Disclaimer and etc.: See Chapter 1
Holmesian Logic
Part I
Chapter 4
His own door was open and he went straight over to the large bread tin containing his 'yes it is a Zombie Apocalypse now' flight-fund contingency measures. The best place to hide what you didn't want others to see usually was in plain sight, which was why the bread tin was nearby to a large biscuit barrel and wall-cupboards.
The tin housed a small compactable backpack containing a military-grade medikit, several expensive top-grade MREs – Meals: Ready to Eat, or combat rations in 'old money' and water purification tablets. It also contained four spare clips for his L9A1 Browning handgun, and more importantly, the laminated original copy of his firearms permit; he had multiple laminated high-resolution colour copies of the permit in virtually every pocket of every item of clothing he owned.
When he'd submitted his application for the Browning, it turned out that the police authority official responsible for approving it was a brother of one Lance-Corporal Alistair Dent, whose life and leg had been saved in Kabul by a certain Army Captain Doctor John H. Watson. As a consequence, the expiry date of the permit read: Indefinite, and permitted not only ownership of a handgun but 'concealed carrying about the person', something usually granted only to the Met's elite SO19 Armed Response Unit and foreign diplomatically immune bodyguards such as the US Secret Service and suchlike.
Of course, it helped his case that the Browning was so quintessentially a British Army weapon, and not some flash Hollywood Gangsta aping Beretta, Smith & Wesson or Glock. Besides, along with his dad and Harry, he'd held handgun, shotgun and hunting rifle licences since he was knee high to nothing, so by the time he reached secondary school age he'd long since been an experienced crack shot winning several Junior Pistol Shooting and Rifle Marksmanship competitions, so his name had been in the 'approval' registers for years without incident.
He picked up the Browning now, testing that comforting weight in his palm; since – well okay – since Sherlock had embarrassed him by remembering to bring his gun for him to Vauxhall Arches when they'd charged Golem – he'd tried to make sure to take the handgun whenever Sherlock hared off out dragging him along on the latest barmy case. He should have had the sense to have it with him when those CIA scum had caught him off guard in Irene Adler's house – he doubted she had ever considered any place 'home'. He could have ducked back into the doorway or got off a shot to warn Sherlock and Adler something was amiss. He could have shot the game-playing ice-bitch when she jabbed Sherlock full of paralytic sedative – that would have brought her cat-and-mouse toying with Sherlock to a juddering halt.
Remembering that unmistakeable feel of a gun-barrel pressing against his spine this morning, he came to a decision – he had no choice but to always take the Browning with him from now on.
What if Sherlock did something stupid again, like when Jeff Hope had nearly goaded him into popping that poison pill because he feared being bored more than he feared being dead – the idiot hadn't known his new room-mate was on his trail – and what would he have done in that horrible second when he realised he'd run into the wrong building if he'd not previously had the instinct to call back to his then bed-sit and pick up the Browning?
Or when Sherlock might need it himself, for something like saving both their arses by clearly being willing to put a bullet in the detonator of a discarded explosive bomb vest because whilst it would almost certainly kill him and John Watson, it would certainly kill James Moriarty, standing barely a foot away from it, too.
Oh yes, that moment…it had almost, almost been worth it, to see the smirk on Moriarty's reptilian face fade, that brief but detectable twitch of fear on Jimmy-Jim's chops as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson smiled at him like Dobermans eyeing up a raw rump steak, and clearly not giving a damn about the multiple dancing laser dots. Yeah, get one of your arsehole snipers to fire, mate, and let the wonders of autonomic reflex make a fireball the last thing you see as Sherlock's nervous system death-spasm pulls that trigger and booooom!
Had one of those laser-dot divas been Seb? Being arguably HM Forces best sniper at the time had been how Seb was tapped for British Special Forces first in their long history of personal 'frenemy' rivalry and how Seb had skipped up to Major whilst he, career military himself and not exactly on a slow boat to China rank wise, had been invalided out at a similar age as a Captain.
He had no idea who had called with the world's most impeccable timing, causing Moriarty to slither away like the snake he was, but if Seb had been up there in the gods somewhere pointing a sniper rifle at him and Sherlock, Seb would have realised the error Moriarty had made in coming back to gloat and also been familiar enough with the mind-set, motives and ability to act of one John H. Watson for Seb to realise that his ex-best-friend had already worked out how to save Sherlock and himself from death, albeit not injury, whilst having the satisfaction of watching Moriarty get vaporised in the process…
But next time…and unfortunately when you were dealing with a psychopath like Moriarty and a sociopath like Sherlock – don't I just feel special – there would always be a next time…Just like he hadn't been the slightest bit surprised to hear Sebastian Moran's voice in his ear this morning. The brutal fact was he'd been lucky so far, but Lady Luck was a cruel and capricious lover who would adore you right up to the moment she suddenly left you sat naked in the dirt as she roared away in a metaphorical Porsche laughing her arse off at the moment you needed her the most. Lady Luck's much nicer and more reliable sister Prudence left no option but to Bodie and Doyle up.
Placing it back and making a note to clean it tonight, he placed yet more bank notes to the stash in the backpack, a small amount he kept from Mrs Olegenski's retainer. Small denominations, used notes and two or three currencies – Euros, dollars and pounds sterling – which would cover most eventualities; in another location, far across town, there was an allotment with a shed, with a lockbox secreted in the five-brick-high slab plinth the water butt rested on.
That box contained a similar backpack, which also contained the same type of supplies as this, with the addition of a fake passport and a fake gun permit for a Derringer pistol in another name, the same name under which the allotment, chosen at random during a brief period of home leave over ten years ago now, had been rented out. A retired, elderly former NCO supplemented his old age pension by making use of the allotment, and had all the produce to eat or sell on. He was reasonably confident it was one of the few things Mycroft didn't know about his life, but he wouldn't bank on it absolutely. That box was for the 'apocalypse of the apocalypse' disaster and if he ever needed to use that…well…
Any second now Sherlock was going to start, but…he couldn't help but grin at his fridge – tall, shiny, six shelves plus a mini 'freezer' shelf up top. Not white either, but shiny silver-grey…thanks Mrs Humphrey.
