Umbrellas, Kebabs, and Saveloys, What Next is the Question?
anadapta0801 and I hypothesised, the other evening, that Sherlock has most likely tried and tested all illicit substances known to man out of sheer curiosity and boredom. We then wondered what he'd be like on the more 'modern' drugs, since heroin is apparently out for this reboot. Then this happened.
Now available in two delicious forms - Watson blog entry (a la www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk), or a transcribed version if the format hurts your eyes. We don't blame you.
WARNING: The image is MASSIVE. Load at your own risk. Formatting was courtesy of a sanity-defying feat by anadapta0801 because she is excellent that way.
And the transcript:
Umbrellas, Kebabs, and Saveloys, What Next is the Question?
When I got back to the flat a few days ago I found that Sherlock had printed out my blog entries and pinned them to the walls, with corrections made in red pen. Apparently my writing has not been up to his standards. I was treated to a five minute lecture on 'flair' and 'vocabulary' which I don’t ever want to sit through again. So I'm going to try to make this entry as loquacious as possible (see?) otherwise Sherlock says he'll make the speech into an .mp3 and replace all the songs on my ipod with it.
Though, actually, this all began last night, when I got an unexpected text right in the middle of a session. Ella was unreasonably annoyed when I answered it, too, maybe I should fire her (just kidding Ella!) Going through my phone now, have found the message, which reads: "John. Return to flat immediately. Of vital importance that you bring crisps. SH"
Since even the most convoluted of Sherlock’s plans don’t involve crisps I sensed something was amiss. I went back to the flat post-haste, only to be confronted by Sherlock lying like a boneless chicken on the sofa, staring at me. I think he'd been watching the door since he sent the text. He seemed not to care about the multi-pack of Walkers I'd carried back from the corner shop, but was intently staring at the arm of the sofa. Eventually he took it upon himself to stare in the vicinity of my face and tell me about "This sofa. This. Sofa. Oh God. This fabric, this stitching. Thisss. Sofa." According to Sherlock, this was "The best sofa. I can tell because the fabric was sourced from a...from the...place....it's a thing that's...good...”
I am fairly sure this is when he started attempting to lick the upholstery.
That wasn't greatly unsettling in itself; I'd seen Sherlock lick a lot of things before, sheep's eyes being the most prominent in my mind. But when he said something along the lines of, “Watson. Watson! Watson come here. I can taste fabric! I can taste time!”, I started to think something was really wrong. Not least because I was standing all of six inches away from him and by now he was bellowing at the top of his lungs.
I leapt forwards, just managing to avoid a wild sweep of his arm, and tried to check his pulse, suspecting he’d had a stroke or, more likely, some sort of psychotic episode. His shirt had been torn open for some reason, and lay open, warm gray against his pale skin. I pressed a hand to his quivering chest to check his pulse. There was certainly something awry; his skin was damp with sweat and his heart pounded wildly under my palm. He watched me with sleepy bloodshot eyes and licked his lips. The cause of his distress was obvious, and should have been so from the start.
I don't know from where Sherlock had obtained the class-B drugs he was clearly under the influence of, but I was a little cheered up that he'd rung me when he felt the effects. A doctor who's spent a considerable period of time around bored young men in the Middle East is probably the best person to have around during a bad trip, after all. I'd have pegged him as one more for stimulants than depressants, but I suppose an intellect as monolithic as Sherlock’s would relish slumming it with the IQs of us mere mortals.
Since I was standing all of six inches away I shouldn't have been surprised that Sherlock mistook my sleeve for part of the sofa and started licking that too. But then it didn't seem to be a mistake, since he told me that he “bet I could taste time on you. I bet I could tell how old your elbow is in one lick. Aha, see, thirty-eight and a quarter. Wait...that's not your elbow.”
It was my elbow, but unfortunately it didn't end there, as he started grabbing my face, with a cry along the lines of: "Watson. Watson. Watson. Watson. Let me feel your face. I think you are keeping sofas in there and I need to check. Watson. Watson. Watson. Are you listening? Watson. Watson. Nostaw. Watson." and so on.
His hands were softer than you'd expect from someone who constantly touches dangerous objects. But I didn't have much time to dwell on that, because he soon stopped repeating my name and grabbed me by the ears, whispering, “Listen to me! My words contain information vital to the survival of the state. You have to listen to them, with your, with your ears. This sofa. Listen. This sofa...is an enemy agent. Ssssshhh, it might be listening too. D'you think it thought I was telling it to listen when I told you to listen? Are you listening?", as if we were spies in a bad thriller novel. I'm so lucky to live here. (There, Sherlock, irony, one of those 'literary devices' you wouldn't shut up about.)
