My dog has been dead for longer than he was alive, which means I m long past having any right to fondly remember him as I stare through a rainy window, or to hear his bark on the breeze on warm evening walks along the old railway track. He s just way too dead> to be taking up that kind of emotional bandwidth any more. How weird would it be for a man in his thirties, with a workplace pension and more than one Oxford shirt, to indulge in routine nostalgia for the animal who lived in his house when he was twelve? Plenty weird.

But weird as it may be, games like Heartbound mean I still think about my dead dog often. I think about how he would stare right into my eyes whenever he was laying dog eggs, as though silently accusing me of being some kind of canine pervert. I think about the time he stole an entire roast chicken from the neighbour s house and then disappeared into the hills for three days, waiting for things to blow over. Or when he turned up one morning in the front garden holding something that looked a lot like a mauled sheep torso. Oh you murderous little scamp. You will never be held accountable for your crimes, because you are dead.

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