pixie selfie

Not content with just having an 'interesting fact' section in this blog - Pixie has decided to take over the photos as well and has started with a Pixie selfie.

She has persuaded (don't ask me how) some of the others to do the same - so this is a Beezle selfie (see his philosophical quote later in the piece)

 a Harry selfie ...............

 a Trude selfie ..................

she couldn't persuade Pocket (quarter Bengal) because he said he'd just laid an egg and was tired.

 and come on Pixie - you don't think I'd honestly believe this rose took a selfie?(This rose by the way is called For your eyes only and is completely beautiful - it opens up like a gorgeous peony.)

Pixie is claiming copyright on the photos though.

Her interesting fact is:

King Penguins can contract their pupils into a square.

So Quigley the quizzical rook has left my head for the skies. As you can see he was getting a bit attached - not good if you are hoping they'll go back to the wild. He had taken to flying onto my arm where he was still demanding to be fed - then hopping with graceful agility onto my head. One day he just sat on my shoulder and wrapped his wings around my neck. The day after this picture was taken and a few minutes after I'd popped into the poly intending to feed him (then remembering I'd left a pie in the oven) - he found a hole and flew away. I wish I'd seen him do it -  his flying was getting really good. I'd loved to have seen him air borne. But perhaps like it's said, that some people wait for you to leave the room before they die, he waited for me not to be there before he went.

I miss him of course - but rooks are sociable animals and I'm pleased his rookery was only a stone's throw from the poly. Later I heard a plaintive Aarkk! Aaarkk! and the maternal instinct kicked in. I looked up to where the sound was coming from - expecting to see Quigley sitting on top of the grain feeder - only to find about fifteen young rooks all with their mouths open. Word must have got round. 

 I'm always thinking the rook flying overhead is Quigley and may well do an emergency landing back on my head - but of course I have no means of knowing which one he could be. Thankfully though, he has transitioned and reached for the skies.

As Beezle and Socrates would say " Man must rise above the Earth - to the top of the atmosphere and beyond - for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives."

 The corvids are such intelligent birds and I can't bear it when I hear that people shoot them or catch them in their odious Larsen traps to attract more corvids that can be put to death.

 Henry Ward Beecher - the nineteenth century American clergyman and wit said:
"If men had wings and black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows."

This is so true - I think Quigley was more intelligent than a lot of people I've met from the nearby town.

So as this appears to be a mainly photo blog post we are putting up two pictures by Mark Ormerod, a recent guest at the Pink Tower who has taken a series of truly beautiful pictures of the wild life around us. He's obviously done some deal with Pixie and I'm pleased she hasn't claimed copyright.

Thank you Mark.

And, Pixie says that the Atchaeopteryx is the first bird - incase you didn't know.

I think that's two interesting facts, Pixie.

The Archaeopteryx's Song by Edwin Morgan

I am only half out of this rock of scales. 
What good is armour when you want to fly? 
My tail is like a stony pedestal 
and not a rudder. If I sit back on it 
I sniff winds, clouds, rains, fogs where 
I'd be, where I'd be flying, be flying high. 
Dinosaurs are spicks and 
all I see when I look back 
is tardy turdy bonehead swamps 
whose scruples are dumb tons. 
Damnable plates and plaques 
can't even keep out ticks. 
They think when they make the ground thunder 
as they lumber for a horn-lock or a rut 
that someone is afraid, that everyone is afraid, 
but no one is afraid. The lords of creation 
are in my mate's next egg's next egg's next egg, 
stegosaur. It's feathers I need, more feathers 
for the life to come. And these iron teeth 
I want away, and a smooth beak
to cut the air. And these claws 
on my wings, what use are they 
except to drag me down, do you imagine 
I am ever going to crawl again? 
When I first left that crag 
and flapped low and heavy over the ravine 
I saw past present and future 
like a dying tyrannosaur 
and skimmed it with a hiss. 
I will teach my sons and daughters to live 
on mist and fire and fly to the stars.

quizzical quigley and some roses

OK - this year I wasn't going to do rook rescue but when I saw these two young rooks strutting around the farmyard I thought I should keep an eye open. Sure enough I found one of them later with its head bitten off - fox? dog? cross gamekeeper?

