It Started With A Tweet(38)

It’s not until I get to the boundary of the farm, where I have to go cross-country, that the spring in my step disappears, largely due to the depth of the mud. It seems that yesterday’s rain has turned the surrounding fields into a scene reminiscent of a festival.

I stare hard at the space between the quagmire in front of me and the hill on the horizon. I could stay here, where I’m standing upright without problem, albeit with no phone signal, or I could run the gauntlet of falling in the mud and be rewarded with a sneaky look at Facebook.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes as I step forward. The soles of my boots slide as they squelch into the mud. If my boots weren’t ruined before, they certainly are now. With reed soles and baby-pink suede, this wasn’t what the designers had in mind, but the lure of the Internet is too strong for me to resist.

I squelch along trying to keep myself upright, and after a while I get used to it. As long as I keep my arms outstretched for balance, I’ve got the stone wall running along to my right to grab on to if I need to cling on. Luckily, it’s that really sticky mud that makes your foot slide slowly so I’ll have time to react if I feel myself going over.

My calf muscles start to ache at the effort, my cheeks feel simultaneously cold and warm, and my lungs feel fuller from the fresh air. This must be quite the workout – almost as good as the military fitness class I see happening on the common near where I live, which I aspire to go to. I’m sure that I’m burning just as many calories.

Just think, if we had a mobile phone signal in the house, I’d be missing out on all this fresh air and exercise. I feel healthier than I have felt in years. It’s also giving me plenty of time to think about more important things, like what I’m going to do with my life now that I don’t have a job. Which is, of course, what I’m thinking about. I’m absolutely not making a list in my head of all the things I’ve got to tell Erica when I log on to Facebook .?.?. ahem.

I’m pretty proud at how much better I’m faring today than yesterday. The hill in front of me doesn’t appear to be getting any closer, but I’ve been walking for a fair while so I’m sure I’ve got somewhere.

I spin round to see how far away the farmhouse is, but it causes me to lose my footing. Instinctively, I grab for the wall with my left hand, but now that I’ve spun round, it’s on the wrong side of me and I end up on my bum.

‘Bugger,’ I shout, as I find myself wedged in. I try to stand up but instead I wedge my bum further into the mud. There’s only one thing for it – I’m going to have to roll onto all fours and push myself up. I take a deep breath and roll over, sinking my hands into the slimy mud. I manage to force myself upright, wiping my hands as best I can down my jeans. I must look as if I’ve been on one of those Tough Mudder runs. Not that it matters; no one’s going to see me up here anyway. I can’t believe I endured that freezing cold shower this morning only to have ended up like this. All I can hope is that I make it back to the farm before Rosie and Alexis start tearing the bathroom to pieces.

Making sure I’m holding firmly on to the wall, I turn and look at the farmhouse and wonder if I should give up on my walk and go straight to the shower instead. But I feel the weight of the phone in my hoodie and I know that I’ve got to get to the hill. If I don’t try now, who knows when I’ll get another chance? Alexis might not leave it lying around again, or Rosie might not leave me unattended for so long.

I quicken my pace and I’m practically jogging through the mud, finding that the slippery nature of it is propelling me along quicker.

I’ve been so focused on not falling over that when I reach the bottom of the hill I notice my surroundings for the first time. I turn around and I almost gasp at the beauty of it. I’ve been walking uphill without realising it and I’m now looking down on the farmhouse in the dip below. I can see for miles. I can’t imagine how incredible the view is going to be from the top.

I look over to the village, which looks quite big from here; its terraced houses huddled together. I think of Gerry and Liz and wonder who they’re gossiping with – or about. Judging by the grilling that Rosie and I got yesterday, I bet we’re the hot topic of conversation at the moment. Those crazy city dwellers who bought that wreck of a farm. But look at me now, that city dweller’s tramped across a muddy field, and despite the story my jeans suggest, has fought with the mud and won.

Now all I’ve got to do is get to the top.

I turn round to face the hill and eye it up like my nemesis. It does look a little steep for my liking. In fact, in front of me is not so much a hill, but a cliff face of imposing rock with shrubs growing out of it. There seems to be a small path that goes up diagonally, but it’s fairly narrow.

I pull the phone out of my hoodie and double-check to see whether or not I can access the Internet from here – after all, we are pretty high up.

I yelp and do a fist pump in celebration when I see that there’s one bar of signal on the phone. But there’s no 3G or 4G where that symbol should be; there’s just the dreaded E. Error? Emergency? Evil? I’m not sure what it actually stands for, but I know from previous experience that it’s a bad omen. I wait for what feels like forever while it thinks about loading a page on Chrome before it tells me the Internet can’t be reached.

‘Right you are, Mount Everest,’ I say as I channel my inner mountaineer and start my ascent.