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earthstellar · 2 years

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I’m reading the Transformers x Mazinger Crossover Manga: Part One

alright there’s a lot to go over here and it’s all incredible

I’m just going to fixate on this chapter by chapter because each one is a contained little mini-story so that sounds doable

chapter one: Bumblebee is written like a very tiny child for some reason and it’s very cute and good, also Ratchet is Very Nice to him and I rate this first chapter as a full 10/10 by default purely because of this

so my review of Chapter 1 of this crossover is going to focus entirely on a single panel because it checks all the boxes in my brain for shit I look for in Transformers media, which is pretty much just “Ratchet doing shit that shows he cares”

I don’t know the behind the scenes on this (I will look into it when I’m not having a terrible asthma day during a heatwave lmao) but I think the Mazinger writer thinks Bumblebee is supposed to be a giant space robot toddler

at the very least, Bumblebee seems to be depicted as being wayyyy younger than usual, and Ratchet is evidently filling the caretaker role (as Primus intended) which is excellent

I’m also not 100% sure if the writer for this just wasn’t super sure about the characters or what but it genuinely doesn’t matter because this one panel is so fucking excellent for me personally to look at and also to read and enjoy

it’s so simple but so good because you can see in Ratchet’s whole expression and body language here that he is absolutely using a genuine “good job tiny son” voice and that is so powerful, this image is so strong, please give me family dynamics in my Transformers content all the time thank you

like I’m not kidding, check it out:

I mean, look, I’m just saying I think they thought Bumblebee was a toddler because he’s tiny and the youngest right, and Ratchet is a doctor robot so he’s nice and takes care of the robot toddler right???

like I’m not mad, because I fucking love Ratchet’s “yes son, you’re doing great!” I-must-be-kind-to-the-child face, lmao. look at how hard he’s trying to be supportive here.

it’s also hilarious how perfectly “small child” Bumblebee is here. he’s just pointing out the most obvious shit like “yeah, I can participate in the briefing too, let me help!!” and it’s like, awww lol

I mean, young Bumblebee and carer Ratchet is a dynamic that has always existed on some level since like early G1 lmao (and it has always been excellent)

but I like the idea of just having a continuity eventually where we get cliché super cute family dynamic shit

uh oh here goes my brain generating content again

like filler episodes based around toddler Bumblebee playing hide and seek but way too well so everyone starts losing their processors thinking Oh Fuck The Child Is Lost and nobody loses their shit harder than Ratchet

(if we’re talking G1 then I can see Sparkplug backing up Ratchet’s stressed out tirade 100% lmao, like Ironhide tries to say some shit but then Sparkplug is like “well Ironhide, you know, if Spike went missing, I’d be just as upset as ol’ Ratchet here! I don’t know how things work for you guys, and I know you all care for Bumblebee just as much, but I’d say Ratchet spends the most time for him and looks after him the same as any good human father. maybe that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you, but it sure does to me!”

and it would land a critical guilt hit, Ironhide has been staggered lmao, but then off screen somewhere you can hear Prowl threatening to arrest Ratchet for undue property damage after he just starts fucking throwing shit around in the lab while Wheeljack has his hands on his helm and is just standing there like “lol u guise seeing this” and Sparkplug walks it back a little after his Defence of Ratchet speech, lmaoooo. Ironhide would just give a shiteating grin and be like “you make a good point there, but I’ve known Ratchet a few centuries longer than you, Sparkplug! he’ll be fine, so long as we

I love cheesy G1 dialogue, let me live, today has been difficult for me ok lol)

but like, when they finally find Bumblebee, it turns out he just fell asleep under a covered gurney in the Med Bay and was fine the whole time and if anyone roasts Ratchet about how he lost The Child in his own territory he’s going to fucking FREAK OUT all over again so everyone’s like lol well at least we found him, happy ending!!!

but then Wheeljack slaps his hand on Ratchet’s shoulder and says some incredible shit like “It’s good to know the kiddo listens, when he asked me earlier for a good hiding place--” just totally oblivious LOL

and we close the episode with a classic G1 group shot of everyone just standing in there laughing as we hear a pretty solid CLANK as Ratchet smacks Wheeljack off screen with his wrench

shit I’d watch that, I think I like the Toddler!Bumblebee concept this crossover has now introduced into my brain purely for the shenanigans this would enable

also some dingus human teaches Bumblebee that stickers exist and Ratchet pulls out his wrench to smack Ironhide around a little bit and it’s just covered in glitter Barbie school day planner stickers or some shit

chaos but like the nice kind

except actually oh shit do we want a toddler anywhere near Dinobots? WHEELJACK NO

(possibly related concept, Ratchet makes a child leash but when Optimus questions it Ratchet is just like “it’s for Wheeljack not Bumblebee” and Optimus responds with “oh yeah that makes more sense, I’ll approve that, good idea. we don’t want him getting distracted by thinking about how stars work and then walking off the end of the pier again.” lmao)

anyway

so far I’m loving this. right now I’ve had to wait until midnight for the indoor temperature in my bedroom to go down to 98F which is somehow happening in fucking England because this is a nightmare world but let’s not bring in the bad vibes

my inhaler can’t stop the sun from killing me though so I’m just reading through this with zero additional research at the moment like “hueh hueh medic is nice to babby, sitcom when”

chapter 1 summary review:

it’s good shit, you’ll probably need some context for Mazinger basics to follow along, which may also vary a little bit depending on the translation available to you (if any)

but I’m hyperfixating on this panel so intensely right now that I’m OK with not feeling well enough to do the research necessary for me to figure out the actual story/plot at the moment LOL

once this heatwave fucks off I might revisit this a little but for now this is a nice read (so far) while

tl;dr carer Ratchet and young Bumblebee is still some of the most god tier characterisation Hasbro has ever given us, absolutely fucked me up with TFP which was devastating emotionally and I also loved it, however here it’s very G1 and therefore corny but very sweet which is also super good

sorry if this is incoherent I am very tired and have not been able to breathe very well today lmao <3

#g1 #transformers crossover #review #kinda #maccadam #maccadams #transformers g1 #tf ratchet #ratchet #tf bumblebee #bumblebee #g1 ratchet #g1 bumblebee #g1 wheeljack #g1 ironhide #sparkplug witwicky #long post #heatwave but not the character like an actual fucking heatwave

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hollenka99 · 3 years

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A Mislabeled Hourglass

Summary: Fundy grows up faster than Wilbur was expecting but he is going to make the most of his son’s shorter childhood regardless.

