Stuck

When I finished mowing the lawn late yesterday evening I backed the mower into the field next to me as usual and proceeded to offload the cuttings. But when I tried to drive away I was stuck on a rut. Well at least that's a bit different: most people get stuck in a rut. But ruts have edges pushed up around them, and when it's very hot they bake hard. And there I was, perched on top of one, high and dry. The wheels couldn't get a purchase as they weren't touching the ground. Now Sarah's friend Johnnie is looking after her house while she's away, and I knew he'd help. He's a useful chap, notwithstanding the fact that he nearly burnt her house down last winter, his second act of inadvertant arson apparently. I went over and knocked on the door and he came out straight away to see what I wanted. "Piers," he called back into the house, "come! Lady in distress!" They followed me over to the field, Piers immaculately dressed in cream linen and a cravat, and wanted to know what on earth I was doing mowing a meadow. But when I explained Piers understood. "My wife does that all the time," he said, "but I'm divorcing her now." Say no more. They lifted the machine as if it were made of Lego, and watched me safely back into my drive. "Night night" they called cheerfully. "You know where we are."

Talk about history repeating itself. Hugo and I were pottering in the garden this evening when a giant combine harvester tried to get into the field next door, and got stuck on the hard ruts! You couldn't make it up. For ages the farmer's husband and a worker tried to help the driver manoeuvre out of the jam, backwards a bit, forwards, now backwards again, but it wouldn't shift, this monster piece of machinery. I thought of calling for Johnny and Piers, those heroes of last night, or that hapless Grundy chap from the Archers who never quite gets things right but did once pull off a stunning combine repair. But then the driver got down to check the lie of the land, and blow me if it wasn't Alyss herself, tiny farmer Alyss, mother of three babies, driving that brute. I have to say the three of them were models of good humour and patience. There was no shouting, no foul language or blaming, just reasonable conversation, and then they went home and left it. The beautiful barley is reprieved for another day.

Hugo has behaved immaculately all day, sitting quietly at Ruth's birthday party for nearly three hours and not licking his stitches once. He's been bounding around the lawn like a mad puppy since we got home, presumably desperate for a good run and a release of pent-up energy. He'll have to wait until Saturday though, according to the vet. We'll both go mad. He's back in his collar now, compliant and unprotesting as usual. And though the backs of my legs are all bruised from being bashed constantly by his stiff, hard Elizabethan collar, I'm not complaining either.