Uncle Peter never married. He was a sheep farmer who, it is rumoured, used his flock to perform dark cross-breeding experiments. It is said that he once crossed a sheep with a komodo dragon to produce a fierce woolly reptile with a herd instinct. None of these allegations were ever proven but Uncle Peter was not liked in Lambwick Hall and his farm was a forbidding place of weeds and dirty black outbuildings.
When I was a child we rarely visited, but on the occasion of his 50th birthday we went for afternoon tea. He offered me a sandwich and when I asked what meat was in it he laughed and said it was ‘shelephant’.
After his death my parents went to help clear Uncle Peter’s home. They found no animals but many drawings of strange creatures with odd heads and multiple legs. They burnt these.
