Saturday Rave: Mary Poppins by P L Travers.

Sometimes, especially when you're small, stories can be the only source of hope in a mightily large and uncomfortably knobbly world.

But, oh, if Mary Poppins can blow in on the East Wind (the East Wind! Not a comforting too-good-to-be-true southerly, but a bracing blast from the Urals) then anything is possible.

It might be really hard to believe in a proper Fairy Godmother alighting in, say, Birmingham; but someone snappish, who smells of boot polish and Sunlight Soap: well, someone like that could easily walk up the front path and knock on any door.

And someone like that (for all grown ups are mysterious) might quite easily have friends amongst the stars, too.

Mary Poppins...was wearing her blue coat with the silver buttons and the blue hat to match, and on the days when she wore those it was the easiest thing in the world to offend her.

Doesn't someone like that just have to be real?

Word To Use Today: offend. This word comes from the Old French offendre, to strike against, from the Latin offendare, which means the same thing.