Tigers and Dog Houses

 Roaaaaaaar! It's here! The Boy with the Tiger's Heart will be available on Thursday 28th August from a book shop near you or a click on the mouse. Eeeeeek.

 I'm still mad about the cover - by such a talented designer Levente Szabo who I've never met but am completely in love with. The cover he has done for the next book- The Dog, Ray is stunning too - and when the time is right I'll post that pic up too. Beezle is most pleased as you'll see(when the time is right) that there is not a dissimilar likeness.

 Pixie is identifying with the Bear in the story and Pocket (quarter Bengal) ---- well you can imagine who he thinks he is.

We are holding out for an Indian summer but have had to light the wood burner now as it's cold in the
house though I still can't bring myself to put in some double glazing. We have mostly metal windows with thin, greenhouse glass, which makes everything condensate. Double glazing seems such un unromantic thing to spend your pennies on. In fact I can't believe I'm even writing about double glazing.
 I expect it's because I've no pics of the funny ducklings to put up in spite of the fact they are looking very funny. I tried to repair the duck house that the badger/fox/pine marten had pushed into but the whole thing collapsed, even though I'd tried to tie it up with baling string. Everyone I asked who was any good with a hammer and nails rolled their eyes when I showed it to them, so in the end I bought a dog house. It's actually really good now someone has put a proper door on it and punched  few holes in it. Actually it's very smart but why would you want to keep a dog in a kennel? It seems cruel. When the girl in the shop asked me if I had a new dog I had to supress a scowl and barked "NO! It's for ducks."

My publisher - Hot Key Books have asked me to write a blog for them about The Boy with the Tiger's Heart. Which I've done for their website but here it is for this one.
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Hot Key have asked me to write a blog about The Boy with the Tiger’s Heart. When I write my own blog I rely heavily on pictures of fluffy chicks and the antics of the many furred and feathered creatures I live with.

I write about my constant battle with dust and fluff, the minutiae of everyday living in a small house within a vast landscape. On the computer screen, the writing of The Boy with the Tiger’s Heart felt a bit like that. You write a sentence and its whole future opens up like the very landscape that lies beyond the window.

The story originally followed a different path – a path I wasn’t sure led anywhere. It had the girl in it and the Bear but the boy with the tiger’s heart hadn’t been there to start with.  I was trying out other avenues in between distracting myself by going onto Google for a ‘bit of research’ and finding I’d bought half a dozen duck eggs off  E Bay  and some thermal socks.

Then one day I had  a  Mary Shelley moment. I was imagining a creature like Frankenstein but made up of animal parts and suddenly the boy with the tiger’s heart was born.

The book was always going to be about the wild – the loss of freedom and the craziness of Health and Safety. The world we live in now has Father Christmas’s in hi viz jackets, children being banned from wearing frilly socks to school in case they trip over them and the death of spontaneity.

The initial inspiration for the story came from reading the news about a man in America who kept a huge collection of exotic and endangered animals. One day he set them all free and took his own life. The result was that the police killed every single animal.  There are more tigers kept in captivity, especially in the States than there are in the wild. In researching tigers I have learnt a lot about conservation issues and the sickening demise of these beautiful creatures due to poaching and the destruction of their habitat. What better force to have in writing a book!

hedgehogs and powder puffs

The ducklings are now over a month old and growing at an alarming rate. I still can't quite tell who is a boy and who is a girl. Boy ducks squeak and girl duck's quack but there's an awful lot of squeaking going on when either a cat appears or I pick them up to give them a bath.

This picture was taken when they were a few weeks old - now they take up the whole bath and soon I'll have to move them to a bigger outside area where I can put in the paddling pool.

Two of the white ducks have got these amusing powder puffs on their heads. As I bought the eggs off E bay I can't be certain - but I think these must have been crossed with a runner duck called a Bali Duck.

picture of a Bali duck taken from the internet.

I'm really hoping they'll be females but they both seem to have a rather high pitched squeak. I think when they grow up, if they're anything like this photo they'll look as if they've stepped out of the Restoration period.

I found this adorable baby hedgehog in the poly tunnel looking like a prickly powder puff the other day. I fear for it's life though - it's perfect snack size for the murderous cats. When I first moved the ducklings outside I found a dead mole, a dead bird and a headless mouse left right by their door. I think it was a warning.

Pixie at the wolfhound day

We attended a wonderful wolfhound day at Lake House two weeks ago. To be sitting in a glorious setting surrounded by eighty wolfhounds was almost too pleasurable for words. Not one of them barked or growled. I didn't enter Pixie into any of the competitions because actually she was on heat and I was terrified she'd break loose and run off with one of the many handsome all male dogs that were there. But whenever one took an interest in her she squeaked(a bit like the ducklings) and sat down firmly on her tail, trying to hide behind my legs.
With Beezle it's quite a different matter. With him she leaps around coquettishly, waving her tail in his face and standing patiently whilst he jumps onto her back, clinging on with all four paws. He looks so funny and when she turns with a sort of "what's that on my back" look he flies off and lands in a heap.

A couple of wolfies at the show.

