Weeks later I still keep thinking about some of the many unusual and wonderful stories we recorded, most of them now posted online. Of these I often suggest people listen to the tales Squashed by a Cow, Cant Trust a Bull and One Legged Stool, all stories about farming life in Sutton over the last 70 years. I have been sending these to people and am quite excited by the number of people that come back to me saying they have also been bashed by a cow; including Joyce from Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon who remembers having been whipped in the face by a cows tail a few times and being squished between two cows’ huge round bellies in the milking line… she was a thin little thing when she worked on the dairy farm. And Sam in Glasgow who once got butted over a 7ft fence by a bullock.

Then I got curious about the one legged stool and found it to be more universal that I thought – here for instance is one from the San Jose Dairy Hill website.