Country Living – Muddy hell!

If I lay my eyes upon one more glossy flyer in the mail depicting children frolicking in shiny, clean gumboots, I’m going to lose my rag. This image is just too far removed from my current reality. Manufacturers can put whatever cute images on them they want, but around these parts, gumboots are just one colour and that’s brown! I have never seen so much rain. The farm is clogged and bogged to the point where even the ducks have engaged 4WD.

The complexities of my personality and my hatred for mud have seen me having daydreams about a perfectly paved urban life. These thoughts get exacerbated at this time of year by many factors, not least of which are the pallets of unlaid paving sitting outside my back door that have now contributed to my third year of muddy torment. My en-suite bath overlooks our triplet nursery paddock and the harbour.

Normally, the pleasure of this view from a steaming hot bath on a freezing day smashing with rain can only be described as a love story – except just recently when I was caught between despair and ecstasy. Through the howling rain and steam I could see a cast ewe and a violently sweeping hawk attacking her. Ugh, really? For a fleeting moment there in that warm bath, I pondered whether hauling myself into the cold wet rain and helping a gal out would be considered as interfering in God’s intended wish for natural selection?

Compounding my urban thoughts are mats and mops. I mean, I am the most ridiculously impractical person I know, but I have concluded that mop and mat designers are on another level. I get sad, puppy dog eyes when I walk past pretty little door mats with floral designs and the word “Welcome”. Out here these mats are like tissues used on a bad cold; one wipe and they’re in the bin! Something at my front door with the texture of gorse would be gold sticker status for any would-be designers out there.

As for mops, it has become increasingly apparent to me that these designers do not live in a house surrounded by a quagmire and certainly do not have an intimate relationship with 200 square metres of kauri floorboards because if they did, they would recognise that nobody sets out in life to become a frustrated “mop hag”. The stupid one I currently possess doesn’t even fit in a bucket. Seriously, with this daft thing you have to take off its head, wring it out and rinse by hand. So, before I have a breakdown, it’s about to meet a slow and painful death on the end of my block splitter! Yes, that hideous definition of domestic cruelty is about to be replaced by another that I have been having a grubby little internet affair with. My new mop is tall and strong with broad shoulders. Once he is in my arms, together we will make surface symphony, suppressing any of my perfectly paved urban daydreams.

Lastly, nothing in my winter wonderland is drying. I’m doing my best to help curb the growing salary of energy company executives by minimising my dryer usage. But should I be made aware of any adverse health effects derived from the adorning of damp undies and socks?

Julie Cotton