It’s publication day for Swan Song (4th Feb 2021). Swan Song is a story about teenage mental health and the restorative powers of nature.
For the publication of Swan Song, I have made a silver swan pendant to be auctioned and the money donated to Papyrus a suicide prevention charity
If you would like this pendant and also support Papyrus, please go to my author Facebook page and write the amount you would like to offer in the comments, and the highest bidder will be asked to donate that amount to Papyrus, and then I will post the pendant and a signed copy of Swan Song. UK addresses only. https://www.facebook.com/GillLewisAuthor
Bids will close on February 10th 2021 at 8pm.
Please note – all the parts of the pendant are made from sterling silver. However it can’t be hall marked because the silver solder joining the pieces together is below 650 parts per minimum.
Also I am new to silver work – so whilst it might not be perfect, the soldering should be strong enough. x
The solder work is a bit messy on the back – hopefully I’ll improve my soldering!
Swan Song is a story about teenage mental health and the restorative power of nature. Excluded from school, Dylan is forced move to a tiny village in Wales where his grandfather lives. With no Xbox or internet, life is looking pretty bleak, but when Grandad takes Dylan out on his boat to see the whooper swans, things begin to change. Out on the water, free from all the pressure he’s been under, Dylan behinds to feel himself again. But when the swan’s habitat is threatened, and tragedy strikes at home, can Dylan still keep going when it feels like everything is slipping out of control again?
The Little Rebels Award is utterly brilliant because celebrates children’s fiction which challenges stereotypes, promotes social and environmental justice and advocates for a fairer and more peaceful world.
We need these books now more than ever, and so I feel really proud to have appeared on the award list a few times!
Moon Bear was shortlisted in 2014, Scarlet Ibis won in 2015, Gorilla Dawn was shortlisted in 2016, Sky Dancer was shortlisted in 2018 and The Closest Thing to Flying is shortlisted for 2020 – with the winner announced on Thursday October 22nd at 7pm.
Please do join if you can here . It will ge a great evening event but you will have to register free at eventbrite
A huge thanks to the organisers and the judges for celebrating books that can change hearts and minds. I’ll ‘see’ you at the event on Thursday.
So, here’s a little bit about how The Closest Thing to Flying came to be written:
I’ve been lucky.
I’ve been surrounded by woke men and women all my life.
Woke – often used as a disparaging term by people of right-wing leanings to describe other people (often younger than they are) for standing up for equality for all.
Well, I thank those woke women over a hundred years ago for fighting for women’s votes.
I thank those woke men and women who gave their lives in world wars so that we could be free from tyranny of fascism.
When I asked pupils in a big school assembly to put their hands up if they were feminists, nearly all the boys put up their hands – good on them – great to see a woke generation in a world falling asleep to environmental and social justice.
I remember being surprised and confused when I encountered sexism as a child. Some was blatant sexism, but most was inherent society expectations and subconscious bias. I remember going to my first Young Ornithology Club Meeting. I was the only girl, keen and desperate to see the birds on the lake and find out what they were. The ornithologists (all men) swept up my brother and other boys to show them the birds and I remember another saying to me, ‘I expect this is a bit boring for you.’ I remember feeling that I didn’t fit in that world. No one was rude to me; they just held the expectations that I wouldn’t be interested in birds, being a girl. The male ornithologists were totally unaware of the effects of their actions. I felt outside, looking in. Not welcome.
I never went back.
And I grew up to see sexism endemic everywhere. Through history and throughout the world now.
The Closest Thing to Flying was inspired by an article that revealed that the founders of the RSPB were women. Hooray! I thought….I bet there were some feisty women there fighting for birds and for women too. Well I was surprised to discover these women were passionate about stopping the feather trade that plundered the natural world, but these women were actively anti suffrage. They didn’t agree that women should have the vote. It didn’t make sense to me. And so I wanted to write a story exploring women’s views in the early days of the suffrage movement, why some women wanted the vote, and why others were so entrenched in expectations of society.
The research led me on to discover that bicycles changed the world for women – made them independent – changed the clothes they wore – allowed them out without a chaperone. There were many men who tried to stop them – said they’d become infertile or be rampant nymphomaniacs if they rode a bike. They said women would develop the non-reversible terrible medical condition called Bicycle Face. But fortunately for women at the time, bicycles came and changed their world.
