I was going to bring this to an end by asking you to imagine a book. A small book, a thin book. Not an epic, not even a novel, but a collection of twenty-four short stories. I would have asked you to imagine that each chapter of the book had an unusual title, which seemed to refer in some way to its contents but was couched in peculiar language. I would have asked you to imagine that the chapter titles doubled as cryptic crossword clues, the answers to which could be inserted into a grid found somewhere in the book. The title of Chapter One would have been clue one, that of Chapter Two clue two, and so on. I would have asked you to imagine that each chapter took up the same number of pages as there were letters in the answer to the title-clue, and that each chapter contained the answer to its clue. The chapters, like the answers, would have had little in common, but for being set in proximate locations and, on occasion, sharing characters.

I would have asked you to do this, what you’re about to finish being, of course, just such a book, except that a) it would have sounded irritating and pretentious; b) it would have been an insult to your intelligence to suggest you’d not already realised all that about it; and c) let’s face it, imagining a country walk was much more fun, wasn’t it?