Social media is abuzz with chatter about our ewes brightly coloured backsides - Jill Thorp

I’ve caught him wandering from room to room, giving the furniture a quick glance, eyeing up anything that he might get away with, hoping he can have it chopped into kindling, bagged up and delivered before I’ve noticed anything missing.

He’s had the hard word from me and returned to school with a flea in his ear. For now, my kitchen table is safe, although he still hasn’t fulfilled his orders!

Paul has been busy all week carting tups out to their girls.

Some of the ewes are already with the chaser tups, but hopefully none will have been missed, while the hill sheep are just meeting their boys.

The fields are filling with ewes with brightly coloured backsides, which tends to be a hot topic of conversation on local social media pages.

Much confusion and speculation begins especially if any of the tups happen to wearing a raddle harness.

Among the genuine puzzlement, plenty of hilarious suggestions are put forward as to why a sheep would be wearing what looks like a pair of reins that tearaway toddlers are often see strapped into, usually under much protest.

I remember quite a few years ago the hilarious saga of trying to get one on a Woodland tup we’d leant to Shona, our vet.

Snow was early and heavy on the ground that year and there was no hope of us getting down the narrow, steep track to her farm.

We’d no option but to walk him down, in the dark. Putting his harness on in the back of the pick-up seemed like a good idea at the time; it would give us something to hold on to as we slithered our way down the icy track to the ewes.

Despite being incredibly tolerant and perhaps somewhat bemused, the tup eventually began to run out of patience as we wrangled the contraption on to him.

A leg through here, this bit over his head, clicks together here…

Needless to say, there was much laughter in the back of our pickup that night as I pointed out to Shona it was lucky that this particular scene wouldn’t be aired on “The Yorkshire Vet”.

Paul and James looked on in disbelief at our attempts to get the harness on before the tup was eventually deemed ready to go and the four of us escorted him down the track, the laughter taking the edge off the freezing cold night.

A fresh load of fruit has been dumped in one of the lay-bys up on the Deanhead road. It’s not the usual crates of watermelons but a great pyramid of oranges and grapefruits.

Where the fruit keeps coming from is an absolute mystery, the waste of good useable food, however, is appalling.

While the fruit rots away, I’m sure countless people drive past thinking the same thing; what a shame.

In a time where hardworking people struggle to put food on the table, this waste really is unfathomable.