Hello

I was born at the bottom of the garden.

I can say positively, and without any doubt whatsoever that there were no fairies at the bottom of the garden.

There was a deep water canal. There was a yacht. There were palm trees. There was a clear blue diaphanous sea. And it was deliciously warm. And even though they promised me I could go swimming later, I was not impressed. Later was just not good enough. I had spent the last nine months swimming, and I was not amused to be shunted out into the bright sunlight so that I could see the sea.

I promptly screamed, and started sulking.

I was bandaged up as if I was ill, or a madman. Later I was put into a box on wheels. I couldn't see over the edge. I was strapped down like a criminal.

I sulked and screamed. When I screamed they jerked me about till I felt sick. And when I sulked no-one noticed. I made a mental note to do something about it. What's the point of sulking if no-one knows you're doing it? I would have to sulk more loudly, or more visibly.

I lay in my box thinking about doing it on stage. If I did it in public on a stage everyone would be able to see me and appreciate the depth of the sulk, and would presumably react accordingly.

For a while I thought it was working. All these people peered over the edge of my box and stared at me. There were hundreds of them. They were always peering down at me. Their faces were too close; they were ugly; they leered at me; and they poked me with their big blunt fingers. This wasn't quite the audience I wanted. They were much too close and took frightful liberties. I screamed to go home, but no-one listened to me. I told them they would regret it, but no-one listened. I told them I hated the bright lights. I told them I hated being stared at. I told them I was shy. But no-one ever listened to me.

There didn't seem to be much point in doing anything other than scream, so I screamed, and wondered what to do next.

I was born at the bottom of the garden, which seemed perfectly horrible to me, after all, I didn't ask to be born. I didn't want to get out. Everywhere was bright, noisy and dirty, and I didn't like it at all. I also felt abandoned.

There was this deep water canal at the bottom of the garden. We had come in on the yacht;. Mother's friends were having fun, and mother was trying hard to get me to stand on my own two feet.

It was like being squeezed off the Tokyo subway in rush hour. It's the wrong station; you know that, but all those people in front of you, and all of those people behind you, and all that mob around you, are swirling off the tube, and you go too. It is only when the crowd thins a few yards from the wrong station that your feet touch the ground, and you look around in horror at the wrong houses, and the wrong sky, and the wrong faces.

You turn back, but the crowd is still swarming towards you, and there is no way you can fight against the flow. The station recedes into the distance, until it is only a faint memory, and you no longer know which way to go.

Then you are snatched away, and you never ever see that station again. You may dream about it, you may search for it, you may go up to complete strangers and beg for directions, but no-one ever knows the way back to the wrong station where you were forced into an alien world.

But I was born at the bottom of the garden.

Actually, if they really make you (and they always do), I guess that's a pretty good place to be born.