The Real James Herriot (28 page)

On one occasion, I faced the prospect of having to administer an intravenous injection to a cow. Aware that serious complications could follow a faulty technique, I was worried. Yet again I rang my father for advice.

‘Dad, I have to visit a cow with milk fever.'

‘Is it down?' he asked.

‘Yes. I suppose I will have to give it an intravenous injection?'

‘You will!' he replied.

‘Which vein shall I use? The milk vein or the jugular?'

There was a pause. ‘The jugular is a cleaner area to work.'

‘Which is the easier?' I asked.

He replied promptly. ‘Hector could find the milk vein.'

After I had qualified from the Glasgow Veterinary College in 1966, I returned to work officially for Eddie Straiton, my first job as a veterinary surgeon. It was in the October of that year that I telephoned my parents from Staffordshire. As it was soon to be their Silver Wedding Anniversary, I wanted to know what the plans were for the forthcoming celebrations. At that time, I reckoned my parents' financial position to be more than adequate and I looked forward to joining the family and friends at whatever party was being arranged. I was to receive a surprise.

‘I don't think we'll go anywhere special,' my father replied. ‘It's pretty expensive to go out nowadays!'

I thought this a little strange. Twenty-five years of marriage is quite a milestone and deserves some recognition, but there was to be no candlelit dinner for Mr and Mrs Alfred Wight.

The reason was simple enough: Alf was seriously short of money. He had recently visited his accountant, assuming that he had £820 in the bank, but had received a severe shock. He had been informed that he owed the Inland Revenue £800, leaving him the grand total of £20.

On the day he received this sobering piece of news, he went to Elland Road football stadium to watch Leeds United play, having been invited by two young men who used to live opposite the surgery in Thirsk. Alf often spoke later of his feelings at the time. ‘I was there, but I never saw the match. It was like a dream. I thought to myself, “My God! I have slaved away in that practice for more than twenty-five years and what have I got to show for it? Twenty quid!'”

It seems incredible that Alfred Wight, a professional man of some standing in the local community, could not summon up enough money to celebrate his Silver Wedding; but there were good reasons and many factors were involved.

Alf had earned well for most of his professional life, but not well enough to become a rich man. His words to me before I embarked upon my veterinary career were very true: ‘You'll make a decent living as a country vet but you'll never make a fortune.'

Unlike many modern practices, his was, for most of his working life, an agricultural one. The hours he spent driving large distances in his car, although enjoyable, only brought in a limited sum of money. Today, the treatment of family pets and horses generates a high proportion of
our practice income, but during the 1960s he still depended primarily on farm work.

Overheads were high. Staff had to be paid and there were cars to be run. The purchase of expensive drugs and the provision of accommodation for the assistants all added to the costs of running the practice, while the cheerless spectre of the tax man was never far away. Many modern, large practices are now run as successful businesses, employing full-time managers, but in those days, in common with the vast majority of their professional colleagues, Alf and Donald Sinclair ran the practice themselves. Neither was an astute businessman, and it must have been very tiring to turn their hand to paperwork at the end of a long day.

Alf was never good with figures and Donald was not much better. It was in 1976, when I became a salaried partner, that I had my first insight into the torrid sessions they endured with their accountant, Bob Rickaby. Alf liked Bob very much but he dreaded his annual visit, the theme of which varied little from year to year.

Alf and Donald used to sit around the old wooden table in the waiting-room, listening to the résumé of the financial year. Donald suffered from a delicate digestion, the symptoms of which usually surfaced during Bob's visits. He would always sit in a hunched position with his arms tightly wrapped around his stomach – leaning forward and groaning softly at every piece of bad news from the accountant.

Alf adopted a very different posture. He would sit upright, staring out of the window at the old garden, a fixed and distant expression upon his face, and dreamily saying, ‘Y… e… s' in response to the accountant's questions.

