A ram raid that just fizzled out...
II could run, I thought, but that might just give the ram something interesting to chase, and he looked like the kind of fellow who could pack quite a punch with a hearty butt
RECEIVED a message on one of the social media platforms the other day, suggesting that it might be time for me to update my profile information.
And while this might be sound advice for bright young things who live their lives at 100 miles an hour or more, and whose personal and profesional circumstances change with the wind, I don’t think anything has happened to make me update my details for a good few years now.
My profile says, and I wrote this myself: “No stranger to danger. Once stood his ground when a ram escaped from its pen at the Totnes Show.”
And it’s true. I did.
We used to love covering the Totnes Show, right at the height of summer. We spent all day in a tiny trailer, furiously typing every result in every category on our portable typewriters.
But when we did escape from the glass fibre sweatbox for a few minutes, the show was a glorious way to spend a working day.
And so I found myself in the far corner of the show field, on the way to Berry Pomeroy, ready to stroll in and collect the latest standings in the various sheep classes.
To this day, I can’t see the words ‘ram lamb’ without saying ‘Ding Dong’ out loud. But, over there, the champion ram was clearly out of his pen, and people were scattering as quickly and unobtrusively as they could in all directions as the beast looked around for a route by which to escape from the showground.
Standing there with just a Rothmans King Size, a spiral-bound notebook and a pen for protection, I pondered my options as the ram weighed me up with his terrifying amber eyes.
I could run, I thought, but that might just give the ram something interesting to chase, and he looked like the kind of fellow who could pack quite a punch with a hearty butt into my hind quarters.
I could walk towards him and try to impose myself as the dominant male in this relationship. The film Crocodile Dundee was quite new then, and in it the hero, played by Paul Hogan, faces down a dangerous beast with no more than a hand gesture, a hard stare and the force of his personality.
I decided this was nothing but celluloid flim-flam, and would be unlikely to work in real life. From my bed in the intensive care unit, I could have shakily penned the headline ‘MOCK-ODILE DUNDEE’ over a picture of myself being butted through the beer tent.
People were beginning to peer around tent flaps and over gates to see what would happen next.
I stood my ground, as it says on my social media profile. So did the ram. This stand-off seemed to have gone on for several minutes, although it was probably just a few seconds.
One’s life seems to slow down when one places oneself in lifethreatening peril.
At that moment, a farmer in a long white coat walked calmly up to the ram, took hold of it in a firm farmer’s grip and walked away. The ram followed obediently behind, like a Labrador walking to the park. I swear the farmer was talking to him, and furthermore I would say the pair of them were laughing at me.