“Be careful where you tread when you get here.” It was one of the more unusual instructions I’d offered to the rest of the gang in advance of their arrival, but then again we’d had quite an unusual morning the previous day. It’s not every Saturday that your partner wakes you up at twenty past six to tell you there’s something interesting going on in the garden. My first response was to groan, roll over and back to sleep, but she was getting quite animated, so I grunted, crawled out of bed and joined her at the window, where half a dozen or more silent woolly white forms were slowly moving about the garden in the thick morning gloom, helping themselves to the lawn and whatever else they could find for breakfast if you please. Ironic really, given that Ali is a lifelong insomniac, and here she was counting sheep in the early twilight. Where had they come from? Who did they belong to? We live in a semi rural area and people around us keep horses. A herd of cows are often to be found in the field somewhere along the path, but neither of us had ever seen any sheep in the immediate vicinity before. I decided I better get up and try to solve the mystery. For her part, Ali crawled back into bed and promptly fell asleep. Maybe she’d been trying to count them too. There was no way of making it clearer that she’d decided this was my job to sort out.
Five minutes later I was in the garden, greeted at the door by the largest member of the invading force, who came up to my waist at least. She looked at me hopefully, although for what reason I couldn’t be sure. Already, the garden smelled like a farmyard. The first evidence that I’d engaged the brain four hours earlier than normal came when I decided it might be an idea to close the gate, before our visitors began to think they might have outstayed their welcome and headed off down the lane towards the road. For a while they stood there, waiting silently at the closed off exit, and then they trooped back to the grass to continue the free buffet. If sheep could shrug, they would have done so right now. At least they’d left the agapanthus alone. I made several attempts to count them but they kept moving and I hadn’t had my first cup of coffee yet. How many? Thirteen? No, fourteen. I phoned the police non-emergency line to report my find. Surely somebody was missing fourteen sheep? I decided not to put it on the local Faceplant group or ring Radio Cornwall - you never know what sort of lunatic you might be inviting to visit you at home you know. For now there was little else I could do. The sheep were contentedly cutting the grass for us - fertilising it too for that matter - and so I went indoors and put the kettle on before I nodded off. By now that cup of coffee was long overdue. This night owl had only been asleep for five hours and he really doesn’t function in the mornings.
Sometime later, I decided it might be an idea to wander down the lane and follow the trail, so to speak. Every few yards, a pile of evidence appeared, and there was little doubting who’d left it there. Well it was one of fourteen potential culprits at any rate. It looked as if they’d come through a neighbour’s garden, so I rang the bell. She told me she’d seen them in the field on the other side when she’d been out cutting the hedge and apparently they’d only been there a week or so. Evidently they’d become bored of their new home and decided to go on an adventure. It was a good job they’d turned right instead of left at the junction and come to the safety of our garden rather than straying onto the busy road at the end of the lane. And as I also took a right, the lady in the posh Land Rover Discovery drove past again, this time stopping by me and winding down the window. “Have you seen some sheep?” The mystery was no longer a mystery. An hour later, we were on first name terms with several leading lights of the wandering menagerie, waving them goodbye as in a horsebox converted to a mobile sheep pen, they were transported back to their field. Well, twelve of them were. They had to make a return trip for Mary and Chilly, the naughty pair who weren't so keen to go home. Temporarily separated from their tribe, the pair began bleating furiously and shot over the wall into our neighbour’s garden with an elegant grace that belied their bulky appearances. Fortunately he was away in Italy and we were feeding his cat. The sheep, at least, were feeding themselves. If nothing else, we had an unusual after dinner anecdote that would last for years.
The following evening, Dave and Lee arrived, treading carefully as they went. We had a plan for a nearby location that had been almost completely ignored by all three of us in the ten years since these outings began. I’d been here a year ago and decided it was an excellent September location, so here we were, completely ignoring the sketchy scramble to the composition I’d found twelve months earlier. Instead, in poor light we settled into our positions down by the water, occasionally retreating by a few yards as the tide raced towards us. Both brain and camera were in sixteen by nine mode, more or less, and with a scene where the wildlife in residence were entirely to be expected, I could smell a composite on the cards too. But then again, my sense of smell had been heightened over the weekend.
The following morning, a bottle of wine, chocolates and a thank you card arrived. We were told that their field had been fortified now, so further escapes were less likely, but in truth, we’d enjoyed the unexpected visit. At one point late in the morning, after the owner had set off to refashion that horsebox, we settled down in our camping chairs with cups of tea to enjoy the companionable silence of our fourteen guests. Ideally we'd have kept them a week or so - they were doing a fine job on the brambles that I’m forever losing an ongoing war against. As it is, we’ll have to get the mower out one last time before the autumn now. Unless they return in the middle of the night again soon, that is.
