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Happy Fobbit Day!

It's nearly one of my most favourite-ist times of the year! Yay!

Easter is approaching!

Now, of course, like most men out there, I LOVE me some chocolate. But that's not why I lurrrrrrrve Easter so much.

Wanna know why?

Do ya?

Okay, let me tell you.

Now it's a bit unusual, so just be prepared alright?

I really... Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally...

Really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really...

love...

BUNNIES!

That's right, I said it. Bunnies! I love them! And Easter is the BUNNY holiday!

Who doesn't want that?!

Laura told me that a lot of people-persons think its strange for foxes and bunnies to be friends, but I think that's silly. Anybody can be friends, it doesn't matter what you look like or what species you are!

So to celebrate my love and bestest-estest friendship with all my bunny friends from back in the wild, I decided to do something special for this Easter and make... A COSTUME! (For more tips on how to make a top-notch fox-tume, see the time I scared Laura)

With my good friends Louis the puppy, Marco the Porcupine (our handy, portable pin-cushion), and Ollie the Owl, we gathered some felt and got the old stapler to make...

THE FOBBIT!

Introducing the new and very bestest symbol of Easter, because it's not only a bunny... But a fox too! (And we all know that they're the best animals around)

Go and fobbit your troubles, eat LOTS of chocolate, and have a lovely jubbly day with all your favourite fobbits!

Happy Fobbit Day!

Lotsa love,

Fox

A new year and a new housemate: Why we had our paws full in 2014...

Whaaat... Who is that?

Come over here a sec, lemme see you...

Oh! Gosh!

Fancy seeing you here!

Yeah, it's been a while, huh?

2014 was a very fox-less year, wasn't it? TOO fox-less for my liking!

But yaaaaay its 2015! So...

Well I GUESS as its been a whooooooooooooole year I should tell you where I've been!

I kept sitting down at my big computery box and looking at it thinking "Yeeeah let's write stuff!" But then something happened and it got swept away in the business of busy things. Then before I knew it, I hop back on and the last time was Christmas! And now it's just been Christmas AGAIN!

How did that happen?!

SO, as you know, I decided a couple of years ago to join my bestest friend Laura and go to art school with her to help her draw pretty pictures. We have made lots and lots of new friends, and it was all pretty wondrous!

And then one day, things changed a bit... A lot. Things got VERY busy as we had our paws full with...

Yayyyyyyy!

I was VERY excited to meet our new chum. I put the kettle on and sat in the living room until there was a: Knock! Knock! Knock! at the door.

We ran down the stairs and flung open the door to greet...

The cutest, sweetest little puppy! 

He had long dangly ears and snowy, chocolatey fur, and he was trying to lug a huge guitar case behind him.

He looked up at us with very wide and very confused eyes and said a VERY excited: "HELLO!"

We jumped back a bit in surprise. I cleared my throat. "Hello! My name is Fo--"

"WOW!" The puppy grinned, with a smile that reached ear to ear. "THIS is your house?! It's a nice house, a REALLY  nice house! When did you get here?!"

"Well," I started "We--"

"WOW, look at that pile of mail! You have A LOT of mail, do you get usually get that much mail?!"

"Um, well sometimes but--" I stammered.

"Where's my room?! Is it the bottom floor or the top floor? What floor is YOUR room on? I like being on the..."

"Here!" Laura laughed, cutting in and crouching down to pick up the guitar. "Follow us, we'll show you." She looked at me as they walked past and gave a chuckle. I sat still on the step, squinting my eyes and trying to catch up with the conversation.

I picked myself up off the floor, and already exhausted, I plodded after them to show the little puppy around his room. We helped him carry in the boxes stacked up by the front door, and decided to save the question of how he carried them all there for another time.

"So what's your name?" I said, pushing along a box with my nose.

"My name is... WOAH! WHAT'S THAT?!" And the little puppy slid across the middle of the room, bumping into the wall and pointing to a little white square.

I looked at Laura. She just smiled and shrugged. "Um... That's... That's a socket." I said, wondering how old he was.

