With all my might I lifted the Cow right up into the field from which it had come....

Do you know one of the things that I relish most about giving up my last job to run a small B&B?

NO TRAVELLING TO WORK.

I wake up, go down stairs and that's it.    I'm there.  On goes the kettle and were off! So, so simple and, of course, really economical.

For 30 years I hauled myself out of bed at some ungodly hour, went out into often treacherously poor weather, in the cold dark night to take sometimes a journey of an hour and a half only to do the whole thing in reverse at the end of the shift. By the way when I say 'in reverse' I don't mean that I drove the 90 miles home backwards, in reverse gear, No I mean reverse as in back the way I'd come in the morning.....



Tomorrow morning Alison is doing just that, actually not driving too far but travelling early, leaving at 04:45hrs to drive to Norwich to catch a train to Stratford (London) to then take the tube to the Docklands for a meeting at 08:30hrs. That is the downside of living in such a tranquil land that time forgot....

Don't misunderstand me, at the time I loved it, Out on the road, never knowing what adventure or challenge I was going to come up against next. There was a buzz, out there I was my own boss (until I got to work of course). Nowadays I'm a little, OK, a lot older and my priorities are different, more sedentary, less challenging. The most challenge I get is trying to find my damned spectacles!

But I did enjoy those journeys and many of them were indeed eventful and on occasions tragic too. That is tragic for the poor wild life that seemed to dive at my car with wild abandonment often resulting in nothing but death. I think the death toll is something like many doves, even more pigeons, several Rabbits, Pheasants, a deer, 1 Squirrel, a Blue Tit, a Robin and very, very sadly a cat.
Whilst I know that this makes me appear a very bad driver, you do need to put it into context. I spent a good decade driving across the Ashdown Forest, which many of you will know is the home of Winnie the Pooh (one of the few beings that I hadn't run down.... Ooooh, can you imagine the hoo-har if I'd run him over).
The Ashdown forest is teeming with wildlife and the vast majority of these 'incidents' occurred  there.
There was one particularly infamous trip, it was very early in the morning and the rabbits were playing the same game as the pigeons and doves do. This involves standing absolutely still on the side of the road, a grey Rabbit or Pigeon on a grey tarmac on a grey twilight morning, not even wearing day-glo jackets would you believe! Then, without warning and as if they owned the forest, voom they shoot across the road right under your wheels. The first you are aware is this blur from the kerb side quickly followed by a small bump as the front wheel bounds over the thing, quickly and rather ominously followed by the second bump as the back wheels finish the job.
Still reeling from this shock and literally within 500yards of it, just as I was gathering my thoughts a large Roe Deer belts out from the passenger side of the road, I immediately swerved towards the side he had just come from in an attempt to get behind him and not in his path. As I hit the muddy road-side he decided to stop running leaving me the choice of hitting a tree or a Deer. The Deer lost.
BANG! He bounced to the opposite side of the road and I came to a halt a few yards further on. I looked at the deer, it was standing again but it had a large gash on its haunch. I made a note of the location and when I got to work I called the police who said they would send a warden out to 'deal with it'. Mmmm, Venison in the canteen down the Nick tomorrow, I thought.
When I got to work I realised that the animal had severely damaged the wing of the car and a colleague of mine went out to see the damage for himself. As I was looking at the piteous looking wing of the car he walked around the front and said "Oh man! Where the **** were you driving? On the set of Bambi?" I went around to the front of the car and not only had I killed Thumper and wounded Bambi  but, it appears I had taken out one of the Blue birds for firmly wedged in my front grill, wings fully open as if in mid flight, was a Blue Tit. It hadn't stood a chance.


