 Have you ever thought about designing book covers for ewes? A steamy romance with Fabio the ram standing on a windswept hilltop, his chest fleece poking provocatively from his unbuttoned shirt…
Well, if you did – and I suspect that a few of you might be doing so now – there’s one essential element you’d have to include – scratch and sniff. Because, for sheep, lurve isn’t in the eye of the beholder, it’s in the nose.
Or so we thought.
It’s tupping time on the smallholding and this year we’ve retired three of our older ewes and brought in some new blood. Our ram, Harmon, who we keep in a separate paddock until he’s needed, has been getting ready for the last couple of months, pacing the fence line, curling his lip back in anticipation, and … greasing up.
Greasing is a ram thing. They start to produce a musky grease in September. It stinks. It breaks out as liquid beads on his head, chest and armpits. And the closer the breeding season comes, the more he produces. By October you can smell him from twenty feet away. If you need to lift him – which you might for foot trimming – you try to avoid placing your hands anywhere near his armpits or they will come out slicked in grease.
But the ewes go crazy for it. Forget tall, dark and handsome. Short, greasy and smelly does it every time.
So, two weeks ago we raddled our ram – which is sheep talk for applying liberal amounts of coloured wax to his chest so that any ewe he mates with will have a coloured patch of fleece on her rear end. It makes it easy to see who’s been covered and calculate the date they should lamb. And to make sure every ewe’s in lamb you change the raddle colour every 14 days. Ewes cycle every 16-17 days and only go to the ram on the days they’re in season so a ewe with a multicoloured rear end is a problem – something ain’t working. Or the grease is working too well:)
Anyway, freshly raddled with L’Oreal’s finest, Harmon burst out of the gate. He chased, he head-butted, he curled his top lip back, he sniffed. He spent two whirlwind days with our last remaining older ewe. Then nothing.
One of the new ewes came into season and pursued him all over the field. She head-butted him. She threw herself at him. But he chased her off. He didn’t want anything to do with her.
Which is when we started to panic. All the new ewes were black-faced. The old ewes had been white-faced. Except one – Black Ewe. She’d lambed successfully with our previous ram but had spent two years with Harmon without mating once. We’d assumed the problem was with her and had even put her on fertility treatment. But now we began to wonder. Did Harmon – a black-faced Suffolk – have a problem with black-faced ewes?
Had #racefail struck our paddock?
Things did not look good. For spring lambs or for Harmon. A ram who wouldn’t touch 80% of our flock was not a ram with a bright future. And it was getting late to bring on a replacement.
So… time to think creatively. Could we whiten the sheep? Maybe dust their faces with flour? But was that racist? Should we sit Harmon down and have a serious talk with him?
We dithered for four days, putting questions on animal bulletin boards. Had anyone encountered anything similar? No one replied. I had the flour ready. Then… the next black-headed ewe came into season and Harmon reacted immediately. He chased her everywhere. This time it was the ewe that didn’t want anything to do with him. Not after the way you treated my sister!
For one whole day she ran and he chased. Both were out of breath, both needed long lie-downs. Then the next morning we awoke to find the two of them inseparable and a copious amount of purple dye.
He’s since wined, dined, and tupped another of our new ewes so maybe he’s got over his problem. The big test will be next week when the first ewe comes back into season. Maybe he’s just not that into her?
Next week: Why wives should raddle their husbands, by Elin Nordegren
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I saw this via Gregory Frost and www.winedater.co.uk and had to share. It's an extract from the book Man Walks into a Pub by Pete Brown and is an account of the The Great Beer Flood of London, 1814.
In 1760 Sam Whitbread made his already impressive Chiswell Street Brewery even more fantastic with the addition of the Porter Tun room. The room was a feat in itself, with tourist guides at the time marvelling, 'the unsupported roof span… is exceeded in its majestic size only by that of Westminster Hall'. And it was dominated by a giant beer vat.
The gauntlet had been thrown down. Proving that phallic substitutes among powerful men predate the arrival of bright red sports cars, rival brewer Henry Thrale built a new porter vat and celebrated its completion by having a hundred people sit down to dinner inside it. 'Right then, you b@stard,' thought the Meux brewery, who went off and built one sixty feet wide and twenty-three feet high. They had two hundred guests to dinner in that one. Just to make sure everyone knew who was boss, they soon added a second one which was almost as large.
The contest reached its conclusion with the Meux's Horse Shoe Brewery tragedy in 1814. The brewery's vat, which stood on the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, held over a million pints of porter. It was made of wood and held together by twenty-nine gigantic iron hoops. One day a workman noticed a crack in one of the hoops. As each hoop weighed over 500 pounds he thought a little crack was nothing to worry about, and he forgot about it. A few hours later there was an explosion so loud it was heard five miles away. The vat had burst, and the force of the jet stream of beer crushed the second vat. This meant the more beer than you can possibly imagine jetted out under very high pressure. The twenty-five-foot high, one-foot-thick, solid brick wall of the brewery stood no chance. It was flattened, and a tidal wave of beer raged into the surrounding streets.
The first to die were those drowned by the initial wave. Others were crushed to death in the stampede as they threw themselves into the gutter to drink as much free beer as they were physically able, hampering any hope of rescue for those trapped in the rubble. Some of those who survived the crush subsequently died of alcohol poisoning. The survivors were taken to hospital, but they weren't out of it yet. They reeked of beer, and those patients already on the wards rioted because they thought patients in other parts of the hospital were being served beer while their own doctors were holding out on them. Finally, there were still further casualties when the dead were taken to a nearby house and laid out for identification by grieving relatives. Everyone was curious to see what victims of death by beer looked like, so they crowded into the house for a look, and the owners even began charging admission. Soon there were so many people in the house that the floor collapsed, and several of those who had gone to look at the dead, ended up joining them!
