Scarce as a Skelton spade

Having come within a whisker of death, I quietly vowed never again to act as a gate in the spot where two bulls had charged me.

Then I made a public declaration. “I'm never going to do that again," I said in a stern voice.   

"I've got bad news,” replied the farmer.  "You've got to do it once more."

If there’s truth in ‘third time lucky’, could ‘third time unlucky’ also hold? As I stood in the dreaded position, I also pondered my need for assertiveness training and this: If I wasn't going to do the job, who would?   

Then I noticed the farmer’s favourite spade - a Skelton with a dagger-sharp blade - on the tray of the truck and my hopes of survival swelled.While he and dogs mustered cattle, I decapitated the tall and swaying seedheads in the gateway with a level of aggression that's rare for me when it comes to manual labour.

Surely the bulls would see the gap now, I thought, as I inspected my handiwork. And they did, filing into the paddock as quiet as lambs. Although where that expression comes from, I don’t know as I’ve seen no evidence of quietness around sheep. 

They bleat a lot and the farmer yells a lot. The dogs, meanwhile, are merely muddled. They’re used to working with cattle not stupid, white, woolly things. It only takes one to cause trouble and later that day the honour went to a ewe which slipped away as the mob entered the yards. Rex took off at a gallop while I revved up the quad and zapped past him to head off the sheep.

The tricky part came when I had to stop on a slope. As quad bikes were designed by men so women would find them difficult to operate, applying the handbrake required both hands and half a second more than the time it took for the sheep to run past me.

Then I glimpsed a fast-moving blur to my left. The farmer had launched into a flying tackle reminiscent of his rugby days.He grabbed the animal in a headlock (he learned that at rugby too) and loaded the creature onto the quad. As the three of us made our sedate and somewhat comical way back to the yards I remembered the Skelton spade I’d left leaning against the fence.

By the time we got there it had been nicked by some cretin who must have known who owned it. 

Rex didn't blame me, but was so sad about the loss of his beloved spade I made it my mission to find another.

As they're no longer made, after scouring second-hand shops and the Internet, I found only one spade (it belongs to Christchurch City Council and has been used four times by the Queen at commemorative plantings) and one simile: “As scare as a Skelton spade.”