Lambie was born on April 25th, 2015 so it will be his birthday very soon.

• Hats ✔️
• Cake ✔️
• Presents ✔️
• Twiglets ✔️
• and a big bottle of gin for Muzzah ✔️

I was looking back at old photos realising Lambie will be 10 years old.  10 whole years.  My little boy who we struggled at the beginning from day to day to keep alive.

Lambie was born prematurely on a stormy cold night.   His owner had gone on holiday saying it was fine, no lambs would arrive but Lambie and his sister were found newly born on a late night walk around and I was summoned to help knowing less than nothing about lambs.  “I don’t do sheep”, I wailed as they were handed to me as their owner’s partner said neither did he and he was going to work so it was up to me……

Blimey.  It was tough.  I put them in a shed – Mum and her two lambs (a girl and a boy).  The girl lamb promptly died the next night and Mum had absolutely no interest in either of them. She had a terrible shitty bottom and wouldn’t feed.

That left the little boy lamb.

He was dying in front of me so I messaged a friend who knew about sheep but was on holiday so from her deck chair somewhere lovely and hot, she told me what to do.  I put Lambie in the oven with the door open.

And then there were the bottles. Lambie wouldn’t eat.  He said he was hungry, I would heat up a new bottle, then he would take 5 ml very slowly and stop, possibly forever.  He had no interest in food. He couldn’t walk. He wasn’t normal like other sheep. He was not thriving.

There were many trips to the vet resulting in four types of antibiotics for joint ill and then many messages to my knowledgable sheep friend who told me all the tricks she knew to keep a small helpless and hopeless lamb alive.

It was all very tough but ten years on, Lambie is still with us.  Now back to planning his birthday party.  A very big bottle of gin, I think!

The usual morning chores – the ponies let out for the day to eat non-existent grass, sheep fed, and ancient horses/ponies given their breakfast.

Accompanied, as ever, by my little fat joker, Gussie….

… and his mother, the gorgeous Dahlia.  When I see her now, I realise she shines with happiness.  I am so pleased she has blossomed living here.

And this morning, I saw that I had to fill up the water buckets in the paddock, which is where everyone goes to drink after their breakfast. I like everyone to have easy access to water, despite a socking great big stream that flows through every field.  As our water pressure is not the best, I was prepared to sit and wait for the containers to fill up.  It can take a while.

So I decided to sit on the shed steps, and Pepper soon took up residence on my knee.

The old ladies were close by.

And the rest were on the other side of the paddock resting after their ginormous breakfast.

Gussie, of course, popped in ….

And then Dahlia.

It was good to see the sheep with Fivla and Vitamin.  They are not remotely scared of them and see themselves as part of their herd – the other sheep steer well clear of all things equine mostly because Lambie was chased when he was little by the Minions and has never forgotten.  He holds a good grudge and at present, refuses to go into any paddock if he sees a horse or pony first.

And then all of a sudden I noticed the water containers were both full, so I wrapped up the hose and went inside for my breakfast.  Thank you very much.

I went to town by myself after the morning chores for a much-needed eye appointment at our local opticians.  I’ve been having a few problems with my eyes and was already worried.

The results – some bad news – I’ve been referred as an emergency to the eye clinic at the hospital, either south or here depending on who can give me an appointment first.  I was not very happy and spent most of my day moping around feeling very sorry for myself whilst trying to remember if Mum had had these eye problems too.

Anyway, I finished up doing my messages and came home to do my afternoon/evening chores.

Home instantly made me feel better.  I can get things into perspective here.  ‘Ster understands.

And the wild primroses are really starting to rev up now.

The mud is also drying up too (I even managed to open a very bad gateway with at least a foot of mud without sinking without trace).

So, apart from the eye thing and the usual, life is not too bad.  If I have to go south, then I go south. I need to get this treated asap.

A thought – I wonder if I could take Newt as my seeing-eye pony…… apparently, they are a thing ….. and even if he took me to the nearest cake shop, everyone would think he was very cute (and he could carry my handbag too!)  Win, win.

Yesterday, Mandy and I went into my shed to play our flute duets as per our usual Saturday afternoon routine.

And Pepper came too, which is part of her routine as well.  She doesn’t seem to mind the noise (we tell ourselves that it is “beautiful” music) and usually settles after a chewy treat, going to sleep.

Today, Pepper said she had eaten her treat and now what?

How can I resist that little face, always trying to catch my eye in between making a pot of tea and grinding to a halt (sadly a frequent occurrence) after I get stuck.

But I could see the Other Half was around too (aka Monster).

And, as the weather was perfect (really no one should be indoors), I let Pepper go outside, even though she has form for leaving to go and play with the neighbours.

I decided to trust her and I explained this to her, hoping she was listening and had maybe grown up a little since her last excursion.

And Monster was around to supervise too.

I explained this to him as well, hoping someone was listening to me.

Yes, please.  Listening ears on.

As the afternoon wore on, and the music continued in varying degrees of accuracy (I can’t help but remember Eric Morecombe’s famous phrase – “all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order”), Pepper stayed around finding different spots to sit in.

She likes to watch the world go around, but the urge to join in is sometimes more powerful.  Luckily today was not that day so maybe she did listen.  I remain ever the optimist.

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Every morning I go out with buckets of food for the old horses and ponies.

This is not as simple as it sounds as I have to carry four rather full buckets – one each for Kolka, Iacs and Haakon (they each have different dietary needs)…..

…. plus another for Fivla and Vitamin which I split.

Then I have to stand in between Kolka and Iacs because Kolka will finish her food faster than everyone else and then start picking on Iacs to get his, failing that she marches off to the little ones as they are an easy target.  So I grab Kolka and stop her doing this, letting Iacs finish his food in peace, though today I did catch Haakon thinking about having a go. We had words.

To get to the field, I have to scramble through a difficult gap in the dry-stone wall, with my four buckets trying hard not to fall over in the process or let Kolka grab the wrong one over the wire fence, while simultaneiously not letting Gussie eat them first, which is his only ambition.  Kolka by now is threatening to kick everyone.  Meanwhile Vitamin is running up and down the fence hysterically worried she will be forgotten.  When she gets her food, she wolfs it down in gulps!  Honestly, none of this is easy.

Gussie does not help in any way.  Just want, want, want.

And Dahlia is no saint either.

Later, when I come out of the field clutching my empty buckets, having fended off everyone left, right and centre, I feel like I have been in a rugby match where no one really knows or cares about the rules very much!