No.19 The Tortoise And The Hare
The little girl had a little bedroom with a teeny tiny fire place and a huge oversized window. The wallpaper was white with tiny blue flowers and leaves all over it and the curtains matched the wallpaper.
The little girl loved her room and liked to pin pictures to the walls. Posters. postcards, and cuttings from magazines all had a chance to be chosen. Her favourite images were elevated in importance by being put in a frame. Frames usually came from the local secondhand shop and the little girl found the resulting mismatch effect appealing.
The teeny tiny fireplace was a focus in the room and as a result a lot of the favourite images were clustered above, around, and on the mantelpiece. There was also a mirror propped up on the mantelpiece and the little girl placed her favourite framed picture in prim position next to the mirror.
The little girls favourite picture was a postcard sent to her by her Gran. Gran and Grandad liked to go on holidays all over the UK and Europe. They would take dozens of photographs as they visited museums, art galleries, stately homes and palaces. Somehow Gran always knew which postcard to send to the little girl. Whether it was a picture of a Degas ballerina painting, an illustration from Alice In Wonderland, or of a Toulouse-Lautrec lithography, the little girl loved them all.
The little girl’s absolute favourite was a postcard with an illustration from Aesop’s Fables by Arthur Rackham. “The Tortoise And The Hare”. The little girl knew the story of course, that slow and steady can win the race, but had never seen the illustration before. It was fascinating and some what disturbing. The little girl would wonder what the animals were saying behind their hands and under their breath. No doubt being unkind and sniggering at the tortoise. This seemed to the little girl to be cruel and unsettled her even while drawing her further into the picture. The fox, in his brightly coloured jacket and patterned waistcoat, was the character that held her gaze. The fox seemed to know, being sly and cunning, that the result of any race was not a foregone conclusion and therefore kept his own counsel.