Hares there and everywhere
We are very fortunate here to have hares living in and around the garden. Seeing one or two of them from the kitchen window cheers me up. I can’t really think why, but I’m always disappointed if there’s none. The most I have seen at any one time is five. They are such strange, almost mystical creatures; often standing bolt upright, their ears erect, and staying perfectly still for minutes at a time. Quite uncanny, the stillness.
Now I seem to be coming across hares everywhere. Several years ago, the mother of an old friend made me a ‘throw’ for my sofa. It is about five feet by four and is made up of panels of differently patterned cloth, sewn together. It is a beautiful work of art and several of the panels show pictures of birds and animals: a cockerel, a hen, a deer and three hares. This was years before the hares appeared in the garden.
Then, last week, I went across to a neighbour’s for lunch and there I met a most interesting man. He has founded, and now runs, the Wild Camel Protection Foundation to preserve the doublehumped camels of Mongolia and the Gobi Desert.
Later, we saw pictures of these magnificent creatures leaping about like ponies. He has three married daughters, five grandchildren, and is about eighty years old. Despite this, he thinks nothing of popping over to Mongolia every now and again. His name is John Hare OBE. He wrote a book about it called The Mysteries of the Gobi, which was published in 2008.
What an example for us, his fellow eighty-plus oldies! Can’t think what exotic place to go to... Hove? Guildford?
I thought this might interest my agent’s secretary; so I told her about it and she ordered the book on her computer-gadget while we were still talking! Her name is Jessica Hare, of course. What else?
Then a friend’s daughter came to pick me up and take me to a screening of the Ethel & Ernest film as I am far too old and frail to drive in the dark. She was startled to see a hare go leaping away as she arrived in the garden; so she told her father about it. He is Roger Mainwood, the director of Ethel & Ernest. We were both on stage after the screening and had to endure the endless Q&A together. To thank me for doing it, he sent me a card with a superb wood engraving by C F Tunnicliffe (1901-79) of a hare (pictured).
Also, I noticed only recently four little wooden ornaments on the mantelpiece, belonging to my late partner, Liz, who died fifteen months ago. They have been there for twenty years or more. They are all hares, rather too rounded in the body, but with their ears erect and the large watchful eyes. Then, in the midst of all this, today the Sussex Life magazine arrived and can you guess what is on the cover? A full-face, close-up portrait of a hare, with another different one inside, just to make sure you don’t miss it.
Today, there was a bitterly cold wind, morning and afternoon, and all that time there was a young hare in the garden, crouched over, back to the wind, munching away or just doing nothing. It was sunny; so he took care to stay in the sun and keep out of the shadow of the house. I had to admire his dogged persistence in dealing with the cold and the loneliness, but what was going on in his mind?