"HA!" The puppy barked, and burst out laughing. "Don't be silly! You can't put that on your feet!"

I furrowed my brow and just stared at the puppy, throwing my paw across my face in despair. "No! Not a sock! A socket! You use it to..."

"OH! I nearly forgot!" The little dog exclaimed, scampering over to one of his boxes. "I got you a present to say thank you for having me..."

I gave a deep breath, smiled and tilted my head. "Aww, you didn't have to--"

"Here!" He handed me a bag and the label read: 'Chocolate covered waffles'.

Laura crouched down and gave him a hug with a pat on the head and a: "Thank you! That's so sweet!"

"No worries!" He beamed. "Actually, I got hungry on the way here and I ate all the waffles! But I thought you could use the bag to make a fort... Or to hide in for hide and seek... Or! Or!..."

"Er... Thank you." I said. "Maybe I'll make it into some socks... Now, let's put our paws up for a bit. Would you like a cup of tea?" I asked, rummaging in one of his boxes for a mug.

"No thank you, I don't like tea... But I LOVE coffee!"

The mug slipped from my paws in shock and I leapt to catch it, juggling it with myself until I managed to clasp a hold of it and fell onto my tummy. I tried to stand up but my legs started quivering and I couldn't do it. I felt too faint.

"You.. You.." I whimpered, "You don't like tea?! ..."

"Nah, well it's okay but I don't really drink it. Ooooh, THERE'S my pillow!" And with that, the puppy disappeared into a box.

I hauled myself up off the floor and used the door frame to pull myself up, clutching on to it and gazing very sadly up at Laura: "H-h-how can you not like tea?!"

"Maybe you can change his mind." Laura laughed. "C'mon, let's go make some drinks. Oh, by the way, did you catch his name? Because I--"

We jumped and turned around to see an overturned box, a pile of half-fallen curtain, and a fallen guitar that had made a nice little hole in the wall. A little bundle of chocolate fur rolled out from under the chaos with a pillow tangled up in his tail.

Shaking a bit of curtain out of his eye, he paused, and then gave a very wide-eyed, mischievous smile and simply said: "Um... My name's Louis."

Laura looked at me and raised her eyebrows. "This is going to be a fun year..."

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmastime, chums!

Here's something a little bit different. I hope you have an absolutely fandabeydosey Christmas full of all sorts of mischief and merriment!

Lots of love,
Fox

Scaring Laura

RRRRRAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR!

Did that scare you? That was my BEST monster impression. I did it to Laura yesterday to wake her up but she wasn't very impressed.

"Why did you do that, Fox?" You ask.

WELL I'LL TELL YOU WHY.

The other day Laura did something REALLY mean to me.

I was buttering my toast in the kitchen and as I went to go and put the peanut butter away, she leapt out from behind the door with a big: "RAAARRRRRR!"

It scared me so much I threw the peanut butter up into the air, and when I tried to catch it, it landed on my paw and my paw got stuck in the jar, all gooey and peanutty and buttery.

SO I decided yesterday to plot my revenge. I decided to scare her back to teach her a lesson.

And what's the best way to scare somebody?

Dress up as something scary!

I rummaged around in my basket for a good costume but, disappointingly, I couldn't find very much in there. So I decided to find something in Laura's room.

She says I should ask before I borrow things, but I think as she was downstairs making tea I couldn't possibly do that... It would be rude of me to interrupt her. So out of politeness, I left her to it and went searching for good costumes.

I sat on the floor and tapped my chin. I thought about dressing up like a spider (because there is nothing scarier than a spider) but there are so many legs I think I would trip over. And then a much better idea hit me. I was watching a program about animals on TV the other day, and there were some zebras that kept running away from a lion who, by the looks of things, just wanted to play stuck in the mud. But those zebras weren't having any of it. So lions must be VERY scary!

I leapt up very excitedly and started hunting around for a lion costume.

