A Day of Pairs.

Today I saw two hares racing around Church Lane, one apparently chasing the other. Up the lane and down the lane they ran, across the lane and back again, in and out of one field after another, and all no doubt driven by the natural imperative of the season. They came so close to me at one point that I feared we might collide.

As interesting as the spectacle was, however, I didn’t exactly welcome it because the seeing of hares is said to be a bad omen in English folklore. I’ve seen hares no more than maybe eight or nine times in the seventeen years I’ve lived here, and the incidence of unfavourable circumstances which followed was uncomfortably disproportionate. I tell myself that bad omens only work if you believe in them, so I try not to.

Much more to my liking was the sight of two bats out hunting together at twilight. It led me to presume that male and female – and possibly a whole family – had survived the winter and are now in fine fettle again. One of those nearly collided with me, too, and I’ve made no secret of the delight I feel at the airy brush of a bat’s wing beat.

But then came the grandest sight of all. As the pale blue of the western sky began to fade after sunset, the new moon and Venus hung majestically together over an open field and against an otherwise empty backdrop. It reminded me of the night walks of old when I would occasionally spot the moon, Venus, and Jupiter forming a cosmic triangle of great splendour. But today was not about triangles, it was about pairs. And that’s fine.