The Enigma Of Arrival - pg. 25

Sheep were no longer the main animals of the plain. I saw a sheep-shearing only once. It was done by a big man, an Australian, I was told, and the shearing was done in one of the old buildings -- timber walls and a slate roof -- at the side of the cottage-row in which Jack lived. I saw the shearing by accident; I had heard nothing about it; it just happened at the time of my afternoon walk. But the shearing had clearly been news for some; the farm people and people from elsewhere as well had gathered to watch. A display of strength and speed, the fleecy animal lifted and shorn (and sometimes cut) at the same time, and then sent off, oddly naked -- the ceremony was like something out of an old novel, perhaps by Hardy, or out of a Victorian country diary. And it was as though, then, the firing ranges of Salisbury Plain, and the vapour trails of military aircraft in the sky, and the army houses and the roaring highways didn't lie around us. As though, in that little spot around the farm buildings and Jack's cottage, time had stood still, and things were easy as they had been, for a little while. But the sheep-shearing was from the past. Like the old farm buildings. Like the caravan that wasn't going to move again. Like the barn where grain was no longer stored.