Baa

During a chat with a time-zone displaced insomniac this morning, the topic of conversation wound it's way towards, as is almost inevitable in such a situation, sheep. I used this segue to reveal, quite pertinently I thought, that in times of sleeplessness (which I'm not experiencing at the moment though I suspect I have due cause - I discovered today that the inland revenue has spent the past year trying to track me down, and in that intervening period has been fining me for some sort of non-compliance, as well as charging interest on said fines. Fortunately a pleasant chap I spoke to on the phone assured me it was all a bit of a storm in a tea cup and that a carefully worded and suitably apologetic letter on my part would work wonders. But I digress...) I have been known to count sheep. Well, no, that's not true. I don't actually count them. That would just be dull, but the alternative of saying something along the lines that I experiment with sheep instead carries entirely the wrong sort of connotations.

When I experience trouble sleeping you see, it's usually because something has happened, an event of some great import, good or ill, that my mind cannot but help flutter around as a moth around a light bulb. In such a case I need a distraction, something benign to occupy and settle my thoughts. Rote counting just isn't enough prevent my attention straying back to where I wish it not, so I modified the counting sheep trick, replacing the counting with a new rule which states that each sheep must cross the fence in a different manner. It's much more fun I promise, and it's something of a challenge to continually invent new fence crossing methods without repetition. It may not work for everyone, but it really does help me sleep, and there's probably some insight to be gained from the solutions I devise to shift sheep from one side of the fence to the other. I'll leave you to decide whether the chainsaw wielding quadruped who demolished the fence with uncommon vigour (for a sheep) came at the end of a good or bad day...