“It is a wonder I haven’t grown a pair of balls”

IT is Friday, 4.30pm. I am at home, up a tree. I’ve been doing more site-maintenance (old farmhouse, three acres: it never ends), what with the vintage shop closing.

For the past two weeks, I’ve had spare time, a luxury to reinvent myself as a lumberjack; I’m determined to rescue the back wall of the house from damp, you see, caused by a thicket of overgrown trees that has been dripping rain down it since... partition.

So now, after my fifth day of chopping this week, I’m up a tree, mustering the gymnastic ability for getting out of it, when my husband returns home from work.