July Newsletter

Exciting news! All three books are finally here and they are now proudly displayed in the shop. They all turned out to be little treasures and the art inside is so colourful and lovely.

Book Three is available to purchase at our shop in York and also from our web site if you would like to read the first chapter for free please

I'm having a little book signing day on Saturday August 9th. If you happen to be in York please pop in and say hi :)

And now I will as always, pass you along to my friends Quentin and Robin who are preparing for a summer adventure.

Well hello there,

I hope you are enjoying a fine summer basking under the shade of a tree somewhere nice and fancy.  Warm sunshine is always such a tonic, a tonic which, unfortunately, I’ve been unable to sip so far this year as the dark grey clouds just seem to be persisting.  The garden is a lovely green and the roses are just glowing, but mercy me, it does feel dab living in the gloom when the calendar says it's almost August.

Robin and I are currently preparing for our summer travels, we will be making our way down to Newstead Abbey for Aunt Millicent's birthday next week and there has beena lot to do.  I've received word that the potting shed is being spruced up in preparation for the festivities and everyone is eager to meet Robin (my days taking center stage are long past at this point). I must admit I'm quite lookingforwardto a bit of a ramble in the hedgerows, I just hope the rainholds off.

We visited a lovely garden a couple of weeks ago and I managed to find a rose bush there that reminded me so much of my old home at the top of the field overlooking the sea. Jayne kindly arranged for a small plant to be brought to our current residence and has planted it near to the front door, when it grows, I'm planning to take a nice dust bath under it and write a bit of poetry, weather permitting.

getting back to matters at hand, I’ve drawn a map of our journey, and there are some lovely little places along the way where we plan stay the night.  Robin is especially excited to visit the badger set as he is sure there will be ancient treasure in the walls, but my money is on Rabbit Lodge, it’s in a blackberry patch and I’ve been promised a nice slice of pie.

I'll be sure to keep notes on our travels and Robin's bringing along his camera, so we will have lots to share in late August when we're home gain and rested.

Until then, toodle pip and keep that beak held high!

Quentin.

Hello again friends its so nice to see you all again so soon,

Thank you for letting me write in your copies of Jayne's new book, it made me feel very special and I did my very best to make sure my handwriting wasn't too scratchy, but I'm not sure if you can read it.

Did Quentin tell you that we are going off on a grand adventure? I don't think I can sleep very well tonight, not because I’m not sleepy...because I am...but because I am filled with the fizzy feeling of excitement. I'm going to be a real explorer like the kind who discovered the ancient cities in the Amazon! Would you like to go to the Amazon? I don't think I'm brave enough to go there because I saw in my book on it that there are bird eating spiders and I do like spiders, but not the kind that eat birds, and I'm not going to think of them any more because then I reallywon'tsleep a wink.

I packed the necklace I made for Aunt Milicent into my trunk, a hedgehog is going to take it down to Newstead Abbey for us because it's too heavy to carry and he was going down there anyway to visit family.  So today I have to finish packing my things and I’m trying to not put too much in, only the necessities like notebooks and pencils and biscuits and my favourite blanket because I like to lay that down and sleep on top of it and that's because it smells like home.

I’m especially excited for next Tuesday because that's the day we will be in the hedgerow near Perlethorpe and we will be spending the night with Mr Arthur Braithwaite an older gentleman badger who has some Roman remains in his set. Jayne says when she was a little girl she read a children's book about a badger who had something similar, I wonder if that was him?  But that would make him very very old, almost as old as the Romans and if he was that old he would probably live in a museum behind glass.

I took a picture of my trunk for you, so you can see all my treasures inside.  Please wish us luck on our adventure and thank you to the nice lady who sent the picture of the troll to me,  I'm not scared anymore because he’s made out of wood so he couldn't get about fast enough to catch me, and besides he’s just a picture so I'm quite safe.

Bye bye

Robin