Exploring Vole Country With Bill Oddie

Bill Oddie owns one of humanity’s better souls. There’s no less flattering way of putting it. Nestled in that body of his beats a heart so pure that it’s thought to be in time with nature’s own clock. There was a moment today when I realised that just to be in the man’s presence is an honour. His breath smells of wild nettles and he has small barbs on the backs of his hands were wild creatures can grip as they sup the heady nectar oozing from his sweat glands. I can honestly say that the exciting days and long drawn out nights I’m spending with Bill are making me more aware of his special qualities. Hell. I've even seen him suckle a weasel. Is there anything more honest and true than that?

We’d spent our morning tickling trout on the stretch of Scottish river that Bill maintains up here on behalf of the wildlife. It’s a lush paradise for all types of fauna, including the grit toad, the gasping adder, and the rare Highland vole (about which, more later). Yet as much as I love Bill and would have happily bore him children if we'd met in my childbearing days, I did feel that the morning was less than advertised.

I’d travelled all this way to Scotland expecting to finger some fish only for Bill to insist, at the very last moment, that I could only tickle his trout if I wore woollen mittens to protect the oils that cover their delicate scales. Water heavy mittens and temperatures below freezing were not what I was expecting when I agreed to this caper. By eleven o’clock, I was so disenchanted that I made only half-hearted attempts at inducing laughter in the trout, who, it turns out, are the most selfish of creatures. Once they realised they were getting nothing from me, they’d slip from my numb, cold fingers and go seek their pleasures between Bill’s waders. I’ve seen similar behaviour at recordings of the Paul O’Grady show, so I recognised the signs that a performer should retire while he still can. Only some, like O’Grady, keep going and put honest men and women out of business. Ruin them. Force them to wretched satellite channels, only a dozen or so channels up from the porn. What kind of life is that for a man with great ideas and a wife with a novel to plug?

However, I digress.

Around lunchtime, I managed to persuade Bill that we’d tickled enough trout for one morning and I suggested lunch.

‘I have some pickled onions and quorn sandwiches in my binoculars case,’ he said with an enthusiasm you couldn’t smash with a mallet. ‘I’ll share them with you, Dick. Nothing like pickled onions and a bit of quorn to warm you up for an afternoon wading among the trout.’

‘Much as I appreciate the offer, Bill,’ I answered, ‘I doubt if your binoculars case could hold quantities of neither pickled onions nor quorn to satisfy my appetite. Let’s call the ticking off for the day and go look for a local tavern and perhaps sample its honey meads.’

‘Taverns? Honey meads?’ scoffed Bill. ‘There aren’t any taverns around here.’

‘Then let us embark on a quest to find a country pub,’ I replied. ‘Isn’t it often said that you can’t walk five minutes in Scotland without smelling some freshly brewed hops?’

‘That’s true but not in this part of Scotland. This is Presbyterian country. Most pleasures are outlawed around here. Do you know I even needed a license before we could tickle the trout? And before they gave me that I had to promise that we wouldn’t go touching any nipples.’

I felt a slightly guilty flush develop around my cheeks. Nobody had mentioned that the nipples were out of bounds.

I thought it best to hurry matters on. ‘This is disturbing news, Bill,’ I said. ‘Where am I to get a pint?’

He laughed. ‘Nowhere! There isn’t a pub within fifty miles of us.’

I could hardly see a reason for humour and with barely a wave to the trout, I set off in search of lodgings and something alcoholic and warm.

Walking in Scotland with Bill Oddie was such a rare experience. It was past noon and the cold of the morning had been turned a touch more pleasant by the breaking of sunlight through the clouds. We’d been walking some time, me leading the way as Bill went bounding over the fields and occasionally returning to the road to hand me some fresh owl droppings that he’d found. Yet it was about five miles down the road when the incident happened.

There was a vole lying at the side of the road. We’d been walking along when Bill stumbled across him. Well, actually, Bill didn’t stumble. It was more like me nearly falling on Bill after I'd slipped on the poor creature’s innards that had been spread across the carriageway.

