Anne Louise Avery
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Anne Louise Avery
@annelouiseavery.bsky.social
6.5K followers 1.2K following 1.2K posts
Writer and Art Historian. Old Fox stories. Edward M.Bannister catalogue raisonne and research. Reynard the Fox and Fox for All Seasons published by Bodleian Publishing. Oxford & Dorset. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/AnneLouiseAvery
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Anne Louise Avery @annelouiseavery.bsky.social · Nov 10
Wonderful & enormous displays of Reynard the Fox in @blackwelloxford! Poultry of Oxford, watch your tail feathers! #MeetReynard 🦊
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🦊🎄🎥Old Fox's Christmas Film Advent Calendar. In honour of Old Fox's great love of the cinema, each day during Advent, I'll be sharing one of twenty-four interesting and rewarding films to watch over the festive period. 🎥🎄🦊 Day Nine: Tokyo Godfathers (2003). Set on Christmas Eve, this funny and good-natured film follows a trio of homeless people – middle-aged alcoholic Gin, trans woman Hana, and teenage runaway Miyuki – as they find and care for an abandoned baby. Tokyo, the real Tokyo, is a further character - every building and alley-way and vending machine is ensouled by Satoshi Kon, the director. There is magic here, as the catalyst of the baby causes miraculous coincidences to be swept into the lives of these deeply likeable and charismatic "wandering people " (furōsha 浮浪者), enabling them to recover, to heal and to find happiness once again.
December 8, 2025 at 11:32 PM
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Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Eighth Window | Anne Louise Avery
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December 8, 2025 at 9:09 PM
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The Eighth Window. It was very cold outside, drifts of snow in the lane, and whilst Old Fox was busy in the Great Woods, Pine Marten and Wolf had settled themselves by the roaring fire with the biscuit tin and a pile of jigsaw puzzles. There was a wonderful selection in the cottage, entire cupboards were dedicated to them in the parlour and the lower attics. There were fierce Norsemen and love-lorn knights-errant and princesses wreathed in apple blossom crowns, there were steam ships and locomotives and stage coaches, charming views of Fairyland and wistful Rococo picnics, dozens of brightly-coloured scenes of Shakespeare and Dickens and Chaucer, romantic American views – ice skating on the Hudson! the retreat from Lexington! The first Christmas in the New Republic! There were famous gardens of Devon, with borders bustling with lupins and foxgloves and hollyhocks, and still lifes of oranges and lilac blossoms and chocolate pots, there were cathedral closes and London railway stations and Scottish islands, portraits of French actresses holding enormous bouquets of pink roses and Gibson girls skiing and yachting and playing golf, and a parade of flappers driving different motor cars and lounging around on the French Riviera. But that cold, snow-bound morning both Pine Marten and Wolf picked wintry puzzles to do. Wolf laboured away at "Bob Cratchit's Christmas Dinner" and Pine Marten tackled "The Christmas Waits". The latter, with its charming group of west gallery musicians, looked very much like the bright, festive eves of their own village and as such, it filled Pine Marten with a warm feeling of almost unbearable happiness as the old-fashioned picture slowly emerged.
December 8, 2025 at 6:52 PM
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@annelouiseavery.bsky.social's Patreon - "Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Eighth Window"
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Old Fox's Advent Calendar: The Eighth Window | Anne Louise Avery
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December 8, 2025 at 3:47 PM
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The Eighth Window: The heavy snow had finally stopped that morning, leaving pale blue skies and drifts as tall as Wolf along the lane. After a breakfast of hot buttery muffins and strong lemon tea, Old Fox made his way to the far corner of the Great Woods across the river. There, ringed with gleaming holly trees, like attendants upon a great Dorset barrow-king, was the cottage's Christmas tree to be. It was a magnificent spruce tree, twelve foot high, whose sacred life had been given freely & reverently to Old Fox for that brief season at the turn of 1930, when the light tried so very hard to level in the world. As was usual, Old Fox stood still and listened intently to the tree's tales, stories of the haze of bluebells and violets in the spring, of the little robins and great tits and black caps who chattered and sang on his branches, of the sweet green cool of the woods in the summer, when all the village courted in its lazy realms, of the copper-dun-gilt beauty of the autumn turn, with its scarlet berries and moon-white mushrooms, and now the snows which lay so heavy on his limbs. "Such a life I have had!" said the tree. "Such a life!" And Old Fox bowed to him, a low bow such as a great king deserves. And at that point we must leave them, for there is magic in the deep woods at Christmastide of which us humans have no right to know.