Originally the second floor of this wealthy Victorian London townhouse had been two large bedrooms and a slightly smaller 'lady's dressing room' antechamber, with a short flight of steps up into a sloping roofed attic that had two small proud windows and was designed to sleep three or four housemaids on tiny metal beds. Ironic, that the family's servants had had the best view of London, not their employers. It was also part of the reason why Sherlock didn't like this floor – correction, didn't like his live-in blogger J. H. Watson being up on the second floor.
At some point years back the cramped attic had been refitted with small wardrobes and drawers for clothing, plus one small pull-out sofa bed, presumably for an 'emergency guests' type situation. During one of their daytime TV sessions, Mrs Hudson had told him about how she had the interior wall between the two bedrooms removed to make one large, open plan bedroom come-sitting room, which was very nice, with a small kitchenette sink/worktop/cupboards in one corner and plenty of room for a big bed and side tables in the bedroom and then a settee, TV, table and chairs, bookshelves, etc in the other half of the room as the wardrobes were up in the attic. Even better, there was a connecting door in the bedroom into the bathroom, so if he wanted he could keep the landing door to the bathroom permanently locked and access everything bar the attic just by walking into his second floor living room.
Above all, in the 1920s, Mrs Hudson's grand-uncle, clearly a genius, had gone to town on the lady's antechamber and turned it into a bathroom heaven…a huge, solid cast iron three-corner bath that must weigh a ton took pride of place with massive brass and porcelain twist taps that gurgled and spurted and splurged water into the tub in a way that you just knew was metaphorically sticking two fingers up at anything and anyone of the 'eco-mental' ilk.
The tiled floor was spacious enough to disco dance across until you reached the wash basin, again genuine porcelain, which was large enough to accommodate a baby elephant, and had a three-sided adjustable mirror with it. A porcelain bidet – something that would have been thrillingly risqué in terms of interior décor in the 1920s - discreetly hugged the wall between said bath and basin. The thing – not that he had actually checked but he had noticed - even had a mirror hidden directly below the plug hole in the French bordello style so you could check every bit of your equipment was A-Okay whilst you were performing your ablutions. And finally a toilet that deserved the appellation of throne resided resplendent and unashamed of it in one corner – large, ornate porcelain, with solid honeybeam wood seat and brass hinges – and one of those old fashioned lever flushes that you pulled like a slot machine.
Mrs Hudson, recognising this familial genius, had honoured it by making no changes and installed nothing else other than a modern 'ultra' walk-in-sit-down glass cubicle shower that did all sorts of snazzy steam/aromatherapy things. Initially her intention had been to make the second floor 221D, a discrete flat in its own right, but had had to keep it as the upper floor of flat 221B because of the layout. Unlike on the second floor, when you walked up to the first floor, the first door went into the living room and kitchen of 221B, but putting a door in the dividing wall of the living room for Sherlock would have it opening out into his bathroom.
Whoever rented 221B on the first floor had to walk out of the living room onto the landing to go 'next door' to their bedroom and bathroom, which meant anyone going up to or down from the second floor had to go via the first floor landing – technically walking 'through' the first floor flat. Since Mrs Hudson had a direct outside door to her flat of 221A behind Speedy's in the yard accessible from the side alley, and there was a separate back garden door at the rear to the unoccupied basement flat of 221C, the inside door along the hallway on the ground floor could technically be left locked all the time to give the occupant of 221B proper privacy as of course 221B's tenant could come through the front door off of Baker Street.
After Moriarty had fled the swimming pool and the CIA assassins had broken in to grab Mrs Hudson, and Irene Adler had turned up to indulge in sex talk with Sherlock – while he sat cringing two feet away from them, thanks for nothing - he had made it habit to check both the front door and the interior ground floor connecting door were both locked before he went up to his bedroom, or more often than not, ended up dropping to sleep in the first floor living room armchair while keeping Sherlock company. It was only a psychosomatic 'comfort and protection' because unless they moved to somewhere really secure like a nuclear bunker, there were way too many points of access – PoVs or 'Points of Vulnerability' as Special Forces termed them - for the mad the bad and completely crazed to gain entry, but it made him feel better.
"Johnnn!"
Yes, there it was – oh, one minute three seconds. The frailty of genius…exactly why Sherlock didn't like this floor, or rather didn't like it when 'the sidekick' came up here, because if said sidekick wanted, he could exist quite comfortably up here, with a little work desk for his laptop and plenty of light and 'facilities' – and coming up two flights of stairs every day was certainly doing wonders for his cardio – but then Sherlock wouldn't have an audience.
Nor would Sherlock have someone's laptop at hand to steal, or someone to send texts for him, or make 'them' a cup of tea, or any of the other myriad tiny ways Sherlock found to 'test the boundaries' of their relationship to reassure himself that he remained pre-eminent on John's priority list.
Mike Stamford was the latest person to suggest he shouldn't become 'known' as an associate of Sherlock Holmes for too long a period or…more than once, he'd been tempted to abandon Baker Street and take up Mike's hints of a professorial lecturer position at Bart's, or a research fellowship at its new Blizard Institute – he was fairly certain Welbeck Military College would co-subsidise his tenure in either role, particularly given his unorthodox surgical experience that the Blizard Institute would eagerly make use of – merely for the entertainment value of seeing Sherlock's reaction.
But it wouldn't ever happen – had he put the Browning back into the tin and the lid on? Yes, he had.
"Jooohn!"
"Yes!" sir, no sir, three bags full sir. "Coming!"
Not that there would be any opposition on Sherlock's part – his pride extremely healthy ego would prevent him from sabotaging John's move. But Mycroft would scupper the deal, purely for his own personal convenience – having a live-in Igor on hand to run interference for Sherlock with real, normal people – and clean up after him - was just too useful to Mycroft Holmes right now, and for the foreseeable future…
And, possibly, for an even Higher Power…he made sure never to bring up Irene Adler and her damn camera-phone, but just before they'd got pulled into that whole devil dog of Dartmoor thing with the Baskerville base, he and Sherlock had had a bit of row on top of him smarting from his most recent attempt of trying and failing to get back in with Jeannette the teacher, who had been the latest in a revolving door of women who dumped him thirty seconds after exposure to Sherlock, who was shaping up to be to John H. Watson's love-life what Kryptonite was to Superman. He should never have brought her to the flat last Christmas.
