Wipe out - part one.......

The next day we started the 'contiguous cull'.

It wasn't as bad as it sounds in that area.  We effectively had to take out every farm that bordered on to Bill's holding.

That pretty much wiped out that village.

With our soon to be notorious bending of the rules, Nigel had agreed with the farmer on who's farm we'd killed Bill's stock that we could kill all the contiguous stock on his farm.  There was a payment made; I'm not sure how we worked it, but he was compensated although the government didn't allow for this kind of situation.

Lorries brought the stock to us.  For the first time since the ban on livestock movements, we had lorry loads of sheep and cattle brought to the farm under police escort.

It was the kind of rule bending that we were soon to become known for.  Some of the 'proper' ministry vets disapproved, but at that time, none of the civil servants had time to stop and worry about our antics.

Did we risk spreading FMD?  Honestly, no.

The fact was, we were taking out the last of the farms in that area; and to get to us, no lorry had to pass through a 'clean' area.

The animals arrived, were unloaded, killed, removed, and put onto a vast pyre that had been made on the farm.

It worked for us, and it worked for the farmers in the area.

A few days after we'd completed our gruesome task, we found out that the people in the cottages at the end of the lane of the farm that we'd turned into an abattoir had complained about the number and size of the funeral pyres on the land near them.  All burning was stopped, and the poor farmer that had tried to help his neighbours by not letting them have to put up with slaughter and the inevitable wait for carcass disposal, was left with a huge number of dead and now decaying bodies stuck on his farm waiting for collection.  He took revenge by loading a very dead and by now bloating dead cow onto the forks of his telehandler and parking it at the end of his lane opposite the homes of those who'd complained.

To add to the effect of this gesture, he took a slasher and opened the cow from end to end.  When challenged by a resident he gave a simple reply:

"If I've got to put up with the smell up there, then it's only right that you should share it."

Tony stayed with us.  We were happy with him, and he with us.  We worked through all the stock that was brought to us, and got on well together.

The incident with the child's farm set stayed with me.  On a rare visit to me at the hotel, my wife was instructed to go out and buy a Britains tractor for the lad.  I had collected and played with Britains farm models as a kid myself, and thought it was a small thing to do for the boy.  I delivered the tractor, wrapped up, on one of the days that we were killing stock on the neighbouring farm.  He was delighted with it.

By this time we worked long days, and after being caught out a few times, it became my habit to phone the hotel before nine and advise them of my estimated time of arrival.  The conversation went something like this:

"Hello, it's Matt.  What is the special of the day?"

"Hello Matt, it's steak and ale pie."

"That sounds fine; can you ask chef to plate me one up please?  I'll be another hour.  Oh, and can you leave the usual at reception for me?"

"No problem, we'll see you later".

The 'usual' was a double vodka and red bull, and a pint of stella.  It would be left on the reception desk, where I would 'drop' the vodka and RB, and carry the stella off to the bath.  On average, it took me twenty minutes to have a bath with a sachet of Virkon disinfectant mixed in, have a quick change of clothes, and get down to the bar for my re-heated dinner.

I'd eat, drink, talk to the lads from the unit if I felt up to it, and then drink some more.  At some point in the evening, I'd find my bed; sometimes with the aid of the night porter, sometimes on auto-pilot.  The 'constants' in my life at the time were slaughtering animals and drinking - in that order.

We were an army fighting a war.  Our enemy was silent, invisible, and devastating.  And I was in the front line.