In The Yard, Dickens is known as a Bulldog who is stubborn in public and soft hearted in private, a proper comic boulder. On slow afternoons Dickens sketches old human shapes on rooftops in chalk and lets the breeze make most of the decisions. Even the glassbirds quiet for a moment when Dickens walks under the leaning tree. Whatever else changes, Dickens means to be one of the names answered for when the corridor lights flicker over the flooded market halls.