The only thing I'd add to this excellent account is the fact that when the floor collapsed the paying customers, having discovered what victims of death by beer looked like, were given an unexpected role playing opportunity - as the cellar they fell into was flooded with beer.
I think Disney should be informed. Great Beer Flood sounds like a game brewed in heaven:)
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Now I have a scanner that works I can at last post some non-digital photos. Here's an old black and white photo from 1974.
The picture shows the victorious Free Cornish Army taking control of Launceston police station. For those unfamiliar with the Great Cornish Uprising of 1974, the story's here. Launceston was the first town to fall to the FCA. Truro followed an hour later.
I'm the one on the left and, as you can see, my uniform owed as much to Batman as it did to Che Guevara. Ah, the seventies when even the freedom fighters wore capes.
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Jackie Kessler, author of Hell's Belles, has been running a series of interviews on her blog where one of her characters (Jezebel, a former succubus demon) interviews characters from other author's books.
Naturally, Annalise volunteered.
Here's the result.
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If anyone has been trying to contact me this month and wondered why I've been so silent - the terrible truth can now be revealed. On Monday December 3rd our broadband connection died. No internet, no email, no telephone for four weeks - everything was routed through our Alice Box ADSL modem which, no doubt in sympathy with the French train drivers, decided to go on indefinite strike. Out came the manuals and instruction leaflets. I located the problem - no ADSL signal was being received. I followed the recommended instructions - switching the box off, checking all the connections, moving the box through to the lounge and trying the phone socket there. Nothing worked. I tried again after lunch - same result - then phoned the Alice service line on our mobile. And hit automated switchboard hell. Maybe it was because I'd just finished writing a story in which an automated switchboard played a prominent part. Or maybe it's my magnetic attraction to disaster but I'd just entered the telephone twilight zone. First I had to get a signal - which living behind a rock in the in the middle of nowhere is not easy. I tried inside the house. Nothing. Then walked outside and stood on said large rock. A signal. I phoned 1033 and entered round one. Which of the many exciting Alice packages did I want? I waited for the automated advert to get to the option where I could report a fault and pressed option 2. And was then asked to input my 10 digit telephone number. I typed in all ten numbers and waited. And waited. It began to rain. Silence from the phone. And no signal. We drove to the public telephone in the village. 1033 calls were free from a fixed line so at least I didn't have to pay for the call. But that was the only good news. I entered option two, I entered all ten digits of my telephone number, I reached level three - another set of options - I pressed 2, another set of options, I pressed three. Then it went silent. Had I scored so high I'd won a replay? No, I received a message that for security reasons this telephone call might be recorded. Fat chance. First came the obligatory music then minutes later ... an actual human voice! I rushed into my prepared script, "Nous avons une probleme avec notre Alice Box." "Allo?" said the voice on the other end of the line. I repeated my opening sentence. Another 'Allo?' I spoke louder. I said 'allo' back. Again and again. Nothing worked. They couldn't hear me. I put the phone down and redialled. Another ten minutes and another spate of puzzled 'Allo's. By now everyone in the village knew I had a problem with my Alice Box - I was shouting loud enough - but not the person hiding behind the automated switchboard. We gave up, drove home and ... found one of our horses rolling on the ground in distress. The onset of colic. Which meant a phone call to the vet. Shelagh did the honours, setting up a base camp on the lawn before ascending the rock to make the phone call. The vet answered immediately, wisely eschewing the buffer of an automated switchboard with several levels of - press one for a biped, press two if your pet's called Polly... And drove out to see us. Several injections later our horse began to recover. Which was more than could be said for us. Disasters come in threes and we'd only had two so far. The next day we tried phoning Alice again. No signal. And it was raining so I couldn't stand on the rock. So, I roamed the house in search of a signal. And found one - if I stood on a chair with my head out of the loft window. I braved the wind, rain and the automated switchboard and found someone who understood me. I told him what was wrong and he said a technician would call back. No one did. The next afternoon I tried again. It wasn't raining so I climbed onto the rock. And spent five minutes pressing buttons to navigate my way to talk to a human who then picked up his script and asked me a further set of questions to identify who I was. I could have told him I was the man standing on a rock in the freezing cold but at that stage I was polite and desperate. I gave him the same telephone number I'd already typed into their system, my name, address and ... now he wanted my mobile number. Which I didn't have. We only use it for emergencies and I've never had the need to call it. So I had to leave my rock to fetch the number and with it went the signal. Start again. Another ten minutes to get back to the stage I'd left fifteen minutes ago, then I told him what the problem was and struggled to understand his answer. The line was breaking up and he was having difficulty hearing me. After another ten minutes I gave up. We'd try a fixed line from a neighbour's. Shelagh volunteered and returned a half hour later. She'd been told by Alice technical support that she had to ring back from the same room that our computer was in. She'd explained that we couldn't get a signal there but he'd been adamant. This was to be a recurring theme. The call centre people had a script to follow and any attempt to move them off that script or to miss out steps we'd already covered in previous phone calls was met by a restatement of the party line. We have a script and you are going to follow it. We rang from our house. We were cut off. We tried again. They told us to do all the things the manual suggested - all the things I'd tried on Monday - checking the connections, trying other sockets etc. We told them again and again that we'd already done that. The problem's with the line. Can't you check it? Now, I've seen life on the other side. I've worked in tech support and, yes, I know that users often say they've done things when they haven't. But this was way beyond that. And every time we called we got a different person and had to start again from scratch. But eventually I was put through to someone who appeared to know what they were doing and he agreed to test the line. Another day dawned. We'd reached Thursday - three days without emails or the internet. I was suffering withdrawal symptoms. And Shelagh was worried about our phone bill. We must have spent two hours calling Alice from our mobile at half a euro per minute. Which is when we hit upon a cunning plan. The mega supermarket chain, Leclerc, had just started their own mobile phone service. Cheap phones, cheap calls and there was a special offer if we took out a subscription this week. We drove into town, bought a new mobile phone, typed in 1033 to call Alice and ... nous sommes desolé, said a recorded voice. We cannot connect your call as