by Roger Evans
There are buzzards everywhere and I see a pair of red kites every day. The leverets are in handy bite-sizes at the moment, a sort of ‘leverets to go’ on the menu.
AS USUAL I’m writing this in the kitchen in the early morning. It’s quite peaceful and I can get on with the job in hand.
There’s an occasional whimper from Mert, who sleeps in what we call the dairy. It’s an old-fashioned back kitchen with slabs of stone where they presumably used to keep food cool years ago.
Mert is trying to get my attention so that I will let him out so we can go and look for adventures. It’s a big step for Mert to come into the house at night. Neither he nor my wife know it’s the first stop on a road that I hope will see him move into the kitchen. If I can crack that big step, who knows where he will end up - watching the telly in the sitting room?
We live in a fairly comfortable area with regard to crime; it’s not that many years that we have been taking the keys out of vehicles at night. For some reason we still don’t lock them although for most it’s just a push on a button on the key fob.
Likewise we never lock the house doors at night, never thought to, never needed to, yet. But deep down I know it’s a ‘borrowed time’ issue and we will eventually have to become more security conscious.
I suspect that it will be something like a break-in that will jog us out of our complacency. I have a theory that the casual thief will not bother to face an aggressive dog, he will just move on to somewhere a bit easier. If the thief is highly professional, he will cope with any sort of dog, probably in ways I wouldn’t like to think about.
And if it’s aggressive dogs you are looking for, Mert – he of the impatient whimper in the dairy – is just the man for the job. He’s also very clean in his habits, which is an added bonus. Anyway, that’s my plan but there’s only us know about it.
Stretched out in front of the Rayburn is another dog. My wife’s Corgi. He can be aggressive but he’s far from it at the moment. He is a kitchen dog, he thinks it’s his kitchen and his boundary is the kitchen door-step. If I’m in the house, Mert is always on the kitchen doorstep and on this threshold of respective territories, they have the most horrendous fights.
Every day there’s the walking stiff-legged in circles and growling, and once a fortnight there’s the fight. Mert always wins but it’s the corgi that starts it all off, so he doesn’t get much sympathy as he limps about for a couple of days.
Not until now that is, because the limping lasted a lot longer and the vet thinks he may have suffered an internal injury. He’s on lots of tablets and feeling very sorry for himself.
Everything in life is relative and, about once a fortnight, we have to be extra vigilant in order to be on hand to stop a relatively nasty dogfight breaking out in our kitchen doorway.
I suppose we had allowed that diligence to falter just lately because our corgi, he of the kitchen territory, had been on medication to clear up a nasty abscess, which was the result of a previous fight. But, over the last 10 days, he had got much better and had returned to the aggressive patrols of his boundary.
Looking for a suitable metaphor, I would probably come up with sabre-rattling, that’s almost exactly what he would do, make threatening noises on his boundary, provoke border skirmishes.
The situation is always made worse when I am away from home because my border collie Mert spends more and more time outside the door, impatiently waiting for me to appear. Recently, when I was away, a border skirmish turned into a full-blown international incident when, unfortunately, a very nasty dogfight was made worse when our bearded collie decided to join in on Mert’s side.
This intervention on Mert’s side tipped the balance and the fight progressed into the kitchen and, I am told, there was blood ‘everywhere’. Today, I am alone in the kitchen, Mert is in his usual place on the doorstep and the corgi is on a drip down at the vet’s, badly beaten up. We’ll have to resolve this somehow.
It is usually customary for dogfights to finish quite abruptly when one dog rolls on his back to signify submission. This is not on the agenda for our corgi which came to us out of Ceredigion, was Welsh-speaking when he came here, and for whom rolling over is simply not an option. Currently England rugby players will be familiar with this phenomenon.
An innocent inquiry of my wife that Mert should be allowed to sleep in the kitchen while the corgi was at the vet’s met with an outburst that left me reeling, given that I have come from such a gentle background.
For some time I have been looking for a good home for the bearded collie who does nothing much except eat, sleep and chase cats (recently I caught him trying to climb up on the bird table).
He is at the time of year and at the stage of coat growth when he closely resembles a Herdwick sheep and he will probably be easier to re-home after his annual clip. Not many people are looking for a sheep to sleep in their kitchen.
IT’S A FUNNY thing, territory. I remember many years ago we went out for Sunday lunch to some friends’ house. My son David was about three or four years old. These friends kept bantam chickens. ‘Would David like a cock and hen for pets?’ It seemed like a fairly innocent gift. No big deal, we let them loose on the yard and away they went.
Twelve months later I did a head count and we had 73 bantams. They were highly prolific because if you found a nest and took the eggs to eat, which was the idea, they would immediately lay somewhere else and you couldn’t always find the new nest until the chicks appeared.
These 73 bantams split into clearly defined gangs. There was the stack yard gang, the cattle shed gang, the workshop gang, and so on. Just like our dogs, there would be horrific fights in the gateways that seemed to define their territories; there would be blood and feathers everywhere. Most of them were caught and sold or given away. Foxes accounted for the ones I couldn’t catch.
