a simple yarn

There is a postcard…perhaps you have seen it that depicts an Irish traffic jam. It’s a herd of sheep on a tiny-one-and-a-half-lane-narrow-road.

Ha! Usually, as I sit in a real wall-to-wall-cork-of-cars in the daily traffic jam, I wonder where the postcard author is at that very moment. And I have to admit, I’m hoping he’s out there in the bottle-necked mess somewhere with me!

But today I experienced it. I lived the postcard….sort of.

I was going from one meeting to another. Decided the quickest route was to avoid the motorway and take the small and narrow, winding road across the mountain.

Masses of purple, heather-filled hills of Sally Gap
I run across (please note I said ‘run across’ not ‘run over’) a group of free-range sheep on the verge. ‘On the verge of what?’ my American friends may ask. On the boundary-free grass ‘verge’ by the side of the road.
These free and easy fellas don’t seem bothered by the occasional road traffic.

And even join in themselves.

So, while this isn’t an everyday occurrence, as the postcard would have you believe, perhaps there is a grain of truth in that Irish stereotype…