If you’ve never heard of it (and I hadn’t) Flat Stanley is a story for kids where a boy is hit by a giant billboard, and finds that he’s squashed completely flat.

You’d think that this would cause some pretty severe medical problems, and the rest of the story would be a graphic description of the surgical procedures needed to restore him to full health, but apparently not.

Instead, Stanley finds that he can live a normal life, and in fact one advantage of being flat is that he can put himself in an envelope and be mailed around the world.

So a friend of a friend is a teacher in a school somewhere in the US of Yankee-Doodle Land, and she sent it to Duncan in England, who sent it to me in China. I spent Saturday being stared at for taking photos of Flat Stanley, and being terrified that a gust of wind would blow him into the Huang Pu river.

Flat Stanley on the Bund
Stanley by the river

Flat Stanley on Nanjing Road
Stanley on Nanjing Road

Now I think I just need photos of Stanley black-out drunk outside BonBon, being over-charged for a fake handbag and standing in a crowd of people, staring at a traffic accident before I can send him to my mate in New Zealand.

[http://FlatStanley.com has a terrifying number of photos that turned out a lot better than these two.]