Enfant terrible

TWO fellow travellers who, many moons ago, were first presented to me on the day of my birth. They have been with me ever since. I was not always that easy to get along with, as you can probably tell, and our relationship soon descended into a brutal odyssey of systematic eye-gouging, bath-time waterboarding, teatime indifference, bedtime suffocation and other inexcusable forms of sado-masochism.

I must, therefore, hang my cruel head in shame lest I incur the unremitting wrath of the Teddy Bear Liberation Front (TBLF) and find myself captured by iron legions of clockwork soldiers, dragged through the Lego-lined streets of Lower Toytown like a deposed emperor and then forced to prepare endless supplies of quivering pink blancmange for emaciated crowds of unforgiving golliwogs.