I’m sitting here on my balcony wearing a t-shirt and shorts. I’ve just made a sandwich and a cup of coffee. The birds are singing in the leafy trees facing me. Welcome to my new office. It’s blissfully peaceful. But there’s always a downside.

I’ve an awful pain in my neck, literally. I was never so grateful to see an email pop into my inbox as when my physio messaged that she was open for business again.

I paid her a visit a couple of days later. I’d to wear a mask and gloves. She was also kitted out in the physiotherapy version of personal protective equipment (PPE). And she set about bringing some relief to my neck remarking that cricked necks are all the rage now.

Working from home without the proper furniture and posture has created an industry in kneading out cricked necks and sore backs. She dry needled me. Yes, that means sticking needles into my neck to relieve the muscles. I’ll need a couple more sessions.

But I’m not totally office bound in my new office. Last week I interviewed champion sheep shearer George Graham as he sheared ewes on the Burkes Kilmullen farm in Co Wicklow. The sound of the shears under the searing sun brought me back to my youth when the sheep were sheared, or clipped as we called it, in Ballyjamesduff.

It was a sweaty job. And I also seem to remember that the Saturday we clipped always coincided with the FA Cup final.

There was no final last Saturday but the clipping is well up and running. George is a former world champion sheep shearer and an advocate for mental health. And he probably thought he’d seen it all until earlier this month, when he was almost killed.

As he was shearing, a sheep came at him full throttle smashing her hard head straight into his, fracturing a bone near his eye. It’d be like getting a thump of a lump hammer. He was hospitalised but feels lucky to be alive. It was proof to me that nobody is safe on a farm.

And I shiver when I think back to my youthful exuberance on the farm during school holidays and how I managed to avoid serious injury or worse. Like anybody who has ever spent time on a farm, we can all look back on the near misses.

The one which stands out for me was slipping into a slurry tank while trying to jump a fence instead of taking the extra 10 seconds to open a gate. Luckily somebody was with me to pull me out.

Alongside the sound of the sheep shears, there’s the louder din of silage cutting echoing around the countryside. It’s an exciting time but also a dangerous time.

A couple of weeks ago, Tipperary woman Angela Hogan recounted to me the moment she heard her partner – Brendan Kelly, an experienced contractor – had died in an accident while carefully trying to release a switch on a baler to bale silage. It was in 2011. He was 50 years old.

No matter the working environment, in an office or on the land, we need to think of our health and wellbeing. Whether it’s avoiding a cricked neck which can develop into something worse or avoiding a fatal injury on farm, nobody is immune. Take that extra 10 seconds as better to be 10 seconds late, than 30 years too early.