The holiday cottage we rent out is the oldest habitable house in Shetland and the most radioactive (radon gas from the granite it huddles in) but at least the rats can’t handle the bequerels. Ovo Energy want to install a ‘smart’ electricity meter “between 12 and 4” so I’m there with Hugo the Italian Bloodhound, waiting. Adrian arrives in his electric van, I open the front  door and Hugo duly escapes, sniffing exultantly and finding a stray sheep he can gleefully pursue, full identify-for-dinner drive engaged. Here in Shet/Sheepland, this is Very Bad. Dogs are quite rightly shot for less, with lambing looming.

Cardiac stents clanking, I’m in hot pursuit up and down the steep and rocky coastline, followed by Adrian the imported lecky man, who doesn’t see this kind of thing much in Worcester. Over the banks, into the sea, under a dead end cliff, Hugo is nose to nose with the sheep, who is hypnotised in terror. No savaging, as Hugo is a hunter not a killer. “Here’s a meal, human! It’s a big hairy rabbit thing! You deal with it!”

But terrifying a possibly pregnant ewe is not good. I haul the dog away with some washed up rope. He is in a lather of Segugio excitement. All his genetic coding has been activated and ratcheting it down is not going to be easy. I’m wondering if he’ll even survive, as a sheep-worrying hound is really not acceptable in Shetland. Meet Doctor Shotgun? Profuse apologies are made to the crofter whose sheep has now returned to eating seaweed, it looks like Hugo will be allowed to live, and meanwhile Adrian is installing the smart meter. Or trying to. It is not going well.

There’s a complicated eco-friendly part-solar system in play and what usually takes minutes is occupying half a day.

While Hugo dreams of acoustic sheep, Adrian has swopped the old off peak/solar metering/switching for something that actually isn’t very smart, as the aforementioned granite overhang renders mobile signals tentative at best. So we have a not quite dumb meter after three hours (“waiting for wiring diagrams”) that may smarten itself in the days ahead, apparently, by piggybacking on other houses’ electrical smartness, somehow. Dark magic from before the dawn of hydro. Meanwhile we have to read the meter same as before. Ow! That smarts.

I clean up, install traps for the radiation-proof mice and Adrian goes away to look for an EV charger so he can reach his lodgings some 60 miles away. Good luck with that. I head with a still-sheep-tripping Hugo for home, where he ransacks Susan’s knitting, now being addicted, it seems, to wool.  “He’s never shown any interest in sheep” we were told when we adopted him. Well, now we know. It’s lamb chops for tea. Of course it is.