Halloween

I liked the music of Belle and Sebastian. Dave preferred the smell of dead crows.

Tom Cox

26 Oct 2025 — 12 min read

Had to clamber over a barbed wire fence, rip my coat and trespass to get a photo of this folkloric monster pretending half-successfully to be a tree a couple of Octobers ago. I have no regrets.

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THE THINNED VEIL

He arrived at the platform of the tiny village station, perfectly on time, and there she was, standing waiting for him like a parcel. It was late October, and a vitriolic wind was relishing the roaming spots the trees had selflessly donated to it via the shedding of their leaves. The clocks had just changed. Some clocks had become more cynical about life yet simultaneously more sentimental. Others had simply ceased being so pointlessly, perplexingly large. Whatever the case, the changes all seemed for the better, as far as she could tell. She had always liked this time of year. Of course she had. She was cool, and cool people liked autumn.

He was not cool. He liked July.

“What are you going as, this Halloween?” she asked him.

My Dad, And The Toad Who Lived In His Shoe

It was 2011 and I had driven up from Norfolk, where I was living at the time, to Nottinghamshire to see my mum and dad. Not long after I arrived, my dad took me to one side. “TOM, CAN I HAVE A WORD?” he said. When my dad says, “TOM,

Memories Of The Time I Rented Some Leaping Deer For £20,00 Per Calendar Month

A couple of years ago, during one of the many times I was hunting far and wide for a house to rent, the confusing listing pictured above kept coming up in my search. It prompted many questions: How could anyone afford to pay £20,000 PCM to rent ANYTHING to

THE MAGIC ROOM

Subscribe now I'm reposting this piece I wrote a little while ago about my mum and dad's art, which some you might have seen, but many of you won't, since I also wanted to let you know about a few bits and bobs the

A Review Of Some Of The Contents Of My House By A Domesticated Moorland Pixie

“Pixy/Piskie: This is the standard term in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset for a fairy, though many writers from the early 19th Century onwards have insisted that the two races are quite distinct.. (A pixie’s) best-known characteristic is causing people to lose their way, even in a familiar neighbourhood: