Party talk soon turned to the state of crops

Family take over. "Do you remember us Mother?", farm work goes up a gear or two or three with lambing, calving and most recently silage making and socialising tends to be the odd shared meal with friends.

All change. Last night we were at a fantastic 50th birthday do and next week we are off back to Scotland with a group of friends for an alleged fishing holiday.

The party was a great chance to catch up with familiar faces although social talk amongst the men soon degenerated into 'How's your barley/wheat/rape/beans/oats coming on.'

One of my friends arrived incensed.

"I asked him how I looked before we went out and without looking up he muttered fine.

Then as soon as we were in the car he perked up and started wittering on about how much fat hen there was in the fields. If that's his idea of a scintillating conversation..."

To be truthful, the waiters on the tables at the party looked a bit rough.

A shade familiar one could surmise, especially when they chucked the wine caps back on to the tables, nudged guests almost off their seats to take plates away or top up wine glasses and suddenly removed everyone's forks.

Eyebrows were raised.

Then, as a workman arrived on the scene to repair a tilt in the marquee, rip down the door coverings and insist on guests moving over on a corner table whilst he adjusted the table legs, eyebrows fairly disappeared into some onlookers' hairlines.

All too too British and too too polite to say anything.

John, the host, battled to keep a straight face as the waiters were heard to complain about the guests, wonder aloud when they would be able to get off home and poured themselves the odd slug of wine.

Finally we twigged, some sooner than others, we had been had.

By them the 'waiters' were drawing cartoons of guests, serenading them off key and generally causing even more mayhem with strategically placed car vacuums.

They were very good.

But in amongst the anarchy there was a chance to catch up with news. Ours was that the silage was all in and under cover.

Sheeted down and a source of great reassurance of feed for the herd next winter.

A friend was how she had managed to wreck her son's most prized belonging. A brand new Landrover.

A chance encounter with a pair of deer on a wooded road, a rain storm to slick the road, too quick reactions to avoid the deer and 'next thing I knew the Land Rover was upside down and I was having to climb out of the windscreen.'

What a lovely son she has though. Car wrecked or not, he bought his Mum flowers later that day as she was so distressed by the accident and he was so pleased she was not hurt.

Mind you, it's unprintable what was said when he saw his car.