Low life | 4 August 2016

After the death by boredom of the slow traffic jam, the agricultural-show field was an assault on the senses. The sun was out and my grandson and I wandered around stripped to the waist. Soon we found ourselves among the livestock pens and we paused to watch a line of nine Texel rams being judged by a tall, distinguished-looking man wearing a country check shirt, tweed jacket, mauve trousers, brogues and a bowler hat. We stood next to the single strand of baler-twine fence and watched him weigh the merit of each sheep. Texels have no wool on their faces, which are as expressive and individual as human ones. My grandson, aged six, said he thought that the one on the extreme left had the prettiest face and the second ram from the right had the shapeliest body.

The judge, I think, was looking for breed conformation, symmetry and meat on the bone. He straddled each sheep from behind, exactly as though he were about to commit a surprisingly obscene act, then he reached forward and searched with his spread fingertips down through the thick orange-yellow fleece for the shoulder muscles. Then he ran his hands sensuously over the sheep’s back, thighs and buttocks. I remembered working on a council grass-cutting gang with an old working-class Devon countryman called Henry, and asking him whether it was true that the best way to shag a sheep was to shove the back legs down your wellies. Old Henry assumed I was asking him a serious and important question, however. ‘There no need for that,’ he said scornfully. ‘If ye spread thy ’and over the small of ’er back, she’ll stand for ’ee.’ The Texels’ thoughtful stillness under the judge’s voluptuous caresses appeared to bear this out. Finally, the judge awarded the red, white and blue champion rosette to the Texel with the pretty face, and the blue and white runner-up rosette to the shapely one, exactly as Oscar had predicted, and we moved on, satisfied with the judge’s decision.