How does one acquire such legendary status? The question ran through my head as I followed my sat nav through a strange wood and along a track.

The countryside is a place of superstition - like the one about stoats hunting in packs on a full moon. It's not a place for sat navs, and it was unsurprising, therefore, that by quarter to seven I was in a field.

This was rural Suffolk, or possibly Essex. It might even have been Norfolk as I had been lost for some time, even though the machine insisted that I should turn right to reach my destination. All around me was sugar beet, and if I'd had native porters with me they would have run off with their eyes rolling by now.

I rang for directions. A light would be helpful, I said cautiously, keeping my eyes peeled for stoats in packs, or a burning wicker man tied to a tree. Moments later, I saw the house and hurried in, retrieving my cool and aplomb from where they had hidden under the driver's seat.

I had come the back way through the field rather than the front way along the main road, so I shook the clods off my boots and hurried in to find the wise woman looking very unlegendary, watching Friends and eating cheese on toast.

I listened to her chest and complimented her both on her legendary status and on the best moustache I've ever seen on a woman.

In return she promised not to tell anyone that I had climbed over the wrong wall and fallen into the pig pen. We bonded over a few stoat stories, and I got home late but intact.

The receptionists were agog the following day. 'Did you go all by yourself to that creepy house? The last doctor to try it fell in the pig pen in the dark.'

I smiled and said I had my ways, being a country person by breeding and experience, owing to it being a sixth sense and stuff, and they looked impressed. I am beginning to see how one acquires legendary status.

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