I know it's in the worst possible taste to ridicule those who are afflicted with
difficulties - but I couldn't resist relaying this story which I was told
during this week
just gone.
For many years, I have known a small time farmer but I've not seen him for a
long time -
perhaps ten years or so. I met him again on Tuesday as I was coming out of the
bank and we
paused for stimulating conversation.
First, he described at considerable length, the difficulty he'd had in starting
an old
crawler tractor his father had bought new in 1948. Then having got it started,
the clutch
blew up. That was repaired and as said tractor lurched out of his farmyard, one
of the
tracklink bolts sheared and the track most oblingingly spread itself in a neat
line down
his lane. He got it sorted in the end but they had to close the road for three
days and
the neighbours were not impressed.
The second problem involved 'taking a sample' from his friend's bull who had
been walked
round to Arthur's farm as the owner "had half an hour spare." Arthur is a bit
against
getting the vet to do AI 'donor work' on the grounds of cost, so he thought
he'd do it
himself. It is alleged that with the bull in the 'mounted' position, an
appliance is
applied to an unmentionable part of the bull's anatomy and the appliance sits
in a flask
that has to be full of warm water for reasons that are perhaps fairly obvious?
As Arthur
wasn't expecting the bull at the time it called and things were a bit adjacent
on his own
schedule for the morning, he got his sister in law to do the watering bit.
Being a lady
not well-versed in the finer points of artificial insemination (or the
gathering of the
er, ahem), she filled the flask with boiling water thinking that boiling water
would make
everything nice and sterile. Apart from collapsing the shelter in which Arthur
was seated
when the appliance was applied, the bull is now said to be signally reluctant
to surrender
itself for the application of a salve for the burns it has sustained. I
understand it
spent about a week in its field bellowing day and night.
Things were not going well.
At the end of last summer, Arthur told me (at some considerable length) how he
had
reviewed his options for spectacular income growth and decided that chickens
were the way
to go. Accordingly, he invested in two hundred pullets at the point of lay and
installed
them in a deep litter house about twenty five yards from the farmhouse. He went
out a few
evenings later for a few beers and a game of darts at The Virgins and finally
came home
the better for his trip and much relaxed. The next morning, he went to feed his
chickens
and to his horror, found they had been wiped out to a bird as a result of some
invading
foxes. As his brother is stone deaf and was in the house on his own, he was
clearly of
little help to prevent or even interrupt this massacre.
We then come to the matter of a trailer tanker he was pulling along the road
with his
tractor (not the crawler) for a friend. The tanker was more than a little
ancient and, as
Arthur said, "that axle looked a bit manky."
It was.
After about two miles, the axle snapped, the tank naturally crashed to the road
and split
open. Unfortunately it was full of ultra-liquid and very noxious, vintage pig
slurry,
which most inconveniently ran down a surface water drain and not a foul drain.
This
attracted the attention of a nearby resident who is an active member of the
Green Party
and who decided to take action for Arthur polluting the environment. Arthur's
case came up
in early February - but he wouldn't discuss the finer points.
At this rehearsal of woes and ills, I endeavoured to express my regrets in what
I hoped
sounded a convincing voice and he then continued with yet more problems, the
details of
which I won't bore you but they were essentially agricultural.
I continued expressing my regrets.
He paused briefly, looked up and said, "Can you tell me what the time is, mate?
I've got
to get the car in for an MOT. Oh, by the way, the wife died last week" - and he
was gone!
Doesn't it strike you as a little odd that 'the wife' came at the end of the
list - and in
such a throwaway fashion?
Well, maybe not.
Jonmac
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