They had waited supper half an hour for him, at Grace's house, and even at that it was only five-thirty.
At around age six, perhaps, I was standing by myself in our front yard waiting for supper, just at that hour in a late summer day when the sun is already below the horizon and the risen full moon in the visible sky stops being chalky and begins to take on light.
About 13 years ago, on a family holiday, it was his job to keep his five-year-old son, Tom, amused by telling him The Odyssey while waiting for supper to arrive: 'I'd wind up neatly as soon as I could see the food coming.' By the end of The Odyssey, 'Tom was sitting with a glass in his hand like this [Pullman pressed hard on the sides of an imaginary glass].
That created a chilling trauma not only for the workers ensnared but also their children waiting for supper.
There, Max leads the creatures in a frenzied rumpus before sailing home, anger spent, to find his supper waiting.
He leads them in glorious "wild rumpus", but tires of rebellion and goes home to find supper waiting for him, "still hot".
Max stares the Wild Things down; they anoint him king; and he reigns until, lonely and a little hungry, he sails home to find his supper waiting for him.
In a fine, spidery but legible hand, he writes: 'Stockholm (Rather drunk after a solitary supper, waiting for a curtain to go down. Feb. 9, 1957)... Women like war, periods of waiting.
The wild things so hate to see Max leave that they try to scare him into staying, but he is not intimidated, and he sails back to his room, where he finds his supper waiting for him.
He gets home to find his supper waiting for him in his bedroom and still hot.