I was also fascinated by the fashion in the feather trade that the founders of the RSPB were trying to stop. Millions and millions of dead birds were shipped to London to be sold for the feather trade – wearing a dead bird on your head was the height of Victorian fashion.
The research made me wonder how much has changed for birds since then – we don’t have the plumage trade (though we do have a multibillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade), but habitat loss is a primary driver of population decreases now.
It also made me wonder how much has changed for women both in the UK and across the world over the past 100 + years.
I wondered how I could connect the two eras, and the answer came to me in a hat, a Victorian hat.
I envisioned a girl tearing up a hat with her hands and teeth, furious at the world. I didn’t know why – but had to find out – and that very hat would be found by a modern girl, suffering in a parallel, very different, yet similar world. The hat would connect them.
So the Victorian girl, Hen, became a girl who sits in the very first meeting of the Society for the Protection of Birds, where her eyes are opened to a new world through her feisty aunt. And in the modern world, an Eritrean girl called Semira finds the hat and Hen’s diary. Bicycles have a significance in Semira’s world too.
Their worlds collide.
It is a story about feminism.
It is a story about women fighting for equality.
It is story about how some men and women want to silence those voices, scared that equality will take away their own freedoms and power – as we are seeing in the world today when people use ‘woke’ as an insult.
And it’s also story about good men; good men who know that equality will bring about a more peaceful, better world for all.
This year, Hen Harrier Day had to move online due to COVID restrictions preventing events in various geographical locations. It was a shame not to meet up with people in person, but what an amazing event it turned out to be; eight hours of talks by professionals in their field from the likes of Ruth Tingay, Guy Shorrock and more, competition, art, poetry and song. There were some wonderful presentations including from the wild-ethos Sunnyside School in Glasgow, and also poetry performance from Anneliese Emmans Dean and some fab children. It was great to see support from many young people and I had the privilege of being interviewed by Young Scotswoman of the Year, Holly Gillibrand.
Well it’s a celebration of a wonderful bird and also a day to spread awareness of the issues surrounding its persecution from the driven grouse shooting industry. HHD 2020 was supported by Hen Harrier Action, Wild Justice and the RSPB.
It was also a day to take action; not only to tell others about these issues but you can write to your MP to show your support for Hen Harriers here.
The day was presented brilliantly by Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin and couldn’t have been done without the production team magicians, Ruth Peacey and Fabian Harrison.
I had the wonderful task of organising a writing competition. We decided that it could be writing in any form, but it had to be about British Wildlife. We decided on 3 age categories: Young 5-8, Junior 9-12 and senior 13-16. Judges Liz Cross (publishing director at David Fickling Books) and Jo Hodges helped with the hard task of judging.
We were stunned to receive over 500 entries in just under three months. The standard was incredibly high. We whittled down 500 to a shortlist of 250! How do you choose a winner? Well it was very difficult. We were looking at use of language, style, information, description and more, but overall, we were most moved by writing that came from the heart and had an original voice.
If you entered but didn’t get placed, please keep on writing. I loved reading each and every entry. There were so many truly amazing pieces of writing. We had foxes, squirrels, rockpools, nature in lockdown, moths and so much more. It was a true celebration of British Wildlife.
So we managed to have top three in each category and an overall winner.
Prizes; the overall winner had their piece read by Michael Morpurgo and will have a school author visit from Gill Lewis.
I thought it was a dog at first. “Mum, come see this!” I shouted. A flash of brown fur zoomed past my front door, I seen it through the glass. I stared at it, my eyes bulging wide and to my amazement, it stopped, right there, on MY driveway. WOW! Slowly it turned its head to look straight back at me. I stood there, frozen to the spot, transfixed, feet cemented to the floor, what was this fascinating animal and where did it come from?
This rabbit-like creature with wise, moonlit eyes and golden-brown fur? It’s belly was pale, and it had a white tail. Oh, how I wished it could I could just reach out and touch it. I imagined it felt so soft and smooth. My fingers tingled at the thought of it. It’s ears, like two tall antennae, twitched their black tips, high above its slender face.
Just then, mum came over to take a look. OH NO, she must have startled it, it was off, my rabbit-dog, zigzagging down the lane. It ran so fast, it’s long furry legs looked almost like giant springs. A blurr of fuzz and golden-brown fur disappeared into the barley field.
Gone! I felt so sad. “Mum, you’ve frightened it off!” I said grumpily. I thought I would never see it again. As the weeks went past, I stopped looking for my rabbit-dog. It had vanished as if by magic, Puffff! I began to wonder, was it ever real?
