Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The circus is in town.

Most of the time I’m more than happy to make do with a boring old mobile phone. The sort that just makes and receives calls. In fact, if I’m honest, I’m even more content to have the thing switched off in the glove box, or left back on the dresser at home. I know, I’m a grumpy old man, and I don’t care, so just get over it people.

Except that today I really, really wish I had one of those third generation, umpteen megapixel, all singing, all dancing, camera-phone-music-player-teasmade-filofax-blonde-bombshell-PA thingies. Because today I appear to have stepped through the looking glass and come out in Monty-Pythonland. You see, I know it’s not an acid flashback, ‘cos I never had the acid to flash forwards from in the first place, and yet the sight that greeted me on the way in to work this morning takes some explaining, and a picture really would have helped. I’m afraid you’ll just have to take my word for it instead. Still, you know you can trust me. After all I am a doctor….

I sense some of you in the cheap seats at the back getting restless. “Once again we haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about!” I hear you mumble above the background hubbub. I shall, at last, explain.

On the outskirts of town there’s a field (if I repeated this line now I might have a halfway decent beginning for a blues ballad—but we shan’t be going there today). In this field the are some sheep (yes, I know, “with a Baa Baa here an’a Baa Baa there”). So far so normal you might think, and so, on every other day it has turned out to be. But today these same sheep are auditioning for the Cirque d’Ambridge. In short they appear, gathered together in the corner of their field, in a seemingly perfect two-tier ovine pyramid, with a cluster of sheep at the base, and two very haughty specimens, side by side and faced Pushmipullyu fashion on the top tier.* So now you can see why I need a camera-phone.

Oh, and an in-car photographer, ‘cos otherwise all you’d actually get to see here would be a very fuzzy snap-shot of two headless sheepy blobs atop a mound of cotton wool.




*the boringly mundane reality is that the top layer sheep are standing on a very flat, very broad tree stump of an old, long ago felled, oak, with the remainder of the flock gathered in attendance around its circumference, which explanation rather spoils the illusion, but might help in my defense when the men in white coats come calling.

4 comments:

Chairwoman of the bored said...

I am a dyed-in-the-wool townie. To me sheep are strange and slightly off-putting creatures (I am, however, OK with cows, pigs, goats, and, of course, horses. Lambs though are cute.

On the way back from Cornwall from our honeymoon, I saw some lambs gambolling in a field. The Chairman stopped the car and we leaned over the gate to watch them at play. Within minutes a large semi-circle of sheep stood Baa-ing balefully at us.

They obviously meant business.

We made an excuse and left.

Doctor Jest said...

madam chairwoman-- sounds to me like the flock you encountered recognized the Chairman as a man with connections, and they wrere trying out their Baah-ber shop harmonies on him in hope of a "deal".

Unless of course they were singing for shear joy ;-)

Incidentally, what a brilliant choice of honeymoon location.

Oh and the "Dyed in the wool townie..." very good. Have a hob-nob.

Unknown said...

The men in the white coats won't come until after the second sighting - the one where you proclaim to the world that the sheepish song-and-dance routine is being performed just for you.

The cows do it here. With bells on.

Doctor Jest said...

orchidea-- no sign of them since. There was a Magpie there last Friday, but today nothing at all. I think the rather brisk frost of last night might have made it too slippy. I'm guessing that's why the sheep were all skating around the perimiter of the field instead, just like in Times Square.