I WANTED A HOLIDAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 189, 5 February 1943, Page 5

I WANTED A HOLIDAY

(Written and illustrated for "The Listener" by

N.

B.

e E’LL be shearing here," ran the letter. "A bit late this year-too. much rain. Bring some old clothes if you would like to help." Of course I would like to help, I said to myself. After all, they only have a land girl now-and she’s a bare eight stone. If I with my nine or so can’t double the output on that farm I will be very much surprised. The morning after my arrival, I hastily

donned shorts and hied me to the yards. It was a sunny Wairarapa morning. The sheep were bleating joyfully and dashing about in glorious abandon. It must be the

weather, I thought, the sweet’ little things are so happy. (I hadn’t seen Fluke the dog, hidden by their woolly rumps doing his stuff!), "Dagging" was the project for the day. Funny words they use, don’t they? I wonder would you find it in a list of regular English. verbs. "I dag, thou ~ daggest, he she or it dags!" Anyway, I found this peculiar custom is a necessary preliminary to shearing-and what a preliminary! For those who don’t know, this is the process. As one is told in the recipe books-first catch your hare. It would be comparatively easy to do this, but have you ever thrown a sheep? Of course they are all bundled together in a very small yard, which helps in a _ way, although the sheep are not above making the most of this limited space, either. They haven’t any rules of fair play. A determined butt below the belt is considered quite the thing, and I found that a well-considered cannon with myself as the cushion is to them a perfectly legitimate way out of a corner. But it is possible to get even. I thoroughly enjoyed creeping up on an unsuspecting ewe-hauling her velvety squashy nose round to starboard, meanwhile pulling her body violently to port, till thud! She’s down!

Now for the next step. You see really this should all be achieved with a pair of shears in one hand! Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But farmers do it with a flick of the wrist. So do land girls! In

fact, mine host and the land girl, who were working in the same yard, had already done it several times while I was still ricocheting from sheep to sheep! She was a wonder, that land girlstoics and Amazons aren’t in it. After having been butted in the tummy and then trodden on as a parting shot, all that escapes her is an anguished little "Golliwoggles!" Well, at last I have my quarry firmly held by the shoulders in a most undignified sitting position. Now the task

gets really difficult. My farmer has politely, but with a rather terrified expression in his eyes, begged me for my own good, as well as the sheep’s, not to attempt to catch the sheep and carry the shears at the same time. Consequently, I have dug them into the ground point first at what was then an uninhabited spot in the yard. Of course this was a mistake. If they are not buried beneath several layers of immovable stupid, greasy, stubborn, implacable 120-pound two_tooths, then one is likely to trip over them oneself and prick one’s leg. (I did!). The land girl meanwhile is dagging away competently, and is now on her seventh or eighth, so hoping no one has seen, I quietly release the great hunk of struggling mutton in my grasp and walk nonchalantly up to watch, before beginning all over again. After a few minutes in which I realise that, strange as it may seem, a sheep has quite a bit of anatomy down there under ‘his formless exterior. I feel I really can’t put it off any longer, but simply must catch one and clean it up, too! An

almost fanatical surge of feeling comes over me. "Cleaner, sweeter sheep" I mutter, feverishly. With a determined lunge which meets with unexpected success, followed by a hand-to-hand

struggle raising a cloud of dust, I realise that I’ve actually got one where I want him. Whoopee! Now. what? Looking from the front down on to a prostrate and obediently limp animal with all its anatomy being laid bare by the competent hand of the land girl is somewhat different, I find, from desperately trying to see, from behind, through and over a great fuzz of wool cleverly concealing such hidden dangers as flying hooves. I realise that literally T am not out of the bush yet! I always prided myself on being able to touch my toes, but that was child’s play compared to this. My back has to describe a sort of arc to take in the enormous bulk propped against my knees. So with a groan and much clawing greasily for a hold, I finally get the upper part of my body within manipulative distance of the lower part of the sheep. Then with rising excitement (and blood pressure) I proceed to "clean him up." j The object, it seems, is to make a monkéy out of him! A sort of clean shave prior to shearing proper. By the way have you ever changed a baby’s nappy? Well, apart from the prelim.

inary skirmishing I prefer dagging.. myself but there are others who think it’s a_ toss-up! We shear tomorrow. Thank heaven a team of ten husky Maoris has just arrived.