The Harpenden Hedgehog Who Needed a Hat

The first tiny hat was sitting on my wing mirror when I arrived in Harpenden. Yellow, no bigger than an egg cup, with a remarkably confident pompom. I glanced at my reflection. Not my size, but somebody had put care into those stitches.

The second was balanced on Mrs Pippin’s gatepost. The third, striped green and purple, was perched on her stone hedgehog.

‘He does look warmer,’ Mrs Pippin said, joining me in her slippers. ‘Though I’m fairly sure he’s been comfortable since 1987.’

I set the yellow hat beside the others and fetched my water-fed pole from the KP van. A gust rattled the last leaves in the hedge. Something pink fluttered past my shoulder and caught on a rose bush.

Another hat. I eased it off the thorns.

I’ve had leaves in my bucket, a tennis ball in my hose reel and, once, a very determined spaniel in the passenger seat. A shower of knitwear was new.

By the time I’d finished Mrs Pippin’s front windows, we’d collected eleven hats. She arranged them along her kitchen windowsill while I worked, like a cheerful little line of boiled eggs.

‘There ought to be twelve,’ said a small voice behind us.

A girl in a red coat stood at the gate beside an elderly gentleman carrying an empty wicker basket. I knew Mr Bell: magnificent runner beans, and an apology for every snail he relocated.

‘This is my granddaughter, Rosie,’ he said. ‘We appear to have suffered a basket incident.’

Rosie explained that they’d been taking her knitted hats to the little community room round the corner. She’d made one for each of twelve woolly hedgehogs her grandad had knitted for the children’s autumn reading afternoon.

‘They sit beside you while you read,’ she told me. ‘So nobody has to read to a whole room if they’re nervous.’

What a thoughtful arrangement. Sometimes all you need is a patient face beside you, even if it’s made of wool.

A gust had tipped the basket off Grandad’s garden wall. The hedgehogs were safely zipped inside his bag. Their hats hadn’t been so fortunate.

‘The missing one’s blue,’ Rosie said. ‘It was the first one I finished. It’s a bit wonky.’

I could hear how much that particular one mattered.

We searched beneath the hedge and behind the recycling boxes. Mrs Pippin inspected her front garden as seriously as if we’d lost a diamond. Nothing.

Then, while rinsing the upstairs glass, I noticed a scrap of blue in the low fork of the ornamental cherry beside the drive.

I switched off the water. Too high to reach from the ground, but comfortably within reach of my ladder. Once it was settled securely on the level paving, I climbed a couple of rungs and lifted the hat free. Its pompom had caught on a twig.

Rosie held out both hands as though I were bringing down a fledgling.

‘That’s him,’ she whispered.

‘Him?’

‘The hat belongs to Bernard. His ears aren’t quite level either.’

Once I’d packed my equipment away, Mrs Pippin and I walked round with them. Soon twelve woolly hedgehogs sat on the community room’s table, properly dressed. Bernard’s blue hat leaned sideways, giving him the air of someone with an interesting weekend planned.

Before I left, Rosie asked whether she could practise the first page of her book on me. I sat beside Bernard and listened. She began quietly, then read loudly enough for her grandad to hear from the doorway. I stayed still and let her find her pace.

Back at the van, I found Mrs Pippin had tucked a biscuit beside my flask.

‘For the rescue service,’ she said.

A good morning’s work: clean windows, twelve warm woolly heads, and one small reader ready for an audience.