Winter gifts?

 

Winter gifts?

books for long, dark nights

Waiting for the quiet feathers,

That drift through the trees,

That smother the world into silence.

 Waiting, still waiting, for the snow.

Waiting for the snow, Gordon MacLellan

As the nights are drawing in and our thoughts turn to the lingering darkness and a need for something to keep us busy other than sitting knitting socks for sheep, and there are gifts to pursue for Christmas, Midwinter, Yule and All, Creeping Toad would like to offer a few extra treats for you, for a loved one or maybe for someone whose complacency you would simply like to disturb….

Books

Sacred Animals: creative, reflective and adventurous ways of exploring relationships with the animal world (or apply similar ideas to trees, other plants, fungi and stones: it’s up to you!) Here are ways of building meditations, composing poems, making outfits, masks, tokens and totems, £15.06 *

Waiting for the Snow: my most recent collection of poems: words for dark evenings and  desire for open spaces, for the northern seas on the rocks of Orkney, for ravens watching the world go by and for the kelpie who waits in dark still poems

50 pages, A5, £5.97

There are cracks in the pavement 

Where the bears live,

Feeding on the careless words we drop

Between one step and the next.

Whisper along the Wind: or you can listen and be drawn into stillness by the beautiful music of Gifts from Crows and words from myself: Orchards are here and the dark night of Vigil and the sharp Beaks of Raven

Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch: a small collection celebrating one of the wildest of the wild witches from her house that follows you through the crowded woods to herself polishing the rust off her teeth, £4.36

Old stones and ancient bones: an older collection poems with words from hollow hills, of bones and skulls and the satyr who waits on the Dancing Lawns

£5.00 direct from me

*Please don't blame me for the strangeness of pricings!  But you can order direct - cheaper! Email below

Ordering: you can go through eBay: the links will take you there. If you want the full set, message me directly as that might be easier!

Email: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

Hide a witch,

Inside a house,

Inside a wood,

Inside a beck,

Inside a bog,

Inside a crag,

Inside a world,

Inside a doll.

 

Autumn Woods public event

AUTUMN WOODS 

trees are palaces too! 

a day of tree ideas, planning adventures, creating stories, making and mess and laughter
Date: Saturday 4th October 
Venue: Serpentine Gardens, Burlington Rd, Buxton SK17 9AL 
Parking: Burlington Road or Pavilion Gardens 
What3words: lurching.instant.scrambles   
Times: 10.30 - 3.30 
This event is free: no booking or tickets needed
Materials are provided
You just bring the smiles, ideas and a helpful grown-up

change of venue notice

 

given the fearsome weather that is being predicted for this weekend, we're moving the Autumn Woods....but only about 100 metres or so!

 

We will be in action in the grounds of the Serpentine Community Garden with strong polytunnels for shelter from the stormcats and rainwolves!

 

Address: Serpentine Community Garden, Burlington Rd, Buxton, SK17 9AR

What3words: roofs.frog.nudge

 

Times 10:30 - 3:00

 

 Join us in the woods of the Serpentine Gardens, Buxton,  to enjoy the trees by the river. Find your own answers to the questions: 

who sits in a tree's throne room?

who guards a trees' treasures? 

who waits in the root-dungeons? 

who waves flags from the twig battlements? 

who dances in a branch's ballroom? 

Make your own Tree Palace Pop-up. 

Take home your own Bee and Bug Palace for your garden 

This is the third of four events Creeping Toad partners Stone and Water are doing as a series Celebrating Woodland with the aim of getting people recognising the richness and importance of the woodlands around us. Funded by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Community Grant Fund

mousehole: hidden in the Palace depths

Book Week workshops

Friends in Nature

celebrating Book Week Scotland

from beetles and bumblebees to birds, bats and bears, exploring friendship with the world around us!

Toad availability for these workshops: 19 - 26th November 2025

DATES STILL AVAILABLE: 19, 21, 25 November

(Book Week: 17 - 23rd November 2025)

 

Making friends,

Becoming friends,

How do we nurture a friendship?

What do friendships give us?

 

Book Week Scotland is an annual celebration of books and reading. This year's Book Week theme is “Friends”,and while this post is about Creeping Toad Book Week plans, these same ideas and activities could be brought to other places! So if you are in darkest Derbyshire, hair-raising Herts, spontaneous Sussex or some such place, get in touch and we’ll see what we can do!

Creeping Toad has done Book Week related activities for the last couple of years and since Toad activity usually revolves around the environment, we’ve been thinking about workshops exploring friendships with the world around us and how those ideas, principles or the friendships themselves might inspire some writing and book-building! In planning for this year’s adventures, we’ve been working with our friends at N4H: 

Nature 4 Health aims to help people connect with nature, each other and themselves. Experience the mindful benefits of green and blue space and the fascinating species we share the planet with. (N4H website)

favourite animals, 

helpful beasts, 

being pals with unlikely creatures, 

long, slow friendships with trees, 

how to make friends with a river…

befriend a toadstool?

Toad sessions could include 

• storytelling
• storymaking
• turning stories into our own little Books so we build books in Book Week
• making puppets to dramatise our stories
• shadow puppets might make for even more striking storytelling
• pop-up landscapes could build stories into forms that encourage words without worrying about writing!

To book, to find out more or to pitch in with your own suggestions contact Gordon:

Mobile: 07791096857

Email: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

Kites and monsters: public events

Kites, Monsters and Trees

public events in the Autumn

As the summer turns towards autumn, the rosehips redden and the blackberries ripen on the brambles, we have a lively series of public events coming up. Some are Stone and Water, some are Creeping Toad: most are a bit of both!

