The Christmas Mouse

The sky was blue and black with night and the grass was seized up with frost. Squirrels and badgers, foxes and voles adopted a retiring attitude faced with this bitter cold. They snuggled in their warrens until they were as warm as toast, and passing chills only cooled them into slumber. Small cars purred down

The ‘Ewesful’ Idiot

A flock of fat, white cotton balls are plodding around the field. The sun is bright and a little spicy in fact, for mid-October at least. It heats the Christmas out of my bones and lets me dwell on summer. We enjoyed the view out on the field back then, through pollen-hazed vision and beams

The Pheasant

It’s one of those childhood memories, half-dreamed, bathed in a blue glint of reminiscence. I was perhaps seven or eight years old – a strong-willed, sensitive child with a penchant for red-faced rages followed by inconsolable weeping. I remember the pheasant now, through the cool glass of the window on that February morning – or