The Rabbit, by a branch of red berries in a snowy field.

There was once a rabbit who dreamt of wild adventure, of liners sailing to Brazil, carrot fields in Norfolk, creameries in Normandy. I have a small life, he said. But before he died, he looked up at his beloved human & he realised that a life of love is never slight, not at all.

[Abraham] “Lincoln saw clearly that if we give up the principle of equality before the law, we have given up the whole game.”

—Letters from an American 🇺🇸 by @hcrichardson.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Cats secretly rule the world.. 😅

The English Beat had a less well known follow up to their hit “Mirror in the Bathroom”

“Kitty in the tub”

The fact that @annelouiseavery.bsky.social has continued to produce such thought-provoking, beautifully-constructed tales, full of wisdom, poise and grace, throughout her illness and ongoing recuperation, has always seemed a kind of miracle to me. Please support her on Patreon if you can.

The Snowshoe Hare had received a telegram from Dorset in England. He read it inside the warmth of a coffee shop, before joining the crowds again, he read it with tears stinging his eyes, he read it listening to shouts and distant gun shots, he read it with a fierce anger rising inside, he read it whilst his heart ached inside his chest, and then he folded the thin paper into a talisman to keep it safe. And he spoke the words aloud: "We are with you. England is with you. Europe is with you. History is with you. We are all Minnesotans until every last one of you is safe, until goodness and kindness prevails. – Old Fox."

The Elderly Squirrel

Rowland Hilder, (1905-1993), December Landscape, Nr Leigh, Kent.

The Elderly Squirrel had made a plan. In the mornings, he decided, he would walk to the village square & back. Not awfully far, but far enough. And he would make sure he had a proper conversation with someone too, Old Fox or the Doctor or Mrs Evans.

The moon rising over a snow-bound village

Candles on the Christmas spruce

Old Fox

That dusk, in the dark drawing room, Old Fox lit the beeswax candles on the spruce tree for the last time & the ghosts of the past & of those yet to come stepped forward, held in their spun-gold for a brief weighted moment, for the end of Yuletide is leaden with time, with the fugacity of all things

On the turn of Midnight, on the very bounds, the ragged rone of Christmastide, Old Fox had quietly left the sleeping cottage. Under the clear, cold January sky he went, lamp in one paw, withy basket in another, along the frozen field-paths up to the highest point in the Barrows. There he waited, patient and unmoving, until a lanterned party could be seen far below, moving slowly along the Sea Road; three travellers and their servants treading a glimmering path of starred light, a path so strange and so important, that it must be followed year on year on year without stop or stay. He signalled to the party and they rested a while until he reached them, and he gave them Twelfth Cake and wine, and talked with them in bounded, formal words, which must not change lest the story falter and snag its golden threads. When the morning star rose, they left and Old Fox watched them walk along that ancient Dorset road, past the holly and the Old Man's Beard, towards the still-dark village and beyond, their bright silks and pearls fading into the dawn light, until he could see only faint shadows on the hard, glittering ground.

Wolf was lying under the kitchen table, whimpering in a painful way. I'm never eating anything again, I'm never eating anything again, not one morsel. It really is your own fault, said Old Fox sternly, finishing off the Huntley and Palmers like that, and that entire round of cheddar. But he went to make him a mint tisane and found him a hot water bottle for his tummy, and by midday, Wolf was bounding down the village lanes again, in the mud and the cold Yule air.

A top-10 list can't contain all the great TV of 2025 TV critic David Bianculli says 2025 offered so many great shows he couldn't narrow them down. But in a year of intense TV, Netflix's haunting series Adolescence, stands apart.

TV critic David Bianculli says 2025 offered so many great shows he couldn't narrow them down. But in a year of intense TV, Netflix's haunting series Adolescence, stands apart. n.pr/499a2HE

