Today I want to talk about sheep. The calming affects of sheep.

As a person of welsh blood, I am used to the wise cracks about us and sheep, but sheep have depths unknown to most men.

In times of deep trouble, you can cuddle a cat, but they require feeding and have claws. In times of despair you can walk a dog, but they slobber and desire to have their stomachs tickled. When times are dark, you can sit with friends, but people always let you down. They get tired of listening, they see something they desire, they need food, they need to pee, and they talk about you behind your back. Not sheep.

Sheep, while shy, do have redeeming qualities. If you feel bad and need to express it out loud, go to a hillside full of sheep. People talk about wolves, but have you heard how lonely and tormented a sheep sounds across the air in a valley? Have you ever answered one back? It’s a sound you make from the back of your throat, and it comes from deep down.

If you try to communicate with sheep, they look at you funny. You may think this is because they are dumb, or think you are going to shear them or make them into a pie, but its not. It’s because they know that you know their secret.

If you get close to a sheep, you can sit down near it and tell it all your troubles, and they will chew and listen, and listen and chew, and then they will Baaaaaa…… in sympathy. You have to listen very hard to know what that is saying, but then the days are long up on the hills. Sheep have knowing eyes, and rather beautiful heads. They stick together for a good reason, but they are open to a relationship of sorts. They don’t want much. And when you are not good at giving with trust, a sheep is a good, solid companion.

In the dark, in the quiet, sheep tell stories and make up heroic verse, and they share it with the crows and badgers, and they take it with them to the grave.

The man in the suit with the cropped grey head was being hauled along by a pretty boy in an open shirt and a black bra. Yeah. They fetched up at the bar between Olly’s mum who is 82 and a man with green hair and a parrot on his shoulder. I was in Brighton for New Year. There’s nothing like clamour to silence clamour.

The boy and the man kissed. ‘Hey,’ the barman said in passing, ‘leave her alone you’ Olly raised his brows and said, ‘told you it was a girl, but….. could be either. There’s nothing in the bra for sure’ 

'You shouldn't be looking!' said Olly's wife, 'but it's a boy, or she likes girls really, it's obvious.'

A younger girl with Goth hair and one foot high biker boots pushed past and hovered. The couple parted and the bra went off to other pastures. The Goth girl confronted Mr. suit, her big blue eyes watering, her chin quivering with rage and misery. ‘What are you doing? On New Year too! You’re kissing my girlfriend – my girlfriend of three years!’ Mr. suit stared into his whisky. Olly's wife looked smug. It was ten to midnight.

Ten past midnight seven of us walked down to a music bar through the wind and the ozone and the satisfying clamour. Irish and Welsh, Arabic and English, straight and bent and just not sure. Somewhere in the music bar between the smoochers and the smilers and the guys dancing Salsa and the young girls shaking it up beneath a screen full of Grace Jones, the vodka got weaker and the conversation harder and it was tricky to know whether you knew the person sitting next to you or not or whether it was probably too noisy to be talking politics and whether that really was a bucking bronco bull in the restaurant opposite, or what time it was when we hit the sea air again and went back to the house for pitta bread and humus.

Somewhere in the tiny hours talk finished and I apparently sent punctuation marks through the ether on my mobile 'phone before sleep took over, and we crumpled up the old year and fed it to the seagulls in the morning. Olly’s two little girls making more clamour - a nice 'la lala la' to hum over and under. At 4 and 2 they had no reason to want to drown the New Year in clamour. Long may it last for you girls.

When I was in Italy – I had a little eye-opener to how Americans are viewed. We were staying in our hotel in Tuscany – a private house out in the countryside, really ancient and rustic. It had stone steps up to the big wooden front door, the floors were stone and wood, and it was painted by the artists who lived there (you can see some pics. of it in the Italy photos. The hotel was chosen for its eccentricity, its beautiful situation and contact with ‘real’ Italians. (The woman who owned it would come out and feed the cats and sit and chat with you as the sun went down and the glowworms came out – no concierge on a desk bowing and scraping.)

On our second morning at breakfast, two Americans came down. At first they were surprised there was no service (you chose your own home made bread and toasted it, or had fruit and cereal). They found the coffee then sat down and whispered to us

‘Do you guys have screens?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Screens, do you guys have screens in your rooms?’

‘Well, we were up half the night swatting flies, weren’t you?’

‘Owls? Ohh. Didn’t the flies come in?’

‘Oh. Yeah, ok. We left the light on and the window open. Maybe we shouldn’t have done that. But you don’t have screens? (looking at her husband) I guess that what they said honey – 'cultural differences.’

Now, maybe I’m wrong, but I read into that ‘cultural differences’ - backward, primitive, behind. Her husband nodded and smiled and we carried on eating.

A day or two later we were sitting with the hostess promising to post her some English Tea when we got home, and the Americans left to go out. We waved and our hostess sighed and said that they had been complaining since they arrived. ‘No screen, no curtain, no waitress, too hot, no air conditioning… what do they want when they book hotel like this in middle of countryside? This normal living – the Germans not complain, you not complain. Always Americans complain.’

We just nodded. But it was interesting. We’d listened to Americans complaining in Rome too. The room was too small, there was no air-conditioning, it was hot! In Venice – in the fantastic gothic and Baroque splendour of our marble floored hotel with its chandeliers and paintings, its man-sized angel wings hanging above receptionand the sounds of Venetians singing outside the window, the talk in the breakfast room was of ‘No air-con.’ or that they weren’t feeling well but there was ‘ No way in hell I’m going to a hospital over here – they’d probably kill you!’

Now, I know it’s not all of you – but I have to say it got a bit galling. The Italians were staying alive perfectly well before ER. The flies and the lack of air conditioning help you to be in the country, not contained in a sterile bubble.

Tell me it ‘aint true – tell me you love our quaint little ways – sweating at night while the owls fly past the window, being operated on by plague doctors - say it aint so!