tealin

[tealin]

This post is really doing the rounds, so I feel obliged to do a little follow-up ...

First, for everyone ragging on phenylephrine in the tags, I made you a little something to keep close to your heart and treasure forever.

It was a subtle one, but it didn't escape you! Well done.

For those of you who didn't spot it: phenylephrine is essentially useless. Which I could have told you in 1996 when, despite it being shoved down my throat on the way to school, the snot monster raged unabated, but now there is an actual scientific study to prove it. With the decongestant properties disproven, and the harm of paracetamol/acetaminophen on the liver well proven, I'm inclined to give OTC decongestants a miss, but YMMV.

For those saying "it's basically chai", as a big fan of chai I say "yes, but ..." Many of the same active ingredients, true, but when one is ill, sleep is the best medicine, and downing cups of tea all day is not going to help you get the best of that. Plus, chai is often served milky, and milk causes many people (such as myself) to make more mucus, so maybe traditional chai is best shelved in this circumstance and the non-caffeinated, non-milky version used in its place.

And finally, on the matter of cloves: Yes, really, a dozen, if not more, especially if you have a sore throat. They are anti-inflammatory and analgesic so will help with both the congestion and the pain. It's a strong flavour, but a taste worth acquiring, because they are quite effective (at least, moreso than phenylephrine). I find them more tolerable with the lemon than on their own. Whole spices are often fresher, cheaper, and easier to find at an Asian grocery, if cost effectiveness is an issue.

Thank you for your time, and good luck busting that mucus! Stay safe, everyone!

Mucus Buster

Everyone's got lingering congestion this year, so as someone who's no stranger to phlegm, and inherited the folk wisdom of a stage actress (the show must go on!) I share with you my recipe for making things better:

2L water

the juice and rind of one lemon (just dump the juiced rinds in, don't zest them, you maniac)

a small thumb of fresh ginger, sliced in coins

about a dozen cloves, some star anise, peppercorns, and maybe whole cinnamon or allspice or whatever else you like, in a tea ball (except the cinnamon if it doesn't fit, obvs)

good dollop of honey, to taste

Bring the water to a boil then dump in all the stuff. Keep it hot but not boiling – a slow cooker is good for this. Keep this pot on a low heat all day and serve yourself a mug every so often, adding water as necessary. At some point you will need to add a new lemon and some more honey, but the spices can generally carry over two pots if you're drinking it regularly.

The acid helps clear the gunk, ginger is good for the circulation, and clove/aniseed/pepper have some sort of decongestant/soothing properties. Honey is both nice and antiseptic, and apparently is a cough suppressant as well? Anyway, I just got over another run of Covid and this was wasn't 100% effective but it worked better than phenylephrine.

#cold remedy #home remedies #recipe #elixir #mucus #covid #colds #congestion #decongetsant

[tealin]

Mucus Buster

Everyone's got lingering congestion this year, so as someone who's no stranger to phlegm, and inherited the folk wisdom of a stage actress (the show must go on!) I share with you my recipe for making things better:

2L water

the juice and rind of one lemon (just dump the juiced rinds in, don't zest them, you maniac)

a small thumb of fresh ginger, sliced in coins

about a dozen cloves, some star anise, peppercorns, and maybe whole cinnamon or allspice or whatever else you like, in a tea ball (except the cinnamon if it doesn't fit, obvs)

good dollop of honey, to taste

Bring the water to a boil then dump in all the stuff. Keep it hot but not boiling – a slow cooker is good for this. Keep this pot on a low heat all day and serve yourself a mug every so often, adding water as necessary. At some point you will need to add a new lemon and some more honey, but the spices can generally carry over two pots if you're drinking it regularly.

The acid helps clear the gunk, ginger is good for the circulation, and clove/aniseed/pepper have some sort of decongestant/soothing properties. Honey is both nice and antiseptic, and apparently is a cough suppressant as well? Anyway, I just got over another run of Covid and this was wasn't 100% effective but it worked better than phenylephrine.

[tealin]

Mucus Buster

Everyone's got lingering congestion this year, so as someone who's no stranger to phlegm, and inherited the folk wisdom of a stage actress (the show must go on!) I share with you my recipe for making things better:

2L water

the juice and rind of one lemon (just dump the juiced rinds in, don't zest them, you maniac)

a small thumb of fresh ginger, sliced in coins

about a dozen cloves, some star anise, peppercorns, and maybe whole cinnamon or allspice or whatever else you like, in a tea ball (except the cinnamon if it doesn't fit, obvs)

good dollop of honey, to taste

Bring the water to a boil then dump in all the stuff. Keep it hot but not boiling – a slow cooker is good for this. Keep this pot on a low heat all day and serve yourself a mug every so often, adding water as necessary. At some point you will need to add a new lemon and some more honey, but the spices can generally carry over two pots if you're drinking it regularly.

