It was a lovely sunny day sometime in October 1990. I was surveying the land round a chicken farm. Apart from the chickens and such of the natural wildlife as hadn't died off from the effects of agricultural spraying, the only creatures supposed to be loose on the farm were me and a farmhand doing chores in one of the poultry prisons. My atire, suitable for such a sunny day, was a smart, light cream coloured linen jacket with matching trousers.
There had been considerable rain overnight, much of which was still attempting to soak away in the corner of some low-lying pasture just beyond the three strand wire fence to my right. To my left was a large caravan used as a restroom by the farmhands. Unknown to me, under the caravan was a delusionally insane Jack Russell terrier. Of course I only realised that the dog, like many of its breed, was delusionally insane when it erupted yapping in a cloud of teeth.

The Tasmanian strain of Jack Russell Terrier."
I lept the fence in one bound - as yer dew - landing in the classic pratfall position with my seat in the mud, arms and legs spread wide and a daft expression on my face. The dog then attempted to sink its teeth in my trouser-leg, but being congenitally short-legged got stuck in the mud before it reached me. Leaping up, I abandoned both the struggling dog and the survey, then drove home in my Y-fronts with the trousers tied to the roof-rack.
When I went back to finish the survey, with a promise that the dog would be properly restrained, the meadow was covered in inkcap fungi, all with their "lawyer's wigs" all just coming into curl. It was seeing them mentioned on Usksider's blog that reminded me of this cautionary tale, that and the fact that in tomorrow's episode of The Mardlingham Saga, the miller's name is John Pratt, after an ancestor of mine who worked at Horstead watermill.