Another Voice | 13 September 2008

In these straitened days, when the international money markets teeter nervily between relief and panic, and stock exchanges hang upon the slightest twitch of one of Alistair Darling’s implausible eyebrows, I must be mindful of my position in the camelid world. If I sneeze, the British llama market may catch pneumonia.

Not that I am any sort of a spokesman. Llamas and alpacas have greater authorities than me to pronounce on their welfare and prospects. Wise and expert breeders in Britain constitute a community in which I’m a very minor player — indeed I fear my subscription to the Camelids Chronicle may even have lapsed. But regular references in national newspaper and magazine columns to our (until today) four llamas here in Derbyshire — their lives and loves, their setbacks, hopes and fears — probably add up to a substantial proportion of all published British journalism on these delightful, soft-footed browsers.