Our Wanker of the Week Award goes this week to someone we know only as "TL", whose email to the Sunday Times was published in the "Homes" section last weekend.
TL's email said "We live in an idyllic cottage on a lane, with one drawback. Four times a day, cows pass our front and back gates on the way to be milked. They leave cowpats down the lane, and we have to hose it down (no ban yet) so that we don't trail muck everywhere. Does the farmer have any duty to keep the lane clean?"
So let's get this straight, TL. You wanted to live in the country, presumably - it wasn't forced on you? Nobody dragged you kicking and screaming out of Starbucks on the High Street, bundled you into the boot of a Mercedes and dumped you in deepest Herefordshire?
Well, we've got news for you. Cows live in the country. Cows have to be milked. Cows shit. People who live in the country tend to know that.
And this idyllic cottage? You did choose it, presumably? You did look at it before you bought it? It didn't occur to you to wonder what those greeny-browny-caky-looking things in the lane were? You didn't notice the odd moo-ing sound, or see some large lumpy animals in the fields, and wonder whether they might perhaps have a bearing on your decision? Or perhaps you're in a witness protection system, and the house was chosen for you?
And how long have you been there? Five years? Ten? Perhaps you've lived there all your life and the farmer's some hideous incomer just moved in from Basildon, complete with a herd of cows he used to keep in the garden of his council house?
No? Come on, own up. The farmer was there first, wasn't he? In fact he's been there since he was a boy, and his father before him and his father before that. And so have the cows. I come back to it, cows live in the country, cows go to be milked, cows shit. That's what cows are for, and that's what the country's for.
If you can't see this, you must be a very silly and selfish person, and you should move back to Surbiton.
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