Mum came home from shopping one day and carefully put all the things that she had bought onto the table for us to see. At first, I thought everything was made of gold.
“Who are you?” asked the rabbit. I was scared but a glimmer of courage tried to surface above my fear and my chest expanded as I whimpered, “I’m a man!” “You’re a what? Speak up. I can’t hear you.” “I’m a man,” I uttered a little louder.
I hadn’t told anybody about my encounter with the rabbit - nobody, that is, except for my dad. I had told him. He was working in the front garden when I got home. I had told him I’d been to the rabbit warren to catch a rabbit because I wanted a pet.
I thought of the rabbit a lot, and every time I did, I kept remembering that time meant life. It was a while before I went back to the field to find the rabbit, partly because of what had happened on my last encounter and partially because my mum had made me feel so guilty about it.
I was not in a particularly good mood. My mother had made me a stuffed rabbit out of some remnants of cloth she had leftover from making some clothes. I wasn't amused. I had talked to my friend about swapping my parents for his. We decided to swap cigarette cards instead.
One day my mum met some lady in town, and they started talking about different things, and then my mum asked me if I would like to do that, as though I knew what she had been talking about. I hadn't been listening because I had been looking at a picture in a shop window.
I didn’t care much for school. In fact, I hated it. “Who needs school?” I asked aloud. If these were the best years of my life, I don’t give much for the rest. I sat in the rabbit hole. The rabbit wasn’t there. I was still wearing my school clothes as I had gone straight to the rabbit warren from school instead of going home and getting changed.
School was finished, and it was the start of the summer holidays. After the holidays I was going to move up to the next class. This would be exciting because a whole new batch of kids who had never been to school before would come into the classroom where I had spent the previous year, and I was going to move to a new classroom.
The very first time I used a telephone was when my dad and I were over at my aunt and uncle's house. They had a telephone - we didn't. My dad showed me how to hold the phone to my ear and told me to talk to my mum.