I.d like to introduce myself. My name is Cal and I'll be your narrator for this evening. Are we sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Once upon a time a long, long time ago, back when video recorders were the size of a sideboard and a laptop was a tray you ate your TV dinner from, there lived an old, wise dwarf. The old wise dwarf's name was Foolscap. (, bet you thought that was a type of paper, didn't you? Now thank your lucky stars that Cal has been so kind as to educate you.)

Now, Foolscap liked his own company, mostly because you can't argue with yourself or get irritated with yourself. So what Foolscap liked to do best was to kick back and listen to Duran Duran on his Walkman.

Now, one particular sunny day (rather unusual for England, I know), Foolscap was pottering about his garden, listening to 'Rio', when! DA! DA! DAAAAA! (, I don't want you to get scared right now, this is not going to be as bad as you think, I promise. Come on now, out from behind that pillow.) There on Foolscap's prize tulips was the biggest, baddest, meanest (yes, even meaner than Simon Cowell) snail!

The snail saw Foolscap approaching, but quite nonchalantly waved his feelers about in a lazy manner. Foolscap quickly drew his super-strength snail and slug spray. He was so quick, in fact, that his arms blurred like a hummingbird's wings!All of a sudden, the snail spoke. 'Am I bothered? Do I look like I'm bothered? Face? Bothered?'

'Erm,' replied the dwarf.

'Yeah, see, bothered. Not!' answered the snail.

I'm afraid that at this point, Foolscap saw red. Now, , this bit you can hide behind a pillow for. Things, I'm afraid to say, get ugly. Foolscap resulted to the only tactic he knew: he gave the snail a... wedgie! The snail righted his shell, giving the dwarf a look of disdain. 'If you think that is going to move me, then you have another think coming, matey.'

The dwarf blinked slowly. 'You are going to regret this soooooooo much.'

The snail once again waved his feelers nonchalantly. 'I doubt that very much.'

At this, Foolscap turned a rather fetching shade of puce and hot-footed it around to his neighbour's house.

Foolscap hammered on his neighbour's door. , I want you to know that he did not actually use a hammer. This is just a figure of speech, because of course he would have done some quite considerable damage to his neighbour's door had he used a hammer, and then his neighbour would have been less inclined to help him.

Shawcross, his neighbour, answered the door. 'Where's the fire?' he asked.

Foolscap rushed into the house. 'Hopefully under the snail who's currently residing on my tulips,' he answered.

'Ah, snail problems. I have just the thing,' said Shawcross as he walked through to the kitchen and opened the cellar door.

'Erm, we have to go in the cellar?' asked Foolscap.

'Of course we have to go in the cellar!' Shawcroft rolled his eyes. 'Everyone knows that skeletons are kept in cupboards and' (he resorted to a whisper at this point) 'deep dark secrets are kept in cellars... along with fine wine, of course!'

Foolscap bit his bottom lip, trying hard not to show his fear. He hated cellars. Horrible things lived there, like spiders, and other creepy things, but surely it must be worth it to get rid of that cursed snail. 'Okay,' gulped Foolscap.

The two of them descended the cellar steps. When they reached the bottom, the cellar was well-lit and contained row after row of filing cabinets.

'What's this,' asked Foolscap.

'Filing cabinets,' answered Shawcroft.

Foolscap rolled his eyes. Well, he thought, ask a stupid question....

Shawcroft wandered over to a filing cabinet, opened the middle drawer and leafed through the files it contained. He pulled a couple out, shook his head, replaced them and pulled out a couple more. All of a sudden he shouted 'Eureka!'

'What? What?' asked Foolscap.

'This is it!' answered Shawcroft, 'it's just what we need.' He proceeded to show it to the dwarf. The pair giggled evilly as they read the file.

The snail watched as an elf approached him across the garden, continuing to munch on a tulip leaf.

'Hello there,' said Shawcroft.

The snail looked up slowly. 'Look, mate, you may as well know that I'm not moving. There is plenty of good food here, and that dwarf is not up to much, so I'm staying.'

'Oh,' said Shawcroft, 'that's a shame.'

'Listen!' said the snail angrily. 'I'm not bothered!'

'What?' asked Shawcroft, 'not even by this?' He leant forwards, whispering to the snail, then proceeded to show him an old and battered bit of parchment. The snail turned a lovely selection of rainbow colours: first pink, then red, then purple, then green and THEN! he seemed to lose all his colour completely! He sputtered, he coughed, he hacked, at one point I even thought he was going to be sick! AND THEN! He sped off — well, as speedily as a snail can speed off, anyway.

Shawcroft stood with a very pleased grin on his face. Foolscap walked over, slapping his friend on the back. Both of them were very, very pleased with themselves.

Now then, , I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'What on earth was in that file?' Trust me, you do not want to know, but you had better hope that our Mr Shawcroft does not have a file on you!

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