Now life is finally looking feasible in terms of generations rather than just our lifetimes I have decided to write this account of the events of the last twelve years or so. What is it that has made the difference? Ogilvie. Simply the birth of my son Ogilvie. I’ve finally broken what the family had begun to think was the curse of our times and given birth to a boy, the second male in the family. From the reactions of the family you’d think I’d learnt to walk on water, though I confess I can’t help the smugness. We’d all joked about it, but the others too, after having twenty-eight girls amongst us, were beginning to wonder if our days were numbered. Like all, we’d suffered from the mlague, but unlike most we’d not starved or frozen, but had toughed it out together as an extended family. Though it must be said that was initially mostly due to the incredible skills and upbringing of our husband. Yes, our husband. We being ten women all related by blood who at our insistence all became his wives.

I’m Judith, and for me I suppose it could be said to have all started on the first day of my second year at secondary school. I was twelve and a tall and well developed girl for my age. Mum was five ten and I was still growing but already five nine, and looking at my face I was obviously her daughter. The way my bosom was blossoming and my hips were spreading it looked like I was going to be a carbon copy of her. As a result to hide my embarrassment I had a big mouth and tried to act older than I was. That morning I went to registration with all the others in my form. We knew we’d have a new form teacher because Mrs. Graves our last year’s form teacher had decided not to come back after she’d had her baby.

We all walked in to our form room to be stunned by our new teacher wearing a predominantly bright red kilt. One of the boys, I can’t remember his name now, but I know his parents were the landlord and landlady of the Kelbright arms, the biggest pub in the town centre, broke down in hysterics. Let’s call him Tom McLeod because I do remember his surname was Mc something or other. Our teacher gazed at Tom and said, “I’m Mr. Ogilvie, your new form teacher and I teach mathematics. Would someone kindly tell me what the name of the young man is. The young man who clearly can’t speak for himself yet because he is suffering from a gender identity crisis.”

“Tom, Sir,” a dozen voices shouted.

“Well, Tom, please go to the window and tell me what you see.” It wasn’t phrased as a request.

Tom went to the window and stammered out, “Hills, Sir.”

Mr. Ogilvie had a quiet, silky voice that almost purred with menace. “Yes. Hills. Born here were you, Tom?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Lived here all your life have you, Tom?” The class was completely silent. We already could tell this was not a teacher to take liberties with and were waiting for the axe to fall.

“Yes, Sir.”

“So for twelve years, Thomas McLeod, you’ve lived within the sight of those hills, the highest of which for your information is called Criffel. Hills which are in Scotland just a few miles away over the Solway, yet you feel so threatened by the sight of a jock in a frock, that’s a Scotsman wearing a kilt, Laddie, that you are mortified by it. And you bearing the ancient and still proud name of McLeod. I suggest you leave us to take a walk round the school grounds in the fresh air, and that you don’t return till you are no longer blushing like a lassie. Off you go.”

That he knew Tom’s surname gobsmacked us. Within the next few minutes he went round and started on the administration for the new school year. Alice reminded him, “You haven’t taken the register yet, Sir.”

His voice was gentle as he said, “Yes I have, Alice Maxwell.” He then pointed to each of us in turn and telt us our names and and our dates of birth before saying, “I know about Jamie Stuart. She’ll be out of hospital next week and be joining us the week after. I know who you are because I took the precaution of looking at the photographs of the class yesterday.” We were even more gobsmacked, looking at the records was one thing, but remembering it all correctly the day after was another thing entirely.

Like I said he was a not a man to take liberties with, so what possessed me I’ll never know when I said, “I’ve always wanted to know whether anything is worn under the kilt of a true Scotsman.”

I suppose every kilt wearing Scotsman must have been asked that hundreds of times and so has answers prepared by the dozen. “As opposed I suppose to a plastic Englishman is that? I’ll tell you what I telt your mother when she asked me the same question, Judith Graham. Thank you for your concern, but everything’s in full working order and every Scotsman wears shoes under his kilt, Which are never polished to a mirror finish for obvious reasons. Other than that lassie there’s only one way you’re going to find out, and I doubt you are brave enough.” I went bright red and was laught at for several minutes.

