by Jo Bailey
Darren and I really got a flavour of how close the pair had become at the school’s annual sports day in the summer of 2012. Manor Primary has a unique way of approaching sports day so that the children don’t feel under pressure to perform on an individual level, but are encouraged to work as a team instead. The children are put into groups and each group is set a different activity to do, so there are eight or nine different things going on simultaneously. The parents can follow the groups from activity to activity, which is really nice because you can cheer your own children on as they do each task.
Apart from in the running races, there is no emphasis on who comes first, second or third. This was perfect for Sam, who struggled both to manage his coordination and to cope with his pressing need for perfection.
The teachers put Sam and Jack in the same group because they knew that they had become really good friends. The only drawback to this was that the boys were so busy laughing together, they forgot they had a sports day to take part in. Instead of joining in, they took themselves off to their favourite climbing frame of the fallen tree. While the rest of the school took part in sporting activities, Sam took part in something he’d never experienced before – having fun with a friend.
Neither Darren nor I had the heart to make them come back and join in. I think the teachers must have felt the same way, as everyone seemed to turn a blind eye.
It would have been nice to have Jack over to our house in the summer holidays but Sam was funny about having friends to stay over. It was a quirk with his autism – he compartmentalised everything. School was school and home was home, and the two should not be mixed. The only reason it had worked out when the children from the CAIRB had visited Chester was because all the teachers had been there too, giving a classroom feel to the experience. With Sam having no school friends to play with, it was down to Chester to be Sam’s only buddy again until the new term started.
Chester was over the moon about having Sam back for the summer, and he was particularly happy because he had a new pad. The dilapidated Wendy house had finally collapsed and I had suggested we get Chester a proper home to sleep in so he wouldn’t freeze in the winter. Darren’s arm took some twisting, as the metal pig arks weren’t cheap, but he came round in the end.
It would be fair to say that Darren wasn’t Chester’s biggest fan. Due to his job on the rigs, he didn’t spend a great deal of time with him. But as fate would have it, Darren was handed a double dose of pig mischief one day while I was in town treating myself to an hour of reflexology.
When I left the house, Darren was peacefully working away at his vegetable patch, humming along to songs on the radio. By the time I got back, all hell had broken loose.
As I pulled into the drive, I saw Darren waving a big stick around – chasing after a scampering Chester. My husband’s face was puce and he was sweating bullets of perspiration from his forehead.
‘Darren, what are you doing?’ I called out. I leapt out of the car and ran after the pair of them. Darren looked angry and when I caught up with him I saw that he was out of breath.
‘I’ve been trying to get that pig back in his pen for an hour!’ he raged.
Chester, who was just out of reach, stopped running and stared back at us with his cheeky grin. I knew exactly what was going on here – he thought this was a game. He’d been having a whale of a time having Darren chase after him, just as he loved the boys to do.
Sadly, I couldn’t say the same for my husband.
‘Did you throw some pignuts down for him?’ I asked. It was a logical question but it infuriated Darren because he hadn’t thought of doing that.
‘No, I’ve just been chasing around after him,’ he replied, a little shamefacedly.
Darren pointed to the ruins of the greenhouse: one of the panes of glass was smashed.
‘Oh my God!’ I exclaimed. ‘What happened?’
Darren then explained how he’d been planting seeds when suddenly Chester had appeared by his side; the pig had escaped from his pen.
‘I managed to lead him away from the veg patch back to his pen. I was just opening the gate when he suddenly veered to the left and darted off into the greenhouse. He wouldn’t come out, no matter how much I called him, so my idea was to go in after him, get behind him, and shoo him out the door. But Chester went straight through the glass on the other side!’
As Darren told the story, his anger increased as he recalled the expensive damage and his fruitless chase after the pig. Meanwhile, I was doing my best not to giggle as I pictured the scene. I cupped my hand over my mouth to smother my laughter as I examined the shattered mess: the broken glass had gone all over Darren’s vegetable patch.
‘It’s not funny, I’ve spent all day preparing that soil!’ he snapped.
‘What about Chester?’ I asked. ‘Is his nose OK?’
‘Never mind about bloody Chester!’
Luckily, Chester was fine. He hadn’t sustained a single scratch despite shattering the whole pane of glass. Darren had more to say on the matter. He shook his head as he glared at our pet pig.
‘He’s really crafty, he ran off every time I got close. It was stop, start, stop, start.’
I could easily see that the best thing I could do was to get Chester back in his pen before any more drama unfolded. I reached for the pignuts.
‘Here, Chesty.’ I rattled them around in my hand.
Chester lifted his twitching snout into the air. He then obediently followed me back into his home. It took only a matter of minutes to lock him back up.
This didn’t go down well with Darren, of course, given he had spent an hour trying to achieve the same goal. He stomped off into the house.
‘Don’t take it personally, Chesty.’ I gave our pig a reassuring cuddle as we heard the door slam.
To be fair to Darren, that was the first time Chester had escaped when Darren was on his own. All the other times I’d dealt with it, so naturally I was the expert. The funny thing was, despite all his raging, I came down for breakfast the next morning to find Darren slaving over the Aga for Chester. He was making him a warm broth from all the leftover potato and vegetable peelings.
