This is Chess, named after G.K. Chesterton, of course – or, possibly after the 1980s musical written by half of ABBA and the whole of Tim Rice, and his owners have been pulling my leg all this time.

Here he is with, I think, the character and whimsy of the Father Brown stories written all over him. It’s lucky something is, otherwise, it’s black curls on black curls, black shadows and black highlights. Lovely. Oh, and no eyes, apparently. Not until I wrote to inquire of his owner whether he had the usual number of eyes, or indeed any.

And these came:

At this point I was going to embark on a long lecture about G.K Chesterton, and had pulled my copy of The Man who was Thursday off the shelf, in order to leaven good old Wiki with some thoughts of my own for once. That was my mistake. Firstly, I realised I remember absolutely nothing about it, and it was high time, more than high time, in fact, that I reread it, and secondly, in putting it somewhere sensible so that I would remember to read it next, I lost the damn thing.

So there is nothing for it but to show some pictures.