by John Hicks
My host farmer, Ivar, took me to my first task. A large field with rows of turnips awaited my inexperienced ministrations. I was given a hoe, shown what was required, and left to my own devices. It was raining. Within an hour or so my hands were blistering and I wondered how I would last two months. Peer Gynt was starting to become repetitive. Even the best meals can cause indigestion.
It was not as though I had received a warm welcome. The family seemed dysfunctional in some way; a late marriage with one incredibly spoilt young son. Ivar was always fair to me, if rather distant, and chose to use his reasonable English very sparsely. Communication was problematical, especially at the start. I slept in an outhouse and wasn’t included in family life. My new suit, purchased for those university interviews (I had been advised to bring it, because social life in Norway ‘is very formal’) hung forlornly on a nail in my damp room against the peeling wallpaper for my whole stay. Dust from the woodworm snowed onto its shoulders.
None of this seriously troubled me because I was entranced by my surroundings. I could set aside that hoe and look at the vast sweeping rock face of Blånipa (Blue Peak) across the valley. 5000 feet above me his misty head parted the mantle of the icecap. I still recall the best photograph I have never taken when one late, balmy afternoon I was descending from a walk high above the valley, where I had been visiting a sirtah (a summer hut providing access to the high meadows). As I rounded a bend in the track, admiring the light streaming round the shoulders of Blånipa, a woman with a wooden yoke across her shoulders and two pails walked out of history and into the foreground. That moment was, for me, one of heart-stopping sublimity.
After the hoeing, silage and haymaking started in earnest. In this wet climate haymaking was very labour intensive. When the cut grass had wilted it was hung on specially constructed fences and, once dry, the loose hay was manhandled into a horse-drawn cart and unloaded into a large barn with slat sides. For silage a tower was constructed from spars arranged in a circle and wired together. Johan, a local lad, used a buck rake on the back of the tractor to sweep cut grass towards this structure. The real workers, usually Gunar and me, were arranged at the base of the tower. We tossed forkfuls of this grass up and onto the growing heap within. After several weeks of alternately pitching the grass into the tower and trampling it down, and pulling grass and hay on and off fences, I started coveting Johan’s job.
Never mind, I was getting lean and fit on this hard work and a rather meagre diet (just wait till the spoiled Ivar junior became a ravenous teenager) consisting of largely goats’ milk cheese, tough stew and fruit soup. But, damn it, Johan was glued to that tractor seat and seemed decidedly reluctant to spill any of his gravy. Ivar must have noticed this and I was promised that one day I, too, could drive the tractor. Eventually the day arrived and Gunar, an older farm worker, who had been coming to the farm for many years—a kind man, of peasant disposition—stepped onto the buck rake behind me. He had never been allowed to drive the tractor. Off I drove, down the road towards the bridge. As we neared it Gunar seemed to be saying something to me. Was it exhilaration that caused the increased animation in his voice? I throttled onto the narrow wooden bridge. It was quite bumpy. Bump, bump, bump. Strange, when the road surface was smooth. Gunar’s voice morphed into frantic appeal, but had become distant bellowing before I had the wit to stop.
Gunar had done the wise thing and jumped off before the buck rake (which was wider than the tractor—silly me not to have noticed) had demolished the handrail and supporting struts one by one. My carelessness had also demolished my credibility and self-respect. To his credit Ivar was very restrained, but I wouldn’t describe him as being best pleased. I pulled my head in and worked harder than ever after that, but for some reason I was never allowed near the tractor again. In the end I must have redeemed myself. I noted in my diary when I was preparing to leave that Ivar said, ‘You must go back so early? You can stay here as long as you like. We are so very satisfied!’