Then, one evening as I was in the garden putting my bicycle away in the shed, a rustling sound made me look across the now golden barley field. Something was bristling though the beards of barley for sure. Could it be my rabbit-dog, come back at last? I dared not to think. But I couldn’t help it, my heart was skipping right out of my chest. I held my breath, “don’t move a muscle”, I told myself. Cautiously, those unmistakeable arrow ears rose up through the shimmering field. I dared not to blink. It was her, my rabbit-dog, it was really her, she had returned! She stared hard at me, with her dark amber eyes, I was hypnotised.
Suddenly, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I blinked strongly, then again, this time really scrunching my eyes more thoroughly, NO WAY! She was not alone. Two more, somewhat smaller rabbit-dogs had emerged. Pushing their velvet like noses through the yellow barley stalks, they now sat boldly looking straight at me too!
In my excitement, I accidentally squeaked a breath and in an instant, my rabbit-dogs disappeared. This time however, I know that they’re there, my rabbit-dog Hares.
Winner of the Senior Category
My Patch of Green in the Urban Jungle by Neha Narne (13)
It’s a peaceful hidden oasis of shining verdant green
Amid the squawking of the birds that are cars and machinery
My patch of green in the urban jungle
Is tended to by many species of people
It has been cultivated to a point where it’s bounty
Is a rainbow array of Mother Nature’s gifts
Harvest is all year round
Because our harvest is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach
My patch of green in the urban jungle
Is at the heart of my community
As an allotment, its purpose is to bring people together
And let us make friends whilst protecting nature
But how can it do that
If it’s not there?
My patch of green in the urban jungle
Is under threat from redevelopment
Doomed to become a finite forest of lifeless beige buildings
Chock full of incessantly twittering TV screens
And devoid of bright flowers and birdsong
I have a patch of green in an urban jungle
And I would like it to be preserved
The secret lavender patch behind the shed
The plot where the nursery children grow strawberries
The tree with branches low enough to swing from
And the waist high grass we run through
They are dear to me
And to everyone else that knows about them
Britain is losing it’s green patches
And becoming an urban jungle
Soon, children won’t know what it’s like
To swing from low branches and hide in lavender beds
The only birdsong they know
Will be the chattering of their phones
Let’s give the children of tomorrow
A future in which nature is key
And protect the little patches of green
In this vast urban jungle
Second place in young Category
Take a Tench by Oscar Sills (7)
Second Place in Junior Category
The Bus Driver Who Turned to Crime by Rufus Dawson (10)
On whirring wheels and with a suppressed sigh, Bob the bus driver is on his three hundred and ninety fourth journey transporting Newport City Council workers to their offices. He repeats the journey every morning, returning every evening, a robin to its nest.
Waiting at the traffic lights, he peers in his rear-view mirror. There must be fifty council workers on board. Those at the front of the bus are discussing the recent proposal to create a motorway flyover through the local nature reserve. Bob shrivels down into his seat – he loves the nature reserve, and is horrified.
A golden flash in the mirror blinds Bob for a moment. He notices it again, and is able to see a tall man wearing mayoral chains: it’s Monty the Mayor (head of Newport City Council).
“I am minded to grant the application!” he says flippantly to his colleagues.
Bob feels the blood in his body boil. The lights change, but instead of turning right, like he has every working day of his life, he speeds up and swerves left towards the nature reserve. As he crashes through the entrance barrier, the workers scream. It occurs to Bob that he is kidnapping them, but he is so incensed he accelerates even faster.
“Where are you going, you crazy imbecile?” the Mayor shouts.
Moorhens and mallards fly into the air, wings beating as fast as hummingbirds. The tide is out and a flock of a thousand curlew fly past the windows. An avocet’s scintillating cry drifts hauntingly downwind. The inside of the bus is as quiet as a still summer’s day.
Carefully, Bob drives into the small, wooded area. A flock of goldfinches is sitting at the top of an ancient oak, their red faces and yellow wings fluffed in the wind. Bob’s muscles relax as he listens to their sweet song. The occupants of the bus are dazzled as a spectacle of colour bursts blindingly around the brown bus; the goldfinches have taken flight, but their magic lingers behind in the minds of the suited workers.
