Reynard the fox in stained glass for Anne Louise Avery

After tea, in the fade-light, Old Fox walked to the Sheep church on the Downs. It was dark, lit by a single oil lamp & deserted but for an elderly hare in the front pew. He was wiping tears away. It's all so hard, he said. I know, said Old Fox & went to sit with him.

Please, don't ever tell someone how they can fix things 'if they just...'
Just sit and listen

There is a death of sorts in the moments after being diagnosed with cancer. The self you were before is torn and blasted with the suddenness of a dozen mines, the heavy sword of Damocles is roped and hung, your own thin ghost steps forward from the shadows.
It feels like being…

The Elderly Squirrel's left hip hurt and he couldn't get very far without his stick, but each morning he still walked to the village shops and back. Buying a few rations for the day, sending a letter or two to equally elderly friends back in India, withdrawing his somewhat meagre…

The Mouse did not know what was happening. She could hear the soft waves & the gulls but could not breathe for the black smoke & the dust. She called for the little girl who once fed her with bourekas, with kunafeh, but she did not come. Let it stop, she heard someone cry, let it…

As the Little Girl's Aunt settled into the village, she had begun to very much enjoy collecting snippets of local Dorset folklore and old customs which lingered like summer thistledown in the lanes and beamed parlours and school-yards. She was even thinking of writing a book.…

Once there was a Tabby Cat who ran a bookshop by the Christchurch gate of Canterbury Cathedral.
It was a marvellous place, with unexpected treasures on every shelf. In summer, it was cool and cavernous, a gentle breeze moving through the upper rooms, tall blue and white vases of…

Update on the Canterbury Tabby! 😻📚

🦊If you like my writing and my stories, then why not support me over on ko-fi. I'm planning a much, much needed holiday/research trip this month, just before I have to have another somewhat gruelling treatment, so any pennies in the jar would go very gratefully towards that!…

The Great Wood, which lay beyond the stream at the bottom of Old Fox's garden, was hazed with bluebells, sudden and miraculous amongst the green, and that overcast afternoon, deep within the trees, a cuckoo sang.
Grey-blue-black as the spring clouds massing in the west, her…

A belated THANK YOU to the lovely Emma 📚🏳️‍🌈💗 (booktwt) for my giveaway prize from Fox Lane Books 🦊 ♥️

I chose a signed copy of Reynard the Fox retold by Anne Louise Avery and it’s every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped! It was beautifully wrapped and presented too 🦊

#bookx #bookpost

Desperately exhausted, so I've decided to take a leaf from Ermine's elegant book this afternoon.

Fox fires! Over Oxford! Hushed and wildly transcendentally beautiful!

Fox fires! Over Oxford! Hushed and wildly transcendentally beautiful!

Hare had taken his lunch up to the high chalk ramparts of the hill fort. Below, the land fell away in folds of green & gold; somewhere in the distance, he could hear church bells, perhaps as far as Abbotsbury. Always such lovely weather on Saint Anne's day, he thought to himself.

Anne's writing is wonderful, the stories are always touching, and she's doing it while raising a kid & fighting cancer. She's got another round of treatment coming so has a research trip/holiday planned 1st. Lots of Ko-fi would get her on her way.