Paragraph of the week

Aidan Hartley, a farmer in Tanzania, explains in the 30 June issue of the Spectator why he bought a pedigree Boran bull despite knowing that he was paying too much: he wanted “some pizzazz” in his herd:

After all, few are the joys left to a man of 47. I haven’t got a mistress. I do not feel the need to ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. I like wine too much and while dodging bombs and rockets in Sudan the other day I thought it might be a good idea to retire from covering African wars. But what comes after the adrenalin of being shot at? I rise early, I work hard, I love my family, but I just seem to spend my life paying utility bills or talking about petty-cash vouchers.

The bull, we learn, is named Ollie and has a “lustful look in his eye. He’s heavy but not coarse-boned, not too loose, with length and a great top line.” Sounds like a bull, and sounds like a couple of Ollies I know. Later in the column Hartley says:

To launch the herd, my wife Claire bought me three heifers for my birthday.

I have a birthday coming up. I wonder…