More details are still to come for some but get these in your diary!

September

Sunday 21st: Autumn Kites 1: make and fly a kite inspired by the winged wildlife of Buxton. Drop in an exercise your flying skills! Design and make your own kite: we’re hoping for swallows, swifts, falcons, bats, bees and butterflies…..

Venue: Ashwood Park, Bakewell Rd, Buxton, SK17 9TB. (At the Morrisons end of the Park)

Time:10:30 - 15:30,

Cost: free

Organiser: Stone and Water

Project: Art in Action: setting out to build skills and bring people together

October

Saturday 4th: Autumn Woodland: a Fun Palaces event looking at trees and woodland wildlife: making bee houses, pop-up forests and giant drawings

Venue: Serpentine Walks, Burlington Rd, Buxton, SK17 9AL.

Time: 10:30 - 15:30

Cost: free

Organiser: Stone and Water with Creeping Toad, Buxton Wild Weeks and the Babbling Vagabonds

Project: Celebrating Woodland for Derbyshire Wildlife Trust

Sunday 5th: Wirksworth Wizarding day

I am telling stories through the day on this amazing festival of magic, wizards, witches and wildness!

Magical creatures and wonderful monsters
old tales of enchantment. Here you may meet unicorns and dragons, boggarts, mermaids and stoorworms. Our stories will take us from the hills and rivers of Derbyshire to the wild north of Scotland. Add your own monster to the mix and slide a page into - or out of - The Wirksworth Bestiary. Suitable for families.

Details and booking: https://www.wizardingday.com/activities

A Creeping Toad day

Friday 24th

Assembly Rooms Buxton: a day with Buxton Wild Weeks exploring sustainability, biodiversity and the richness of our local environments Details to follow

More details to follow

Tuesday 28th: Autumn Kites 2: make and fly a kite inspired by the winged wildlife of Buxton. Drop in an exercise your flying skills! Design and make your own kite: we’re hoping for swallows, swifts, falcons, bats, bees and butterflies. Given that we are very close to Hallowe’en, we’re expecting a few broomstick kites and maybe some floating ghosts tangled in the treetops…we’ll be making indoors in the library and flying in the Rec

Venue: Buxton Library, Kents Bank Rd, Buxton, SK17 9HW.

Time: 10:30 - 15:30

Cost: free

Organiser: Stone and Water with Creeping Toad

Project: Art in Action: setting out to build skills and bring people together


Friday 31st

And at end the month, join us for a thoroughly spooky day at Ryecroft Hall, Audenshaw for Tameside MBC. There will be stories, masks to make, gargoyles build and sinister grinning goblins to hide in corners at home!

Details to follow

Organiser: Creeping Toad

Creativity, London

Creativity Conference,  London

 27th June 2025 
 Vue Cinema, Piccadilly, 

The Raindance Film Festival….and in one cinema we gather to talk about creativity, inspiration, passion and delight: what inspires us, how do we keep creativity flowing, how do we nurture our imaginations…. 

 I’m involved in two presentations at this first UK flowering of the Creativity Conference *

Wonder, Enchantment and Landscape: essentially, saying to people: let things go, abandon preconceptions and go for a walk: wherever: urban park, inner city street and plane tree square, mountain glen or roadside verge: just go and look and listen and breathe yourself into the richness of moss and stone and water and an excitement of dandelions….1 way of keeping creativity going: let the world have a conversation with you (presentations are only 9 minute long!)

 Then there is a panel on storytelling: 

Our starting point might be a few questions….but who knows where this will go! 

"why do we/you tell stories and maybe how do you use them?"    

"what sort of stories do you use?"   

"what do you hope the stories you use will do for the people who read/listen/experience them", which isn't necessarily the same as #1 above   

The answers to these are not likely to be discrete and starting at any one of them will bring in the others. I happily work across the spectrum of stories from ancient myth to 'just 5 minutes ago' craziness....maybe overall, for me there is the thought 

 "don't just say we use stories, it is good to think about why we use them and what we hope they can do." 

 Following up the conference 

 if it seems appropriate, I’ll post my powerpoint on google drive and add a link here

finding my books: 3 main books around just now 

Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch - a small booklet 

Waiting for the Snow: my latest collection of poems 

Old Stone and Ancient Bones: an earlier collection of poems (get through my website)

Sacred Animals: a manual for building a creative, personal spiritual relationship with the world around us

(links will take you to ebay pages for books...you could also visit my website's shop page)

The Creativity Conference is a global meeting of minds to explore the essence of creativity. We invite incredible creative speakers to share the wisdom they have gained from successful projects - and our definition for 'Creativity' is very particular: 'Any intentional decision'.

The Creativity Conference

Golden leaves and stories

 Gold Leaves and Fingerprints...

recent Creeping Toad adventures

in the rain in Corbar Woods: a damp and damper day that eventually drove us out of the woods and away from the last bluebells and the baby rabbits. But before the rain really hit, we heard about the Mystery of the Golden Leaf (spoiler: it was a cat on a scooter), and we met the fingerprint people who lives among the trees

footprints and other clues....

In Corbar Woods....

yesterday saw the second Leek Loves Books festival. More rain. But authors, talks, poets, the "What is Leek reading now" board (and the board itself made for very interesting reading....and round in the Toad corner I was telling stories and working with people to make puppets....and either making up stories to go with puppets or watching young people create their own puppet shows! The young people in these pictures all arrived together so i am hoping that the photos (sent in by a parent) are OK to use: if they aren't just let me know!