Sunk down in the Mire

So half the vegetable garden is now down to leeks, and I needed to start work on the other half - and those now rather devastated areas where I dug up suggestive fruit trees.  My task has been given extra urgency from another letter from Marjorie, informing me that she has rented the house out and will be with me early next week.

So I've been working really hard all morning, wrestling by the sweat of my brow with thorns and thistles. By twelve o'clock the whole patch was cleared and I was receiving my order of manure from the farmer.

I note from another web page the appalling use of language in our modern-day workforce.  Sometimes they are so coarse as to approach the foulness of Eileen's language back in Husborne Crawley.  And I can guarantee that the Revd Phil Ritchie's friends' experience is one I shared this morning.  The farmer turned up with his lorryload of manure, and asked - in terms lacking in all politesse - where I wanted the - well, I shall paraphrase what he said. He asked where I wanted the "dung".

I was so disconcerted by his use of vulgar epithet that I stood to upbraid him. Surely, I said, this use of the language of the gutter is unfitting? Think of the power of the human language - the traditional beauty of the King James Version. What would St Paul think, I was starting to ask - when I realised that he had activated the motor and the entire load of his lorry was sliding rapidly toward me.

Truly, l once again was as one that had gone down to the Pit. My head sticking out the top of a pyramidal mound of horse refuse.  But I refused to lose my dignity. I refused to descend to foul abuse. I merely remarked that he would receive his just reward. To which he responded that he already had that, as I had paid in advance.

At this point, Maud and Elsie wandered past on their way to market. I heard the words "Up to his neck in it again", and the reply "Yeah, he's no better than the last one".

I've spent the last half-hour moving as much manure as can be moved, from the drive where the farmer dumped it across to the vegetable patch.  And now I must be off. The shower and the fragrant aroma of carbolic soap in my nostrils await me.