Amanda Jane is a 30-year-old writer, social media lover and pop-culture obsessed adult*. While she isn't working on her novel, she enjoys watching television shows, wondering about the YouTube business model for vloggers, movies and reading any books she can get her hands on. She might be made up of 20% coffee and 80% sarcasm.
*An adult when her parents are looking.
But don’t lose heart, dear ones—don’t lose heart. Don’t let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world.
James Baldwin, from Another Country (Dial Press, 1962)
My life so far, illustrated in 4 panels. 😅 Really though, I have no clue how to do anything when I first start, but part of life is doing them anyways and figuring it out along the way!
[Jacqueline still on vacation, will return in a few days!]
Obviously Emmerdale storylines, cast, wrote and filmed the episodes in a couple of days 😂😂😂
Couldn’t possibly be IM’s work
NEVER! It’s not like he is still there supervising or anything. Nah. Not his idea at all. Lets give Kate Oates credit or something! I’m going to work to stop myself from getting more negative. Also, I need a nap too.
you know why forty hours a week is considered the standard maximum?
because for SEVENTY FUCKING YEARS, unions demanded a forty-hour week and worked their asses off trying to get it.
SEVENTY YEARS workers organised, communicated, educated, protested, screamed at the establishment. They stood defiant, they persevered in the face of violent opposition from their employers, they went on strike to the point where one fifth of america’s labour force was on strike in 1919.
Organise. Unite. Stand up.
Stop listening to the bullshit about unions as a concept being corrupt or bad. Stop listening to the bullshit that capitalists invented these things and gave them to us out of the non-existent goodness of their slimy black hearts.
Unions gave you the labour rights you have. A minimum wage, a 40-hour week, Saturdays off, meal breaks–all these basic things were fought for by unions. UNIONS did that. I’m not asking you to feel guilty I’m asking you to BRING IT BACK. We have the power if we unite.
Please support your local unions, even if you can’t be in one.
In 1970, my dad worked at the post office, and they went on strike. This wasn’t permitted – the laws at the time didn’t cover that kind of collective bargaining. But they struck anyway, and marched around with signs in front of the post office, and so on.
One woman started to head into the building, realized they were on strike, and stopped. And my dad told her, “you can go in; there’s people staffing the windows.” And she said, “oh no; my husband’s a Teamster; he’d never speak to me again if I crossed a picket line.” And she left.
That’s how unions work. You support each other’s goals. You don’t casually break the picket line – you accept that the only reason people would be standing around outside waving stupid signs is that there’s something very very wrong with this business, and the workers understand it better than an outsider could.
Even if you’re not in a position to strike, you can be supportive. I know, it’s all fucked-up now; you can be working in an office and your actual “employer” is six states away, and your cubemates are also working for a company somewhere else but a different one, so no amount of waving signs is even going to be noticed by the companies that might actually be able to grant you better pay and medical coverage and so on.
But you can say, Unions are awesome. You can be grateful that unions won the 40-hour workweek. That they won OSHA standards. That they organized to stop “company towns” where you’d be paid in “script” that was only good at company stores. (Imagine working for McDonalds and only being paid in McDonald’s coupons.)
You don’t have to join a union to support union efforts – speak out in favor of them, don’t cross picket lines, and if you have the resources, help the strikes where you can: bring coffee, bring donuts, bring sunblock; let them know that the community has their backs.
@littleatticboy because you talked about Robert, Aaron and bookshops. 💓
(Warning: this fic includes Seb so if that isn’t your cuppa…)
Sometimes the smallest things take the most room in your heart. ~ A. A. Milne
Aaron has never been a big reader. It’s not to say he doesn’t like it. He does. But he tends to be picky about what he reads due to the fact that most books do his head in. Aaron likes complex things though (look at his husband, so really). He’ll pick up books about little strange histories: footy, cars, boxing, mechanics. Every once in a while he’ll read a mystery. Not those cozy ones that his mum loves (and manages to talk Robert into reading if she really likes it and Robert will because he is a soft touch) but thrillers that leave him shook.
His family is a different story.
Robert likes to read…everything.
He hadn’t known that about Robert until the one week at Home Farm during their affair (the week that changed everything). They’d exhausted themselves from fucking everywhere they could those first two nights. Had ended up in Robert’s bed finally and Aaron had woken up, pressed against Robert’s side, one of Robert’s hands playing with the loose curls on Aaron’s head, and the other holding open a book.
Aaron stared at him, noticing how his face changed as he read, how he looked so at peace in this world he was in. Robert had caught him eventually, grinning at him as he took the time to save his page with a bookmark (something Aaron learned later Robert always did, bent pages in books drove him nutty) before rolling Aaron under him and taking him apart.
Later, when they became them, really and honestly, for the first time, Aaron would go with Robert to book shops, follow him around and try hard not to roll his eyes at Robert’s excitement when he found a new book to add to his ever growing collection.
When they’d got Liv, the trips had become longer because, it turned out, his little sister liked to read, too. Not the same as Robert (she teased him constantly about his Stephen King obsession) but she likes fantasy, horror, and eventually she and Robert found common ground when they discovered their mutual love for manga and graphic novels. He’d stood watching them for 15 mintues once as they pored over a copy of Watchmen (he’s still not sure what that’s all about and honestly that’s fine) and he’d had to turn away from what that did to his chest.
Usually Aaron went his way to look at magazines or some of the manuals he likes to find and leave them to it.
Then came Seb.
Having Seb changed so much and Robert wanted to instill a love of books into their son.
(Aaron had asked him once why he loved books so much.
Robert had shrugged, buried his face deeper in Aaron’s neck and mumbled a quiet, “They make me feel closer to my mum.”
Aaron had squeezed Robert tighter.)
When they took their first trip together to the bookshop on a day out in Leeds, Aaron had steered Robert to the new book section as Liv wondered off towards the back. He’d taken hold of Seb and walked with him toward the children’s section. The bright, happy colors made Seb clap a little and Aaron kissed his head, found the book his mum had read him a little boy, and sat down to read it.
He wasn’t sure he was any good at doing voices but Seb’s gaze never left Aaron’s face, blue and wide, as Aaron read him the story of the 1000 Acre Woods, a little lonely boy named Christopher and his friends.
By the time they got to Pooh Bear stuck in a tub of honey, Aaron’s voice was fading and Seb’s head had lulled to rest on Aaron’s shoulder. He shut the book quietly, turning to see Robert and Liv standing to the side. Liv gentle smile turning into a smirk and Robert looming at Aaron like he was the most amazing thing in the world.
“What? You said, didn’t ya?”
Robert had shaken his head, leaned down to kiss Aaron firmly as he took Seb and the book with him toward the till.
It became a tradition as their family grew, their kids got older, and Aaron found that he was a reader when properly motivated.
