Rainair

It had to happen! I wasn’t the only one to predict it. We had visitors this week from Scotland and Ireland, coming to spend their week’s summer holiday in France with us at Chauffour. Ryanair had magnanimously charged them for suitcases full of unnecessary summer clothes and a set of golf clubs. What it hadn’t charged them for bringing with them was the weather. Rain, rain and more rain; starting within minutes of them stepping off that plane. The golf was interspersed with laborious showers and the evenings with brisk gusts and shivering temperatures. In mid July! I found it quite refreshing after a four month drought. My mentioning, in passing, that it wasn’t like this last week and that indeed it had been positively tropical with recent outrageous heat, did little to quell their disappointment.

At last the sheep can graze during the day without the blazing heat and actually have something to graze on. The dogs can be outside rather than hiding in the cooler bedrooms all day. In fact the cooler bedrooms are also a blessing too, nights of sleep without perspiration and blistering insomnia. Sitting out on the terrace working fully clothed allows my head to clear just a little more as well, when my imagination can create more than just desert scenes.

The guests leave later today and guess what? The forecast is for summer to return. Maybe we have learned a secret. Next time we get a four month drought, import some via Rain-air.

The Nearly Olympics

You must note that this month I have had to brave the picket lines in order to deliver you this column, as you will be well aware of the fact that BBC journalists have voted for strike action. And who can blame them? An expense account of conservative MP proportions, allowing them to travel the world by first class air, staying for weeks in top hotels, possibly accepting a few back-handers if they write in the odd product name (heaven forbid, no?) and only a few hours work per week? A career of making things up instead of getting a proper job? And now, the BBC wants to sack a few of them. How could this be, they are a protected species, surely? Well good old Auntie, it’s high time it cut a few costs if it is to be continually bankrolled by us, the public, despite it rarely showing anything on TV that I am remotely interested in. I can’t remember the last time I listened to the World Service, but I don’t remember that being very interesting either, maybe I was asleep at the time.

Wasn’t it great to see a new winner at Wimbledon last month, good old what’s-his-name, you know that new bloke. Yes him, oh come on, the one from some third world eastern block country? Because that is how it ended isn’t it? The two greatest players in the sport dethroned while our nation bites its finger nails and backs our very own hero for a few days and then goes to the pub before the finish. What is wrong with our sportsmen and women? Why are they so good at nearly winning? May I suggest that, after the Olympic Games next year, London hosts another event. The NEARLY Olympics.  Our teams can line up as favourites in their respective sport alongside other less equipped nations and then compete frantically until the very last second, when they can fall over and come second.  They would then be crowned Nearly World Champions! Team GB would win every event and Prince Harry and Boris Johnson wouldn’t be able to hand out the medals fast enough.

Last year we bought a few sheep and, thanks to nature, we now have a few more, nine in total. What I failed to notice, when we collected our purchases last summer was how outrageously wild two of them were. I should have spotted the tell-tale signs, them climbing the walls trying to escape for instance, a bit of bleu-du-maine ancestry (I know about that breed!) I should have been suspicious of. However, I am very glad to say that our flock has been pretty low maintenance. Lambing time came and went without a hitch, we missed worming time and dipping time due to such dry weather, even ear-tagging time managed to pass us by unnoticed and, as yet, unenforced. But now has come shearing time. Except it hasn’t, because I cannot catch the damn things! I used to consider myself an expert in such matters, so maybe I am just getting too old, but every time I go near these two particular animals they huddle menacingly in the corner, threatening to hurdle my fences and disappear off into the sunset. And that is exactly where they would go too as, if they escaped from our contained oasis, there isn’t other fence between here and Paris. So, in best Baldric fashion, I have a cunning plan! I am considering hosting a Greenham Common re-enactment day to celebrate its 30^th anniversary. Friends, friends of friends, neighbours, neighbours of neighbours, young, old, lesbians, hippies, they are all invited to come and hold hands in our field on the same day, circling the perimeter. They can swap stories and sing songs by Billy Bragg about Tridents and Russians until, and here is the cunning part, one by one, some people will eventually get bored and go home. The circle will get tighter and tighter without the sheep noticing they are contained in the middle. At dusk, now in a 10 metre human paddock, I will tackle the sheep and clip off all their wool. What do you think? A plan so cunning, you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel?!

In a world where so many species are endangered and constantly falling into extinction, I am greatly cheered this month to see the arrival of a new species onto our planet, that of the Zonkey. Although it has no stripes, this creature is, of course, the offspring of a cross between a zebra and a donkey, born in a zoo in south east China. It is also destined to become yet another designer pet. I have no doubt that a Zonkey will soon be on the wish-list of the rich and fashionable, in the same way that a Labradoodle or a Bug (a cross between a Boston terrier and a Pug) was a few years back. But what of the designer animals of yesteryear, where are they now? Where is the Shoat for instance, that highly efficient sheep-goat cross that was going to populate our farms one day? Did it ever make it out of the lab (laboratory that is, not the Labrador)? Or the Liger, a well documented cross between a lion and tiger, and its friend the Jaguar XK8. In the interest of modern science, I feel that perhaps some of these controlled crosses should be made with humans. A super-race of Boylotts (OK, I know, stop having a go at Susan Boyle and John Prescott every month) could be bred for the army, where they would sing and annoy people to death. The Beckurray could become race of Fennis stars, swerving the ball over the net and into it alternately, at the wrong time. They could even cross-breed two whole governments to make one? Oh no, that one has been tried. What is it called again, oh yes, a shambles. Zonkey? My Ass!

Green is the new black

    When I was a youngster on the farm back home, my father never gave the time of day to anyone who wasn’t a farmer or at least in some way involved in agriculture. Also, in those days, farmers were viewed as mysterious creatures, to be at least despised and preferably avoided altogether. I am talking about the days when the “Farming Programme” was on Sunday mornings at about 6am, before the real world had got out of bed. Farming magazines were hidden away in corner shelves in newsagents if they were on sale at all.

    I am not sure when things changed, but change they did. In my years of going to and exhibiting at livestock shows throughout the country, the interest of the general public swung from horses and tacky stalls to the cattle and sheep section. In those days it was just the oohs and ahhs of children and mums looking at the pretty ones, especially the calves. In those days, the public never really had much idea of the breeds nor their assets. In those days, beef came from a butcher and so did lamb, probably New Zealand. I remember doing a TV programme with John Craven back in the late eighties where we were grooming some herd or other for sale. I wanted to explain about the reasons why this breed, (Charolais, I think they were) provided the best rump steaks and to go so far as to point out which part of the animal the beef cuts came from. He wasn’t into that. The less the public know about those things the better, was his attitude.

    My how things have changed. Now most of the sheds at the home farm are full of someones storage, old cars, furniture and small businesses. Farmers now have their uses again. But more to the point, there are queues of people wanting to come around and look at the stock, especially lambing time. They know the breeds, the sexes and often the ages of the animals they see. They also want to roam the footpaths, no longer to trample the crops but to admire them, to see where their food comes from. For much of this, we can thank BBC pundits such as Adam Henson and (to a degree) Kate Humble and her crew.

    What amazes me though, is that kids programmes and stories seem to ignore all this information. Where some adults now will know the difference between a pretty 4 horned Jacob ram and a productive mule ewe, kids are still being fed stories about all sheep having horns and drawings of black and white bulls. When did you last see a Friesian bull in real life? They don’t exist outside specialist insemination centres these days.

    So when I write children’s stories about actual farm animals, doing what animals do but in a humorous way, this is deemed (by publishers) to be boring and not-of-the-right-time. They all want to brain-wash children with paranormal romance and football stories. Somewhere, in between the child and adult, there is a gap growing. The general public (the adult portion of anyway) are looking more and more to greener issues. Isn’t it time we approached some of these at a younger level? Not just, go green, drive a hybrid, but the ins and outs of farming and food production. When will a field trip consist of something a bit more educational that a petting zoo of city farm with rare breeds and goats? Why don’t kids get taken to a large dairy or beef farm, or, heaven forbid, a slaughterhouse? When I was at school, we had a bearded little professor who taught “agricultural science” from a big grey book. Even then, I knew he was teaching rubbish. The very sad thing is, while grown-ups are at last taking a keen interest in what they eat and how it is treated, that same old professor, or his ill-advised successors are still droning on about the same rubbish. When at the Highland Show last week, I spoke to some kids who were charging around the “rare breeds” sheep lines filling in a questionnaire about Soay sheep. I have to say, they had no idea about real agriculture what-so-ever and nor did their teacher. Why not?

