I’m not really a man’s man when it comes to anything automotive. Much as I’d savour the opportunity to homologate a valve flange deep in the bowls of an oily engine, the reality is that the wielding of proper tools must be left to those comfortable with boiler suits, imperial measurements, and the ability to nod sagely at difficult times.

So I’m not much troubled by cars, aeroplanes, boats and the like as long as they work. I feel that most strongly when engines meet wings and spend much of the journey clutching the arm rest in terror. Once, a kindly older gentlemen – seated next to my twitching and blubbing form – explained that a fear of flying is irrational as air travel was safer than crossing the road. My counter argument, delivered through clenched teeth, was that flying really didn’t scare me at all, it was plunging vertically into the ground while encased in a tumbling fireball that put me off my in-flight sandwich.

You way mistake this for cowardice. But you’d be wrong, I am the only sane voice amongst a bunch of lunatics and, when the World Dictatorship Committee finally sits, anyone not afraid of death by extreme squashing shall be sent to the quacks to have their imagination glands checked for blockages.

And so to my car buying strategy. Because of my entirely reasonable aversion to sales people and assorted hangers on apparently interested in wheeled depreciation, my approach has been Internet research* followed by a swift test drive, some rubbish negotiation and the parting of me from a vast wodge of cash.

This time it’s going to be different. The Mighty Honda asks nothing more than black oil to be pumped in at one end, and a quarterly maintenance regime offered by a man owning nothing more than a soapy bucket. Sure, every year I get to witness the Service Centre practice licensed theft, but they do at least clean it properly. This is akin to having your house broken into, and the burglars doing the washing up on he way out.

My plan was to keep it until the built in obsolesce worried away at that valve flange and then again take up the cudgel of car ownership using nothing more than a browser and a crate of decent beer. The pup has changed all that. It seems we can take the dog, the kids and some luggage in Carol’s car. Just not at the same time. This could make future holidays a bit of a bugger.

Unless we don’t take the kids or spend the price of a Honda service on some rat infested chicken run to board the dog. We tried Murphy in my car but he already occupies an entire footwell, and is not best pleased to be sniffing the children’s feet while occasionally taking a errant size five trainer to the snozzle.

And there’s something else. My 41st birthday has brought on a worrying rural Ferrari fetish. After watching all manner of grunty machinery bringing in the harvest, I feel the time has come to scoot around in something with a ride height similar to a proper tractor. And that my faithful friends is essentially the twisted logic to buy the Tonka toy you see up there.

I did try to shelve my hatred of shiny suits and crowded forecourts, but when the man’s derisory offer for the just-3-hour-cleaned Honda fell well short of the sticker price optimistically displayed on the X-Trail we tried, I reverted to type, typing and beer.

Which is how I ended up in a strange conversation with a bloke in a Portacabin who sells cars that he doesn’t own and never sees. This probably tells us something important about the future of the second hand car industry, but I don’t care as it told me that we could bring the boxy truck home for FOUR GRAND LESS than Mr Checked Trousers promised me was the lowest price on the planet.

Okay it’s missing some toys and is six months older but once he’d answered my question re: does it go when you put diesel in it in the affirmative, I was pretty much sold. The Honda of Never Diminishing Mightiness may end up on eBay which sounds like a properly silly way to sell a car. Failing that, another nice man I’ve never met may well sink into it’s comfortable seats and feel the power of the precision elbow patches.

I have to say though that my life currently feels like it’s a small boat in a big river, and I’m really not in control of the rapidly changing options and decisions. That’s probably quite important too, and to make sure I think about it properly, I’d better go and open the cognitive juice.

* because, of course, hardly ANYONE on the misinformation super rantway is biased, bitter, venting or clinically sane.

Dribbling contentedly on my foot is Murphy. After a brief – but forceful – explanation of exactly how democracy works in our family, it was agreed the black hound of lower hell should go by the name of a Guiness wanabee. And there are good reasons for this, the best of which is my refusal to shout “Ziggy, STOP” if and when the toothy pup starts chewing on someone else’s car tyre.

Such an action is clearly contravening the RULES. This document has a series of non negotiable behavioral patterns as laid down by the pack leader. So for the first time in my married life, there is something organic lower down the hierarchical chain than yours truly. Before Murph arrived, that was a rank allocated to a jar of sandwich pickle.

