I was brought up Irish, where there was room for my own private world.
I think the idea of Mary Poppins has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life.
And all the time he was enjoying his badness, hugging it to him as though it were a friend, and not caring a bit.
I think that Mary Poppins needs a subtle reader, in many respects, to grasp all its implications, and I understand that these cannot be translated in terms of the film.
I've felt that if I just used initials nobody would know whether I was a man or a woman, a dog or a tiger. I could hide from view, like a bat on the underside of a branch.
