by Amanda Owen
‘I’ve got so much to do,’ he said. ‘I ain’t got time for no blinkin’ ’ospital. I need an ’ospital trip like I need an ’ole in the ’ead.’
‘Yep, you’ve certainly got one o’ them,’ I replied. Luckily the doctor at our local surgery volunteered to do the stitching, and with the help of a no-nonsense nurse and a good length of suture Clive was soon patched up. It had shocked him and he was quiet for the rest of the day, waking up the next morning with a shiner of a black eye.
The doctor did a marvellous job, and within weeks it had all healed up very nicely. Clive looked in the mirror and frowned.
‘If mi scar had gon t’other way I’d ’ave looked ’ard, like a gangster,’ he said. ‘But as it is I’ve just added another furrow to mi brow.’
12
December
December is officially the first month of winter, but up here in the hills we will have been feeling the cold for some time. In some years we have had a light covering of snow on the ground when we’ve been tonsing the tups ready for sale in late October, and small packets of compacted snow can survive under rocky overhangs at the moor until late May.
The sheep are back on their respective heafs at the moor by now, and we supplement their diet with hay and sugar beet pellets.
By December my aim is to have the dairy well stocked with provisions for us, and the meal house packed to the rafters with enough food for the animals to see out a storm.
Usually we have a barn full of year-over hay – hay that has been left over from the previous year. Time doesn’t do it any favours, but in a bout of bad snowy weather it can be fed to the animals when the pangs of hunger bite. Sheep usually prefer not to eat the clumps of seaves, but when these are the only greenery, their stems poking out from the snow, they will nibble them. Throwing out canches of the ‘storm hay’ or, in a bad time, straw, will fill their bellies and they’ll ride out the storm, especially in the early winter months when they are only in the earliest stages of pregnancy.
We try to preserve the smaller-sized conventional bales for feeding the flocks at the moor. For any sheep in the barns and the horses we use larger round bales of haylage, some of which we’ve made on the awkward steeper areas of the hay meadows, and some that we’ve bought in from any local farmers who have a surplus. One year, Clive bought a trailerload of round bales for ‘handy money’ and set me off on a tractor to Kirkby Stephen to bring them home.
‘If yer get yerself over to Kirkby this mornin’ then there’ll be someone about to load the bales onto yer trailer,’ he said. ‘I’m too busy to do it, an’ yer can pick up a bit o’ shoppin’ whilst yer there.’
True, I did need a few bits and pieces from the supermarket, but it is no mean feat manoeuvring a tractor and a twenty-five-foot trailer into the bays of the car park. The previous winter we’d bought loose clamp silage for the cows and I still remember how the top layers of the wedges of grass, pickled and pungent-smelling, blew off the trailer and across the car park. Shoppers laden with bags and pushing trollies were wrinkling their noses and brushing from their hair and eyes the wisps of chopped grass that had been carried on the strong breeze, while I, clearly identified as the culprit by my wellies and waterproofs, turned a blind eye to the complaints and carried on shopping.
Dressed warmly, I walked down to the other side of the bridge where the tractor was parked. The trailer had been abandoned on the hard standing beside the river. Hitching up a trailer to the tractor is not as difficult as hitching up a trailer to the pickup or Land Rover, as you can see clearly from the back window of the tractor whether you are lined up right to drop down the tow ball and link up to the trailer drawbar. I did this without a problem, then climbed down and connected the hydraulic brake pipe and the light electrics. Unfortunately I’d overlooked the fact that the hydraulic pipe was dangling loosely, and as I turned the tractor quite sharply towards the road and pulled away, the pipe caught in one of the tractor’s wheels, stretching it until it snapped. I didn’t notice any of this until I turned round in my seat and saw the pipe trailing on the ground.
Oh, hell, I thought. Clive is not gonna be reet impressed when ’e sees what I’ve done.
