Today's Dairy Entry

There was no need for today to turn out dreadful, but stuff happens. The seed was sown when I left home without a camera. That's not strictly true though the nicety is neither here nor there. In truth I left home with three, but I left my DSLR in the car because I had in mind I would be using a tripod in woodland and did not fancy carrying the big one. So that left two cameras with me after parking the car half way between Meriden and Fillongley, in the pull off at Meighs Wood.

From Meighs Wood I took the Heart of England Way north towards a footbridge crossing the M6. The field sloped to the bridge and as I drew near I had to circuit the water filled tractor tracks to avoid getting filthy. The brige itself was no better. It was thick with soft mud, plastered about like floor levelling compound. The land immediately beyond the stile the other side was perhaps worse.

On finding an area of plain grass I reached for my pocketcam intending to see what I might make of a hawthorn on slightly higher ground. It was at this moment I cursed hopelessly at the message telling me I had left the memory card in my computer. So I reached for my phone-cum-map. This is the shot. The one and only shot taken today.

From then on I thought to find the shortest circular walk back to the car. Photos would be for the afternoon. That circular required me to head for Green End Lane, probably a quarter of a mile away at most. All I needed to do was drop down the hill and wander through the farm drive.

This was easier said than done. The ground got worse. It was pretty much tractor tracks all round, so I picked my course as carefully as I could, preferring a grassy tuft whenever I saw one. However, there came a time when I made mistakes. I think the mistakes sprung from when I thought I had found a hard surface underfoot. A hard albeit submerged surface made sense contrasted with slipping and slobbering in the mud. So that's the way I went, until I detected the hard surface had gone from underfoot, and now both feet had sunk into mud just three or four inches from the tops of my wellies. I was stuck and at risk of losing the boots.

From the upright I now entered the crouched. Crouched so as to be able to tug at the buckles at the knee end of my boots. First one, then the other. And as I did so I observed in the puddles the purple and irredescent greens of petroleum pollution. But once free of mud, where then to put them? Adopting this crouching posture I moved my feet through the mud, retreating I might add. But the retreat was to end in defeat. There came a time when the tug caused me to over-balance. There was litle choice but to outstretch my hands and lower my rear to avoid a catastrophic bellyflop. In went my hands, and down went my bum. Now I was caked in mud, all the way up to my elbows and all the way round my backside. Thick globs clung and other glops dripped, and still I was no safer.

This of course was no laughing matter. And if you're enjoying things so far, be sure to wipe that smile from your face. My choice of profanities grew louder and one might have imagined the farmer out selecting wood, or an inhabitant of the nearby farmhouse, both no more than 10 yards away, might have heard one or two of them. Perhaps the cloth-eared farmer deliberately shut me from his mind. If he did he had no reason too. Had his butt-ugly chops reddened at the words selected to describe his lack of parentage, I would have been a sitting-duck, an easy picking for his sawn-off.

Eventually, as night follows day, I freed myself from the wreckage of that fraudulent, billious pond masquerading as a farmyard. I made my way back whence I came. I didn't look back. I might have caught the farmer chuckling up his sleeve. And if I had, needing no excuses, I might have gone over and rammed a fully extended tripod down his throat. And at this point my thoughts turned to what next. When I'm back at the car what next?

It's at times like these, plodding along while cloaked in a mixture of sand, clay and cow poop, that the imagination runs amock. Sensibly I began by making a mind's eye tour of the car boot. There was nothing in there I might use to sit on. I would have to spread my coat on the car seat. Then I thought about struggling to get the boots off and dropping the trousers at the roadside. But even the three second walk from boot to driver's door would be too much to handle. I heard the parp-parp of passing motorists and thought of Officer Dibble reaching for his notebook. I thought of the questioning back home. 'Why did you do that? Why did you sit in the mud? Why couldn't you have not sat in the mud?

At the road, rainwater formed a continuous lace of puddles and streamed past blocked gullies. And as I walked up the hill towards the oncoming motorists I made no effort to make their driving comfortable. They would have to pull out or brake. And if anyone wanted to fight that would be fine by me.

The car boot was as I imagined it though there was a plastic shopping bag or two I could utilise. Along the way I had wiped my hands on wet grass or whatever was available, but sat at the wheel, the cockpit rapidly got smudged. Thankfully, I was at last in the car and never more ready for home.

In the ten or so minutes it took to get back, the interior of my car took on the unmistakable whiff of dairy.