Lifes never dull

It just isn't. Life is never ever dull here at Rock HQ. Always something going on, and today was no exception. Another really early alarm call from Tristan was my cue to feed and change him before abandoning him and his mother while I went to play farms. Jill, aka Super Grandma has gone back home for a well earned rest, we granted her a 48 hour pass. Tracey, my beautiful and oh so patient wife is very poorly having picked up an infection so light duties have become even lighter duties and it looks like it will be a while before she mucks out the pigs. Poor pigs. Anyway, a lovely spring morn, the birds were singing their little hearts out while I attended to the critters. Down in the pig/sheep/cow pen a strange type of bleating from the excuse for a barn alerted me to the fact that today I might find something more interesting inside than sheep pooh and lazy goats. Daffodil, our three year old home grown lamb (spared Mr Whirlpool on account of her pet status) had been a very clever girl and lambed almost all by herself. I got there in time to pass her hot towels and prevent junior, now named Berry, from falling into the real pig pen.

Separating her off from the hoi polloi took a moment of sheer genius on the part of yours truly. I disguised Berry as Daffodils favourite breakfast and persuaded her to follow me to the safety of the stables where Daffodil was unceremoniously dumped onto her backside and held there while little Berry got a good belly full of the all important colostrum milk. This is full of antibodies and other magical bits that ensures the lamb at least has a chance of surviving the next 24 hours. After making sure they were all cosy and feeding the dogs, rabbits, fish, horses, poultry, goats, and dogs again I decided it was time for a well earned cuppa. Over the small copse along our dirt track I could see smoke rising. Being a nosey sort I wandered towards the smoke to see what sort of bonfire the militia bordering our plot were having.

Now this is something you don't see everyday. A car on fire in your neighbours field. I watched for a moment pondering. I dismissed the leave it someone else will do something idea shortly after the lets get a toasting fork and crumpets. I was sure it was an old car, it had appeared the day before, but quite why it was now adding to the depletion of the ozone layer was beyond me. So I set off to make sure that no one was in it and more likely that those at the farm knew that this was happening and that it might be an idea to do something about it.

In the farm yard I met a large chap, he didn't need to tell me his name, it would almost certainly be Steve ( I found out later I was right) standing on the top rungs of a stepladder shouting into a mobile phone. It was, apparently, the only way he could get a bastard signal on his bastard mobile, two bastard bars and it took ten bastard minutes to get through to the fire brigade, the bastards. I liked Steve, a man who told you exactly how he felt. So while I waited with him for bastard fire brigade ( Steve used Bastard as a form of punctuation, or endearment, he saved the F word for insults or bouts of extreme excitement) I heard about his poor health, the life story of the car and his plumbing. Bastard plumbers had taken seven weeks to come to the house and find 14 bastard leaks. The car had been stood for 10 years, a sort of fixer upper, but never having had the time to fix it it bastard rotted.

This rot had spread to the wall of the wooden barn, so to allow the rot to dry out they had towed the bastard into the field.

Now at six o'clock the bastard was alright, and Steve had decided to have a bath, now the hot tap worked. But by half eight he was sure he could smell burning but put that down to his wife burning the bastard breakfast. Again.

Then there was this sort of explosion sound, not normally associated with toasters and he popped his head out of the bathroom window and saw the car on bastard fire.

I held the stepladder steady while he explained to the fire brigade that his bastard farm was the only bastard next to Steve's with a bastard car on bastard fire so it was bastard obvious.

They dutifully arrived and dealt with the inferno, saving the hedge and my ears from further bouts of bastard. Why the car should spontaneously combust after standing for ten years with no battery is, as my new friend was shouting at the fire commander as I left, a big bastard mystery.