He then dropped his hands from my ears, and stared intently at me in complete silence for a few seconds, before he declared that, "It is absolutely imperative that we, at this minute..." He trailed off, pawed at something in midair, cursed, and then turned back to me. "Get kebabs. I know a place. The chances of food poisoning aren't too high."
He handed me a post-it note with a shakily-drawn bar chart plotting chances of food poisoning against various local outlets. I probably shouldn't have let him out of the house, but then I've never been very good at making the right decision. I should also have reconsidered when he couldn't remember how to walk through the door.
In retrospect it's amazing we managed to get there at all, since the shop in question turned out to be in the East End, and we had to take two busses and a taxi to get there. Admittedly it would have been quicker to take the tube, but Sherlock started arguing with the automated voice, something about him 'not needing to mind the gap' because he had an intellect far outstripping her plebeian processors. He spoke like the tube tannoy woman for the next ten minutes, which was just unnerving. I've come to expect unnerving from Sherlock, but he kept telling me to keep all my personal belongings with me otherwise they would be destroyed.
It's lucky that they seemed to know him at the kebab shop, when we finally got there, after being thrown out of the taxi for only having monopoly money on us (how he managed to replace my cash I'll never know), because he did the same to the man behind the counter. Except, this time, he commanded that he be given “a portion of the swine” or else everyone in the shop would be destroyed. Then he started rubbing the countertop and talking in soothing tones to it. I didn't know he had soothing tones.
They were quite nice soothing tones, I have to admit. He'd have a good bedside manner if it weren't for the, you know, potentially homicidal sociopathy. Still, he didn't take kindly to being asked if he would vacate the premises because he was scaring the other customers. In fact he grabbed a piece of cod and tried to use it as a cudgel, all the while shouting that the proprietors “couldn't handle the truth”.
I got him to agree to sit on the wall outside and recite pi to eight hundred decimal places while I bought the kebabs, which luckily I was able to do despite having no money because Sherlock has a tab there. Will the surprises never end. I couldn't help noticing that the jar of pickled eggs looked like eyeballs. (There. Metaphor. Or was that simile?) Here's another simile for you: the kebabs I got looked like heaps of cow labia. But I got a saveloy too, so that wasn't so bad.
Holmes did not take to the saveloy. He told it to stop breathing in the vicinity of his brain. He then ran off and gave it to a homeless person, who looked confused more than anything.
Things got worse when I muttered that I'd wanted that saveloy. He took it into that giant brain of his that he was going to save my sausage. That sentence sounds more unsavoury than I meant it to. He immediately declared that “THE CHASE IS ON” and ran off into the park on a wild sausage-chase. I think he may have been trying to be chivalrous. Which makes me the fair maid in the equation, and I'm not at all comfortable with that.
I had never seen Holmes ride a tramp like a mechanical bull before, and I don't want to again.
After that endeavour he seemed worn out enough to want to go home. Until he found a broken umbrella in the gutter and decided to treat it like a wounded kitten. He said he found its broken limbs aesthetically pleasing, and apparently thought they could be better appreciated up a tree. He kept waving it around and shouting things like, “It’s broken like the society in which we live!” and, “It’s also broken like the boy’s arm I broke when I was six. He was an idiot, he deserved it."
He'd gotten onto how his umbrella was “much better than Mycroft’s brolly. Thinks it’s too good for the other wet-weather gear, just because Pater left it the estate” when I turned to desperate measures to get him down.
It seems that the wild Sherlock in its natural environment is drawn to the half a Mars bar I had in my inside pocket. He didn't even eat it though. He poked it a few times, then jammed one of the spokes of the umbrella through it. He stuck it in the ground and backed away from it carefully, as if he were a photographer setting up a shot. He seemed about to start ranting about his latest 'art installation' when he seemed to remember something, and ran back to the park, only falling over three or four times. It turned out he'd left his kebab on the seesaw.
You have never seen a man's face drop quite so spectacularly as Sherlock's did when he found that his kebab was not there.
He was like a five year old being told that it's bedtime. Of course five year olds don't typically start screaming that “MORIARTY TOOK MY KEBAB” even when they don't know who Moriarty is. Though this morning I wouldn't be surprised if that was a daily occurrence with Sherlock as a child. He then insisted that his hands were cold and that it was my duty as a doctor to warm them. (Damn it, Sherlock, I'm a doctor, not a radiator!)
Even now I'm amazed that he managed to keep his hands in my pockets on the tube ride home, or that I let him. Especially when that gang of skinheads got on near Aldgate East. I've been stuck in a dugout in the middle of mortar-fire with half a telephone and some paperclips and I never felt closer to death than I did right then.
