Vet in a Spin Read online

  Vet in a Spin [112-2.5]

  By: JAMES HERRIOT

  Synopsis:

  More musings and anecdotes from everyone's favorite country veterinarian,

  James Herriot.

  Chapter One Vet in a Spin With love to ROSIE, JIM and GILL .

  . .

  This was a very different uniform. The welling tons and breeches of my

  country vet days seemed far away as I climbed into the baggy flying

  suit and pulled on the sheepskin boots and the gloves the silk ones

  first then the big clumsy pair on top. It was all new but I had a

  feeling of pride.

  Leather helmet and goggles next, then I fastened on my parachute,

  passing the straps over my shoulders and between my legs and buckling

  them against my chest before shuffling out of the flight hut on to the

  long stretch of sunlit grass.

  Flying Officer Wood ham was waiting for me there. He was to be my

  instructor and he glanced at me apprehensively as though he didn't

  relish the prospect.

  With his dark boyish good looks he resembled all the pictures I had

  seen of Battle of Britain pilots and in fact, like all our instructors,

  he had been through this crisis in our history. They had been sent

  here as a kind of holiday after their tremendous experience but it was

  said that they regarded their operations against the enemy as a picnic

  compared with this. They had faced the might of the Luftwaffe without

  flinching but we terrified them.

  As we walked over the grass I could see one of my friends coming in to

  land.

  The little biplane slewed and weaved crazily in the sky. It just

  missed a clump of trees, then about fifty feet from the ground it

  dropped like a stone, bounced high on its wheels, bounced twice again

  then zigzagged to a halt. The helmeted head in the rear cockpit jerked

  and nodded as though it were ma king some pointed remarks to the head

  in front. Flying Officer Wood ham's face was expressionless but I knew

  what he was thinking. It was his turn next.

  The Tiger Moth looked very small and alone on the wide stretch of

  green.

  I climbed up and strapped myself into the cockpit while my instructor

  got in behind me. He went through the drill which I would soon know by

  heart like a piece of poetry. A fitter gave the propeller a few turns

  for priming. Then 'contact!" the fitter swung the prop, the engine

  roared, the chocks were pulled away from the wheels and we were away,

  bumping over the grass; then suddenly and miraculously lifting and

  soaring high over the straggle of huts into the summer sky with the

  patchwork of the soft countryside of southern England unfolding beneath

  us.

  I felt a sudden elation, not just because I liked the sensation but

  because I had waited so long for this moment. The months of drilling

  and marching and studying navigation had been leading up to the time

  when I would take to the air and now it had arrived.

  FO Wood ham's voice came over the intercom.

  "Now you've got her. Take the stick and hold her steady. Watch the

  artificial horizon and keep it level. See that cloud ahead? Line

  yourself up with it and keep your nose on it."

  I gripped the joystick in my gauntleted hand. This was lovely. And

  easy, too.

  They had told me flying would be a simple matter and they had been

  right. It was child's play. Cruising along I glanced down at the

  grandstand of Ascot racecourse far below.

  I was just beginning to smile happily when a voice crashed in my ear.

  "Rela' for God's sake! What the hell are you playing at?"

  I couldn't understand him. I felt perfectly relaxed and I thought I

  was coin fine, but in the mirror I could see my instructor's eyes

  glaring through h goggles.

  "No, no, no! That's no bloody good! Relax, can't you hear me,

  relax!"

  "Yes, sir," I quavered and immediately began to stiffen up. I couldn't

  imagine what was troubling the man but as I began to stare with

  increasing desperation, now at the artificial horizon then at the nose

  of the aircraft against the cloud^ ahead, the noises over the intercom

  became increasingly apoplectic.

  I didn't seem to have a single problem, yet all I could hear were

  curses an groans and on one occasion the voice rose to a scream.

  "Get your bloody finger out, will you!" ; I stopped enjoying myself

  and a faint misery welled in me. And as al way when that happened I

  began to think of Helen and the happier life I had left behind. In the

  open cockpit the wind thundered in my ears, lending vivid life to the

  picture forming in my mind.

  The wind was thundering here, too, but it was against the window of our

  bed-sitter. It was early November and a golden autumn had changed with

  brute suddenness to arctic cold. For two weeks an icy rain had swept

  the grey town and villages which huddled in the folds of the Yorkshire

  Dales, turning the fields into shallow lakes and the farmyards into

  squelching mud-holes.

  Everybody had colds. Some said it was flu, but whatever it was it

  decimated the population. Half of Darrow by seemed to be in bed and

  the other half sneezing at each other.

  I myself was on a knife edge, crouching over the fire, sucking an

  antiseptic lozenge and wincing every time I had to swallow. My throat

  felt raw and there was an ominous tickling at the back of my nose. I

  shivered as the rain hurled a drumming cascade of water against the

  glass. I was all alone in the practice Siegfried had gone away for a

  few days and I just daren't catch cold.

  It all depended on tonight. If only I could stay indoors and then have

  a good sleep I could throw this off, but as I glanced over at the phone

  on the bedside table it looked like a crouching beast ready to

  spring.

  Helen was sit ting on the other side of the fire, knitting. She didn't

  have a cold, - she never did. And even in those early days of our

  marriage I couldn't help feeling it was a little unfair. Even now,

  thirty-five years later, things are just the same and, as I go around

  sniffling. I still feel tight-lipped at her obstinate refusal to join

  me.

  I pulled my chair closer to the blaze. There was al ways a lot of

  night work in our kind of practice but maybe I would be lucky. It was

  eight o'clock wild never a cheep and perhaps fate had decreed that I

  would not be hauled out in that sodden darkness in my weakened state.

  Helen came to the end of a row and held up her knitting. It was a

  sweater for me, about half done.

  "How does it look, Jim?" she asked.

  I smiled. There was something in her gesture that seemed to epitomise

  our life together. I opened my mouth to tell her it was simply

  smashing when the phone pealed with a suddenness which made me bite my

  tongue.

  Tremblingly I lifted the receiver while horrid visions of calv