The family dog was scratching, sniffing and scoping out the stripped-back Sage bushes in an ungodly hour of darkness, while the neighbourhood slept tossing and turning under lock and key in anticipation of the calling of synchronised alarms to rise and shine to earn their share of the worker’s crust.

Twelve hours earlier, the canine investigator had been circling the firepit where I had been burning the dried cuttings of Sage, locked in a furious battle with the wind and driving rain, smoke billowing from the broken patio flagging stones, in a spontaneous liberating act of clearing the energy in the local postcode.

By midnight, as the bedroom lights on the pedestrian estate went out in glitched unison, fire long since reduced to cold ashes blowing in the wind, a restless fever gripped the hound busy climbing up and down the stairs and pacing from room to room, as the walls of darkness closed in and the ancestors and spirits came alive in a remembered dance of the dead.

And, with the trail gone to seed for a few hours of fitful sleep, so I found myself outside with the top dog sleuth under the cool pale moonlight of the witching hour, where all roads seemed to lead to the barren shrubs at the gardens end.