arthur conan doyle
The floor of the kitchen in the house I rent is hard-worn and wooden, with dark splotches and a slightly uneven texture to it. I’m very fond of it, but when it comes to feeding my four cats it can be both a blessing and a curse. On the
coastal erosion
It’s cold and wet when I arrive at Dunwich: miscellaneous fragments of tree and bin and fence are flying through the air and everyone who is or has been outside - which is essentially me, a bold crow and about three other people - looks like they’ve just
badgers
The tawny owls in the trees around my house have been in fine voice recently. Usually, there’s a fairly even split between the sexes - the high-pitched female tawnies with their “to-wits” (which is actually more like “to-WEEEEEET” in reality) and the more bassy and insouciant male tawnies with
countryside
“What’s this?” I asked my dad. He’d just walked into the living room with several canvases under his arm. On top of the pile was a watercolour painting featuring Winnie The Pooh and Piglet walking through a dark underpass hand-in-hand while three somewhat grotesque, mean-faced men in trenchcoats
boscastle
I was walking along the clifftops a couple of miles west of Boscastle in Cornwall last month when a dog rocketed out of a farmer’s field directly into my path, with a look of rare industry and resolve. I don’t know exactly what make of dog it was,
close encounters of the furred kind
There had been quite a bit of speculation amongst my dad’s mates at swimming concerning when his black toenail would fall off. Looking at how precariously it was hanging there on their last swim before Christmas, his friends Pat and Malcolm suggested that today could be the big day.
black dogs
I was waiting for a call from the vet to find out if my cat had survived an operation to save her life so I took myself out of the house and onto Dartmoor. It was no sane weather to be on the moor, but it felt like the right
animals
I was trying unsuccessfully to find some picture hooks so I thought I’d have a look in a drawer in my garage. I’d not been in there for several weeks and, by opening the door, I managed to disturb a sleeping cat. I’m not sure who was
Avalon
For my first Somerset walk since moving to the West Country I chose the best day of skies all year. There's a lot of big talk about the skies in the Fens but in 13 years of living in East Anglia I saw nothing like these. Here, in
bonfires
Although lifelong bloodthirsty tyrants, my cats Ralph and Shipley will often go through long phases of not killing another living creature. Born into the same litter, yet roughly as different in appearance as a stunted lion would be from an angry monitor lizard, they are both now 14: an age
countryside
Old King Idiot And His Goose Largely due to the seemingly endless reign of The Sexy Queen, it had been aeons since the country had experienced a genuine simpleton as its sovereign, so when Old King Idiot took over he was a great talking point among the population. “Old King
countryside
For a year, maybe longer, I saw a tower in my dreams, again and again, looming over a giant rock face, in the mist. I'd seen it many times in reality too but it wasn't until I went walking in Derbyshire with my parents back in