Do you want free theatre tickets?

www.anightlessordinary.org.uk

Thank you, Colin and/or Merlin. I wouldn't have known that such a cool offer existed if not for you. :D

Basically it's like this: If you're under 26 and you love watching theatre, just jump on the bandwagon (i.e visit the website) and learn how you can watch plays for free!

(Also I've said this on my EllJay -- this post is another way of me pimping the cute, gobbley-little awesomeness that is Colin Morgan and his Irish accent. Plus. His face when he said 'Ratatouille'!

Keeping the Faith

And no, this ain't the Edward Norton-Ben Stiller rom-com.

It's what I'm working on right now. Here's an excerpt. Tell me what you think, guise.

Another communion. Another long row of grey-haired widows in tweed and young obedient, innocent children (the widows’ grandchildren?) waiting to be fed with consecrated bread. And here I was doing the feeding, murmuring the same words over and over like some meaningless mantra.

The body of Christ.

Amen, they replied.

The body of Christ.

Another amen echoed.

The body of –

A shriek from the back of the church caused my dwindling attention to snap. My gaze lifted from the dainty-dressed little girl in front of me to a man who was now making his way to the pew near the exit. It would have been a perfectly normal sight – a churchgoer who was late for communion service, but a churchgoer nonetheless.

But this was no ordinary sight.

The man’s otherwise starch-white, pretentiously French-cuffed shirt was drenched with blood. Judging from his flippancy, I don’t think he minded the attention given to him. Neither did he care nor was he disturbed by his own dishevelled appearance. Father O’Keefe glanced at me for a split second before looking at the bloodstained man.

The man looked back at Father O’Keefe, the rest of the priests, the entire congregation...and smiled. “Carry on,” he waved a gun tiredly, his voice slightly hoarse. “Just pretend I don’t exist. I insist,” he continued wearily, before making a seemingly painful effort to swallow his own spit.

The crowd panicked. Father O’Keefe stepped forward.

“Paddy,” Father O’Keefe began, before the old man was silenced by the man’s sharp stare.

“Father O’Keefe,” the redheaded man acknowledged understatedly. “Long time no see.”

I stepped away from the altar and watched Father O’Keefe, ready to stop him in case he tries to do anything foolish for a man his age. The redhead seemed distracted for a moment, before reaching for something in his trousers’ pockets. Father O’Keefe’s initial reaction was to leap at him, but I leapt faster. The last thing I heard was a gasp from someone (everyone?) and Father O’Keefe’s voice calling (screaming?) my name.

The redhead pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

Not a gun. I was almost disappointed.

Nevertheless, cold sweat formed on my brows; more trickled down my back. Suddenly, I was no longer the young priest handling a communion. I was the centre of this man’s acerbic attention, as he smirked a “Cat Eyes? Yeah, I’m in the parish. Come and pick me up round the corner,” into the phone, all while staring right through me.

He leaned back into the pew, the .35mm calibre still held aimlessly in his other hand. “Never seen you before,” he said to me, before tilting his head to glance at Father O’Keefe who was standing rigidly behind me. “Never seen him before,” he repeated the statement to the elderly priest.

“What are you doing in the house of God?” I asked him fiercely. Instead of being threatened, he merely shrugged and said, “I’m searching for salvation. What are you doing in the house of God?”

It was his challenge. An obvious, subtle dare. A trap.

“I’m a priest,” I shot back.

“I can tell. Oh well,” he sighed, before raising a brow. “Do you have some hero-complex-streak in you, leaping off in an attempt to stop me? Have you lived long enough to want to die?”

“I just don’t want you to hurt anyone.”

“Oh, that’s definitely not what I had in mind when I came in here, but you’ve given me ideas, Father.”

“Don’t do it.”

“I’m not going to hurt them.”

“Thank God,” I breathed.

“But I could hurt you,” he smiled scathingly, pulling the safe in a reverberating click before pointing the nozzle at me.

I gulped. I didn’t know why I said what I said next, but I did. “You could, but you wouldn’t.”

“And how can you be so sure, Father?”

“Because by hurting me, you’ll end up hurting them too.”

This caused him to narrow his eyes, before his lips curved up in another sardonic smirk. “This is an interesting one, Father O’Keefe. I like him already,” he lowered his gun and did the unimaginable.

His gaze softened. A genuine, warmhearted smile was transposed upon his cold sneer; coinciding with the faint sounds of police siren that became clearer with each passing second. “Paddy, you have to leave. Now,” Father O’Keefe’s stern voice resonated from behind me. The man stood up from the pew, nodding. “Gotta go,” he grinned, licking his bruised lip before making his way out from the parish.

“Oh, and by the way,” he pivoted around almost gracefully to share one last tidbit, “this ain’t my blood,” he pointed to his bloodied shirt. “Thought you guys would wanna know that.”

“Oh, we know,” I blurted out sarcastically without thinking. I was pretty sure that Father O’Keefe was rolling his eyes at that.

“I’d love to have a conversation with you sometime, young priest,” were his last words, before leaving the church’s giant oak double doors. His inflection was similar to that of a Jedi master giving advice to a Padawan in some Star Wars movie.

And then I mentally derided myself for even thinking that a mobster has time to watch Star Wars.

-end excerpt-

Medicine. I actually quite love it -- except the tiny bit about the exams

The title says it all, really. It's in a few days now, and I can't say that I've prepared much at all. Too much fun seeing patients, not much fun studying statistics, remembering figures and percentages for epidemiology.

That said, I'm scared that I might come down with a cold again next week. I'm feeling it now -- sore throat, no coughs, but there's yellow phlegm streaked with some red anyway. Rather malaise-ish, too. And the stupid cold weather of Le Edinburgh is not helping either.

The Maharani is back. I can't really put it in words how I truly feel, but I am blissfully happy that she's back. Does that mean I missed her? Yeah, kinda. Considering how she's THE person to look up to. And she'll only be here for another year...which is sad in itself. (Don't tell anyone I said this).

Who else will I miss? My Specialist Registrar at the Western. Yeah. My groupmates won't really agree with me, but I think he's a cool guy. Ah, his 'analogies' about playing scales in a grand concert and 'a three-legged-dog is still a dog' shall be remembered always.

(And today is officially the last day we had him for bedside teaching). Sad times.

Lifelong Lullaby

This song is love. Somehow it sort of fits Paddy and Alex, dunno why. And the fact that it's a Crews/Reese song makes me love it even more.

Sonnet XVII

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Pablo Neruda, 1960

The 3rd verse has killed me. It's pretty much the embodiment of the fic I'm trying to write right now.

Question

Is it a travesty if I'm a medic student and I don't find shows like House/Grey's Anatomy/Scrubs epically fascinating?

Need to get a sling bag pronto. And adorn it with WWII military patches. And then get a nurses' watch.

Priority. You know I haven't got the wits for it.

CF, and a plot bunny, and the Misanthrope

It's a proven fact that I tend to include my latest fads into my fics. Exhibit A: The autism spectrum - In Another Life, In Another Time (the Heroes fic). Exhibit B: Zen Philosophy & the Mafia - A Time Imperfect (the one previewed in the previous post).

Soon, I might be featuring Cystic Fibrosis (seeing a real CF patient does open my eyes) in my latest fic. And this is when I'm supposed to write up my patient portfolio. Do I feel guilty? (Umm, no, not really).

To Firdaus: It's a prequel/sequel thing to A Time Imperfect. So yeah, you'll get to see a glimpse of Paddy's life before the events in ATI happened, because it's a Paddy-centred story as told by one of his goons. Sounds interesting, Y/N?

Knowing me, it will probably have some questionable content as well.

In other unrelated news, I wonder if you guys are interested in watching a play in London starring Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis, titled The Misanthrope. It's about a famous British playwright (Lewis) who is "disillusioned and angry with the hypocrisy, shallowness and vanity of the contemporary world. Vowing to reject society, Alceste's plans are derailed when he falls madly in love with Jennifer (Knightley). An ambitious American film star and darling of the social scene, she may prove to be his biggest challenge yet."

Because I totally have a kink for non-conformist anti-heroes who gets matched with an equally strong female lead character (Think Gabriel & Paddy; Claire & Alex) -- and it's Damian Lewis (!!!) with Keira Knightley....

Anyone wants to come along, pretty please?