by John Hicks
Chapter Six
I Wanted to Be a Vet, but I Never had the Brains
‘I wanted to be a vet, but I never had the brains.’ Most practising veterinarians would be able to dine out sumptuously were they to be even modestly remunerated for the number of times they have had to field this statement, or its numerous variants. Admittedly it is a declining refrain, and today’s youth weaned on yuppie latte and Chardonnay marketing is more likely to iterate a disgusted: ‘yuk—the things some people have to do for a living’. We’ll discuss the former perception first; the latter will become self-evident if you persist with this book.
Like many desirable things in life, attaining a difficult objective is a matter of luck, determination and ability. A deficiency in any one of these can be made up by a surfeit in another. I was certainly not regarded as a bright boy at school and the educational ethos of the day decreed that everyone should be made well aware of their deficiencies. School reports could be objects of dread. What parent wants to know that their child ‘continues to know more and more, about less and less!’
Fortunately, in those days the government fully funded tertiary education, but five years’ training for veterinarians was the most expensive of all degree courses and they wanted to make sure their investment was well targeted. From a national point of view, it made sense to try and ensure that a fair proportion of veterinary graduates ended up servicing the farming sector. Accordingly, most of the six veterinary schools in Britain selected their intake on the basis of interviews as well as ‘A’ level exam results. If you were from a rural background, had played rugby for the school 1st XV, and your neck was wider than your head, you could waltz in with three ‘E’ grades. Should Barry Hargreaves have displayed his predilection for guinea pigs at such an interview, his bar would have been raised to three ‘A’s.
There was a very low intake of women. In my year there were forty students. Only seven of them were women and half of these had necks like water buffalo (I am relying on only three or four of them ever reading this ungracious fiction).
Nowadays selection from the thousands of applicants for the relatively few veterinary places is based solely on the seemingly fairer basis of academic ability. For many years the intake to veterinary colleges around the world has run at around seventy per cent women. As a result, there is a screaming shortage of rural veterinarians while the western world’s pets have benefited immensely.
So how did I, Master Average, who never represented the school at rugby, was never a prefect and only had a sixteen-inch collar, manage to be offered a place if I achieved three ‘D’s? It was all down to the interview.
First of all was the delicate matter of selecting to which of the six colleges I should apply. I didn’t really mind where, as long as I could be a vet at the end of it. My best chance would appear to be to apply to all six, but that would have been very naïve. These are unique and proud institutions. They would not understand how anyone could be promiscuous enough to want to achieve their degree anywhere without their own hallowed walls. It was considered best to compromise and apply to a maximum of three. There is always a hometown advantage, so in my case Liverpool had to be one of them. Liverpool University’s prospectus was enticing. It was set on glossy paper with black and white photos of eager students breezing about its modern campus in tweed jackets, collars and ties. This last gave away that the photos were, in fact, several years old; by the late 1960s no self-respecting student would be seen in anything but denims and ponchos. For the more seriously left-wing, anti-establishment types, an expensive embroidered sheepskin jacket was de rigueur to show one’s contempt for bourgeois, middle-class values. The buildings in this up-beat brochure were also new looking, yet to be spoiled by the soot marks and other ravages that beset the ghastly sixties concrete and glass box architecture within months of erection. Liverpool wouldn’t be too bad if I had to go there.
Of course really I wanted to be near the mountains. I had visions of weekends spent climbing and skiing in the Highlands, so my other applications were to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Edinburgh was a long shot. Their prospectus was written in gothic script on parchment and there were no pretty pictures. The Royal (Dick) [sic] College was obviously confident of its reputation and required no yuppy marketing (or the 1970s equivalent). What was more daunting to me was that half the prospectus appeared to be written in Latin and that inordinate emphasis seemed to be placed on accomplishment in this language. The introduction of Latin to our school syllabus had displaced Maths from the bottom of the division as far as my scholastic abilities were concerned, and Latin and Divinity were now my two weakest subjects at school. Any chance of this application succeeding was therefore a matter of faith, and consequently doomed to fail. I wasn’t even granted an interview.
Glasgow, on the other hand, did invite me for an interview. I was lured into purchasing my first suit, and staying a risky night (redolent of Taggart) in the YMCA with some ‘reformed’ alcoholics. I failed their interview. Although I was a desperately keen and passionate (though relatively untalented) cricketer, this cut no ice with one of the interviewers, who had obviously never heard of the game and only had ears for rugby. You could tell this because the ruckles on the inside of his had been smoothed out by repeated haematomas. Cauliflower ears are the hallmark of those who enjoy having them ground between the buttocks of their colleagues in this strange sport.
I have worked with both Glasgow and Royal (Dick) graduates and I can assure you that those colleges turn out a great product, although the Edinburgh graduates seem to have lapsed somewhat in the Classics of recent years.
