Tummy trouble

Under ‘large floral patterned chamber pot, used once, slightly damaged, £5 ono’ I came across ‘Abmaster stomach exerciser, boxed, unwanted gift, £10.’ I’d been looking out for a stomach exerciser in the small ads for a long time, so I dialled the number. A small inarticulate child answered. Was the Abmaster still for sale? There was the sound of laboured breathing, then she went away, and after a while an adult male came to the phone. I repeated the question. There was a long contemplative silence. He didn’t know nothing about no Abmaster, he said, then he too went away. Next a woman came to the phone. Obviously the dynamo of the family, this businesslike woman assured me that the Abmaster was indeed still for sale and she told me how to get there.

Her directions led me to a farm beside a bend in the road that is known locally as Pooh Corner. It’s called Pooh Corner because the road there is always covered in liquid cow manure, the result of a herd of Friesians crossing the road there four times a day, twice there and twice back, to be milked. The woman selling the Abmaster said she and her family lived in the caravan in the farmyard.

The farmyard, I saw as I stepped out of the car, was inches deep in a mixture of rainwater and cattle slurry. There was no high or dry access to the caravan’s door; I simply had to paddle through the muck. After a few paces I could feel it oozing coldly into my shoes via the lace-holes. A pair of slurry-caked rough collies came slinking across the yard to check me out. One had one startlingly light-blue eye and one smoke-grey one.