I’M struggling to keep up with the lightning changes in television programmes that John is making as he switches between motor racing, cricket and tennis. Normally I would not be inside on such a beautiful summer’s afternoon, but I am incapacitated by a bad back.

The injury happened in a split second. Helping John to worm the sheep, a hefty Texel cross lamb decided it didn’t fancy being squirted with a dose of wormer and twisted away from my grip. The lamb went one way, my back went the other. It hurt, to put it very mildly, which my language wasn’t.

It has been quite a few years since I damaged my back. Then it was a yoga class that did for me. At least getting hurt working with stock has more authenticity with farming friends. None of which I could achieve anyway. For weeks I attended a physiotherapist, subjected my back to electric pulses and magnetic forces, nearly drowned in an aqua therapy class and guzzled pain killers.

This time I am taking it gently. I have found a support belt that John used while clipping sheep to stop his back going and trying to remember some of the less vigorous exercise that didn’t incapacitate me almost as much as the original injury last time. And I’m propped up in a chair that I can lever my way out of.

Loud cheers, however, for a six by Ben Stokes seemed to fix the channel flipping, then groans at Archer’s swift dismissal meant John deserting for the tennis. As I could not stand the drama, I decided to check on my hens. Only to spot my persistent escapee hen had once more legged it out of the house paddock.

I eventually found her trying to get out under a hedge behind the farmhouse. How she had got in there I had no idea as the lawn is ring fenced. To add insult to injury she had laid an egg in the middle of the grass, scorning the comfortable nest boxes in the hen hut. Her back is blazoned with purple hoof rot spray so that anyone who spots her legging it down the road, knows this is a marked convict hen. I think she liaises with the sheep on the fences’ weak points. But as I cannot in my current enfeebled state bend down and grab her, I used a large landing net from John’s fishing gear, to scoop her up. “One more escape and you are a roast dinner,”, I threatened. Only to have all my threats drowned by a wild cheer of from the house.