7 September 2010 – The tales of Horace 1.

Horace the Hedgehog woke suddenly. The sun was streaming through his leafy shelter. Motes of dust and strands of cobweb could be seen drifting by, dancing in the morning breeze. But it wasn’t the sun that had woken him. No, he definitely had something on his mind. You know how it is. If you go to sleep promising yourself to remember something in the morning you will probably wake up several times in the night thinking it is morning already and that you must get on with whatever it was. Then, the chances are that you will oversleep because you were awake so much in the night.

He stretched, easing his prickels and spine. “So,” Horace muttered, “morning at last. What do I have to do today?” When the answer did not immediately suggest itself he decided to have a quick snack as a way of focussing. For a morning treat he had bought himself some waffles at the woodland supermarket, Alfrescos.

It was in the middle of buttering his waffles that it came to him. “Ah yes,” he muttered. “SCOLA.” To the uninitiated the word might have seemed a Buddhist mantra muttered often with the morning exercises to give focus to an otherwise empty day. But no, this was so much bigger. So all encompassing! It promised to transform his life. He was going to enrol on a course. But the troubling question was, “What course?” Last night he had had a flash of genius. He had studied the prospectus – so much to choose from – and then written each course that he wanted to study on a post-it note. These he had filed on his spines – the logical place. At least, it had seemed logical last night.

Imagine the scene if you will: a small hedgehog (he was only 2) gently rotating on a bed of leaves, his spines covered with yellow post-it notes, his teeth and paws struggling to remove them and place them in a logical order on the ground in front of him only to have to have the breeze periodically re-shuffle them or even remove them entirely.

He considered Shiatsu, but realised that realistically it would be difficult for someone to massage his spine to any good effect. He thought about Indian head massage, but then decided that he did not know any Indians to practice on.

By a process of hedgehog logic and elimination – that is, selecting the post-its that had not blown away, he decided to try clock repair and Pilates. These were two separate courses of course, but he had decided to treat himself.

He finished his waffles feeling quite pleased with himself. This year he was going to do something brilliant. He was going to change his life. He would enrol on a course of study. Being a canny hedgehog, he would use these two as a taster so that he could work out what he really wanted to do. Who knows, at a certain point he might even feel brave enough to undertake something more academic. He could learn a foreign language or improve his maths or English. A world of opportunity lay before him.

The tales of Horace will continue in a fortnight…

Jan Koene