The acid helps clear the gunk, ginger is good for the circulation, and clove/aniseed/pepper have some sort of decongestant/soothing properties. Honey is both nice and antiseptic, and apparently is a cough suppressant as well? Anyway, I just got over another run of Covid and this was wasn't 100% effective but it worked better than phenylephrine.

#recipe #decongestant #home medicine #covid #colds #phlegm

[tealin]

Shamefully reblogging this because a copy/paste error previously cut two very important paragraphs out of the middle. If you wondered about my sudden pivots, hopefully this makes more sense now.

The Millennials' Polar Expedition

A year ago today (23 Nov 2022), I launched Worst Journey Vol.1 at the Scott Polar Research Institute. This is the text of the speech I gave to the lovely people who turned up to celebrate.

As many of you know, my interest in the Terra Nova Expedition was sparked by Radio 4’s dramatisation of The Worst Journey in the World, now 14 years ago.  The story is an incredible story, and it got its claws into me, but what kept me coming back again and again were the people.  I couldn’t believe anyone so wonderful had ever really existed.  So when I finally succumbed to obsession and started reading all the books, it was the expedition members’ own words which I most cherished.  These were not always easy to come by, though, so plenty of popular histories were consumed as well.  Reading both in tandem, it soon became clear that, while there were some good books out there, there was a lot of sloppy research in the polar echo chamber as well.

I also discovered that no adaptation had attempted to get across the full scope of the expedition.  There has never been a full and fair dramatic retelling, all having been limited by time, budget, or ideology from telling the whole story truthfully.  I was determined that my adaptation would be both complete and accurate, and be as accountable as possible to those precious primary documents and the people who wrote them.

So the years of research began.  I moved to Cambridge to be able to drop in at SPRI and make the most of the archives.  Getting to Antarctica seemed impossible, but I went to New Zealand to get at least that much right, and on the way back stayed with relatives in Alberta, the most Antarctic place I could realistically visit.  I gathered reference for objects wherever I could.  Because Vol.1 takes place mainly on the Terra Nova, which is now a patch of sludge on the seabed off Greenland, I cobbled together a Franken-Nova in my mind, between the Discovery up in Dundee and the Star of India in San Diego.  I spent a week on a Jubilee Sailing Trust ship in order to depict tall-ship sailing correctly.  I’m sure I’ve still got loads of things wrong, but I did all I could, to get as much as I could, right.

But still, everyone I met who had been to Antarctica said, “you can’t understand Antarctica until you’ve been there, and you can’t tell the story without understanding Antarctica; you have to go.”  So I applied to the USAP’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, with faint hope, as they do “Ahrt” and I draw cartoons.  But I must have blagged a good grant proposal, because a year after applying, I was stepping out of a C-17 onto the Ross Ice Shelf.  The whole trip would have been worth it just to stand there, turn in a circle, and see how all the familiar photographs fit together.  But the USAP’s generosity didn’t stop there, and in the next month I saw Hut Point, Arrival Heights, the Beardmore Glacier (including the moraine on which the Polar Party stopped to “geologise”), and Cape Crozier, and made three visits to the Cape Evans hut.  Three!  On top of the visual reference I got priceless qualitative data.  The hardness of the sound.  The surprising warmth of the sun. The sugary texture of the snow.  The keen edge on a slight breeze.  The way your fingertips and toes can start to go when the rest of you is perfectly warm.  The SHEER INSANITY of Cape Crozier.  The veterans were right – I couldn’t have drawn it without having been there, but now I have, and can, and I am more grateful than I can ever adequately express.  With all these resources laid so copiously at my feet, all I had to do was sit down and draw the darn thing.  Luckily I have some very sound training to back me up on that.

Now, this is all very well for the how of making the book, and, I hope, interesting enough. But why?  Why am I putting so much effort into telling this story, and why now?

