My Wild Life

by Simon Cowell

  It was one of the most magical moments of my life, almost otherworldly in its beauty and symbolism. The sentimental Simon likes to think that the fox looked back in gratitude for what we had done for it, thanking us for its second chance in life and that the owl was a spiritual messenger sent to guide it. The rational Simon knows the owl was off hunting for the night and the fox was looking back to make sure I was not following.

  The satisfaction I received from Wildlife Aid was in sharp juxtaposition to the increasing fear and terror I felt in my day job. I knew I was losing control when I started shaking on the way to work in the mornings. I became terrified because I felt a complete lack of understanding. I genuinely didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing and what was expected of me. I really shouldn’t be here, I thought to myself as I sat down at my desk each morning and stared at the words and numbers scrolling on the screen in front of me.

  I stumbled through each day, terrified I would be found out, and by the time I got home I was in a stupor. I was crappy company for Jill and for my children, and I felt empty. The only relief I found was when I was with the animals, which provided some form of balance against the soullessness of the City. One offset the other and I was living in two very different worlds. I was 100 per cent committed to Wildlife Aid and I was happy to let it grow and grow while I oversaw it with the same commercially minded ethic that I had employed at work.

  I was not sure how much Jill shared my enthusiasm for the charity’s growth. In hindsight, when we moved to Randalls Farm it was probably too big for her. She never hankered after riches, recognition and status like I did. I had an ego – I still do – and without one I would not have had the drive or determination to keep moving Wildlife Aid forward. I wanted it to be the best and to do the best for the animals we took in. Jill loved the wildlife, she loved looking after the animals and she ran Wildlife Aid from the beginning, but it was all getting too big for her and I wasn’t there to listen. She probably would have liked it to stay small. I invited it in and it took over our lives.

  Things came to a head in 1993 when my health started to suffer from the stress I was under at work – not that I admitted it at the time. One morning I was on the train going to work and was, as usual, beset by the anxiety and terror that were my regular commuting companions. I felt hot and prickly and the next thing I remembered was coming round, slumped on my seat with a concerned member of South West Trains’ staff squatting down in front of me and asking me if there was any pain in my chest. I felt confused and worried, and wondered if I’d had a heart attack or a stroke. The train staff radioed ahead and when we pulled into Sutton station there was a paramedic waiting for me on the platform with a wheelchair. By that time, I had recovered enough to protest that there was nothing wrong with me but, quite rightly, they insisted that I went to get checked out. Secretly I was pleased because I was anxious to find out what the problem was.

  I was wheeled out of the station, put in an ambulance and taken to Sutton Hospital. I wasn’t in any pain but felt incredibly tired and washed out. I was strapped up to a heart monitor and checked regularly. I lay there on the starchy sheets, listening to the beep of the monitor, which was printing out a record of my vital signs. Periodically, a doctor came by, looked at the printout, took my pulse and blood pressure, and went again. When it became clear that I wasn’t suffering a heart attack I unhooked myself, got off the bed, called Jill and asked her to come and pick me up. She wanted me to stay in hospital and only reluctantly agreed to collect me after I told her that if she didn’t I would get on a bus. Before she left home, she called our GP who was waiting for me when I got back and tore me off a strip for being such an idiot.

  ‘We don’t know what’s wrong with you yet so it’s a bit premature to discharge yourself, isn’t it?’ he said sarcastically.

  Suitably admonished, I agreed to go to another hospital where I was monitored again. I was told I was suffering from ‘executive burnout’, which sounded very posh. Basically, I was having a nervous breakdown. I wasn’t even shocked because I’d seen others suffer the same fate. Deep down I knew things had not been right; the stress and anxiety had been building for several years but I had chosen to push through it.

  ‘Take six months off,’ I was advised by a consultant, which would have been funny had it not added to my stress levels. There was no way I could go to my boss and explain that I needed a six-month break on doctor’s orders so instead I took two weeks off and went back to work. There was no occupational health or assessment; I went straight back into the daily grind as if nothing had happened. I was still alive, I was still breathing and everything still worked so there was no reason to change anything. After the initial shock of the blackout wore off and I realized that I was not dying, I told myself it was a blip and carried on as normal because I didn’t know what else to do. In today’s working culture I would have been offered counselling, a stay in a clinic perhaps and the option of flexitime, just in case I sued. Back then, in less enlightened times, we were all appliances; if one of us stopped working they just got rid of us and brought in a replacement. People went quietly. They burned out and they were replaced, like light bulbs.

  With grim inevitability, six months later I had an identical episode and blacked out on the train again. I got checked over and after a brief break I went back to work a bundle of nerves, shaking periodically but enslaved in a lifestyle that I couldn’t sustain. I had one child at private school (Lou went to Freemen’s), a love of good food and a growing charity to help run.

  And, just to complicate matters, I started having an affair with one of the volunteers.

