I spent a very dreamy day pottering and pootling around yesterday. It is the second day I’ve done this, this week. R was in nursery both days and I just faffed about doing nothing in particular. This is my idea of heaven. I felt so terribly guilty about it though that I couldn’t relax 100% and confess to jumping to attention a few times Mr. P came down from his office – making out I was being busy! I was recently saying to a friend that the sort of “day off” I crave is being at home doing absolutely zilch and how nice it was too. I spent some of the time eating, some of the time looking out at our birds and animal neighbours, much of the time thinking and alot of the time on the computer reading and writing about random things. This is the story of my life: to the undiscerning onlooker, it may appear that I’m a lazy bugger yet really I’m ever so busy mentally. Yeah right!

I’ve been noticing many white patches of abandoned sheep wool lying in the fields and hanging from the fences and hedges. Wouldn’t it be nice to go out and collect it and do something with it instead of letting it go to waste (OK I could leave the birds some for their nests). I spent ages on t’internet searching for someone locally who might be able to wash and spin a small amount of wool. It took me a while but I finally tracked someone down (gleaning useful info on the way about the issues facing the local wool trade and where to take up courses in wool carding, spinning and weaving). I’ve emailed her and am now wondering how often a hand-spinner and potential luddite might check their inbox?? We’ll see.

I quite often have vivid dreams. I don’t remember much about last night’s except a definite unpleasant image of a dead lamb in a plastic bag. (Sorry to anyone squeamish, perhaps you shouldn’t read on). I’d forgotten this when I got up this morning and was just stumbling about out of bed when I looked out the back window and I saw a worryingly still and abandoned lamb lying down in the field. Quite often I over-react to sleeping lambs and later see them skipping about but sadly, this was not the case with this one. It looked as if it had been killed by a fox. Thankfully it wasn’t close enough to the house to see in detail but I was upset and fascinated by it at the same time. Similar to the mixture of emotions I felt seeing a cow struggling to give birth to a still-born calf last year. I suppose it’s like rubbernecking after a car crash. Something strongly draws you in. I texted the farmer to let him know. I was hoping in my “twit in the country” way, that he would drop everything and come and collect it’s remains but it’s still there. The saddest thing about it was watching the other sheep. A few other lambs went and looked and sniffed at it and jumped over the carcass and carried on their way. Were they upset? Or is that just silly? Am I just projecting human feelings onto unintelligent animals? I tried to figure out which was the mother sheep. I refuse to believe she wouldn’t have felt some kind of emotion, especially if she witnessed the attack. There was one sheep on it’s own, far away from the others but sitting about 100yds away from the dead lamb looking at it. Is that her? It pulled on my heartstrings.

It was only later that I remembered the horrible image in my dream. A premonition? A coincidence? Or perhaps part of me was aware of the commotion in the field last night, as I slept. Before she went to bed tonight R wanted to see the carcass from her bedroom window and she commented without any prompting from me that “the other sheep look sad Mummy”. RIP little one.