Private Secret Diary

“Are you sure you can do that?” insists Eddie. “Are you sure?!?”

I give Eddie a contemptuous look. She will rue the day she doubted my chickens. I order Eddie and Eddie more drinks, and we discuss terms.

It is my first major order!!! John Twonil is getting married, and I have won the contract to supply eggs for the wedding cake!!! This is the sort of break that really makes a difference to the hungry business executive; I suspect it is how Bernard Matthews, Mr Kipling etc. started.

Becoming a supplier for the big society wedding of the year fills me with pride. The event has been planned for months - specially printed invitations, a privately-made dress for the bride, one of the top venues in the region (Village Pub). I would imagine that I can now put some form of crest on the side of the chicken coop, perhaps in gold lettering. They will need a website and perhaps a mission statement. There is so much to think of.

“Two dozen. It must be two dozen,” Eddie maintains, poking me and fixing me with a stare. I give an involuntary shiver. If I am to be the egg equivalent of ‘The Apprentice’ then I will have to harden up and get used to dealing with such people.

“It’s pretty fucking important,” I explain to the chickens as I put them to bed. They have had it easy up to this point; now is the time they start earning their keep.

“My chickens have arrived!!!” exclaims Big A, from the other end of the telephone line, over the road.

I am pleased for him. His run has everything the modern chicken enthusiast could want - including a covered area, a bespoke constructed house and a letterbox - except some chickens. Now this gap has been filled, and he can join our international brotherhood. I give him my congratulations.

“What are they like?” I ask him.

A note of doubt creeps in to his voice. “Well - they look like chickens,” he ponders.

“I need some advice from the expert,” he continues. “What time should I be putting them to bed?”

I am an expert!!! The words resound with me resoundingly. I am so proud of my chickens: they have given me love, and eggs, and the status of an expert. And more eggs. I haven’t been the expert at anything for as long as I can remember. Truly these chickens have changed my life.

“Well I don’t let mine stay up too late,” I caution. “Except on Thursdays when they are allowed to watch ‘Heroes.’”

There is a bemused pause. I am not sure whether he knows that I am joking. They would not be interested in ‘Heroes’, or not the second series, anyway. That is the thing with being an expert - you have to watch what you say as people will take your word as law.

“I think one of them might have an egg stuck -” he begins.

“You’ll need to speak to Short Tony or Len the Fish,” I interrupt immediately.

Short Tony gives me a very satisfied look, like an Austrian who has just refastened his trousers having made a careful and contented tick on his clipboard against the words ‘Timmy the Dog’.

“You didn’t plant any in there this morning, did you?” he adds, anxiously.

I assure him that I did not. Five eggs!!! That is exactly one per chicken. Productivity is going through the roof.

I glance round at my new Egg-Skelter (R). This is a marvellous device for storing your eggs, and keeping track of which ones are freshest. It is overflowing with eggs. There are eggs piled up everywhere; on the table, on the surfaces. My kitchen is like Eggs ‘R’ Us. If I opened the wall cabinet, eggs would probably cascade out in a humorous fashion, burying me under a pyramid of them like the Tribbles in Star Trek.

I think the problem might be that I don’t eat eggs very often.

I should have thought this out more. If we are getting five eggs a day, divided by Short Tony and I, then that is seventeen and a half eggs per household per week. A quick burst of mental arithmetic reveals my usual weekly egg consumption as one (fried, with breakfast at the weekend). I have been coming up with new egg recipes, such as scrambled and hard-boiled, but I think my chances of raising my consumption by a significant factor are slim.

I have already given a half-dozen to Len the Fish. When you have chickens, giving people eggs is the most neighbourly thing that you can do. Unfortunately, Short Tony turned up about a minute later, with another half-dozen for Len the Fish. Len the Fish is now sick of eggs. I have given some to the other neighbours, but there are still loads left. I sense that what was once a neighbourly thing is going to turn in to ‘oh God here comes bloody Captain Egg again; pull the curtains and pretend we’re out, or vegan’.

The LTLP is getting a little tired of Egg Surprise for her dinner when she gets home; I am finding it increasingly difficult to populate my dinner parties. I am grateful to the chickens for their continued efforts, but if they could - haha - hahahahaha - ‘lay off’ - haha - a bit then I would not complain.

