Читать книгу William’s Progress - Matt Rudd - Страница 56

There is nothing worse than having a sick baby, except when you are sick yourselves, except when, instead of being at home, you are in mid-Devon, about a thousand miles from a chemist, and bloody wildlife is keeping you awake at night. Last night, in the precious minutes when Jacob wasn’t hacking his way through an illness he wouldn’t have if we were in a nice centrally heated house, a barn owl, a bloody barn owl, was hooting away in the adjacent bloody barn. Isabel, the barn owl conservationist, didn’t notice. She had a pillow over her head. This was a shame. Even she, the great farm-loving romantic, is beginning to see that there are advantages to the twenty-first century and that perhaps farm holidays aren’t right for (a) this time of year, (b) a young family and (c) enjoying oneself in the slightest bit, ever, at all. If a bloody barn owl had kept her awake all night, too, she might have also seen that (d) barn owls aren’t worth conserving.