Sheep and love
I rode on the top deck of a bus through the countryside. Though it's now late spring, there were still lambs around, playing agreeably, destined for a nice navarin. Their condition is much the same as ours...for sheep, not only love, but life generally is a cunt, and if you are unfortunate enough to have the Burdizzos ( a splendid name for a band, why has it never been used?) wielded to make a nice dish of testicles, you won't get much of the love part anyway.
The movement to return mutton to the British menu (which I heartily endorse, by the way) is another worrying trend from the ovine perspective.
It made me thing about ageing, which is much on my mind. However much I disguise it with bold talk of Petrarch and his Laura, Dante and Beatrice, the matter of age is insuperable. And note that Laura died, and both girls were entirely indifferent to their elderly dribbling admirers. In my gloomier moments it has occured to me that my passion for L is the final flush of flower on a old rose bush ready for the bonfire. "Even the Swainlets [14 and 12 years old-LS] would be ashamed to carry on the way you do about L", said the Burra Mem once; the adolescent quality present here is a distorted mockery of how love overpowers when one is young enough for it.
The best I can hope for is to be spared for a while longer for my fleece.
Technorati Tags: castration, dante, petrarch, sheep
posted by Lovelorn Swain | 10:37 pm
I do not think you should be so cynical, anonymous. Beautiful things can happen between a man and his ewe.
I was reminded of something from Lawrence Durrell, describing how shepherds in the north of Greece, near the Albanian border I think, away from their villages with their flocks, would choose a favourite and especially comely ewe as a "wife", offering it trinkets and decorating its horns with jewellery.
Bloody brilliant. I don't need to explain why - the tags speak for themselves.
And I won't recover from learning what Burdizzos are, for a week.
Actually, if one wants to eat the testicles, the old-fashioned knife is better. Once I kept a pair of Burdizzos in my desk drawer in one office I worked in.
"Once I kept a pair of Burdizzos in my desk drawer in one office I worked in."
Dare I ask...
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, davon muß man Schweigen, in this case, I think.
But it was when I had a great deal to do with animals.
For recipes, I used to have some somehwere but can;t trace them right now. Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating would be a good bet
My German engineer would not admit there was not a sheep in the room, Russell wrote OM.
Amended in your honour, darling Swain.
I love sheep, actually. From far away, where they look fluffy and white...reminds me also of Saki, "The Brogue". the secret reason for naming him that, that is, And the comment, he's gentle as a lamb!