Border Reivers

The festival was mindful so felt safe, although one child seemed unhappy with her ancestral heritage being ethnically challenged by an inclusion privileged person.

A canny Scotsman here, probably a previous cornet.

I blanked the commercial market stalls, not for lack of interest; I have 27p in my bank account. Access to the festival was free, on entrance visited historical medical, armoury and spinning stalls. Flag bearers, both English and Scottish soldiers appeared gallant, stood in defiant stance on top of the castle mound; their silhouette backdropped by moody grey sky.

Charlie received a phone call from an employer requesting assistance with a dead calf; so we departed from the festival earlier than planned. Work ethnic, as in commitment, is important, and no more so than in farming as this is an often a potentially dangerous profession. Tomorrow we'll learn about the imposter calf, wondering if this practice is where the term "wolf in sheep's clothing" derives from. In the evening, we rejoined the Revivers Festival in Wilton Lodge Park, awaiting the torch lit procession arriving from Common Haugh.

I have the full procession on film, maybe I'll upload and stream the footage from this website, but possibly speeded up a wee bit. I also recorded the fireworks and the bonfire, and turned my camera on the Scout Band as they finished piping. At the end I was eager to get to the car and return to the farmhouse, seven very hungry lambs were waiting for a bottle-fed. Charlie found twin lambs born in a dark wet corner of the calf creep; claims mother ewe likes them, but they are cold, barely alive; we're warming them underneath a heat lamp.

Charlie can't leave them, one lamb is whining the other lamb is barely breathing, ever so slightly that I am wondering if I am imagining, from wishful thinking, the lamb breathing. Both lambs have not had their colostrum yet, Charlie reckons they have five hours to suckle from their mother ewe; thinks both lambs are premature, they also are having a late start. The ageing Zwartble ewe, who had triplet lambs last year, has suffered another prolapse and then broke her waters prematurely; Charlie is struggling trying to rescue her lamb. Now there is only one mother ewe, the Herdwick, left to lamb; how chaotic is this end of the season lambing for us at Woodburn Farm. I've had enough of the day, wanting to go to bed.