Warnings: Mentions of hunting animals, implied character death

Wilbur is no stranger to growing up faster than most. In the midst of learning survival skills as a child, he was still able to play to his heart's content. His mum, and later Phil, never cared too much if he got dirty. Kids will be kids. Despite that, his first experience with grief is at 6, he causes an animal's death sooner than most would and he dies himself for the first time at the age of only 9 (stupid accident, he should have watched his step). He is perhaps 8 when Phil gives him his first taste of independence. At 11, Tommy enters their life and makes him a big brother. Phil's day trips gradually get more frequent, sometimes stretching out for longer durations too. Whenever it's just him and Tommy, he has to be responsible, has to play a more adult role despite being in his early teens when it becomes a noticeable habit. Then Technoblade shows up. You could argue that from around 17 or 18, Wilbur is practically becomes a young carer on a full time basis. However, this accelerated maturation was all mental. The earth had gone around the sun once when he spoke his first word, five times when he began deciphering sequences of letters as words, ten times when Phil told him what to expect over the next several years and it had completed its 19th revolution shortly before Fundy came into the world. Fundy was... different. First of all, he was a shapeshifter so right off the bat, he was never going to look fully human. Sally had fins and naturally red hair. Fundy was born with a substantial amount of ginger hair and ears that seemed slightly more pointed than they should be. When his son gets older, it will become apparent that his senses are stronger than Wilbur's too. Speaking of Fundy getting older... Wilbur has a hunch that something isn't quite right when his baby rapidly outgrows clothes meant for his age group. He initially dismisses it as Fundy likely inheriting his ridiculously tall genes. Because what else could it be, right? Then he is crawling at 2 months old. Wilbur's far from a baby expert but he's sure infants don't become that mobile that soon. A month or so later, Fundy takes his first clumsy steps towards him. Now that? Yeah, that undoubtedly raises alarm bells. He knows for a fact that that milestone was for those around 12 months old. Okay yep, something was definitely up. The books say Fundy should have been introduced to solid foods by now. He guesses that puts him in the Bad Dad category, along with temporarily using cows to feed him when he first got Fundy. He'd defend himself by pointing out he didn't have formula on hand the moment he became a father and was yet to learn non-human milk wasn't actually good for the baby but those excuses don't seem credible. He knows he's been going about this blinder than he would liked since day 1 but the accelerated aging might end up screwing him over even more. Ha, imagine having time to settle into parenting a baby before they graduate into toddlerhood. It's fine, he swears it's fine. It just means he gets to start having comprehensible, reciprocated conversations sooner than most, not to mention going through less nappies. There are stumbles for the first week or two after Fundy learns to walk but his son soon gets the hang of it. Only days after his first steps comes his first word. Noisy pattering paired with cries of "Daddy!" get more common. He could certainly get used to this. A one year old's way of running is potentially one of the silliest things he's ever witnessed. But look at his little champion go! When Fundy learns to crouch, Wilbur is crouching right beside him. Tommy comments that he looks and sounds like an idiot whenever he plays with Fundy. Wilbur pays him no heed because his brother is an absolute hypocrite. He has to say, Tommy is doing a great job for someone who was thrown in at the deep end just as much as he was and his brother doesn't even have the responsibility of having to care for a kid. He's always been a bit... rough and ready when it comes to playing with others. But with Fundy, he makes sure to be gentle around the toddler. Wilbur isn't entirely sure whether hanging upside down from someone's grip on a near daily basis is healthy for a little kid but Fundy's eruption of giggles each time suggest otherwise. When Tommy turned 11, he was not yet an uncle. The following April, he has a two year old nephew who complains he wants to help blow out the candles, nearly fighting for his right to do it instead of the actual birthday boy. It somehow leads to a pillow fight between them. So all in all, Tommy is taking it in his stride. By Fundy's second Christmas, Wilbur is able to start calculating. A 14 month old kid is supposed to be getting the hang of being bipedal, not receiving books that will help them learn how to read. Given that his son was walking at 3 months old, his best guess is that Fundy's development rate was four times that of other children. It seems consistent too since Fundy is approximately the equivalent of a 4 or 5 year old boy now. He recalls Sally once joking about how shapeshifters tended to live fast and die 'young'. He thinks he gets what she means now. Quadruple speed for Fundy though? Fuck. If he's got the maths right, they will be the same physical age when Wilbur is 25. The gap will only grow more and more from then on. At 30, he will have a child who is roughly 40. And when Wilbur himself is 40... he'd rather not dwell on the heartache his early 40s are set to bring. He has been given a 60 second hourglass that's been labelled as a 4 minute one. He's begun to comprehend this with 2 seconds' worth of sand already piling at the bottom. What is he even supposed to do? Does he bake a birthday cake every January, April, July and October 10th or just that last date? He guesses that will be for Fundy to decide in the future. Tommy has made a 'reverse leap day kid' joke before but it really is based in truth. While still a small child, one of Fundy's favourite places to rest is against his father's chest. There have been plenty of nights where the little boy has fallen asleep in his father's arms while being read a story. He's rapidly getting bigger and Wilbur frequently has to adapt how he holds him to accommodate. In the quietest of moments, his eyes will notice a tiny mischievous smile directed at him that will make his day or his ears will catch the softest of snores coming from beside him. As much as he tries to enjoy those occasions, peace often leads to a chance for overthinking to take place. When that happens, it all turns bittersweet with the desperate wish he could get several years of this, not feel lucky if he gets more than 2 or 3 of them. Of course, every time Fundy is resting against his chest is not necessarily positive. There are obviously the typical 'toddler having a breakdown because they scraped their knee' type stuff. Those are fine, all he has to do is soothe him and distract from what is usually an overthought 'injury'. But then there are the times where Fundy's fingers ache from the ordeal of slowly developing claws, Wilbur lets him dig his nails into his jumpers as hard as he feels the need to. The same happens whenever there is any significant growth with his ears too. The older Fundy gets, the more used to the flat of a small head pressing into his chest he becomes. He would do anything to alleviate his pain and discomfort if he could. And no, he definitely hasn't shed a tear or two when nobody is watching in regards to the matter. From here on in, it feels like he's on home soil. He's helped raise a kid from the age of 4 before. The only difference now is that this kid is his own flesh and blood. And a shapeshifter, which Tommy never was. They've begun entering the "Dad, look what I can do!" phase of Fundy's life, now that he is getting more capable with age. The first major instance is when he comes home from a hunt. Tommy has a smug look on his face and Fundy seems seconds from exploding with excitement. His son is let loose on him as soon as he's freshened up, dragging him to a chair where he is made to listen to the most drawn out reading session he has ever experienced. But Wilbur can't help but beam every time Fundy successfully gets through a word. The day he believes Fundy is old enough to start learn how to use a bow can't come soon enough. He knows fuck all about hybrids or shapeshifters other than the very basics. He can't tell you how to construct the most impressive of architectural structures. But this, archery and hunting? Now that he can impart wisdom on. He passes down second hand stories about Fundy's grandma and anecdotes about his trips with Phil when he was a young boy himself. As far as he can tell, Fundy laps it all up. Swordplay is soon added to the mix of training activities. The wooden sword he crafted for his son is slightly too big but eh, the kid will quickly grow into (then inevitably out of) it sooner than later. They gradually work up from technique and stance to improving accuracy and striking moving targets. Every bit of progress he makes, his dad is there cheering him on. Fundy only grows reluctant when it begins to get 'real'. That is to say, when Wilbur tries to take him on an actual hunt or attempts to introduce him to the subject of turning a kill into a meal. And yeah, he gets it. He wasn't the biggest fan of it either when he was being taught himself. Plus, he's aware Fundy's nose is more sensitive than his or Tommy's so yep, preparing a body's going to be even less pleasant for him. It's unfortunately a part of this sort of life. There's... well, there's always the option of heading down to the butcher's in town. Just keep in mind who got his first girlfriend indirectly due to the fact her dad would always give him money for helping supply produce. You've been doing great though. The important part is you're learning how to survive on your own if need be, not to mention how to defend yourself in case of an attack. Another part of Fundy's development to make him gush with pride is when he starts to really hone his shapeshifter nature. It's small at first, a furrier hand transforming into a paw here, a lump of a half formed tail spotted underneath a dressing gown there. He can't really describe how happy it makes him to see a child with a fox's head greet him one morning when Fundy jumps out from behind a door. There are features the young shapeshifter will keep in his human form obviously. Yet it's thrilling to have him keep coming over to show off a new shifting-related ability. The first time Fundy manages to morph fully into a fox, during the spring after his 2nd birthday, Wilbur promises the three of them can have an 'anything Fundy says, goes' type thing the following day in celebration. There are times where Fundy may, for instance, forget to include his tail as an animal or he'll walk around as his usual self, albeit with accidental fox eyes. It's simply a matter of practise, Wilbur believes. One of the best parts of Fundy gradually improving his shapeshifting is the fact he loves to curl up on his dad's lap while in fox form. Wilbur cherishes it. Fundy's getting older now (taller too, this kid is undoubtedly going to be at least 6 foot one day) but he'll always be smaller as a fox than as a human. Forgive a father with limited time to enjoy carrying his son around for wanting to prolong the inevitable. Fundy is 3 when he physically catches up with Tommy, age wise. It's not until he is the equivalent of maybe 15 that he passes his uncle's height. Tommy complains about it incessantly, especially whenever Fundy teases him about how much taller he's getting. It's all fun and games but Wilbur was an unusually large teenager once (only a few years ago really, though let's not dwell on that) so he understands what it's like. Going through growth spurts is hardly the most enjoyable thing out there and he can't imagine how it must feel to keep getting hit by them with even less time to settle into your new height. Not to mention growing pains. During a quiet evening, he checks in on his son and approaches the subject. It leads to him allowing Fundy to rant about the worst parts of growing up. Orange fur recedes on his arms to show a few stretch marks. Ah, he was wondering if the extra hair was deliberate or simply puberty taking hold. He assures Fundy stretch marks aren't something to be ashamed of. He got a bunch of them himself at his age. Although, they've pretty much all faded by now. It's fine, you don't need to stress about it. Besides, Tommy's going through the same kind of shit. The main problem with Fundy and Tommy being similar ages now is that they are arguably closer than ever. Which, no, isn't a bad thing. In fact, he's glad that for a few months they're able to hang out on more equal footing. The issue lies in the fact that Fundy takes after his uncle when it comes to causing mischief. The little rascal is turning into a bit of a prankster. And yeah, maybe Wilbur himself likes channelling hints of chaos into his life but you'll never hear the designated responsible adult admit to that in the others' presence. At one point, Fundy is a six year old gleefully explaining how Tommy helped him up so he could place that water bucket. Only a year later, there's an 11 year old revealing that yes, he was the one to make their chickens, cows and sheep switch enclosures during the night. He only gets more ambitious from there. God knows where he got all that dye from when he's in his mid-teens. Fundy is much like himself as a teenager. Both clearly love their respective fathers but both grow to varying degrees of resentment regarding the level of independence they are given. Wilbur always had too much. It was his job to take care of Tommy whenever Phil left on short trips until the avian hybrid pretty much said 'well, you're an adult now, you can take care of things all by yourself' before heading off with Technoblade for months on end. It's why Wilbur knows kids want a safety net, for an adult to be there to help them out if they need it (no matter how mature or independent they feel). Has he taken it further than he should have? Maybe. Fundy is the only one who can be the true judge of that. He just wants his little boy to be safe and happy. He didn't want him to grow up so quickly. However, even if this was happening in 15 years, he would have grown up too soon. It doesn't surprise him too much when Tommy and Fundy make the choice to go off on their own. He only allows it because they promise they will stick together throughout the journey. He supposes it was time. Phil snuck off to do the same around their age and his mum was roughly 18 when she set off to be a nomadic traveller. The thought to live a similar style life has crossed Wilbur's mind. His duty to the two boys under his care has always made him reconsider. But Tommy is 16 now and not as much of a child as Wilbur likes to say he is. As for Fundy, he's probably around the equivalent of 18 or 19 by this point. He hates to admit it but they've both grown up. Where the hell did the time go? So although it pains him to do so, he nevertheless sends them off with a smile. If they find anywhere nice in their adventures, they'll be sure to tell him. He might even join them if they choose to stick around in one area. He turns back into the house after they leave and fuck, has it always been this empty? He gets a letter in early July, telling him all about this place called the Dream SMP and their time there. He arrives and things seem to snowball as soon as he begins the 'drug business' bullshit. Suddenly, he's a general with his brother and son as soldiers, along with some new friends. They are at a disadvantage in this fight against tyranny but it's okay, Eret says she has a secret weapon. They might just pull through. Or... they might instead be brutally betrayed by a former friend and lose so much more than their possessions. He loses track of his battalion in the chaos. All he knows is screaming for everyone to flee. Then the agony a sword through his stomach. Tubbo's dead, as is Tommy. Where's Fundy? He can't see him anywhere. God, please say he managed to get the fuck out of here. Please let it be that he turned into a fox and scarpered away, something like that. Never mind his dad. If Fundy's alright, he'll be alright too. He loves his son, has done all he was able to ensure his little boy has never had reason to doubt this fact. Over the past few years, that love has been repaid in mischievous grins, unrestrained giggles and drowsy cuddles, among other quieter moments. It gets repaid once again as a boy playing a soldier struggles to join the side of his pretend general of a father in order to loosely grasp hands. It barely registers. Neither does the tiny pained smile or ginger hair that go largely missed by eyes preoccupied with the vain effort to keep them open. They all celebrate the independence they'd fought so hard for the next night. The bittersweet nature of this victory goes ignored. With all the cheerful chatter and singing declaring their land to be one of freedom from tyranny drifting in the evening air from the campfire, it feels like the good mood will never end. It feels like the only thing that may tear the father and son apart is Wilbur's desperation for just a bit more time with Fundy as his little boy, despite how painfully obvious he was already grown up into a man in less than 5 years. Arm slung around him as a toast is made, they are not yet a debilitatingly stressed president, increasingly suicidal exilee or secretly loyal spy. For tonight, they are still a relatively happy, loving pair. For tonight, there is hypothetically still so much time for them to stay like that.

#dream smp #wilbur soot #fundy #my writing

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sprngdayv · 4 years

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ao3 fic recs!

basically just a list of all the fics i read sorted by ship c:

jikook

riptide | 62k + mature

Jeon Jungkook is still just a kid when he sets out for Seoul. He knows about the tall buildings, the maze-like roadways, and dorm life he's signed up for. He expects the difficulties of being a trainee, finds it in the holes of his worn out dance shoes and countless sleepless nights. But what he doesn't expect, could never expect, is meeting Park Jimin.