it's coming from an unauthorised source. Our new phone could not call special numbers. Surprise, shock and minor hair-tearing. Why? How? A quick consult of the small print on our Leclerc contract confirmed the news. You can phone anywhere in the world - except those pesky emergency numbers. Looking on the bright side - a lifelong pursuit of mine - I realised that this made disaster number three. I could now rest easy. Until I tried to call Alice. All I wanted to know was had they tested our line. All they wanted to know was my name, address, the numbers of all my phones, how many phone sockets I had and then take me through the same prepared script I'd railed at for the previous two days. Even my declaration that 'Je suis tres proche to a breakdown nerveuse' didn't deflect their curiosity. Have you confirmed that your Alice Box is plugged in? I was about to tell them exactly where I intended to plug the Alice Box next when the signal died. Shelagh tried next and failed. Could we ring back from a better line, they asked? We went back to our neighbours and played the same switchboard roulette until we were told to return to our house because we needed to be close to our computer. That's where we've just come from! The phone keeps cutting out! Please return to your house. We asked if they had someone who could come out to our house and sort the problem out but ... they changed the subject. It wasn't in their script. It began to look that, although Alice were responsible for our phone connection, they didn't actually maintain the phone lines. France Telecom did that. But, naturally, FT were more interested in their own customers and would get around to other provider's requests when it suited. All Alice had was a call centre and a script. We rang FT to find out if they'd received a request to work on our line. They wouldn't say. Ring Alice, they said. More calls , more frustration. Can you find someone who speaks French? Can you find someone who can fix a phone line? Impasse. We returned to our neighbour and she had a go. Put the phone down and return to your house, you need to be near your computer. No, we don't! Yes, you do! We fetched a French speaking friend and ferried her to our house. Twenty-five minutes later and without any need to access our computer she was told that our line would be tested. When? Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. If you haven't heard in seven days time, ring back. Time ticked on. I thought that being weaned off the internet might give me more writing time but, no, I was too busy working out scenarios as to what to do or say next. Were they actually testing our line or just saying anything to get us off the phone? And then I embraced the dark side - conspiracy theories. Our bank statement arrived the following Monday and there was no monthly payment to Alice. We'd switched to them from France Telecom on April 3rd and every month since then a direct debit had been paid to them on the 24th of each month. Except last month. There was no payment at all. And we'd lost our phone line on December 3rd the eight month anniversary of the contract. Dots began to join and form the words - they cancelled our account by mistake! It would explain everything and maybe make it easier to get everything working again. There was no line to fix just a clerical error. I prepared a new script and climbed onto my rock. Je suis Sherlock Dolley and I think I've solved the problem. Twenty minutes later I was put on hold and ... the signal went dead. I redialled, I restated, I waited and ... no, your account has never been cancelled. Or so they said. I was wondering how far the conspiracy stretched. Should I ring Mohammed Al Fayed and swap notes on Prince Phillip's whereabouts last Monday morning? I decided to wait. MI5 are always thorough and Prince Phillip never leaves loose ends. On the Thursday - having heard nothing from Alice for the obligatory week - Shelagh rang them from our bemused neighbours (who, by then, had built a small grandstand by their phone so crowds could gather to watch and buy popcorn) Alice said they'd found the fault. It was in the line at their end and it would take three days to fix. So everything will be back and usable on Monday? Yes, they replied. Shelagh asked them to repeat it three times. And let them know she had a gun. Monday arrived and still no line so I wrestled the gun away from Shelagh and drove into town, found a phone that worked and called Alice. The fault hadn't been fixed because ... there was no fault. Could I go back to the house so that the modem could be verified? I remonstrated, explaining that we'd been doing little else for two weeks. Someone needed to come out. No, you need to go home and call us again. I went home, called them again, tried to explain and ... was ignored. Out came the same script - switch the modem off, unplug the line, switch it all back on again. I jumped through all the hoops until they said they were going to get a technician to test the line. Ring back in a day or so. I exploded and was told to be patient. Patient? Moi? I was a man standing on a rock in the freezing cold, snow falling all around him. I'd been nothing but patient for two weeks! I cut the call. And vowed I'd never speak to Alice again except through a solicitor. The next day we got up early and drove, cap in hand, to France Telecom who had a shop where you could talk to real live human beings and employed engineers who could actually fix telephone lines. 'Take us back!' we begged. 'We didn't mean to leave!' They took us back but ... we'd have to change our telephone number as Alice insisted on keeping the old one. And wait four days for the new number to be switched on. By then we'd have agreed to anything. The old phone line was useless - no one could even leave a message for us - anyone trying was met by an automated voice telling them we couldn't take their call. Four days passed and - you guessed it - nothing. I rang 1013 (the France Telecom fault line) and was told that the line should have been connected but it hadn't. Try ringing 1014 (their office line) to find out why. I rang 1014 and was told there was a problem but it should be fixed soon. Two days passed. On the three week anniversary of The Day the Telephone Died and with Christmas only a day away I rang 1014 again and was asked if I could go to their shop in Flers. I drove to Flers, braved the Christmas Eve shoppers who were queuing out the door of the France Telecom store and waited. But at least I got to speak to a person and watch as they phoned the engineers and confirmed that there was a problem and it was being worked on. Not over Christmas though. More silent days passed and on the Friday I drove into the village for my obligatory call to a service desk and was told that the work had been completed. But my phone doesn't work! Doesn't it? It looks fine from this end. He then told us to return to our home - not to be close to our computer (they pine for human company, you know) - but so he could test the line for us. We gave him our mobile number, rushed home and waited. He rang us on the mobile and took us through a couple of tests - testing our errant line first with a phone connected then without. Two minutes later he pronounced our line as dead. An engineer would come out on Monday to fix it. Bliss. A real person was coming to our house. Something we'd asked for right at the beginning. And it had only taken France Telecom a couple of minutes to test our line. Our sojourn in the mind numbing alternative world of automated call centre hell was coming to an end. New Year's Eve arrived on time and so did the engineers. They found the fault in ten minutes - the line between our house and the road was dead - and then re-cabled us. We no longer have broadband but at least we have something.
