For her radio programme A Small Country Living Jeanine visits the Baker family who keep Anglo-Nubian goats. Jeanine has often considered buying them but has been put off by stories of their possessive and neurotic temperament. She has more than enough to deal with at home already.
However, when she enters the shed 'the goats were in a state of absolute calm as they sat dreamily cudding on their thick beds of straw'. 'It was a world away from the constant drama's of my own goat-shed, where I sometime feel more like the headmistress of a girls' school along the St Trinian's line, than a simple goat-keeper.
Perhaps, I thought, as we stood amongst the beautifully behaved Anglo-Nubians (...) goats, like any other animals, are simply reflecting the inward state of the people who look after them. Given the steadying influence of the Bakers, my own British Toggenbergs might become models of rectitude; given my usually manic state of mind pervading their lives, the Baker Anglo-Nubians might turn into raging delinquints.'
I was glad Jeanine came to this insight because I was getting a bit tired of her constant state of panic. Always too late, too dark, too much work in too little time, too icy a road, not enough petrol, danger from the IRA, violent thunderstorms ... Nothing really goes wrong, on the contrary: she is welcomed everywhere and many people help her. But Jeanine makes the reader feel things will end badly regardless.
I found this book, the third of Jeanine McMullen's memoirs, at Barter Books in Alnwick.
Jeanine
continues to tell us the story of her small country living in Wales,
but mostly this is a record of het adventures while making her BBC radio
programme of the same name.
Mrs P. (Jeanine's mother) is still there, as are her neighbours, faithfull vet Betie Ellis and of course her beloved animals.
We learn that one of the reasons for moving from Australia to the UK is her health: '... some freak of those ancient genes of ours has made it impossible to survive the Australian summer without being half-dead with asthma or hay fever ...'
Readers of other books covered in this genre may be interested in her visits to Ruth Janette Ruck in Wales and Derek and Jeannie Tangye in Cornwall.
Organizing the trips to make her programme is always a stressfull business: to save costs lots of visits have to be squeezed in as little time as possible. Sometimes she has a producer to help and accompany her. She also has helpers to 'house and mother sit' and then there are her faithfull neighbours, always ready to drive her to a far-flung destination. At home there is the farming life we got to know in her earlier books, with horse Doli and goat Dolores as the main characters.
Towards the end of the book Mrs.P. starts getting health problems, and is hospitalized for weeks. In the end she returns to Australia.
I think this book will be especially interesting to lovers of her radio programme. Unfortunately, the Archive Hour of A Small Country living is no longer available