John was hosted on a farm beside one of the glaciers and his host, Anders, was a far more convivial personality. Anders was the proud possessor of an alpine hut set on a ridge 3000 feet above the valley floor. In return for ferrying supplies up to it, such as the odd bag of cement (he certainly made use of us as we got fitter), we were allowed free rein up there. From this magnificent eyrie it was possible to don skis and set out across the Jostedal icecap. On many weekends we would carry supplies up for Anders and cross-country ski or borrow a tent and camp out on the rocky nunataks—islands in a sea of snow and ice. Vast panoramas unrolled. Away to the east were the Jotunheim, home to the frost and rock giants of Norse mythology, and Norway’s highest peaks. The silence and isolation were magical. Nearby, delicate alpine plants survived in the sun-warmed fissures of the rock. Sometimes we were accompanied by other students on these trips, usually Danish or Norwegian, who also worked on Anders’ farm. This was a relief, because they invariably spoke good English and were able to show us the ropes and inform us about the area.
One weekend, Brita and Ingrid, two Norwegian university students, joined us. It was a hot sunny day as Anders loaded us with extra provisions for his hut. A summer of physical work had hardened us well to the task and we steadily pulled up the steep climb from the valley floor despite our heavy packs. John and Ingrid were ahead. I was last: following behind Brita’s pumping legs. These Norwegian girls were fit. As the track levelled off she turned round.
‘Look, John, I will show you something.’
Her English, as usual, was perfect. She beckoned me off the track to a small declivity. Dotting the short-cropped grasses were alpine flowers. Some I recognised from British hills—Milkwort and Parsley fern—but many, like the neat little four-petalled Cornel, were new and exotic to me. Below we could see the track we had climbed and across to the fjord and its jumble of surrounding peaks. Brita dropped her pack and sat on the sweet grass in the hollow. I joined her. It was cool relief to lose that weight and feel my sweat-soaked shirt separate from the skin of my back.
‘Maybe we should take off some clothes.’
Had I heard correctly?
‘It’s hot, John, we should take off our clothes. The others won’t mind if we’re a little late.’
Yes, there was no mistaking this. I had a strong notion that if I complied with the suggestion there would be consequences for which I was totally unprepared. Brita was a strapping specimen of Norse womanhood. I liked her, but I didn’t fancy her in the least. I had followed those sturdy suntanned legs uphill for a couple of hours without a tinge of lust. I think it was the crew-cut. What really surprised me was that there had been no sign of tenderness on her part. No evidence that I was a favoured one. She had told us about her boyfriend in Bergen and how he was soon to come and join her. Perhaps I had misunderstood—nakedness has less significance for Nordic races than the average Brit—but her disappointed, even scornful, response to my gabbled excuses as I grabbed my pack left me doubting. Had I refused an offer that no red-blooded male ever should, or had she read my misunderstanding and was outraged at my presumption? Was I in her eyes a gauche mouse, or an arrogant male? Neither was a wholesome option.
Literature is filled with heroes who have known how to react in such situations. We all know what Flashman (at least in George MacDonald Fraser’s re-incarnation) would have done. I wondered about Tom Brown. He would have done the manly thing, graciously. But what was that? As a callow, nineteen-year-old I had no idea. I didn’t know the rules in my own country, let alone these strange shores. Yet scorn has an international language, and Brita needed no great skill to stab me with her over-powering disdain. As we walked on to the hut it was as though a cloud had come over the sun and the blooms had lost their charm. Not for the first or last time in my life, I was in the throes of self-doubt. I had a lot of thinking to do.
If this had been an opportunity to lose my virginity I couldn’t have chosen a better setting, but my upbringing had prepared me for a spiritual experience with someone I
loved, preferably a woman suffused with pre-Raphaelite beauty. A quick shag with the mannish Brita didn’t quite fit the bill. We can’t discard the values instilled in us at the drop of a hat. I had been steeped in the ‘middle-class ethic of postponed pleasure’. This applied as much to sex, as to saving the choicest roast potato on my plate till last, or delaying unwrapping the Christmas presents till late morning. All good things come to he who waits. Women who claim that men are only after one thing misunderstand. Chivalry, chemistry and due courtship are requisite precursors for many of us. I consoled myself that although I had been a mouse on this occasion, a spiritual man was within me.
