My father had a go first. He settled his stool comfortably in the muck around Minima’s feet and made sure she had enough hay in her hay-rack to keep her occupied. He warmed his fingers and flexed his hands, and reached in to grasp two of her teats with the gentle, rippling squeeze Johnny Yatt had showed him.

Seconds later he was on his back in the cow manure and Minima was looking down at him smugly.
“Do that again, stupid human, and I’ll kick you into next week,” her eyes said.
And, indeed, he did try again and she did kick him away again, and this went on all morning. He tried it with the calf shut out of the shed to make her forget we were stealing her milk, and he tried it with him in the shed to calm her down. He tried it from the left side and from the right side. He gave it a rest for a while and then came back.
Every time he went near her, she kicked him into the muck.

“I don’t think I’m going to have a go at that myself,” said my mother philosophically as she watched my dad pick himself up again and settle doggedly back on his milking stool. “I think she’s used to you now – I’d just confuse things.”

After a few days of this, Johnny Yatt came round to see how we were getting on.
“We’re not doing terribly well,” admitted my father.
“You’d think she’d want you to strip her milk, the little calf can’t be taking all of it,” wondered Johnny. "But he looks healthy enough.” There was something warm and gentle about Johnny that made everything, even a vicious kicking cow, seem a minor problem in the overall scheme of things. When Johnny climbed in to have a go himself, Minima kicked him. But not as hard as she kicked my dad. Johnny was able to stay upright at least four attempts out of five. He was even able to show us an inch or so of milk sloshing about at the bottom of the bucket. No doubt, given a few days, he could have gentled her enough to milk her properly twice a day. Unfortunately for us, we were going to have to work out how to do it without Johnny, because as much as we might want him to, he didn’t live with us and he had his own livestock to attend to.
“You’ve got an evil temper on you, haven’t you, old girl?” he told Minima gently.
He turned to my dad. “I think if you want to get any milk out of her you’ll most probably need a spansel.”
“A spansel? That’s a lovely medieval word…. I wonder what the etymology of that is. I’ll just get the…”
“It’s just a bit of strong rope,” Johnny added hurriedly. “I’ll show you how to tie it. You put one loop around her standing leg, you see, and then you tie the other loop around her kicking leg. The two legs are held in position. She can’t kick you without pulling her standing leg off the ground, and she won’t want to do that. After a bit of time she’ll stop kicking altogether.”
So my dad went to fetch some strong rope and Johnny showed him how to tie it in two leg loops, and how to fit it onto Minima’s back ankles. Oddly enough, she didn’t kick at all as the spansel went on, and she merrily went on eating while the two men fussed around her. She didn’t bear any kind of grudge. She just didn’t want anyone fiddling with her boobs, thank you.

Spansel safely on, Johnny tried again, to show us the difference. Minima jerked a leg towards him, but when she couldn’t get up the power, she gave up and made do with shifting restlessly from foot to foot. Johnny and my dad swapped places, and somehow she found that extra swing from somewhere and swiped at him. She missed, though, or at least she missed as long as you consider a bruised thigh as a ‘miss’. He was still upright.
“A-ha!” muttered my dad. “You can’t reach me as well like that, can you?” It wasn’t perfect, but it was bearable, and to be honest we had no other choice beyond giving up and letting the calf have all the milk. As well as being very un-self-sufficient, it would have meant that our tiny herd had just become the county’s most expensive pets. As opposed to the county’s most expensive farm animals, which they already were.

Spansel or no spansel, my mum and I kept well away from Minima at milking time, so my dad got up each morning before he went to work, marched out to the cowshed, fitted Minima’s rope restraints, fought tooth and nail with her for half an hour, then changed into a smart suit and cycled off to the office. Minima, meanwhile, perfected her technique so she could still do damage even when she was all spanselled up. She couldn’t kick my dad over any more, but every so often she was able to get a side jab in that knocked over the milk bucket and spilt everything he’d got so far into the straw. In the end he had to give up using the bucket directly. He put it safely on the other side of the cowshed and used an ordinary kitchen jug, held in one hand, while he milked with the other. Every so often he’d get up, walk across the cowshed, and pour an inch and a half of milk into the main bucket. The spansel made milking possible, but it was still a very, very slow and painful process.