Day of the Ducks

Everything was perfection, until the ducks came.

Another morning of elbow greasing the earth beneath another extensively exotic looking sky, and today with a new HelpEx recruit from Argentina; topping up team to a total of five workers all sharing the same exclusively lucky experience. Only two days in and already feeling the pride of our churned about space within the garden, so you can see why I didn't have much patience for a crowd of cheeky ducks who kept creeping round the corner to chunk their huge yellow gobs around carefully grown sumptuous hunks of paradise green lettuce. "Merde off!" I bellowed, time after time, waving a muddy fork around and shooing them back to their own garden, naively assuming that of course, this would do the trick. Various wailing incidents later and I'd had enough, this time I really meant business; the tiny sleepily poetic village was quaking with fear with my bullish fog horn threats. But as always, the joke was very much on me. Their fat little waddling bottoms outran me as I slipped on some uneven ground : BOOOOSH, a crippling disjointed pain ran through my entire body + left we writhing around amongst the soggy Autumn leaves in excruciating pain. I soon realised that of course, it was my left knee coming back to play sinister games with me again + left me perplexed and crippled + deeply worried of my state of play.. Tony T booked me an appointment with his friend who's a physio who gave me a good examination [firing incredibly fast Basque accented French at me; thank goodness for my trusty Tucker interpreter]. Language aside, I gulped in fear as he pointed to his wobbly life size skeleton in the room and gestured towards the incomplete stringy bit of rubber that despite kidding myself momentarily, could only be understood  as one almighty snapped ligament. Closely followed by a vague understanding of "10 days - no movement", and after that, one flabbergasted and downright disappointed pant of bewilderment from yours truly and a very sympathetic face from Tony T.

My idiocy and increasing agedness never fail to leave me alone for too long.

But.... just look where we got to have lunch today...