Come out and play

[impulsereader]

Grandmere is dying to hear about one of Sherlock and John’s adventures. Which ACD story should be adapted for her benefit? Come on – throw me your favourite – Silver Blaze, Yellow Face and Speckled Band are the only stories off the table as I’m trying/planning to use or have already used those.


I’m still not sure what Mycroft is building – or assembling – he has the MJN crew bringing in one element and Sandy Arbuthnot flying in another – there may very well be other components as well... This leads one of the opening scenes in the Much Ado season to feature a dogfight bringing down Sandy’s plane and a group of armed men hijacking Gertie! Luckily, John and Not Anthea look harmless and are taken along as hostages. It does not take them long to return control to Martin (who displays a slightly startling willingness to be Captain even when doing so requires him to be kidnapped at gunpoint. “No, being Captain means taking the bad with the good, Douglas.”).

What is Mycroft building/assembling? Maybe he’s let one of you in on it? He doesn’t seem inclined currently to tell me.


Mycroft refers to the clan as ‘a blizzard of Holmeses’. Do we like that or can you lot come up with something better? I know djarum99 is good at this – a charm of hummingbirds - *happy sigh*.


Do John and Sherlock exchange gifts? If yes, what would you like to see them give each other? Two holidays here, mind…is anyone interested in any other possible gift exchanges?


What do you think might be in the bottle (sealed with lead) which Sherlock pocketed in the attic?


The boys are scheduled for a final fitting of their costumes. I think this requires another canon character (anyone but Donovan *glares at Sally*) to drop by the flat coincidentally while Sherlock is trying on dresses. Who would you like it to be? What else is going on in November at Baker Street? What are we talking about while the fitting is going on? Is there a case on? Maybe we can even put in another ACD adaptation here…go wild!

Comments

[221b-hound.livejournal.com]

I've always been massively fond of both The Red-Headed League and The Solitary Cyclist (the latter because Violet is pretty BAMF, considering).

I'm wondering now if Mycroft is *not* building something sensible and grown up but completing an experiment from his teenaged years, for which he needs the engine of a Trabant (weird communist car from Eastern Europe). Perhaps he always fancied that he could soup up the engine of that thing so it was less like a lawnmower. Or that he could use the lawnower engine of the thing to build one of those mini-helicopters. I think I'm just amused by theidea of it being Mycroft for a change who is indulging some fanciful inventor/experiment ideas. Just a thought.

Instead of a blizzard of Holmeses... a gaggle of them, maybe? (I'm thinking of geese, all long necks and imperiousness and bad tempers).

The bottle may contain the results of one of his earliest experiments with chemicals, and he wants to see what the chemical soup has turned into since then?

I love those touchscreen gloves that djarum99 linked to. Apart from practical gifts, I wonder if John might find experiential gifts for him. I mean, I expect Sherlock acutally knows how to ballroom dance, but a set of lessons in salsa might come in handy for a case sometime. There's actually this neat thing you can do in Poland, where one of the last steam trains still running a commuter route exists. For a week you can learn how to be a steam engine driver and then take the train on one of its runs. With his medical contacts, John might be able to arrange for Sherlock to spend time observing some kind of medical specialist at work. Or, if he wants it to be more of a kidding around present, a cookery course in some cuisine that John really likes. I read someting recently about an apron that reads "Cooking is science for hungry people".

I wonder if Sherlock might be willing to give John sort-of experiential things too, instead of material gifts. Like a note promising to not destroy the kitchen for a month. Or to do the shopping at least once in January. (And when he does it, he does the shopping EXTRAVAGANTLY).

Though maybe he might just get John a really, really, really good bottle of whisky.

Or typing lessons. In retaliation for last year's cooking lessons.

I think Molly catching SHerlock in a dress would be all kinds of hilarious, because she'd be blurting out things and trying to be all 'Oh, it's cool, my uncle's a cross dresser and you like much nicer than he does. More feminine. Uh. And. I have a handbag that would go nicely with that..."

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

Hm. This is all good to meditate on. I very much like the idea of something I can then translate into one of our interludes - like doing the shopping as a present. I think I'd quite like to write John and Sherlock out grocery shopping. Ugh, that would require quarryquest to work overtime as I've only been in shops in London very briefly.

