You know what us poets are like – always looking for a writing opportunity or an audience upon whom to inflict our rhythms. Who better then to attempt to impress than the cows in the field next to our kitchen who, hoping for perhaps a tasty forkful of sileage or two, gather eagerly by the fence when I wax lyrical whilst loading up the log basket. I guess the sound of it must be similar.

Seldom has an audience appeared so enthusiastic. What, then, shall I choose to declaim? Frost? Yeats? Shakespeare? Or something from someone a little bit less dead?

I begin with Ogden Nash – you know the one….The cow is of the bovine ilk etc, etc. This seems to go down quite well. The audience push their noses closer to the poet. One even begins to urinate. This I take as an indicator that she finds Nash’s little ditty amusing, and wonder if this is the origin of the phrase (letters omitted for the sake of decorum) p***ing itself.

Then I begin on one of my own. I’m practising for tonight’s Tick Tock event, not to mention headlining tomorrow night at Speaker’s Corner. Oh dear. They’re beginning to look a little bored. Gaze around. Rest their heads on other’s backs. Perhaps what’s needed is  a bit of back rhythm. I fill the coal bucket. Oh yes, that’s the ticket – a rhythmical intro and then the first stanza. I’m not sure whether the barbed wire is to protect me from the audience or protect the audience from the wild poet. Either way, I hope they’re taking it all in…