Jim Webster's Blog, page 35

It’s a sheep day

You can tell it’s on the warm side. Sal has dug herself a shallow depression in the ground to sit in! She’s pleased as punch with it now because it’s probably a bit damp and cool, but this is Cumbria, in another week it’ll be flooded. So today is a sheep day. Ewes and lambs …

Posturing political pygmies

I’m supposed to be promoting books and stuff but frankly I’m just too hacked off. You see, a lad I went to school with was killed as collateral damage in one of the IRA bombs. So I know what his family went through. So when political pygmies cavort on the corpses of the freshly dead, …

Pigs

This isn’t really my story, but it’s one I thought I ought to share. It concerns a friend of mine so I’ll keep things carefully anonymous. Just in case. A mate of mine worked with pigs early in his career. He then went on to do engineering and become respectable, but at least he started …

Consummate professional

I apologise for the photo, but it’s a real photograph. We think it was taken by a small girl using a disposable camera in a pre-digital age. So I scanned it in because here you have old Boz in the foreground and Jess behind him. This is what is now called ‘succession planning.’ Nobody lasts …

Evaporating Herwicks and other stories

Sunday morning was a bit hectic. I got my baby ‘pet lambs’ fed (these are the ones who still get milk) but then had to dash off to church because as well as the normal service we had an extra one. Our village lost two lads in the First World War, and this week was …

It shouldn’t happen to a dog.

You’ll see a lot about how to train dogs to work cattle, but actually you need to give nearly as much time to training the cattle to be worked by dogs. When you stop to think about it, One thousand kilos of bull shouldn’t really be all that bothered by ten kilos of dog. That’s …

Dulce et decorum est

  This time of year can be difficult for the diligent Border Collie. All these charming lambs scampering about might look delightful but they’ve got no respect. As old Jess would doubtless have said, if she could be bothered lowering herself to communicating verbally, “If you haven’t got respect, you’ve got nothing.” From the working …

A gentleman could do no less

Every so often a man must do what a man must do. Or something like that anyway. I was browsing through the books in a charity shop when I became aware of the presence of two ladies. From their comments they were mother and daughter and I’d guess the mother was about my age. Mother …

And farewell to all that!

This morning those lambs remaining from last year’s crop were loaded and left. They were by and large those who had perhaps not shone in the past. Still when the weather got cold they were considered a bit delicate and whilst the rest stayed outside these were whisked inside and pampered a bit. Having sheep …

Just follow the money!

Now it has to be confessed that I have a real ability to somehow get myself tangled up in dying industries. Look at agriculture. I know one year in the 1990s I discovered I’d been working over seventy hours a week at the princely rate of 9p an hour. But thanks to the internet, freelance …