Although there are still marlin around my season has now finished. I really had better go back to work. I'll have a ferret around the garage and see if I can't find my golf clubs as the Obald Official Golf Season starts the weekend after next. I like to start in mid April so I can have a good excuse for turning down my invitation to play in the Masters. Daylight saving has stopped and it is now dark far too early. The solar heating can only get the pool to a 'bracing' 22ยบ even after a full day of watery autumn sunshine. I've had to heat the spa back up again for the refreshment after an afternoon toiling with the chain saw. The last day of the last Test of the summer finished this arvo with New Zealand's star batsmen Cold Front coming in to see out the Indian attack until stumps for a well crafted 0 not out.
Yup, as far I'm concerned summer has finished. That means this blog will turn its back on fishing and get back into the real world.
Helen Clark has been given the bum's rush to New York to be something at the UN. I was going to write 'to be something jolly important at the UN' but nothing at that useless outfit is important so I can't. One is led to believe that this posting is what her whole life has been working towards. How bloody sad. Good riddance to bad, no very bad, rubbish. I never want to see or, more particularly, hear her ever again. John Key has done the country a great service by supporting her application and getting the worthless harridan out of the country.
Whilst he was on a roll Key neutered History Boy today. Made him Deputy Chairman of NZ Post. Now this is perfect in many ways. One; it gets him and his arrogant, swarmy and unctuous manner out of mainstream anything. We no longer have to put up with his Smart Aleck shenanigans in Parliament. We no longer have to put up with 'the sharpest wit in the house' - barrrrff. Two; this now means he has to walk around ringing a bell and shouting 'Unclean' when in the presence of his former Labour colleagues as he has effectively sold his soul for 30 postage stamps. He now works for 'the Rich Prick'. Beautiful. Three; JK has also made him Deputy Chairman of the SOE and not the full Monty. Really rubbing his hideous nose in it. No, the Prime Minister has done very well in disposing of the Wicked Witch and her odious Henchman - oops sorry, Henchperson.
But the story that really caught my attention when touching back down on the planet was the sheep dog stuff. Someone told me that Silver Fern Farms was considering getting rid of sheep dogs. Eh? Although I live in the country I do not pretend a farmer to be. I own a few agricultural implements that do their bit to keep my carbon footprint as big as possible but I don't pretend to be a farmer. But even I know that farmers have dogs. It goes with the bit of straw between the teeth, the blue coveralls and the Red Bands. I checked the date and April Fools Day was a week ago. What is going on?
It all appears to have Tesco at the bottom of it so I repaired to The Daily Telegraph website for the good oil. Tesco reckons that a shepherd's canine companion stresses the sheep. This can be alleviated if the dog is replaced by a stick. I don't really believe I am typing this bollocks even if it is coming from someone else's brain. Let's get this straight. These 'ere sheep are off on their last journey. There ain't no coming back from the abbatoir under your own steam. You, Mr Sheep, are going to come out of Affco as a lamb chop and not as next year's Merino sweater. If I was in one of those double decker lorries with the slots down the side and the bad smell and the sign on the front said 'Horotiu', some Huntaway barking at me would be the least of my worries. My stress levels would not fall one jot if a shepherd came up to me with a stick either. If my next appointment was with the chain and not the shearer little else would have any significance to me at all. As Oscar Wilde said 'The thought that you are to be hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully' Now, although I doubt many sheep are avid scholars of literature, I'm equally sure they soon get the idea that things in their ovine world are not all they could be when they are herded up the loading race in bulk numbers by whatever method Tesco sees fit and at that time they couldn't give a rat's arse how many dogs (or sticks) are in attendance.
Using dogs to round up sheep is hardly a Johnny come lately idea now is it? It's been going on for centuries - and a good many of them. No one in the last three hundred years or so has said 'Hell, this rack of lamb tastes awful. It's those bloody sheepdogs stressing the sheep again'. You don't get Egon Ronay giving an extra star for 'Dog free Lamb' do you? All means nothing to bloody Tesco though. They are demanding that dogs go by, wait for it, next week. They want sheep to be herded with the aforementioned sticks or flags. Flags. Flags of all nations? Red ones? Union Jacks in the UK and the Tricolor in France? Jolly big flags if the sheep won't pay attention like the shouting in Monty Python's Wuthering Heights in semaphore?
Even though I have laid my non farming credentials out for all to see, I will admit to a limited experience at moving sheep. I have not tried flags but my wife and I move between and forty and sixty (depending on the timing of the next bus to to Horotiu) around three or four paddocks every six weeks or so. We favour the 'stick, waving arms, saying 'Through the gate you daft bugger and not across the lawn', getting sweaty and swearing a lot' method. It has always struck me that it would be an awful lot easier for both the sheep and shepherd (be it amateur Michael Mouse variety or the real thing) if a dog were involved. I'm not about to get one 'cos I don't much care for dogs and ten minutes of chaos every six weeks or so is no big deal. If, however, I was organising lamb chops for Tesco by the cubic kilometre I would get dogs (multiple) and make sure they worked damned hard whilst I sat around somewhere with one of those funny whistles directing traffic. Bugger the sheep's stress levels, mine would plummet.
Even the hand wringers of the world think all this is nuts. The RSPCA 'had concerns about the anxiety suffered by sheep as they are circled and pursued by dogs' - well they would, wouldn't they, because they're daft - but even they don't want the dogs banned. Tesco reply to the thinking man's opinion that their ideas are looney by saying that they 'don't have a problem with sheepdogs'. Sounds to me like they have a huge problem with sheep dogs. But 'we need to make sure they move the sheep in a considerate manner'. Give me strength. If anyone can write down how you would do that I will happily supply the postage stamp and builder's pencil with which to do it.
If I still lived in the UK I would avoid all Tesco stores like the plague as they are obviously run by mad people and you would catch some nasty 'orrible contagious mental illness by merely crossing the threshold.
Barking.
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