Sedgeweg, a crony of the Tuppers, had many toppings. Some of them were like lids and some like caps. One of particular note was the flat one, the one that decisively lacked fizz. That was unusual, but not unexpected, for Sedgeweg was a ringer, and a Tewkeston one at that, with the distinctive old red shawl and the calipers. His grip was firm, you could say that for him, and you could say much else. People did. Take a walk along the bridle path one morning, just after dawn, and you will hear of little else. Even the birds making a birdy dawn din seem to call out his name, although of course that is just our human fancy at work. Any bridle path hereabouts will be the same, in the mornings, crowded with folk who’ve risen early from their beds, wandering out of doors like sleepwalkers, heading nowhere in particular, with no particular business. It may be the pong of the bridle paths that attracts them, in their dozens, woken from dreams of pigs upon gravel, always the same dream, shared by so many, it is quite a wonder. After all, this is not pig country, hasn’t been for a hundred years or so, long before Sedgeweg’s time. By the time he came along it was all geese, or otters, or just vast tracts of cement. His parents had both been among those who poured the cement, without much in the way of skill, but with enthusiasm. You need to be keen to perform certain actions, when you’ve not been apprenticed to them. But Sedgeweg knew ringing backwards, he’d been trained to it. Lots were, once. You’d be surprised how readily he took to it, all things considered, by which ‘things’ I mean his dumps and flops and clownishness. Each in turn he struggled with, but defeated. He was a decent man. Some, on the bridle path of a morning, have it that he cannot count and never could, but they are wrong. A ringer unable to count would be a strange creature indeed, as strange in its own way as those otters that now prevail where once the pigs held sway. They are not quite like any other otters, or at least any you are likely to chance upon at a standard riverbank. Take your binoculars or a telescope and have a look, you’ll see what I mean.