Solicitors, vets and butchers - but not necessarily in that order

Why are there so many solicitors in Crediton? I read that the crime rate is low, so what are they doing? Perhaps the divorce rate is lucratively high. Perhaps there are a lot of disputes between neighbours.

I also wonder at the number of vets. I suppose I might expect a lot of vets with agriculture all around the town; perhaps there are lots of cows and sheep to mend. But I saw remarkably few of those animals in the waiting room at West Ridge Veterinary Practice when I arrived with my daughter, clutching the family hamster.

Back in Bristol you just turned up in visiting hours, joined the queue and endured pet Beirut for the next hour or so: fat labradors snapping at hissing, caged fur-balls; grumpy rabbits thumping the walls of their boxes; pythons coiled around tattoed owners. Here in Crediton you make an appointment. "Peter to see the vet at 5:45," I announced as we strolled into the practice.

"Ah yes," said the receptionist uncertainly. "Peter who?"

"He hasn't got a surname," I replied. "He's a hamster."

Within three minutes we were already in the surgery with Peter being examined carefully by the new vet who was clearly very nervous around hamsters.

"How much will this cost?" I inquired.

"About £10."

"And a new hamster.......?"

Apparently - according to my daughter - this was not a line of thinking that was either acceptable or moral. Apparently I was confusing my thinking about damaged hamsters with my thinking about damaged cars.

Actually I am very fond of animals, and that is why I make regular visits to the two butchers in the High St. Incidentally, I am sure that they are, in fact, the same shop. I have often noticed staff from one scurrying along the road and disappearing into the other.

Anyway, I was waiting to be served the other day when my eye was drawn to the posters that render various meat-yielding animals in diagramatic form with their sections marked and labelled, e.g. topside, ribs, flank. Now that is callous. How would we feel if we visited the surgeon and he had similar charts of the human body marked up with his favourite cut lines?

"I'll cut along this dotted line down your flank. And here around your loin." How would you feel? I know I'd feel as nervous as a vet with a homicidal hamster. By the way, it turned out the family hamster was a girl.