Slowly, Bob follows the goldfinches back towards the estuary. The mudflats are popping gently. A majestic marsh harrier, hunting above the nearby reeds, divides the goldfinches. The harrier is gliding like a buzzard: a circular motion. The tips of its wings are jagged and its fan-tail is spread wide. Suddenly it swoops, its bright yellow talons forward. Its needle-like beak rips a plump, brown water vole apart, before scooping it up, carrying it high into the air and disappearing into the horizon, its silhouette getting smaller and smaller.
There is a stillness in the bus that is electric. Bob opens the doors and the workers stumble out into the reserve, dazed and enchanted. As the mayor passes Bob, he lays a warm hand on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” he mutters under his breath, “I almost made a big mistake.”
Bob had never before fallen to crime, but decides he has taken rather a liking to it…
Second place in Senior Category
Seal Gaze by Megan Loftus (15)
Oh seal sleek,
Watching me
From the fickle curve
Of your weightless world
I wonder what you see
With those depthless pools
As you slip between the tangles
Of fallen mermaids’ hair
Selkie queen,
Always weeping
Why do you grieve so?
Do you mourn the loss of the moon
As you slide beneath the waves?
Blubber-slick
Sighing through my dreamscapes
Gril, beast and goddess
Our briny paths intertwining
Like strands of fishing net
You live between silt and starlight
And I between cloud and satin
But I, too, feel the tug of the tide on my heartstrings
And I know before long, we’ll be sisters
Cockle-shell hearts
Always weeping.
Third place in Young Category
City Fox by Leila Miah (8)
Third place in Junior Category
Flooded Field by Colette Henderson (10)
The loop of soft, rippling water swirling serenely, completely unconcerned.
The fast darting arrow sharp birds flicking through the air snatching at
unsuspecting insects.
Long limbed pond skaters basking on the mirror smooth surface.
And past the banks the lush green is framed by the tipsy choir of reeds.
The dappled deer peacefully drinking, shadowed by orbs of ever changing
green, tail swishing, ears pricked.
And, at the edge, stands the tall grey bird of steel, one leg raised.
Cover of Willow Wildthing and the Dragon’s Egg Illustrations by Rebecca Bagley
I’m really chuffed to celebrate the publication of Willow Wildthing and the Dagon’s Egg, the second story in the Willow Wildthing series, written by me, illustrated by Rebecca Bagley and published by Oxford University Press.
In the first book, Willow Wildthing and the Swamp Monster, Willow finds some strange creature-like friends in a small patch of urban green space called The Wilderness. They have an adventure to discover the maker of the strange haunting howls heard across the swamp.
The Wilderness is a place where nature and magic collide, where the world is as big as you want it to be, where anything can happen.
In this new book, Willow’s brother discovers some small baby dragons underneath some leaves in the garden. This discovery leads Willow and her friends on a new adventure to the secret Dragon Gardens where dragons lurk.
The truth behind the dragons that Willow’s brother finds is more incredible than any magic and Willow and her friends must change hearts and minds to save their precious creatures and the habitats where they live.
Hope you enjoy the story and Rebacca’s wonderful illustrations.
A year ago, I was joined by Dr Ruth Tingay at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to discuss raptor persecution. Many adults and children created artwork and letters to ask the First Minister to act to stop persecution. But nothing has happened and the slaughter of wildlife continues.
My email:
Dear Nicola Sturgeon
Ref recent satellite tagged White-tailed Eagle poisoned in the Cairngorms National Park
I do not understand your silence.
I do not understand your inaction.
I do not understand your lack of anger.
Yet another magnificent Scottish raptor has been illegally killed in an area of driven grouse moor. The Golden Eagle Scottish Natural Heritage Report that you commissioned concluded unequivocally that persecution associated with driven grouse moor is the primary reason behind the demise and lack of recovery of the Golden Eagle in Scotland.
All raptors entering driven grouse moor areas risk persecution: Golden Eagles, White-tailed eagles, Hen Harriers, Goshawks, Buzzards, Red Kites, Peregrine Falcons. The killing by shooting, trapping and poisoning is relentless.
A year ago, I joined Dr Ruth Tingay in Charlotte Square at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to talk about the problem of illegal persecution of raptors in Scotland. We walked to your official residence to hand deliver artwork and handwritten messages from adults and children who want to see raptors in our skies. I have attached some of those letters and artwork here as a reminder.
Maybe you are silent because you feel this issue is unimportant? Maybe you do not act because you do not want to rock the boat of wealthy landowners? Maybe you are not angry because a White-tailed eagle is just a bird?
