archives: december 07 2011 – in which tonton stole the light

Good morning from Sunbury, Australia. Welcome to The Archives. Presently I am going through every single post of 2011 extracting recipes and stories to polish up and make into little ebooks.

Next week I start on 2012. And will be back on the farm. There is a lot of snow coming through on the plains so it will be interesting to see how far across the world I get.

I am preparing for travel hold ups. But I have loads of really interesting reading so it will be fine!

If you would like to see this post in its entirety go HERE.

If you would like to listen to yesterday’s recording of Alice – go HERE. We have one more chapter to go which will come out on Sunday/Monday.

This bedtime story series has been well listened to. More people listened than I ever imagined. So thank you to all those who subscribed!

I am tossing up whether to read The Wind in the Willows next or Winnie the Pooh. Maybe both! Until I am discovered and someone pays me to read THEIR stories!

This is the view from my little Aussie studio. I will be back here in a little over two months. Things will be very different for a few years – but we will have fun as we go!

Read HERE if you are not up to speed on the changes! I am leaping off in an entirely new direction.

Abd so to the archives!

Here is the post from December 07 2011:

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‘ I was writing last night and realised it was time to go outside and finish up in the barn. I sat on the stool in the kitchen to pull on my warm clothes. I sent TonTon off to find my gloves. He found them and brought them to me, one by one, then stole them back off my lap and gave them to me again. He did the same with my top pair of socks and my Hattie, but he’s fairly useless at getting my big wugga jacket down off the hook inside the basement door, so he just stared at it until I got it down myself.

When he heard the zip going up, he retrieved the flashlight from its corner by the door (it has a convenient handle for dogs) and stood watching his own reflection in the French doors, waiting. I took the torch, turned it on, and we proceeded outside into the cold, across the grass to the barn.

We wrapped Big Dog up in his two eiderdowns (he was waiting in his bed of straw), said “ni night” to Daisy and Queenie (the sheep were still outside), checked the water, the feed, the doors, and the baby chicks, then turned off the big barn lights. It was very dark.

I shut and latched the old barn doors behind me, and turning, I saw a light running to and fro out in a field, across the grass, around the back of the rat house, past the chook house. The light leapt and nodded through the fence, over the gate, and then this ghostly, wavering, searching light jaggedly made its way back towards me, randomly catching trees and fence posts and cameos of surprised cats in its white beam.

TonTon the BonBon had run off with my flashlight. But he was bringing it back. He had never done this before, so I stood out in the cold with my blimp layers on, all alone under the stars, and laughed out loud. He gave me back the torch, looked a bit disappointed when I declined to throw it for him to fetch, then we both trotted back to the warm house and our beds.’

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TonTon was a different dog when he was young. Now he seldom ventures far from the fire and to get him to come for dinner I have to bang on the wall with his bowl.

But he is a good dog. Still a good dog.

We had fish and chips in the park yesterday and I saw ducks. They made me sad.

The Aussie ducks are so small. Maybe because they are wild ducks.

Take care talk soon

Celi