Naughty Nurses

The very first television soap I remember was called Emergency Ward 10. Nurses in crisply starched frocks crackled through the wobbly cardboard set on their way to an assignation with a dishy doctor or to soothe the sweaty brow of someone who’d fallen off the tram. I think that’s why, years later, I became obsessed with its more contemporary win Casualty, although Charlie’s habit of staring at a corner of the ceiling whenever he spoke irritated the hell out of me.

But I stopped all that when I realised I had all the medical trauma I needed in real time, and real life, right here on the farm. And this week has been a stellar production. One terminally broody hen sitting on no eggs and sporting a temperature that ought to turn her into roast chicken; an uncatchable cat who looks as though she’s been in a knife fight with Steven Seagal; a nanny goat with a pronounced limp which came about because she reacted badly to her annual vaccination; a ewe at risk of fly strike; a boxer dog who, for no perceivable reason threw up all her breakfast and is now moping about looking miserable; a border terrier with an abscess, and a wife with early morning frozen shoulder.

Sarah is, as you may know by now, keen in giving injections, so I expect all this to be cured by her wielding her needle. I don’t know how we’re going to deal with her shoulder, but I wouldn’t put it past her to grip a leather strap between her teeth and plunge a needle into her own arm. What I wish though is that she would dress the part. I quite like her in baggy, soiled jeans (she doesn’t know it but her builders bum is quite the most attractive thing I’ve seen in a long time), ankle length wellies, a stained T shirt and un-matching socks. But if she slipped into a nice piece of linen, some nylons, a starched pinny with an upside down watch, and her hair bunned up under a little cap then I might recapture some of my lost youth.

Still, I can dream.