Nestled snugly in the green limbo of South Devon, Down St Mary is a blink-and-you’d-miss-it experience. To call it a hamlet would be to insult the great Dane.

Down St Mary doesn’t have a newsagent, for example. Nor does it have a mini mart, a video rental, a butcher's, a baker's, a post office or a Chinese takeaway. In fact, Down St Mary doesn’t have a single bloody shop.

Not one.

In Down St Mary, an evening’s entertainment involves one of the locals dialing up the public phone box while all the others stand and listen to it ring.

Now you might think that I'm not too keen on Down St Mary, and you'd be right. A pity, therefore, that my father chose it as the venue for his retirement home.

On one of our annual visits from Tokyo, we were sequestered in Dad's bungalow. It was a fine July morning, with diamond-blue skies and mashed potato clouds. Sunlight burnished the earth; the air hummed with warmth. Butterflies floated, sheep bleated. And The Horse and I chewed the carpet out of complete and utter yawning boredom.

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, so, making an excuse that we needed some fresh air, we set about walking the eight miles to Morchard Bishop, the nearest village. Now while Morchard Bishop is hardly bigger than Down St Mary, it can boast one thing that its neighbour can’t.

A pub.

And a rather fine one at that, with low-beamed ceilings, copper kettles, a more than acceptable range of ales and, joy of joys, a vegetarian menu.

Having thus eaten our fill and drunk somewhat more, we were in fine, if slightly unsteady, form as we began the long wander back through the chirruping lanes to Down St Mary.

We were digging into the ascent out of Morchard Bishop when a tractor droned past, suddenly swerving for no reason and causing us to jump aside. By the time we had righted ourselves, the tractor was already a hundred yards away and fast diminishing.

We continued the uphill slog.

Halfway up, and it became evident that something was very wrong. The tractor, having reached the brow of the hill, had gone off the road and crashed into a fence post. The driver, from what we could make out, appeared to be rhythmically bouncing up and down in his cab.

We started running.

I was first there and jumped up on the tow bar at the rear. Looking through the opening into the cab, I could see that the driver’s eyes were rolled back in his head and his mouth was slack and dribbling. I’m no doctor, but this was a clear case of epileptic fit.

I’m no doctor…

Oh, my God, what the bloody hell do I do? The only thing that occurred was to loosen his collar, but he was convulsing so much that I couldn’t get a hand to him. I turned to The Horse, standing helplessly in the lane and looking up at me, and said:

“Get to the nearest house and phone for an ambulance. Quick!”

She duly dashed off back the way we’d come, almost running smack into a car which was making its way up the hill.

“Stop!” she screeched, “stop!”

It promptly did so (maniacally gesticulating Japanese women being relatively rare in those parts). The family owners of this vehicle, realising the gravity of the situation, bundled The Horse inside and set off backwards at high speed.

Meanwhile, inside the tractor, the fit seemed to be passing. Flat cap askew and hair plastered to his forehead, the driver began to focus.

“Who are you?” he asked, not unreasonably.

I explained.

“Got to get back,” he muttered, “the farm…got to get back. Don’t tell no-one will you? Don’t tell no-one I was like this. I’ll lose my job if they find out.”

I wasn’t sure exactly who he thought I would tell, but then realised that I had already sent The Horse to get medical help. I tried to point out that driving a tractor was probably not his best course of action at this point, but he kept reiterating that he had to get back and that I was to keep his secret. In order to stop him driving, I settled on removing the key which was still turned in the ignition. Reaching out to take it, I found my wrist grabbed by the driver who’d intuited what I was about to do.

“Let go,” I said, somewhat less manfully than the occasion demanded.

“You gimme that back. That’s my key. Gimme it.”

The car bearing The Horse and her saviours returned just in time to witness the pair of us tussling unceremoniously in the tractor cab. With the slamming of car doors, the driver became quieter and let me go. He returned to his mantra about how we shouldn’t tell anyone.

Help had been summoned, it transpired, and an air ambulance was on its way from Exeter. At this news, the driver took fright again and started making feeble attempts to open the cab door and run for it. Acting decisively for once, I crouched down, reached around his chest from behind and held him pinned to his seat.

By now, there was quite a little crowd gathered, the car family having been augmented by another who were all out for a walk.

Minutes passed. And then – was it? Was it? Yes, it was – the distant chop, chop, chop of approaching rotor blades. All faces cast skywards. All except mine, as my cheek was pressed rather painfully to the back of the tractor seat with the effort of keeping my captive subdued.

The sound of the helicopter got louder, then louder still. Grass flattened, hedges thrashed, hairstyles dissolved and, with a roaring din, the blue and yellow air ambulance settled gently down into the next field. Two paramedics, jumpsuited and efficient, were on the ground before the chopper was. I released my grip on the driver who had, by now, realised that the situation was beyond his control and gone limp.

Hopping down from the back of the tractor, I received a round of applause from the people gathered round. I allowed myself a modest smirk of acknowledgement. It was precisely then that the tractor door, which the driver had half-succeeded in releasing, was caught by the downdraft. It blew open and smacked me firmly in the face.

Post Script

Later that evening, lying in bed, we talked over the events of the afternoon.

“Do you know what?” asked The Horse, with a giggle.

"No, what?" said I, absently rubbing the end of my still tender nose.

"Well," she continued, "you know when we first saw him, bouncing up and down on that tractor seat..."

"Yes?"

"...I thought he was having a wank.”