Once upon a time, long before you or your parents, or your parents’ parents were born, there existed in a far away land a small village named Alpouvar. The residents of Alpouvar lived according to the seasons, their buccolic idyll rarely disturbed by the outside world.
Spring was a time to move their bony sheep to higher ground and shake out their winter rugs, summer was a time of indolence enforced by the arid heat of the South, autumn was harvest time, grapes and olives, sufficient in a good season to trade for the odd luxury, winter was spent with the sheep in the basement and the womenfolk knitting the justly famous Alpouvar socks from the roughly spun fleece of their wiry flock.
Year on year, generation upon generation the village survived and at times prospered on this annual cycle of unchanging events.
In the good years the priest led the population in Christian worship and the Fetes were a time of joy for all.
In leaner times the old beliefs and superstitions came to the fore and octagenarian Senorina Mendez was much in demand for her knowledge of local herbs and folklore.
Into this world was born Lucia, first born child of Pablo and Isobella Benendez.
Lucia was a happy beautiful child much loved by her hard working parents but afflicted from birth with a withered arm and a birthmark on her left foot which unkind neighbours whispered was the mark of the Goat.
Lucia grew quickly, introverted, well behaved but in a world apart from the other village children.
Her parents worked hard, Pablo was often away for weeks in the spring with the sheep and Isobella was left alone with Lucia designing the intricate variations on the traditional designs for the winters knitting. Lucia washed and scrubbed until the house was fit for even the most discerning shephards return.
Reports of damaged and destroyed socks filtered into the village from the neighbouring community of Monte Choro. Other villages in the Vale de Santa Maria reported incursions by a giant goat. Alpouvar entered that winter undisturbed and unprepared.
Winter progressed and the womenfolk hunkered down to their Knitting. Lines of freshly paterned socks made the village look a festive place, reds and blues stood out against the unseasonable snowfall.
The first losses were on the night of the tenth of January…
Five pairs of the Gomez families socks went witout a trace…
The remaining weeks of that January were apocalyptic, whole lines of socks went missing and the village faced financial ruin.
Dogs were left out in the bitter winter nights to guard the few remaining garments but to no avail.
(Point of information, the intricate patterns and vegetable dyes of the Alpouvar regional sock require at least one night of hard frost to bring out there true beauty. Non frosted socks sell for a fraction of the price.)
The village turned inward and called upon the services of Senorina Mendez for their salvation. At this time the venerable wise woman was in her ninety third year and in a frail condition.
Pablo was there that fatefull evening when Senorina Mendez recounted the chilling fable from her youth of the “Giant Sock Eating Goat of Albutherath”
Fable told of a goat of preposterous proportions stalking the land devouring socks on a hitherto unknown scale…
Pablo listened in horror as the old crone told the story of how the last incursions some eighty years previously had been averted. Pablo returned home a shattered man to the arms of his beloved Isobella.
The community were united, Senorina Mendez was in the ascendancy.
“A virgin of the village with the sign of the goat upon her person must be sacrificed to the Giant Sock Eating Goat of Albutherath”
That evening a bitter wind keened through the naked sock frosting lines of Alpouvar as a crowd gathered outside the house of Pablo and Isobella.
Lucia now thirteen, coldly beautiful and showing the first signs of a womanly figure, walked through the silent crowd with her head held high. She was wearing socks, at least thirty pairs draped over her nubile body, their colours and patterns giving the impression of a diminutive Salome as she walked towards her fate…
U start with like something exciting and then wind it down! 