The Twenty-fourth WIndow. Christmas Eve in Old Fox's cottage and everyone was sitting by the parlour fire having tea and telling stories – stories about winters long ago, about the Silver-tongued Nightingale of Kraków and Brave Robin Redbreast and Christ's Harsh Garland, about the golden lights which flickered on Barrowdown on St Stephen's Day and the French princess, in satins tattered and torn, who came to the village on a cold December night in 1791. When it was Wolf's turn, he had an extra big spoonful of rum trifle and began a tale which they all knew and loved. "When I was a little wolf, I would be sent out into the snows to call Grandfather Frost and his granddaughter, Snow Maiden, in for supper. Sometimes I would have to howl for a long time, until the Christmas moon rose high over the church, before they heard me. Then they'd sweep in, all magnificent with their silver crowns and their blue silks, and they would take the best chairs and the best plates, and they would eat with us - borscht, they liked, and all the old favourites - vatrushka and pirozhki and coulibiac - and gooseberry kissel and my mother's rice pudding. When they'd had their fill, they would stand up and bless each one of us with a different gift. My brother had the gift of standing tall and my father the gift of tears and my sister had the gift of forgetting." "What was your gift, Wolf," asked Pine Marten. And Wolf suddenly faltered, the memory falling away like a cliff crumbling into the sea. But Old Fox came in as sharp as a pike and pulled him back. "They gave him the gift of love, Pine Marten, the gift of love," he said, and tucked a blanket over Wolf, who had finally had his fill of stories for that night, at least. "Merry Christmas, my loves, and to all who think of us from afar," said Old Fox, raising his glass of elderberry wine, "Merry Christmas one and all! Merry Christmas one and all!"

Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden

Old Fox

#OldFoxAdventCalendar

The Twenty-third Window. Once upon a time, there was a green-eyed Tabby Cat who ran a bookshop by the Christ Church gate of Canterbury Cathedral. It was a marvellous place, four stories high, with treasures on every shelf & free buttered toast, plum cake & hot sweet tea for all who visited. At Christmas, it glittered with lights & its window was a wonder of the city. That evening, the night before Christmas Eve, the Tabby Cat locked up at half-past six. She was very weary and apart from her usual afternoon nap in the little attic room where she had her office, had been on her feet since six that morning. Hundreds of books had been suggested, bought, wrapped and paid for. The old-Victorian iron safe built into the wall by the front desk was a treasure trove of notes and coins and cheques, and the account ledger had increased by a considerable number of pages. She stood for a moment outside in the street looking up at the stars in the dark sky. It was very cold and there was an odd wildness and elemental magic in the air, a glimmer of an old, old Christmas. She thought of Becket preparing his sermon for Christmas Day a mere stone's throw away, and shivered. She had a sudden urge to leave Canterbury and decided to drive to Faversham, to an old smugglers' inn at Hollowshore in the salt marshes. She used to go there with her father, who died a few years before. They'd have a slap-up fish and chip supper and sit by the fire and talk for hours. She wasn't sure that her motorcar would make it along the rough track, but that was where her Christmas would start – at the very edge of the Kentish land, where curlews wade and the sea laps on the Holy Shore, as a Viking king had called it, and Old Father Time falters in his relentless course.

Canterbury in the Snow by Ernest Uden.

The Tabby Cat by Rachel Stribbling.

Rowland Hilder

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🦊🎄🎥Old Fox's Christmas Film Advent Calendar. In honour of Old Fox's great love of the cinema, each day during Advent, I'll be sharing one of twenty-four interesting and rewarding films to watch over the festive period.🎥🎄🦊 Christmas Eve. The Bishop's Wife (1947). In my opinion, there's no finer film to watch on Christmas Eve. Cary Grant stars as Dudley, a devastatingly charming and debonair angel. His mission is to help an Episcopal Bishop, Henry Brougham, played by David Niven, who has rather lost his way in his single-minded determination to build a new cathedral. Trouble ensues when Dudley begins to fall deeply in love with the Bishop's neglected wife, Loretta Young, foreshadowing another one of my favourite films, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. Based on the novel by Robert Nathan, this is a witty and profoundly otherworldly film, shot through with a solemnity and melancholy which is personified in Young's ethereal and moving performance. Her kindness to everyone around her, to her friends and her family and to strangers, her innate shining goodness and humanity, eclipses both Dudley and the Bishop, and in that, I think, lies the true message of the film.

#OldFoxChristmasFilms

Timeline cleanser. Lily purring. Sound on.

Day Twenty One: The Green Knight (2021). For the Solstice, this eerie reinterpretation of the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is a film of arresting beauty, anxiety and strangeness, both in the sense of the violent uncanny which orders it, and of the marked otherness, of race, of gender, of place, which guides the narrative - upturning and subverting the grinding myths & ancient tropes of old England one by one, blow by slinging blow. This is a piece of fascinating, visceral magic, which is barely contained onscreen. Some people have hated it. I absolutely loved it, not least for its inclusion of Gawain's gentle care of the fragmented, violated being of St Winifred, whose freezing-cold shrine I've swum in, and a dark, rusted-iron-voiced, psychopompal Reynard the Fox.