The spring rays of evening sun trickle down on the Village; chirping birds dwarf any noise from the road. I gaze out on to the front garden, in a reflective mood.

None of us have been very well recently, with a cough. And we are very tired, as the Toddler refuses to wait until the rabbit clock opens its bright bunny eyes before waking up and expecting us to be entertaining. Plus I am sure that I am approaching a crossroads in my life.

The thing about crossroads is that you can either turn left, or you can turn right. Alternatively, you can go straight ahead, being sure to give way to traffic from the left or right (depending on whether you are on the major or minor road). The problem is that if you stop to think too much at the junction, then a man in a lorry behind you will start hooting, and after a while perhaps get out and punch you in the face. (For the purposes of the analogy there is no safe place to pull over off the road, as there is a high wall on both sides and no pavement/layby etc).

It is a dilemma.

I start worrying that the LTLP might be getting a bit eccentric, as I wander outside to take the chickens their pudding. Yesterday she was in a well-to-do establishment, and retired to ‘freshen up’. It was only after wondering for ages why the toilet paper was on the other side of the room that she realised that she had performed her ablutions in the bidet. She has been working very hard recently, and I hope that she is not losing it.

“Here you go, chickens!” I offer, setting the pots down. They seem to have enjoyed their asparagus. We chat a while before I retire back towards the house.

‘I would do anything to make the LTLP’s life a bit easier,’ I think to myself as I scrunch across the gravel.

Smoke starts curling up around me from my pants.

I waft it away irritably. Spring is coming. We need to relax a bit more.

The smell of the fresh-cut grass; the ‘clunk’ of the colliding woods; the gentle and friendly handshakes at the end…

I have looked forward to this moment all winter. Things have gone a bit tits up with various professional stuff recently, and I have been a bit stressed out an’ stuff, and there is nothing quite like a relaxing game of bowls to ease one’s mind back into the pleasures of the English countryside.

“And so I started chasing… well I sort of went after him,” I explain later to the Police Sergeant, choosing my words carefully. He glances at his Constable for support. “I have to say I was pretty pumped up.”

Big A nods in agreement. “That’s when we rang you.”

The Police Sergeant alternately shakes his head and shrugs. “I can only apologise we weren’t there sooner,” he offers. “If we’d have got the message from Control…”

Nobody asks me what I was planning to do if I’d have caught the chap. I cast a nervous eye at my bag, which contains four very heavy bowls woods.

No official action is taken.

“You’re in the Mail on Sunday!” gibbers Big A.

I am taken aback. Fearing some sort of expose regarding the chickens, I hurry over to his place to investigate…

Hm. I drop a note to John Wellington, who is the Mail on Sunday’s Managing Editor. It reads:

‘Dear Mr Wellington,

On page 74 of the March 16th issue of ‘The Mail on Sunday’ you published a 392-word piece headlined ‘Blog of the Week – Adventures of a family man who gave up his high-powered job and moved to rural Norfolk’.

The piece (in its entirety) consisted of copyrighted articles lifted without my knowledge or consent from a website for which I am the registered owner…

[bit more blah, yours sincerely, etc.]‘

Not having worked for the Mail on Sunday before, and a stated wordage figure proving elusive, I pluck a conservative amount out of the air and stick it on the bottom of an invoice, which goes off via the kind auspices of the G.P.O. To the Mail on Sunday’s credit, they pay me my two hundred quid quicker than most biggish companies would, and John Wellington sends me his (what I am sure are sincere) apologies.

There’s nothing quite so Rikfromtheyoungonesesque about people with blogs getting on their high horse about print journalists, except perhaps print journalists getting on their high horse about people with blogs. Clearly, however, there’s a little bit of a mutual-understanding issue here. I always go for cock-up over conspiracy, but one paragraph of his reply to me does seem a bit… a bit not quite fitting in with what I thought things were about.

‘We generally take the view that blogs published on the internet have already been placed in the public domain by their authors and, in case of amateur writers, most people are happy to have their work recognised and displayed to a wider audience.’

Discuss.

The evening is unexpectedly beautiful; I smile contentedly as I slam the car door. Lugging my bag with me, I step through the gap in the fence and into the arena.

“You’re looking fat this year,” are the words with which I am greeted. I take this with cheery good heart. It is a competitive environment after all - people will take any advantage that they can.

