With his wife Helen by his side, and a partner's plate on Skeldale House's railings, James Herriot thinks the Yorkshire Dales have never seemed more beautiful. Despite farmers who think nothing of calling him out to freezing fields at three o'clock in the morning, then drunkenly serenading him as he tends to a ewe in labour. Or vicious pigs who have to be bribed into their pens with biscuits. But there are bright moments too: pulling off a miracle cure with the new sulphonamide drugs; and saving a stray kitten – who finds a most unusual mother in the form of a sow.

(Published in the US as part of the book titled All Things Bright and Beautiful.)