Sheep

No, this is not a Welsh porn blog entry. Rather, a cautionary tale for all those who are wont to stroll on the hills of a morning regardless of the presence of the ovine community.

We set off from the car and immediately encountered a large and wide spread flock of sheep. Nothing new there; its an occupational hazard of the pastime, and Rufus rarely bothers with them these days. Nevertheless, with such a widespread gathering ahead, I put him back on the lead so that we could pass though them quickly.

Sheep gathering

No sooner had we passed the ovine event horizon, than a few of the bolder ones started to take in interest in us. We are accustomed to them running away from us or even standing and staring from afar, but for sheep to follow us, that is a different matter and a major rewrite of the rules. Soon a small gang had formed and they started to follow us along the rough path.

Sheep gang

At this point, it gets a little hazy. Maybe they stalked us all the way to Carn Llechart, splitting up to cover all our possible moves and watching from the long grass.

Keeping us under surveillance

We see you

Maybe got in touch with their fellow ovines to keep us under surveillance. Maybe it was all a carefully enacted plan. Maybe it was co-incidence. Who knows? In the pressure of the moment, I felt we were being shepherded along and closely watched at all times.

Running to encircle us

“You can’t go this way”

I tried not to show any nerves. I took photos, fed and watered Rufus and finally we made it to the little ring cairn. All the time, sheep peered from reeds, over tufts of grass and from between rocks.

Covert sheep

After enough time spent at the cairn to make it clear we weren’t intimidated, we set off back to the car, trying to avoid any sheep. Of course, trying to avoid them when they were deliberately seeking us out was well nigh impossible.

“Move along”

But eventually, we managed to find a route that avoided most of the flocks and saw us safely to the sanctuary of the car.

Maybe I was mistaken? After all, sheep are just stupid creatures that eat grass, right?

They are constantly plotting.

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And another thing…

Have you noticed that ‘digital’ is no longer a technology, it is now a whole philosophy. One created to make things more marketable.

I can now buy a digital case for my camera. It’s actually advertised as a digital case – presumably it’s made up of lots of little ‘0’s and ‘1’s and when there’s a power failure it will crash and require rebooting. Of course, I can get a digital photo frame. I sort of get it, but in the centuries that follow us, when all the digital records are corrupted and someone finds a scrap of paper with ‘digital photo frame’ written on it, will they assume it was a programmable frame style rather than a display tool?

Moving on from photography, I could get a digital ovulation test pack, and a digital pregnancy test kit. If, by some miracle, I was pregnant and delivered a bouncing baby (how hard can it be?)  I can get a digital baby monitor (I can only guess that if you have an analogue baby, you need a different product. “Darling, the baby is emitting a strange sound, I think he needs rebooting”). I can buy camouflage pants in digital camo! Guaranteed invisible to the digital robot overlords, but not the analogue ones. I can get a digital compressor for inflating (I’m making a big jump here) digital tyres?

Should I require feeding, a digital microwave will heat up my food. Discretely in packets of ‘0’s and ‘1’s. I assume each molecule will either be hot or cold. None of your analogue ‘luke warm’ here thank you very much.I can get a digital ceramic tong for my curly locks. And this introduces another one of those marketing ploys, because not only is the ceramic tong digital, it’s also ‘pro’. Because you wouldn’t want an amateur tong, now would you?

I can get a digital Scalextric set (hmmm…) and a digital microphone for my iPad. But neither of these are ‘pro’. I’m beginning to have my doubts now.

But wait, I can get a ‘pro’ electric tooth brush, a ‘pro’ electric home pedicure kit, a ‘pro’ metal threaded tap connector and a ‘pro’ steam mop. ‘Pro’ trousers, ‘pro’ low energy light bulbs and for my digital child, a ‘pro’ child seat for the car are all available.

There is a serious point here. The words ‘digital’ and ‘pro’ are used by marketing people because they have become synonymous with the words ‘quality’ and ‘essential’. But most people don’t consider whether this comparison is true. So when they see these tags, they assume it must be better than before. It may be, it may not be. My point is that we are being trained to accept that it is. This attitude extends into the abstract – services are now being advertised as digital (in this case, digital usually means ‘online’, which is slightly different). I was looking into cloud computing the other day. But I had to have a good internet connection to do so, and of course if I actually wanted to work with the ‘cloud’ I’d have to have a consistently good connection. I process images on a PC not connected to the Internet – by choice as it means I don’t have to run potentially disruptive firewalls and virus checker software. So the cloud won’t work for me. The concept is good but the execution (as usual) is not quite there yet.

But the government tells us digital is the way to go. So that is where we are heading and if you haven’t got a secure hold on the bandwagon, you may well fall off during the bumpy ride.

By the way, all the examples of ‘digital’ and ‘pro’ above were found on one well known shopping website. Other well known shopping websites are available, all of them digital and some of the ‘pro’.

An analogue camera with analogue dust. Ironically (and I didn’t spot this until I took the photos) it is labled ‘Professional’.