Frivolity
Lambs, puppies, baby goats
Firstly, thank you so much for your incredibly kind messages after last week’s HEAVY post. (I have read through your lovely comments and am slowly replying to them all 💚)
Anyway, I can promise that this post is light, so much so that I changed the title to ‘Frivolity’ - the previous working title was ‘Living off the fat of the land’, because - look!
Lambs! (I can’t pretend that I don’t enjoy that Alba calls them ‘lambies’, after her favourite toy.) They love cuddles - Mia promptly kissed one on the nose with a loud ‘mwah!’, so I followed suit and they have the softest noses.
Wait - I started midway through. We have sadly not acquired lambs. And much as I’d love to say that in the last week we packed up our London house and started a smallholding in the country (a dream of mine, of which more later), these beautiful lambs and their mothers are at Warborne Farm* in the New Forest, where we took the girls last weekend. (Alba’s third and Mia’s second visit.)
I love everything about the farm - that you can collect your own eggs from the hens, pick as much veg as you like from the polytunnels, feed the pigs, sit in the lambing pen with the sheep, cuddle baby goats. And of course the exceptionally nice renovated barns where you stay - if you go, the Grain Loft has a window in the floor in lieu of a coffee table, so you can see down into the beautifully lit goat pen beneath - how clever is that? Especially with the baby goats underneath - I foolishly didn’t get a photograph of them, but they really are top trumps for loveliest baby animals.
This time we stayed in the Hay Loft, which has exceptional sunrises over the orchard and something I hadn’t seen on any of the pictures**, a cleverly designed 12 foot daybed which, had I not been zooming after the children, would have made a wonderful place to sit and read. I do wish I were a better photographer, and then I could give you a proper sense of the light in the morning - this was my best attempt:
Really, I could have spent the entire visit in the lambing pen - it’s very soothing with all the hay and a couple of lambs to cuddle. One of the sheep had triplets and couldn’t feed the third lamb, so Alba was invited by the v genial farmer to help bottle-feed (which was like nothing I’d ever seen before, the lamb downed a pint of formula milk in about 30 seconds).
I grew up countryside-adjacent, and after some initial success growing vegetables as a teenager (I know, prematurely middle-aged), I pinned a drawing of my future life on the wall - it had a cottage with a neat kitchen garden, a horse, several dogs and cats, two small cows, a few goats, pigs and quite a lot of chickens. All as pets, of course, not to eat. (In hindsight, it was very foolish of me not to include sheep.) Incidentally, I didn’t include a husband or children in the drawing - v prescient of me to realise that while both are delightful, they do get in the way of spending the whole day gardening, what with their requests for food, attention, or asking where I’ve put the car keys, etc.
Anyway, our visit to the farm only confirmed what I’d figured out twenty five years ago - rural life is the ultimate end-goal.
Me: ‘Darling, darling, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we moved to the countryside? And had a couple of pet sheep?’
Tim (London born): ‘You are joking.’
Me: ‘No no, I’ve always wanted to live in the country, and have animals. Maybe a little Shetland for Alba, and some goats…’
Tim: (wishing we’d had this conversation on our first date, so he’d have had a sporting chance to run away) ‘We are not going to be farmers! Also, you told me that Shetlands are vicious!’
Me: ‘Well, I’m sure we could find a nice one. I’d look after all the animals. You could work from home! Wouldn’t it be lovely? All I want…’
Tim: (sighs deeply)
George, the farmer, pointed out that lambs do grow into large and not particularly fragrant sheep, but I think the sheep are rather sweet in their own way too, like walking ottomans.
But if you want to see something really sweet… the farm collie, Mist, JUST HAD PUPPIES. Ok yes, I’ll admit it - our visit was timed exactly to visit the pups at 7 weeks. Here they are below:
We had no intention of getting a puppy. We’re just about making it through each day - calming an alternately irate and delightful toddler, entertaining a fully grown border collie, and dealing with Mia’s one year sleep regression (aka, no one sleeps. What is sleep, who is she?) I try, and fail, not to grumble about the drudgery of cooking, shopping, running a house and squeezing in paid work in-between, while Tim gets to go and work in an actual office. The luxury!
