The running cow. No, really.

I was watching Blue Peter with my eldest the other day. For those that don't know, Blue Peter is a venerable old childrens 'magazine' style telly programme which has been going for years, and changes presenters every few years or so. Like someone's favourite Doctor Who, you can usually date someone by who they remember as their Blue Peter presenters.

It's not as good as it used to be, with rather more nods to popular culture than I'm happy with (a recent example being a performance by the Eurovision song contest entry, laden with gross sexual innuendo), but it is still a worthwhile program, encouraging children in a wide variety of interests - sports, travel, art, different hobbies, animals etc.

So anyway, we were watching, and there was a giant Boa Constrictor snake being shown. One of the joys of Blue Peter is that it's live television, so anything can happen. In a very famous instance, before I was born, Lulu the elephant stamped on John Noakes' foot and went to the toilet.

Well, the Boa Constrictor decided to make a bid to upstage Lulu in Blue Peter history, and went to the toilet in all the ways possible for a snake to do so. It was, erm... educational. The presenter was completely surprised, and it very much appeared that her surprise was that snakes actually go to the toilet at all. Which seems ridiculous, of course. It's surely obvious that an animal that eats will have to go to the toilet at some point.

But I understood her surprise - it's one of those things that normally never even crosses your radar. It reminded me of a similar instance I had on a train. Fear not, this isn't some distressing tale of a snake on the loose on the British Railways.

No, it's about a cow.

I didn't grow up on a farm. I'm not exactly a city girl, and I did spend quite a bit of time in the countryside growing up, but didn't really have much up-close-and-personal contact with farm animals.

I mostly saw cows and sheep and horses through the pane of a car window, or, as in this story, the window of a train. When I'm travelling at speed, and at some distance, cows look just like they do when they're plastic and 2 inches high. Black and white and very static. Except, this day, one cow wasn't static. It was running. Actually going full pelt across the field.

I actually said aloud "A Cow! Running!" The other people in the carriage must have thought I'd been locked up in a basement somewhere most of my life. It was a moment when I was surprised and then realized that I had no real reason to be surprised; it was just something that had never occured to me before.

Now, you're probably reading this and thinking I'm completely bananas, but there it is. It had honestly never crossed my mind that cows run, just like it had obviously never crossed the Blue Peter presenters mind that snakes go to the toilet. I'm sure you, gentle reader, have never had a moment like that. Or maybe you have? If you have, share it in the comments and make me feel less like a bimbo.