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.