This evening's entertainment was a ghost story reading by Robert Lloyd Parry - a local actor who specialises in traditional fireside readings of spooky gothic tales by MR James and other masters of the ghost story. We joined friends for the reading in a beautiful house in Eversden. It was a lovely evening, even though I had to go to super-human efforts not to cough through all the quiet spooky bits (I've done two school visit this week, and picked up yet another cough and cold from the little darlings!).
I took the photo looking back at the house as we left to walk back though the pitch dark to our friends' house nearby - it's a village that prides itself on having no street lights!
This was my second ghostly encounter of the day. At lunchtime, during a break in my school visit schedule, I hurried into town to a talk at the newly refurbished Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, about the skeleton of the Roman lady in her stone coffin, that was excavated in Arbury in the 1950s, and was the inspiration for Sylvia Plath's beautiful, if rather morbid, poem, To All the Dead Dears. They still have the bones of the mouse and the shrew that were gnawing on the ankle of the corpse taped to the top of the coffin.
Three good things.
1. Kind people! It was such a nice audience at the ghost story evening that nobody tutted as I spluttered; in fact I was swamped by offers of cough sweets from all the nice ladies in the row behind me, who were very sympathetic.
2. World Book Day/Week. All the children at the school I visited today were dressed up as characters from books. There were a lot of Harry Potters and pirates and princesses. There was even one Emily from Adventure Island, complete with her investigation kit!
3. Living in Cambridge! There's always something interesting going on.
This looks very cozy Helen & a perfect circle of evening light...how wonderful to live in a light free environment....the stars must be very visible. You have got a great capture of this little gathering!!
