A time of quiet contemplation and companionship or of energy and joy, a walk with your dog is an experience shared with a being which will show affection, share happiness, be appreciative and loving. Meg, a bearded collie, walked and ran with me in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow for five years or so, usually in the evenings. She would run joyously back and forth chasing a ball or pummelling her way through piles of autumn leaves. Whatever the weather, she had fun. It could be a time to catch up on the day or for quiet thought if with Meg alone. Whichever, it was an interlude between more pressured times of work and domestic matters.

In Kelvingrove one can find oneself, as T.S Eliot writes, “in the stillness between two waves of the sea.”