No change here: grey and cold.

Nevertheless, when I announced I was taking the mutt for his constitutional, I had another volunteer. Phil piped up helpfully from behind his laptop: “Shall we come along?”

In a flash, the 40 minutes of sanctuary away from the hustle and bustle of family life disappeared: and in its place a thunderous seven-year old was scowling as though his life depended on it.

Felix had laid out his table football game with infinite care, albeit not on the table, but on the floor. And now it was time to forsake the tiny players on their hemispherical podia to take a stroll around a frankly Dickensian outdoors.

It was not deemed fair exchange.

“Mum, I had my fresh air in goal this morning!” he stormed, ever hopeful that negotiation might let him off the hook. But Maddie was already donning her flowery wellies and the tide of time must needs sweep her brother in the same direction.

The dog has never been an easy soul to fix a lead to. We command imperiously, “Sit!” so that all the neighbours can hear how firm we are. But they do not have the advantage of seeing the dog, who sits and then, because he can hardly contain his excitement, turns in tight circles of virtually unconfined joy.

It is like trying to fix a lead to a whirligig: trying.

And he chooses, for the location of this exercise, the centre of the porch, where the world and his wife are balancing one-legged, aiming the other foot unsteadily at an inhospitably cold wellington boot.

Chaos. Mayhem.

Somehow we managed to explode out of the door. I said to Felix: “Do you want to take your football, love?”

He indulged in some more stormy grimaces and affected resolution, striding off on the path to the forest: but his resolve crumbled and he ran back, rooting in the box of Important Things kept in the porch until his football emerged.

And we set off.

We have a main road to traverse before we reach the acres of forest we love. And as we arrived at the crossing we were aware immediately that there, on the opposite side of the road, standing at the edge of the forest, was company.

Every day, twice a day, these two big muscly husky-dog types walk past our back gate to the forest. And every day, twice a day, unless I contrive otherwise, Macaulay does his best to harangue them as they walk past.

Whatever he is barking, I know it is blunt and antagonistic. Macaulay does not mince his woofs. The expressions on the faces of the dogs indicate that, were there not a fence between Mac and themselves, they would gladly eat the little terrier for breakfast.

Consequently when we meet them in the forest, there is some social awkwardness, as well as a frantic tug of war on the part of the opposition as the two stunning giants lean pointedly towards their waiting snack.

Macaulay loses his impudent little voice at these times. We simply turn round and walk in the opposite direction.

I have unwisely taken to calling the dogs Macaulay’s Sworn Enemies. Which proved an unfortunate strategy about a week ago, when in full hearing of their owners Felix shouted energetically: “Mum: it’s The Enemy!”

Any lecture about appropriate terms of address would be simply shutting the door after the horse had bolted. The dog’s owners, perfectly nice if a little neurotic, have remained stoically taciturn ever since.

We backtracked and re-routed, then crossed when the coast was clear. Felix kicked his football to Phil, and Phil kicked the football to Felix, all the way through the woods to Macaulay’s favourite rancid pond.

When we reached it, Mac launched himself into the water of questionable provenance, pawing frantically at I know not what. We’ve abandoned the Digging for a Dead Body Theory in favour of a hypothesis which posits that he is digging for water snails.

Let us hope, Reader, that this is so.

And on the way back, having hauled him out by hand because there is no way on God’s own earth he was leaving this smelly Eutopia for the comparative comfort and warmth of a human residence, we all kicked the ball to one another, into puddles, into ditches, into the bushes of gorse which are gaily outfitted in early Spring yellow.

And we ambled across the tabletop, surrounded by ramparts, a tiny plateau which has been used by man for thousands of years.

We tramp on earth which covers the remains of roundhouses and a village which once thrived. Now it belongs to us and the deer, and a disreputable terrier.

No change here; grey and cold.