Leaving their rooms to cool off before he did something he didn't regret, like demonstrating his unarmed combat military training on Sherlock's assorted pressure points, he had actually gone to Bart's and blagged that 'Mike Stamford was going to leave an application form for me.'
Mike at been at that Cardiology conference at the time, so he'd walked off his pique by going to Mrs Rabani's for a much needed brew. Putting his hand in his pocket for his wallet his fingers had touched a piece of paper; pulling it out, he opened up the thick, expensive but plain notepaper upon which had been handwritten a message, stating that his discretion in the matter of the delicate situation of Belgravia was noted and appreciated – his blog, the 'Murder That Wasn't' had been only about the hiker accidentally killed by his own boomerang, he had mentioned nothing to do with Irene Adler, as the whole thing had had a D-notice slapped on it and to be honest, it would be many decades if ever before the public and even half of officialdom, not to mention the U.S. Government, was ready to deal with that can of worms.
But the next paragraph also said that his actions in defusing the argument between 'Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes in our very own sitting room' had also been noted, and appreciated – the unhappy relations between our dear friend Mycroft and his brother have been a source of sadness to us for some time. We note that you appear to be able to ameliorate the tensions between them and facilitate at least civil conversation between them in your presence, and would be most desirous that you should continue this good influence.
The note was unsigned and when he pulled it out of his pocket again barely fifteen minutes later after wracking his memory in a failed attempt to determine when it had been slipped into his pocket – it was by then entirely blank. Something told him all efforts to reactivate the ink or show what had been written would be futile. As a precaution, when he had returned to the house and found Sherlock out, he had thrown it onto the hearth and made sure it burned completely away. But it was abundantly clear that he wasn't going to be allowed to withdraw from this game, at least not right now.
Sherlock stood in the doorway of the living room, 'resplendent' in a pair of turquoise pyjamas and a heavy brocade silk dressing gown with one of those thick gold-coloured tasselled thread belts that looked like a curtain-tie back. All he needed was a 'wee Willie Winkie hat' and he would look just like Alistair Sim in that old Scrooge film or John Laurie as Corporal Frazer the Walmington-on-Sea undertaker in Dad's Army.
Sherlock opened that mouth and with timing he might have to hug the delivery bloke for, the doorbell rang. Waitrose, I love you.
It was indeed a man from a van, with two large bags and a sign-sheet. There came a faint creak and he knew without looking that Sherlock had ventured out onto the landing and was copying his own trick from earlier, leaning against the balustrade. He made a mental note to check the banister spindles and repair/replace any weakening ones – the staircase balustrade was solid wood, excellently crafted by some long-dead Victorian who understood the concept of pride-in-his-workmanship, and no doubt, counted as some 'worth a fortune antique' in its own right, but all the time, money, effort and energy the mad bad and dangerous to know put in to trying to do in Sherlock Holmes, it would be a pity if a broken neck courtesy of a random, accidental plunge through a broken banister did for them.
"Did you get the beans?" a voice drawled in a tone that suggested John could barely be trusted to walk and talk at the same time.
"Yes."
"…beans – with - sausages." Sherlock clarified very precisely as if this had been an instruction he'd had to repeat many times.
"Yes." And I may shortly be battering you to death with the four-pack of tins.
"And the tea?"
"Yes."
"The loose-leaf tea, not the bags –"
"Ye-eh-es." He signed the declaration that he had received his groceries in good order and the correct items, returning the van driver's sympathetic look with a wry smile.
"Thankyousir, mind you them cheekbones 'r' good enough t' make up for a multitude o' sins."
"Well he's done a multitude of sins," he didn't resist murmuring back, unsure whether he had been meant to hear the sotto voce comment or not.
But since everyone else on the planet seemed to make blithe 'assumptions' about their exact relationship without bothering about the actual reality, he would never have time to do anything else if he challenged and corrected every single innuendo, implication, hint, assumption, assertion, arch query or rude question (the last of which he always responded to with a blunt 'none of your business') about the exact 'physical nature' of his and Sherlock's relationship. Did the fact that he had once put Sherlock in a stranglehold headlock because the twit had unprovoked punched him in the face, triggering an auto-reflex attack response from a decorated combat veteran officer, Sherlock you idiot – count as a physical relationship?
But the driver gave him a surreptitious wink and an arch smile as he left. He suspected ordering online from Waitrose from now on would be a good thing in terms of the odd freebie finding its way into a carrier bag. Picking up both said carrier bags he went back up to the first floor, and left the upstairs carrier on the landing and went inside to the kitchen where the kettle, wonder of wonders, was on the hob – there were two, a modern electric one that you put on a central connection and an old copper one you boiled on a hob plate, which Sherlock seemed to prefer, although he suspected that Sherlock also used it to boil/simmer some of his more dubious experiments; as Greg Lestrade had wryly commented once, 'coming here for tea is like winning one of those TV-show fan visits to the set of Dexter'.
"Move some of that stuff, so I can make breakfast."
"Excellent…Eggs as well, I think." It was said with blithe, 'let's pretend my obnoxious older brother was never here' cheer.
He didn't mind in principle – after all that would be hypocrisy, because for many similar reasons, he avoided Harry by way of extensive forward-planning and logistical manoeuvring, helped by the fact that his sister's own medical career – far more high-flying and lucrative than his own - kept her well away from the capital most of the time. There was a whole laundry list of subjects he intended Sherlock to never know anything about, never mind discuss, and Harriet Amelia Watson was top of it...in fact, she was the top five of that particular Hit Parade…But it was time to gently poke back a little, to a metaphorically channel a bit of Mrs Hudson: not your housekeeper, dear.
He took down the big old frying pan – a proper pan from the days when people cooked their own breakfasts for a furnace-worker hubby and ten kids before school, without hectoring by the nanny state – and the small saucepan, into which he pulled the ring top and emptied the beans and sausages, ready.
Bracing, he opened the fridge door. It said a great deal for Mrs Hudson's resilient nature that she had declared herself to be more traumatised by the plastic bag of severed thumbs she'd found in the salad drawer than those 'horrible, rude Yank goons'. He'd seen the bruises on her wrists, and that cut on her face from CIA Head Honcho's ring-clad fist slapping it.
