Have you ever been close to something so disproportionate in size to you, so mammoth and looming, that your entire body has turned to jelly and a sense of impending doom has settled into your bones? Think gigantic, towering, impossibly fluffy, spotted all over, life sized and like giraffe.

Now let’s couple that with the searing fluorescence of light strips and screens over and around head. Surrounded by high pitched tones and pops of colour so artificial you can’t believe they’re real.

Hamleys was the place, with the finest toys, and ability to trigger every one of my fears. The hypersensitivities, overstimulation and megalophobia that plagued me daily. And I was here because I needed to get a new friend for a new friend, a little bundle of human light who needed to know, from the get go, that I was the provider of comfort and calm that would always be there.