Feeling sheepish…

I thought that spring was going to be sprung without any reference to those cute, leaping lambs that seem to be in every field you wander into at this time of year - crook in hand, sheep dog at heel. I thought that I’d managed to get away with ignoring their fluffy whiteness and not having to mention their cuteness now that Easter is long gone.

But then I wasn’t reckoning on the text that Holly got from Goronwy, our farmer friend, the other evening. There’s an orphan lamb up at the farm, a bottle feeder, not your fluffy white ball of cotton wool kind of a lamb, something else, a veritable E.T. of a lamb.

As you can see E.T. isn’t the most attractive of creatures, but what he lacks in looks he makes up for in personality. Just look at him, he looks like he’s been dipped in soot and he’s borrowed somebody else’s skin – a bigger somebody’s skin. In fact if I didn’t know better I might think that he was a glove puppet and that Holly was doing an impression of Shari Lewis – remember her? Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop - Sunday evenings, black and white telly, school the next day… or was that Pinky and Perky?

‘Are ewe my mummy? Are ewe my mummy?’ As you can see he’s decided that Holly probably is his mummy, silly little bleater. Orphan lambs are like that, they’ll go to anyone for affection. Everyone and everything is a potential mother.

Poor little thing, he’s all over Holly like a rash and not only does he not have a mummy but being born a boy… well let’s just say that I hope that he isn’t allergic to mint.