Are you mad? A friend said. What on earth will you do with yourself in the country? 

I’ll be fine I replied. I think it may even suit me.

Larkin said that ‘Nothing, like something happens anywhere’. And nothing, like something, sometimes happens here.

Cinnamon the Capybara has escaped from a zoo during the delivery of a new tractor. Tractors are very much in vogue in my fold in the map. The VOR, my wife – the voice of reason – recently collided with one at the crossroads, writing off her Mini and proving that not just American blues singers have significant encounters at intersections. Needless to say, her driving is much improved.

How did he escape? a reporter incredulously asked. Well how do you think; by sneaking along the sides of the Nissan huts, pressing close as the searchlights swing past, then breaking from the shadows and crawling along the grass to the razor wire before frantically using a snips to make a Capybara sized hole then mounting a motorbike left by a willing accomplice. How did he escape indeed. The standard of journalism just isn’t the same out here in the sticks.

My youngest son says that my fold in the map is the perfect place to ride out the impending zombie apocalypse. All I have to do is blow two bridges and stock up on tins and toilet rolls. In light of this summers riots this may not be such a bad idea, although the atrocious weather in England’s increasingly mean and unpleasant land ensures that such disturbances only occur between downpours.  

It costs £3 a month to adopt a donkey, which seems very reasonable, especially as it stays at the donkey sanctuary rather than your own home – for which I imagine there’s a healthy discount. There’s no mention of Capybara adoptions. I think I’d rather like a guinea pig the size of a Labrador and they’re bound to be smarter than a donkey. 

I’m eagerly awaiting my copy of Boris’s fictional memoir Unhinged or is it Unchecked?.  It will not only provide me with merriment, but help fill my time here in the provinces and keep me from announcing to the VOR that a tractor has just gone past, or that a mysterious car has appeared in the lane that I haven’t seen before.

There’s an urgent need for someone to do face painting at the village fete and the VOR is thinking of volunteering. I point out my reservations, as a friend once did it and didn’t manage to get a break and not so much as a venison burger or an extremely dilute and expensive Pimms passed her lips all day.  

YOU MUST DO IT! her brother announced, in a manner reminiscent of Bojo commanding the SAS to invade Holland. I had no idea he felt so strongly about children walking around with unpainted faces. I said that perhaps she should smear the paint on, then scape it off, like Frank Auerbach, but my humorous interjection fell on stony ground. 

Any way, I wouldn’t be at the fete as I was off for a jolly jaunt to the city. I just needed to dust off my Coke hat, roll my brolly, and break out the pinstripes – only to discover that moths had eaten the crotch away in a vindictive and specifically targeted attack.  As Michael Corleone said ‘Everything’s personal’.

There’s a talk at the village hall this weekend on the old testament and biblical violence –  I wonder if the farm shop has any toilet rolls?

‘ When a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape’. Chekhov.