Natural landmarks

While posting an entry on my wildlife blog the other day (www.hillingdonwilflife.blogspot.com), I found myself looking back over the past and thinking of all the times animals and birds have played a significant roles in my memories.

I can't ever think of the night I lost my virginity (!) without remembering the rat that ran out of the bushes afterwards and attacked my feet! After that, whenever I was in a bad relationship, sooner or later I would see a rat, and it became a sign that the man himself would sooner or later turn out to be one.

I cannot think of a dear friend, now passed on, without thinking of her parrot, that I looked after for a week. Until then, it had spoken in her husband's deep voice. Afterwards, it copied me singing and playing the guitar and had turned into a soprano, much to my friend's husband's disgust.

I think of Calderstones Park in Liverpool and am taken back to my earliest memory of all, of myself in a pram gazing up at the marvellous sight of my mother with a blue tit perched on her hand, pecking crumbs.

My first holiday in Majorca when I was 24: being given a hoist up onto a horse that pulled a trap to convey tourists along the bay. My friends wandered off and I was stuck on the animal's saddle-less back and couldn't get off.

The red-hot summer of 1955: Percy the racing pigeon. We were on holiday in Anglesey and the lost bird turned up at the door of our rented cottage and wandered in. It shared our lives for a fortnight then, on the last day, it tragically got itself run over. My mother jotted down the number on the ring on its leg and when we got home, she got in touch with a racing pigeon society and traced poor Percy's owner. (Percy had been given a decent burial in the back garden.) That same holiday: borrowing a very bolshy strawberry roan pony that trod on Dad's foot. He was wearing plimsolls and sported a vivid horse-shoe-shaped bruise for weeks. Tethering same pony to the door of the outside loo, not knowing Mum was enthroned. The pony bolted, taking the door with it!

Lying on my back in a field on a perfect day and watching the slow wing-flaps of a heron flying majestically overhead.

Counting buzzards on a long drive up to the Lake District.

On my wedding day, in a thunderstorm, being unable to drive off to the reception because a small ginger cat was taking shelter from the rain behind the wheel of the car. Two years later, sobbing brokenheartedly on finding out that my husband was having an affair and having Petal, our small grey cat, soothe me by licking the tears from my face as I lay on the bed.

Standing by the crater of Nea Kameni in Santorini on a boiling hot day, with a small grey lizard licking sweat from the palm of my hand. I don't remember much else about that holiday, but I do remember that.

A visit to Bournemouth: the park with the koi carp pond and a bridge over it, enabling me to study at close quarters the largest and most vividly orange fish I have ever seen.

A wade in the sea on the island of Symi, with tiny, jewel-coloured fish darting around my ankles.

Sitting in a beachside restaurant in Santorini, watching three porpoises leap clear out of the water and chase each other out of sight.

London Zoo, years ago, on a day out with the then love of my life, and pressing my nose against the thick glass while a huge tigress pressed her large black nose against the other side, as if nuzzling me.

The black cat I adopted for a fortnight in Gran Canaria. I called her Shadow. How I wished I could have taken her home. I cried when, suitcase packed, I fed her for the last time.

So many highspots, low spots, happy or bittersweet times, all marked by fur or feather, fin or wing. Nature has given me so very much.