Laura draws stuff a lot, so I thought the best place to start would be to look in her box of drawing things, and I found myself a pair of scissors. The first step was making something to make my fur a more lion-ish colour. Maybe like a jumper. I've never made one before but I'm sure it's not that hard. So I cut a little hole in her curtains, which are the perfect lion-ish colour.

I tried to make the hole as neat as possible, so that it was soooooo subtle she wouldn't even notice it was there. So to make it its very neatest, I kept going over the edges to trim the jaggedy bits -  but unfortunately it kept getting bigger and bigger  and I didn't realise how much bigger until there was more window than curtain. Oh well, they say painters like to have 'natural light' to paint in - and now she has loads!

The next thing I needed was a big fluffy mane. I looked at a can of hairspray and wondered if that might be quite useful to fluff up my fur - but after sampling a bit on my paw the fur came out all crunchy and weird - so that wouldn't do.

But THEN I saw the duffle coat! And WOW! What a big, beautiful, fluffy hood it has!
I poised with my scissors and wondered if Laura would mind. I looked out of the curtain to see what the weather was like and... Yup. Nice and sunny.

"There's no rain," I nodded, "She won't need her hood."

*

After a lot of time gluing and cutting, I sewed everything together. And by sew, I mean I used the stapler because it is A LOT quicker and more efficient.

I cut out a big rectangle and two smaller rectangles of curtain and put them together to make a beautiful jumper. It was so beautiful actually, that I might look into the jumper-stapling business to open a stapled-jumper shop.

Then I stapled together either end of the fluff from the duffle coat, and slipped it over my head. I even snipped off an extra chunk of coat fluff for a lion-tail.

Now at this point I started to get a bit confused as to what a lion's tail looks like, so I had to draw myself a diagram of a lion to check...

AND THEN, looking at my very factual picture, I realised my tail is far too poofy for me to be taken seriously as a lion. I considered using some celotape to wrap around my tail to flatten it down, but then realised that might be a bit sore to get off. SO, I wrapped a generous supply of toilet roll around it instead and stapled the bit of coat fluff onto the paper at the end.

Assessing my diagram again, It looked like the only thing left to do now was the ears. I have pointy ears and lions have round ears. This was a bit of a problem because, I don't know if you know this, but its quite hard to change your ears.

I looked at the scissors and thought back to the celotape, and knew that these were both VERY bad ideas. Instead, I rummaged in Laura's laundry bag, and found two pegs  - so I clipped down the pointy ear bits with those.

I looked in the mirror, and held up my diagram...

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.


I think it looked so professional that Laura would be quite confused as to why there's a lion in her house.

I waited for the sound of the key in the door, and then in 3, 2, 1...

Top 7 tips: What to do when you're feeling blue.

Sometimes in life, you feel a little bit sad. Sometimes you even feel a lot sad.

It's not nice when you feel sad. And I don't know what to do sometimes to cheer myself up!

So I thought I'd make a list of the top 7 Fox-rated things to do to cheer you up when you're feeling blue...

1. Have a cup of tea
The first step to feeling better is the essential ingredient of tea. I'm sure a scientist somewhere at some-point, really frustrated with his overly frothy test tube, had a sip of tea and thought: "By george! Eureka! My goodness! That's it!" And decided that a hot tea is the bestest for sorting you out.
So there you go. Scientifically proven.


2. Smile at yourself in a mirror
We didn't have mirrors in the wild, so when I came across one here I found it pretty weird in general. But if you pull faces at yourself in there, it looks so strange it just might make you smile!

3. Eat lots of cake (Without your Laura looking)

Laura says I shouldn't eat lots of cake because it's bad for me. BUT I think if you're sad, a top tip is to eat lots and lots and lots and LOTS of it until you feel very satisfied and a maybe a bit queasy. Then you can focus on the tastiness and queasiness instead of your sadness!
(But maybe run around the garden a few times and stock up on broccoli when you're feeling better).


