I hate cattle.

Scotland is sinking into the sea and there's a big problem with stupid Aberdeen Angus cattle (the mammoth-like variety with great shawls of long, filthy red coats) wandering down hillsides, foundering among the ice floes (?) and drowning.

Me and my mother are volunteers helping out and making efforts to wade in up to our chests and wrestle the idiot, panicking creatures back towards land as they float and thrash, driving themselves further out towards the encroaching sea. It is utterly thankless work and the cattle, of which there are around four, stink to high heaven.

Unfortunately, among our wards is a massive bull, and as soon as we drag his head around towards the grassy bank where he fell in and co-erce him back onto terra firma, he starts getting a bit shirty. In a few minutes, Mum and I are having to take evasive action. This builds to a point where, at the crest of the hill, I am transfixed before a charging, screaming bull and mentally I project profile and bull-time views of exactly what ugly pjysical wounds are going to happen to my head when his head makes contact with it.

This leads me to rapidly consider what objects I could place between the bull and myself, and how good for protection they'd be:

• A vinyl record held out at arm's length


• My hand


• A halberd


• My boxer shorts, which are red


• A breezeblock hurled between the eyes


• A small house

Of course, this proves so fascinating that I become quite absorbed, and the bull, the hillside, the other stupid bloody cattle, and my mother -- all being figments of my warped little imagination -- disappear instantly.