h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Once it invades, your life will never be the same again.

It seems to come from nowhere, materialising out of the primordial slime.

Stealthily it invades your body, then your mind, and then your living space; draining you of nutrients, stripping your resources, robbing you of rest and every normal joy you used to count on for your sanity.

It understands no reason, nor can you understand it. Nevertheless it soon gains control over your mind, hijacking your emotions and reducing you to a dribbling fool. By methods from the most devious to the most blatant it wrests your compliance in following its own incomprehensible agenda; you become its unwitting agent, its slave.

After some decades of dominating your life, it may, if you are lucky, simply go away. Finding another of its kind, it may reproduce. This instantly makes it a sympathetic fellow-sufferer, and makes you a ridiculously proud grandparent.

So congratulations are in order?

To Chaiwallah (Leah Rose born 11 Jan 2004).

Me, I'm an old hand (grandsons of three and five).

I thought you were talking about buying a new bicycle !

This is probably because we keep buying them. I've even got one in the bedroom now (but he is wuvley ).

Hello Ravenbait! Gosh it's interesting to re-read this with 'bicycle' in mind; but the reading breaks down when you come to the part where it reduces you to a dribbling fool -- a nice bicycle elevates you to god-like status (in my eyes). And a bicycle will never make you a grandparent; it will militate to its utmost against you becoming a parent at all (though the chicks do fall for the god-like thighs).