To my surprise, Daisy asked me about metaphors. I told her that a metaphor involved a comparison to something else. For example, I said, I might say that she was flying along. She wasn’t really flying along, I explained, I was just comparing her to a bird. Daisy wasn’t too keen on this idea. Her feelings about birds are ambivalent. Are you talking about me as if I was a bird? she asked. Yes, I said. And are you talking about yourself, at the same time, as if you are someone who is entitled to do that? I hesitated. Everything you do is one giant metaphor, she said – only I have substituted ‘giant’ for a word that was much more shocking.