Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country (18 page)

I popped the carrier on the passenger seat of my car, wrapped the seatbelt around it, and headed off. Titch was off to explore pastures new. As I drove along, I began to think how remarkable it was that I actually had a pig on the seat beside me. I hadn’t realised just how charming a creature one could be. OK, Titch was a baby, and a baby micro pig at that – and puppies and kittens are always much cuter than dogs and cats – but nonetheless, I was sensing that a pig could easily be man’s best friend, just like a dog. Maybe that was because they were so clever. I’d read about experiments conducted by Penn State University between 1996 and 1998 in which pigs were taught to manoeuvre a modified joystick to move a cursor on a video monitor – and that they learned the task as quickly as chimpanzees.

So pigs could watch video and computer games? I wondered if Titch was a fan of
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
, and that was why she was sitting so quietly? Perhaps she was delighted to have been abducted by her skateboarding hero.
2

The other goods news about pigs is that they are much cleaner than the myth would have it. Yes, they’re not averse to being caked in mud, but this is because they have no sweat glands
3
and they roll around in the mud to cool down. From my perspective, the best news is that they will not excrete anywhere near where they live, given the choice. To be fair, this is an area where they’ve got one over on me. I still use the upstairs toilet, thinking that relations would be soured with the neighbours if I went round and had a crap on their lawn. People can be so sensitive.

Pigs have had admirers is high places too. Winston Churchill once made a wry observation about them:

‘A cat will look down to a man. A dog will look up to a man. But a pig will look you straight in the eye and see his equal.’

One can only assume that Winston had downed a few whiskies when he’d uttered this, after all, this is somewhat off-message when delivering a speech about the Middle East. Nevertheless, these words offered me an interesting insight as to what I might expect from Titch in the coming days. It was just going to be a shame that Titch, as my ‘equal’, wasn’t going to do any of the pedalling.

***

‘She’s lovely!’ cried Fran, as I let Titch out of her carrier and she began roaming our kitchen. ‘She’s so cute!’

She was indeed. She did seem a little disorientated, though, as I set her down. She immediately began exploring the place, nudging around with her nose, almost as if she was foraging for food. I took out a handful of the animal feed Chris had given me, and offered it to Titch, who gobbled it up with gusto. Thinking that this would lead to an inevitable need for her to have a poo, I lifted her into the garden, where she continued nudging away with her nose, this time at the lawn.

‘Come on!’ I called to her, after a few minutes had passed. ‘Have a poo!’

This was probably a mistake. If Winston was right, and pigs are our equal, then shouting at them to have a dump isn’t going to work. Admittedly, I’ve never had it done to me (I’m trying to think of the sequence of events that might lead to such a request), but I feel fairly sure that my bowels would contract rather than open in the face of vociferous goading. Of course, if I’d left Titch totally alone, then I wouldn’t have known if she’d been or not, and I was keen to try and establish how she liked to manage things in the bottom department. Well, it would have to wait for now. She was far too interested in feigned foraging than satisfying my need to feel on top of her toilet habits.

In the evening ahead, Fran and I took turns at picking up Titch and cuddling her, as this is what she seemed to like. She was a baby, after all, and our soothing embraces definitely comforted her. It was Saturday night, and I wasn’t going to set off for my cycle ride until Tuesday. This time had been set aside for Titch to settle in, and for some experiments to find how she’d be comfortable travelling.

When bedtime came around, I popped Titch into her carrier with the lid removed – this was to be her sleeping quarters – and covered her with blankets. We decided to enclose her at one end of the kitchen, so that she didn’t go on a foraging expedition around the shelves that were open at the foot of our kitchen island. We lifted down bags full of duvets and pillows and piled them up as a makeshift barrier.

‘Goodnight, Titch,’ I said, ‘sleep well.’

She’d beaten me to it. She was already away with the fairies.

We awoke to something of a mess in the kitchen. It seemed we had been naive to think that our makeshift blockade would limit Titch to our designated area. She had simply bulldozed through our defences, spreading duvets and pillows around the floor. Piglets, it seemed, were strong little creatures. She’d had a little poo in the corner – this was made up of hard pellets like sheep dung, I was pleased to note – and there was a puddle of pee by the cooker. Titch, though, was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t returned to her pet carrier or ‘bedroom’. I had a mini irrational panic that she had escaped. Then I spotted my rucksack by the radiator. That was odd – I hadn’t left it there. I went over and looked inside, and there was Titch, fast asleep. She must have nosed the rucksack into that nice, comforting position by the warmth of the radiator, and crawled inside for a snug, cosy bed.

During the coming day, Titch seemed to settle in well. Perhaps her unrest during the night had been down to a strange environment and it had all been overwhelming for her. She had been used to snuggling up to other pigs at night, and now she had a new house and two strangers with which to familiarise herself. However, by teatime she’d been cuddled senseless by both me and Fran, and she seemed to be a happy little pig.

‘I think I should try her in the bike now,’ I declared with confidence.

‘You may as well,’ said Fran. ‘The rain has stopped and she seems ready.’

I tried to lead Titch outside on the little harness that Chris had given me. Titch clearly didn’t like the harness, nor did she like the idea of going in any direction that she hadn’t decided on herself. After several minutes of grunts and squeaks, I gave up and carried her out to the bike. It made me realise just how impossible the initial bet – to walk round Devon with a full-sized pig called Dave – would have been.

