Country life
Donkey work
Patrick Marnham
The renewed interest in country matters, aPParently encouraged by a programme (311 the television, has led to much excitement here in Arcadia. It all started Ill a nearby farmyard which is surrounded by a high stone wall built in massive style to support spacious cow sheds, stone archways and slate roofs. It is in pretty average condition for places like this, which are frequently owned by wealthy farmers, and it should just about see the winter through Without collapsing. 'Nature must take its course is one of our country sayings, and nature's course in the case of these superseded farmyards is a seasonal process of rain
and frost eating away at the mortar and the nails until you get a handy pile of hand
carved facing stones where there used to be a Wail. These can be broken up for hardcore for the new by-pass, and then you can nip in With the planning application.
But such things take time, and the prudent farmer never lets a natural asset go to waste. So this yeoman I mentioned, one of the old school, has been letting the yard out at twenty pounds a week. uut since the roofs leak, and there is no electricity, and the water supply has been mislaid, he can't get the best ten ants, and he finally let it to a scrap dealer Who'd been watching that telly programme and thought he might keep a few Pigs. Well, one thing led to another, the Pigs were joined by a few sheep, the Sheep by a lurcher bitch with litter, and the scrap dealer completed his collection With a dear little pony.
Now the thing about pigs is that you can put them into an old yard which has got a bit overgrown and they will clear
the ground for you. These pigs snouted around between the rusting car bodies
and tins of rat poison and pretty soon there wasn't a blade of anything for the sheep or the pony. And then the scrap business looked up for a week or so and
the next thing was that the puppies were !II over the road and the pony seemed to °e spending the day lying down in one of the sheds, and the time had come to call Inspector Mould of the RSPCA.
They do it thoroughly nowadays when the Society's inspectors go on a raid. Inspector Roberts came too, with his camera, which meant that the entire RSPCA force for fifty miles around were all homing in on this one barn. They climbed in over the back wall, and found four young pigs in fair condition but Probably unlicensed and lacking a movefluent order. The sheep were a bit less sleek and despite stern efforts had failed to knock down the locked door which
kept them from the bags of nuts which were the only thing in the yard they could eat. The pups were all right since the pony was dead and they had been keeping themselves quite fat on it.
Inspector Mould took some good pictures of them tucking in and then we were joined by PC Snagg, the strongest man in the local force, who obliged us by summoning the vet and the Diseases of Animals Inspector on his radio. 'I know who owns this lot,' said PC Snagg, 'and I'm getting a bit fed up with him. Do you know he left his wife last month? He needs a good kick up the arse. She is a lovely woman.' PC Snagg normally likes to do everything by the book,' said Inspector Mould.
Later on when the various auxiliary officials had gone, there was time for reminiscence over a large pot of tea, and. Inspector Roberts relaxed sufficiently to confess that he had been very nervous of the lurcher bitch and was in truth rather frightened of most dogs. 'We drink a lot of tea in the RSPCA,' said Inspector Mould. 'You need it after some of the sights I've seen. That wasn't the worst case by any means. The worst I've ever had was with one of those part-time television personalities. He thought he'd have a little farm, and within a year there were thirty ponies dead and twice as many sheep. It was the only time I've had to call in a bulldozer to bury the carcases. That was a smart young vet we had today wasn't it? Not like his predecessor. The old vet's wife died before he retired and he got into a terrible mess. He used to come out on call with more holes than jersey and I was told that he lost all interest in food and just ate bread. He used to buy fourteen loaves at a time. He never minded stale bread, he just cut out the grey bits.' Inspector Mould has a naturally lugubrious manner and he ended this story by saying, 'Of course his wife had caught polio on their honeymoon and was paralysed from the neck down. She hit the bottle pretty hard before the end.'
Later that day the scrap dealer was charged with allowing a carcase to remain unburied for more than twenty-four hours, cruelty and neglect of the dogs, sheep and horses, breach of the pigkeeping regulations and, PC Snagg's speciality, keeping a dog without a current licence. Inspector Mould thought that it was a sufficiently serious matter to ask the court for a life ban on keeping animals. But the great day of the raid ended, all the same, with the pigs, sheep, puppies and carcase still in the yard, where they remained for two more weeks. And when the case did come to court all charges were dropped, since the scrap dealer failed to turn up. He was already being tried for something completely different in another part of the country. So when he gets out he can have another crack at it. ,
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