Society moves on, but I still hold to my own inclination—that chastity is a virtue to be broken only in good taste. This seemingly bold statement is as open to interpretation as any biblical injunction. It is a guiding principle to which I have vehemently adhered: a rule of which Tom Brown, and even Flashman were he the judge, would have approved.
The after-effects of this awkward weekend stretched to months and years, but I finally made sense of them yesterday.
~
One of the least useful things that I had brought with me, along with my suit, was a Teach Yourself Norwegian book. The contents bore little resemblance to what my ears were telling me. However, after two months with its limited help I was very proud that I could make myself at least partially understood. What I didn’t realise was that I had picked up a dialect of Landsmål, a tongue of the Western seaboard and more akin to the language of the Vikings than the main Riksmål language, which more closely resembles Danish. When we returned home via Bergen, people failed to understand even my basic ‘yes’ and ‘no’. I had to admit defeat and resort to the shame of most English people abroad and use my native tongue.
It was a combination of technical failure and linguistic incompatibility that led to an incident of incredible frustration for me towards the end of my stay. While I had been sampling an idyll, some unfortunate desk-bound academics were slaving away back in England marking my ‘A’ level efforts. My whole future rested on these exam results, but this wonderful sojourn had allowed me to put the burning issue of my future career to the back of my mind. Suddenly, one day, I was summoned by Ivar to the phone. On the end of the line I could hear my mother’s voice chatting to my father as she waited for a connection.
‘It will be interesting to hear how he reacts when he hears the news—’
‘Hello, Mummy, can you hear me?’
‘—especially when he wasn’t expecting to know until he came back … Come on, blast you! Why can’t we get through?’
My mother is not the most patient of people, especially in situations like this.
‘Mummy, I’m here. I can hear you perfectly. Please, please just tell me the results!’
‘—Dors was gobsmacked when she heard. She had no idea that he would get anywhere near.’
Me, exasperatedly (I share my mother’s genes), ‘For God’s sake, just spout out the bleeding results!’
My mother, seeking to cast blame, ‘We can’t get through, we can’t get through. Some silly swine can’t have pressed the right switch at the other end.’
Operator, to me, in perfect English, ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but it is not possible to make a connection.’
‘But can you hear her?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, please could you just ask her to state my exam results over the line. I can hear every word she’s saying perfectly. They are very important to me.’
‘I regret that there is another operator and she can’t understand.’
Click ... click ... Followed a little later by, ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but she’s hung up.’
For a brief uncharitable moment that’s precisely what I wanted to do to my dearest mother.
It was to be another ten days before that tantalising hint was verified. I felt such relief and joy. Despite the best efforts of testosterone I had the grades and was soon to start my first year at Liverpool University Veterinary Faculty.
Chapter Nine
Teasers and Pizzles
pizzle (´piz l) n., (archaic or dialect), the penis of an animal, esp. a bull [ETYMOLOGY 1523, from L.Ger. pesel or Flem. pezel, dim. of root of Du. pees ‘sinew’, from O.L.G. root*pisa].
Alternatively, and less prissily (JH) resulting from elision of ‘piss’ O.F. pissier urinate, and ‘hole’.
Avril Price was one of us. One of a small group of forty new ‘fresher’ veterinary students about to be put through the humiliation of an initiation ceremony at the hands of older and supposedly more worldly-wise veterinary students. She was the one selected from our group to go to the front of the lecture theatre and identify the formalinised specimen that had been smuggled down from the anatomy laboratory. It was, as she rightly and disdainfully declared, a bull’s penis. She gave the impression that she had a vast experience of all types of penis and that this one did not particularly impress her—an attitude that took her questioner aback.
Perhaps a few years earlier a blushing new graduate would have provided entertainment for those assembled, but those days had gone. The rules had changed. The meeting ended in anticlimax.
Avril’s attitude was at one level surprising. The specimen would have been almost a metre long if fully extended. But Avril was the product of a co-educational system and who knows what might have been lurking behind the bike sheds in Wolverhampton? I was frightened off her immediately.
