“Go on, tell us the one about the family of cannibals again — pleeease!”

John groaned. “Not again! How many times have you heard it already?”

“Pleeease.” The two children looked on with big eyes and expectant faces. John sighed with resignation.

“Sit down then. Just once more, eh?”

The children took their places and John began.

“There was this English man backpacking through Australia, he was hitching rides wherever he could and ended up in the back of this beat-up old station wagon. Next thing he knows he’s bashed on the head and tied up and taken to this old shack somewhere in the Outback.”

The children had heard the tale before, but sat in silence, entranced.

“When he comes to, he finds he’s chained to this old metal bedstead. Solid iron it was, far too heavy for the man to move.”

The tension was getting too much for the children and they began to fidget, knowing the next part of the story well.

“That night, the head hillbilly, a mean, dirty old fellow, chopped the fellow’s foot right off! The man screamed and screamed like you wouldn’t believe, but it didn’t put the hillbilly off one bit, and he did the other foot too!!

“An old hag who lived in the shack wrapped the stumps in rotten old rags to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile the two feet were dropped in a pot of boiling water and left there till they were soft and tender enough to eat!”

The children’s eyes were like saucers by now and the elder of the two, a girl of about ten, put a hand to her mouth.

“They didn’t?” she said.

“They did,” said John, “every last bit was eaten! They even threw the bones to their mangy dog!”

“What happened next?” asked the girl.

John was getting into his stride now as the story neared its climax.

“The Hillbillies began to be a bit kinder to the English chap. Because he couldn’t run away without feet, they untied him and even fed him now and again. But none of that mattered to him, he missed his family and his legs hurt like you couldn’t imagine. He cried himself to sleep most nights.

“Then, about a month after they first captured him, the head hillbilly had him tied up again. This time he chopped off a whole leg! You’ve never heard screaming like it, I promise you. That leg lasted the family about six weeks. Then, can you guess what happened next?”

“They chopped off his other leg?” whispered the girl.

“That’s right,” said John. “And they told him there and then, they were going to eat him bit by bit, feeding the whole family, till he was all gone!”

The girl looked at John in his wheelchair. “When is Daddy going to take your arm then?”

“Next week, I think,” said John, manoeuvring his chair to the barred window.

“Goody gumdrops,” shouted the children in unison.