Well, my step-count for March has skelpt all previous lockdown records thanks to one monster sow and her gluttony.
Splodge has a consumption rate that could only be rivaled by a rabble of journalists at a free bar.
The chunkiest of our three little pigs is a storming specimen with a phenomenal talent for eating on the hoof. Like an expert minesweeper at the end of a student party, she pounces on every last scrap strewn throughout their wee wooded glen. She’s a guzzler with no concept of dining etiquette, nor does she have any concern for the nourishment of her sisters.
Breakfast is a battle of wits and wellies as I scrabble between them; desperately scattering feed in the direction of the more svelte two. But Splodge is an unstoppable machine – an industrial vacuum sooking up every morsel as she storms at break-neck speed through the low-hanging branches. It’s the perfect technique, but leaves me scrabbling to outpace her, twisting and turning to chuck the food as far from our ‘big-boned’ girl as possible.
I’ve no intention of body-shaming this athletic big beast and have been delighted to have had my vocabulary extended this week with a term I’ve now adopted for personal use. The husband has pronounced her ‘over-conditioned’ and threatened Splodge with separate, meagre breakfasting arrangements.
If she’s to be fenced off and handed half a grapefruit, I think I’ll be joining her. Our youngest child has been amusing herself with light-hearted attempts to initiate me in her rigorous strength and conditioning regime. Our lovely lounge, with its open fire and cosy furnishings, has been requisitioned and transformed into an uninviting gym with clanging weights-bars, dumbells, gym-balls and other nasty paraphernalia. To much hilarity I’ve been learning squats and lifting techniques, but I seem to have remained over-conditioned in the livestock way, rather than developing into my aspiration of the perfectly conditioned human.
Perhaps I might reach that peak condition if I had to run through a forest, racing my family for a share of the grub. Hard work, but does sound similar to sharing a bottle of wine with my husband…
The Softer Crofter 