If you want rain, get a washing line! So, conversely if you want the weather to cheer up in dear old Blighty you all need to demolish your external laundry drying mechanisms. I am surprised that Michael Fish didn't cotton on to this years ago.

I haven't had a washing line since moving to the farm. This resulted in very, very, dry weather. On Sunday the concrete had set and I finally got my whirly line in place.... and then the rain came. It's fail safe.

There is also Plan B. If you want it to rain, plan a picnic in the park. That seems to have worked too. There is a big black cloud over my shed this morning (like a bright golden haze on the meadow but more gloomy!) Luckily our picnic blanket has a plastic lining!

Hope you all sleep well whilst I squelch beneath you.

For some reason I have had a burst of energy over the past few days. Jobs that have been bugging me for weeks are all done and dusted. I even got around to mending the electric fence in the goat field that Mr Not had managed to cut through with a weedeater before Christmas. Luckily Billy (Goat) Muggins hadn't noticed the chink in my fencing armour and didn't run off to sow his wild oats amongst the girly goats.

I could beat an episode of the Archers into a cocked hat sometimes you know! Yesterday, I found my neighbour sitting by my shed at morning tea-time. (morning tea is an institution to which I am slowly adapting)
We share a water supply and he had come to check why the water had stopped running into my tank which was very sweet of him.

He is a lovely well-meaning bloke but he is the sort of man who would have given God advice on how to create the world. Rather like Harry Enfield's "you don't want to do it like that" character, he knows something about everything and, without a doubt, thinks very little of the Family Not! He always wears a supercilious smirk when he speaks to me and criticises EVERYTHING I say, seemingly just to throw me off balance. He does this especially when there is another male around who he thinks he should impress

Well, yesterday he announced (glancing around with an infuriating grin, at a male friend of mine who happened to be present) that he would do me a 'favour' and graze his cattle in one of my fields as I had let it get too long. I was so surprised that I didn't even glorify this with an answer and think I sort of grunted.

Well, today, I spotted his Ute disappearing down my drive. He had obviously been planning the best route for his mob of moos with a view to moving them into MY field tomorrow. My grunt had been mis-construed as "yes please, that would be lovely".

I now don't really know what to do. Should I ring him and tell him to "moo off" thus risking neighbourly disharmony for ever more or should I just let him exercise his machismo (isnt that a make of motorcycle?) and give him the opportunity to boast for the next few weeks that those Poms can't even graze their own fields properly. I think I might opt for the latter cos (a) I am a total coward and (b) it is good therapy for the locals to feel superior once in a while