Hello Richard! I am ready to be transported to the bucolic English country side (real or imagined!) full of birds, hedgehogs, foxes, and hares and to learn of books and stories that remind us there is more to our lives than 24 hour "news" cycle and teetering world order! Besides who in Quebec can resist reading about a place where the daffodils are already blooming! Lead on!
Fiona - you are exactly the eager/subscriber that my old friend hoped to attract. He is drafting a couple of book reviews for you in the next edition. I'm not sure that I would escape this part of England as "bucolic" but it has its attractions and the fenny marshes teem with wildlife. I agree about the daffodils ...
I thoroughly enjoyed your post! What an amazing world we live in, that someone from Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A., could be reading about your retirement venture in Huntingdonshire England! Best of luck with your shop and on Substack. In a future post, you must tell about how your cat came to be called Redux — I’m betting there’s a good story behind that name!
Hello Mary Lee thank you for your comment. I think I should come clean ... I write the entirely factual Whilst Out Walking substack from my home outside Montreal but for 30 years before emigrating to Canada I lived a half hour drive from where I have located the OLD Bookshop, and its village. Pidley, Warboys, those are real communities. The village of St-Fenella/Mirkmere emerged from the mists maybe 40 years ago when I was a morris dancer and musician and with friends created a suite of traditional-style dances ... which we located in Mirkmere. These newsletters will include genuine book suggestions and reviews of real books that I have enjoyed, along with an evolving, semi-fictional community based around people and places that I have known for a long time. Redux the cat? The fellow sitting in the door of the bookshop is the spitting image of my own cat, name of Buster, who died three years ago but whose shade haunts the bookshelves ever more. Thank you for visiting my retirement venture, I hope you will enjoy the tales I have in store for the future.
If you have a map on your computer, the bookshop is approximately here: 52.391931, -0.037969
Agree that "bucolic" might be too grand a description for fens. marches, and muck, but they do have their charms for those of us enamored with all things Nature :-)
Hello Richard! I am ready to be transported to the bucolic English country side (real or imagined!) full of birds, hedgehogs, foxes, and hares and to learn of books and stories that remind us there is more to our lives than 24 hour "news" cycle and teetering world order! Besides who in Quebec can resist reading about a place where the daffodils are already blooming! Lead on!
Fiona - you are exactly the eager/subscriber that my old friend hoped to attract. He is drafting a couple of book reviews for you in the next edition. I'm not sure that I would escape this part of England as "bucolic" but it has its attractions and the fenny marshes teem with wildlife. I agree about the daffodils ...
Please spread the word.
I thoroughly enjoyed your post! What an amazing world we live in, that someone from Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A., could be reading about your retirement venture in Huntingdonshire England! Best of luck with your shop and on Substack. In a future post, you must tell about how your cat came to be called Redux — I’m betting there’s a good story behind that name!
Hello Mary Lee thank you for your comment. I think I should come clean ... I write the entirely factual Whilst Out Walking substack from my home outside Montreal but for 30 years before emigrating to Canada I lived a half hour drive from where I have located the OLD Bookshop, and its village. Pidley, Warboys, those are real communities. The village of St-Fenella/Mirkmere emerged from the mists maybe 40 years ago when I was a morris dancer and musician and with friends created a suite of traditional-style dances ... which we located in Mirkmere. These newsletters will include genuine book suggestions and reviews of real books that I have enjoyed, along with an evolving, semi-fictional community based around people and places that I have known for a long time. Redux the cat? The fellow sitting in the door of the bookshop is the spitting image of my own cat, name of Buster, who died three years ago but whose shade haunts the bookshelves ever more. Thank you for visiting my retirement venture, I hope you will enjoy the tales I have in store for the future.
If you have a map on your computer, the bookshop is approximately here: 52.391931, -0.037969
St Fenella The Fastidious....I trust we will learn the manner of her martyrdom, and indeed how it might be depicted within the church...?
I imagine the vicar will know something about that … a dive into the parish archives too. All will be revealed.
Agree that "bucolic" might be too grand a description for fens. marches, and muck, but they do have their charms for those of us enamored with all things Nature :-)
I prefer mountains but spent 25 years on the fens - better than any city
PS: I though this "new writer" looked suspiciously like your younger brother ;-)
Wait until you meet young Aimée Inconnue (or just AI as she prefers to be named), my newly hired assistant. She is drafting edition number 3 already
Delightful! Wish-fulfilment, perhaps?
looks superb i shall have to visit sounds like my kind of shop