From A Very Distant archive, far, far away. 3.

All this month of July the editorial staff of Bitsnbobs have shut themselves away in the distant archives. They hope to turn up a few gems, but whatever they find THERE will appear HERE.

Once you reach the archives and have handed Mrs Penny a half fragment of a forgotten dream or a partly pursued piece of someone's subconscious, her dog Bundle will lead you to the first of the caves.
Bundle will turn and leave you there. It takes courage to cross this cave alone, it seems vast and foreboding. If you do, in the middle you will always find something that was not there before you arrived and can only be found once you have passed. It may take the form of text, it may be photographic.

Rarely, it will be both.

I’m wearing shorts; a short-sleeved cotton shirt (my green one) and my feet are all undressed in the simplest of sandals.

The outside temperature is over 30, the inside - despite the air conditioning that is humming behind me - is pretty much the same.

My green cotton shirt sticks to my back with sweat that this writing provokes.

Yet I’m looking at snow.

Actually, if I’m honest, I’m looking at Elodie who recently served me a glacial orange juice and who is now sitting in the shade outside the window to my left.

Over her shoulder, if I ignore her hair gathered erratically into a ponytail, her strong arm - bared just above the elbow - and her ankles showing prettily above her skate shoes, I can see the snow.

She is looking at the snow too.

Between her ponytail and the snow there is a motorway – home to this service station where I sit.

Where I don’t want to be sitting.

But which I am going to make the most off if I have to be here.

They have a free wifi service for people who don’t want to be here and since I have a computer to escape into and I have just drunk a double espresso as well as the orange juice  - escape is on my menu next.

I start by reading today’s on-line Guardian Newspaper.

My eyes skip past news of The Queen of England shaking hands with martin McGuiness; historical though it may well have been it really tells me nothing about which either of them thinks.

Instead my eyes land on the announcement of the death of Nora Ephron.

I don’t know Nora and although I don’t know The Queen I know whom the Queen IS.

I even know a little about Elodie – she works in a service station cafeteria but she doesn’t love it. She loves skate boarding, or surfing or snowboarding – maybe all, and certainly loves the outdoors. She cleans up after herself (she has gathered her plates), has long hair that she tries to tie up for work and she dreams.

But Nora is/was a mystery so I clicked on the link offered and I read this link.

And despite the beauty of the distant, melting snow.

I cried.