    Come on, if the world wants to go environmentally mad, then at least let the kids get a bit greener too. Let’s start by putting some animal books back on their shelves with a touch of reality about them.

The child within the animal

    It’s a funny direction that children’s writers arrive from. I encounter writers, often female, who quote “I have been writing since I was 8 years old…!” I have no doubt they have. Then there are the boys who played video games and progressed into the extra world of fantasy writing. Why not? It sells and sells well. I met an old guy who wrote 50 history text books before deciding to pen that one book for his grand-daughter that made him a millionaire. So an ex-farmer writing books? Well nothing new there really. In fact one or two current fashionable authors claim to be farmers, well they have some animals at least. Morpurgo for example.

    Try though I might though, I struggle to pigeonhole myself into any of these categories. You see mine was a love of animals first, then a love of words second. Yes, for years the words came from my mouth rather than from my pages but that is a fairly easy bridge to cross. Or is it? That, at least, is another topic. But back to the animals, my job, my task which I set myself as a young man, was that of some kind of animal psychologist. On leaving school I found fascination with the pedigree animal kingdom and the art of displaying live animals to win prizes. I am not talking about pets, but farm animals, cows, sheep, big f*ck-off bulls sometimes. To put an animal in front of a judge and win prizes takes two skills. Firstly, the animal needs to look right, have its best clothes on and shine. My one skill lay in that area, the ability to brush, groom, clip hair with the finest attention to detail. In fact I became such a guru at that, my videos and grooming products still live on to this day.

    The other was down to how an animal behaves itself in a show ring, and that didn’t happen by accident. I prided myself, still do in fact, to have the ability to encourage an animal to behave itself to order. I wish I could do that to humans, toddlers especially! Don’t get me wrong, I am no horse whisperer, but I learned that the secret of getting an animal to behave was to understand them, to see inside their head. To me, it seemed to come easy, I don’t know why. I am not the only one, all good stockmen have this sense, many are better at it than I. But it is a gift, something that one is born with as well a skill that develops with practice.

    So, many years later I am reusing that gift. Great children’s writers speak of using their childhood and their memories as their writing material, of course they do. But I use something else as well. You see, the mind of a young animal is just that, YOUNG. When I look back, nearly all the animals that I have worked with, lived closed to, persuaded and coaxed, they were all youngsters, children. They were my kids, with their strange persuasions, habits, tempers and tantrums. It took me years to work that out but one day it happened, and on that day, I gained my most valuable asset.

    Most of the animal characters I write about now are children wrapped up in some kind of animal skin. In every one, I see three things: an animal I once knew; a child bouncing around, sometimes trying to escape or grow; and a little bit of myself trying to control it. I have received numerous emails from grown-ups telling me that, after reading one of my books, they will never look at their animals in the same light again. That pleases me no end. They hear what I see.

    However, the skill of getting these stories into the correct form, of making the words and smells that I feel in my head, in their head, dance on the page? That is my biggest quest. But I am so so glad it is that way around and, after a year of trying, I would like to think I am mastering it now.  I get so disillusioned with so many literary critics and writers, with so much literary skill and grammar, yet with nothing exciting to say. I am sure they consider someone like myself, with so many stories to tell, as a tedious intrusion into their grammatically classic dimension. But let them keep listening, for already some people are starting to hear the child within the animal.

Dreaming is free

I had a strange childhood really. My mother now openly admits that she doesn’t like children and I suppose back then, that showed. I am not bothered about not having loving doting parents, I just got on with things then and I still do now. I was never too bothered with books either. I read the primary school stuff, Noddy and some other Blyton things. I always loved Winnie the Pooh and still do, I have my Mum to thank for that. I remember enjoying Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Zeuss from the library, it was new then. My father did read books for a while, but I think as a younger man, when I was growing up, he was too busy farming and drinking.

For all she doesn’t like children, I get my love of writing and words from my Mum. She is never without a book in her hand and reads five or six per week. It is hard to impress her with my writing, she compares everything to the very highest level and I know I am not there yet. I am often too scared to show her things I have written and likewise, she is too sceptical of it to read it anyway. She would rather read the paper end to end or a book she has read three times already, than pick up one of mine that I may have nonchalantly left on the sideboard.