The chickens have taken over my life a bit recently. This is fine, as they are chickens, but I have been getting a bit concerned that it might be getting boring for the readers of my Private Secret internet diary. Fortunately, just in the nick of time, the bowls season has started up once more, bringing with it an injection of fresh excitement.

The pre-season roll-up is sparsely attended; worryingly so. I join Ned, who has a beard, in playing a friendly against Big A and his mate, but if we are to get a strong team out to challenge for the title this year then we may have to recruit new blood. I am hoping that what with all the excitement in the region about the Olympics being held in London in years and years time, I will be able to persuade some more hopefuls to join us.

“Evening!” - a couple more players have arrived. “You’re looking a bit porky!” they call across.

It is worrying. I put on a lot of weight anyway over the winter, as I do not really do any exercise during the bowls close season. Also I am having two dinners a day - one with the Toddler and one with the LTLP. We play a few gentle ends, but I do not find myself out of breath at all, which is encouraging. Maybe I am fitter than I thought. AND there is a slight slope on our green.

The competitive season begins in earnest on Friday. I hope to write up full match reports here, which I know will cause some interest worldwide. For too long the followers of bowls have been starved of information about their favourite passion; web 2.0 will change all that.

It is good to be back in the saddle (which is a metaphor for ‘on the mat’ as you do not use a saddle for bowls, the expression is from riding horses).

Booooooo - we had to shoot Chicken Four.

It lived for only a few weeks. That seems desperately sad and unfair, given that Jeremy Kyle is 43. So five chickens remain: Chicken One, Chicken Two, Chicken Three, Chicken Five and Anne Robinson.

Chicken Four was always smaller than her sister chickens, and it is possible that the strain of coming up to her first egg-production did for her. She became completely paralysed in the leg and pelvis area, and thus was unable to get food or water. There was talk of trying to use an old remote-controlled car to move her about, to create a kind of chicken Ironside without the ability to solve crimes.

I have always been clear in my mind about shooting things - I have no problem if I am subsequently going to eat them, or if they are suffering or in distress (unless they are Jeremy Kyle). For two days, however, Chicken Four remained resolutely cheerful as I popped in to chat to her and to stroke her little head. Not being about to eat a chicken that had been paralysed due to unknown causes, it was difficult to know what to do. Then she fell out of her box, shat all over Short Tony’s conservatory and started making piteous noises. Boooooooo.

Interestingly, the other chickens started laying eggs almost immediately after they heard the ‘bang’. They have clearly been intimidated, although not as much as to stop them making two more escape attempts. I have acquired them some nice new hay from the farm, however, to show that I am not all bad.

Booooooo, boooooo and triple boooooo. I have only been chickening for a few weeks and already I have lost around 17% of livestock. Perhaps this is another thing that I am not cut out to do, like arm-wrestling and getting a proper job. I hope that the other five understand. I would be miserable if I thought they hated me.

Chicken Four.

2008 - 2008.

Chicken keeping is a fickle mistress.

One minute there are six happy and well chickens. The next minute, one becomes very out of sorts, and Short Tony is forced to dip his finger in olive oil in order to stick it up its jacksy.

“I’ve done the olive-oiled finger thing,” he tells me. I swear that there is an aggrieved tone in his voice, if it is possible to have an aggrieved tone in his voice via SMS message. Clearly, I have picked a good time to visit my parents for the day.

We have a short telephone conversation, mainly about the process and results of him having to stick his finger up its jacksy. My mother and father look on, oddly. “Are you SURE you didn’t try to have sex with it?” asks Short Tony. I look around the living room, and decide that it is best just to reply with a ‘no’.

Booooooo - there is a chicken with chicken problems. We were all excited the previous night, as we thought that it was about to lay an egg. It was sitting down a lot, and then sort of bouncing awkwardly on both legs, as if it were on an invisible chicken spacehopper that was ever so slightly too big for it. However, no egg appeared and now it does not seem to be able to stand or move at all.

“I’ll give Len the Fish a ring,” sighs Short Tony. Len the Fish knows all about farming stuff. He turns up later on, out of the goodness of his heart. Short Tony passes him the olive oil.

There is apparently a condition called an ‘Egg Bound Hen’ which is very rare and unlikely to happen, but involves the egg getting stuck on the way out. Clearly its rarity works proportionately to the fuckwitteddom of the person to which the chicken belongs. I try to envisage what the symptoms would be if I had an egg stuck on the way out, using role play, and it seems to fit the chicken’s behaviour.