In that split second I decided to put off saying anything to Clive, as we couldn’t repair the damage ourselves, snapped hydraulic pipes being something that only Metal Mickey could sort. Time was of the essence here. Reaching into my pocket for a strand of baler twine, I tied the snapped pipe back to the trailer and tried to remove the other half of the pipe from the connector on the back of the tractor. I’m not a weakling, but the coating of oil on my hands, and the fact that the metal connector had been bent by the pressure of being pulled at by the force of the wheel, meant that it would not move. Cussing to myself, I reasoned it would just have to stay attached – after all, it wasn’t going to interfere with my job. The big problem was that the trailer brakes were obviously not working, but I figured that, as long as I drove slowly and carefully, I’d be all right.
Off I went. It had begun to rain, and the clunky, unrhythmic wipers were smearing the blobs of muck that had crusted on the windscreen after the previous week’s muck-spreading. I drove as quickly as I could, meeting no vehicles coming the other way and never taking my foot off the accelerator. Unladen, the trailer was no bother when it came to stopping, but when the bales were on board it would be a different story. I daydreamed a little, mulled over what I needed to get from the supermarket and looked across to the open moors, studying our neighbours’ sheep.
Reaching the top of Tailbrigg, I was brought back to reality as I rounded the bend and saw a car approaching up the hill. Needing to give him some room so that we could pass each other, I put my foot on the brake and began to steer towards the crash barrier. The tractor didn’t respond the way I expected: in fact, it didn’t really respond at all, the steering feeling heavy and the brakes spongy. I tried to change gear but couldn’t depress the clutch pedal. I frowned, grasping at the steering wheel and pumping the brakes more forcefully. By now the dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree, flashing warning lights, and an alarm was ringing from somewhere near the ignition. I began to panic. Taking my foot off the accelerator had slowed me down fractionally, but I was still in top gear and travelling far too quickly for a descent down a 1:5 gradient hill. Even more worrying, the chap in the car coming towards me seemed to be counting on me swerving to one side at the last moment. The steering wheel just wouldn’t budge. I hit the horn, hoping that the oncoming car would realize that I was on a runaway tractor and trailer. Turning round in my seat to see what the trailer was doing, I saw a jet of oil spraying like a geyser straight up into the air from the back of the tractor.
There was only one thing for it. Pulling on the handbrake I made an abrupt emergency stop like no other. I quickly switched the engine off. I was grateful and very lucky that I had one of my legs braced against the foot pedal and was half twisted backwards in my seat, for this is what saved me from hitting the windscreen face first. Fortunately the car coming towards me had also stopped. I sat still, exhaled loudly and willed my hands to stop shaking. Taking a moment to compose myself, I looked at the road and saw rainbow colours in the film of oil that was slowly spreading across the damp tarmac.
I climbed down from the tractor and went to investigate what had gone wrong, and to apologize to the other motorist. There was an oil slick from the top of the hill, where I’d first tried to brake, right down to where I’d come to an abrupt halt – there was gallons of it. I assumed that there was no oil left in the tractor. The other motorist was very understanding, until I restarted the tractor and tried unsuccessfully to move it out of the way. It moved neither forwards or backwards. Stalemate. A line of cars had appeared behind me, and the drivers were none too impressed with the situation.
‘I could do wi’ borrowing someone’s mobile phone,’ I said.
I rang Clive, but of course nobody answered. I left a message and hoped that he would respond.
Respond he did, and it wasn’t pr
etty.
‘You’ve done what?’ he shouted loudly, as I held the borrowed phone away from my ear.
He appeared half an hour later in the pickup, children in the back, bringing a random selection of spanners. By this time I’d been deserted, everyone else having turned their cars around and either abandoned their plans for the day, or found an alternative route.
Not much was said. Clive shook his head as he wrenched the hydraulic pipe connector out of the fitting.
‘There,’ he said, as he ceremoniously handed it to me.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered. It seemed obvious in hindsight that leaving the snapped pipe attached would mean that the valve would be open, and free to spew oil from the tractor until no more remained.
Between us we carefully tipped three-quarters of the contents of a very large drum of oil into the back axle, and it wasn’t long before I was mobile again. We went our separate ways. The rest of my journey was relatively uneventful, and I was soon back at Ravenseat with the bales.