December 8, 2025 at 2:52 PM
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Day Eight: Miracle on 34th Street (1947 and 1994). There are two iconic versions of this magical New York fairytale. Both are perfectly cast, but I particularly love Richard Attenborough's thoughtful portrayal of Kris Kringle/Father Christmas as gentleness and goodness personified, imbued with a faint, otherworldly melancholy to cut the sentimentality. There are moments too of real magic, but magic based not in special effects or wild capers, but in small and transformative acts of kindness to others. https://youtube.com/watch?v=pMXk048h3XQ
December 8, 2025 at 8:39 AM
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It was Advent Sunday and Old Fox, always an early riser, had been cleaning since half-past four. The cottage, apart from Wolf's bedroom, was already extremely tidy, but now its lovely old rooms and corridors seemed to beam in happiness at such expert and loving care. The silver and silver plate shone, the house spiders had kept their spinning to their allotted corners, the Turkey rugs were as bright as when they were first woven in sunlit, thyme-scented rooms in Uşak, the kitchen range and hearth stones had been freshly-blackened, and the oak and walnut tables and conversation chairs and settles gleamed with their rich heady polish of lavender and beeswax made from Old Fox's busy hives of orchard bees.
November 30, 2025 at 12:07 PM
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The Seventh Window. It was a glittering, snow-swathed Sunday morning of pale sun and wood-smoke and summon bells. After a hearty breakfast, Old Fox walked up to the Sheep Church, pausing on Maygad Hill to call down to the Little Girl's Aunt who was walking along a lower track. She decided to come with him and they talked happily of Christmas and the village carol concert and the research for her book on local folklore. A little robin greeted them at the porch, singing a high and rather ancient song of frozen ground and barrows and hidden gold. Inside, it was very still and a beautiful sea light fell through the blue soda windows onto the uneven stone floor. The Little Girl's Aunt sat down on a chancel pew, and Old Fox stood for a while in the silence. Then he lit the second Advent candle in the tangled wreath on the altar, and it flared straight and golden and steady. This one is for Peace, he told the Little Girl's Aunt and the robin and the faint, lonely ghosts of that lonely chapel. For Peace.
December 7, 2025 at 9:31 AM
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Day Seven: The Snow Queen (Снежная королева; 1957).

Directed by Lev Atamanov, this animated retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fable was the first Soviet film acquired by an American company during the Cold War.
A still of Gerda from the Snow Queen. She has blonde hair and a bright red skirt and is depicted amidst a frozen landscape. Day Seven: The Snow Queen (Снежная королева; 1957). Directed by Lev Atamanov, this animated retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fable was the first Soviet film acquired by an American company during the Cold War. It was also such a profound inspiration to Hayao Miyazaki that he later reminisced that had he "not one day seen Snedronningen (The Snow Queen) during a film screening hosted by the company labor union, I honestly doubt that I would have continued working as an animator." It's one of my favourite childhood films – poetic and brave, with a feeling of a vast and intricate magical world glimpsed from on high.
December 7, 2025 at 9:52 AM
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The Seventh Window. It was a glittering, snow-swathed Sunday morning of pale sun and wood-smoke and summon bells. After a hearty breakfast, Old Fox walked up to the Sheep Church, pausing on Maygad Hill to call down to the Little Girl's Aunt who was walking along a lower track. She decided to come with him and they talked happily of Christmas and the village carol concert and the research for her book on local folklore. A little robin greeted them at the porch, singing a high and rather ancient song of frozen ground and barrows and hidden gold. Inside, it was very still and a beautiful sea light fell through the blue soda windows onto the uneven stone floor. The Little Girl's Aunt sat down on a chancel pew, and Old Fox stood for a while in the silence. Then he lit the second Advent candle in the tangled wreath on the altar, and it flared straight and golden and steady. This one is for Peace, he told the Little Girl's Aunt and the robin and the faint, lonely ghosts of that lonely chapel. For Peace.
December 7, 2025 at 9:31 AM
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The Seventh Window. St Ambrose's Day, the Honey-Tongued Doctor, Patron Saint of Bees and Beekeepers. At first light, making his way through the snow and pausing to admire the delicate rosen-gold of the dawn, Old Fox had gone to the orchards to check on the bees. They were wintering now, but a messenger bee emerged to talk to Old Fox, to hear his news and tell him theirs. With Old Fox's skill as beekeeper, they always survived the cold months, never losing even one fellow. Their winter stores were sumptuous and plentiful, and the hives were very comfortable and warm. How they loved their Old Fox! How happy they were to be bees in those quiet old orchards in that quiet old corner of Dorsetshire!