So I decided I'd don my rook rescue bonnet and save the other. This is he.

 I decided not to give it a name (Grace?) but hand feed it until it could feed itself and hope it'll fly away (Ophelia? No - not after the last one drowned - I think not a good idea.) Anyway - although I was quite sure the last one was a female I'm pretty sure this one is male. (Ted?) I'm not going to give my stereotypical reasons as to why I think that here  - but believe me there are some. Also he loves his food. (Orson?)
The Rook Helpline have again been wonderful and sent me a care package to deal with all the parasitical things that rooks get. Also a fabulous menu. Pixie and Beezle (see below) can't understand why  (a.) they don't get fed so regularly (every two hours) or  (.b). why they don't get peas, pasta, cheese, soft fruits,  cat food and mince.
 He shuffles his wings, looks at me beadily and quizzically tips his head when he sees me - probably wondering if it's peas or pasta on the menu.

 He's flying really well in the large shade tunnel that is now entirely his and jumps onto my arm when I come in, opens his cavernous bright red mouth and goes Aaarkkkk! Aaarkkkk! Whereby I obligingly tuck the afore mentioned menu down his throat. I thought I was making progress with the wholewheat spaghetti as it looked like worms but he's not interested in feeding himself. Well why would he when I'm doing it. I'll probably be doing it when he's riding around on my bath chair.(a hooded wheelchair for the infirmed incase you are under a hundred and reading this.)
As Beezle and Mark Twain would say "Part of the secret in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

Truman Capote had a pet raven who he called Lola. Corvids like to steal and cache and she had taken a pair of false teeth from an elderly guest staying with Capote. Here he writes:

She leaped from floor to chair to bookshelf; then as though it were a cleft in a mountain leading to Ali Baba's cavern, she squeezed between two books and disappeared behind them:evaporated like Alice through the looking glass. The Complete Jane Austen concealed her cache, which, when we found it, consisted, in addition to the purloined dentures, of the long lost keys to my car .....a mass of paper money - thousands of lire torn into tiny scraps, as though intended for some future nest, old letters, my best cuff links, rubber bands, yards of string, the first page of a short story I'd stopped writing because I couldn't find the first page, an American penny, a dry rose, a crystal button ....


I am hoping this rook learns to fly before it learns to steal.

 No exciting book news from me - only rook news - but my writing day is obviously starting a little later now there's another mouth to feed. Oh I sound like some poor woman in a Dicken's novel with ten children.
So here are some fabulous roses I have in the garden. Although they look fabulous, these tightly petalled ones aren't a favourite with bees as they can't really get in.

 For long time readers of this blog you'll know that the elegant Beezle is also a philosopher and shares his thoughts on every post. Pixie says she feels left out and wants to contribute an interesting fact section.  She said if I didn't let her she'd sit on my lap. So here's her first interesting fact.

 Polar Bears are left handed.

I asked if she was going to accompany it with a photo nicked off Google but she said don't be silly, my paws are too big to work the keys on your computer.

I've decided to call the rook Quigley

                                      (all the rooks seem to like my laptop stand as a perch).

The Darkling Thrush

Related Poem Content Details

BY THOMAS HARDY

I leant upon a coppice gate 

      When Frost was spectre-grey, 

And Winter's dregs made desolate 

      The weakening eye of day. 

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky 

      Like strings of broken lyres, 

And all mankind that haunted nigh 

      Had sought their household fires. 

The land's sharp features seemed to be 

      The Century's corpse outleant, 

His crypt the cloudy canopy, 

      The wind his death-lament. 

The ancient pulse of germ and birth 

      Was shrunken hard and dry, 

And every spirit upon earth 

      Seemed fervourless as I. 

At once a voice arose among 

      The bleak twigs overhead 

In a full-hearted evensong 

      Of joy illimited; 

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, 

      In blast-beruffled plume, 

Had chosen thus to fling his soul 

      Upon the growing gloom. 

