Czech Mates

This must be what AA is like. A rough day. A good day.

One day at a time, riddled with constant prayer. Today, a triumph. During afternoon milking all was as normal -- cows behaving quite nicely and lots of gentle moo-mooing all round, then suddenly, masses of wild gesticulating from the Mr H department. What fresh hell might this signal? Seems the calves had broken through the fence and were running loose. We dropped everything and made haste to round them up. That lasted about 20 seconds, maybe less. Scampering wildly in all directions, it was patently hopeless (and would have been fantastically funny to watch if one were allowed to laugh, though managed to sneak private snicker in.). Mr H returned to the barn in stoic resignation, but I quickly hatched my own plan.

Czech this out. This week, living next door are four lovely young Czech guys, working in the forest on logging the paths with chainsaws. Martin, Martin, the others with the tricky names willingly sprang into action, never I believe, having previously attempted to round up eight frisky bucking calves in the Austrian Alps, which makes five of us. They were stars – and had obviously played high-level hockey back home. Not only that, but they willingly repaired the broken barbed wire fence afterwards. That small, far away country of which we know little breeds true gentlemen and top-notch cowboys. Afterwards it was beer, “schampoo” and sausages all round at the “greell parteey”. Conversation was flowing too, owing to the good English of one of the guys and my dog commands – come, sit – garnered from family friends in Canada, Dr and Mrs Svoboda, whose dog spoke fluent Czech.