@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: Christmas Eve!"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Old Fox, Wolf, Pine Marten)
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: Christmas Eve!"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Old Fox's Cottage)
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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
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The Twenty-fourth Window. Christmas Eve and in Old Fox's cottage, all was merry. From High Attic to Parlour, every room, every nook and cranny was filled with light and bustle and food. Such food! Bethmännchen and Fernby & Evans florentines and amber tart and ginger fairings and sugar plums and Old Fox's fiery rum trifle. And the snow was still falling, falling on golden thatch and on the dark fallowed fields, on the ancient gnarled apple trees in the orchards and the ancient guard-oak at the end of that happy little lane in the depths of Dorsetshire.
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twenty-third Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Tabby Cat)
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twenty-third Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Ermine, Sea Otter)
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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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The Twenty-third Window. Sea Otter and Ermine were sitting on an ianthine-coloured sofa in the artistic, book-filled, freesia-scented drawing room of Ermine's small but very pretty Georgian cottage situated on an estuary in Cornwall. The sofa was extremely comfortable, but they were both perched on the edge, listening intently to the wireless. The Children's Hour was just finishing. "It's five to," said Sea Otter. "Not long now! " "I can't bear it," said Ermine, "It's so terrifying." She gripped his paw. The music had ended. The next programme had begun. "And now," boomed the presenter festively, "Our Christmas Edition of Poetry Today, which features some new, rather exciting literary voices." "Oh god," whispered Ermine. "The first poem is in the imagist tradition and is from the pen of a new poet from Cornwall. The title is 'Glaucus Bound.'" "I'm so proud of you," whispered Sea Otter. "LASH! LASH! LASH! What pulls the fisherman down into the depths? Fish-tailed Glaucus bound in love! The pine trees urge towards the light, to the gleaming, silver-capped waves, Their roots push into salt-water, The sea's weeds strangle the mountain-top, His head crowned in celery leaves! Crowned in summer grass! EBB! FLOW! EBB! FLOW!"
As they listened to Ermine's words being broadcast across the country, floating into a million strangers' holly and tinsel decked sitting rooms, Sea Otter thought of the agonies she had gone through in their creation. The late nights, the endless pots of coffee and cigarettes, the wind-swept walks along the cliff path to the headland. And he thought of her subject, the humble fisherman Glaucus turned sea god, so in love with the beautiful Scylla that the witch Circe jealously transformed her into the ghastly monster guarding the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy. He'd sailed through there a couple of times himself, and still remembered the impenetrable fog in the height of summer, the tense concentration, keeping close to the coast all the time - yes, poor Scylla still haunted those troubled waters. And the end of Ermine's poem had come already - "A man of broken shells and phŷkos Hear his prophecies! They break as the waves break upon the rocks, then draw back, and are lost in the dark currents of Messina like old treasure." The presenter explained a little of the antique mythology of the piece, mentioned its forthcoming publication in 'Farrago' in January, and then moved on to the next poet. Sea Otter turned down the wireless and poured them both a cherry brandy. "To my Ermine, a great poetess! Merry, merry Christmas!" Ermine, still trembling, quite overwhelmed with delirious happiness, raised her glass until it caught the light of the oil lamp, and pronounced "to my Glaucus, the finest sailor in Cornwall and my eternal muse!"
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twenty-second Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (The Little Girl & her Aunt)
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❄️If you're enjoying #OldFoxAdventCalendar, please, please consider supporting my writing (and somewhat precarious health) and buy me a Kofi (ko-fi.com/annelouiseav...) or join my patreon for the price of a coffee or two! patreon.com/annelouiseav... ❄️
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twenty-first Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Old Fox. ghosts at Sheep Church)
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The Twenty-second Window. The Little Girl had spent so many Christmases ill or convalescing in bed, it had become a family tradition to decorate a tree in her room, usually by the long windows which looked out over the parkland. That year, her bed was made neatly in the morning & only slept in at night, and she was well enough to help her Aunt. Together they dressed the little spruce with all their favourites – sweet oranges studded with cloves, scarred & play-worn wooden penguins and foxes & ermines & doves from the nursery chest, a battered old train engine once owned by her father, a dozen bold flags of elven-realms, strings of dried apples from Old Fox's orchards, baubles & pom-poms & festoons of paper flowers, delicate Japanese chōchin from Liberty's, a papier-mâché model of Felix the Cat and a protective fairy queen, dressed in silver brocade & carrying a wand of gilded hazel.
