Country life
Keeping your nerve
Leanda de Lisle
Our sullen mood lifted miraculously when we arrived at one of the hangars where the market was being held. I hadn't realised they sold rabbits, chickens and ornamental ducks there, as well as cattle and sheep. The boys were enchanted by pretty New Zealand ducklings with up- turned beaks, baby partridges and Buff Peking bantams held in row upon row of cages. Blocking out any thoughts of the hated rabbit kept in our backyard, I found myself admiring the big albino bunnies that snuffled at our fingers. 'They are straight out of Alice in Wonderland, aren't they?' I said, and wondered if we should have one as a pet. I really want to have something can put on my lap and stroke when I'm sit- ting in front of the telly, but I suppose the dog would reduce a rabbit to a bloody mess in minutes.
We passed through an area selling tank- tops and cheap imitation Persian rugs to where the cattle and sheep sales were going on. In a tiny ring, five young bullocks were hurried back and forth as the auctioneer joked with people in the crowd. It was almost exclusively made up of men with battered and sometimes warty faces, dressed in very old clothes. They seemed to be a different race from the smooth- skinned people I meet in offices, or see in department stores. Each one was a car- toonist's dream. The sale began with no obvious warning and in seconds it was over, with the bullocks being guided out by a man smacking them lazily with a long stick.
The sheep remained in their pens while their fate was being decided and we walked up and down between them guessing at what breeds they were. From time to time, the boys would lean over the rails to dig their hands in brown or grey-cream wool. They were amazed at how deep their fin- gers sank. 'How are you doing?' I asked a farmer who had come down from Sunder- land and was standing among his sheep. He shook his head. 'It's all a matter of keeping your nerve,' he said. 'If I don't get the right price for my animals, I'll keep them longer. I've seen others unloading theirs for next to nothing.' I thought I detected a smirk. Could it be schadenfreude?
Farmers aren't great ones for helping each other, but at the mention of the word 'supermarkets' he was off, praising the new willingness of farmers to get together to picket those buying imported meat. It had proved quite successful in his part of the world, he said.
Hungry by now, the boys insisted we bought some of the Melton Mowbray pork- pies laid out on a stall, where they were going soggy in the rain. Some were plain, some were made with a filling of chicken and apricot, others with Red Leicester and pickle. I chose this last one, but decided to keep it for high tea, by which time it might have dried out.
The best way to end the morning seemed to be to have lunch at the Curry Pot in Leicester — ethnic food being as much a staple of the Leicestershire diet as pork- pies and it being conveniently close to the Toys R Us. The boys had saved up their pocket money for a new computer game. The cattle market may not have been as dull as they supposed, but it would have been too much to have expected them to spend an entire day away from an electron- ic screen.
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