So little cause for carolings 

      Of such ecstatic sound 

Was written on terrestrial things 

      Afar or nigh around, 

That I could think there trembled through 

      His happy good-night air 

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew 

      And I was unaware. 

RIP Jane Patchett.

black cats and magic potions

I am doing some work on one of my manuscripts which involve the words death - cat and black in no particular order.

So I have been looking at cat things, particularly their association with witches. There is no doubt that was this the mid fourteenth century, I would definitely be considered a witch. Come on! The black cat (a familiar) - see Nancy above- who is one of a long string of black cats that I've had.

 The toads - a handy source of ingredient for magic potions

 The bird  ..............

 Maybe going to collect the post in my bird head started the odd rumour. But I rest my case.

One book I came across (published quite a while ago) was aimed at children, a sort of mix of fact about medieval magic and witches and "how to make" pages.
 How to dress as a witch.
How to make a shaman's mask.
How to make your own hex doll.

Where was the how to make your own spell? How to make your own invisibility cloak?
I expect health and safety would call in all those books if they could be bothered to trawl through the second hand bookshops and charity stalls.

Still, as Beezle (oddly not photographed this time- but search previous posts for endless reference pics.) and Goethe would say " Magic is believing in yourself, if you do that, you can make anything happen."

Anyway reading all that stuff made me think I could write a new story about a witch or a wizard who goes to a magical boarding school and carries a wand and wears an invisibility cloak. What do you think? I'm not sure it would be very successful. But I could present it to twelve publishers who will all turn it down.

Meanwhile with my new magic potion skills I've grown these stunning tulips

Another book I've been looking at - well listening to it on the radio - is Chris Packham's autobiography "Fingers in the Sparkle Jar." It is an amazingly honest account of his life. He was born in Southampton as was I and he used to fish for tadpoles etc on Southampton Common. It brought back all these similar memories of doing exactly the same thing. I had completely forgotten about the ornamental lakes on Southampton Common. As a special treat, on my mother's birthday, we would go to a stream in the New Forest where I'd collect caddis fly larvae and minnows and other strange aquatic things and put them in  a jamjar to take home to my Animal Hotel. We also got to eat Mum's birthday cake she made each year - sponge with jam and icing. I remember her sitting in a deck chair by the stream smoking a cigarette to keep away the midges. She didn't actually smoke but she lit the cigarette anyway. My parents kept cigarettes in a wooden ornamental box to hand out to guests who came to the house for drinks or supper. I think everyone smoked or pretended to in those days. She was a good sport and as far as I know never did anything untoward with a toad.

Nancy, who perhaps I should re-name Pyewacket. 

Black Cat

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 1926

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
 

larkin an barkin

I couldn't resist posting this drawing my daughter Chloe did (she'll tell you it's not finished)

of a wolf. I can feel another story coming ...............................

I have just returned from Hull where my book The Dog, Ray won the Hull Children's Literary award. I've never won an award and I was so shocked when they announced it that I couldn't think what to say. I had spent ages on my one hour "visit to schools talk" and my ten minute final "vote for this book" speech but not even contemplated an acceptance speech. All I could say was  it was like winning an Oscar!

Now I can understand why those people on X Factor burst into tears when they learn they've been chosen.

I think I won an ostrich egg for an art prize when I was about nine years. Fortunately it never hatched but I think it was a very old egg.

The first writing competition I ever entered was at about the same age and the prize was a pony!!! Yes - how irresponsible of the newspaper (I think it was the Daily Express) This is how ponies get to live in high rise flats. I'd always wanted a pony and thought this would be my chance. I didn't win. (I think to my parents relief)There must be a law against offering animals as prizes.

The Hull Children's book Award was an amazingly well run event and the best thing was that only children could vote. Yay! I think only children should vote for whether we stay or leave the E.U. I'm sure,given the facts, they'd have a clear and sensible view.
 Anyway I loved being in Hull and meeting the other authors shortlisted with me (we were five - and they are all fantastic writers which is why I hadn't prepared that speech.) They were David Solomons, Amanda Mitchison, Sally Nicholls and Joanna Nadin.

