Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
waved its backside in my direction and put me firmly in my place with typical cat haughti-
ness. They'd been here five minutes these cats and they were already bullying me.
Of all the animals I thought we'd ever own, I'd certainly not banked on cats. I'd never even
liked cats, and it became increasingly obvious over their first few weeks that Natalie and the
boys didn't feel I could be left alone with the kittens. In order to keep me and the kittens apart
therefore, I was assigned tasks that kept taking me outside, though I am not, by any stretch of
the imagination (and hammocks apart), an outdoor person. I don't do outdoor stuff; I am not
capable. I don't even own a pair of wellington boots, my logic being that if I owned a pair I'd
be asked to do things which involved having to wear them, and that's surely to be avoided.
Some men may still see themselves as hunter-gatherers; but some of us sadly are best left
with the admin.
The first year we were here I had to build a big bonfire for garden rubbish, which in itself
is easy enough, but I just couldn't get the thing lit. Every time I got a spark going it went out,
I tried rags soaked in petrol, barbecue firelighters, magnifying glasses using the sun's rays
- I even rubbed two sticks together for about half an hour because I'd seen it in a film, but
nothing worked. In the end I ran out of patience and just emptied the petrol canister on it in
a manic arsonist-style frenzy, stood back (I'm not an idiot) and threw a lit box of matches at
it. The resulting fireball threw me to the ground and as I lay there thinking that that was a bit
too close for comfort I saw the fire snaking along the grass towards me and the petrol canister
that was next to me. I got up and ran away shouting 'She's gonna blow!' and jumped into a
hedge.
Yet despite this dubious track record with the great outdoors, rather than be trusted indoors
with the kittens, I was, one sweltering autumn day, to be found waist deep in odious, rotted
bio-matter, while wearing someone else's waders, all on the pretext of pond clearance. It is
not a situation I thought I would ever find myself in and I don't want it repeated, but appar-
ently ponds don't clean themselves and I had been earmarked to remove all the reeds.
'Didn't we plant these reeds?' I asked.
'The fish need to breathe,' Natalie said.
'Yes, but didn't we plant these reeds?' I persisted petulantly.
'Take those things off before you go back in the house, won't you?' And with that she was
off.
Firstly, wearing someone else's waders just feels wrong, like using someone else's tooth-
brush. Oddly enough I don't own a pair of my own waders, largely for the same reason that I
don't own a pair of wellies but also because, and I'm ready to be corrected on this, Fred Perry
haven't yet moved in to the 'Swamp Husbandry' market. If being a mod is about anything, it's
about looking your best at all times and about dignity, both of which are sorely tested when
you're wearing an agricultural gimp suit, covered in a tar-like substance that appears to have
oozed up from the Earth's core and that smells like a landfill site on a hot day. It's difficult