I believe you should not be silent.
Raptor persecution is theft. Theft of a life, theft from the wild, theft from the Scottish people who want to have a wild Scotland to be proud of, and theft from future generations.
I believe you should act.
You have been entrusted with a position of power. To be able to bring a halt to raptor persecution and also a ban of Driven Grouse Shooting and restore truly wild landscapes, as is being done in many places, will benefit biodiversity, carbon capture, reduce flooding, support rural economies all year round, not just for a short shooting season. You could help ensure Scotland is proud of its natural heritage, not embarrassed by the continued widespread criminality that has clung on since Victorian times.
The poisons used in this recent killing are toxic enough to kill a human via skin contact.
I believe you should be angry.
Maybe you are not angry about the illegal killing of a bird that died a horrible death. Maybe to you, it’s just a bird. Even so, I am surprised that you are not angry about a centuries-old feudal system that has held landownership, power, politics and wealth in Scotland. This holds the same underlying reasons why a minority of people are running roughshod over the Scottish landscape, allowing largescale legal and illegal killing of Scottish wildlife, and landscape-scale environmental damage and destruction to produce heather for grouse production on grouse moor.
In my book Eagle Warrior, a young Scottish girl has a lucky escape from being poisoned when she is out with her Granny’s dog. The dog eats poisoned bait and dies. If the girl had touched the poison, she would be dead too.
In the book, feisty Granny exchanges words with the gamekeeper who put the poisoned bait out for the eagle. She knows that no one has ever been prosecuted for killing an eagle.
“You’re right,” spat Granny. “People like you and the Duke get away with it all the time. And that’s the biggest crime of all.”
Nicola – I urge you to act now. For the wild, for Scotland and for future generations.
People are angry about this. Many young people, too young to vote are furious. You may choose not to listen, but we will raise our voices ever louder.
Regards
Gill Lewis (Children’s author, vet and human with a vested interest to protect this planet)
Get your pens or keyboards out…and enter the Young Wild Writer Competition and celebrate British wildlife as part of Hen Harrier Day 2020.
In past years, Hen Harrier Days have taken place in various locations around the UK, but because of Covid19, many have been cancelled. Instead an online Hen Harrier day will take place on 08/08/2020. There will be great speakers, lots of community involvement and some great competions to enter.. There is also a Welsh online Hen Harrier Day on the 18th July.
For the Young Wild Writer Competition: see here for the RULES
This competition is for you to tell us what you love about British Wildlife. It could be written as a piece of prose, poetry, a story…it’s up to you.
500 words about British wildlife
Three age categories: 5-8, 9-12, and 13-16 yrs.
The three winning entries in each category will be read out on Online Hen Harrier Day and the overall winner will be read by Michael Morpurgo.
There are book bundle prizes from some fabulous authors including
All the above write about the wild world and Hugh Webster’s book The Blue Hare is also about grouse moors.
There is also an author visit to the overall winner’s school from me.
So what is Hen Harrier Day all about?
Well, it’s to celebrate the beautiful bird the Hen Harrier. The Hen Harriers and our precious upland habitats are under threat. The land is intensively managed to produce as many red grouse (wild chicken-like bird) as possible for the sport of driven grouse shooting. This involves burning the land for new heather growth resulting in vast acres of treeless, predominantly heather landscapes. Burning the land has negative impact upon carbon capture, biodiversity, water and air quality and is linked to increased flood risk downstream. Bird of prey are illegally shot, trapped and poisoned because they eat grouse and threaten the profits of the driven grouse shooting industry. There is also much legal cruel trapping and killing of other species such as foxes and crows, because they are drawn to the high stocking densities of red grouse, and they eat the grouse.
Driven grouse shooting must belong in the past. The future belongs to restoring these landscapes, allowing the wild to flourish for the benefits of biodiversity, carbon capture, and also the rural green economy. Already in parts of the UK, this is happening to great effect.
But the killing of birds of prey continues over grouse moors and needs to stop. Forty known birds have ‘disappeared’ in suspicions circumstances or been killed since 2018 and they are only tip of the iceberg.
Both the DEFRA Hen Harrier report and the Scottish Natural Heritage Golden Eagle report show that perscution and the lack of recovery of these species is primarily due to criminal activity within the driven grouse shooting industry.
So we need to celebrate the Hen Harrier as an icon of change and help that change happen.
