Slow Club Two Cousins

The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid ~ A Tuesday Teaser post

"Anthony hadn't exactly played Cupid; he would have shivered with horror at the mere idea of being thought to have such base motives. But he had invited them both for dinner with him and his wife Deborah and if not exactly the midwife, he had certainly been present at the birth of their interest in each other."

The Grave Tatto a psychological suspense thriller that mixes history, heritage and heinous crimes written by award-winning and Number One bestselling Val McDermid

• ISBN-10: 0007344600
• ISBN-13: 978-0007344604

A 200 year-old-secret is now a matter of life and death.
And it could be worth a fortune.
It's summer in the Lake District and heavy rain over the fells has uncovered a bizarrely tattooed body. Could it be linked to the old rumour that Fletcher Christian, mutinous First Mate on the Bounty, had secretly returned to England?
Scholar Jane Gresham wants to find out. She believes that the Lakeland poet William Wordsworth, a friend of Christian's, may have sheltered the fugitive and turned his tale into an epic poem – which has since disappeared.
But as she follows each lead, death is hard on her heels. The centuries-old mystery is putting lives at risk. And it isn't just the truth that is waiting to be discovered, but a bounty worth millions …

 This is a Teaser Tuesday post, see more here, to join in :

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

A Blythe post from Easter 2008 and yes there was snow!

Over the years I've been a bit of a serial blogger, starting a blog and abandoning it because I haven't posted for a while. I'm going to try really hard to just keep this one going even when I go missing for months.

 I was reminded of my bad blogging habits when I saw this post of mine from a long abandoned blog :

Constance woke Easter Sunday to see snow for the very first time. She was so excited that she rushed outside in her old dressing gown of course the inevitable happened!

Up you get Constance your pet ponies are waiting for a sugar lump or two.

Happy Easter

 

Happy Easter, hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Image: The Orchard Year

Red Nose Day Dolls - Mac goes camping

Mac goes camping in his sitting room...for COMIC RELIEF :-)
A group of v. talented people have been working on Red Nose Day Dolls to auction for Comic Relief:

"Mac is just one of the hand made RED NOSE DAY DOLLS created to be auctioned on Ebay, by Ros Badger and Emma Mitchell for Comic Relief 2013. In this unique collaborative craft project, Mac, and his 3 girl doll friends, are fabulously dressed, by a group (20+) of designer/makers asked to create their own pieces for the dolls. They are indeed bedecked, bejewelled and accessorized from head to toe, pets included. Karen Boatwright  is just one of the makers involved...  loved making this little film etc to support a truly enchanting project for a truly great cause.
PLEASE help support Comic Relief by bidding for one of the Red Nose Day Dolls...auctions start on 7th March!!!

THANK YOU!
Karen Boatwright

Follow the Red Nose Day Dolls on:
Twitter @rednosedaydolls
http://therednosedaydolls.blogspot.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/RedNoseDayDo...

You can also follow on Twitter, Karen @handihead, Ros at @rosbadger, Emma at @silverpebble2, Emma H (Salty) @SewRecycled"
 Source:  YouTube

Art Deco plastic buckles - Vintage Friday

These vintage buckles are now in the Etsy shop Essential Curiosities at £2.50 each.
(Reminder to self: We are now over halfway through February so a half price January sale isn't really appropriate!)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – by Robert Frost (1874-1963) Weekly Poem

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it’s queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

This was one of my Mother's favourite poems, consequently I'm rather fond of it myself.
 More on the poet Robert Frost here.
Image courtesy of My Equestrian World.

Smile this Friday - watch Let's Dance

 A tribute to the joy of dance...it's a wonderful thing - and it will make you smile
Great video featuring "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers. All rights are theirs. Images gathered from pubic domain resources
1) Svetlana Zakharova - Swan Lake
2) Riverdance - Reel of the Sun
3) Michael Flatley - Lord of the Dance
4) Michael Jackson - Beat It
5) Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse - Singing in the Rain
6) Elvis - Jailhouse Rock
7) Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times
8) John Travolta/Olivia Newton John - Grease
9) Jimmy Cagney - Yankee Doodle Dandy
10) Debbie Reynolds - Singing in the Rain
11) A Chorus Line
12) Patrick Swayze - Dirty Dancing
13) Natalie Wood/Richard Beymar - West Side Story
14) Al Nims & Leon James doing the Charleston
15) Maxim & Mel B - Dancing with the Stars
16) Elvis and Ann Margret - Viva Las Vegas
17) Michael Jackson from TV Special
18) Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers - Swing Time
19) Gene Kelly - Singing in the Rain
20) All That Jazz
21) Three Stooges get a dance lesson
22) Flashdance
23) Shirley Temple & Bill "Bojangles" Robinson - Just Around the Corner
24) Anne Reinking - All That Jazz
25) Nicholas Brothers - Stormy Weather
26) Wizard of Oz

I Am the Only Running Footman by Martha Grimes - Teaser Tuesdays

"The thin plain fabric that had been woven around David Marr and Ivy Childess had now been interwoven with  more exotic threads, perhaps obscuring rather than heightening the pattern in the carpet, There was also the disquieting knowledge that Macalvie was right, that solving the murder of Ivy Childess depended upon solving the murder of Sheila Broome."

Re-reading old Richard Jury murder mysteries by Martha Grimes this one's "I Am the Running Footman."

The Running Footman is a real pub in Mayfair, London, off Berkeley Square (pictured above) find out more about this historic public house here.

This is a Teaser Tuesday post, see more here, to join in :

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Shrove Tuesday - 5 Things

 Why pancakes ?