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Update
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Nov. 9th, 2007 @ 10:43 am
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I'm at one of those authorial crossroads, not quite sure which direction to take and wondering if I can get planning permission to create my own road - a far more entertaining path with lots of twists, good views and connecting all the places a good road should.
So here's my quandary. I'm still waiting for Baen to make a decision on my time travelling novel - they've had it for 14 months. In the past I would have completed the novel sans contract but, today, I find it difficult to motivate myself to spend nine months writing a book that may never see the light of day when I have a queue of other book ideas shouting 'Me! Me!' in my ear.
I'm six chapters into a police procedural with magic. I'm five chapters into a sequel to my mystery novel, An Unsafe Pair of Hands (the manuscript of which has just been requested by a New York agent). I'd like to bring out a Kitten's Guide book. I've been looking again at Nous Sommes Anglais. And, to cap it all, I've decided to try my hand at Urban Fantasy - combining my three loves, magic, mystery and humour.
Which is what I've been doing the last month. I thought I'd trial the experiment by constructing the first three chapters as a standalone short story - which I've done - and then send it out to the big mags and see what they thought. Chapter four would then be a 'setting up' chapter before going into another episode - which I'm now writing - which I'd send out as another short story.
I like the idea. Whether editors and publishers will is another matter.
Now I'm off to complete our ram shelter. We laid the concrete base yesterday, now comes the lifting of the shelter onto its base and the roofing. Unfortunately magic is not an option - so brute strength and craftsmanship is required:)
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"I tried to get rid of them, but they were having a party, eating all my bread, bananas and avocados and swigging bottles of wine they had taken out of the refrigerator,” said Carol White, manager of the Camel Rock restaurant in the quiet village of Scarborough near Cape Point, South Africa.
And to make things worse they ran off without paying.
Not only that but they're above the law - immune from prosecution as they're under age ... and a protected species. Yes, the wine-swigging louts in question were in fact a group of baboons who, having been fed by tourists, had learned two things. One, humans are an inferior species put on this earth to feed baboons and, two, it's easier to steal food from a fridge than it is to find it in the wild. Put the two together and you get Scarborough, South Africa. A frontier town where no banana is safe.
The baboons have burgled houses, raided stores and intimidated inhabitants. Security bars can't stop them. The ingenious baboons push their babies through the bars and get them to open the window latches. They've even taken on the local dogs - the previous top species in Scarborough - in a gang fight. The dogs, with studded collars and mouthfuls of teeth, entered the town from one end while the baboons, in leather jackets they'd stolen from the local store, clicking their fingers and whistling extracts from West Side Story, sashayed in from the other side. Mayhem ensued.
And the animal crime spree is not confined to baboons.
Elephants from the Ang Lue Nai wildlife sanctuary in eastern Thailand turned to crime in 2003. Large numbers blocked roads and used their trunks to steal sugar cane from lorries.
Colin Jones, a builder, hired a bodyguard this year after being attacked by seagulls in Brighton. Steve Jackow followed him wearing a fluorescent bib and a referee’s whistle.
Chippy, a male chimpanzee, was exposed in 2001 as the perpetrator of heavy-breathing phone calls after staff at Blair Drummond Safari Park, in Stirlingshire, recognised his shriek. He had stolen a keeper’s phone and learnt to operate the redial button.
Lewis, a pet cat, was placed under house arrest in Connecticut last year after attacking an Avon lady. He was ordered to stay indoors for the rest of his life.
It's a dangerous world out there, humans.
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Another exciting weekend on the smallholding and another trip to the ER. This time the result of an accident with ... an axe.
Not the usual type of accident with an axe - we're not those kind of people. No, we found an entirely new way to maim ourselves. The story began on Thursday when, during a prodigious session of log splitting, I split the handle of the axe. So, off we drove the next day to our local DIY store and purchased a new handle. That's when the problems began. Extracting the old handle from the axe head was not easy - not only had we wedged it tight on the handle, we'd then hammered a small metal wedge into the end of the shaft to expand the wood and ensure the axe head never flew off. Even when we wanted it to.
I tried chiseling the wood out. I tried drilling it. And succeeded in bending one drill bit. Whatever wood the handle had been made of when we'd first attached it, it had now seasoned into something with magical properties.
When I suggested that perhaps a trip to the chemist for a bottle of hydrochloric acid to burn the wood off might be a good idea, Shelagh intervened. Why not try and hammer it out with a cold chisel? The remaining plug of wood was honeycombed with drill holes, surely it couldn't take much more to hammer it out.
I hammered. Nothing moved. And then Shelagh, after watching her husband struggle unsuccessfully for two hours, made a huge mistake. She grabbed the chisel. "Let me have a go," she said. A phrase that precedes 60% of all trips to the ER.
Holding the metal chisel with her left hand she smacked hell out of it with the right. Next minute, blood was everywhere. Not dripping blood but a fountain of blood. To say we were shocked would be an understatement. There'd been no cry of pain. Shelagh didn't even know she'd been cut. Neither of us knew where the blood was coming from. You'd expect a hammer and chisel injury to be finger or thumb related. But this one wasn't. Our patio was looking like a CSI crime scene. Blood spatter was everywhere. Then we saw where the blood was coming from. It was spraying from Shelagh's forearm. Pumping even. Like when an artery is severed.
