Mrs Down's Diary

THE mood is tense. Language clipped. re taking too much stuff.

We are off to my sister's house in Spain first thing in the morning and, as ever, are taking too much stuff.

Or at least that is John's opinion. Me? I think we will struggle to find a clean change of clothing after a couple of days. What is weighing down the suitcases (and I haven't told John this yet) is the small matter of a rice cooker and a slow cooker lurking among the socks, knickers and T-shirts.

My sister asked if I would take them out to the house but had failed to appreciate how much they weigh. With a limit of 20kg each, those suitcases have been packed and unpacked more times than I care to calculate and the bedroom floor looks like a bomb has hit it.

My son-in-law Chris, who is staying with us during the week while he completes a fellowship post at a teaching hospital, will look after the house.

Geoff, my brother-in-law, is farm sitting. Since the partnership split, he has been involved in a range of jobs. But he will be able to take advantage of his time here to dissemble the incubators and rearing huts that he had left in the paddock for his pheasants and partridges.

Detailed instructions have been spelled out for Bud, our Jack Russell's medicine, as well as which cows to avoid as they are very protective of their calves, plus where to walk the dogs now that we no longer have the wood, and how to manage the Rayburn.

It's a complicated going-on. And we haven't mentioned the sheep, lambs, chickens and cats.

Chris can no longer slope off to bed at an early hour, as he has to check the cows last thing at night to see if any are struggling to calve. Then he has to make an emergency phone call to Geoff. No slacking here.

Prior to our packing saga we had a night out with close friends Richard and Shirley to catch up on their news.

They are off to far more exotic climes '“ to Dubai to watch the tennis.

Richard is glad to take a break from his duties as clerk to various charities in his village. He had taken advice from John over the valuing of parish land willed to the village in the 17th century. The land, after all this time, was going to be registered with the Land Registry, and he needed an idea of what it was actually worth.

The issue was complicated because fields were not measured in the deeds in European Union hectares but in the language of yore '“ oxgangs. And not only in oxgangs, but roods and perches too.

To further muddy the waters, one field had been robbed of a corner by that newfangled invention the railway.

Richard delighted in regaling us with the 17th century dialect that the deeds were written in. Each bequest was introduced by immensely wordy diatribes. Written, for example, by an elderly man, frail in body but not in mind.

An oxgang was the amount of land that a team of oxen could plough in a season.

The field in question was half an oxgang, equivalent to about six and a half acres in today's measurements.

Today, Defra measures to a hundredth of a hectare in a field inspection. I wonder how it would cope with the looseness of yesteryear's dimension? And with global warming, who knows how long a season entails? Would Defra accept an excuse that the oxen had got bogged down in a muddy field or that land was so parched that their plough could not bite?

This feature was first published in the West Sussex Gazette March 5. To read it first buy the West Sussex Gazette every Wednesday.