farmdoc's blog post number 119

Music therapy. I’m aware of it but never seen it done. Even Hampton Rehabilitation Hospital, where I worked in the 1990s, didn’t have it. But I think it’s marvellous, and I often self-administer a rudimentary form of it. Last Thursday I felt awful. After a very cold weather spell I discovered four dead lambs in a paddock. Died of exposure. Poor little things. Wednesday night blew a gale, and in my Thursday travels feeding out hay I found four trees that had blown over. Luckily none across the driveway, but one blocking a walking track and one abutting a water tank. I felt like phoning the real estate agent and putting the property up for sale. But I didn’t. Instead I cranked up my iPod Mini, plugged the earbuds into my shell-likes, and set off walking to the Post Office to collect the mail. Calming music – Norah Jones, actually – grated. I needed something uplifting and inspirational. So John Williams’s Superman theme began my peripatetic concert, followed by some Sousa marches: Stars and Stripes Together, then Semper Fidelis and others. I felt better. The lambs and trees shrank into perspective. I fetched my chainsaw, cleared the walking track, and began cutting the tree near the tank. That one, a dead eucalypt, made a hot fire to cook my Spaghetti Bolognese dinner. Thank you, Messrs Williams and Sousa.