Jeremy Clarkson - Diddly Squat: ‘Til the Cows Come Home

The contents of this book first appeared in Jeremy Clarksons Sunday Times column. Read more about the world according to Clarkson every week in the Sunday Times.

Jeremy Clarkson began his writing career on the Rotherham Advertiser. Since then he has written for the Sun, the Sunday Times, the Rochdale Observer, the Wolverhampton Express & Star, all of the Associated Kent Newspapers and Lincolnshire Life. He was, for many years, the tallest person on television. He now lives on Diddly Squat Farm in Oxfordshire where he is learning to become a farmer.

Motorworld

Jeremy Clarksons Hot 100

Jeremy Clarksons Planet Dagenham

Born to Be Riled

Clarkson on Cars

The World According to Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul

And Another Thing

Dont Stop Me Now

For Crying Out Loud!

Driven to Distraction

How Hard Can It Be?

Round the Bend

Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

As I Was Saying

If Youd Just Let Me Finish!

Really?

Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?

Diddly Squat

This book is dedicated to all of the worlds farmers.

Hello in my first book about life at Diddly Squat Farm, I explained how Id survived a year of biblical weather, a forest of red tape, a lockdown, a herd of escapey sheep, ten million vindictive bees, chickens, trout and supply chain issues. So it felt a little unsatisfactory to finish with a story about how I stopped a school trip from urinating in my garden.

So, picking up where we left off Diddly Squats still going strong(ish). I continue to love what Im doing even though Im not very good at it. And to make things worse, I now have that most dangerous of things: a little knowledge. For instance, I know the difference between wheat and barley, and I know what oilseed rape is for. But what I know most of all is that farming is unbelievably hard work, and not very well paid.

There are times though, when a spare moment presents itself and the sun is shining and I can lean on a gate, chewing on a piece of grass. And then its the best job in the world.

Last month I watched some alarming video footage of a policeman near Reading deliberately ramming a cow with his pick-up truck. The poor thing had escaped from its field and was wandering around on a road, in some distress. Apparently, it had knocked a shopper over and there were fears it could eat someones lawn. But even so there was no need to kill it. Its not like it was a brontosaurus or a saltwater crocodile. It was just a cow.

So why didnt plod entice it with a bit of hay, or call a vet, who could have pulled something humane and scientific from his bag of Herriot trickery. Ramming it with a two-ton police truck seems so brutal.

We are told that the cow represented a significant danger to motorists but as the road had been closed this seems unlikely. What seems more likely is that whoever decided to implement a new policy of ramming cows is a bit thick.

Still, the British plod did better than their counterparts in America because back in March, when officers in Virginia were asked to deal with an escaped cow, they reacted by arriving on the scene in a blizzard of noise and flashing lights and tried to shoot it which resulted in them missing ten square feet of slow-moving cow and hitting one of their colleagues. Then, after hed been taken to hospital and the cow had been wrangled to the ground by someone who knew what he was doing, they shot it anyway.

Its all too tragic for words but at least there is a silver lining. Ive decided, against all my instincts, to install some new fencing.

When I was younger I used to sit watching the most interminable drivel on television because I couldnt be bothered to get out of the chair and change channels. Now, of course, thanks to the remote control I dont have to. As soon as James May says Hello and welcome to I just press the button and, kerpow, hes gone.

Nor when I want to speak with a friend do I need to go to the phone box and stand in a puddle of tramp urine, or wait for the neighbour to get off the party line because today its considered a human right to have a smartphone of your own.

Life is easier and faster in every way. We dont have to crank a handle to start the car. We dont have to put up with feeling green around the gills for 90 minutes when we want to cross the Channel. We dont even have to go to the shops when we want something.

However, when we want to build a fence, we are still expected to use the exact same system as those apes we saw at the beginning of Kubricks space odyssey. You deploy something called a fence knocker, which is a heavy bit of iron with handles on the side and is far and away the most tiring thing in the world.

Knocking in one post takes about 20 minutes and in a mile of fencing there are 1,320 posts. And on my farm there is maybe 20 miles of fencing. Get that job done and I could beat Tyson Fury at arm wrestling. Thats why I use a different system, which is called paying someone else to do it.

Except now, thanks to global warming, or transgender issues, or some other kind of woke plague, I cant even do that because theres a massive planetwide shortage of timber.

A small beetle, no bigger than a grain of rice, decided recently to eat Canada. It started in British Columbia, stripping the bark off every tree it could find, and now its halfway across Alberta. God knows how its still hungry after all of that but it is and soon there will be no trees left.

And its not just the six-legged Mr Creosote thats causing the problem, because theres also the Wuhan bat. When that caused the world to shut down, some people went home and spent their newly gifted free time making bread. Some learnt French and some broke out the watercolours. But the vast majority reckoned that because they were stuck at home they may as well spruce the place up a bit.

So off they went to the DIY store, where they bought timber for decking, timber for new fencing and timber for an extension. And this wasnt just happening in Britain. It was happening everywhere.

So now theres a huge surge in demand for what the beetle hasnt eaten and, to create the perfect storm, theres also a shortage of sawmills. After the last recession in 2008, a lot of lumber yards suffered a kneejerk reaction to the sub-prime problems and shut up shop. So now, when timber is cut, there are very few places that can turn it into lumber.

And Covid has also caused chaos with shipping. So even if you can find a tree that hasnt been eaten, and you can find a sawmill thats still open, youre going to struggle to find a company that can deliver it. Which is why you might want to look at getting your wood from Europe. Yeah, well, post Brexit, good luck with that.