I always wanted a winch of my own, something I could use to haul things up and then to lower them again. Winching is splendid exercise, for one thing, and for another thing, it is often very useful to winch things off the ground. Think of a flood, or an infestation of ferocious ants with powerful biting jaws, or even both at the same time! You might think the floodwater would drown the ants, but that is not necessarily so, for they might be swimming ants. My brother Raoul tells me that his barn was almost swept away in a mighty flood, and that there was a swarm of fierce ants bobbing about in the water, biting anything that came into their path, such as my brother Raoul’s goose. Raoul has a licence for only one goose, otherwise I am sure he would have more. His goose was bitten by the ants, but he was able to rescue it before the ants’ venom coursed through its veins. He does not have a winch, so he had to slosh through the floodwater in the barn and pluck his goose from it with his bare hands. Well, they were not bare, for Raoul was wearing farmers’ gloves. But if he had had a winch, he could have winched the goose, if not the entire barn, out of danger. That is the kind of thing you can do if you have a winch. It is not always easy to hire one at short notice, as I know to my cost. The winchless circumstances in which I learned that cost are too recent, and too upsetting, for me to talk about without bursting into tears. I have not even told Raoul. After all, as the old saying has it, “Never sob in front of a farmer”.