Panic. Absolute unbridled panic. Shelagh clamped an hand over her forearm and I headless-chickened back and forth between the house and the car - grabbing wallet, health card, car keys, extra clothes, locking up - then screeching out the gate en route for the hospital, ten minutes away.
Or possibly twenty minutes. I rounded a bend and nearly hit a tractor. They were fauchaging the hedges. It was 6:45pm on a Friday and they were still at work, blocking the road as the side mounted arm with the flail cutter slashed at the hedge on our right. I couldn't believe it.
"Hit the horn! Let them know we're here!"
I was torn. I can't remember the last time, or even if, I've used the car horn. I'm not even sure I know where it is. I'm not the kind of driver who flashes his lights or honks his horn whenever anyone get in his way. I hate that kind of driver. You see them all the time. I'm an important person and you're in my way. Move over! But this was an emergency. I had to do something!
But what? This was a small country road with deep ditches on either side. Two small cars had trouble passing each other. No amount of horn honking could make the road wider or the tractor smaller.
Time drifted into slow motion hell. Shelagh got angrier - which was probably a good sign - you can't be angry and death's door anemic at the same time.
Can you?
I saw a gap - the kind of gap only an imminent widower could see - and went for it. Luckily it was on the side that didn't have the flailing chains. But it did have the ditch.
We squeezed and slid through, defying gravity and a magnetic ditch. I gunned the car, slued around the next hairpin bend and...
Found the next tractor. They always fauchage in pairs! And this one was coming towards me, chains flailing and no doubt ready to extract revenge against the pushy motorist.
But this was a pushy motorist with his wife's blood all over his T-shirt - not to mention his face and hands. A fact that must have registered with the tractor driver. Strange blood spattered man with screaming wife approaching at speed. Reverse!
He reversed and I shot past - again avoiding the flailing chains. At the junction at the top of the hill I braked hard and managed a breath - my first official one since leaving the house - and grabbed a quick glance left and right. Then Shelagh took a trembling hand off the gaping wound and said," Oh, it's stopped bleeding."
"What?"
"It's stopped bleeding."
Naturally I couldn't believe it. And I'm a person who spends half his life in a state of bemused incredulity. How can it have stopped bleeding? A minute earlier blood was pumping from her arm in one metre high jets. Had she run out of blood?
No. A debate ensued. Do we go back to the house or carry on to the hospital? The sound of flailing hedge shearers made up our mind. And surely the cut had got to be looked at? It might only be stopped temporarily.
So off we shot to the hospital and queued at the Urgences. By then we'd surmised that a shard of metal must have flown off the chisel when the hammer had struck it and shot sideways into Shelagh's left arm. Having active imaginations, we then postulated that the shard of metal was now either sealing the cut artery - and therefore preventing further blood spurts - or was inside her artery and whizzing around Shelagh's blood stream - probably piloted by a group of killer bacteria.
Luckily our French was not up to sharing all our theories with the doctor. But we tried. And after he stopped laughing he assured us that no boat-shaped shards of metal were circulating in Shelagh's bloodstream. An X-ray was ordered and a half hour later back came a picture of a small piece of metal lodged in Shelagh's arm. The magnification wasn't large enough to see if it was being piloted but the suspicion must have been there as a course of antibiotic depth charges was prescribed.
The metal though would have to stay. It was not easy to spot and it wasn't anywhere vital. An observation that didn't sit very well with Shelagh who regarded the entirety of her arm as eminently vital. And don't you have any magnets? Shelagh has long been a believer in the Lex Luther school of surgical practice and assumed all hospitals would have super magnet 'metal shard suckers.' But, sad to relate, in the real world our tax euros are put to more mundane purchases.
Life is now sliding back towards normal. I removed the last remains of the old wooden handle from the axe - by immersing it in my Lex Luther death watch beetle and woodworm preparation - and Shelagh is alive, well and setting off metal detectors at all good airport security stations.
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I saw this today and had to share. It's really funny. The cast of Frasier 'doing' Star Trek.
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To recap: it's September 1995. We'd just survived eight months in France and then this happened. Someone stole my identity and grabbed our life savings. And, according to a witness description - that someone might be David Jarvis, our estate agent - the man who I arranged to have all the evidence sent to...
That must have been the reason he'd delayed so long in sending the faxes. He'd been sifting through the bundle and suddenly saw the word CASTLENAU flashing neon-lit back at him - probably alternating with the words 'guilty bastard'.
And it must have been one hell of a shock. It was a header page, not part of the actual fax itself, but a page of A4 with all the details concerning the sender, the destination, everything. I doubt he even knew it had been sent as part of the fax.
He'd have taken one look at it, panicked and spent the next day wondering what to do. He'd have to send something as he knew I was waiting. So he removes the incriminating page and posts the rest.
Then another thought hits him. He'd only bought himself a few days time. Someone's bound to notice the Castlenau post office stamp eventually. So he invents Peter Kennedy; gives him a job in Castlenau - handy for the post office - and keys to our house. Then he sends the missing page.
It fitted.
Case solved - send for the black cap.
Then I looked closer at the page of fax details.
La Poste at Castlenau was not the only stamp. There was another one for Villeurbanne, wherever that was. Both stamps contained a date and time. Both were dated 16th May. But the Castlenau stamp said 17h. Villeurbanne said 14h15.
The fax originated at Villeurbanne?
I dived for our road Atlas. Villeurbanne, Villeurbanne, I sifted though hundreds of French towns beginning with Ville. Until I found it; Villeurbanne, page 70, département 69.
It was a suburb of Lyon.
I checked the telephone code for Lyon - 72 33. Close enough. The fax came from 72 34, Villeurbanne.
Which opened a considerable number of questions. Where did La Poste at Castlenau come into this equation? Was someone trying to make it look as though the faxes were local by routing them via Castlenau? To hide the fact that they were coming from Lyon? Or to frame David Jarvis?
