Today’s wool-related recording is a poem written by Richard and Jim’s mother, and read out by Richard in David and Diane’s kitchen. David and Diane keep the Black Hebridean sheep featured in yesterday’s sound recording.
Richard and Jim are brothers, and Jim is David and Diane’s shepherd. He is officially retired, but he still tends a few small flocks around the Lake District.
“Claes” means clothes, and this poem is about the wear and tear that clothes get in the daily business of life in the countryside. It’s called “I’s hard on me claes.”
You can hear the wind in the aga chimney in the background… the wind being a fairly constant feature of the fells where Cumbrian sheep graze and grow.