Tom Cox's books include Villager, 1983, the Sunday Times top ten bestseller The Good, The Bad And The Furry, the Wainwright Prize-longlisted 21st-Century Yokel & Help The Witch, which won a Shirley Jackson Horror Writing award. He lives in Devon.
Writing
Someone turned all the lights out in the sky on my final journey back to The River House. At least, I hoped it would be the final journey, just as I’d hoped every one of the previous three journeys would be the final journey, only to be proved wrong,
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The Black Tree was what everyone in the village called it. Nobody alive remembered a time when it hadn’t been there or hadn’t been black. A perplexing runt amongst its tall confident siblings, it never got bigger, never went into leaf, never died, never withered. It was a
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Melbury Beacon isn’t quite the highest place in Dorset, but, at 263 metres above sea level, it’s one of the big boys and, much like the man I walked to it with this time last year, probably has no trouble seeing when it stands at the back at
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* A lot is happening locally and it’s not always easy to keep up. Some rescue hedgehogs were released and have been breeding industriously. A lady in the village up the hill witnessed a large aggressive rescue hedgehog push a smaller, more diffident rescue hedgehog into her garden pond, in
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The cattle are in the field across the river again. Larger, more diverse characters than last year’s lot. They can pick out the sound of the farmer’s jeep and they moo rowdily, impatiently, as soon as they hear it progressing down the lane with their dinner. The uncontainability
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This summer has raced away like no summer before it. I don’t think it’s just age. Everything has been tumbling relentlessly forward in a cloud of stirred dust, and I can’t quite see through to the centre. I notice events I want to go to but often
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When I stay at my mum and dad’s house in Nottinghamshire, I sleep in what used to be the main bedroom - the only real bedroom - of the house. Ever since my parents got the place extended early this century and I graduated from some big cushions on
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* The first thing to say is probably that when I’m writing about music and its extended universe in 1993, I’m really writing just as much about 1992, plus about 1991, and 1990, and 1989, and maybe even 1988. And about 1994 (but not about 1995, because everything had
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* I have been in a huge, even-more-time-consuming-than-I’d-thought-it-would-be phase of finetuning my record collection recently. I’d call it a spring clean, if it hadn’t gone on since long before spring and I felt totally confident that it is going to be 100% finished before summer. Part of my
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Writing
“You did that,” said Pete, pointing at the headless rabbit having the last of its throat torn out by jackdaws. “I told you you shouldn’t have said it. It was you! I bet you feel terrible now.” We were on the Isle of Portland, in South Dorset, and as