The narrator and his wife wanted to ‘duplicate’ the round—the world voyage made 200 years earlier by Captain James Cook. They had been making formidable preparations for the last 16 years. First of all they got a boat especially designed and professionally built for this purpose. It was a 23 metre, 30 tonne wooden-hulled boat. They tested it for months in the roughest weather. They were both mentally and physically prepared to undertake their exceptionally long and challenging sea-voyage.

OR

They had been preparing for the past 16 years, spending all their leisure time honing their seafaring skills in British waters in lieu of their round the world voyage. Their boat, the Wavewalker, was a 23 metre, 30 ton wooden-hulled beauty which had been professionally built and they had spent months fitting it out and testing it in the roughest weather possible. The family also took on two crewmen, American Larry Vigil and Swiss Herb Seigler to help them tackle one of the world's roughest seas,the southern Indian Ocean.

It was on this day that a CT scan was done on King Tutankhamen’s mummy after an X-ray on the same by an anatomy professor. His was the first Egyptian mummy to undergo such a scan. A modern operation performed on a cursed ancient mummy paved way for various superstitions and rumors. The CT scan resulted in producing various life-like images.

King Tut was buried in a coffin made of pure gold “lavished with glittering goods”. The gilded treasures found included precious collars, inland necklaces and bracelets, rings, amulets, a ceremonial apron, sandals, sheaths for his fingers and toes. In those times, the royals believed in the idea of taking their wealth with them. Tut was adorned with all such riches for his journey after life. It also gives the idea of the Egyptian belief in resurrection.

The mummified body of King Tut (Tutankhamun 1355 - 1346 BC) was cut up in several places by the first expedition led by British Egyptologist Howard Carter, sometime in 1925-26. This was done to extract the jewels and amulets that were adorned on the embalmed body. The remains had become fragile due to this mishandling and rested on a sandy coffin. Since then, it had been moved twice for examination by X-Ray.

In January, 2005, it was taken for a complete CT scan, by an Egyptian team, to establish the cause of death of the young king. Thousands of scanned images were reviewed and it was established that King Tut was not murdered.

Visitors from different places came to the Tut’s grave to pay him respect.  They watched the frescos on the walls of the burial chamber and stared at Tut’s face with keen interest. Some visitors read noiselessly from their guidebooks about the life of the young pharaoh. Everyone tried to make a scrutiny about the death mystery of the young pharaoh. The mummy was of great interest to everyone.

The narrator found herself in the midst of all those ‘nice things’. They once belonged to her mother. The silver cutlery, the antique plates, large vases, tea pots, the table cloth with the burn marks were there. But they lay there in a ‘tasteless’ manner. No doubt, they aroused nostalgic feelings in her. The narrator didn’t long to possess them any more. They were useless now. Their true owner was no more in the world.

The narrator kept staring at the woollen table cloth because  she did not want to look around, she was scared to do so. As she stared at the table cloth and began to rub it, her fingers grew warm from rubbing, she followed the lines of the pattern and somewhere on the edge, she started looking for a burn mark that had never been repaired. She realized then that it was her mother's table cloth.

Adults talked of love and preached about it but they did not act lovingly. This is the moment of realization, the speaker begins to understand that adults are hypocritical and do not practice what they preach to children. They do not refrain from harming others. The poet certainly does not approve of their approach.

In the poem childhood by Markus Natten, the words hell and heaven depicts the transformation from being a innocent child in to an individual hypocritic adult.

The childhood is the heaven where the child has spirit of vengeance or urge for power, where the adult life is the hell with man running all around conquering the world.

Every human being in this world at some point fall into the life of hell from innocent heaven.

He expresses concern over his childhood’s disappearance. Childhood cannot be regained. It keeps our life aloof from the world of hypocrisy, bitter reality and materialism.

According to the poem, the process of growing up involves the attainment of mental maturity. A person is said to be grown up when he has become logical, rational and is able to build his own thoughts. A grown up has the power to distinguish between reality and fantasy.
A grown up individual understands the actions of others just as the poet recognises the hiatus between the preaching and the practice of the adults. He realises the hypocrisy and the double standards maintained by the adults. A mature individual also asserts his thoughts and opinions. The poet realises that he himself is the master of his mind and can form thoughts and opinions of his own.

According to the poem, the process of growing up involves the attainment of mental maturity. A person is said to be grown up when he has become logical, rational and is able to build his own thoughts. A grown up has the power to distinguish between reality and fantasy.
A grown up individual understands the actions of others just as the poet recognises the hiatus between the preaching and the practice of the adults. He realises the hypocrisy and the double standards maintained by the adults. A mature individual also asserts his thoughts and opinions. The poet realises that he himself is the master of his mind and can form thoughts and opinions of his own.

The poet, basically, seems to be obsessed about his childhood and, more so, about its loss. He feels very nostalgic and lament over the fact that his childhood will never come back.  

• The poem "Childhood" presents a real picture of what man is.
• The poet builds a contrasting image of childhood and the adults' views and perspective.
• During childhood, a child is very innocent and is filled with love and purity. As he starts growing into an adult, the negative emotions like hatred and jealously steps into the person.
• Although the adults preach of living in harmony and with love but in reality they do not practice such things.

The poet can find his lost childhood in the picture of an infant. Yes he has lost his childhood irrevocably. The poem Childhood by Markus Natten is about his lost childhood. He also wants to know where his innocence has gone. He feels he has left it somewhere in the past. May be it has gone to the infant that he used to be. But he is sure he no longer possesses the joys, carelessness and innocence of his childhood.

The first and most important reason the poet seems confused is because, he does not understand when he stopped being a child and when he became an adult. Whilst trying to find his childhood, he reveals more things about himself that show his confusion. He is confused by the fact that Heaven and Hell are not real places unlike what he learnt growing up. He is confused as to why adults are so hypocritical. He sees adults around him preaching love, but they never practise it themselves, which leave him confused. He suddenly realises that he is now an adult who can think for himself and the sudden burden of responsibility confuses him as it is not something he experienced as a child, as he was always told what to do as a child.

Poet feels that grown up people do not act on what they preach.

The child in the poem Childhood does not think highly of the adults. They say that the adults tell us to preach love but fail to do so themselves.

Hence, the child calls the adult hypocrites who say something but do something else.

The child interprets that the adults talk about love but they do not preach so themselves and ends up calling them hypocrites.