Hull is where the poet Philip Larkin lived for a long time, he was the librarian at Hull University and when you get off the train there is a statue of him. Hull is a city on the edge of things to quote some travel writer. The old part is so intriguing and atmospheric and I visited two museums one formally known as The Whaling Museum (here I'd like to add an RIP to The Artist formally known as Prince). The other on the slave trade. I feel a book coming .......

Add caption

The dog book of course was inspired by living with Beezle who unfortunately could not attend the awards though he told me he would be wearing his lucky socks. He was tired by all the excitement when I came home with my trophy and he reminded me that as he and Mark Twain would say "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."

I came home to a clarion call from this thrush who was sitting in the porch. Now I know he didn't fly in through the cat flap ... hello Pocket? Nancy?  But fortunately he lived to tell the tale (though not to me) I feel another book coming ..........

Pocket (quarter Bengal) denied all knowledge of it.

In my absence the tulips are opening - here is Flaming Parrot - a gorgeous confection of frills and colour.

And I also couldn't resist putting this picture up as I'm working on my fox book. He does not belong to me but was rescued by one of the fox rescue people. He, like Beezle, is inspiring the writing.

Because Philip Larkin was a librarian -  here is my opportunity to thank the librarians in Hull who are doing such a fantastic job of keeping our libraries open.

This is my favourite Larkin poem (apart from they F you up your mum and Dad). I've posted it before but I doubt anyone would bother to trail back through all those blog posts.}

At Grass by Philip Larkin

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances surficed
To fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies:
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

hooray ray

It's The Dog, Ray in the news again. 

 Firstly, here is a beautiful drawing of the inspiration for the book, the handsome Beezle, by Durer (my computer can't do the dots above the u} er - by my daughter Chloe. (my computer can't do the dots above the e }And here .......

 is the new beautiful cover for the book to be published in America by Candlewick Press in the Autumn.
Hooray!

 So here at Dog HQ we are very excited and Beezle is jumping for joy. He has been the subject of a 400 word document on being the inspiration for the book to be used in USA publicity. He says he'd like Tom Hiddleston to play him in the film.

 though Pixie can't see what all the fuss is about.

 It's that time of year again - the rooks building their nests. Two weeks ago there were only 6 nests in the rookery and now there are 40. Some of them have built semi-detached nests and they sit there proudly looking as if they are awaiting inspection. One or two of the nests look like something off Grand Designs. The trees are all linked together overhanging the drove and  when you walk underneath them (there's no where else you can walk but underneath) you get rained upon by little twigs. I left Harry the horse's feathers in the field behind them and pleased to see that most of them have gone and must now be lining the more exclusive nests - probably the ones in the gated community in the next door tree which is set slightly apart from the others.

 I'm on a bird theme now. My naughty ducks broke into the polytunnel and ate all my sweet peas that I'd just planted out. I'd been growing them since November and they were looking so good. Gardening can have its heartaches.

At least the shooting of the pheasants have stopped for the season. As Beezle and P.G.Wodehouse would say "The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or the wrong end of the gun."

I wanted to give this sad Thomas Hardy poem (below) ( thank you Jill )to the new gamekeeper but I think it would be an oxymoron.

 
Happy Easter dear Readers of this blog.

The Puzzled Game-Birds

They are not those who used to feed us 

When we were young—they cannot be - 

These shapes that now bereave and bleed us? 

They are not those who used to feed us, - 

For would they not fair terms concede us? 

- If hearts can house such treachery 

They are not those who used to feed us 

When we were young—they cannot be!

Thomas Hardy.

wolf moon

I awoke last night to hear the sound of some creature being dragged up the stairs. This is always accompanied by a low cat growling, announcing the trophy.

Pocket (quarter Bengal) was dreaming at the bottom of the bed, and I was hoping, at the top of the bed, that I was dreaming too.. It was obviously not a small animal. I imagined a large rabbit or a small deer. Nancy (the hunter) likes to wail as well which is then followed by the slow crunching of bones. In the morning I have to tiptoe around various organs left on the landing. This time I wasn't sure what animal it was.

