"HELLO. This is your local radio station here," came the voice down the phone. "We'd like to talk to your husband about moles."

The cheek of it. I could talk to them about moles for England, but they were apparently wanting informed and intelligent opinions. Not me then. It turned out that the radio station was actually broadcasting a programme about a professional mole catcher. The mole catcher had given John's name as one of his customers and the radio station wanted to pad out the programme with an interview on the problems moles can cause. John declined the offer.

He had only turned to the mole catcher when in extremis about the damage the moles were causing to one of his hay fields. The last thing you want in a hay bale is a large molehill and from the number of moles we had in the fields, the bales would have consisted primarily of topsoil rather than grass.

When mole numbers are not overwhelming us, John will set traps in a run. The moles caught are then hung on the nearest barbed wire fence, a grim gibbet for these industrious little creatures. I shall never forget the embarrassment of Jo's primary school class teacher showing me Jo's picture of a typical homely scene where "we hang the moles by thur noses" for the benefit of her classmates. The picture depicted a row of wire fencing and lots of little black blobs along it.

"The radio station would probably take everything I said out of context," John said. This could be true. One of our friends has been engaged in a long fight with the authorities over a very justified grievance. The clip that was eventually shown on the television of the interview hardly related to his argument at all. It juxtaposed his line of reasoning, made the most of any hesitation in his answers to make him look clueless and only showed about two minutes of a forty-minute interview.

The power of the press is definitely not to be trifled with however. Over the last year I have often mentioned our fruitless quest for a mate for our peacock. We thought we had struck lucky with Peepee, a very elegant white peahen who sadly died after sitting on her eggs for too long. Suddenly, out of the blue, a phone call came asking us to give a home to four peafowl, including two peahens. I can only conclude that someone had read the column and decided to make the perfect match of problem and answer. Only the management around here intercepted the phone call and made the decision that if a run of moles could cause problems, five peacocks would cause a lot more.

Fortunately Geoff, my brother-in-law, is made of more amenable stuff than my husband. He has fetched the peacocks home and has promised me a sitting of eggs when the peahens start to lay. He can keep the peafowl in a protected run and stable until they get used to his paddock and he has no neighbours to be annoyed by visiting peacocks.

The peacocks came from a very cherished home. Their owner, who was moving house and could no longer keep them, had offered her birds a select diet.

"I've brought back two pound of grapes, three bags of porridge oats, tins of sweet corn, and packets of digestive biscuits," Geoff said. "I think I'm going to have to draw out extra money from the farm to feed them. They eat better than I do."

Hopefully, if we hatch the peacocks out at home, they will not be so tempted to roam. That is the theory anyway. And they will look lovely on Jo's wedding photographs next year, although Jo is not so convinced about this.

"Just make sure that they don't make a mess near my dress, mum."

Updated: 12:21 Thursday, January 31, 2002