Along Norwich’s hare course of fifty or so multi-coloured leporids, there are supposed to be over 160 leverets nesting in shop windows or larking about in gay abandon outside doorways. That’s what young hares are called, apparently. Well, I’ve only noticed a few here and there. So where are the other 129?

I did, however, stumble across a drove of ten of the little blighters in a department store ready to pounce from the long grass and play havoc at the Clarins counter.

House of Fraser Hares

The whole oversized-creatures-in-the-street theme for charity is getting out of hand. Now Manchester’s doing it with their Bee in the City trail. 101 giant, brightly-coloured worker bees can be seen buzzing about the city all summer.

Bee in the City

Bee image courtesy of Manchester Evening News.

Imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, married, middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country. I chronicled our exploits with the mad, the bad, the sad and the glad in a blog for the whole world to ignore. Then came the book which became a critically acclaimed best seller. Its success opened out a whole new career for me, firstly as an author, and now as an indie publisher. Who'd have thought it? Certainly not me. In June 2012, we ended our Anatolian affair and paddled back to Britain on the evening tide, washing up in Norwich, a surprising city in eastern England, then to the wilds of Norfolk as the only gays in the village. I’m sometimes nostalgic for our encounters with the hopeless, the hapless and, yes, the happy go lucky. They gave me an unexpected tale to tell and for this I thank them.

4 thoughts on “Bee in the City”

Share your thoughts

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.