A strange thing happened the other evening. We got back from a quick trip to the shops and there was a ball of black hair on the lawn.

My husband pointed towards it, said “Tribble!” and promptly forgot all about it.

I, however, brooded over and worried about this mysterious object all that evening and most of the following day.

I found myself going to the window to check if it was still there and, at one point, made an excuse not to take out the rubbish as I didn’t want to have to go past the ball of hair that was now bouncing lightly around the lawn in the evening breeze.

Where had it come from? When I was a child someone had an ancient armchair from which the stuffing was gradually escaping. The stuffing looked like hair and I used to think that a woman with long black hair had been stuffed into the chair.

Maybe the ball of hair on the lawn was stuffing out of an old chair. Who had carefully rolled it into a ball though and why had they placed it on our lawn?

By the next morning the ball of hair had disappeared. Did someone come and retrieve it during the night?

I wondered and worried about the significance of the sudden appearance and then disappearance of a ball of hair on the lawn most of yesterday and, as a result, forgot it was Earth Day* which I was going to blog about.

I finally mentioned what had become unmentionable in our house and my husband said “It was fur from next door’s poodle. I saw them brushing it in the back garden.”

* I felt bad that I was distracted by a ball of black hair and forgot Earth Day so I planted a witch hazel.