“You know my mum, Sir?”

“Not in the biblical sense, but aye, we’ve exchanged words. Linda Graham she be, and she owns the chip shop on the end of Steelyard Brow which I have to say sells remarkably tasty fish and chips.” It was a few weeks before I learnt what ‘not in the biblical sense’ meant. When Tom came back he apologised, and Mr. Olgilvie said, “Think nothing of it, Laddie. I was concerned that if we didn’t finish with the matter today your education would suffer. Were I you I’d talk to your family concerning the kilts, for McLeod is a nice enough tartan, if you’re into yellow. Though there are others patterns.” He smiled and it was obvious there was no malice in his words. I remember his words and that’s why I suggested McLeod because it’s the only predominantly yellow tartan I know of.

He was a brilliant teacher and had a way of dealing with folk, adults and pupils alike, that was incredible. He also took no prisoners in a classroom. If I heard him say once, “I’ll no let ye trash the education of the others in this room. Get out and dinnae bother coming back till you’re ready to learn,” I heard him say it hundreds of times before I left school and the mlague struck.

But back to that day. When I got home I asked Mum about him, and she blushed bright red. She telt me he’d been in the shop for fish and chips in the early eve a few days before and she had indeed said what I’d said, and he’d given her the same reply. Mum had been a bit wild when younger and had always claimed she’d no idea who my father was, so I asked her, “And?”

She went even brighter red and said, “We chatted for a few minutes, and never you mind any and.” Which gave me serious food for thought. Mum was a good looking twenty-seven with a trim albeit as I said earlier generous figure, and I was an only child. She’d never been interested in a man in my memory, but obviously fancied my form teacher who was maybe a few years older than she was. I wondered if he were married, and decided it would be a good idea to bridle my mouth with Mr. Olgilvie just in case there was any chance he may end up being my stepdad. If only I’d known.

Mr. Ogilvie was unconventional and telt us he was quite happy to treat us as young adults, but that meant we had to behave that way. It was one or the other. As a class we decided to be young adults and we didn’t often screw it up. He was never quite the same when teaching as he was in form time because when he was teaching we were all treated as children. We were envied a bit by other kids, but they didn’t realise the price we paid for being treated as young adults, there was no messing about like kids for us, and we had to tell the truth. Mr. Ogilvie always said, “Lying is for children trying to hide their mistakes. If you make a mistake, and we all do from time to time, admit it and we’ll fix it.”

My grandparents were small scale hill farmers on the fells, I say small scale, but they actually farmed on several thousand acres most of which was poor grazing only fit for sheep and was above a thousand feet above sea level. Granny was forty-six and Granddad wasn’t quite fifty at the time I first met my new form teacher. All of which becomes relevant later.

I’d never seen my mum tongue tied before, but at the year eight parents evening she could barely speak. I don’t know who said what and when, but Mum and Mr. Ogilvie were going out together a fortnight later, and he was sleeping with her at home occasionally a month after that. Mr. Ogilvie had never been married, but when one of the boys made a disparaging remark about ballet he telt us a story about having gone out with a ballet dancer years before. I remember the class being mesmerised when he’d said, “If you think ballet dancing is soft think again. Years ago the manager of Leeds United was an ex England player called Don Revie who eventually went on to manage England. Leeds at that time was arguably the most successful football team in the world.

“Don wanted the toughest training schedules he could get for the Leeds players and he got a ballet dancer to give it to them. They laught initially, but at the end of the first session they were in too much pain to laugh any more. Not a one of them could keep up with her. The girl I went out with like all ballet dancers was small and didn’t have big muscles but what she did have were as hard as iron. It was said that a dancer’s thighs were strong enough to crack nuts, but I think we’ll not explore that statement. There are few sportsmen have thighs as strong as any dancer’s, and the other thing about dancers is the job teaches them to live with pain. It’s a job that gives them a lot of pain and often too.”

“What happened to her, Sir?” Someone asked.

