This is as far as my imagination took me on this venture, only the introduction of an mock E. Nesbit book. I have no idea what would have followed thereafter.
Michael Attwood was not like most storybook children you might read about. For starters, he was not an orphan. No, both his parents were living and were in the best of health, with neither in any risk of suddenly falling ill, dying or even disappearing. Nor was he an only child, he had three other brothers and two sisters. All four of his grandparents were still very much alive and preferred things to be left just as they were, thank you very much. He had no indulgent, bachelor uncles nor any solitary, dowager aunts, which is not to say that his aunts and uncles were not kind or caring, they simply had enough children of their own to worry over. He knew almost everyone he was related too and it was clear that none of them had any great treasures or fortunes, hidden or otherwise. He had not uncovered any dark family secrets, for there were none. His father, like his father before him and his father before him, was a dentist, with little hope of changing the tradition. They lived in a fairly new house with little to speak of in the way of attics and basements, or even wardrobes for that matter. The nearest lake was a full fifteen miles away, the nearest wood, even further. The truth of the matter was that the only thing that really stood out and labelled him as a storybook child was his full name: Michael George Thomas William James Leroy Richard Henry James Peter Ernest Attwood. And none of these were too peculiar, excepting, perhaps, the repetition of the name “James”, but that is what happens when you are the eldest child and your parents are set on honouring all their uncles and fathers. What galled Michael especially about the whole business was that he had all those names and he could not make an acronym – a word using each of the first letters from each name – out of them. Not enough vowels. Despite all this abnormality for a storybook child, Michael Attwood was one and he did have the most amazing of adventures, which involved none of his family but all of his names.
