A dull story from the rural past of Chickenlady
***Early warning for dullness***

I haven't posted on this QOTW mainly because I've not got a story to tell about how I quit the stripping or how I managed to kick the drink and even the tale of how I left the marines is fairly dull, even considering the test pilot and the small dog.


I do however have a short tale about how some graffiti ended up on the road near my old home.
Bear with me….

Or…don't - skip down to the **** where the story gets going, this first bit is just setting the scene.


It was the long hot summer of 2004, I think, and my life was a fairly quiet and dull one of a full time mother and farmer's wife - just think rosy cheeks and forearms like hams. My days were spent doing farmer's wifey things - just to set the bucolic scene for you…

Acres upon acres of farmland in every direction as far as the eye can see. Serried rows of wheat, oil seed rape, field beans and barley tucked in next to apple, pear and cherry orchards. Shades of green ranging from the early acid of spring right through to the rich mellow cool canopy of high summer. It was said that if you stood still for long enough you could see them all growing.

In amongst the rural idyll that is the biggest outdoor factory in the British Isles - the Farming Industry - there are many pockets of unrest and strife. Each summer hundreds of students, mainly from Poland and Eastern Europe travel over to the South of England in particular to come and pick fruit. Many of these jobs used to be done by the local rural population but these days the people who can still afford to live in the countryside have a better paid job working in the cities and towns. That's not to say that there isn't money to be had from fruit picking - there is, but it's short-lived and damned hard work - ideal for students from overseas who are willing to work and can practice their English while they're at it, much in the same way that it used to be popular for British students to go off to France to pick grapes at one time.

So…there I am, living in the sticks with a small Polish ghetto of caravans behind me - employed by my next-door neighbour - a farmer with less personality than your average garden rake. A personality honed by years of tractor driving while first stubble cultivating a field,
then subsoiling a field,
then ploughing the field,
then drilling (sowing) the field,
then rolling the field,
then fertilizing the field,
then spraying the field,
then spraying the field (again, for something different),
then spraying the field,
then harvesting the field,
the same chuffing field - driven over and over again many times each year….and then repeated again the following year.

Believe me, this takes a certain type of personality to carry out all these operations on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis - it's honestly no wonder that the farming communities tend to marry amongst themselves - lovely people but by god are they dull calm.

******
Now this particular farmer, known by his workers as Little John, made up for his lack of sparkling and charismatic personality by being an utter bastard for whom no pettiness was too small if it had the desired effect of making his victim feel miserable.

As an example - the fruit pickers working on his land have no transport and the nearest train station is three miles away, the buses only run during the week. Many other local farmers run a courtesy service for their pickers and take them to a large supermarket in the nearest town on a Friday evening and back again so they can get their food for the week.

Little John told his pickers to walk - he'd even drive past them in his mini van and wave.


Another example of his unpleasantness was that he fell out with one of his neighbours - a common occurrence unfortunately with this particular chap. When he saw some of his pickers talking to the neighbour - in their own time - he ranted at them and forbade them from talking to That Bastard again.

The list goes on and on….countless pickers simply packed their bags and either went to other farms or else went home.


Apart from one particular young man who had had enough of being spoken to and treated like a slave while being paid slave wages…..

This young man had a particularly fine grasp of English and English slang and obscenities.

Everyone in the village knew when he had finally quit because he told the world.

In six foot high letters.

In bright blue.

On the main road out of village, the only road out of the village in fact.

He emblazoned the road with

"LITTLE JOHN IS A CUNT"


It was the talk of the village for weeks until it finally wore off the tarmac.

Bugger me, life is exciting in the sticks.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 27 May 2008, 18:53, 8 replies)

So...
do I take from the first part of your story that you've yet to quit the stripping and the drinking?

Nice little tale though. Amused me in a calm, rural way.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 27 May 2008, 19:01, closed)

The stripping and the drinking kept me entertained after I gave up the test piloting.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 27 May 2008, 19:11, closed)

Well you've got the rosy cheeks thanks to the copious amounts of wine but.....
Arms like hams.... I don't think so : )
( girlinthehole, Tue 27 May 2008, 19:45, closed)

I know someone
On a farm who has arms like hams. Proper like hams.



Oh wait, that's a pig.

So sorry.

/Coat
(PenguinOfDeath is Scottish, and most likely angry, Tue 27 May 2008, 19:50, closed)

Forearms like hams
Okay...that's a bit of artistic license.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 27 May 2008, 19:54, closed)

License indeed.
I've seen you, and can attest that you look nothing like the popular image of a farmer's wife. You may be almost as tall as I am, but you're not of the heavily built sturdy stock that can carry two bags of potatoes and a grown pig into town.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 27 May 2008, 20:50, closed)

Hang on a minute!

Does this mean that 'The Archers' - an everyday tale of country folk - is a tiny bit off the mark? How is it that David, Ruth, Tony, Adam et al are all such vital, interesting, cosmopolitan people....[trails off]. Ah. I see. Yes.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Wed 28 May 2008, 11:37, closed)

If I had a pound for every time that someone told me
"Your life sounds just like the Archers!"

I'd have, oooh.....maybe £20.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Wed 28 May 2008, 12:22, closed)