Yougottadance

#eejit #awaywiththefairies

[Anne Louise Avery @AnneLouiseAvery]

Midnight. Mouse had blown out her candle & the room was suddenly as strange & silvered as the sea. Smoke & the sweet rich smell of the hay. Over the stubble in the fields, over the solemn hay-ricks, a great harvest moon & the World stilled, heavy in its turning & oh so old.

[Anne Louise Avery @AnneLouiseAvery]

Spring equinox this morning, said Grey Brock to Miss Rabbit over the garden wall, fur starred with plum blossom. And he spoke, they felt the great green swooping feathery rush of life around them; the sweet, soft air and the young fierce nettles in the hedgerows ready for soup and tonics and tea, and the golden celandines in the woods and the tangled swirls of nests in the elm trees and rows of hot cross buns in the window of Fernby's and pink and purple and gold foiled Easter eggs in the everything shop, and the lovely loud ludic sound of the village school down by the watercress beds, where the herons guard the river and the willow boughs trail in the dark glassy water.

[Anne Louise Avery @AnneLouiseAvery]

High in the Black Mountains, on the cold weathered border between Wales & England, a woman is walking. She has lost everything, but is recasting herself from air & stiff frost & stark ragged courage. Here in the knife-lands, in the thinning times, she recalls herself to life.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@AnneLouiseAvery Perfect.

[Anne Louise Avery @AnneLouiseAvery]

The Second Window. Once upon a time, there was a green-eyed Tabby Cat who ran a bookshop by the Christ Church gate of Canterbury Cathedral. It was a marvellous place, four stories high, with treasures on every shelf & free buttered toast, plum cake & hot sweet tea for all who visited. At Christmas, it glittered with lights & its window was a wonder of the city.

There were ancient, comfortable arm chairs and deep velvety sofas the colour of pansies in high walled gardens, gently undulating wooden floors, cyclamen and primulas in blue and white china pots on wide Georgian windowsills, and books, thousands upon thousands of books old and new, arranged in such a way that made perfect sense to every browser and led to satisfying and productive juxtapositions.

An impoverished and rather melancholy writer, for example, could turn happily in a couple of steps from Thomas Hardy's Tess to a history of bridges in Bratislava to a fat and jovial cook book of hearty stews and Pot-au-feu for "lean days and empty purses," and feel somehow that these three volumes fulfilled a profound need of which he had hitherto been entirely unaware.

Downstairs, at the old fashioned polished counter with its pots of pens and pencils and thick ordering ledgers and ornate brass till decorated with notable cats of the 1840s, his books would be wrapped in sturdy brown paper and string, invariably costing a little less than expected.

The Tabby, extensively well-read and an expert in many areas, was always interested in her customers' eclectic choices and made them feel fascinating and erudite in their tastes – "the engineering history of the Danube is such an absorbing subject – how clever of you to find that particular signed edition of Hardy's! – do try the Hungarian lecsó on page 134, it's terribly good - very warming for a winter's night!"

Thus one would leave the Tabby Cat's bookshop, its bell tinkling merrily, grasping one's weighty parcel, warm with toast and tea and cake in the cold December air, feeling that the world was a good place after all, full of possibilities and vast intellectual and imaginative horizons, unfettered by one's position or bank balance or low spirits.

And that, thought the Tabby Cat on a regular basis, was the essence of a good bookshop – it salved and suggested and guarded and guided and presented and preserved and mused and mapped – a veritable mappa mundi for the frantic modern soul.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@AnneLouiseAvery 💕💕💕

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@laureng5783 Honestly, you will love travelling alone. It’s the best way to do it!

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@higgyboson I am so sorry for your loss. 💕

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@iarlabyrne @cyclingontnt I am raging! Been watching all day!

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@cyclingontnt No because your coverage failed. Technical fault with the channel.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@cyclingontnt wtf technical fault 1km from the end of the stage? Bring back Eurosport. Their coverage was unaffected.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@lardychap @daniellloyd1 The reason they haven’t in other countries is because a lot of them show the same sports on terrestrial tv so it’s highly unlikely people would sign up.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@AnneLouiseAvery All the Love and strength through the ether 💕.

[Anne Louise Avery @AnneLouiseAvery]

Old Fox had gone to the Sheep Church where it was very quiet & still.

Just the sound of the wind & the sea in the distance.

There he sat for a very long time, so long that a few of the old ghosts made to settle with him, their russets & silks thin in the late afternoon light.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@greateranglia absolutely disgusting of you to put the 0742 Cambridge service at the opposite end of Liv' St to where it usually departs from and half way up the platform with less than five minutes notice.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@_ablackguy So sorry for your loss. All the Love to you and yours 💕.

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@SpitfireMKXII @WSC_magazine So, a little bit excited then? 😂

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@Emma_Campaigner Nope. I was thinking the same thing. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@AnneLouiseAvery All the Love. Your work keeps me going. Never doubt its importance..

[Yougottadance @KellyCD]

@AnneLouiseAvery Sending all the love. ❤️