4. Eat lots of biscuits (Without your Laura looking)
You really can't go wrong with eating!

5. Make best friends with your duvet
There's nothing like wrapping yourself up in your duvet until you look like a sausage roll. Then you could either pretend you actually ARE a sausage roll, and think about the taxing life of flaky pastry to distract you, or you could pretend your duvet is a big monster trying to eat you and the people of the world, but you fight it off to save the day and become a hero! Yay!

6. Dress your hoover up in big shoes, a floppy hat and a moustache until it no longer resembles a hoover
I really really really really REALLY don't like hoovers. And I don't want it sat there staring at me, looking like a hoover, when I feel sad. It would just make me feel even MORE sad. So you need to be very brave, and carefully sneak around the back of your local hoover (possibly dressed in an army or ninja-style fashion for full sneakiness) and cunningly disguise it so it is no longer a threat.


7. A HUG
Sometimes what you need more than anything in the whole world is a big old cuddle! So spread those arms, put down your tea, wipe off the cake crumbs, hop over in your duvet, give me a smile, and c'meeeeeerrrreeee....

GIVE US A CUDDLE!

Lotsa love,

Fox

Summertime!

Hoooray, we're back home for a few weeks of summer holiday!

And LOOK at the weather. Just LOOK at it.

Its probably raining now I've said that.

But it's been sooooooooooooooooo sunny recently, its great!

I've been kicking back and sunbathing in the garden with a nice cool glass of lemonade and a good crossword... What more could you want for the summer?

In the next few weeks whilst Laura is working, I have some exciting things planned... and THEN. AND THEN! In a couple of weeks we're going to Reading music festival!

HOW EXCITING IS THAT.

It took a bit of time to convince Laura to take me along, but as long as I carry my own suitcase and don't talk to strangers then its okay - Yayyyyy!

Anyway, I need to dash, my breakfast is ready and I can't be doing with soggy cornflakes.

Just thought I'd show you a little picture of Laura and me catching some rays and give you a little update.

Catch you soon for some summer adventures!

Lotsa love,
Fox

The Uni Adventures: Saying goodbye

Eventually, after many-a deadline, the summer hit and the time neared for the sun to set on our first year adventures. In our last few weeks, Farnham didn't quite seem to want to say goodbye; the sun climbed up into a bright blue sky and shone warmly down on the little town, making it look prettier than ever.

The weather was a bonus to the last few weeks, and we spent it together watching films and cruising around, finishing off our lessons before kicking back and embracing the summer sun.

One of our aims for the year was to pop into the town for a good old English cream tea; and what better time to venture out than in the last stretch of a wondrous year! Al and I trotted down to The Vintage Cafe; a quaint little place full of chunky wooden tables, delicate chairs and pretty little teacups - with fresh flowers in vases on the tables.

Our tea, scones, cream and jam arrived and they were very scrumptious. We nattered and munched, sipped and crunched until the day grew to a close. We reflected on the past year, and all the times we'd had.

"It'll be sad to leave this place," Al nodded, "But it'll be great fun in the new house!"

Yep, that's right, NEW HOUSE!

We got the keys to our lovely new house in July, and then we all plan to move in around September time. In fact, soon after our cream tea we joined up with everybody else to go and chose our rooms. Unfortunately Andy won't be joining us, but we have a basket reserved especially for his frequent visits.

We ambled up through the streets of Farnham and met one of the previous people that lived in the house, and she showed us 'round. Laura and me chose a room on the very top floor that overlooked the garden. We all wandered around asking the questions we needed answering, and pondering the ponders we had been pondering, then all met back up in the garden.

Whilst Russel and Bradders discussed where they'd play football in our tiny little garden, Lui and I nattered about vegetable patches, and planting a whole forest of Raymonds. We looked at the big ol' tree sat in the corner with a little lantern hanging from it, and decided that investing in fairy-lights and having a BBQ would be a fitting start to life in house 22!

We left the house feeling full of excitement for the upcoming year. Where we had been living was really lovely, but it will be nice to have somewhere to call our own... with SOFAS! And a garden!

When the end of May hit, the old house started to empty. We had teary goodbyes and big old hugs, and waved our paws to each-other until next time.

