Talk:Book:Wintersmith/Annotations

AgProv: "I'm sure we used to have this page.... did it get lost on the Lorry when we changed quarry?"

I'm not sure, did you write any? --Old Dickens (talk) 23:28, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm re-reading the book now. I'm sure my memory will be punched every so often! AgProv (talk) 23:55, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Doubleday Hardback, p234

Tiffany is distracted by a pulp romance novel. She wonders why life on this farm is unlike any farm she's ever known, with particular reference to sheep. She digresses quite a way into sheep and their ways, in fact.

This suggests an old Welsh joke.

a naive new teacher from Swansea or Cardiff is sent North to take five or six year old children in a rural school in Sir Y Ddinbych, in their first English classes. She decides to introduce children to the English names of the animals through large coloured cards carrying a picture of the animal. She holds the card up, voices the English name, and gets the class to repeat it. Going through cows, goats and pigs (gwartheg, geifr, a moch), eveything goes well.

And then she holds up the picture of the sheep and the children are suddenly mute. She prompts them again. They remain mute and puzzled. Then they start talking among themselves in Welsh.

She kindly asks what the difficulty is.

"Are you telling me you cannot recognise a sheep?"

One child holds up a hand.

"Please, miss. We don't know. We cannot tell what it is. Eirlwys Jones thinks it's a Romney Marsh Black. But the nose is wrong. Iollo Jenkins says it looks right for an English Leicester but it does not have the full fleece and distinctive rump folds. Rhiannon Price says it's a French Rambouillet, but the hooves is not quite right. Danny Williams thinks it is a Scottish Blackface, but then Danny's daft. Mickey Owen says Cheviot-Dorset Horn cross. Are you testing us, miss, with one we have not seen before?"

AgProv (talk) 08:56, 1 April 2015 (UTC)