Matching cartoon fox and hound tattoos

The weir has frozen at the edges again, and the heron who used to fish below the sluice has moved on to the reservoir, so I have the whole pool to myself. I went in yesterday anyway. The water was so cold it made my teeth ache, and I stood in it up to my chest pretending I was not waiting for someone to bark at me from the bank.

Mrs Pargeter came down with her tin of bacon rinds on Sunday, the way she always did when you were here, and she put them on the flat stone where you used to sit and say nothing at all for an hour. I ate them. They were good, and I could not bear to let them go to the crows.

The letter from the kennels came last week, the one with the crest that looks like a shield with a bone in it. I read it three times in the hedge before I understood it. They say you have a place now, with a bed and a bowl that is always full, and a man who calls you Sergeant. I am glad. I am. You always did want something to take orders from, and I always wanted you to be warm.

So I am writing to tell you the splash you made when you jumped in on the last day was the biggest this river has ever seen, and that I have kept the ring it made. It is still out there, spreading slowly against the reeds where the current cannot reach. Come back in the spring and we will see whether it has got as far as the far bank.

Yours, as ever, Ferris