Well, it means a lot to me personally.  To begin to understand why, you need to know that I grew up in the 80s and 90s, at the height of individualist, goal-oriented, success-driven, dog-eat-dog, devil-take-the-hindmost neoliberalism.  It was just assumed that humans, when you get right down to it, were basically self-interested jerks, and I saw plenty of them around so I had no reason to question this assumption.  The idea was that if you did everything right, and worked really hard, you could retire at 45 to a yacht in the Bahamas, and if you didn’t retire to a yacht, well, you just hadn’t tried hard enough.  Character, in the sense of rigorous personal virtue, was for schmucks.  What mattered was success.  Even as my politics evolved, I still took it as a given that this was how the world worked, and that was how people generally were – after all, there was no lack of corroborating evidence.  So: I worked really hard.  I single-mindedly pursued my self-interest.  I made sacrifices, and put in the time, and fought my way into my dream job and all the success I could have asked for.

And then I met the Terra Nova guys.

What struck me most about them was that even when everything was going wrong, when their expectations were shattered and they had to face the cruellest reality, they were still kind.  Not backbiting, recriminating, blame-throwing, defensive, or mean, as one would expect – they were lovely to each other, patient, supportive, self-sacrificing; in fact the worse things got, the better they were.  They still treated each other as friends even when it wasn’t in their self-interest, was even contrary to their self-interest.  I didn’t know people could be like that.  But there they were, in plain writing, being thoroughly, bafflingly, decent.  Not just the Polar Party – everyone had to face their own brutal realities at some point, and they all did so with a grace I never thought possible.

It presented a very important question:

When everything goes belly-up, and you’re facing the worst, what sort of person will you be?

Or perhaps more acutely: What sort of person would you rather be with?

It was so contrary to the world I lived in, to the reality I knew – it was a peek into an alternate dimension, populated entirely with lovely, lovely people, who really, genuinely believed that “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” and behaved accordingly.  It couldn’t be real.  There had to be a deeper, unpleasant truth: that was how the world worked, after all.  I kept digging, expecting to hit bottom at some point, but I only found more gold, all the way down.  How could I not spend my life on this?

Mythology exists to pass on a culture’s values, moral code, and survival information – how to face challenges and prevail.  Scott’s story entered the British mythology, and had staying power, because it exemplified those things so profoundly for the culture that created and received it.  But the culture changed, and there were new values; Scott’s legacy was first inverted and then cast aside.  The new culture needed a new epic hero.  You’d think it would be Amundsen, the epitome of ruthless success, but “Make Plan – Execute Plan – Go Home” has no mythic value, so he didn’t stick.  The hero needed challenges, he needed setbacks, and he needed to win, on our terms.

Shackleton!  Shackleton was a winner!  Shackleton told us what we knew to be true and wanted to hear at epic volume: that if you want something badly enough, and try really hard, you will succeed!  (Especially if you can control the narrative.)  Scott, on the other hand, tells us that if you want something badly enough, and try really hard . . . you may nevertheless die horribly in the snow.  Nobody wants to hear that!  What a downer!  I think it’s no coincidence that Shackleton exploded into popular culture in the late 90s and has dominated it ever since: he is the mythic hero of the zeitgeist. I am always being asked if I’ll be doing Shackleton next.  He has six graphic novels already!  That is plenty!  But people still want to tell and be told his story, because it’s a heroic myth that validates our worldview.

That’s why I am so determined to tell the Scott story, because Scott is who we don’t realise we need right now – and Wilson, and Bowers, and Cherry, and Atch, and all the rest.  The Terra Nova Expedition is the Millennials’ polar expedition.  We’ve worked really hard, we’ve done everything we were supposed to, we made what appeared to be the right decisions at the time, and we’re still losing.  Nothing in the mythology we’ve been fed has prepared us for this.  No amount of positive attitude is going to change it.  We have all the aphorisms in the world, but what we need is an example of how to behave when the chips are down, when the Boss is not sailing into the tempest to rescue us, when the Yelcho is not on the horizon.  When circumstances are beyond your power to change, how do you make the best of your bad situation?  What does that look like? Even if you can’t fix anything, how do you make it better for the people around you – or at the very least, not worse?  Scott tells us: you can be patient, supportive, and humble; see who needs help and offer it; be realistic but don’t give in to despair; and if you’re up against a wall with no hope of rescue, go out in a blaze of kindness.  We learn by imitation: it’s easy to say these things, but to see them in action, in much harder circumstances than we will ever face, is a far greater help.  And to see them exemplified by real, flawed, complicated people like us is better still; they are not fairy-tale ideals, they are achievable. Real people achieved them.

