Dear diary, I do not know why I write these silly letters: nobody but me ever reads them, and sometimes I feel as though you are my only friend. Never the less, I shall record now what happened at the farm today. My fifteenth Monday in the real world after graduating…

Back home, as I feel I must write, to keep the memory alive, the farm is the opposite of the farm here: there is a nice farm boy who can add and subtract, here there is a farm boy who says ‘innit’ a lot—I have no idea what this means—and whose face resembles some animal hide dragged free of the combine harvester.

Also, back home we have equipment—our farm, our proper farm. Here there is only relics of old and things which must be operated by hand and elbow grease. It is truly disturbing. Back home everything is computer controlled, but here the cows must be milked by hand! Really quite disgusting.

A problem arose today: they asked me to milk two cows by hand (I mean lets be honest, I may as well go out an apply for permanent vet jobs now). The grim farm boy knelt down and pulled away on both simultaneously, a smile on his face, and then he asked me to do the same. I told him in no uncertain terms I would not do this. He then looked me up and down and said that women didn’t usually wear frocks on farms. I did not know how to react to this, but after some time of deliberation decided to tell him the truth and teach him how a proper farm should be: I told him that every female member of our five hundred acre farm had always worn a frock to work, like in the olden days when farming was a charming thing to do—almost romantic. He did not understand this, spouting all kinds of rubbish about how impractical it is and how the garment can get caught in farming equipment. What did he suggest I do? Whip my frock off there and then? He should be so lucky!