Immediately adjacent to the Duntblau Wool Shop, on the main shopping parade, is the Duntblau Nougat Parlour. This is the chief source of nougat, not only in Duntblau, but for miles around.

The proprietor of the Nougat Parlour is a fellow called Jukka-Pekka [Illegible], who can best be described as a “capsized man”. That is how he was referred to in the most authoritative book on the subject, Pen-Portraits Of The Proprietors Of The Duntblau Nougat Parlour, From Its Foundation In 1882 To The Present Day.

The illegibility of his surname is but one, telling, sign of his capsized nature. Add to that the fact that he is often to be found upside down and soaking wet, even when behind the counter selling nougat to the more confectionery-bedazzled citizens of Duntblau.

His history is curious, if shadowy. It is also dark, sweeping, flinty, error-strewn, piquant, lode-bearing, toffee-nosed, hip, hep, and hapless. Some claim it is tacky. Whichever words are used to describe his history, they pale in comparison to the pencil-drawings and diagrams which often accompany them. Many, if not most of these were executed at a single marathon session by Duntblau’s civic penciliste, Maisie Binns.

Maisie Binns herself is a woman without a history.

“One day she was just there,” reported the town blabbermouth, “Sitting on a chair near the shopping parade, scribbling in her sketchpad with a pencil. It was as if she had simply dropped from heaven. The pencil whizzed over the paper, she turned out drawings and diagrams with a felicity that can only be marvelled at. She was there, and then, just as suddenly, pfft!, she was gone. They say we shall not see her like again, but this is incorrect, as a second penciliste will be appearing shortly, God willing, if my prayers have been answered. And why should they not be?”

There is something dismal about Duntblau once one wanders far from the shopping parade. Any sense of civic oomph is dispelled the further away one is from wool and nougat. But I suppose the same could be said of virtually any cluster of buildings, any human settlement, in any of the districts of any of the regions in any of the countries in any of the continents on any of the planets in any of the solar systems.

It cannot be said of the seas. The seas are very different from the lands. The seas are soaking wet, and riddled with fish, and cephalopods, and huge aquatic monsters which suddenly crash to the surface and overturn our puny human boats, capsizing them, and all who sail in them.