A brief immersion into the four closely written sides of A4 which constitute the rules will demand said dog shall not:

– Wee, Poo or Barf in any location other than within 10 feet of the compost bin
– Eat the Cat Food, the Cat, the furniture, the kids toys or anything chewy, rubbery and previously representing a mountain bike tyre
– Whine, howl, whimper or bark when shut in the cage*
– Fall headlong into the pond while chasing spiders.

This is merely a summary and once the dog has learned to read, I fully expect them to be followed in full. Until then, and based on experiences so far, almost all of these rules are merely guidelines to be ignored in the spirit of puppidom. So far, I’ve fetched the dog out of the pond, removed a tyre from its’ teeth and given it a stern talking to whenever ‘squatting’ and ‘indoors’ are brought together in a single smelly sentence.

This afternoon I have promised to paint a door. This task is made somewhat harder since Murphy – respecting my status as pack leader – follows me everywhere. It is likely I shall be phoning the emergency vet later this evening to enquire on the correct procedure which follows emulsioning a Labrador.

Cute tho isn’t he? And doesn’t the bugger bloody well know it.

* Although ten years being sort of responsible for children has equipped me with the appropriate tool here. It’s like politicans and whinging kids, if you ignore them long enough, the noise falls back to a background hum.

Scotland has many qualities. The sense of wilderness, the rugged beauty of the mountains, the endlessness of stunning landscapes and some pretty wild riding. Of course, this must be tempered with single digit summer temperatures, moistness from the ground up and the sky down, and a trillion midges hell bent on sucking you dry.

On balance though, a fantastic country to ride bicycles in, as a few chosen photos full of heroism and downright British grit will soon ascertain. However, that’s for later because the photo at the top of this post is clearly lacking anything within chucking distance of mountain bikes, except perhaps for noting that we’ve acquired a singletrack dog.

Large paws, low centre of gravity, short paw-base and excellent additional rear facing steering appendage*. It’s an odd story – today I was still meant to be in Scotland but five days hard riding, dubious ongoing weather and a wrenching missing of the family saw me spend seven hours heading south west last night.

Which led to an apathetic carpet treading furniture buying mission turning into a full on “I tell you what, let’s get a dog” event through a set of coincidences about as likely as finding your sister was also in fact your mother, your aunt and a small bag of aniseed balls.

The rambling antique furniture barn was only gained via a suspension wrecking drive and guarded by a friendly, slobbering Labrador. We quickly discovered that our financial radar was seriously awry because the cheapest thing on offer seemed to cost about the same as a new car. I don’t know what Queen Anne did for the furniture trade, but they’ve repaid her by placing discreet price tags that brought on an involuntary “F*ck ME!”.

I didn’t even dare look at the larger items because I shall never ever be able to part with that much money for something that doesn’t come with about 4 acres of land. Anyway, distraction was adequately provided by a friendly puppy attempting to chew about 15k’s worth of table. He seemed very happy to see us and we discovered he was the last of a litter of 12 and had been returned by a distraught family with a dog allergy.

So with 11 puppies already sold and this one surplus to requirements, it seemed somehow fated that we’d end up spending two hours fetching its’ nose out of – well – everything and trying to find reasons no to add four more legs to the family.

We failed. So meet Murphy. Or Ziggy. Or possibly Max. Although looking at the size of those paws, I’m thinking Beelzebub may be more appropriate

* Those in the know call this a ‘tail‘. To be it looks like a rudder.

Aside from the abruptly terminated squeals of those too slow movers deep in the food chain, not much disturbs the peace and quiet of plants growing round here. Except at harvest time, when all manner of noisy machinery stalks the landscape pulling, shredding, lifting, slicing and dicing the crop.

We’ve become accustomed to the rhythmic thump of the bonkers potato grabber, and the whining of heavily overloaded tractors. But tonight, the rapeseed was given a proper mowing by a man piloting a frankly terrifying big, green threshing machine.

Although he appeared fully in control of the behemoth, I did worry that a slight steering miscalculation would see him harvest the Mighty Honda. In fact, both of them and the kids who’d stationed themselves on the car roof for a better view.

When we finally get a lawn, I might ask him for a mates’ rate haircut of our grass.