I’ve found it a useful thing to do. Say something or behave a way that offsides people. Then, when you tell them something sensible it has the added power of surprise.

I look through the glass partition to the worker pool and can’t help thinking of slow dinosaurs. A cow-eyed herd, gathered placidly and chewing amongst low tree ferns with vegetarian stupidity.

Every now and then someone reaches for a mug. Like they’re picking fruit, foraging amongst felty partitions in the sulphured air, their backs hunched over computers, shirts the grey, pale green and soft pink colours of the skins of wild pigs. All with little socks on.

You can tell a lot about a person from their socks. And their mugs for that matter.

I steer myself away from guessing what underwear everyone is wearing and look up dinosaurs on my selphone. I try to figure out what sort of dinosaurs exactly I’m reminded of. Parasaurs, I find.

Parasaurs (they think) produced low-frequency resonances, rudimentary linguistics rivalling some monkeys. Herding bipeds accumulating in a rigid social hierarchy, with a mid-way intelligence.

Mm.

I have a vague memory of reading somewhere that ninety-nine per cent of species that have ever lived have gone extinct. Or perhaps I heard it on the nature discs. I bought them, a job lot, and the mechanical disc player, from the throwback store. Even the little whirr of the machine is calming. Whhhiiiirrrrrr. Click. Zeeeeeeee.

Last night I watched Emperor Penguins.

They talk in-tow melt rates given the increased salinity and warmer ocean currents and how much of the berg we’re likely to lose but how, even so, the maths support bringing it here and that we were right to not dock-build further north and try to move the water overland.

‘Look at the trouble they already have with the Water Train,’ Alan adds, ‘and the increasing attacks.’ He seems to aim that at the Westminster spokesperson, and she tenses in her seat, braced to answer questions.

But Alan nods to Susan and she starts the digigram. The visual looks beautiful. Draws all eyes, as Alan starts the fairy tale. How . . .

. . . The floating ice will come up from the coast (he explains) and be linked to the winch . . .

Tap tap. Tap tap.

Still the chaffinch beats the glass.

. . . Then will move on heated rollers that follow the old bed of the river.

Initially, the rollers will warm the bottom of the berg to create a melt zone. The ice above will push down on that zone, creating friction, causing further heat which will, in turn, itself melt the base of the ice, giving it more fluidity to move. The meltwater will be drained to irrigate points along the route, to help grow food.

On the graphic, the process is exaggerated. Gloriously magnified. Over-size drops riddle down the ice, pooling with the water melted by the downward pressure.

My favourite caption appears then on the screen: Stillicide collected to serve crops.