We Found The Hand Of Franklin! by buzzylittleb
Hi, buzzylittleb here, to really prove that this is "anything goes" Thursday! Okay, first I'm somewhat obliged to appologise for the tardiness of this post, which was caused by a series of unfortunate relocational incidents resulting from the completion of my degree, the result of which I shall find out upon the morrow.
However, more interestingly, on Saturday last shadowkitty and I conducted an expedition to find the Hand of Franklin, the reaching out one, you know...
And off we went to find the hand of Franklin. Reaching for the Beauford Sea. And if we do find his hand... The reaching out one... We'll let you know.
...and, well, I don't know about Fraser and Ray (though I hope they found some reaching out hands, even if they were only each others, and are now in the Canadian shack of legend and well... warming up after their long journey across the ice) but we found it.
Suffice to say, the climatic conditions on a June weekend in London, England are quite different from those in the "Northwest Areas"...
shadowkitty and I have rather different styles of doing things, to say the least, it's like crazy logic and reasonable sanity (which might be why shadowkitty bought my tube ticket). I wore red and managed to bring a handbag that carried almost everything we might need for any eventuality (camera, band-aids, soundtrack on mp3...) except what I actually needed videlicet currency and an ankle support (I had a slight disagreement with the pavement), while shadowkitty wore some more practical items of apparel, hot pants, and had managed to attach her (currency containing) coinpurse to them, as Fraser was advised:
Fraser: When I graduated from the Academy, my father gave me one piece of advice. He said always . . . no, he said never . . . well actually he gave me two pieces of advice but I've forgotten the other one but the important one is, never chase a man over a cliff.
er... no, not that piece of advice, the other one, the one about attaching one's wallet to one's underwear, wherever that is.
Unlike Ray and Fraser, we're still not sure how we got the idea to do this, we blame the pressure of the life of the modern university student and being stuck in a Uni whose only point of fame is that its "spiritual founder" Jeremy Bentham is kept embalmed in a case in the cloisters dressed in his old clothes (his head used to be on a plate between his feet, but there was an unfortunate incident involving a rival university and a football match, and also a further incident involving a lost luggage office in Aberdeen, so for reasons not be explored at this juncture his head is kept in the college safe and only removed for special occassions) and nearly every room and facility is named after him, causing much confusion and resentment amongst the student body. Of course, Ray and Fraser have a much better motivation:
Kowalski: You know when I add it all up, I only got one regret. That I never went on any err kind of real adventure.
Fraser: You don't consider being trapped 200 feet down an ice crevasse an adventure?
Kowalski: No no no. More like errr finding the err you know err the top of the Nile, or the tomb, king Tut's tomb, dating a supermodel, or Franklin; what the hell is Franklin, why did I think of Franklin?
Fraser (laughs): In 1845 Sir john Franklin set off in search of the Northwest passage with two boats the, Arabus and the Terror, and he was last seen navigating Peel Sound July 26.
Kowalski: Nobody found him?
Fraser: No no no. Many went in search of his hand reaching for the Beauford Sea, but none found him.
Kowalski: I get out of this, I live through this, gotta find that hand, I gotta find that reaching out hand.
Fraser: It might be the hand of death.
Kowalski: Yeah, well, I've faced death.
Fraser: And what did you do?
Kowalski: I sang. Of course it was Abba so it sort of spoilt the the romantic effect but yeah, I sang.
Fraser: Then we should sing.
Kowalski: What SOS?
Fraser: No
Fraser, singing:
Ah for just one time, I would take the Northwest passage,
Bob (joining in)
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beauford sea.
Tracing one more line thru' a land so wide and savage,
And make a North West Passage to the Sea.
West ward from
And to tell the truth, though I feel lost without shadowkitty, after this, our last hurrah, on that day, June the third, a day that will go down in history (probably as a small footnote) and shall forever define our friendship; she still won't let me sing in public, for reasons not to be explored at this juncture but almost certainly involving the preservation of both her hearing and her sanity.
We had some adventures on the technological wonder that is the London Underground, interchanging at the historical Baker Street Station, the first ever station on the putatitive network at its inception, where Fraser would undoubtably admire the architecture and the history and Ray would ask where the hell Sherlock Holmes is and venture that they make so much a better team than Holmes and Watson, 'cause they're a one-two punch and Watson just made Holmes look smart and that ain't buddies, is it?
Eventually, we alighted at Piccadily Circus, whereupon we got deeply confused by the multiplicity of exits, though I believe the correct one is Number Three and hence thought of the colour yellow until our feelings of ire and heatstroke subsided. We proceeded forth, and found British Columbia
and thence got a little lost and ended up in the vicinity of Quebec (house) and found a gentleman who would probably make Fraser feel very much at home and give any stray terrorists/ crazed trappers/ marmoset smugglers something else wearing shoot-me-red to shoot at, and thus spread disorder and confusion:
And Ray would almost certainly ask why he got a gun while Fraser hasn't and remind Fraser that superior firepower is your friend and the shield of righteousness is all very fine but not so funky when confronted with some fart hammer with an uzi. We asked him for directions, but clearly he was subject to an Ice Queen of his own.
