Tom Cox's Blog, page 10

A Visit To Owl Club (And Other Recent Bird Adventures)

Pete and Lady Jane Grey



I wore my best shoes to my local Owl Club. Who wouldn’t? I’d only been there a matter of seconds, though, and I was already putting them in jeopardy. An owl had done a poo very close to the entrance to Owl Club and I was weaving, last minute, to dodge it, swivelling and swerving in a move arguably more impressive than any I’d pulled last week at my birthday party

Summer West Country Tour Dates

I've decided to do a little spoken word tour this summer, where I'll be chatting about my books, the countryside, my cats, and reading a few excerpts from my new memoir Close Encounters Of The Furred Kind. Dates are as follows:

Exmouth Festival (in Exmouth Library): 6pm, 22nd May. Details here.

Devizes Books: 7pm, 30th May. Contact the shop for tickets.

Totnes RSPCA (fundraising event): 7pm,

A rainy walk in Derbyshire

My latest Guardian column.

Write-walking, notebooks, jackdaws, the language of the countryside and zombie snakes

My latest Guardian column.

The End Of Vandalism by Tom Drury

In Britain, at the very least, Tom Drury might just be modern America’s last great lost living novelist: an astute chronicler of the shrugging, unintentionally hilarious exchanges that go on in small towns. If you’ve enjoyed the fiction of Richard Russo or Annie Proulx and, like me, you wanted to enjoy the fiction of Garrison Keillor more you’ll surely love his long out of print 1994 debut,

If you think I'm the kind of person who'd go on a walk and find some seaweed resembling a zombie snake and fail to adopt it, you are mistaken

If you think I'm the kind of guy who'd go on a walk and find some seaweed resembling a zombie snake and fail to adopt it, you are mistaken

Recent Sheep Photos I Have Taken

The reason this sheep I met on a walk the other week on Dartmoor looks sceptical is because I'd just told it that it was the best sheep of all time.





I shall name this photograph I took on my walk yesterday 'The Easily Offended Sheep And Her Young Family'.



"I might just be a sheep but one day when I'm rich and important I'm going to go to that island and stay in that weird art deco hotel

Six Conversations I've Had About Devon History With A Small Poodle Called Billy

Me: "The road is beginning to get very steep now, as we get closer to the moor. You'll notice that it's a very acidic environment up there on the highest points, which has made farming impossible on the majority of the terrain for the last eight centuries or so. Can you feel the slight change in the air and altitude already?"

Billy: "Dogs eat sticks!"











Me: "This is the Dart, one of

Helping drift the ponies of Dartmoor

My February 2015 column for The Guardian's Life And Style section.