Rhoda Meek: Sheep shearing season shows reply guys in full force
I can't stop because a few weeks ago, I set myself the challenge of shearing my own flock, and I am a competitive creature – I do not enjoy losing and especially not against myself.
Unsurprisingly, the first question most people have asked, upon hearing about this madness, is why? Why am I putting myself through it when there is a perfectly good alternative – bring in the professionals.
I'd be lying if I hadn't asked myself the same thing more than once – usually as I lie on my back in the pen, having been bested by a large, heavy wedder for the umpteenth time.
There are three answers, all equally weighted.
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First, I've never done it before. I've been taught multiple times, and I've done the odd one slowly and badly, but I've always relied on other people to do the bulk of the job. And while I'll happily call in the professionals when needed, I also believe that if you keep livestock, you should be able to do the work that goes with it. I raise animals for meat. That means making hard decisions, and I think the least I can do is to learn the skills needed to care for them properly.
Second, I wanted a challenge. I've been trying to get fitter and stronger this year, and there's nothing quite like wrestling a full-grown sheep to show you where you're at physically.
And lastly – let's not lie – it makes cracking social media content. I'm 5'3' and a bit, and some of these sheep are not far off my weight. Watching me try to pin one down while wielding clippers and very little experience? That should be internet gold.
Before I started, I watched as many videos as I could get my hands on – refreshing my memory and trying to memorise the steps. The professionals make it look like a dance – smooth, efficient, controlled. The sheep they clip barely know what's happening. One minute it's hot and woolly. Sixty seconds later, it's been spun in a circle, the clippers sliding over it effortlessly and it's back with its mates.
Mine have not had that experience.
We've all suffered. My fortysomething back has taken to shouting at me. I've flown past the camera on the back of a fed-up sheep. I've cried. I've sworn. I've had to stop and rest more times than I'd like to admit. But I'm still going.
Setting a challenge is easy, but keeping myself honest and making myself do things I don't want to is a sight harder, which is where the social media angle is surprisingly helpful. I've told a couple of hundred thousand people I'll do it – and so I've been filming the process. It's not just to force me to finish, and it's not just for laughs (although it's creating quite a few), it's also because I like to show things as they are. I hate the polished nonsense of social media perfection. Life is messy. Learning is hard. And failing in public is part of it.
I'm showing the good, the bad and the ugly and my honesty has been met with a mix of reactions.
Some people are cheering me on. Some think I've lost the plot. And some – inevitably – are full of unsolicited advice and criticism. The internet, after all, loves an expert. It also loves an opinion, especially about women. The week a photo of me carrying a North Ronaldsay sheep made the front page, someone commented: 'Looks like her mother cut her hair.' I don't usually read the comments, but that one leapt out. I replied, truthfully: 'Honestly, my mother would have done a lot worse.' Incidentally, she agreed.
There's something gloriously ironic about being mocked for my own unruly fleece while I'm literally shearing sheep. But it's never really about the hair. The same crowd likes to tell me I resemble Nicola Sturgeon – which I take as a compliment. I'm fairly sure it's not meant that way, because what really seems to upset a particular subset of people is a woman being both confident and competent in public. Last time a troll made the comparison, I tweeted about it, and was thrilled to get a laughing comment from the woman herself!
Hot on the heels of the trolls come the reply guys – a well-documented species. No matter the topic, he knows better. He'll tell you what you should be doing, how to do it, and why you're doing it wrong. It won't occur to him that you might know a lot of it. And he doesn't talk to men like that – just the women.
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Often, his advice is wrapped in mansplaining and delivered with such confidence that it's almost impressive. Almost. You see it online, but you also see it in real life. I've sat in many a meeting as the expert in the room, only to have a man explain my job to me. Or worse – to repeat my exact point 10 minutes later and be congratulated for it. That's a 'he-peat,' by the way.
It's the sort of thing that might have crushed me when I was younger. I started working at 19 – as a kids' TV presenter, of all things – where everything was about performance and perfection. You had to be polished. Get it right. Look the part. There wasn't a lot of room for failure.
But over time – and especially since hitting my forties – I've stopped caring so much about what people think. I've made peace with making a fool of myself. The fear of looking daft has fallen away, and what's left is something far more useful: the freedom to be real. To show up, warts and all.
When you choose to learn in public, as I very obviously have, you invite feedback, and not all of it is helpful. I've lost count of how many people have told me to stop, that I'm doing it wrong, that I'm hurting the sheep, that it's not worth it. But you don't get good without being bad first. You don't build skill without struggle.
I'd rather fail out loud than quietly conform to someone else's expectations. I'd rather be a beginner in public than an expert in private. After all, that's how things change in all aspects of life – slowly and awkwardly.
Speaking of awkward, I won't shear all my sheep this year. The rams and the biggest pet wedder were done for me – they're just too big for me to handle. But I'm aiming for that next year, in the vain hope that I'll be a vast amount better than I am this year.
Pleasingly, I'm already getting better. I'm starting to read the clippers properly – I can tell when it's me getting it wrong, and when they need to be oiled or adjusted. I've still not cracked the animal control. There are two positions where I lose the sheep every time. But with 40 left, I might just figure it out.
And if I don't? That's fine too. I'll ask for help. Not from the reply guys, but from the people who know me – who guide gently, who've done it before, and who show up in real life.
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