  The lady in question was having relationship difficulties, and Jill and I had drifted apart, but that wasn’t an excuse. It was totally wrong of me. My relationship with her developed and it all came to a head because I had a PA who saw me in a compromising position with her at Waterloo station. The next day my PA took me aside and explained that, due to her ethical beliefs, she could no longer work for me in the knowledge that I was cheating on my wife. I knew that I had to tell Jill. Full of guilt and remorse, I confessed.

  Jill, to her eternal credit, did not tear me apart. I had been an arse, I had betrayed her and betrayed our children. I moved out of Randalls and rented a flat nearby. We told the kids. It went as well as it could have done given the scenario. I continued my relationship with the volunteer and I also continued co-running Wildlife Aid, which obviously was based in Jill’s home. News of my indiscretions spread through the volunteer community, who were rightly loyal to Jill and it’s fair to say I was not particularly popular. But I didn’t care because, as far as I was concerned, helping the animals was my calling so each evening and weekend I would turn up and continue directing operations. Jill and I remained separated and didn’t get divorced until some years later. Life was awkward for many reasons and it got even more awkward about six months later when my tenure in the City came to an abrupt end.

  One of my clients made a mistake which I tried to rectify. I was required to do the best by my client so I worked out a deal that would reverse the damage and I took a commission from it. The whole thing went sour though and I was called in and told, ‘Simon, we are going to fire you’, as if it was a good thing. I was given a month’s notice during which time I was whisked off the trading desk and hidden in another department like a dirty secret. I hated that period and couldn’t wait to get out of there. The strange thing was that when they told me I was off I felt my shoulders lift because I knew that the pressure was gone and that I wasn’t going to feel scared any more.

  I got a six-month pay-out, which was a reasonable sum in 1994 but wasn’t reflective of twenty-three years’ service. The sad thing was that after all that time I didn’t get one call. I had spent more time with those people than I had done with my family but once you are out of the club you don’t exist. I didn’t have a plan and, as usual, had no idea what I was going to do. If necessary, I would have driven a cab. The hardest part about it all was mak
ing economies. It took me a long time to slow down my spending but the sudden surplus of spare time allowed me to devote myself fully to the animals.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Rescuers

  THE TRANSITION FROM City slicker to full-time animal rescuer was seamless. I left the City and the next day I went to work at Wildlife Aid. Towards the end of the period I like to call ‘my London life’ I had started to see myself as a wildlife rescuer, rather than a City worker, anyway. In London I eventually felt like a fish out of water: my natural habitat was Randalls Farm, which was no longer my home but was where my soul and spirit resided, and I was devoted to the cause that I had sweated blood and tears to develop.

  The day I walked out of the City I was sure that within six months I’d have the centre financed by all my wealthy City contacts. During my notice period I had started to soften them up, dropping hints about the charity and the struggle we had raising funds. It was hard for a small charity to get noticed; we didn’t have the benefit of a large back office full of support staff. I explained to anyone who would listen about the vital work we did. The numbers of patients and rescues had risen exponentially year on year; an ever increasing upward graph of misery as man trod selfishly over the natural world. Land development in the south-east had cracked on without paying much attention to the recession in the early nineties and wildlife suffered as a result. Animals were dying in their thousands on roads that continued to fill with traffic; they were choked and poisoned by litter; and driven from their habitat by diggers. The more I had seen, the more I realized that the natural world was at war with man and man was winning. I was pretty certain my impassioned polemics would melt the most ruthless commercial heart and prize open wallets. I was wrong on so many levels. Not only did none of the mean bastards donate anything, they didn’t even return my calls. The day I left was the last day I spoke to any of my former colleagues, with just three exceptions. It was like the Berlin Wall going up.

  Thankfully the general public were more understanding and appreciated what Wildlife Aid was doing. The local community was extremely supportive and most people got the message: that all wildlife deserves a second chance. While other wildlife charities choose to be species specific, Wildlife Aid welcomed all comers. If wildlife had been damaged by man’s interference, we owed it a debt as a collective species and anyone good enough to donate was repaying some of that debt. I think the public understood and although we have never been awash with money we have managed to survive and expand as costs have increased. We had volunteers who would shake tins at local events and man stalls at fairs and in shopping centres. We made appeals in local newspapers and, with more time on my hands, I would go out with Malcolm, one of our volunteers, and help with community fundraising although I preferred corporate fundraising, contacting local employers and trying to wrestle money from their social responsibility budgets.

  I was with Malcolm at a one-day event on the top of Box Hill. It was summer – peak fundraising season when all the local fairs and fetes are held. We put up a gazebo, which was lucky because it poured with rain all day and hardly anyone turned up. We made pennies; hardly enough to cover the cost of the petrol and, at the end of the day as we were packing away, a gust of wind picked up the gazebo and blew it down the steep slope of the hill.

  I turned to Malcolm.

  ‘That’s the last one I am ever doing,’ I told him.

  To be honest, that sort of fundraising, while vital, is never going to draw in big money. You are lucky to earn a few hundred pounds here and there.

