Was there ever such a hopeless ingrate! Inches from my face Mrs Flatman was swinging from the crossbar of her hammock, her lips parted in mockery, her nipples, brown and mocking also, protruding like a chimp’s – and I was complaining. Because I wasn’t getting quite, because I wasn’t getting exactly, because I wasn’t getting precisely what I wanted. And did I know what that was? Oh yes – that Mrs Flatman and her best friend (but mainly Mrs Flatman) should look up and discover that I was there, that they should know whose red little eyes and whose even redder little putz that was, burning holes in the bottom left hand corner pane of glass. What, so that they could immediately scream and wrap towels around themselves and run fleet-footed like the startled worshippers of Diana into Mrs Flatman’s kitchen? Or so that they could give me a special wave perhaps, and throw me kisses, and do handstands by the side of the children’s paddling pool in my honour? No, I didn’t want either of these things to happen. What I needed to perfect my bliss was for Mrs Flatman and Mrs Lisberg to know that I was there and to take not the slightest bit of notice of me. I wanted them aware of me but indifferent; disrespectful, scornful, contemptuous of my presence. I wished for them to use me precisely as the Brobdingnagian Maids of Honour used the tiny Gulliver when his Nurse carried him to visit them at their Toylet, without any Manner of Ceremony, like a Creature who had no Sort of Consequence.

Oh, those giant women!

Observe the dangers of allowing unexpurgated works of literature to fall into the hands of children.

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