I thought the evening would be over when we returned to Baker Street. Apparently not.
Sherlock wanted to see if he could play the violin with his feet.
After several minutes of fumbling and contorting himself on a chair (he is, incidentally, more limber than I’d like to be aware of) he dismissed playing the violin that way as something MORIARTY would do. This seems to be his new insult. He then decided it was high time I learned to play the violin. Because I am ‘a philistine’. Lovely.
In the process of teaching me how to hold a violin, Holmes insulted my parents (“how did they raise you?”), my intelligence (“no it’s not a guitar”), and my face. (“your chin is too small to play this instrument.”)
I was on the verge of making an ill-considered comment on his own lineage, because really, no-one with eyes that far apart doesn't have a cousin for a mother, when he seized my chin in one hand and my fingers in the other and proceeded to correct my egregious mistakes himself. (Egregious, there, I told you I'd put it in somewhere). Apparently Sherlock loses all sense of personal space when in an...altered state. It didn't help that he kept giggling, then stopping himself as soon as he realised he was doing so. And that was before he got the nosebleed.
He didn't actually realise he'd gotten a nosebleed until he'd rubbed his face all over my new jumper because it “felt like the rabbit he'd had as a child” (which, incidentally, was prematurely vivisected). It wasn't until he complimented the avant-garde asymmetrical pattern it had that I realised the massive patches of red on it were blood, and that they were coming from him.
It was then decided (not by me, as I should hope you have guessed) that my jumper should be removed. It is hard to argue with a six foot sociopath at the best of times, even more so when he's bleeding from the face and stoned to high heaven.
What I was not expecting was for him to then wear said jumper as a turban. Apparently he'd been to the Middle East too, which might explain where he got the controlled substances he was out of his gourd on.
Though it's as impossible for me to know Sherlock's thoughts as it is for a termite to know the mind of God, I think he might have started taking his own clothes off because he was jealous. If you've read this far you won't expect that decision to make any kind of sense.
However, he stopped halfway through removing one sock, sat down on the floor, and smiled at the wall with the most mellow, beatific expression I have ever seen on his face. He appeared to be playing pat-a-cake with the spot of air just in front of him.
The seraphic effect was ruined when he loudly and suddenly demanded that music be played, fine music, and immediately. I could only find a cassette of 80's disco music hidden in an empty flour bag. "John!” he cried upon hearing it, “John! I can taste the notes!”
He insisted that we put our heads together so that I could hear the notes through him. Not for the first time, I had to remind him that he is not a gramophone. And he swayed completely out of time with the music. Having given up the notion that he was a metronome in addition to an amp, he picked up the violin again.
He started licking it, pausing every few minutes to proclaim that he could taste every note it had every played, and that G# tasted of melon. I couldn't look away from him tonguing the f-holes. It was hypnotic. He offered it to me, saying I could “taste the rosin of its ancestors”. Unsurprisingly I demurred. Holmes' renewed ministrations caused one of the strings to snap, and upon this happening he decided that he didn't like the violin any more, it was making the wrong noises. "That note tasted of pickle! Pickle, John!" he shouted, before pausing to consider and finally concluding with an air of deep mystery, "...do we have any pickles in the flat?"
I managed to dissuade him from flinging the instrument into the bin, saving the Stradivarius foundation a river of tears. He demanded a ham sandwich in return for being robbed of his violin, with a pickle, apparently.
Before I could even think about condiments, Sherlock seemed to forget about his sandwich altogether and crawled to the sofa, deciding that he should “rest his face upon its magnificent fabric”. He passed out then, but only for a minute. He soon woke up and stared, wordlessly, like a deer in headlights at his own foot.
He tried to back away from it without it noticing him. The minute Sherlock saw it move after him, he let out a small keening sound, grabbed a nearby table lamp, and threw it at his foot. When this missed (smashed. I liked that lamp, too.), he started hurling the contents of the Walkers multi-pack at it. At least they'd come in useful.
I managed to stop him from gnawing off his own toes by dropping my jumper over his head. Mollified, since he seems to operate in the same way as a budgie, he immediately crumpled back onto the sofa and resumed snoring. He woke again, briefly, and called, "John" (at least, that's what I think he said, his voice was muffled by the jumper) "was that...was that my foot?"
"Yes."
"Oh." There was a pause. "Then why did it express homicidal intent towards me? I have enough enemies without my foot joining in."
I sighed. "Go to sleep, Sherlock."
