Charles Kingsley offered me The Heroes, which I found interesting but was completely unable to work out who these people were, when they lived nor what country it all seemed to have happened in. I think I imagined Ancient Greece to be somewhere near Lulliput for some years. I puzzled deeply over who Jason and the Argonauts were and where they went. Their ship didn’t need petrol so the Golden Fleece service station was a red herring. And when I encountered Aquanaut (a Sea Hunt imitator on TV) and Astronaut—the newspapers were full of the Project Mercury team in training—I went back and checked up but still could work out what an Argo was. "Ah, go and get stuffed," Horrie reckoned when I foolishly asked him. Only one of us would ever come to know the correct answer.