by Jo Bailey
‘There, Mummy!’ Sam showed me the hole in the wire on the far side, where Chester had made his escape.
You clever pig, I thought. It was the hedgerow side of his pen, which we’d simply covered with wire, thinking the hedgerow made a natural defence. I had to hand it to him: he’d spotted the weakest link. He must have spent the past week using his snout as a lever to lift the wire when we weren’t looking. It was a testament to his determination. Chester’s desire to be with us was stronger than any kind of Fort Knox we could build around him.
And, to be honest, I think that’s why Sam let him in the house once he had escaped. Apart from the giggle factor of having his pig running riot, Sam could empathise with Chester’s need for freedom. Sam also needed space to breathe – if things became too overwhelming, he liked to run into the garden to let off steam. His new ‘flap’ place was a strip of grass that ran parallel to Chester’s pen.
I couldn’t think how I was going to block the hole Chester had made so I grabbed the first thing that came to hand – the stepladder.
This should do the trick, I thought, as I lugged it across the garden and slotted it between the hedge and the fencing. Chester twitched his ears and nose simultaneously, as if to say, ‘Do you really think that will stop me getting out?’
But it was going to have to do for now – I had other things to be getting on with, such as plenty of unpacking.
Incredibly, we then had a very quiet few months. Chester didn’t break out again and Sam fed off his friend’s calm mood – he was equally content with his new home. So much so, I felt confident enough to say yes to Lynda Russell when she suggested taking the children from the CAIRB on a camping trip on Dartmoor in November 2010.
Lynda was always encouraging the children to step outside their comfort zone and to have the same experiences that the children in the mainstream classes enjoyed. For this trip she picked four boys who she felt would be able to cope with two nights away from home in a tent. The fact that Sam, who was then nearly eight, was chosen showed how far he had come in just two years.
Like any nervous mum waving her charge off into the world, I must have checked Sam’s rucksack for essentials three times over before I dropped him off at the school car park on the morning of the trip.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Lynda reassured me as she placed Sam’s bag carefully in the boot of her car. Luckily, I trusted her implicitly.
Sam clearly did too, for he wasn’t the slightest bit nervous to be heading off on his great adventure. He didn’t even look back as he jumped into Lynda’s car. He knew exactly what was going to happen from Lynda’s storybooks and was therefore at ease: Lynda had planned the camping trip with military precision. My mind, too, was set at rest by the knowledge that, as well as Lynda, there would be two teaching assistants on the moors with the children. Sam was going to be very well cared for so I gave him a big cheery wave as the car started up and the camping party set off for the moor.
As I turned for home, I reminded myself that as well as this being a great experience for Sam, helping him to learn independence, there was another beneficiary too. Sam’s absence meant I could spend some quality time with Will. Even though Sam’s little brother never once complained about the attention we gave to his sibling, I knew that moments like these were a fantastic opportunity for me to spend some real one-on-one quality time with my younger son and remind him how proud I was of him and how much I loved him.
I asked Will what he would like to do that afternoon – the world was his oyster. His answer surprised me. I’d thought he might say toy shopping, or even going to Pennywell Farm (our new house was only five minutes from the farm). But he said he wanted to spend time with Chester and me. I couldn’t think of a better way for all three of us to be together than by mucking out our pig’s pen, and Will was really enthused by the idea.
We hopped in the car and drove to Tuckers, a nearby farm supply shop. We bought a big bale of straw and more pignuts. The bale was too heavy to carry to the bottom of the garden so we put it in a wheelbarrow to transport it from the car – and then the fun really began. Will climbed up on to the bale of straw and we stuck a saucepan on his head as an improvised ‘crash helmet’. Then I picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and raced with my delighted passenger down to Chester’s pen, deliberately ‘crashing’ into trees and obstacles as we went. Will gripped the sides of the wheelbarrow as he bounced around, squealing with laughter. He looked a real picture with the saucepan handle sticking out at a 90-degree angle from his head. Will loved every moment of that escapade, especially his impromptu ‘helmet’!
