Seriously though, I do love local newspapers, puns and cows.
I don’t know where my love of cows started. I like to walk, which means you often bump into an odd cow. They are often curious and will come up to a fence and give you a sniff. My mum collected cow creamers, which are milk jugs in the shape of a cow. They are now in my loft until I take my sister on the antiques roadshow (which, if there is an afterlife, will make my parents laugh so hard earthquake prone places should take precautions). This never made sense to me, as she was not so fond of cows. When I was a child, we would walk through fields of cows, with her side stepping, clinging onto my dad and muttering about how they were all going to murder us. We could never go camping in France because the cows would ‘murder us in our beds.’ She probably got this piece of information from a local news story. I used to wonder if she had been a mean dairy farmer in a former life and her fear of cows was because there had been a heard that genuinely wanted to murder her. I thought that the cow creamer collection was, possibly, a way of atoning for her past-life crimes against cows. I was quite a fearful child and while I laughed (encouraged by my Dad) at Mum’s cow related fears I also thought that they were so much bigger than us and if they decided to revolt we wouldn’t stand a chance.
Well, I believe the revolution has begun.
I’ve been watching out for stories about cows in the local papers and yesterday, Leistershire Live reported one that, I’m sure, marks the start of the revomootion.
This is their version of the story.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/cow-loose-peers-windows-heads-3804898?
utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar
My version, fills in some of the gaps and gets into the mind of our heroine, who we will call Daisy. Actually, I’ve looked at the picture again and she definitely isn’t a Daisy. That’s such a stereotypical name for a cow. She is actually called Audrey.
Yesterday morning Audrey had been to the milking parlour.
“Oh, the indignity,” she said, as the farmer cleaned her udders and pushed the automatic milkers onto her teats.
Geraldine, standing next to her, spouted the usual rubbish.
“Now, now, Audrey. You know it’s our duty. These poor humans can’t make their own milk. Their babies would die without us. Giles loves us. It’s the least we can do, to let him have some of our milk.”
Audrey shifts uncomfortably. She thinks that she’ll never get used to this feeling.
“But it hurts,” she protests.
“Buck up girl. It doesn’t last long. Just grin and bear it for another four minutes and we’ll be out in the field chewing the cud. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the birds are nesting. We get all that and food in return for ten minutes of this a day.”
Pollyanna was always the most upbeat cow in the heard.
Audrey knew there was no point in continuing to protest. The rest of the girls had bought the lie. They had a bovine version of stock home syndrome.
When they were out in the field Audrey thought more about the situation. The sun was shining but it was quite cold and muddy. Oh, it was so muddy. It had hardly stopped raining for the last three months and they had been out there in that. The ground was all churned up and it was hard to keep your footing. It’s no fun when each of your four legs slip a different way. She took herself off to the edge of the field to think some more. She watched the robin hop from branch to branch singing about worms and eternal freedom. He landed on a bendy blackthorn branch that was just coming into bud. The branch bounced up and down and as Audrey watched it she thought it was pointing to something.
Yes. She was right. A gap. There was a gap in the hedge.
She looked back to check that none of the girls were watching her. She couldn’t risk any of them snitching on her. She had a plan.
Audrey knew exactly where she needed to go. She had overheard humans walking by her field talking about going to Tesco. Tesco, in Audrey’s mind, sounded like heaven: somewhere warm, light, full of food. Especially chocolate. Sometimes a human had sneaked her a square of chocolate and she liked it.
Off she went, down the track and along the footpath until she got there. She was amazed that she had managed to get all the way there unseen. She felt invincible. Pressing her nose up against the window of the store she wondered how to get in.
What did she see? Milk. Rows and rows of milk. Milk in bottles. Milk in cartons. Milk flavoured with coffee or bananas or strawberry.
It was then she realised that she wasn’t invincible or invisible. She had been seen and they’d sent the police to come and get her.
“Giles will be cross,” she thought, “but wait ‘til I tell the girls that they’ve got enough milk to feed their babies. We can just stop. They can get their milk from Tesco.”
She knew Tesco was heaven.
We can’t pretend we haven’t been warned. You only have to look at Audrey’s face to know that a revolution is coming. Thank to Leicestershire Live for the best story of the year.
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