When they’re feeling fond of me, my sons like to recite tales of my ovine derring-do – ‘The time Mum rescued the sheep stuck a bramble bush’; ‘The time Mum rescued the sheep stuck in a feeding trough’. But their favourite of all is ‘The time Mum got bitten by a sheep. Twice’
This last is the least heroic, but easily the most interesting. Anyone can rescue sheep – being savaged by one is harder.
Our village had a tiny pretty pocket-handkerchief sized paddock right next to the church. The late Squire used this to keep small numbers of sheep under his eye in special cases: pregnant ewes, for example or, in this instance, intact rams.
My mother, who was with us at the time, is not a countrywoman.
‘Look at that poor animal’ she whispered to me, in some distress. ‘It’s got some sort of enormous growth hanging, you know, under its tummy. Don’t you think we should tell someone?’
‘Bollocks, Mother’ I said.
You can wait years for an opening like that.
I stopped to rest my foot on the paddock fence and tie a shoelace. A ram ambled over and, quite deliberately, bit my fingers through the fence. I jumped, laughed sportingly, and went back to tying my shoelace. It did it again: really painfully this time. I was obliged to withdraw sheepishly, leaving my shoe-lace untied.
On balance, sheep are incredibly stupid animals. The parable of the Good Shepherd is not a flattering one from humanity’s perspective, Although Middle Eastern sheep 2,000 years ago may have been rather more goat-y. Look into the cunning, slitty eye of a nubian goat and you can see why the devil has hooves. Look into the eye of a modern sheep and you can see all the way to the back of its daft woolly skull…
Which reminds me. I've just found in a Cathedral shop the perfect Christmas present - a pair of Holy Socks.
They are packaged with a verse from the Gospel of St Matthew:
‘He will put the sheep on his right, and the goats on his left.’
One sock has sheep on it. The other has goats.
I laughed so much I had to be led out out of the shop.
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