I'm actually toying with the notion that the bottle contains something other than a liquid. A note, perhaps? I kind of want to go for - a genie - but on the other hand want to keep the story firmly in RL.

I quite like fanciful!Mycroft as well. I think whatever he's assembling is something that he's over-complicating. He's flying things in and being all secretive and telling people off because they're interrupting his working on it and he ends up with a can opener or something.

Yes, Molly might be good. Having just read Pargoletta's fic Nearer My God to Thee - highly recommended, by the way http://pargoletta.livejournal.com/tag/nearer%20my%20god%20to%20thee - I was meditating on bringing in Sarah to poke fun at Sherlock in a dress.

[221b-hound.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Little sherlock made a list of wishes for his future on a sad day. Things he wanted to have or to be one day, and he put it in a time capsule to check when he was older and all grown up, and he didn't remember until he saw the bottle. And a tightly rolled up piece of paper would contain a list of things like:

I will be a pirate and have adventures, I don't care what Mycroft says.

I will have a best friend (a real one not an imaginary one) (and not Mycroft) and we'll have adventures together.

Daddy will like me again.

I will prove that Mycroft broke my violin so he will stop blaming Plutarch.

I will never like sprouts. Not even when I'm really really old like 30.

Re the shopping, I can't help thinking that Sherlock will come home with strange gourmet goods or weird foreign brands (Polish beer, for example. Last time I was in London, the local supermarket had all this Zywiec in, catering for the immigrant Polish population, which amused us no end. Polish beer is excellent, by the way).

I've bookmarked that fic to go read. :) I liked Sarah a lot, so it'll be good to read more of her in fic.

[natsuko1978.livejournal.com]

Why would only quarryquest have to help you? I lived on the borders and worked in London until I was 30, still have family in London and am under a London hospital (St Thomas' on Westminster Bridge Rd) so o there several times a year...

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

If I'm setting Sherlock loose in a shop I expect to need all the Brits I can get!

[djarum99.livejournal.com]

My vote for The Solitary Cyclist. And, oooh, Sherlock doing the shopping - I can just picture him in a market buying all the cantaloupe, with some experiment in mind, and taking a course in Thai cuisine. He would drive the instructor to murder, I think.

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think I'll go with the Solitary Cyclist. Now I just have to knock it into a more modern shape.

I know, right? Sherlock grocery shopping has to be epic!

[221b-hound.livejournal.com]

A fun thing for Sherlock at cookery classes, if he went to them, would the stuff he knows already (or perhaps learns) about the household foodstuffs that are poisonous. Like rhubarb and eggplant leaves.

I imagine that after Sherlock has fulfilled his 'gift' of doing the shopping once that John will make sure he NEVER DOES IT AGAIN. Because he still doesn't know what to do with the sixteen cans of catfood Sherlock bought because IT WAS ON SPECIAL.

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can see Sherlock actually attending a cookery class, though the visual is completely hilarious.

I have to write the shopping now, I just have to. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it as funny as it should be, but I have to at least try. What I really want - oh, god typing is scary - what I just realized I need to do is send Sherlock on his own, but give John something to do to intercut - then we get the reaction scene - You bought WHAT????? Sherlock will very definitely be banned from doing the shopping ever again.

[221b-hound.livejournal.com]

I can see him *disrupting* cooking classes and being thrown out in the first half hour, but attending, not so much.

Shopping SHerlock. THis I want to see. SO MUCH. I suspect that, besides being easily distracted from the mundane task of gathering foodstuffs from the home, Sherlock is probably *deliberately* bad at it, in the hopes that people will stop asking him to do it.

And now I'm wondering if John will be all WHAT THE HELL IS THIS??? and then twig onto Sherlock's evil plans to skive out of household tasks, and grits his teeth and thanks him, and then *makes Sherlock eat the things he bought*.

"NO, SHerlock, if you bought herrings and jam and bread, this is a clear indication of what you want for breakfast. Enjoy. Unless you'd prefer the quail eggs and royal jelly on crackers, because that's the other option." ANd eating it himself, because he was in the army and he knows how BAD bad food can actually be.