It's then Jungkook realizes that there's more to learn in Seoul than dance choreographies: about growing up, falling in love, and about himself.

---

A three year story [2013-2016] of coming together, breaking apart, and putting each other back together again. Jeon Jungkook learns about change, growing up, and the hardships of falling in love with a friend.

wonder | 7k + teen and up audiences

"You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

constraint | 40k + explicit

Jungkook is young and he is more acquainted with confusion and poor-decision-making than he’d like to admit. Despite being only 19 years old, he sometimes argues that he’s been through and seen some shit. He is never sure where he’s going to end up and he’s not entirely sure what kind of future is waiting for him. He is often not sure of a lot but he is certain—absolutely certain—that he’s not gay. Alternatively, a story in which Jungkook meets Park Jimin and doesn't like him whatsoever. There's just something about him... there's just so much about him. Jungkook really can't stand him. In fact, he can't stand him so much he can't quite seem to get him off of his mind.

imperfectly perfect | 205k + mature

Jungkook just moved to Seoul and comes to a new school. He's quite naive and believes that there is good in everyone. He loves photography and always carries his camera with him. He thought his life wasn't going to change much, even though he had moved to Seoul.

However, that changed, when he took a picture of a certain orange-haired boy with the brightest eye-smile he had ever seen.

there for you (love is a road that goes both ways) | 32k + teen and up audiences

Jimin needs a place to stay and Jungkook has a spare room.

picture (not) perfect | 50k + mature

Jungkook's conceptual photography professor gives him a new assignment, and he finds a unique muse. A dancer named Park Jimin, who he can't stand.

you are the ruler of the stars (and my heart) | 18k + teen and up audiences

Jimin reluctantly joins his college's Space and Astronomy club on the basis of Taehyung's persuasion. Surrounded by a group of unnecessarily tall space nerds, he unexpectedly finds himself falling in love with one of them.

red string of fate | 17k + teen and up audiences

There’s a Chinese legend that says two people are connected by a red string around their pinky finger. Said people are meant to be together, no matter what happens in their lives; even if they find themselves going their separate ways at one point, the string never breaks and their paths will always cross again.

The one where Jimin and Jungkook were best friends until a confession turns everything upside down. They meet again two years later but things have changed… Or have they?

“I can’t believe it took Jungkook having his ass handed to him on a golden platter for them to sort this shit out.”

these things take forever (i especially am slow) | 4k + mature

In which Jungkook does his level best to be a functioning person, but then Jimin shows up to school in a fluffy oversized sweater skimming the tops of his gorgeous thighs and clutched around his tiny hands like sweater paws, and everything goes to shit.

in which Jimin overworks himself and Jungkook waits up for him | 1k + general audiences

Jimin drags his feet toward the kitchen where the light over the sink remains on. He’s focused entirely on the fridge and thinking about downing one of his chocolate protein shakes when he spots Jungkook slumped over the kitchen table, his head resting on his arms and a blanket over his shoulders.

(alternatively titled: "what are you doing up?" / "waiting for you.")

baby lotion and marigolds. | 16k + general audiences

Jungkook over the years kept his friend at arms distance, from his first day of Kindergarten to his second year in Junior High, never letting anyone get too close, literally and metaphorically.

But then there was Jimin.

God, Jimin.

A ‘even-the-teachers-think-we’re-dating-AU’

just give me a reason | 7k + teen and up audiences

Jimin shows Jungkook the reasons why he needs a girlfriend, and the one reason that he doesn't.

friendly favours | 76k + teen and up audiences

Jimin and Jungkook have been friends for a while now, and that's all they've ever been. Friends. And friends do favours for each other all the time, right? So whenever Jungkook asks for a favour, Jimin always says yes, even when this one particular favour involves pretending to be Jungkook's boyfriend for the next two months. But hey, that's what friends do...right?

artifice | 51k + mature

Taehyung is oblivious, Jimin concludes. Absolutely dumb. It’s hopeless.

Or in which, Jimin gets some help from Jeongguk in order to impress his crush who clearly could use some glasses because Jimin is as transparent as they get.

you don’t bring me flour | 3k + general audiences

In order to graduate, Park Jimin must convince cute grocery cashier Jeon Jungkook that this sack of flour is his beloved child.

not alone | 30k + mature

Jungkook ends up with a baby somehow and his best friend, Jimin, helps him raise it while they both manage new feelings, along with other challenges.

your body is a place to stay | 8k + teen and up audiences

In which Jungkook juggles a five-year-old daughter, Jimin the pretty bookstore employee, and coworkers who like to tease him too much.

who would have thought i’d get you? | 2k + general audiences

in which jimin comes over for dinner, and jungkook and seoyeon try to impress.

(follow-up to your body is a place to stay)

pause, rewind, play | 3k + general audiences

Jimin doesn’t know why it starts. Maybe it’s the eightieth post he’s seen today about him being rejected by Jungkook. But whatever the reason, Jimin starts to not care anymore.

we’ve got chemistree | 19k + teen and up audiences

“Look, my brother invited me to his jolly-ho party next week and I may or may not have also told him that you’re my boyfriend when you’re not actually my boyfriend and that I’ll bring you, my boyfriend, to the party for him to meet just so that I can shove it in everyone else’s faces and hear the end of his and my entire family and extended family’s ceaseless mentions of my single life because it’s getting extremely annoying.”

There was a slight pause. Jungkook squints at him skeptically, “And you told your brother that I’m your fake boyfriend? Me, of all people?”

your little moon face, shining bright at me | 89k + teen and up audiences

Jimin lives an unassuming life, working at the small and quaint coffeehouse known for its reoccurring open mic nights to showcase indie performers, while he juggles between who he truly wants to be and breaking the conformity his parents try to shape him into. It's dull and grey, full of sleepless nights-- dreamless, even, how he doesn't have much going for himself. His routine is all but a fixed, tedium cycle.

That is, until Jimin meets someone interesting during one of their open mic nights.

falling for you again | 30k + teen and up audiences

Jungkook loses all memory of the last five years of his life. Jimin is scared he will never love him again.

there for you | 33k + teen and up audiences

jeongguk's best friend ditches him an hour before their plane to japan. jimin loses his ticket at the airport and isn't allowed to board his plane to japan. fate or not, jeongguk happens to have a spare ticket and jimin thinks jeongguk is an angel sent to him by god.

or in which cinematography major, jeon jeongguk, and aspiring singer, park jimin, fall in love in the busy streets of tokyo.

yoonmin

maybe i hate you can be our always | 35k + mature

When Yoongi thinks about it, really gives it genuine thought, it's possible that Park Jimin isn't the worst person in the world.

(Or, Yoongi and Jimin get off on the wrong foot.)

cleaning clam shells, raising children and falling in love | 49k + teen and up audiences

After an accident leaves him the sole carer of his four-year-old niece, Park Jimin struggles with grief, kiddy tantrums, parenthood, and trying to find himself—but after finding Yoongi within this mess instead, he realises he might not be as alone as he thinks he is.

not crying on a sunday | 125k + teen and up audiences

Min Yoongi lives in a small town with nothing but his little band of friends and basketball every Thursday until something enters his life in the form of a Park Jimin. Sure he's nothing but a timid little guy at first, but slowly Yoongi learns that the arms wrapped around his waist in every bicycle ride on the way home means more to the both of them.

love is patient, love is kind | 106k + teen and up audiences

For many people, the sky meant freedom, being a small part of the universe, a speck of dust in a long-winding infinity. The sky meant a lot of thing for many people, but for Jimin the sky was a person, a boy who both built and teared his world apart.

Jimin thought that living in a small town was nothing but a punishment that he deserved after being disowned by his parents. That was, until he learned how beautiful yet dangerous a certain scarlet sky could be, he found himself slowly falling in love with it until it became nothing but the only thing that he detests the most in his life.

An accompaniment and sequel to Not Crying On A Sunday.

when you’re in love all the lines get blurred | 36k + teen and up audiences

Jimin isn't sure what possessed him to lie to his mother and tell her that he had a boyfriend, but now that he's opened the position, he has no choice but to fill it. Yoongi is, apparently, his only option.

as you wish | 17k + general audiences

Jimin, a single dad trying to juggle two toddlers and a painful past. Yoongi, a photographer who is lacking inspiration for his next showcase. Jeongguk, a four-year-old who keeps on bringing home stray cats. Namjoon, a six-year-old who just wants to learn how to multiply fractions and read The Princess Bride for the 57th time. Somehow, it becomes a lovestory.

conflicting arrangement | 162k + not rated

"Absolutely not," Yoongi deadpanned. "Namjoon-ah. I value you as a friend, and I think I'd even go as far as to say that you're my best friend, but absolutely fucking not."

"You owe me," Namjoon pleaded. "Come on, Yoongi, it's not a big deal."

"Your boyfriend's best friend's best friend needs a fake boyfriend to come out to his family this Chuseok, all the way in fucking Busan." Yoongi repeated drily without pause, making Namjoon wince. He flipped a page of his textbook, picking up his highlighter. "Not a big deal, Namjoon. Amazing."

math tutor | 11k + teen and up audiences

Min Yoongi is the school's resident Bad Boy™. He's covered in tattoos, is pierced, curses like a sailor, smokes like crazy, doesn't give a shit about anything, possesses a hot temper that has people steering clear of him, and is desperately in love with Park Jimin, the adorable math nerd. When Jimin is tasked with tutoring Yoongi in math, who is in danger of failing the class and being held back a year, both boys are hesitant. Yoongi because he can't think straight around the boy with startling red hair, and Jimin because Yoongi is scary as hell and looks like he can easily kill someone. Gradually, though, the two grow closer, and Jimin finds that Yoongi is nothing like how he'd imagined.

out of my system | 101k + mature

Yoongi likes one night stands and he understands how they work. What he doesn’t understand, however, is how he ended up in bed with a probably-not-legal kid crying in his arms about his broken heart, because he’s pretty sure (and correct him if he’s wrong) that a babysitting job was not what he was looking for when he went to the opening of his friend’s new club.

sweet nothings | 14k + teen and up audiences

Park Jimin really hates Valentine's Day and he really likes Min Yoongi, his co-worker at the bakery and his crush of almost a year and a half. He's shy and awkward and turns into a blushing mess whenever he's around Yoongi, but he wants nothing more than to confess to him and ask him to be his valentine, but Jimin is somewhat of a coward, and he's pretty sure Cupid is out to get him. But little does he know that Yoongi has hidden feelings of his own.

look my way | 5k + general audiences

It all started when Yoongi read his own name and the word 'cute' written in the same sentence on the wall of the boys' bathroom.

