Darrowby Eight Five

Fanblog for All Creatures Great and Small and home of a fanfiction AU in which the Fifth Doctor stops off at at Skeldale. Lots of Fair Isle knitwear, tea, crumpets, waistcoats and random 1930s stuff.

[darrowbyeightfive]

Moving!

Dear followers,

I’ve decided, for organisational reasons that are too boring to go into, to move my main blogging activity to a new sideblog The Scenic Route which will feature:

My All Creatures Great and Small / Doctor Who fanfiction crossover “The Scenic Route” (mostly comedy, occasionally gets just a little angsty)

All Creatures Great and Small (obviously)

Fifth Doctor and other Doctor Who stuff

Retro 1930s aesthetic: period illustrations, costume, Art Deco

Lots of tea, crumpets and Mrs. Hall’s marvellous cake

Anything else related more or less tenuously to the above that I feel like adding

Please do follow me there!

Thank you!

[darrowbyeightfive]

Repeating for signal boost

[darrowbyeightfive]

Moving!

Dear followers,

I’ve decided, for organisational reasons that are too boring to go into, to move my main blogging activity to a new sideblog The Scenic Route which will feature:

My All Creatures Great and Small / Doctor Who fanfiction crossover “The Scenic Route” (mostly comedy, occasionally gets just a little angsty)

All Creatures Great and Small (obviously)

Fifth Doctor and other Doctor Who stuff

Retro 1930s aesthetic: period illustrations, costume, Art Deco

Lots of tea, crumpets and Mrs. Hall’s marvellous cake

Anything else related more or less tenuously to the above that I feel like adding

Please do follow me there!

Thank you!

[darrowbyeightfive]

Repeating for signal boost

[darrowbyeightfive]

Moving!

Dear followers,

I’ve decided, for organisational reasons that are too boring to go into, to move my main blogging activity to a new sideblog The Scenic Route which will feature:

My All Creatures Great and Small / Doctor Who fanfiction crossover “The Scenic Route” (mostly comedy, occasionally gets just a little angsty)

All Creatures Great and Small (obviously)

Fifth Doctor and other Doctor Who stuff

Retro 1930s aesthetic: period illustrations, costume, Art Deco

Lots of tea, crumpets and Mrs. Hall’s marvellous cake

Anything else related more or less tenuously to the above that I feel like adding

Please do follow me there!

Thank you!

[darrowbyeightfive]

Repeating for signal boost

[darrowbyeightfive]

Moving!

Dear followers,

I’ve decided, for organisational reasons that are too boring to go into, to move my main blogging activity to a new sideblog The Scenic Route which will feature:

My All Creatures Great and Small / Doctor Who fanfiction crossover “The Scenic Route” (mostly comedy, occasionally gets just a little angsty)

All Creatures Great and Small (obviously)

Fifth Doctor and other Doctor Who stuff

Retro 1930s aesthetic: period illustrations, costume, Art Deco

Lots of tea, crumpets and Mrs. Hall’s marvellous cake

Anything else related more or less tenuously to the above that I feel like adding

Please do follow me there!

Thank you!

[yesterdaysprint]

The San Francisco Examiner, California, January 20, 1942

[the-forest-library]

A Literary Map of the United Kingdom

[prydonianrogue]

The Fifth Doctor in Black Orchid

[darrowbyeightfive]

I could try to say something insightful about Black Orchid and this photoset, but... cricket! Ripping performance, old boy! How happy he looks when he plays cricket! Which is great because he doesn’t get the chance to just be happy very often, poor darling! Cricket jumper! That Pierrot costume that is still in ‘his’ colourscheme and has pockets because where would he put his hands otherwise? Lovely costumes for the other characters! Period interiors! Singing in the bathroom! That gorgeous dressing gown in deep red! Which contrasts so beautifully with the colour of his hair!  His worried/confused expressions! The light and shadow in the corridor scenes! Almost everything in this serial is just so pretty! Etc., etc.

I would quite happily watch an entire serial of the Fifth Doctor having a nice time, wandering about, playing cricket, drinking tea, eating cake, wearing different costumes, singing, putting his glasses on and taking them off again, examining and tinkering with things, bantering with other characters, being a bit confused, thinking deeply about something, finding the answer and then being happy again. It would be lovely. Who needs a plot?

[academicssay]

[darrowbyeightfive]

OK but how *do* you read 35 papers in 6 hours... feeling totally inadequate now!

[mylittlevintageworld]

[darrowbyeightfive]

1930s magazine illustration. 

Seeing vintage illustations and advertising from the 1930s does make me wish that the BBC had used this kind of light, airy aesthetic a bit more for some of their set and costume designs, but I suppose they also wanted to show the harshness of rural life in Yorkshire and the gloom of the impending war, and were perhaps also limited by the available production techniques from the 1970s.

Actually, this is pretty much how I imagine my character Vera from the story “Marble Halls”.

[octobersociety-deactivated20241]

Ruins of Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire

[enchantedengland]

    Since I’m on a brief gothic horror binge here I LOVE THIS.

[darrowbyeightfive]

Bolton Abbey.

