Autumn’s windfalls. Greg Dixon/ The Listener
Pear Orchard Paddock has been temporarily renamed Porno Paddock.
This is not, obviously, as idyllic a country name as Pear Orchard Paddock, with all of the cheerfully frolicking sheeply images it conjures. But it accurately describes the antics that are going on out there.
I hate to sound like that professional prude, the late Patricia Bartlett, but, really, one must avert one’s eyes.
The ram is in the paddock. A ram in the paddock is rude. He wears a harness, with a dye tag attached to the front of the thing. The dye rubs off on the bums of our girls, denoting that they have been tipped.
We ought to be used to this by now – after all, we have seen what goes on out there for six years now. But somehow, when it comes around again, it always comes as a shock.
Our last season’s lambs are still babies, to me. To a sheep farmer, they are hoggets and hence available for humping.
Elizabeth Jane, my pet ewe, has been had at. She is sporting a red bum. Other ewes are sporting green or blue bums. Their rear ends look like crazy clown’s wigs. Elizabeth Jane had her remaining cancerous ear cut off a few weeks ago.
Her lack of ears has evidentially not diminished her desirability. Rams are not lookists.
Reginald, EJ’s ram lamb from last year, is back home, having been saved from being sent to China or, quite possibly, the works. He had the vasectomy, which means he can still do the rammy business without the end result. I held him throughout said op.
I visited him the day after – with biscuits, in lieu of a bunch of grapes or a packet of frozen peas – and he didn’t appear to hold the nasty business against me.