 Beezel and I are very proud to announce here at Dog HQ  that our book The Dog, Ray has been shortlisted for the Hull Library Book Award. He wanted me to photograph him in a domineering pose over his symbol for my other book The Boy with the Tiger's Heart. This is vey exciting. They will announce the results in April and I (but sadly not Beezel) have been invited up for the awards. He said he'll have to teach me how to have that Oscar "oh I'm so glad I didn't win" look when they say who the winner is.

I thought I'd share the first sign of Spring. When I opened the lid to read the water meter there was this mother toad and her baby! (the small brown thing} She moved over and put a protective arm around it which I didn't photograph because it just looked like a pile of pebbles.

 All waiting is over now and things sorted which is great. As Beezel and Charles Reade(1814-1884)
said, giving advice on writing novels,  " make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait." I am now half way through an exciting story involving a fox. You'll all have to wait.

 Because Pixie is a wolfhound she is particularly effected by the Wolf Moon. I'm a little late in reporting this as the Wolf Moon is in January. But I love the names given to the full moons. They are, incase you don't know them -  and going through the months starting with January
Wolf Moon -Snow Moon -Worm Moon -Pink Moon -Flower Moon - Strawberry Moon -Buck Moon - Sturgeon Moon - Harvest Moon - Hunter's Moon - Beaver Moon - Cold Moon.

 One of the ducks ambled in thinking it was a Worm Moon but disappointed and a little miffed to see it was just a washing machine - not even reconciled with the fact he could see lots of other ducks in it when he looked at his reflection.

Wolf Moon

by Mary Oliver



Now is the season
of hungry mice,
cold rabbits,
lean owls
hunkering with their lamp-eyes
in the leafless lanes
in the needled dark;
now is the season
when the kittle fox
comes to town
in the blue valley
of early morning;
now is the season
of iron rivers,
bloody crossings,
flaring winds,
birds frozen
in their tents of weeds,
their music spent
and blown like smoke
to the stone of the sky;
now is the season
of the hunter Death;
with his belt of knives,
his black snowshoes,
he means to cleanse
the earth of fat;
his grey shadows
are out and running - under
the moon, the pines,
down snow-filled trails they carry
the red whips of their music,
their footfalls quick as hammers,
from cabin to cabin,
from bed to bed,
from dreamer to dreamer.

Planet earth is blue

RIP David Bowie.

Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do - but WAIT. 

For anyone who might have read the last post and were waiting for the Christmas greetings which I said I'd send if I had news from my publishers - well - obviously I didn't have news. And I still don't have news. However I will send a Christmas picture of Sam - our cousin's dog who came to visit.

 He was embarrassed by his costume and Pixie spent a lot of time giggling with Beezle

 So I am looking at waiting yet again. I know that all things come to him who waits - as long as you know what it is you are waiting for and don't miss it when it does arrive. (news from my  publishers)
I know that knowing how to wait is the great success of life. I've never really liked that word successful. It's the opposite end of the scale to failure - neither words I like or their connotations.
If you wait, all that happens is you get older.

 Here is Pixie waiting for supper.

 Here is me waiting for my cold to go.

As Beezle and T.S.Eliot would say "The faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting."

 I'm waiting for these tulips to flower

 I'm waiting for this particularly beautiful rose to open its petals.

The ducks are waiting to come out

I'm waiting for the sweet pea seeds to germinate and grow into these

and here is Harry waiting for someone to ride him.


And sure enough - as William Faulkner said - even waiting will end - if you can just wait long enough.

Waiting

The song I came to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing
and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true,
the words have not been rightly set;
only there is the agony
of wishing in my heart…..

I have not seen his face,
nor have I listened to his voice;
only I have heard his gentle footsteps
from the road before my house…..

But the lamp has not been lit
and I cannot ask him into my house;
I live in the hope of meeting with him;
but this meeting is not yet.

Rabindranath Tagore