The Fat Goose

I'm feeling very Christmassy, and there are still 10 days to go. The Royal Mail and all of the national delivery carriers are forming an orderly queue at my gate, bringing the presents I have chosen online right to the door. All I have to do is check everything is exactly as I ordered, and then make sure I hang onto receipts and wrappings in case anything has to go back. It's not that I've taken the lazy way out, far from it. Very much research has gone into everything I have bought, hours and hours of internet shopping, humming and hawing, wondering and considering and deciding. I'm very pleased with my purchases, and I hope the recipients are too. But if not, they can choose for themselves, replace what they don't like or don't want. Thank god for the internet, three cheers for Google. How we managed before they came along I know not.

I made a decision several months ago to let the boy off his lead in the fields behind the house, provided that when I scan in all directions I can't see any hares. It's not a foolproof plan of course, but I think the risk of him running off occasionally is worth taking. The pair of us plodding along together is too depressing, and he needs to run. It worked until yesterday when he suddenly got interested in a dry ditch, sniffing energetically where he was getting a scent. Amazingly a large hare jumped out of the ditch and ran off across the field, but he didn't see it! He was just yards from me and I called him to come, but as he always does before he obeys, he looked behind him to see what fun he might be missing. And so he spotted the hare and that was that. Like the Pinball Wizard, he was deaf, dumb and blind to me and my exhortations. The animal had quite a head start on him, and Hugo was wearing his coat, but he quickly began to make up the distance. I watched as the hare began zigzagging to try to put him off, and then they both disappeared from sight. I wasn't too worried. At 10 in the morning the lanes were quiet, and he knows his way home. Eventually he turned up covered, no plastered in mud, and I had to bring a bucket of hot water into the garden to wash him. He had no injuries apart from a very tiny cut near his dew pad which has know healed. And he was triumphant, though I'm sure he didn't catch his prey. "Good boy" I told him. "Clever boy finding your own way home". But he didn't hear me. He had fallen into a deep, deep sleep.