Out! exclaimed her husband, with something like genuine consternation in his voice.

I sent a ping to the insurance company to see if they received our claim.

The bullock driver, or bullocky, was an important part of the rural labour force in the era before cars and, in some places, for long after.[…]A good bullocky could get work just about anywhere.

Though there was to be no encounter with the Bol'shaia Igra that day, the shadow of the bulbiform envelope, and the menacing twinkle of gunmetal beneath it, nonetheless would persist well into the later moments of ground-recreation.