Laughing Gas

If you were to utter the phrase ‘You’ll never guess what JJ Pogle’s been up to?’ in Sleepy Hamlet, you’d have the entire village eagerly hanging upon your every word. JJ Pogle was to the villagers a source of constant hilarity and thanks to Mrs Fenshaw, the vet’s secretary, the village was about to learn of another tale of JJ Pogle’s exploits.

It began as most of the best JJ Pogle stories do with him looking through the farming trade papers for ways to diversify and make money. JJ Pogle would read all the trade papers and farmers gazettes in detail. He would then latch onto one particular idea and see something in it that no one else had. This month he’d seen a story about producing and selling gas through the natural process of methane production. JJ read on to discover that DEFRA wanted to set up a network of farms that would have digesters producing the necessary gas from manure, straw or surplus crops.
It was at this point that JJ put the magazine down and went all misty eyed. It was generally considered to be a bad sign when JJ Pogle went misty eyed as it indicated that the cogs in his head were turning; and in JJ’s case that always meant the wrong way.

He reasoned that he could make some money from this as the rate the gas company were going to buy it in at was set somewhere round 16p a therm. JJ Pogle didn’t know what a ‘therm’ was, but it sounded both scientific and important so he wrote ‘Therm’ down on his ideas pad and underlined it twice. His second reasoning was that he had a fair sized dairy herd which meant they were producing the necessary stuff naturally. And after a quick calculation, using the DEFRA’s calculating system, he came up with the figure he could earn with the size of herd that he had: The figure that JJ Pogle arrived at though did not initially inspire him.

Now it is at this point that JJ Pogle’s mind splits from that of any rational minded persons. Most people would look at the figure, decide if it was going to generate enough of an income, and if it wasn’t going to, they’d either shelve the idea or invest in more cattle thus producing the requisite quota of manure. That, as I’ve said is the rational way of thinking. JJ Pogle looked at the figures, didn’t like what he saw and decided his herd needed to produce more manure. This was how he arrived at the unbelievable idea of feeding his cattle curry.

He’d hit upon this questionable idea after a brief dalliance with a cook-in-the-pot Vindaloo curry which had had the effect of producing the stuff almost at the speed of light. So within two hours of consulting his old Ma’s recipe books, he’d visited the village stores, procured the ingredients and the curry was boiling away in many pots and pans around the house; by the end of the afternoon, JJ Pogle had produced 14 gallons of curry and had taken the cooled liquid out to his herd. He had just fed the last cow its portion when the first one started to react.

The cow gave out a low groan, lifted its tail and the crude liquid came out like water from a fireman’s hose. JJ smiled and saw, not an unnatural jet, but a way to a future profitability that would make him the talk of the Farmers Gazette. As he started to dream about his future as a methane gas baron the second cow, followed closely by the third and fourth, began to react; their tails lifted and they hosed out the liquid. JJ smiled again, but not for long. He had expected the herd to start reacting in sequence, after all that was how he’d fed them. But cows, like any other creature, have digestive systems that work at varying speeds and the cow that JJ was standing behind now had a mercury like one, and before JJ Pogle could move, the tail was up and it was divesting itself of almost a gallon of untreated therms.

JJ was covered in the stuff; he barely had time to wipe it from his eyes before another stream hit him. He moved quickly to the right, when in theory he should’ve gone to his left, as the cow he now faced had digested the curry, discovered on second thoughts that he didn’t like it, and hurled it all over JJ Pogle. This went on for almost an hour and as JJ started to see the error of his ways he also realised that he was going to need a bigger barn as the stuff was beginning to seep out into his farm yard and beyond.
Luckily the vet happened to be passing by at the exact moment that the slurry made its inaugural appearance into the lanes that led to Sleepy Hamlet. Upon seeing it was JJ Pogle’s farm that was leaking the foul smelling slurry, he decided to investigate.
When he arrived, it was to the scene of a little man, covered in foul smelling manure and on all fours looking for his cap, which he insisted had been knocked off by an unexpected salvo from the left.

After the cows were injected with some sort of clotting agent and liberal applications of Savlon were administered; JJ Pogle was cut out of his clothes and went for a week long soak in the bath. The vet, now finished with his unplanned emergency surgery, went back to his practice and this was when he recounted the tale to his secretary whose eyes lit up and mentally ticked off the minutes until lunch time when she could inform the village of JJ’s latest exploits.

JJ Pogle for his part sat brooding among the powerfully scented bubbles of his bath wondering what had gone wrong.
‘It must’ve been his mother’s recipe, yes, that was it. It was his mother’s fault. Next time’, he exclaimed loudly, ‘I’ll go lighter on the chilli peppers’. Then he reached for his note pad and went all misty eyed again.

Sleepy Hamlet © Karl Dixon 2010