I clearly remember my first occasion around that table. I was seated next to Donald, who had a large piece of cod protruding from his coat pocket. My father was staring glassily at Bob who, having explained in detail how he had arrived at the figures, asked him whether he had understood.

‘No,' replied my father.

The accountant was very thorough, attaching great importance to his clients' understanding of their financial position. He took a deep breath, removed his spectacles before giving them a polish, and began slowly to explain it all again.

‘Listen, Alf,' he said, replacing his spectacles while fixing my father with a patient stare, ‘let me put it to you in the simplest possible way.
You go to the butcher and you buy two pounds of sausages… are you with me so far?'

‘Yes.'

‘Right,' Bob continued, ‘the sausages are five shillings per pound, so you give the butcher ten shillings. OK?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good! Now, these sausages that you have bought have actually cost you more than ten shillings, haven't they?' said Bob.

‘Why?'

‘Because they have been paid for out of taxed income.' My father stared silently out at the garden. Bob looked at him closely before ploughing on. ‘You have already paid tax on that money you handed over to the butcher. Do you understand the analogy with the subject that we were discussing?'

‘No.'

Bob took another deep breath. ‘Well, let's put it another way, Alf. The butcher asks for less than ten shillings –'

At this point, my father came to life. ‘It's all right, Bob! Look, we trust you! Just carry on! You could boil me in oil and I would never understand these figures.'

Bob looked at the blank faces around the table. He hesitated before going on to another point. It was an unwelcome one. ‘Very well. Now, let me see, ah yes. I'm afraid you owe the practice four hundred pounds, Donald.'

Donald gave a hollow groan and lurched forward in his chair. ‘Why?' he asked, quite reasonably.

‘You have overdrawn!'

Donald sat bolt upright. ‘Bloody hell, Bob!' he shouted. ‘You're always giving us bad news! Why can't you give us some good news for a change?'

Bob was unruffled. ‘If you look at the profits, Donald, there
is
some good news –'

‘Not for me, there isn't!' interrupted Donald, tightening the grip around his waistline. I could see from the expression on his face that his digestive system was in ferment.

Bob continued to explain that the practice was really ‘not doing too badly', but that expenses had to be met, and that the taxman wanted his cut.

‘Not too badly, you say?' said Donald. ‘I think we are going out of
business. We pay out huge bills and nothing is coming in. We are going under! What do you think, Alfred? Don't you think we are going to the wall?' He nervously fingered the fish in his pocket.

My father continued to gaze out of the window, but a fleeting spasm crossed his face. We sat silently for a few moments, trying valiantly to grasp the facts and figures.

‘How much can I have, Bob?' Donald exclaimed suddenly. ‘How much is my share?' I had the feeling that my senior partner's limited store of patience was almost exhausted.

‘Well, after deducting that four hundred pounds, let me see…'

‘Never mind that! How much?!'

The accountant arrived at a figure while Donald rocked backwards and forwards in his chair. After receiving his answer he leapt quickly to his feet. ‘I must go now! Audrey is waiting for this fish. Lovely to have seen you, Bob. Do give my love to Gwen! Goodbye!'

Our yearly financial consultation had just ended.

Despite neither Alf nor Donald being experts in the field of facts and figures, the practice continued to make a profit but many other things conspired towards limiting it, not least among them the thorny issue of bad debts. Obtaining money from many of the old Yorkshire farmers was an art in itself, with some of the clients owing the practice large sums of money for years.

I remember telling my father, over lunch one day, about my morning round.

‘I met two grand blokes today, Dad! Full of laughs with hardly a care in the world.'

‘Who were they?' he asked.

I told him. He gave a wry smile. ‘You know why they are so happy?' he said. ‘They receive a prompt service for which they pay me very infrequently. They receive totally free overdraft facilities from our practice.'

Alf loved his work but he never enjoyed the business side of it, such as sending out bills and chasing up bad debts. Many vets today enjoy the challenge of managing their own businesses, but he never did.

