RIGHT now, the fields of Tynedale are full of newly- shorn sheep, dazzling onlookers with their newly- acquired whiter shades of pale. Beside them, their lambs are looking equally perky as they frisk and frolic in the lush greenery of the summer.

It’s an idyllic picture – but what a pity that in my experience, sheep are the dimmest creatures on this or any other planet.

I am willing to bet that the average member of a shoal of plankton has a higher IQ than a single Blackface tup, and considerably more extensive common sense.

Evidence that sheep are monumentally lacking in grey matter can be seen every day, for as you drive through the countryside, note how many sheep in a field of many acres are craning their necks through the fence to get a nibble of the roadside grass, which is equally abundant on their side of the field boundary.

Should a drystone wall fall down, one curious sheep may well poke its nose through the gap to see what’s going on, and within a matter of moments, all the others come trooping after it for no particular reason, like members of the townswomen’s guild on an outing to Harrogate.

And if you are unlucky enough while driving to come across a group of sheep which have managed to escape from their field, why do they invariably walk down the white line in the middle of the road, casting nervous glances over their woolly shoulders while maintaining a stately trot, rather than stopping and tucking into the tasty grass at both sides of the road?

And while they may look innocent enough, sheep are a festering mass of unpleasant ailments, as I discovered some years back when I foolishly lifted a lamb back into the field from which it had escaped between Bellingham and Wark.

A few days later, I started sloughing all the skin from a diseased finger, and found that I had contracted a repugnant skin disease known variously as contagious pustular dermatitis, infectious labial dermatitis, ecthyma contagiosum, thistle disease or scabby mouth – most people call it orf.

Many years ago, before we were even married, Mrs Hextol was driving her Mini along one of those single track roads with which the North of Scotland abounds, with me riding shotgun in the passenger seat.

A motley crew of shaggy sheep were tucking moodily into the heather shoots on either side of the road, but in the far distance, a lone yow stood on a rocky pinnacle high above the road. It must have seen us from over a mile away, but remained motionless on its rocky perch until we drew alongside it – and then it had a panic attack, jumped off the rock, and slammed its horny head into the front wing of the car.

It created an enormous dent, and didn’t even have the good grace to die from the impact. It merely shook its head and staggered away, hastened by a few well-aimed kicks to its skinny ribs.

Another example of the paucity of brain cells in sheep came when we were children spending our holidays on my uncle’s farm in Cumberland. We were always there at clipping time and had to lend a hand in “gathering the fell”, or rounding up the sheep ready for facing the primitive hand shears.

The sheep had to pass through a corridor of wooden hurdles for sorting, and one of them decided that rather than going through the open space, it would stick its head through one of the hurdles.

That was its last decision, for it got its head irredeemably stuck, and in the time-honoured manner of hill sheep, chose to die instantly rather than let anyone extricate it.

It was a fine young lamb, which did not die in vain, for in a trice, my father had it strung up by the legs in the tractor shed for ritual disembowelment and hacking into joints of a sort. He had no training in the finer points of the butcher’s trade, and the tractor shed was rapidly turned into a reeking charnel house, but the lamb lasted us most of the fortnight.

I found the gory exhibition of spurting blood and cascading semi-digested stomach contents one of the most absorbing parts of the holiday, and tucked into lamb’s liver and onions that very night.

For some reason my sister said she had lost her appetite.