kenwood sunday 21st june 2020

Last Sunday M daughter visited me in her new car and took me to Kenwood. It was a beautifully sunny day and she invented a wonderful picnic involving Emental , salmon, avocado in a sweet and sweet potato wrap. She was surprised because she got the car in March, but we had all been on lock down and I had never seen it. Fo me it was mnagic being in a car. I had been in solitary confinement for three months.

So it was sucha big adventure to get outside, to walk on the grass to see other people. There were many benches scattered around the house and we kept moving from bench to bench. She also provided tonic water.It was so lovely.

We had just moved to a large expanse of “Rolling Ground”

The steep rolling ground was in front of the house, Beside the house was a huge well kept lawn with gentle sweeps of ground, very convenient for tiny ones, and this is where we sat, watching people exercising and children rolling. Happiness was secure. We sat on the edge of the lawn near a small dirt lane which was a convenient access for visitors with their dogs and some of them on bicycles.

Then, suddenly there was a srange sight. What we thought was a sqjirrel doing a dance on the lane.e. It was not a place for motor cars, but there were people and dogs there quite a lot.

Why was the squirrel playing there, where it was bound to get run over – was it teasing a dog or something, but it was alone.

We went up to it and found it lying there in a kind of coma. It semed dead, but it was breathing. The biggest surprise of all is that it was not a squirrel. It was a tiny rabbit. Its lunch of baby carrots was scattered on the road. It was horrid to think that someone may have deliberately poisoned it.

It was in a dangerous position but it would be foolish to touch it, so I watched over it and got people to go the other way, while Aya my daughter went for a steward.

During the time she was away the rabbit had another big fit, jumping jup and shaking all over – which is what had attracted our attention previously.

Ays arrived with the steward, wearing gloves and carrying a box with a sliding cage like door. He picked up the creature carefully, shielding his hands and put the rabbit in the box.

He explained that there was a current plague of miximatosis and rabbits were dying all over Kenwood. It is a disease peculiar to rabbits and invented by mankind as rabbits tend to breed so fast and overtake all other population. It has not bWe had saved him from being worried by other animals. We were grateful to the kind man but were not able to give the creature a funeral. I just wrote about it on facebook so that the creature could be remembered and thought of.

I was reminded when I was very young – not sure of the age, probably just past todder time. I trod on a caterpillar – cabbage white genus. It was vey green, but I scraped it up and put it in a machbox. We help the funeral. Me and some kids that came around for it.

We needed a sad song to sing but couldn’t think of any funeral songs- none of ujs knew anything much about funerals, except that we had to sing and then we would have some orange juice and a bun provided by parent (We didn’t publicise it to grown ups – wasnt sure they would understand. Think it was a bit of getting dirty. But one of the girls would provide the orange juice and the buns.

Eventually I decided on a song “Red Sails in the Sunset” I didn’t know the words but I realised it was a sad song and therefor eappropriate.

When we came home ferom Kenwood. Aya and I opened a bottle of wine and had a couple of glasses and thought about the little creature.

I sang some songs for it when Aya had left.