Today is raining after a glorious weekend.  Killed ourselves mowing, weeding and feeding the garden.

On Friday, a tennis friend, from the Hurlingham Club, came and gave her expert advice on how to grow cutting flowers and veggies. A project for the summer.

Nicky also came for tea and we had a power talk, that means talking about everything very economically and effectively. I value her insightful and clever mind. I just had a message from her that she was up half the night in driving rain, delivering lambs. That’s my Nicky.

When I went to Iventure, Auntie Wilma’s farm, in the grasslands near West Wyalong, I would help with the shearing. At the same time male lambs were castrated and all were docked, tails removed. 

There is something tremendously romantic about the life of itinerant shearers and workers. Moving from station to station, doing their back breaking work, keeping their spirits up with larking around and singing. “Clip go the shears boys, clip, clip clip…” as the song goes.

In preparation for their visit, Auntie Wilma and I would make hundreds of Anzac biscuits for “Smoko”, which was morning tea, with a cigarette (the smoke), for the shearers.

The shearing began at the crack of dawn. The speed and energy of the shearers was awe inspiring. Each sheep would be wrestled over, the hind legs then trapped between the shearer’s legs and the front legs under his left underarm (if he was right handed) and then whilst the sheep was immobilised, he would use the electric shears to remove the fleece in one piece. If he accidentally nicked them, hot tar was applied to stem the blood flow. Then the sheep would be thrown down the chute and the next one would appear from another chute. Over and over all day.

It was my job to sweep the floor, the dags – soiled wool – from the sheep’s bottom, between each turn. The shearers teased me. They would burn my backside when I bent over to sweep with their hot shears. They would throw me into the wool bales. It felt greasy like Vaseline in there. It was joyous, fun times.

Underneath the shearing floor were the little lambs, separated from their mothers, crying like mad. They were inconsolable. I would try to comfort them, but to no avail. Wilma and Don would place rubber bands around the base of their tails so that they would fall off – docking. Otherwise they would get flyblown and maggots would grow there. The male lambs, if not intended for breeding, were castrated, again by placing rubber bands around their balls. Rumour had it that Wilma’s father Tod, would castrate them by cutting open the balls and removing them with his mouth. 

Today I intend to have a break from the garden and go with Domino to the South Downs for a stretch.

Going to watch the Olivier Awards on television tonight.