I’m looking forward to reading all the entries. Good luck. 🙂
Ps; other fab competitions to enter including a young presenter and T shirt competitions
And some great making ideas…create your Hen Harrier and send a pic to Hen Harrier Day Online.
June 9th is Empathy Day, though in truth every day is empathy day.
Stories are powerful things. They let us wear another’s shoes to see life from a different perspective.
Empathy Lab is a brilliant organisation which builds children’s empathy, literacy and social activism through a systemic use of high quality literature. Their strategy builds on scientific evidence showing that an immersion in high quality literature is an effective way to build empathetic understanding of others.
Join in for Empathy Day Live. There are lot of activities and
Some fabulous blogs by some of your favourite authors
https://www.empathylab.uk
And some thought-provoking story shorts from Jo Cotterill, Lucinda Jacob, Bali Rai, Marcia Williams, Sam Copeland, A.F Harrold, Atinuke and me.
I was delighted to be asked to write a story of up to 500 words. It’s a tough ask, what do you write?
As I write stories often with animal characters, I thought, what if I write from an animal’s perspective? We need empathy with animals too.
Then I thought, what about other living things?
I wonder what it is like to be a tree in a forest?
Ancient forests are highly complex ecosystems. Trees in a mature forest have grown connections to each other via a mycelium network, a fungal sheath around the roots. The trees can communicate about predators, drought, and many other threats. They can direct nutrients and water to other trees in need. It seems they have empathy too. We too often compare consciousness with our own human understanding of it. What if there are other forms? What if we allow ourselves to understand that other life forms have complex lives so different from our own that there are hard to compare, yet valuable in themselves.
There may be people who would laugh as such a notion, and choose not to give thought to this concept, but even so, protecting the wild habitats is vital for our own human survival. It’s worth giving it a go…if not for the trees, then for the humans and other animals.
But I chose to try to imagine empathy with a non-animal life form.
I wondered what it would be like to be a tree in an ancient forest which has seen millennia pass by. Imagine living in a different time frame to a human; living hundreds of years. Imagine experiencing that passage of time!
I find it inconceivable that many ancient forests are being destroyed for the High Speed Rail link HS2, at a time when we know how vital and irreplaceable these forests are.
HS2 construction has progressed in lockdown, and trees have been cut during nesting season. People who have tried to protect these trees have been forcibly removed.
Ancient forests have been felled.
You cannot replace an ancient connected forest with a few unrelated saplings.
This king ordered his men to build a road paved with gold between his castles in the south and the north of his kingdom.
“But sire,” said a wise man, “We mustn’t. This will destroy the ancient forests.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said the king. “This road will let me travel faster.”
“Not much faster,” said the wise man. “You could only boil an egg in the extra time.”
“Eggsactly!” said the king laughing at his terrible joke. “But time is money.”
The wise man did not laugh, and the king had him beheaded.
So, the king’s men began to fell the forest.
The forest folk flung their arms around the trees, but the king’s guards drove them away.
Chop, chop, chop until they reached the oldest tree. Their axes could not cut its bark.
“Bring dynamite,” roared the king.
The tree bent down to the king. “If you spend a night in my branches, I will lie down at your feet.”
“What is this witchery?” said the king.
“Are you afraid?” said the tree.
The king did not want to look a coward in front of his men, so he agreed and climbed into the tree.
As the king dozed, he felt his arms grow wide and birds came to land on his outstretched hands. His feet dug deep into the rich earth and wriggling earthworms tickled his toes. The king could now see the long ago past laid out before him. The great kings and queens of old came to kneel at the tree, to give thanks for giving their people food, water and air.
As night fell, the king felt afraid and alone.
He saw himself for what he was.
“I am a fool,” he wept. “What shall become of me?
As the sky began to lighten, the tree said, “I will give you three dawns.”
The first time the sun rose, the king looked out over the green roof of the forest. He heard a child’s laughter. “My son!” he cried. He paddled and played with his child in the cool river beneath dappled shade, and as he did, he felt the richest man alive.
The second sun rose, and this time the king found himself in a golden carriage racing along a road paved with gold across a barren landscape. He saw a child lying face-down in the dust.
“My son?” cried the king.
The carriage driver cracked his whip. “No time to stop sire, for time is money and you are the richest man alive.”
The king gripped the branches of the tree and screamed, “Where is my son?”
The third sun rose over the horizon.
The king closed his eyes and wept. “I cannot bear it. Tell me what happens in the third dawn?”