And where were the faxes from Mutual Friendly going to? Villeurbanne? Was someone going to Lyon to collect their faxes or having them sent on elsewhere?
I rang Andy. I had about five minutes-worth of solid facts to impart. He said he'd add David Jarvis to his list of names to check out. But he had some bad news from the Irish Police. They'd asked the Spanish police to investigate the bank account in Bossost and had been told it would be at least four weeks before they could even think about it. They were far too busy.
So much for international co-operation.
In all the excitement I forgot to ask what fax number they'd used to contact my impersonator.
I'd have to save that for next time. Meanwhile, I'd gather everything together and try to construct a time-line of events. There were too many stray faxes and telephone messages running around in my head. I needed to put everything down on paper and impose some sort of structure.
(next instalment: the net closes)
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A new svelte Kai has returned form International Kitten of Mystery Rehab. Readers may remember the consternation in International Kitten of Mystery circles over the full-figured superstar's weight. A situation that came to a head when he became stuck under a sideboard (I think James Bond had a similar problem in Casino Royale with a Russian tabby) and needed an extraction team with an extra large tub of grease to pull him out.
Following Kai's debriefing - and degreasing - it was decided urgent measures were called for. So after a strict regime of diet mice and vole lite, a new Kai has emerged. And, no longer the fat cat of the spook world, Kai is now licensed to swing from very high places.
Witness his first mission. Enemy agents are holed up in barn. They've planted explosive charges around the doors and windows. There's only one way in - up the wisteria, under the eaves and squeeze in through a minuscule gap in the roof.
Here we see Kai climbing the wisteria. Look, no grease!
Now he's looking for the gap under the eaves and, ever the showman, putting on a wobble for the cameras.
Then he leaps! Catches hold of something with his front paws and dangles for several seconds. His back paws claw air. His fellow international kittens of mystery hold their collective - and very mysterious - breath. Can Kai swing it?
Now, an evil blogger would end this post with a kaihanger. Tune in next week to find out if Kai survives! But... as I'm currently not evil here's the conclusion. Kai hauls himself up, under and through. Once inside, he leaps from a very great height onto the straw bales below. "Make my day, voles," he says in a Dirty Tabby voice and the voles immediately surrender.
Here we see Kai posing amongst the straw bales for the debriefing cameras and thinking about supper.
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By popular demand a whole chapter this time.
To recap: it's September 1995. We'd just survived eight months in France and then this happened. Someone stole my identity and grabbed our life savings. When I discover a forged passport may have been used to open a bank account in my name in Spain, I ring the Passport Section of the British Embassy...
I think Ian Morris was related to the man who told me I couldn't have wasps in my bedroom in November. I recognised the same fundamentalist understanding of the world; the passport system was set up to prevent fraudulent claims, therefore they couldn't exist. And passport numbers were never re-used or had sixes added to the front.
I tried to explain to him that we were dealing with someone who could produce Pergoninis to witness all manner of official documents and could he check his records to see if any passport applications had been made in my name in the last year.
He didn't sound very interested. I think he would have preferred a robot switchboard to protect him from the public as well. But I wasn't going to be put off. Could he check the status of my passport with the Passport Agency? Had it been reported missing at any time? Had anyone made any changes to it, tried to add a name, anything?
He said he would but I wasn't going to hold my breath.
So, how had my passport number appeared on a Spanish bank account?
I thought of all the people who had taken photocopies of my passport. The bank, the notaire, the mayor, the Sous-Préfecture, the Préfecture. And the countless staff who, presumably, had access to files at all the above.
And our estate agent, David Jarvis.
He'd taken a photocopy of my passport when I'd made the offer on the house.
And if Peter Kennedy had been an associate and shared the commission on the sale, he'd probably have had access to it as well.
Did someone take my details to a forger and have a false passport made up?
It was somewhat of an anti-climax to be re-united with our car later that day - what with all the excitement over forged passports and wandering Irish con-men. But so what if we were looked upon with incredulity as the English couple who drove without water in their engine? What was that compared with the knowledge that maybe half of France owned a photocopy of my passport - probably hanging on their wall certified as a genuine Pergonini!
Thursday morning arrived with a phone call. It was Jean-Pierre. The gendarmes had just phoned. They had a description of our man. Could I come over?
Try to stop me! I was out the door and revving up the warp engines before the receiver settled in its cradle.
This was the breakthrough, I could feel it. I'd almost given up on the gendarmes. And on anyone at the Hôtel du Midi actually remembering someone from five months ago.
I found Jean-Pierre in his office, which was looking even more crammed than it had before. The man was definitely a hoarder. I thought I was bad but here was a master, sitting in an office that had become a sanctuary for every electrical appliance he'd ever owned. There was hardly space for his desk and two chairs, his shiny new computer system stood out like an island of tidiness amidst mountains of chaos and what looked like old toasters. I moved a pile of manuals from a chair by the door and pulled up alongside him.
He was busy copying out the gendarmes' report, translating it into English and adding a pleasing array of print fonts.
I looked over his shoulder. Rapport de la Gendarmerie, it began. Yes, a man had been to the hotel during that period (May-June 95). Yes, he received letters there but no faxes. He was of middle height, blond and minced.
Minced? Was that like a gingerbread man only made of meat? I was being impersonated by a mincemeat man?
God knows what the passport picture looked like!
"Is not right - minced?" asked Jean-Pierre, making squashing gestures with his hands.
I dreaded to think and grabbed for the dictionary. Mince, mince, where was it? Ah, there, mince - thin, slender, slim.
I think I preferred minced - much easier to spot in a line-up.
I read the Rapport further. Elegant appearance, well dressed, looked like a commercial traveller. This was a very good description. I was expecting something along the lines of medium build, two legs, hair.
But this was excellent. And there was more. Youngish man, thirty to forty, very good French but slight accent - English. He said he had family in the area.
English!
But would a Frenchman know the difference between an English and an Irish accent?
