1 March

If I were compiling a list of my favourite creatures, hares would be right up there, along with owls. Hares are everywhere in East Anglia; in the folklore, the symbolism of the architecture, the vernacular; watching you slyly from a barleyfield, somehow always there, at the periphery of your vision. I suppose it’s fitting that I feel compelled to ramble on about hares today, for surely this is their month. I was awake at the rude break of day, thanks to my daughter, who couldn’t sleep due to the howling wind and came into my bed, and who ensured that I could only doze fitfully, gripping for dear life to the edge of the bed. (My husband’s still away and we have a huge bed, but she of diminutive size magically expands through the night to fill every inch of space). Anyway, she woke as dawn was breaking to ask for some milk and then promptly went back to sleep again. I am one of those people who were born to sleep: I crave it, cherish it, and am vile and hideous when I don’t get enough. I store up the promise of lie-ins and afternoon naps like little bags of treats. My children, of course, being sent to carelessly smash this pleasure, naturally don’t care at all how often I have to wake up for them, but have had to cope with my filthy moods and complete disorientation while I stagger around, swearing and wondering where I am. This morning, for some reason, I didn’t feel like that at all; I got a cup of tea, opened the curtains and watched the light stream in. Out in the fields I could see a solitary hare, ears pricked, this most ancient symbol of spring just sitting there, letting the air wash over him. I watched him for ages. Hares have become talismanic for both us since we lived here. R (husband) has always loved them; before we moved here, we lived in Hertfordshire and R was enchanted to find that we lived close by where the poet Cowper used to live. He kept tame hares and wrote exquisitely about them. Since we moved here, they have followed us everywhere. I love the way that in the old East Anglian dialect, they are called the ‘lookers to the side’, which resonates with me as it not only describes them, but also seems to describe the way they are always there, at the edges of my sight. Whenever we have had a bad time we seem to see them, as though they are reminding us of a more primitive, playful reality. I have seen them running through the corn, leaping over hillocks. I have seen them boxing in the late spring, and, once, I saw one in, in time-honoured fashion, gazing adoringly at the moon, while it seemed that the moon was gazing back in delight. There is something so mysterious, prankish and puck-like about them; in mythology they have been, at various times, an emblem of spring, a fertility symbol, a moon-creature, a fire-devil and a shape-shifter. Perhaps it is their shape-shifting antics in the fields that make it one of the oldest and most widespread animals in world mythology. Brer rabbit was a hare. So was the Easter Bunny. Associated with the moon, dawn and, eventually, Easter, he was linked with death and resurrection. All cultures seem to have linked the hare with the night skies, with cunning and bravery. In Egyptian myth, Osiris is sometimes portrayed with a hare’s head. Across Africa and India and other parts of the East, there is no man in the moon – just the outline of a hare on the moon. In a lovely old wool church a couple of miles from here, there is a representation of the ‘three hares’ symbol that I believe is common in some churches in Devon. I’d love to see them.

I have to say in closing that although they are hardly a local phenomenon, they do seem to fit this landscape so well, with its huge, arched skies and patchwork fields. There is something a bit solitary and introspective, I’ve often thought, in the local character, and I seem to have adopted some of that sort of quietness since I’ve lived here. There is something so calming and steadying about living here, it does seem to seep into your bones. I do love cities too; London is the only city I know really well, and there are things that I will always adore about it. But my attention is always being arrested here, by the smallest things, which never really entered my consciousness before. The shy magic of hares seems to represent that shift for me.