Chester heard us coming and started grunting loudly in the deep, breathless oink he saved for when he hadn’t seen us for a few hours. We took the precaution of wearing wellies, for Chester’s ‘back yard’ now resembled a muddy swamp – just as Darren had predicted. Once we reached our destination Will leapt off the straw bale and helped me lift it into Chester’s home.
Mucking out meant changing the water in Chester’s trough, cleaning out his loo area (which he’d designated to be in the bottom right-hand corner of the pen), and changing his bedding straw. Chester always insisted on making his own bed. He loved nothing more than for us to place the bale of straw (string removed, of course) in his Wendy house so he could use his nose to spread it out. Watching him distribute the straw in the house reminded me of how you shake the feathers in a duvet before you spread it out over a bed. He was so clever, he even pushed a clump of straw in front of his front door, ready to cushion his trotters when he stuck them out later that night.
As Chester, Will and I transformed the pen, Will and I chatted easily with one another. My younger son was now six years old but incredibly mature for his age because of everything we had been through with Sam. He was still cheeky and mischievous but he was also caring and grounded. Because of Sam having autism, Will had essentially had to become a young carer; there are tens of thousands of them all across the UK and they don’t get enough recognition in my opinion. Though Darren and I took the lead on caring for Sam, just living with his brother put Will in a position of responsibility. It was not easy for him but he has always been a brilliant brother to Sam. And as we swept out Chester’s pen, Will revealed to me that his caring for Sam had recently taken on a new dimension. I’d known nothing about it, but Will now told me how he sometimes helped Sam to dress himself in the morning – by confiscating his brother’s favourite Ben 10 figurine.
Will told me he would hide it behind his back, until Sam put his clothes on in the correct order. I was stunned for two reasons – firstly, that Will had come up with such an idea to help his brother, and secondly, that it had worked without sending Sam into a meltdown. Ordinarily, Sam became very distressed if he was separated from his favourite toys. It was a risky move, but one that had paid off. Sam might have reacted in the same positive way if I had tried this technique, but I knew I would never have thought to give it a go because sometimes I wrap Sam in cotton wool, trying to protect him from the meltdowns that are so distressing to us both. But Will didn’t have the same instinct: instead, he wanted to push his brother, to show Sam that he could do more than he thought.
‘I just want to help Sam,’ Will confided.
It was reassuring – and incredibly moving – to realise how confident Will was in his ability to help Sam. I gave him a big hug, feeling so proud of him.
Sensing the mood, Chester wanted to share the moment too and waddled over to us, still with bits of straw sticking to his furry coat. He leaned against my legs affectionately, and both Will and I gave him a scratch behind his ears.
Suddenly, I had an idea – why didn’t we use the broom as a belly-scratcher, just as Mr Murray had done with Pumbaa? Well, as soon as the bristles hit Chester’s tummy, he dropped to the ground so we could get right in there. Will helped me run the broom back and forth over Chester’s big hairy belly. With every scratch, Chester let out a grunt of happiness – there’s nothing more satisfying than scratching an
itch!
That evening, I played table tennis on the dining-room table with Will and cooked him his favourite meal of chilli con carne. We went to bed tired from our hard work in Chester’s pen but very, very happy.
Halfway through the night, I woke up. There was a gale howling outside. My first thought was, of course: is Sam OK? It sounded pretty terrible weather for camping. I knew Lynda would be keeping everyone safe and sound, however, so I eventually managed to doze off, only to be woken again in the early hours by my mobile beeping, alerting me to an incoming message.
It was from Lynda Russell: ‘A wild and windy night, everyone is safe, we are going to continue.’ I’d known everything would be fine. And who knew? Maybe the ‘adventurous’ weather would add to the children’s enjoyment of the trip.