 Legend tells us that a housewife was using up her eggs and milk before the Lenten fast began when she heard the church bells calling her to confession. Rather than put her cooking aside she ran off to church, complete with pan apparently tossing the "pancake" along the way!

5 more things about Shrove Tuesday:

1.Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent begins.

2.Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake Day, Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras.

3.It's the last day of being able to eat whatever you like before the ritual fasting of Lent.

4.Shrove Tuesday is 47 days before Easter Sunday.

5.Shrove comes from the word shrive which means to confess, traditionally people would go to church to confess their sins on Shrove Tuesday.

Image: Wiki Commons  Belathee Photography

One Perfect Rose by Dorothy Parker - Weekly Poem

 

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.


All tenderly his messenger he chose;


Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet

-
One perfect rose.


I knew the language of the floweret;

'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'

Love long has taken for his amulet

One perfect rose.



Why is it no one ever sent me yet


One perfect limousine, do you suppose?


Ah no, it's always just my luck to get


One perfect rose.


Find out more about the witty Dorothy Parker  (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) here 

Image : Source

Snowy Evening

The debate as to how much snow is going to be dumped on us overnight has continued most of the day.

Our forage man said it would just miss us.

The fruit grower said we'd get 4 inches of snow overnight.

The lady in the petrol station said we were due to get between 8 & 10 inches of snow by tomorrow!

"Surely not here", I replied desperately hoping we wouldn't get any.

Of course I should have known that we'd get some,

the snow still lies on the land from earlier this week,

that's a sure sign of more.

Evening update, the Land Rover green laning enthusiast has been outside and measured the snowfall so far - 2.4cms to be precise.

That I can live with, please no more tonight....

Ice on the rabbit's paw - Weekly Poem - Laurie Lee 's Christmas Landscape

Tonight the wind gnaws
With teeth of glass,
The jackdaw shivers
In caged branches of iron,
The stars have talons.

 There is hunger in the mouth
Of vole and badger,
Silver agonies of breath
In the nostril of the fox,
Ice on the rabbit’s paw.

Tonight has no moon,

 No food for the pilgrim;
The fruit tree is bare,
The rose bush a thorn
And the ground is bitter with stones.

But the mole sleeps, and the hedgehog
Lies curled in a womb of leaves,
The bean and the wheat-seed
Hug their germs in the earth
And the stream moves under the ice.

It's the obligatory blogger's snowy post and as the photographs seem to  fit so well with one of my favourite poems I've used them to illustrate the first four verses of Laurie Lee's Christmas Landscape.

Friday Flowers - 365 Days of Flowers - Sally Page

Sally Page of Flower Shop Stories fame has set herself the task of finding 365 messages we can say with flowers and has given permission for readers of her blog to send her photographs as virtual flowers to our friends and loved ones. 

January 2013 - A New Year Quote

"And what does January hold? Clean account books. Bare diaries.Three Hundred and sixty-five new days,neatly parceled into weeks, months, seasons. A chunk of time, of life...those first notes like an orchestra tuning up before the play begins!"  from Country Bouquet (1947) by Phyllis Nicholson

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrees by Agatha Christie - Weekend Read

A marvellous read whether it be Christmas or not
From Agatha Christie 's Foreword
  "This book of Christmas fare may be described as "The Chef's Selection." I am the Chef!
There are two main courses: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and The Mystery of the Spanish Chest; a selection of Entrees: Greenshaw's Folly, The Dream, The Under Dog and a Sorbet: Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds.
  The Mystery of the Spanish Chest may be described as a Hercule Poirot Special. It is a case in which he considers he was at his best! Miss Marple, in her turn, has always been pleased with her perspicuity in Greenshaw's Folly.
  The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding is an indulgence of my own, since it recalls to me, very pleasurably, the Christmases of my youth. After my father's death, my mother and I always spent Christmas with my brother-in-law's family in the north of England - and what superb Christmases they were for a child to remember! Abney Hall had everything! The garden boasted a waterfall, a stream, and a tunnel under the drive! The Christmas fare was of gargantuan proportions. I was a skinny child, appearing delicate, but actually of robust health and perpetually hungry! The boys of the family and I used to vie with each other as to who could eat most on Christmas Day. Oyster Soup and Turbot went down without undue zest, but then came the Roast Turkey, Boiled Turkey and an enormous Sirloin of Beef. The boys and I had two helpings of all three! We then had Plum Pudding, Mince-pies, Trifle and every kind of dessert. During the afternoon we ate chocolates solidly. We neither felt, nor were sick! How lovely to be eleven years old and greedy!
  What a day of delight from "Stockings," in bed in the morning, Church and all the Christmas hyms, Christmas dinner, Presents, and the final Lighting of the Christmas Tree!
  And how deep my gratitude to the kind and hospitable hostess who must have worked so hard to make Christmas Day a wonderful memory to me still in my old age.
  So let me dedicate this book to the memory of Abney Hall - its kindness and its hospitality.

  And a happy Christmas to all who read this book."

My copy was published for The Crime Club in 1960 with an original cost of 12s.6d. it did service in the W.H.Smith & Son Library where it could be borrowed for the charge of :

Up to four days - 2d per day

(Minimum charge 6d)

9d first week 1d per day thereafter

Friday Vintage - January Sale at Essential Curiosities

Just to let you know that there is a half price sale throughout the month of January in our Etsy shop

 Essential Curiosities.

Happy New Year

Back to blogging after the holidays to wish our friends, family and readers a happy and prosperous New Year.