The Green Knight film poster

Reynard the Fox

#OldFoxChristmasFilms

The Fourteenth Window. The Christmas of 1930, Sea Otter had decided to organise a spot of carol singing in the harbour to raise money for the new motor lifeboat. He'd marshalled a good group. They were mostly, of course, from the chapels – some very skilled singers, all very enthusiastic. They met at the Secretary of the Art Club's little white-box cottage on Street-an-Pol, agreed the set, readied the thermoses, distributed collecting and biscuit tins, draped bright woollen scarves and pulled on warm hats and gloves. At half-past three, as the lamps were being lit and the gulls were calling over the darkening sea, they walked down to the wharf, formed a semi circle, and began to sing. The carols were both ancient and modern, and had rather an international character. One, "A minuit fut fait un réveil", was a French carol, another, "The Rocking Carol", was Czech, translated in 1920 by the great liturgist Percy Dearmer. But the ones which drew the most change in the tin, the most applause and swelling hearts and hanky-dabbed eyes were the old Cornish "curls" – ending with "Hellesveor", which every member of the audience joined in singing – their voices deep and cracked, young and old, tired and joyful rising above the harbour and over the waves, far over the wild Atlantic swell until they became as one with that clear, still night of Christmas, 1930.

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The Thirteenth Window. Since being taken up to London to see the Ballets Russes perform Stravinsky's ballet Le Renard, the Little Girl had wanted to learn to dance. She didn't tell anyone, because her legs were still weak and they ached unbearably if she stood or walked for too long. But she dreamt of the costumes and the music and the way that Diaghilev's dancers could share the deepest hurts and the highest comedy and the most heartbreaking of passions without a single word. One morning, when Old Fox came to call, she told him, in a rush, and he understood and made her feel that it was perfectly reasonable and they spent the whole of elevenses (Florentines and sweet tea) talking about Alice Nikitina and Serge Lifar and Nina Verchinina, and how wonderful the dancer playing Renard the fox had been. Eleven days later, on Christmas Eve, the Little Girl opened a beautifully wrapped parcel, all pale grey-green velvet ribbons and silvery tissue paper. Inside was an exquisite pair of white satin ballet shoes, made by Elmina of Paris. The Little Girl hugged them to her for a long moment, then put them very carefully and very reverently back in their box.

#OldFoxAdventCalendar

The Thirteenth Window. It was Little Yule, St Lucie's Day and according to the old reckoning, the shortest day of the year, the turning-point of the light. Let us walk up together onto Maygad Hill just before dawn, with the icy wind whipping in from the sea and the snow hard and frozen beneath our boots. Look down, across the sweep of ridge-and-furrowed fields – do you see Old Fox's cottage? Ablaze with candles in the winter darkness. Candles in the parlour window cheering visitors along the lane, candles in rows of painted green Majolica in the Morning Room, each staff shaped as a ruffed and doubleted courtier, candles in the winters-worn Männleinleuchter sticks glimmering on the library desk, candles in the High Attic, fixed hard in sailors' lanterns, beaconing the sea road, candles on the kitchen table, scarlet red & golden orange, friendly rushlights by the chatter & the morning porridge, candles in the bedrooms in sweet porcelain dishes decorated with ivy & winter ferns, & candles in the drawing room, the oldest part of the cottage, blazing in the Christmas spruce's arms, glising the glass baubles, and a dozen beeswax rowels, as sweet as roses, on a candelabra wheel, made in the local smithy centuries back, braced high on the ancient oak beams like a crown of gildy stars in the Midwinter sky.

