His first ambition was to be a scrap man. He and my son would bring home rusty metal and pile it in our yard. Now and again they persuaded one of the local dealers to collect it, and they received a five pound note, for which I solemnly gave them change so they could divide it. When winter came, though, they tired of the muck and the effort and we were left with their last pile of scrap as a kind of mini Turner Prize.

When they were in their last year at school one of the teachers was discussing the class's future and their forthcoming exams. “You all need them, apart from Big Time Boy there, who's going to be an entrepreneur.”   Taking teacher at his word, Big Time Boy did not deign to sit his GCSEs.

He would have liked to be a mechanic, but to begin with neither he nor my son was old enough to drive a car so he decided they should mend bicycles and sell them. He brought a variety of corroded, chainless boneshakers to our house, and then stood by, making wrong diagnoses and suggesting impossible treatments, while my son attempted to restore them. Sometimes he tried to take a hand, but usually my son lost patience and beat him off. The pair may have actually taken some cash for their work, but probably less than they had spent and certainly not enough to cover the wear and tear on our nerves and tools. A hayrack full of bicycle frames is the legacy of this little venture.

Once he was old enough to possess a provisional licence, he began to arrive at our place on a 50cc motorcycle. Mechanical ham-handedness quickly turned his Dad’s gift of a gleaming new machine into a buckled ruin. The ham-handedness was not improved by a thirst for Newkie Broon and a very low threshold for its alcoholic content. He'd wheedle a publican into selling him a bottle or two, and come wobbling over the fell road to drink and boast and shout around our yard. Usually he wobbled off home once he’d drunk up, but on the last occasion he arrived at 3 am so he settled himself in our hay-mew, and lay there finishing the bottle and smoking spliffs until he fell asleep towards dawn. His coughing and thumping around kept me awake most of the night so I really stamped my feet at him the next morning and told him the barn was off limits: I had no ambitions to be burned in my bed.

If he were always as horrible as he sounds, I’d have banned him entirely from the farm. The trouble is, he possesses something that gets under my guard every time: comedy. A big country house that could afford enough staff to keep an eye on his ambitions would find him a wonderful pet. He’d be perfect as Muncaster Castle’s Tom Fool. He isn’t a deliberate comedian; he isn’t physically funny as so many comics can be, and certainly not witty; he is simply hysterical as an innocent abroad. There isn't an ounce of malice in him. Although fags and drink have turned him into a little barrel on legs, he'll cheerfully tackle your heavy jobs, though you do have to give him precise instructions and watch him like a hawk to save him from his own fecklessness.

When he's about there is always something to laugh at and he's never in the least offended. You can tell him with stark honesty exactly why his bragging exasperates you, you can hurl insults at his grandiose plans or smack him round the head if you get mad enough, and he'll just laugh and wag his head knowingly and say, “Aaaahh, but ... when I Hit The Big Time ....”.

For a while after they left school, it was quiet, but Big Time Boy was drawn back by the magnet of our yard, our farm sheds and my husband's well equipped workshop. He passed his car driving test and persuaded his Dad  to buy him a high-roof Transit van with a carpet steam-cleaning vacuum system installed. To advertise his business, he ordered  “Big Time Cleaning” decals to put on the van panels, and cajoled my husband into helping him to apply them. The moment they were perfect he was desperate to show off down the pub, so he jumped in the van and fired her up. He then hurled her backwards against our heavy goods wagon, which wiped out  the near-side of “Big Time Cleaning” with a long, irreparable tear.

It was much the same with the equipment. He would “clean all my carpets and upholstery for nothing,” if I would let him practise on them! To this day I can't tell you why I said yes, except for his patent desire to please. The settee was soaked for days and one of the carpets ended up looking like the aftermath of a Moth Grub Banquet. The office escaped by the skin of its teeth, due to me standing in front of the computer with my fists on my hips. A local night club was less lucky. Big Time Boy applied heat and moisture indiscriminately to its huge main bar carpet, the two halves shrank and the long central seam came unstuck. They had told him to be careful of the join. “Aaahhh BUT ...”

You can never be sure what vehicle he’ll be driving when he arrives: in the past year it’s been anything from the local courier's parcels van to a high-spec red Mazda car. How on earth -- ???  Phew – it wasn’t his. An employer had trusted him - trusted HIM - to deliver it safely. Take a photo, quick! It never happened again.

Big Time Boy disappeared for some time. He owed too much money for comfort. Then one dark, wet and windy afternoon I was mucking out the stable, when the mare flung up her head. I turned, to see a roundabout little woman (as I thought) in waterproofs, who ducked in through the stable door. She wore rain-spotted glasses, a reflective waistcoat, and a flickering red head torch strapped round her woolly hat. It wasn’t till the funny little woman spoke that I realised it was Big Time Boy, reduced once more to the most basic form of transport: a filthy and battered mountain bike.

He's now twenty-eight, and no more grown-up than he was at fifteen. Through all those 13 years, he has been living on fantasies: going to Be A Star, Make A Million, and of course Hit The Big Time. Last week, when I was working in  the office, and my husband was painting the walls of a bedroom upstairs, I was startled by a burst of yells and shouts so I rushed out thinking that my husband and his step ladder had somehow fallen out. The repeated yells of, “Are ya ready to HIT THE BIG TIME! cos BIG TIME BOY IS HERE!” provoked my husband to yell back, “NO! Stop out! Go away! Goodbye!”

The terrifying news is that he’s blagged his way to a 7.5 tonne goods vehicle driver's licence.

Ham-handedness and blind faith in his own abilities will take him and a machine to The Big Time all right. If you see a 7.5 tonner coming at you with a short, stout, bespectacled lad at the wheel, JUMP, or you'll be shunted to the Pearly Gates along with him.

It won't matter to Big Time Boy, of course, because St Peter will pat him on the shoulder and say, “Park your bike round the back, son. God's been hoping you'd turn up; He likes a good laugh.”