Exciting news – my new book is published!

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on 17th October 2024.

We have a different subject this week as I am delighted to tell you that my new book, ‘The Language of the Badger – a year of personal encounters with the wildlife on our doorstep’ has now been published.

I can’t quite believe I am publishing my sixth book. Where did all that time go? Just Passing Through came out in April 2020, a travel memoir of our first three years living on a boat. A Simple Life came out a year later, sharing our adventures as we learned how to live an off-grid life. In 2022 The Turning of the Seasons followed our small-holding years in Wales and in 2023 The Constant Traveller provided a record of how our travelling life had expanded to include house-sitting as well as boating. I also published a guide to house-sitting in the same year.

Below is the information on the back cover of the book.

Do you know where a kingfisher hides its nest? Would it surprise you to hear that cats have nine lives because they can self-heal, or that badgers have a rich and varied language? Our affinity for the natural world is a vital part of being human and yet all too often the demands of modern life push it into the background.

Mary-Jane Houlton set herself a year-long challenge of actively rekindling that connection with the landscape and the animals who live in it. Each week she looked for a subject that piqued her curiosity, asking questions and seeking answers, and in doing so discovered a wonderful world right on her doorstep. The year begins at home in an off-grid cabin in France, with summer spent on her boat in the Netherlands, and these two very different landscapes provide the inspiration for her reflections. As the year draws to a close she finds that her life has been quietly changed by the simple act of finding a little time each week to indulge her curiosity.

This book is a love letter to the natural world, a place that in our hearts we all care deeply about. It’s also an invitation to escape our busy lives, to spend time getting to know the creatures of the woodlands and waterways and to gain a new perspective as we see the world through their eyes.

As you can see this latest book is a move in a new direction. However it is still set against the backdrop of Le Shack and Olivia Rose and so will therefore feel familiar to many of you. In fact, if you cast your mind back to last year, you may remember a blog where I explored the idea of asking weekly questions. During the year I have included some of those questions in the Olivia Rose Diaries as I wanted to see if people found them interesting. Your responses and the way my blog stats shot up in those weeks was very encouraging.

No book of mine would be complete without Michael providing me with the drawings and there are twelve of them in the book, one for each month. The one below is for December and the night of the long moon.

And finally, as threatened a few weeks ago, here is an excerpt of the first chapter.

The Language of the Badger – Introduction

As a child I was naturally curious. Everything was new to me and there was so much to discover. I don’t think I was unusual; it was just the natural curiosity of a child. I was so hungry for knowledge and understanding that I drove my parents to distraction, always asking why, where or how. I couldn’t help myself; the questions popped out of my mouth seemingly of their own volition.

All these years later that natural curiosity about the world around me seems muted and that bright-eyed child a distant memory. I find this strange as we live in a digital age where all knowledge is literally at our fingertips. I have the means to answer any query I can dream up, and yet the desire to ask questions seems to have dwindled. Instead I feel smothered by an overload of information that is not of my choosing, is more often than not deeply depressing, and which leaves me weary. My brain has so many things that it needs to process that it no longer has the capacity for whimsical questions or the energy to pursue the answers.

Curiosity is a wonderful thing though, something that we all need in our lives. The dictionary describes it as an eager wish to know or to learn about something and whilst some definitions can be stilted, those words struck a chord with me. I wanted to wake up in the morning feeling excited about what my day might bring. I felt a pang of longing for that sense of childish wonder that I had been too young to appreciate fully. For my own well-being I needed to feel more positive about the world I lived in and find some way to restore a sense of balance.

It seemed to me that reconnecting with my natural sense of curiosity would be the first small step along that road. It was time to open my eyes and my mind and let the small things in life beguile me once more. I set myself the challenge of learning something new each week, asking one simple question and letting the answer take me where it would. If no question came to mind it would be enough just to notice something new and to appreciate it for its own sake. I didn’t expect this resolution to be a life-changing experience or an overly time-consuming habit, I was just hoping for a small part of each week in my everyday life that would become special.

I have always turned to the natural world for succour, and it soon became clear that my questions reflected this natural affinity for the landscape and the animals that were around me. I learned why butterflies danced and where the wind came from, how we can read the stars and all about the secret life of trees. One question often led to another, and an innocent, childish thought sometimes took me off at a tangent that only an adult would consider.

After just a few months of indulging my curiosity I found that it was not possible to be half-hearted about the process. The more I learnt, the more I wanted to learn. I soon came to the conclusion that curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it made its life far more interesting.

From my own experience I am now a firm believer of the many benefits that arise from indulging our natural curiosity, but the science backs up my personal feelings. We retain more information when we actively choose to learn rather than being fed an endless stream of largely unnecessary data that goes in one ear and out of the other. Curiosity activates the same area of the brain as when we accomplish something, stimulating the release of dopamine, the ‘feel-good’ hormone, and as a result offers a level of protection against anxiety and depression. A curious mind is the psychological equivalent of a healthy heartbeat, a nurturing link between the mind and the body.

This book is a chronological record of my questions and the resulting answers, beginning in January and running on month by month to December. It is set against the backdrop of our cabin home near the Pyrenees for the winter months and on our boat in the Netherlands for the summer months but it is not a travelogue, the focus being more on the animals that we meet on the way rather than our personal journey. There were some weeks when I couldn’t find a question, but was content to simply become more aware of something beautiful or strange. Some questions provoked a longer answer than others, whilst for some the answer remained elusive. It also provides a record of a year where, much to my surprise, my life has been quietly changed. Curiosity, my old childhood friend, that voice in my head who had such a zest for life, is now my constant companion. All too often I have embarked upon a new resolution for a new year and it has fallen by the wayside. Not this time. My sense of curiosity has become strong; it thrives and is a part of me once more. When my year comes to an end I know I shall keep on asking questions and being delighted by the answers.

The Language of the Badger can be purchased from Amazon in both kindle format (£3.99) and paperback format (£8.99) and is also available if you are a member of Kindle Unlimited. I have attached a link which should take you to the Amazon UK site below. (Although knowing my digital skills It will probably take you somewhere else altogether).

It sometimes takes Amazon a while to get all their systems in place across all the different countries, for example the free sample option, and also for the print set-up to be finalised for the paperback version. By the time this blog comes out, everything should be ready but if you have any problems please do let me know.

The Language of the Badger: A year of personal encounters with the wildlife on our doorstep (In Search of a Simple Life Book 5) https://amzn.eu/d/gT0o1F4

I know many of you have read my previous books and I am always grateful for your support. I hope you might enjoy reading this book as much as I have loved writing it. It’s made the world a much more interesting place for me and I would love to share that sense of wonder with you.

All the best

MJ and the badger