it all began with Masquerade, a 1979 story about a love affair between the Moon and the Sun, and Jack Hare, their four-legged go-between who carried a treasure from one to the other, but lost it in transit, it took Williams three years to paint the book's 15 highly-detailed illustrations, just over a month to make the beautiful 18-carat-gold amulet, and one very dark night it was secretly buried, within the book were clues to it's location,
tens of thousands of people started digging up parks around Britain, spade in one hand, muddied book in the other, every so often stopping to study the beautiful illustrations which contained messages around their borders and to re-read the poem on the title page,
it wasn't just Brits: one German man sold his home and moved to the UK to compete in the hunt, others became so frustrated and obsessed that they needed psychiatric treatment, a man called Fred Hancock was so fanatical he drove 120,000 miles from spot to spot, digging as he went, apparently, you can still see the indentations on Plymouth Hoe where Hancock and a friend dug 17 holes,
finding the hare was everything, beautiful though it was, it was worth only £5,000, no one was ever going to get rich, except perhaps in spirit, whoever found the hare would possess a symbol that spoke eloquently of their effort and skill in finding, well I will not spoil the ending but if you want to know the full story go here, for me I remember well the story but I can hardly believe it was 30 years ago, how time flies!
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