So, yes. Foolish to think about a puppy. But I might have sent a speculative enquiry to the farmer one week after they were born (alright Cruella), and I might have told Tim that there were still two pups left to rehome, sending photographs of their little puppy faces to him at the office, because what is a marriage if you don’t spam your husband with pictures of dogs when he’s trying to work. (His reply was in the negative. Heart of stone.)
But. Once we got to the farm, Kate, the farmer’s wife***, might have told us that the pup on the right, Gertie, was still available. I stole a look at Tim, who was trying to stop Pepper running over half the pups with a football. ‘Which one is Gertie?’ I whispered. Kate picked out the smallest girl from the snoozing puppy heap, and put her next to me. I held out my hand, and held my breath. She blinked, and walked away. I exhaled. Thank goodness, I thought. I’m not going to lose my heart to a puppy who doesn’t want to make friends. What a near miss!
Day 2. Alba wants to see the puppies again. So we go into the courtyard, ingeniously converted with puppy hideaways lined in fleece (see above left.) Alba stomps in, and the puppies scatter. ‘THEY’RE SCARED OF ME!’ she shouts. They cower under the ivy. I sigh, and whisper that you have to be very quiet around animals, particularly baby animals, and that if we sit very quietly, they’ll come to us. So we sit on the step, and wait.
One pup leaves the hideaway, and walks up to us. She sniffs my hand, accepts lavish strokes, and promptly climbs into my lap. She reaches her little miniature collie face up, and starts to lick my face. (I don’t mind dogs doing this, but understand that some people do mind.) I kiss her back on the nose. She curls in my lap, ecstatic as I scratch behind her ears, leaning up for more kisses. ‘Uh-oh’, I think. My heart feels quite considerably lighter. I look at her carefully. It is hard to tell a litter of largely black and white pups apart, but she is a girl, and she does look a little smaller than the others. I am almost certain she is Gertie, the pup still looking for a home. Something in my chest feels funny, and all the sensible things - our lack of time, energy, resources - fly out of the window. She is truly joyous. And then - the farmer walks by. ‘Is this Gertie?’, I call out, hoping so much that she is. ‘She is!’, he says. And my heart leaps. But he continues: ‘And a lady from Somerset is coming to take her tomorrow!’
I suddenly feel very cold. I put Gertie back on the floor - she runs to her water bowl, and tries to eat it. Tim shakes his head. He’s just turned up with Mia, and heard the interaction. A lucky escape, he says. You know we can’t manage a pup right now.
Back at the barn, a message flashes up on my phone. It’s George, and he says that the lady is coming to look at Gertie or a boy tomorrow. Tim shakes his head, emphatically. I wait till he’s not looking, and text George back covertly. ‘I have to convince Tim, and we have to hope the lady from Somerset takes the boy. But if both stars align, I think we really bonded, and I would love to take her home.’
The rest of that evening, much of the night, all morning, and for half our drive home, I tried to convince Tim. There is some urgency, I thought, because surely if I remove the husband obstacle, George might put in a good word for the boy, and this Somerset puppy gazumpher might leave poor Gertie to her actual person - me.
I bore in mind that to change someone’s mind, you listen carefully, you give more information, then you let someone come to their own new conclusion, by themselves. (Pascale, apparently.) I was charming, I was amusing, I listened. But Tim just wouldn’t come to the right conclusion! Very vexing! And then, unexpectedly, tears. I explained that it was like having baby Mia back, the Mia I lost for two months, and yes, now Mia was fine and a big, robust one-year old, but I’ll never have another baby now. And the pup felt like having that bond back. I sensed a shift from Tim. And almost simultaneously, a text from the farmer. The lady from Somerset had taken the little girl.
