Maybe I’m just a bit slow on the uptake, but it took a minute or two to sink in when someone asked me if I was going to be taking part in national tidy up the farm day tomorrow (Saturday).

The penny (which might have been for the guy) did eventually drop when it was explained to me that a good old bonfire party was a good way of getting rid of a lot of the junk which inevitably gathers around the farm.

But I’m beginning to get used to things being not quite as you’d expect them to be.

This was certainly the case when my wife and I arrived in Australia on the long-anticipated trip to see two of the kids who are currently residing down under.

For when the plane touched down in Melbourne, such was the weather that I found myself strongly suspecting that we’d just flown round in a big circle and landed back at Glasgow.

The scene didn’t get much better as we arrived at the border between Victoria and New South Wales - which runs along the course of the Murray River. For, following the wettest September on record, October was doing its best to keep up – and the place was in full flood.

And many crops, some of which were only a week or two away from harvest, were standing in – or even totally covered by – flood water. So, what had looked like being a bumper grain harvest after the drought of the last two years had broken, no longer looked quite so clever. They had my sympathies.

Livestock prices, however, were through the roof as the great flush of rain-fed grass continued and everyone competed to get either store stock to eat it down or breeding ewes or cows to build up numbers again after several years of enforced de-stocking. As someone at home rightly said, if a farmer has plenty of grass and plenty of money, he’ll soon get rid of the money.

But it was great to see a different part of the world and spend time with the family and the two and a half weeks seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye.

And I found myself back home in time for last week’s NFUS conference – which was to focus on the Brexit.

While the drop in the value of the pound might have been improving some of our farmgate prices, the trip to Australia (where the exchange rate had slipped from around two dollars to the pound before the referendum down to closer to one and a half) I could appreciate that such a slide isn’t likely to be all good news in the longer term.

So I was quite keen to get along to the conference to get an update from the distinguished politicians addressing the event – and to hear their views on the likely course which trade agreements, access to labour and agricultural support policies were likely to take after we quit the EU.

However zero, zilch, zip, nada, rien would probably sum up the contribution their combined efforts made towards clarifying what the post-Brexit future is likely to hold for us.

Instead the emphasis was on 'get your act together and tell us what you want' along with a very blunt underlying 'but by God you’re going to have to fight for it'.

Sorting out trading conditions and access to our export markets are going to be key – but we’ve known all along that farming is likely to be pretty well down the line for consideration on this front.

And with major export industries such as Nissan and the pharmaceutical manufacturers apparently queuing up for financial sweeteners to stay in the UK post-Brexit, there’s not likely to be much left in the kitty on the support side either.

But, with the clock ticking, you have to wonder what is behind the extreme reluctance of our political leaders to at least start drawing up some sort of agricultural policy.

One reason, of course, is that it’s going to be hellishly complicated job to sort out.

I guess another reason might be that in the past Brussels has always been held up as the baddie as far as red tape, bureaucracy, form filling and over-regulation are concerned.

And, for many of those short-sighted enough to vote for Brexit, it was probably the misguided notion that all this would mysteriously disappear when we cast ourselves adrift in the North Atlantic that led them to vote to leave the EU.

So I have a strong suspicion that the game of Mexican stand-off between Hollyrood and Westminster over who will be first to show their hand on farm policy has something to do with the fact that they all want to avoid being the ones to break – and then enforce – the bad news that, in reality, that’s simply not going to happen.

But from our own point of view there is another major danger lurking in the fact that we’re being charged with arguing our own case. And the clue probably lies in the word 'argue'.

Because giving the industry free rein to draw up our own proposals is likely to result in us arguing amongst ourselves. And without policy decisions, imposed upon us from above for us to criticise and rebel against, it’s very likely that different sectors will inevitably develop widely conflicting views.

So there’s a very real danger that just when we need to present a strong cohesive front, things could begin to fall apart.

But maybe I’ve just been slow on the uptake again and that’s been their plan all along…