Oh, the ones that always make me feel underdressed. Well, thanks a lot! As if it isn’t bad enough that I’m wearing this old jumper with splotches of black on it from where I painted the shed yesterday. The mergansers always fly away from me, through the gap where the bridge used to be, every time they see me. They seem like a very fearful bird. Are you feeling fearful today? You were a wolf yesterday.

I was a wolf because we had been talking about that bit in Reka’s journal, where she describes the time she played in the pub in the Scottish Highlands, and the landlord had a pet wolf and there was the lock-in and the wolf ended up falling asleep with its head in her lap, and that reminded me I hadn’t been a wolf for a while…

Ah, Wolf Night! So memorable and magic. I say that like I was there. But I feel like I was, just from reading her account of it.

… and I thought in view of what we are doing today it might help if I was a creature with a knowledge of the river. Also, maybe, yes, I do feel a bit fearful. You said that if you found the swimming spot you have been talking about, you were going to dive. I don’t want you to dive. You don’t know what’s under there, and it’s not within my capabilities as a female merganser duck – or within my capabilities as anything else – to call an ambulance if you hurt yourself.

But the whole point about Abbot Cathcart’s Pool is that it’s sixteen feet deep. There is nothing you CAN hurt yourself on. I do love the way you can just switch animals like that. How does it work?