Thursday June 15th 2016
Monday June 15th 1992
Saturday, after sunbathing, when my father-in-law came round, I decided to cut back the big bay tree next door, which our Polish neighbour and his partner had always seemed agreeable to.
I left only 2 spindly tall branches, so that the tree looks like a lonesome pine on a mountain top.
Our neighbour’s British partner was obviously worried about what our neighbour’s reaction would be.
Then, just as we went out Saturday night, our neighbour came home and went bananas. We could hear him as we left the house.
I got home to find a letter from him telling me I was a criminal (and to our golden retriever having had diarrhoea all over the kitchen.)
When I see our neighbour on Sunday morning he’s very cross.
You castrated my tree, he says, in his deep voice with a strong Polish accent.
I tell him I’m sorry, I didn’t do it deliberately to hurt him.
It is, he explains, his family tree.
His partner planted it in 1965, around the time our neighbour came to England.
His last name means Bay Tree in Polish.
I explained quietly that I had liberated his tree for future growth.
He warms to the idea and brightens.
Liberated, he says, thoughtfully.
He then tells me he’s going to have a pool in his back garden, with those fish that look like carrots.
Sunday June 15th 2003
Thursday June 15th 2000
On Tuesday evening we went over to Saddlescombe beyond Devil’s Dyke to see a lady called Colette about buying a new rabbit after Misty’s death on Sunday. She had advertised rabbits for sale in the Friday Ad.
She lives with her husband in a cottage on a National Trust farm down Saddlescombe private road. Her husband had worked for the farm but was made redundant when the farm closed down 18 months ago. He’s only just found another job on another farm (echoes of current events on the Archers). The field at the back of their cottage has been rented (or bought) by a farmer in Chichester who is using it as set aside – that means earning EU funds for doing nothing, she says.
The stone walled cottage is on the end of a row along a chalky track that leads onto the South Downs Way towards Patcham or, as Colette described it, the horseshoe, a walk to take you round in a big loop back to where you started. Across the way from the cottage behind a fence of chestnut rails was a large field full of sheep and attentive watching lambs with large ears. Two ducks with necked stretched and heads held high in some strange ritual ambled through the clumps of dock and switch grass like a couple having an argument.
A path ran along the edge of the field to Saddlescome Donkey Wheel housed beneath a peaked roof shelter. It’s an old wheel for raising water, with a diameter of 4-5 metres, made of chipped and broken grey wooden slats and struts. The shafts that would have been used to secure the donkey leant up against the wall.
The garden in front of the cottage was a mass of flowers – roses, red hot pokers, clematis. At the side of the front gate was a black wrought iron sign of a rabbit. Another sign warned of the dogs whose barking could be heard constantly from every open window. Occasionally there was a glimpse of a grey and white face, jaws open.
The garden continued to the side of the house where (the woman informed us later) her husband had drained a lower pool and had constructed one above it. Both were rectangular, lined with a rubber liner. The red and orange shapes of carp swam through reflections. Newly plated iris and water lily were in flower.
To the side of the garden was a chalky driveway where an old van was parked. Across this was a field of birds penned in and protected from the cats and other wildlife by a high chicken wire fence topped with an electrified wire. In this pen were hens, ducks, hooting peacocks, including a pure white one.
A couple of cats greeted us when we got out of the car and one a small, thin marmalade cat was pregnant and followed us round. My step-daughter and my son were enchanted by the cats and kittens we found inside when the woman led us into a warren of outbuildings and runs.
One hut held nine or more hutches full of rabbits. British Giants occupied one set of hutches. Two beautiful grey blue does were keeping house. They had been mated with the large dappled black and white rabbits in the hut we would visit next.
Very young kittens tumbled over each other inside and outside the cages. Small fluffy cat kittens scrabbled about on the sawdust floor and played peek-a-boo from behind the hutches. Some were black and white, some silver tabby, one was black and another tortoiseshell tabby. Colette was constantly attending to them as they attempted to find a way to get into the dog compound that lay beyond the wooden fence in front of the hut. They would surely be torn to shreds if they managed to get in, she said.
Inside the hutches were very young rabbit kittens of many different colours – grey, agouti, pied. In front of us was a long low hutch from which four sets of deep brown eyes were watching.
If you crouched down you could see a mother and three kits, all male. But these were no ordinary rabbits. They had deer-like faces with small features and elegant whiskers, bright, wide, intelligent eyes and handsome long ears like the trumpets of beautiful lilies. They were taller than ordinary rabbits, with long slim legs, long feet and toes. But what you most noticed, apart from the quality of their gaze, was the colour and softness of their fur. It seemed to have a deep glow like polished mahoganey. These animals had a smooth aerodynamic line yet their outline seemed blurred by the rich lustre of their coats, a reddy brown sheen that reminded me of a brushed and burnished chestnut mare.
They were Belgian hares.
The kits hopped about, as though expecting a game. The doe watched. The decision was made for me in an instant. In the corner of the hutch one of the young bucks had sat still for a while, ears raised, watchful. I knew immediately this was the rabbit I would chose to fill the gap left by Misty’s death.
The others talked for a while about the other rabbits and the cats. Colette lifted the young rabbit from the hutch and gave him to me to hold. He nestled down against my chest, nervous, fearful, eyes looking up to me. I stroked over his ears and his fragile back, captivated by his physical beauty and presence.
He’s six weeks old. He cost £25. We took him home in a cardboard box but not before Colette had shown us around the rest of her smallholding. In a second hut next to the garden with the pools, she had an aviary full of fluttering budgies, a golden pheasant and various other unspecified fancy birds. In the aviary, taking advantage of its warmth and shelter, she had another eight or ten hutches with miniature Rex rabbits, with small ears, lops and large black and white rabbits with a French name I can’t remember.
Diagonally across yard from the aviary there was another outhouse full of guinea pigs, who were also running around. Earlier my step-daughter had passed a large cat sitting near here that had hissed at her with all the animosity he could muster. He now reappeared – a huge silver grey Tom with pale blue eyes and a firmly set jaw that suggested he would beat the living daylights out of you if he had half a chance. As we were leaving he took the opportunity to see to a number of the females that purred and prowled round him. He looked like a greying old street fighter with his sleeves rolled up doing press ups.
The Belgian Hare is now living in the old hutch my daughters brought down from Preston with their rabbits Blackberry and Hazel. He seems to quite like his new surroundings, although he’s still very timid. Thundery, my son’s chubby guinea pig who looks like a steel brush and is the colour of the sky before a storm, keeps hovering around the hutch. I imagine him wanting to introduce himself…
Hello, I’m Thundery, who are you? There used to be this big fat rabbit here who hogged the hutch and used to sit on me, but they took him out last Sunday and I haven’t seen him since. They were digging a big hole at the side of the garden on Sunday afternoon. I’m not very good at maths but I’ve been putting two and two together and so far I’ve made seven and a half!
You don’t say a lot do you, but wow, you’re an amazing colour. And why are you getting special food? I fancy some of those green flaky things…Lettuce crisps are they? Never tried them. Hey, do you want to come out and play?…
It will probably be another two weeks before we let him out – we have to make sure he doesn’t eat grass as he’s never had any and it takes a while for their stomachs to get used to it.
My son decided the Belgian hare looks like a kangaroo, because he’s got a nice face and he’s red. So we’ve decided to call him Roo which seems to fit and reminds me of my eldest daughter – so I like it.
Saturday June 15th 2024