Last Saturday on the 9th May, we had to say goodbye to our wonderful dog Murphy. We put him to sleep in the garden he loved while the owls hooted around us.
He had a wonderful life, with only a short illness.
But we are heartbroken and bereft.
We have lost our gentle giant.
We are so deep in sorrow, that our hearts are aching.
It might seem to some that this is an over-reaction in this time of Covid, whilst people are concerned about vulnerable loved ones, and many have lost relatives. Maybe some would say, ‘well he’s just a dog.’
But he held our hearts. He was a wonderful kind and loyal soul.
Lockdown has not been easy for us as a family. Like many, we have lost a loved one. My husband’s mother died last month (not Covid related), but the separation, the inability to hug loved ones and spend time with them, has left us in a sort of limbo, a suspended grief. My mother-in-law was one of the kindest, gentlest people I have known, yet it has been hard to grieve in these strange times that seem to have an altered reality. The normal channels for grief have not been there. But when Murphy died it opened those channels, not only for our recent loss, but a sort of grief, a goodbye to the last ten years. We have been through some very difficult times, but also many joyous times, and somehow they are all wrapped up in our wonderful dog. Saying goodbye to him was saying goodbye to part of our lives.
But it was also saying goodbye to him. He was a dog with the biggest most generous heart I have known. Always ready for hugs or to play. He gave his love to us unconditionally. Maybe it was his huge size that made him such a comfort to hug, but I think it was that he just knew when people needed one. He saw all my children pass through their teenage years…and many times has been a comfort to them and also to us as parents! My own parents looked after him when we went away on holidays, and he loved my dad who died in 2018. So, saying goodbye to Murphy, was losing another connection with my past. He could offer a paw and a hug and yet at other times he could be the biggest buffoon of a dog, completely unaware of his size and strength. If a family member had been away for more than 24 hours, his greeting would be so enthusiastic, we would have to hold onto a fixed surface, to prevent being swept away by a tidal wave of a dog. There was often the yell, ‘watch out! Murphy’s coming!’
He’s been a hero dog too and has given blood and saved other dogs’ lives at the veterinary practice where my husband works. He trained how to be a water rescue dog, to rescue people in the water, though never got to put his skills to the ultimate test.
For me he has been a big part of my writing life. He arrived in our family in February 2011, the year I was first published. He has been my companion, stretched out beside me as I typed stories on my laptop. He’s taken me on walks when I needed to think over plots and mull ideas. I wrote Murphy and the Great Surf Rescue about a leonberger like him, and he joined me on school and festival visits. He has been hugged by Jilly Cooper at Cheltenham Festival, and he had his own badge and hotel room at the Edinburgh Festival. At one school he infamously escaped into the school kitchens, creating chaos and helped himself to sausages in the canteen, while the dinner ladies screamed, ‘there’s a dog in the kitchens!’ to the great excitement of all the pupils. At another school he helped to calm a girl who suffered with severe anxiety. He was great fun and had a big heart for all. He climbed mountains with us, swam in lakes and the sea.
He seems to have always been there for us.
Murphy, star of Edinburgh Festival
Murphy and the Great Surf Rescue, illustrations by Sarah Horne
So losing him has been unbearably hard. The house is so empty and quiet. Our collie, Ned, is very subdued. He even sobbed, gulping sobs without tears. I have never known a dog to do that.
But we were blessed to have had him in our lives. For him, lockdown meant his human pack has been home, which is what he has loved most. In the last eight weeks has been with us for long walks, swum in the river, and slept out in the tent with my children.
On the night before he died, he couldn’t settle, and he took me on a moonlit walk in the garden, slowly sniffing all his favourite places. It felt as if he was saying goodbye to the home he loved.
He gave us his heart and we gave him ours.
I have just finished a story about a dog, and it has been so hard and painful writing the final edits, because Murphy taught us so much. His love and loyalty were unconditional. He greeted each day as enthusiastically as the other, always ready to play, to offer his companionship. He had an exuberance for life. He was cheeky too, taking food from the kitchen surfaces when he knew he wasn’t being watched. If he didn’t want to go somewhere, he would just lie down on his side and close his eyes, refusing to be moved. He loved hide-and-seek in the garden. But most of all he loved being part of a pack. Our pack.
The day before he died, I wrote these words into the final edits of my story…and then I cried a river of tears….
“When a dog gives you its love, it is a gift. A gift to be treasured with all your heart and soul.”