December 7, 2025 at 7:51 AM
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The Seventh Window. St Ambrose's Day, the Honey-Tongued Doctor, Patron Saint of Bees and Beekeepers. At first light, making his way through the snow and pausing to admire the delicate rosen-gold of the dawn, Old Fox had gone to the orchards to check on the bees. They were wintering now, but a messenger bee emerged to talk to Old Fox, to hear his news and tell him theirs. With Old Fox's skill as beekeeper, they always survived the cold months, never losing even one fellow. Their winter stores were sumptuous and plentiful, and the hives were very comfortable and warm. How they loved their Old Fox! How happy they were to be bees in those quiet old orchards in that quiet old corner of Dorsetshire!
December 7, 2025 at 7:51 AM
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Post See new posts Conversation Anne Louise Avery @AnneLouiseAvery The Sixth Window: The night of the Feast of Saint Nicholas. The Newcomer's wagon had appeared on the village green. A thin plume of smoke wreathed from the chimney, and red and yellow and blue and green lamps were draped between the surrounding trees. But where was he? Inside, by the stove, fur as white as snow, eyes the colour of sea amber. He was spinning a silver apple in a wide silver saucer & looking upon the world in miniature. There were the tall creaking ships in the grey Atlantic swell, gulls following in the dimming skies, there were the little children playing in a harbour street in Rotterdam, there were the cravatted and moustachioed gentlemen sipping their Picon-bières in the cafes of Lille, there was the King of England coughing and wheezing by an embering fire in Craigweil House in Bognor, and there were the street lamps glimmering through the windows of Duke Humfrey's Library in the Bodleian as a scholarly fox carefully opened a 13th century manuscript at a well-remembered, well-beloved point and began to read – "SEyn Nycholas þe holi mon þat good confessour was Icome he was of heie men In þe cite of patras …"
December 6, 2025 at 10:51 PM
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The Sixth Window. The Feast of Saint Nicholas. Well-wrapped up in an enormous rose-coloured muffler, carrying a sturdy wicker basket in paw, Babcia had taken the early bus into Dorchester to do some Christmas shopping on her own.
Babcia the Pine Marten Genge & Co in Dorchester Dorchester
December 6, 2025 at 2:16 PM
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The Sixth Window. The Morning of the Feast of Saint Nicholas. The turret clock in St Thomas's had just rung five, and everyone in Watercress Lane was still asleep, apart from a young mouse in Medewort Cottage.
St Nicholas on his white horse The Mouse of Watercress Lane The Mouse's cottage.
December 6, 2025 at 9:36 AM
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Day Six: Morozko (Father Frost; 1965). Directed by Alexander Rou, the doyen of the Gorky Film Studio, this is the pinnacle of Soviet folk revivalist cinema. Based on the fairy tale Morozko or Father Frost, its deep winter magic, wild Russian humour, sumptuous cinematography, uneven special effects, questionable acting and fierce insistence on the conquering power of goodness and kindness are to be utterly relished.
December 6, 2025 at 9:54 AM
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The Sixth Window. The Morning of the Feast of Saint Nicholas. The turret clock in St Thomas's had just rung five, and everyone in Watercress Lane was still asleep, apart from a young mouse in Medewort Cottage.
St Nicholas on his white horse The Mouse of Watercress Lane The Mouse's cottage.
December 6, 2025 at 9:36 AM
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If you want to be transported to a kinder and gentler world, follow Anne and open an advent calendar window (sometimes two!) each day. It's a little moment of peace and gratitude that may help you feel hope.
annelouiseavery.bsky.social Anne Louise Avery @annelouiseavery.bsky.social · 4d
The Fifth Window. The Elderly Squirrel was carefully arranging his Christmas cards on the Georgian mantlepiece in his little sitting room. There were five cards in sum.
The Elderly Squirrel in younger days Good King Wenceslas sheet music A postcard of Cliff Walk, Newport, Rhode Island.
December 5, 2025 at 12:53 AM
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The Second 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.
Canterbury in Winter by Ernest Uden. Tabby cat by Rachel Stribbling. Bookshop by William Oxer
December 2, 2025 at 4:26 PM
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The Fourth Window. Herr Professor Hedgehog was having a perfectly delightful morning. After breakfast, he walked into the village past fields of glittering frost and bought some oranges, four Chelsea buns, a bag of marzipan walnuts and a sheet of stamps. Outside the drapers, he'd bumped into Old Fox and Wolf who had provided him with an interesting, potted version of all the local gossip. Back home, he arranged some of the walnuts in a silver nut dish, made a strong pot of coffee, put on a gramophone record of medieval carols, and began the happy task of writing his Christmas cards and letters, commencing with the most important one of all, addressed to the villa of a small vole in Baden-Baden.
