Prisoner, cell block pig

Don’t you hate it when you’re having a conversation and the other person drops a bombshell, and they know it’s a bombshell but they act as though they were doing nothing more innocuous than commenting on the weather, or worse, when they sneak it in with a whole load of other stuff so you have to replay it in your mind to see if they actually said what you think they said?

“Yes, of course we’ll have to go shopping at the weekend,” Debbie said, hand on hip standing in the kitchen. “Also got to drench the sheep this week – have we got drench or do we need to buy some? I can’t remember. What book are you reading, I saw you reading something new? You know you can’t go back to London, the farm’s too big for me to do it on my own now. What do you want for dinner?”

She turned away and started fumbling with some washing-up. She probably hadn’t stopped talking, but I had stopped listening. I had to, I couldn’t listen and rewind at the same time.

I rewound, and in my mind I heard her voice again, “You know you can’t go back to London, the farm’s too big for me to do it on my own now.”

I felt poleaxed. “Are you serious?” I said.

She turned back, her face a question.

“About London,” I said. “I can’t go back?”

She looked sad. “I’m sorry, there’re too many animals and I’m just not strong enough to do them on my own.”

I go to London—had been going to London—about half a dozen times a year, just for a day or two at a time to see family and catch-up. I like the contrast, plus it gives me a chance to dress up smart with shoes and everything, and talk city speak about business.

“How’s business?” I’d say, and promptly switch off and start thinking about home, because that’s the other thing about London, it makes me miss home and realise all over again how lucky I am. Debbie knows this.

“You can still miss the place and me while you’re here,” she said.

“No I can’t. How can anyone miss something while they’re doing it?”

She shook her head. “You’re such a man.”

I wandered off, determined to be anything but a man. I’d be a child; I wanted to be a child! I felt a tantrum coming on, a really big one followed by a really long sulk.

I could never leave the farm again. Never. I was trapped like a prisoner! A prisoner on my own land. The animals weren’t my friends, they were fellow inmates!

I went upstairs and grabbed a pair of work jeans and a magic marker and set about drawing arrows down the legs, but stopped after the first one and stood staring out of the bedroom window instead.

No more London. I’d never see my mum again, or my brother, or anyone. I loved my pigs and the animals, but the thought of seeing only them for the rest of my life filled me with a sense of loneliness so profound it felt like another being in the room.

Then the being spoke, and I nearly jumped out of my skin until I realised Debbie had followed me in.

“So, have you reached the point where you’re never going to see another living sole as long as you live, yet?”

I didn’t answer.

“We just need to put some systems in place so it’s a little easier for me to do on my own,” she said. “It wouldn’t take much, and then you can go back to London again.”

I nodded, but the childish tantrum hadn’t finished and I wanted to stamp my foot and yell, but I want to go now!

One amazingly lucky piglet

Some piggy mothers are just clumsy. I see them kick and tread and lay on their young, not out of spite, but just because they’re in the way, as though they haven’t quite tuned into their babies. All the outer signs of mothering are there, it’s the other ones that are missing, the ones that are more difficult to describe but can pretty much all be filled under the heading, ‘bonding’. They love them, but they don’t bond with them.

Luckily Mother Nature has done a bit of forward planning in this department and built piglets like Tonka Toys. Once the babies are a few days old, they’re solid little bruisers and it’s rare to have problems, which probably means when you do get a problem it’s much more of a shock.

I found a piglet lying dead in the straw.

Mother and siblings were at the other side of the pen munching the dinner I’d just tossed in for them when I noticed the little black body. He was at the bottom of a furrow shaped like mum and the assumption was he hadn’t got out of the way quick enough when she’d lain down.

Whenever anything dies it’s always the same sudden feeling and I hate it; it’s like my entire insides are yanked out leaving a vast Tardis-like expanse that’s icy cold. It’s the worst feeling.

I climbed over the gate. There was little point in rushing. I could see his head squashed and his tongue sticking out between tiny pin teeth. I picked him up. He was warm, but then he would have been with a 40 stone mum lying on top of him.

