HELP!

I need somebody. I’m suffering. Perhaps this will come as no surprise, as we all know how dangerous forestry and farming activities in the countryside still are, in spite of all the improvements in communications and technology.

Forestry is inherently perilous, as it often involves lone machine operators or, at best, small groups working in isolated and lonely areas. But I am sure nobody reading this needs a lecture on health and safety, do you?

This diary has a long history of safe working, if you eliminate the awful drop of that filing cabinet onto my office manager’s toes. That apart, we haven’t been troubled for as long as 25 years. Until now, that is.

WANT MORE TANARUS? 

Today, as I report, this long and admirable record has been brought to an unceremonious end. I am injured. In mundane, if hardly life-threatening circumstances, I find myself on the wounded list. I will tell you how.

It all started a month or so ago. I went to the farm to collect some straw bales for my livestock. I am used to gripping that orange baler twine, but this time I had the misfortune to step on a grey squirrel which had been busily filling its face with layer pellets.

I tripped, falling backwards onto the bale and a large amount of fresh air – and did my back. I couldn’t get up. 

Needless to say, I didn’t have my phone in my pocket, but luckily a neighbour happened to chance by, who recognised my bad language and came to my rescue. They alerted my wife, who is excellent in these kinds of situations and immediately took charge.

I was eventually carted off to the local A&E by the two of them and we waited for the X-ray department to take some pics, which happily confirmed that my spine was intact and a period of rest and recuperation should bring about a cure.

This cheered me up more than somewhat, as I am sure you will imagine.

I was duly installed in front of the telly, just in time for the Olympic Games in Paris. I was fed a steady diet of coffee and biscuits, baguettes and brioche, and life didn’t seem too bad.

However, this euphoric state was not to last. I soon began to struggle with the more passive side of my treatment – and am still struggling.

So far as I am able, I am under strict instructions to keep still and not move or lift anything for six weeks. Six weeks! For a chap whose whole lifestyle has been outdoors, walking, climbing and lifting things, six weeks sounds like a life sentence. To make matters that much worse, I twisted my bedclothes into a rope during all that hot weather (two nights, was it?) and fell once more to the floor last weekend. Back to square one.

P.S. The squirrel appears unhurt. Saw him this morning. Damn it!