He laught and replied, “I couldn’t afford her. The constant workout and exercise routines mean those tiny, super fit girls actually eat and burn off enormous amounts of food. She could start at the top of a menu and work her way down to the bottom.” He was entertaining, and we knew he was exaggerating, but he did teach us to look at situations from every possible angle and know there would still be others we had over looked. One of the boys asked him once if he’d ever had a decent car because he drove round in a beat up fifteen year old Peugeot 505. “Aye. I had a five point three litre vee twelve E type Jaguar once, but every time you started her up you could hear a guzzling sound as she drank petrol. I could only afford for one of us to drink, so she had to go.”

I enjoyed my school days, and a large part of that was because I had Mr. Ogilvie as a form teacher, and he was the nearest thing I’d ever had to a dad after he moved in with us just before my year nine. To us all he was an amazing man, he seemed to know at least something about just about everything, and when he didn’t know he said so. Most of our teachers bluffed and bull shitted when they didn’t know.

I don’t really know what I expected a teacher to be like to live with, but I certainly hadn’t expected one to be handy and able with any and every tool you could think of. There’d been loads of stuff at home that hadn’t worked, some of it for years, and he fixed it all. He put a light in the fridge and a central heating radiator in the cold back bedroom, my bedroom. Mum’s van was bought second hand. It was all she could afford, and it was always breaking down, but after he’d looked at it it ran properly. Those three years when he lived with us over the chip shop were the last for us all of the old world, the world before the mlague came which changed everybody’s lives.

It happened when I was sixteen in the school summer holidays. I was going to the sixth form to study French and German in the September, but that never happened. Early in July, men started dying from what we were telt was a virus and there was no cure or immunisation. Men died, boys died, baby boys died, even baby boys in the womb were still born. It was happening all over the country. Then we heard it was all over Europe too, and within a fortnight there wasn’t anywhere on the globe unaffected. It was called an airborne pandemic plague, but because it only affected men ordinary folk called it the man plague: the mlague, as it soon became known. I don’t know why but it was spelt mlague like plague with the p replaced by m, but pronounced malague with the p replaced by ma. It started with a fever and then unconsciousness and death three days later without ever having regained consciousness. It took my Granddad, both my uncles, three cousins and two of my cousins’ boyfriends, along with every male we knew except Mr. Ogilvie.

The world we lived in changed dramatically, not overnight, but within a month. The radio said fewer than one in ten thousand males had survived and some were still dying, which had profound effects on society. The third wave feminists had always claimed women didn’t need men, but most of the heavy goods vehicles were driven by men and with no deliveries there was no food in the shops in days. Even if it could have been delivered meat was unavailable because abattoirs were staffed by men. Eventually the feminists were put to the test and they failed and starved to death along with a huge number of other women. In less than a month all services failed and government at all levels and law enforcement had ceased to exist.

I remember that night, the night the fortunes of my family started to pick up from their nadir that had included a depression and hopelessness that was hard to shake off after the deaths. That was the night we finally accepted it all as real and we began to plan our survival. It was the night it all sank in that the world we knew had gone for ever. It was ten days after the deaths had started in Britain and there were virtually no males left alive, but we were lucky because Angus, as I then called Mr. Ogilvie was one of the males who didn’t die. Outside the rain was so heavy it was drumming on the nearby lock-up garages making it difficult to hear each other without shouting. In the kitchen Angus, said, “This is going to get worse not better, and I don’t mean the rain. The looting and rioting hasn’t started yet because women aren’t used to that way of thinking, but it will, and it will start as soon as the food they have in the house runs out. I think that will be in days, probably two or three.

“The number of unburied bodies is going to make centres of population very unhealthy very soon. We need to get out of the town before then and take the entire family and everything that that will be of value to us when if we can’t grow, raise, make or fix it means we have to do without. It seems I’m going to survive, so we need a plan, two plans. One with me and one without just in case, but we haven’t got the time to plan right now. We need to get the family and our stuff to your Mum’s farm, Linda, and then we can plan. It’s raining stair rods out there which will make conditions unpleasant for us, but it will be keeping folk indoors so I doubt there’ll be many to see what we’re doing.”

