Ieuan the Sheep Farmer

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This piece was not written as a piece of prose but as a story for telling aloud. My thanks go to Annie Proulx for reminding me of a very old joke in her excellent novel The Shipping News.

Ieuan Pritchard was a sheep farmer from Carmarthen. He had 200 acres of high grass land and ran a mixed flock of Welsh Mountain and Texel sheep. He never made a lot of money, but he was happy with his lot. He watched his flock through the seasons, feeding them through the winter and keeping the rams well raddled, helping with the lambing, drinking with Kiwi shearing gangs in the summer and, of course, selling his young fat lambs in the sheep market in Carmarthen. He had no family but had long ago become content in his own company, spending his evenings in his tiny cottage by the big open fire. He had two hobbies — well, three if we include drinking with the Kiwi shearers. One was very commonplace. He watched television. His second hobby used to be commonplace, but not so much nowadays. He knitted. His mother had taught him as a child and he loved to sit in his chair by the fire, watching television and knitting.

One night he was at home, television on and needles clicking, when a cookery programme came on. It was that Jamie Oliver, teaching fifteen layabouts to be restaurant chefs. They had obviously completed lesson one with distinction. The lesson was called 'How to Swear Like Gordon Ramsay'. They were brilliant. It was f*****g this and f*****g that. Those kids were going to go far. At the end of the programme, Jamie jumped on his trendy scooter and went to one of those fancy West London butchers were they have top-quality meat, trimmed just how you want it, beautifully laid out and not a blue plastic tray in sight. 'Oh, there's lovely,' thought Ieuan. 'It's nice to see good food.' Slowly, the camera panned across the display before coming to rest on some Welsh lamb chops, beautifully trimmed with little paper hats on the bones. Stuck in the chops was a price tag. Ieuan was brought up in the chapel tradition and didn't often swear, but when he saw the price he did. 'F*** me,' he exclaimed, '£35 a kilo!' When he sold his last load of lambs in Carmarthen, he got 35 pence a kilo.

Ieuan made up his mind. The next day he hitched up his old Ifor Williams sheep trailer to his even older Land Rover and drove up to the field. He rounded up twenty of his best fat lambs, loaded them up and set off to sell them to the fancy butcher in London. 'Come on, girls,' he said. 'You're off to eat the green, green grass of Hounslow.'

Seated in the old Land Rover, he drove down to the A48 and onto the end of the M4 motorway. Now, with the best will in the world, old diesel Land Rovers are not quick, especially when they are running on recycled cooking oil from the fish and chip shop. They do, however, leave behind a lovely smell of deep fried haddock. The best he could do was 25 miles an hour along the slow lane of the M4. By the time he reached the Cardiff turn-off, he was getting bored, very bored. He started to sing out loud:

'Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven,

Feed me till I want no more,

Want no more

Feed me till I want no more.'

By the way, when I first started telling this story I used to sing that bit in Welsh. Some Welsh friends in the pub wrote it out for me. It was always very popular with Welsh audiences — guaranteed to raise a laugh. It was some years later that I found out that I had been singing:

'English b*****d, English b*****d,

Why don't you just f*** off home

F*** off home

Why don't you just f*** off home.'

Anyway, back to Ieuan. He still was seated in the old Land Rover, driving at 25 miles an hour along the slow lane of the M4. The singing had kept him amused right over the Severn Bridge, but by the time he got to Bristol, his voice was going and he needed a change. Suddenly, he had a brainwave. He reached for his knitting on the passenger seat. He stuck his arms through the steering wheel, steered with his elbows and began to knit. He was as happy as Larry, clicking his way past Bath, on past Swindon, knitting away on the long and boring drive to London.

Obviously, the inevitable happened. There, on the bridge and just as bored as Ieuan had been, were the police. They had been there for hours with the speed camera. No speeding footballers, drunken celebrities, mobile phone users or Cabinet Ministers in Jaguars. Then they saw Ieuan, knitting needles flying, as he slowly drove at 25 miles an hour along the slow lane of the M4. The police gave chase, screaming down the slip road with blue lights flashing and sirens wailing. The sheep saw the lights and everyone in Newbury heard the sirens but Ieuan, bless him, was oblivious. He carried on, knitting to his heart's content.

After a few minutes, the police car pulled out from behind the Ifor Williams trailer and drew alongside the Land Rover. The policeman in the passenger seat wound down the window, waved his arm and shouted.

'How nice,' thought Ieuan, knitting away happily, 'being personally greeted to West London.'

The policeman shouted again. 'Pull over, pull over!' he yelled.

'No, bach,' said Ieuan. 'It's a cardigan.'

Well, what with the magistrates and all that Ieuan never did sell his lambs. He didn't have the heart to take them back to Wales and he couldn't find the green, green grass of Hounslow. He did find a nice big field nearby with acres of lovely green grass and lovely secure fencing so he left them there. He did tell me where he had left them. Somewhere called... wait a minute, it's on the tip of my tongue... yes, it was a place called Heathrow.

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Phil Yabutz

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