Herd mentality

My parents were, on the face of it, strict about our televisual upbringing as children.

- Joe Gibbs

One programme a week was the limit. That was before nannies became paid like KCs and tele-parenting was born. However, lax enforcement allowed us to watch plenty more, including Western ranching series The Virginian and Bonanza, which left me an enthusiast for leather waistcoats and shunting herds of livestock around. Some friends who binge-watched Yellowstone were so desperately taken with herding cattle that they booked an emergency stay on a Montana dude ranch. I empathised. In the no man’s land between Christmas and New Year, I went to chew the fat with Richard, a farming and enviro-consultant friend who drove a herd of 10 Luing heifers from West to East Highlands last autumn (see next week’s issue, January 21). Crabbed with disappointment at not having accompanied him, I wanted to hear how the trip went.