It's fair to say that our hero's father/baker/pirate was crackers for crumpets. (“He even had crackers with crumpets as part of the cheese course, then crumpets with the after-dinner coffees; his guests did not appreciate taking their cappuccinos via the hollowed-out vessel of a leaky crumpet, lest it be said, and thus took their scolded laps–”)

  “Get on with it!” panged a flipping sploosh from the plank.

  “Since my father did so love crumpets – I believe I mentioned this,” our hero went on narrating, “I surmised that his attention could perhaps be turned by a very special crumpet.”

  “Pray it be an exploding crumpet that'll decapitate us both and bring this endless backstory to a cease,” Muffin Mind grumbled, climbing from the sea via plank. While he dried behind his blueberry ears and plucked a perplexed crab from his quiff, from the surrounding swirls of gaseous flour there unfurled a new scene: the factory-come-ship melted away, in its place a boy's bedroom, desk creaking with recipe books, a precocious child chewing on the end of a pencil while hunched obsessively over their pages.

  “Here at my desk – that one there, see?” our hero pointed, ensuring the villain and his readers were following along, “I set about creating the most magnificent crumpet the world had ever seen. I must have toiled away for hours on hour on hours on end; I also toiled away for hours on side, hours on top, hours on bottom, hours underneath, a quick couple of hours toiling around the maypole–”

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  “Make it stop!” the villain and his crab *pang*ed simultaneously. By now the villain's face was red-velvet with vexation, his quiff steaming.

  “Finally, after much toiling in various positions,” Crumpet-Hand Man said, for one of his hands had momentarily fallen off due to a typo, “I had perfected the ultimate crumpet. All I needed do was unveil my creation to what was sure to be a beholden father!

  “...Yet, little did I know,” our usually buoyant hero sank, peering downcast into the abyss of his part-baked hand(s), “I had unwittingly set in motion a chain of events which would quite literally reshape my fortunes forever.”

  Much to the perking of the otherwise comatose villain, Crumpet-Hands Man looked set to reveal the turning point in his illusive past, that moment when he went from mere boy to mere hero with crumpet hand(s)(blah); but just as he seemed ready to spill the proverbial beans (for brunch with spam and Branston!) our hero's attention was diverted by a spectral figment emanating within the shimmering glaze of a nearby egg tart: from the semi-set pool of custard wibble a face seemed to call, “Wake up! Crumpet-Hands Man, please do wake–”

  But before our hero could communicate with this tart, or take another bite from its custardy-cheeks, Muffin Mind was quick to whisk both he and the hero into the next chapter.

  “Onwards!”the villain hissed, taking his nemesis by the arm(s) and dragging him into a spinning vortex of memory flour. “Perhaps within your teenage years we will discover your innermost secrets; preferably before one of us has to commit an act of mutiny.”

  “My abetment, sir, will come at a price,” our hero misheard, slapping the villain's back. “Oh! But for the price of a pound of–”

  “Shut up!”

  “Righto. *Cough.*”