In the back garden of the semi detatched house in which I grew up was a small pond and at each end was a concrete slab, around the pond wound a path which led up by the lawn to the extension at the back of the house.
But this was not how it appeared to me as a child, for in my eyes then the lawn was the endless steppes of the East from which wild raiding parties of mounted barbarians would emerge to capture women and children and lead them off into slavery. The path was,of course, a road built by a powerful Empire for its disciplined armour clad soldiers to march along, and the pond, my favourite place, was an inland sea somewhat like the Black Sea and the concrete slabs,two cities like Colchis and Troy, great rivals almost perpetually at war. A war that constantly ebbed and flowed, fought out by their fleets during the Summer months but in Winter the soldiers would do battle on the thick ice. The weapons of their greatest foes were not the only threat that these people faced as within the water lived gigantic, golden sea creatures that could surface beneath the boats and capsize them before devouring the luckless mariners alive. To kill one of these golden sea creatures was a feat deserving of great praise and honours would be bestowed upon anyone so brave who achieved that. Perhaps the highest honour would be the hand of one of the King's daughters, a proud and haughty, dark skinned beauty who would need to be tamed.

So, I made a whole imaginary world, a mountain out of a molehill with the aid of my action men and airfix soldiers whose dismembered parts would be found for long years after I had grown up as my parents hoed and dug their vegetable patch which adjoined the pond.

And I wonder whether any of you had similar worlds in which you would escape. If so, what were they like and if you close your eyes can you picture them now?