Quicunque

Every yokel knows that if cows are lying down, rain is on its way. If they're standing with their backs to the wind, expect a storm. If they're racing round and round with their tails up, batten down for an earthquake. But when they're all lying down at the far end of the field under the trees, dreamily chewing the cud and staring at nothing, that means -- what? That they're not going to chase Jerry down and trample him, right?

Nope. It just means they're biding their time.

Lulled into a false sense of security, their intended victim cautiously hops over the gate and keeping a wary eye open for stray calves (you do NOT want a 600kg horned bulldozer thinking you're molesting its baby, trust me on that) nonchalantly heads off towards the opposite side of the field, manfully avoiding eye contact with the one or two cows that have stopped chewing and have started to look vaguely interested at this break in their routine.

"Don't run," my partner always tells me. "Longhorns are docile, but they'll follow you if you run. Just ignore them and keep walking."

Me, I thought it was supposed to be predators that have chase responses, not herbivorous bovines. However. I'm not arguing with him because in my experience he's right. Run and they run with you. Just call me Runs with Cows.

People who know me and my secret fear know where I'm going with this. I get half way across the bloody field and my bootlace mysteriously unties itself and I have the dilemma off keeping going and tripping face-down in a fresh cow-pat or stopping to re-tie and letting the cows that are now lumbering to their feet get me. Honestly, do I LOOK like a threat to their babies? Maybe they smell my fear. They break into a trot. My nerve holds until I feel the first hot, wet snuff on the back on my neck, but fortunately by then safety is within reach --- I nimbly vault the gate into the next field --- to find another two dozen or more English Longhorns all staring at me in round-eyed wonder.....

Incidentally, calves are kinda cute, with those long, long eyelashes like drag queens. It's just their bad-ass mamas that put the wind up me.

Fanny Fae at Panhistoria asks: "Do you find that your real life leaks out into your fiction and vice versa? How do you deal with that?"

I find my real life leaks into my fiction surprisingly infrequently. My male characters tend to share my sexual and cultural interests because I suppose we all tend to write what we know best, even if its subconscious, but very little of the actual events and situations in my life find their way into my stories. Maybe because I write for escapism, to be something else or something more than all the crap in my real life? My real life does occasionally provide inspiration for my fiction in a very indirect way, I suppose. For example one of my characters was born from the jokes about gold teeth I shared with a Pan buddy following a RL visit to the dentists years ago now. No, I never got a gold tooth *chuckles* but the character born of the jokes about my wish for one remains.

My mood leaks, though, even if my actions don't. If I'm sad, depressed, angry, then (if I write at all) I'll write one of my moody characters. If I'm feeling giddy and high-spirited, then I'm more likely to write something off the wall.

As for fiction leaking into my real life, well that would just be scary! Try explaining at job interviews that you ticked both the 'male' and 'female' box on the application form because you're actually a mystical hermaphrodite...

Someone at Panhistoria posted in their blog the following quotation by G.K. Chesterton: "My country, right or wrong, is a thing that no true patriot would think of saying.... it is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'." And it got me wondering, is criticizing one's country being unpatriotic?

In England 'patriotism' has been a dirty word for most of my lifetime and probably even beyond that - talking to a German friend recently, he said the same thing is true in his country. To we European countries with a long history of colonialism and oppression, 'patriotism' is something we can't feel or express without its baggage of guilt. It's all too often automatically equated with 'racism', and as my friend sadly explained, in Germany it still carries the taint of Nazism. As ex-Imperialists, we cannot be patriots, except during the World Cup or Euro 2008. Patriotism and nationalism are something left for those nations, like America and Australia, who have shaken off the colonial yoke and won freedom for their countries. English nationalism is - according to our ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett - an incorrigibly primitive beast: "festering, resentful" and best kept carefully locked up in its cave.

But, criticising or ridiculing our rulers has a long tradition in England, and while some (any?) Americans might think its 'unpatriotic' to criticise the great and glorious Dubya or question the social, economic, religious and political implications of being American, here it would be postively de rigeur to have a stoic grumble about our lot in the world. That's what the English do - we're not so good at direct action like the French, but we are wonderful grousers.

My esteemed countryman Mr Chesterton was of course a very astute social critic, satirist, and opponent of British imperialism, and even now his name is often invoked by politicians addressing questions of English identity. It is only a shame he equated English freedom with beer...