‘Heeland Coos’ – something I loved to say to anyone who’d not have a clue and then watch them join the lengthy conversation until finally asking me “sorry, what are we talking about?”
The chagrin with which my neighbours once looked upon my half dozen Highlands I chose to breed turned, over the years, into displeasure, critique and finally insult.
“When are you going to get rid of them goats?” blurted the very old bloke who delivered water in his even older Dodge truck each February.
“And those,” said a neighbour too experienced for me ever to disrespect, “When are you selling them bloody hairy things wot wreck my fences?”
One night I had come home from a job interview, dressed to the eights in crisp white shirt, burgundy tie, silver cufflinks and boots (thus, not the nines) when Amy — the matriarch of my Scottish rabble — decided to drop young Harvey, just as it began to rain and just on dark.
And, also just on the edge of the fence, on a slope, so that the newborn slid in the mud down on to the side on which I stood in my faux Savile Row suit.
All while a gang of four pairs of three-foot horns added up to (… carry the 1…) eight horns in a half circle.
It wasn’t a pleasant next 10 minutes, in which the reader’s imagination can go as wild as these four girls did, but please include an afterbirth-stained shirt, a mud-covered jacket, drenched everything else and some stupid notion that a bale of hay was going to help.
The cufflinks survived, the calf survived and — given that no-one witnessed the event — so did my fictional account of farming brilliance.
By the next weekend the sun was out, and the kids were running through the green swards with their giggles and snake-evasion hand claps; and it was time to ring this little fella so we could grow a sturdy steer.
Getting into the wonky former chook shed, walled in on all four sides and attached to an antique sheep yard, without getting gored took several goes after we had coaxed calf and mother to within proximity.
Why all six of us needed to be involved was no mystery: we wanted a child to hold down one leg each.
But how all six of us scrambled into the shed twice sans calf was testimony to how we wrote our own comedy.
On the third attempt we did a head count: still six, with one pinned-down redhead swapped for a blon... oh dear. My daughter had got locked out.
She still talks of it to this day and will include it in my eulogy I have no doubt, and she is completely justified.
Poor girl ended up hiding under the old sheep ramp with her long hair pulled over her face to camouflage it among the dry grass from yesteryear, while all half tonne of Amy did laps of the building roaring at all of us.
Roaring — not mooing.
Inside we had young Harvey pinned down.
“He’s so gorgeous,” said my wife, who then bent down to kiss the teddy bear’s head.
I attempted the same and copped a headbutt that threw me backwards.
After a reinforced pinning, I enjoyed not a jot of the ultimate payback as the green rubber fruit loop ring was clamped on in a blink.
“You counted two, dear?”
“I did.”
Then the youngest of the boys lost his hold and Harvey got as near as he could to a quid pro quo, hoofing me clean between my legs.
Amy still roared, daughter sat motionless under the ramp and the rest of them laughed as the calf went pouncing out the door with all of them in tow, now in slow motion as the credits rolled.
I was still on my side, clutching both head and nether regi... well, actually, clutching them doesn’t help, truth be told, ladies.
We ate him a year later. Peppercorn sauce and a side of fava beans.
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