Jonathan Schofield

YOU wait for one cow in the city and then three come along at once.

Behind the splendid Timber Wharf apartments, off Arundel Street, a short graze away from the Bridgewater Canal and a longer one from the Metrolink line, are three fine milkers.

Amidst the urban totems of apartments, old mills, warehouses, canal and rail, you'll find are Daisy and friends minding their empty-headed, double stomached business. Great joke. It makes you smile not the first time but every time you see them.

Here's a sublime suspension of reality, a little halt in the day's concerns, a moment of absurdity to evaporate worry. Who needs a shrink when you've got three fibre-glass cows in silly suits sat by the tracks?

The beasts are part of the Cowparade Movement: various artists and amateurs who are 'moved by their own interpretation of the cow as an art subject.' You heard it here first. Our trio are Blue Mooon, by The Langhorne Family, Cowmooflage, by HMP Wormwood Scrubs Art Class and Cowmuter, by Helen Collard.

It was Tom Bloxham of Urban Splash who made the decision to herd them north, and he should receive a pat on the back for doing so.

The best public view is from the tram into Manchester. This is my January ambition: to get the whole carriage rocking with moos as we glide past. Moooooooo!

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