Rachel Wise.
About this time of year as we go into the usual drought the neighbours must think we've run out of water and I've started sustaining myself with the contents of the liquor cabinet instead.
Having just a small amount of grazing on our place, I tend to be miserly with the grass, eking it out by strip grazing my horses and ponies behind an electric fence.
Each day I shift my fence a metre or so, initially taking care that it stays suitably straight and the fence standards are evenly spaced.
This is easy to do in the winter, simple in the springtime, and increasingly difficult as summer wears on.
The ground steadily gets harder and the electric fence standards, once my greatest ally in the war against equine escapism, start to become my adversaries. They are funny things, electric fence standards.
I use the plastic ones with the multiple levels, because I have multi-levelled horses ranging from mini (underfence escapees) to maxi (over-the-fence aficionados).
They have hooks for the electric tape and a prong on the bottom.
In damp circumstances it's just a matter of un-pronging your fence standards and re-pronging them in your preferred position.
Enter, summer. The ground hardens and occasionally there's a spot where the fence standard just won't go in. First you poke, then you stab, then you stomp on the handy foot-peg bit at the bottom, in the hope the ground will relent.
If you've chosen completely the wrong spot the fence standard does a wobble, tipping you off the handy foot-peg bit and tweaking your ankle, then you give in and reluctantly shift your standard to a secondary spot, just a little out of line, enough to be annoying.
More summer. The ground gets harder and the struggle increases. Now it's every fourth or fifth standard that can't gain a purchase. They are getting further out of line and the fence is looking decidedly unkempt, bordering on wonky.
Even more summer, the word drought is being bandied about and, in the home paddock, the struggle is real.
Every third-or-so electric fence standard refuses to penetrate the parched earth. You shift them more out of line in the search for prong-able real estate. Finally they go in but you have to face facts, a straight fence is a distant dream ... wonky is the new normal.
By now, the horses are impatient and they are not helping matters by being right at your heels when you're trying to shift the fence, breathing hot horse-breath down your neck as you go along testing the ground.
Stab, nope. Stab, nope, foot-peg-bits are snapped, ankles rolled over, the round bit of your jandal gets pulled out of its hole and swearing occurs.
Drought is declared. In the home paddock, so is war. The ground is concrete and there's no longer any point in trying to poke in fence standards.
You are reduced to hunting for cracks in the ground to jam the little sods in. That's the ones you have left, anyway, that aren't bent or snapped. The electric fence zigs and zags. Long spans of tape go completely without support and some standards are bunged in at an angle.
The hot, dry wind catches the un-taut tape and flaps it about, whipping the unsteady fence standards to and fro. The whole fence looks like a conga line at the after-midnight end of a wedding reception. It looks like the job was done in the dark, under the influence of vertigo, St Vitus Dance and the leftover sherry from the Christmas trifle.
It's about now that I start to scheme. Past efforts in the quest for straightness and order have involved a hammer (fail), sharpened implements (ouch) and throwing stuff (unsuccessful but satisfying).
This year I am pondering power tools. I'm eyeing up the cordless drill and thinking of buying a masonry bit. I think I'm on to a winner.
Failing that, there actually is leftover sherry from the Christmas trifle.