The shepherds who made their millions

SOME things can’t be taught. In fact, quite a lot of things can’t be taught, and how to make money is one of them. As has been pointed out, correctly, several times recently, there is no positive correlation between an increasing proportion of a nation’s population going through higher education and its economic performance.

Cynics might even draw the opposite conclusion, that large numbers of people spending their time talking or writing, quite often with the object of teaching others to talk or write and so on ad infinitum, rather than doing, is a negative not a plus for the nation - rather like writers writing books about writers writing books with real life intruding only occasionally.

I mused about that on Saturday night after talking to three multi-millionaires in the space of half an hour. Not, I should add, my usual Saturday recreation nor in the hope that anything was going to rub off in the way of inspiration, but an interesting and invigorating part of a good night out where Jubilee mania was not mentioned once.

The significant factor, apart from the one that to all outward appearances I was as likely to be the multi-millionaire of the party as the trio, was that all three had started life as hill shepherds with no education beyond secondary school.

Several decades on, two at least still have a love of sheep breeding, an activity which brings out the best and worst in human nature - whoever said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned had never seen a sheep breeder whose ram had been placed second instead of first in a showring.

That’s their hobby. They’ve moved far beyond sheep with commercial activities which include tourism, building a new village and producing most of Scotland’s eggs. If I’d caught up with them a few hours earlier there would have been a fourth in the company, a man who started work as a machinery sales rep and now runs a billion-pound food business.

This isn’t a paean to greed is good, only to note the zest and vigour which the driven enthusiast with work as a hobby can bring to any business and what a welcome relief it is to listen to them rather than report a farmers’ meeting arguing about the level of subsidies.

The problem, let’s say the reality, is that not everyone has the combination of abilities, nerve - all four have at some stage put every asset they owned on the line - and enthusiasm to take the chances and prosper. But 20 minutes with any of the four would be a better incentive for the nation’s students than a degree course.

A CERTAIN amount of discussion has gone on in our house for the past fortnight - two weeks precisely at 7:47 last night since the event causing the discussion took place - of whether an injury in sport is justified by the result.

What happened was that after several years absence from the cricket field, I turned out for the legendary Scotsman Publications once-a-year team and insisted, for old times’ sake, on playing wicket-keeper.

I performed reasonably well, but realised towards the end of 20 overs of squatting and stretching that I might never walk again. Then a batsman hit the ball ferociously hard, but almost vertically. Instinct overcame common sense, I bawled "Mine!", staggered 20 yards and hurled myself forward in a wheezing mass of tortured calves and twanging hamstrings.

Remarkably, the ball was in my right glove, a fact acknowledged by astonished team-mates and the departing batsman’s sporting "****** me!" So far, so good.

The bad was that four days and two tubes of Ralgex later, when I was almost able to negotiate stairs or climb in and out of the car unaided, I realised that pain and stiffness in most parts of my body might be easing, but not my left knee, which had taken the impact when I landed after taking the gravity-defying catch.

That was when discussion started in earnest about whether sporting glory - although not quite as glorious as our sporting Australian’s (is there any other kind?) mighty six in the last over to win the game or the attacking batting of our deputy news editor - was worth the pain.

To date, the ayes are still ahead. But many more crunching noises from my knee and I might have to change my vote.

ISN’T science wonderful? (continued), viz today’s story about a chemical injection which allows a sheep’s fleece to fall off instead of having to be sheared off. Two points: one, the injection costs more than the fleece of most sheep is worth and, two, where does the fleece fall after the injection? Anyone who has tried to extricate the flailing legs of a runaway sheep from its tangled, three-quarters-shorn fleece will know how important that question is.