My upbringing in the 80s milieu of selfishness, which set me up to receive the Scott story so gratefully, is hardly unique.  There are millions of us who are hungry for a counter-narrative.  My generation is desperate for demonstrations of caring, whether it’s activism or social justice or government policies that don’t abandon the vulnerable.  We’ve seen selfishness poison the world, and we want an alternative.  The time for competition is past; we must cooperate or perish, but we don’t know how to do it because our mythology is founded on competition.  The Scott story, if told properly, explodes the Just World Fallacy, and liberates us from the lie that has ruled our lives: that you make your own luck.  What happens, happens: what matters is how you respond to it.  My obsession with accuracy is in part to honour the men, and in part because Cherry was the ultimate stickler and he’d give me a hard time if I didn’t, but also because, if I’m telling the story to a new generation, I’m damn well going to make sure we get that much RIGHT.  It’s been really interesting to see, online, how my generation and the next have glommed onto polar exploration narratives, not as thrilling feats of derring-do, but as emotional explorations of found family and cooperative resilience.  We love them because they love each other, and loving each other helps get them through, and we want – we need – to see how that’s done.  It’s time to give them the Terra Nova story, and to tell it fully, fairly, and honestly, in all its complexity, because that is how their example is most useful to us.  Not as gods, and not as fools, but as real human beings who were excellent to each other in the face of disaster.  I only hope that I, a latecomer to their ways, can do them justice.

[tealin]

I've now got all my old Snicket fanart up on a Ko-Fi gallery! If there's a piece you remember that isn't there, please let me know and I'll try my best to add it, if I still have it somewhere ...

Galleries for other fandoms are also there, where my past work is conveniently collected in one place:

Cabin Pressure

Discworld

Worst Journey (Prologue to Vol.1)

Harry Potter

Also miscellaneous stuff, go to ko-fi.com/tealin to see it all.

#a series of unfortunate events #lemony snicket #fanart

[tealin]

If you've been waiting to buy a Worst Journey Vol.1 until your hard earned cash money can go to a good cause, now is your chance! I have a first edition copy in the Children in Read auction, supporting BBC Children in Need – if you win it, you get a signature and a drawing! The auction is open worldwide but is in GBP; at the time of posting the book is going for £160, which is more than anyone I know can spend on a book, but please reblog anyway in case it reaches someone who can!

#charity #auction #children in need #children in read #fundraiser #signed book

[tealin]

Bit of an odd question but— Archives Hub has some of Henry Rennick's 1910-1913 correspondences held at the SPRI listed as including leaves. Does the SPRI actually have these leaves? or have they been long lost and we just know the letters had leaves because the letters mention them or something?

To be honest, I don't actually know – I've had to strategise my research time and haven't got round to Rennick's papers (sorry, Rennick) so I can't answer this myself.

My first response is to question whether these are actually leaves, or the term "leaves" meaning "sheets of paper". Not that I would doubt he collected some nice specimens! It might just be a simple answer to the question.

[tealin]

After a period of delay, the study has finally been re-activated!!

I hate to spam tags, but I need about 50-75 more participants for my dissertation study looking at the impact of non-affirming Christianity on LGBT sexuality. Participants may be former or current Christians, from either affirming or non-affirming backgrounds/faiths. You must be at least 18 and have been sexually active to participate. You do not need to be from the United States. The study should take approximately 20-40 minutes and there is a %50 Amazon gift card raffle you can enter upon completion.

I'd really, really appreciate your participation, and it would really help forward understanding of how religion can impact people, especially queer people! Feel free to forward this to people you may know who might be interested.

Link here: https://baseline.campuslabs.com/liu/religionlgbt

You can contact me here or at [email protected] with any questions.

[tealin]

There's a first edition of the Worst Journey graphic novel (Vol.1) in the Children in Read auction this year! If you win it, you get a drawing and a signature, and also the happy satisfaction of helping out some needy kids. (As far as I know, the remaining handful of first editions are all on my bookshelf right now, so, #collectible.) The auction closes on 18 November, with proceeds going to BBC Children in Need.

At the time of posting, the bid price is £100 – if that's too rich for your purse, please spread the word anyway, in case it reaches someone with deeper pockets!

#charity #auction #book signing #graphic novel #children in read #bbc children in need

[tealin]

I'm going to be showing off Worst Journey Vol.1 at LICAF next week! If you're lucky enough to live somewhere near the Lake District, come on by and say hi, maybe get a signed copy ...

Word is, there's going to be some Radio 4 celebrities there, so I am going to be very normal about the whole thing.

[tealin]

Yet another platform

For those who have been following me on Twitter, and are concerned about its continued demise, I am also @tealin.bsky.social.

I won't be on it nearly as much as Twitter, but, y'know, reserve your spot in the lifeboat now, sorta thing.

To that end, I currently have ONE remaining invite code looking for a happy home; DM if you want it.