I was right. When I picked Sam up at the end of the trip, he had a smile plastered all over his face as he ran to give me a hug. It just reinforced to me why leaving Spain for Devon had been the best thing I could have ever done for Sam.
Every week that passed, Sam became stronger and more confident. Most importantly, he became more able to regulate himself: to understand and react to the stormy moods caused by his condition and take steps to avoid a full-scale meltdown. If he was in class and needed to escape for a flap, he would show a card to one of his TAs (he had two: Mrs Short and Mrs Scull). If he was at home and needed to let off steam, he would run outside to his favourite spot next to Chester’s pen.
But while Sam’s outlook seemed sunnier by the day, the real weather didn’t get any better. The windy wet night on the moors was a precursor to a bitter winter. And come the morning of the last day of term, 17 December 2010, all hell was let loose.
I didn’t notice anything different when I first got up because it was still pitch-black outside. I went about my normal morning routine – switching the light on in the kitchen and leaning against the warm toasty Aga as I waited for the kettle to boil. The boys came down in their pyjamas, brushing the sleep from their eyes. I rubbed a hole in the mist on the window almost mindlessly, just looking out into the darkness as the whistle of the kettle started to build. But the lane outside looked somehow different than usual – although it was dark, the light spilling from the kitchen shone on to a differently textured path.
I switched on the outside light – and couldn’t believe my eyes. The whole place was covered in a thick blanket of snow.
‘Boys, it’s been snowing!’ I squealed in delight.
They came racing through the living room, heading straight for the back door. I had to stop them from stepping out in their bare feet. They’d seen the countryside dusted in a coating of snow the year before, but nothing as dramatic as this. I hadn’t seen anything like it either – it was so deep that I couldn’t drive the boys to school. Funnily enough, they weren’t too disappointed by this news.
The boys spent the morning building snowmen and lying on their backs in the snow, making snow angels. Our garden was just as pretty white as it was green. The trees looked like they had been dipped in icing and Chester’s Wendy house resembled a ski chalet, with the snow layered on the roof. I loved the sound of the snow on the ground crunching underneath my boots – it brought back happy childhood memories of snowball fights with my sister and skiing in the French Alps.
Chester was also delighted by the change in the weather because it meant that Sam and Will played by his pen all day long. He seemed to be handling the cold well, disappearing into his bed of straw whenever he needed to warm up. I wasn’t too worried about him because I thought the snow would be gone by the next day.
I was wrong. It kept falling, and falling some more, until it was nine inches deep and we were well and truly snowed in.
It was fun at first because it brought the community together, but as the snow got deeper and deeper, not even the postman could make it up the lane. It was decided that he would leave all our cards and parcels with the people who lived in the cottage about a mile down the lane, and that our closest neighbour, James, who lived on the nearby farm, would fetch the post from that cottage and bring it to us on his sledge. When he arrived, he looked like Santa Claus pulling a sleigh full of presents. The whole scene was magical, with the sun bouncing off the snow and the glistening blue icicles hanging from the bare branches overhead. The boys were waiting for James in the lane, all wrapped up in their hats and scarves and mittens, barely able to contain their excitement at what the delivery might bring.
Luckily I’d already stocked up on all our Christmas food. We had fun delving into some of our supplies because we couldn’t get out to the shops.
But by the fifth day of the snow, things got serious. We discovered when we got up that morning that Chester’s straw had frozen overnight. The problem was the wooden Wendy house – the snow had seeped into the walls and floor, making the straw damp and soggy. It had then completely frozen as the temperature plummeted at night. Poor Chester had basically slept on a bed of ice.
I felt terrible thinking about how cold he must have been and dived into his pen to check he was OK. He seemed to be all right – he was a hardy animal – but I could feel him shivering as I stroked his back. I wrapped my arms around him, or rather as far around as I could reach given how large he was, and gave him a rubdown to try and warm him up. Seeing me at work, Sam and Will cottoned on to what I was attempting to do and joined in. With all three of us smothering him with affection, Chester perked up, grunting with delight as we rubbed his back and belly.