‘What are you doing?’ I teased him, knowing full well he was looking out for our pig.
‘Well, I can’t let Chester go hungry,’ he said lightly, shrugging his shoulders. It was Darren’s way of making it up to Chester for being so cross with him. And actually the duo went on to get on really well in the garden. Chester’s pen was right by Darren’s vegetable plot so they kept each other company whenever Darren was working on his patch. Chester would rest his big head on one of the wooden slats, grunting at Darren, and Darren would throw him weeds and sticks of rhubarb from the vegetable plot to chomp on. It was very sweet to watch!
A few weeks after the greenhouse disaster, the shoe was on the other foot when it was me on the receiving end of Chester’s provocative behaviour.
By this time Darren had returned to the rig – but not before presenting me with a beautiful gift of two blueberry bushes; he knew they were my favourite fruit. I quickly set to work nurturing them in a sunny spot on the patio by the back door. As the bushes matured, I was able to saunter out on to the patio in the mornings, pick a few home-grown blueberries and throw them into my yoghurt. It was blissful country living at its best.
It was all going so well – until Chester decided to break out for a second time that summer. By chance, I spotted him escaping just as he bypassed Darren’s vegetable patch and headed for our back door.
I ran out into the sunshine, ready to intercept him, yelling for the boys as back-up.
‘Come quickly, Chester’s got out!’ I shouted.
I reached Chester just as he reached my blueberry bushes. They were enough of a temptation to make him pause before entering the house, which had been his Plan A. He hovered beside them, nose twitching. And then the greedy pig was upon them in seconds.
I pushed and pushed Chester as hard as I could, trying to move hi
s snout away from the luscious fruit, but he was too big and too strong and already guzzling with such gusto, hoovering along the branches with such determination, that my efforts were in vain. He was making the desperate gobbling, grunting noise he saved for when he was devouring treats, such as when he stole the chicken feed from our former neighbours’ garden. It was all over in seconds.
Chester, oinking with satisfaction, trotted past me into the house. I was left looking forlornly at my blueberry bushes, which now consisted of bare branches stripped entirely of their fruit. Meanwhile, the boys, as ever, were rolling about with laughter over Chester’s naughty antics.
Of course, Chester’s behaviour, as it had always been, was a hot topic of conversation in the village – and beyond. So I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise when the BBC got in touch one day to say they had heard about Chester (because news of our pig had spread far and wide) and wanted to film him for Country Tracks. But it was definitely a surprise! I didn’t know what to say. The locals in our previous village had once joked that he would one day be a TV star but I never thought it would really happen.
Country Tracks wanted to make a programme about how our micro pig hadn’t stayed micro. My first concern about this was how it might reflect on Mr Murray and Pennywell Farm. I worried that it might be bad business for them if it were to get out that Chester hadn’t stayed miniature. So I rang the farm and Mr Murray said he’d be right over. It was the first time I’d ever contacted him about Chester’s size, for I’d never wanted to complain about it. Chester was our pig and we loved him no matter what.
‘Oh my goodness, he’s huge!’ Mr Murray exclaimed when he set eyes on Chester.
He scratched his head in bewilderment.
‘I honestly can’t explain it!’ he said.
Mr Murray got in the pen with Chester and gave him a once-over as he tried to work out how his micro pig had ballooned to such an enormous size. Our pet pig was now 167cm long from snout to backside, but that didn’t include his tail, which was 45cm long. And he was 80cm tall!
I kept telling Mr Murray that I didn’t mind about it, but he insisted on giving me an explanation. In a roundabout way he said that Chester was a genetic ‘throwback’. A throwback is an evolutionary term for when traits suddenly appear which had disappeared generations before. In the case of Chester, a full-size pig had been born to two miniature pigs who’d been specially bred to be tiny. It was apparently something that could happen when farmers bred hybrids, although Mr Murray had never seen it before at his farm.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he kept apologising. ‘You saw his parents, they are both tiny!’
‘It’s fine!’ I kept on reassuring him.
Mr Murray was so worried that he’d let us down that he offered to swap Chester for a new piglet. The thought had never even crossed my mind.
‘I wouldn’t swap him for the world!’ I exclaimed, glancing affectionately at Chester’s smiley ginger face.
I explained to Mr Murray that Chester had transformed Sam’s life, that our son would be devastated if we swapped him and that I’d be crushed to lose him too. I thought even Darren would be sad.
To his credit, Mr Murray insisted that I go ahead with the BBC programme to show the world how Sam’s life had been changed thanks to an animal. I thought it was really decent of him not to put his own reputation first. And he also gave us some great advice for caring for Chester, warning us that we should part-cement Chester’s pigpen as Chester had dug it up completely by this time and walking around in wet mud all day every day wasn’t good for his trotters.
Darren arrived back from the rigs days before the filming was due to take place and his first job was, of course, to part-cement Chester’s home. He went into classic Darren overdrive, trying to make Chester’s pen look pristine for his starring role.
