Nicholas Garland writes: There are many snatches of songs and lines of poetry which lodge in your memory, and that you find running through your head when you're not thinking of anything much. They are companionable, like old friends. I don't remember how I learned a couple of the verses included here; probably I picked them up at school. A year or so ago, I looked them up on the internet and found that they, and two other verses like them, had been included in The Poet's Tongue, an anthology edited by W.H. Auden and John Garrett. They were not exactly as I remembered them, but perhaps, like folk songs, they never have existed in a fixed version. Auden and Garrett do not say anything about their origin, but at the end of the four verses add the words and so ad infinitum ... I wrote down and illustrated the two I remembered, and began inventing the rest.

Childhood can be a confusing time, but not to Evan and Sage. They've got the world pretty well figured out, and are happy to explain it to their perplexed parents.

One year on, new exhibition and book bring back memories of Olympic and Paralympic summerWith exciting sporting and cultural events planned to mark the first anniversary of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, members of the public are being offered the opportunity to own a unique memento of last year's incredible summer. Renowned artist and illustrator Nicholas Garland OBE has captured the colour and spirit of the Games in a series of evocative pictures being exhibited at City Hall and due to be published in a new book.