Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear update - we LOVE in really big capital letters this book. Three chapters a night and the Wafflettes baying for more.

It suddenly dawned on me that Andy Stanton has managed to write a Goon Show for kids. (Yes, it's that good.)

"Mr Gum stood on the oily deck of the Dirty Oyster, scowling at everything in sight. Not that there was much to scowl at - just a load of water, a bit of sky and a line between called the 'horizon' which God had put there to keep the sky from getting wet."

Replace Mr Gum with Neddy Seagoon, hear the sentence read in Roy Greenslade's announcer voice plus BBC library sound effect waves and you're in similar territory.

Essential reading.

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... and I'm wondering whether Polly is some weird amalgam of P.J. Harvey and George Herriman's Offisah Pup ("I been a boy all me life an' I always wee standin' up 'cos I'm not a girl or nothin'").