SUPPORTING the Scottish rugby team has never been an easy pastime, but last Saturday at Twickenham took the normal emotional rollercoaster to a whole new level.

Twenty minutes in and we were looking at 80-0. Twenty minutes to go and we thought we were in with more than a sniff. Then, two minutes to go, leading by seven points, we really believed it was on.

But once again, like the World Cup quarter final against Australia, a daft penalty sealed our fate. The English players were shell-shocked and their fans absolutely stunned. Mind you, so were we.

How on earth could we have been so useless in the first half hour and so effective and fabulous to watch for the rest of the game in normal time? Quite unbelievable. But somehow around the bars of Twickenham, it really did feel like a Scottish victory and a great night followed.

Thank goodness we had something to take our minds off the mayhem and doom and gloom that continue to fill our everyday lives. Prices for cattle, in particular, are hopeless and sheep aren’t much better, especially with the cost base of the winter of 2018-19.

And the excitement of an early spring, with beautiful late February weather, has been replaced by the usual crap weather with fields that would now look better planted with rice rather than grass.

There is no question that the ongoing Brexit debacle is impacting on finished beef and lamb prices in the UK and it is now getting well beyond a serious short term blip.

We could now face months more of uncertainty as an arrogant wee man in the Speaker’s Chair in the House of Commons decided to make a name for himself by throwing yet another spanner into the proverbial Brexit works.

Theresa May is finished, that is obvious, but that is no consolation to businesses up and down the country who are bleeding to death with her and her government’s dithering incompetence and sheer bloody stupidity.

Jeremy Corbyn is even worse. Five minutes after he instructs his MPs to abstain on a vote for a second referendum, last week he has the gall to stand up and say he is going to support one. Am I missing something, or is he having a laugh, because I for one don’t think this is even vaguely amusing any more.

It is pathetic, absolutely pathetic. A bunch of second rate, self-centred buffoons playing political games for their own personal gain while the rest of us are left to wonder what the hell we are supposed to do is absolutely disgusting in the name of democracy.

They are all a total disgrace and I wouldn’t trust one of them ever again. I have always been interested in politics, but after the last couple of years, I will never vote again, never mind support any of them.

I have no idea what will happen next and the problem is, neither do they. Whatever it is, it is now certain it won’t be good for Scottish agriculture – no, actually, it’s already bad for Scottish agriculture.

But I bet you one thing for sure – Irish beef farmers will get support from the EU and their government for depressed prices and we wont see a penny, even although Irish beef is pouring into our market and is part of our current price problem.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Michael is more than half way through calving and lambing is imminent, with all the usual problems before it starts. With so many triplets and even quads scanned in the ewes, it was always going to be challenging with prolapses, twin lamb disease and all the usual mishaps and hassles that go with huge scanning percentages.

But I’ve seen it all before and hopefully things will settle down when the ewes get going lambing properly. Mind you, where they are going once they lamb is anyone’s guess right now – unless the ewes and lambs learn to swim!

Apart from a wee run of C-sections amongst the heifers bulled in the second turn, the biggest issue with calving right now is space. Being forced to keep 500-600 calves inside is challenging in a normal year. But this year we have more stores left than normal so we are having to be creative to make the space we need for young calves.

Fortunately, we have plenty of really good quality silage and we have to hope that by the time these calves are ready to sell next year, some politician somewhere may have decided to reach a decision and sort this Brexit crap out, giving us a sporting chance of running a profitable business again.

On a recent trip to visit family in Australia, they couldn’t believe what we were doing to ourselves as a nation. As an island (quite a big one mind you) like us, the Australians are totally dependent on exports for a successful economy. The idea that a country, especially ours, would voluntarily walk away from stable trading relationships with countries in the EU and third countries outside it, just blew their minds.

What blew my mind about Australia as well as the scale, was the extremes farmers face year on year. There were more than 200,000 ha burnt in Tasmania while we were there in bush fires and then the flooding in Queensland was unbelievable. There were pictures on the news of a dry river bed before the rain came which turned into a torrent 40 km wide sweeping away everything in its path.

They estimated that more than 400,000 cattle had been lost in the Queensland floods while tens of thousands were still being lost through drought in other parts of the country. One cattle station had lost all of its 30,000 cattle herd.

It’s hard to imagine what that would be like. Mind you, the way our politicians are behaving, we won’t have 400,000 cattle to lose in Scotland before too long, they’ll all be gone anyway!

I’ve often written and talked about not worrying about things you can’t control, but a bit like watching Scotland play rugby, this is testing me to the limit. If we are bloody leaving, can we just have some decisive leadership please and get on with it – we can’t run our businesses like this.