But he kind of liked the way his name looked in the stranger's handwriting.

help desk ticket | 64k + mature

That one where Yoongi is the IT guy and Jimin is really, really bad at computers.

sleepovers in my bed | 12k + teen and up audiences

“You should just sleep here, hyung. It’s still raining hard.”

“Should I? My house is literally in front of yours though.”

The fingers in Jimin’s hair continue combing through the locks, soothing and gentle. Yoongi’s ministrations help him dip slowly into sleep. “Just listen to me, hyungie! I’ll make you pancakes in the morning.”

How can Yoongi say no to that?

; or Yoongi and Jimin get to know their selves, each other, and fall in love through a series of sleepovers.

untitled.mp3 | 13k + teen and up audiences

Jimin doesn't expect being suddenly evicted from his apartment right before his senior year of college. He also doesn't expect to move in with his quiet neighbor.

And he's definitely not expecting that neighbor to be his newest music teacher, Professor Min Yoongi.

the 100-day love challenge | 19k + teen and up audiences

For a variety show challenge, Jimin must tell Yoongi every day for 100 days that he loves him.

Let's get this shit started.

sweetening sugar | 63k + explicit

All Min Yoongi wants is to finish college. He wants to get through the remaining five months of his last semester, complete his final project, get his degree and get the hell out of here.

And then Park Jimin happens.

it’s the most wonderful time (of the year) | 55k + teen and up audiences

Park Jimin is only three years old when he meets cooler, older, and smarter Min Yoongi for the first time, and is immediately enamoured.

For the first time in his entire life, Jimin feels an emotion he never thought he would feel: infatuation.

Not that he even understands what that feeling means.

All he knows is that there’s a small, pale boy at the front door of his home, right under the hanging mistletoe, firmly gripping his father’s hand and his mother’s skirt as he stares unabashedly into Jimin’s eyes, rendering him absolutely speechless.

childhood best friends yoonmin growing up together and experiencing the complexities of love & relationships, as well as, the harsh realities of growing older over the years, on Christmas day

because of you | 37k + teen and up audiences

Yoongi is careless over a test and ends up with Jimin tutoring him. Yoongi's sure he's never talked to someone this much in months but he can't say he finds it as annoying or frustrating as he thought he would.

i'll be a gentleman ('cause i'll be your boyfriend) | 21k + mature

Yoongi isn’t an easy man to surprise, but kisses out of the blue and sudden boyfriend proposals can do the job.

yoonkook

my youth is yours | 10k + teen and up audiences

“What did you say your name was?” says Yoongi, after an eternity of awkward silence.

“Jeongguk,” says Jeongguk. “Um. My name is Jeon Jeongguk. I’m a freshman.”

“Oh,” says Yoongi. “Fucking hell.”

(In which Jeon Jeongguk goes to college, makes some friends, and learns he’s got a lot of growing to do.)

shake bend and break | 48k + mature

Min Yoongi takes in a stray cat. Jeon Jeongguk lives next door.

curiosity killed the cat (but satisfaction brought it back) | 11k + not rated

jungoo :3 [11:45AM] YOONGI SENPAI

yoongi [11:45AM] hey siri fastest way to fucking kill myself

(jungkook, a visual arts major, accidentally texts the wrong user and ends up finding yoongi, a music production major who just wants to sleep. they strike a bet. chaos ensues.)

here comes the sun | 57k + teen and up audiences (THIS IS MY FAV FIC OF ALL TIME PLS READ IT)

“hey, hyung,” jungkook says in a tiny voice into his ear, “how are you? it’s been a minute.”

“it has, hasn’t it.” it’s been two years, which is not hard to believe, because holy fuck— “you got, um. tall.”

that’s not really it. jungkook was already taller than yoongi two years ago. and it’s not a drastic change by any means. it’s just that everything about him is… more. yoongi refuses to think of other words for it.

(or: yoongi comes back to summer camp and finds himself in something of a crisis.)

party tattoos | 24k + teen and up audiences

For a fleeting second, Yoongi doesn’t do anything. His features settle into an expression of softened worry, pretty eyes bleeding questions, the smooth line of his jaw cut sharp.

Then, just as if he’d been doing it all along, Yoongi is hugging him.

Alternatively: Yoongi finds Jeongguk having an anxiety attack in the middle of a party, and manages to catch a few feelings along the way.

draw the future you have dreamed of (give it colour) | 13k + teen and up audiences

Jungkook was supposed to be on his way to a lecture that's starting in ten minutes, oh, wait, nine minutes and a half now, yet he found himself in the middle of a huge supermarket, helplessly wondering if they sold there some handbooks titled How to Handle a Lost 5-Year-Old That's Crying Her Eyes out Right onto My Hoodie and Is Not Able to Tell Me Where Her Parents Are 101.

with a bang (stunted plants can bloom) | 24k + mature

namjoon [1:12] so you met jimin and taes roommate last night

yoongi [1:15] …...yeah

namjoon [1:15] met him real good

yoongi [1:16] oh my god

what not to do when you find yourself falling for the guy you almost slept with but then didn’t because he turned out to be your friends’ roommate: a guide by min yoongi

time will be frozen for us | 11k + explicit

The first time it happens is an accident.

Well, more accurately, the first time it happens is because Yoongi is a giant pushover and Jeongguk’s scrunchy nose smile could get him to walk through an ice storm in the dead of winter, even though Yoongi hates being cold more than anything.

Yoongi acknowledges this ‘softness-toward-Jeongguk-truth’, albeit not to Hoseok, Namjoon, and Seokjin who pointed it out—

(“If he said he needed to, like, knife you for a project you would let him.” “I would not.” “You genuinely might.” “You totally would.” “You’re legitimately considering if you would right now.” “Would all of you kindly fuck the fuck off.” “You’re irritated because it’s true, Yoongi-yah.”)

----

(or yoongi and jeongguk fall asleep in some beds together and then there's a lot of metaphors, low key skinny love cliché, somewhere between slow and fast burn, and then kitchen counters and lotsa touching)

twenty-four | 20k + teen and up audiences

“i’m doing a social experiment and writing about it,” taehyung says easily. “i decided to handcuff two people together for twenty-four hours and have them report back to me on the experience. you guys are an ideal pair for this, really, because of your contradictory lifestyles. kookie goes to the gym every day, yoongi hasn’t seen the sun in what, four years -“

“jungkook has a semi-healthy sleep schedule, and yoongi texted me at two a.m. asking if i want to grab dinner,” namjoon supplies.

“i am the pinnacle of health,” yoongi snaps. the handcuffs clink as jungkook lifts their arms.

“so you just. handcuffed us together while we were sleeping?"

slowly drifting to you | 32k + teen and up audiences

A stranger argues with him over cat ratings on his own damn blog, and Yoongi wasn't expecting it to be the start of a friendship, but here they are.

(Or: Namjoon, Hoseok, and Yoongi run a travel blog, Yoongi's been running for three years, and Jungkook is lonely in Seoul.)

home is (this house and the people in it) | 83k + explicit

“okay,” namjoon says slowly, “you can’t just drag strangers home with you because they tell you their name.”

“we didn’t kidnap him. he is here very much of his own volition,” taehyung pipes in. he slaps at jeon jungkook’s shoulder. the boy looks sort of pained, and yoongi can’t blame him. “we met him at a street corner, near jimin’s work. it was raining, and he didn’t have an umbrella, and he was looking kind of lost, so we asked him to come with us.”

“and you just went with them? two strangers? them?” namjoon stresses, and jimin and taehyung look kind of uncertain, like they’re not sure whether they were just insulted.

jungkook merely shrugs.

“you end up doing all kinds of shit,” he says, and yoongi perks up at the sound of his voice, “when you live out of your car.”

or: jungkook stays for a night, and then ends up staying a lot longer.

fool me once | 24k + teen and up audiences

Yoongi is thirty years old and alone. He's got a watered-down version of his dream job (working for a small-town paper writing fluff pieces and ghostwriting the advice column), an older sister who won't stop trying to set him up with every girl she knows, and today is his parents' fortieth anniversary.

Maybe if he was happier he wouldn't have pretended to be someone else's blind date in the middle of the train station.

good love grown | 52k + not rated

“are you haeun’s other dad? kim taehyung’s husband?”

and, you see, jungkook has never really done well in the presence of beautiful men. the man standing before him has nice slacks on, as well as a dress shirt that’s rolled up to his elbows, and he looks devastating. his hair is bleach blond, almost white, and a bit of a contrast to his outfit; something about his entire aura is captivating. jungkook finds himself staring as his brain tries to come up with an appropriate answer.

“uh,” he mumbles, eloquently. “um, yes.”

no, his mind screams at him, almost immediately after the words have left his mouth. no, no, no! he is not kim taehyung’s husband, just the thought of it sends shivers up his spine, but standing in front of this beautiful, ruinous man, he is kim taehyung’s fucking husband.

fuck, he thinks, as the man grins at him. fuck.

// or: jungkook gay panics, and has to pretend to be a dad just because he's powerless against pretty men (yoongi).

love me lights out | 10k + mature

Min Yoongi is the student TA for Digital Mix Techniques 201, aka Jeongguk's eight a.m. this semester, aka his thrice-weekly reminder that he is, in fact, gay.

That's how it starts.

take me out (we’re going down) | 20k + teen and up audiences

There are a lot of things that Jungkook expected from his junior year of college. General stress. Student debt.

He did not expect to be hit by a car.

It’s going well.

who hide from the sun | 24k + explicit

“It’s the oldest story in the world. One day you’re seventeen and planning for someday. And then, quietly, and without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And then someday is yesterday. And this is your life.”

taekook

pillowtalk (i'm sooooorry) | 9k + general audiences

Jungkook knows he made Taehyung angry, so he sneaks into his room to make things up.

[Taekook being cute]

supercut of us | 4k + mature

“I think it was destiny? It wasn’t university housing that brought us together, it was fate. He’s like, my soul-roommate.”

“So your soulmate,” says Seokjin.

“No,” says Jeongguk. “My soul-roommate. I wanna live with him forever. I think he might be the Great Roommate Of My Life.”