My family now consisted of Granny, Mum and Angus, Auntie Janet and her girls Jemma, Jean and Abi and Auntie Sarah and her girls Cathy and Wendy. My aunties were Mum’s sisters. We’d lost Granddad, Uncle Alf, Uncle Frank, my cousins James, Arthur and Charlie and Jean’s and Cathy’s boy friends Billy and Gerry. My aunties and and my cousins were ok, but as scared as Mum and I were. My cousins were all older than I, but none was twenty-one yet, and like me Jemma, Abi and Wendy didn’t have a boyfriend. We all lived within a mile of each other and the phones were still working then.

Day 1

Mum and Angus talked, I just listened, and then she rang Granny to tell her what was happening and my aunties to tell them to pack everything that would be useful, including all food, bedding, kitchen utensils, all my uncles’ tools and everybody’s clothes and shoes including the men’s. Angus would pick them up after dark, and when we had moved all their stuff to our house we’d start loading the trailer properly to take it all to Granny’s who was expecting us. Their houses were shells after a few journeys.

Angus had gone looking for a box waggon, but not been lucky, so he’d picked up a sixteen foot trailer with six wheels and what he called cage sides that he got from a local trailer place, and we loaded it in the chip shop yard which couldn’t be over looked. Fortunately the rain had eased, but though Angus had a tarpaulin to cover the load a lot of stuff would need drying when we got to Granny’s. We packed in silence and took the most useful stuff first. He took me and my cousins, in the car with a load of stuff packed round us and the trailer was loaded to the sky when we left. Mum drove her van packed to the roof with bedding and clothes. The bedding and clothes went in the van to ensure they stayed dry.

My aunties waited for his return packing what we wanted, so it took up less space. We helped Granny and Mum sort out sleeping arrangements and made up beds, some of us were sleeping on the floor, while Angus went back for my aunties. The second load cleared everything, though there’d been no room for any furniture. Granny said we’d get some beds and furniture from empty farmhouses nearby in the next couple of days.

Day 2

Angus got some sleep and set out again and took me, Mum and Wendy. He wouldn’t tell us where we were going or why. It was the local B&Q first, a DIY superstore. The place had been broken into and was empty of folk. Mostly it was electrical goods that had been taken which amused him. He telt us what to get, and we started clearing the shelves. Mostly it was hand tools and bedding we collected, but Angus included a box of cordless angle grinders, batteries and discs. He said we’d come back later for the cement, starting with the stuff that was packed in sealed plastic bags. We stopped at a garden centre and cleared them out of seeds, we didn’t bother to sort the vegetable seeds out from the flowers we just picked up the racks and took them complete. Our last stop was a gun shop where we collected a variety of weapons including a load of ammunition. That was when I realised what the angle grinders were for, opening gun safes and cutting the chains that ran through the trigger guards. When we left the trailer was loaded to the sky again and we could feel the weight of the load as the car started climbing into the fells.

Day 3

The following day we did three runs for the cement.

Day 4

The day after that we cleaned a library out of all their DIY, gardening, food preserving, livestock and farming books, and what little was left in every shop selling food we could find. Angus said he was looking for kitchen ware shops and telt us to keep our eyes open. We found three, it was the Kilner and Mason jars he wanted. One of the shops had a few and we took some other stuff too, but we hit the jackpot with the third one. There was nothing in the shop, but at the back there were two dozen unopened boxes of jars of various sizes. We stopped at a handicrafts shop and cleaned out all needles, pins, thread and a whole load of wool and other stuff too. Granny had an old Singer sewing machine that originally had a treadle to power it and said the modern sewing machine needles could be made to fit. Angus made them fit and removed the retrofitted electric motor. He made a belt out of hay bale strings so the treadle worked like it did years before.

What surprised us all was how few folk we encountered, all bar one woman of the five we saw hurried away with whatever it was they’d taken as soon as they saw us. The one who spoke to us was an unpleasant women who was clearly after information. Angus telt her we were living in a town fifty miles away, but it had already been picked clean, so we were looking further afield. On the way home Mum asked him why he’d been concerned enough about the woman to lie to her. Angus said he wasn’t bothered about her, but suspected she had a lot of friends who were currently living as a gang and robbing other survivors, and the less they knew about us the better. We called in at a secondary school on the way home and cleaned out the kitchen of all their cooking utensils. The pans and utensils were huge but we were cooking for large numbers now.