Meanwhile, across the globe, aspiring colonials in New Zealand struggling merely to speak Standard English (they will love me for this!) had to complete their veterinary education in Australian universities and further debase any linguistic skills they may have had. This undesirable state of affairs was reversed in 1964, the first year of intake for Massey University, when New Zealand started training its own vets. In New Zealand the requirements for university entrance are minimal, but there is a higher ‘wastage’ at the end of the first year of those who don’t make the grade. This is perhaps a more equitable arrangement and gives late developers more chance. Alas for men! The end result is that in New Zealand, as in the rest of the Western world, at least seventy per cent of those currently qualifying as vets are women. They are, of course, graduates of the highest calibre and linguistically attuned to their unique and wonderful environment.
The purchase of my suit was not in vain. The interview at Liverpool hinged on an in-depth exploration of my knowledge of insectivorous plants, a topic I had listed as one of my interests on my application form. Fortunately, I had (and still have) an abiding interest in plants of all types, but at that stage I was almost as well equipped to answer their questions as if they had asked me about mountain ranges round the world. The bar was set relatively low for me, but I didn’t achieve my objective at first try.
The ‘A’ levels I required were Physics, Chemistry and Biology. It was Physics that I flunked. What was I to do? The prospect of another year at school was appalling. I had outgrown the system. I am now eternally grateful that my parents supported me for a year through Liverpool Polytech so that I could have another crack at my target. It wasn’t going to be easy. At Polytech there were other distractions.
Chapter Seven
Much Ado About Women
Lust is one of those glorious Anglo-Saxon words that has wandered from its Germanic origins. The original meaning yet lingers in the adjectival form. A lusty lad is one of vim and vigour; healthy and happy. Were he to be lustful, on the other hand, he would be prey to biblical sins. Physiologically lust is a primal driving force, essential to human survival, but it has the potential to disrupt social cohesion. One of the main determinants of cultural differences between different societies is how they harness this force and become, in their eyes, and often their eyes only, ‘civilised’. The outward manifestations of a different culture
may be subjected to derision—eating snails, men shaving armpits, as examples—but, deep down, the English envy the perceived sexual freedom of French society. Or did. Western, Anglo-Saxon dominated societies have changed vastly in the area of sexual mores since the end of the Second World War, and the biggest changes seemed to coincide with my transition to manhood.
Adolescence is the period when an individual learns to adjust to the rules predetermined by the society or social group within which he/she lives. Successful adaptation depends on level of libido (difficult to control, even with cold showers) and strength of character (to break or obey the rules). Conscience plays the largest part. Middle-class English society used to be very efficient at implanting guilt complexes in its members—a torment unknown to the upper class and ignored by the uncivilised, lower classes. The balance of all these internal conflicts shapes the thin veneer of civilisation that differentiates Englishmen from beasts of the field, and lesser societies such as the Spanish and, indeed, all other foreigners.
This transitional period is hard enough to navigate today, but for those of us growing through the sixties and seventies I would venture to say it was even harder. The rules were changing.
The first seventeen years of my life were spent almost entirely in the company of males, the only female influence being my mother. From the beginning her attitude towards the delicate subject of sexual morality borrowed heavily from her ancestors, a number of whom had been Methodist missionaries. Her father (the Professor) had a special interest in venereology, so her message of strict chastity was laced with pragmatism. To us the incoordinated steps of a drunkard weaving his way home along the pavement (a common sight in Liverpool) were not to be confused with the uncertain gait of those afflicted with tabes dorsalis (also a common sight in Liverpool), a terminal feature of untreated syphilis. The wages of sin were patently obvious. Eye-Spy games spotting sinners was more fun than collecting car number plates.
As children my brother and I were encouraged to read widely. At home we had a large selection of books from which to choose, and we absorbed a wide spectrum of literature, a lot of it dating from Edwardian times. I progressed from Beatrix Potter and The Brothers Grimm, to Rider Haggard, John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson. If mentioned at all, women in these genres of literature were to be revered. The beautiful ones were invariably gentle and loving. The bad ones were invariably ugly and, or, witches. Like all early childhood influences this was a hard one to dispel. I had imbibed an Edwardian attitude towards women and there were no role models to contradict it. We had no television.
As my fascination with the hidden world of women developed, I eagerly absorbed the eclectic works of J.B. Priestley, Howard Spring, Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, Guy de Maupassant and John Masters. The characters in their tales usually broke the rules of sexual etiquette. They had affairs, committed adultery, or otherwise indulged in pre-marital or extra-marital sex. But, in breaking the rules, they had the most fun even if, the most grief. Either way, it seemed they were the only ones worth writing about. No one ever got VD. If the principal characters married, sex between them was a taboo subject. End of novel. I have to declare that my interest was no longer pure: testosterone-laden fantasies tended to intrude. Biology dictated that I could no longer be true to my ideals. But would my well-honed guilt complex determine that I should never be free to indulge my secret longings?