I receive another communication. There is definitely no egg up there. I get some advice to feed it some olive oil. Short Tony feeds it some olive oil. Different olive oil.

We are a bit stumped now. The chicken is in the emergency isolation ward (Short Tony’s conservatory) and has been given a hot bath and stuff. It does not seem to be able to walkat all, but also does not seem to be particularly distressed; its eyes are bright and it is pecking at food. I do not think that it is just a lazy chicken, though. Perhaps it has had some form of stroke. It is not bird flu. Poor chicken. Can anybody help?

“Have you ever thought of being on TV?”

I blink at the question, and turn to the Pork Butcher. He blinks also, but I am not sure whether this is due to the question or whether it is because that people blink all the time.

The girl is quite foxy, probably in her twenties, and has sidled up to me. It was definitely a sidle - certainly it was on the sidle side of walking. To be honest, I am a bit flummoxed. I am not used to being chatted up by foxy twenty-something girls, whether in front of Pork Butchers or not, and I appear to have lost the capacity to know what to say. I stare beseechingly at a rolled shoulder for rescue, but it just sits there impassively. That is the problem with meat. It is no help in a situation such as this.

My mind races. If she wants to have sex with me, then the best place would probably be behind the Vegetable Delivery Man (with a beard)’s stall. We get along very well and I am sure he wouldn’t mind nipping off for a coffee for ten minutes as long as she promised that she would not do anything revolting with the jerusalem artichokes. I am pleased with my idea, which I managed all on my own without the counsel of any meat whatsoever. No wonder people just eat it and do not appoint it to advisory bodies.

“It’s ITV’s ‘Britain’s Best Dish,’” she explains, spoiling things a bit. “I’m from ITV. Do you cook at all? I see you’re buying lots of good ingredients.”

Boooooooo - she is not picking me up at all. She wants me to be on her television show. Boooooo, boooooo and triple boooooo. I make vague noises about not really being a reality television type of person.

“Do you have a signature dish at all?” she persists. It is odd. I cannot help but be flattered by her interest. I obviously look quite televisual in her eyes. Obviously it is ITV so they are not looking for cooking ability in the slightest, but want people who will grab the housewives and melt them with a rogueish twinkle of an eye. This might be my thing after all. She then spoils it a bit by mentioning that she’s just asked the elderly Pork Butcher, who has turned her down.

I say that I will think about it, take some details, and don’t. They get you on to these things with a combination of promised stardust and ego-flattery, and I am not falling for it. Later on, I pass the details on to Short Tony and Len the Fish, with some promised stardust and ego-flattery, but they do not fall for it.

I am forced to accept this, as I watch one perching arrogantly on the higher extended escape-proof bit of fence that we constructed. I carefully tip-toe in to talk it down, like the chicken whisperer.

I feel very foolish. ‘Can chickens fly?’ is one of those questions like ‘why are there seasons?’ and ‘how does electricity work?’. You sort of think you know the answer and that it is all simple, but once you try explaining it to people then you realise that you are getting a bit bogged down.

I am not too sure about the options. I really do not want to put a chicken wire roof on, as I suspect it will make what is at present quite a pleasant environment into something a bit guantanamobayey.

And then there is the issue of wing-clipping. I know all the books say that it is what you should do and it doesn’t hurt and it is just like having your toenails cut, but I have a small feeling that it is not like having your toenails cut at all, and more like having a leg removed under general anaesthetic. Essentially, shorter toenails would not change my life materially for better or worse, whereas I suspect that a reduction in leg quantity would.

Short Tony returns from his holidays today, and I have managed a whole week without something bad happening to any of them. None have got worms, I have not trodden on any of them, I have not rented any out to Max Mosley. And we still have a full complement, so even though they can escape in theory, they clearly choose not to.

‘I must do everything in my power to make it a happy environment for them,’ I thought this morning as I went out in my pants to let them out. I do not wish to be a benevolent gaoler; I wish them to stay of their own accord.

I blink in surprise.

There is never a knock on the door these days, let alone at this time in the morning. The weather outside is foul; I have only just woken up the chickens to let them out into their escape-proof run, and am looking forward to a nice cup of hot coffee.

I open the door. It is Mrs Short Tony, announcing that the chickens are escaping.

