The Ruminati – Volume Two

What It Is

The second volume. A retired Household Cavalry horse in a Welsh field, the donkey who came free with him and runs the place, a bison calf leading a herd into ground its kind left six thousand years ago, and a Highland cow standing out in a Wester Ross blizzard because the shelter did not appeal.

Volume One made the case for British livestock through seven animals. This one is about what happened next: a pub in another county toasting a goat none of the regulars had met, a village moving a wedding indoors on the strength of where a ewe chose to stand, and a footpath in Herefordshire with forty-one reviews on it.

The New Cast

Hector, Cavalry Black. Seventeen years on State and Ceremonial, including a state funeral at the slow march. Retired to Denbighshire. Undone by pheasants.

Nelson, donkey. Came free with the horse. Eats first, picks the dry spot, decides when they move. Has brayed three times in his life, twice about hay.

Seren, bison calf. The first born on that ground in six thousand years. Leads a herd of half-tonne adults to a puddle and is extremely proud of it.

Isla, Highland cow, Wester Ross. Calved alone on the hill and would not let her own crofter within thirty yards for eight days.

Moss, collie pup, and Jed, thirteen in February, who quietly added forty yards to his own line so he could keep doing the job, and told nobody.

Also Returning

Keith, who got into a church, a pub and Dave’s kitchen. Gerald, still in the south corner, now with a worrier taking his reading off him. Doris, who organised a village wedding without being asked. Eduardo, Marged, Beatrice, and the people who keep them.

Format

Digital PDF, 272 pages, illustrated throughout, instant download. A fixed-layout PDF: best read on a tablet, laptop or e-reader, and readable on a phone with zooming.