I cried all the way home. And much of the evening. Everything felt grey. I took Pepper on our favourite walk, which helped, but while she attends to everything I request with complete focus (we’re working on eye signals now just to give her collie brain something new to learn), she will engage in a maximum of five minutes affection with me in the morning. (Unless we’re in a car, in which case if I don’t stroke her she’ll tap the handbrake with her paw until I do, or settle for my holding her paw. Which is quite difficult in a manual car.) She’s a working dog who largely prefers commands to cuddles from me, but I hadn’t realised how very lovely the reverse can be.
But. The star of the story isn’t Gertie (lady from Somerset, you did choose well) - it’s my husband. The next morning, he said - despite all his very sensible, logical arguments against - that if there was something that one of us as a couple thought was really, really important, the other should be supportive. Even if that meant getting a puppy….
Watch this space!
- *Our first visit was very kindly comped as a PR stay (this is the video I made - you’ll want the sound on!) but we loved it so much that we paid ready money for a second and third visit, dragging two other families with us last time. Alba has already requested a fourth visit - the plums from the orchard are exceptionally good, so I have designs on a return visit once they’re in season.
**Do you obsessively look at photographs of hotel rooms before visiting? It takes forever for me to choose comparing rooms online - too frilly, too austere, too dark, too Brexity (the ones with Union Jack cushions) too 50-Shades-meets-Mrs-Hinch (Malmaison, no?) Really it is very hard finding somewhere to fit one person’s preferred hotel aesthetic, let alone two. India Knight has helpful recommendations here and here - I took Tim to stay at NoMad on her rec and we loved it (though he might make his fortune yet with a pound jar where I have to stick a pound in every time I say ‘India Knight says…’ On the plus side, he’d be able to take me to NoMad again within a few weeks.)
***Kate the farmer’s wife, who is v cool and someone I would happily talk about dogs with all day (surely the best sort of conversation) is a consultant at a nearby hospital, which proved my point that Tim could keep his job as a lawyer while I looked after all the animals. Totally achievable!
On the table this week
It’s the 1st and 3rd birthday party weekend!
On the menu:
these spelt & cheddar biscuits from the Sweet Roasting Tin
these tomato, ricotta & thyme muffins from the Sweet Roasting Tin
Nigella’s butter cut out biscuits from How to be a Domestic Goddess
feta, olive, butterbean & flat leaf parsley puff pastry rolls (winged the filling)
mini rhubarb & custard tarts using Felicity Cloake’s ‘Perfect’ recipe
I will admit that I didn’t have the energy to cook, and we saved on hiring a venue by having the party at home, so I got the very talented Lu Cottle to come and help - she’s a food stylist & recipe developer who helps me when deadlines are crashing around my ears and did a spectacular job, I will post up photographs of the food next week if I can take them before our guests dive in.
(I said I didn’t have the energy to cook, but promptly left Lu to it in the kitchen while I went out and attacked the vicious holly tree in the garden. After I struggled with secateurs and a handsaw for twenty minutes, our neighbours took pity on me and handed an electric saw and hedge trimmer over the fence, along with a long power cable. What a rush! The tree is subdued and now a neat sphere (my first foray into topiary) and no longer blocks all the light. It was less fun picking every last holly leaf off the grass afterwards so Pepper wouldn’t hurt her paws. On the plus side, neither will any future puppy…!
Thank you so much for reading! If you’ve enjoyed this post, please do hit the 🩷 button below, boring algorithm Substack blah - but on the plus (and more coherent) side, it helps this community grow with more like-minded people with excellent taste joining us as readers! Have a wonderful weekend, Mini xx
Ahh Rukmini. I felt moved to write a comment on your last bulletin, but (awaiting a potential cancer diagnosis myself - I literally devoured your words in the doctor’s waiting room) couldn’t summon any. Now this really has produced stinging tears. What frivolity?! Better call it Instinct, or maybe Yearning. Maybe it comes from something in our lives that has passed, or perhaps something that never was. Something to be a woman. And knowing it and recognising it and not suppressing, is that not absolutely critical? This is not to say get a puppy. But it is to say, I completely understand why you might yearn for one! To each, their own (puppy). Good luck!
You are SUCH a good writer. This is happy-sad and also blooming hilarious. Particularly love the ‘husband psychology’!