Goodbye house 87, and thank you for having us!

Now, it's back to the Ives with Laura for the summer, and some new adventures back home!

Catch you very soon!
Lotsa love,
Fox

The Uni Adventures: Washing machines

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Yup, that's right, I've never used a washing machine before. To be fair, I think I have a good reason - being a fox and all. I mean, we never used to wash clothes in the wild. Actually, we didn't even have clothes. Don't worry though, we have these natural fur coats to keep us cosy and covered up.

But when I went to live with Laura, over time I got given some stuff like a coat, scarf, gloves, PJs, and a teddy. So eventually the time came when they needed freshening up...

"Laura! Laura! Laura!" I called, sprawled out in my basket.

There was a doomp, doomp, doomp sound through the wall as someone thudded downstairs and pushed through the door, clutching three mugs and a bottle of milk.

"What is it, Fox?" Laura said, trying to balance the things in her hands.

"My clothes need washing - especially teddy, he's gotten a little bit muddy."

"How did he get muddy?" She sighed, leaning against the door.

"We were playing stuck in the mud." I said innocently.

"Well," She said, coming in and sitting on the bed, "I think it's time you learnt how to do this yourself. Do you remember what I taught you?"

I thought back to a day before we left, sat in front of the machine and listening to the instructions, and sketchily remembered:

1. Put clothes in the big bucket thing
2. Put in the soapy stuff
3. Press a button
4. Wait a bit
5. Get the clothes out.

Simple enough. Besides the fact I put too much soap in and didn't shut the door, so we came home to find a room full of water and bubbles. I tried suggesting we kept it that way, as like an indoor pond, but that didn't go down very well.

"Um, yeah..." I said, hopping onto all fours and grinning,  "...Yeah. Yeah! Yep. No worries. None at all. I'll sort it out!"

I threw my stuff in a bag and plodded off out the house, across the green and over to a building in the street opposite. To keep me company, I had put my headphones on and was listening to some music... And let me tell you, there's no feeling better than an automatic door opening for you whilst listening to a dramatic number from a musical!

'Why yes, washing machines,' I thought, gliding through the self-opening doors, "Fox is here. Fox has arrived. And yes..."

I clutched my bag of clothes and gave a far off look into the distance, singing out the first chorus of the song... "I dreamed a dream in time gone byyyyy... When hope was hiiiiigh..."

With a deep intake of breath and a dramatic sigh, I waltzed myself around the room, drifting in and out of tune and singing the gentle, emotional lines as they twinkled in my headphones: "There was no ransom to be paid, no song unsung, no grape juice untaaaa-sted..."

Until BOOOOM! The drums hit, and the dramatic last chorus hits, full of emotion!

I threw my clothes up into the air and fell to my knees. Throwing my head back, I howled with feeling in the loudest voice I could ever muster: "AND STILL I DREAM HE'LL COME TO MEEEEEEEEEEE! THAT WE WILL LIVE THE YEARS TOGETHERRRRR!"

I was so wrapped up in my performance, I hardly noticed the squeaking of the door. I leapt on top of a washing machine, grabbing the bottle of fabric softener to use as a microphone and belting out the last few notes: "SO DIFFERENT NOW FROM WHAT IT SEEEEEEEEMED, NOW LIFE HAS---"

"Um... Fox?" A voice cut through.

I jolted around to see a bemused looking Laura standing at the door, eyeing the dirty washing that was spread over the floor like a patchwork carpet.

"I.. er... I was just..." I stammered, clutching the fabric softener with the most innocent expression I could muster. "Just..."

Her expression wobbled and wibbled until out crashed a big, hearty: "AHAHAHAHAHA!"

I sniffed. "Well, you could at least be subtle about it. Not even a clap?"

She cleared her throat and marched over to me. With a grin she took hold of my paws and danced with me around the room, singing out: "We dreamed a dream of fresh laundryyyyyyy!"  tangoing us through socks and duffle-coats until we were dizzy.

Washing machines turned out to be quite good fun after all! I might clean more often...