#BlogTour-’21st Century Yokel’ by Tom Cox

Hugest of thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things for being able to participate in this blog tour for ’21st Century Yokel’ by Tom Cox!

About the book…

21st-Century Yokel is not quite nature writing, not quite a family memoir, not quite a book about walking, not quite a collection of humorous essays, but a bit of all five.
Thick with owls and badgers, oak trees and wood piles, scarecrows and ghosts, and Tom Cox’s loud and excitable dad, this book is full of the folklore of several counties – the ancient kind and the everyday variety – as well as wild places, mystical spots and curious objects.

Emerging from this focus on the detail are themes that are broader and bigger and more important than ever.
Tom’s writing treads a new path, one that has a lot in common with a rambling country walk;it’s bewitched by fresh air and big skies, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless and prone to a few detours, but it always reaches its destination in the end.

Who could not love a book that has a chapter called ‘Witches Knickers’?

Tom Cox regularly lights up my life with his art and musings on Twitter so getting the chance to read his newest book whilst travelling the length and breadth of Wales was an absolute must.

Interspersed with balck and white illustrations throughout, anecdotes, ramblings and history, reading this is like going on a super long ramble with one of your best friends!

‘I am not better than a bat because I am able to watch Netflix and a bat is not.If anything,this probably makes me worse than a bat.In fact,out of solidarity with bats I recently cancelled my Netflix suscription.I am also 100 per cent sure I ate a couple of midges when I had a drink in the dark with the bedroom window open the other night. Now I just have to learn to echo-locate and fly through the overhanging branches of an overgrown drover’s road and I will be very nearly there,in full eternal unison with bats.’

I LOVE this!

Imagine-‘Why did you want to cancel your susbcription?’

‘Solidarity with bats!’

Absolutely brilliant!

The deep and abiding love for folklore, urban legends and shaggy dog tales is quite something special, and I learnt a lot whilst reading it.

I now demand that he is commissioned to travel the country and write about every rural area if there is anyone with the ability to make it happen please raise your hand!

About the author…

Tom Cox lives in Devon. A one-time music journalist he is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling ‘The Good, the Bad and the Furry’and the William Hill Sports Book longlisted ‘‘Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia’. ‘‘Help the Witch’, a collection of folk ghost stories, was published in October 2019.

Links-http://tom-cox.com/

Twitter @cox_tom

@annecater

@unbounders