LAST AUTUMN we upgraded a tractor. The finances of dairy farmers are in such a parlous state that swapping a 25-year-old tractor to one half its age is a big deal. I would have liked to have kept the old tractor but couldn’t afford to do the deal without the £5,000 it was worth as part exchange. Ever since we did the deal I have felt guilty. We’d had that tractor about 15 years; it had been a good and faithful servant, and I miss it.
Sometimes I go up to the yard to do some task or other and find myself looking for it. I did make tentative inquiries of the dealer who bought it about its whereabouts. ‘It’s been exported to Greece.’ Greece! What sort of life will it have there? What sort of home has it gone to? I feel really guilty; no proper goodbye, no proper thank you, no gold watch.
WHEN our cows are feeding in a long row there’s about a 2ft space behind them and the adjacent wall.
When I walk this space, as I often do, I am always conscious of a pressure at the back of my legs, which is Mert, keeping close behind me. I know the cows don’t mind me walking close behind them but I’m not sure about the dog.
This confined space is a very good place to get kicked; the kick would be aimed at the dog but he’s so close to my heels there is no doubt at all that I would have to share it with him. But I could turn this to my advantage.
When I take Mert out and about I always leave him shut in the Discovery because not only does he have a fondness for nipping cows’ ankles, he will bite any other ankle as well.
I quite fancy taking him out of the Discovery and letting him meet our public. I wouldn’t put him on a lead, there is no dignity in a lead for a dog like Mert but, if he keeps as close to my heels as he does around the yard, I should be able to control him.
Top of my agenda is the big poodle that lives in the shop where I get my papers. This poodle, fully trimmed up in proper poodle fashion, is a bit full of himself. I bet he’s never met a dog like Mert and I know for certain that Mert has never seen anything like it.
Could be an interesting meeting. Could it be time for the poodle to find out a bit about the real world?
FOR SOME TIME I’ve been concerned about my diet. I’m not c
oncerned about dieting, I’ve been doing that for years, to little avail. My first cup of tea of the day, in which I allow myself a spoonful of sugar, is a daily treat, the prospect of which will get me out of bed on many a dark, wet morning.
It’s the implications of our bed and breakfast business on my diet that concerns me. Most of our guests spend weekends with us, which means that, on Fridays, my wife does what she calls ‘a big shop’. As this shopping is put away I receive very clear warnings: ‘Don’t eat these, they’re for the guests.’
At particular issue are fruit and yoghurts, both of which I enjoy. So every week I have a fruit-free, yoghurt-free weekend. For breakfast, our guests have a large bowl of fruit and a wide choice of yoghurts. Come Monday, it’s a different story: ‘That fruit needs eating up,’ says my wife.
I ascribe to the five-a-day theory, but on some days I am expected to eat 10 or 12. Yoghurts are a different story; every week I not only consume yoghurt that has gone past its sell-by date, but push the boundaries on those dates way beyond recognised limits – and I’m still here to tell the tale.
LAST SATURDAY I was grumpy. Very, very grumpy. We have this machine, you see, still fairly new, that we call a straw chopper.
Simplistically, you put a great big bale of straw in the back and it chops it up and blows it some distance to where it makes a nice even bed for cattle to lie on.
But it wouldn’t work a week ago, so we sent it in to the supplier where it spent three days and was returned fixed and ready for work.
I put it on the tractor on Saturday morning and it still wouldn’t work. So I drove it six miles for the dealer to have another look and, after two hours, he once again declared it to be OK. The trouble was that we couldn’t really try it out on his yard because there was a large bale in the back with its strings removed. Not only would his yard have been full of chopped straw but just over the fence is a business that transports new cars and all their lorries were packed full – we suspected that they wouldn’t welcome the new cars being covered with straw and, besides which, a bale usually contains the odd stone.
So, I drove back home to try it again and it still didn’t work. My less than gentle sarcasm on the mobile brought the dealer out but to no avail and we ended up emptying the straw by hand. He went off promising to return on Monday morning, my son had gone off to play rugby, it was lunchtime (what lunchtime?) and I still had about three hours’ work to do before milking.
So I set off with the dog to look at the cattle that were still out, my grumpiness close to being quite nasty. But it was such a nice day I couldn’t keep it up for long.
In the mile-and-a-half I have to travel to our other ground, I passed three different shooting parties. When I got to the little valley where my dry cows are they were just shooting that particular drive. I switched off the engine to watch – it would be bad manners to drive between the guns and the beaters but, even more important, not safe.
It was a spectacular drive, the birds flying out of the acre of maize that I allowed the keepers to grow on one of my fields, back across to the woods they think of as home.
The drive finished and I drove slowly on to see my cows. I had the windows down and all the beaters said ‘hello’, some of the guns waved as I went by, and some of them called out ‘All right, Rog’. But some of the guns ignored me; too up themselves by far. I came across the one who runs the shoot and stopped to say hello.
