Stick and board, my arse: Part II (May contain swearing.)

‘Fucking pigs!’ (OK. Does contain swearing.) This is me last Monday, large stick in hand, running, again, after a large porker that is completely out of hand. I approach from one side; Her Outdoors from the other. Together, we steer the semi-feral beast towards a corridor made by veggie patch and pig field. I think we’ve got him this time. But at the last moment, he breaks left and legs it past the polytunnel, up the hill, across the track and into the woods. All I can say is: ‘Fucking pigs!’

The day had started so well.

After the school run, we popped down to Beaumont to borrow a trailer from Michelin-star Steve. Had a quick coffee and a chat. Lovely. English-mafia friend, Sonya, arrived with a 4x4, and drove said trailer through the slightly soggy field and into position. All we had to do was persuade one of the pigs up the ramp into the back and off we’d go to the abattoir.

Plan A only started to go wrong when it swung into action. Her Outdoors’ freshly finished ramp was tossed to one side by one pig. Another started eating it. The third smashed the food bucket, spilling the incentive all over the ground and started tucking into breakfast.

Plan B was quickly improvised. This involved an electrified path leading up to the trailer, and the separating of one pig from the other two. A number of other Plans followed, all designed to guide the one escaped pig back into the pig area we started with.

Time is no friend in moments like these, and eventually Sonya had to go and collect people from the airport. Which meant the trailer had to stay in the field, ring-fenced to stop greedy pigs eating tyres, wires, or anything else they could lay their teeth into. Thusly:


When I went into work on Tuesday, a colleague asked me how the trip to the abattoir went.

I told her.

‘You didn’t have a method?’ she asked. ‘You have to have a method.’

‘Fucking pigs,’ I replied.