I feel that I should balance the above incident and record some of the animals that I have saved the life of. For instance one day at the crack of dawn  just outside Tonbridge in Kent I happen to come upon a flock of sheep all revved up with no place to go.Covering the whole width of the road, as sheep do, there must have been about 20 of them, all bleating their little socks off. The vast chasm left by a large 5 bar gate suggested the escape route and this was supported by the several dozen sheep remaining in the field in complete ignorance re; the success of the escape committee.
Just as I was pondering what to do another poor sod arrived at the scene from the opposite carriageway. We got out of our vehicles and approached each other, the sheep separating like the Red Sea as we did so. After a short discussion and realising that there was no obvious Farm building in site we decided with a rather foolish naivety that we would heard them back into the field after all how hard could it be?
VERY HARD, Shep made it look so easy! A quick "come-By", a whistle and a pant and it was all done. Well it was laughable as you went for a biggish group, arms held high and kindly asking them to"go on girls" (I don't know if they were Ewes or not but it seemed the most appropriate gender at the time), "go on girls" I'd shout, but they didn't go on at all. No two went west, three East and the other disappeared behind me, it was as if you had dropped a dozen bouncy balls and they were all flying off at random. Thinking back now it must have been great to watch and I wonder if some mile away across a field there was a farmer with his feet warming in the Aga chortling away whilst looking through his field glasses at our buffoonish attempts to reinstate the sheep with their field. I think we finally managed it when two other drivers joined us and with the last sheep in to the field it was with great relief that we seured the gate.

No such shenanigans here at the Old Bakery B&B, by an equivalent time here I would still be fast asleep in the distant land of Nod!

This was not the only farm animal that I have rescued, oh no! A few years later on a small lane just a mile from my old Village I had to slam on the brakes having come around a sharp corner only to be presented with a very young calf in the middle of the road. Now there was a big embankment on one side, about 15 foot high, but a fairly gentle slope and at the top was a Moo Cow. I don't know much about sheep but I know even less about Cows, however I knew it was a Moo Cow because it was Mooing .....   A lot. To me this looked like it was mummy and I could see the disturbance on the ground where the calf must have fallen through the hedge and slipped down to the road.
This time I knew where the Farm was, or at least a farm, and so I drove the mile back to it and knocked on the door.  

Nothing.

It was 6am, all farmers are up by then, I know this as a matter of fact and as a keen listener to The Archers, I knocked again.

Nothing.

The milking sheds were nearby but there was absolutely no activity going on there and being very concious of the dangerous position that the calf was in I decided to try to get it back to the field my self and set off back down the road.

When I got there mummy was Mooing for England and the Calf was making a poor copy of the same noise. I checked the gate but it was locked so then I started to contemplate getting the animal back into the field the same way it had come out, up the embankment. It looked do-able.
Again, niave.

It was after all a very small calf. So I tried the trusty ye-ha with a slap to its Rump. Clearly it had never seen a Wild West film as it took no notice at all. So then I gave it a push in the right direction and it thanked me with a kick to the shin.
Now I was getting late for work and so desperate measures were needed. I had parked my car back down the road just prior to the bend so any other car would not smash into either of us.
Then I placed my left arm under its neck and my right arm hugged, and I'm not too proud to admit this, around its bottom. I then heaved with all my might and we started the ascent of the embankment. It must have looked very.... intimate and we were about half way there when it dawned on me that cows are not the cleanest of beasts and I was dressed in my stupid work supplied brass buttoned blazer. I took a glance at my right arm, it was not a pretty sight.

The embankment steepened at the top and things came to a standstill then. There we were so close and yet so far, mum mooing and me and the calf on the edge of slipping all the way back down again.
Everything was very precarious to say the least.

Meanwhile back to the future at 6am I'd normally be asleep in the Old Bakery probably not getting up for another hour.....

So as I stood there on the cusp of failure I was suddenly spurred on by an horrific thought, what if the farmer came around that corner now? What would he think was happening? GOD, he might think I was rustling and call the police or even shoot me!

All of a sudden I found a new superhuman strength and with all my might I lifted the Cow right up into the field from which it had come where it then stumbled through the hole and mother and baby were reunited.

Having read this back several times I could quite understand you accusing me of making this up. Why would I go to such trouble, it wasn't my problem, I could have been hurt. All very true and do you know what I cannot answer that. Only to say that I must have had a pathological compulsion over which I had no control where I had to solve the problem before I could leave the scene.
In hind-sight I now see that I was simply NUTS!

NEXT BLOG...... Tales from the Cesspit......








3,197