Wednesday 1 July 2015

crows and shows

This wonderful photograph has inspired me to do some work on Harry


You can see from the photo below that he is full of vim and vigour


and has agreed to let me do a show on him provided he can have a little snooze first. In a previous life Harry was indeed a circus horse he tells me. Here he is reminiscing about the glitter and the sawdust and the fancy costumes.

As Beezle and Ernest Hemmingway would say " The circus is the only ageless delight that you can buy for money. Everything else is supposed to be bad for you. But the circus is good for you. It's the only spectacle I know that, while you watch it, gives the quality of a truly happy dream."

He shot himself didn't he? 
And ironically his father shot himself as well.


Beezle musing on the circus He told me he used to do an act with a lion. I''m not sure I believe him.

And talking of horses I have just finished my new book The Dark Horse.  It's about a shape shifting water horse that Harry is definitely not. The story is told in the voice of a cat which just so happens to be Death's cat. Well - everyone needs a companion don't they? There is no guarantee as yet that my publisher Hot Key Books will publish it - but we have fingers, paws and hooves crossed.

My second book The Dog, Ray is definitely going to be published. More on that later. It's coming out in September and has a glorious cover done by the same artist Levente Szabo who did the cover of The Boy with the Tiger's Heart. I am very lucky. I hope they publish the Dark Horse if not just for the cover which I can already imagine with a black horse, a Cat and a Raven on it.

I just had to include this picture of a fasciated foxglove in my garden. I love it when Nature takes a hand and creates some madness. It's like the foxglove is going to Ascot Races and felt it needed a special hat.






It seems that after caring for the rook Cornelia my name is down on the Rook Helpline for the South of England, and I received a phone call last week from a woman who had found a Crow with calcium deficiencies. I was intrigued as to how you'd know that a crow was lacking in calcium but apparently they have white feathers amongst the black. This was a young crow which had been found in a courtyard throwing itself up against some French windows. I was excited at the prospect of helping a crow and we arranged a hand over spot in the B and Q car park. But best for the crow, at the last minute the woman found someone else on Facebook who had a crow with the same problem so they put them together. It's amazing who and what you can find on Facebook. (in joke)



Pixie was relieved. She thought I spent far too much time with the rook(and on Facebook) and not enough time throwing balls for her to retrieve. She's in training to be a ball girl at Wimbledon.



Crow's Fall

by Ted Hughes



When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.

He got his strength flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked.

At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.

But the sun brightened -
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

"Up there," he managed,
"Where white is black and black is white, I won."