December 3, 2025 at 11:43 PM
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The Fourth Window. "It's the Rag & Ribbon Weasel," shouted Wolf from upstairs. "He's coming up the path!" "Rather early this year," said Old Fox, and went to open the front door. Standing on the threshold was a whiskery Weasel, great sack on his back full of tatters and frays. Wolf and Grandcub found the rag-bag, which hung on the linen room door. It was a huge bag, made from an old green velvet tablecloth. Inside, were scraps and shreds collected over the past six months: jags of threadbare white linen and woollens and fairy-whisps of calicoes and poplins and faradines and mousselines and tussores and fancy Ottoman and Merveilleux silks. "Always the best rags," said the Weasel, "no cholera in the cottage, no whooping or Scarlet spots?" "Nothing like that, answered Old Fox, who'd brought him some plum bread & a snifter of gin. "Then I'll be giving you half-a-crown and asking for your blessing." And the Rag & Ribbon Weasel munched his cake & swiped his Geneva, and was on his way, vanishing into the snow-piled lane like a puck or a Yuletide gobling.
December 4, 2025 at 8:21 AM
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The Fourth Window: For the past few years, Wolf had received an adventskalender in the post from his friend Ulfric, an elderly wolf who lived in Munich. This Advent, he had sent a beautiful Nikolaus calendar made by the lithographers Reichhold & Lang. It had nineteen doors – the first to be opened on St Nicholas' Day, the 6th December, the last on Christmas Eve. Each door was decorated with a small angel and a wolf holding different flowers and plants of the season –Schneerosen, Mistletoe, snow-white Chrysanthemums, blood-red Holly, Goldflieder, Kirschblüten. Of even greater delight, however, was the daily additional presence of a delicious Stollwerck chocolate. Each morning, Wolf leapt out of bed and thundered with such excitement and exuberance and untrammelled happiness towards his calendar, that Old Fox quietly ordered an extra large box of Stollwerck bonbons for Christmas Day.
December 4, 2025 at 10:28 AM
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The Fifth Window. The Elderly Squirrel was carefully arranging his Christmas cards on the Georgian mantlepiece in his little sitting room. There were five cards in sum.
The Elderly Squirrel in younger days Good King Wenceslas sheet music A postcard of Cliff Walk, Newport, Rhode Island.
December 4, 2025 at 12:37 PM
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Wonderful & enormous displays of Reynard the Fox in @blackwelloxford! Poultry of Oxford, watch your tail feathers! #MeetReynard 🦊
November 10, 2024 at 11:20 AM
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St. Nicholas Eve. Peter had been sent to bed very early that night. He had an awful cold, and, because of his diabetes, the Doctor had been called. Bed rest, he'd said, plenty of fluids, just bread and milk for supper. I'll call back first thing in the morning. And don't worry, he'll be fine, he said to Peter's mother, who always did worry, with some reason. Peter didn't feel that bad, but his nose was red and sore, and his head throbbed and his eyes hurt when he moved them around. He fell deeply asleep at seven, and then woke suddenly at midnight, not knowing what day or time it was. He felt rather feverish and giddy. The room was bright with moonlight, and he knelt on the bed and opened the curtains of the little window which looked out across the sleeping hamlet and beyond to the downs and the sea. He heard an owl calling and another replying politely from the far woods. Then, suddenly, the unexpected clip-clop of a horse, the delicate jangle of bells, the creak of carriage wheels. Descending the steep road from Gleydestow farm, was a wagon, gaily painted in bright reds and blues and pulled by a silver horse with a long silver mane, threaded with silver stars. Holding the reins with capable paws was a white fox with bright amber eyes. At the turning to the hamlet, the fox slowed his horse, and looked directly up at Peter for a long moment, and then carried on down the hill into the heavy mist which had risen from the frozen fields. Peter opened the window and tried follow its course, but to no avail. The Newcomer, he said to himself, excitement bubbling up inside, the Newcomer is back, he's back! Christmas is near, Christmas is near! And he closed the latch, drank some water, tucked himself back into bed, and fell straight to sleep. When he woke the next day to his mother and the cheerful Doctor, smelling of cold air and iodoform, he felt as though he'd slept for days. I feel fine now, said Peter, my nose isn't even running any more. My word, said the Doc…
December 4, 2025 at 7:23 PM