Dingwall Auction Mart

When you live in a sheep farming area, you don't necessarily look at the sheep that much. It's a routine part of your day, passing sheep filled pasture, saying "look, that one's still scouring", or seeing a farmer's pickup towing a trailer with a few woolly heads peering out.

Today I sat in the car park waiting while Mrs Oons was inside, talking to John about the next general sale. Things I noticed.

The smell of cow manure. The accompanying smell of damp, dirty wool, such as you might pick up from somebody whose overcoat was well past time for a visit to the cleaner. Fair enough, sheep do smell like that, though it's less pleasant when people do.

Bovine bellowing from the shed to my right. Ovine bellowing from the paddocks in front of me. Relaxed sheep really do say things like baa-a-a-a, and quite often zzz-zzz-zzz. Unrelaxed sheep shout BAH!  Very firmly. And the stillness, the observant posture of the sheep en masse, knowing something was up and clearly apprehensive about it.

This trio, for example, moving gently back and forth, less towards anything than away from something they could sense but not see. And never once giving up the comfort of firm body contact.

It has always been like this of course, and I was first on my uncle's farm aged three. But only today did I pay attention and see it from the sheep's point of view.