Tigers, Children and Things During the time that I was a toddler, I had two pets: a retired police

Alsatian called Betty and a tiger called Tiger. Betty did not live long after she retired from the police force, only a year or two, but my mother told me that she could leave me in the front garden with no fear of my being abducted, if Betty was wi th me. I missed Betty when she went away. Mum said she was just old, but I think she mi ssed her job and her old friends, although I knew that she liked her new family too. Almost as soon as Betty went away, a new friend arrived. I knew that it was a ti ger from TV and the zoo - I have always loved animals and nature programmes - bu t I could never pronounce her name. It started deep in the back of the throat an d the 'r' rolled for a while. It was too guttural for me as a child, so I just c alled her Tiger, which was pretty close anyway. I wasn't allowed to play alone in the garden without Betty, although Mum said th at she trusted Tiger just as much. Shortly after I started infants' school, Tige r went away too. I know now that Tiger was what most people in the West would call an imaginary f riend. In other cultures, people are more generous and refer to them as familiar s. I now think that Tiger came to give me comfort and a sense of security after Betty died, but I also believe that she was real - just not visible to many. But why wasn't she visible to many people? I can hear most of you shout: 'Because she was just a figment of your imaginatio n'. And maybe you're right, but who can put their hand on their heart and swear on t heir children's lives that they know that that is true? Would you be so bold? Ma ny people will be sceptical, but they do not really know either. Have you read any Carlos Castaneda? Well, I can promise you that I hadn't either when I was pre-school and that can be borne out by the fact that the books were n't written until 20 years later. Joking aside, I believe that Tiger was there and while I lived at home, where no -one ridiculed me, I could see her, but when I went to school, I was taught to c onform. This was beautifully illustrated in the song 'Puff, the Magic Dragon' wi th little Jackie Paper. My younger brother also had a friend whose name was Andrew. I was older by this time and couldn't see Andrew - I had been robbed of the ability by conformity but my parents used to set a place for him and answered questions posed by Andre w but voiced by my brother (Andrew wants to know why ...). The point I am trying to make is that I was fortunate enough to have Spiritualis t parents who believed in ghosts, spirits and life after death. They believed th at my brother and I could see our friends and never discouraged or made fun of u s. In fact, my father told me years later that they really could see them and that Andrew was a local boy who had died a cot death, but that they were scared to ad mit it to us until we were old enough to realise that we could not tell everyone what our parents thought in case they were deemed to be crazy.

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