‘Oh, the poor little mite,’ said Bill, kneeling down to close the vole’s lifeless eyes.

‘Looks like a car got him,’ I said. ‘Dunlop. I recognise the tread pattern across his back, all four bloody feet of it.’

Bill wiped a tear from his eye as he stood up. He’d left his jacket across the remains of the poor dead vole.

‘We should buy him,’ he said.

‘Bury him?’

‘You can’t leave him here. Not like this. It’s undignified.’

I looked up the road, imagining a hot toddy waiting for me in some warm snug with access to repeats of the Richard&Judy show on Watch. ‘Oh, it will be alright,’ I said. ‘A cat will come along at any moment and lap that up. Isn’t that the way with nature? He’ll be food for some passing crow within the hour. I promise you, Bill.’

Only Oddie wouldn’t listen to reason. He spent the next ten minutes digging a small hole by the side of the road and then transporting the dead vole into that makeshift grave.

‘I’m surprised you don’t need a license to do this,’ I muttered as Bill stood over the grave and bowed his head.

‘Do you think we should say something?’ he asked.

‘I could say a fair few things,’ I replied in a threatening tone. Only, one look at Bill and I realised how terribly cruel I was being. ‘Of course I could say something, Bill. In fact, I’d be delighted.’

As you probably know if you’ve read ‘Fathers & Sons’ (reasonably priced at Amazon and getting even more reasonable by the day), I’m blessed with a mastery of words. However, nothing could have prepared me for that moment when I had to compose a valediction for a mole lost by the side of a Scottish road. I wish I could recover the words I’d said there but they have been lost on that lonely stretch of tarmacadam and vole juice. All I do know is that by the end, Bill was sodden with tears; his beard a single strand of bedraggled hair, matted together and smelling like damp straw. As I stood and watched him play the Last Post on his favourite duck call, it was then that I realised that Bill really is a very special person. He’s a one off; the champion of owls, defender of the hedgehog, and a friend to animals everywhere. And as soon as I’d scraped the last of the vole from my shoe and kicked it into the grave, I was only too happy to start filling in the hole on behalf of my good friend who could only stand there, blubbering out his vows to fight even harder to have vole tunnels installed under every road in this country of ours.

When I was finished heeling in the earth, Bill looked up at me, his face hardened into a look of solid ardour.

‘Never again,’ he said, gripping my arm. ‘Never again.’

‘Never again, Bill,’ I agreed with compassion. ‘Now let’s go get a drink and help me rinse this taste of vole out of my mouth.’

A Meaty Meal

Forgive me if I parse a few ugly phrases this morning. I’m suffering a hangover so acute that it has already penned its own agenda for the destruction of the human race. Last night was something of a special occasion. To mark the first job interview I’ve attended in over twenty years, I was treated to a meal by my excellent friends, Stephen Fry and Jeremy Clarkson, at one of the West End’s finest restaurants. The place came with a good reputation for having the widest menu in the city. A.A. Gill had described it as an ‘omnivore’s paradise’, which in Clarkson’s version had become ‘tasty grub’. In practical terms, the menu offered speciality cuts of meat for those of us who enjoy the finer side of the mammal and vegetable divide.

As if to prove the point, I’d been tucking into my main course when I must have hit an artery somewhere in the midst of the raw steak. The plate was soon awash with bovine claret. I didn’t know what to do: mop it up with a bread roll or fashion a tourniquet out of my napkin. In the end, I asked Clarkson to lean over and lend me his finger. With a bit of pressure applied to the steak’s wound, I piled mashed potato over the meat and the problem was solved. It’s the sort of quick thinking that I’m known for.

I’m telling you this in order to make a point about my diet. To argue that I’m a man who has never taken the vegetarian shilling is to understate my love for meat. If I had the teeth for it, I’d rip it straight from the hoof. Many a time have Judy and I holidayed abroad and I’ve gone for the most meaty dish on the menu. There’s not a animal on this green earth I’ve not dreamed about chewing through and that would include some fairly rare beasts. It’s why I don’t take Jamie Oliver’s arguments all that seriously. If God hadn’t intended us to eat meat, he’d have never given us the cattle gun.

