My American friend JG bought the old mews building a long time before I moved to Edinburgh. I did see her there once with her sister A – but only because I had mastered time travel. My sudden appearance rather took her by surprise, as did my parting words ‘I’ll see you on Facebook’.  In her time this social networking platform had not yet been invented.

Now in the present, with my cousins R and A, I paid a visit to the mews and the surrounding land. Using Google maps in layers format, I traced our route there from the (old) St James Centre. My cousins just wanted to see the conversion of the stabling into self-catering apartments, whereas I was keen to photograph the new born lambs in the field and email the pictures to JG.

I had heard that the landowner was a rather nasty character, but hadn’t appreciated that he kept dangerous dogs. The moment that I stepped into the field to snap some shots of the straggly-looking lambs, a pack of dogs raced towards me.

A large brown Labrador-Alsatian reached me first, clamping my right arm in its jaws. The pain was horrific, and just made worse when I tried to shake off the animal. I only managed to free myself when the landowner’s grandmother called the dog away.