tiger biscuits and feathers

It's been a week since the launch of The Boy with the Tiger's Heart so I thought it was about time I reported back. We had a great party, sold the books, drank some wine and ate - the highlight of the evening - some Tiger biscuits.

 Below are some of them - we made about a hundred I think - and are still chewing our way through them though admittedly they are a little stale by now.  So,  Dear Readers, I hope you have all gone out and bought a copy of the book to boost sales which will mean my publishers will want to publish another story which I do have, waiting in the wings, about a mysterious black horse, a girl and a strange cat.

 And at last - a picture of the ducklings - now , as you can see, teenagers with brand new feathers and you can see the two of them that have their Rococo wigs on.

 Like their baby feathers, some of the leaves are beginning to fall. Here are the remnants of one of my client's garden - still looking good but with a definite air of autumn in the seed pods and dried flower heads.

 A season when the late flowering anemones are out and the odd rose, trying to fit in an extra bloom or two before the frost hits them. (Why do the anemones in my garden insist on coming up pink when what I really want is Anemone Honorine Jobert - a beautiful simple white one. Perhaps because I'm so busy putting it in to other people's gardens I forget I don't actually have any myself.}

 Soon, like the swallows, my girls will be off on their travels. One of them, I hope, will return with the swallows in the summer - the other will be gone for a year. She has been working to raise some money and painting. Here is a beautiful picture she has done of whales and one of a feather.

 You can see her work on http://chloecoggin.tumblr.com/

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.