Picasso slipped a hood over the mare’s head so she couldn’t see, then, with the riding crop, laid into her rear end, which was sensitive from having just given birth. What could she do but bolt forward on top of Edna?
That Picasso’s a fucking eejit. He kept apologising to the dumb bastard every time he hit it. ‘Oh I’m so sorry, my darling, I’m so sorry.’ Fuck’s sake.
She backed up then reared on her hind legs, and he apologised again with the crop, and it sent her hinds forward enough to ensure that when she brought her forelegs down, they hit the spot. Which shut Ed up. But was she dead? He couldn’t tell without getting in himself and checking. Dodgy. The mare might have done the same to him. A mother, head away, protecting her young – not recommended. I always advise people to stay away from mad mares who’re protecting their young.
Though he did need to give Edna a couple more goes to make sure.
He got on the mare’s back. Risky. That trench was up to her withers and only a few feet wide. She could cripple him. Still, the photograph on his living-room wall said his arse had been on a horse before; he obviously knew what he was doing. He fed the lunge lead through her mouth and, using it like a bit and reins, backed her up then kicked her onto Ed and junior. Hard going with all that bucking and screeching. Difficult to be accurate.
Then she reared and when her fores landed I heard a crack.
I doubt there was a roller in place. My guess was he’d give her one more go for luck, and that did it. Difficult one to call – how many times you need to trample an eighteen-stone woman with a one-ton mare to do the trick. Having administered a final trot or two, that was him for the night, as far as riding without a safety helmet was concerned. He went across to the cowshed.
I went and shone my trusty torch and had a look at how Edna was managing. When the light hit her face, I thought I was looking at a Halloween mask. Bye, sis.
But was the damage consistent with this type of … ‘misadventure’? How the fuck should I know? Who’s to say how much trampling a mare would be capable of when trying to save its foal? That’s how this would look – should, anyway – to the law. For a while. Until they realised Lucille had orchestrated it, as I’ve said.
As for the foal itself, I could now see that he hadn’t thrown Edna on top of it. I think that Picasso’s a bit of an animal lover. It still looked dead though. The mare was nudging it but it wasn’t moving.
Now, as you know, one of the most important ingredients in farming comes from cows. Then farmers spread it to make the grass grow. Years ago a man might’ve had an old byre in which to shelter his livestock over the winter months; today it’s intensive state-of-the-art slatted sheds – barns with slatted flooring, each with a centre aisle between two holding bays. Cattle are taken off the land at the back end of the year when the grass has stopped growing and kept in a shed where they eat silage, which is grass cut in spring or summer, rolled into a four-foot bale and wrapped in black bin-liner-type plastic. You must’ve seen them in fields; they look like giant snooker balls from a distance. The grass gradually breaks down, ferments you might say, in the plastic, which gives it a high acid content. It’s not only good for fattening cattle; it also makes it easier for the farmer to look after them. Once eaten, the silage passes through their systems and comes out the other end as slurry then falls down through the slats they’re standing on into a man-made pit the size of a swimming pool – effectively we’re talking about a swimming pool of liquid cow shit. Then comes spring, the cattle are let back onto the land and some of the slats are removed to allow a pipe from a slurry spreader to be lowered down into it so it can be sucked up and sprayed over the land as fertiliser. All very recyclable, and all very boring.
Unless you have an alternative use for it.
Poisonous gas builds up in this slurry. Methane. And that’s when it becomes interesting. Which is why I chose it. They’d removed the slats for the slurry man to come and empty the pit. Every year they did this. And they’d brought their bull in.
He’d been out all winter. But his ladies were out grazing. And he didn’t like that. He was keen to earn his pay, wanted to be out playing with them. Which meant he was in a bad mood – and that made him dangerous. Horny bulls kill ten men in Ireland every year. More in a good year.
This one was in the left-hand-side holding bay. Picasso was shaking a bucket of beef nuts beside him to let him smell them. He put the bucket in the opposite holding bay, opened the bull’s gate, got the fuck out of the way, watched the bull cross over to the holding bay opposite and get tucked into the nuts then went back up and closed the gate, locking the bull in the bay where the slats had been removed.
Oh, just in case you’re wondering why I’d chosen Amy for this, instead of Edna, well Edna was too fat, y’see. Amy was only a skinny little thing – about seven stone. Whoever removed those slats removed
