HELLO DEAR

You may be walking through the countryside outside Arundel very early in the morning, enjoying that moment when no other person is about, and the animals and birds are out in a world that just for these hours, is theirs alone. If you’re there on a particular day of the year, you might step quietly through some long grass, and round a little copse where rabbits hop and skip on a bank, and then you reach the other side of the copse and there’s a sudden explosion of sound and motion as you startle an animal that was there. You’re so surprised by it at first that you step back and don’t see much other than a dark blur racing away towards the woods down the hill. Just before it reaches the shadows of the treeline though, you catch your balance and you see it, just for a second: a black deer. Then it’s gone, with a rustle of branches, into the darkness of the woods.
You marvel at what you have just seen, as you have never seen a deer like that before. Then you go on with your walk, because you have to be home in an hour.
There are two ways back home. If you go one way you will see more rabbits, a red kite tracing lazy circles, and some complacent sheep. If you go the other way, you will see more rabbits, a field of cows pondering, and a man with black hair and a black beard, wearing a black tee-shirt and jeans, stumbling out of the woods and hurrying away, with a strange gait as if he is not quite used to his own body.