No matter how much Sherlock might irritate him, he'd be the first in the queue to nominate Sherlock Holmes Esquire for a medal for tossing that tosser out of the first floor window. Greg Lestrade had also shown his sterling qualities by taking in Mrs Hudson's shaky bravado and those tell-tale marks of rough handling and showing a distinct disinclination to pursue the exact sequence of events as to how a foreign national with diplomatic immunity mysteriously fell out of a window whilst trussed up like a Sunday roast chicken.
It wasn't too bad today, although he scrupulously avoided touching anything he knew he hadn't put there himself, and pulled out the butter, milk, sausages, bacon and pot of beef dripping – and last night's leftover potatoes in the dish. He scooped out a small spoonful of the cold re-solidified butter from the potato dish into the frying pan and lit the gas.
He added a bigger dollop of the beef dripping into the beans' saucepan ready for when he needed set it on the lowest heat to gradually warm through – he'd learned that culinary lesson that wasn't taught in any cookbook when he'd just met Sarah and her nutritionist Chlöe (who was very particular that yes, the umlaut stayed in her name), well before he met Sherlock Holmes. Chlöe had laughed at him when he declared he'd fallen in love with her 'proper butcher' husband who had sold him a string of proper sausages at a discount, but those sausages had nearly been the death of him, when he'd cut into his quick fried links only to spit out raw, uncooked meat.
One look at his miserable face the next day had had Chlöe rolling her eyes and her husband Craig Reddish had explained his mistake to him – just like drug traffickers 'cut' heroin and coke with other things to make the drug 'go farther' and maximise profits, so too modern commercial food production eked out meat, fish and dairy by bulking it out with 'rusk' – usually ground up wheat kernel or cornflour – gelatine, water, and combinations thereof. The reason supermarket sausages and bacon and 'roasting' meats like chops and chicken cooked within two hours in a 'moderate oven' was because you weren't roasting meat – which was dense flesh – but boiling off water and jelly. Proper food took half again as long to cook through as anything you bought in a supermarket.
In retrospect, he wished he'd had the balls to declare he wanted a commission for the speculative gleam in Craig Reddish's eyes, as nowadays the printed sticky price label on the wrapping had been enlarged to include 'recommended cooking time for this product' on it. Chlöe had told him how her husband's trade had increased once passers-by saw those labelled products in the window, indicating that he hadn't been the only one to stuff up the timing of his treat. But since Craig Reddish not only looked like Lawrence Dallaglio but was built like him and played amateur rugby, he'd held his peace.
As it happened, most of the shopping he'd got from Waitrose had been household cleaning items and salad stuff/vegetables and tinned stuff. Thanks to Mrs Humphrey and company, he could now afford to buy all their meat products from Craig Reddish, Chlöe the nutritionist's organic butcher husband, rather than the occasional treat; given supermarket sausages had so much bulking added water and corn rusk you could legitimately label them a vegetable he didn't begrudge a penny. Even better, Chlöe's hubby had shrewdly seen the need to diversify to boost the survival chances of his business and understood his wealthy clientele would and could pay not just for quality, but for the 'exclusivity' of his products.
The enterprising Craig Reddish had used his contacts in the Channel Islands to source proper dairy produce – the delicious dense yellow butter, cheese, and milk products produced from the traditional herds, that he had shipped over daily, and had also obtained a licence to sell curds, whey and 'raw' – unpasteurised – milk, which was more nutritious as the beneficial enzymes were destroyed by the pasteurising process and all of which had been banned or sale-restricted in the UK by the tofu-touting brigade and the vested commercial interests as selling pasteurised milk in a bewildering variety of forms was much faster, cheaper, easier and more profitable to produce via 'factory farming' than producing fresh raw milk because it had to be done properly or not at all.
During that period as Sarah's locum, he'd prescribed several child patients suffering eczema, asthma and the like a diet of Craig Reddish's dairy produce and good red meat, and given their parents a firm talking to on the need to ditch their margarine and skimmed milk (pure profit for the dairies as it was basically water with delusions of grandeur and about as nutritious as gravel) and their low-fat/sugar/salt yoghurts and snacks which were full of artificial sugars/fats/salt and quack quorn diets and give their children real food that had experienced minimum mucking about with between original animal or plant and their plate. Funnily enough with a month all the children had experienced a big improvement in their skin and chest conditions.
He put the butter and milk on the table ready for the tea and toast. The frying pan was just starting to smoke so he quickly popped in the bacon and sausages which sizzled with wonderful 'popping' and 'snapping' of fat molecules – no water, gelatine or white 'froth' leached out of these, the only thing currently in this frying pan was pork, and in a minute he'd add the potatoes.
The marvellous Craig R. had also made contracts with the smallholder Jersey Royal Potato farmers, as well as some in Ireland and on the Cornish coast. The big inland Channel Island potato farmers whose crops would be shipped to the mainland British supermarkets used bog-standard manure on their crop, meaning they lacked flavour and nutrition. The small one-man-band farmers used the centuries old tradition of covering their potato crop with 'wrack' – seaweed – infusing the potatoes with a fabulous flavour and increasing their nutritional content fivefold, as well as negating the need to add any salt.
Craig Reddish's small supplies of freshly harvested Jersey Royal new potatoes, picked that dawn, shipped to London that morning and on sale by 9.00am with the soil still clumped to them, sold amongst the cognoscenti like gold bars. Eaten the same evening as they had been picked, just lightly steamed and smothered in Brittany Butter-with-Sea-Salt-Crystals they were delicious. Allowed to go cold in the dish so the butter re-solidified and then sliced and fried the following morning along with genuine pure-pork sausages and bacon, they went from delicious to the level of orgasmic gastronomy…
In the minute he had, he got the knife and cut thick doorstep slices from the loaf out of the actual bread bin. Craig Reddish's next moment of genius was to realise that his customers wanted their eggs and bread to match their sausage and bacon – in short, they wanted to make the whole meal consist of stuff that tasted great, instead of having amazing sausages but only adequate bread or tasteless tomatoes.
