A missed lunch and a portrait.

Tony paid us a flying visit last weekend. A very old friend from the other Brookwood, deep down in the south where they have shops and airports and stations.  We drove him miles to a very nice hotel/restaurant in Kylesku specialising in fish. When we arrived they had just stopped serving lunch!  We had a drink and a packet of chicken flavoured crisps and agreed, looking at the menu that it all looked very tasty!

Tony brought a picture of Lamb Chop for us (our resident sheep with an eating disorder) that his daughter Sophie had drawn. All I've done is added a little colour to Sophie's original drawing using photoshop.

                    

And Lamb Chop herself! I think Sophie captured the "Have you got anything to eat?" expression extremely well. I haven't shown the drawing to Lamb Chop, I think she'd see it as something to eat - a new type of biscuit or something

Sophie also sent instructions on how she managed to achieve such an accurate picture

Brilliant Soph. Thank you very much.

Movie Star

Lamb Chop has stopped limping! I told her I'd make a movie. She could become famous. She wasn't that interested. But she was interested in a slice of bread and showed how she could eat it using no hands, no table manners, no stops, no pauses for breath. She was keen to help make the film - the camera looked promising (tasty). Whilst filming I pointed to a piece of bread she'd missed. She couldn't quite work it out, and as you can see she's not the brightest cookie, but she's very funny and it's nice not see her limping past the window. Meanwhile she continues to eat all the scraps, the bird seed, the tree bark, and any blade of grass or anything that might grow in what I try to call my garden!

Lamb chop

When I first became acquainted with Lamb chop I thought she was just another one of life's losers! Scruffy, bedraggled, always hanging around, ever hopeful for the the odd hand out. But I've since concluded she's just one very smart sheep!

She comes round most days, and stands outside the kitchen window, calling out in a rather tuneless, urgent 'bahhhhing' sort of way.

I go out side and join her. I sit on the step and we have a chat - well, I have a chat, Lamb chop has an eat. She's partial to a number of things but she loves bread. She's not fussed whether it's stone ground, multi grained, soft batch wholemeal or granary, from Tesco or the bakers, just as long as it's in big chunks to go down. She eats apples and carrots as well, and last nights salad and cabbage stalks, all the vegetable peelings , but not potato (I don't like to give her those.) She's far more effective than a dustbin

She's very inquisitive, (can I eat this camera?) but at the same time very timid. Sometimes she lets me rub her muzzle. Her ears appear to be made up of holes and serrated edges

She's also unraveling a bit at the neck - a real scruff bag. Apparently sheep rub their wool off with their continual efforts to reach the greener grass under the fence. Living here it would have to be the tree on the other side of the fence always has more bark!

Up and down the lane lambs are being born at an amazing rate. Some mums and babies just graze by the side of the lane, others are in fields, and others just roam on the hillside.

The sheep are very protective of their young. Some days there is a constant calling of mums and their off spring, who not noticing the distance, have wondered out of range. Each mum knows her baby and if a lamb tries to latch onto the wrong mum he's shown no pity and gets short shrift.I've mentioned all of this to Lamb chop and asked her if she intends to be a mum. She is looking wider just lately, although Niels says that's because she's eating all his food. I'm under no illusions regarding this friendship. It's totally one sided. I'm a sort of mobile larder, a meals on wheels. I'm not sure what Lamb chops reply was when asked about motherhood, she had her mouth full at the time, but I think, I thought she said she'd rather come in and have a cup of tea and a jaffa cake!