I hadn’t seen my friend for months, but when we did meet, it wasn’t the Labour party’s problems, her MA or my house move we talked about …

There is a shortage of rescue dogs in the UK, particularly staffordshire bull terriers. No one knows why. Maybe all the existing staffs lost their mojo during the first lockdown, and it has interrupted supply. People might be stockpiling staffs, ahead of Brexit shortages. This is only of the mildest imaginable interest when you are not actively seeking a rescue dog, but my friend B was and, for ages, it was all we talked about. She would send links from Spanish dogs’ homes, and now I could probably get a translation job, provided all you needed me to translate was “un perro sociable y amigable”.

Anyway, Jem eventually arrived, speaking no English but with no discernible Spanish either. When we met in the park, B told me how almost everything about domestic life confused the hell out of him. He would stand on the sofa staring at his paws and swaying about as if he were on a boat, and lift a pie clean out of your hand. From this, she concluded that he had been raised not by humans, but by other dogs. Then we talked for ages about his stance and gait, the way his rolling shoulders gave him a beautiful wildness, but also made him look a little bit like a CGI terror robot from The Maze Runner, and how his stocky, slightly bowed legs were reminiscent of a young Dennis Waterman.