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then her backside went up (indicating her rising hackles) and she began to growl. But the resident did not move. The resident smiled. This smile may have worked on other people, may haveworked on the chalk artist, may have worked on the man with bathroom scales, may even have worked on the Porter. It did not work on Twenty. Twenty growled, her lips curled up, her eyes stuck out. She was offended. This was her patch after all, what right did this cigarette smoking, bespectacled biped have on it? Truly this woman was amazing. She was the sort of person who walked all over other people’s privacy; the sort of person who, when walking along a country path, would come across the inevitable sign saying PRIVATE PROPERTY – KEEP OUT and deliberately enter.
    But Twenty was not allowing it. She barked. She bared her teeth. Black and yellow they were. She growled closer, so close that her nose was practically touching the new resident’s face. I thought I ought to call out to the new resident, tell her that she was in danger. I thought I ought to perhaps warn her that unless she moved she would surely be bitten. I thought I ought to take her away from that place, instruct her never to go there again. That is Twenty’s patch, I ought to have said, and no one goes near Twenty’s patch, unless you’re a dog and only then if you’re invited. All this I ought to have said and done. Instead I did nothing, I sat and watched. I smiled, I stroked my gloves and thought what really I ought not to have thought at all. I thought: Go on, Twenty, bite her. Bite her! Make it really hurt .
    And Twenty did. Twenty bit her on the hand, and blood trickled out of the new resident’s hand and tears sprang up in her eyes, testifying that the bite certainly hurt. There, I thought, now you know. Leave Twenty alone, the pain will go away, the wound will heal up, go home, bandage your hand, dry your tears. But the infuriating new resident did not budge an inch, instead she raised up her hand to Twenty, Dog Woman, inviting her to have another go. It was as if she were saying – Go ahead, Twenty, Dog Woman, take the whole arm off for all I care, I have another. Twenty looked at the hand, considered it, considered what the offering meant. If she hada tail she would surely have stopped wagging it at that instant, for the offering of hand, and arm too if required, meant only one thing: that the new resident was not frightened of Twenty. Twenty was confused. I, a short distance away, was confused also. The new resident looked determined. She pushed her hand towards Twenty’s face, and then the first extraordinary thing happened – Twenty backed away.
    The new resident stood up, Twenty backed further away. The new resident raised her hand higher than Twenty’s jaw level, to head level. She placed her hand on the top of Twenty’s head, on Twenty’s hair. And then the second extraordinary thing happened – she started stroking Twenty, the Dog Woman. And Twenty, the Dog Woman, let herself be stroked.
    Five minutes later the new resident was sitting down on the piece of patchy grass formerly considered Twenty’s property, with Twenty’s head in her lap, stroking, still, Twenty’s hair. Twenty smiled contentedly. (Now, I would not have touched Twenty’s hair for the world, I had my gloves to think of. I feared for the new resident’s hands.) In this manner, sitting an inconspicuous distance away, I watched the happy coupling for half an hour – the new resident stroking and smoking, Twenty smiling and sighing – until I was unavoidably distracted.

A brief history concerning passport photographs .
    My passport photograph collection began when I had ended my habit of going for walks in the city (shortly after Tearsham Park had changed its name to Observatory Mansions). I set off from home and looked about the city for an interesting person to follow. When I had found such a person, I would simply follow him or her, at a discreet distance. Sometimes I