He was ecstatic about the drive they had just had. I let him dig himself a hole and then I said that if it was such a good drive I’ll want £1,000 next year if I am to allow them to grow another game crop. His face was a picture and he laughed nervously at my joke. The grumpiness may have gone, but I was still not in a good mood. A couple of hundred yards further on, I met my friend the keeper, a transformation in his posh shooting outfit – he usually goes around disguised as an urban guerrilla.
In the mirror I saw him watching me go, thinking about it. I bet I could get a bit more money out of them when the time comes.
A couple of hours later and I was making a similar journey to put out bales of silage for the cattle still out. There was only one shoot still active, it was plenty late enough in the day; pheasants need some time, after being so violently disturbed, to get their bearings and to find somewhere safe to roost.
There were small groups of pheasants everywhere, on full alert, some standing in the middle of fields they’d not been in before, some scurrying down lanes trying to find their way back home. Lots of pheasants in lots of places where you would not normally expect to find pheasants so near to dusk.
SO I’M getting on the train again to go to London, to Westminster, this time as part of a presentation to MPs of the wide range of dairy products available in the UK dairy industry and the innovation that is going on all the time to produce new lines.
This is a very important occasion for me, as no-one from our village has ever been to London twice in one year. I remember about 20 years ago organising a trip from the pub to the Smithfield show at Earls Court. Seventeen of us went and only two of us had ever been to London before, but that’s another very long story.
So I get on the train, which is very full, and the only seat I can find is next to a young girl, probably in her late teens. Well, it’s only half a seat really, because she’s asleep with her head against the window, her coat as a pillow and her bum half across the seat I paid for.
Anyway, I squeeze in as best I can and, about 20 minutes later, we stop at a station and this disturbs her.
She wriggles about a bit trying to get comfortable, gathers her coat up, folds it into a better pillow shape, plonks it on my shoulder, reverses her position and goes back to sleep couched up next to me.
I don’t mind really, she’s a very pretty girl, but doesn’t need those piercings.
The train pulls into Euston; she wakes up, stretches, gives me the sweetest of smiles and says ‘thank you very much’. And off we both go wherever our lives will take us, the only evidence of our meeting some make-up and a whiff of perfume on my shoulder.
As usual I had no breakfast so I go to one of those fast-food outlets which purports to be French but which is always staffed by Asians and East Europeans and order a latte (keep the milk sales up) and a cheese croissant (very sophisticated) and sit at a little table on my own to watch the world go by.
‘Is anyone sitting there?’ asks a very smart lady of about my own age. This is another big event in my day; no one usually wants to sit by me.
I think I dress about right for my age, go with the flow – you can’t stop life’s clock. She’s putting up a bit of a fight – she’s trying to look 15 years younger. She’s very elegant, although the elegance is fading a bit.
She’s got coffee and a croissant as well but she’s finished before me. She gets a tissue out and dabs around her mouth and discards it. Then she gets another tissue out, takes out her top set, wipes it clean, applies some adhesive and pops it back in again.
I’m too fascinated by this to pretend I’m not watching, but she just gives me a smile and goes on her way. That’s two smiles already this morning and it’s not 11am yet.
THIS MORNING I went for my pre-operation check-up, before surgery on my bad knee. I’m sure I’ve told you about my bad knee. I’ve told everyone else.
For people-watchers like me, there are rich pickings to be had in hospital waiting rooms. I’m very early for my appointment but the waiting room is almost full, probably because everyone except me seems to have someone with them. There are about four different people to see in this procedure, and I’d been sitting there only a couple of minutes when my name was called.
Lots of questions here. Have you had this and have you got that and I’m soon back in the waiting room. But only for another couple of minutes, because I’m called again.
This time it’s blood pressure and ECG and stuff like that. Finally, the nurse says she’s going to take a swab of my nasal passages. ‘What for?’
‘To check to see
if you have MRSA.’
My alert antennae are on full stretch now. ‘Do you have MRSA in this hospital?’
‘No, and we intend to keep it that way.’
So she pokes this long cotton bud thing up each nostril and then she says: ‘I can’t believe you’ve done that.’
I think: ‘What have I done now?’
She goes on: ‘I’ve been doing the MRSA testing in this hospital for five years now and up until you, every single person that I’ve approached with a nasal swab has opened their mouth.’
She obviously thinks that I’m a bit special now, which is something my mother and I have always known.
Back in the waiting room and the original whispered conversation between companions (which are, of course, a British tradition) have developed into full-blown conversations with fellow patients, with such lines as:
‘Where do you come from? Oh really! Do you know so-and-so?’
Two down and two to go. I reckon I’ll be out of here soon; then I see a notice that says pre-op checks can take up to four hours!
A man comes in on his own; he’s carrying a briefcase-sized box. The front of the box is transparent and you can see that it is subdivided inside into 12 compartments. The sort of thing that I would keep electric drill bits in if I could find any.
A hush goes over the waiting room as the spectators take in all this medication – there’s pills in every compartment. This must be a proper patient, really ill. Apart from being about five stones overweight he looks as fit as a fiddle to me.
I’m sitting there for two hours now. ‘Doctor’s delayed in the wards’ they say; that’s fair enough, no problem to me.