Raining Cats and Donkeys by Doreen Tovey

her.
    Â Â I called to him – frightening the Forestry man, who hadn't realised how close I was behind him, practically out of his wits. Placatingly I explained that my husband had gone back to look for our donkey and now they'd both disappeared. Presumably into the cottage garden, I said, and I'd better go in and look for them.
    Â Â 'I can see a bloke dodging about in the garden', was the reply. 'But I can't see no donkey'. I couldn't see no donkey either, until – yelling my head off to Charles and (which looked even more suspicious) getting not one peep in reply – I went round behind the cottage and there he was, too breathless to speak, chasing Annabel round and round the garden.
    Â Â Eventually, after a great deal of running, we rounded her up; I pantingly enquiring of Charles why on earth he had to go in there just when there was a patrol man about who no doubt thought he was concealing a stolen tree, while Charles panted back how the Devil else was he going to get her out?
    Â Â Things weren't improved meanwhile by my noticing the patrol man crouched behind the hedge and periodically peering over the top of it, undoubtedly checking on whether there really was a donkey in the garden with us.
    Â Â It was a very docile Annabel we led on her halter for the remainder of the trip – during which, needless to say, we met no further patrol men at all. Charles said of course we couldn't have looked suspicious. All I knew was that I hadn't seen that particular Forestry man before. He obviously didn't know us, either, or that we owned a donkey. And for safety's sake – though we always buy it from the greengrocer anyway – I insisted that we didn't have a tree that year. I had no wish to have my Christmas festivities interrupted – undoubtedly just when the Rector was with us, having an after-church sherry on Christmas morning by the local constable and Forestry chief coming to uproot it from its pot to check on its identity.

SIX

    When Winter Comes

    T he snow started on Boxing night. We were on our way home from Charles's brother's party when the first few flakes began to fall. Congratulating ourselves that we'd got Christmas over before it started and there were still two days yet before we need think of getting through it to town, we swept down to the valley, put the car into the garage, and couldn't get it out again for a fortnight. Even after that we were only able to take advantage of a break in the weather to get it towed up to the farm at the top of the hill and use it, when practicable, from there. Six weeks in all we were snow-bound in the valley, and as a study in character it was fascinating.
    Â Â There were the Hazells, for instance, who lived up the lane beyond us. This was their first winter in the valley and Jim Hazell absolutely revelled in it. Every time we looked out of the window he was trudging past dressed like a prospector in the Yukon. Up the hill to get the groceries, which he towed back down to the valley on a sledge. Up the hill to get a film – three miles it was to the nearest chemist's shop, but it was worth it, he said, to get the scenery. Up the hill to the Rose and Crown, where Father Adams encouraged him nightly by prophesying that it would be worse than ever tomorrow.
    Â Â True to the pioneering spirit Jim was first, after the night when it drifted ten feet deep by the church, to climb over the top to the road. First, when it was obvious that the lane would be blocked for days, to have his car towed out by tractor across the fields. As a result he was also first to break his back axle on a frozen furrow and, pushing the car down the main road to the garage for repair, he slipped and hurt his knee. He passed our window at breakfast time like Jack London en route for Alaska. At lunch time he limped past in the other direction like Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow. But still he pioneered on.
    Â Â A few nights later he prospected up