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The last advent candle for @Colinthemathmo with love from Rachel and me xxx
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The Twenty-first Window. At twilight, Old Fox found his sturdiest lantern and made his way to the Sheep Church up on the Downs, a wild and lonely place, little visited. A great fog had come in with the rising tide, & the land was so dammered & dimmed, he could barely see the snow-heaped lane ahead of him. Out at sea, the melancholy boom of a coaster's fog horn sounded somewhere by Watchhouse Point. But in the church, an ancient peace reigned in the Midwinter darkness and when he lit the last Advent candle, it flared bright and merry and clear. This one is for Love, he told the ghosts gathering there, for Love.
Candle by Kevin Gray.
Old Fox
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twenty-first Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Bishop Badger)
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The Twenty-first Window. The Bishop of Dorchester, a noble and imposing badger, had travelled up to London that morning by motor car. His destination was the BBC studios at Savoy Hill, just off the Strand, to record a message for St Thomas's Day. At four o'clock on 21st December 1930, his speech was broadcast, and across the country, from Jarrow to Faversham, Port Talbot to Weymouth, Dudley to Ely, people listened with their tea or lack of it. And whilst clothed in a Sunday afternoon voice and presentation, the Bishop's speech somehow cut through and moved people, made them feel heard and seen and understood. Many wrote to him via the BBC afterwards, and he wrote back to all with great care and consideration. Here is a short excerpt, to be read in a deep, kind voice full of passion and authority. "I know full well what Christmas can do, how injurious this long week can be, how desperate the prayers sent into the dark winter nights. For those without employment, without food, without money, without lodging, with a dozen swords of Damocles at their throats, peace and good will are ensnared by suffering and pain and despair. The year that has passed is marked by the greatest industrial depression of our modern times – many of our great cities and towns have become "workhouses without walls". I call upon the government and all those in positions of authority – our new financial ruling classes – to do everything in their power to help local authorities feed and clothe and comfort those in peril. I hear that a Means Test is being advanced in the halls of Westminster and a more unchristian proposal would be difficult to imagine! My fellow bishops and archbishops have called for prayers, but those prayers must be tethered in our own autonomous actions. God works through us and our charity – unshowy charity – should be the cornerstone of our morality. Giving is the light in the darkness of midwinter. And how much should we give? Well, as a great friend said to me in Oxford o…
The Bishop of Dorchester
The Christmas Radio Times for 1930.
BBC Studio 1 at Savoy Hill in 1928
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twenty-first Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (The Newcomer, Old Fox)
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For @cathylowe.bsky.social, the balance of the dark and the light, with love xxx
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
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The Twenty-first Window. The Stinting of the Sun is not a safe time, said the Newcomer to Old Fox. They were sitting high on Pooksdown Hill, leaning against the slope of the round barrow and looking out across the snow-palled land, hatched in dark thorn and hazel, little plumes of smoke rising from farms and the hamlet cottages on the distant rise. The clouds were heavy and vast and leaden, pressing down on the fields like yperite. And they saw below them the lonely and the grief-stricken, the impoverished and the sick, the lost and the frightened, and then the first gleeds of Solstice light, rosy and golden in the darkness, striving to meet them and warm them, flaming through the brittle ice and the pushing, belligerent fog.
Image: Dorset: Snow on Eggardon Hill by Mike-DT6.