Seokjin squints at him.

to always follow the sun | 36k + explicit

In which Jeongguk upgrades from being his boss' frazzled and overworked assistant to prospective future step-parent practically overnight.

we’d be good, we’d be great | 25k + mature

Taehyung and Jeongguk have been best friends for six years.

operation: get taehyung a boyfriend | 14k + teen and up audiences

Jimin and Yoongi are finally dating and everything would be perfect if Taehyung would stop freaking cockblocking them. Every time Jimin and Yoongi seem to have a moment to themselves, an unintentionally oblivious Taehyung somehow ruins the moment. So Jimin devises the perfect plan; to get Taehyung a boyfriend so he'll leave the two of them alone. Enter Jeon Jungkook, a shy boy who has no friends and is Taehyung's secret crush and Jimin's new target.

fall asleep (fall for you) | 150k + mature

“They say when you fall in love you can’t fall asleep, but now that I’ve met you I feel like I finally can.”

A University AU where Jungkook and Taehyung become roommates. But Jungkook has insomnia and can't fall asleep with other people and Taehyung can't fall asleep alone.

brace face | 13k + not rated

Taehyung desperately wants to be popular and Jungkook just wants to see Taehyung smile.

hiraeth | 100k + explicit

Jeongguk has learned the hard way from the tender age of thirteen when his father pushed him down the stairs, that people are a disappointment. They always will be and so he breaks hearts instead.

Hurt people hurt people.

Jeongguk likes hurting girls, but he doesn't like hurting Kim Taehyung.

the happiest place on earth | 15k + explicit

“Oh god, Kook. Don’t tell me you’re going to propose in front of the Cinderella Castle. That’s like, extra cheesy. The most cheese, even for you.”

“No?” Jungkook laughs. Does it sound as nervous to Taehyung as it does to himself? “No, that’s corny. Definitely not.”

the time space continuum (or something) | 9k + teen and up audiences

Jeongguk's kind of sad drunk. A boy out of time. Taehyung is kind of gross. The boy who waits.

come on, lattice bond | 12k + teen and up audiences

“Hello, I’m Kim Taehyung!” he greets. “Biochem senior and your very knowledgeable senpai-slash-mentor.”

“Jeon Jeongguk,” the boy replies. “Bio major.”

Taehyung is on the quest to be Jeongguk's ultimate senpai. Unfortunately, life has other plans. (Lab!AU)

king of the library, knight of his trade | 47k + teen and up audiences

Moral of the story? Don't fuck with Jeon Jungkook or else you'll end up ruining your perfect attendance to chase his coattails.

namjin

a seokjin in shining armor | 3k + teen and up audiences

Still, Seokjin hears it, loud and clear, when someone sitting at the table next to his says, "Come on, Namjoon. We both know you're not really gay."

Seokjin freezes, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. Because what?

(An "I overheard someone making you upset by saying you can't be queer so I decided to pretend to be your significant other" AU.)

a sugar coated pill and a come pick me up | 25k + teen and up audiences

As Namjoon stood slightly removed from the scene, bemusedly watching the six-year-olds swarm around his cooler (which he had borrowed from his mom), he didn’t even notice that someone had sidled up next to him until he heard the tiny, but undoubtedly exasperated, huff.

He followed the sound, turning his head to the right. A guy was standing there, arms crossed, lips pursed. He let out another huff, louder this time, but only slightly.

Namjoon refused to acknowledge him. What the fuck was this guy’s deal? Was he really that bitter that his six-year-old just lost a soccer game for six-year-olds?

One more huff from the guy.

He was beginning to think this guy’s lips were just perpetually pursed and would simply never, ever unpurse themselves, when he, the guy, finally unpursed his lips to speak.

“I just think it’s pretty irresponsible to bring Gatorade to a soccer game for first graders,” he said, huffily, “No offense.”

(or: namjin are soccer dads who fall in luv)

taegi

all these sleepless nights | 62k + explicit

Yoongi is a writer whose life is falling apart around him.

Until one day he sees a stranger reading his book and everything changes.

because fries and mixtapes | 6k + not rated

Yoongi works the graveyard shift at a fast food restaurant while trying to make it big. Taehyung has insomnia.

sope

same damn hunger | 40k + explicit

When it comes to fucking around with his best friend, Yoongi follows two rules:

1. They must be inebriated.

2. They must not kiss.

#bts #ao3 #yoonmin #jikook #bts ao3 #fanfic #yoonkook #ao3 rec

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lordraveondagooseofdolallytap · 4 years

Text

THE ROAD TO DOLALLY

THE TRAIN TO DOLALLY

I assert ownership of this work

David Kitchen

April 14TH 2020

Doolally Tap

Origin and definition adapted from Collins English Dictionary

Slang: Out of one’s mind

In full: Doolally Tap

Word origin: C19. Original military slang from Deolali or Devlali, a town near Mumbai, the location of a military sanatorium and the Hindustani word for fever, tap.

A debt owed

Every fourth Sunday, more or less, for ten years. That’s how long it went on for. A four hundred mile round trip beginning after work on a Friday evening and completing back at home on Sunday around six. I was glad to do it. She had been the best of mothers and it was time to pay some of that care back but I am no angel and cannot say I was wholly selfless or always ungrudging…but it would have been unthinkable not to have made those journeys.

And that ten-year span took her from a badly rheumatic old lady, with much left of what had been a very good mind, all the way to a cot chair, carefully positioned pillows, a ghoulish expression and the ‘lostness’ which is the most shocking thing. You greave in stages when someone has dementia, and by the time it comes to an end in death you are relieved. Or at least I was. That decade had been an ever-growing aberration of what she was.

There were midway points, such as when at the care home some of her self could be retrieved by a Frank Sinatra song or a baby’s photograph, but once a month was not enough and careless carers could not be bothered to make the effort as evidenced by the dusty, cobwebbed corner where these things were kept for her. That time was not the before and after moment. It was earlier when she was still at home, in her own house. It was one specific weekend and I can remember it clearly. Everything changed after that.

Friday evening

I got there Friday evening at about half-past ten. All the lights in the house were on but mum was up in her bedroom. She shouted down “who’s that?”

I answered as always, “Just me mam”,

And she would come back again and say “who’s that?”

And this time I would say “Just me, Ryan”.

“Oh love I’m glad you’ve come. It’s a long drive for you, get something for yourself. There’s ham in the fridge”.

Indeed I was hungry, I’d had a McDonalds on the road but that was like nothing ten minutes after finishing it. I opened the fridge, and all by itself on the middle rack was a little plastic pack of boiled ham. Nothing like the meat we got sliced from the bone years before when I’d lived at home. I reached over but then withdrew with revulsion at the sight of a green-silver coat growing on the meat. The pack only had a couple of slices left. She must have eaten some that day. I did not want to look at the bread or think about her eating it.

My elder brother had remarked one time that leaving her after a visit had felt like leaving a toddler in the middle of a busy road. She paid for carers to call in four times a day to give her meds, help with simple meals and to get her washed and dressed. That was the theory but some of these angels of mercy skimped and rushed in and out doing the least of what they could do. I had witnessed this when they did not know I was sat in the corner. It left me sickened and angry. The only regular caring face was that of my youngest daughter who did mums shopping on a weekend and gave her time and love.

This home-care charade was a sordid carry on and my mother was fading through neglect. There was no way it could go on but she was refusing to go into a care home and was furious anytime the subject was broached, accusing me of trying to get the house and steal her money.

I felt this state as a great inertia. I could not go one way and she would not move the other and in the middle was this nightmare being played out. I had a job which paid barely enough to fund my situation: getting both daughters through university and doling out a sizeable monthly amount to my ex-wife and her lawyer. Something was going to have to give. If I moved back up north I would not earn two-thirds of my present wage and everything would come crashing down.

A month previously the police had phoned and said they had found my mother in the shop-door-way of a Toys “R” Us shop in the city at almost midnight. Seems she had set out to buy presents for her grandchildren and was found braying on the shop doorway and screaming at the empty place to be let in. It had only been a few weeks earlier that he Tetley’s Tea man had sold her a bedroom full of Easter Eggs and commemorative mugs. It was all going to pieces and there were disgraceful scoundrels around who were happy to prey upon her.

The house was getting a tatty look and the brown mark on that cushion might be shit. It felt much like sleeping over in a house without an occupant, a place that did not belong to anybody. I would do a top to bottom clean through that weekend and fix the garden up to an acceptable standard but nobody was really living here. Mum was just occupying the rooms. I got a half-drunk bottle of brandy out of the boot of my car and poured a full measure into a faded yellow Tupperware plastic beaker which my father had once kept his teeth in. There was only one proper cup left and that would be upstairs at her bedside. She liked to sip water during the night when she woke with a thirst.

I let the spirit do its work. Relax me after the drive, give me a dose of wellbeing and prepare for sleep. I texted my girlfriend and told her I’d got here and things were as awful as always and wished her goodnight.

I had to break this inertia and do something. It was like a free fall.

Saturday morning

The thin, scratchy, woollen army surplus blankets were still there on my childhood bed. Their feel was my first conscious perception of the day.

Quick wash at the sink then I walked to the Mace store on the estate and bought some breakfast supplies in. Got back to the house and made a tray of toast, orange juice and breakfast cereal but by then she was up and she had it at the table. I knew her mental facilities were at their best in the morning so settled on having the conversation I’d been stewing on right away.

“Mam, we need to have a talk about what needs to happen next. You’re getting frail and it’s time to go into a care home”. I am one of those people who cannot dress up a difficult conversation and if I was then she might have missed the point somewhere amongst all the fluff.

“What are you saying Ryan that I’m so old and decrepit that I cannot live in my own house anymore?”

There was a temptation to temper but decided against it-

“I need to talk to you honestly now mum, this is getting dangerous. There will be a fire or something and that will be the end of you”

“And I’d bet you’d like that, that sod of a brother of yours and you can’t wait to get your hands on this house and my money. Your bastards, the pair of you. Taking from your own mother. You ought to be ashamed and trying to dress it up as helping me. Well, how is stealing off me helping? That’s wicked.”

“I have got to be honest mam, this is probably one of the last times that we will be able to have a proper conversation. I’m not after your money or your bloody house or anything. I am only saying these things because you need taking care of.”

“Why do I need taking care of? Who do you think you’re talking to? I am not a child you can order about. So what is this big thing that’s wrong with me? Tell me that.”

My mind spliced for a moment and one half of it was thinking how well she had kept her verbosity when dementia was stripping everything else away at pace. She had been an English teacher maybe that gave her some kind of buffer: an extra resilience against the fleeing away of words I’d seen before.

I was pretty brutal. “Mam, you have dementia, you have coped well on your own since dad died but now we are at the point where you need care. I've got to start being honest with you”.

