The End is Nigh

What I've been thinking about this week:

1. Training courses.
2. Lambs. 

When I worked in the university sector, I was always being sent on training courses. You know the kind of thing - building resilience (aka 'how to deal with a sociopathic boss'); writing reports (that was one of the few useful ones); and teamwork.

The teamwork one involved filling in a questionnaire to find out what your Belbin role is. Raymond Belbin is a researcher who came up with a way of categorising team members according to their strengths and weaknesses. It's supposed to be a way of knowing yourself and your colleagues better so that you can make the most of what you're all good at and not get too irate when Bob can't make up his mind about anything. 

They have fancy names like shaper, monitor evaluator and plant. I usually came out as resource investigator, which means I'm really good at starting things but can lose interest after the initial enthusiasm (that's why I'm on week 9 of Couch to 5k for the fifth time). 

More my comfort zone

One of the less common - and most useful - roles is completer finisher. They're the person on your team who makes sure that the i's are dotted, the t's are crossed and no-one goes to the pub until the deadline is met. 

This is all very well in a desk job but not very useful when it comes to an industry like farming. I mean, you can't just leave the last dozen ewes left to lamb because you've found something new and shiny to get excited about. 

Posing pets

Although we're reaching the end of lambing at The Spittal, the ones left will probably string it out until the end of the month. Ivie and the team have no choice but to be completer finishers while also getting ready for whatever's next. 

I've seen very few lambs being born this year, mainly because I try not to get in the way. I'm not sure I'll progress from, 'oh cute lambs,' and that's not particularly useful in the whole scheme of things. I have managed a bit of bottle feeding and cuddling the pet lambs (don't tell anyone) but, other than that, I've let the experts get on with it. 

I don't think anyone will argue if I keep hold of my desk job for now.