Postcard from Norfolk - Llama drama or other matter?

Wells is home to a small herd of llama, or alpaca. For most of the day they sit in a contented huddle in a field behind the church, looking exotic but, at five o’clock, their owner leads them from their pasture to, presumably, their overnight accommodation. This requires him to lead five haughty and frankly surly looking creatures along the pavement next to the road.

To say that the llamas (or alpacas) look skittish is an understatement. He does do a very good job of holding on to the reins of all five but one feels that if there was a concerted effort and a five way bolt for freedom, it would be chaos, South American style. The creatures manage to look both haughty and mad as a bag of bats at the same time and one feels that the whole herding process could get, literally, out of hand any moment.

For instance, if there were a problem, it would be a llama drama. If the problem caused upset to the beasts’ owner, then it would be a llama farmer in a llama drama. If somebody, in the midst of a stampede, attempted to hurt the beasts and the owner retaliated, might this not be a llama harmer and llama farmer in a llama drama? And off course, if a prominent television historian and a famous film director were visiting the region and were somehow involved in some sort of altercation with the beasts and their owner, then it would be Simon Sharma and Brian De Palma in a llama drama with a farmer.

If they are not llamas, then any unruly behaviour would merely be an alpaca fracas.