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The Thirteenth Window. The scene: the steps of a brightly-painted circus wagon, early morning, a fallow field near Long Bredy in Dorsetshire. The characters: a small patch-eyed dog, known throughout the noble cities of Europe as a supreme acrobat and juggler, and a girl, a dancer and accordion player, dark hair, dark eyes, holding a pack of tattered cards. It's St Lucie's day, she said, let's read our fortunes. Supposed to be last night, but it's still dark. Pick one, go on. The dog reached out a paw and chose. The girl turned the card over. It was a picture of a honeyed stone house, with a tower and a balcony. That looks like that place we saw near Lyon, he said with a big sigh. I'd like to settle down one day, leave the circus. Garden. Sleep. Eat. Let's do another one, then, said the girl, see when you can do that. The dog picked again, a card half-hidden in the middle. The girl pulled it out with a flourish and gasped. Look it's the ship – that means soon! The dog spun round in happiness - soon, soon! Lazy living for me! Do one for you, now. The girl shuffled the pack, closed her eyes and chose two, right next to each other. The first was a beautiful lady in a crimson velvet dress and a golden cloak made of satin of Cypress. That's me, she said, a great beauty! And they both giggled. Next, said the dog. It was the sun, blazing in the centre of the card, blazing in the darkness of that long-ago winter morning. Ooh, said the girl, that's the best one – it means I'm going to be the most famous dancer in the whole world – headliner every time! Come and see me in my French castle, though, said the dog. Course, said the girl, won't forget my best friend! And somewhere, crowned in light, St Lucie looked down on the scruffy pair in their little wagon in that muddy Dorset field, and sent all the blessings that a saint can send, which are considerable blessings indeed.

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The Twelfth Window. Now the magnificent spruce tree in the old hall was decorated, at Vesper-tide, in the grey-blue shadows of dusk, Old Fox would perform his nightly candle-teening. With a long taper, he would light the dozens of beeswax candles clipped to the branches in little brass holders. One by one, they flared brilliantly in the darkness, as they always had done in Old Fox's cottage – back, back, back though rustling thatch and creaking wood and embering fire, back through the nesting birds and the blossoming orchards and the snows and the springs and the summers and the autumns and the births and the deaths and the tragedies and the joys of centuries, back, back, back, further, further, further, to when the Midwinter fires were built on the high downs and songs were sung of fight-lacs and silver-scaled dragons and cups of gold and the great ruined cities of giants which once scattered the Dorset lands.

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The Eleventh Window. Old Fox was going up to London, and Babcia had gone to see him off at the train station. Afterwards, she walked back to the village square to do a little shopping for the day. At the grocers, which was very festive with Christmas trees and garlands and wreaths for sale and fancy tins of Huntley and Palmers, she bought some coffee and laundry soap and a Fuller's chocolate cake, and was just fastening her purse and preparing to leave when the owner emerged from the back and asked if he might possibly have a quick word. He was a tall, broad man with dark curly hair and big bristling eyebrows. Old Fox always said he could play a marvellous Mayor of Casterbridge if he ever felt inclined to join the Hardy players. He was gruff but kind and had a very sweet tooth, which was mirrored in the inventory of his shop, which had one of the best selections of cakes and sweets and chocolates in Dorset. Yes, said Babcia, looking sternly over her lunettes. I was just wondering, Madam, said the Shop Keeper, clearing his throat, if there, were, um, any, um, delicacies from your Poland that you would like us to keep. I asked my supplier and he said they can get most regular things, I believe, from the big cities. We at the store, want you and your grandson to feel most welcome, you see, and I knows how sometimes you miss things from back home, even when you're settled right in, as you are, with Professor Fox. Babcia looked up at the Shop Keeper, who was mopping a bead of sweat from his brow, and extended a paw. That is very good of you, she said, I will consider this very carefully and bring you a list. And she managed to say goodbye, and walk across the Square and then across the Green and down Lace street, until she was enfolded by the rambling scarlet-hawed hedges and arching trees of their own quiet lane, and could have a little cry, blowing her nose with a tiny frilled hankie embroidered with snowdrops. For kindness of that kind to immigrants and people and …

Babcia

The Village Shop

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The Tenth Window. It was just before six & Dorchester was deserted apart from Bear, who was unlocking the church hall to set up the soup kitchen for the day. It was bitterly cold and the North wind was howling angrily up and down the High Street, but he turned the oil heaters on & lit a fire in the old grate too, albeit more for jollity than warmth. At seven, the doors opened to a long, shivering queue, and there were piles of soft, woollen blankets & well-knitted socks and jumpers to hand out & sturdy bags of coal & Christmas sweets and parcels for the young & old, & the heartiest breakfasts in the whole of Dorsetshire. The image is a linocut portrait of Bear.

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The Dragon of Kensington High Street. Illustration by Debra Macfarlane.

The Three Bears by Arthur Rackham.

The Chelsea Palace.

The Ninth Window: The Dragon of Kensington Church Street, accompanied by his best friend, a lady who ran a charming flower shop on the High street, had just hailed and climbed into a cab.