Gran’s place was hidden and difficult to find if you didn’t know where you were going. Angus said that was good, but probably it wouldn’t matter in a few months. “By then the only folk alive will be able to look after themselves and there will be land enough for everyone. They won’t be looting or robbing because they won’t need to and it’ll be risky because any folk left will fight back.” Gran knew of several farms that had had only had men living there and a few others where the surviving women had left to join relatives in local towns and villages. We went round to collect all the livestock and anything else of use. We had to walk the cattle and sheep but the trailer did stalwart service with pigs and poultry. Angus said we’d turn some of the pigs loose in woodland to fend for themselves and we could hunt them if we needed to, but they’d have to be to be far enough away, so there was no possibility they’d find our crops to forage in.

Probably the most difficult single objects we took were from neighbouring farms. Granny had a solid fuel Rayburn cooker that did hot water and heating too, but for eleven of us it wasn’t enough. Granny knew what all her neighbours had in their kitchens so we went to disconnect and remove all six modern ones like hers that she knew about. At going on for half a ton each [1100 pounds, 500Kg] they weren’t easy, but using fence posts as rollers and levers, and ropes as friction brakes we managed. Each took a full day to load and offload four into storage and two into Granny’s kitchen. Another three days to install them along with additional hot water cylinders and chimney connections and life was a lot pleasanter. We collected all the already cut fire wood and coal we could find and picked up wood whenever we saw any because three solid fuel stoves take some stoking.

Day 10

We’d been at the farm ten days when an hour after eating the evening meal Granny said, “I’ve something to say and I want all of us to hear it.” She went and got everyone into the kitchen. which was a huge traditional farmhouse kitchen, and it was where decisions were made. “I’ve been talking to the others, Angus. We’ve some questions and something to say.” She went for a tray of glasses and a couple of bottles of whisky and poured eleven glasses to the brim. We were surprised Granny produced the whisky rather than the clear spirit she made, but we women all knew what it was that Granny had decided to thrash out, though Angus had no idea what was coming. From the looks on the others’ faces they were as nervous and excited as I was, which was why we’d decided to leave it to Granny to raise the subject at a time of her choosing. “How do you see the future, Angus? I’m not talking about the next twelve months when we’ll have to be very careful to protect what we’ve got, but after that. How is a society with hardly any folk left and virtually all of them women going to work?”

“Well, Ellen. I’ve been thinking a lot about that in the last few days, and I think the population is going to continue to fall dramatically till the number of women is more or less equal to the number of men, which will happen over the next five years at most I reckon, but most will be dead within twelve months. Fact is the feminists were wrong. It was the men who had the skills that kept society functioning, kept us alive if you like. My grandparents were crofters on both sides which is how I learnt. There just aren’t many women possessed of the necessary skills or capable of learning them fast enough to avoid death. Fact is, in this situation there aren’t many men with the skills and knowledge to keep going in the long term either.”

“So population replacement is not going to happen any time soon?”

“No I don’t think so. Pregnant women are even less able than their non pregnant sisters and are even more vulnerable. Without someone able to feed and shelter them they’ll die first and the men who used to feed and shelter them are now dead.”

“Right them. A few facts from our point of view, that’s our the female point of view. Right now our most valuable asset is you. I’ve been a farmer’s daughter and another’s wife all my life, and I know enough to know the skills and knowledge you have are what are going to make the difference between survival and death for all of us. The larger a group we have that can trust each other and rely on each other the better for survival. We all love each other because we’re family. I don’t agree that the number of women will fall till it’s the same as men, because women aren’t like men.

“Yes the number will fall, but not to that degree. Unlike men, women will share things, and that includes men if it comes to it. We got a family here with ten women and one man and we women don’t have a problem with that. The families that survive will be like us in that respect. The families that survive in the longer term, the ones that will still be around in a generation or two will be the ones that are having as many children as they can.

“We’ve talked about it and I was chosen to speak for all of us with everyone’s agreement. Linda has agreed she can’t expect to monopolise you, because the world we live in doesn’t allow for that any more if we want to survive long term. At the very least you need to get us all pregnant as often as you can. That way we will ultimately all be safer. We’ve agreed that since the next generation will all be your children they should be reared as siblings, and despite my girls calling me Mum, and their girls calling me Granny, we should regard ourselves as sisters. Sisters who share the work, the responsibilities, the rearing of our children and our husband.

