Following the Herd

or

Sheep are Cool!

I live beside The Curragh, a land of sheep, shite and soldiers, as Martin McDonough describes in his book of the same name. It can be uplifting in early morning on the way to work to see the sheep grazing and the thoroughbreds being worked on the gallops.

Sheep are often regarded as stupid creatures. They follow each other blindly and one tends to come across the odd deaf one on the road. I think they're just fooling us all. The ones that get killed are the kamikaze division, probably ailing anyway, who conspire with their owner to get some compensation.

When the rest of them march along in single file, I like to think they're they're organizing a rally somewhere, perhaps a protest demanding better grass to munch on or more access to the Camp now that it has been fenced off to them. On the other hand, maybe I spend too much time watching Shaun The Sheep, an excellent programme right up there with Top Cat.

This all came into my head due to a recent holiday. As luck would have it, I got a seat in row 3 of the aeroplane with extra leg room. There were two rows of seats (no row 1) on my side of the 'plane to match three on the other. Then, as we disembarked, the people in the row ahead of me had other family members further down the aeroplane and so hung back to wait on them. This meant that I ended up being leader of the pack.

The funny thing about homosapiens is that while we laugh at sheep following each other blindly, we exhibit exactly the same behaviour. I set off, with no idea where to go, with my newly formed herd behind me. Now I'm quite good at finding my way around unfamiliar surroundings so I was fairly confident I wouldn't get lost but there was one wee problem. Those of you who know me, well don't need to be told that I'm a bit of a cripple. I need a walking stick to get around, can't move quickly and the more I walk the slower I get.

I found it particularly hilarious that not one of my acquired posse passed me out! There were even some murmurings about the speed we were going and why we didn't go faster but, I repeat, NOT ONE person took the initiative to go ahead. Passport control was a doddle. I just breezed through and again, because I was on my own and didn't have to wait for anyone, I was first on the bus!

This whole incident put me in mind of the great, late Douglas Adams and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (I think that's the book anyway). Dirk believes you should navigate by picking a car at random and following them. As he says (I'm paraphrasing here), he may not get where he intended to but he always ended up somewhere interesting (on second thought, may he said he always ended up where he needed to, but you get my drift). Maybe we should stop laughing at the sheep and start admiring them for their philosophical outlook on life...