Callouses, cows and Elizabethan ladies.

I have currently been unemployed for 2 weeks and a day. Up until now it has felt like a holiday but it's gradually starting to feel more real.

This week I have done a lot of sewing which I really enjoy. I haven't picked up a needle in a year now so it's been good to get back into it, although since last sewing I now find that I have to take my glasses off to thread a needle - what's that about? The last thing that I made was a patchwork quilt for my nieces wedding. My Mum and I made it together and it took over 2 years to complete. My niece has just celebrated her first anniversary and I hope that she likes the quilt as much as we enjoyed making it for her. When we were making it I developed a callous on the pad of my middle finger of my right hand from pushing the needle through the fabric and I can feel this starting to form again. It may sound odd but I am quite proud of it as it shows that at least one little part of me is gainfully employed. Surely having a callous shows hard labour? Wouldn't you normally expect to see callouses on the hands of fishermen, farmers, lumberjacks, miners or others doing physical work, not the unemployed?

I love sewing and crafts, creating lovely unique things from bits of wool, fabric and paper. In some ways I would have made a good Elizabethan lady. I can almost picture me sitting in the drawing room, getting out my sewing frame and placing teeny tiny little stitches in an elaborately embroidered wall-hanging. I  have some of the necessary skills already: I am fairly good at fainting, tapestry and watercolour painting. I like the idea of carrying a fan and learning to ride side saddle and to play the pianoforte. On the down side I'd have to wear stays, wouldn't have had much of an education, would have been subservient to men and couldn't have voted, so perhaps I'm better off living in Elizabeth IIs' era after all.

When not sewing I have been out walking with my dog and enjoying the lovely spring weather. We've had some good walks, with the exception of yesterdays that is. I am unlucky enough to have a dog who is terrified of cows. I'm not quite sure how it started but think that it was when he was a pup and  a cow behind a hedge mooed unexpectedly and startled him. Ever since then he has been nervous and tries to pull away whenever we walk near cows.

His fear was made even worse a couple of years ago when we spent a week walking Hadrians Wall. One day whilst walking we managed to get between a herd of cows and their calves and the cows charged at us. When this happens the advice is to let the dog off the lead, the cows then chase the dog but will not catch it so that you can get away safely. I stupidly decided not to follow this advice and instead picked him up. There was a low crumbling piece of wall a few yards from us so I crouched down behind it on the side away from the cows, with my dog Billy held tight in my arms. As the noise of their hooves got nearer I  felt a warmth spreading down my front and I realised that in his fear Billy had peed all down me. Then before he had even finished weeing the cows had thundered past us, in true cowboy and western fashion, and were heading up to the top end of the field to join their calves.

Feeling relieved and a little bit smug at outsmarting the cows I stood up still clutching Billy to me and came face to face with the bull. He was standing about 10 yards away and glared at us with his red rimmed rheumy eyes. He was a huge beast, grey and stocky with the neck and shoulders of a rugby player. He still stared at us, his nostrils flared and then he pawed menacingly at the ground with one hoof and lowered his head so that we could have a better view of his horns. It was then that Billy lost control of his bowels and diarrhoea joined the urine down my front. I think that this was when the bull took pity on us and decided to amble up the field to join the cows and calves, his pendulous balls swinging as he walked. Leaving Billy and I to resume our walk both of us liberally smeared in excrement.

So since then Billy has been even more terrified of cows than ever. Where we live in Cornwall there are a lot of cows around so Billy's fear of them does affect the walks we can do. For this reason every week we do what I call the cow walk which is an hour long loop that leads us past a couple of cow fields, in the hope that one day Billy will get over his fear. He hates it, I hate it, not really sure what the cows think about it, but my plan definitely isn't working. But I don't like to be beaten so Billy and I will continue with the cow walk each week and hopefully he will realise eventually that not all cows are going to charge at us, especially when there is a fence or gate between us.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should all count our blessings. In the general run of things it would normally be considered a bad day to get peed on by a dog, and an even worse day to be covered in dog poo. However when the alternative to this is being trampled by cattle even this can be seen as a good day. I should be worried about being out of work but am enjoying having the time for myself and to do some things I like, especially if this means for a few hours a day I get to pretend to be an Elizabethan lady.