“We, and the girls all agree with their mums, would prefer it were not an ‘at the very least situation’ but that all of us were treated equally in your eyes. Even if we could find more men we’ve decided we don’t want to bring any in. It’s too dangerous, and we don’t need them, for you can do what is necessary for all of us. We are happy to be one of ten wives with the same husband, a husband that we would prefer did not leave the safety of the farm unless absolutely necessary because without a man we are just waiting to die. I’m sure there will be some embarrassment in organising the practicalities of bedtime to start with, but that will pass.”

Angus went red, but was steady in his reply, “I can’t disagree with your assessment, and you are probably right about the way women think. I had wondered how and where the girls were going to find men given their scarcity, but this solution hadn’t occurred to me. However, you can’t expect me to decide who I sleep with under these arrangements. You ladies will have to sort that out amongst yourselves.”

Granny looked him in the eye and said, “We thought we were going to get argument from you, so we’re pleased you’ve agreed to it with out any fuss. You’re in my bed tonight, husband Angus, because I’m the one at the best part of my cycle to get pregnant. I’ve had no indications of menopause yet, so you’re with me for the next three nights and three nights a month till you get me in child. Doubtless our cycles will start to synchronise with time because that’s what happens when women live together, but we’ll make decisions as to who you sleep with on any given night on the basis of who’s most likely to get pregnant, or who has the greatest need of you at the time.”

Day 20

Angus spent over a week figuring out how best to find some farm horses for when the diesel ran out, but on an off chance he took Mum and Granny into Yorkshire to a brewery he knew had had some. The eight shire horses were still there and almost on the point of starving to death. The horses went into their horsebox lorries willingly with a bale of hay and a bucket of oats each. Mum drove the car back with the trailer three-quarters loaded with all the feed they could find and the horse tack and other horse gear too. Angus and Granny drove the huge lorries back with four shires in each. Granny said they’d stopped twice to water the horses. When we went scrounging stuff after that we used one of the lorries.

Granny had always grown her own fruit and vegetables and preserved food. She jarred and bottled jam and fruit, salted green beans and made her own sausage and bacon. Granddad had always done the killing, but she knew how to do it and wasn’t squeamish. I didn’t know it, but a couple of years before Mum had asked Angus if he could get her mum a couple of pressure canners, so she could preserve meat and vegetables too. He’d managed to get hold of a couple of huge American ones that Granny said held forty-two litres. That’s when I realised why he wanted all the Kilner jars.

“We’ve time to rest a bit as regards foraging for stuff now,” Angus said. “But we need to organise all the stuff we’ve got and make sure it’s all stored so as to minimise deterioration. If anyone sees a cement bag with a hole in it put it to one side for using first after we patch it with tape. We also need to arrange better sleeping arrangements to avoid friction. Which means the cowshed built on the end of the house is now part of the house. we’ll need all the space when your children start growing up. We’ll have to make it habitable and build something else for the cattle to over winter in. I suspect a lean to on the back of the big hay barn will be easiest and we’ll be able to feed them more easily if we put a door through the back of the barn.”

Angus found the timbers for the new cattle shelter not far away just down the side of the road, telephone poles. Granny knew where there was an old two man, cross cut saw hanging up in a shed. We didn’t have two men, but we’d discovered woman power was just as good for everything we’d tackled so far, even if it was a little slower. The wooden handles were completely wood wormed and turned to dust when handled, so after cleaning all the rust off and sharpening and setting it Angus made new handles and oiled them. Wendy and Cathy cut the poles down and said the saw went through them like a hot knife through butter. The horses had no trouble bringing them back to the farm.

Angus instructed us, “We’ve got enough cement and timber to fit out the rest of the house but we need some replacement slates, and then to insulate the roof. We’ll get the insulation from builders’ merchants but I don’t know about the slates, may be a building somewhere, or I’ll use flat sheets of dark plastic if I can find any. I don’t want anything light that will shew up from any distance, so keep your eyes open and think about possibilities.”

