Ours is a large establishment with few people and many animals. I went into the big shed with three of the dogs this morning to feed the farm cats while the youngstock were being sorted into groups. There was Cartwright, the tom cat, with his sisters reclining on a straw bail looking magnificent. Peebles is a pretty tabby and Nose is an immaculate and elegant black cat with smooth fur and a white nose and feet. But Cartwright is a huge fluffy cat with curling wisps coming out of his ears and a fluffy shirt front that is positively Regency. Most days he sits bolt up right on the forecourt keeping an eye out for intruders and making sure that his women are all safe. There’s his mother, Wilma wife of Fred who is now dead; Trug, the original black cat that Geoff found abandoned at 4 weeks old and who we brought up wrapped in a woolly hat in a garden trug. Up at the farm lives Boat, short for Bow Tie who is an awesome hunter; lean and black. And everywhere, moving in a mysterious way (like God) is Devizes, one of two Devizes. Boat had a big bow tie, but the Devizes had small bows, so originally they were called Small Bows, which naturally became Smallbones, and then Smallbones of Devizes then … well you know. Cartwright is currently the only male. There’s a handsome neutered black and white male at Panteg who is best friends with Boat. They hunt together. Cartwright will soon have his own pockets picked for safety and I don’t want to lose him, he’s so gorgeous and fearsome.

The reason why the youngstock were being sorted into groups is because we had an inspection today. It’s our bureaucratic master’s idea of making sure that we farmers toe the line. We have far too many cattle to be able to bring them all home at once to be poked and peered at by a Ministry official so we have to bring them home in batches. The Ministry official is very serious about his job but is scared of the cattle. “Good job you show your animals” he says “they would be difficult to cope with otherwise”. “Ho!” we think, “wait until you have to deal with 28 steers who have ranged wild and free all summer on the bogs of Tregaron and Fochno!” Some of them are 12 years old: great big chaps with enormous horns! But we say nothing; it may be a useful lesson to be a little scared of a very large animal with very large horns that is trying to jump out of a cattle crush. Perhaps we’re being unfair; but these guys get 60% of the money set aside for farmers for coming onto our farms and pushing us about. Not that we get much, our children pay more in tax than we earn; but the principle of the thing is still there.

If I think about it, I don’t really mind. That sounds as if we don’t need the money. Well we do in one sense. We like to be warm, fed and clothed with some kind of vehicle and time to see and entertain friends and neighbours, even if we don’t venture very far off these days. But in another sense, we don’t. We could be even more frugal than we are: it’s a good thing to try to free oneself from attachment to material things. One has to be less ambitious by definition and I rather like that, it gives one time to think about other things than Success and Achievement. What I do mind about is that the people who help themselves to our money come to our farm yard and talk down to us as if we were ivory – or maybe polystyrene - from the neck up! I am not a humble person although I try and arrogance makes me boil; especially from a jack in office.

So I won’t be alerting our Ministry man about the steers, nor will I hurry to pacify these largely very gentle animals when things get athletic as they so surely will!