You’re not going to believe this, but this chapter was dictated to me by a dog. Honestly. It’s the kind of thing that happens when you have a local witch. The canine, who belongs to the Lamberts, is a schnauzer called Schnapps:

‘Firstly, I would like to thank the author of this book for giving me, a dog, the opportunity to contribute a chapter. I haven’t read the rest of it, but I hear he is telling you about our village. I can’t think why you should want to know about our village –I don’t want to know about where you live, and I’m sure he doesn’t either– but since that is the topic I shall stick to it. It will be good for you to look at the place through a dog’s eyes; I imagine the author hasn’t said much about species other than Homo sapiens sapiens.*

This being so, I shall tell you about the world the human inhabitants miss out on. Because you miss out on a lot. For a start, you don’t have a sense of smell, something for which I sincerely pity you. How can you live without it? You don’t even do anything about it. People with poor sight can wear glasses or contact lenses. The deaf have hearing aids. Indeed, as far as hearing and sight go you can do better than nature, since you can, using telescopes, binoculars, microscopes, magnifying glasses, and so on, look at objects too small or distant to view with the naked eye, and you can use amplifiers, loudspeakers, microphones, et cetera, to increase the volume of sounds. But what about those whose sense of smell is weak? You haven’t invented anything to help them. Oh, sorry, you have. The handkerchief, or tissue, for unblocking stuffed-up noses.