Being a man, I really am no good whatsoever at multi-tasking (I do not think that it is sexist to say that). Therefore there is some comfort in the fact that I am able to combine my reaction at her news with some much needed practice for next week’s National Face-Falling Championships.

Stomping outside, I find Short Tony grimly banging in nails. The wind howls pitilessly through the trees. The chickens peck around innocently.

“I caught them sitting on this fence,” he explains, indicating a piece of fence that is surely too high for chickens to get up to. I look at the chickens. I look at the fence. To be fair, we had identified it as a Point of Potential Weakness, but had assumed that they would not be able to jump that far.

We spend the next bitterly cold hour raising the height of the fence by two feet.

I am learning all the time about this chicken business. So far, I have hung up a washing line for them to use, and constructed a useful Perchomatic 3000 out of old bits of wood. I do not see why they would wish to go elsewhere, and am a very tiny bit hurt by their attitude.

The lady asks us over her shoulder, heading towards a bunch of sleek, befeathered show-hens.

“No,” we affirm, absent-mindedly.

The lady bypasses the show-hens with a cackle, and veers towards the deepest depths of the shed.

Shortly afterwards, Short Tony and I are speeding back along the A-road, a half-dozen chickens confined to the dogg cage on the back of his truck.

We discuss our new family, thoughtfully.

“We should decide a few things. Are we going to give them names?” he muses.

“I hadn’t really thought about that,” I reply.

“Maybe we should leave that to the kids.”

“Let’s be clear, though,” I say, resolutely. “No comedy names. Like Gregory, or Princess, or Livingstone, or Ganley. And no bloody post irony, like when people call their cats Chairman fucking Miaow.”

“Fair enough. Can you still see them?”

Short Tony is looking at the rear-view mirror in some alarm. I turn to peer through the glazing at the back of the cab. No chickens whatsoever are visible. I undo my seatbelt and strain my neck. There is no sign of chickens. I have a brainwave and remove my phone from my pocket; reaching up as far as I can, I take a picture through the glass into the base of the load area.

The result is inconclusive.

“I’d better pull over,” mutters Short Tony, indicating for a lay-by. We hop out anxiously and hasten round the back. Six chickens peck away at us from the security of the dogg cage. We are relieved. I give a weak smile to a lorry driver who is staring down at us from his parking space.

“Vets?” asks Short Tony as we continue on our way.

We agree that running up a vet’s bill for a chicken is bad economics.

“And no puns,” insists Short Tony. I nod vigorously in agreement. “No ‘oooh, aren’t they egg-citing!’ or ‘This one is egg-strordinary!’ or that sort of stuff.”

We are reassured that we are both singing off the same hymnsheet on that topic, and subsequently also agree that neither of us will attempt sexual intercourse with one.

“How much were they again…?” asks Short Tony as the truck rumbles on.

“Seven pounds fifty each,” I report. “No V.A.T.”

“Forty five quid,” calculates Short Tony. “That’s a poultry amount.”

We continue the journey in silence.

“A letter box?!?” I spit.

“I’ll show you,” offers Big A.

Big A’s new chicken run does, indeed, feature a letter box. I stare at it in some annoyance. He is being ridiculously competitive about his new run. It is not even as big as mine.

“I’ve concreted the posts into the ground,” he mentions casually.

I consider lying about our own post construction, but do not wish to descend to his level. “Some of this wood looks quite rotten,” I point out helpfully, as we return through the garden. He is careful to pull the reclaimed front door shut as he leaves the run.

I bolt off home to look through chicken books. If he is going to build a run with concreted in posts and a reclaimed front door, I am determined that we will have the better chickens. I quite fancy the Transylvanian Naked Necks myself, just because they sound exciting. Either that or an Old English Pheasant Fowl. I can quite see myself owning an Old English Pheasant Fowl, and taking it for walks.

Big A is getting some scraggy old ex-battery hens. My pedegree rare breeds will put them to shame, and it will serve him right. I will be careful not to let them mix, so mine do not get into bad habits. But they can write to each other if they like.

Mrs Short Tony hands over a thick paperback. It transpires that the LTLP has been lured in to joining the Village Women’s Book Group.

I am pleased about this. The LTLP does not get out much, as she is always tired and stressed after her hard day at work. It will be nice for her to have another interest. I sometimes worry that her quite internationally-important and high-level professional role comes at the expense of the social life that she would want.