I must say, inspite of all his injuries and this affront to his dogliness he remains very stoical. As Beezle and Byron would say "What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?"


He remains a little like this beautiful poem by Derek Walcott.

Love after Love


The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. give bread. give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
sit. feast on your life

some of the clematis in the garden are looking great

births, deaths and carriages

They've arrived! Here is the birth of the first duckling - a day earlier than the others, which meant he was on his own in the box until the next egg hatched. Out of twelve eggs I have five ducklings - two black runners and three white ones. Sex as yet unknown. Hoping I haven't got five boys though.

 This was the second hatching - a day later.

 Sadly, although several of the eggs probably hadn't been fertilised, at least three of them got to full term and died before they could get out. It was heart breaking to open up the eggs later on to find them inside. I'm not surprised in many ways. Watching them struggling to get out was I imagine like watching Houdini escape from a straight jacket - only he would have been quicker. I had to help a couple out by pulling away a bit of the shell with tweezers.

 They have the most enormous feet when they come out - like the claws on a lobster - which gradually open out into their webbed footwear.

About five minutes old

 Here they are under the infra red light bulb. I have now put in a paint tray in which they have enormous fun. You put water into the bit where the paint normally goes and the other bit is like standing on a beach before you splash into the sea. They run in and out, fluttering their tiny wings, queuing up to do it all over again. Then they all huddle up together under the warm light bulb to dry off and fall into a deep sleep.

 My new pink wildflower "meadow" (about two square feet !) has come into bloom and I'm really pleased with it. Lots of different kinds of pink cosmos, pink dahlias - the one you can see is Stolz von Berlin which is adorable with very small pale pink flowers. Also in there are black cornflowers and pale pink nigella, a mixture of grasses etc.

Took Harry out in the carriage the other day - er -  cart - and had a wonderful journey round the fields of barley and up the lanes. I had always meant to do the school run in it but obviously too late now as both the girls have left school and anyway I think they would have been embarassed. I would have been pulled up outside the school gates with the Range rovers and Audis and my girls would have been standing - ignoring me and looking up the road saying in loud voices "Wonder where Mum has got to?"

Pocket (quarter Bengal) has been banned from the dogs room where the ducklings are as he is taking an unhealthy interest in the chirrupings coming from inside the box.

Here is an extract from a beautiful poem by Louis MacNeice. Well worth looking up the rest of it if you don't already know it.} Sorry - I'm too lazy to type it all up.

Prayer before birth

by Louis MacNeice

 I am not yet born; O hear me.


Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the

 stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.


I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,


with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,


on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me


With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk


to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light


in the back of my mind to guide me.

nips, tucks and nuptials

rosa rambling rector

Due to a wedding in their original field, the horses are back again in the yurt field. It's like they are on a piece of elastic. I'll keep them there for a while now - the grass has got so long they are nibbling in to it as if they were eating asparagus tips. I can only give them such a tiny piece at a time as there is so much of it - but Harry is so greedy he is tucking into the hedgerow and all that is sprouting from it. Glad to see he's eating  the nettles. He must be desperate.

And talking of weddings -  the other day hundreds of these moths flew into the dog's room through the French windows - fluttering around as if they were confetti. I have never seen so many of them. Perhaps they all hatched at once and had been hiding under the computer table.

The house is full of the heavy scent of perfume at the moment with these Dianthus Mrs Sinkins(see below) which just have to be picked as they sprawl all over the place -  and the continuing sweet peas and lilies and branches of Philadelphus Belle Etoile. We have a friend staying with us who suffers from hayfever (and animal fluff) so we 've tried to keep the perfume isolated but you can't really - it just wafts around going where it pleases.

 I love this onopordum acanthus which is towering at about ten feet. They are only biennial but once you've got one you'll always have them and Nature - who I think is the best garden designer of all - sets them up in perfect places. This one is a little close to the washing line but what's a snagged cardi when you have something so magnificent? It's also known as the Scottish thistle and it does look as if it could be sprouting from the head of the Monarch of the Glen.

 This is one of my favourite pelargoniums - Lord Bute. He's such a great colour and with any luck will have surpassed all other pelargoniums by the end of the summer. Of course it isn't only luck - I have to remember to water it. We haven't had rain for weeks and things are very hard and dry but we had a downpour yesterday which made everything look like Glastonbury festival. We did get caught out in it taking the horses back to that yurt field. I had some waterproofs on but Beezle hates getting wet and has to be towelled down. Still, as he and Alexander Woolcott (1887-1943) would say " I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.

I expect Lord Bute would have said it too.

 I must say I'm really missing my poly tunnel ducks. There are loads of slugs and snails there now even if my labels are still where I put them. And these naughty boys in the garden are really into big nips on the back of your legs as you battle with the onopordum acanthus to de-snag the cardigan.

Wedding (1996)

Alice Oswald

From time to time our love is like a sail

and when the sail begins to alternate


from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail


and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;


and if the coat is yours, it has a tear


like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins


to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter


and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions…


and this, my love, when millions come and go


beyond the need of us, is like a trick;


and when the trick begins, it’s like a toe


tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;


and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,


which is like love, which is like everything.