The Dad and I went to the local shop yesterday (peppercorns and garlic bread, if you must know) and Ellie decided to follow us. That much isn’t unusual, but generally she’s distracted by birdlife in the park, and hangs around there, being feline, until we come back. Then she lurks about the shadows and, just when I’ve forgotten to be vigilant, leaps on my back. Ho ho, indeed. I’m sure it was amusing the first few times.

Anyway, whether there was a dearth of starlings yesterday, or she just felt like tormenting me in new and exciting ways I can’t tell, but she crossed the road with us and moseyed on down past the building site. Then she disappeared – whoosh – like a minor character in an Albert Campion story. The Dad, being an old softie, was all worried about her, and when she wasn’t even back for breakfast this morning, insisted on going out to look. He wanted me to come but I explained that it was before eight o’clock and especially cold and that my terrier senses simply wouldn’t be at their best.

Later on it snowed, proper snow, big white flollops of it, and I did feel the teeniest twinge of remorse, in between snores. When there was a lull I agreed to accompany the Mum on a final search. I don’t think the Mum’s sense of smell is any good at all, for she left the sniffing business entirely to me, just following on behind, quite unlike her usual bossiness. I must confess to having a bit of fun with this, leading her to all my favourite lift-the-leg spots before I finally got back to young Ellie’s scent. Unfortunately it stopped at the bottom of a tree, and since Ell wasn’t at the top of it, I was a bit stumped. It was the Mum’s suggestion that we should go on towards the shop, and my humiliation as she insisted on calling Ellie at the top of her voice as we walked along the road.

All of a sudden, as we passed an unprepossing row of brick houses, a small grey shape sped out from behind a garage, whipped across the road and hit me at a forty-mile-per-hour nuzzle. It’s a good thing I’ve got a solid head.