St. Nicholas Eve. Peter had been sent to bed very early that night. He had an awful cold, and, because of his diabetes, the Doctor had been called. Bed rest, he'd said, plenty of fluids, just bread and milk for supper. I'll call back first thing in the morning. And don't worry, he'll be fine, he said to Peter's mother, who always did worry, with some reason. Peter didn't feel that bad, but his nose was red and sore, and his head throbbed and his eyes hurt when he moved them around. He fell deeply asleep at seven, and then woke suddenly at midnight, not knowing what day or time it was. He felt rather feverish and giddy. The room was bright with moonlight, and he knelt on the bed and opened the curtains of the little window which looked out across the sleeping hamlet and beyond to the downs and the sea. He heard an owl calling and another replying politely from the far woods. Then, suddenly, the unexpected clip-clop of a horse, the delicate jangle of bells, the creak of carriage wheels. Descending the steep road from Gleydestow farm, was a wagon, gaily painted in bright reds and blues and pulled by a silver horse with a long silver mane, threaded with silver stars. Holding the reins with capable paws was a white fox with bright amber eyes. At the turning to the hamlet, the fox slowed his horse, and looked directly up at Peter for a long moment, and then carried on down the hill into the heavy mist which had risen from the frozen fields. Peter opened the window and tried follow its course, but to no avail. The Newcomer, he said to himself, excitement bubbling up inside, the Newcomer is back, he's back! Christmas is near, Christmas is near! And he closed the latch, drank some water, tucked himself back into bed, and fell straight to sleep. When he woke the next day to his mother and the cheerful Doctor, smelling of cold air and iodoform, he felt as though he'd slept for days. I feel fine now, said Peter, my nose isn't even running any more. My word, said the Doc…

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The Dragon of Kensington Church Street (illustration by Debra McFarlane)

The Red Squirrel (photograph by Mark Sisson)

St Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, 1904. Historic England.

Advent Sunday & London was bitterly cold and wreathed in a damp fog which smelt of underground rivers and coal smoke. The Dragon of Kensington Church Street, however, was exceedingly well wrapped up in a Sèvres blue muffler and matching mittens.

It was half past six and pitch black in the hamlet when Peter woke. From his bed, he could still see a cold, white scatter of stars & there was noble Jupiter high and kingly and benevolent in the west. His mother had lit a fire in the little grate and he quickly washed and dressed and packed his satchel. Marbles and cigarette cards were as vital as his Latin homework, and were placed and checked with care. He had a good selection of cards to swap that week, courtesy of the Doctor, who always saved them up for him. He clattered downstairs to the kitchen and breakfast: porridge with cream and warm, white doorsteps and butter. His mother's breakfasts were always the best. She had the knack, like Old Fox and the Bears, of making even the most humble food taste delicious. When he wheeled his bicycle to the village road, the sky was lightening into that very particular blue of late November mornings and the grass was stiff and glittering with frost. "Be careful on the ice," called his Mother, and he called back, "I will!" and he was off, careering down the hill, the magnificent view of the village and the downs and sea before him, his breath billowing, face stung by the cold – oh, what it is to be young and happy on the sacred edge of Christmastide!

After the storm, Wolf had gone for a long tramp in the woods and along the rushing ditches and the boggy slade by Brimstone farm. He, alone of all the walkers that day, full-entered those enchanted November lands, their wistful, unappreciated, delicate beauty veiled in smoke and mists and soft rain, blood-scarlet berries pricking the dun-greys and the dun-browns and the marish greens.

As the church bell sounded the last deep toll of the eleven, the wet, mizzling rain suddenly stopped and in the silence, a blackbird began to sing in the apple orchard by the memorial. Standing in his old great coat, still flecked with mud, the Doctor remembered another little blackbird calling in a wood where bodies lay. These were songs of God, he thought, longing for a cigarette, of a God who fell in strips of light in cottage parlours when the telegrams were read in trembling hands, in the piping larks who rose above the shelling, of the sudden singing of the Welshmen along the trench, rich and dark and as holy as Christmas night.

Opinion: Remembering Bob Trumpy — NFL great, broadcaster, and life-saver Bob Trumpy has died. While he leaves a fine legacy as a Cincinnati sportscaster, his best moment might have been the two hours he spoke with a desperate and depressed woman who called into his show.

Bob Trumpy has died. While he leaves a fine legacy as a Cincinnati sportscaster, his best moment might have been the two hours he spoke with a desperate and depressed woman who called into his show. n.pr/3WOlNh0