And then we found somebody who looked rather familiar:
Sadly, it was not Franklin, we had the misfortune to be in the wrong hemisphere, though it made us wonder what the late Victorian fascination with horribly doomed exploritory expeditions was:
We think it might be something about mortality, morbidity and the transcient nature of the human race. Alternatively, they were all gloomy Guses. (For the benefit of those who can't read it, the inscription says
"Robert Falcon Scott
Captain Royal Navy
Who with four companions
[names slightly illegible]
Died March 1912 returning from the South Pole
"Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell
of the hardihood endurance and courage
of my companions which would have stirred
the heart of every Englishman
These rough notes and
dead bodies must tell the tale"
Then we found him, Franklin, on the other side of Waterloo Place and by dint of wonderous Victorian etiquette out of Scott's sight, so that he might not inspire jealousy in him by being even more disasterous.
We Found the Hand Of Franklin!
And here, for your benefit and edification is the inscription,
And having found the Hand, we ate ice cream in honour of our heroes arctic adventures and set off back on the Cockfosters tube.
Now where I to have had my own computer at this juncture, I might have been so bold as to recommend my favourite Quest stories, however, I will only recommend one story, in honor of shadowkitty's hotpants and her extreme reluctance to be photographed in them:
Broadwalk by Kellie Matthews
F/K NC17 92k
In which Ray wears some very very short shorts and looks hot.
Next was a faded red plaid flannel shirt. Okay, that was good, at least part of him would be warm. He picked it up, shrugged it on, and realized the sleeves had been raggedly torn away an inch or so below the shoulders. So much for warm. He picked up the cut-off denim shorts and grimaced, but stepped into them, pulled them up and started doing the buttons, then realized his briefs were showing about five inches past the bottom of the shorts. Picked the wrong day to wear long-lines.
With a sigh he took the shorts off, peeled off his briefs, and put the shorts back on. Sort of. Jesus. Where the hell was he supposed to put himself? After some judicious rearranging he was finally sure nothing was showing in a way that would get him arrested before he even left the division, and sat down on the john to put the steel-toed workboots on, lacing them up. Yeah, somebody got this look right. He'd seen it in quite a few of his jerk-off magazines, back when he'd still needed those. Finally dressed, he opened the door.
I'd also like to recommend the scene with Ray giving Fraser cut-offs in Somewhere Else To Be, which may well suggest that Kellie has a shorts!kink of which I for one heartily approve! (and of course, it is an excellent AU! With academic Fraser and mecchanic Ray and a scary mafiosi called Vecchio)
Until next Thursday, when hopefully there will be more with the fiction recs, this is buzzylittleb buzzing off!
However, more interestingly, on Saturday last shadowkitty and I conducted an expedition to find the Hand of Franklin, the reaching out one, you know...
And off we went to find the hand of Franklin. Reaching for the Beauford Sea. And if we do find his hand... The reaching out one... We'll let you know.
...and, well, I don't know about Fraser and Ray (though I hope they found some reaching out hands, even if they were only each others, and are now in the Canadian shack of legend and well... warming up after their long journey across the ice) but we found it.
Suffice to say, the climatic conditions on a June weekend in London, England are quite different from those in the "Northwest Areas"...
shadowkitty and I have rather different styles of doing things, to say the least, it's like crazy logic and reasonable sanity (which might be why shadowkitty bought my tube ticket). I wore red and managed to bring a handbag that carried almost everything we might need for any eventuality (camera, band-aids, soundtrack on mp3...) except what I actually needed videlicet currency and an ankle support (I had a slight disagreement with the pavement), while shadowkitty wore some more practical items of apparel, hot pants, and had managed to attach her (currency containing) coinpurse to them, as Fraser was advised:
Fraser: When I graduated from the Academy, my father gave me one piece of advice. He said always . . . no, he said never . . . well actually he gave me two pieces of advice but I've forgotten the other one but the important one is, never chase a man over a cliff.
er... no, not that piece of advice, the other one, the one about attaching one's wallet to one's underwear, wherever that is.
Unlike Ray and Fraser, we're still not sure how we got the idea to do this, we blame the pressure of the life of the modern university student and being stuck in a Uni whose only point of fame is that its "spiritual founder" Jeremy Bentham is kept embalmed in a case in the cloisters dressed in his old clothes (his head used to be on a plate between his feet, but there was an unfortunate incident involving a rival university and a football match, and also a further incident involving a lost luggage office in Aberdeen, so for reasons not be explored at this juncture his head is kept in the college safe and only removed for special occassions) and nearly every room and facility is named after him, causing much confusion and resentment amongst the student body. Of course, Ray and Fraser have a much better motivation:
Kowalski: You know when I add it all up, I only got one regret. That I never went on any err kind of real adventure.
Fraser: You don't consider being trapped 200 feet down an ice crevasse an adventure?
Kowalski: No no no. More like errr finding the err you know err the top of the Nile, or the tomb, king Tut's tomb, dating a supermodel, or Franklin; what the hell is Franklin, why did I think of Franklin?
