Splashing across our lawn on a rain-spackled evening, the hare announces his return by dancing in the pools of water that form in the tyre tracks where the JCB had been all those months ago – laying electricity cable and mangling our lawn in the process. Though it’s not so much a lawn as an anorexic meadow. Our garden is in the New Irish Rural style – lots of dry grass and a set of rusty swings for the kids. The swings have to compete with satellite TV and DVDs.
Still, it may not be pretty but at least it’s grass. But for how much longer. The gorse waits, biding its time. “It will return ” said the local man who built our house.