“How dare you say things like that? You bastard. You bloody bastard. Get out of my house. Sling your hook and don’t come back. I can manage perfectly well without people like you”. She was on her feet now and screaming the words.

I tell folk, and I am open about it. No one gets as angry as the grown-up children of a parent with dementia. Even though you know it’s not the ‘real them’ talking and saying things that sting and the not understanding on their part is not some spiteful refusal to understand. The rage was building up in me and so I moved across into the lounge which was one room with the dining room except there were sliding doors between them which I kept open. I sat in the threadbare high-backed chair facing across to where she was at the table six yards away. The curtains behind me were still drawn and the light was off so I was in the half-dark and I knew I would be effectively invisible in a minute or two. The best way of calming her was to become invisible and give her mind a chance to settle on something else. So I sat still and watched whilst she munched on her toast and looked straight ahead but not registering me.

We can never truly know where we will end up, and that was probably for the best. How would it be if we did see such an end approaching? All that life lived and encoded in the brain, stripped away and lost. She had been an exceptional woman whose life had taken her across the most extreme mental terrains and peaked in wonderful achievements, being given degrees, met prime ministers, won an elevated place in the memories of many hundreds of children but she was now someone trying to munch her toast sans teeth (they were always being lost) and so in danger of choking.

I thought it wise to get out in the garden for the morning and be yet more invisible. By lunch, it would be safe to come back in again. The memory of what had happened at breakfast would only last a few moments but the emotional weather in her head would linger.

There was a drizzle and in a normal situation I would have put the garden work off for another day, but now was the only option as tomorrow I would be heading back home. It was early spring so I gave the grass its first cut of the year, cut back on some overgrowth in the bushes and pushed bulbs into the ground. By 11.30 I was sodden to the skin and caked in slimy clay mud. I sneaked in the house and got a bath, went down to the high street, did her shopping and then got us fish and chips for lunch. That would shift her mood.

When I’d got back she had retrieved the ham and bread out of the bin and was chomping away on a rancid sandwich. One could not stop all these things but still, I felt like a thoughtless shit. Why had I not got the stuff out of the house? She accepted a few chips though and with a neat sleight of hand, I removed the remains of the sandwich. House cleaning was on my schedule for the afternoon but decided Sunday morning would do fine enough.

I know what happened to old people when they went into care homes. The progression downwards would accelerate, previously home and familiarity had been an anchor, but when inserted into the strange ‘out of placeness’ of a care home…well, that would cut her lose from life. Maybe in a year, she might be in one of those chairs with a swing across lap-table which incidentally restrain the occupant and stop them from wandering.Then sometime later there would be a cot like bed, pillows placed strategically around her, and there she would lay for months or years “in second childishness and mere oblivion.”

Saturday afternoon

She and I needed to get out somewhere nice for the afternoon. We settled on the choice of Ilkley Moor, just half an hour away in the car. I knew then and there, in all likelihood, this was the last time she would take pleasure in such ‘seeing of things’. Mum was happy at the prospect of an outing, the argument of the morning and its thundery mood all gone. We stopped at a tea hut in the car park of a spot known locally as The Cow and Calf, a great rock standing alone and splendid, yards from a towering rocky outcrop that had once reminded people of a cow with its calf, on the downside of an escarpment looking out over the town.

I helped my mother out of the car but her body had forgotten how to walk on sloping ground, so I brought the tea and cake to her in the car. She could not balance the paper plate on her knee or grip the plastic utensil so I passed the cake over on a plastic fork.

I took the car twenty yards forward so she could see out over the town and the Dales beyond. The drizzle had been pushed out by great swarms of windblown rain pellets coming in diagonally across the valley. The sun deflecting through every watery lens and making a wonderful show.

We stopped at a favourite baker under the old Temperance Hall on the way home and bought a few of her favourite things. Vanilla slices, ham off the bone, a small brown loaf and the special pork pies. Individual jellies and custard trifles. These had been our regular Friday treats, which it had been my task to pick up after walking from school over the Engine Fields.

Sat around the Formica topped table we were about to set about the Vanilla Slices when mum said. “Ryan, am I going Dolally Tap?”

I heard her but asked her to repeat it.

“I want to know off you Ryan if I’m going Dolally. Will you tell me”?

I thought about lying but just as quickly rejected it. There has to be a bloody good reason for not being truthful if someone asks you a question like that. “Yes, mum you have Dementia”, I hesitated and then decided to leave it at that.

Then she looked over and in her old way said “Oh bugger” and then carried on with her Vanilla slice.

I don’t know if it was the invigorating effect of going out or just the natural ebb and flow of her mental clarity, but I knew she understood what she was asking and what I said in reply. And it was back to what was typical of the old lass to accept my answer without fuss. I felt it very brave of her. Over the coming years, that moment stayed with me and became a kind of badge of what she was. By the next morning, it felt like the woman was already closing down. She either did not remember the conversation or chose not to speak about it.

Over the next weeks, I spoke to a Social Worker and arranged for my mum's admission to a dementia care home in Idle outside of Bradford, which in time let my mum down badly and all the things I expected happened even sooner than I imagined.

I’d got her there by saying we were going out for another ride but I think we both knew what I was doing. I won’t be hard on myself about that. I had to do what was necessary but I won’t dress it up as something it wasn’t.

More years went by till she reached the cot bed stage. A new care home took wonderful care of her and I cannot fault any of her time there. In all the fall into oblivion took ten years from first mistaking the radio for hearing voices in the wall to the last, very hurried but too late Friday evening drive up the A1.

The Road to Dolally

It’s always been my nature to quietly stew on things and then bring the stewing to a close with some gesture to myself. And then move onto the next thing. I don’t get to choose (at least consciously) what the full stop will consist of. It just sort of drops into my head then I feel released.

Two years after her death I woke up one morning and decided to go to Deolali in India and do ‘The Dolally Tap’. That needs two kinds of explaining.

Firstly, what is the Dolally Tap? When the British were in India they brought items of linguistic culture back home but did not spell them correctly. Deolali or Devlali was a permanent British Army of India camp about six (modern) train hours from Mumbai. It included a military hospital which treated soldiers evacuated in with dangerous fevers of one kind or another, which were as a group termed the Dolally Tap. Tap being Hindi for fever. Then the meaning of the words morphed with use by British army lads like my great-grandfather and came to be the words used to describe the act of going bonkers with the heat and boredom of the camp. The term evolved some more and became about mental illness, and by then the people who used it had no idea where it came from. Growing up in Yorkshire we learnt that there were two kinds of mental illness. Being balmy, equated to very odd and or even floridly eccentric behaviour, whilst Dolally Tap meant you were totally going off your head. It’s lovely how we used these words as commonly as we spoke about anything but never thought of whence they came.

So my mum, at the moment when she needed to ask about the fitness of her mind, opted for words she would have heard spoken, in childhood, by her grandfather. This was a woman who had gone all the way from mill hand, and cleaner to be an MSc in Education and a Head of English in a middle school, but when the time came she chose a homely word. I liked that a lot. It summed up the person she was. Some would have gone the full drama, or have hidden behind intellectualisation but she used the language of her home and where she started from. Her choice of words was a marriage of humour and dignity.

She liked to do things like that. Pass a binding rope between past and present, and the threatening and the funny. She did a lot of thinking about words and how they could best express something. At that breakfast table, she was asking if there was a cliff edge under her toes, and she would have certainly felt the fear of that potential fall but she chose a form which was so wonderfully brave.

So that’s why I went to Deolali/ Devlali. Of course, I added other experiences and visits to the trip: Delhi, New Year’s Eve midnight trains, Gandhi, Rajasthan, but at its core was the ride to, Deolali. I was making a statement of respect, remembrance and gratitude in my mind, and I hoped such actions would complete a necessary circuit and then I could go back home, and be content.

The odd pilgrimage started out from my little ramshackle hotel at 4 am. The man who manned the desk and all the other staff who worked in the small hotel were asleep across every surface in the reception area. The night clerk stirred himself and called a taxi that took me across town to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus. I walked the last few hundred yards from the drop off point but in the road as the pavement was carpeted with sleeping bodies including what looked like whole families with babies and small children.

India has ten types of first-class carriage but only one designated second class and the authorities take care to tell foreigners that the latter is not recommended. I took it anyway, in part because there was nothing else but also I could see orderly, comfortable trains at home. This was India and if one’s eyes are a school we have to look to learn.

As expected it was standing only in Second Class and we were crammed like matches in an overfull box but at the same time, we were also an incrementally creeping mass that (irresistibly) pushed me toward the door of the traditional squat toilet where I spent most of the six-hour ride. I did have another view out between the legs of a hostile looking youth who had wedged himself tight within the four angles of the open door of the carriage. And indeed I videoed the parched, red dusty hills from that perspective as young women sang and somehow danced to the tinkling tune of their finger cymbals further down the carriage.

I had once taken my mother on a rural bus journey in Swaziland, a small country in Southern Africa. We, the passengers, were similarly on top of each other for that journey. It was the intense, infringing, vivid, loud, brash and jarring unfamiliarity of our surroundings that was most upon her. I watched from sideways on as an old man with chickens and no teeth asked if she needed a husband and simultaneously a goat licked the space behind her knee and she shrieked a little and the lecherous suitor laughed well naturedly. She looked at me, grinned bravely and said she would never complain about the 55 Leeds bus again. That became our line about anything difficult from then onwards and I suspect it was the best bit of her slide presentation to her friends at the Wesleyan Methodist Ladies social. Her kidney stones had given her jip but she had conquered that bus journey and I suspect she would have done at least as well here on this train to Deolali.

I stood at the open door to the toilet all the way, averting my eyes from the scene: men crouching over a hole set in a circular, inwardly sloping floor, whose contents spilt out and washing around the floor. Six hours of holding myself still and facing resolutely away left me with a tortured back and feeling like I could never move with ease again.

It was a long train, and when we stopped my poor carriage was beyond where the platform finished. Most of my fellow passengers made off through the thick undergrowth towards a broken fence but I turned the other way and headed in the direction of the military checkpoint where a railway employee was checking the tickets and soldiers were watching out for likely terrorists. Nationally, tensions were up again about the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, and there had been some dreadful killings in recent weeks. As a military base, nearby Deolali, the camp had to be a target, and the security at the station serving it was understandable

The soldiers waved me through. Eccentric Englishmen like me did not fit the profile of interest even if they were carrying an outsize rucksack on their back. Foolishly I had not considered the possibility of a military presence and it was not just on my platform. A machine gun was mounted within a nest of sandbags at the end of the next platform across and formed the third point of a triangle with a spot where I was standing.

