I continue to be amazed and delighted by the support you are all showing to Phoebe and myself, thank you so much. I've been spending a couple of days field-bound at The Blackden Trust in Cheshire - the educational and creative charity that my parents founded and where the video for Lost & Found was filmed.  This is where my love of Folk Tales was nurtured, it's wonderful to have reached the 40% mark whilst I'm here.  Cheers were raised to the timbers!  Please do keep on sharing and helping to bring this book into being.

Whilst I've been here, retreating slightly from 'the real world,' I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between stories and objects.  The Blackden Trust is a place where treasures from past and present seem to gather of their own accord... and if you take another look at the Lost & Found video you will see there are plenty of weird and wonderful things lurking in the dark corners, or by the fireside - or indeed both!

As I've been plotting out a new story- Little Sparrow - I have found myself returning to this 'mobile' of glass and a hagstone that my Grandmother Betty used to hang in her window and that now catches the light every morning in my parents' kitchen. These beautiful, old, strange trinkets that have always been familiar 'background decoration'  have gently given me an unexpected new angle/ way into the ending of the story.  The 'what happens' is absolutely true to the original.  The 'how it happens' is a surprise, but still true to folklore. Exciting stuff! 

Don't be fooled by the title though, actual birds do feature in one of the Lost & Found Tales, but it's not this one...