Hi to you all,

This week for me the lockdown seems to have gone full circle. It is the anniversary of the start of lockdown.

In the first weeks almost without warning family members of some of us became ill and died. Nobody knew how to treat the disease, and funerals took place without us being there.

And I remember writing that in the middle of this chaos life also prevailed, nature continued and the first lambs that we had to help birth by ourselves, in the isolation of lockdown, were born.

To me, they were symbols of hope, that the disease would take a heavy toll, but life was irrepressible and life would find a way.

And so a year later, in the past week people close to me, close to us all, continue to lose family members, gatherings are still difficult to mark their passing, and as if they knew it is the anniversary, this year’s lambs begin to be born.

Some of you recall that we had some births that were more difficult than others last year, lambs are easiest when both front feet and the head emerge first, but some arrive in the Superman position with only one leg thrust forward and the other shoulder more likely to get stuck.

We had triplets last year and one of the lambs was born in this position and we called him Superman to celebrate that he arrived safely. Superman lived up to his name, he ate the most, grew the most and clearly believes he is now a hansom Ram. In order to spread out the timing of the births, and to keep our Rams together with unrelated ewes, we kept Superman with two ewes.

Both of these ewes lambed at the weekend. Not only did they choose the weekend but they chose halfway through the England v France Rugby match, causing the male Shepard of the household to have to abandon the rugby in favour of the sheep. For each of the ewes the birth of one of the lambs was simple, and one of each pair, in honour of their father, emerged superman style.

I have been watching rugby since playing it at school, and recently my wife has learned a few of the names of the positions, she appraises the likely outcome during the National Anthems by picking the team with the best ugly players. She finds ugly things have intrinsic beauty. What can I say? It has emerged that her favourites generally turn out to be the front row of the scrum. Having appraised the likely outcome by this method she has no real further interest in the game itself. In the Autumn Nations tournament, she was disappointed that Georgia did not win. Some of you, especially those who played until recently, or those who live with him, will know exactly what I mean.

In honour of the Rugby and also to reflect the relative ease and difficulty of their birth, the lambs were named, the first pair tight head and loosehead. The same evening, when the second pair were born we had prop and hooker. We have three ram lambs and one ewe.

I was roused from my bed (a small insight into how our domestic life works) and at about half-past six this morning, barely awake I was out in the bitter cold north wind watching for the next lamb to be born. This one came out breach, back legs first, an awkward birthing position, with danger the lamb will breathe in fluid before it is born.

We waited for it to be born without assistance, and the legs hung out for a while, and then started to wriggle and then stopped. We took this as a sign that the lamb may be in distress and Alison pulled and the lamb was born. It had swallowed fluid, it was not breathing and took a while to revive before it began to take the occasional laboured breath.

The other sheep in the field had gathered around, Claudia was very curious, and Alison decided to secure them in the next paddock before we opened the gate to take the mother and her babies inside. They were both ewes.

Alison had taken her coat off and left the lamb lying on it to keep it off the wet grass, but soon it became apparent that the lamb was lying in a pool of blood.

Usually, the umbilical cord shrivels and closes quickly, preventing the lamb from bleeding, but in this case, it seemed to have torn near the base, perhaps there was a slight umbilical hernia, blood was flowing out of the tear right at the top of the umbilical cord keeping the umbilical cord from collapsing and the lamb was struggling to breathe, life was ebbing away.

We have never had this before, and were unprepared, in the middle of a cold wet field without any of the resources from the lambing shed. It is only our third year of having a handful of sheep, and only the second year we have birthed them alone.

I knelt down in the wet grass, next to the lamb and used one hand to hold her down and the other to clamp the cord closed and waited for Alison to return from moving the other sheep.

Einstein said that time is relative, I think he may have meant when life is ebbing away, and you are kneeling in a puddle in a wet field and the wind is bitter and cold, and the sheep are nudging and licking both you and the lamb wanting it to move and stand up and you know that you have to hold it still so that it does not pull against where you have its life literally held between your thumb and fingers, I think Einstein meant that the time it takes Alison to come back from moving the other sheep seems like a long time.

Time stood still again as Alison went to fetch some cotton, and came back and tied the umbilical right up near the belly shorter than we would tie a puppy or you would ever tie a human baby and fortunately the bleeding stopped.

We took mother and lambs into the relative shelter of the lambing shed.

It reminded me of the start of the pandemic, and how fragile and precious life is. That sometimes we need to intervene in order to save a life, and initially, we may not know how but we still strive and sometimes we succeed. I know that a year ago for me, and for others, the birth of lambs and the promise of new life was juxtaposed against our loss, the confusion of how to treat covid. It is the anniversary of lockdown, and for some of us, we approach the anniversary of our loss.

I don’t think we knew it would take a year to emerge, but now we are emerging, the lambs and the spring reaffirm that despite everything nature continues, I am looking forward to the birth of new grandchildren and all of us are looking forward to seeing our families and friends and those we work with again. Despite the pandemic, we have found a way to begin to emerge.

The lambs have now struggled to their feet, and are eating well, society is beginning to do the same, it will take a little longer, but we will emerge, maybe battered bruised and bloodied by the experience, but we will emerge.

At the start of the pandemic, I determined that we would do our best to walk into lockdown as one family, to stay together, and emerge together at the end. I decided to write to you each week and many of you have written back. I hope that we have all cared for each other, I hope that at times in isolation our contact with each other has helped each of us get through the experiences of lockdown and I hope that whatever I write about, however, removed from your lives, or trivial it may seem it also tells you that I care.

We haven’t named the lambs next, but having lived there for years I do have an allegiance to Wales, so perhaps we will wait until Saturday, and perhaps, sticking with the rugby them, perhaps, just perhaps, we will name one Grand Slam.

With love to you all and your families,

Nick