It didn’t look anywhere near this gothic when James proposed to Helen there!

[darrowbyeightfive]

For @edgeofthedales (when you get back)

“I heard you had something that needed fixing. Unfortunately I’m stuck in the 1930s at the moment, where the technology is really rather primitive, but I’m very good at fixing things.”

- The Doctor

[yesterdaysprint]

The Baltimore Sun, Maryland, August 23, 1925

[darrowbyeightfive]

I hope it was the turtle rather than the man who was fond of pancakes.

[darrowbyeightfive]

Tristan’s lovely knitwear, part 1/?

OK, it had to be done… Farnon Fair Isle ahoy! These are some of the wonderful 1930s outfits modelled by our favourite veterinary student in the first half of Series 1 of All Creatures Great and Small.

Partying jumper. Actually I don’t like this one all that much - a bit too dark. Sorry about the weird motion blur here, particularly on Brenda.

Newspaper-reading and haunting-planning jumper. Also served as something for Siegfried to grab Tristan by in S01E02. I think this is my favourite out of all these.

Sleeveless hands-in-pockets standing-in-lab pullover.

Pre-posh-date pep-talk-giving jumper, with James in his somewhat-short-in-the-sleeve dinner jacket (how did the sleeves get shorter?).

Smiley Tristan in my favourite Fair Isle jumper, just because this picture is lovely.

Eavesdropping jumper, with blankety disapproving Siegfried.

“Realising you mixed up the dung sample and the ointment in the post” jumper. Actually the same one as the eavesdropping jumper, but with a different tie and jacket, and I think this colour combination looks better. Also (spoilers) sending poo instead of ointment turned out to be a good thing as it got rid of an unpleasant customer, so hoorah for Tristan and his knitwear!

I am also in the process of cataloguing Siegfried’s wonderful waistcoats - coming soon, I hope!

[darrowbyeightfive]

Reblogging for @favouritefiveyfaces, @circular-time and any other fans of Tristan and his knitwear. No hungover expressions here, but plenty of lovely 1930s Fair Isle.

[darrowbyeightfive]

Tristan really didn’t feel like any breakfast...

Series 1 Episode 8 “Advice and Consent”

[yesterdaysprint]

The Evening World, New York, April 5, 1906

[logopolis]

me, watching Caves of Androzani for the 5939306603th time:

Ok but how do you milk a bat?

[circular-time]

Honestly for 30 years the main thing I remembered about Androzani was my mother making fun of the poor Doctor dying while milking a bat

[darrowbyeightfive]

Hmm... also wondered this, but I suppose bats are mammals and feed their baby bats with milk so it should be possible to milk them???

(NB I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert in biology)

Oh and here (linked) is a picture of a baby pipistrelle, which you may find either cute or creepy depending on your opinion of bats. 

[darrowbyeightfive]

Marble Halls, Part 11

Just a little snippet…

“I’ve found, in my extensive experience, that panic is really rather effective in helping one shake off minor indispositions.”

“Hmm, it never seems to work for me,” said Tristan. “Although, to be fair, it usually isn’t me doing the panicking at the time. It’s mostly the telephone ringing and Siegfried bellowing at me to answer it, neither of which make one feel particularly full of vim and vigour and eagerness to greet the new day.”

“Well, you know, early to bed and early to rise, as they say. A healthy mind in a healthy body and all that.”

“Hmm, yes, quite.” Tristan grinned. With the arm that was not around the Doctor’s shoulders, he reached across, detached another of the less wilted parts of the celery garland and passed it to the Doctor, who took a bite.

“This is also working wonderfully well as a restorative. Not quite as good as Gallifreyan celery, but eminently fit for purpose. And in any case,” he said, his voice becoming a little higher. “It wasn’t necessarily the wine that had this, um, adverse effect. Certain substances that are harmless to humans can provoke unexpected reactions in the Time Lord constitution. Some of our biochemists have studied this phenomenon in detail, but it’s impractical to carry a list of all their publications on the subject around with one all the time. Particularly when one is wearing…” he looked down disapprovingly at his rather flimsy tunic “…a garment without any pockets in it.”

“Are you feeling better now?” asked Tristan, affectionately.

“Very much better, thank you. And now we must address ourselves to the problem.”

[edgeofthedales]

No one should expect the Doctor or Tristan to stop prattling unless interrupted by a disaster or a force of nature…..or Tegan or Siegfried….XD

I love that Tristan is feeding the Doctor celery bits. While this might be the first time he’s used that particular remedy, I’m 100% certain Tristan has played nursemaid to hungover people many, many times.

Funnily enough, I think these lighter, amusing bits make the tension even more effective. So I’m still eagerly waiting for the next plot twist….

[darrowbyeightfive]

I wasn’t necessarily hungover, you know. It could have been entirely coincidental that my symptoms were similar to those Tristan experiences when he has over-indulged at the Drovers’. We Time Lords have a very delicately balanced metabolism. Nonetheless, I did very much appreciate having Tristan around to look after me. He does indeed seem to have quite a lot of experience in that area.

And I don’t prattle!

- The Doctor