Reddish didn't sell chicken, only proper capon – cockerel – he'd sourced from the same French suppliers of his white veal and horse meat, which was more tender and juicy than hen's meat. Those farmers supplied barn and run-confined hens eggs, which were healthier and less dangerous than free-range eggs, and to complement that, he'd got in touch with a couple of niche bakeries in Kent and Norfolk, and every morning at six o'clock received deliveries of big, round loaves of bread – slow-baked in wood-burning stone ovens, flour, yeast, salt and water only bread that was soft and nutty to the taste and which lasted several days. Craig Reddish now sold everything with small A5 recipe leaflets that were free and he was able to charge a fortune – just before he'd been able to leave being a locum at Sarah's surgery thanks to Mrs du Lac and Mrs Humphrey and Mrs Olegenski, Chlöe had cheerfully let slip that her husband earned a third more a year than she did, simply from shrewdly maintaining the artisan quality of his butcher's shop whilst simultaneously diversifying into complementary products.
"Oi, here," he took the two old brass toasting forks off the wall and speared the bread slices. "You're on tea and toast duty. You know I like mine golden brown."
"Warm bread," Sherlock's lip curled but he took the toasting forks and glided to the hearth, which he had actually banked up and now had a small fire in the grate – although probably only because, as usual, he was padding about in his bare bony feet that had gotten cold. One of these days he was going to get a nasty cut.
But Sherlock handled the forks expertly and turned the bread carefully; and if asked, he could probably explain scientifically why food like meat and bread always tasted much better when cooked over an open flame than in a modern gas oven. Grandmother Hamish, who had lived to be a hundred and six in her own home, had never cooked on anything other than what had been left in her long-deceased mother-in-law's kitchen from the day she married Grandfather Hamish and moved onto his father's farm: a mediaeval era spit-roasting hearth, an ancient wood-burner stove in the corner and a temperamental old range that took up most of one wall. The eternal furnace heat of her kitchen had heated the entire house far better than any 'central heating' malarkey and the superlative taste of her food had been legend for a hundred miles in every direction.
In went the cold potatoes and butter and sizzled, oh yes. The beans were simmering nicely, the dripping thickening the too-thin sauce so it clogged properly and finally – crack, crack – a fried egg each; he used the spatula to coat the yolk with fat, but took them up first – he and Sherlock both liked dip; he couldn't abide a hard-yolk fried egg. Splitting the bacon, sausage and potatoes around the eggs on each plate he'd kept warm in the grill, he spooned on the cloggy beans and sausages as Sherlock, with debonair flourish, put the toasted slices on the table bread board.
They sat down, Sherlock pouring the tea and adding milk for them, raising an eyebrow when John, who did not take sugar, dropped a brown sugar cube in his tea and then another with no apparent indication of stopping…four…five. He began to stir vigorously as Sherlock took a sip of his own tea without comment but speculation flared in his eyes.
He didn't care what Sherlock thought; after the morning he'd had, it was a five sugar cube problem – and better than nicotine patches. He needed the glucose rush and this had always been his sure-fire and absolutely legal way to self-stimulate…his idiosyncratic – some would say adverse – reaction to refined sugars had been well-noted by his family by the time he was three.
There was the time seven-year-old Harry Watson had got her bottom and the back of her legs reddened with several well-deserved smacks to physically match how she'd been caught metaphorically red-handed feeding her brother the entire two trays of Auntie Marcia's sugar-puff mini bites, after everyone knew John was expressly forbidden refined sugars. He hadn't eaten, drunk, slept or stopped moving for the next 60 hours straight, and when they were both in their teens and their relationship continued its relentless downward spiral, Harry had more than once declared the spanking had been a price well worth paying for the entertainment value of watching her younger brother quite literally bounce, burble, jitter and jigger for three days without pause. At least social media hadn't been around then – he had no doubt whatsoever Harry would have filmed the lot and be earning sixty thousand a year from it via YouTube™ when it went 'viral' or whatever.
He would just have to hope Sherlock didn't hit on the idea that turnabout was fair play and decide that John needed an intervention regarding his sugar habit as he himself had pulled on Sherlock over having 'given up' cigarettes – although they were entirely different situations…he'd come downstairs to find Sherlock bouncing off the walls and wearing eight nicotine patches simultaneously for goodness sake.
Instead of commenting, Sherlock thickly buttered his toast and sliced it up, dipping it in his golden yolk with evident satisfaction.
He hid his own satisfaction as he ate. When he'd first met Sherlock, it hadn't registered that when they'd been watching for Jeff Hope at Northumberland Place, nor that morning in the café with the Connie Prince murder, that Sherlock hadn't actually eaten or even drunk anything. At the time he had still been wavering between this is brilliant and I've got to get out of here. But he'd finally remembered overhearing Sherlock's declaration: I never eat when I'm working, digestion delays deduction!
Now that might be fine for a case the man solved in eight seconds, as per Irene Adler's encrypted 'Bond Air' email, but he had quickly realised that a lot of Sherlock's cases lasted at least two or three days, if not a week or more. Those sharply defined cheekbones the supermarket van driver so admired were not a good sign.
Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food – Moriarty and his mind games – the sicko's over-the-top histrionics like press-ganged suicide bombers and secret snipers, and yet Moriarty had no clue all he had to do was come up with a puzzle of such involved complexity that it would take Sherlock four weeks to solve it.
A hungry man ate fast, without tasting. A really hungry man ate slowly, with small bites, with each morsel of food held on his tongue as if to reassure his taste buds and his entire body and mind that it was real and solid and not illusory. Sherlock ate slowly, with measured precision and total focus on his plate.
Psychoanalysts would have enough with that quirk alone to keep them going for decades of psychobabble and counter-babble about the Holmes brothers: Mycroft, apparently morbidly obese at least once before in his life and now a yo-yo dieter, and Sherlock self-starving to the point of malnutrition every other week or so. Yeah, like there wasn't a decade worth of therapy needed there alone.
Which was why it was important to get as much real food – unpackaged, unprocessed, unrefined, straight from the field-and-beast to the plate – into Sherlock, and himself to a lesser extent, when he could. If he himself needed real, properly prepared food over 'quick' chemical/fat/salt and sugar laden modern convenience food so as to avoid a life lived in constant sugar-overload mania, he could only imagine – unfortunately as a doctor, only too well - what regular fasting combined with multiple nicotine patches were doing to His Personal Idiot's physical health and central nervous system, never mind whatever substances Sherlock had once used to or chose to continue to ingest.
He knew of, and knew, more than a few who had been 'functional addicts' for most of their adult lives; people who operated for months, years, decades, a lifetime, whilst also being addicted to some narcotic, or alcohol, or legal stimulant. Hell, like Dad had admitted to him, the Watson family had three ancient traditions – the practice of medicine, military service, and functional alcoholism, quite often a lifetime of all three together.
