My wife informed me that it was time to shear the sheep.

I should preface this. We have two ewes. I have lived alongside them for some years in the way one lives alongside a neighbour whose name one has never quite caught — cordially, at a distance, with no particular business between us. My wife knows them as individuals, with histories and grievances and names I cannot retain. I know them as the two large items in the far field. Until this week, that arrangement had suited us all.

But shearing, it transpires, is a communal undertaking, and my wife had assigned me a part in it. My part was to load the ewes into the trailer. She delivered this as though it were a small thing, in the same tone she uses for “just move the sofa,” and I received it with the same misplaced confidence.

I went out and called them. I am not certain what I expected. They regarded me with the frank indifference of creatures who have correctly assessed my authority and found it wanting, and declined to move. I took hold of the larger one’s collar and pulled; she set her four feet against the earth and became, instantly, geological. I have since learned that a determined ewe weighs roughly what a filing cabinet weighs, and is appreciably less cooperative.

My wife, observing my failure from the gate, explained the correct method. The shearer, she said, simply throws a leg over the animal’s back, takes hold of her ears, and walks her wherever he likes; the sheep, thus mastered, goes meekly. This sounded plausible, and authoritative, and like a thing done by men who know what they are doing. I am not such a man, but I have found that the surest way to be mistaken for one is to act without hesitation, and so I threw my leg over the ewe and took hold of her ears.

I can only conclude that the shearer is a considerably taller man than I am. For where his method presumably leaves the sheep pinned beneath a reassuring weight, mine left me merely seated upon her; and the ewe, discovering that her burden was negotiable, stood up, lifted me clear of the ground, and set off across the field at a pace I would not have credited in her.

What followed was educational, though not, I think, in the manner my wife intended. I held the ears. I attempted, by leaning, to steer. The ewe attended to none of it and made directly for the fence, at which point it became clear that one of us was going to stop very suddenly, and that it was not going to be her. I dismounted under fire — which is to say I fell off on purpose, and badly — and arrived upon the ground having wrenched my back and put my thumb out of its joint.

I lay a while, taking my customary inventory, and concluded that I was, on the whole, alive, though I could not have sworn to which parts.

My wife came and stood over me, regarding me with the particular tenderness she reserves for my worst ideas, and informed me that I had not done it right. She was, as she generally is, correct.