Sheep…
Sheep…I’m writing about sheep.
I’m telling you about harnessing and marking up the tups, sorting out the groups of ewes, colours, counting, feeding, watching …and all those things that help make my lambing easier and less stressful.
Pictures too. I’d taken some interesting ones.
But the silence is white noise in my ears. Expanding in long thin tense sharp silver wires – reverberating, singing, zinging – springing back with a pinging twing and attenuated stretching, up-down, up-down, in multiple silent vibrations.

I’ve found it hard, in the last six weeks or so, to concentrate, work and make adjustments to a house full of bustle, noise and chaos. My routine blown away. Huge meals, huge washing, huge muddle, huge, well huge just about everything. Chatter, talk, gossip. Babies, sons, friends. An ever changing rainbow.

Squigsy looking round the office door, having escaped his parents…’Hey! Hey!’ tentatively, inquiringly, ‘Tracta, tracta?’ ‘side? wow-wow, side?’ moving a little closer ‘moo, wha,wha…rotbot, tracta.’ Gaining confidence he decides to do a little dance to entertain me, bored, he moves round to my chair and stares intently up at me, places a hot sticky little hand on my arm – ‘uh-oh, nanoo, uh-oh’. Of course I’m butter in his hands and stop everything!

Coming home from a long days work in Exeter, tense, tired, headachy – to find Joes cooking the most delectable roast chicken stuffed with herbs and lemon, a glass of wine waiting for me on the kitchen table.

Girly talks with Jess about, well about just about everything! A days shopping together in town. Her ability to know exactly what’s bugging me and to do something about it. Shared thoughts, shared experiences.

Walks in the afternoon with dogs and Squigs in the backpack – checking the stock, playing in the river, stalking the deer and finding birds and dormice nests.

Friends – theirs, ours, both theirs and ours…for lunch, supper, or just a quick drop in.

But they’ve gone. Today, this morning. We waved, called, shouted our good-byes till they were out of earshot. Skye threw back her head and howled. I had salty tears dripping down me, Robert hugged and cried too.

Now silence.
The house heaves, sighs and settles.
I write. White noise. What’s that about sheep?