I probably shouldn't have said that, because on hearing it he sat bolt upright and asserted that he couldn't possibly go to sleep on the sofa, because the sofa wasn't the place for going to sleep. Then he collapsed again. Unfortunately his aim was understandably poor, and he bounced off the edge of the settee and rolled onto the floor. If only Mycroft could have seen him then. I considered taking photos so that Mycroft could have seen him then, but then I remembered that one of us had a moral compass.
However, since Sherlock was using an empty dinner plate as a pillow and seemed in imminent danger of rolling onto his collection of bespoke broken glass bottles, I decided he'd better be put to bed for his own safety. Sherlock was having none of this, and as I tried to raise him to his feet, he decided the best strategy would be to deadweight, claiming that he should stay with the sofa, the sofa understood him. He didn't believe me when I said the sofa only wanted him for his body.
If anyone reading this has ever tried to drag a six-foot tall bag of cement - containing not only cement but several live chickens who hate you - across a room they'll know how hard it was to physically get Sherlock into his bed. Especially as I had to step over various piles of objects which Sherlock had deemed interesting, and other people would deem ungodly. I don't want to know how he got his hands on a child's skeleton, and why it was wearing something that looked suspiciously like the crown jewels. We did eventually get there, though, and I have to say Sherlock's sheets are no less cluttered with miscellanea than the rest of the flat. It was like a Womble den.
I managed to clear most of the junk away by sweeping it with an old broom (which was also in the bed). Then I tried to lift Sherlock off the floor, where he had been attempting to crawl into the wardrobe. It wasn’t easy, because he seemed to think he was a boat and his legs were oars, and kept kicking me and shouting “STROKE!”
And before you start accusing me of batting for the other team, Harry, yes I did put pyjamas on him, yes that did involve taking his trousers off, no I did not cop a feel and yes, he does wear boxers.
He kept making feeble efforts to make his way to the wardrobe again (why do I get the feeling he was read the Narnia books as a child), but eventually he seemed to drift off to sleep. There was a piece of Mars bar in his hair.
I had thought the evening was over, but no. Suddenly Sherlock sat bolt upright, and shouted "John! John! The umbrella! Bring back the umbrellage!” Since he'd 'installed' the umbrella in the park and I didn't fancy taking a moonlight stroll through Whitechapel, I found a charred children's brolly (replete with image of Paddington Bear) stuffed behind the fridge, and broke a few of its spokes before giving it to him. I felt uncomfortably like a child pulling the legs off a spider. And I hope I'm imagining this, but when I gave it to him I'm fairly sure he started chewing on it. I definitely didn't imagine him hugging it like a weird teddy and finally going to sleep. Nor did I imagine him waking up two hours later and asking for a glass of 'alligator'. I think he meant Gatorade.
"The blue one, John!” he shouted, shaking his fist, “I have lost essential blue and need to replace it! Get thee to the corner shop!"
Happily the only off-license in West London to be open at 5am also had several blue energy drinks, prominently displayed on the counter. I somehow got the feeling my experience was a regular occurrence round these parts. The clerk saw the look in my eyes and wordlessly handed me a bottle of Gatorade. It's nice to know I'm not alone in having to deal with Sherlock's ways.
By the time I'd returned, he was, of course, soundly asleep. I left the bottle of Gatorade by the bed and contemplated fishing the bits of Mars bar out of his hair. No, I decided. He can deal with that.
I should probably stop writing this now, Sherlock has just woken up and has stopped asking whether he’s murdered someone because he’s covered in nose-blood, and has started demanding bacon.
E.T.A. Just went in to check how he wants his breakfast and he's stuck to the pillow with the melted remains of a Mars bar. I'm going for a walk.
Comments:
SH: This post is without doubt the most fanciful piece of purple prose you have ever spewed from your nib. My recollection of last evening is considerably more civilised and, I don’t doubt, more accurate. As I recall, we went out, got kebabs, you insisted on a scenic walk through the park for reasons I cannot fathom, then I attempted to instil some culture into your primate brain by endowing you with the knowledge of classical music. The fact that one of your jumpers (incidentally, you have too many jumpers, I'm taking you to Saville Row after I finish writing this) has my blood on it is neither here nor there. Many items of clothing around the world have received my bodily fluids.
SH: Stop laughing, I didn't mean it like that.
SH: Furthermore, the fact that I woke up with a battered umbrella in my hands is probably another of your meagre attempts at humour. I also find that my violin is covered in something chemically resembling saliva. I am currently subjecting it to DNA testing, and may or may not require you to clean it, depending on the results.
SH: And never bring Gatorade into this flat again. It tastes of blue. And not of river-dwelling reptile as I had thought. Once again you've dashed my hopes, John, like the Moriarty you are.
