Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men

As the artist sleeps the night after the birthday party, the artist's son has a dream. He travels through these long broad tunnels of cauliflowers into a large and open lake where birds with little birthday notes in their beaks dive from left to right and right to left again. Fish of all colours leap from the water and soar through these multi-coloured rings held by fantastic stand-up cherubs in the clouds. He makes it through entirely and lands on a giant leaf, getting caught in the current. Then he travels faster and faster, towards a giant waterfall, and after a while goes sailing over the edge, gliding like a leaf himself, cutting through the air like a paper dart, and by the time he lands at the bottom, he is lying on his back with a broad five-year-old grin on his face and with his little presents beside him, waving at the friendly gorillas in the trees, nodding at the odd hippo's head emerging from the water, and belly-laughing with the pikes. There is no doubting it: he is happy in this dream, and he bears none of the anxiety befalling some of the crabs at the bottom of the lake. He looks up with an air of bliss as he continues through the water and spots high above himself a flying pig. He so wants to be up there himself - he likes pigs - that he wills himself into the air like a magnificent boy in a flying machine and starts - as if by magic - flying higher and higher. As he looks down he can just about see everything - the wooden huts being built at a rate of 3 million a second, the factories churning out custard pies, the armies gathering in the distance with their feet stuck in concrete. My, he shakes his head and goes even higher. He feels the warmth of the sun and suddenly remembers the chocolate car in his pocket. Better eat it before it melts, he thinks. And so he does. 'I like birthdays,' he whispers, to the make-believe earth below. 'I really do.' This last phrase wakes up the artist, but not yet the artist's son.