Via Mike Stamford, he knew that one of the most highly respected professors he had trained under had a couple of years ago been very quietly given the option of public disgrace or discreet rehabilitation, and after completing an extensive treatment regime had been clean of any narcotic substance for the first time since she was a med student back in the 1970s – at which point she had promptly retired from medicine because she couldn't be persuaded from her view that she had been a far better physician whilst using cocaine than her current 'bland, neutered, pedestrian state of being'.
But he understood the power of that pull, that delusional sense of operating at a higher, better peak – in Bosnia he'd once spent two months straight spooning five sugars into every hot drink he had and yes, for a while he had been seduced by the flattery of people's admiration for his 'inexhaustible' energy, stamina and alertness, basking in the glow – until he'd been pinned down for 27 straight hours in a wet, stinking mud foxhole half his size with bullets whizzing all around him, bullets he was in no fit state to even register never mind evade because he was shaking like a jelly in a wind tunnel from sugar withdrawal. It had been a miracle he'd escaped unscathed. Although maybe it had just been that he was shuddering and twitching so much he simply didn't stay still long enough for any aimed shot to be effective. Not even Seb Moran sniper extraordinaire could have hit him with all that jitterbugging going on.
For Sherlock, it was all about his brain – the body was a transport system, nothing more or more interesting – and what excised him intolerably was boredom: the trivial, the trite, the tedious, the inane and banal.
Whilst Sherlock had limited himself mostly to nicotine patches ever since the two of them had become flatmates, using cigarette packets merely for moral support, he wasn't fooled that was all the man had ever used, and maybe occasionally eschewed in favour of something with more 'oomph' - particularly not after that outburst from Sherlock – a year ago near enough to the day, by now, blimey! – when Greg Lestrade had yanked the Holmes' chain by pulling that drug bust stunt on 221B.
Of course Sherlock was far too clever to have any illegal substances at their flat, but his own expression of…disapproval?...surprised disappointment?...had clearly hit a nerve from the way Sherlock had turned on him and snarled 'Oh shut up!' in his face when he hadn't even said a single word. Sherlock Holmes' drug use in whatever form it had taken or might in future take, would be a precise, methodical experiment of carefully noted sensation, of his craving for mental stimulation and distraction.
Unfortunately, just like a car was the transport system for the person, the body as transport for the brain needed probably more careful maintenance and repair than the driver. That morning, as Sherlock had stalked around the kitchen, ranting about his experiment results, his face too white, his cheek-bones too defined, his figure too lean, he had genuinely feared the man was about to stroke out, or at least have a nervous breakdown. He'd had to literally stand in Sherlock's path and Sherlock hadn't stopped him as he'd pulled up each pyjama sleeve in turn to reveal four patches on each of Sherlock's upper arms. He had stated, on the spot, that Sherlock had quit smoking and would quit nicotine supplements now.
That brain Sherlock loved so much wouldn't have it quite so easy if the body developed lung cancer from smoking, or other types of cancer from the nicotine patches, or he went into total overdose with nine or more patches and had a stroke, or aneurysm, or haemorrhage. Or else he developed Hypothyroidism, or Diabetes or high blood pressure/hypertension/cholesterol from his crap diet, Hepatitis B, C, HIV or sundry other infections should Sherlock happen to use a needle that was not clean, or even if he got something respectable but nasty like MRSA or C. Diff in hospital after getting shot/stabbed/injected/bludgeoned by the villain du jour and his malnourished body wasn't able to put up enough of a fight. Keep the car in tip-top condition and it would take the brain anywhere it desired for years without a hitch…John Watson, soldier, doctor and metaphysical mechanic…is that another profession I just invented for myself?
"Why differentiate?"
"Hum?" almost wistfully he swallowed the last bite of superb sausage a moment after Sherlock finished his breakfast and asked the question.
"You said that the armchair looters like the late, unlamented General Shan needed 'professional survivors' able to tell a tomb from a temple. If you're an antiquities thief, isn't one archaeological site to shoot and loot the same as any other?"
Tea – hot, sweet, nectar of the gods, tea, with rich, creamy, Guernsey cow milk and sinfully wonderful amounts of I-don't-give-a-damn sugar. "Have you ever seen that Harrison Ford film, Temple of Doom?"
"Yes?"
"What was wrong with it?"
"Where should I start? Leaving aside that blonde actress who screamed so much all the way through you were actually rooting for her to be eviscerated by the cartoon-painted baddies – there's alphabetically, chronologically – "
"All right...Okay let me put it this way…I know your methods so, what's my faith?"
"Faith?" Suddenly Sherlock fixed him with that unblinking, unwavering snake-stare as he enunciated the word as if uttering the name of a social disease.
"Yes, my faith…my religion –"
"I understand the word." Sherlock cut him off and then spoke flatly, "Roman Catholic. You're –"
"Right." It was his turn to do a verbal shut-down, he didn't need the expository monologue. "In view of that, think about Rome – St. Peter's Basilica, and the catacombs underneath it and the city. I know Puabi wasn't Egyptian, but think about the Valley of Kings and then Luxor. Now apply proper Star Trek Vulcan logic to it and tell me what was wrong with the Temple of Doom, and come to think of it, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, and what – despite the comic book origins – Lara Croft: Tomb Raider got right."
As he expected, he was dealing with a genius. "Form follows function," Sherlock obligingly quoted Spock of the pointy ears, "A tomb is designed to keep people out; a temple is designed to let them in."
He raised his mug in slight salute. "If you're an ex-army merc' working for relic thieves, you don't want a tomb, because tombs are hard – they're hidden, remote, inaccessible and when you get there booby-trapped up the yin-yang to keep the goodies in and the grubby unwashed out...ancient tombs are the equivalent of Manchester United footballers' 'gated communities' to keep the unwashed plebeians out. A temple is easy, because the whole point is footfall, like a modern day shopping centre, I dunno, Bluewater or Meadowhall or somewhere – a temple is visible, convenient, and accessible – the priests' income and the god's reputation depend on happy visitors translating into return customers and they'd get neither if they went around Temple of Dooming their worshippers."
"Tomb equals hassle and more effort, temple equals a pleasure trip and increased profit margin," Sherlock concluded sipping his tea. "As a matter of interest, where were you actually on the night of the robbery?"