I climbed back out and sank down next to a straw bale, cuddling him to my chest and telling him I was sorry. I told him I wished I could have been there to help him, and I stroked him and held him and stroked him some more, and brushed his little face with my finger and touched his little tongue, and as I did he opened his eyes and looked at me.

Okay, first reaction was to throw him on the floor, which was stupid but it was like having a ghost wink at you. When I recovered I said, “Blyme boy, are you still alive?” which was probably just as idiotic.

I kept cuddling him trying not to laugh so he wouldn’t bounce up and down on my chest. Bit by bit I could feel him recovering, and marvelled at how tough these little guys really are. I thought back to the mum shaped dent in the straw and figured the way the straw had been compacted she must have been there for at least half an hour.

He could only have been minutes away from dying, possibly less. For me to come along right at that moment, with the feed so that mum got up, was so lucky.

There were no broken bones, but the obvious worry was brain damage from oxygen starvation.

I tried to think of what I should be looking for, but without any understanding or training I had no idea, so I just tried to look for anything unusual. First I grabbed a can of antiseptic purple spray from the side and put a line down his back so I could pick him out, then put him on the floor.

Mum was back lying on her side with all her piglets plugged in. He marched over and hooked straight onto a teat. He seemed fine.

Mum groaned and kicked her feet out, but none of them detached. Then, little by little, the babies began drifting off to sleep still plugged in. The last one to drop off was the one with the line down his back, without which I’d never have been able to pick him out.

Published in The North Devon Devon Journal in my weekly column.

Cuddling up with the General

It was that early in the morning it was still dark. I crouched down on all fours and peered into the General’s house. I could just make him out laying sprawled on one of his gigantic sides taking up half the pig ark, and beside him the shapes of three other pigs.

My first thought was to wake the lazy pigs up, bang on the tin roof and yell that I had breakfast and it was a lovely morning and what on earth were they still doing in bed? But I didn’t. I did the opposite. Without thinking, I crept in.

I crawled through the straw careful to avoid bumping into the sleeping group until I was behind the General. Then I lay down next to him, put him arm over his shoulder, and spooned into a cuddle behind him.

It was warm and the air smelled of fresh straw and that kind of musky scent of pig. It’s not unpleasant. He wriggled a bit as he got used to my body behind him, and then fell still.
I felt small in that way you sometimes feel small when you look up at the stars on a really clear, really dark night. Small not because it seems so big, but small because you feel so close and kind of surrounded. Small in the comforted sense of the word.

I guess I did feel comforted. Since my first pig Kylie died, I’d become really good mates with the General. We kind of hung out together, nothing excessive, just when I went down to feed I’d spend a bit of time with him. I liked to tell him what’s going on with everyone on the farm, and I swear he likes to keep up with the gossip.

Laying there listening to the General and the three snore and shuffle about in their sleep, it was like I was a kid again and having a sleep-over with my friends. I thought of the last sleep-over I had before reaching the age where it became un-cool, probably about nine or ten. I thought about camping trips with the school. I thought about—wooh! One of the pigs let out the most violent wind that smelled like it had been trapped for some considerable time in the folds of Satan’s underpants. Yep, just like camping with the school.

Outside it was beginning to get light. I’d come down early to feed so I could get on with the day. I stroked the General’s side. I had loads to do, loads to be getting on with. I stoked him some more. I should get up. I let my eyes slip closed. My last thought before I drifted off to sleep was that I really, really shouldn’t have closed my eyes.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I grabbed my head and ducked.

“Simon!” Debbie yelled.

Confused. Banging. Lots of noise, keep down - hang on, where am I—oh.

I opened my eyes. The pigs had gone. I was alone in the ark. In the doorway Debbie stood staring in. She didn’t look happy. I struggled up onto my knees and smiled. “Morning,” I said.

She rolled her eyes and looked like she wished she’d had the presence of mind to bring a rolling pin. “I’ve been worried sick,” she said.

