Growing up, I remember there being an awful lot of myths. There were myths for everything no matter what. To name but a few there was the myth about the legendary bright green bum bag being the holy grail of bum bags, the one about all the men and women employed especially to bend bananas, the myth that a swan could break your arm with its wing, and the myth that if the wind changed while you were mucking about, you could end up looking like a really unfortunate church gargoyle (my personal favourite). As the years wore on, several things became clear about these myths: one of them was that a swan really could break your arm. I know this because I was with some friends who found tormenting a swan was much more fun that waiting for the wind to change. One of them had his arm broken (my friend, not the swan) and to be honest I remember thinking good on you swan, good on you.

Once I’d worn myself out with working my way through all the myths there were, I started to wonder what the myths were really there to do. Was it to scare us in to behaving? That didn’t seem right, seeing as I knew nobody who behaved. Or was it that we need myths to make life more exciting? Yes, I decided, that sounds much more likely.

Myths have always been there, you see, that’s just the way it has to be. I can’t imagine a world where myths don’t exist. I don’t think that would be very much fun at all.