To be fair, Chris hadn’t given me the harness for walking, but to secure Titch to the basket on the bike, so that she couldn’t make a leap for freedom whenever the fancy took her. I plumped up the basket’s pillow and blankets and clipped her in. Then I mounted the bike and cautiously began cycling. At first, no problem. Titch seemed happy enough. It was only when we went around the first corner in the village that Titch started to become agitated. As the front wheel turned, the basket turned, too, and it tipped up. Titch didn’t like it. It clearly felt like she was being tipped out. She began squeaking.

When a pig squeaks, it seems to activate the same nerves in a human as a baby’s cries. Something in the pitch, the sharpness of the sound and the frequency at which it’s delivered, combined with the urgency and the volume, can make one begin to believe that the world is going to end if something isn’t done, and isn’t done quickly. Thankfully, the village was quiet and no one was around to witness what sounded like me slaughtering a pig on the street, but I quickly lent forward, unclipped Titch, and lifted her to my chest.

‘There, there,’ I said, stroking her, ‘you’ll be fine. You’re just getting used to the bike, that’s all.’

Fifteen minutes later, it was clear that my forecast – of Titch being ‘fine’ – had been as accurate as most of those emanating from the Met Office. Titch was not fine, and she clearly would not have listed ‘being in a basket at the front of a bike while it goes round a corner’ as one of her favourite pastimes. Her noisy protests prompted a young woman to come into her front garden to investigate. I recognised her as Kate, with whom we’d once exchanged brief pleasantries when she’d walked past our house with her dog and two-year-old daughter.

After she’d got over the shock and sheer enchantment of seeing a baby pig in a basket, I explained what I was about to undertake. Kate smiled, and her eyes lit up with what could have been delight, or disbelief. Or both.

‘The trouble is that the basket isn’t going to work,’ I said, disconsolately. ‘It moves too much when the bike corners.’

‘Have you tried a baby sling?’

‘I thought of that. But would it work?’

‘Come on in, let’s try.’

Life, as well as sometimes chucking shite at you, does deliver its fair share of serendipitous moments. Kate, it turned out, had up until very recently been running a business where she sold baby slings, and she still had plenty of samples in her house. She recommended the Asian design of the Moby, assuring me that it would cope ably with a pig. I paid Kate for it there and then – she was delighted to have made a sale simply on the strength of having gone into her front garden – and Titch and I cycled off in complete harmony.

Titch adored the sling. She loved being cuddled and feeling the warmth of another body next to hers.

As we continued on our test cycle, the village seemed to come to life and soon I was showing off Titch to everyone I passed. I was flagged down by fellow committee members, familiar faces whose names escaped me, and people I had never met before. All paid homage to Tony and Titch. Before I got home, I stopped at Ken’s workshop, where he was tinkering with his Massey Ferguson (if you’ll pardon the expression).

He emerged from beneath his tractor, grinning broadly as I unzipped my jacket to reveal Titch.

‘You’d better not wear bicycle clips,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, if she has a wee, it’ll need to trickle out somewhere.’

‘Yes, good point, Ken. Hadn’t thought of that. By the way, can you show me how this works.’

I pointed to the strap that Peter from the bike shop had given me to keep the pet carrier on the back of the bike. Before the successful introduction of the baby sling, the idea had been for Titch to travel in the front basket in good weather, and to switch to the pet carrier on the back should the rain start to fall, as it surely would in mid- to late December. The trouble was, this strap was confusing to me.

‘It’s a ratchet strap,’ said Ken, ‘I’ll show you how it works.’

Peter had already given me a full and thorough demonstration of how it worked, but I had retained none of the information. Knowing that I wouldn’t remember what Ken now told me either, I took out my smartphone and filmed his explanation. I watched it back, and felt rather chuffed that I’d had the foresight to do something quite so sensible.

‘How does Titch like travelling like that?’ said Ken, pointing to the sling.

I lifted the edge of it that was covering her eyes, and discovered that she was now fast asleep.

‘Clearly she loves it,’ I said triumphantly. ‘Titch and I are ready.’

‘
She
certainly is,’ said Ken. ‘By the way, are you going to smile on your trip?’

‘I don’t know. I should hope so. Why?’

‘Because I’ve noticed that cyclists never smile.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, have you ever seen one smile?’

‘I don’t know – I’ve never really looked that closely.’

‘You have a look next time you’re out in the car. You’ll see, cyclists never smile.’

‘Well, when I’m cycling I’ll try.’

‘You do that.’

I just hoped I’d have something to smile about.

9

Too Young to Die

The first day couldn’t have got off to a better start. After an excellent night’s rest, I came downstairs to find Titch fast asleep in her pet carrier, no evidence of any accidents anywhere. I lifted her into the garden and watched with pride as she had a wee and a poo.

‘Well done!’ I announced, punching the air.

I could have sworn that Titch threw me a look as if to say, ‘Leave it now, Tony. This is me crapping. It’s not an Olympic event. I haven’t just scored a winning goal in a cup final, I’ve had a poo, that’s all. No need to remove your shirt, swing it round and around, and blow kisses to the heavens.’

Maybe I was reading too much into a quick glance from a small pig, but I resolved to change my ways. No more faeces festivity. Titch came into the house, ate the food I offered her, and drank the water. We seemed to be an excellent team now – ready to hit the road.