People go mad for babies. They just love babies. Not just human babies – people go mad for all sorts of babies. They go to the Zoo just to see the baby elephants and giraffes. It’s the wobbly legs and the tiny trunks. Brainy people become silly when they see them. Angry people become happy.
‘I don’t care, I’m going to complain to the manager – ah, look at the baby parrot’s little beak!’
People just love babies. They love talking about babies and feeding babies and weighing babies and throwing them in the air and sometimes catching them and – ah, they just love babies. Especially yapping about them.
When it comes to babies, the three most used words in the English language are ‘big’, ‘fat’ and ‘baby’.
‘Will you look at that big fat baby.’
‘There’s a big fat baby.’
‘That’s a great big fat baby.’
‘That’s a grand fat baby.’
‘Ah now, look at the size of that baby.’
‘That’s a good old-fashioned baby. Big and fat.’
Two countries were about to go to war.
‘This means war—!’
Until one of the leaders was shown a photograph of a baby.
‘Oh, look at the fat on that baby! Is this your baby?’
‘Yes,’ said the other leader.
‘Well, we can forget about the war then. You’ll have too much on your hands feeding that baby.’
It wasn’t the other leader’s baby at all but that doesn’t matter. The point is . . . I forget the point. People love babies. Especially when they’re big and fat.
But, really, babies aren’t big at all. They are tiny.
And this baby was really tiny.
What baby?
The BFB.
The BFB was a tiny little big fat baby. The BFB was a girl, all dressed up in pink, and her granny, Billie Jean Fleetwood-Mack, was carrying her on her back.
Excuse me . . .
Yes?
Why are girl babies always dressed in pink clothes?
I don’t know. But later on in the book a seagull called Sam will ask the same question.