‘It’s the little baby chickens,’ I explained to Clarkson as he began to hack into his own side of beef. ‘He gets all gooey eyed when he sees their cute little beaks.’

‘I love beak,’ sighed Jeremy. ‘Newly fried with a squeeze of lemon juice. Absolutely terrific.’

At this point, Stephen Fry returned from the wine cellar. He’d insisted that the waiter took him there to choose a bottle of the red that would match not just our meal but his new vermilion cape.

‘Do I return at the end or the beginning of an interesting topic of conversation?’ asked Stephen, resuming his seat.

‘We’re discussing meat and why Jamie Oliver is fussy about what he cooks,’ explained Jeremy.

‘Oh, I know something he’d never cook,’ said Stephen. ‘Panda.’

‘Panda?’ said Jeremy, wiping his mouth with his napkin and then giving me one of those looks. ‘Do you believe this, Dick? Stephen claims to have eaten panda.’

‘I didn’t much care for it, myself,’ said Fry. ‘A rather tough meat with an excess of gristle.’

‘And when did you eat panda?’

‘In China,’ said Stephen. ‘Some of the larger zoos have quite a collection of panda. I happened to be guest of honour on the day one of them died. The poor thing fell from its tyre swing. Everybody was quite distraught but then common sense took over. They quickly dressed the meat and popped it in the pot. It was quite the experience.’

‘I’ve eaten raccoon,’ I admitted, which didn’t sound half as interesting as panda.

‘I bet neither of you have eaten chaffinch,’ said Jeremy, with a gleam in his eye. ‘I love chaffinch.’

Now it was my turn to look pleased with myself. ‘You certain have,’ I said. ‘Your love for them is the stuff of legend. That’s why Judy has made you so many chaffinch pies over the years. It’s become her speciality.’

‘I bet Mr. Oliver wouldn’t know what to do with a chaffinch,’ said Stephen. ‘It reminds me of a meal I had on a tour of Japan. It was the days of Jeeves and Wooster and Hugh Laurie had taken me to a little traditional restaurant in the heart of Tokyo. You would not believe what was on the menu.’ He looked at us and sipped his wine in order to delay the moment. ‘Zebra.’

‘Oh, I’ve had that too,’ said Jeremy. ‘A tough meat but has a strong flavour. It reminds me of porcupine.’

‘Australian porcupine is the best,’ agreed Stephen. ‘It’s best when it still has the spines.’

‘Another good meat,’ returned Jeremy, clearly getting excited by the topic, ‘is llama. It’s tastier than camel yet just as juicy.’

‘Yet camel is one of my favourites,’ said Stephen. ‘Put the snout under a hot grill at gas mark 4 and it is the perfect meal for a cold night.’

I listened as these two great men began to run down the meats they’ve eaten, all of which put to shame even my own carnivorous ways. Between them they’d eaten pretty much everything: otters, lizards, ponies, dogs, cats, spiders, and even Arctic mice.

The conversation lapsed as we scraped the last of our meal from the plate and prepared for the dessert.

‘So,’ I asked Stephen. ‘What shall we have for pudding? Sparrow, gnu, or cougar?’

‘I fancy something light,’ he replied. ‘I suggest a spot of ice cream?’

‘Excellent choice,’ agreed Clarkson.

‘Okay,’ I said, waving over the waiter. ‘Three ice creams.’

At which point, Jeremy leaned back and took on his favourite look of unqualified smugness. ‘This reminds me of my time in Louisiana when we have alligator pie and ice cream flavoured with a wombat’s ears.’

‘Amateur hour,’ replied Stephen. ‘I once ate ice cream sprinkled with the crushed loins of the silver backed sand monkey of Papua New Guinea.’

And so they went on. For another hour, I listened to some of the most mouth watering recipes imaginable. I began to jot them down but soon gave up for the same reasons as I’m now going to close this post: I’m beginning to feel hungry. And I happen to know there are some ham sausages in the fridge. I’m not going to eat them, of course. But I might be able to lure the neighbour’s dog into the back garden…