We are having an ongoing battle regarding the (dis-)tractor. I am determined that I should know how to drive and use it, while John is equally entrenched in the position that declares it way too dangerous for a mere female. Please, ladies, form an orderly queue behind me with your various weapons.
Even though I swear solemnly that I will never attempt to use it unless he is here, he will not hear of it, probably on the justifiable grounds that he knows that I’m lying through my teeth. He is well aware that I would not just sit and look at it when things need to be done that require its use, whether or not he is around, if I could but manipulate the thing.
It will come to a head shortly, because I have now reached the stage of threatening that I will very soon just get up there and play around until I learn for myself how it works, if he doesn’t take the time to lead me through it in a civilised fashion.
John’s major store of currently-held ammunition for counter-attack in this matter lies in the rather vivid memory of a little accident I had last summer that involved me falling from the terrace in front of the house and rolling down the slope with a cordless drill in my hand – a manoeuvre that rather regrettably led to my drilling a large and somewhat messy hole through the back of my right calf.
Like the spider bite I sustained a few years ago (to the other calf, that one), the carnage left by a large twist drill spinning into unresisting flesh has taken an age and a day to heal. This is mainly because the local ambulatorio (medical centre emergencies section) saw fit to stitch it fairly hastily, and quite obviously didn’t clean it sufficiently first, because the wound tracked under the stitches and ultimately caused far more damage than I had originally sustained.
Anyhow, it is fair to say that with the scars I now bear I do look as though I was involved in a drive-by shooting that peppered both legs, and it isn’t a pretty sight. And John feels that it gives him the right to avow that I will only drive the tractor over his dead body.
An unfortunate turn of phrase, really….
bittenbyspain 
Comments on: "Tractors and drills" (1)
[…] by Spain) is hardly an act of ineptitude on my part, although drilling a hole in my own leg (Tractors and Drills ) does admittedly fall into that category. And I will confess that I do sometimes take risks, like […]