Going away to boarding school at barely 11 years old, I never really took to books in my teens either. My love of music developed at an early age, when I would spend hours marvelling at the song lyrics on the back of album covers by Led Zepplin or bob Dylan. I still do that although it never dawned on me to write a few of my own, I probably would have been quite good. Sadly I realised that I couldn’t play a note and a life of rock’n’roll would be quite difficult without that. I certainly didn’t write any more things at school than was required by class-work and gave up the subject of literature as soon as it was an option. That is quite ridiculous when I look back, I probably didn’t something like woodwork instead! 

Then on leaving school at a young age, farming, girls and drinking were all I cared about. It wasn’t till I was 26 that I set out in business on my own and then the huge task of learning to read everything, write things down as well as a competent level of salesmanship set me new challenges. I did all these with ease and enjoyed those years, but they afforded me little time to think of anything else and certainly not enough time to read fiction. I used to revel in story telling though, always keen to pick up on a recent funny situation and make it my own, or retell a joke with my own characters in it. That became my best sales pitch, I would laugh my customers into buying things.

I am not quite sure when the love of writing forced its way to the top of my todo list. It was always underlying, for twenty years I have known that one day I would be a writer. Famous writers speak of the torture of seeing an empty page and it mirroring an empty head, the old writers block. For me that has never been an issue. I like to talk, I love to tell stories. It is just a simple progression on to writing them down. My English teacher once told me it is the learning what not to say, that is harder than the spoken word. The same applies to me in written form. I quite literally can write 1000 words per hour and it isn’t until I read them back that I even know what I have written.

What I have learned to do more of now is to dream and I need to stop and do it even more often. I sometimes quote that my stories write themselves, just driving my fingers to the keys without passing through my brain. This in some instances is great, but at other time it is this that holds me back. A page of writing for writing’s sake is no better than a blank page, worse in fact. Sure, the more I write, the better I get with the practice, but if I am to succeed where perhaps I am failing right now, I need to stop, think, look, listen, and sometimes possibly walk away.

So I am scribbling this blog instead, as my head clears out the words that have built up through a few days and are begging to spill over the dam. I think maybe that is what a writers blog is for? Tomorrow I can get back to writing a story that I am loving with more clarity. Loving writing it is one thing. Loving reading what I have written with complete surprise and admiration, that is where the real enjoyment lies. I hope I can always achieve that, rather than being disappointed by seeing things in print that I know are not my very best.

Shocking

A while ago we installed an electric fence system to contain our two dogs within our grounds. The device is simply a collar that gives out a warning beep when the animal gets to near to the fence and then a small electric shock if it ignores the warning. The instructions said it would take up to 31 days to train the average dog, and quite correctly, Pooper, the clever one, learned in about 10. Unfortunately it has taken Louis, the not so clever one, three and half years and he still has to wear his collar like some sort of ASBO! It is not that he is being naughty or defiant; I am quite convinced that he just forgets and wanders out into the road.

However, the device got me around to thinking about other purposes it could serve. For instance I could wear one so that it sent me a reminder when I went to near the cheese, or the pub even. I know I shouldn’t go there, but sometimes (often involving alcohol) my mind plays tricks on me and calls me to temptation. Possibly football players could wear them to stop them getting too close to other players wives or sisters. Idiot rugby players could wear them to stop them going on game shows and Andy Murray could wear one that electrocuted him every time he lost a set point at Wimbledon. The possibilities are endless. Hands up who would like to see John Prescott or Susan Boyle get a shock every time they go near a TV camera or Alan Sugar every time he says anything smug? Although the latter might be quite a drain on the batteries. Let the shocking campaign begin.

