If you keep sheep you have to look after them – part of which is taking off their crumby old coat at this time of year. No drama – I thought – my neighbour has an electric sheep shearer and I always did my own hair with a clipper thing for years while working for a previous employer when that sort of thing was expected. So yesterday was the day. Today I am in tatters. Luckily the sheep are not. But shearing is not quite what I thought it would be – peeling off warm folds of jet-black wool and stuffing fine fleeces into a wool-sack. I can only describe it as learning the tango from scratch with a grumpy, unwilling partner (who also doesn’t tango – and has horns) while simultaneously cutting your dance partner’s very big hair. They knocked me over, butted me, horned all sorts of places where horns aren’t required. But I got the fleeces off in the end and they do look like black deer grazing the field today. Very dignified and half the volume.
So today it was back to poetry manuscripts and anti-inflammatory’s. I’ll never complain about computer work ever again.
David
