Michele Hewitson
The competition was fierce at Wairarapa Word’s annual writing competition.
Stephanie said: “You have to dress up as a sheep.” I told Janet, who shrieked before calming down and saying she could get some sheep’s ears. Not, I hoped, real sheep’s ears. “No, Michele,” she said, “I’m not going to cut the ears off one of Miles’s lovely lambs.” I was glad to hear it and so, no doubt, was Miles, her husband.
We were all going to Wairarapa Word’s annual writing competition. Who could resist? “We want some woolly writing,” the flyer read.
Miles was not going. No way. Stephanie saw Miles at the farmers’ market and asked him whether
Janet’s piece about sheep was fact or fiction. “Fact-slash-fiction,” he said.
We were not going to read. No way. The competition was fierce. Janet, despite having ascertained that Stephanie was pulling the wool over our eyes about the dressing up, had gone to some trouble.
Fixed to her front and back were suitably labelled laminated images of a sheep. Hers was the best costume by a country mile. Actually, she was the only one wearing a costume, unless you count David.
David came fourth with a surreal story about falling for a sheep called – what else? – Baabara and asking her out. They went for a drink before a date to the Golden Shears, only to have her fleece him out of his wallet and cellphone. It was brilliant, like a sketch from the bonkers British sitcom The Mighty Boosh.
David was wearing a black T-shirt that didn’t owe him anything and black shorts that clearly came from the same era as the T-shirt. He wasn’t wearing shoes. It was a Sunday in summer in Carterton.
Janet was first up. We were about to find out why Miles, a modest chap, had refused to attend. His wife told a delightful story about a clever, mischievous sheep called Yellow 70 with a liking for buns with pink icing and a surprising ability to understand English.
On overhearing an American visitor to the sheepmilking shed say, “You should be charging money for this!”, Yellow 70 quietly lifted his wallet. Clever? That’s not the half of it.
A local baker had heard that Miles’s sheep liked buns and dropped some off. Miles gave them to the sheep and stashed the plastic bags in his trouser pocket, whereupon the pickpocketing sheep struck again and in the process pulled Miles’s trousers down. The story scored Janet second place. Hooray!
Stephanie went a bit Trump, which is to say she did not stick to her own script – a hilarious argument for the adoption of the word “shoop”: “so much more suitable for a single sheep than the correct ‘sheep’.” The judge, Jan Farr, editor of the Carterton Crier, agreed and decreed that “shoop” should be the word of 2018.
Nobody envied the judge. There were 14 entries and, as she said, “not a dud among them”. She also said, “I’m never doing this again!”
Brian came third with his top-notch short history of New Zealand’s sheep industry. Pam won with a cracker yarn from “over 80 years ago. This story is about my lovely pet sheep.”
She somehow persuaded her parents to allow her pet sheep, or perhaps shoop, to be dagged on the kitchen table. “I must have had a persuasive manner in those days.”
Stephanie wasn’t a finalist but should have been. I swiped her one of those sultana biscuits that decades ago we called “fly traps” as a consolation prize. I think she was pleased.
I know we were pleased that we went. I may even enter next year. Note to the organisers: could the topic please be chickens?
The judge, editor of the Carterton Crier, decreed that “shoop” should be the word of 2018.