Bunny hops

I slid off my bed, tied up my trainers and put a Lidl’s puffa jacket – orange from the middle aisle £9.99 – over my pyjamas.
It was 5.30.
I set off down the hill, turned right towards the avenue. The sun was already peeking over the clouds. All was dead quiet save for the birds that were gossiping and chattering in their dawn chorus.
I walked down towards the avenue, I haven’t been for ages owing to my clunky kidneys, still there I was tripping over long grass and abundant blackberry brambles.
There are so many berries this year although they are small, too much sun not enough rain,
I tiptoed down the side of the avenue negotiating pebbles and what would normally be rabbit pellets. But there weren’t any.
Not one tiny little ball of rabbit shit. Nowhere. And then it dawned on me – dawned you see what I did there – it dawned on me that there were no rabbits. Normally at 5,30 in the morning they scamper and skitter but not one little bunny tail anywhere.
And it got me thinking why are there no bunny rabbits anymore. Pesticide? A change in farming techniques? 40 years of living here and the bunnies have deserted us.
I don’t know where they’re hiding, but they are not part of our surroundings any more.
So sad.
And where was the cuckoo this year?
And where was the wood pecker, always by the kissing gate and down towards the little pond, the woodpeckers used to hammer loudly on the tall trees. Now nothing.
It was a quiet walk.
My tree was covered in overgrown beech branches. I couldn’t find my kissing nodule. I parted the leaves and there it was ready and waiting. The lipstick had worn off. I had missed my hugs, I wonder whether the tree had missed my hugs too.
I’m not as steady on my pins as I used to was but that didn’t stop me from walking up the avenue and counting the big trees. I thought there were 52 now there are only 39.
Since last July the world has changed around me. I have been so absorbed in my dialysistical journey that I haven’t noticed my surroundings.
Walking I took my mind out of my body and made myself look at the world around me. Looking at fields and hedgerows. It’s all there despite my absence,
Confusing times. Feels like we’re treading water until the Trumps and the Putins, the Netenyahus, Orbáns, Mileis, and Melonis’ drown in their own lies. Waiting whilst a new paradigm reveals itself.
It can’t go on the way it has. Sewage and shitty decisions. The blame game and the decline of our planet. I know there are surprising developments that I can’t see but I want the rabbits back and I want to hear the woodpeckers again.
The garden got so overgrown I’ve borrowed a neighbours gardener. Fine fellow of a man that weeds and prunes and does it all efficiently. I have started to redesign the top of the garden. After thirty years it needs a makeover. I’m nurturing, in three pots, ‘elephant ears’ – Gunnera. They grow huge. In another plot I’ve put in a silver leafed artichoke. In another bed there are blue Himalayan poppies and I’ve introduced a row of lavender next to the path.
I’ve put pots of fuchsias, pink and red, next to each other and planted up four peonies. Next year we should have colour.
The pink resin bath tub, a casualty from a film discarded by the director, sits in the corner of the garden. Dahlias, echinacea and purple flowers.
Since I can’t travel at the moment I spend an awful lot of time looking at the garden. The herbs are flourishing, the sage, mint and rosemary. The marjoram and thyme.
Pigeons and magpies visit whilst Sid sits looking into the hedge waiting for mice.
August the 2nd is a big eclipse when we’ll go dark for 6 minutes, at the mercy of the sun and moon, no control whatsoever, we are in the hands of nature.
But then we always are.
Every mouthful of food now is tinged by the knowledge thousands are starving in Gaza whilst we are obsessed with diet pills and adipose tissue. The upset of the natural order of things will stop. I don’t have a crystal ball but the likes of the big Orange creep and the cruel Farage will finally fade into insignificance. I can only trust that brave people will speak out against the injustices that the powerful are pouring down on the meek.
If Jesus were alive now he would be cancelled.
If Gandhi were alive now he would be mocked.
If Buddha were alive now he would be put on Ozempic.
If Sathya Sai Baba were alive now he would be ridiculed for his philanthropy.
We are struggling up hill as the world changes around us, flicking away the untruths of the selfish and bemoaning the practices of short sighted politicians.
Where have the rabbits gone?
And the hares and the dormice, the sparrows and hedgehogs?
There’s no point in progress if everything of any value gets destroyed in the process.
I’m off now to the dry cleaners, three hours of contemplation and toast.