Taught by Cows.

Tuesday is farm day and as a welcome respite from shovelling shit we spent the morning getting the highland calves used to wearing a halter. A halter is much like a thong made of rope i.e. it’s anybodies guess which bit goes where, and a calf is a quarter ton reception child. Simon talked me through it. Scratching them just in front of their tail calms them down, put your leg next to theirs so if they kick they push it rather than sledgehammer into it, avoid being between the reception child and an immovable object or you’ll get squashed, and finally talk to them. If you’re a trainee therapist I strongly advise you have this experience. OK cows don’t respond to, “and how did that make you feel?” but they do to your eyes, your tone of voice and the core of where and who you are. There is no lying to a cow; it’s just you and them in a kind of thoughtless union. They will respond immediately to how they feel so if they’re anxious stay away, but they will respond to your pool of tranquillity and affection if you can provide it. They will teach you the real congruence of thoughtless honesty because it’s all they know, if you let them. Talk to them as you would your love and they will respond in simple clarity. They will strip away your bark of flattery, cajoling or bullying and in some wordless fashion ask, “where are you?” And, as if by counterpoint, I watch ‘Making it’ after tea, a superb NHS real-com where our multiple mutual deceptions abound in our rational pseudo efficiency. It’s as if each human animal is obscured by its own conscious thoughts, confining its animal nature into continually scratching its square foot of soil less patch like a factory chicken. That is no way for an animal to live. So give me a cow to talk to to teach me of my own animal nature so I might see my deceptions for what they are.