I had to find a clear station platform sign displaying the true name of the town, stand beside it and do a brief and discreet tap dance. It was plane though that such a thing might be mistaken, by the many soldiers, for a nervy suicide bomber about to detonate himself, so I risked being splattered by a machine gun or shot through by a lone pot shot of a soldier’s rifle. But not ‘doing the dance’, after all this effort, was unthinkable. Of course in more normal circumstances, when we are about to do something which might appear odd, we explain ourselves first. “Sorry, pardon me, I know this is going to look odd so am just quickly forewarning you that I am about to do a tap dance in honour of my dead mother. Please do not mistake this for a suicide bomber attack”.

No that would not work. I walked to the very end of the platform hoping for inspiration. There was a trolley parked there stacked to waist height with brown, cardboard parcels. They would be sufficient to block the line of sight from the military checkpoint on my platform but would put me directly opposite the machine gun nest on Platform 2 which was just yards away across the first track. I needed something to block the view from there whilst I performed my dance beneath the sign next to the parcels. Then just like an apple might fall into your hand from out of a tree I heard the approach of a local train from my left. That was it, the timing would be crucial but it was probably a winner. Something which would legitimately block the view from platform 2 and allow me to perform my dance, if only from the waist down so the soldiers on my platform had no clue.

And that’s what I did. I pretended to be a tourist filming the arrival of a typically overcrowded Indian train, and when the train draws level with me I pointed the camera downward and recorded a film of my feet doing a little tap dance for around ten seconds. The upper half of my body mostly but not entirely still. The men crowded at the windows of the train and hanging out the door and are watching me. They wave, and laugh and cheer and call things out I cannot understand.

And that little dance in the shadow of a train in the station at Doelali closes my circuit. I can say “Bye Kath”, and now it’s all done and you are put to rest.

The author is very tall and local people kept asking to pose for photos with him

#devlali #deolali #dolally #grief #creative writing #short story #dolally tap

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litttlebeast · 4 years

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Updated AU verses for Aurora

AU One | A Modern Fairytale

Based in a modern setting. Aurora was given away for adoption as a baby and, for all her life, was passed between group homes. Most carers were kind but clumsy in their care and quiet children like Aurora often went ignored, but there were some who were more neglectful and cruel too.

Throughout her childhood, Aurora became very attached to the story of Sleeping Beauty, with the princess in the story giving her hope for herself. Even as she grew older, she still never lost hope that she, like the Princess in the story who was her namesake, may one day wake up to find her own happy ending waiting for her.

AU Two| Pidgey Partner

Pokémon AU. A keen Pokémon fan ever since she was a small child, Aurora was delighted when, at thirteen, she was finally able to partner with one of her own. She was chosen by a pidgey, whom she named Flutter. They become fast friends and Aurora does her best to avoid fights with him, for fear of him getting hurt.

AU Three | Arendelle Raised

AU with @fiiimbulvetr. Growing increasingly paranoid about Maleficent and her curse, King Stefan convinces himself that she’s spying on Aurora and decides to send the young princess further away in an attempt to hide her better. The toddler is sent to the kingdom of Arendelle and becomes Queen Elsa’s ward.

AU Four | Walked With You Once Upon A Dream

X-Men / Marvel AU. Briar Rose Ashling was always viewed as odd. She hardly slept yet seemed to function like a normal human being. She was twelve when they noticed that whenever they or anyone else heard her sing or hum to herself, they would fall asleep and her carers soon began to suspect what Briar Rose’s true nature was.

They called Charles Xavier to take her in and help her control her powers. After this, Briar Rose also discovered she was also able to enter people’s memories through their dreams, which made her able to get information about them.She became known as Aurora, after Sleeping Beauty, which is a double joke about her powers and about the fact Briar Rose was the name Aurora in the original Sleeping Beauty story was given to try and hide her identity.

AU Five | Hufflepuff House

Harry Potter verse. Aurora Rose is Muggleborn, though was given up by her parents for adoption as a baby. It came as a surprise to her at eleven when she got her letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, although she had incidents growing up that could be explained by the fact she was a witch. She was sorted into Hufflepuff almost as soon as the hat was put on her head.

AU Six | Descendants

Descendants verse. Now 36, Aurora was very much opposed to the Isle of the Lost, believing the villains to deserve a second chance, and spent the past twenty years pitying those trapped there. She was delighted when Ben made his proclamation that allowed four of the children from the Isle into Auradon. She felt a sense of protectiveness over them when they arrived, as well as her own daughter Audrey of course, and made sure to do her best to watch over them.

AU Seven | Once Upon A Time

This verse essentially omits the show’s canon portrayal of Aurora. She’s instead still primarily based on the portrayal in the Maleficent universe and essentially follows the same story there, just crossed over into the OUAT universe.

Before she could marry Prince Philip, the Evil Queen’s curse came and swept Aurora and her loved ones away.

When she woke up, she was Briar Rose Ashling, a 21-year-old homeless young woman reliant on small jobs and Granny Lucas’ kind nature to survive. Briar Rose is a lot more reserved than her Enchanted Forest counterpart and more pessimistic about the word because of the hardships the Curse made her believe she’d endured, but Aurora still shines through in that she’s essentially probably at her happiest when around animals.

AU Eight | You’ll Float Too.

IT-based verse. Adopted out of the foster system at fifteen, Aurora and her family go on holiday to visit some family in Derry, Maine, USA, shortly before the girl’s sixteenth birthday. When she arrives, she starts hearing some strange voices coming from the drains and sewers whenever she’s alone.

Aurora’s biggest fear is sharp objects. Her love of Sleeping Beauty is only dampened by the fact the finger-pricking element kind of startles her.

On the day of her sixteenth birthday, she’s lead to a room of full of sharp objects, particularly spinning wheels with very sharp spindles, and green smoke. Seemingly trapped in there, Aurora was trying to figure a way out when an old foster sister of hers appears behind her. She’s startled that the child seemingly made it out this far, but is delighted to see her nonetheless.

The child says there’s a creepy clown around and explains she found the key out of the room but can’t reach the door. Aurora, however, is tall enough to, and the child offers her a key. When Aurora reaches to take it however, the child’s face changes to that of a monster and Aurora is attacked by IT.

AU Nine | Daemons and Dust.

Orphaned as a baby, Aurora was raised by gyptians her entire life, despite her parents having been landlopers. Her daemon, Ingvar, stopped being able to change form when she reached thirteen, and he settled as an owl.

Ten years later, the gyptian woman she was closest to, Lilith, died in childbirth and Aurora raised the baby as her own for almost a decade. The child, now an eight-year-old boy named Marcus, is eventually taken by the Gobblers, and Aurora, now 31, is one of the gyptians that goes north in search of the missing children.

#( verses; )

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thehouseonthehill · 5 years

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Labour of Love

They say it takes a village to raise a child. But there are no villages anymore.

(Technically I live in a village but let’s not get bogged down in semantics. My closest family and friends are strewn across the country, not close in proximity. Words are tricksy.)

Instead of a village, I’ve found a lovely group of local Mums. We offer each other support, solidarity and good company. But now most of the Mums are back at work and my makeshift village is shrinking.

I am in the chasm of social support that appears between my child being nine months and three years old. As a self-employed person, for the first nine months of motherhood I was paid a maternity allowance of around £145 per week. Once that allowance stopped, the honeymoon period of parenting ended and I felt cut asunder. When my child reaches three, the state will pay for a set number of hours of childcare per week. Until then, I’m on my own with paltry child benefit.

Let’s be clear, my child still requires full-time care. He’s now one, only just starting to walk and not yet talking, utterly dependent upon others for his survival. Looking after him is a full-time job. If I was to take on other work, then I would have to pay someone else to look after my baby-cum-toddler. That person, or institution, would be paid far more than I receive in child benefit (I think the cheapest nearby nursery option is £40 per day). My freelance earnings are too unreliable and meagre to cover such costs. And it seems silly to seek a higher-paid job that I might not like in order to pay someone to look after my child, which is a job that I do like. Today I took my baby to story-time at the library. A childminder and some nursery staff were there too, professionally employed, and me and some fellow Mums were doing the same thing unpaid. Society attributes no financial value to our role, despite rewarding the job when outsourced. Is it any wonder that Mums feel devalued? Why can’t I get that job for which I am surely the most qualified candidate?

This is just one part of a knotty bind. For whilst I want recognition for the job of parenting, I’ve always enjoyed my ‘career’ too. I love journalism. I try to pursue this whenever my child is sleeping. But it’s very difficult to do two jobs well simultaneously: I parent distractedly and work distractedly, doing neither with panache. Furthermore, this squeezes out all the time for relaxation and leisure and then the storm in my head threatens to capsize me.

I don’t know how to parent in the modern world. I am a walking contradiction. I carry around the burden of being primary carer like a martyr’s cross, but if someone relieves me of my duties then I feel bereft. I normally write to find out what I think, but writing this is just proving to me what a muddle I am in.

One problem: my sense of self-worth is too bound up with what job I do. My identity is fused with my journalism. This is because I have been lucky enough, and motivated enough, to be able to do what I enjoy and get paid for it. When people asked what I was up to, I felt I had an interesting story to tell. Now when people ask what I’m up to, I point at my kid. He’s interesting too but it’s a more familiar story.

Another problem: Why do I think I need a salary to feel of social value? Why am I equating money with meaning when I’ve railed against that concept my whole life?

Another problem: I have competing desires. I want to continue pursuing interesting work that I consider useful to society. I also want to parent like my Mum.

My Mum was a full-time, stay-at-home Mum. She gave up her work when I was born. She says this didn’t feel like a sacrifice because her job wasn’t her passion. She loved raising me and my brother. She didn’t want to be anywhere else. She was fortunate that most of her fellow Mums felt the same and were in the same position and they raised their children together in a social web. I feel I owe much of my happiness and contentment to the solid ground that she laid before me.

Probably the best advice that I have been given is to let go of any ambition for a few years. Babies are only young once and this precious time goes vanishingly fast. I see the wisdom of this position and yearn to embrace it, but I’m also reluctant to give up work completely when I dream of throwing myself into investigations.

Non-market solutions are available. I can lean on my parents and partner to assist me with their own unpaid labour. I can arrange time-swaps of childcare with fellow Mums in the same boat. It takes courage to ask for help and effort to build mutual dependency but it seems the most attractive option. Perhaps in this way I will muddle through, being a present parent whilst dabbling in stimulating work.

