Crumpet-Hands Man's father, much like his father before him and his father before him (and his father after him, due to the former running late) was a baker of outstanding repute. Many declared him a Lutheran of the Loaf, a Barrister of the Baguette, a Patron of the Pita, a Squire of the Scone, and so on, add you own in the comments. By royal decree he was even anointed a Master Baker by the queen, but on account of a misunderstanding this “slanderous!” moniker resulted in a broken nose for her majesty and the emergency reprinting of a million stamps.

  Yet when he wasn't rearranging royal conks our hero's father was consumed entirely by the intricacies of baking, his every waking moment channelled into the running of his bread factory. This factory he ran like the tightest of ships. Literally.

  “Every morning my father would make his rounds of the factory floor – or deck, as he preferred to call it,” Crumpet-Hands Man explained to the villainous Muffin Mind, the pair beholding the dreamlike sequence unfurling before them: a great bustling factory, our hero's father, measuring spoon behind his ear, parrot on his shoulder, marching up and down the line of assembled ranks, inspecting those bakers under his charge. As ritual would dictate these bakers were called upon to salute their cap'in, recite the company shanty – “Bread, bread!...em...” – before the blast of a bugle dismissed them to their posts. Despite this nautical mindset resulting in the occasional mishap (opposing bakeries plundered, customers finding stowaways in their buns, bakers constantly tripping over rigging, lavatories switched out for cannons and many a day's profit squandered due to the factory running aground – add, comments, blah) the baker/captain's principles were never to be questioned.

  “Make set to port!” ordered the scourge of the seven sieves, unfurling a telescope and plunging it and peering into a sack of grain. “Half a turn to the east!”

  The bakers turned up their ovens.

  “Batten down the hatches!”

  The bakers buttered up their Battenbergs. A cannon packed with cobblers blew a hole in the wall, a parrot fled the sanctuary of its master's shoulder and ducked into a sack; and in the centre of all this lunacy the living memory of a baby-faced and toddler-bottomed Crumpet-Hands Man followed in his father's wake (literally), eager to bask in the sheer presence of the baker-come-mariner he so idolised. Unfortunately the mighty baker-come-blah was too blinkered by his obsessions (as well as an eye patch) to notice his son's attention seeking endeavours.

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  “All I wanted was to be accepted, to share a brief father and son moment,” Crumpet-Hands Son regaled a yawning Muffin Mind, the latter's once-ripe blueberries having already shrivelled through tedium as our hero recounted, “For my father's birthday I iced him a heartfelt pirate curse along the length of a Roulade. Alas, despite my ingenious rhyming of buccaneering, father did barely notice.

  “I then crafted a 1:1 scale replica of the Mary Rose from ladyfingers,” our hero sobbed, sniffing away a tear; it went up his nose, made him *cough*. “When I presented the magnificent ship to my father he ordered it blown out of the water – with me aboard. *Cough*.

  “In desperation I hatched a last-ditch plan; this plan did indeed hatch, quack, flap its wings, fall in said ditch – father ordered it blown out of the water.”

  Muffin Mind yawned, checked his watch. His blueberries were so shrivelled they might've been mistaken for rat droppings.

  “Aside from baking and running people through,” our hero wailed on, blowing his nose on the villain's cravat, “my father had one weakness: crumpets.”

  “You don't say,” the villain hoped our hero didn't say. “I do say,” our hero did say. “He loved 'em! Father had crumpets with every meal: crumpets for breakfast (with butter and marmalade), crumpets for brunch (with baked beans and spam), crumpets for lunch (with chicken and lettuce, the crumpets forming the most crunchy of croutons), crumpets for dinner with pilchards and ravioli, crumpets for–”

  “Jeez! I get it! The man liked his crumpets,” the villain shouted with a *pang*, eager that our hero get to the flipping point. Our hero flipping didn't. (For he was no pancake!)

  “Crumpets for afternoon tea (with clotted cream and jam), crumpets for supper (with roast beef and suet); and if that wasn't crumpet enough, father even had crumpets as a midnight snack! (With cookies and a knob of butter. And a very powerful laxative.)”

  Despite Muffin Mind's flagrant disinterest (he was scouring the H.M.S Bakery for the nearest plank to walk) our hero explained that his crumpet-obsessed father even commissioned his own commemorative flag: a grinning and toothless crumpet, centred between a knot of crossed pretzels.

  “He called it the Jolly Crumpet!” an equally as jolly Crumpet-Hands Man beamed, pointing to said flag flapping high atop the bakery mast. “Not the most original of flags, I dare say,” Muffin Mind sniffed without *cough*ing. This our hero conceded. “Yeah, as flags go it is a bit rubbish. Several of the head bakers voiced similar criticisms.”

  “Did your father heed their advice?”

  “No. He had them blown out of the water.”

  Leaving our hero to recount on, the villain found what he was looking for and began walking it.