I’m back in harness and thanks to the Mother for covering for me.

As you know, I came back from Lisnapookybawna with a tractor, a driving permit and a dog named Leo.

Now, I don’t know many people whose daily form of transport is a tractor, but I made the mistake of driving around with a transport box attached to the machine. Every time I stopped at Manus’s shop, I’d end up taking a bag of coal home for one or a bag of spuds for another. I became a delivery service.

The Mother was furious: “You were born with ‘Gobdaw’ written across your forehead,” says she, “ and that has now been replaced by “Gobdaw-with-a-tractor.”

Giving people lifts is another hazard for the tractor driver. That in itself is not bad enough but one good deed inevitably leads to another. Last week going up Crookdeedy, I encountered Mickie McGrath on his bike with his tongue out and him trying to get himself and two bags of messages up the hill. I had no option but to stop and put Mickie, bike, messages and all into the transport box.

Further on, at The Galloper’s Cross, what was waiting to greet me but the bould Sergeant McKready on point duty. He had no place else to scratch himself that day so he repaired to this godforsaken spot where the meeting of a badger and a fox would constitute a traffic jam.

“Maurice, is it yourself?” says he, “and Mickie McGrath, your brave passenger. Did you get tired of the push up the hill, Mickie?”

“Begod and I did Sergeant. Councillor Maurice is a gift since he got the tractor. ’Twill be worth him more number ones than a bag full of grants.”

“He’s no fool, our Councillor Maurice,” says the sergeant. “But he is being foolish and reckless endangering your life standing on this dangerous contraption that’s travelling at speed.”

“Travellin’ at speed?” said Mickie, “Sure if he was goin’ any slower you could have arrested him for loiterin’.”

McKready paid no heed and taking the notebook from his top pocket he proceeded to caution me under section something-or-other of some road traffic act, and instructed me to hand in my licence and insurance cert at the station within 10 days. To add insult to injury, he spotted Leo, my dog,

“Have you a licence for that mutt?” he asked.

“I have,” says I, “ it’s up under his tail if you want to go lookin’ for it.”

I took off before he could answer me. I was like a divil, and why wouldn’t I be – penalised for being neighbourly.

I dropped Mickie home. But even after all my trouble with the sergeant – a direct result of carrying him in my transport box – the man wanted more.

“Maurice, now that you’re here with the tractor and box, would you give me a hand to move that heap of manure from the calf house to the back of the haggard.

By the time we finished, an hour and a half later, the dog, the tractor and myself were covered in scutter and smelling like a slurry pit. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I pulled out of Mickie’s yard only to be greeted again by that hoor of a sergeant.

This time ’twas he was in trouble. The squad car was broken down thanks to a banjaxed gearbox, so he wanted me to tow him back to Killdicken.

“Well Sergeant,” says I, “wouldn’t it be more appropriate to call headquarters in Clonmel and ask them for help. I don’t want to recklessly endanger the local sergeant.”

“It could take the Clonmel crowd four hours to send anyone out. I have to be in the parish hall for bridge at seven o’clock. So, back up that tractor, I have a rope.”

“Hang on a second,” says I, “before I do anything, take out your note book and tear up that epistle you wrote when you stopped me earlier.”

“Are you trying to obstruct the course of justice, councillor?”

“No, I’m not,” says I, “’cause there was nothing just, right, nor fair about what you did to me back at The Galloper’s Cross. I was just being neighbourly.”

After a brief standoff, he took out the notebook and did as I asked. We hitched up the squad car to the tractor and I took off as fast as the Ferguson could go. Every piece of Mickie McGrath’s scutter that had stuck to the wheels went flying in the air and covered the squad from stem to stern. McKready stuck his head out the window shouting at me slow down and got a full facial for his trouble.

That night in the pub, Cantwell remarked: “I see you were dishin’ the dirt on the guards today,” says he.

“Only returnin’ the compliment,” says I. CL