The car is still leaking oil. The drain is still leaking dirty water. Something struck me last night, and it chilled me to the bone.
There’s virtually a whole chapter of the book devoted to The Curse Of The Robin Of Sherwood Dolls. I won these in a charity auction at the Robin convention and they’re just a lovely, hand-knitted collection of woollen dolls in the image of the Robin Of Sherwood cast. There’s Robin and Tuck and Marion and Will and Little John and all the rest, and they even have little wool bows and swords and arrows and things.
And everyone who comes into contact with them suffers a terrible fate. Even at the convention, with them on the back seat of the car, they managed to destroy our “alternator” (whatever that is) and leave us stranded on the side of the M1 near Mansfield at 3am. They’ve since destroyed a car windscreen, a PC motherboard, a broadband internet connection and a car tyre, and eighteen months ago I locked them in a lead-lined cupboard in the spare room and haven’t heard a peep out of them since.
Until a week ago, when I thought “Ah, the hell with it…” and cleared out the cupboard. I put them in a storage box which is currently on a chair on the landing. That was two days before the oil leak started and three days before my drains collapsed.
Last night, lying in bed, my girlfriend Sorcha swore she heard something moving in the house. I did the usual manly inspection around the place (ready to batter any intruders to death with a Dalek bubble bath container) before coming back to bed and laughing”It’s probably those dolls trying to force their way out of the box”.
We looked at each other. We turned pale.
We’re not laughing any more.
Wiffle Lever To Full! 
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