"The Blackface lambs on this side of the hill were always timed for April: sown by the rams in November and pused out as woolly, surf-white blobs in time for the first new grass. Perhaps this will change now that grass keeps on growing almost right through the winter; so much else is changing, after all. My neighbours' early-morning inspection of the ewes, once a fairly leisurely round, is now an urgent tour squeezed in before the drive to work at distant buildling sites and factories."