Sandra Lindsey

Spent yesterday afternoon over at the sculpture park by the dam - the RSPB were having a family fun day to celebrate International Bog Day, and our village line dancing group had been asked to do a display (of dancing! Get your minds out of the gutter!) and a 'have a go' teaching session. We weren't the only entertainment though - there was a singing group, a chap doing chainsaw sculptures, and a sheep shearing demonstration.

I've never seen shearing up close before - only on the telly (we were too far away to really see anything when we visited the Royal Welsh the other week) and it was really quite fascinating. I never realised they have to wear specialised clothes! Double-layer trousers (so they don't accidentally cut themselves) which sit higher on the waist (to keep their lower back warm because they have to be bending over all the time) and moccasins (to give them better grip on potentially slippery boards) which have to be bought new for each season because of how mucky they get. I also learned that these days they don't recommend a man takes up shearing properly, or tries to do fast-shearing, until he's at least 21 because of the strain it puts on your back. And also that professional shearers get paid around £1/sheep and will probably do around 280-300 per day during the season (of course, the kind of guys who get to the finals of the golden shears will do more than that!) (They also mentioned about only being able to sell the fleeces for 50p, but I knew that already. And yes, that *is* a 50% loss. If you want to know more about it, I'm sure you can find it out from a far more knowledgeable source)

So yes, not only interesting for knowing more about how life works, but all good for sparking off random plot-bunnies :-)