To begin with we didn’t have a bedroom each and a lot of us slept downstairs. To make life easy Angus had the big bedroom and when it was our turn we slept there with him. Granny said making love was like any skill, the more you practised the better you became. We kept a diary of our periods to help work out who was most likely to get pregnant, but decided every one was to have three nights a month with Angus. When my first turn came I was a nervous virgin, for not long ago my husband was my form teacher, but he’d always been a good teacher. “Just regard it as another lesson, Judith. I’ll shew you what to do and help you as much as I can.” I’d kissed boys before, but not like that. Angus was gentle, and he took his time. By the time ‘the moment’ had arrived I was desperate. I don’t remember any pain and I’d never experienced anything as euphoric in my life.

“Mum looked at me at breakfast and said, “There’s no need to ask you if you enjoyed yourself last night. We all heard you.”

I must have looked puzzled, but Abi said, “You’re a screamer, Judith.” Screamer or no, Granny was right about skill too, Angus had lots of practice and we all agreed he was good at it. Our domestic arrangements were successful. If one of us was supposed to be with Angus but for whatever reason didn’t wish to be there was always someone who would happily sleep with him instead. If as occasionally happened one of us was desperate for sex that was easily accommodated. We rarely thought about it, of course we talked about it, but we talked about everything we did. It was just a part of our lives and by the time we’d all slept with Angus a couple of times it had become normal. Granny was right our cycles did converge, so till we were pregnant Angus sometimes made love with three of us over the evening and night.

I was looking at the calender when Gran said, “You were due yesterday, Judith. How regular are you?”

“Within a day or so, Granny. But I know my period isn’t coming in the next three days. Why?”

“Looks like you’re pregnant, Love, with the first of the next generation.” That was the beginning of a ten week spell of threwing up every morning.

The building that was the house and the old cattle shed was all one building built at the same time and it looked like a terrace of probably six or eight houses. The cattle shed was twice the size of the house and the lot was about a hundred and fifty feet long and thirty five deep, front to back. We reckoned we could have twenty rooms per floor if we planned it right which would provide more than enough bedrooms upstairs with some rooms left over which we had no initial plans for. Food preparation and storage, the dairy, kitchen and living accommodation was to all be downstairs.

It was a big job, and I think even Granny hadn’t realised just how hard a man’s life could be. Certainly none of the rest of us did till we started learning some of what had always been regarded as men’s skills. I became a pretty good brick layer and Aunty Sarah despite being six stone wringing wet through became a skilled blacksmith. Angus had acquired a couple of dozen books on farriery and she read the print off them before shoeing our horses. We all did bits of everything though there were some skills we preferred to exercise rather than others. A lot of our meat we had to hunt for though snares and traps were useful. Angus was pedantic about cleaning our guns after use and we knew he was worried because eventually the ammunition would run out. We had a lot, but it wouldn’t last our lifetimes never mind that of our childrens. Angus had us all work our way through our library of books and it was Mum who found the working diagrams to make crossbow. After a number of okay but no better than okay versions we eventually had a dozen that worked well and we reserved the gun ammunition just in case we needed to protect ourselves from other folk.

The damaged roof slates were replaced with slates we found on a tumbled down out building on a not too far away farm. We collected them all for spares. At the same time we replaced a few on the house part of the building and removed and reset all the ridge tiles on new sand and cement. The window holes upstairs in the cowshed were circular and had never been glazed. Granny said they were ventilation holes for when hay was stored up there so moisture could escape as it dried out, and the heat too for freshly cut hay without ventilation could heat up so hot it caught fire. Angus shewed us how to make circular window frames. Jean and Cathy were good at carpentry, and after a few attempts they managed to cut glass to fit without breaking it. They cut the glass at the window place where they found it and cut a good few spares too. As we built our bigger and better insulated house we designed in defence mechanisms too, but we have never had to use them.

