DID you read our story about the anti-social cattle who broke free from their field and headed for Mouldon Hill Country Park?

Fortunately police officers and PCSOs were soon there to round up the bull and 20 cows, for which they have my admiration.

As a city-born, town-dwelling person, I’m no expert on the countryside, but from what I gather it’s big, it’s green, it whiffs a bit in places and it’s full of animals who know we like to eat them.

You may think cows are gazing at you placidly as you cross their fields during country walks, but they’re actually sizing you up. “Not so brave now,” they’re thinking, “not so brave when we’re in one piece instead of polythene-wrapped bits in the supermarket chiller cabinet.”

I can’t help wondering, though, whether the Mouldon Hill escape heralds a new and sinister era of bovine loutishness. Perhaps the council will end up having to apply for court orders against them. If it does, I intend to make some extra cash by offering my services to the cows in question during their Asbo hearings.

“My Lord,” I might say, “it is my submission that my client, Daisy, should be regarded with sorrow rather than anger.

“As you have already heard, she did indeed escape the confines of her field and wander through a number of gardens, eating anything that caught her eye. To her shame, she was also observed leaving something unmentionable on the crazy paving at one address, although I am informed that this was subsequently gathered by the householder in question and did wonders for his rhubarb.

“My client’s troubles began at an early age. She never met her father and does not even know his name, merely that he was a prize bull from somewhere in the Devizes area and that she has about three thousand half-siblings. Her late mother worked for a local cafe as several hundred burgers and in the fashion industry as half a dozen leather jackets and a belt.

“As Your Lordship can see, then, my client does not come from a stable background – quite apart from anything else, the stable was reserved for the horses next door, while Daisy and her friends were confined to their own field, a shed and a milking parlour.

“It was in these locations that she fell in with the wrong herd, including several streetwise Friesians brought from a city farm in the North.

“Her situation was made worse by a particularly unpleasant farm hand who taunted Daisy and her friends by wearing a t-shirt with a ‘golden arches’ design and regularly informing them he was ‘lovin’ it’.

“I therefore urge Your Lordship to show mercy, especially as she had no involvement with her boyfriend’s activities at the china shop.”

NOT HAVING GREEN FINGERS MAY HELP

A NASTY invasive plant called Himalayan balsam is literally being rooted out in a campaign organised by the Wiltshire Invasive Plants Project.

Potential volunteers are invited to visit www.wiltshirewildlife.org to find out more.

If anybody from the project is reading this, your best bet is to appoint me, not to get rid of the stuff but to try to grow it across the county.

Such is my horticultural incompetence that it’ll be gone in no time.

Back to school

SWINDON schools currently need about four million quid’s worth of repairs, thanks to underfunding by governments of all political persuasions over many years.

Perhaps we should have a rolling programme of workplace swapping, in which kids from the worst hit schools get to spend a few weeks being educated in officials’ and politicians’ cosy offices.

The officials and politicians, meanwhile, would get to work in one knackered schoolroom after another until their priorities sharpened.