“When is the next meeting?” I ask.

“Next Thursday.”

I look at her crossly. We are meant to be playing a snooker match on Thursday and this means that I will have to drop out. It is annoying. I have been busting my guts out at home looking after the house and talking to the cleaner and making plans for the chickens whilst the LTLP pisses around with her mates in an office. I take the book and promise to pass it on.

I do not speak to the LTLP for several days, whilst she glues herself to the book. This happened with the last book she read, which was the ‘da Vinci Code’. At one point I try suggesting that she reads a few more books a bit more regularly but a bit less intently, but she tells me to shut up and make her tea and that she might take me up on that, but for men. I stomp off.

It is clear from the odd glance over her shoulder that it is a dreadful book, which has been tightly plotted by a genius and then written by a jobbing spider monkey. The descriptions are all horribly obvious, and the dialogue plumbs the depths of clunkiness.

“There is such clunky dialogue in this book that you are currently reading, which has been selected as this month’s choice for the Village Women’s Book Group,” I complain. But she is lost in her own world.

I am a literary snob. I would not expect Mrs Short Tony, Mrs Eddie, Mrs Len the Fish, Mrs Martin the IT Consultant etc. to go for Shakespeare or whatever, as he was famously no good at giving female characters identities in their own right. I should not be so judgmental. She enjoyed it, and will enjoy the literary and cultural discussion around it, and that’s what counts.

The LTLP arrives home late on Thursday evening, really pissed.

“Here you go,” I offer Short Tony.

I thumb through the book before handing it over. “She has sex here, here and here,” I explain helpfully.

It is bloody weird reading a book about people you know. I would have thought she’d have included our brief and sadly chaste time together in a lavish Brighton hotel room, or the post-pub darts match at Short Tony’s, but Petite Anglaise’s publishers seem to have insisted that she kept it to stuff about Paris an’ that. I have a part so insignificant that you might miss it, but I had to sign something official!!! Presumably so I don’t sue her. It was exciting.

I would imagine that you can get it from all good bookshops, or Amazon.

*

Reader Neil Forsyth also has a book!!! He is the man behind the funny funny Bob Servant stuff that I mentioned ages back. Anyway, this is the paperback edition of ‘Other People’s Money’, which got some great reviews when it was first out in hardback. Whilst you are in the all good bookshops you should give it a good thumbing. I do not think that Neil Forsyth has sex in it much, however.

*

Dan is banging his head against the Foreign Office wall. The pesky ‘emergency evacuation of Iraqi translators who are being systematically murdered for helping British soldiers’ thingy just won’t go away, which is annoying. The government has leapt into action and provided those in hiding with some emergency forms however; it is hoped that, four months after the first ones being hastily completed and returned for Civil Service perusal, some helicopters or whatever might arrive. Dan’s latest post about it is here. No sex is involved.

*

That is the news for now. I am thinking of taking some photographs of the chicken run and putting them on here, in order to lose visitors. Day five and it still stands.

The coop has been up for some weeks; the ‘Keeping Chickens - For Dummies!’ books are well-thumbed. We purchased building materials ages back, taking care to measure carefully and get exactly the right length of wire needed; the ground had been cleared and the chickensdirect websites bookmarked.

It is good to live off the land like this. Once I get a couple of chickens I will practically be Ray Mears.

It is possible that there have been longer building projects - the cathedral thing in Barcelona, perhaps, or the last Olympics. But it is important to get these things right. Plus we had been hinting to Len the Fish for ages that he might come round and ‘give us some advice’ which is code for ‘do all the work for us’. As it is, he agreed to turn up to help for the couple of hours that it would take us.

By day two of construction, I am feeling a bit down. Short Tony has disappeared to buy more wire, and I have been struggling for ages to hammer the same small staple into a piece of wood. Meanwhile, Len the Fish is erecting, wiring, twisting, hammering, digging, measuring and fixing.

“Thanks ever so much for your help again Len,” I mumble. I am embarrassed. “If you ever need some… ummmmm… humorous writing done, then just…”

I tail off lamely. It is shameful. Len the Fish is brilliant at everything practical. What he doesn’t know about practical things isn’t worth knowing. He has given up his entire week to do our fencing for us, and I have cock all that I will ever be able to offer him in return, apart from a pint, which doesn’t count as he will buy me one back. Despite being so powerful, I have about two practical skills in the world: I can use a patent type markup system that sends instructions via a modem to a plant in Watford that then couriers back your typesetting at twice a day intervals if it is before 1991, and I can name the local newspaper that covers each town in the UK, apart from the ones that I have forgotten.