Old Fox
The Newcomer
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twentieth Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Mouse, w/ mentions of Wolf, the Doctor, & 1 of Bear's Sisters)
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twentieth Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Old Fox, the King of Gold)
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Twentieth Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Wolf, Old Fox, & a lot of ghosts)
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For @annelouiseavery.bsky.social as a small thank you for the gift of your exquisite Advent tales. ❄️❤️ #OldFoxAdventCalendar
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The Twentieth Window. Midwinter Eve. In the hamlet, in the simple white-washed bedroom which had become her place of peace and refuge, Mouse was curled up in the window. She was watching the tattered clouds slowly drift pass in the cold blue-glass sky. Everything was very still and she could hear a song thrush singing somewhere in the hazel trees. Next to her, was a dainty box of Cadbury's Regent chocolates, a half-pound selection decorated with yellow and blue flowers and tied with a slightly muddy pink silk ribbon. A merry Wolf and Doctor had brought them round that afternoon. We can't stop, said Wolf, we're on a very long walk & want to get back before dark. Mouse pulled the ribbon and opened the box. She chose one at random. It was a milk chocolate caramel. A sudden strange fancy came to her, that it tasted of love. How could something taste of love, but it did and then she thought of Wolf carrying it around on his very long walk and getting good old Dorset mud all over the fancy ribbons and she began to laugh and then got the giggles so badly that one of Bear's Sisters came rushing up to see if she was quite alright.
Winter Road at Twilight by Sergey Polyakov
Mouse
Cadbury Chocs
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The Twentieth Window. Midwinter Eve. Two figures in the snow, high on Pooksdown Hill. Old Fox and the King of Gold. The sun is setting in the west, and lamps are being lit in the windows of the hamlets and villages, festoons of glittering amber across the snow. How is the world, asks Old Fox. In shivers, answers the King, in shivers.
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The Twentieth Window. St Thomas's Eve and there were ghosts abroad in the village, ghosts in the frozen woods as pale as primroses, ghosts, clad in ash-grey satin, smiling at the windows of the sturdy Georgian villas on the Green, ghosts in the Three Choughs inn drinking cups of hot spiced ale, ghosts of turnpike sailors along the Dorchester road, counting their pennies, ghosts in the school-yard on Watercress lane, spinning their ashen hoops, ghosts in the deep snows by the Abbey, whispering their Norman-French prayers, ghosts at the door of Old Fox's cottage, begging to come in. "Tell em to go away!" said Wolf, "it's our Christmas, not theirs!" "I can't today," said Old Fox, "not today, it's a day of passing, you know this, Wolf, you must be tolerant, my dear." And so the spirits passed in and out and sat with Old Fox in the old part of the cottage, and told him things of consequence and inconsequence, tales of kings and crops and murders and births and wrongs and passions and politics and schemes and psalters and hats and dresses and flower beds and cider presses, and he listened and listened and listened and then sent them on their way for another year and in a corner of that ancient drawing room, St Thomas, made of a stilled-storm of winter light, cloak wreathed in damp ivy, blood-rough spear in hand, listened too, and blessed each one as they left.
The Little Stars of Gold, Artuš Scheiner (1863-1938)
St Thomas from the early 16th-century century painted rood screen at Beeston Regis in Norfolk.
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Nineteenth Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Wolf, the Doctor)
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Nineteenth Window"
#OldFoxAdventCalendar (Old Fox, Wolf, Dragon of Kensington Church Street & friend)
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For Kate, a Wolfish story, with love xxx
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
Illustration: Allen Saalburg from Vogue, December 1926.
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The Nineteenth Window. Wolf was sitting in his warm bedroom surrounded by his Christmas shopping - bath salts and talcs and soaps and books and sheet music and diaries and boxes of chocolates. He sat there and looked at them and apart from Pine Marten's new Leica camera, which he'd been guarding with his life since he'd bought it with the Doctor in Dorchester earlier that week, he simply couldn't remember who each one was for. He began to feel the familiar quick-sand undertow of panic, of searching for something in a dark foggy field at night, when he noticed that each gift had a paper luggage label attached with the name of the recipient in the Doctor's handwriting, printed to make it less medical and more legible to Wolf. He'd also written why Wolf had bought each present - "Babcia's favourite bath salts", "Old Fox has wanted this new music by Moszkowski for ages," "Miss Rabbit needed some new woollen mittens." And the panic ebbed, a sudden beam of golden winter light brightened the untidy room, and he was Wolf again and he was safe once more from the swirling, usurping darkness.
Illustration: Allen Saalburg from Vogue, December 1926.
Wolf
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