  At the centre, Jill and I worked together for quite some time after we separated and I admired her for that. It was generous of her and we got on as well as we could. I dread to think what she really felt in her heart because it must have been bloody hard for her but we didn’t row. For my part I carried on blithely with all the determination of a man on a mission. My motivation was twofold. Firstly, I loved going out to an animal that I knew would die for whatever reason – trapped or ill or injured – if I couldn’t rescue it. I loved that I could change that animal’s life and give it a second chance. It was a kick. Secondly, I loved the releases, which are amazing moments that are hard to describe. I found a balance and purpose I could not have got anywhere else and became philosophical after my departure from London. Life, I figured, was a path and the path eventually led me to where I was supposed to be. I had found my destination.

  The rescuing side of the job also fed my need for adrenaline. Despite our best efforts to acquaint ourselves with the full facts, calls from the public often lacked important details and I would arrive with no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to catch something, which gave each job the element of unpredictability and excitement I craved.

  ‘There is a deer in a field with three broken legs,’ a distraught caller would say.

  I’d tear over to the location (sticking to the speed limit, of course, officer) in our specially kitted out Volvo estate, which had a CB radio and one of the earliest satnavs, which had been donated by a company called Vodacom. Often when I arrived, the animal would get up and run off on all four legs. To cover this eventuality, we asked callers if they had done a broomstick test. If it was safe enough and wouldn’t endanger the animal or the caller, had they been able to get close enough to the animal to very lightly nudge it with a broomstick? This helped bring to a conclusion many ‘emergencies’ because the animal would rouse from its torpor and run off.

  On one occasion a man called to inform us he had a golden eagle chick trapped in his garden. When I arrived it was a duckling. The confusion, I assumed, was because it was yellow.

  Even when I was lucky enough to have the full facts there was always no determining exactly what the outcome would be. There was no training; success depended on instinct, the ability to read the animal and the situation, and some quick thinking. My number-one priority then and now was the safety of the animal. Even if it took hours, I would wait patiently rather than risk danger or further injury to an animal. I discovered there was no skill in catching an animal. The skill was holding on to it. With deer I learned through bitter experience that you hold the antlers and keep them pointed away. Before I learned this, I received an antler in the head, which made a perfect puncture hole, and another in the neck, which luckily missed the major blood vessels.

  Rescuing is about understanding an animal and adapting your behaviour accordingly. I’ve had volunteers who have come out with me over the years and most do not last long. Some will blunder into a situation and make it worse, others will be too hesitant and wait too long before they make a move. Today, we classify rescues according to the situation and match volunteers to the type of action necessary. If, for example a hedgehog is caught in a football net (which is a common problem), most rescuers can deal with it but if it is a ‘red tag’ rescue – one that is dangerous – there are only four people who can attend. You get to that level through experience and time.

  Rescues have four outcomes: sometimes the animal has gone; sometimes it is a rescue release; sometimes the animal is injured and needs to go back to the hospital for treatment; and sometimes it is so badly injured the kindest thing to do is to put it to sleep (PTS, as we call it) – they are the rescues no one wants to go on. On every rescue I am absolutely focused on the animal and the space between me and it, watching what it does and how it reacts. Sometimes it is better to take a step back and wait a moment to avoid distressing the animal. Other times I have to react quickly. It is a skill and an art and, if the creature is injured, I also need to make correct decisions about treatment. Unlike pets, our patients do not arrive with owners who can tell us the animal’s medical history. We have to use detective work and experience.

  Some rescues are over quickly, others take hours. Some have stayed in my memory long after they were concluded, not always for good reasons.

  In the mid-nineties I was called to one of the most harrowing rescues I can remember. We received a call from the police, which was n
ot unusual, especially if an animal needed to be put to sleep as I had a licence to carry a .38 revolver and was sometimes called to use it. It was often the quickest and cleanest way to put an animal out of its misery. On this occasion the emergency was a deer. I was told that there had been several calls over the space of a week about a deer in distress that had been injured badly in a road accident. It had survived with leg injuries and had been seen several times on the same patch of land. Nothing could have prepared me for the sight I witnessed when I drove out to the location of the reports.

  It didn’t take me long to find the poor creature. It was in a field bordering woodland. At first it was behind a low bush and I thought it was kneeling down on its front legs – knuckling – because its haunch was above its shoulders. As I got nearer it started to walk, which was strange for an animal on its knees. When it cleared the bush I could see piles of leaves under each front knee. For a moment I was confused until it registered. The deer had no lower front legs: both must have been severed, most probably in a road accident. It was walking around on exposed bone and each bone acted like a spiked litter picker, spearing leaves as it trod over them. God only knows how the wretched thing survived and what pain it must have suffered but it was still trying to eat grass. There was only one thing I could do in that situation. I got the gun out as fast as I could and killed it. The sight of it haunted me for days each time I closed my eyes.

  Malcolm and another volunteer, John, would often come on rescues. Both were characters, as is everyone involved in animal rescue I have met over the years. The busiest times are from May to the end of August when there is a continual stream of emergency call-outs and patients arriving at the centre. December and January are quiet but often the most dramatic rescues occur in these months because it is dark, the weather can be poor and usually the rescues involve an adult animal.