I know, deep in my bones, that the job of parenting is one of the hardest and most rewarding in the world, and a mighty privilege. I’m also handsomely paid in the truest sense. Though the maternity allowance dried up, the real-world rewards are increasing exponentially. My boy now waves, makes fish faces, blows kisses and gives high-fives. Dancing with him, cheek to cheek, is my favourite thing. When he wraps his tiny arms around my neck and envelops me in a hug, it’s the sweetest sensation. And when his face breaks into a smile as I enter the room, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.

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stevescoles · 7 years

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Hilary Scott looks at the offer of free childcare provision for pre-schoolers and asks how effective it will be…

There was a point, many years ago, when I earned ten pounds a month less than I paid in childcare.

It sounds madness to have effectively worked for less than free, but it was the only way to keep a full-time job, and there was no help with childcare fees. At that point we had two under-fours in full-time nursery. It wasn’t forever; there came a point where they went up to school and the costs reduced (before starting again for two more siblings). Things have moved on for the better for working parents since then, and our first toddlers are now teens of 18 and 19, off to start university.

While today’s parents of pre-school children have seen successive governments offer various forms of financial schemes for childminding and nursery care, the latest promise of 30 hrs ‘free’ childcare for 3 and 4-year-olds from September has been a painful and complicated mess for parents, councils and providers alike.

Some nurseries have decided not to offer the 30-hours places, mainly because the rate per hour set by the government via local councils has been decided at a lower rate than it costs to run.

The basic rate payable in Northants is £3.80 an hour, and providers cannot ask parents to make up the shortfall.

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Some providers can only offer the 30 hours to children in full-time places, or have opted out completely. This disparity has led to some parents being forced to move their children to a different nursery or childminder.

Apart from the obvious benefit of helping families budget for childcare costs, studies have proved that children who get some form of early years education has developmental benefits. An OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report, published earlier this year, provides evidence that children who have received high-quality early childhood education experience better outcomes later in life.

On an academic level, they get significantly better scores in international tests at the age of 15. Students who had attended early childhood education for a year or more scored an average of 25 points higher in the Pisa science assessment compared with those who had not – 30 Pisa points is the equivalent of a school year. In countries where the proportion of under-threes in formal education and care is high, there is also less obesity.

England has traditionally been at the bottom of the list of countries that offer state help with childcare, so the doubling of the 15-hours funding has been lauded as an improvement. The provision is, in principle, a good step towards helping parents in work or to be able to go to work after time at home as a full-time parent. But not everyone is eligible, and those in part time or irregular or zero-hours jobs will have to work out how to take advantage of the offer without losing other assistance, like working tax credits.

All families can currently claim up to 15 hours a week of free childcare for 3 and 4-year-old children for 38 weeks (ie, term time only). This can be taken as specific mornings or afternoons or to assist paying towards a fulltime space. But there are already availability shortages for places even for the 15 free hours.

From September 1, an additional 15 hours (so 30 in total over 36 weeks) can be claimed if:

Both parents or carers are working (or the sole parent is working in a lone parent family). This can include if the parent or career is on statutory sick leave, maternity, paternity leave or claiming certain benefits.

Each parent has a weekly minimum income equivalent to 16 hours at national minimum wage or living wage; (parents do not necessarily need to actually work 16 hours a week, but rather their earnings must reflect at least 16 hours of work at national minimum wage or national living wage, which is £107 a week at the current national minimum wage rate)

Neither parent has an income of more than £100,000 per year.

Both parents or carers live in England

If unemployed, both parents must become employed within 14 days of applying. The parents and the providers have to sign an agreement and the providers claim the money via local councils, who in turn are funded by central government. Parents have to reconfirm their eligibility every three months.

For those who are able to find a place, which can be shared between up to three different childcare providers, the savings can be several thousand pounds a year. So why aren’t all the nursery providers in the country signing up to provide places, maybe even expanding their businesses and hiring more staff?

The short answer is that they can’t afford to because, as mentioned earlier, the cost per hour offered by the ‘free’ scheme is less that it actually costs to provide. So, for example, if a nursery or childminder charged £5 per hour, they would be losing £1.20 per hour on that place. That shortfall cannot be requested from the parents, and would have to be borne by the nursery.

So here’s the maths: if a 30 hour ‘free’ place were offered, the nursery or childminder would get £114 a week from government to pay for it. But the place actually costs £150 to provide. That’s a deficit of £36 a week for one place that has to be found by the provider. Multiply that by the number of spaces offered and that’s a considerable loss to the nursery, which is a business that has to pay for staffing and overheads. Many who previously did not charge for meals, classes and excursions are now having to pass these costs on to the parents or stop providing them at all.

Most nurseries do not make much profit and have seen costs increased for minimum wage and pension provision. I know this personally as I volunteer as Committee Chairman at a charity nursery, ranked as Outstanding by Ofsted, in Northampton. No one is making money out of running an independent childcare nursery, I can assure you. Places were already in short supply before the new scheme was even rolled out: A Family and Childcare Trust survey found 159 local councils did not have enough places in 2016.

From salary sacrifice vouchers to childcare tax credits, the claim processes for parents are never straightforward. And in the last month, HMRC has announced it will be paying compensation for those unable to register with its Childcare Service website for tax-free childcare and the 30-hours, due to technical glitches since its launch in April.

A campaign by childcare providers called ‘Champagne Nurseries, Lemonade Funding,’ has been widely shared online, with a campaign website featuring an easy to understand video explainer (see champagnenurseries.co.uk). They continue to petition the government to appropriately fund the scheme. Northamptonshire County Council’s Early Years department has been working flat-out to try and make sure the systems locally are up and running in time for the September launch. But there are still major issues – some providers and parents have reported they still haven’t received registration numbers as the deadline loomed.

A spokesman for the council confirmed that the basic funded rate for providers in Northamptonshire is £3.80 but added that average they expected to pay was £4.08, if they were eligible for a range of supplements, as well as further funding for additional needs children.

The spokesman said: “We recognise that funding rates for providers are challenging, however our funding rates are based on the money we receive from central government. Despite a reduction in funding for Northamptonshire from the Department for Education, we have been able to increase the basic rate we pay providers by 35p per hour over the past three years.

“We have already had more than 170 providers sign up to provide the additional free childcare hours as part of this government scheme and only one has indicated that they will not be taking part.”

You may be thinking: ‘But I don’t have kids, or ones this age, so why does the issue even affect me?’

In the long term, the provision of quality, affordable childcare is essential to the future prosperity of the country, with children equipped to cope with adult life and employment, which in turn will feed the economy and allow the state to support the pressing issues or social care and pensions. So in the words of Whitney, I believe the children are our future, and we have to get early years childcare functioning well, as it may be what allows us some dignity in our older years . . .

You can find out more about the 30-hours funding via the early years section of Northants County Council’s website, Northamptonshire.gov.uk or via the Childcare Services website at Gov.uk Are you affected by the changes in childcare funding? Let us know.

Case Study: free childcare offer led to nursery switch

Helen and George McIntyre

Helen McIntyre from Daventry is a parent who has taken the tough decision to move her son to a different nursery due to the chaos of the 30 hours provision. She and her husband are both self-employed and need to keep a tighter rein on the family’s budget.

She said: “I work as a team leader for Usborne Books (selling children’s books & working with schools & nurseries) and also take on freelance work in buying/marketing/social media.

“I have just one son in nursery, George, who is 3, plus a teenage stepson. We were quite sad at having to move George to a new nursery as he had been at his old nursery since he was 6 months old and was settled there, had friends, knew the staff and the routine. “However as both my husband and I are self-employed, we had to think about costs and how we could best save some money, as I only left full-time, employed work in March which meant a loss of regular salary.

“My son had been attending a nursery in Daventry for 3 years, however they confirmed at the end of May that they would not be offering the 30 free hours from Sept, as they could not afford to fund it. “We heard that another nursery in close proximity would be, it was also Outstanding OFSTED rated, so we went to look round it and it seemed a no brainer to move our son as we would save a large amount of money.”

Helen said that the family’s original nursery later said they had reconsidered, and would offer the 30 free hours after all, but they still didn’t know at that point how they were going to afford it and what the terms & conditions would be. So the McIntyres stuck with the decision to move their son.

“As it turned out, the original nursery can only offer the 30 free hours to children attending full time (ie 50 hours a week Mon-Fri 8am-6pm),” she explained. “So although 30 hours are free, you have to pay for another 20 to get the full free entitlement. If you attend fewer hours/days than this, your free allowance is only pro-rata. So, for us only doing 3 days (ie 30 hours), we would only get 18 hours free. The new nursery we have moved to allow us just to do the free 30 hours and attend 3 days.

“Most nurseries in our local area (Daventry) do seem to be offering the 30 free hours, but many have additional provisos around the amount of hours you need to attend to get them, or have introduced additional costs for food or supplies as they’re not allowed to charge a top up fee.”

Despite all the difficulties and paperwork, the potential savings of the 30-hours childcare for working parents are too big to be ignored: around £4,000 a year for the full allocation on top of the allowances already claimed.

Are you missing out on new childcare help?

Hilary Scott looks at the offer of free childcare provision for pre-schoolers and asks how effective it will be…

Are you missing out on new childcare help? Hilary Scott looks at the offer of free childcare provision for pre-schoolers and asks how effective it will be...

#childcare #Hilary Scott

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nqbuddy · 7 years

Text

Hilary Scott looks at the offer of free childcare provision for pre-schoolers and asks how effective it will be…

There was a point, many years ago, when I earned ten pounds a month less than I paid in childcare.

Some nurseries have decided not to offer the 30-hours places, mainly because the rate per hour set by the government via local councils has been decided at a lower rate than it costs to run.

The basic rate payable in Northants is £3.80 an hour, and providers cannot ask parents to make up the shortfall.

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From September 1, an additional 15 hours (so 30 in total over 36 weeks) can be claimed if:

Neither parent has an income of more than £100,000 per year.

Both parents or carers live in England

You may be thinking: ‘But I don’t have kids, or ones this age, so why does the issue even affect me?’

Case Study: free childcare offer led to nursery switch

Helen and George McIntyre

She said: “I work as a team leader for Usborne Books (selling children’s books & working with schools & nurseries) and also take on freelance work in buying/marketing/social media.

Are you missing out on new childcare help? Hilary Scott looks at the offer of free childcare provision for pre-schoolers and asks how effective it will be...

#childcare #Hilary Scott

0 notes