Let's Discuss Cows...

Everyone I’ve ever spoken to seems to love cows. They seem to think cows are sweet and harmless milk-providing animals that you can innocently visit at most farms. I once went into a friend’s home and found her love for the bovine had extended to photographs of Highland cattle plastered all over her walls.

I mean, what the...? To my mind, cows are evil, vicious animals.

I suppose I could have been normal and just scared of something like spiders or snakes. But my cow phobia stems from an unfortunate incident when I was a young child.

My aunty and uncle had taken me to a farm somewhere in Essex. See photos. There we were, enjoying ourselves in a field with a cute baby cow. My aunty and uncle said I could pet it. Yay. But the mummy cow was not impressed.

In fact so unimpressed was Mrs Cow that she charged at us. My aunty claims she saved me that day, leaping in front and pushing me out of the way.

I don't remember this. All I recall was everything going black, and from that day onwards, a lifetime of cow-related nightmares.

Now, my aunty and uncle are absolutely lovely and I would like to point out here that they would never have emotionally scarred me on purpose. But they did make me promise not to tell my mum. Which, of course, I did, immediately, the moment I got home.

To be honest, I’m not sure it would have mattered if I’d tried to keep quiet. ‘Cow Gate’ had seriously traumatised me so I reckon she probably noticed anyway.

Anyway, now I was facing a lifetime of cow angst. And whilst you might think a fear of cows is OK, because they can be avoided, especially if you stick to urban life, it’s not that simple. At least not for me.

Fast forward to my teens and I’m on a first date with my new boyfriend (now husband) at a cinema in Ipswich. I thought I’d be safe from cows at the multiplex, but no. First we had the surround sound mooing to get us to turn off our mobile phones. Then there was the lovely milk advert with the slogan, 'the cows want it back' with creepy music and a group of cows that follow a man home and go up in a lift. Argggggghhh!

It was like someone had seen inside 10 years of my nightmares and plastered them on the big screen for entertainment of my future husband. I freaked. When I finally admitted my intense bovine fear, he thought I was crazy.

Things with the cows weren’t improved by my brain haemorrhage, either. In hospital I could tell I was being pumped full of ludicrously strong drugs because I was quietly convinced there were cows living on the building’s roof.

I was also put into a medically-induced coma for a while, and while I have no memory of visitors at this time, I do remember taking them to feed the cows at some stables, which helpfully, were also on the hospital grounds!

I knew it was crazy and would sound rather worrying so I never said anything to the doctors, the nurses or anyone, frankly...Let’s face it: I’d had a massive bleed on the brain, I had enough problems.

I had sketchy memories of my time in Cardiff hospital and I went back there in 2016, to see the doctors who’d saved my life and also to see the ward where so much had happened.

But to be honest, I also went back because there was a small part of me that wanted to double check there weren’t actually any cows there.

I saw none.