A Bit of Yarn About Jean At The Woolshop.

I’m sure you’ve all been wondering about the whereabouts of Jean at the Wool Shop, and whatever happened to her radio show?

Well, are you sitting comfortably? Plump up that old cushion supporting your lower back, raise your tired feet up onto the worn wooden footstool, pour yourself a wee glass of cooking whisky, and I’ll tell you a sad story.

The truth is that Jean fell for the yarns of a Wool Salesman. He spun her wonderful, naturally-oiled tales about ancient drove roads once travelled by romantic sheep, who sang to each other in harmonious bleats.

Jean knitted this salesman many a pair of her famous racing-green underpants, urging him to tell her more.

Upon receipt of his underpants, the salesman confessed to Jean that she was his m’ewes. He told Jean about ways that sheep flock together and, if she really loved him, they should share a sheep pen, write about clapdarnachs, and leg it together to make a mint.

Jean counted the sheep she already had, and after a short snooze, decided to follow the Wool Salesman. She sold all her foreign Alpaca double-knitting, racing-green, 50 g balls at half price. She left her radio station with Daft Uisdean and offered the wool shop for sale on the housing market. Jean then trotted off after the Wool Salesman, with a heart as light as lamb’s wool.

Alas, after much nose-to-tail traveling of drove roads, Jean developed foot rot, for her skills as a Wool Salesman’s Assistant were poor. She was a creative knitter, not a melodious yarn spinner. As she wandered aimlessly, she felt as if she’d been spun around and teased until she was one ply short of the full double knitting ball.

Everywhere she followed, she noticed that she fell further and further behind in the line of sheep that followed behind the Wool Salesman. As time passed, he seemed to be more passionate about the sound of his sales pitch to the flock than ever writing about clapdarnachs. However, Jean remained ever hopeful that one day her skills would be called upon to pen sheep tales, and once and for all she could proudly live up to the title of 'Wool Salesman's M’ewes'.

Jean asked the Wool Salesman if they could take a break from the drove roads, to invent some knitting patterns together. She waited with her knitting needles packed at the ready but alas her wait was in vain.

Her secret dream was that one day the Wool Salesman would spin one of his ultimate romantic yarns about her and set it to some of his m’ewe’sic. As time went by, though, Jean became conscious that the Wool Salesman’s entire repertoire of sheep tales was about Cheviots, Black Faced Sheep, or Cotswold sheep from his past.

In every sheep port and pen thereafter, Jean encountered a ewe that looked prettier than her in her racing green, hand-knitted, double-knitting clothes. The followers of his flock would frolick, intoxicated, dressed in fancy rich colours, as he spun his yarns. Jean could never compete with the way that lively groups of leggy Cheviots often flashed their own tales back to the Wool Salesman, as he performed his sales pitch.

And so, after traveling many drove roads, Jean returned to the island with a few dropped stiches and a heavy heart. She has purchased another property to restart her Wool Shop.

A well-respected gossip from the local Church Guild Knitting Group reputedly overheard Jean say, "My heart feels even heavier than one of Murdo the Ram's giant and swollen testicles." Upon hearing this, the Church Guild group decided to knit Jean a handkerchief for her sorrow, made in double knitting wool and in her favourite colour of racing green.

She is now hoping to strike a deal with Daft Uisdean's lawyer, to get back her radio station and hopes to begin producing shows again in the near future.