Shock and Spore

I started this blog in September 2010 with a story, possibly even a cry for attention, about me erecting and testing an electric fence. In it I showed a distinct lack of tolerance, physical prowess, ‘nouse’ and dignity. I consider it therefore a quite massive personal failing that two and a half years later I am once again in the business of electrifying the same fence, and showing the very same character flaws that frankly I should have grown out of by now.
Have I learnt nothing?
The goats, particularly Chewbacca, seem to be able to escape at will and actually, once having done so, then panic and yearn to be locked up again, more comfortable in familiar surroundings. As such desperate times call for desperate measures and it was decided that the electric tape that currently keeps the horses in check should be lowered to protect the goats from themselves and their permanently itchy feet. The process of actually doing this was fairly straightforward; Natalie and I have become dab hands at the logistics of animal imprisonment even if the results, in practice, are somewhat patchy. The only potential problem was that Junior, still somewhat under the weather with a muscle disease, has decided to fight his physical travails with typical belligerence and springtime aggression. So while I was screwing the brackets for the electric tape into the fence posts, Junior was doing something similar to Ultime just a few yards behind me and deliberately trying to catch my eye while doing so. It was like being at a teenage party all over again while the tough, good looking bloke was showily getting off with the best looking girl.
My way of dealing with those parties was to down a tank full of cheap cider but, having moved on, I ignored the angry beast and just got on with my work. Having completed the re-electrification it was time to test the thing; the standard procedure for this is to get a piece of grass and touch the tape with it, the resulting shock will show whether it’s working or not. But you know what? I’ve had enough of this. So often have I had to go through this rigmarole over the years – I have developed a tic to prove it – that I just couldn’t face it. I came out in a cold sweat at the prospect, starting stammering with fear. The pain is shortlived but intense, the charge remember is set at a level to deter a horse, a charge far, far higher than most effete English mods can handle and as Natalie didn’t fancy testing it either we decided to just turn the thing on and see what occurred.
What occurred was flying goats. Not literally of course, but each one of the goats got one blast from the horse-charged fence, was thrown back a few yards – literally in shock – and didn’t go near the fence again, for a bit anyway. Could it be? Could it really be? That the great goat-man stand off was at an end. If so then it’s for the benefit of everyone. Natalie’s parents had made it clear that unless the goat problem was solved they would, quite rightly, not be keen to house sit the place for us in the summer. As it is, I have fly back from the family holiday in the south because our planned house sitter has balked. These goats have driven a wedge in this family which would be solved if only they’d just stay in their ample bloody field. The prospect therefore, and the early signs were encouraging, was that the new system was working. Occasionally one hears a goat that has drifted too close to the electrics but they quickly recover, let me make it clear we haven’t got goats being flung across the place like the weapons of a siege army throwing livestock at a battlement. They seem genuinely happier, though with their eyes the wrong way up (as all goat eyes are) it’s difficult to tell exactly what they’re thinking. Inscrutable creatures.
Emboldened by this rare foray into outdoor work I set about trying to repair the results of the endless rain of the last few weeks, in short de-weeding 200 square metres of gravel driveway. It used to be that we could put weed killer down, but as the hens have taken ‘free range’ to mean ‘go where the bloody hell they like’ this is no longer an option. Natalie keeps trying to convince me that we should allow most of the area to go fallow and therefore provide further grazing ground but seeing as this seems to either a, increase the chances of acquiring further semi-domesticated animals or b, deliberately letting the now re-imprisoned goats out I wasn’t having any of it. I am, I admit, a petty man, but a driveway is a driveway and seeing as we moved here because I got into feuds in the UK over the lack of acceptable neighbourly driveway etiquette, I’m not letting it go and I attacked the place with gusto wielding my hoe like a mad man, all the while Junior watching me and doing the same.
I have my standards, as Maurice’s schoolteacher will testify. Maurice at the moment ruins at least one pair of trousers a week. He can’t help himself, there are no half measures with Mo and so even a playground game of football is treated like it’s the most important match of the season and another pair of trousers gets ruined. His teacher suggested to Maurice that perhaps sewing patches over the holes rather than buying a new pair may be the way forward but Maurice, knowing my thoughts on patches demurred, “Daddy doesn’t allow patches.” He told her and once again my ranking in the local eccentricity league table rocketed. I don’t mind that at all, I’ve got a proud record of being inappropriately dressed in all four corners of the globe and if some of that rubs off on my boys then I’ve done my job I thought, as I continued maniacally with the weeding.

I’m sure it was quite a sight, a gardener dressed more for a Bank Holiday seaside riot than bucolic horticultural husbandry and in the background, Junior and Ultime continuing with their angry sex. All the while the hens fretted noisily about the place like women disturbed in the M&S Bra-Fitting department and the cats and the dogs basked in the spring sunshine, occasionally getting up to slurp noisily at a bowl of water or chase a lizard. And then every so often you’d hear a squeal followed a few seconds later by the thud of a landing goat. Ah, the sounds of summer...
The book of how all this crazy circus started is available in all good bookshops, online, in paperback, on kindle, audio download, flickbook and charades shorthand. Click this overwordy sales pitch for details.