text: [Themes: Espionage, Horror]
  
  > look around
  A winding country road threads its way between old stone cottages and barns. Daffodils and snowdrops spring from the grass verges, adding a dash of colour to the grey walls and roofs. To your north, the sign of 'The Green Calf' swings in the sunshine, beckoning locals and tourists alike to pop in for a drink. There is a small garden to the south of the road which is attached, unsurprisingly, to a small house.
  
  A short gravel track leads up to a wooden gate to your north-east.
  
  The chickens are scattered across the road, sounding out every last nook and cranny for nourishment. You had better get them back into the farmyard before they're run over by a bus full of ramblers.
  
  Your car, a battered blue Volvo estate, is slewed across the grass verge, two wheels in the ditch.
  
  > climb gate
  You hop over the closed gate...
  
  This wide rectangle of concrete is littered with the chaotic fallout of everyday dairy farming. And its brown! The stark windows of the farmhouse stare accusingly down into the yard from the north, and, to the east, the roof of the main barn is outlined against the rising sun.
  
  The farm gate to the south-west is safely shut.
  
  A crumpled leaflet, presumably discarded by a passing tourist, blows back and forth in the gentle summer breeze.
  
  > read the leaflet
  The leaflet has been torn, mud-bespattered, and generally maltreated, and as such you can make out very little, but it seems to cover topics as wide ranging as sheep varieties, weather forecasting and the country code. It also includes a badly typeset advert for a badly typeset computer game called 'LSE' by Shirc Shimt.
  
  > look up Sheep in the leaflet
  Apparently there are three main varieties of sheep found in Skebdale: the hardy Skebdale Mountain Sheep, the fatter, more cautious, Skebdale-Milton Keynes Cross, and, finally, the newly-bred Fliglot. There are individual paragraphs on each breed.
  
  > look up mountain in the leaflet
  The Skebdale Mountain Sheep is an ancient breed, adapted to cope with grazing on steep moorland. It is world famous for its most unusual trait: the pair of legs on one side of any sheep are shorter than the pair on the other. This allows the sheep to walk around the mountain while remaining upright. There are two distinct strains: those with a left-leg bias, and those with a right-leg bias. Obviously interbreeding is impossible between the two strains of sheep due to simple geographical problems. This means that the two strains have drifted apart to form differing sub-species. The left-leg variety are the more common as they graze with the prevailing wind around the hills in Skebdale. The right-leg  variety, however, tend to end up grazing against the wind. This means they graze more slowly as they must cope with more air resistance, and they have hence become the rarer breed. To overcome these aerodynamic difficulties the right-leg variety developed closer, shorter, more tight-knit coats that allowed them to move faster. However, in order to counterbalance the resulting heat loss, they have evolved thin, concentrated layers of fat beneath their skin.
  
  The Skebdale sheep has never spread further than a few hills in Skebdale as it is perfectly suited to the slope angle of Skebdale Pike. The leg-bias makes migration difficult and unrewarding, so the Skebdale Mountain Sheep remains an isolated and extraordinary specimen.
  
  > look up Keynes in the leaflet
  The Skebdale Milton-Keynes Cross was a result of cross-breeding in the mid-nineteenth century (before the invention of ethics). It created a sheep ideally suited to living on the flat flood plain of Skebdale Beck. The Milton is possibly the exact opposite of the Skebdale mountain sheep. It is a low slung sheep which hugs the ground for warmth and protection, it's layers of fat and wool insulating it from temperatures lower than 30 degrees. A farmer's dream, it grazes slowly and steadily, producing perfectly mown stretches of grass, and yielding high quantities of wool, milk, and fat. The famous cricket pitch in Skebdale was brought to such a high degree of perfection due to a groundsman's brilliant idea. By releasing several Miltons at the right time and angle around the pitch, he created a perfect overlapping hexagonal cut, something very rarely seen on cricket pitches. It was this flash of inspiration that originally brought fame to Skebdale and resulted in the booming tourist industry that now flourishes there.
  
  The name of the sheep is not, in fact, derived from the town, but from the 19th century creators of the sheep, Mr. Milton and Mr. Keynes. (It is a little known fact that the town is actually named after the sheep, not the village of the same name. The developers were so impressed with the concept of a large, artificially created, easily manageable sheep, that they decided to apply exactly the same principles to town planning.)
  
  > look up Fliglot in the leaflet
  The Fliglot was an experimental sheep first released in early June 1966. Bred by the now infamous farmers-cum-genetic-engineers Liz and Ned Brown, of Fliglot Farm, Skebdale, it had a short black coat, two straight, sharp horns, prominent hooves and a pointed swishy tail. Comments at the time likened it to a goat rather than a sheep, but it quite happily bred with the other breeds in Skebdale to produce a small flock of Fliglots. However, they were extremely lazy and unproductive, and also quite violent. In the late 1970s they broke free of their field in South Skebdale. There was a brief spurt of mysterious disappearances in the village the same week, accompanied by heavy storms. At the end of the week the Fliglots returned to their pen and peace returned to the village. Since then the sheep have been regarded as a good luck omen and guarded against escape at all costs.
  
  > Go north
  The farm's hallway serves its purpose well. In other words, its the way in. It leads up to a dark staircase, the northern end flanked by two low, wooden doorframes. Along the west wall, there is a row of three or four wooden pegs, underneath which is a delapidated welly rack.
  
  A bright yellow floppy sou'wester hangs from one of the pegs, clashing badly with the corridor's decor.
  
  > get yellow
  You take the sou'wester, revealing an electric socket underneath.
  
  > look at the yellow
  The sou'wester is dazzlingly yellow. Glowingly mustard-hued, no less.
  
  > search it
  You find nothing of interest.
  
  The wind picks up and the sky darkens as black rain-clouds appear on the western horizon.
  
  > wear the hat
  You put on the sou'wester.
  
  > wear yellow
  You're already wearing that!
  
  > look at the rack
  A welly rack, made out of tough plastic-coated wire, screwed firmly into the wall about a foot from the floor.
  
  > Go east
  Painted in an uninspiring shade of pastel cream-gunk, the farmhouse kitchen has evolved over time into a mixture of modern and ancient appliances jumbled against the walls. Decorated with stains ranging from champagne to tomato ketchup, the ceiling has obviously seen country life in all its glory.
  
  A single rubber glove lies discarded upon the draining board.
  
  You can also see a kettle here.
  
  > get the glove
  Taken.
  
  > examine the kettle
  A blue plastic electric kettle, which contains a little cold water. I shouldn't waste it: after all, there is a water shortage in Skebdale at the moment. Its black power wire leads to a white three-pin plug. The kettle is currently switched off.
  
  > examine the glove
  You see nothing special about the rubber glove.
  
  Black cumulonimbus clouds tower over Skebdale to the north-west.