“A pint. Just buy me a pint,” he replies, not asking me about Exeter, or Mansfield, or Leigh-on-Sea, or even giving any indication that he requires humorous writing services. I return to the single post that I have insisted on putting in myself.

“Huge gales forecast for tomorrow,” he says, not entirely reassuringly.

By dusk the run is complete. A happy home for six chickens, that we will probably purchase some time in the year 2163. Mrs Short Tony’s car draws up and she steps out.

Her jaw drops. “It’s a bit… bigger… than you claimed it would be.”

I rest against the garden wall, looking with anxiety at the mass of the trunk. It is amazing how a tiny little apple tree can suddenly appear so solid. I scratch my head and walk thoughtfully away from it into the front garden, clutching the rope in my hand.

As far as I can work it out, things can go one of two ways. Left to its own devices, the tree will fall backwards on to the outbuilding. Whereas if I pull on the rope with all my might, the tree will fall directly towards me into the safe expanse of Short Tony’s front garden. With luck, I will be able to leap out of the way.

“Are you ready?” asks Short Tony.

“What exact definition of the word ‘ready’ do you…” I begin, but my words are drowned out by the chainsaw. He starts cutting a wedge shape into the trunk. This, I reason, should help the tree fall towards me and not backwards towards the building.

I take the strain on the rope.

I don’t know why it is. I am reasonably tall, and I have not had a shave, and I am wearing old clothes that are covered in paint and stuff from where I have done DIY in them, and I am taking the strain on a rope that is tied to a tree that is being felled by a man with a chainsaw. You would think that I would look a bit more rugged. As it is, I can’t help thinking that if a passing photography student captures the scene in order to display a large black-and-white print in a pseudy photography gallery, he may well be tempted to caption it: ‘Nancy Boy Holding A Rope (2008)’.

I do not seem to be able to get a proper grip. My feet are not spaced correctly. The tree appears to be quite heavy. I strain hard. This is not good. The front lawn is all around me – all I need to do is to stop the tree falling backwards. I can feel its weight. Stop it going backwards! Stop it going backwards!

“Almost there,” warns Short Tony.

The chainsaw slices through. I give a huge pull on the rope. The tree falls almost perfectly sideways, taking the top off the wall and coming to rest in a cloud of twigs and masonry across the driveway.

There is a short silence.

“A lot of that cement was loose anyway,” Short Tony offers, tactfully.

“Ummmmm,” I reply in embarrassment.

“Anyway, do you want any more free wood?” he asks.

Free wood!!!

Short Tony is standing in his front garden waving a chainsaw around. I am unenthusiastic about going over to help. There is such a fine line between being ‘a Good Samaritan’ and ‘a statistic’.

“He won’t need my help,” I protest. “Plus if I go and offer, knowing that he won’t need my help, he will just think that I am angling for some free wood.”

“Go on,” she insists, kicking me out of the car with a look.

I amble to Short Tony’s house. He is sizing up a sizeable old apple tree, which has been semi-uprooted and is leaning precariously. Miraculously, it has missed the house and everything else of value. So far.

“Do you need a hand?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t mind, actually,” he replies. “Do you want some free wood?”

Result!

I scuttle back to the Cottage to change into some old trousers. I have recently broken the habit of a lifetime, and bought some trendy new jeans in ‘Gap’ and I would not want these to get muddy. (For those who live in the middle of nowhere and not near a ‘Gap’ shop, the ‘Gap’ is basically a store that is frequented by forty-somethings who are seeking to maintain the heady sartorial excitement of their late thirties). I reappear some time later in my old gardening clothes.

Short Tony hands me a rope and gestures towards the tree. He has a small outbuilding in which he has installed a home gymnasium; the direction in which the tree has half-fallen is towards this. Clearly this is the way it will continue to fall should somebody attack it with a chainsaw - hence the rope. It transpires that my job is to take the strain on the rope, pulling with all my might, so that the tree, when felled, will not demolish the outbuilding.

To be, unfortunately, continued.