especially associated with this place, because it wasn't Sherlock's actual home - which wasn't particularly happy - but a bit of a country refuge. Maybe Uncle Rocky's attic is where all the really good toys reside.
This link offered by another friend is brilliant - and you know Sherlock had a chemistry kit...I can't see him seeking out his old chemistry kit since he has such cool stuff in the flat, but this sort of thing perhaps? http://www.cracked.com/article_19481_the-8-most-wildly-irresponsible-vintage-toys_p2.html
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Date: 2012-05-30 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-30 11:31 pm (UTC)Might it be related to music, then? Something that happened in this house that first helped him find music, and the solace he experiences with it. Was it Rocky or an aunt who let him stay up late to listen to the quartet playing for the soirée and discovered that it brought order and calm to his overstimulated mind. It might then be an instrument, a kind of playbill (I bet the family goes to the effort of creating programs for their Events). Maybe if this is the place where his music started, it gives him a foothold again?
(poor lad. *pets him*)
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Date: 2012-05-30 11:18 pm (UTC)I'm also convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that my old blankie, which vanished before I was ready to get rid of it, is peacefully decomposing under the back porch. The fact that my parents completely renovated the back of the house several years ago, destroying the porch in the process, does not hinder this belief in the slightest.
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Date: 2012-05-30 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-01 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-06-01 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-30 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 01:09 am (UTC)Ivory game counters shaped like fish. Bifocals that are hundreds of years old. Gas masks. Plane spotting charts. A dress form. Trunks full of old clothing. The only stuffed dodo in existence. A mirror with mysterious carvings around the frame. A medical skeleton with one leg missing. A set of bagpipes. Some swords. Ice skates. A fly fishing kit that's too brittle with age for anything to be of use. A worn out wing chair, slightly too wobbly even for the servants when there were servants. Great Aunt Vivianne's collection of cigarette holders. A matching cigarette case, clock, pen holder (no pen) and lighter from her desk set. A matching set of badly done oils. A pair of old ski boots, the kind that lace on, with all the laces in knots. A book press. A glass display case of native insects. A cigar box filled with costume jewelry, half of the paste gems gone. A rug beater. A Victorian pump action vacuum cleaner. A bundle of children's writing exercises. A Spirograph. Galoshes, odd sizes, unmatched. A beautiful antique bottle, mostly opaque, sealed with lead. In a box lid slid under a dresser full of stuck drawers, a child's collection of river-smoothed oval stones. Great grandmother's compact.
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Date: 2012-05-31 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-31 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-01 03:45 am (UTC)A bunch of other stuff tumbled in from my past, including the archaic skis and the astonishingly ugly coat rack, so those things could have wandered into dream. :-)