Beside her the General poked his head around the opening. I gave him a look like, you could have woken me!

“And you needn’t look so pleased with yourself,” she told him, swiping him on the neck. He made a Mm sound and wandered off. Looking back she said to me, “you left a sack of feed outside. Between the four of them they’ve scoffed nearly all of it. Simon, it’s nine o’clock!”

I rolled back into the straw. “I can explain,” I said.

Two cooking books to review

Just received two stunning cooking books to review for magazines, but it seems churlish not to yell about them a little bit here first!An exciting cookbook from one of Britain's landmark meat-free restaurants http://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Friends-Modern-vegetarian-cooking/dp/1906821542/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287408191&sr=1-1

and,

a beautiful, arty, coffee table cookbook http://www.diningcity.nl/toscanini/en/index.php

As soon as i know when the reviews are to be published, I'll put up here the magazines and newspapers they'll be in.

Rant without a cause

I like my life, and sometimes that’s a problem. I want to rant, I’m a man for God’s sake! Men rant and shout and yell at the injustices of their life. I want to be one of those. Not all the time, but every now and then. Like now.

I want to stand on my own private soap box and yell out at the world that it’s not bloody fair!

Trouble is I’ve got a really good life and I’m ever so happy. But it doesn’t stop me wanting to rant! I’d scream at the football, only I don’t like football.

So I yell at the pigs – not AT the pigs, at the pigs; they’re my audience, not the subject matter. I yell and they gather around me and I tell them that, “It’s not fair!”

Of course it’s all rubbish. There’s nothing in my life that’s unfair at all. I’m the luckiest person I know. But that hardly seems relevant.

“It’s not fair!” I yell.

Pigs are a great audience. They don’t care how weak the content of your rant as long as it’s passionate. They do like a passionate speech.

When I get going I’m like a cross between Michael Macintyre and Winston Churchill, skipping round the pig pen shouting, “We’ll fight them on the beaches, Come On…”

I can see the beach from here, though quite who I’d fight on Lynmouth beach in the middle of winter I haven’t quite worked out. It’s not renowned for invading marauders, though there was talk once of setting up a ferry service across from Wales.

I’m a ranter without a cause. A freelance ranter. If my life was horrible, I’d be brilliant. People would flock from near and wide to hear me moan. The fact that I’m happy is a loss and a tragedy!

“It’s not fair,” I yell again. I’m loosing my audience. One of the pigs has wandered off to eat a tree, and the others are weighing up whether to watch him or stick with my, It’s Not Fair speech. They wander off.

So I’m alone. That’s okay. A man can rant alone, in fact that’s when we’re at our best. I might even be able to work that into the speech.

But I don’t. Truth is a rant is like a magic trick, there’s no point to it if there’s nobody to watch you. I stuff my hands into my pockets, hunch my shoulders and wander over to join the throng surrounding the tree munching pig. I really need to get out more.

Feeling for Edwina

Autumn will forever more be known as the Masterchef time of year. There's Masterchef Australia with its maddeningly catchy theme tune, Masterchef the Professionals, Masterchef for kids - we're inches away from Masterchef for Poochy Pets.

Then suddenly from the heat of the complicated kitchen, comes the prospect of 'Egg Week'. A whole week dedicated to eggs. Seven days to celebrate the beautiful simplicity of this little package of gorgeousness, all neat and tidy in a delicate shell.

Scrambled, boiled, poached, fried, scotch eggs, egg mayonnaise...

With near fifty free range chickens to my name, I should be jumping for joy at the egglicious prospects, for there is no better way to start the day and we should all be going to work on an egg. And here lies the problem.

I can't help thinking of Edwina Curry. Eggs make me think of Edwina Curry.

Here's a lady who entered politics, we would like to think, to make a difference and do something special, and yet we remember her for claiming that eggs give you salmonella poisoning and could wipe out the UK in a single Sunday morning fry-up, and then shagging the greyest man in the country.

I wonder if Edwina will enjoy a little egg this week?

Meet the goats