Theimprobableone: who is this moriarty of whom you speak? he sounds intriguingly handsome.
Theimprobableone: or she.
SH: P.S. Make me a sandwich.
SH: P.P.S. With a pickle.
Now available in two delicious forms - Watson blog entry (a la www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk), or a transcribed version if the format hurts your eyes. We don't blame you.
WARNING: The image is MASSIVE. Load at your own risk. Formatting was courtesy of a sanity-defying feat by anadapta0801 because she is excellent that way.
And the transcript:
Umbrellas, Kebabs, and Saveloys, What Next is the Question?
When I got back to the flat a few days ago I found that Sherlock had printed out my blog entries and pinned them to the walls, with corrections made in red pen. Apparently my writing has not been up to his standards. I was treated to a five minute lecture on 'flair' and 'vocabulary' which I don’t ever want to sit through again. So I'm going to try to make this entry as loquacious as possible (see?) otherwise Sherlock says he'll make the speech into an .mp3 and replace all the songs on my ipod with it.
Though, actually, this all began last night, when I got an unexpected text right in the middle of a session. Ella was unreasonably annoyed when I answered it, too, maybe I should fire her (just kidding Ella!) Going through my phone now, have found the message, which reads: "John. Return to flat immediately. Of vital importance that you bring crisps. SH"
Since even the most convoluted of Sherlock’s plans don’t involve crisps I sensed something was amiss. I went back to the flat post-haste, only to be confronted by Sherlock lying like a boneless chicken on the sofa, staring at me. I think he'd been watching the door since he sent the text. He seemed not to care about the multi-pack of Walkers I'd carried back from the corner shop, but was intently staring at the arm of the sofa. Eventually he took it upon himself to stare in the vicinity of my face and tell me about "This sofa. This. Sofa. Oh God. This fabric, this stitching. Thisss. Sofa." According to Sherlock, this was "The best sofa. I can tell because the fabric was sourced from a...from the...place....it's a thing that's...good...”
I am fairly sure this is when he started attempting to lick the upholstery.
That wasn't greatly unsettling in itself; I'd seen Sherlock lick a lot of things before, sheep's eyes being the most prominent in my mind. But when he said something along the lines of, “Watson. Watson! Watson come here. I can taste fabric! I can taste time!”, I started to think something was really wrong. Not least because I was standing all of six inches away from him and by now he was bellowing at the top of his lungs.
I leapt forwards, just managing to avoid a wild sweep of his arm, and tried to check his pulse, suspecting he’d had a stroke or, more likely, some sort of psychotic episode. His shirt had been torn open for some reason, and lay open, warm gray against his pale skin. I pressed a hand to his quivering chest to check his pulse. There was certainly something awry; his skin was damp with sweat and his heart pounded wildly under my palm. He watched me with sleepy bloodshot eyes and licked his lips. The cause of his distress was obvious, and should have been so from the start.
I don't know from where Sherlock had obtained the class-B drugs he was clearly under the influence of, but I was a little cheered up that he'd rung me when he felt the effects. A doctor who's spent a considerable period of time around bored young men in the Middle East is probably the best person to have around during a bad trip, after all. I'd have pegged him as one more for stimulants than depressants, but I suppose an intellect as monolithic as Sherlock’s would relish slumming it with the IQs of us mere mortals.
Since I was standing all of six inches away I shouldn't have been surprised that Sherlock mistook my sleeve for part of the sofa and started licking that too. But then it didn't seem to be a mistake, since he told me that he “bet I could taste time on you. I bet I could tell how old your elbow is in one lick. Aha, see, thirty-eight and a quarter. Wait...that's not your elbow.”
It was my elbow, but unfortunately it didn't end there, as he started grabbing my face, with a cry along the lines of: "Watson. Watson. Watson. Watson. Let me feel your face. I think you are keeping sofas in there and I need to check. Watson. Watson. Watson. Are you listening? Watson. Watson. Nostaw. Watson." and so on.
His hands were softer than you'd expect from someone who constantly touches dangerous objects. But I didn't have much time to dwell on that, because he soon stopped repeating my name and grabbed me by the ears, whispering, “Listen to me! My words contain information vital to the survival of the state. You have to listen to them, with your, with your ears. This sofa. Listen. This sofa...is an enemy agent. Ssssshhh, it might be listening too. D'you think it thought I was telling it to listen when I told you to listen? Are you listening?", as if we were spies in a bad thriller novel. I'm so lucky to live here. (There, Sherlock, irony, one of those 'literary devices' you wouldn't shut up about.)
