101 Things #85 - A Roll in the Hay

I've been compiling my set of bucket-list rejects, the stuff that others recommend and which has no appeal to me, for some time now. One of the sources that I have freely plundered for suggestions to ridicule is the Bucket List Journey website and, wouldn't you know it, they've come up trumps again. I shall be adding to my non-achievers bible, 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, the somewhat offbeat notion that one should

Sleep in a stable on a haystack.

I'm not sure how much experience BLJ have of stables or haystacks. They may, of course, have considerable expertise in sleeping and see this idea as a doddle. Be that as it may, let us consider the position for the rest of us.

Firstly, some light quibbling [He does like a quibble, you know: Ed].

Here are some haystacks.
 

Those huge structures that look like houses are actually haystacks, built on the Manor Farm site in beautiful Ruislip. The photo was probably taken before 1914 when hay for London horses was the main agricultural output of the area.


And, by way of contrast, here are some stables.

This photo shows the stables at Manor Farm. The building is still there, now converted for public use as a meeting hall.

Readers, do you see the problem? Haystacks are very big and stables, by comparison, are smaller. It is not possible to do anything in a stable on a haystack because it is not possible to build a haystack within a stable. Obviously a very, very small haystack could be put up in a stable but then it would not really be a haystack, just a pile of hay.

I also rule out, just to frustrate any pedants about to put their hands up¹, the idea that stables could be constructed on top of a haystack. I think we may assume that our friends at BLJ did mean you to sleep on a haystack within a stable and just worded it clumsily.

Having therefore dismissed the idea that one could even attempt to sleep in a stable on a haystack, let us now be generous and consider the more general concept of having a kip in some sort of farm building using hay as one's bedding. (I don't think I can make the wording any more generalised than this, but anyone who thinks they can do better is welcome to send in their suggestions to the usual address).²

Of course it sounds so romantic and daring. The runaway from home dossing down for the night with only the snuffling of the horses to disturb her. The escaped POWs listening with thumping hearts for the approaching boots. The lovers, burrowing deep into the hay as they lose themselves and forget the dreadful fate hanging over her when Uncle Silas starts the foreclosure proceedings. Yes, we've all read the stories and seen the programmes on telly. Let us return to reality.

Stables and most farm buildings stink of animals, manure, fertiliser and diesel oil. Straw is scratchy, apt to get everywhere in one's clothes and provides no real support for the back unless laid out on some suitable surface³. There is no electricity to hand so nowhere to charge one's phone and no reading light. If you need the loo in the night, the pitch-dark, muddy farmyard is your only option and you had better hope the geese are penned up and the dogs are asleep. If it is a cold night then wrap up in your warmest clothes and wait, shivering fitfully, for the dawn. If you wisely choose a summer night make sure you do not oversleep, you do not want to be prodded by a pitchfork and have goggling yokels eyeballing you. Of course what with the mice, or more malicious vermin, scurrying about and the horse-flies delighted to have found a change to their monotonous diet, you probably won't sleep much anyway.

Sleeping out in the open in fresh air is a better idea but way better still is to stay at the BnB that the farm offers, sleep comfortably in a nice airy bedroom and tuck into a proper farmhouse breakfast the next day.

No sleeping on hay in some freezing farm outbuilding for me, thanks very much, but I am so pleased to have been able to include some photos of beautiful Ruislip in one of these pieces.

Footnotes:
1. [I wasn't putting my hand up, actually, I just have this itch on the left shoulder blade that is hard to reach: Ed]
2. All submissions will be vetted with scrupulous care by the Editor before being carefully filed in the little wicker basket at the side of his desk, emptied into the big dustbin out the back on Thursdays, collected by the refuse service of Hillingdon Council and incinerated, probably somewhere near Slough.
3. Yes, I do know what I am talking about. I have slept on straw-filled palliases many times, whilst camping in my youth, and will gladly never repeat the experience.