Gratitude list: Free Time

1) This awesome book from the library at my school.

Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth by Chris Priestly is book of stories within stories - just the kind I like.  I cadged it off a student who had just finished reading it.  I love weird fiction and the books written for children in particular are just a little bit more strange.

A boy rides a train to London, but falls asleep in the cabin on the way.  When he wakes up, it is dark, the train has stopped, and his other passengers are still snoozing.  Except.  There is a new passenger seated directly opposite him, a woman in white, who has been watching him.  He checks around him and realises his watch has stopped.  Not knowing how long the train will be stranded for, the boy starts a conversation with the woman in white and she whiles the time away by telling him stories.  Creepy stories.

What I really enjoyed was how the stories walked the fine line between uncomfortably creepy and outright horrific.  Uncomfortably creepy stays with me for much longer but doesn't run the risk of keeping kids up at night.

There are some gems among the separate stories: The New Governess is especially unnerving and Gerald, though not completely original, was neatly crafted.

The unsettling little illustrations help too.

2)  High Tea

Whenever I'm at home, my afternoon pick me up includes a cup of milky tea without sugar and whatever biscuit, cake or snack I've been squirrelling away for the week.  I love my afternoon tea (so much so that I'm thinking of documenting all the mundane combinations in pictures!) and going out for the occasional high tea is an even bigger treat.

Earlier today, E, S, and I met up to enjoy sandwiches, pastries and cake at the Regent Tea Lounge and spent a very pleasurable afternoon lying on the couches and chatting about everything.  (I do recommend the tea set, the scones are the sweet, dense, old-fashioned kind that I've only ever had in the now defunct Compass Rose and in Goodwood Park Hotel.)

3)  Waking up luxuriously late and looking over to find what my mother has left me on the nightstand: