The commotion stopped as suddenly as it had started, and I jumped out of bed and went to the window. The open fields, mile upon mile of them, stretched away into the distance on every side. Just below my window the roof of the dairy was wet with dew. No sound could I hear anywhere, until a robin chirped from a holly bush near the gate.
I was in truth on a farm in the country, and what was more I was actually going to be a part of the daily life and routine of that farm. This thought was emphasised by a knock on my door (at 6:15 a.m.) which was intended to wake me. It was not necessary on the first morning. I wished that my people at home could see me, awake and up as early as this. Getting up early was never one of my strong points! And by the following Saturday, when I heard the knock, I felt that I could have gone on sleeping for at least another 24 hours.
I went downstairs, and out to the fold with Mr. Pick. Having made the acquaintance of the turnip cutter (the handle of which, if you were not careful, came up and hit you under the chin when you let go) I went into the cow-house to have my first go at milking. Having been shown what to do, I sat down on the three-legged stool, thinking that it didn't look too difficult anyway.
The farmer sat down to milk the black cow immediately behind me. She, of course, came over towards me straight away, and as I was not prepared for this she more or less cannoned me into the flanks of my cow! And there she stayed close to my back, all the time she was being milked. I was not very keen about being in such close quarters. Whichever way I looked I was surrounded by cows' legs, and not very sure of what those legs might do next. However, I supposed I would have to get used to it, so I returned to the job on hand.
At my first try a few drops dribbled into the bucket, and no more could I get whatever I did. The cow turned her head and watched with a look of bored indifference. I could hear the milk flowing in streams into Mr. Pick's bucket. Would I ever achieve that? A certain cure for too much self-confidence this! Especially when the cow flicks her tail at you as if you were just a troublesome fly.
Fortunately my cow was more or less guaranteed not to kick, and did not seem to mind what I did to her. It had never occurred to me, though, that she would be able to turn and watch the performance herself, and I found it somewhat disconcerting at first.
It took me about a fortnight to learn to milk and strip thoroughly. After a while I was able to tackle the black cow, who was by no means guaranteed not to kick, and whose chief delight, when her efforts to put her foot into the milk bucket had been frustrated by judicious use of my left elbow, consisted in turning her head so she could take careful aim, and then swishing her tail until she succeeded in standing the back of my hair on end. This she did, without fail, every time I milked her.
Eventually, on my first morning, Mr. Pick took over and the milk was soon streaming into the bucket without any difficulty.
Soon after this we went in to breakfast. As I attacked a large plate of porridge I saw that Mrs. Pick was piling bacon and fried bread on a plate for me, and that on the table was a huge stack of bread, a dish of butter, and some marmalade. Surely we were not expected to eat all that bread! I remembered the hot toasted teacakes, swimming with butter, we had had for supper the night before. The days of rationing seemed to have disappeared, for the time being at any rate. I thought that if I went on like this for long I should soon be too fat for anything. A glance at Mrs. Pick, however, reassured me for she was thinner than I was. So I got going, and unbelievably, when we got up there was not a slice of that huge pile of bread left.
That morning Mr. Pick took me down to the stockyard to 'clean wuzzle'. By the side of a few tall willow trees stood what I had previously called a clamp. From now on it was a 'pie'. One end being open, and just temporarily covered with straw, I was soon viewing the stack of bright red and yellow mangel wurzels (known familiarly as wuzzle) under a thick thatch of straw and soil.
An empty cart was drawn up along-side, and I was told how to clean the wuzzle using a curved knife with a sharp curved point at the tip, and a thick wooden handle. The point was used for lifting the wuzzle. This seemed to be a good idea, except for the fact that if you didn't dig it in deeply, when you gave a heave strong enough to lift it, the knife was liable to come up quickly (without the wuzzle) and give you a good crack on the jaw, or more painfully, on the nose. Trying to remedy this, I dug the knife in so deeply that I had to set the wuzzle on the ground between my feet and tug with both hands to get it free again.
However, after a few more tries I hit the happy medium, and all went well. Here, at any rate, was a job with which I could cope reasonably well, and one which I liked, and which I continued to like.
There was a shower during the morning, but it was soon fine again though considerably more muddy than before. A robin alighted on the extreme tip of a willow branch close by. The branch curved towards the ground and the rain-drops dripped from the edge of a leaf, making a clean pink circle on the mud-covered brick half buried in the earth.
A wren sang its loud and cheerful song from the hedge behind the pie, and the robin hopped down on to the cart shaft, causing the branch to spring back and send a shower of spray in my face.
By the end of the morning I felt quite at home with the job, and was not worried either by the huge patch of mud down the front of my one-and-only mac, (my Land Army uniform not having arrived) or by the state of my hands, which looked as if I had spent the morning making mud-pies.