I was often miserable in this ‘unique’ state, so close to ecstasy, so close to damnation. In the self-centred world of adolescence it didn’t seem to register that ninety per cent of other young men also had spots and were in grave danger of going blind. If they were brought up in middle-class families they were mostly miserable, too. So woe to those men who tell you that school was the best time in their life. Either they were temporarily blessed (but in the long run cursed) with low libido or, more likely, they were about to embark on a career as a cad, unfettered by any taint of conscience. Ironically a high proportion of both sexes have always admired such men, witness society’s infatuation with Hollywood and its denizens. Although the rules have changed (thank goodness), it is important to realise that there were always unwritten rules as well.
Liverpool Polytech was a melting pot for teenagers from all social backgrounds. Many of them would have arisen each morning from crusty sheets without a care in the world, and spoken to fair and fat alike without fear or favour. It would be a few years before I could aspire to that. At one level it was intoxicating. The presence even of Susan’s hair clip on the next desk could evince paroxysms of longing, unrequited and destined to remain so. She was of course gorgeous, had a longstanding boyfriend, and to my enfeebled mind she was utterly unobtainable.
Ah Susan! That bright smile across the refectory table was just for me.
I caught it and it seared my mind
An instant of blazing elation stabbed my heart
Yet I hung my head, unequal to your charming challenge,
Condemning myself to a year of agony
Inept, I tried to overcome that self-defeating lovelorn gaucherie
And you were kind. That was so cruel!
Why did you forsake him for me that one weekend
And skilfully deflect my declaration ere it left my mouth? I felt my heart would stop.
How different might our lives have been had I grasped the moment?
And yet I know for me, a much wiser me,
That with you
I could never have been as happy as I have been.
Could our souls have truly soared when
Elvis hound-dogged through your mind,
But Elgar shook up me?
Losing the power of coherent speech in such circumstances is a major disadvantage. What would an experienced young lady want with a puppy like me? I contented myself with a flippancy that was quite well received and disguised my inner turmoil. Evidence of my desperation was manifest in my joining rehearsals for the production of Trial by Jury, just to be near her. I am not really a Gilbert and Sullivan fan and wild horses would not normally have induced me to contemplate setting one foot on a stage. Being cast as a ‘little teapot’ (short and stout) at primary school had been quite enough for me. It really didn’t look as though anyone was ever going to be interested in me or my spout.
Yes, I had no idea how women’s minds work (still don’t, but then I have trouble with my own). However, despite such errors I knew that one day I would meet the love of my life, stop being a little animal and the pain would go away. All that literature had turned me into an incurable romantic. I now had a clear vision of what I wanted, not just for my career, but for my personal life. There was a lot to strive for.
The message is: if you have sons never, ever, send them to a single-sex school. In a modern, liberated society they will be at an almost insurmountable social disadvantage compared to those who have come from a co-educational background.
The major miracle was that I survived my introduction to normal society still more or less sane and sat my three ‘A’ levels at the end of the year. There remained several weeks to await the results and find out whether I would be admitted to university. To fill them John Watson (my old school friend and fellow Gallipoli Shield bus saboteur) and I had planned an overseas adventure.
Chapter Eight
Norwegian Interlude
A couple of days after the exams John and I were on a North Sea ferry. John, like me, had always had mountain fever and we had arranged through a student agency to do voluntary work on farms in a remote part of Norway.
The Sognefjord is the longest fjord in Norway and slices deeply into its lonely mountains. Our anticipation grew as the boat slowly probed the calm waters from Balestrand; each twist in the fjord revealed new vistas of rock and forest. From just such isolated fastnesses, fleets of Viking longboats had carried fierce men seawards in the Dark Ages to plunder, ravage and ultimately settle softer lands across the North Sea. Their feats of seamanship, their courage, and the fear generated by their berserk bl
ood-lust changed the course of European history.
It seemed strange to contrast these images with the sun-dappled peace of the glistening fjord. The bows gently parted the hissing water, and the deck strummed beneath our feet. Cadences of Edvard Grieg surged through my mind. Great was our excitement as we disembarked down the small wooden gangway, well and truly freed from our city-centred lives.
Fjaerland, a small farming and tourist community, is nestled at the head of a northern branch of the Sognefjord. Two glaciers descend almost to sea level through breaches in the mountain rampart holding back the vast Jostedal ice-cap. Between them their retreat has left a pocket-handkerchief of fertile soil, providing the toe-hold on which the descendants of the early Vikings survive. In 1968 it was only accessible by boat—the way we had come. We revelled in the good fortune that had brought us to such a magic spot. It was picture postcard perfect.
Farmers this far North have to winter their livestock indoors for seven months of the year, a major disadvantage compared with Britain (three to five months), or New Zealand where it is usually possible to dispense with the major cost of wintering accommodation altogether. The old wooden house where I was hosted took advantage of hot air rising, and the cattle were housed under the living quarters during winter. However, John and I were here for the summer, a time of frenetic activity when seven months’ worth of hay and silage has to be made in the space of a few weeks of rather dubious weather. Norwegian farmers are grateful for all the help they can get over this period and eager foreign students looking for adventure readily fit the bill. Luck was to be with us in 1968; it turned out to be one of the driest summers on record.