Shortly after this, my thoughts turned to Christmas and shopping for the festive season. I don’t believe in pointless presents, preferring to give each of the children a carefully chosen and appropriate gift. But my idea of ‘appropriate’ doesn’t always tally with everyone else’s. Geoff, our knacker man, turned up just before Christmas a couple of years ago to collect the body of Van Gogh, one of our veteran tups, who had succumbed to pneumonia. I went down to the bridge to pick up the paperwork, and to give Geoff a box of chocolates and a Christmas card.
‘How yer doin’, Geoff?’ I said. ‘And ’ow’s Donna? Looking forrard to Christmas?’
‘Aye, I’s champion. But I’s not wi’ Donna any more, I’s back wi’ Katy.’
I decided not to delve any further into his love life.
‘Anyway, there’s sum chocolates ’ere for yer.’
‘Ta varry much,’ he said, putting them on the front seat of the lorry. ‘Ah’ve got summat for thi kids, an’ all.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t ’ave,’ I said, smiling.
‘I’ll just get it, it’s in t’back of t’lorry.’
Alarm bells started ringing. What sort of Christmas present was delivered in the business end of a knacker van? I soon found out.
‘Aye, I’s gotten a dead reindeer for ’em. Just picked it up this mornin’.’
A dead reindeer! Crikey, here’s me trying to get the little ones to recite ‘Prancer, Dancer, Donner, Blitzen . . .’ and here was one of them (Vixen, maybe) laid out cold in the back of Geoff’s knacker wagon.
‘I’s thinkin’ they’d mebbe like to see it an’ saw off t’antlers . . .’
‘Errr . . . nooooo, Geoff, I don’t think so,’ I said, contemplating how that sort of traumatic memory would be associated with every Christmas-time thereafter.
Admittedly Reuben does have a collection of horns and antlers in the woodshed – which isn’t really that macabre, because there’s money to be made from selling them to stickmakers who will bend, carve and craft them into decorative handles for walking sticks. But hacking the antlers off a reindeer at Christmas just seemed wrong. This was one set I decided they could do without.
I collect most of the children’s presents throughout the course of the year, so my Christmas shopping is just about getting wrapping paper, cards and crackers: nothing too taxing. Not long after the runaway tractor incident I was asked to say a few words at a tourism conference in Harrogate, and decided this would be an ideal time to get these bits and pieces.
The day started badly, as I was already het up by having a cow to calve that morning. The cow and calf were fine; the calf was just a bit bigger than normal, but it meant I was running seriously late. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get to Harrogate but decided that I would put a smart dress on and sort out the finishing touches – hair, make-up, tights and shoes – when I got there. I took Annas with me, while Clive kept an eye on the bigger children.
‘Don’t panic,’ said Clive. ‘Stay calm.’
This was guaranteed to make me panic, and did nothing to calm me.
After slinging a variety of bags into the pickup and strapping baby Annas into the car seat, we were off. The first thing I noticed was that the footwell seemed wet. No matter, I thought, working vehicles are usually damp. No farmer ever uses a boot bag or changes into driving shoes, so the footwell was normally disgustingly wet and muddy. There were a few dog hairs, too; not surprising really as Bill the sheepdog doesn’t like travelling and only tolerates a car journey if he can curl up on the passenger seat so no wonder there was a pervading smell of wet dog. A quick spray of perfume would soon rid me of the whiff, I thought. Oh, and one of the leaf springs under the pickup’s chassis had recently broken so the whole motor rather tilted to one, the back door had become detached and was officially classed as missing in action, and a pair of faded red fluffy dice that the children had found at Tan Hill Show hung from the rear-view mirror.
I hadn’t gone far down the dale when my foot started slipping off the accelerator. Glancing down, I realized that the small pool of water that had accumulated in the footwell was actually oil, from the oil-drum behind the seat which Clive had brought to rescue the tractor. It had tipped over, spilling the remains of its contents. When I went uphill the oil disappeared under the driver’s seat and into the back, returning to the footwell when I went downhill.
‘Thank goodness I didn’t put on mi heels,’ I thought, as it was bad enough getting a foothold in my wellies. A couple of hours later I was negotiating Harrogate’s one-way system, with one eye looking at a map printout that was laid on the seat. I kept glancing towards the clock. Annas slept in her car seat, without a care in the world, her little rosebud mouth pursed, sighing occasionally and turning her head without opening her eyes. After a good while stuck in traffic and looking for a pub called The Stray, where I was supposed to take a left, I stopped to ask for directions. Apparently Harrogate had no establishment by that name, The Stray being a stretch of open parkland.
