Episode 103 – Three Passes, a Tractor, and a Dribble of Water…

An Evening with Bully…

There are evenings when you pull into your own driveway and wonder if you’ve accidentally stumbled into someone else’s drama series. Last night was one of those.

I heard it before I saw it, the growl of a tractor idling. A steady, low rumble that somehow manages to announce, chaos is coming. And yes, it was Bully, performing what I can only describe as his interpretive hedge-cutting ballet.

Not content with trimming the hedges once oh no, that would be far too pedestrian, he went back and forth three times, right in front of the house. Three! The same stretch of hedge, as if he was trying to etch his name into the grass, or maybe just my patience.

Is it intimidation? Performance art? A test of my mental fortitude? All of the above, undoubtedly. This is Bully’s signature: a knee-jerk reaction to the slightest ripple of disruption in his carefully orchestrated little world. The sofa delivered by Saul? Clearly, it required a response of seismic subtlety. By “subtlety,” of course, I mean a tractor-lit hedge trilogy under the cover of twilight.

Then comes the minor domestic drama: the kettle. A dribble of water. Barely enough to fill a cup, and suddenly my mind is spinning. The pump? Broken? Malfunctioning? Or,  as I now firmly believe, a classic knee-jerk reaction from Bully himself. He’s trying to provoke, to annoy, to see if he can get a reaction. He must have turned off the pump deliberately.

And here’s the twist: I refuse to respond.

The power of his theatrics diminishes the moment I choose to simply observe, document, and sip tea in slow, deliberate defiance. This is not a submission; this is a strategy.

So here’s the evening report:

1. Tractor idling like a predator with too much free time.

2. Hedge-cutting, repeated three times with unearned pride.

3. A kettle barely whispering, possibly sabotaged.

4. My refusal to rise to the occasion, a silent triumph.

Some people climb mountains. Some people write novels. Bully cuts hedges three times in a row under fading light, turns off the water pump to annoy, and calls it a reaction. I call it entertainment, in the dark, under duress, with a dribble of water for dramatic effect.

And as Granny Frass would say, perched somewhere between disdain and bemusement:

“Three passes for the hedge, none for his brain. Tea, love, make it strong. Keep your receipts. And remember, the kettle tells no lies.”

Because we do keep receipts. Every sofa episode, every hedge trilogy, every moment of petty theatrics, catalogued and occasionally laughed at. In this theatre of absurdity, I am both the audience and the critic. And Bully? Well… he keeps performing, oblivious to the fact that his audience has learned the most powerful move is to simply not react.

Mae 🧡