Getting to grips with shear skill

I nervously went up to Coom, on the Cork-Kerry border, to be taught how to shear. It was akin to shaving while arm-wrestling, says Conor Power

AT ‘the top of Coom’, on the Cork-Kerry border, next to Ireland’s highest pub (which is being rebuilt after a fire last year), I’m in a shed that contains a pen of sheep waiting to be shorn.

I stare at them: a worried man and worried sheep sizing each other up.