‘He’s got to look good; he’s going to be on telly!’ Darren insisted.
It was no small job. We had tons of wet cement delivered and had to put it to use while Chester was still in residence! It was a monumental battle keeping him out of the way as we spent the day transforming his pen, but hilarious fun.
Sam and Will jumped at the chance to turn their friend into a shining TV star with a pristine pad. They ran off to fetch the buckets and wheelbarrow and shovel and anything else they could think of to help Darren continue his mission to scrub up Chester’s home. Together, the three of them replaced all the dirty straw with fresh straw and scrubbed at the ark, clearing away all the moss and dirt. Finally, Darren cut back the foliage that bordered the pen.
Darren even made Chester some toys from logs and branches he had chopped down in the garden! He formed them into a wigwam shape and then threaded a load of old wellies and plastic balls on to a string, which he hung between them. They dangled low enough that Chester could reach them with his snout. Darren spent hours and hours making the pen look incredible, which showed how much he really did care for Chester after all.
Chester loved every second of it; especially the part where he got a makeover. We brushed his thick ginger hair with the bristles of an outdoor broom. We braided the furry bit at the end of his tail. We even put moisturiser on his ears to make them look smooth. Grooming him was probably a harder job than clearing up his pen as he kept rolling on to the floor and putting his trotters in the air, desperate for his tummy to be rubbed. He looked very dapper by the end, though.
We arranged for the film crew to come at the weekend so the boys could star in the programme too. I was a lot more nervous than I thought I would be when three women with a very large camera showed up. They briefed us on the questions they wanted to ask us and how we should reply. I kept fluffing my lines and they had to keep doing retakes!
Sam, on the other hand, blossomed in the spotlight. He was a bit nervous when the crew first arrived – he went to have one of his moments down in the wooded area by the brook – but once he’d shaken the anxiety out of his body he transformed into a confident little boy. He led the crew down to meet Chester and he even advised them as to how he thought they should film his pig.
Will, Darren and I were speechless at his confidence and command of the situation.
‘You weren’t joking about him being big!’ the women exclaimed when they clapped eyes on Chester.
Being a great performer, our pig rose to the occasion too. Chester levered himself up so that he was standing on his hind legs, his front trotters resting on the fencing. He wanted to make sure he shared the limelight.
The interview started with me and Darren explaining why we had wanted to buy a miniature pig. It was so fun watching Darren on camera, especially knowing his love/hate relationship with Chester. Darren was just as nervous as me and kept saying the word ‘predominantly’, which he never usually uses in his speech!
They then zoomed in on Sam.
Sam knew the camera was on him but he wasn’t the least bit intimidated. He jumped into the pen with Chester and started grooming his pig and tickling his tummy. It was so sweet to watch them interact because you could tell Chester knew Sam needed him to be on his best behaviour. It was an inexplicable connection they shared – they seemed to know when they needed each other most.
As I watched Chester perform impeccably, I also thought to myself that it would never cease to amaze me how Chester could transform from being a hooligan pig to an angel pig in the blink of an eye . . .
The filming ended with a final question to Darren and me.
‘Do you have any regrets?’ the interviewer asked us, about getting Chester.
I glanced across at Darren with gritted teeth, apprehensive of what he might say.
But Darren leant back and announced cheerily: ‘Wouldn’t change him for the world!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Chester to the Rescue
WE WERE SUCH a happy family, the five of us: Darren, Will, Sam, Chester and me. And for Christmas 2013 Sam gave us all the best present: we discovered he could sing like a West End star. I’d had no idea of h
is hidden talent. I’d heard him hum in the bath, and sing to himself when he was drawing, but nothing like what I witnessed as I watched him belt out the songs for his end-of-year school production that winter. He was part of the choir for the World War Two musical We’ll Meet Again, and his voice resonated above all the other children’s. He had the voice of an angel.
‘You can hear him above everyone else,’ Mum whispered in my ear as we both proudly watched him sing his heart out.
I know every mum thinks her child is a star in the making, but at that moment I truly felt he was. My hair was standing on end; it was such a mesmerising performance. Inside, my heart felt as if it might burst with joy. I was overwhelmed at the sight of Sam standing on the stage, hogging the limelight and staring with such a passion into the spotlights, but most of all singing the lyrics to entire songs when he normally found language such a struggle – I just wouldn’t have dared to imagine it might even be possible.
To top it all off, when the performance ended, all the other children stood there quietly, but Sam lifted his arm above his head to deliver a majestic bow, twirling his hand in front of him. Still looking to the front, he also turned sideways, spread his arms wide and wiggled his hands and fingers. He was the only one to do this and it made us roar with laughter! He was oozing confidence. Mum and I rose to our feet and applauded our wonderful boy.
Sam turned eleven in January 2014 and there was so much to celebrate. He had been fully integrated into all mainstream classes at primary school now. His speech had come on so much that he could say up to forty-five words in succession. Sam’s autistic mannerisms had also massively decreased – he had stopped muttering sentences under his breath, and the flapping and bouncing had stopped altogether in public. He had made a best friend in Jack. He had also rekindled his friendship with his brother, much to my delight.