He then dropped his hands from my ears, and stared intently at me in complete silence for a few seconds, before he declared that, "It is absolutely imperative that we, at this minute..." He trailed off, pawed at something in midair, cursed, and then turned back to me. "Get kebabs. I know a place. The chances of food poisoning aren't too high."
He handed me a post-it note with a shakily-drawn bar chart plotting chances of food poisoning against various local outlets. I probably shouldn't have let him out of the house, but then I've never been very good at making the right decision. I should also have reconsidered when he couldn't remember how to walk through the door.
In retrospect it's amazing we managed to get there at all, since the shop in question turned out to be in the East End, and we had to take two busses and a taxi to get there. Admittedly it would have been quicker to take the tube, but Sherlock started arguing with the automated voice, something about him 'not needing to mind the gap' because he had an intellect far outstripping her plebeian processors. He spoke like the tube tannoy woman for the next ten minutes, which was just unnerving. I've come to expect unnerving from Sherlock, but he kept telling me to keep all my personal belongings with me otherwise they would be destroyed.
It's lucky that they seemed to know him at the kebab shop, when we finally got there, after being thrown out of the taxi for only having monopoly money on us (how he managed to replace my cash I'll never know), because he did the same to the man behind the counter. Except, this time, he commanded that he be given “a portion of the swine” or else everyone in the shop would be destroyed. Then he started rubbing the countertop and talking in soothing tones to it. I didn't know he had soothing tones.
They were quite nice soothing tones, I have to admit. He'd have a good bedside manner if it weren't for the, you know, potentially homicidal sociopathy. Still, he didn't take kindly to being asked if he would vacate the premises because he was scaring the other customers. In fact he grabbed a piece of cod and tried to use it as a cudgel, all the while shouting that the proprietors “couldn't handle the truth”.
I got him to agree to sit on the wall outside and recite pi to eight hundred decimal places while I bought the kebabs, which luckily I was able to do despite having no money because Sherlock has a tab there. Will the surprises never end. I couldn't help noticing that the jar of pickled eggs looked like eyeballs. (There. Metaphor. Or was that simile?) Here's another simile for you: the kebabs I got looked like heaps of cow labia. But I got a saveloy too, so that wasn't so bad.
Holmes did not take to the saveloy. He told it to stop breathing in the vicinity of his brain. He then ran off and gave it to a homeless person, who looked confused more than anything.
Things got worse when I muttered that I'd wanted that saveloy. He took it into that giant brain of his that he was going to save my sausage. That sentence sounds more unsavoury than I meant it to. He immediately declared that “THE CHASE IS ON” and ran off into the park on a wild sausage-chase. I think he may have been trying to be chivalrous. Which makes me the fair maid in the equation, and I'm not at all comfortable with that.
I had never seen Holmes ride a tramp like a mechanical bull before, and I don't want to again.
After that endeavour he seemed worn out enough to want to go home. Until he found a broken umbrella in the gutter and decided to treat it like a wounded kitten. He said he found its broken limbs aesthetically pleasing, and apparently thought they could be better appreciated up a tree. He kept waving it around and shouting things like, “It’s broken like the society in which we live!” and, “It’s also broken like the boy’s arm I broke when I was six. He was an idiot, he deserved it."
He'd gotten onto how his umbrella was “much better than Mycroft’s brolly. Thinks it’s too good for the other wet-weather gear, just because Pater left it the estate” when I turned to desperate measures to get him down.
It seems that the wild Sherlock in its natural environment is drawn to the half a Mars bar I had in my inside pocket. He didn't even eat it though. He poked it a few times, then jammed one of the spokes of the umbrella through it. He stuck it in the ground and backed away from it carefully, as if he were a photographer setting up a shot. He seemed about to start ranting about his latest 'art installation' when he seemed to remember something, and ran back to the park, only falling over three or four times. It turned out he'd left his kebab on the seesaw.
You have never seen a man's face drop quite so spectacularly as Sherlock's did when he found that his kebab was not there.
He was like a five year old being told that it's bedtime. Of course five year olds don't typically start screaming that “MORIARTY TOOK MY KEBAB” even when they don't know who Moriarty is. Though this morning I wouldn't be surprised if that was a daily occurrence with Sherlock as a child. He then insisted that his hands were cold and that it was my duty as a doctor to warm them. (Damn it, Sherlock, I'm a doctor, not a radiator!)
Even now I'm amazed that he managed to keep his hands in my pockets on the tube ride home, or that I let him. Especially when that gang of skinheads got on near Aldgate East. I've been stuck in a dugout in the middle of mortar-fire with half a telephone and some paperclips and I never felt closer to death than I did right then.
I thought the evening would be over when we returned to Baker Street. Apparently not.
Sherlock wanted to see if he could play the violin with his feet.