"Date." he shrugged, "Didn't end well."
Lie, with plausible excuse – it was the one area in life where you could hope to get away with deceiving the human lie detector. He had no idea if what Irene Adler claimed Jim Moriarty had labelled Sherlock as was true, Mycroft the Iceman (definitely) and Sherlock the Virgin…because it was none of his or anyone else's business bar Sherlock's and quite frankly, this country would be a much better place if people put a bit of self-discipline into being the master of their body, not a slave to every basic ephemeral impulse that flared in their gonads.
But he suspected that if Moriarty's goading taunt was untrue or wrong, then Sherlock's past experi-ence – of physical intimacy had not been enjoyable or pleasant or possibly even voluntary or consensual at all. Sherlock was to the 'tender emotional spectrum' what a shotgun was to candy floss…which was why there was no way no how he was going to get into any explanation or wherefores of the truth that in fact he had been scouting out the placement of a particular headstone in a London cemetery of a pleasant early evening.
© 2012, The Cat's Whiskers
All rights reserved
Continued in Chapter 5…
Martin Freeman, who plays John Watson, played the character of Arthur Dent in an adaptation of Douglas Adams (1952-2001) bestselling novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy.
The word 'frenemy' is a portmanteau of the words "friend" and "enemy" (like "cargument" is a portmanteau of "car" and "argument") and had appeared in written form by the early 1950s, according to Wikipedia (itself a portmanteau of "wiki" and "encyclopaedia".)
As a 'general rule' since all languages were 'spoken' before many developed a 'written' form of their speech, any word or phrase in existence has been in 'common or frequent usage in general speech for a minimum of one generation before the first known of recorded example of it being written down.'
Most authorities use a general time-span of '35 years' to equate to the period of 'one generation' for uniformity and research reasons. Since Wikipedia states that the earliest (so far) known written example of the word frenemy is in 1953, this means the word existed in the English language in spoken form at least as early as 1918, and probably well before.
Similar origins apply for the portmanteau words cargument and bromance ("brother" and "romance" to denote a very close but platonic friendship, a 'brotherhood', originally termed 'buddy-buddy') which, although both coming to prominence in the 2010 'reimagined' TV series Hawaii 5-0, had become widely known 'spoken' terms from the late 1990s to the 2000s, as is the case with chillax (the slang usage of the word "chill" combined with "relax") which had been around for over 20 years before making it into general pop culture usage.
Given that the word frenemy existed in spoken form at the same time as World War I, it is interesting to note that originally the term was used to describe an enemy pretending to be a friend (e.g., fifth columnist, enemy spies) and in this context was often applied to more than just the relationship between two individuals, such as political institutions and commercial organisations.
From the early 1950s onwards, the word's meaning has shifted and is now used more to describe the relationship between two individuals rather than organisations and to describe someone who genuinely is a friend – or amicable acquaintance – but also a rival in some way rather than an actual enemy masquerading as non-hostile or as a friend. Usually, but not always, both the friendship/amiable acquaintanceship and the rivalry arise from both individuals working in the same profession or occupation, or having achieved/making progress in the same 'field' or discipline, such as music, science, authorship, sport, acting or whatever it might be.
For examples, two journalist correspondents for different newspapers or two stock market traders for different banks or two chefs for different restaurants might describe themselves or be described by others as 'frenemies' because whilst they have a friendship or a cordial acquaintanceship in the pursuit of their common career, they also have a rivalry in seeking to achieve qualifications, acclaim, awards, salary and so forth before the other.
For examples: the characters of Raymond Doyle (Martin Shaw) and Bodie (Lewis Collins) in the British TV series The Professionals (police);the characters of Tango and Cash in the eponymous movie played by Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell (police officers); the eponymous characters of Franklin and Bash in the TV series starring Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (lawyers); the characters of Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres) in the TV show Suits (lawyers)and the characters of Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson) and Josephina Lupo (Erica Cerra) in A Town Called Eureka (sheriffs)are all examples of a 'frenemy' relationship of varying degrees.
Sometimes a frenemy relationship overlaps with, has elements of, or combines to become both a frenemy and a bromance – such as Bodie and Doyle, Franklin and Bash. However, the bromance between the characters of Danny Williams (Scott Caan) and Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) in Hawaii 5-0 and that between G. Callen (Chris O'Donnell) and Sam Hanna (LL Cool J) in NCIS: Los Angeles would not also qualify as frenemy or frenemies because the rivalry component does not apply – Danny is a police detective, Steve is a US Navy Naval Intelligence then SEAL (Special Forces) operative and both have achieved in their spheres of adult life independently, as have Callen (spy) and Sam (SEAL), so the frenemy component does not apply. Similarly the relationship between Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherley) in NCIS is neither bromance nor frenemy, but mentor and protégé. However, the relationship between Anthony DiNozzo and Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) combines elements of all three – bromance, frenemy and mentor (DiNozzo)/protégé (McGee).
Wikipedia quotes a Businessweek article as follows that having or being a 'frenemy' is much more common in the modern world due to 'the abundance of close, intertwined relationships that bridge people's professional and personal lives...while [people socialised with colleagues in the past] the sheer amount of time [that an individual spends at work] now has left a lot of people with less time [energy, capability and] inclination to develop friendships outside [their workplace or careers].'
NB – portmanteau, plural portmanteaux, is a combination of two (or more) morphemes or words and their definitions into one new composite word, for examples, smog (smoke and fog) and cargument (car and argument). You can have an argument with someone anywhere but you can only have a cargument with someone inside a motorised vehicle of some kind. Likewise a bromance is a very close, intense friendship between two men that is entirely platonic – if the two men become sexually involved with each other, it is no longer a bromance, by definition platonic, but a straightforward romance.
Although there can be minor overlap, a portmanteau is not the same as a compound or contraction. In the 19th Century, a 'portmanteau' was a suitcase that opened out into two equal sections (these can still be bought from luggage retailers), and derives from the French porter (to carry) and manteau (cloak, from mantle, outerwear). British writer Lewis Carroll used 'portmanteau' to describe the coinage of his unusual words in Alice Through the Looking-Glass [Mirror] in 1971. After Humpty Dumpty has told Alice that 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy' and 'mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' he then tells Alice, 'You see it's like a portmanteau, there are two meanings packed up into one word.'