When I started working in rural New Zealand I occasionally encountered bulls with injured penises. A bull’s penis is, in fact, a rigid fibrous organ and erection is achieved mostly by muscular contraction straightening out an ‘S’ bend. If the protruded penis is not on target for intromission it is possible for penile tissue to rupture and block off the urethra. Unable to urinate, such a bull will slowly die without veterinary intervention. On large farms, where cattle are not checked every day, the problem may not be apparent till the accumulation of urine under the skin of the belly is noticed, a condition called ‘water belly’. By this stage the bull will be looking decidedly seedy. Since surgery to restore full working capability is expensive and generally unsuccessful, the usual procedure is to create an opening in the urethra under the anus so that urine flow is restored, albeit in an unusual direction for a bull. The operation is done with the bull standing, using an epidural anaesthetic to deaden pain. In advanced cases there is often rotten tissue in the vicinity from urine leakage, in which case penis amputation is required. Withdrawing a metre-long bull’s penis from a small incision under his tail is one of the more dramatic moments in veterinary surgery.
The farmer is left with a bull dangerous to stand behind when not wearing wet-weather gear, and a defunct penis. The latter is usually discarded or scavenged by the farm dog. The bull may recover to be salvaged for meat (probably hamburgers), or (the bull’s preference) retained as a ‘teaser’ to select cows on heat for artificial insemination.
Teasers were widely used until it was discovered that other cows are better at detecting when their friends have ‘come on’ and all that is needed is to put some paint on the cows’ backs and see when it gets rubbed off. Vasectomies, as per the humans, were not the method of choice for making a bull infertile and turning him into a teaser, because in theory the bull could still, in his promiscuous perambulations, spread venereal diseases; a consideration that is frequently lacking in the human model.
One ingenious solution was an operation to alter the angle of the bull’s penis by a few degrees so that he was unable to insert and fired blanks to one side. Bovine lovemaking is singularly unimaginative and, without recourse to the Kama Sutra, such a bull was condemned to an unsatisfying sex-life. The success of this method relied on the long time it took before reason over-ruled instinct and the bull realised that there was no reward for the effort and gave up in disgust.
The penis? One of my colleagues had a use for that, and, in this instance, requested that I save it. I duly put it in a plastic bag
when the farm dog wasn’t looking and concealed it in my car.
Roy is a likeable Irishman with a great sense of humour, but hanging a penis from the rafters of your garage is eccentric behaviour beyond the bounds required to claim affiliation with even this noble race. However, there was method in his madness ...
At her birthday party a very attractive and worldly lady of his acquaintance, with a passion for horses, was presented with a long, slender, and elegantly wrapped package containing the, by now, well-dried and decidedly whippy article. Bull pizzles are apparently used in other parts of the world as riding crops. This lady carried the moment with as much panache as had Avril, a few years earlier. The end product was an aesthetic disaster, but extremely serviceable: a possible accessory for rodeo, but definitely not for the refined dressage circles to which she aspired.
Chapter Ten
Anatomy of a Veterinary Student
The anatomy library housed many spectacular specimens besides the bull pizzle wheeled out for the initiation of freshers. Heavy, formalin-filled Perspex boxes glugged as avid students tilted them for close inspection. On surreal shroud-white flesh snaked lurid blood vessels, injected with coloured resin. Diaphanous veils of tissue wafted on unseen currents, snowstorms of scurfy debris swirled. We must handle them with care.
There is no refuge; there are no secrets in these pellucid prisons: all has been laid bare by the anatomist’s scalpel. But are they merely monuments to science? Is there no room for awe? Who can gaze on such relics without some passing thoughts on their own mortality? Or reflect on the sometimes sordid history of the early men of learning whose curiosity about the body drove them to such an unnatural pursuit?
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. For these lonely body parts preservation is only a temporary escape from inevitable corruption, before they have served their purpose and are discarded for a fresher model. Ragged edges of disintegration already mar their sculpted perfection.