After several minutes of fumbling and contorting himself on a chair (he is, incidentally, more limber than I’d like to be aware of) he dismissed playing the violin that way as something MORIARTY would do. This seems to be his new insult. He then decided it was high time I learned to play the violin. Because I am ‘a philistine’. Lovely.
In the process of teaching me how to hold a violin, Holmes insulted my parents (“how did they raise you?”), my intelligence (“no it’s not a guitar”), and my face. (“your chin is too small to play this instrument.”)
I was on the verge of making an ill-considered comment on his own lineage, because really, no-one with eyes that far apart doesn't have a cousin for a mother, when he seized my chin in one hand and my fingers in the other and proceeded to correct my egregious mistakes himself. (Egregious, there, I told you I'd put it in somewhere). Apparently Sherlock loses all sense of personal space when in an...altered state. It didn't help that he kept giggling, then stopping himself as soon as he realised he was doing so. And that was before he got the nosebleed.
He didn't actually realise he'd gotten a nosebleed until he'd rubbed his face all over my new jumper because it “felt like the rabbit he'd had as a child” (which, incidentally, was prematurely vivisected). It wasn't until he complimented the avant-garde asymmetrical pattern it had that I realised the massive patches of red on it were blood, and that they were coming from him.
It was then decided (not by me, as I should hope you have guessed) that my jumper should be removed. It is hard to argue with a six foot sociopath at the best of times, even more so when he's bleeding from the face and stoned to high heaven.
What I was not expecting was for him to then wear said jumper as a turban. Apparently he'd been to the Middle East too, which might explain where he got the controlled substances he was out of his gourd on.
Though it's as impossible for me to know Sherlock's thoughts as it is for a termite to know the mind of God, I think he might have started taking his own clothes off because he was jealous. If you've read this far you won't expect that decision to make any kind of sense.
However, he stopped halfway through removing one sock, sat down on the floor, and smiled at the wall with the most mellow, beatific expression I have ever seen on his face. He appeared to be playing pat-a-cake with the spot of air just in front of him.
The seraphic effect was ruined when he loudly and suddenly demanded that music be played, fine music, and immediately. I could only find a cassette of 80's disco music hidden in an empty flour bag. "John!” he cried upon hearing it, “John! I can taste the notes!”
He insisted that we put our heads together so that I could hear the notes through him. Not for the first time, I had to remind him that he is not a gramophone. And he swayed completely out of time with the music. Having given up the notion that he was a metronome in addition to an amp, he picked up the violin again.
He started licking it, pausing every few minutes to proclaim that he could taste every note it had every played, and that G# tasted of melon. I couldn't look away from him tonguing the f-holes. It was hypnotic. He offered it to me, saying I could “taste the rosin of its ancestors”. Unsurprisingly I demurred. Holmes' renewed ministrations caused one of the strings to snap, and upon this happening he decided that he didn't like the violin any more, it was making the wrong noises. "That note tasted of pickle! Pickle, John!" he shouted, before pausing to consider and finally concluding with an air of deep mystery, "...do we have any pickles in the flat?"
I managed to dissuade him from flinging the instrument into the bin, saving the Stradivarius foundation a river of tears. He demanded a ham sandwich in return for being robbed of his violin, with a pickle, apparently.
Before I could even think about condiments, Sherlock seemed to forget about his sandwich altogether and crawled to the sofa, deciding that he should “rest his face upon its magnificent fabric”. He passed out then, but only for a minute. He soon woke up and stared, wordlessly, like a deer in headlights at his own foot.
He tried to back away from it without it noticing him. The minute Sherlock saw it move after him, he let out a small keening sound, grabbed a nearby table lamp, and threw it at his foot. When this missed (smashed. I liked that lamp, too.), he started hurling the contents of the Walkers multi-pack at it. At least they'd come in useful.
I managed to stop him from gnawing off his own toes by dropping my jumper over his head. Mollified, since he seems to operate in the same way as a budgie, he immediately crumpled back onto the sofa and resumed snoring. He woke again, briefly, and called, "John" (at least, that's what I think he said, his voice was muffled by the jumper) "was that...was that my foot?"
"Yes."
"Oh." There was a pause. "Then why did it express homicidal intent towards me? I have enough enemies without my foot joining in."
I sighed. "Go to sleep, Sherlock."
I probably shouldn't have said that, because on hearing it he sat bolt upright and asserted that he couldn't possibly go to sleep on the sofa, because the sofa wasn't the place for going to sleep. Then he collapsed again. Unfortunately his aim was understandably poor, and he bounced off the edge of the settee and rolled onto the floor. If only Mycroft could have seen him then. I considered taking photos so that Mycroft could have seen him then, but then I remembered that one of us had a moral compass.
