What Sweet Contentment Doth the Patty-Man Find?
I returned home an hour ago, on a beautifully balmy Cumbrian spring evening, to find a hideously mephitic smell assaulting my senses as soon as I stepped through the door. Upstairs I found evening sunshine streaming through the windows - outside, in the background, a thunderously gorgeous sunset such as only the north-western world can provide was illuminating southern Scotland, the Solway Firth and the far-distant coast of Northern Ireland; in the foreground, a muckspreader driven by Sheep-Fighting Man sailed past my windows, churning out chickenshit au nature onto his fields right up to the cottage wall. Slowly, he turned in an arc at the bottom of the field. And drove back, ordure flying as before.
The weekend starts here.
The weekend starts here.
posted by Nick at 7:51 pm
4 Comments:
Ah yes, very important event in the agricultural calendar is muck spreading. Many years ago, during the school holidays, I worked on a farm in deepest Worcestershire. It was here as a townie that I was introduced to the little known world of the country yokel. Asking Old Charlie (he of the lopsided face caused it was said by his parents smacking his face instead of his arse when he was but a lad because they couldn’t tell the difference) how long he had worked on the farm he replied Oi bin ‘ere twenty foive year this muck spredin. Ray.
Ray, I'm grateful - nothing like a bit of local colour & even mor local odour . . . though I don't think that accent's quite the same up here . . .
For it is written in the commandments of the Cumbrian Farming Brethren
"Verily upon the Bank Holiday shalt thou spread muck and ordure for only then shall the nesh townie know that the countryside is a place of toil and travail not merely put there so he can stroll amongst green pastures and gawp at the strange practices of the natives...."
Dr John - 'Nesh'? You're going to have to translate . . . As to 'strange practices of the natives', you'd better not. So few farmers, so many sheep . . .
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