Broken Britain
Jeremy Clarke It was spitting. The train was late. When it did come there was no hot water in the buffet car and the lavatory floor was awash with urine. The next station on our route had to be missed out, said the conductor, because the engine wasn't working at full power and the train needed to maintain its momentum in order to climb a slight uphill gradient on the other side. After an hour we had to disembark from the train and take a coach to the next station as the line was closed for repairs. Then we got on another filthy train. This was already full when we boarded and we had to stand in the aisle for the rest of the journey.
At Heathrow we had to queue to check in, queue to go through the departure gate, queue for a cardboard cup of coffee, queue to get into the departure lounge, queue to get on the plane. A plane had broken down on the runway and we sat strapped in our seats for an hour and a half before the plane reversed away from the terminal. The newspaper I was reading said that the number of confirmed cases of foot and mouth had risen to 320. We had to join a queue of 747s waiting to take off. None of them would let us in.
At Fort Lauderdale airport customs a very attractive young official, whose white shorts showed off her long tanned legs beautifully, said, 'Hi, sir! Where in England are you from? You guys have been having a little trouble from hoof and mouth, I understand.' I told her I lived in Devon — Disease Central. I could see her interest in me quicken. 'Tell me, sir, do you live in a village or in a town?' Town. I lied. When I told her I was going on a cruise, however, she waved me on through with a smile that must have cost a fortune. 'OK, sir! Your feet aren't going to be on our soil, I guess. Have a nice day!'
The Americans I sat with at dinner on the first night of the cruise all said how sad they were to see the news footage of the cows being burnt. Were there any signs of the epidemic abating, they wondered? I told them that Mr Nick Brown, our agriculture minister, had told farmers that the epidemic was 'under control'. And, as we tucked into our beefsteaks, I told them what I knew. A very good policeman friend of mine, I said, has been guarding the piles of animal corpses every night. He'd guard one pile until it was burnt, then move on to another one. As most piles were left for at least a week he got to know some of these piles of rotting carcasses quite intimately. He became a student, he said, of the changes in their size, colour and smell. After ten days, for example, the leg of a cow comes off in your hand quite easily apparently. (Jeez!' said one of the Americans, gagging slightly on his mouthful.)
Watching over these piles has rekindled my policeman friend's interest in the flora and fauna of the British Isles. It was a bit like putting bacon rinds out for the birds, he said, except on a larger scale. Rooks, crows, magpies, buzzards and seagulls turned up to feast on the eyeballs. The foxes and badgers that turned up got stuck in as if they couldn't quite believe their luck. The overtime he has earned guarding these decomposing pedigree animals every night has already paid for a new patio and a two-week holiday in the Dominican Republic in September.
Although we were on a cruise, I relayed to my American friends one or two of the more depressing things he'd told me. One was that if you shoot a new-born lamb in the head with a captive bolt gun it doesn't necessarily die for some reason, so the vets are having to go to the trouble of administering fatal injections instead. The other depressing thing was my friend's tale of a sheep farmer who lost a flock that had been in the family for 150 years and who killed himself by drinking Paraquat. By the time dessert came round the conversation had turned to less tragic matters, such as the price of diamonds, cut and uncut, in the Cayman Islands.
I came home yesterday. It was still raining. What with the crowds of ill-fed, illclothed people, the litter and the dilapidated buildings it was like coming back to a Third World country. A country of peasants run by spivs. In the paper I bought at the airport it said that the number of confirmed cases of foot and mouth had risen to 943.
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