However, since Sherlock was using an empty dinner plate as a pillow and seemed in imminent danger of rolling onto his collection of bespoke broken glass bottles, I decided he'd better be put to bed for his own safety. Sherlock was having none of this, and as I tried to raise him to his feet, he decided the best strategy would be to deadweight, claiming that he should stay with the sofa, the sofa understood him. He didn't believe me when I said the sofa only wanted him for his body.
If anyone reading this has ever tried to drag a six-foot tall bag of cement - containing not only cement but several live chickens who hate you - across a room they'll know how hard it was to physically get Sherlock into his bed. Especially as I had to step over various piles of objects which Sherlock had deemed interesting, and other people would deem ungodly. I don't want to know how he got his hands on a child's skeleton, and why it was wearing something that looked suspiciously like the crown jewels. We did eventually get there, though, and I have to say Sherlock's sheets are no less cluttered with miscellanea than the rest of the flat. It was like a Womble den.
I managed to clear most of the junk away by sweeping it with an old broom (which was also in the bed). Then I tried to lift Sherlock off the floor, where he had been attempting to crawl into the wardrobe. It wasn’t easy, because he seemed to think he was a boat and his legs were oars, and kept kicking me and shouting “STROKE!”
And before you start accusing me of batting for the other team, Harry, yes I did put pyjamas on him, yes that did involve taking his trousers off, no I did not cop a feel and yes, he does wear boxers.
He kept making feeble efforts to make his way to the wardrobe again (why do I get the feeling he was read the Narnia books as a child), but eventually he seemed to drift off to sleep. There was a piece of Mars bar in his hair.
I had thought the evening was over, but no. Suddenly Sherlock sat bolt upright, and shouted "John! John! The umbrella! Bring back the umbrellage!” Since he'd 'installed' the umbrella in the park and I didn't fancy taking a moonlight stroll through Whitechapel, I found a charred children's brolly (replete with image of Paddington Bear) stuffed behind the fridge, and broke a few of its spokes before giving it to him. I felt uncomfortably like a child pulling the legs off a spider. And I hope I'm imagining this, but when I gave it to him I'm fairly sure he started chewing on it. I definitely didn't imagine him hugging it like a weird teddy and finally going to sleep. Nor did I imagine him waking up two hours later and asking for a glass of 'alligator'. I think he meant Gatorade.
"The blue one, John!” he shouted, shaking his fist, “I have lost essential blue and need to replace it! Get thee to the corner shop!"
Happily the only off-license in West London to be open at 5am also had several blue energy drinks, prominently displayed on the counter. I somehow got the feeling my experience was a regular occurrence round these parts. The clerk saw the look in my eyes and wordlessly handed me a bottle of Gatorade. It's nice to know I'm not alone in having to deal with Sherlock's ways.
By the time I'd returned, he was, of course, soundly asleep. I left the bottle of Gatorade by the bed and contemplated fishing the bits of Mars bar out of his hair. No, I decided. He can deal with that.
I should probably stop writing this now, Sherlock has just woken up and has stopped asking whether he’s murdered someone because he’s covered in nose-blood, and has started demanding bacon.
E.T.A. Just went in to check how he wants his breakfast and he's stuck to the pillow with the melted remains of a Mars bar. I'm going for a walk.
Comments:
SH: This post is without doubt the most fanciful piece of purple prose you have ever spewed from your nib. My recollection of last evening is considerably more civilised and, I don’t doubt, more accurate. As I recall, we went out, got kebabs, you insisted on a scenic walk through the park for reasons I cannot fathom, then I attempted to instil some culture into your primate brain by endowing you with the knowledge of classical music. The fact that one of your jumpers (incidentally, you have too many jumpers, I'm taking you to Saville Row after I finish writing this) has my blood on it is neither here nor there. Many items of clothing around the world have received my bodily fluids.
SH: Stop laughing, I didn't mean it like that.
SH: Furthermore, the fact that I woke up with a battered umbrella in my hands is probably another of your meagre attempts at humour. I also find that my violin is covered in something chemically resembling saliva. I am currently subjecting it to DNA testing, and may or may not require you to clean it, depending on the results.
SH: And never bring Gatorade into this flat again. It tastes of blue. And not of river-dwelling reptile as I had thought. Once again you've dashed my hopes, John, like the Moriarty you are.
Theimprobableone: who is this moriarty of whom you speak? he sounds intriguingly handsome.
Theimprobableone: or she.
SH: P.S. Make me a sandwich.
SH: P.P.S. With a pickle.