Fraser (laughs): In 1845 Sir john Franklin set off in search of the Northwest passage with two boats the, Arabus and the Terror, and he was last seen navigating Peel Sound July 26.
Kowalski: Nobody found him?
Fraser: No no no. Many went in search of his hand reaching for the Beauford Sea, but none found him.
Kowalski: I get out of this, I live through this, gotta find that hand, I gotta find that reaching out hand.
Fraser: It might be the hand of death.
Kowalski: Yeah, well, I've faced death.
Fraser: And what did you do?
Kowalski: I sang. Of course it was Abba so it sort of spoilt the the romantic effect but yeah, I sang.
Fraser: Then we should sing.
Kowalski: What SOS?
Fraser: No
Fraser, singing:
Ah for just one time, I would take the Northwest passage,
Bob (joining in)
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beauford sea.
Tracing one more line thru' a land so wide and savage,
And make a North West Passage to the Sea.
West ward from
And to tell the truth, though I feel lost without shadowkitty, after this, our last hurrah, on that day, June the third, a day that will go down in history (probably as a small footnote) and shall forever define our friendship; she still won't let me sing in public, for reasons not to be explored at this juncture but almost certainly involving the preservation of both her hearing and her sanity.
We had some adventures on the technological wonder that is the London Underground, interchanging at the historical Baker Street Station, the first ever station on the putatitive network at its inception, where Fraser would undoubtably admire the architecture and the history and Ray would ask where the hell Sherlock Holmes is and venture that they make so much a better team than Holmes and Watson, 'cause they're a one-two punch and Watson just made Holmes look smart and that ain't buddies, is it?
Eventually, we alighted at Piccadily Circus, whereupon we got deeply confused by the multiplicity of exits, though I believe the correct one is Number Three and hence thought of the colour yellow until our feelings of ire and heatstroke subsided. We proceeded forth, and found British Columbia
and thence got a little lost and ended up in the vicinity of Quebec (house) and found a gentleman who would probably make Fraser feel very much at home and give any stray terrorists/ crazed trappers/ marmoset smugglers something else wearing shoot-me-red to shoot at, and thus spread disorder and confusion:
And Ray would almost certainly ask why he got a gun while Fraser hasn't and remind Fraser that superior firepower is your friend and the shield of righteousness is all very fine but not so funky when confronted with some fart hammer with an uzi. We asked him for directions, but clearly he was subject to an Ice Queen of his own.
And then we found somebody who looked rather familiar:
Sadly, it was not Franklin, we had the misfortune to be in the wrong hemisphere, though it made us wonder what the late Victorian fascination with horribly doomed exploritory expeditions was:
We think it might be something about mortality, morbidity and the transcient nature of the human race. Alternatively, they were all gloomy Guses. (For the benefit of those who can't read it, the inscription says
"Robert Falcon Scott
Captain Royal Navy
Who with four companions
[names slightly illegible]
Died March 1912 returning from the South Pole
"Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell
of the hardihood endurance and courage
of my companions which would have stirred
the heart of every Englishman
These rough notes and
dead bodies must tell the tale"
Then we found him, Franklin, on the other side of Waterloo Place and by dint of wonderous Victorian etiquette out of Scott's sight, so that he might not inspire jealousy in him by being even more disasterous.
We Found the Hand Of Franklin!
And here, for your benefit and edification is the inscription,
And having found the Hand, we ate ice cream in honour of our heroes arctic adventures and set off back on the Cockfosters tube.
Now where I to have had my own computer at this juncture, I might have been so bold as to recommend my favourite Quest stories, however, I will only recommend one story, in honor of shadowkitty's hotpants and her extreme reluctance to be photographed in them:
Broadwalk by Kellie Matthews
F/K NC17 92k
In which Ray wears some very very short shorts and looks hot.
Next was a faded red plaid flannel shirt. Okay, that was good, at least part of him would be warm. He picked it up, shrugged it on, and realized the sleeves had been raggedly torn away an inch or so below the shoulders. So much for warm. He picked up the cut-off denim shorts and grimaced, but stepped into them, pulled them up and started doing the buttons, then realized his briefs were showing about five inches past the bottom of the shorts. Picked the wrong day to wear long-lines.
With a sigh he took the shorts off, peeled off his briefs, and put the shorts back on. Sort of. Jesus. Where the hell was he supposed to put himself? After some judicious rearranging he was finally sure nothing was showing in a way that would get him arrested before he even left the division, and sat down on the john to put the steel-toed workboots on, lacing them up. Yeah, somebody got this look right. He'd seen it in quite a few of his jerk-off magazines, back when he'd still needed those. Finally dressed, he opened the door.
I'd also like to recommend the scene with Ray giving Fraser cut-offs in Somewhere Else To Be, which may well suggest that Kellie has a shorts!kink of which I for one heartily approve! (and of course, it is an excellent AU! With academic Fraser and mecchanic Ray and a scary mafiosi called Vecchio)
Until next Thursday, when hopefully there will be more with the fiction recs, this is buzzylittleb buzzing off!