Dairy goat shows in the UK take a night and a day, because we have a 24 hour milking competition. You have to get to the show site an hour before 'Milking Out' on the evening before the show; the goats are milked, checked to see they are truly empty by stewards called 'strippers' and then installed in individual pens. There they must stay for the duration of the show, except when they are in the ring for judging in the inspection classes. The next stage is 'Full udder inspection' at crack of dawn the next morning, so that the judge can see what the udder looks like when full and whether the teats leak under pressure; this is followed by the first milking, during which stewards patrol to see you aren't doing anything illegal to enhance you goat's milk production. The buckets of milk are weighed, samples taken for analysis and then everyone, goats included, has breakfast. Judging proper commences around 10 a.m. with all the milkers classes, followed by the goatlings (yearlings) and kids. Best in Show is chosen and then we all collapse for a while, because it's been a long, hard day after, usually, a pretty hectic evening before! The second milking takes place to end 24 hours after the previous night's stripping, milk is weighed and sampled again. Generally, there are prizes for 'Highest Yield on the Day', first kidders, goats running through and so on, but the real results of the competition are not known until the milk samples have been analysed for butterfat and protein content. A complicated formula involving these figures, time elapsed since kidding and weight of milk go to make an answer in points, the highest number of points being the winner.

But I digress - back to the transport. You'll appreciate that not only do you have to equip your goat for an overnight stay, with all the goodies to encourage her to milk well and be happy, but you have to be kitted out similarly yourself. You can imagine, therefore, how crowded it might become in a Reliant three-wheeler with the goat in the back and all your overnight gear in the front. I well remember the journey to that first show - me with just room to drive the thing and Annabelle, who was quite a rangy sort of goat, standing in the back with her head resting on my shoulder for about 65 miles! That was the occasion, too, when I discovered the delight of living in the pen next door to your favourite goat!

Eventually, we used another Reliant chassis to build a trailer to go behind the van, which made a bit more room for everything. However, when it came to travelling stud jobs, it was easier to put the billy in the back of the van. Many a mile we travelled with a smelly fellow at close quarters; mostly they behaved well and sat down for the ride. One male we had on loan was not so good on the return journey, having got a bit over-excited while doing his job. As soon as you put him back in the van, he would whip round and bash the back door. It was only fibreglass and had a window, so we feared for the door and the goat. I contrived an 'arrester wire' like they have on aircraft carriers, consisting of a chain and hook tied to the front seat frames and threaded through the wire mesh partition. As he jumped in, you had to swiftly hook his collar up, so that when he turned round for the big bash, his head couldn't reach the door!

As our goatkeeping expanded, so did our transport. While we still had a Reliant for domestic use, for the goats we had a rather boringly practical 1½ ton Ford with a horsebox body; eventually it began to fall apart, though, and we had to look around for a replacement.

One day our local newspaper had an item about some retired ambulances which were being sold for scrap by the local hospital authority because their wheels fell off. An enterprising car dealer had bought them all and was selling them on as campers. "One of those," I said, "would make an ideal goat-mobile. Let's go and have a look." By the time we had a buyer for the Ford, all the ambulances had been sold, with the exception of a long wheelbase one which had been an accident ambulance. The Sea Scouts had been going to buy it, but their parents objected because of the wheel problem, so we were able to acquire it ourselves.

As I drove this great, ponderous machine home, I wondered whether I had done the right thing, but once I got used to the different feel of the Bedford I began to enjoy driving it. As an animal transport it was almost ideal. It had a particularly good automatic gearbox which made the gear changing much smoother than the manual ones we'd had previously. This was a good thing for the climb up the very steep hill out of our valley, as the animals no longer fell over when you changed down into bottom gear.

The floor area was about 6 ft x 11½ ft, palatial after the Reliants; we made a pen to go in the front part; it had sides which were low wooden hurdles with tying-up places at intervals, two stout timbers across the back and a folding table as the front. The goats travelled in this part on a plastic sheet with sawdust and straw on top. The ambulance had brown tinted windows which stopped the onlookers from seeing in (except at night when the lights were on, so we had to make it some curtains), but allowed the goats to look out. All the equipment (known in the goat fraternity as 'clobber') went in the bit behind the pen. The fittings included two full height cupboards at the back, a sliding door between the cab and the back and a hole behind the driver's head which had been a window, but was handy for talking to the animals as we went along.

On arrival at a show, the clobber would have to come out first - it was an encouragement to get it all unloaded quickly as the goats would be all fidgeting about waiting to be unloaded. Between the double doors at the back were a pair of folding steps which the goats would skip up and down in fine style. Later, the Regulations for Vehicles Carrying Animals were changed and we had to have a ramp. We duly made one half the width of the steps so that we could walk up the steps leading the goats up the ramp. The only goat ever injured getting in or out of our ambulance was one who got a black eye hitting it on the door post while trying to avoid going up the ramp! After that we carried the ramp to be legal and went back to using the steps.

As you'll no doubt have realised, the beauty of all this was that, having unloaded goats and paraphernalia, you had an excellent camper, complete with table and storage for food and clothes, to live in for the duration of the show. Many a good party did we have in the ambulance in the good old days! We repainted it in British Toggenburg brown and white, changed the illuminated sign on the roof of the cab to read GOATS and got as far as signwriting the nearside PARCMAWR AND GONGOOZLER GOATS, but we never did get the offside done (in the UK, where we drive on the left, at least the people on the sidewalk knew who we were!) All this had the advantage that we could always be picked out in the crowd at a show.

Of course, time went by and eventually we decided that we could no longer afford the running costs of this monster so we replaced it with a car and trailer. I couldn't bear to part with my dear old friend, though, so I parked it in the corner of our yard, where it remains to this day. The cab is used as a store for all my show clobber, but the main body is now the studio where I go to have a quiet painting session when time permits. Now it no longer has to move, we've wired it into the domestic electricity supply, so it now has a heater and radio/cassette player to keep me entertained as I work on the next 'masterpiece'!