Poetic Licence: Counting Sheep
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Your support makes all the difference.Culture Secretary Chris Smith has waded in on the side of One Man And His Dog fans. The row over the BBC's decision to axe the programme after 23 years looks set to escalate this week, after Mr Smith spoke out in support of the programme on Radio Four's Any Questions.
Among those rain-green purple hills
Beneath that tableau of the clouds
The ruthless choreography
And dressage of the collie "creep"
The smartest dogs to walk the earth
Will wheel and weave - even in dreams
While city workers fall asleep
Yan, tyan, tethera - counting sheep
For here is man but here's his dog
A fur-machine with dustbin breath
As border-collie owners know
They have this look, the collie eye
Reserved for nervous visitors
The children, cats or anything
The creature may identify
As necessary to bring "by"
To see the collies working though,
A symphony in monochrome
From occiput to tip of tail
Along a valley hell-for-leather
Narrow hips and galleon chests
A canny canine SAS
In marinade of Cumbrian weather
Another matter altogether
Yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp
The farmers now go down the ramp
And head towards the shedding-ring
As rural England goes for broke
And governed by remote control
Becomes a film-set, set-aside
A tale of complex country folk
Being treated as sort of joke
Lethera, hovera, dovra, dick
The collies bring the last ewes in
And semi-telepathically
Will drive them in a pincer sweep
The smartest dogs to walk the earth
Can wheel and weave, even in dreams
While city workers fall asleep
Yan, tyan, tethera, counting sheep
Yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovra, dick - one to 10 in old Cumbrian dialect used for counting sheep
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