Tractor
I am getting a lot of reading done* waiting for this frelling machine to (a) boot up (b) do anything with its booted-upness. Load Outlook? That’ll be five minutes and five quid in the swearing jar.** Load the link that Jodi Meadows sent me? That’ll be ten minutes.***
But worth it. Even if you too are catching up on back issues a lot while you’re waiting for more computer memory to arrive in the post or the hands of Computer Men . . . worth it.†
http://www.viruscomix.com/page523.html
Although I’m not sure if this level of hormone-enhanced hilarity is good for me in my still-internally-fragile state. Didn’t I say something yesterday about the possible curative effects of adrenaline? I think I’ve had enough of that prescription, thank you.
Hellhounds and I were noodling back to the car this morning at the end of our walk. We had just done one of our duck-and-dives out of the way of a jogging woman and her two off lead Labradors†† and were making our way cautiously back through the next gap in the fence to the proper track. And there was the most appalling roaring noise. Now, when we’re walking on little back roads I walk in the middle on the theory††† that some fathead in an SUV might think that taking the odd dog out is not a big deal so long as it didn’t dent the fender, but will probably choose not to hit a human.‡ But whatever was approaching us sounded like a fleet of SUVs and I judiciously decided to stay huddled in the shrubbery for a little while longer.
When I first moved over here twenty years ago this area had a lot of trouble with ‘travellers’ as they’re called: people who live off the grid, in caravans—both the Airstream and the pony-power versions—and tents and old buses and so on. There are laws about where they’re allowed to camp, but these are apparently not always very practical or very well enforced. I was—and mostly still am—afraid of them, because their campsites tend to include large protective and frequently off-lead dogs. We still have travellers; a few of the nicer regulars I know a little—especially the groups that feature horses and/or sighthounds—but twenty years ago the knowledge or awareness of a traveller camp would make me turn aside or around in a hurry. One of the things that makes the careless ones unpopular with the local rate-payers is the fact that they don’t clean up after themselves: there’s a major bill that someone has to foot after they’ve moved on. (The good ones, I want to emphasize, are not like this. You’d hardly know they’d been there but for the bit of black ground where their raked-over fire was, and some eaten-down grass and horse droppings. This is a contentious issue and I don’t know that much about it, but I’d say that responsible travellers can be a positive benefit for underused rural commons.) There was a notorious local case after I’d been here a few years when a group of travelers (well endowed with large unfriendly uncontrolled dogs, just by the way) not only left a bus behind, but piled up a lot of debris both in and around it . . . and torched the lot.
It was after this that a lot of big steel upside-down-U-frames went up at significant points and crossroads around some of the bigger and more popular off-road bridleways and footpaths, especially ones wide enough to make attractive campsites. I don’t know what the official term for the frames is, but the crossbars are low enough that you can get a small car or a jeep through, but no big caravans and certainly no buses.
Nor can you get any of the bigger farm machinery past. The crossbar can be unlocked and swung open however. When The Biggest Tractor I Have Ever Seen Up Close stopped immediately in front of where hellhounds and I were crouched among the foliage‡‡ this morning—and hellhounds do not like large tumultuous vehicles—I knew intellectually that it had stopped so the driver could unlock the crossbar on the frame immediately to our left. Atavistically I was convinced we were about to die: the equally enormous harrow that this thing was dragging was clearly going to turn its flashing ruby eyes on us and reach out long curling pincer-prongs like something out of Judge Dredd. ‡‡‡
A nice normal-looking young man jumped down from the excessive height of his seat behind the juggernaut’s controls, flourishing the predictable key. You can go on past, he said jovially: there’s just about room.
Just about. Looking uneasily at the harrow—I’m sure I saw one of its tines twitch—we sidled on past and down the track. It would take him a few minutes to get through and lock up again, by which time we would be well gone: there were at least three plausible tractor turn-offs between that U-frame and Wolfgang, pulled up on the bank near the road. All was well. I did hear when the tractor started up again, but as I say, there were SEVERAL likely fields for Juggernaut & Friend to be aiming for.
No. They were coming for the road. Where Wolfgang was probably insufficiently pulled up on the bank—and what is it about that primal you’re being chased instinct? He is not going to run down a human being and two dogs. Get a grip. Nah. I turned and looked disbelievingly at Armageddon bearing down on us at about twenty miles an hour—turned back again and bolted. It was downhill, and adrenaline? Let me tell you about adrenaline. The hellhounds, who had been in full mooch mode§ are nonetheless always ready for a sudden sprint, and the novelty of me trying to sprint obviously appealed to their sense of humour§§. So we all took off as our various anatomies allowed.
We made it to Wolfgang and I actually got hellhounds bundled into the back seat before the End of Days was upon us. Wolfgang was in fact not up on the bank far enough, but the juggernaut merely mounted the opposite bank and ground on past anyway. I shrank back behind Wolfgang, trying not to tremble (and failing), reminding myself that it’s just a frelling tractor—it’s also the noise, you know? There’s something about enough torque to haul a harrow through our flinty Hampshire soil six feet deep that makes a hell of a lot of NOISE when it’s merely trundling down a track in hot pursuit of a terrified woman and two moderately animated hellhounds. . . .
I followed it most of the way home, of course. Twenty mph in a car is a lot slower than it is when you’re on foot and it’s gaining on you. It was still tall enough to blot out a lot of sunlight, and I still don’t like the look of that harrow.
It was thus probably a very good day for me to have an appointment with the osteopath§§§. I may manage to get out of bed tomorrow.
* * *
* Catching up on old^ London Reviews of Books at the moment. Very interruptible.
^ Old old—yikes—OLD.
** It is a very good thing for me there is no penalty for bad language in this household. A very very good thing.
*** I could read an entire chapter. If I could decide which book I’m reading. Okay, stop wasting time, I’ll stick with the LRB.
† Thank you Jodi.
†† Sportsist remark: Joggers never ever stop to sort out their dogs. If their dogs don’t need sorting, you’re fine. If their dogs do need sorting, you’re on your own. And the jogger may have disappeared into the distance while you’re still in the thick of it.
††† One might almost say grounds. Cough. Cough.
‡ Perhaps only because of the dent in the fender, but hey, whatever works.
‡‡ And I for one was having a vertiginous flash of empathy with yesterday’s deer.
‡‡‡ I’m not enormously fond of large tumultuous vehicles either. No! Be strong! Must set good example for hellhounds!
§ They’d had way too good an off-lead hurtle early on in the walk, and had mostly been waiting for me to stop torturing them and let them lie down for the rest of it.
§§ Which is perverse, as observed yesterday.
§§§ Ow! Ow! Frell! Ow!
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