This entailed a walk of about five miles around the more isolated farmhouses in the area, of which there were many. I knew the area a little but needed to be given detailed instructions on how to get to the more remote farms. Some appeared to have no road, simply a slightly marked track across fields. The two at the apogee of my round were Pant Glas and Hygga. I never saw anyone at either farm but simply left my pile of Christmas cards and occasional parcels in the front porch.
One morning, it was freezing cold – the area is over 1000 ft above sea level – when I noticed some activity in the farmyard of Pant Glas. There were three border collies facing me in a semicircle; chests on the ground bottoms in the air; making no noise whatsoever. A fourth then closed the circle behind. I felt no particular concern as I had been here before, though had never previously seen the dogs. However, they showed no obvious signs of aggression other than their body position. I had grown up on farms, though the dogs there, in the soft lowlands, were just for playing with and shouting at, not working ones.
Suddenly a fifth dog came racing from my left across the ring taking a piece out of my left trouser leg and a portion of the calf beneath it and shot on out of the right side of the circle. At this point, I made my apologies and left, as the News of the World used to say; quite fast with my bag to the rear. The dogs seemed to regard this as a result and ignored me.
The moral of the story is that you can worry about tsunamis, SARS, terrorist attacks, bird flu, but it is the one you have not noticed yet that is the bugger.