Airs

“Soldiers kept out, shouting at him, waving guns and screaming abuse. There was an air of anarchy about them, a madness brought about by months of doing almost nothing except guarding an empty city where nothing stirred except vermin and reptiles.”
― Victoria Hislop, The Sunrise

“A dust from the indoor spice market has permeated my clothes, my hair, my lungs. The ghost of ground ginger and pepper, fine and soft like talcum powder. Dust, on this trip, has been the dust of fatigue. But not today. This is dust that energises and lifts the spirits, that makes my eyes tingle and my nose run.”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts

“It was cozy in the manner of all such country establishments from England to Russia, a wash of shadows and firelight, crowded with bodies and cooking smells, its ceiling held up by what looked like driftwood logs. Above the bar, where one might find a pair of antlers on the continent, there hung instead the tremendous mandible of a whale.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“Our beekeeper turns out to be a bear of a man with possibly the largest hands I have ever seen. Gentle and benign, as you might expect of someone whose life is marinated in old trees and sweet honey. A man who cares for his bees like they were his children.”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts