And so Hollandé did returnith from the weekly council of rulers, his pleadings to the queen of Germanicus to further open her kingdom’s coffers penetrating not her horne’d helmet nor her stone heart. The messiah thus visited upon his alchemists and forgers of coin and his demands were such as to make them tremble.  And they did retreat from his rage to the corners of their dungeon, the tar torches adorning the walls reflecting with terrible majesty in their master’s dark rimme’d spectacles.

Long before Buzz, Woody et al arrived with their wonderful pixillated world, Disney had virtual carte blanche to foist whatever they chose upon pre teen children. And, deep in the bowels of their script writing department was some evil little bastard whose sole task was to ensure that the dog, cat, bear, dolphin or ocelot snuffed it in the final reel.  OK, I lied about the ocelot, but you could guarantee that an otherwise rare treat to pictures would end in tears, with a hundred furious mothers assuring their kids that either there was a doggy heaven or that it was all pretend,  while silently wishing Walt dead and swinging from the nearest tree.

There was once a boy who went to war. Aged just 16, he persuaded the recruiting Sergeant to turn a blind eye, got kitted out and left for France, there to join his brothers in the trenches. Two years later, he was the only one to return home.  The years passed and the boy became a man, took over the farm and worked the land well into his 70’s. Blessed with an agile mind and tough as Teak, he bore the scars of working with often unguarded and seriously dodgy farm machinery – not least several missing finger joints, victims of an unruly buzz saw.  And with no one about to help on the day his cab-less tractor tipped over, he bent a steel bolt to free himself from the wreck and then walked home. He lived into his late 80’s and died while finishing the Guardian crossword. Like I said, bright. And tough.