The wrong trousers

In answer to a question I raised a few months ago about the accountability of the press, I note that new rules have now been imposed in France on that subject which may affect me personally. For instance, I am no longer allowed to say ‘follow me’ on Facebook or Twitter, as this would be seen to be advertising. Also if you do follow me on Facebook (andy frazier) or Twitter (andy_the_author) I may just have to be responsible for the accuracy of my rantings, particularly if they were insulting in any way (which they are not, of course!). For those older readers, this means I may be imposed with a “super-injunction” were I to mention on the internet, say, that I happen to think that Princess Eugene’s wedding-hat was just an attention-seeking stunt or that Graham Norton is an annoying little twerp (which I wont, of course, despite both these statements being true.) On receipt of this super-injunction, I would then be able to appeal and leak contents of my insults to the press in order to gain free publicity for my latest novel while hiding in a sort of Salman Rushdie fashion on the tabloid front pages. My point here is that all this nonsense about idiots like Ryan Giggs are surely just a publicity stunt and it is as certain as a homing pigeon that both he and whatever bimbo he has been sleeping with will soon release a new book each by the time this column goes to press. It will then catapult to the top of the best-seller list and they will waltz away with a bucket load of cash, grinning from ear to ear. Do they really think we are that stupid? Well, yes they do because many of us are.

Wendy and I have been on our travels again last month, taking in the capital cities for various reasons. A visit to Cardiff found it full of Irish rugby supporters and some great craic, prior to a superb European cup final. We then progressed to Dublin to rub shoulders with the most powerful man in the world. No, not Simon Cowell, I am talking about none other than President Barack Obama. We were completely taken by surprise when Air Force One just happened to land about 10 minutes after us and we managed to escape from the airport before it was ringed in a security fence as the world’s first black president set foot on Irish soil. After claiming his roots in some small but highly publicised village nearby, he then drank the statutory pint of Guinness for the cameras before parading around the town kissing babies. I have to say it was all most inconvenient as roads were closed and public transport brought into chaos while we tried to reach our own destination, a mere Pink Floyd concert at the O2 arena. But the biggest insult of all was that a pair of talentless twits by the name of ‘Jedward’ were, for some reason, invited to ‘perform’ at a free concert in front of the Obama’s. Whatever must they have thought as these two numpties jumped around and mimed to songs, with their stupid hair, in the name of entertainment. The presidential visit may well have done some good for US-Irish relations but these two morons will have surely set Ireland’s (and Dublin’s in particular) musical reputation back 50 years. They have to be the worst thing to come out of Ireland since Gilbert O’Sullavan, or possibly the Guilford Four?

Our travels continued into Scotland, this time to Glasgow. A fine city and, despite it being colder than our fridge, we enjoyed a social gathering in the first of a series of fiftieth birthday parties that we are due to attend this year, (my own among them). Whilst visiting a local corner shop on Sauchiehall Street, one of those ridiculous situations arose that could only be scripted by the Two Ronnies. On ordering a bacon roll, the Pakistani shopkeeper asked me a question which, after three times of me requesting her to repeat, I still failed to understand as her Indian accent was so strong. Eventually, a local builder behind me in the queue translated it into Glaswegian for me but I failed to understand him either. He then repeated it to Wendy who translated it into English. Did I want red or brown sauce? Le rouge s’il vous plait, Madame, I replied in French!

            Hands up if you have tickets for the 2012 Olympics? Really? It seems that nearly half the applicants have failed as there were not enough tickets to go round. Well here is my take on that? Cheapest ticket, £190 to watch one of the early rounds of the show jumping? From £450 up to £1450 to watch the athletics finals? From a seat so far up in the stands that you wouldn’t be able to distinguish Asafa Powell from Enoch Powell? Do people really pay these prices? You would be far better watching it on TV and spending your money on a ticket to see Princess Kate’s wedding dress for a mere £17.50 per sniff!

I am not sure why but I never seem to manage to wear the right clothing at the right time. Anyone who knows me will concur that I am not exactly a fashion guru but I am not referring to style here, more to practicality. I often step off the plane in Birmingham to 50mph crosswinds without a coat, or into 26 degrees wearing two. I turned up at Hay book festival last week wearing a jacket and shoes to sweltering heat which required my panama hat, which I had left in France. So this week when I arrived back at Bergerac airport I was, for once, relieved that I had done it again; worn a thin t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, only to be greeted with rain coming down in stair-rods. Regular readers of this column will recall that here in South West France we have been officially in a drought for months and hopefully this recent rain will bring it to an end. It may be too late for some crops as many of the sunflowers failed to germinate and maize crops are stunted. My farming brother in Rock tells me that the UK price of wheat has risen by £8 per ton due to the failed wheat harvest here in France, but at least the place is becoming green again. So now I must go and mow the lawn.