“COME on England.” A brave thing to shout when you are in Westpac Stadium, Wellington, in the middle of the third one day international between England and New Zealand.

So I didn’t.

Well, not too loud anyway. But at the very end, when England won the match by a nail biting four runs, the whole stadium sportingly applauded the visiting team.

It was a great day and all the more exciting as our tickets were unexpected; the generous gift of my close friend Viv. Viv’s daughter Lorna, who lives in Wellington with her cricketer husband Si, organised the surprise and the champagne in our hotel. Weren’t we lucky.

John has been following the matches as we drove down through North Island, and the game started with both teams having won one match apiece. The atmosphere in the stadium was amazing. Family orientated and fun with spontaneous Mexican waves erupting whenever a excited group felt moved to start one.

Attending the match in a city was in stark contrast to most of our New Zealand tour. Only days earlier we were at a sheep shearing demonstration, held to highlight differences in clipping styles in New Zealand and England.

Our sheep are only clipped annually, but in NZ they are more often clipped twice. As a result the fleece does not come off in one piece as it does in the UK, especially as the lambs are often clipped only a few months after being born. The argument runs that this results in the lambs finishing better for market, ie put weight on faster, when they are not carrying so much wool.

And sheep in NZ are not needing to have a nice woolly coat to counteract the recent Beast from the East, rather they are usually metaphorically slapping on the sunblock.

We are gutted that we are missing the Golden Shears competition in Masterton, North Island. It is happening as I write and John, who has clipped sheep from his teenage years, and spent 20-odd years as part of a clipping gang, was looking forward to going to see some of the champion shearers work.

They work at amazing speeds and I think the individual winner has shorn 20 sheep, comprising long wool, second shear and lambs in just under 17 minutes. At top speed, and clipping full grown sheep, John used to reckon on finishing six in that time.

Now about two, as he only has me to help and not a fit fellow to catch and bring him the sheep in that time. And I have no intention of catching a sheep and tipping it up ready for the clip. I am a retired sheep shearer’s assistant. And on holiday.