Murder

Problematic, but also quite moreish, once you get into it.

In lieu of social media
Now that I’ve deleted a significant portion of my social media (Twitter, Threads) I was thinking of paying for some proper journalism. You know, the stuff that you see linked to online, and then you click on it and you’re like, oof, paywall! And so you just go back to staring at hundreds of DIY videos instead.

We’re not doing any DIY
We’re not actually doing any DIY in our house anymore, we’ve finished it all (given up). DIY content is now irrelevant. What should I read instead? The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Magazine…

We don’t live in New York, either
Actually, that doesn’t seem to matter. These are the publications I try to click most often—worthy articles, yes, that’s all I want these days.

The first thing I read
The first thing I read is a long story about a woman in Texas who was so desperate for somewhere to live that she accepted a room in a house-share in exchange for cleaning the place up (it’s an absolute kip). Turns out her new house-mate isn’t actually the landlord—in fact, the landlord is nowhere to be seen. Oh, and there’s little red specks on the walls, mysterious black bags in the attic, and a human corpse stuffed under the deck that she’s told is “just a dead dog” and can she please get on with cleaning the place up, now, please.

You don’t get this kind of content on Instagram
Okay, this is quite a good story. Especially because the poor woman kept living in the house for another year and a half while trying to convince the Houston homicide department to come and take a look. I guess this is what they call “true crime”—problematic, I know, but also quite moreish once you get into it.

Deep down
But what I really want to know is: so, did she actually get the place cleaned up? I suppose, deep down, I still like to inhabit a world where she can scrub the whole house, whitewash the walls, and live happily ever after once she pulls back some old linoleum to reveal original oak flooring.

Victorian True Crime props, by my workshop student Laura Whitehouse.

In other news
In other news, the owners of a beautiful old country manor house have emailed, to ask if I’d like to host my prop design workshop there this summer. They could provide full board—bedrooms and meals for ten guests—and the use of the whole house and its gardens. Hmm. Perhaps? It would be fun to take the workshop out of Dublin, and I do love carefully restored period features.

A little look
I have a little look at their website, where I’m surprised to read that two murders took place in the house, back in the 1800s. Now, look, while I don’t condone murder of any kind, I have to admit my interest is piqued. Is this my “thing” now—murder? My god. What has long-form journalism done to me.

Wait
Wait! What if we did a kind of prop-design/murder weekend? Everybody has to choose a Whodunnit tale to inspire a portfolio of evidence: poison pen letters, police records, ransom notes, that classic movie trope ‘diary of a serial killer’—things like that. We’ll then spend the weekend in this isolated old house in the Irish countryside talking about Agatha Christie and completely freaking each other out.

It could work!
Message me if you’re interested.