I finally pulled into the gravelled car park of the country house hotel with twenty minutes to spare. Only one parking space remained, my dilapidated pickup looking somewhat incongruous between a yellow Porsche and a brand new Range Rover. The great and good of Yorkshire were all making their way to the grand foyer, while I rummaged around gathering up bags of clothes and shoes. I had left Ravenseat on a typically frosty cold morning wearing my camouflage army surplus coat over my dress, and now, in temperatures a few degrees higher, I looked seriously overdressed. Annas started to squawk. I picked her up along with the assorted bags, and did what could have been mistaken for a war dance on a neatly manicured lawn in an attempt to wipe off the oil from my wellies.
I needn’t have worried about the impression I made in my strange outfit, because the hosts of the event were typically welcoming and uncritical.
‘Ah, Amanda . . . glad you could make it,’ said one of the organizers, vigorously shaking my hand. I shrank away, worried what state my hands were in. Rough and shovel-like is normal for farmers. I began to babble:
‘I’m sorry I’m late . . .’
He cut in: ‘Yes, yer need to change, I can see that. Follow me to t’green room. We’ve laid out some breakfast for yer, too.’
Things were looking up. I followed him up a winding back staircase away from the large crowd of people who had assembled, chatting to one another or networking, depending on how you see it. I was ushered into a small dressing room and he switched on the lights. Annas’s eyes lit up nearly as brightly as the bulbs around the Hollywood-style mirror. I squinted at my reflection, rubbed my eyes and ruffled my hair. I looked ropey, to say the least.
‘I’ll leave yer to it,’ he said. ‘There’s some breakfast in t’green room, just along t’corridor. Someone’ll come an’ get yer when it’s time for you to go to your seat.’
I thanked him, and proceeded to tidy myself up as best I could. Then, tempted by the prospect of breakfast, I went along to the green room. Annas
was getting hungry, chewing her little hand, and I was hoping there might be a yoghurt for her.
I was not disappointed: juice, fresh coffee, fruit, pastries and yoghurt. My attention was momentarily diverted from the food by a man in a suit and maroon tie sitting on a small upright sofa in the corner. I smiled and said hello, then went back to filling my plate. I plonked myself on the other end of the sofa and put my overloaded plate on a small table. Sitting Annas on my knee and tucking a serviette under her chin, I began spooning yoghurt in. She beamed, yoghurt dribbling down the sides of her mouth.
‘What a morning I’ve had,’ I said, attempting to engage with the man at the other end of the sofa.
He nodded, saying nothing. I guess it must have been my nerves kicking in because I started to rabbit on about cows calving, not having time to get changed, the children, trouble with the pickup, you name it, ending with how I found myself sitting in the green room at a tourism conference. Throughout the whole episode he uttered not a word, no outward sign of emotion. He didn’t look interested, or even disinterested. He passed me my cup of coffee from the low table.
‘Anyway,’ I said, in full spate. ‘If this whole conference thing gets too boring an’ Annas cries, then I’ll just plug her in, give ’er a good feed an’ then she’ll be fine. These things can be sooooo dull, dull, dull.’
I somewhat emphasized the ‘dull’. Annas finished the yoghurt, I polished off the pastries and then it was time to go. I was placed in the front row of the auditorium and was told that the presenter would call me onto the stage. I was slightly flustered, as I’d decided to just ad-lib, rather than write any notes. Annas was sitting on my knee and she too was fidgety, picking up on my nerves. So I plugged her in, covering her little mop of sprouting blonde hair with an oversized scarf that I’d had the sense to bring with me. Breastfeeding has only once caused me embarrassment. Usually when I’m on the farm or out and about in the fields it simply means there is a ready supply of warm milk for the baby. The folks at the auction treat it with casual indifference. It amuses me when I hear of women in towns and cities being criticized for feeding their babies in public: at the auction mart, a microcosm of traditionalism and convention, it is accepted without a second glance.