Cloggy Beans: the vast majority of 'baked bean brands' (e.g., Heinz, Branston, etc.) are very nice apart from one universal flaw, the 'tomato sauce' is actually thin and more like ruddy water (ruddy in the colour sense not the epithet sense) than proper sauce. In order to fix this problem, get a small saucepan, empty your baked beans into it and then put in a big dollop of proper fat – by which I mean, if possible, real dripping (beef, pork or lamb, doesn't matter) or a bit of goose fat or lard or butter. Do NOT use any low-fat, low-salt so-called 'healthier' (excuse me whilst I laugh) option. Keep the beans on the lowest possible heat, stirring occasionally and you will see the 'red water' thicken and reduce to a satisfying consistency of deliciousness. When the sauce has reduced to the consistency of your preference, stir a couple of times and serve immediately.
Milk from any lactating mammal that is herbivorous (eats only vegetables) or omnivorous (eats vegetables and meat) – cows, sheep, goats, camels, horses, dogs, badgers, bears, pigs - and yes, human breast milk – is highly nutritious and contains a great many very useful enzymes that help particularly with skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis. (Note, purely carnivorous mammal milk such as that produced by cats is not, which is why there is no difference in eating dogs and badgers than sheep and pigs but cats should not be eaten). The animal should be milked and the milk boiled to heat it through and then it can be drunk or chilled and served later.
In many European countries you will see vending machines that sell raw milk chilled like our vending machines sell soft drinks and such like. However, in the 1950s following World War II, vested interests in Britain were seeing their profitability plummet. The issue with raw milk was that it had to be done properly, with a high quality of animal care and welfare, otherwise there was a risk of brucellosis (also called Bang's Disease and Maltese Fever), which is a febrile disease and abortificent with a minority of death rates amongst vulnerable people.
Animals kept in poor conditions and distressed were susceptible to contracting brucellosis and thus infecting their milk with it. This, however, reduced profit margins even further. Pasteurisation of milk was faster, cheaper, easier, 'kept' longer, could be transported over greater distance and allowed for high-profit margin 'factory farming' with lots of animals maintained in relatively small areas by being kept penned inside. In the 'Vet' series of James Herriot (real name Alfred Wight), the eccentric co-lead character is 'Siegfried Farnon', who was really a vet named Donald V. Sinclair (1911-1995). Although never mentioned in the series, Sinclair's first marriage was ended by the death of his wife, Evelyn B. Sinclair, née Holborow, in March 1936 at the age of 30 due to brucellosis. Thus, an artificial brucellosis scare was 'media manufactured' and the sale of raw milk except by licence from a few small-scale organic farms is now severely restricted in Britain.
The topography of the primary Channel Islands – Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, is very steep hillsides that rise up almost in terraces like the South American pre-Conquistador farming. Traditionally the Channel Island farmers covered the potatoes they grew in these terraces with seaweed brought straight from the beach, called 'wrack'. Stupendously nutritious, as the seaweed dried it replenished nutrients in the soil rather than leaching them away as does many manure and fertilisers and gave the potatoes a fantastic flavour. In the centre of the islands where fields are large and flat, it is faster, easier and far more profitable to cover potatoes in standard manure then ship these to mainland Britain to sell at premium prices as 'Jersey Royals' whilst the real Channel Island potato crop is kept on the island in question. The smaller farmers who hill-farm continue to use wrack, and it is typical for them to start selling their potato crop at 6.00am and be sold out by 6.15am. So delicious are wrack-potatoes that they can be eaten raw and fresh from the field.
All avian species (birds) are scavengers and will peck at and ingest any rubbish around. In order to prevent nasty germs etc., from killing them, the bird's immune defences 'insert' the germ into an egg that is then laid and is sterile, literally expelling the problem. However, if the egg is then eaten (particularly raw or soft-cooked) by another creature, the germ or parasite can attack the eater. Whilst the meat of free range birds is tastier and superior to that of caged or barn-raised birds, the eggs of such birds are dangerous because the free-foraging means the birds can ingest any muck and it is impossible to tell by looking at an egg if it is infested or not; the eggs of barn/cage birds are far safer because you know within reason that the birds have been fed on grain, etc., which carries no risk of parasite or germ.
The Golden Triangle – salt, fat and sugar - are the three big ingredients in all food processing, especially industrial-scale commercial processing (e.g., supermarkets, chain restaurants and pub food which is frozen and reheated). If one ingredient is reduced or removed for whatever reason, the other two have to be increased because otherwise the food is inedible by virtue of tasting like 'wet cardboard'. Due to this, anything that is 'low fat' will have high levels of sugar and salt (no matter whether a sweet or savoury food) and anything that is 'low sugar' or 'sugar free' will have increased fat and salt, and anything 'low salt' will have compensating sugar and fat. Eating naturally occurring fats and oils which are quickly and easily broken down by the body and turned into nutrients, like butter, cheese, yoghurt, fruit, meat, vegetables, are much healthier than low-substance alternatives such as margarine, processed fruit juice drinks, 'low-salt' products and artificial sweeteners. Margarine, for example, cannot be easily digested by the body and often passes through and is excreted as a solid, dense lump. Unless a child has a genuine illness, e.g., Coeliac Disease, extreme care should be taken not to put children on fad or limit diets like vegetarian, gluten-free, no/fat-reduced dairy, macrobiotic or whatever the Sainted Gwyneth Paltrow dreams up next. – preadolescent children and (particularly men) humans over the age of 35 need certain enzymes and nutrients that excluding these foods will remove from their diet. Human beings (should) begin puberty between age 12-16, and adolescence actually lasts from about age 12-26, and humans do not reach full physiological adulthood – physical, mental, emotional – until the age of about 26-32 for women and 28-35 for men. It is therefore unwise to deprive a human being's developing body of any nutrient until after age 35, and even then only for a diagnosed medical reason. Lack of such nutrients can cause or contribute to everything from Parkinson's Disease, Schizophrenia, Dementia, Diabetes, Heart Disease and a whole slew of unpleasantness, which is not fully recognised because often the nastiness doesn't kick in until 20, 30 or 40 years after the initial damage was done – it's like the guy who smokes like a chimney from 20-40 then becomes a health freak…so he doesn't develop smoking-related lung cancer until the age of 75.