‘Why can't I just drive around, doing the job I love and receive a sum of money at the end of the week?' he used to say. ‘I don't want a huge amount, just enough to ensure that I can continue to enjoy my life. Apart from some security for my future, there is nothing in the world I really want that I haven't got already.'

In many cases, of course, the farmers had genuine difficulty in paying their bills – and there were many very good clients who paid promptly – but there is no doubt that the practice was severely disadvantaged by its outstanding debts.

It was not only some of the farmers who were slow to settle their accounts; a large proportion of small animal clients walked out of the surgery without paying. Many of them never paid at all and one can only guess how much the firm of Sinclair and Wight would have been worth had all the debts been settled promptly.

Neither Donald nor Alf were ruthless businessmen. Not only did they find it difficult to ask for money, they performed much of the work for vastly reduced fees. Old age pensioners, and anyone who had fallen on hard times, were given cheap, sometimes free, treatment. When a dairy farmer from Asenby near Thirsk died, leaving a widow and a very young son and daughter to run the farm, Alf did not charge them for his veterinary services for a whole year. This ‘Robin Hood' approach (Alf and Donald were not alone among their profession in this respect), while being very admirable, contributed significantly towards limiting the practice profits.

It is not hard to understand why the old farmers were so reluctant to hand over their money; every penny they made was earned through sheer hard work. But every cloud has a silver lining and, years later as James Herriot, Alf had many a good story to tell about the Yorkshireman's reluctance to ‘part with his brass'.

Another drain on the practice finances was the running of the motor cars. The assistants were provided with cars, and the golden rule seemed to be that they were driven at maximum speed at all times. These tormented little machines rocketed round the country roads, frequently shooting into ditches, somersaulting into fields or having the oil sumps torn off on the rough farm tracks. They were a very expensive item.

On one occasion in the early 1960s when I was on holiday from university, I was with my father in the office when suddenly outside I heard a tortured roar followed by a high-pitched squealing. I ran to the window but could see nothing. ‘What on earth was that terrible racket?' I asked.

My father seemed unmoved. ‘It's only Ron setting off on the morning round,' he replied. He walked over to the window and looked wistfully out on to the street. ‘He'll be arriving at the first farm by now!' He was obviously resigned to it all.

Ron Reeves was a very able and popular assistant, but one who set a new record in the practice. He managed to put a smooth, shiny finish onto a brand-new set of tyres in just 3,000 miles of motoring.

A few years later, Alf bought a second-hand car, a grey Renault 16. Previously, whenever he had replaced his car, he had bought a new one, but other priorities, for example pension provision, were now diverting his financial resources along other channels. One thing comforted him; he would not have to take any more ribbing from the farmers.

This used to be quite embarrassing. Whenever he was seen in a new car, he would receive remarks such as ‘By gaw! Look 'ere! Another new car! Veterinary job must be payin' ower well!' It was good-natured banter, but he still cringed when under attack. He thought he was safe in his second-hand car as he drove onto a farm one day. He was mistaken. The farmer's wife sprang out of the door to meet him, and she was in an aggressive mood. It was just his luck that he was visiting one of the very few unpleasant farmers' wives in the district.

‘By, the whole country's talkin' about your bills!' she shrieked. ‘An' look at this! Another new car! All got wi' the money from us poor farmers!'

My father was ready for her. ‘Actually it's only a second-hand one. I can't really afford a new car nowadays.'

She looked at it for a moment before returning to the attack. ‘Oh? So it's just a lot o' show on nowt, eh?' He said no more; he knew when he was beaten.

Despite everything, my father was doing well enough in the early 1960s to preclude his receiving a full local authority grant towards the funding of my university education. As that decade progressed, however, he saw a gradual downturn in the practice fortunes.

The amount of TB Testing – although still a major contributor to the practice income – began to slowly diminish as the number of stock farmers in the surrounding area declined. In the early 1970s, a new government scheme to eradicate Brucellosis would begin, meaning more revenue for country practices, but not only was that still a long way off, the big upturn in small animal work was yet to materialise.