A sorry tale of mud, field, indignity, and soiled grey Tesco value clothing

One of the awful things about Dig's absence is the terrible and terrifying thoughts that beset me. Like, what if some disaster were to strike?

What if I were driving Shark to the lake today for her sailing lesson and we were struck by an out of control lorry and I died and all my darling children were ambulanced to hospital, motherless and alone in all the world?

Or what if I popped down the Co-op for a bottle of beer, leaving Shark, Squirrel and Tiger glued to Night at the Museum which they think is the funniest film they have seen forever, and I never returned because some druggie outside the Co-op decided to murder me on the spot because I am carrying a bottle and it is brown and the colour brown sends him crazy because he thinks brown is a member of M15 and out to destroy him? What if that happened?

And what about the puffin? I know it sounds unlikely, but horrible things happen. Then there are the heart attacks, the electrocutions, collapsing buildings, falling trees, runaway buses, dropping down dead, all of these scenarios that, given a fraction of a second and the wrong turn, could happen, might happen.

Then I think the emergency services will have to break into the house, and what would the newspapers report? No longer Woman on toilet struck dead by puffin but Mother in drugs death traded triplets for booze.

Of course I have one safeguard against these dreadful newspaper reports that will blight the lives of my little girls forever. It is to clean the hob. Because when the police break down the door - because Shark, Squirrel and Tiger are unable to open it, driven to zomboids by watching a looped Ben Stiller - then the police will look around the kitchen and know that this mother may have been clubbed to death in a Co-op doorway by a drugged out crazy before being mangled to death and simultaneously electrocuted in a road tragic accident by a runaway train, and finally flattened by a dead puffin in a falling tree, but look at that hob. Now her children need protection for ever because that hob proves she cares.

But today none of these things happened. What did happen is that, while running across a muddy field to take this photograph ...


...without my knowledge or consent yesterday's knickers detached themselves from my trouser leg and flew out to greet the people behind me.