Jean-Pierre didn't think so. It would be like me trying to distinguish between a Belgian and a Frenchman. Unless one was Hercule Poirot, I wouldn't have an earthly.
I showed Jean-Pierre the bundle of faxes I'd received and asked him about Pergonini. Had he ever heard of a doctor of that name? Did the stamp look as wrong to him as it did to me?
He shook his head. "No, no, no. There is no Pergonini. It is not name."
This was a very positive assertion. I was amazed. How did he know?
"It is not name," he repeated. "Look I show."
He turned to his Minitel screen and started typing in Pergonini and Aurignac. The system came back with no matches. I was impressed. This was better than the gendarmes. I wondered if it did fax numbers as well?
He extended the search to the département and then to all of France. No Pergoninis. Even if our Pergonini was ex-directory, it was hardly likely that every Pergonini in the entire country was as well.
"It is not name," Jean-Pierre reiterated. "Not Italian. Englishman, he may think it Italian but it is not. Pergoni, yes. Pernini, perhaps. Pergonini, no."
I was even more impressed. An impromptu lesson in Italian genealogy as well. I don't think I'd have been as confident about an English surname.
And I was impressed with the Minitelsystem. If it could search for Pergoninis, it could search for Kennedys too.
We tried the Gers first. No Peter Kennedy. Or any other Kennedy. We tried the Haute Garonne, then the Tarn. Still no luck. Did he even exist?
Or was he ex-directory and in hiding?
We called up the Hôtel du Midi and checked their telephone number against its supposed fax number. It wasn't a conclusive test by any means - line numbers can be carried from département to département - but generally the first four digits of a French telephone number form an area code. The Hotel's was 61 85, the fax was 72 34. Not even close. Very unlikely the fax belonged to the hotel.
Which fitted in with what the gendarmes had found. Letters had been received but no faxes.
I took another look at the Rapport de la Gendarmerie. Medium height, blond, slim, well dressed, fluent French with slight English accent.
And thought.
My God!
David Jarvis to a tee!
And what idiot had sent him all those faxes!
I could not believe it. And I was someone who'd spent most of the last seven days not believing anything. But this! Of all the people in the world to choose, I had to give the fax number of the man who'd sent them all in the first place!
And what must he have thought?
Months of careful planning and suddenly he walks into his office and finds his floor covered in evidence. Perhaps he thought his fax machine had developed a conscience and had entered spontaneous confession mode?
If it was him?
What did Peter Kennedy look like? Had I leapt to a conclusion without proof? And was David's hair blond? I'd have described it as more a mousy brown.
I checked the dictionary again. Blond could also mean fair. Presumably a light mousy brown could fall into that category. I tried to summon up his face. The description gave the suspect as thirty to forty. I'd have put David Jarvis more in the thirty-five to forty-five bracket but he had the kind of face difficult to attach an age too. It'd always struck me as one belonging to a dissolute public schoolboy. A schoolboy who'd spent the last ten years at an all-night party.
Jean-Pierre printed off a couple of copies of the Rapport de la Gendarmerie and I left to tell Shelagh.
And Andy and Simon and everyone else on my list.
I was bursting with news. And bursting to tell people. By the time I pulled up outside our house I was like an incurable gossip after ten years solitary confinement.
But Shelagh met me on the doorstep. The post had arrived. And with it another envelope of faxes from David Jarvis. And a handwritten note, I'm not sure you got all the pages last time - David
I checked the postmark - Castlenau, 17:00, Wednesday. The fax had been sent at 17:15, Monday. A long time to spend decollating and looking for an envelope.
I checked the bundle of faxes; the Pergonini letter, the Spanish bank details, Ralph's Dear Big Nose. They were all there. And so was another page. A copy of a fax header, stamped La Poste, Castlenau.
(next instalment: Headers and Handwriting)
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To recap: it's September 1995. We'd just survived eight months in France and then this happened. Someone stole my identity and grabbed our life savings. Now I discover they somehow forged my passport...
You would think that someone ringing to report a passport fraud would be accorded a modicum of priority.
I know I did.
But I couldn't get through.
I could not believe it. The Passport Office had automated their switchboard. Some genius had decided to remove all humans from external contact and replace them with a series of messages.
None of which told you what to do if attempting to report a fraud.
I pressed 'one.' I pressed 'two.' I listened. Nothing. No 'other' option, no press this number if you want to speak to a human.
I could not believe it. Who was I supposed to ring? All the telephone numbers suggested on my 'Essential Information for UK Passport Holders' booklet refused to speak to me - they were all hiding behind a line of robots!
Incredulity was too mild a word to describe my feelings as I scanned all thirty-two pages of the Passport Agency booklet. Lots of useful information about safety and customs and two pages of useless telephone numbers!
But there was a section on what to do if you lost your passport abroad.
The British Consulate!
They were supposed to be informed in case of loss.
And they could issue an emergency document to get you home.
And use to open a bank account in Spain?
I was definitely enjoying myself. This was fun. Detection, problem solving ... why hadn't I been robbed earlier?
I tracked down the number of the British Consulate in the appendices of my Living in France bible, tapped in the numbers and … found it had changed.
Which is when I remembered that Paris numbers had changed recently to ten digits or was it eleven? I couldn't remember the exact details but what was a missing couple of digits to a great detective? I'd extemporise. Find a few examples of current Paris numbers and make a guess.
I spoke to a fax machine at the British Embassy.
Never an engaging conversation. I probably set off three international incidents and cancelled a couple of licenses to kill.
But I was not beaten. Weren't there consulates in the regions? I'd look them up in the local directory. Amazingly, I found one. The British Consulate, Toulouse.
I got through immediately. Obviously robots hadn't yet reached South-West France.
"I am destroyed," said the female voice on the other end of the line.
Perhaps robots had reached South-West France.
"Er ... hello?" I ventured.
