‘Leave her, Father, she’ll give Ben a chastising and then he’ll be out with us. It’ll be like water off a duck’s back at the moment, for he tends to do his own thing and have a mind of his own, does our Ben,’ sighed Danny.

‘Aye, I had one of them, and look what he grew into! A bloody big stubborn bugger, who still tends to do just what he wants.’ Archie laughed and patted his son on the shoulders. ‘Right, let’s get these sheep clipped.’ He reached into the bag on his back and pulled out a shining pair of sharp steel sheep-shears. ‘The sooner we get started, the sooner we get done. Is that not right, lads?’ he shouted to the four neighbouring farmers, who were already handling sheep, turning each animal onto its buttocks and then holding the struggling sheep fast between their legs. The sharp shears started cutting the fleece away from the sheep’s stomach, and then up around the back and next to the head, carefully keeping the fleece whole and not nicking the sheep. Once bare of their fleece, the sheep were then marked with a red waterproof mixture, with the letter A, to denote that the sheep belonged to the Atkinsons, before they were let back out of the farmyard to the holding pasture where their spring-born bleating lambs were waiting. The marking would help if a sheep got lost on the open fell and would reveal who its owner was.

‘You needn’t think you are clipping, Father. Not on those doddery knees. First sheep that struggled, you’d be knocked over.’ Danny looked at his father, whose disappointed face said it all. ‘Why don’t you roll the fleeces up? Harriet was going to help, but she’s got enough on, with the baby still under the weather.’

‘But it’ll be the first time I’ve missed clipping my sheep for the last fifty years. I can do the odd old one.’

Archie looked at the yard full of grey-faced Rough Fells and Swaledales, all breathing hard and bleating in the warm summer’s sun. The flies they were attracting buzzed around them, and as Archie watched them he realized his son was speaking the truth and he would have to face up to the fact that he’d be more bother than he was worth.