Piglet’s granddad send over a play centre, a term with which nobody seems to be familiar. It’s essentially a smorgasbord of sensory delights for a baby – a play mat bristling with toy and textures, sounds and sights, colours and contrasts for a piglet’s ever-burgeoning brain.
As always with new things in her life, now a whopping ten weeks, there is first a period of quizzical engagement, usually signalled by a slightly bemused, stand-off posture while she sizes it up:
Then there follows a time of happy interaction with the new object, during which her little piggy face relaxes:
Inevitably, though, her mind wanders off to affairs of the day, thoughts of the dinner menu, perhaps sleeping, and when her focus returns to the object at hand, there’s a startled intimation of non-recognition…
“Aargh, what is this thing in which I find myself? Why the danging yokies? I feel one of my self-awareness fugues coming upon me.” She cries out, in a remarkably quiet voice – “NURSE – THE VAPOURS!”