Donald Campbell of Rutherglen was another distinguished veterinary surgeon with whom Alf spent some time. He learned much from this go-ahead practitioner, but his fondest memory of him – one that he would never be able to recall without tears of laughter – was at the end of evening surgery when Donald Campbell would telephone his wife, informing her that he was on his way home. An unvarying ritual was performed so often that Alf became almost hysterical in trying not to laugh every time he listened to it.
Donald Campbell had an ancient telephone system by means of which, when the day’s work was over, he would contact his wife by cranking vigorously on a black handle attached to the phone. Having completed several energetic twirls on the handle, he would shout loudly into the mouthpiece, with a piercing and distinctive drawl, ‘Calling the ha-ouse, calling the ha-ouse!’ There would then be a tense pause while Donald waited for a response, followed by a faint ping from the other end and a low chattering noise while he listened intently. Having received the necessary information that he was through to the ha-ouse, he would then inform his wife that he was on his way home. ‘I’ll be na-ow, I’ll be na-ow!’
This set piece, which never varied, put enormous strain upon Alf’s powers of self-control. He enacted the ritual for his friends at the college, which so intrigued Aubrey Melville that he requested a day seeing practice at Donald Campbell’s surgery. At the end of that particular day, Alf and Aubrey were in a state of high tension waiting for the famous telephone ritual. Aubrey was so charged up that the slightest nudge would have been enough to send him over the edge. When Campbell moved over to the black handle, the pressure was really on, and once the cranking began, Aubrey was at breaking point. True to form, Donald’s voice pierced the silence with, ‘Calling the ha-ouse, calling the ha-ouse!’ Aubrey Melville was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared into a nearby cupboard, his head buried deeply into an old curtain. By the time, ‘I’ll be na-ow, I’ll be na-ow!’ came over the airwaves, he was writhing on the floor.
Despite being such an unconscious source of amusement to the students, Donald Campbell was held in high regard. He was a first-class veterinary surgeon and the students gained tremendous experience while under his care.
Alf saw plenty of small animal work with Bill Weipers, while Donald Campbell gave him a taste of life with the large animals as well as the small, but he wanted next to spend some time with a specialist country veterinary surgeon. At this point in his life, he thought that he would probably become purely a small animal veterinary surgeon. Nevertheless, he wanted to get among cows to observe the life of the large animal veterinarian for himself. He had already worked with some cows. Not far from his home in Scotstounhill was a dairy farm run by a man called Mr Stirling, and Alf was a regular visitor there in his final two years at the college. He had the opportunity to observe the cows, milk them by hand, assist during calving and examine any that were ill.
During the vacations in his final two years at the college, he went further afield to gain this experience, first seeing practice at Dumfries in the south-west of Scotland with a veterinary surgeon called Tom Fleming. He soon discovered that life among the large animals was very different from that among the clean and orderly small animal surgeries in Glasgow. This part of Scotland is the home of the Galloway cattle and, although they can be very docile animals if left to get on with their lives, they respond spectacularly to any hint of interference. The veterinary surgeon is often an unwilling participant on these occasions.
Alf and Tom Fleming visited a farm one day to remove an afterbirth from a Galloway cow of uncertain temperament which, miraculously, the farmer had managed to tie up in an old hen-house of dubious construction. On entering the dark little shed, the men received a hostile glare from their patient who further showed her displeasure by savagely switching her tail from side to side, propelling liquid faeces in every direction. The prospect of making any sort of contact with this animal was not an appetising one.
Alf, following Tom Fleming’s generous gesture in allowing him the privilege of removing the afterbirth, soaped his arms in a bucket of water, advanced towards the cow and gave a gentle pull at the mass hanging from her rear end. The following few seconds were lively ones. The cow burst forward with a deafening bellow, and as the chain around her neck sprang open she saw her line of escape. There was a small window in front of her and she charged straight for it. Her head smashed through the opening as she plunged forward, taking one end of the old hen-house with her. The remainder of the ‘building’ collapsed on top of the men as she catapulted away over a large field, her rate of progress seemingly unhampered by the splintered remnants of the shed still around her neck.
As the three men watched the ruined hen-house thunder over the horizon, the farmer displayed the qualities of a man who could make an instant decision in a crisis. ‘Let the bugger go!’ he yelled.
‘ Whatsort of a cow was that?’ thought Alf. It bore little resemblance to the docile creatures he milked on Mr Stirling’s farm in Glasgow. At that moment, he had no inkling that unplanned rodeos among the bovine race were to figure prominently in his future life.
Some more surprises were in store. One of the more unpleasant aspects of a veterinary surgeon’s life is the wide range of amazing smells that assails the nostrils – smells taken for granted by the experienced veterinary surgeon but which can come as a considerable shock to those who are unused to them. Alf had experienced plenty of challenging smells in the small animal clinics in Glasgow, but he was unprepared for the fresh olfactory experience that awaited him as he and Tom Fleming walked into a large knacker’s yard near Dumfries.
These establishments, now no longer in existence, disposed of fallen stock and unfit meat; being full of dead and decomposing animals, they were not the most edifying of places. Young Alf Wight had not been inside this one for more than a few seconds before he, quite spontaneously, vomited his breakfast straight out onto the floor. The smell that had hit him was quite unlike anything he had experienced, a mixture of decaying organs and the sickly sweet smell of fresh blood. Mountains of skins, bowels and bones loomed over him while a bright green piglet lying at his feet did little to ease the situation. His reaction was watched with mild interest by a slaughterman who was sitting on a carcass, happily munching at a large sandwich, a fat-smeared, blood-stained teacup in his hand. This man, wallowing amongst, possibly, every pathogenic organism known to mankind, was the picture of health.
His pink, shining face broke into a smile. ‘Dae ye no like the smell?’ he laughed. ‘Ah widnae worry, they all dae that when they first walk in here!’
Many years later, as a qualified veterinary surgeon, Alf would watch, with equal amusement, other young students struggling to come to terms with the bombardment of smells from a knacker’s yard that he himself by then regularly entered with nonchalance.
There was another veterinary surgeon with whom Alf saw practice during his final two years at the veterinary college. J. J. McDowall, a vet in Sunderland, was someone who played a very influential part in Alf’s life, both before and after his qualification from Glasgow Veterinary College.
During his regular visits to his relatives in Sunderland, he would stay in Beechwood Terrace with his Auntie Jinny Wilkins. Not only was her home very close to J. J. McDowall’s practice, but she used to attend his surgery with her dog, Bonzo. Alf, at her suggestion, enquired whether it might be possible to obtain some practical experience with him. This request, which was readily agreed to, began a friendship between the two men which would last for many years.