Has someone been smuggling drugs in my hay bales?

The hay dealer showed me his latest stock and told me the bright green hay would cost me a staggering €165 a bale.

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‘I don’t want to smoke it, I want to feed it to my horses,’ I said, looking doubtfully at what was apparently best meadow hay. It was a very large bale, and it was very green, but even so. I would expect to pay €80 for a large bale, so twice that did not make any sense. I took a handful of it and smelt it and it had a pungent, grassy aroma. There was a strange twang to it.

I asked if he could deliver me a couple of bales and he screwed his face up. He explained he had driven it all the way from England to West Cork. He would be happy to deliver me a €5,000 job lot, and he could offer me an arrangement whereby I paid it off in monthly instalments. ‘I’ve just delivered five grand’s worth down to an English lady with horses in Ballydehob,’ he said, with a swagger.

‘You’re not selling it by saying that, not to me anyway,’ I said, for I have come across many a mad English person living down near the Mizen Head. The fact that hay had been bought at that price by a pink-haired hippy, in all likelihood flying a Palestinian flag on her old farmhouse, with a load of llamas in a paddock and some ‘rescue ponies’ never ridden in a barn, did not increase my confidence.

I told him I didn’t want credit.