"The silly girl. She destroy me. I find nothing today," she continued, in a distracted and heavily accented English. She sounded Eastern European and what the hell was she talking about?
"Hello? How I help?" she asked.
I explained about a passport being used to set up a false bank account in Spain and asked what happened when the Consulate issued an emergency passport.
She said she didn't know; there was a Passport Section in Paris that dealt with all that, but it would be a waste of time phoning Paris because no one would answer. Switchboard like that. Many lazy girls. She did have a number for someone in the Passport Section but then some silly girl had come in yesterday and destroyed her filing system. She would find nothing today. Perhaps never. She was destroyed, her files were destroyed, all was destroyed.
It's comforting to know that whatever your situation, there is always someone worse off.
Another call came in and she asked me to hold. I could hear much muttering, shuffling of paper and half a conversation in French.
And then 'I have it!' came screaming down the receiver. "Why she put it there?"
I couldn't hazard a guess. Who could tell with silly girls? They come in, destroy you, then disappear.
But I had a name at the Passport Section - Ian Morris - and a number to reach him on.
(next instalment: Mincemeat Men)
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To recap: it's September 1995. We'd just survived eight months in France and then this happened. Someone stole my identity and grabbed our life savings. Now my estate agent has given me a lead - a wandering Irish con man called Peter Kennedy...
I phoned Andy almost immediately. After all, doesn't 'in strictest confidence' mean ‘pass it on as soon as possible’? And besides, this was evidence in a crime. And a lead that could be followed.
Andy said he'd inform the Irish police and they'd check up on Peter Kennedy. And he had other contacts he could use as well.
Which sounded interesting. Were these underworld informers? Barmen in hotels, who'd only answer questions when presented with a ten dollar bill?
"Have the gendarmes visited the hotel yet?"
Sadly not, I told him. At least as far as I knew. I wasn't sure if they were going to get back to me or Jean-Pierre. I'd check tomorrow if I hadn't heard by then. And pray they'd phoned Jean-Pierre in the meantime - I had zero faith in my ability to make myself understood by the gendarmes.
"Did your estate agent say anything about Peter Kennedy being involved in personal finance?"
No, other than fraud. Which I suppose could be loosely termed as very personal finance.
"Do you know any accountants or financial planners locally?" He was off again. Obviously he'd given up on doctors and was now moving through the rest of the professional classes.
"No," I replied, waiting for the follow-up on bankers, solicitors and veterinary practitioners.
I think he must have realised at this point the obtuse nature of his questioning. "You see," he explained, "I'm sure we're dealing with someone who knows the Financial Services Act intimately. This man is not an amateur."
And it wasn't easy to set up bank accounts nowadays, he continued. Most countries had anti money-laundering legislation. Spain was certain to be a signatory to all the international conventions.
Which made me think. How did someone manage to set up a bank account without identification? If governments were so hot against money laundering these days, how did he do it?
"He'd need a passport or a recognised identity card. Some banks insist on a banker's reference as well."
Which is what I'd thought. Credit Agricole had insisted on both our passports.
So how was this account in Spain opened?
I went back and had a look at the bank account fax. Reading and re-reading all the details. Chasing down every word and number.
Which is when I noticed the line of numbers underneath my name on the account. It wasn't a good copy - probably a fax of a photocopy of a photocopy. But I could make out the letters HIF - or was it MIF - followed by ten digits. And it wasn't the account number.
But there was something vaguely familiar about those numbers.
I'd seen them before ... recently.
My passport!
I shot out of the settee and nearly collided with the door in my haste to check. I dug out my passport and threw it open. The last nine digits on the Spanish bank account were my passport number.
I was totally thrown. Up until noticing the passport number, everything could be traced back to Dublin. It was an inside job. They had our bond details, our address, our signatures, the cancellation form. Everything.
But they'd never had my passport number.
Crime suddenly stepped a thousand miles closer. My passport had never left the house - except when I had it in my hand.
Did that mean someone had broken into our house?
Peter Kennedy?
It was a very fraught ten minutes that followed as the two of us brain-stormed the ramifications. We'd have to get the locks changed. Dare we leave the house unattended? How had someone broken in with Gypsy in the house? Had they waited until we'd all gone off in the car? Was the house being watched?
And why had the Spanish bank added a tenth digit to my passport number?
I looked at it again. It had a leading six. Why?
Perhaps it wasn't my passport?
Clearly nine digits out of ten were too much of a coincidence but was there another explanation? One that didn't involve anyone breaking into our house?
More brain-storming.
What happens when someone loses a passport? Could someone claim they were me and that my passport had been lost or stolen? Would the Passport Office believe them - especially if they had a doctor witness their signature on the claim form?
And would the re-issued document have the same number as the original - but with an extra digit, a leading six to show it was a re-issue?
I'd seen enough plausible faxes in the previous hour to know that whoever was impersonating me would be capable of fooling a Passport Office.
So I rang the Passport Office.
(next instalment: Robots destroy the British Consulate)
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With Household Security issuing a brown (mouse) alert, it's been a busy time for international kittens of mystery, Kai and Xena. Here we see the feline two sizing up a dangerous situation. Enemy mice, for there are no other kind, have been sighted holding illegal gatherings under this cupboard. Time for some non-covert kitten surveillance.
Having size up both the situation and her shoulders, Xena decides to move to the side entrance. Kai having sized up very little, prefers the direct approach. No exceedingly small gap can defeat a kitten with determination.
Two dislocated shoulders later, Kai squeezes where no international kitten of mystery has ever squeezed before. Or ever will again, thinks Kai. The insurgent mice - those that haven't been squashed or wedged up against their terrorist training manuals - flee the building pursued by Xena.
His job done, agent Kai emerges. 'Nothing to see, folks. Move along.' Five minutes later the International Kitten Of Mystery extraction team arrives with their extra large tub of grease.
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