You see, wishes do come true

I wish the muntjac would come back,” I said dreamily, gazing out of the window at the rose bed beyond. It had been almost a year since the original lockdown was imposed, and in that first stint an invasion of muntjac had arrived at the boundary of the garden and made several attempts to cross the border and graze on my mother’s prized roses (The buck stops here, 29 April 2020). They had lost five troops for the cause, including one with a stunning gold-medal head.

One year on and I was back in the same scenario, except there were no muntjac. Hearing the longing in my voice, my mother looked at me sternly, “tsked” and left the room. It seemed the loss of last year’s roses was still a raw subject in her mind.

A few days