Sunday was my most MANLY and BUTCH day in quite some time. Rounding up sheep and footy. Makes me want to beat my chest just thinking about it. Ug.
It started out on the farm, Dan and I being invited to help with some sheep. The first step was to move the sheep to a pen. The basic rule of convincing sheep to go somewhere is to frighten them. They’re perpetually nervous of people, so you just stand where you don’t want them to go, and they’ll go anywhere else that they can.
We had almost got the sheep to the pen when Steve, our host and part-time farmer, announced a small problem. A bull lives in the same paddock we were moving the sheep to. This was, of course, something he hadn’t mentioned before we started. I’m not sure I would have been quite so eager to accept had he said "Let’s move some sheep into the same paddock a huge bull is resting in".
But his advice was simply to keep your distance and run for the fence if the bull approached looking angry. I thanked whatever deity might be listening that I had a grey coat on over my red jumper.
In the end it all worked out. We got the sheep into the pen and gave them the appropriate medicine, then got them back out again. A few of them were unco-operative and had to be man-handled (ug!), but combined with driving rain and a bull watching from nearby only helped to get the testosterone flowing.
On Sunday evening Dan and I went to the MCG with fifty-five thousand of our closest friends to see the big men fly. Cats versus Kangaroos, and alas the Cats lost, but not before beer and pies and chips had been consumed in more rain. Nobody seemed to mind the rain except for the fact that it watered-down the beer. Nothing could slow down the constant flow of invectives towards the opposing players and umpires.
