Dorper sheep seem to shear themselves, usually on gates, fences or their relatives. Ewe just have to ask why? (BTW, does anyone else think that, from a distance, they could be meerkats?) Photo: Sally Hopman.
Things I don’t understand. By Sally. Age 124.
No. 1: Dorper sheep. I mean, what’s the point of them? Yes, they are meat sheep but they are also covered in this fleece-like, well, fleece, and try to shear themselves against the fence. You don’t shear them, their fleece just falls off in clumps.
I can understand the fleece wanting to come off in clumps – it clearly has an identity problem – but in some of the more reputable stock and station agents, rumour has it that they refuse to even let the fleece inside.
Even spinners and weavers, who are usually so cosmic about most everything, don’t want that fibre anywhere near their spindles.
No. 2: Why James Taylor hasn’t written a song for me. I mean he’s probably around 80 now so I don’t know he’s writing as many songs as he is searching for pureed food recipes, but I would have been well chuffed had he done so back in his, and my, prime.
He wrote them for Joni Mitchell, for Carole King, for his now wife – and he even wrote one for Martin Luther King. Sigh. Hate it when you feel you no longer have a friend. I could well be souring just a bit on Sweet Baby James.
No. 3: Ads. Doesn’t matter if they’re on TV, radio, online or in those crumply things people used to read on buses and trains, I don’t get them.
Having worked in the media for about 4000 years I should get them, but they all tell lies.
They tell you you’ll look better if you wear this, thinner if you eat that, more attractive to the same or opposite sex if you do or don’t do that and, the absolute corker, that banks aren’t only about money.
Seriously? What else are they about? Ending poverty. (Thump. Sorry, sound of your writer falling off her chair in uncontrollable laughter.)
Does my bum look big with all this? Just as well sheep, dorpers or any others, don’t talk. Photo: Sally Hopman.
No. 4: Anything with a cord. Particularly computers, TV sets, anything really. I now understand why the directions for setting this stuff up is mostly written in Swahili, because it doesn’t matter what language it’s in, I’m going to screw it up. Without a screwdriver, because there is never one at hand, except the pink one someone bought me as a joke because I’m a, duh, girl and can only work in pink.
But wait, there’s more.
No. 5: Why people dress their dogs in, well, anything. They have fur, for heaven’s sake. They don’t need another coat on their back, especially ones with their name on it, unless they’re completely stupid and/or have short memories.
Also, when did dog shoes become a Thing? They’ve always had feet, four of them mostly. Apparently it’s because the pavement can be too hot for their little pawsie-wawsies in summer. Well, don’t walk them on the footpath in summer then. That’s what grass is for – and other things too.
Have saved the best for last.
No. 6: Don’t quite know how I can police this one but … don’t allow Bob Dylan to sing in public, or anywhere else really, anymore. Ever. (NB: This is coming from one of his greatest fans. Me.)
Instead of letting him perform live any more, so he can ignore his audience like he has done for almost his entire touring life, turn his microphone off. Let him lip-sync to any of his records from the 80s backwards when he could, er, sing. OK, from the 1960s backwards then.
Also it might be wise to stop trying to decipher his lyrics. If he reckons most of them don’t make sense, who are we to say they do? Just us sad old blinkered fans, left out like rolling stones, blowin’ in the wind.
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