10. The big, brown bull

On the way up to Pangbourne from Mapledurham lock we were treated to see a scene that depicts England in all her glory. A number of cows and a bull, coming down to the water’s edge for a drink and to cool down.

They’re a bit like us said Billy, “Did you know that they are male and uncastrated  “.We all thought it but didn’t actually say it that we could solve the National Debt by making castration compulsory for all the spongers on the Welfare state ,retirees  such as us three being amongst the chosen few to be retired in our fifties and pensioned off to a life of luxury, being the exception for compulsory neutering, would be prepared to make donation to any well-paid sperm bank hoping to improve the quality of their  gene pool.

 A bit more like us then you think said Jimmy” Apparently, bulls will mate with a cow, and then never mate with her again. No matter what you do to that cow, the bull knows he’s been there, done that and in all our cases,” Amnesia rules O”

Phil then proceeded to enthral us with the mechanism of goring telling us that once they have knocked a person down, they will then walk and run up to the grounded person and continually gore them until they are dead.

Our conversation on The Big Brown Bull ended with Jimmy telling the crew his favourite bull joke, which was of course a load of bull, having told it many times before.

A man took his wife on holiday to Texas and while there they went to Rodeo. One of the exhibits was a section concerned with that of breeding bulls.

They went up to the first pen and there was a sign that said, “This bull mated 50 times last year.” The wife poked her husband in the ribs and said, “He mated 50 times last year.”

They walked a little further and saw another pen with a sign that said, “This bull mated 120 times last year.” The wife hit her husband and said, “That’s more than twice a week! You could learn a lot from him.”

They walked further and a third pen had a bull with a sign saying, “This bull mated 365 times last year.” The wife got really excited and said, “That’s once a day. You could REALLY learn something from this one.”

The husband looked at her and said, “Go up and ask him if it was with the same cow.”