Lost And Found

Today we lost some sheep and a mobile phone.  Or rather Christopher did.  Not that he is admitting this.

So you will recall that yesterday we drenched the sheep ready for their move into a different field.   We moved the sheep and the big fat Romneys stayed put and the little skinny Shetlands escaped.  The Shetlands are built for mountain living – they are more like goats in lots of ways – very sure footed and they can jump.  They are in fact little woolly jumpers.  So they jumped right out of the field, into the next one, and then bolted for Knelle Wood which doesn’t belong to us. 

This all happened in the space of about five minutes.  Christopher had left the house saying ‘I’m going to move the sheep’ and ‘no I don’t need your help’ but I followed at a distance ostensibly walking the dogs but really anticipating a sheep related crisis that I would need to assist with.  And sure enough I found him waist deep in bracken in the woods trying to get Alice, Mary, Celia, Dinky and Victoria out of no- mans land.   

At this point I repeated my offer of help.  Reader – you may be surprised to learn that this wasn’t met with the gratitude I’d anticipated.  The response was along the lines of ‘help me get the f’ing sheep out of the f’ing woods’ and I replied ‘there’s no need to f’ing swear, it’s not my f’ing fault’.  This continued for some minutes.  Again – I repeat the observation I made yesterday about sheep being marriage-testers.  Once a stony silence had settled between us, the sheep were eventually chased from the woods via a field belonging to someone else, back through two of our fields to the field from which they originally set out.  Christopher and I had a terse exchange about required repairs to fences in order that sheep search and rescue doesn’t turn into a daily activity.

The husband then announced he’d lost his mobile phone.  And of course he’d looked everywhere for it.  ‘Lost’ and ‘everywhere’ were the two key words he used.  Despite the fact that at that precise moment I didn’t really give a damn, I offered to walk around the farm, calling his number from my mobile phone in the vain attempt that I might hear it ringing.  I spent an hour doing this.  On my return to the farmhouse Christopher was mid conversation with the folk at Vodafone, getting his phone barred.  And I found his mobile.  On the back doorstep.  Which apparently doesn’t fall under ‘everywhere’ as in ‘I’ve looked everywhere’.

The phrase Christopher is most likely to be heard saying is, ‘have you seen my…’ (complete as appropriate) the phrase I’m most likely to be heard saying is, ‘it’s in the ….’ (complete as appropriate).  I spend about 3 hours a week looking for Roy’s spectacles – which have been found everywhere from the veg patch to the tractor shed.  My dad loses things quite often too – but interestingly his first and frankly rather suspicious thought is that someone has stolen them.  This might make sense if it was an item of value – but even if dad can’t find one of his shoes, let alone a pair, he is still likely to level the blame at a mysterious thief.  My friend Geoff often loses important things that I’ve emailed to him but his defence is that he ‘never received it’ or it ‘got lost in the system’.  There’s a pattern emerging – dare I venture that this is a bloke thing?