Milk out of a stone

We once had a pet cow named Miranda.  She was the most docile of all cows and we could do almost anything to her and she would take it all in her stride.  We climbed up onto her broad back and attempted to ride her, and we even placed my fathers old raincoat over her and tried to climb up using the pockets as footholds.  She was the gentlest of creatures and would allow us to lie underneath her and squirt the milk from her teats straight into our mouths.  Deliciously warm and wonderfully frothy.

My father suffered greatly from ulcers, and spent a good deal of his life in bed.  It was during one of these periods of illness that early one morning my mother sent me down to the cowshed to bring back some milk for breakfast. 

It happened to be one of the coldest days of the year and the temperature was well below freezing point when I set off for the shed.  I'm not sure whether it was me an inexperienced milker, or whether it was the freezing temperature, but the cows just would not oblige.  Eventually I was crying with frustration.  The regular milkers were very sympathitic and offered to help me, but I declined their offer, feeling that my mother would be cross with me if I let someone else do the milking instead of myself.

After about an hour of squeezing this and pulling that and feeling throughly humiliated in front of all the milkers, I finally went home with a quarter of a bucket of dirty looking milk.  To add insult to injury, my mother was really angry that I had taken so long to get back and had so little to show for it.  Her insensitivity to what I had gone through to get the small amount I had, crushed me.  For heavens sake, I was only nine!