The Christmas pantomime was the high spot of the year, although Alan himself later recalled of Christmas 'that as a small child I was quite unable to predict when it would fall, I didn't even realise that it came at regular intervals¹.' Back at dreary² Baston Lodge³, his head was buried in maps. He asked for an atlas⁴ as a birthday present and pored over it by the hour. He also liked recipes and formulae, and wrote down the ingredients for a dock-leaf concoction⁵ for the cure of nettle-stings. The only books he had were little nature-study notebooks, supplemented by his mother reading The Pilgrim's Progress aloud. Once she cheated by leaving out a long theological dissertation⁶, but that made him very cross. 'You spoil the whole thing, ' he shouted, and ran up to his bedroom. Perhaps he was responding to the uncompromising note of Bunyan's plain-speaking Englishman. But once the rules were agreed then they must be followed to the bitter end, without bending or cheating. His Nanny found the same when playing with him.