I wished I could bring Chester indoors for Christmas, but I knew if I did he would trash our new home. He’d caused such chaos the last time he’d broken out of his pen. No, sadly it wasn’t an option. Instead, I was going to have to do my best to make his house as cosy and as warm for him as possible.
‘Come on, boys, we’ve got to get Chester warm – this is not good for him.’
I fetched the pickaxe from the greenhouse and hacked away at the frozen straw, while Sam used the shovel to scoop it away; he insisted on being the one to clear the ice. Chester didn’t make it easy for Sam as he spent the whole time leaning against his legs for warmth and comfort. But Sam merely giggled at his friend’s touch as he soldiered on, shovelling the sludge into the wheelbarrow. Will then dumped it into the muddy part of the pigpen.
After two hours of hard slog, we eventually managed to clear all of it away. We had a fresh bale of straw ready for Chester and, knowing what was coming next, our pig started grunting even more loudly. I placed the bale in his house and cut through the pink string holding it together. Chester immediately started making his bed, spreading the straw around.
I was so worried about Chester’s bed freezing again that I asked our neighbour and new ‘postman’, James, what I should do. The farmer very sweetly offered to dig a pit in his barn as a temporary home for Chester until the snow cleared, but if I took him up on this offer, I would have faced the problem of getting the pig movement papers signed – no mean feat given we were snowed in. I decided it would be easier, and better for Sam, if Chester stayed under our watchful eye – we would just have to make sure we checked his straw several times a day.
This would be easy to do over Christmas because an army of helpers was soon to arrive in the form of my sister, her boyfriend Simon and children Tom and Dan – and, of course, Mum also lent a hand. Fortunately, the snow didn’t prevent them from getting to us: by the time they came, the tractors had carved paths through the snowy lanes.
It was an unforgettable white Christmas, not least because we had to resort to using the garden as a fridge-freezer; we only had a tiny one that the previous owners had left behind, but it was too small to store all our festive goodies. The boys loved being sent back and forth to the garden to fetch food as I prepared Christmas lunch. Thank goodness Chester didn’t escape – if he had got out, we would more than likely have waved goodbye to our Christmas dinner!
Sam couldn’t wait to wolf down his Christmas lunch – not because he was starving but because the sooner he f
inished eating, the sooner he could take some food to Chester. Sam was still wearing his paper crown as he ran out into the snow with a plate piled high with turkey, stuffing and veggies – we even treated Chester to a little bit of cranberry sauce! Before Sam had even reached the gate, Chester was on his hind legs. If a pig could drool, he would have been. Instead, he grunted so loudly that we could hear him from the dining room.
The one element that was missing from this magical Christmas, though, was Darren. He’d been contracted to work over Christmas so I had to wait until just before New Year to see him. I had a stockpile of presents from us all waiting for him under the tree, but he surprised me with his gift before we’d even got into the house.
We’d just pulled into the driveway after the journey from the airport and were sitting chatting as the bright winter sun streamed through the windscreen. I was about to climb out when he grabbed my arm. He suddenly looked nervous.
‘Darren?’ I asked uncertainly.
‘Will you marry me?’ he blurted out.
I wasn’t expecting that! The breath left my lungs and caught somewhere in my throat so I couldn’t speak for a few moments. Then a smile crept across my face.
‘I’d love to!’
I guess it wasn’t the most romantic proposal in the world, but it was the second time around for both of us, so it felt right that it was low-key. It certainly didn’t detract from the love we had for each other.
At the time Darren proposed, we’d been together for three-and-a-half years. The heartache and hardship we’d suffered in Spain when Sam was so unwell were well behind us: we were at a stage where we were settled and Sam was doing well. Getting married felt like the icing on the cake to bring us together and make us an ‘official’ family.
I couldn’t wait for the big day.