We all read the books we’d foraged regularly in the evenings, it was profitable entertainment, for we’d learnt a lot that way. Jean had been reading books on bee keeping and decided she’d like to have a go. We were nearly out of sugar, so the rest of us were all in favour of the idea. We knew where there were some hives, but they were pretty rotten and unlikely to survive the journey back to the farm, so Cathy and Jean made some boxes the same size at the ones the bees were in. Jean said several of the books gave detailed instructions on how to make what she said were called Langstroth hives. Granny had made her a veil and it took her a week to transfer the frames of bees into the new boxes on their old site. Late one night she shut the bees in and we moved them at first light. By dinner time that evening the hives had quietened down and Jean gave the bees access to the out side. She was a bee keeper. Angus suggested we went back to where the bees had come from to see if we could find any equipment. We found lots in a shed. Trouble was the equipment was pretty modern, and by that I mean the extractor was electric, but Angus copied Granny’s sewing machine design and it was then treadle operated.

We’d soon run out of coffee, instant, ground and bottled liquid extract, and it wasn’t long after that when we ran out of tea. We’d emptied every shop and warehouse within going on for thirty miles of everything they contained and weren’t prepared to risk travelling farther afield on the slight chance that there would be anything available there. The risk of a confrontation with others who regarded that area as their territory just wasn’t worth it. Gran knew how to make a coffee substitute from chicory and dandelion roots and old country style herbal teas of many varieties. We pored over books looking for further information and by the time we’d learnt what the books offered for us to learn we’d probably forgotten what genuine coffee and tea tasted like. Some recipes were better than others and most us had our favourites, but it was a long time before Mum pointed out that none of us had used honey or milk in our drinks for over twelve months.

We cleaned out the cattle shed right down to the floor and washed the walls before digging out the hard core floor which we used to improve the farm yard. There was no longer any electricity and diesel was precious. The lorries and tractors ran on diesel, and we’d long since used all our white diesel, but since there were no customs and excise officers to care any more we used red diesel from the tanks on local farms, but we were aware it was a finite resource, so Angus rigged up a horse powered arrangement to the concrete mixer, whilst the rest of us collected sand and aggregate from the builders merchants with the horses, which took us three weeks. When we got there, nothing had changed since our last visit so we concluded there was no one living nearby. We cleaned an off licence out of everything on the way home, cider, beer, wine and spirits and all the non alcoholic stuff too. We loved it when we could do two or more tasks as sneakers. That what we called jobs we sneaked in on top of the main task, extras if you like. We’d laid the plastic sheeting damp proof membrane down on top of a foot of insulation, all from a builders’ merchant, and had the aggregate, sand and cement ready the day before laying the floor. We started on the floor before it was proper daylight which was late because it was late October. The floor was in on top of plastic sheeting, levelled and floated off that day by artificial light two and a half hours after dark. The horses were seen to, and we had a very late dinner. I was pregnant but was sleeping with Angus that night. I don’t know where he found the energy, but I was glad he did.

Eighteen months later we were all pregnant or nursing and Granny was both.

Ogilvie is my fifth child and tonight we’re celebrating, because as I said in my opening remarks all our children till to now had been girls, and we’d all wondered if the mlague had prevented boys from being conceived. We’d had as little contact with the outside as possible for the last eight years, for if we were seen to be pregnant it would be known we had a man. Maybe we’ve been over cautious, but we’ve had no need of contact with outsiders, and as time went on we saw fewer and fewer folk. It’s been over twelve months since any of us have even seen evidence of human activity. As a result we know of no one who has become pregnant, so we’d concluded it was possible that there would be no boys conceived. Well now we know we were wrong, and at least we have a father for the next generation. We’ve wondered if whatever it was that kept Angus alive is genetic but that it also affects the relative vigour or numbers of X and Y type sperm, favouring the X type, but we don’t know.

We all agree that life is better now than it was before the mlague struck. Yes it was without doubt a tragedy and we still miss those we lost, but life is more real now than then, and it teaches what truly matters and what was just a twenty-first century virtual reality nonsense. There’re are few things any of us miss about our previous lives. We live better, we eat better and we seem to be healthier for it. We’re currently discussing how to create an education system for our children. It will have to be very different from what we went through and will have to focus on the skills that are needed to survive, but we are all agreed a balance needs to be achieved, so our descendants don’t fall into barbarism. Having said that we’re all optimistic concerning our future because our husband is the perfect person to design a modern curriculum. Literally a new age curriculum. We’ve no idea what the future holds, but all are agreed that now at last we actually have one.