Codes are gone now, but I will share when I get more!

#bluesky #twitter #social media #lifeboats

[tealin]

@afterthegreatunknown, it's your lucky day ...

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #vfd #snicket #lemony snicket #jacques snicket #hector the handyman #the vile village #village of fowl devotees #feelings #drawing #fanart

[tealin]

Was it this one?

I long ago lost access to where my site was hosted, but I have very slowly been putting the whole archive up at https://ko-fi.com/tealin.  I think the Pratchett stuff is limited to Discworld for now, but I can get the handful of Good Omens pics up if you want.

I still like my serene Paul McGann-esque Aziraphale, but both the radio adaptation and the TV show make him a bumbly fusspot, so I guess that’s what the authors intended.  Oh well.

Genuinely touched you remember my art at all -- thank you!  Means ever so much.

I come in a time of desperate need: I'm looking for old Good Omens fanart.

The artist also drew Discworld fanart, on their personal website (it wasn't hosted on deviantart or Tumblr). I can remember that they drew Moist von Lipwig, and used a background from the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The artist drew Crowley as very cool and strong jawed, in sunglasses, and I think they described him as Hugh Jackman-ish. This would have been from around 2011ish?

Terrible, terrible description, but I'm trying to recall a vague image from a decade ago lmao. Any help is appreciated!

On their OWN PERSONAL WEBSITE? omg

Unfortunately if it was NOT on Tumblr or DeviantArt then I have no clue who it could be

Followers?

#good omens #fanart #aziraphale #crowley #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #tealin answers #it was on livejournal #the website was just an archive #I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled #Biofreak659

[tealin]

Today my family went to the Discovery museum in Scotland. While walking through the exhibits, one of us made a comment referencing your art/projects, only to find later that your graphic novel was being sold in the gift shop! All that is to say, we bought a copy and the art is beautiful! Thank you for making what you make :)

Oh, thank you! It's so thoughtful of you to send me this story! I'm so glad you enjoyed Discovery Point; it's one of my favourite places and they do such a good job of presenting the history.

You can follow my polar stuff here at worstjourney.tumblr.com in case you weren't aware of it already ...

#tealin answers #discovery point #worst journey graphic novel

[tealin]

The bust of Scott from the Canterbury Museum is still on display! While the renovation is ongoing they've got a pop-up museum with some favourite pieces on display, and Scott made the cut : ) along with a few other Antarctic ephemera

There he is! Much better lighting than in the museum, too. Sadly he didn't make the cut at the new NPG, though Shackleton is hung in the WWI gallery, for maximum irony!

#captain scott #canterbury museum #christchurch #new zealand #sculpture #kathleen scott #bronze #bust #portrait

[tealin]

This is tomorrow! there’s still time to sign up if you’re keen!

Drawing in Dundee

I always love visiting Scotland, and one of my favourite things to do while there is hang out with the ghosts of the Heroic Age on the RRS Discovery in Dundee. I will always recommend a visit, but if you happen to be convenient to Dundee on Thursday 27 July, I will be hosting a drawing workshop there! It’s by donation so that those who couldn’t ordinarily afford art classes can come, but you do need to get a ticket so that we can be sure of numbers.

Hope to see you there!

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[tealin]

Hello! I’m in Christchurch atm and stopped by Scott’s statue while out on a wander, and noticed something strange about the plaque below it. As a resident Bilson expert, I was wondering if you knew anything about it?

Bill’s initials here are listed as A.E. rather than E.A.? I may be completely missing something here, but I’ve never seen him referred to anywhere as Adrian Edward rather than Edward Adrian; though it seems a rather glaring typo to have made on such a prominent monument. Any ideas?

People make mistakes sometimes.

The plaque at the Cape Crozier igloo says the Winter Journey party got there in June 1911 when it fact it was July – they had departed Cape Evans in June. The handful of people who would ever visit are the most likely people in the world to notice the mistake. But to err is human ... it's only a little more embarrassing when one does so in bronze. I'm guessing the text was assembled by someone who didn't know, made a transcription error, and it wasn't caught until it was too late.

This statue is one of my faves (the other being the bust in Canterbury Museum, which I believe is inaccessible at the moment) – Kathleen had to make it in marble rather than bronze because of wartime supply issues, but I think it's a superior sculpture to the one on Waterloo Place (of which it's technically a copy) due to the limitations of the medium making it more graphic, and the way marble interacts with light. Thanks for visiting Capt. Scott, and enjoy Christchurch!

#christchurch #sculpture #kathleen scott #human fallibility #tealin answers